Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

Dear colleagues, please comment on CentralNotice banner proposal for WikiGap 2020 Russia article contest. (8 March - 8 May, all IPs from Russia, WPs only, 1 banner impression per week). Thank you. JukoFF (talk) 08:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

There has been a long recognized need for improved communication and coordination between the community and the Wikimedia Foundation. Too often Foundation plans have come as an unexpected and unwelcome surprise to the community. Too often community concerns or objections have come as an unexpected surprise to staff members. Better communication and collaboration would reduce the rate of conflict and failed projects. Staff members are generally enthusiastic about our public service mission, have good intentions, and want to help us. However to be frank, most of them know about as much about what goes on over here as most of us know about what goes on inside the Foundation. They are employees in a conventional top-down authority structure. Most of them have no experience in the community, and our consensus system is alien concept. Sometimes they struggle to understand how we work, what we want, what we need, and even how to talk with us effectively. There is a communication and culture gap.

I have seen positive efforts from the Foundation over the last few years. However I believe both sides need to work to bridge the communication gap. I have some ideas, and it begins with this proposal to create a new village pump page. The current Draft Village Pump Page header reads as follows:

The WMF section of the village pump is a community managed page. Editors or Foundation staff may post and discuss any information, proposals, feedback requests, or any other issues of significance to both the community and the Wikimedia Foundation. It is intended to aid communication, understanding, and coordination between the community and the Foundation.

There is currently a Pump Proposal open above, asking WMF Legal to enforce the Terms of Use against an abusive company. That is a prime example of kind of topics I envision for the new page. The Central Notice template also currently lists an RFC for the Foundation's rebranding strategy to rename itself from Wikimedia to Wikipedia. As part of that project they evaluated the level of community support and produced a report, which I believe has been delivered to the Board of Trustees. The report states Measure community appetite for change: ✓ 0.6% of informed oppose. The 0.6% oppose figure is in rather stark contrast to the over 92% oppose on the RFC. I have several other examples of confirmation bias in Foundation's gathering or handling of data. I believe bad data has contributed to some of the tensions between the Foundation and Community. The RFC page also has a Statement by the Foundation. Given how the RFC is going, I believe it is clear that the staff handling the project do not grasp the significance of the RFC.

I have long been following Foundation projects, plans, and strategy. I have a small pile of similarly significant topics for the new page, including matters of past and future Foundation strategy. As some of you may be aware the Foundation has finally given up on the Flow project, and a Consultation resulted in a decision to keep and enhance existing Talk pages. I am concerned that the enhancement project is going off course. For example, like Flow, the project has a design flaw that can result in wikitext content corruption. The manager has indicated that he considers it an insignificant matter, not worth fixing. One of my priorities for the new Pump page will be to provide more detailed information on the new Talk Page Project. I hope to bring that team helpful information on our needs, concerns, and expectations for any major changes to Talk pages.

Over the years I have had discussions with several top managers, with the previous Executive Director, and with the current Executive Director. I believe the Executive Director would be receptive if we produce some consensus message regarding Foundation strategy and engagement. That is beyond the scope of the immediate proposal.

Proposed: Install Draft Village Pump Page. The page may of course evolve based on comments here or later. Alsee (talk) 12:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support as proposer, per the rationale above. Alsee (talk) 12:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support Additional communication is a good thing! This makes hella sense! GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 12:53, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• So another village pump page that most people won't watch? Much less WMF? Nah. --Izno (talk) 15:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Izno... Can you come up with a better suggestion? We do need SOME way to facilitate more communication with the WMF. Blueboar (talk) 15:20, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Comment Previous discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 130#New Village Pump page?. Anomie⚔ 15:23, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support concept, but in practice, this will need buy-in from the WMF - if they don't use it, then there's no point. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 15:32, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• In my opinion, such a thing is better placed on the Meta wiki; that's where the WMF does most of its work and it would make this venue usable for non-enwiki projects as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:47, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support as beneficial, even a less active Village PUmp page would be seen more then the current set-up which is basically "meta pages only seen by a couple of keen souls. They panic and dump on CENT after a significant delay". The only other action that could provide a substantial assistance would be something akin to Tech News "WMF Newsletter". The issues with this are threefold: you'd need about 200 sign-ups to get reasonable awareness; you'd need several active people to run it reliably; some major WMF discussion areas would need much quicker response times than (a max) 30 days to give a chance for proper discussion. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:53, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Summoning @Whatamidoing (WMF):... — xaosflux ^Talk 16:13, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

  User:Nosebagbear, rather than creating Yet Another Newsletter that nobody reads, the English Wikipedia would probably find it easier to promote the WP:Wikipedia Signpost, which already has the subscribers, and which could be a reliable source of information that mattered to this particular community. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support concept per Creffpublic's similar comment above, but Jo-Jo Eumerus has a good point too. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:57, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Strong support Regarding Jo-Jo Emerus's comment; Meta is where the WMF does most of its work, but the problem with discussions on Meta is that members of the individual communities rarely go there and can easily miss important discussions. Having a page here to discuss things with the WMF makes it easier on the community. Such a page can house links to important discussions that are taking place on Meta, thereby driving traffic there. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:05, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • ONUnicorn, have you heard about User:DannyS712's work on a global watchlist? Flow/Structured Discussions, which is widely used at MediaWiki.org, will ping people with every new discussion thread on a watched page. That's great for cross-wiki notifications, but at Meta, your options are either changing your prefs to email you for every change to your Meta watchlist, or hoping that we get a global watchlist. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

    @Whatamidoing (WMF): I'm glad you find it useful. Useful enough to support the grant request / incorporate it as an extension? See m:Grants:Project/Create a global watchlist extension DannyS712 (talk) 23:58, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

  • Yes, I'm aware of the global watchlist project. I also have no idea why it's relevant to this discussion. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 01:13, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Being able to see, while you're still "here", that a discussion page has changed "there", seems like a way to improve the problem you identified, that "members of the individual communities rarely go there and can easily miss important discussions". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • Yes, but in order to add a discussion "there" to your global watchlist, you need to first be aware that it exists "there". ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:42, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • I agree with you that it's not a complete solution, but it could improve the situation, especially if you put Meta's central announcement pages, such as m:Template:Main Page/WM News, on your watchlist. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support Having a dedicated page for communication with the WMF seems like a no-lose proposition. I think it needs to be two-way; people should be able to post questions for, and expect answers from, Foundation personnel, and the Foundation should also be expected to make announcements for the community, using the page. I can't think of a downside to this proposal. --Jayron32 17:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support A direct way to see WMF related proposals, and for clear, one on one communication with them? Yes please! This would, hopefully, greatly help with places where the WMF clearly didn't get proper consensus, and would allow for us to bring proposals their way in a place everyone would see. --moonythedwarf (Braden N.) 17:24, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support in principle per Creffett. I would love to see this happen. Our best chances for greater two-way communication with the Foundation may be by raising it as an issue in the Board of Trustees election. EllenCT (talk) 19:13, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support - Having a centralized enwiki discussion forum for interacting with WMF would be beneficial. I hope that WMF agrees. - MrX 🖋 13:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. On issues for which the WMF is completely non-responsive, I don't think having a dedicated board would make them willing to respond. On issues where they are willing to respond, they're frequently willing to participate anywhere, unless it's a cross-project issue, in which case they'll sometimes only interact on Meta. The WMF has given no indication that they'd be more willing to use a dedicated forum. The task of dragging the WMF into areas where we can have some level of mutual awareness is going to take a long time. The WMF has the ability to communicate things well, they even use a wiki internally to host things like every team's weekly report (which they won't let us see, or comment on), but as far as I can tell, they just don't want to allow that much WMF-community interaction, for reasons unknown to me. --Yair rand (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2020 (UTC) seems fine, butReply
• Oppose, I wonder, why the enWP, who already is the center of the anglocentric WMF, is complaining, just go to Meta, unfortunately for the non-anglophone projects they seem to speak only english over there. This sounds to me more like a venue, whre the WMF can pretend to talk with the community, while they are talking just to a tiny peace of the community, bur one that conveniently speaks the only language they seem to know. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(talk) 05:19, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support concept but different name and framing WMF communications happen in a decentralized way and there are regular disagreements about what WMF representatives communicated effectively and what was hidden in some out-of-the way area. I support the idea of centralized posting but think it should be either outside the village pump, or if listed with the village pump boards, then it should have a different name and branding. WMF communications are different because everything that organization does is entangled with money and someone's career, and consequently much of that organization's activity here is in a conflict of interest with some individual or team's financial livelihood. The interests of the Wikimedia Movement and the Wikimedia Foundation often diverge, and staff of the Wikimedia Foundation are not part of the Wikimedia community in that they each have a commitment to serve the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation as an organization and favor that organization in the case of any conflict between the Wikimedia Community and that organization. The reason why the village pump is not the place for WMF discussion is that the village pump is established as a community volunteer space. Instead, I think the right board for the WMF would be something like a Wikipedia:Local Embassy, where the WMF sends its diplomats and negotiators into English Wikipedia space to negotiate something. Maybe the WMF should set up embassies wherever it would log its efforts to establish agreements with a local Wikimedia community. The idea of a central space is great. We should distinguish ideas and proposals from the WMF from ideas and proposals from Wikimedia community volunteers, though. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:57, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support concept. I am a little concerned that not all the messages that would be posted to such a board would actually be matters that require the attention of the WMF. There should be norms established that if inappropriate content is added, it can be moved to a different pump page. Sdkb (talk) 21:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support the concept... but I ain't holding my breath on this being useful if the WMF decides to have a rerun of the Fram and Flow Show. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Onward to 2020} 23:43, 3 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Dont mind, but don't think it will approve communication of either the foundation or the community one bit. The problem is not the amount of locations to discuss, its that there are too many stakeholders with too many different opinions and too many thing happening to keep track of no matter what you do. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:18, 6 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support Concept per above, especially Creffet and EllenCT. Puddleglum ^2.0 20:29, 7 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support this idea for now. Anything to open constructive communications seems fine. I would like to suggest we review the actual results later. a channel to discuss things with WMF seems fine, but we should also hjave the option to look at other methods later, if this new idea doesn't have the full effect desired. --Sm8900 (talk) 04:28, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support the concept of constructive communications with "norms established": I am one of those that very rarely "go there" (Meta), and think comments to "just go to Meta" are out of touch, as I imagine many also don't "go there". I think there would be community benefits in this proposal and help others not "easily miss important discussions". We "advertise" to get involvement so why not have a local centralized place? Will the WMF get involved or "buy-in"? I don't know, but I will continually assume good faith that others will do the same. If true, the comments "WMF is completely non-responsive" might be a reason that a collaborative effort (and a fairly large show of support), will hopefully gain more involvement ("WMF-community interaction"), and "might" be a game changer, or not. We will never solve issues or find solutions by just complaining and not trying. I do not know anything about "anglocentric" concerns (Is this a real problem and how is it really relevant here?) the WMF "might" be complaining about. I assume enWiki is among the more active projects. I cannot help where I was born (demography of the editors), but this is where I am, and I imagine that is true for the many on this project. The WMF has to understand that it is not the fault of any considered anglocentric that broad community involvement somehow created some sort of bias. I want to see worldwide involvement but I only speak English so my endeavors, that consume most of my free volunteer time, would very logically be focused here, so I "favor this organization" for obvious reasons. The WMF and the other projects need to worry about their end. On this "end" I would like to see better communication (dedicated forum?) and support anything in that direction. Maybe a new tab here, or another supported location, but I don't see that Wikipedia:Local Embassy ("Wikipedia-related multilingual coordination") would be proper. If the WMF is picky about what involvement they wish to be involved in, then at the least, we can have a central location for discussions and potentially important news, as well as hopefully collaborative communication. Any thoughts that we possibly somehow shouldn't continually make attempts doesn't seem logical. Otr500 (talk) 17:41, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Jayron32, you used the phrases 'expecting answers' and 'expecting announcements' from the Foundation. I want to emphasize that this is a community page, and creating a community page does not create any particular obligation on the Foundation. An appearance of imposing an obligation or responsibility onto the Foundation could raise objections and resistance. The new page is a workplace for us, and I wish us to extend an open invitation to the Foundation utilize the page. I hope and believe they will accept that invitation (likely with hesitation and fear, as conflicts have been painful for both sides). The only expectation on the Foundation is that they continue their existing efforts, and I have hope that we can help work towards improvement. Alsee (talk) 22:05, 29 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

See, I still feel that is backwards. Wikipedia and the en.wikipedia community does not exist for the purpose of supporting the whims of the Foundation. The Foundation exists to support the work of the volunteers and the various communities of the Wikipedia movement, and increasing and improving communication between the Foundation and the communities it serves is what we should be focusing on. We should not be focused on being better foot soldiers blindly following whatever mission the Foundation has decided to set us upon, we should be expecting and receiving support from the Foundation for the purpose of building an encyclopedia. Where conflicts have been painful have been where the Foundation has acted unilaterally and in its own interest without regard for the interests of the Community. The expectation is, the Foundation should seek input and advice from the community on major issues, and that the Foundation should be willing to respond to legitimate concerns from the community. If they are not willing to do either of those things, the noticeboard is pointless. --Jayron32 12:40, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

I will pass along a link to this discussion, but I think I can predict some of the questions I'll get, so perhaps some of you would like to start answering them now, just in case:

1. Why do we need a single, separate page? Why not have all of us talk on whichever pages are relevant? At least some of you have figured out how to ping me ;-) and if that's too hard, we could always create a generic {{ping the WMF}} template. Having a discussion half at one page and half at a "Village pump (WMF)" sounds like a WP:CENT problem. On the other side, imagine that the WMF is offering hackathon scholarships to bot operators. Why should that be announced at a special "WMF" page instead of at WP:BOTN? Have you thought about the signal-to-noise problems in the movement? The main problem isn't a lack of information. It's finding the thing you care about in the middle of all the things you don't care about.
2. What's the specific purpose? Specifically, is it primarily one-way information from editors to the WMF, primarily one-way information from the WMF to (some) editors, primarily discussions to exchange views without trying to make decisions, or is it primarily a location for decision-making? I see comments above that seem to believe each of those four. Forums that try to do all of the above usually fail at achieving most of them.
3. Why shouldn't this online community join all the other online communities in central locations (such as Meta)?
   • The Working Group volunteers for the 2030 Strategy discussions say that we should be integrating the movement across all the online and offline communities. This proposal is for more separation, elevating the status of one online community and one movement organization.
   • To give a concrete example, I see elsewhere on this page that the OP still thinks that the WMF is planning to cram the visual editor down our collective throats. Why shouldn't we be talking about which editing options to offer in a central place, so that people like User:Sänger, who has been asking the Editing team to enable the visual editor on talk pages for years now, can join the conversation and share his insights? (Sorry, Sänger, they're still saying no.)
4. Do you really understand that it's not just the WMF that you need to deal with?
   • The Strategy folks are advocating for a smaller role for the WMF and decentralized action. This proposal seems to be focused on a single organization, when editors at the English Wikipedia need to be talking to many.
   • For example, WMDE is finishing up a project that will change the <ref name="Alice"> syntax to do something similar to the {{sfn}} templates. I'm not taking bets on how long it will take for someone to complain that "the WMF" did this "unwanted" work (which was democratically selected through a public, on-wiki voting process), but I do want to point out that if you're setting up a page for just the WMF, you are excluding all of the (multiple) organizations whose activities affect us here.
   • To give another example, see https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/events/13 for a list of 300+ events that have been announced in the last few months. Many of these are editing events, which have a direct effect on New Page Patrollers and other editors. Very few of those announcements are from the WMF. This trend is going to continue: more events, and more articles about people, places, and things that the average English Wikipedian has never heard of. You might want to hear about them, and a WMF-focused page won't tell you about any of them, because the WMF isn't running those events.

There will probably be other questions, but perhaps these would be a good starting place. In terms of a response, I predict that the WMF's managers first thought will likely be that they're hiring someone to create something called a "strategic communications plan", so nobody should make any final decisions today. (My own personal thoughts sound a lot like https://xkcd.com/927/ – namely that it would be convenient for me if a single forum could replace all the others, and if people would actually pay attention to it [even though most of it would be irrelevant to them], but I do not expect that to happen.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 30 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

Whatamidoing (WMF) You mentioned above the global watchlist work; and here you list several items that can be summarized as, "people should use Meta". One thing I'm thinking this would be useful for is as a repository for links to important discussions happening on Meta. Because if there is a discussion happening on Meta, but people who would be interested aren't aware of it, they aren't going to participate. A global watchlist to remind you to check up on developments with discussions you are interested in on Meta is only useful in as much as you are aware of the discussion and have added it to your watchlist. People on en wiki are constantly surprised when action gets taken as a result of a discussion happening on Meta that affects 100% of the en wiki editing community, but less than 1% of the community was even aware the discussion was occurring. The end result is that the WMF looks like the Vogons in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

“There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.”

My thought is that the board could be used to post announcements about discussions happening on Meta, with reminders to discuss this there. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:57, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

ONUnicorn, a page for links to relevant discussions (more than fit in CENT) could be created by any interested person. It already happens in some other communities, and there's no reason why you couldn't do the same here if you wanted to (e.g., w:de:Wikipedia:Projektneuheiten, which is specific to technical changes, or w:fr:Wikipédia:Annonces, which is general news). Subject-specific pages might improve the perceived signal-to-noise ratio for readers. I recommend against making it WMF-specific, as this community is affected by far more organizations and individual-led projects than just the WMF. You might want to talk to the Signpost about this, as they have some experience with announcements, and they already have an audience.

It won't solve the problem that most people won't read it (or remember what they've read). I've manually posted messages to more than a hundred high-traffic pages, and run site-wide banners to 100% of logged-in editors for weeks, and still had editors say they never heard about it; I've seen a CENT-listed, month-long RFC here at VPPR, with 20+ editors supporting it and nobody opposing it, get overturned because some other editors didn't notice the RFC; I've even seen someone actively participate in a discussion on wiki, and then ask a month later why nobody ever discussed the subject. There is no way to make people read and remember everything that's relevant to them. But the fact that it won't be a total and perfect solution doesn't mean that it's not worth doing it at all. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

Whatamidoing (WMF) I find it ironic that you come here opposing the new page and apparently blaming me regarding the WMF cramming the visual editor down our throats. It's ironic because, on exactly the issue of WMF's VE throat-cramming, you are responsible for letting us get to the brink of second Superprotect-level crisis. In case you don't recall you were liaison for the Single Edit Tab (SET) deployment. I told you that the manager explicitly assured me it would NOT be deployed as VE-default without a community consensus. I repeatedly asked you weather the the product was going to deploy with a VE-default. I presented a pattern of evidence that the product was about to deploy with a VE-default. Your responses and denials on the subject turned out be... unhelpful and untrue... that is the most generous way I can put it. Furthermore the manager on the project later asserted surprise at the issue... suggesting that either (1) you failed to ask or mention the issue with staff or (2) the manager was lying. I will not speculate between those options. In any case, the project for which you were liaison was in fact deployed with a VE-default. Exactly as I anticipated. Exactly as I repeatedly brought to you in advance. After deploying the VE-default the Foundation went non-responsive for well over a week, despite attempts to reach the Foundation in multiple places including the manager's personal talk page. We only got a response when I escalated the issue to the Executive Director's talk page! She had to summon the manager to give an answer. The manager gave us assurances that it was a bug and that he would fix it. More than a week went by with no action. We went back to the manager and he told us that VE-default was always his intention and he had absolutely no intention of fulfilling his promise to change it. At that point things went from ugly to obscene blatant bad faith. He was outright called a "liar", and ANI decided that "liar" was not uncivil given the diffs of his own words. A community member then wrote a hack for the sitewide javascript to change the default. The community members involved were acutely aware that hacking the sitewide javascript to explicitly override a manager was putting us on the threshhold of repeating the Superprotect incident. Note that the manager said it was a bug - so either the javascript hack was an undisputed bugfix or the manager was acting in deceitful bad faith. Either way the editors involved considered the javascript absolutely justified. At that point the manager finally agreed to fix the default-editor from his end, as he had promised to do a week earlier.

Whatamidoing, I respect your work and experience and expertise and dedication as a community member. However as a liaison your job was to prevent any of that from happening. I persistently attempted to ask you and warn you, attempting to head off the impeding problem. The reason I want this new Pump page is because you and other staff consistently ignore my accurate warnings that manure is about to hit the rotary air-mover. I am trying to tell you that there are a whole series of fans spinning right now. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I'm hoping the new page will help us sort out issues before they escalate to crisis. I hope the page will help us get moving in a common direction.

To minimize WallOfText I'll limit my reply to that one subject. Oh, and Spoiler Alert, the Foundation is about to release hard data on how badly a VE-default reduces edits. Alsee (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

Last I checked, I still hadn't been appointed queen of the wikiverse. (I'm sure it's just an oversight. ;-)) However, until that happens, I can't actually prevent everything that I'd like to prevent, any more than I can force someone to build the things that I want built (e.g., phab:T89970).

The movement might need a clearer understanding of which groups ultimately get to make which kinds of decisions, and specifically where the English Wikipedia's editors fall in a typical responsibility assignment matrix for different kinds of projects undertaken by outside communities. Are you supposed to be "informed" or "consulted" about projects that affect you, but the people responsible for the project get to make the decisions? Or do you see yourself as the ultimate "approver" or "decider", with veto power over everyone else? The volunteers in the Strategy Working Groups have proposed that a movement charter be written to clarify some of these points of contention. Perhaps having a document that explicitly says something like "An online community {can|can't} veto a project that affects that online community, but which was undertaken by another group" would forestall some of these disputes by preventing all sides of any dispute from thinking that their side has the ultimate decision-making authority. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 31 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

But the Foundation did appoint you queen of Single Edit Tab liaising. You do an excellent job as liaison - until the Foundation agenda is questioned. At that point you tend to cease liaising. That doesn't serve the community or the Foundation. I can't decide whether it's better or worse than a liaison who lacks your community knowledge and understanding. The job should be to facilitate communication, understanding, and collaboration between the Foundation and the community. One of the most important things is to alert staff of any issues that may negatively impact their work, especially any potential or actual opposing consensus. Those staff then need your expertise and help to reach a viable resolution. Too often such situations go unacknowledged until too late. Most staff don't seem to have have the mandate or understanding to constructively engage that kind of situation. That leaves us with unconstructive approaches and bad outcomes. The Foundation and community need to work as partners.

Regarding Responsibility assignment matrix, I spent some time absorbing the page. The models generally seem to presume a context essentially internal to an organisation, generally everyone is an employee. It's a bit more complicated to apply the models here. I will try to summarize my view this way: Those models generally acknowledge approval may be needed from multiple parties to initiate a project and/or approve deployment. I acknowledge the Foundation has something approximating universal veto of every stage of anything affecting them or expending their money or labor. Wikis should get broad local decision-making on things affecting us, and I see cases where a global level consensus could apply. For example the Foundation sometimes cite the issue of a wiki unreasonably blocking some deployment - perhaps even one admin on a tinywiki. The community has the solution. It's documented in WP:CONLEVEL. If a wiki goes Nationalistic and violates NPOV and abuses admin tools, the global community can revoke the admins and reboot the wiki. If a wiki is unreasonably obstructing some deployment, global consensus can assert global deployment. Problem solved - if the Foundation engages consensus. Alsee (talk) 09:57, 1 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Liaison work, as any professional liaison officer could tell you, does not mean that you can always make two sides agree. It is possible to do excellent work as a liaison (i.e., as a person who carries information from one side to the other, and back again) and still end up with an intractable disagreement.

Before we could agree that things could be done by global consensus, we would have to have a consensus that consensus is the movement's method of making decisions. "The consensus of people who showed up" is mostly how we do it here at this wiki, but it is not how things happen in other communities. Some prefer straight-up majority votes or super-majority votes. There are also disagreements about what to do when there's no consensus. The Strategy volunteers favor the idea of a more integrated movement, but I think that will require us to spend time sorting out the details. For example, is it each human who gets a "vote", or each community or organization? And how do we respect devolution and local autonomy if we all get to vote on other group's affairs? (Surely we wouldn't want to say that the 99% of us who don't speak Swedish get to tell the relatively few Swedish speakers what they're supposed to be writing about.) And what do you do about intractable disagreements, e.g., that on the one hand, "the Foundation has something approximating universal veto of every stage of anything affecting them" but on the other hand, this community very much wants to have the opposite outcome, and sees itself as being the primary party affected by a WMF decision? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Sdkb, we'll collectively sort out how the page actually gets used. But for what it's worth, my concept for the page is "about WMF" rather than "to WMF". For example I picture anyone could post "The WMF is working on X", information which might be of interest here. That post might or might not spark a conversation. That conversation might or might not rise to a level where we want to actively talk to the WMF about it. Although I do anticipate a need for feedback-to or discussion-with the WMF for some initial topics that I want to post. Alsee (talk) 12:34, 3 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I support Alsee's proposal. and this new resource would be beneficial to WMF, and to Wikipedia. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 378,105 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more). (Number as of this proposal, 00:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC))

That number of articles would seem to be overwhelming, with human effort unlikely to reduce it, especially since it gets higher with new tags. Here are some suggestions:

1. Create a bot to work on that huge category, looking at articles tagged before a certain date, say before 2010, and checking how many references were valid on the date cetain, and how many are valid during the check, and then delete the tag if the number of valid citations has increased enough. Determining that number might be tricky to establish, so perhaps some sampling bot would be needed. I suspect that there are many older articles which would qualify for deletion, even with a increase of 20 to qualify for deletion.

2. Create a category a lot smaller than 378,000, say only 3000, with some way to select good candidates for human effort, perhaps large older articles with only a few inline references.

3. Run a contest for that smaller number for any user who signs up for it.

4. We know who created the article and when the tag was applied. A bot could be created to send a message to the tagger user, or the creator of the article and maybe only send messages to volunteers, not everybody found to have created or tagged a references needed article.

What do others say? The previous proposal shows some interest in this situation--Dthomsen8 (talk) 00:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Those are only the articles actually tagged as needing more references. It is possible that 5 million would be a more representative number. Another way of looking at it is that only GA and FA or equivalent and maybe B-class have been adequately checked, and that was when they were promoted. It also depends on whose evaluation for need is applied. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:14, 9 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

You are right, there is likely to be far than 378 thousand articles that could be tagged as needing more references. Your idea of starting with FA or GA articles is a good one. My basic concept was find articles with sufficient references but tagged long ago to be done first, and your idea to start with FA and GA articles is would help. I am going to look at those two categories by manual means. I wll post some findings here.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 01:00, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Dthomsen8 I've seen editors add the template when there are only a few sentences lacking a citation and everything else is cited. To me, it should only be used in the worst cases, since as Peter says nearly every article needs additional citations by default. As such a bot that can determine proportion ie. number of citations vs. number of sentences, could better determine when to both add and remove the tag. These tags are emotive in the community, any bot work would need to be balanced with both adds and deletes. I ran a bot that added about 10,000 {{Unreferenced}} which you would think would be uncontroversial but it took months of RFC and BRFA (two of them) to finally get approval, it was a big effort. The software was also not easy simply determining when an article has a ref or not, or should even have a ref or not, turns out to be complex in the details due to endless edge case exceptions. -- GreenC 16:21, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

From many of the above comments, it looks as if wikiprojects are a thing of the past. Only those concerned with producing high quality articles are considered successful while those with few active participants are considered to be inactive.

I have a rather different view. I find wikiprojects extremely useful in identifying articles on a given area of interest, in contacting editors for pertinent collaboration and in alerting potential collaborators to developments which may be of interest to them. I can confirm this has worked effectively in connection, for example, with the monthly topics of Women in Red, with notices of contests, with the need to concentrate on third world countries/populations, and with attracting interest in developments such as elections or world conferences.

There has been little mention of the part wikiprojects play in attracting new editors but in my experience that is frequently one of the more important outcomes.

There is one aspect in particular which seems important to me and which up to now has received little attention. It is the frequency with which wikiprojects are included on the talk pages of new articles. These templates serve not only to relate an article to the areas of interest it covers but they are also a means of initial and on-going assessment. I think it would be very useful if we could find a means of listing the number of talk page templates per wikiproject added each month. In my opinion, it would provide quite a different view of the importance editors give to one of the more important features of wikiprojects.

In conclusion, while I welcome general discussion of how we can revive community collaboration, it looks to me as if many wikiprojects continue to serve a useful purpose and should therefore be given further support. But to avoid confusion, those which really no longer serve any useful purpose should be deleted.--Ipigott (talk) 08:00, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I think Sandy is referring to the fact that many WikiProjects end up inactive or barely have a couple of active editors and that most editors have the tendency to do their own thing. I know I've personally started a few projects which are now largely inactive and I see dead projects all of the time when I send out notifications of my contests. The Intertranswiki project for instance is arguably one of the most important things we can do towards addressing systematic bias and getting content on other wikis put into English but we only have one regular contributor who functions within that project, most people work independently. My challenges are faring pretty well as a whole though, and have grown in the number of contributors. The Women cause is somewhat different in that it unifies a lot of people in the real world who are campaigning to make a difference, Women in Red has been extremely well organized and run, in an ideal world every topic would have a fully functional operation and be consistent like this.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The inactive WikiProjects should be nominated for deletions. GoodDay (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Sandy is quite right that many wikiprojects often end up completely inactive and I agree that they should either be deleted or completely bypassed. But many of the others serve a useful support purpose as I've tried to explain. Thanks for reminding us of Intertranswiki - I had almost forgotten about it. It's the kind of wikiproject that could be usefully revived as there is a growing need for translations in and out of English. But like many of the others, someone needs to drive it along.--Ipigott (talk) 15:23, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I didn't expect my observation about MILHIST's performance, relative to other moribund WikiProjects (or active WikiProjects where quantity does not equal quality), to be taken as a reason to delete WikiProjects, rather as a reason to Be Like MILHIST. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I strongly oppose the deletion of WikiProjects unless there is a good reason behind doing so. The pages can just as easily be marked as "historical" until interest is regained on the subject. See: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion as an example of this. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:27, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I just want to add that past consensual reasons for deleting WikiProjects include: Projects created by a sock/banned user, and Projects that are created pre-maturely. Keeps have been historically high for former large scale WikiProjects, and those with a lot of members. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one WikiProject that was deleted, and that was because its purpose was deemed to be antithetical to collaborative editing. isaacl (talk) 21:01, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• How is the encyclopedia improved by deleting an inactive wikiproject? This is like people wanting to clean up stale userspace pages. They may have minimal (or even, zero) value, but if they're not actively causing any harm, why expend any effort to delete them? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • If anyone wants to spend time and effort on getting wikiprojects deleted then I would suggest that they would get more bang for their buck by improving articles, not least by finding reliable sources. Yes, most such projects are moribund, but why waste effort on getting something deleted that nobody reads anyway? Let's remember that we are supposed to be producing a public-facing encyclopedia, not making a nice tidy Wikipedia space for ourselves. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • One possible benefit of deleting an inactive wikiproject is that it makes it less confusing for editors to find a venue to raise their concerns. Wikipedia has lots of dead spaces where you can shout as much as you want, but no one is listening. Removing some of these could make for a more responsive experience.
      That said, I think this is a fairly minor concern. The harm done by inactive wikiprojects is pretty minimal and likely not worth the trouble to address. --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

      The work done by the WikiProject can still be of use, even if the project is no longer a central hub of activity for the topic area, such as style advice and guidance on article content and format. Additionally, preserving the historical record is important to ensure that future work can build on the past and that blind alleys aren't unnecessarily retaken. Marking them inactive may be useful to set expectations on responsiveness, but deleting them is not required. isaacl (talk) 20:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

      That's well-argued and convincing. I never did think it was very useful to delete them; I was just pointing out that it's not quite no benefit. --Trovatore (talk) 01:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

      I would like to chime in briefly, just to my own agreement with Isaacl's well-said comment above. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 14:33, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Wikiprojects were never just about collaborating on articles. Of the two projects where I make regular comments on the talk, I've only ever "signed up" for one. Usually the best way to judge the health or usefulness of a project is to see how often the talk page has changed. Women in Red score very highly there, and in fact generates a lot of collaboration or just helping out, but nearly always at well below FA level. Johnbod (talk) 19:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Aren't Wikiprojects also the framework for how articles are rated? I don't think I've ever seen an article rating outside of a Wikiproject banner on the Talk page. Even a moribund project can still serve that purpose. Schazjmd (talk) 19:38, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Yes, but many of us see ratings more often because there's an option in your gadget preferences to display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header (documentation). Wikipedia runs parallel rating systems: A-B-C are managed by the projects, FA-GA by community processes. At MILHIST we have vigorous A- and B-class review processes, but responsibility for ratings below B were turned over to the Project Bot. (Any other project that would like to use this facility is welcome to do so.)
  • In addition to ratings, the MILHIST project organises collaborations, runs competitions, provides recognition in the form of barnstars and other awards, and provides a forum for editors to receive expert advice and resolve content disputes. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Not all WikiProjects that are quiet are moribund. Some have other channels of communication through mailing lists, chat rooms and meet ups, and some, like WP:WikiProject Olympics, come alive every four years. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

^^this. I agree fully with this comment by Hawkeye7. on that note, please feel free to comment on the section above, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Idea for new community workspace. I am trying to offer different ideas for some sort of workspace where WikiProjects could actively provide updates on their status, their current activities and where people can find them, i.e. in a resource and forum that could be used by 'editors and coordinators from multiple wikis, in other words to provide a shared space where several wikis would combine information and updates.

If no one finds this handy enough for easy use, then I guess it may not get so far; however, I am open to any form. method, or approach that people think might enable this type of resource to become useful. E.g, if you want to make this a sub-page of some existing resource, page or project, then that's fine as well. feel free to comment if you wish. thanks!!--Sm8900 (talk) 20:41, 10 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I can see many areas where a collaboration (never a bad thing) would be important. One example would be article assessments and issues involving multiple projects. There is some bot assessed articles but I have seen where a member from one project raises the level (particularly on B-class), and then someone else raise the others to match. An issue I have is particular to a B-class article with sourcing tags or inline citation tags. This means the blanket promotions where solely to match the other articles without looking to see if there are issues. The criteria is that the articles should be suitably referenced with inline citations. I realize that many like to state something to the affect of "why not do it yourself. On articles in the areas I regularly operate I may, BUT sometimes I am reading articles, from a maintenance point of view, that may involve a large number of articles on a list. It is easier to note comments on the talk page than redirect efforts (like to researching the issue) to solving problems on one article. Also, why just demote an article, especially that has a 4 or 5 year old career tag, as if there is an emergency. An involved or topic proficient editor may "fix" the issue, without someone slapping a revert for BRD reasoning, that should not be applicable on policy and guideline related maintenance issues, and then involve more discussions and edits. Seems logical to me but not to everyone. I give more attention to BLP issues and at my age I would never get through one complete list, if I stopped on every article to assess the issue. Sometimes I am not topic proficient, and sometimes I may notify several projects of comments seeking a solution. It would be a benefit, in some of these cases, to have cross-project collaboration where diverse editors watch one page. I, in fact, read where if there is doubts to inquire at the relevant talk page or project. That is seeking uncontroversial collaboration as well as help. Nope, I don't see a down-side in this instance. Otr500 (talk) 20:56, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Otr500:, thanks so much!!! if that is the case, then could you please stop by the draft page for the proposed forum, and leave any comments, any content you may wish, or else simply say hi? I haven't gotten a whole lot of activity there, in the short time since I introduced this new proposal. that's totally fine of course, and obviously I will accept whatever the overall community consensus may be. However, my main thought in creating this page was that it would simply be a community resource, for anyone who might wish to use it; in other words, for those who want to use it, it is available, and for those who don't, they are free to use it or to not use, as they may wish. it is meant simply to be available for those who find it helpful as a community resource and forum.

so therefore any ideas, input, or simple greeting that you might wish to add there would be more than welcome. right now, we simply want to hear from active or experienced members of our community, really any editor who has any group idea or effort that they wish to explore, and who sees a resource like this one as a net positive. so I would welcome any input that you might wish to provide. thanks!!

* the draft page is located at: User:Sm8900/Draft for town hall page (see below for new title)

I appreciate your help, and your great positive and encouraging comments above. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 21:59, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm a member of Unreferenced articles and despite what looks like a healthy list of members is currently in a semi comatose state with little wider community involvement or collaborative efforts. One of the reasons I think is looking and clicking through the oldest and obscure unreferenced articles is enough to make you lose the will to live. WProjects like MILHIST are more interesting, broader in scope etc. I'm not sure that outright deletion of WProjects is the answer, some of them could be merged/redirected. I remember there was a big blacklog drive (8 years ago?) to deal with unreferenced BLPs so the Wiki community can come together when there is the will among enough editors. I'm haven't got an answer to the WProjects problem, many of the smaller projects get created by a small group of enthusiastic editors only to die when there isn't any wider community support for them to keep going. Hopefully User:Sm8900 efforts can bring something positive to the WProjects ecosystem Mattg82 (talk) 00:20, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Mattg82:, thanks so much!! I appreciate your positive words and encouraging insights.

Based on some comments above, I have decided to simplify the name for this new page somewhat. the name "Town Hall" was overly broad, and does not give a real idea of what we are trying to do. so here is the new name, below:

• DRAFT NAME: User:Sm8900/Community forum and bulletin board re WikiProjects
  • in order to build this, I will be approaching various individual editor who are working on specific group projects, to ask them what items they might like to post.
• One editor asked an excellent question; how is this different than Wikipedia:Community bulletin board?
  • this idea is different from the Community bulletin board because this would be an active forum, where editors from different wikiprojects exchange ideas and data; the Wikipedia:community bulletin board is mainly for concise announcements.
  • however, until we get actual activity there, any such features might remain hypothetical. so I will approach some individual editors, and see what they might like to post there.
  • even for simple updates, this page would be much more expansive; in other words, it would not just be for terse announcements, but rather a collaborative bulletin board and forum, so even simple updates would be more detailed, and more engaging
• the reason I entitled this "Community forum and bulletin board for WikiProjects," is to make it clear that this is not just one more new WikiProject which might eventually fizzle out; so that's why I did not name this "WikiProject bulletin board," as that would be a bit misleading.

this is still just a page in my own user space. it will remain there, as a draft, until I get some more editors directly involved in this. I hope to approach a few editors who are leading current group efforts, whether at WikiProjects or elsewhere, and see what they might like to post, and hope to make this a real resource for them.

however, if anyone here has any content or topics that they'd like to post, please feel free to come by any time. right now, we are seeking any material for inclusion that others might find helpful. so any ideas or items are welcome. feel free to visit the page any time, to provide ideas for topics or material, or any comments. thanks!!! --Sm8900 (talk) 05:03, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Inactive WikiProjects should NOT be nominated for deletion. They should be tagged as inactive. We should not delete the history of any once-active WikiProject. There is always potential for a resurgence of interest, and other good reasons.

Many WikiProjects are moribund. This should be acknowledged.

I propose that as a rule, new pages should not be tagged with the banner of an inactive WikiProject. I believe that patrollers adding banners for WikiProjects have been a contribution to the death of WikiProjects. Only active WikiProject members should be tagging new pages with their WikiProject banner. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Wikiprojects certainly shouldn't be deleted. I am not sure of the benefit of marking dormant ones as inactive, the risk is that it may make them less likely to revive when editors post there or return after wikibreaks. With a broadly stable editing community there are bound to be areas which come in and out of activity. I'm also not sure of the merit in not tagging articles for wikiprojects, in the past I have come across editors who screened new articles in particular wikiprojects at least to tag hoaxes and unnnotables for deletion. So an apparently inactive Wikiproject may still be serving a purpose. ϢereSpielChequers 15:17, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I've noticed a lot of editors here seem to have some strange ideas about the function WikiProjects serve. WikiProjects served a different function 10 or 15 years ago: there were large amounts of interesting articles that needed creation on most topics, and at the same time, lower featured standards much more easily facilitated article collaboration of the WP:FA/WP:GA type between lots of editors who weren't necessarily niche subject matter experts on specific article topics.

The former are largely done now except in areas that severely lack interested editors, but WP:WIR is a great example that it still works for that purpose only as long as you've got a discernable group of interesting articles that needs creating on a subject matter broad enough to bring in a mass of editors. The rising standards have meant that WP:GA/WP:FA collaboration as a thing across the encyclopedia is largely dead, and WikiProjects for that purpose only work where you've got numbers of hardcore niche experts wanting to work together on the same specific articles - which is very rare, and unsurprising WP:MILHIST is one of the few to pull it off.

What we're left with is that areas have more subtle content issues: neglected corners of the subject matter that need fine-tuning and ideally need multiple editors to put their heads together and come up with a good solution that's generally agreeable to the editors in that area, new work that needs highlighting to interested editors, and a place where interested editors can generally engage with other interested editors where that would be helpful. This, although less suited to the mega-topic projects (i.e. history, medicine) happens quietly all the time in our more specific WikiProjects across the encyclopedia. It was also the inevitable evolution of the role WikiProjects once the low-hanging fruit was done and the standards rose. Given that, I think it's helpful to have more discussions about how you effectively link up the editors in a subject matter area through a WikiProject in a way that works, for what it's worth, given that many ongoing WikiProjects would be, if they were people, almost old enough to drive in some places. And I also think it's a damn bit more helpful thinking about how we can more effectively revitalise projects that have fallen by the wayside (given that, as I said, the mega-topic ones are too broad to be helpful - there are rarely editors actually interested in all of "history" as a topic). The attempts to undermine the format from editors who don't understand the role of WikiProjects for the last decade or so because they aren't involved with any is really frustrating when they continue to be an incredibly important part of keeping the encyclopedia functioning in many areas (and could be in more areas given some thought). Editors who are heading down the portal line with these need to get out and engage with editors doing the subject work more. The Drover's Wife (talk) 16:26, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@The Drover's Wife:, I agree with you!!!!! your points above are excellent. so then, if that's how you feel, can you please come by, and help me build a community forum, for addressing these exact issues and ideas?? I hope you'll feel free to drop by! if not, that's okay too,; however, either way, I hope you will take a little time to let me know what you would ideally like to see in such a community-wide forum for projects, and what you think of our current ideas so far. Here is a link, to view our efforts so far: User:Sm8900/Community forum. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 18:51, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree that these are excellent points, particularly regarding the value of more fine-grained projects and the need for more thought to what effective topical collaboration looks like on-wiki. However, I do feel compelled to disagree with the idea that article creation is "largely done". AFAICS we are orders of magnitude short of what even a rough sketch of a complete Wikipedia would look like. Indeed, I would suggest that the collapsing rate of article creation (for which those "rising standards" IMO carry considerable blame) means that we are actually moving backward relative to the only benchmark that matters ("the sum of all human knowledge"). This fact is obscured by the dysfunctional way that editors are socialized into creating an illusion of completeness by not creating redlinks or creating inappropriate redirects to conceal the inadequacy of our coverage. Almost every time I create an article, I have to run around and create links that should have been red to begin with. (One example that sticks in my mind is subscription school, a topic of considerable importance in US educational history whose absence was hidden first by widespread non-linking and then by an editor creating a wholly inappropriate redirect to an unrelated topic.) -- Visviva (talk) 22:04, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm not so much suggesting that article creation is "largely done" as much as that the low-hanging fruit is. For example, we had many city-based WikiProjects that were very active in rolling out articles on things like suburbs, major monuments, parks, etc, but faded into inactivity when all of that was created. On larger topics, all the more obvious topics that easily sparked editor drives tend to have articles. The article creation work that needs doing these days is much more niche, less likely that a particular specific niche is of interest to large amounts of editors, and harder to collectively drive through that format. For example, in my areas of interest, we can highlight creation work that needs doing, and it'll probably get done eventually, but any one niche area needing articles created is rarely of interest to multiple editors in that subject area. The use of WikiProjects now reflects this obvious development of the project. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:27, 13 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I added some new features to this. the draft is at the link below. thanks.

• User:Sm8900/Community forum and bulletin board re WikiProjects

thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:17, 16 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Another (somewhat labour-intensive otion) can be to consolidate wikiprojects into taskforces of a more active wikiproject. A cetralised talkpage might be able to consolidate some of the discussion to keep momentum in the community whilst maintaining specific tagging of articles, subject-specific advidce etc. E.g. WP:Molecular Biology recently merged WP:GEN, WP:MCB, WP:COMPBIO, WP:BIOP, WP:RNA, WP:WPMP and WP:CELLSIG. See also WP:MED's taskforce system. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 04:49, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Evolution and evolvability, I agree with that idea. by the way, one option might be to create a shared page where all such projects could discuss group projects. it could be a roundtable for related wikiprojects. --Sm8900 (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Template:Welcome (the standard welcome template) contains too many duplicate or unnecessary links and needs some streamlining so that new users aren't paralyzed by choice. For instance, it currently suggests four different places to go if you have a question^[a] and four different tutorials^[b]. Following a survey of Wikipedia's introductory materials, I drafted some changes to streamline the template that establish a clearer visual hierarchy to point new users to our best resources and remove more minor links to topics covered in Help:Introduction (such as the Manual of Style). After receiving some positive feedback at the Welcoming committee WikiProject, I'm bringing it here to establish a broader consensus for implementation. Here's the proposal:^[c]

Welcome!

Hi [Username]! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

As you get started, you may find this short tutorial helpful:

Learn more about editing

You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that covers the same topics.

If you have any questions, we have a friendly space where experienced editors can help you here:

Get help at the Teahouse

If you are not sure where to help out, you can find a task here:

Volunteer at the Task Center

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date.

Happy editing! Sdkb (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The full code (which includes customization options) is at the template's sandbox. Please let me know what you think! Cheers, Sdkb (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• @Sdkb: Is there a reason one button is blue and the other is not? I'd prefer they be the same but it's not a huge deal; I like the general concept. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:54, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  You can see a little bit about the different types of buttons WP has at the template page here. The blue button is the "progressive" class, i.e. something that we think you ought to click. The white button is "neutral" class, i.e. something that you can click if you want. I classed them that way since the tutorial is something we strongly want to encourage new users to check out, so it makes sense to have a more prominent styling, whereas the Teahouse is something we want them to know about but don't need to push them toward. Per the rules of visual hierarchy, it's also better to have a single point of focus, i.e. if a new user is only willing to click on one link, we should let them know that it should be Help:Introduction. Now, all that said, I also thought it looked slightly odd, and if it also appears that way to others, I'd be fine with making them both blue. Sdkb (talk) 01:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• I like it. I remember being overwhelmed by the many links and options when I was welcomed. I've been using {{welcome-screen}} because some other editors in a discussion seemed to think it the best of the options at the time, but even simpler (like this) would be better. I think some way to set it off (a border, perhaps?) and make it stand out on a talk page would be helpful. Schazjmd (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  A border would definitely be nice! I focused on changing the text/buttons since that's more what I know how to do, but feel free to tweak the sandbox if you're inclined, and we can consider it. One thing to keep in mind is that when the welcome template is used, it being it's own section provides a sort of natural border, so it doesn't appear as floaty as it does here when I put it in the middle of a conversation. Sdkb (talk) 01:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  That's a good point (about the separate section). I know nothing about making templates, I just admire and appreciate them.   Schazjmd (talk) 01:43, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I use the Welcome template regularly, especially when I see a red Talk box in a history. Concistentcy in the wording would be a good change. Allowing an article name to go in from a box in more places would be good, too. Perhaps we could allow a choice of images, not just cookies, as we already have in some barnstars. There are too many ways to warn new users or IP users, and not enough ways to welcome a new user with many or especially good contributions. Good idea to post the revision here for us to see and comment on. Cheers!--Dthomsen8 (talk) 02:14, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Strong oppose choice of links "if only one page"...should be WP:Contributing to Wikipedia. .Not good feed back or good data for multi-page tutorials that are not formatted property for mobile view. Main problem I see above is the fact our main intro page is missing WP:Contributing to Wikipedia (the page with all the info, links to all the main help pages, and videos, brochures produced by this community and the Wikimedia Foundation). We have learned over the years the "Next page style" doesn't retain readers. Should not replace links to our help articles maintained by the community with mobile view format problem tutorials that lack basic info and our outdated. If trimming of links is required...tutorials should go and our 3 main help articles that have watchers to help should be retained. Don't send new editors on a goose chase trying to find information ...make it available on one page with a nice TOC for navigating to the section most relevant. Raw data Wikipedia:IntroductionDaily average:723....next page Daily average:85...page after that Daily average:44.....by page 50 only 6 virws. People dont want a list of link to another list of links.....they want serviceable info at a glance in a recognizable format.--Moxy 🍁 06:42, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi Moxy — I'm very much with you about reducing the lists of links, so hopefully we're at least in agreement about the overall need to streamline. Funneling users to a single intro when we currently have multiple is unfortunately going to have to involve stepping on someone's toes. I see that you're by far the top contributor to WP:Contributing to Wikipedia, so I apologize, but in its current state it just does not feel as modern and user-friendly as Help:Introduction. Essentially all other large websites (which, let's be honest, devote a lot more resources to user interface issues than we do) have onboarding processes for new users that use multiple short pages as Help:Intro does, rather than one really long one. I have to imagine they know what they're doing. Sdkb (talk) 21:49, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

We will simply have to disagree. ..... I don't see how info separated out over 50 different pages that does not work properly in mobile view is more helpful ...run around setup.--Moxy 🍁 22:32, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

We have lots of welcome pages, no objection to another being created. But changing the default this radically should not be done without first testing different welcomes and seeing which has the best result in terms of turning newbies into regulars. ϢereSpielChequers 08:02, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I see these changes as an improvement to the standard welcome template, not an alternative to it; they're substantial but build on what's currently there rather than replacing it from scratch. More to the point, since so many editors default to using the standard welcome, I think it's important we make that one as good as it can be; the old one could be renamed to something else if any editors really want to keep using it. I also don't think it's great to have too much welcome template proliferation — we need to keep our best resources centralized so they can be maintained/improved, not fork them every time there's a controversial upgrade.

Regarding testing, I'm very much behind the idea of doing some A-B testing in theory, but when we previously discussed it, it didn't seem to be very practical. It would take a long time to build up a sample (since I don't know of any way to welcome newbies in bulk) and would take some programming to measure the results. If you or someone else has the expertise and time to conduct that sort of experiment, I'd be fascinated to see it, but barring that, we should act boldly and go with whatever we think will likely work best. We risk as much through inaction as through action, and there's a lot of room for improvement in converting readers to editors. Sdkb (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Sdkb: off the top of my head, you could create two redirects, E.G. WP:TEST1 and WP:TEST2 that both go to the same page. Have the template randomly link to one of them on each transclusion. After a few days/weeks, compare the number of page views each redirect got with the number of back links to show which had the most best ratio of clicks to transclusions. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:06, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

A redirect could be used to measure the engagement of this template, but it wouldn't work with the current Template:Welcome as a control, since that template links to many intros, not one. And there's still the issue of building up a meaningfully sized sample. Sdkb (talk) 03:42, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• This welcome message doesn't work on an Android mobile device. In its current state it takes you through several pages of broken formatting. Until that is fixed, this is not an improvement and is more likely to drive many editors away. While I can see your good intentions here, simplicity is best when we have to consider mobile audiences. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:22, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  @From Hill To Shore: Can you share a screenshot of the issue you're encountering? It works alright on my Android device. And yes, simplicity is the whole goal here—that's what this template is doing. Sdkb (talk) 03:29, 14 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

A note regarding mobile formatting: I fully agree that ability to read on mobile is vital, and the {{intro to}} and {{intro to single}} templates both need to be updated to use flexbox css to make that smoother. Thet should be a relatively quick fix. The cause of the poor mobile formatting is that these are all currently in rigid divs, rahter than flexbox divs (main culprits are the handling and placement of {{Intro to tabs}} and the column implementation in {{intro to single}}). Sidenote: this is also a problem with a lot of templates that aim to implement multilpe tabs (compare Wikipedia:Tutorial vs v:WikiJournal_User_Group for a flexbox equivalent for tabs). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 05:31, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Evolution and evolvability: Thanks for that info! I made a request for help at the technical pump since I don't know how to use flexbox divs myself, but I'm not sure if anyone will take me up on it. If you end up being inclined to make the fixes yourself, it might go a long way toward helping this proposal achieve consensus. Sdkb (talk) 09:37, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Sdkb, From Hill To Shore, and ToxiBoi: I've updated the Template:Intro_to/sandbox to work pretty well on mobile I think (as well as making the window on a desktop narrow). I'd welcome any testing by others though! Formatting parameters now controlled through Template:Intro_to/styles.css. Side-by-side comparison to Wikipedia:Tutorial on others' devices also valuable. Just waiting for the sandbox version to be copied over to the main template before it's viewable as the default for all pages using that template. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 07:25, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Evolution and evolvability: Good work, the problems I was seeing in Firefox on Android have now gone. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:18, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Another idea After looking over some research that was done on the welcome template rhetoric in 2011 that noted that new users are often unsure where they can be useful, another potentially useful link that occurs to me (probably as a second white button) is Wikipedia:Community_portal#Help_out or perhaps Wikipedia:Task Center, both of which have lists of tasks needing attention associated with links to guidance on how to do them. Thoughts on that? Sdkb (talk) 23:49, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

We had talked about linking the main To-do page Wikipedia:Maintenance in the past but most seem to think that pointing new editors to what to do page off the bat would not be all that helpful. I personally think Wikipedia:Maintenance gives a good overview. PS was looking for this link for hours last week.... As it was one of the reason WP: contributing to Wikipedia was updated with Foundation brochures and added to the templates.--Moxy 🍁 00:02, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Moxy: WP:Maintenance is certainly comprehensive, but I'm not sure it's accessible to new editors. It has too much detail on too many tasks — for instance, the very first item after the intro is a full section on copyvio, a complex area I'm not sure many new editors are going to want to dive into. I think the best approach for new editors is to provide a bunch of options of areas where help is needed, let them choose one, and then provide instructions for that area and clear examples of pages where they can apply what they've learned. The Task Center does this with a short intro followed by a concise list of tasks. I like how it plugs the benefits of participating in different areas. The open tasks list has the advantage of listing actual articles editors can click on and then help out with. Overall, I'm leaning toward including the task center. Sdkb (talk) 07:19, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Update: I've added a button for the Task Center to the sandbox. If there are no objections, I'll wait a day or so and then refactor the proposal here to include it. Sdkb (talk) 00:19, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Comment: Research and testing It makes a lot of sense to actually assess how effective our welcome messages are, and to improve them where possible. Ensuring that not only the welcome messages, but also the pages they links to will display properly in mobile view seems almost as important as the effectiveness of the welcome template itself. Sadly, as Moxy has found, there seems to have been no serious research into the effectiveness of welcome messages and their impact on editor retention since around 2011/2012. (i.e. all pre Teahouse) All I could find is this, this and this, which was mentioned above.

One 2011 study on German Wikipedia concluded that:

Back at English Wikipedia, there is a study currently ongoing by WMF researchers into Teahouse invitation message effectiveness. (Summary: It is comparing the old automated invitee selection process against an ORES-based editor selection process for HostBot to send out invitations to new editors who've made their first few edits here. The research process unfortunately contained a small number of variables which rendered the results on editor retention inconclusive, and a second wave of research will hopefully go ahead soon. It did not look at the effectiveness of the Teahouse invitation wording, or timing, - only the criteria for the selection of good faith editors to send them to. See here for summary and feedback)

Now, it strikes me that the A/B study methodology used to look at Teahouse HostBot invitations must be very similar to that needed with Welcome messages. Therefore, I am pinging @Jtmorgan, Maximilianklein, and Halfak (WMF): in the hope that one of them might be willing to offer ideas or insight on whether any research study is currently ongoing or planned, and whether there might be a possibility of encouraging, supporting or funding an investigation into this important and related area of editor welcome and retention. Nick Moyes (talk) 12:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Nick Moyes: Maximilianklein is considering doing some more testing of AI-powered HostBot invites later this year, but no plans are finalized. If it looks like it's going forward, we'll notify on the Teahouse. Depending on the scale of the experiment, I could see experimenting with different welcome templates being a component of it. When it comes to what should be on the generic invite template, I'm definitely in the "less is more" camp. We can't, and shouldn't expect new editors to RTFM before they do anything. J-Mo 19:53, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Simply is best in my view as per this - thus I use Template:W-short alot. Years ago we created 2 types of "MAIN" help pages - one static article style WP:Contributing to Wikipedia and duplicated that at info at Wikipedia:Tutorial with tabs/next buttons (see what worked best). We can see and saw by the numbers most dont go beyond the first page of the tutorial. This is also what happens at the Wikipedia:Adventure - 50 percent drop in views by the second page....with a loss of 90 percent by page 3. I am all for making things easier ...not harder by making people click 50 times to get serviceable information....less is best and of course mobile view must be considered. -- Moxy 🍁 14:22, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Moxy: those numbers are certainly concerning. To me, they potentially point to those resources not being as well-designed as they ought to be. (Do you have a link to the data, btw?) Some dropoff is natural, though, since we're never going to convince everyone to read a full tutorial, and for all we know, the dropoff rate on the pages that present it all together could be even higher. (The metric we'd need to measure that would be average time spent on page, and probably only the WMF knows that.) The benefit of splitting materials into multiple pages is that short chunks are more digestible, whereas sending readers to one long huge page will overwhelm many and make them give up. Sdkb (talk) 00:03, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• template:W-short should be the default. The Wikipedia Adventure is for children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:8d80:542:b5b3:65bb:37c9:5b31:11b5 (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Good day I phone user.....can you elaborate on your experience! I am assuming your our normal IP poster and get a lot of welcomes.....what template is used most in your case?--Moxy 🍁 23:35, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The blue-with-white-text button seems wrong to me. I believe (though I might be wrong) that blue buttons have a specific semantic meaning on Wikipedia. On my desktop interface, the "Publish changes" button is blue/white, and the "Search" button on the search page is blue/white, implying submission of a request, not just a link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:03, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Jonesey95: I haven't been able to find any stylebook or documentation about when it's appropriate to use a blue vs. gray button. I gave my rationale for choosing blue to Wugapodes above, but similar to what I mentioned above, I'd be open to it being gray if it looks weird to others, too. Sdkb (talk) 03:39, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

At the very least we should follow MOS:COLOUR "Links should clearly be identifiable as a link to our readers." Big changes here...removal of most links....replaced with a link to an intro with 50 sub-pages that is currently not viable for 60 percent of our readers.....and big buttons that may or may not look like links. Best create a new template see if it gets good feedback ...then ask for a whole scale change to the main welcome template.--Moxy 🍁 04:07, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

This style guide was very difficult to find. I think it is current and accurate. Jon (WMF) may be able to give us some pointers or send us to the right resource or person. It would be useful to have some version of this UI style guide in a form comprehensible to regular editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Interesting read.--Moxy 🍁 05:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Jonesey95: Thanks; that's what I was looking for (without knowing it existed)! The key phrase seems to be this: Use progressive variant for actions which lead to a next step in the process. (progressive variant = the blue one) Whether that's applicable here is a little borderline; I think we could go either way. Courtesy pinging Wugapodes, as you had the same concern about the color. Sdkb (talk) 05:45, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Action.= ."If an action is to “navigate the user to a new resource, taking them away from current context, consider a link instead.". The norm as per all wikis. the most significant navigational symbol we have.--Moxy 🍁 06:08, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The major advantage of buttons over links here is that we can easily make a button fittingly prominent, whereas I'm not sure how to do that for a link. If you want to experiment, I'd be interested to see a design that uses a prominent link instead. Sdkb (talk) 07:03, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Sdkb You make a good point about experimentation. To that end please do not overwrite the old welcome template, but create a new one instead which will allow side by side comparison as to its effectiveness, as Moxy suggested above. I appreciate there is already an over-abundance of tweaked welcome templates, but this is a significant change and one well worth testing and tweaking alongside the older approach. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:31, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

We can also consider the example and precedent of the Teahouse HostBot invitation template, which uses what looks like a custom-designed button. If we used that style of button here, it would display as this:

Learn more about editing

Sdkb (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support. I agree that the current Welcome template is in need of some streamlining. My only concern with the new design is with the buttons, it could trip up a new editor when they press one and get taken to a different page (that's what I think, though). Also can confirm it works fine on Mobile Web. –ToxiBoi! ^(contribs) 02:06, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  If concerns are with the mobile app, I can see that happening. I won't be able to test that myself though. –ToxiBoi! ^(contribs) 02:07, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Summary

In case if it's TL;DR, otherwise please start at the Background section.

I would like to propose a new template. The main purpose of this template is to collect and show links which lead to articles/chapters in reliable sources that have additional textual information (not only data or images) on the subject, like encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, GLAM sites, academic projects, etc. Similar to Template:Authority control or Template:Taxonbar but with content that expands on the topic and provides further reading. Example:

Background

There are many great online, freely accessible reference works, encyclopedias, biographies, virtual exhibitions which are unknown for most people or maybe even completely forgotten after a few years (academia has a problem with communication?). This also means they are not channeled in to Wikipedia (some general examples are Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology absent from the Anthropology article, The First Amendment Encyclopedia missing from the First Amendment article, Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development missing from related articles). Even if used, they easily get lost among references or a longer list of external links.

At the same time, more and more of these sites are connected to Wikidata, the ID each article in the source added to the corresponding Wikidata item.

You can check the ones that already have their own Wikidata property ([1]), the ones that are being matched to Wikidata items but don’t have their property yet ([2]), and a growing list of sites to be included in Wikidata ([3]).

Idea

To make these sites visible in Wikipedia, I would like to propose a new template. The main purpose of this template is to collect and show links which lead to articles/chapters in reliable sources that have additional textual information (not only data or images) on the subject, like encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, GLAM sites, academic projects, etc. Similar to Template:Authority control or Template:Taxonbar but with content that expands on the topic and provides further reading.

Goals, advantages

• promote the use, presence and knowledge of reliable sources
• encourage further reading
• add depth to article stubs, help finding sources for expanding them
• make Wikidata more visible
• possibly facilitate authors of the external sites to recognise/contribute to Wikipedia
• help smaller language Wikipedias to gather content/make their wikis more visible

There are similar templates on other Wikis, these are the ones I know of:

• w:fr:Modèle:Dictionnaires
• w:es:Plantilla:Control_de_autoridades
• w:it:Template:Collegamenti_esterni

An important feature of the template would be its multilinguality. This means two things. First, that it is meant to be used in any language Wikipedias, using the same central list of sources and automatically ordering the IDs to show the local language ones first. Second, in the case of multi-language sites, it could handle multiple formatters and use the one in the local language, perhaps also offer the other languages in a bracket.

I think by having the template prefer open-access sources would not only prioritise for the readers articles they can actually read but would promote open access in general. On the other hand, as this would exclude paywalled sites like Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, probably best if they are still included but in a separate category or just shown with a lock icon next to them.

Visuals

Visually it would be similar to authority control but rather as a sidebar, located on the side of the external links section or below the main infobox of the article. Another option is to still have it as a navbox, and include it in the beginning of the external links section like Template:Medical_resources (for example in Influenza. It should be distinct from the authority control navbox so it wouldn’t go unnoticed to the reader. Still, it shouldn’t take too much space so it wouldn’t get too distracting. It could also help in taking some weight off authority control as sites in this template should not have to be included there, making it clear what purpose each one serves. It would be important that the template shows the full name of the sites instead of abbreviations (so Historische Lexikon der Schweiz instead of HLS) even if this takes more space because readers are not necessarily familiar with the short names and they would know what they are clicking on (w:fr:Modèle:Dictionnaires is this way). Also, abbreviations don’t always work with multilingual sites as they have the title translated with a different short name. Plus, search engines would show the article with the template if someone looks up encyclopedias. If the list would be too long, taking up too much space, it could be that only the local language part is expanded and the others are in a collapsed section.

Technical background

The template would use external IDs from Wikidata. By this, it would be easily expandable and translatable to other languages. Wikidata and the template would be expanding together automatically as a new ID added to an item would also show up in the template. If the URL of the ID changes (and is updated in Wikidata) the ID would automatically be changed in the template too.

In order not to get entangled with some inconsistency/lack in the tagging and titling of these sources in Wikidata, the sites referenced by the template would not be automatically generated from Wikidata but rather come from a centralised list which would be maintained and expanded by the community on consensus about what is a good enough source to be included.

From Wikidata, the template would gather the following: the ID (from property statements in the items), the formatter URL (from property), the language(s) and the title(s) of the site (from the qualifiers of the formatter URL and _not_ from statements in the property’s subject item as those are often non-existent or lack information).

To further minimise the risk of having IDs that lead to the wrong article or are just offline, the template could have a simple report button which would automatically generate a note to check the IDs for the specific item.

Examples

Obviously these are handcrafted, including some sites that don't have a Wikidata property yet and not using multi-language formatters but it shows the potential of the template.

Tasks, things needed

In Wikipedia:

• Editors who comment on the idea, help to make it better, thinking about how to make it easily translatable and available for all wikis.
• Template editors who would like to do the coding. The best would be to contact and work together with the creators of the three similar templates, build on those of possible - I’d be happy to help in coordinating this.
• Creating bots that could help spreading the template in articles.
• Writing documentation for the template with info on how to use the template in articles, what are the rules for expanding the list of sources.

In Wikidata:

• Tagging the external ID properties’ formatter URLs with qualifiers for title and language, adding missing formatters for multi-language sites.
• Submitting property proposals for sources that don’t have it.
• Matching items in Mix'n'match.
• Expanding the meta list.

As I lack coding skills, these are just what I came up with and there are probably a lot more to consider.

Possible issues

• link to encyclopedia already in article's external links
• making sure the template's list only includes quality sites
• how can the database of sites be maintained centrally if it is used by many language wikis (how do they communicate?)
• multiple ID values under a property in an item

Participants

Please put your name here if you would like to help creating the template. I'll make a separate project page if we have enough people.

Discussion

Let me know what you think. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 14:00, 23 February 2020 (UTC) (Please contribute @Nomen ad hoc:, @Thierry Caro:, @Epìdosis:, @Magnus Manske:, @Strakhov:, @Eru:, @Lofhi:, @Gerwoman:, @Trade:, @Trivialist:, @Jean-Frédéric:, @Bargioni:, @Rotpunkt:, @Bultro:, @Sakretsu:, @Horcrux:, @Jheald:, @Charles Matthews:, @Simon Villeneuve:, @99of9:, @Spinster:, @Malore:, @Pigsonthewing:, @Vesihiisi:, @Doc James:, @RexxS:, @Galobtter:, @MSGJ:)Reply

Holy wall of text. You could cut that down by 75% easily. As far as I can tell, the idea has merit, but getting to the part where we see what it is you're proposing is an adventure in reading an advocacy piece, more than telling us what you're proposing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

So, who decides what sources get spammed to what pages? Because that is what this proposal amounts to, spamming of a bunch of sources, many of which don't seem to be reliable, just because they are free. Oppose - we are not an advertising service.Nigel Ish (talk) 14:53, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

As it says in the proposal, my idea would be that it is based on consensus which sources are added. Please explain which ones are not reliable and how is linking to mostly academic sites advertising or spamming. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 15:16, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• {{{1}}}. NAH 15:20, 23 February 2020 (UTC).Reply

• I can sort of see making sure that we have categories on en.wiki of the type "Reference works that cover TOPIC" (where TOPIC should be broad topic areas: World War I, but not the Western Front of World War I; physical chemistry but not states of matter. etc. We could then make sure these categories are highlighted at Portals, and could use a template that is presented like {{Commons category}} to direct readers to this list of possible resources. That doesn't necessarily mean they will find content about the specific topic in each reference listed but this would be a list they could start if our articles do not specifically identify any to begin with. --Masem (t) 15:37, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Ugh; this would be a wreck for medical content, as (allegedly) we keep our content more up to date, and often those kinds of sources are (theoretically) well behind the more recent journal sources we use. In the articles I edit, the kinds of sources we would link to generally are grossly outdated and inaccurate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I think medical content would no be included as it is already in Template:Medical resources. Though many of the medical articles on these sites show when they were last updated by a professional. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 21:21, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose This is the kind of navigation template clutter that burdens so many articles distracting from the core text, making photos and text alignment jumbled, or filling the bottom of articles with more random stuff. Studies have shown few people click through to external links, like less than 5 percent per page view click through to any external link anywhere in the article. That includes the highly relevant citation links, much less these random general links. The upsides of this template are not balanced by the downsides IMO. These kinds of links are better organized in a Bibliography article where users can decide which are the best online sources and can organize them while not being limited to a few dozen sources. -- GreenC 16:01, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

This seems to be about just the placement - where would it be the best? Also, maybe I misunderstood, but there is a contradiction between distracting from core text and no one clicking through them. Also, maybe only some people would use it but that's still a start for a good thing. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 21:21, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

If the template was in the talk page, which exists to discuss existing or new sources. I could support that. Also need to deal with link rot and archive URLs.. every URL dies in time 7 years is average lifespan of a URL, they will likely change URL formats as they move servers, change platforms, new owners etc.. -- GreenC 16:15, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support (though suggest collapsing the box by default to avoid annoying readers with visual spam). In the area in which I tend to edit (historical biographies etc.) the material is fairly stable and sources tend not to go out-of-date. At the moment Wikidata holds keys into reliable sources, but these are not surfaced to Wikipedia. Dsp13 (talk) 18:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

There are appropriate places on Wikipedia to surface reliable sources. But at the bottom of mainspace articles in a collapsed template is not surfacing it is burying. It is also clutter, as I noted in my Oppose !vote very few will click though on these links. An example of how to do it right: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. It includes justification as to why a source is reliable, a scale of reliability (score A+ to F-). This page is widely used and appreciated. -- GreenC 20:05, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedians not knowing about these sources does not make them not reliable - please check the actual links. Again, if the problem is with the placement - I'm happy with having it in a more visible place but then the discussion should rather be constructive about how to make it more visible rather than opposing the whole idea. Also, in shorter or stub articles they would be even more visible and needed. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 21:26, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

The Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources are about non-academic sources as those are generally agreed upon in Wikipedia as reliable. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 21:32, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• The reason why we usually don't include encyclopedias in a Further reading or External links sections is that, well... we are an encyclopedia. People come to this site to read encyclopedic articles, not to get links to other encyclopedias. WP:ELNO§1 says: "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article. Links for future improvement of the page can be placed on the article's talk page." – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:17, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Of course many of these provide additional information to the article. Being an encyclopedia does not mean other encyclopedias contain the same information (especially the thematic ones). Also, IMDB does not contain any extra information to a wiki article, still it's everywhere. And any other kind of external link could include information that could be included in a later version of the wiki article. I think these things should be more flexible and Wikipedia can also be a gateway to other quality sources - it is not a competition. --Adam Harangozó (talk) 21:21, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree that it's not a competition, but we need to be sure that in each case the link is helpful. In some cases a link to a specific site will be helpful, but in others it will not, for example if the linked source provides content that has been superceded by more recent content that is in the Wikipedia article. We should not be providing blanket assurance that any particular external resource is reliable. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:52, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree with Phil Bridger. Interesting thematic encyclopedias can already be linked on a case by case basis under current policy. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:40, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose, because although I appreciate the thought that went into it and the detail of the exposition, it is largely duplicative. For many of the most important PD sources (EB1911, Catholic, DNB being those I'm most familiar with) editors have already put in the work, in the early 2000's, to identify them in the relevant WP articles. We already have too many competing styles, including inline attributions or simple cites, footnotes in References/Further Reading/External links (to the individual editor's taste), and sidebar posters (which are basically the same as the citation templates minus volume and page information). Citations and inline citations' related footnotes usually link to the PD source of interest, more for purposes of verifiability, but the Further Reading usage is also found in many cases. In other words, addressing Adam Harangozó's point: there are many, many articles that do already include an external encyclopedic source in Further reading; that ship has sailed. Yes, in principle we could import the entire article but sometimes there is archaic or POV, but still interesting, material that doesn't belong in WP proper.

I suggest the better project would be to create templates like (to choose the example I'm familar with) {{Cite EB1911}} and posters like {{EB1911 poster}} and encourage their use instead. If we're going to spend effort on WP's relationship with PD sources, it should be on identifying specific attributable text more precisely; a general reference to a verbatim copy of a PD source doesn't cut it any more. David Brooks (talk) 21:56, 23 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I think you misunderstood, the proposal is not about public domain sources but mostly new encyclopedias.

(previous comment was by User:Adam Harangozó)... Yes, I did misunderstand that part. But I still have a problem with the inconsistency with the (several) existing ways of referring to encyclopedic sources. Especially if an article ends up with both an old-style reference (PD or not) and a new-style one. David Brooks (talk) 18:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose per Finnusertop's rationale. WP:ELNO is well-crafted to ensure minimal duplication, as it should be. We don't want to start competing with Google in an attempt to link to every quality source on a topic on the web. Wikipedia at its core is a tertiary source, since it's a collection of mostly secondary sources. Collecting tertiary sources would turn us into a quaternary source, and those aren't a thing for a reason. Sdkb (talk) 21:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose- this strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. Reyk _YO! 07:23, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Comment - I don't like the 'other languages' sections much, given we're the English wiki. However, I suppose an argument could be made that, since English is the biggest wiki, if any language should have such a section it's this one. --bodnotbod (talk) 12:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. So it's External Links, but we're moving them into a template because I-don't-know-why. And it's going to be powered by wikidata.... but wikidata is a problem so we'll use some unclear and complicated method to define the list and then power that with wikidata. I'm not a fan of wikidata in general, but this sounds like an exceptionally messy way to promote wikidata for the sake of wikidata. Alsee (talk) 10:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC) P.S. After studying it more I have a better understanding of the intent. While it makes more sense, I still don't want to try to spam auto-generated and externally defined External Links. Alsee (talk) 10:51, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

This is running in March, sign up if you can help, there's nearly $500 work of book prizes available so if anybody needs books for other topics might help you out! I propose we run these for different areas and topics to reduce our huge amount of stubs!♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

On the talk page for WP:ITN, and most especially on User talk:Jimbo Wales, multiple editors and administrators expressed their disapproval of the ITN project and its placement on the Main Page. There are multiple facets of disagreement with ITN's system, but the main central issues are as follows:

• Confusion regarding its purpose: This section is called "in the news". The issue therein is that by Wikipedia policy, and the established internal policy of the most regular ITN contributors, is specifically not to run a news ticker. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a level of subjectivity regarding which Wikipedia articles that happen to be "in the news" are significant enough to be posted to the Main Page. A rough consensus exists, but it is more or less determined by whichever editors are present in the discussion. This subjectivity calls into the question the name of the aforementioned project. Name changes have been proposed multiple times, but none have stuck.
• Other sources exist: Portal:Current events and Wikinews are cited as sites for staying ahead of breaking news, whether they be in Wikipedia article format or not. Beyond that, the argument is that there are simply other news sites available to seek this information if people desire it, and Wikipedia is not expected to be an up-to-date source of current events.
• Better options exist: WP:ITN is currently featured prominently at the top of the Main Page, which some people feel is not appropriate. Other options for its slot include WP:FP or a proposed "recently updated" section.
• Main Page exists to serve its readers and not its editors: The central purpose of WP:ITN often-cited is that it draws the attention of editors to articles based on or containing current events, which conflicts with the aforementioned argument.

I am not saying one way or another whether the above arguments are valid or invalid, or what rebuttals exist for each of them, but those are the central arguments that were purported on Jimbo Wales' talk page for why WP:ITN should be marked historical. So far, there has not been a lot of participation on this subject outside of the regulars of ITN and the "talk page stalkers" on Jimbo's page. That is what this RFC aims to solve.

Should Wikipedia:In The News be shut down, marked as historical, and replaced on the Wikipedia:Main Page?--WaltCip (talk) 17:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Addendum (27/2/2020) - Or, if there is no consensus to delete WP:ITN, what other steps should be taken to improve or refine the process?--WaltCip (talk) 16:45, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose – ITN's purpose is not to "draw the attention of editors". That should be done at WP:ITN/Candidates (EDIT also at WP:CEN). ITN's purpose to draw readers' attention to articles about topics that are significantly in the news and have been improved to a quality worthy of highlighting on the Main Page. Not every news story qualifies in both these criteria, which is why it is rejected. ITN has also contributed to the improvement of countless BLPs that have, until the person's death, been plagued with sourcing issues. (See Slate article about ITN.) I for one have created articles like Mavis Pusey about notable people that have gone unnoticed and "Under-the-Radar" as The New York Times put it. ITN is doing great work to improve our encyclopedia. What people still seem to not understand is that ITN is not a news service. It is a WikiProject like any other. The goal of the project and the measure by which it or any other WikiProject should be judged is whether or not it causes articles to be improved and helps to "make a great encyclopedia" (see first paragraph of Wikipedia:In the news). Yes, we should lower our notability criteria for inclusionblurbs but I absolutely oppose lowering our quality standards or removing ITN altogether. My nominations are sometimes rejected. Tough. That is life. But that does not give me the right to go complaining to Jimbo as some (not OP of this RfC) have done. ITN is not perfect but it is a great WikiProject that has made immense contributions to our encyclopedia. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 18:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose shutting down ITN at this time. Project is active and well used. Project scope is well defined at the WP:ITN guideline pages, though of course we should always be willing to discuss and change its scope and guidelines as needed. I don't see the value in shutting down an active and well used project. --Jayron32 18:13, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  How about retaining it as is but putting it on its own page with a simple link from the main page? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:16, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose Nearly all the problems identified above stem from a lack of participation and nominations to ITN outside a roughly small set of editors. As one of those editors, we want more participation, we want more stories, but we need those stories to be suggested and those articles to be in decent shape, which tends to be a stumbling block for many newcomers otherwise. If we had double the participation and nominations, I bet most of the problems listed above would not be seen as problems any more. --Masem (t) 18:16, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose - I would focus the attention on fixing the lack of participation problem here and on other areas of Wikipedia. I agree with the others here that there is no value added by shutting this down. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:19, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose - I feel that the ITN section does serve a highly useful purpose. As per the other prior comments above, it does have its own policies, procedures and parameters; if these need to be refined somewhat, that can be done through discussion. --Sm8900 (talk) 18:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• I have deliberately not read the previous discussions about this, and rarely visit the main page, so I come to this as an experienced Wikipedia editor, but rather cold on the topic itself. My memory is that the original idea of this section was to highlight Wikipedia articles about people or things that are currently in the news, rather than articles about the news events themselves. If this is still the focus of the section then I see no problem with it, but I dislike the tendency for Wikipedia to be treated as a breaking news service, with articles being created about events that have received only news coverage, rather than the proper secondary coverage that we should base articles on. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:27, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. Completely laughable proposal. Abyssal (talk) 22:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose The fact that people misunderstand ITN does not mean much because everything is misunderstood by someone. It might be better to shut down User talk:Jimbo Wales instead. Johnuniq (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I would take a great deal of delight in that being implemented.--WaltCip (talk) 13:13, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  😂 ^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:08, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose. It documents our articles that are in the news and are therefore of likely to be of interest to our readers, not the news per se. This is a bad argument and should be a WP:SNOW close. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:16, 25 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. It is a valuable part of this project and encourages the creation and improvement of many articles. 331dot (talk) 00:01, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. ITN is far from perfect - IMO the biggest problem is a lack of quality article updates for stories which would otherwise be posted. But shutting it down is completely over the top and unjustified. If anyone has constructive ideas on how to improve things, they should be discussed at WT:ITN, not User talk:Jimbo Wales. Modest Genius ^talk 12:30, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Nah, UT:JW is a good honeypot for crazy. It serves a valuable purpose keeping a good volume of crap off of useful parts of Wikipedia. --Jayron32 12:52, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Jayron32, " UT:JW is a good honeypot for crazy" most accurate description of it that I have seen in a while. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I did specify 'constructive' proposals... Modest Genius ^talk 15:32, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support ITN is a silly place with no clear purpose. Half the editors want to promote "good" articles (with the result that the main page is a quality-curated [aka. censored] version of the encyclopedia, which in turn means I refuse to click on any bolded link on the main page), while the other half are more interested in "significance". Consensus between the two camps is practically impossible. One just has to look at how often WP:NOTNEWS is cited in ITN, or (WP:MINIMUMDEATHS). The entire project is extremely arbitrary because significance is inherently arbitrary, and quality is no better [4]. It would still make sense if we just embraced subjectivity and operated by a pure vote count ala RFA, but we don't. Further:
  1. One can't just ignore ITN and let those who're interested get on with it, because (funnily enough) nearly all the problems identified above stem from a lack of participation (Masem, above).
  2. It encourages the creation and improvement of many articles. Not true. Most nominations are by people other than their creators/updaters. Besides, even if this were the case, then ITN effectively becomes a bribe for people to update articles, and I find that silly.
  3. Project is active and well-used. So it is, but it's also lost people who've become disillusioned with it (so much for "lack of participation"). Check how many people didn't like ITN in this previous discussion ([5]) and how many of these people even come to this one. I'm pretty confident more people who are familiar with ITN's processes disapprove of it than approve it, but there never is consensus to change, so the status quo gets kept.
  4. It documents our articles that are in the news and are therefore of likely to be of interest to our readers - anyone who believes this can try nominating articles they see in the news to ITN themselves. You are going to be opposed by the people who think only "good" articles can be promoted. Example: 2020 Australian Open was certainly in the news (it's even ITNR), but it wasn't featured. You need more than "are in the news" and "likely to be of interest to our readers".
  5. Do we even want to mention the word "bias"? This is another thing one can easily search the archives for, e.g. [6]. Is it even possible to untangle ITN from systemic bias? With significance inherently arbitrary, quality also arbitrary, and whatever is "in the news" dependent on where the reader is physically located, I doubt it (and that's before getting into the fact that some articles, e.g. an election in some obscure nation, will be less developed because we have fewer editors from those nations).

  tl; dr: what ITN really is is a place where a bunch of people (the ITN editorial board) argue about which articles are worth featuring on the main page. This group of people is completely vulnerable to systemic bias and has mostly arbitrary standards. They can decide X is worth posting today, but change their minds tomorrow. The main page is better off without it.

  Banedon (talk) 01:08, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Several of your points are exaggerations, and stem from common misunderstanding of the purpose and methods of ITN.

  Most regulars of ITN are judging both the significance of the item and the quality of the article, and it is typically only newcomers to ITN that see only the significance, unaware about quality. If anything, TRM is probably the most stickler on quality but TRM is also very vocal when significance is not there as well, so no, we don't have half the editors ignoring significance and/or quality.

  Article quality is a requirement that comes from any Main Page featured link regardless of what section (ITN, DYK, etc.)- it has to showcase quality work on WP, so that's a non-negotiable and suggesting any attempt to remove it is a non-starter. And significance and quality are two separate factors, they are not tradeoffs as you suggest. We decide if something is significant or not, and separately if it is of quality or not. Quality for an ITN item is not hard, we're not asking for GA level here, but we are asking for appropriate sourcing especially for BLP and those RD-related ones, reasonable length, and not just a splash of tables with minimal prose. And plenty of editors will jump in if it is an item they can help with. We're a volunteer project, we can't force anyone to do anything. But I personally try to offer my hand if I see something relatively close or a rather significant story if I have time, I just can't do that nor necessarily have the interest for all ITN posted ones. But I known plenty of the other regulars dig in to help where appropriate.

  Most other points are all related to the fact that ITN is not a news ticker. We are not going to be a mirror of the same headlines one would see at CNN or the like, which is the most common misconception in all those points you have listed. WP is not supposed to be a newspaper in the first place, and while we cover very current events we shouldn't be covering the minutae of broader events - for example, you could write volumes to summarize every day of the Trump impeachment proceedings for the four-some months it took. But that's not how an encyclopedic works, we're looking at the long-term highlights; ultimately at the end of the day, there should certainly be a decent article on the impeachment but that's "a" single article, not pages and pages. That aspect translates to ITN in that we're looking at big picture stories, events that are the keystone points in major long-running stories rather that be a news ticker that cycle numerous but often insignificant events within that longer story that have no impact. (That link about the bias is more specific that we announced that Trump won the presidency which was the more keystone event of the election cycle over the inaugeration, that was not bias). If you want to see more of a newspaper approach, Wikinews is exactly that project, and that's over that way. ITN is a reflection of how WP is meant to cover current events, not how the media covers news. --Masem (t) 01:39, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  @Masem:

  1. any attempt to remove [quality criterion] is a non-starter - possibly to you, not necessarily for everyone else, e.g. [7], [8].
  2. Quality for an ITN item is not hard - I've repeatedly pointed out that it's extremely rare for people to oppose a nomination because of omissions in the text. By far the most common reason for opposes based on quality is unreferenced text, which implies that to get the article posted all one has to do is to delete the unreferenced text. One can even restore the text after the article is no longer on the main page (I'm sure this happened once in an OTD article, but I can't find it anymore). Here's another (tongue-firmly-in-cheek) way to stop articles from getting posted [9]. I call both these fixes silly, not sure if others do.
  3. significance and quality are two separate factors, they are not tradeoffs as you suggest - this statement is contradicted by ITN policy. To quote from WP:ITN, "a highly significant event, such as the discovery of a cure for cancer, may have a sub-par update associated with it, but be posted anyway with the assumption that other editors will soon join in and improve the article. Conversely, an editor may write an in-depth update on a topic normally considered marginal, thus convincing commenters that it is deserving of inclusion". Examples in practice: [10], [11]
  4. I personally try to offer my hand if I see something relatively close or a rather significant story if I have time - good for you. Back in the day I used to nominate articles to see if anyone was interested in improving it, vaguely remember being called out for nominating bad articles, and stopped doing it.
  5. Most other points are all related to the fact that ITN is not a news ticker - so you say. Others don't agree. Here's an example of a proposal to do something which would, as you write in the first comment to the thread, "[make us] become a news ticker". Note the OP was not the only person in favor of the change. There're several more such proposals in the archives who say the same thing, indicating more people who think that way.

  I stand by my assessment that we as a whole do not agree on what the purpose of ITN is (e.g. [12], [13]), cannot agree about whether ITN is biased (e.g. [14], [15]) and how the ITN editorial board has arbitrary standards. The main page is better off without it.

  Banedon (talk) 05:11, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I would consider the diffs you point out in the first point as sarcasm, not serious. Regardless, as long as ITN is a Main Page component, our hands are tied on quality. That said: I fully agree that we should not be remove essential article content that not sourced just to get an ITN just because it is hard to get all the sources, or playing games by removing content to get the ITN and then putting it back. If that activity is actually discovered to be happening, that would start a possible trip to ANI if the editors don't stop abusing it.

  On the criteria you quote, I have always read that as to the extent of the update, not so much its sourcing quality, and that is particularly true for science topics. The maintain may give high level details, and we put to ITN based on those, and then more expert editors come in, find the academic sources and expand out the update. That is the intent of that statement, and that reflects the basics of what we want ITN to do. It does not mean "sub-par" in terms of "partially sources", and if you feel that could be mis-read, then we need to fix that. --Masem (t) 05:47, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I don't have anything more to say that I haven't said already, so I won't be responding any further (especially since this thread's already huge). Banedon (talk) 11:14, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  @Masem: why do you way "our hands are tied on quality"? That's not in any way a god-given rule, or an overarching sitewide policy, it's just something that has been decided upon by consensus and precedent, and could be changed if there was a desire to do so. The flipside of the "showcasing quality content" argument is a desire to engage more potential new editors, something which is easier to do if they click through to an article and observe that it's a bag of garbage ripe for improvement. Check out this suggestion at TFA, to drop a substandard FA article on to the main page every now and again. And, as we all know, POTD articles are almost routinely crap. I'm not saying we necessarily should relax the quality standard, but equally there is no justification for rejecting it out of hand.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  The Main Page is meant to feature what is representative of our best work. A "substandard FA" is still tons better than 99% of more articles. The POTD is only looking at the picture, not the article behind it, and judging that quality. For ITN, we're looking to make sure that the article is in a good place to start other editors to add to, in a "monkey see monkey do" approach - that everything is appropriately sourced (particularly for a BLP or RD), it is long enough and reasonably comprehensive but by no means complete, and there's the update of why it is in the news there. These are not hard, but where most ITNCs fail (when significance is otherwise deemed okay) is on sourcing and 90% of those cases are related to creative people's -ologies sections which editors historically have not cited appropriately. That's an historical failure we've had with BLPs in this area for a long time. --Masem (t) 15:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  PS: It's ironic how some editors below (Guettarda, GreenC, Goldenshimmer, oulfis) say "ITN is how I hear about news" while others are vehemently against the idea that ITN is a news ticker. So in spite of all the efforts to make ITN not a news ticker, others are treating it as a news ticker, and it is useful to them precisely because it's a news ticker. Really?! ITN makes no sense. We're better off removing it. Banedon (talk) 22:04, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  PPS: this isn't criticism of the editors mentioned above, but rather that we cannot agree on what ITN is for. Banedon (talk) 22:34, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  @Banedon: I didn't intend my comment to mean "that's how I get the news". Rather, I value it as what it is - a curated set of links that point me to more details about a story (or give me a heads-up to something I missed). Guettarda (talk) 23:24, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Re the addendum: if ITN is not removed, then I would say something like take the BBC news feed as the "source material", and the ITN editorial board can worry about which articles to link to each news item on BBC. Banedon (talk) 01:23, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose - as a reader I see real value in ITN. As an editor I value a lot of other things (DYK, TFA), but as a reader ITN is the best part of the main page. Guettarda (talk) 13:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Comment by OP - We're at the 21-hour mark, and I wonder if at this point, the current tally can be considered a consensus.--WaltCip (talk) 14:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • Its up to you, a dozen editors against 2 in favor including yourself in less than 24 hours does present an uphill challenge though. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Incidentally, I'm neutral on this. I just wanted to solicit outside input since I myself am a regular of ITN and I want to avoid false consensus effect from being around people who are more active in that sector of Wikipedia. The opinions I saw on User talk:Jimbo Wales were the first time I was aware of any sort of groundswell of discontent regarding ITN, and it seemed as if it had been percolating for a while.--WaltCip (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose ITN is the main reason I go. To find a link a breaking story (like the Corono virus, a hurricane etc..). And to learn what else is happening in the world that some random wikipedians think is important enough. Curated current news is not Wikipedia's purpose, but for this exception it works surprisingly well. Ignore All Rules. -- GreenC 15:50, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Would you not find ITN equally useful if it was on a separate page with a link from the main page? There are plenty of parts of Wikipedia that some people find to be extremely appealing, but that doesn't mean they have to be on an already overly-cluttered main page. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Comment The main page is a bit of a mess, and it could be significantly improved, but probably the way to improve it is to integrate 'in the news' within a more unified display of content, not to remove 'in the news'. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support ITN has become quite stale and unproductive. Most other sections of the main page list several new items each day but ITN tends to repeat the same items day after day, even when they are no longer in the news. For example, on Feb 26 there was one nomination – 2020 CD3 – but this was shot down at ITN/C as being "trivial". Because this new item has not been accepted, ITN continues to show the oldest item – Hanau shootings – which is now over a week old. So, the effect is that ITN has four blurbs for eight days – one every two days. This is too much attention on too few stories and so some reform is needed. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:45, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  So it sounds like you want ITN to be refined rather than delete outright. For future reference/posterity, what sort of changes are you looking to see? A relaxation of the "notability" criteria that we use to judge stories, I'd assume?--WaltCip (talk) 13:10, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  On rather obvious answer is to make no changes at all, but simply to put what we have on the front page now on a subpage with a simple link from the front page. Any changes [past that could be decided by those who participate in ITN. They could decide to change nothing, or they could decide to make use of the sudden lifting of space constraints. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  In addition, if you don't like what is posted, you need to be participating. We can only consider what is nominated, and only post what there is consensus to post. 331dot (talk) 13:21, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  That's a rather strange argument. You appear to be implying that someone like me who opposes the entire idea of Wikipedia being a source of late-breaking news instead of an encyclopedia needs to participate in deciding what late-breakking news to include in order to have a valid opinion. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  An issue we have to explain far too many times is that ITN is not a news ticker, we are not going to repeat verbatim what the media is reporting. This will often lead to periods of lack of stories that have any encyclopedic value. For example, over the last few days, the media's focus has been dominated by the coronavirus for good reason, but they have a disproportionate coverage of it (they are far more panicked than medical experts are at this point). ITN has that covered by the ongoing, ready to post a blurb on a major change like an upgrade to a pandemic. Take that out of the news, there's not much left that was really news that we could cover that would be otherwise biased: we are not going to cover the individual US presidential debates, and we try to avoid unfortunate cases of domestic crimes like the workplace shooting at the Coors factory yesterday. You take out these types of stories and there's not much that I see bubbling up on most news sources main pages that are ITN usable. I had suggested the mini-moon story, knowing it was an edge case for ITN but at least that's something that has some encyclopedic value for a global audience. This is sometimes how the news happens. Sometimes we'll get a flood of numerous different headlines all being appropriate for ITN. We can't make news happen or the like; we're not like DYN where there is effectively an infinite pool (for all purposes) of items to pull and we just have to manage that flow. -- Masem (t) 14:12, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  ITN is currently highlighting the death of a former president (of Egypt) while ignoring two current leaders who are meeting in India. It covers a domestic shooting in Germany while ignoring a shooting in the US. Riots in India are covered while riots in Greece are ignored. There's plenty of news but the ITN selection is quite arbitrary and partial. And because the process is driven by a who-shouts-loudest forum, items tend to suffer attrition from opinionated objections and this discourages people from making nominations. This manual process needs to be cleared away and a fresh start made on a more automatic, objective and productive basis. For example, the Wikipedia app doesn't show readers ITN. Instead it shows them the top-read articles. This is quite objective and sensible as, by definition, it shows the topics which are currently of most interest to our readership. This naturally correlates well with what's in the news but also throws up some interesting oddities. For example, mouth assessment and The Eyes of Darkness are getting exceptionally high readership currently. That's probably associated with the virus scare but they provide different angles and insights from the usual media. So, we can try the app's approach and see how it works out. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Support turning ITN into a separate page with a simple link from the main page for the reasons listed at the top of this RfC. Oppose any attempt to shut down this RfC early. I just heard about it and some people are on vacation, in the hospital, etc. Let it run the full 30 days. Oppose the ongoing WP:BLUDGEONING behavior where anyone who dares to oppose gets bombarded with multiple objections but those who support do not.
  We all knew before this was posted what the result would be. Here is why, and it has nothing to do with whether ITN on the front page is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. Near where I live we had a proposal to make changes to a major highway. On the side of keeping the traffic flowing were thousands and thousands of users of the road, none of whom showed up at the city council meetings about the plan. On the side of a plan to reduce 4 lanes to 2, convert the existing lanes to parking spaces, drop the speed limit from 40mph to 25 and place stop signs every 50-100 feet were a grand total of 15 shop owners who showed up at every meeting and gave generously to political campaigns. 1% who are vocal proponents who are heavily invested in an idea always win over 99% who would oppose the idea if asked but see it as a minor problem that has a minor negative effect on new readers. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:45, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I'm not sure I agree that your analogy is applicable here. It's usually those who don't (or rarely) participate in ITN that call for its elimination, or people who participate and don't get their way, and those who actually do participate should get a voice. 331dot (talk) 13:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  Why should those of us who think that this should be an encyclopedia aid not a news ticker be denied a voice? Just because we refuse to participate in something that we believe to be a determent to the encyclopedia and to the readers? Not-serious-counter-proposal: Only those who are not heavily invested in the current ITN system should get a voice. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I'm not saying anyone should be denied a voice, (we're here, after all) but people who participate should not get less of a voice. ITN aids readers, not deters. 331dot (talk) 19:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  I don't think we know for sure what the result of this RFC is going to be. That's why I didn't outright say earlier it should be closed as WP:SNOW, because I wasn't sure if we had yet received the input of a reasonable cross-section of the community. I'm more than happy to let this run the full 30 days. Is this RFC something that needs to be posted on WP:CENT?--WaltCip (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Yes. Post a neutrally-worded link on CENT. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose, the section has been a constant, popular, and important part of the main page since (? but as long as I recall). As an up-to-date encyclopedia there is nothing broken here, the section simply accents articles of interest to readers as do the other features on the main page. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:03, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose - The purpose of this project is to create a free encyclopaedia, and people acting in a way that's fundamentally hostile to the creators and users can't help with that goal. If one clicks through WP:NOTNEWS, for instance, they'll quickly discover why it can't be construed to apply to In The News. Similarly, none of the other complaints could be made by someone acting in good faith who has looked into the matter at all. WilyD 14:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• No, as a reader I enjoy it TonyBallioni (talk) 14:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose The purpose of the Main Page is to connect readers with articles. ITN does exactly that, by providing links to articles that may be of interest to readers due to high contemporary relevance. The project itself may perhaps need an overhaul, but it should absolutely continue to exist and remain on the Main Page. Yunshui ^雲_水 14:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Alternative... the issue here was about the lack of coverage in ITN. The proposal to remove it is being done by an ITN contributor who wants nothing of the sort, to drown the perennial coverage issue. 4 genres dominate the whole thing. Those include disaster, government leadership, sporting awards and entertainment awards. That's like 80-90% of the template, which only gets four slots total. Why is there not a companion page, which is currently proposed on Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news#Proposal_for_a_companion_page,_Wikipedia:_In_other_news, and why is there no sort of link to Signpost or other attempt to lean into the sites mission? ~ R.T.G 16:11, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • A link to Wikipedia:News (which itself includes a link to Signpost) exists in the box immediately after POTD. As that W:News page points out, there's various ways to dissect news about Wikipedia depending on what you want. This is perfectly fair for that. --Masem (t) 16:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Please Masem, respect the Signpost as well as you respect WPITN is. The Signpost is a valid thing, and it is a news thing. In an ideal world, they would link to one another. ~ R.T.G 16:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
      • All I'm saying is that Signpost is one way to cut news about Wikipedia. There's several other ways - such as what the Foundation says, how Wikipedia appears in the media, simple daily and weekly tallies of edit counts/etc. Wikipedia:News is a smart page to take someone if they say "I want news about Wikipedia" and give no other preference. --Masem (t) 16:48, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
        • Wikipedia:News is not a link to news, but a link to links to news. ~ R.T.G 16:51, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
          • ... to allow the reader to pick which version of news about Wikipedia they'd wish to read, since there's a few different ways to distill it. Though I would not be opposed to adding a specific link to the Signpost as a second link on the same line on the main page as the link to Wikipedia:News as the one that I'd think most would likely use. --Masem (t) 17:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm okay expanding the scope of the RFC to include alternate solutions. The biggest noise I heard was regarding whether ITN should even have a continued spot on the Main Page, and as you know, being a regular, I'm surrounded by insiders who wouldn't even consider that as an option. I think a lot of people are in agreement that ITN should be changed, but that they are not sure how, and no single solution - not even the "In other news" page - seems to be getting much ground.--WaltCip (talk) 16:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
    • Well I'd like to see at least a small expansion to ITN and many others have expressed that wish in the past. Such a change can be done in a way which barely affects the ITN project. ~ R.T.G 16:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. It would be useful if a much wider range of news were to be highlighted, but that requires wider participation, not relegating the project to somewhere less prominent. I'm not strongly opposed to moving it below the fold, but in the current two-column layout I'm not sure what merit putting a smaller featured picture in top right has for the main page (and let's face it, featured picture has as many problems as ITN). Espresso Addict (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• OpposeMain Page Wikipedia exists to serve its readers and not its editors. I think its hugely valuable to have this sections, I would support intelligent proposals to improve this section and make it more relevant to users, but there is no evidence at all presented that this change would improve Wikipedia for its readers. AlasdairEdits (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
  • The evidence is the inadequacy of the current template. It has four, sometimes five slots. From a readers perspective, literally anything additional would improve that. ~ R.T.G 19:21, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose - use it (and Wikinews) more, and avoid including breaking news & WP:NOTNEWS in our articles, particularly in the AP2 topic area. Perhaps stronger enforcement of related PAGs would help? --^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:25, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Replace with highlights from WP:MOSTEDITED. Let's use the top of the most viewed page to show readers what our editors are genuinely interested in as a means of editor recruitment, instead of trying to be just another headlines site for an overly-wide audience based on the opinions of typically no more than two dozen ITN participants. EllenCT (talk) 17:50, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Those at ITN have no control over who participates. Anyone (including you) is free to participate, and I invite you to. 331dot (talk) 19:05, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Comment: there are some plausible, if anecdotal, arguments that ITN doesn't promote article improvement before inclusion. But to really evaluate whether ITN's presence on the mainpage serves our purpose of building an encyclopedia, it would be helpful to have more information (data/examples) regarding whether articles tend to benefit from increased attention and editing after ITN links to them. Assuming ITN provides some non-zero benefit in this regard, it's better than nothing and shouldn't simply be removed -- but I guess the next question would be whether there's some alternative that might provide a greater benefit in the same space. (EllenCT's suggestion above of using highlights from WP:MOSTEDITED is pretty interesting.) -- Visviva (talk) 20:03, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Question: what is the basis for the statement above, that "Main Page exists to serve its readers and not its editors"? I would have thought it self-evident that the main page exists to serve the purpose of the project, namely to build a comprehensive free and open encyclopedia (the Wikipedia.org website being merely one incidental aspect of this project, and the main page being in turn an incidental aspect of the website). So whether the main page serves current editors or not, it surely needs to promote editing, or at least some sort of involvement in the work of the project, in some way. -- Visviva (talk) 20:16, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

  All parts of Wikipedia, all in equal measure, serve everyone and no one. Editors and readers are, in equal measure, the purpose of the main page, every article, and every thing else at Wikipedia. Without editors, there would be nothing to read, without readers there would be no reason to edit. --Jayron32 20:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Well said, Visviva. "All parts of Wikipedia" serve a defined mission. ~ R.T.G 02:55, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose: I open the main page every day or two to see if there are any news items. It's my main method of hearing about news, and I'd be sad to lose it. The quality seems high (it has plenty of eyes on it, I think; I fear that moving it off the main page might damage that). Using encyclopedia articles as the basis of news items also avoids the "firehose of trivia" effect that would come from trying to stay up to date with a source like Wikinews or the BBC (if the headline won't still be on the front page in a few days, I probably don't need to know about it!). ITN keeps me up to date while using my limited time and energy efficiently. I appreciate that a lot. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 23:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose, for essentially the same reasons as Goldenshimmer above: I intentionally don't consume news, and agree wholeheartedly that "if the headline won't still be on the front page in a few days, I probably don't need to know about it." I appreciate that ITN is slow-moving and focused on holistic summaries rather than individual 'breaking' details; it seems appropriate to Wikipedia's mission to supply information that will be of interest to many people but in an encyclopedic, not news-y, way. I suppose since I don't follow the news, I wouldn't know if there were major events that ITN is leaving out, but everything that has appeared seems appropriate. As a reader there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with ITN. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 00:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Strong oppose ITN is not meant to be a news ticker, it's meant to showcase relevant, timely articles relating to current events that people who visit the site can find more information about. ITN serves its purpose relatively well and should definitely remain on the main page. Nixinova   T   C   05:25, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support but only if all the stories are replaced with alt blurb 3 - "Wikipedia closes its "In the News" section. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 17:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose, I find ITN one of the more useful sections of the home page. Like it or not, Wikipedia does have articles on current event and they are often among the best sources for finding out what is happening without hysteria. The current coronavirus situation is an excellent example. I check ITN irregularly, both to find out about interesting stories I missed and to check on how events are being covered, with a view to fixing any problems I see (I rarely find that necessary). I think attracting more eyes on current event articles is an important side benefit of ITN. While there is always room for improvement, ITN isn't remotely broken.--agr (talk) 19:38, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Rename and broaden scope I would support changing the name of the section from "In the news", which causes confusion, to "Recently updated". Along side that, I would expect the scope to be broadened somewhat to include articles that have been recently updated with new facts, even if those facts are not what someone would consider "news". So for instance, imagine there is a significant archaeological find about Ancient Egypt, something that changes the way historians interpret the civilization going forward. That would likely take a long time to be written up in journals, accepted by mainstream historians, and filter down to Wikipedia, such that it's not really "in the news" - you won't turn on CNN and learn about it. But when our article is updated with that information I wouldn't mind seeing Ancient Egypt in such a "Recently updated" main page section. I would expect that the bulk of that section be things like blurbs about recent deaths and other newsy things, but I think this change would stop the confusion of it being a news ticker and would also serve to keep the content fresh, as right now finding the right combination of updates based on news and quality means the section changes somewhat slowly.~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:58, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support and support the proposals to start a new main page feature concerning recently updated content or WP:MOSTEDITED (one of which is the proposal identified as "rename and broaden scope" immediately above). ITN is and has been fraught with questionable judgment calls about what constitutes relevant content for our readers and it is beyond the scope of a limited volunteer team to do this accurately and impassionately, plus reflects poorly on our core mission which we codify as WP:NOTNEWS. Wholeheartedly agree with the comment Is it even possible to untangle ITN from systemic bias? made by Banedon. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support For years it has no longer served its intended purpose. Gamaliel (talk) 20:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose, readers do come to Wikipedia to get the most thorough coverage of topics that happen to be important news events. BD2412 T 21:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support - It will never fulfill its purpose. We will never have quality articles on breaking news stories. In the meantime, it’s a political honeypot that detracts from Wikipedia's actual mission. We’re here to build an encyclopedic not a newspaper. Levivich (talk) 03:44, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose I look at ITN a lot more than I look at DYK, and would rue its removal (even though I've never contributed to the former). I find the slight time delay between a news story developing and maybe even a pre-existing page being posted here is actually quite helpful. I also quite like the fact that stories stay for a few days longer than they do in non-Wiki news feeds. I tend to discover tid-bits about people and topical events that have happened around the world that are not in my country's news outlets - or at least that I've missed them. And when something big has happened that I am interested in, I find it of great interest to see how my fellow Wikipedians have covered it. I find the recently deceased links also of some interest and value, too. All in all - it's a great shop window element to include on the Wikipedia main page, and long may it continue. It's a shame Portals aren't so visible! (Now wanders off and hides from the impending howls of foaming-mouthed editors...) Nick Moyes (talk) 16:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Keep. I feel the same way as multiple editors above. This is a useful section that directs readers to encyclopaedic articles about current events. I think it's very much in line with our mission. The events I find are normally of global significance. I also think it is a channel for new editors to become involved because of editing to new articles. I feel strongly this should be kept. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:24, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Suggestion - why don't we move it down the page and create a new section to replace it? Specifically, a section highlighting recently promoted Featured Articles. That way we can showcase both some of Wikipedia's best ongoing work and encourage people to get involved in featured article creation and promotion. This would complement TFA quite nicely - one special featured article from the past for TFA, several newly improved and approved featured articles for the new section. Ganesha811 (talk) 19:49, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose or Strong oppose 23
• Support 7
• Alternative 1
• Replace 1
• Rename and broaden scope 1

Current tallies here for reference (question/comment removed) ☆ Bri (talk) 23:51, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose It encourages people to improve articles, connects users to where our articles are for topics of some of the highest current interest, connects users to articles about people and topics they may not otherwise know about (RD in particular) and also to navigation aids such as the list of recent deaths page, helps reduce duplicate article creation on topics of sudden interest, and acts as a display-window for some of our better material. If it disappeared, I would miss it, and I think Wikipedia as a site would be that degree diminished. People click the links if an item is in ITN, so I do think people use it, and I do think people find it useful. Jheald (talk) 22:05, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose, move its section down in the main page, but don't delete WP:ITN. It still has its uses. BEANS X3 (talk) 13:45, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose - Wholly stupid proposal. ITN encourages the improvement of articles, and it also advertises relevant articles that people worked hard on to a wider readership. This seems to have been prompted by a single disgruntled user complaining about the wording of a single blurb. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 20:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose Wikipedia is not a newspaper, but it is also not a traditional encyclopedia that cannot easily handle updates. The feature is fine as it is, but I would not oppose renaming it to something like "Current events", which might work better semantically. StonyBrook (talk) 04:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose Removing (or hiding) it certainly doesn't make wikipedia better. I can understand where the initiators are coming from, but ITN is a well established feature of the main page, and the one that I probably use the most. – sgeureka ^t•c 16:31, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose one of the issues with ITN is that it's a small box with static content. We should redesign the main page to support dynamic content, scollers, and HTML5 CSS widgets. When the main page is successfully redesigned we can revisit the value of each component. --LaserLegs (talk) 22:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Support ITN often seems like an inadequate fudge between being a news service and showcasing encyclopedic content. The most prominent events often have trouble getting in because of the quality of the relevant articles, but the best articles may not correspond to sufficiently important events. I'm sure we can use the space for something better. Hut 8.5 22:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose per C&C and Goldenshimmer. —⁠烏⁠Γ ^(kaw) │ 23:13, 03 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose per... well everything, but C&C is a good start. The nomination is fundamentally misguided and making invalid assumptions, like "having both a significance criterion and a quality criterion is bad." That said, while we're here, I would be in favor of removing the link to Wikinews in the sister projects template, and also shutting that misbegotten project down entirely - but that's an entirely different debate that's been had before and rejected, so eh. SnowFire (talk) 00:48, 4 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose I like ITN. Yes news is knowledge. And yes we do summaries of breaking news very well. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:37, 4 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose As a reader of Wikipedia I use ITN on a daily basis to find out world happenings. It certainly would be missed should it be removed. Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 07:26, 4 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

An ongoing discussion of interest to watchers of this page is happening here. [It's about RFA watchlist notices] –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 13:53, 26 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hello!

I think it would be good if you can search for deletions ONLY in a particular namespace, for example File or Draft. Special:Log is unable to do this now however it works perfect at Special:Contributions. Thanks!Jonteemil (talk) 12:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Jonteemil: that would be best done via a software enhancement, and I think there is a request open that meets your needs: phab:T185854. You may comment on that task and follow it for updates. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

On mobile it's a real pain to have to scroll for ages when you want to close a section of the page and read another. If the section header (<h2>) stayed at the top of the screen while you scrolled it would make mobile reading a lot better. Thoughts?  Nixinova   T   C   05:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Nixinova: I see what you're saying, but that's be a real PITA on small screens. If your mobile browser supports Javascript there is a script that may work for you - it's a button to automatically scroll to the top. -- a lad insane (channel two) 21:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

Would it? I think phones are big enough now that having a header stay in place would not be much of an issue.  Nixinova   T   C   21:17, 28 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Nixinova: I'm sorry for responding so late! I speak only from my perspective - I use a very small phone, small enough that such a sticky would be annoying, but I know I'm in a small minority. I'd be completely onboard with you idea so long as there was a toggle somewhere! -- a lad insane (channel two) 08:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

I agree! One of many UI changes that could be made to make mobile better, but especially important since it affects readers rather than editors (most of whom are on computers). Sdkb (talk) 21:44, 29 February 2020 (UTC)Reply

When an editor wishes to first make a talk page, prior to the actual article, why doesn't WP:CSD#G8 have a time factor?

The case of "user subpages when the user has not created a user page" is on the list of tolerated exceptions- more than just tolerated, it is part of what is called "any page that is useful to Wikipedia."

I propose that a 48 or even 72 hour window of time be added to the "useful to wikipedia" criteria for CSD#G8 for talk/no article (yet). Pi314m (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

This seems like more trouble than it's worth. Why are people creating talk pages that aren't "useful to Wikipedia" and that don't have a corresponding article page? ST47 (talk) 18:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Not really sure as I have never seen it happen, but maybe they want to discuss the topic with someone before creating the article? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:28, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

In that case, they should head for the teahouse, an appropriate wikiproject, or other discussion forum - orphaned talk pages have near-zero visibility. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 18:48, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Question - I am a bit confused... are we talking about:

1) ARTICLE talk pages with no corresponding article... 2) User talk pages, where the user has not yet registered... or 3) sandbox pages in userspace?

All three should be handled a bit differently. Blueboar (talk) 20:31, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

I interpreted it as the first one based on the title of the thread. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 20:38, 2 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

• Better solution - make it more explicit that the Ignore all rules policy applies everywhere including CSD. If it's in the best interest of Wikipedia NOT to nominate a CSD-eligible page, don't nominate it or wait until it IS in the project's interest to nominate it. For some G8 pages, may mean waiting the 48-72 hours Pi314m suggests. For other G8-eligible pages, clearly no wait is needed. As an administrator, if it's in the best interest to NOT honor a deletion request or to WAIT before honoring it, decline the request or leave it alone for a day or three as your good judgment suggest. Bottom line: I don't think we need to hard-code in an time factor. Editors and administrators should use common sense in tagging and deleting. If this isn't happening, we should encourage it in general terms across all CSD criteria, not focus on G8. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:45, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• If there is a useful orphaned talk page, just tag it with {{G8-exempt}}. -- Tavix ^(talk) 17:07, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• I think that such examples would be very rare, but when they do occur I would expect any deleting admin to be open to restoring such a page, and then it can be tagged as Tavix said. For such a rare case I don't think there's any need to build in a timer, because nearly all such orphaned talk pages will be eligible for deletion immediately. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
• Perhaps you can explain your reasoning for your proposed change? I presume it is related to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#Talk:Peter de Jager? isaacl (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

  If that's the case then I don't see what purpose the talk page served before the article was created. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:53, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Reply