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Proposal:Create a capability and process to expunge a block from someone's record when all agree that it was an error

Proposal:Create a capability and process to expunge a block from someone's record when all agree that it was an error.

I always wondered about this in general and now know of a case. Such a block can have an immense impact on someone who cares and has a clean record. I learned that neither exists. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 04:39, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

There is a discussion about the technical and policy implications of this proposal at Misplaced Pages talk:Blocking policy#Urgently required. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:49, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support - If technically possible - we all make errors (even admins when blocking) and these errors should not have a negative impact on the end user. Moxy (talk) 04:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Note: The purely technical capability exists, in the form of WP:Revision deletion#Log redaction, however the current policy states that:

Log redaction (outside of the limited scope of RD#2 for the move and delete logs) is intended solely for grossly improper content, and is not permitted for ordinary matters; the community needs to be able to review users' block logs and other logs whether or not proper

Would you be willing to share the details of the case? A block record alone, if clearly mistaken, should not have "an immense impact on someone" as blocks are not brands or scarlet letters; the context should be evident, and if not, a note can be added to the log stating that the block was in error. Intelligentsium 04:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Note Redaction using revision deletion will not expunge the log entry, it will gray out and strike through the log entry so that non-admins cannot see who did the action, how long it was for, or what reason was given. A line will still appear in the user's log, it just won't say what happened. MBisanz 05:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Block log entries can also be oversighted. Of course, this would mean changing the OS policy. --Rschen7754 06:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Answering Intelligentsium, I'd rather keep it general. Hopefully that the proposal is just to have a general result (that the capability exist, and that there be a process for deciding to apply it) and that my question included the premise that all parties (including the blocking admin) agree is reassurance that I'm not looking for an out-of-context answer to take into a particular situation.

Answering Rschen7754 & Intelligentsium, as step 1 at Village Pump technical I asked if the ability technically exists and someone answered "no". So now I'd like to know who is right. (????)North8000 (talk) 13:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Removing the log entry partially (revision deletion) and completely (oversight) are both possible, but their implementation would go very much against the grain of what those tools are for. Personally, I'd rather not start down the (possibly) slippery slope of adding exceptions to those policies. Instead, when you unblock, just add a note in the unblock saying that the block was unnecessary/improper/whatever. If its expired already, do a quick block-and-unblock with a note that the original block was unnecessary/improper/whatever. – Philosopher  14:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Any editor genuinely disturbed enough by the presence of a block log entry agreed to have been invalid, and determined enough to make a case for a change in policy, is not likely to be satisfied by a solution that creates another "corrective" entry in their block log. Leaky Caldron 14:29, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "What the tools are for" is doing what's right. What's right is that someone who's done nothing wrong should have an empty block log. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• Strongly support the modification of oversight policy to allow the eradication of block log entries created in error. It's not fair that a bad decision made by an admin should irreversibly stain a user's record, even if the blocking admin is subsequently subject to censure. I would add that it should be possible for an admin to request such eradication of a log entry they caused themselves. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support: If it is discovered and agreed that a block was made per incurium then it seems only fair that the person should be entitled to have that wiped from their record. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 14:40, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. This capability is would be too easily misused. I would rather see people explain their block log as having an erroneous entry than have it wiped. Binksternet (talk) 15:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Support if only oversighter can perform this action. Binksternet (talk) 22:48, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that the past block may be used to justify another block without giving the editor a chance to explain that the previous block was in error. Monty₈₄₅ 15:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• The current proposal is too generic. Even if it reached a consensus, we would then need to conduct a second RFC to actually implement a specific policy for dealing with it. There are two main questions, and both can be addressed in one initial RFC. Question 1: should 1a) RevDel policy allow for the redaction of block log entries; 1b) Oversight policy allow for the redaction of block log entries; 1c) no redaction. Question 2: If there is consensus in favor of 1a or 1b, what standard should be used for redaction/what process is necessary? Monty₈₄₅ 15:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - see the discussion on my talkpage before Christmas. If someone wants an example case, I accidentally blocked an innocent user who provided some information at an SPI using SPI helper script. It's also possible to do similar with the checkuser tools - you tick a box for all the accounts you want blocked, and it is possible to tick the wrong box). In case folks think it doesn't happen often, User:Courcelles has two blocks from admins with bad aim, and User:Dougweller has one, and that's just from a couple of conversations. It happens more than you think.

The proposal I would support has four elements -

1. Full suppression is carried out by an Oversighter. Revdel is not used
2. The block resulted from a factual error(admin has blocked the wrong user or did not intend to block any user) not from an error of judgement on the part of the admin (admin intended to block the user, but block is not supported by policy/consensus).
3. The admin who made the block is the one requesting suppression

The user in such a case should be unblocked immediately upon the error being discovered and advised that suppression will be requested.

I think if the community also desires a process whereby it can declare a block to be invalid and request it to be removed from the record, it needs to be thought through and set out in more detail. I also think that there should never be a circumstance in which a blocked editor can request an Oversighter to suppress their block record. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:26, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Elen....why would you exclude cases where the blocking Admin says that it was an intended block, but later decided that it was an erroneous decision?

I was thinking that the mechanism in your last post should be included eventually, but didn't want to complicate my proposal with it at this time.North8000 (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose: This seems to be a solution looking for a problem. I have never observed that a user has been unfairly judged simply because of a mistaken block, though I recognize of course that they occur. A block log is not a mark that condemns a user to ostracism for his/her wikilife, and I am sure there are cases where a block may be overturned, but later the original reasons for the block are later substantiated; in this case having the original block record would be helpful.

Moreover, I am somewhat disturbed by the sentiment expressed above basically to the effect that a block is some sort of conviction or prison sentence, and the log thereof a yellow passport that will cause a user to be spurned from every mairie in the countryside. Intelligentsium 17:26, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with Intellegentsium's point. Also, we don't need to revisit such issues with more arguments and more "ivotes": ('it was mistaken -- no, it was not -- you're an idiot -- no you're a fool, etc.') . Moreover, a history of mistaken blocks by an adminsitrator should not be expunged. Perhaps annotations for incidental mistakes would be fine (I can't imagine a long or contentious discussion about whether to do that, but can't that already be done?)Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment/question I think that an erroneous block on ones block log does have an impact, even if it not the the extent of the over-the-top straw man descriptions of the impact (mentioned above.) For example, a "clean block log" is a widely-used term. Can an editor who has had only an admitted-eroneous block be said to simply have a "clean block log"? The answer is no. Some contortions would be needed like "technically not, but the one block was an error" which people are going to doubt, or if it is said that they do, people will look and say "well no" North8000 (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support both for blocks that were clearly errors (slips of the finger, wrong editor, wrong button, etc.) and also for blocks that a consensus of a hypothetical block-evaluating jury would consider to be bad blocks (violations of WP:INVOLVED; blocks from an admin desysopped for misuse of tools; blocks which normal, sane people would have thought were bad blocks if it had happened to them ... etc. etc.) Injustice damages people, and when it comes to block logs, injustice creates further injustices right down the line. Block #1 is a lousy block, block #2 was only done because there had already been a block allegedly for something similar, block #3 would have been kinda OK, possibly, but not really without warning and if blocks #1 and #2 had been properly recognised as wrongful; appearance at AN/I has a pile-on of drama-whores yelling "But see how many times he's been blocked already!" ... so EnthusiAdmin applies an indef on the basis of the "consensus" of the pile-on of people who haven't had the wit to analyse the previous blocks, and so on, and so son, and so on ... Pesky (talk) 17:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support As proposer. Comments elsewhere. North8000 (talk) 18:09, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Comment - the capability for suppression of blocks from the blocklog already exists; what's needed is agreement on when and how to use it. This could be used for completely mistaken blocks (oops! wrong user! type thing) at least. In addition, it's possible to annotate blocklogs where a disputed block remains - see Misplaced Pages:Blocks#Recording_in_the_block_log. Rd232 18:18, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. It is a relatively complicated work around to add a note that the block was unnecessary, and is much simpler handled by using an undo. As to the wording, all is undefined, imprecise, and superfluous. If we decide to allow it we can work out the details. There are basically two scenarios that I see someone tries to block Foobar, and accidentally blocks Footar. That can be reversed uncontroversially. The second is by editor error, this does not get reversed. For example, if someone loses count of their 3RRs (ignoring that 2 is prohibited, just not as strongly as 3 or 4), and gets blocked. That never gets expunged, even if they go on to become a Steward. What other types of mistakes are there? Apteva (talk) 20:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) But if an incorrect block is applied, it is actually less work to note that the block was unnecessary in the unblock log entry than to unblock, then suppress the block log; obviously the mistakenly-blocked user will not be expected to wait out the block! This also addresses your point that there be an undo - this is already handled by the unblock function.

As I see it there are two issues here: The first is, should a mistaken log entry be removable? If you edit the wrong page or perform an accidental revert, you can reverse it, but the edit remains in the history. Same goes for all other logs (move, delete, etc., with the exceptions set out in the suppression and oversight policy), whether the action was justified or not. The same arguments can be made about practically any mistaken action that happens to create a log entry, but I find it extremely unlikely that consensus will emerge to enable the editing of all logs. Logs are logs because they by definition record everything save egregious abuse.

The second and bigger issue is the perception that having a block on record, even if mistaken, in some way ipso facto "tarnishes" a user's reputation. This is why users are willing to have this discussion about block log but not delete/move/revert. My opposition stems not so much from the proposal itself as from this second issue. I firmly believe that this issue should be addressed, but this is completely the wrong way to address it, because it validates the claim that blocks are punitive and represent a stain upon a user's reputation which must be expunged to preserve his or her "good name". Blocks are not convictions.

The example cited by That Pesky Commoner above is unfortunate; not only does it not refer to any specific example of where such a thing has occurred or whether or not such a thing is a common occurrence among accidentally blocked users, but more concerning, it also assumes incompetence on the parts of the users involved. It assumes that users (and administrators) will not be circumspect or thoughtful enough to investigate the context behind the block. I am reminded of the old saying, Let people rise to your expectations (or something wittier, I forget); if you prepare for incompetence, then most likely you will encounter it. And even if that case occurs, where a user has a history of blocks, including one accidental or invalid block, that one fewer block is unlikely to change the circumstances.

The potential for abuse and the decrease in transparency in case an admin has a history of making bad blocks are also valid issues that other users have addressed better than I could. Intelligentsium 01:13, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Incorrect blocks in block logs are valuable - not because of what they say about the blocked user, but because they may in some cases help expose a pattern of carelessness or ineptitude by the blocking admin. I believe the correct solution is the ability to edit or append clarifications to block log summaries when they contain false information, not to pretend it never happened. Dcoetzee 00:59, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Create a sortable "List of expunged blocks". We need to preserve the record, but it doesn't have to be atomised across individual block logs. Such a list would be much more likely to expose a pattern of admin incompetence than the current situation. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support based on Dougweller's reasoning. By the way, I have no personal stake in the matter, given no blocks, but overall it certainly creates bad feelings for users. The process of agreeing on what is to be expunged needs to be based on WP:CON I think. History2007 (talk) 01:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose If people are being stupid and misinterpreting a log file, that is the people's fault, not the log's fault. If you hide the log file, the people will still be stupid and draw their unwarranted conclusions from other sources. Kilopi (talk) 03:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Per Elen. The "oopsy" block, where you didn't mean to block or accidentally blocked the wrong user, is uncontroversial. I think, if there is strong enough consensus here for Elen's formulation, we can go straight to the relevant policy pages and make the changes. As for blocks that were intended but later repudiated by the community or the blocking admin, we need to assess the extent of the problem and define precisely what kind of block can and can't be expunged, and what kind of record to keep. So, for now, I support immediately changing policy to allow suppression (oversight) of unambiguous oopsy blocks when that is requested by the blocking admin, and the creation of a sortable "List of expunged blocks." --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose per Dcoetzee. Expunging blocks might provide some relief to the blocked user, but it would also shield admins from scrutiny (this is regards to blocks rescinded by the community; oversight of unintentional blocks per Elen seems fair). Hot Stop (Talk) 05:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

If bad blocks are removed from the victim's block log but added to a publicly-viewable "List of expunged blocks" (either attached to the blocking admin's account or a sortable - by admin, date and victim - list of all expunged blocks) this will improve our scrutiny of admins. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

An alternative would be to establish a practice where any admin that makes a block which is subsequently overturned by consensus (or deemed a bad block by consensus after it has expired) is blocked for one second with a summary linking the discussion in question. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:47, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Excellent suggestion that addresses the problem! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:34, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support expunging blocks: An undo could reverse several forms of unneeded block. Even a genius can make a mistake (Albert Einstein once mistakenly wrote "x' " where ex-double-prime "x' ' " was needed, or I could be mistaken), and there is no intelligence requirement for admins, so the community needs all the undo-admin help it can get. Other nitpick shades of undo can be discussed in other venues, such as line-hiding of borderline blocks, but a simple undo, or "erased block" rewrite of a block entry should be allowed as soon as possible. As a long-term editor with several improperly placed blocks, I can confirm that they are shouted, by many people, as evidence that "your next block will be indef" or the ever-snarky, "it can only end badly for you". I support the unblock, and any similar functions, to reduce the shoot-from-the-hip, knee-jerk, short-sighted actions of ]bunny admins. Also see: wp:MELT about the need to wait and re-think some decisions. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. We all make mistakes on Misplaced Pages. Most of the time, this is on an article or a project page. In such cases, either we fix our own mistakes, or someone else does so. Except for extremely serious cases (such as a major privacy violation or massive copyright infringement), we do not mess with the history. The same should apply for admin actions. We need to be very careful to try to avoid admin mistakes. But when it happens, we should just correct it, and move on. In the case of an incorrect block, it is definitely good form for the admin to state unambiguously (e.g. on the blocked users' talk page) that it was an error. But I don't support messing with the logs. If it comes up (XYZ was blocked before), simply explain what happened, and point them to the blocking admin or someone who knows about the error. Another serious problem with this is who has to agree to the expungement. If it's just the admin, then it is a way for them to (at least partly) cover their tracks. If it's more people, then consensus becomes a problem. Superm401 - Talk 21:16, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: WP:Perennial proposals#Prohibit removal of warnings is, I feel, relevant to this discussion. Toccata quarta (talk) 22:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support I agree that the official block log should have mistaken blocks removed. Not blocks that are simply overturned because someone else think enough time has elapsed, or the blocked editor is valuable, only blocks where a consensus of admins would agree that the block should not have been issued. I agree with Dcoetzee that I do not want the complete history to disappear, as it could help identify problematic admins, but I believe this is easily resolved, with either a complete history available in another place, or perhaps the incorrect block would be noted on the admins record, which preserves Dcoetzee's goal. yes, I fully understand that one ought to review a block log with care, but in the heat of a contentious situation, it would be unfortunate if an admin glanced at a block log, saw six entries, and didn't read closely enough to see that it was three blocks followed by three unblocks, each noting that the block was a misunderstanding. Why not make the block log informative, rather than a mystery to be analyzed?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Define all

The Proposal states "when all agree that it was an error", who is All?

• If All is everyone on Misplaced Pages, then the proposal fails with the first Oppose vote above.
• If All is just the Admin who made the block, then the proposal needs a huge rework for clarity.
• If All is everyone involved, then you need to define how to identify All and where to track their agreement.

JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 19:24, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

This is where I, personally, like the idea of a kinda jury of longish-term editors with a fair number of contributions (including at least 30% in article space) to review blocks. A consensus of a jury of "reasonable editors" (avoiding the possible sexism of "reasonable men" ;P) with perhaps 20 members should be sufficient. We do have to face the probability that the blocking admin themselves may never agree with that. Admins are human, and therefore like the rest of us not perfect. Pesky (talk) 20:29, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I feel like the jury idea is one doomed to fail, amidst various cries of cronyism, cabalism, policy creep, and needless additional bureaucracy... not to mention the people that don't get picked to be on the jury and subsequently get pissy about it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:42, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

A jury is exactly what we don't want - it opens Pandora's box of other problems, as stated by EVula above, in addition to reinforcing the "court" mentality that pervades this thread. Sinking twenty users' time into this would be a terrible idea (time which could be used to edit articles). I thought the point of this was to be non-contentious; if you invite twenty users to have a discussion then naturally the discussion will drag on ad infinitum.

And just consider the negative impact that even one contentious expurgation would have; I daresay it would far outweigh the questionable positive impact that every noncontentious expurgation could have. Intelligentsium 01:30, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

In my proposal I used "all" as a simplification. It really translates to "If the admin who made the block agrees". And I deliberately avoided discussing (kicked the can down the road on) the possibility of a process to do this when the initial blocking admin does not agree. North8000 (talk) 22:08, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Why not just use WP:CON anyway. History2007 (talk) 01:52, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep. Community consensus is sufficient, and I don't agree with the blocking admin being able to veto expunging. How does that make sense? Consensus rules. For Elen's minimalist proposal, in the case of truly uncontroversial oopsies, it makes sense, but for cases where the community agrees the blocking admin exercised poor judgment, we shouldn't have to wait on that admin's approval for expunging. Too many cowboy admins here never admit they were wrong. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:37, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

More full views over at Misplaced Pages talk:Blocking policy#Summary, but the cabalism / picking thingie could be addressed in some way like this:

(copied across) to avoid the cabalism thingie, how about having "block-log-cleaning-juries" drawn from a pool of suitable editors? Editors could opt-in or opt-out of the pool, and a panel of 20 (or whatever number) could be drawn from a list of editors who have chosen to be available to look at whichever particular block log is under discussion. It could work something a bit like opting-in for RfC's, to get a long-list for each case, and picking the working party from the long-list could be randomised.

Sometimes the solutions to perceived (and / or actual) challenges aren't hard to think up. I think, on the whole, it's better to be solution-focussed than problem-focussed.

I think that this situation is one which a panel of fair-right-minded editors would be likely to agree is the kind of block (Rodhullandemu's block of Malleus) which should be removed from the block log.

We need to learn lessons from Real Life, and one of those most needed (particularly in today's increasingly litigious societies) is the very human tendency for some people to indulge themselves with barratry. We do need to be very aware of the injustices caused by pile-on responses from those who may have an axe to grind, when we're looking at consensus, for example. Pesky (talk) 11:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose - a block made in error is an important part of the blocking admin's record some of the time; we need to allow each user to make decisions about how much of a stain it is on the admin's record - for example, if we ever have a community desysop process, if the admin runs for ArbCom, etc. We should definitely make sure that the blocked user's log make it clear that the block was in error - but not hide it. Additionally, some times even a wrong block is important to show that the user should be aware of some thing - for example, there was a case where a new user did a fourth revert of a 3RR violation while logged out. While I (and several other users who commented there) had no doubt that the user logged out by accident, and the indef block for sockpuppetry was wrong, the user knows that if (s)he does this again, an indef block may be the result. And should it happen, admins need to be able to see the previous block to make the decision. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:48, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

• This is where having a separate record for bad blocks would solve that problem. The full record of the block is still there for any purpose for which it is needed, but it doesn't get used by the inadequate in a "But he's been blocked X-number of times already! He must be really bad ... he should have learned his lesson by now!" argument. Again, being solution-focussed rather than problem-focussed is necessary, and fairly simple. Pesky (talk) 10:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Where would you put the record of people blocking lay preachers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.118.46.205 (talk) 14:04, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I would support some sort of "badf block" marker - provided that it doesn't prevent anyone from seeing the block details (blocking admin, blocked account, and block reason). Unfortunately, that's currently not possible. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I can't see any major technical issues with having something like that made possible. (and the comment about lay preachers ...(Theo-retically possible es.) ..d'uh? What was that about, and to whom was it addressed? And why is it relevant?) Pesky (talk) 19:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

My premature summary, overreaching interpretation and suggested next step / revised proposal

One person pointed out an ambiguity in my proposal (the undefined "all") which I then clarified, but that's now messy. I did a very fast count and it looks like a lot more support than oppose....not that means anything beyond maybe thinking about a refined proposal. More importantly, the reason cited by almost all of the "opposes" was that a record should be kept and visible, even of bad blocks. Finally, one or more editors pointed out the narrowness of my proposal as it only includes cases where the blocking admin admitted that it was an error. This "narrowness" was deliberate (to keep this from dying from complexity) but we should note that leaving it out does not weigh in against it. So I have a revised proposal which the above would indicate probable 90% or 100% support for. Lets let it sit a few hours without any "supports/opposes" in case anybody sees any error or ambiguities which we can fix. OK, it's been about about 9 hours. North8000 (talk) 00:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal When the the administrator who made a block subsequently determines that the block was in error, let's create the ability and expectation that that administrator can and will mark the block as being in error in a way that makes it very clear. This can be via a mark on that block itself, or the ability to create an additional log entry (without creating an additional block) This ability to mark the log shall only be used by an admin to mark their own block as being in error. The "expectation" will be created by some new wording in Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy. The idea of a system for the community to do this without agreement by the blocker is acknowledged and can be discussed later but (for simplicity) is not included in this proposal.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:02, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support As proposer. North8000 (talk) 00:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support - When acting as admin on other projects (not Misplaced Pages) I've even made mistakes of blocking the wrong person simply by pressing the wrong user information and imposing the block. I've always undone such blocks immediately and usually even apologized on the user's talk page with usually a note of praise of what that user has accomplished as well to try and smooth things over. Still, having the ability to mark in the logs itself that the block was in error would be useful. I've also stepped into wheel warring disputes as well where it was later determined by the community at large that the blocks were done in error and bad faith. While the ability to note a small text explanation is already in the MediaWiki software, what seems to be missing is the ability to retroactively mark a specific block as being done in error. Perhaps simply allowing an admin to make an "administrative" entry on behalf of that user in the block log that could be a standard summary field of any kind for any reason but would otherwise not have any impact upon the user? I could see this being used in other log entries too as a more generic tool. --Robert Horning (talk) 06:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support: this is obviously a good starting point for further work on less unambiguous areas. Pesky (talk) 12:14, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support I like the idea of creating an "whoops!" entry in the block log without having to re-block. An elegant solution. – Philosopher  13:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support I can support the blocking admin marking a block as erroneous in the log. This is purely a case of adding information; I do not support removing information from any block logs. However, a block "being in error" should mean, "At the time of the block, there was not justification for blocking." It does not mean "Since block expiration, or since unblocking, the editor has edited productively." It is the goal that editors will return to productivity after the block is done. That does not mean it was mistaken. In other words, 'user forgiven' is not the same as 'mistaken block'. Superm401 - Talk 18:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support Per Superm401. Intelligentsium 02:38, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support as reasonable in the case of a bad block. -- Ohconfucius  03:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support new version. Having worked in a medical-related field, I've grown to appreciate the need for clear documentation, especially when errors are made. Even if you document it elsewhere, the record itself should be amended to indicate the error and what steps were taken to correct it. That way, there is no impression you are "hiding" the error. — The Hand That Feeds You: 20:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support I'd like to go a little broader, but have nothing against starting with clean situations, and if it works well, consider expanding later, as noted by the proposal. I'd also rpefer that the block log look clean as opposed to being dirtied with an explanation, but that too can come later.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I'd go further and support bad blocks being expunged from the log as proposed above, but this is a good first step in that direction, with no obvious problems. Robofish (talk) 23:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support, good corrections, feasible solution, reasonable option. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:42, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• Support - Fair is fair. Blocks can have lasting consequences, needless to say, and this would fix simple human error. Jusdafax 23:46, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support proposal from Elen of the Roads, otherwise oppose. Elen came up with a well-thought-out set of criteria which will avoid abuse and politics. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Theoretical situation: Admin A makes a questionable block of User. Discussion, and then uproar on ANI, and eventually creation of a case at Arbcom where the Arbcom makes a finding that Admin A's block was wrong. Admin A refuses to make note in Users block record as described above indicating that the block was wrong . Is Admin then in violation of Arbcom's findings? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Well no one can be in "violation" of findings. They could only be in violation of sanctions. And that's a different issue, likely handled by ArbCom itself. It's not a requirement for the blocking admin to be the one who amends the block log, so it's not relevant to this. — The Hand That Feeds You: 15:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

This proposal only covers cases where the blocking admin has determined that their block was in error. So, your question is not actually germane to this proposal. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:30, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Once again i believe there are procedural problems here:

• If a radical change to the way supposedly erroneous blocks are handled is seriously being proposed there needs to be a much more public process, as in a formal RFC, a listing at WP:CENT, possibly watchlist notices, etc

• Are we sure this is even possible with the current software? Big changes in the interface take months or even years to implement and can be quite expensive for the WMF to implement, has anyone even asked about this?
• Will this "notational ability" be given to all admins, enabling any admin to add notes to any users block log at any time?

Until these questions are answered I don't see much point in proceeding with actually discussing the proposal. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Answering you points and question in order:

• I don't believe that adding the ability and expectation that when an admin determines that their own block is in error that there is an ability and expectation to make a log entry to that effect is a "radical change". But review of this in a wider venue would be great, given that such a venue would be more likely to lead to implementation once decided. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:42, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
• If adding the ability to add a notation were a huge process (which IMHO is doubtful), then something needs fixing with the system. On the second note, it would kill every new idea and proposal to have to assume the worst and confirm the opposite prior to discussing. North8000 (talk) 20:55, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
• Regarding your "ability" question, Per the proposal, "This ability to mark the log shall only be used by an admin to mark their own block as being in error.". If you are asking whether admins would have the technical ability to do things that are in violation of policy (e.g. use that ability ability to add a notation for a non-allowed purpose), the technical ability to do things in violation of policy already exists for all admins and all editors including IP's, but immensely so for admins. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:35, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Assumption of guilt

We cant fairly make the assumption the previous block was valid. We can make a guideline that specifically forbids using previous blocks as a motivation to block a person. One time I was blocked for a few hours. Reason given: "dubious IP edits". It took a bit to long to get unblocked for my taste but no real harm was done. Pointing at such entry as if it demonstrates previous problematic behavior should be frowned upon. It smells WAAAAAAAAAAY to much like "making it up as we go along". We should simply close the old case and open a new one. The new one shouldn't be mistaken for reopening the closed one.

I've even seen a group of users report the same guy over and over again, each time assuming the previous reports had already demonstrated his wrongdoings. The uninvolved editor reviewing a report should never be expected to go figure out if the previous report contains evidence.

How many times you've seen the inside of a court room wont tell us if you are guilty or not. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 03:40, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Agree with you 100%, and your thought should be promulgated, but you'll have to rewire how the human brain works to fully make that happen. In the meantime my proposal is a partial step towards that end. North8000 (talk) 13:15, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Close?

The proposal went through 2 variations. The first was a bit vaguely written and call for the ability to completely expunge the record. There were approx. 11 in favor and 6 against. Very importantly, the reason cited by all of the "opposes" essentially said that the record of the block should be retained. I then prepared a revised proposal which was more specific, and called for the ability and expectation to mark (rather than delete) the log. Of the 10 respondents, support was unanimous. Moreover, the change clearly resolved the issue cited by all of the "opposes" in the first round. North8000 (talk) 01:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

What is needed now is to simply present this to the developers, most likely as a Bugzilla request with a link to this discussion noting this is now a formal feature request from the Misplaced Pages community and that consensus has been formed on the concept with unanimous support. While anybody can make that request, I would suggest that the original proposer make the formal request if possible with support on Bugzilla by as many people who want to follow/support on the Bugzilla request as well. "Advertising" this request on some of the various mailing lists would be useful as well for further discussion or support of this concept. I agree, this proposal should be marked as closed, although further action is needed. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:26, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Cool. I'll have to learn how to use that Bugzilla channel; I know nothing about it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:38, 28 January 2013 (UTC) North8000 North8000 (talk) 16:04, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Next steps

I learned and put in a request at Bugzilla. North8000 (talk) 18:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

They asked how it was different than the ability to create an additional block and immediately undo it. I provided various answers to this, most notably that this possibility was already acknowledged early in the RFC, and responses were made with that knowledge / take that into account. North8000 (talk) 13:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC) North8000 (talk) 12:47, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Link to bug please? Thanks. — Hex (❝?!❞) 12:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for asking. I just learned how to file a wp bugzilla and that's basically all that I know. I'll need to and will figure out how to look at it and get a link. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that this is a link. North8000 (talk) 14:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Note that if you consider this "bug" to be important, you can "vote" for the bug if only to demonstrate your opinion that it is something that should be seriously considered by the MediaWiki developers. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems weird, after it gets decided here it needs to go thought another more mysterious decision-making process. Where it needs votes but is not an active discussion in Misplaced Pages. North8000 (talk) 03:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Remove WP:DEFINING

WP:DEFINING as a part of the guideline Misplaced Pages:Overcategorization does not comply with actual practice. Articles are routinely added to categories because the category is applicable to the subject, not because the subject is defined by the category. Very few people are defined by their year of birth or the university they graduated from; however, these categories are beneficial and are used in practice. I propose removing the section of the guideline, and replacing it with the current practice. Articles are placed into any category that is applicable to the subject of the article. Ryan Vesey 00:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it is a useful rule... but could use a clearer statement as to what it means. Blueboar (talk) 03:47, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't it more a case of actual practice does not always comply with WP:OC ?, but doesn't that apply to any rule ? Sure, WP:DEFINING should be improved (many discussions at WP:CFD revolve around differing interpretations of it) and exceptions such as year of birth (which is, in effect, a sort of maintenance category) should be allowed. However changing guidance to allow articles to be placed into any category that anyone thinks is applicable would lead to articles in far too many categories and far too many articles in categories - reducing the usefulness of categories. It would also increase the amount of adding/removal of categories on pages causing more watchlist "noise". Example: There is sometimes disagreement between newbie editors who want to add an article to (their) "of country" category (because the subject has some connection with that country) and the members of the relevant wikiproject who want to restrict the categorization to defining characteristics (this is a recent example) - removing WP:DEFINING would make things worse. DexDor (talk) 04:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you suggest an improved wording for WP:DEFINING that would (a) be consistent with the Eagle Scout situation below; and also (b) satisfy your concern about "far too many categories/articles"? There must be some improvement to the wording we could make that recognizes the reality of what happens in WP. --Noleander (talk) 04:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

How about this for a solution: Improve the wording to make it clear that "definingness" applies to the existence of the category; not to whether individual articles belong in the category. Those are two distinct concepts. WP:DEFINING is already written to apply only to the existence of categories, so it is good to go there. Maybe we could simply add a sentence that says "Whether or not an article belongs in a category does not require that the category's attribute define the topic of the article, instead the requirement is that reliable sources must clearly, uniformly, and unambiguously state that the topic of the article has the attribute." --Noleander (talk) 04:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not too keen on that - does it makes things clearer? DexDor (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, it addresses the Eagle Scout example. The way DEFINING is written now is a bit ambiguous: it suggests to some editors that a person/thing cannot be put into a category unless the category's attribute defines the person/thing. In fact, it is standard practice to put people/things in a (otherwise valid) category even if the attribute is fairly incidental. Example: senator A is an Eagle Scout, yet that fact has never played any significant role in A's life. Would you agree that that represents a potentially confusing aspect of DEFINING? --Noleander (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

We categorize articles not people. An article should only be in Category:Scouting if it tells you something significant about Scouting. An article about a senator that mentions he was a Scout (as were millions of others) doesn't tell you much about scouting. An article that explains why someone didn't join an organisation might actually tell you more about that organisation than an article saying someone was a member. However, the Eagle Scout category doesn't lead to a lot of overcategorization and (unlike some categories) is unlikely to be used instead of the correct category. DexDor (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it should be removed or modified. I recall a major discussion about a year ago about whether person X should be included in Category:Eagle Scouts. Person X was, by no means, "defined" by being an Eagle Scout. Indeed, that category contains scores of persons that are not defined by being a scout. That category is simply an index of every person (who has a WP article) that was an eagle scout. The existence of WP:DEFINING made it really hard to argue that person X should remain in the category. The problem is not just in WP:DEFINING: the primary WP:Categorization guideline also contains similar guidance: "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession". Therefore, by all means, the requirement that the category be "defining" needs to be removed or modified. --Noleander (talk) 04:14, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that's what is meant. I think the point is, Category:Eagle Scouts should include only Eagle Scouts, not things related to Eagle Scouts. For example, you wouldn't include someone who had achieved only the rank of Life Scout, on the grounds that it's a related concept. You wouldn't include merit badge on the grounds that you need lots of merit badges to become an Eagle Scout. The wording is less than ideal, but the point is important. --Trovatore (talk) 20:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

In practice, the way we categorize articles about individual (unique) things is a bit different from the way we categorize articles about concepts; WP:DEFINING can't be significantly improved unless this is considered. Maybe something like the following would be help:

Articles about individual people and (unique) items (John Smith, BBC, RMS Titanic ...) should be categorized by the characteristic(s) that makes the person/item notable (e.g. a person may be notable as an actor) and by biographical characteristics (in particular the year of birth/establishment/construction). Articles about other subjects (e.g. concepts) should be categorized by what the subject is a subset of - for example the subject of warships is part of the subjects of naval warfare and ships.

Most WP articles are already categorized as per the above guidance. Many articles also have other categories (e.g. "alumni of" or Eagle Scouts); the above guidance could be extended to allow such categorization in limited cases where it would not cause lots of categories to be added to an article (see for an example of what we don't want).DexDor (talk)

Categories do take policing. If adding a category to an article amounts to overcategorization, it can be removed from the article, or switched to a more appropriate cat. Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

@DexDor: To clarify your proposal: you're saying wording could be added to DEFINING to say something like:

Generally, an article about a person/thing may be placed in a category only if the attribute of the category plays a role in what makes the person/thing notable (that is, the attribute is significant in the history/definition of the person/thing). However, a person/thing may be included in a category which is not directly related to its notability provided that (a) it does not cause the person/thing to belong to an excessive number of categories, and (b) reliable sources clearly, uniformly, and unambiguously state that person/thing has the attribute.

Is that an accurate restatement of your point immediately above about Eagle Scouts? --Noleander (talk) 16:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

No. An article can (in fact should) be categorized in every category for which it meets the inclusion criteria (subject to rules like not being in 2 cats one of which is a parent of the other). The category structure should be designed so that most articles don't have an excessive number of categories - for example we don't have "people alive in <year>" categories. WP:OC (which includes WP:DEFINING) is about deciding what categories we (don't) have. Your text says that decisions to avoid OC are made at the article level which is incorrect. DexDor (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Let's step back to the beginning: Do you agree that there has been confusion in the past in situations like Eagle Scout category, where editor A says "person X cannot be in the ES category because their membership in the scouts was not 'defining' ... they just happened to be in the Scouts"; and editor B says "Yes, X can be in the category because they were a Scout". I've seen that kinds of confusion lots of times. Do you think the guideline wording could be improved so editors A and B have clearer guidance for that kind of situation? --Noleander (talk) 17:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Note that WP:Categorization of people#General considerations clarifies the debate to some extent... It says that (with the exception of certain limited "standard biographical details") we should categorize people only by characteristics that make the person notable. This connects the categorization directly to the individual. It means that since some people are notable for being Eagle Scouts, and others are not, we are going to categorize some people as Eagle Scouts and not categorize others. To my mind, what needs to happen is this: If a person is notable for being a scout (and thus categorized as such), this fact should be clear in the article, and supported by sources. The sources need to do more than just mention in passing that the person was an Eagle Scout... the sources should discuss how being an Eagle Scout had an impact on the the person's life (or, I suppose, how the person had an impact on Eagle Scouting). Unfortunately, a lot of people are not aware that the COP guideline exists, and that it says this... so they add categories that are inappropriate... not connected to the person's notabliity. The only way to fix this is to do a better job of policing the category... going through the category, article by article, and determining if the categorization is appropriate or not. Blueboar (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I think even more than any problems we have with WP:DEFINING, the section you quote above in WP:Categorization of people#General considerations ("Categorize by those characteristics that make the person notable") is seriously contrary to practice as well as a bad idea (and when you said that "a lot of people are not aware that the COP guideline exists", that's really just another way of saying that "the COP guideline does not actually represent practice"). The example given there ("For example, a film actor who holds a law degree should be categorized as a film actor, but not as a lawyer unless his or her legal career was notable in its own right.") makes this clear.

We have never omitted people that qualify for a category just because that category is not why we personally think they have been the subject of significant coverage in multiple reliable sources. Doing so would punch arbitrary holes in category content that readers will be unable to figure out the meaning of, seriously hindering navigation and creating more disagreements than it would solve.

More evidence that this section is completely confused is the fact that occupation is a "standard biographical detail," especially when we're talking about a licensed profession such as law; many people might also consider participation in scouting to be a "standard biographical detail", so the division that section is trying to establish doesn't even mean anything and just leads to arguments and subjective decisions. All at the expense of a categorization system that is supposed to be predictable and factual rather than subjective and selective. So no, we should not categorize only some people who were Eagle Scouts but not others, nor only some people who were lawyers but not others. postdlf (talk) 19:09, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Who's "we"... You might not have removed a category from an article due to the cat not being "what makes the person notable", but others (including me) have done so... frequently. I suppose a lot depends on which category we are talking about, and how controversial it is. Category:Eagle Scouts may not be the best example here... as it is not that controversial. I doubt many object to it being applied to an article, so it suffers from neglect. Other categories are much more likely to be removed when misapplied or over applied. Blueboar (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

If the category is "controversial" or "sensitive" (as the category guideline you cite to above calls it), that's a very different question, as it is when a category is "misapplied" (i.e., factually inapplicable). But yes, I would consider it contrary to consensus and a bad idea to prune mundane categories of articles that factually belong in them, and that's what this discussion here so far also seems to represent, and so far you haven't presented a good reason for doing so (nor responded to my several points as to why it is a bad idea). Especially considering that many categories would be considered "standard biographical details", and thus even omitted from the "only if it's why they're notable" standard from the guideline you are citing for it.

But it's difficult to discuss these things meaningfully in the abstract (part of why broad, abstract rules tend to be useless and counterproductive in many instances as a substitute for case-by-case judgment), and it's possible that I would even agree with you regarding many of your category removals even though I don't agree with the principle you are now offering in support. Re: the specific, concrete case before us, I think that if Category:Eagle Scouts exists, it should contain every person verified to have been an Eagle Scout. If for 99.9% of those it is completely trivial to the point that it's questionable whether it's even worth it to mention in their articles, then maybe that should instead lead us to question whether the category should exist at all, or ask if there is a better way to rename the category so as to target the .1% for whom it is significant without opening the door to everyone else. postdlf (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I tend to agree with the sentiments Postdlf is expressing. I'm not interested in prescribing how editors should categorize; But I do want to describe the current practices in WP. When a new editor asks us "person X has attribute A, but it is not very important, can I put them in category A?", we should have a guideline that we can point them to that is consistent with what the WP community does now. Right now the guidelines are not consistent with long-standing community practices demonstrated in categories like Category:Eagle Scouts. --Noleander (talk) 02:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Given that WP contains many categories like Category:Eagle Scouts that the community has decided do not need to meet the Defining requirement (that is, anyone who is an Scout can be in the category, even if that did not make them notable) what guidance can we give to future editors to let them know when this is permissible? I don't think it is wise to just ignore this dilemma, or else the arguments & debates will repeat weekly, for years to come. Let me toss out a few options (I'm not endorsing any of these):

1. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if the categorization is not controversial
2. The Defining requirement may be bypassed only for biographical articles, and only if the categorization is not controversial
3. The Defining requirement may be bypassed for membership categories (clubs, alumni, scouts, groups, etc)
4. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if it does not cause the person/thing article to belong to an excessive number of categories
5. The Defining requirement may be bypassed if it does not cause the category to contain an excessive number of articles
6. ... others? ...

Can we agree that one or more of the above are exceptions to the Defining requirement that have been accepted by the WP community? Or, can someone propose what they think is a statement of when the WP community bypasses the Defining requirement. --Noleander (talk) 02:42, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know whether or how the current guidelines regarding defining categories should be changed, but I don't think the place of birth for Pauline Anna Milder-Hauptmann (Constantinople) or Willy Clément and Renato Capecchi (Cairo) is of any value for categorising these people. Does Erich Kästner's compulsory military service for 1 1/2 years when he was 18 make him a member of Category:German military personnel of World War I? Of course not. Any changes in the guidelines which would support such categorisations will only dilute the navigational advantages of categories. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:53, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

If a new editor asked you for guidance on how to tell the difference between categories where any person (with a WP article) can be included (Category:Eagle Scouts, Category:Louisiana State University alumni, etc) and categories where the membership must be "defining" (Category:German military personnel of World War I, Category:Anarchist writers, etc) .. what would you tell that editor? --Noleander (talk) 10:01, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Good question. The answer is to look at the text on the category (which ideally will say something like "This category is for ...") to see if that specifies the inclusion criteria. If not, go to the category's parent(s). For example Category:People by occupation says "This category classifies people by their notable occupations:...". So if an article about a politician says he was a (non-notable) paper-boy as a teenager then his article shouldn't be in Category:Newspaper people. DexDor (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Why wouldn't Erich Kästner be placed in Category:German military personnel of World War I? It is not "People primarily known as German military personnel of World War I." Kästner did, in fact, serve in the German military during WWI, which his article not only mentions but even discusses at length, to the extent of using it to explain his later pacifist views and even lifelong health problems. And military service should be a pretty obvious "standard biographical detail" that shouldn't require any further analysis other than "does this verifiably apply?" I think we have some major problems if editors feel themselves free to second guess the applicability of such straightforward categories, on the basis of nothing more than "I don't personally think it really matters to the subject..." It's as if people are trying to treat categories as more than simple indexing tools, as if the only people who would belong in a category are those who would be mentioned in the article that defines the category. postdlf (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I would not call military service a "standard biographical detail"... it isn't something that happens to most people. That said, there are people who are notable for being in the military during a particular war... and it does sound like this is the case with Erich Kastner. On the other hand, I don't think that is the case with Alfred Alexander (That article does not even mention that Alexander was in the military, much less in it during WW I). The category could certainly have a clearer inclusion criteria. Blueboar (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

What could be more clear criteria for "German military personnel of World War I" than "personnel who served in the German military during World War I"? If an article does not even mention a category's fact, feel free to remove it (though the Alfred Alexander article actually does mention that he received the Iron Cross for his service during WWI, albeit with a cite needed tag, but if verifiable certainly significant). But if inclusion is verifiable, again I'm not seeing any solid reason for not including an article in that category. Categories aren't simply useful for finding people who are notable because of X, but instead for finding people about whom X is true. One might as well say the deaths by year categories should only include only people notable for dying in that year, as to exclude from a military service category anyone who is notable for other reasons than serving in the military. postdlf (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

If you look at a Category:Bartenders you find a mixture of articles about people who are notable as bartenders and articles where it barely gets mentioned (example). There are probably hundreds of other articles that mention the person did a bit of bartending (e.g. while at uni); that so few of those articles are in the cat shows that the "categorize only by notable occupation" rule is working pretty well. The rule is a bit blunt, but as editors we can apply some discretion in how strictly we enforce it. Articles about people contain lots of facts (raised on a farm, bullied at school ...), but we don't categorize by every fact. DexDor (talk) 23:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Vanity categories?

I think a sub-issue here is what I will call "vanity categories"... ie categories created by members of an organization - more for the purpose of promoting their org (by demonstrating how many famous people are members) and less to aid editors in finding related articles. WP:DEFINING is a useful tool for minimizing such categories. Blueboar (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, but how does that observation specifically impact WP categorization guidelines? Take the two examples above: Category:Eagle Scouts and Category:Louisiana State University alumni. Are you suggesting that (a) Those should be eliminated? (b) That they should be pruned to leave only persons that are notable because they are members of that group? or (c) those categories are okay as-is (with any WP-notable person included)? --Noleander (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Re (a) You could take the cats to CFD, but take a look at the DRV in 2007 and Misplaced Pages:Systemic bias#The "average Wikipedian". Re (b) Not if the articles satisfy the inclusion criteria of the category - you'd need to get that changed first. DexDor (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I would go with (b)... I suspect that there will be at least some people who are notable for their involvement in each group (those who founded the groups, for example... or those who were prominent leaders in the groups). I would say the cat is absolutely appropriate for these people. So... my call would be that the cats should be kept, but pruned back. Shift the criteria for inclusion from "mere membership" to "significant involvement". This shifts the cat from being a simple vanity category (ooh... look at all the prominent people who were members of this group!) to something more appropriate (ah... these people are important in relation to the group.) Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, so option (a) has been tried and failed (and common sense says those categories will never get deleted). Considering option (b): Given that this issue has come up many times before, and given that those example categories have always ended up using the "mere membership" rule, do you think there is any chance at all that the WP community would now approve pruning those categories to "significant involvement" (which would, I guess, remove 80% to 99% of the articles from the category)? --Noleander (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

It probably depends on the specific category in question. With Category:Eagle Scouts I would expect some push back from those who are emotionally tied to the vanity category (such as Eagle Scouts or former Eagle Scouts), but I think the community at large might accept a redefinition of the inclusion criteria once the concept and rational was explained to them. I am less sure about Category:Louisiana State University alumni (where a person went to school boarders on being "standard biographical information" along the lines of year of birth/death... so I would expect a much harder job of gaining a community consensus on that one). Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

To look at it from another angle, someone may have played a violin in high school, and even still have it as a hobby (and this a verifiable confirmed thing). But if they are known as an actor, a politician, or a reporter, being a violinist doesn't matter one iota to the reason they are on WP. Some thing, it's probably unlikely that them having been an Eagle Scout is relevant, and for many people what college they went to isn't really either, though I would certainly never take the later out of an article anymore than I would birth/death dates. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It is useful to note that stuff like the Eagle Scout category is an accomplishment that is earned and not something given out to anybody. Note that only 2% of all scouts in the BSA earn that achievement and takes several years of hard work to get there. Then again, I don't see a problem with Category:United States Marines either, which is also an achievement to be called a U.S. Marine. Many categories of this nature really do define the very life of the people involved. That James Carville (to pick on some particular person here) was a Marine is something useful to note (mentioned and sourced in the WP article) and can be used for searching purposes as well. His role as a Marine, however, is not the reason why James Carville is notable. Should this category be removed from this article? I am suggesting it shouldn't and furthermore has value improving Misplaced Pages simply by having this category exist. Frankly, I think it is neat to see a list of notable Marines, Eagle Scouts, or alumni of some university and have Misplaced Pages automatically create those lists through the use of categories like this. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

There seem to be two schools of thought here: (1) the alumni/EagleScout-type categories include too many articles, and should be pruned to be consistent with the DEFINING guideline; vs (2) the alumni/EagleScout-type categories can include any person, and DEFINING should be augmented to mention this possibility (or already permits it). Personally I dont have a preference one way or another, but the fact is that we've presently got a dysfunctional situation where we have scores, perhaps hundreds of categories that are technically in violation of DEFINING (or, some might say DEFINING permits such categories but it is just worded in a very confusing manner). I wonder if an RFC should be initiated to formally try to pick on path or another? --Noleander (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I doubt an RFC would actually clarify things. I think you are correct in saying that there are two schools of thought here... and my guess is that the community will be as equally divided on the issue as those of us who have commented so far. I suspect an RFC will simply confirm that there is "No Consensus". Still, it might we worth it just to confirm my suspicion. Blueboar (talk) 15:16, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, my gut feeling is that the community is split .. but is it 50/50 or 80/20? Or maybe consensus could be achieved if the proposal said "Retain DEFINING for all categories except for the following exceptions: blah, blah"? I seem to recall that you (Blueboar) invested a lot of time in a policy-based RfC recently ... I'm more inclined to work on articles than waste spend my time on an RfC that may have strong passions on all sides :-) But, I may try it. --Noleander (talk) 16:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• I think people are missing the true issue involved in the Eagle Scout category. The vast majority of people who are in Boy Scouts of America do not make the rank of eagle. Thus we do not have a category for everyone who was ever a boy scout, we have a more limited category for those who become eagle scouts. In a way by limiting it to people who made a certain rank we have limited it to those who have been proactively connected with and involved in the organization.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I have had enough people attack me for removing people from categories that there is no in-text mention of them fitting the definition that I think defining is hardly the issue. I also figured that if the connection is not notable enough to mention in the text of the article it can not be categorized.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The Eagle Scout category was just an example, so its special characteristics ("only a few scouts become ESs") is not too important here. The primary issue in this discussion is: "Should the wording in DEFINING be changed to clarify when people/things can be put in a category when the person/thing just happens to have the attribute (that is, when the attribute does not contribute to the person/thing's notability)". Alumni categories are other categories that are subject to this issue. --Noleander (talk) 20:04, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• I actually think we are going for too narrow a view on defining. What we should categorize is what defines a person. This is why we categorize by year of death and birth, and clearly why we categorize by place where they recived their education. The place they recived their education has a defining effect on them. Diet choices though are ephemeral, and we should not categorize by those. The category that makes sense to have but I have seen most overused are political party categories. These should be limited to office holders, candidates for office, party activists and maybe a few other people who have clearly identified with a political party. However from what I have seen lots of actors have been put in such categories, often with nothing in the article on the actor even hinting that the connection is true, let alone something that the person did anything about.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Deprecation of disproportionate usage of "initialism" on Misplaced Pages

Following recent decisions regarding removal of the word "initialism"

• from WP:TITLE
• from the title of Acronym and
• from the title of List of acronyms,

I would like to gauge consensus on the next logical (to me) step, i.e. deprecating wide use of the term "initialism" in Misplaced Pages articles.

Please note that I don't seek its complete removal. I acknowledge the existence of the term, and I consider its coverage in the current version of the Acronym article adequate.

Here is a summary of the rationale (see discussions linked above for details and supporting evidence)

• There is no universally accepted definition of "initialism". While it's true that some reliable sources define it in contrast to "acronym" (describing the latter as being pronounced as words instead of single letters), some others define it as a synonym of "acronym".
• Most reliable sources use "acronym" for both concepts. The term is therefore receiving WP:UNDUE attention on our site.
• There exist plenty other cases that are neither pronounced as a word or pronounced as letters (e.g. JPEG), or cases whose pronunciation varies according to the speaker (e.g. IRA). There is no term describing these cases, which makes the alleged distinction between "acronym" and "initialism" even more confusing.
• Per WP:JARGON, we should "not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader, when more common alternatives will do". Saying that AOL is "commonly pronounced as an initialism" is unnecessarily obscure to most readers. It sounds pretentious and elitist. Introducing LGBT and LGB as initialisms is superfluous and disruptive to the average reader.

If people agree that we should limit our use of "initialism" to specialised linguistic contexts (such as in the current version of the Acronym article) I volunteer to go around and convert the excessive occurrences. Thanks. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:06, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I have advertised this at Talk:Acronym and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics. Let me know if it would be appropriate to open an RFC. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I really don't see the problem. Constructions of the form "X and Y" where X and Y are synonyms or otherwise closely related notions are widespread for various reasons that ultimately boil down to instant recognisability. Sometimes, as in the case of "odds and end", "pots and pans", "nuts and bolts" they become idiomatic, almost like a single word. That's known as Siamese twins (linguistics). But one can also make them up on the spot, and this is a good one. "Acronym" is a well known technical term, but not everyone knows it and for those who don't, etymology won't help. "Initialism" is less well known and maybe more ambiguous, but in context you have a good chance of guessing what it means even if you have never seen it. "Acronym and/or initialism" roughly means "acronym in a wide sense" and inherits the advantages of both individual words. The use of such combinations is a matter of good style, especially when writing for a diverse audience. E.g. when the German dialects and local speech forms were unified to a single Standard German language, many such Siamese twins were formed because they significantly enhanced and improved the odds and chances that a farmer or peasant from somewhere all up in the South or a sailor or seaman from somewhere all down at the sea coast comprehended and understood at least minimally one of the two terms and alternative words. Hans Adler 14:38, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Note, this proposal is not about WP:AND or its applications. It's about the overuse of "initialism" in Misplaced Pages articles, instead of the much more common term "acronym". 220.246.155.114 (talk) 14:53, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm coming at this from a background of having had some linguistics instruction, so it's hard for me to see the terms as equivalent. It seems to me that there is a useful distinction being made that goes beyond jargon. In the same way that we utilize IPA (which is specialized knowledge akin to jargon) to tell people how words are pronounced, it is within our purview to indicate to readers whether one of these is pronounced as it is spelled or as a series of letters. Thus, to me, this proposal seems to be arguing for making the indication of pronunciation that much harder for no reason except that we might accidentally teach someone a new word.

I understand that reliable sources differ on whether they view acronym and initialism as synonymous (and that is the only difference, it seems, in the definitions of initialism), but we can choose to mark that distinction and to maintain it across Misplaced Pages articles. It's not as though doing so would violate WP:NPOV any more than not doing so would.

At the same time, I'm fine with considering initialisms a subcategory of acronym so that the former term is used more frequently when the distinction is needed in the same way that tabby and cat are. I'm not sure if that categorization is represented in relevant literature. — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. The discussions referenced above have already chosen *not* to mark such distinction in their respective contexts (notably, in the Acronym article), unless use of "initialism" is strictly required, for instance in order to explain the nomenclature of the concept. Hence my request to extend this decision to the whole site, following the same logic. Where there is a need to explain how an acronym is pronounced (and I would argue that in the case of LGBT no such need exists), indeed either IPA (an international standard in very wide use in reference works) or a short inline explanation (e.g. "pronounced as a string of letters", which is only 6 characters longer and is exactly the explanation readers eventually get to if they follow the initialism hyperlink) would be preferable. 220.246.155.114 (talk) 16:25, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the discussions at WT:TITLE and Talk:Acronym were explicitly about WP:AND, not about marking the distinction between acronyms and initialisms. One user even explicitly stated that their support of the move was only about the title, saying "We need not be so imprecise in the body of the article."

Like I said, I'm fine with using acronym as the more general term, which would probably be consistent with most of the initialism>acronym changes you'd like to make. But I'm not behind completely eliminating proper usage of initialism just because it's jargon or because it's possible to use it as a synonym for acronym. — Ƶ§œš¹ 21:28, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. Just to be clear, could you please give examples of what would be OK to change (and how) and what should stay as it is? (You can choose from this list.)

Also, are you suggesting that we take the view that initialisms are a subset of acronyms? This way out did not occur to me, but if so we should state it very clearly, and possibly find sources for it. If we are not fairly prescriptive on this, the same people who hold the view that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets, and that it's useful for WP articles to use them as such, are liable to change the occurrences back, for consistency. Also, if we take the subset view, the phrase "acronyms and initialisms" would lose any meaning, so it would be effectively banned from WP, which I'm definitely OK with. 219.78.114.21 (talk) 01:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay. I'm not sure about examples of when we should keep "initialism." Instances would probably be pretty rare. As to your second question, I am indeed suggesting that we may want to consider initialisms to be a subcategory of acronyms, though as I said above I'm not sure how representative that view is. Looking in google books for the phrase "initialism is an acronym" turns up five sources and "initialisms are acronyms" turns up three. — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers. As I predicted, some editors argue that initialisms are not acronyms, further arguing that the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation(!) I think the bottom line is that for every reference one can find that <X> is an initialism, I can find 100 that say that it's an acronym. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 11:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said that "the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation". I was clearly referring to a rather nonsensical edit summary0 XML is not an acronym. It is an initialism. Also, "initialism" is not a subset of "acronym". They are both distinct subsets of "abbreviation". "Acronym" is derived from the Old English nama, which comes from the Greek onyma and the Latin nomen, all of which mean "a single word used as a name" --Guy Macon (talk) 21:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Can you calm down please? I am not putting words in your mouth, I am quoting you. Your edit comment says "Pronunciation has nothing to do with it". Perhaps I misinterpreted what "it" is. Can you tell us what your definition of initialism is please? Many of us here are under the impression (perhaps based on the acronym article) that when the distinction is made, it hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of letters. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:37, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Imagine that you ran into an edit that changed "'big' and 'large' are synonyms" into "'big' and 'large' are homonyms" with the nonsensical edit summary "Pronunciation is obvious, no need for WP:JARGON"

Now imagine that you reverted the edit with the edit summary "Pronunciation has nothing to do with it. 'big' and 'large' are not homonyms"

Imagine that you later saw someone quoting the above in support of the claim "as I predicted, some editors argue that synonyms are not homonyms, further arguing that the distinction has nothing to do with pronunciation(!)", later going on to say " I am not putting words in your mouth, I am quoting you."

The above is an example of putting words in someone's mouth. It is paraphrasing, not quoting. It takes the argument "'big' and 'large' are not homonyms" combined with an observation that the "pronunciation is obvious" edit comment is completely irrelevant, transmogrifies it into an argument about what distinguishes synonyms and homonyms that was never made, and stuffs the argument in the mouth of someone who never made it. This is a classic straw man argument. Free clue: if what you write contains words not found in the original, you are not quoting. The next time you "quote" me, please cut and paste my actual words and put quotation marks around them. Don't interpret and call it a quote. --Guy Macon (talk)

OK, I am not interested in continuing this. I apologise if you felt like I was putting words in your mouth. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 01:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, a plain reading of your edit summary does indeed suggest that you don't believe that the difference between initialisms and acronyms is one of pronunciation. Your outrage suggests that this is incorrect, but you haven't clarified what you actually meant. In addition, your synonym/homonym example is apples-oranges because no one would argue that the distinction between those has anything to do with pronunciation, while everyone else here has acknowledged that pronunciation is the very thing that the acronym/initialism contrast centers on. Importantly, your misplaced outrage at the anon's plain reading has prompted you to ignore the simple question designed to understand where you're coming from. I'll repeat it: how do you define initialism? — Ƶ§œš¹ 15:43, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

So, it seems, you do not agree that part of the definition of homonyms is that they share the same pronunciation. Aren't straw men fun? But of course we must always remember that straw men need something to build them out of, so if your opponent isn't providing enough material to misinterpret, try accusing him of ignore a simple question designed to understand where he is coming from.

Abbreviation: any shortened form of a word or phrase.
There are several types of abbreviations. They include:

Acronym (a type of abbreviation):
A word formed from the initial parts (letters OR syllables OR arbitrary parts) of a name.
Example: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

Initialism (a type of abbreviation):
A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter being pronounced separately.
Example: "PBS" (Public Broadcasting System).
The difference between an acronym and an initialism is that an acronym forms a new word, while an initialism does not. So "NATO" is an acronym. But "UK" is an initialism. Unless, of course there exist a significant number of people who say UK as a single syllable that rhymes with "duck", or NATO as a four syllable phrase.

Contraction (a type of abbreviation):
Removing part of a word, often replacing it with an apostrophe (I'm / I am) and sometimes other changes (won't / will not).

Truncation (always a type of clipping, sometimes a type of abbreviation):
An abbreviation of a word consisting only of the first part of the word. Example: Mic. (pronounced like "Mike") for Microphone.
--Guy Macon (talk) 11:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. — Ƶ§œš¹ 14:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe that any uses of the word initialism should be removed in favor of the technically incorrect, or at least less precise (depending on which dictionary you consult) word acronym. We aren't introducing these words for the purpose of showing off our vocabulary or teaching the words; we're trying to write with suitable precision and on the assumption that our readers have a decent education, even to the extent of including the occasional word with four or more syllables.

This is no more "jargon" than our decision to have an article about Motor vehicle collisions rather than "car wrecks" (as if trucks were never involved in collisions). I wouldn't insist that you use the longer word yourself, but I do not believe that we should be reverting other people's accurate choice of terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

As per the above, it is not technically incorrect to say that initialisms are acronyms, based on both the definitions available in reliable sources, and on usage in reliable sources.

Motor vehicle collisions strikes me as another violation of WP:COMMONNAME. Luckily, that redirects to the less pompous traffic collision. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 11:35, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

As for your "less precise" remark, I find that there is nothing less precise and more confusing than using a term that has no universally accepted definition, the ones available being incompatible with each other. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 12:16, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is a very simple distinction that editors can follow: if the string of letters is pronounced as a word, call it an acronym (e.g. NASA). If it is pronounced a separate letters, call it an initialism (e.g. EU, USA). The acronym article has an explanation of this. As it says, some people call the latter type "acronyms" as well. But there is nothing wrong with calling them initialisms, and if we do then everyone can agree that the usage is correct. Many people learn this distinction in school, so it is not some sort of advanced jargon. Personally, I don't think there is any reason to try to discourage the use of the term "initialism". — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:07, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, there are cases that are neither pronounced as a word or pronounced as letters (e.g. JPEG), or cases whose pronunciation varies according to the speaker (e.g. IRA). Therefore, the distinction you are proposing is not as simple as you portray, and it's what led to the invention of such monsters as "pseudo-blends" in the List of acronyms.

I also doubt that so many people learn that distinction in school, again based on the number of sources defining "initialism" in other ways, and based on the number of reliable sources referring to what you propose to call "initialisms" as "acronyms". 219.73.120.206 (talk) 13:51, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

If you read the list of acronyms lede, they would call JPEG an initialism and UNIFEM a "pseudo-blend". They use the latter term for things like "MAOI" where the "A" is not an intial. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

JPEG is also an initialism, which is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials. It is true that some sources call initialisms "acronyms", but that does not mean there is something wrong with calling them "initialisms". Even if some sources call "EU" for "European Union" an "acronym", if we call it an "initialism" nobody will mind. People who think that "acronym" and "initialism" are synonymous will be satisfied, and so will people who think they are different. Only people who have a pet peeve for the word "initialism" will worry about it, and I don't give much weight to linguistic pet peeves. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't find the there's-no-common-definition argument convincing. It is a misleading characterization that implies there are a multitude of meanings possible when one says initialism. In reality, the only dispute is whether it has a separate meaning from acronym; when it does, the meaning is unambiguous. When you think about it, this means that it is actually acronym with the inherent ambiguity.

Considering initialisms to be a type of acronym will actually keep us from needing to do a purge the other way (replacing acronym with initialism) and will also help with circumstances where an abbreviation can be either or where it's not clear. — Ƶ§œš¹ 14:16, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. One thing though. You say that the meaning of initialism is well-defined and it is only its relationship with acronym that is ambiguous. However, so far I have heard various (stand-alone) definitions that are incompatible, such as the one that Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language gives (anything made from initials, which would therefore include "laser" and "sonar"), and the one at List of acronyms (anything made from initials pronounced as letters, with the additional "wholly or partly" unsourced cop-out). 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:56, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, it seems like CEEL (as well as the Google books that show up when one searches for "acronyms are initialisms" or "acronym is an initialism") sees acronyms as a subtype of initialism. That kind of puts a wrench in things, doesn't it? — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I told you it's a mess :-) 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:58, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

"JPEG is also an initialism, which is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials." According to which source, sorry if I missed it? 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Found it, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, per acronym, thanks. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

It is true that some sources call initialisms "acronyms", but that does not mean there is something wrong with calling them "initialisms". - It's not just "some" sources, it's "most". Big difference there, which supports invoking WP:JARGON. 219.73.120.206 (talk) 15:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I just looked up "acronym" and "initialism" in the OED. Under "initialism" it indicates that the word is "contrasted with acronym". Under "acronym" it has two definitions:

1. A group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism

2. A word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occas.) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word (such as NATO, RADA).

Then I looked at the American Heritage Dictionary, which has "usage notes". Here is their note about "acronym":

"In strict usage, the term acronym refers to a word made from the initial letters or parts of other words, such as sonar from so(und) na(vigation and) r(anging). The distinguishing feature of an acronym is that it is pronounced as if it were a single word, in the manner of NATO and NASA. Acronyms are often distinguished from initialisms like FBI and NIH, whose individual letters are pronounced as separate syllables. While observing this distinction has some virtue in precision, it may be lost on many people, for whom the term acronym refers to both kinds of abbreviations."

So I think it is perfectly consistent with reliable sources for us to use the word "initialism". — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:20, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

We need to distinguish between reliably sourced definitions and reliably sourced usage. According to definitions available, it is equally perfectly consistent for us to use acronym instead of initialism, with the difference that most people will not have to look up its definition, because it reflects common usage. "A number of commentators (as Copperud 1970, Janis 1984, Howard 1984) believe that acronyms can be differentiated from other abbreviations in being pronounceable as words. Dictionaries, however, do not make this distinction because writers in general do not". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:43, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

The sources I cited are the Oxford English Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary - both dictionaries that do make the distinction you are claiming dictionaires do not make. It is true that some people do not make the distinction, but since they don't, they would also accept "initialism" as correct. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I see it more like, some dictionaries make the distinction, but most writers don't, and therefore quite likely most readers are aware of the meaning of acronym, but not initialism, let alone the difference between the two, which is apparently very much a matter of opinion. Therefore, using initialism is unnecessarily obscure and confusing to readers, while avoiding it is not such a big deal, really. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 01:11, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

By the way, this is to say nothing of the number of dictionaries that do not even mention initialism, but they do explain what an acronym is. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 05:23, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Strong Procedural Objection
Re: "Let me know if it would be appropriate to open an RFC", I have a concern about the claimed "recent decisions" above. The three "decisions" listed were:

1. Removing "Acronym and Initialism" as an example with "Laurel and Hardy" and "Supply and demand" suggested as replacements. The RfC was shut down and the "decision" made by one editor, presumably because an RfC is not needed to change an example to an equivalent example. No "decision" concerning whether to use the term acronym in place of initialism was made here. The only "decision" was which example to use.
2. A proposed move of "Acronym and initialism" to "Acronym". The result was two supports and one oppose, with one of the supports specifically saying that the usage is imprecise and thus OK in a title but not in the body of the article. This should have either been closed with no consensus or relisted to get more input. In particular the closing summary ("The result of the move request was: Move per WP:COMMONNAME") does not reflect any consensus found in the RfC. It was the closing admin making the decision rather than reporting what the consensus was.
3. A proposed move of List of acronyms and initialisms to List of acronyms. This one got three supports and one oppose, which I consider to be a (weak) consensus. Then again, I would have voted support simply because the titles of "list of" articles should match the title of what they are listing. In other words, if you want to change the title of "Elephant" to "Woozle", I would oppose that change, but if the change was made I would support changing "List of Elephants" to "List of Woozles" to match.

Given the fact that two of the above three examples are being falsely characterized as "decisions" and the fact that the title of this section ("Deprecation of disproportionate usage of 'initialism' on Misplaced Pages") is not neutral and purely descriptive, I don't have a lot of confidence that another RfC will be fairly evaluated.

WP:COMMONNAME specifically says that "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." To take the most famous example, Misplaced Pages rather famously uses "Portmanteau" and "List of portmanteaus" instead of "Blend" and "List of Blends" Nobody denies that Portmanteau is rarely used outside of Misplaced Pages, but we use it anyway. The reason? All alternatives are inaccurate. Likewise, "Acronym" is an inaccurate replacement for "Initialism". --Guy Macon (talk) 19:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought on Misplaced Pages we didn't count votes, but arguments based on policy and reliable sources (as opposed to emotional attachment and anecdotes). The discussions above were properly advertised, with no canvassing and with powerful arguments made against initialism. I don't think I deserve to be called a liar when I say that decisions have been made. Sorry if you didn't like the outcome. 219.79.73.160 (talk) 00:23, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

As I stated, I liked the outcome in two out the three. Nonetheless, you did mischaracterize what it was that was decided. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:28, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

• Actually lots of people use Portmanteau, so I see no reason to claim it is somehow[REDACTED] specific. On this issue, JPEG is clearly not an initialism, becase you pronounce PEG as "peg" not as the letters. My general understanding though is that "acronym" is widely seen as any word made up from a set of first letters, regardless of whether it is pronounced. That may not be how some linguistic purists use the term, but it is how most people use the term, and so it would follow common name. I think "initialism" is linguistic jargon imposed on us, and should be discoraged from use in most cases, and so generally think this is a good proposal.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:01, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
  • You have it backwards. JPEG is an initialism because it is made of the initials of the Joint Photographic Experts Group. An acronym is an initialism pronounced as a word; an initialism need not be pronounced in any particular way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Doesn't this JPEG debate (and the fact that the JPEG article says "acronym") illustrate my point that the use of initialism is inherently ambiguous and confusing to editors, let alone to readers? 220.246.156.35 (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
      • Not really. Edits like are good, because they clarify the text. But changing "the initialism IBM" to "the acronym IBM" is not an improvement to the article, since it doesn't clarify anything. If there is real confusion, the solution is to use "abbreviation" instead of "initialism" or "acronym". — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

It's clear from this discussion that the IP editor is hopping between IP addresses. He or she is using some of them for discussion here and others to make the change that is still being discussed here, e.g. which were made from different IP addresses. . — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:32, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm gauging how the changes are received, and I'm happy to report most occurrences are not being reverted - and I'm editing as an IP, therefore presumably subject to stricter control. It seems that you are implying that I am operating by stealth, but I'm not and I thought I was pretty open about this, reporting some partial results above. Are you saying that I should stop this and wait for some resolution of this discussion? 220.246.156.35 (talk) 15:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I personally don't feel that your test-case implementation is being done in bad faith, and it does seem to have helped get at least one more participant in the discussion. However, some people might feel like it's too close to deliberate disruptiveness. Perhaps a compromise would be to link to this ongoing discussion in the edit summary, something like "changing initialism to acronym per WP:JARGON; feel free to revert and/or discuss at ongoing attempt at consensus-building." — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought about it, but then wouldn't that effectively attract only people who strongly oppose the proposal, which seems to already have happened by the way? In other words, it would be some perverse form of WP:CANVASSing. I'd rather stop doing that for now, if that's what people prefer. (Incidentally, I started doing it before this section was even created.) 220.246.156.35 (talk) 16:22, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I tried to word it in a way to be neutral to that, but that sort of bias is probably unavoidable no matter what you do. — Ƶ§œš¹ 15:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

You're not editing as "an IP" - you're editing as at least a dozen IPs. That makes it much more difficult for people to see how many edits are being made, because the contributions are split among numerous IP "accounts". — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

The IP hopping combined with the comment "I'm gauging how the changes are received, and I'm happy to report most occurrences are not being reverted." brings up the question of whether the IP hopping is being done with the express purpose of making it difficult for anyone to find and revert the places where "initialism" has been replaced with "acronym". --Guy Macon (talk) 23:44, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Restricted proposal: "pronounced as initialism"

Let's try to break this down a little.

Would people agree that replacing "pronounced as initialism" with "pronounced as a string of letters" is a good change? 219.78.114.18 (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I would support that edit - "NASA" is also an initialism, but not pronounced as a sequence of letters, so whoever wrote the text originally was confused. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, are you talking about one edit in particular? I am talking about a whole class of edits. 219.78.114.18 (talk) 02:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, no ignore me. I understand what you mean. 219.73.123.246 (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

No, because "initialism" is a perfectly fine word that does not need to be replaced. We don't replace "aircraft" with "machine that flies" or "noun" with "word that denotes a person, place, thing, or idea" There is no valid reason to replace a perfectly valid word. I was going to suggest that the suggested replacement might be OK on the simple English Misplaced Pages, but that Misplaced Pages uses "initialism" as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

"Initialism" is a "perfectly fine word" in a world where

1. Its definition is on every respectable English dictionary
2. The various definitions are consistent and compatible
3. Most reliable sources use it consistently
4. There does not exist another word that is overwhelmingly frequently used in its stead, in reliable sources
5. Discussions among experts (let alone average readers) on its definition, its usage and its relationship with the aforementioned commonly-used alternative word does not continuously generate confusion, like in this section

Now, I must ask again. To which definition of "initialism" do you subscribe to? Me, I agree with those linguists who "do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but use the former term for both" . Carl has a different opinion. He believes that initialism "is the catch-all term for abbreviations made from initials". He has the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language to back that up, and possibly other sources. Perhaps you trust the Oxford Dictionary online, which defines initialism as "an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (e.g. BBC)"? 219.73.123.246 (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I would not support such a change. Avoiding initialism because acronym would work fine is one thing (assuming, of course, that initialisms are a type of acronym, which is not agreed upon by everyone), but deliberately avoiding initialism because it might be a new word for readers is something I'm against. — Ƶ§œš¹ 15:16, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Not only because it might be a new word for readers, but because it's very likely to be a new word for readers and WP:JARGON applies, plus in this case you are liable to confuse readers who do know the word, but do not attach to it the same meaning as the person who wrote the original phrase. (Yeah, in this case the substitution with acronym would not work.) 219.73.123.246 (talk) 15:57, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Does WP:JARGON apply? Let's break it down:

• Minimize jargon, or at least explain it. Minimize is not the same thing as completely eliminate.
• Avoid excessive wikilinking (linking within Misplaced Pages) as a substitute for parenthetic explanations... In this case, it would require only one additional wikilink. That's not particularly excessive.
• Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader, when more common alternatives will do. Usage of initialism in these cases is not to teach them to the reader (that's just a happy byproduct). In the case of initialism, there is no common alternative. The phrase "pronounced as a string of letters" could be considered a concise explanation, but that doesn't make it the preferred form.

Jargon is a necessary byproduct of encyclopedic writing so WP:JARGON does not apply to every case of it. WP:JARGON is designed to, in the interest of readability, avoid overuse of it. If you can admit, as you have above, that initialism would be appropriate were its definition more secure, then the issue isn't actually readability and WP:JARGON doesn't apply like you'd like it to. — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:41, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

"Minimize" means avoid it if possible. Here it's possible. Also note that I have said from the start that I acknowledge the existence of the word "initialism" and I am not seeking to eliminate its usage completely, only to limit it... or minimize it.

"Excessive wikilinking" - your reasoning would apply to every single instance of wikilinking. I think you misunderstood what was meant; "excessive" there does not mean "in great numbers", but something like "extreme".

"Common alternative" - this does not apply to this example, but to the cases where one could use acronym instead of initialism, like most reliable sources do.

"initialism would be appropriate were its definition more secure" - Sorry, where did I say that? I see that as a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Most reliable sources not using "acronym" instead would also need to apply before I considered "initialism" as appropriate (in most cases). 219.73.123.246 (talk) 17:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

"...use acronym instead of initialism, like most reliable sources do." --Guy Macon (talk) 17:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I got from your "'Initialism' is a 'perfectly fine word' in a world where" list that you were saying it was about sourced meaning, not about readability. In addition, throughout this discussion you seem to have assumed that a variable definition of a specialist term would harm readability, but I'm not so sure that's the case. Is this what you believe?

It seems from your proposals that you would like to completely eliminate the use of (which differs from reference to) initialism in Misplaced Pages articles. When you said you don't want to completely remove it, you cite the acronym article, where the term is mentioned. So it seems that your minimization would quarantine it out of normal usage; that's basically the same as eliminating it. If there are examples where the term initialism would still be used under your proposed deprecation, what are they?

I think that, each time you say that WP:JARGON applies, you are assuming what you should be proving. The decision we are working towards is to determine whether WP:JARGON applies. It's up for debate whether wikilinking the first instance of initialism in any article that uses it is "extreme" (I don't think it's extreme), as well as whether acronym is a sufficient alternative to initialism (others here think it is not). — Ƶ§œš¹ 18:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

See next section (but also above, really) for sources about WP:JARGON.

As for where to use it, I would not oppose using it where it was proven that reliable sources prefer it over "acronym", or where the term itself is discussed, but necessarily clarifying what is meant, like I did here. 220.246.135.131 (talk) 23:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

So you're saying that, on a case-by-case basis, a particular abbreviation could be called an acronym or an initialism depending on what reliable sources say about that particular abbreviation? That approach is akin to the policy regarding original synthesis, though it is carried to an absurdity IMHO. The unspoken caveat to WP:SYNTH is that the synthesized conclusion should be one that requires sourcing. When a commonsense conclusion (XML is an initialism) is drawn from two sourced statements (an initialism is pronounced as a string of letters and XML is pronounced as a string of letters), WP:SYNTH doesn't really apply. Moreover, it seems that, because there isn't a unified agreement on the distinction of initialism from acronymm, that we must make a decision that goes across Misplaced Pages for the sake of internal consistency, regardless what sources say about a particular abbreviation. In a sense, it's a sort of stylistic issue; we need to make a choice so our readers' experience is more predictable.

The Feb 13 edit you point to is a good one, btw, though as I hope is clear now I don't think sourcing explicitly using the term initialism should be prerequisite to such an edit (which I think is what you are arguing). — Ƶ§œš¹ 03:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping listening. Let me try and clarify a few things, apologies for the confusion.

Case-by-case: I agree it sucks and it's riduculous. I would definitely prefer a nice, short, simple, unequivocal guideline that everybody agrees on and it's easy to apply. That's what I am still hoping to achieve with this proposal. However, as a compromise with people who somehow still seem to be under the impression that initialism is robustly supported by a wide usage in reliable sources, I can offer to not object to describing a word as an initialism if the number of reliable sources that support that is comparable to the number of reliable sources that support alternative descriptions (tipically acronym). Since I am confident that such occurrences will be very rare, I can settle for that. The way I see it, we would be basically trading some stylistic consistency for some WP:FLAT.

Note however that this would only take care of stuff like articles saying (tipically in the lede), "XYZ is an initialism that blah blah" vs "XYZ is an acronym that blah blah", and I don't think it should cover generic occurrences like in my Feb 13 edit, simply because it is likely to be part of a delicate linguistic/stylistic explanation that would be totally messed up by the ambiguity and readability issues I keep highlighting. We need to find other arrangements for those. Hopefully we can start from that Feb 13 example to build a consensus on this second class of edits. Maybe I should come up with a list of other concrete case studies, along with some categorization, so it's easier to reason about them.

Readability/accessibility for readers is an absolutely central concern of mine in this proposal, closely linked to the goal not making Misplaced Pages unnecessarily read like Nerdopedia. That's why I keep bringing up WP:JARGON. The reason why you cannot see this in the "perfectly fine word" list is that I think it follows directly from #4, which is a good proxy for it, except better mearurable. 219.73.104.198 (talk) 15:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I have to ask... why do we need a guideline about this? Misplaced Pages has too many "rules" as it is. Surely the issue of whether to call "XYZ" an acronym or an initialism (or some other term) is best settled through discussion and consensus at the individual article level. Blueboar (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, but I thought it efficient instead of having the same conversation hundreds of times, we'd have a centralised one and simply point to the consensus in the edit comments. 219.73.104.198 (talk) 16:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

First use of "initialism"

From the Oxford English Dictionary under the entry for "Initialize": 1899 R. Thoma in N. & Q. 9th Ser. III 103/1 "In my 'Handbook' I gave an initialism of Mr. Watt's, 'P.P.C.R.'" --Guy Macon (talk) 08:36, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, what is your point? This fact was already part of the acronym article, so I already knew that. Actually, it states, "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common." 219.73.123.246 (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The fact that is has been in usage for 114 years and in general usage for 48 years sheds doubt on your "it's very likely to be a new word for readers" claim. Do you have a reference establishing that, or is your evidence anecdotal and based upon your own experience? I was certainly taught the difference at a young age.

Initialism has the advantage over Acronym that the meanig can easily be figured out by anyone familiar with "initials" and "-ism", which is pretty much everybody. If the argument is that the precise definition is not well known, this is true of many common English words. Most people cannot tell you the difference between a Berth, Dock, Groyne, Jetty, Landing, Mole, Mooring, Pier, Quay, Slip, and Wharf -- and indeed most people don't even see the problem with the song "Sittin' on The Dock of the Bay" -- but that does not mean we should avoid using the correct terms. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:05, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Our acronym article already contains a reference for "the term acronym is widely used to refer to any abbreviation formed from initial letters", and I have already linked it above.

If that is not enough, we can easily compare the results from Google books for each disputed term. Let's try for JPEG. "JPEG is an acronym" gives me 239 results. "JPEG is an initialism", 1 result. You want XML? "XML is an acronym", 102 results. "XML is an initialism", 1 result.

Like it or not, these sources are saying that the earth is WP:FLAT, and so we must report it. 220.246.135.131 (talk) 23:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Long story short

You're not going to get a consensus, let alone a policy decision, which deprecates the correct use of the word "initialism" simply because people have taken to using "acronym" as a catch-all (or simply because they may not have heard of it outside of Misplaced Pages, c.f. our OTT use of "portmanteau") any more than you're going to get consensus that we should leave greengrocers' apostrophes around simply because the majority of the world's native English speakers are apparently unable to get a basic rule of grammar right. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

... And before anyone goes stating that we already have some sort of "initialism is deprecated" consensus, the move requests that are being used as evidence here are some of the weakest closes I've seen in a long time. I'd be extremely concerned if they were being used to justify any wider moves, such as mass article edits. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we will not get a consensus to depreciate the use of the word "initialism"... but neither are we going to get a consensus (let alone a policy decision) to promote the use of the word "initialism". The fact is, the issue of what terms we should use to describe an article's subject can only be determined on an article by article basis... by looking at how our sources describe the specific subject of the article. If the sources use the term "acronym", so should we... if the sources use the term "initialism", so should we... and if the sources are mixed in their usage, then we should reflect that mix by using both terms. Blueboar (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

"any more than you're going to get consensus that we should leave greengrocers' apostrophes around simply because the majority of the world's native English speakers are apparently unable to get a basic rule of grammar right" - Yet another man of straw, and uncalled-for sarcasm. The initialism question is a completely different story, because there is not one "correct" thing to do. Portmanteau is also different, and even if it weren't, two wrongs don't make a right. You have contributed yet another non-argument disagreement without answering the open questions or offering an alternative way forward to a problem that you may not be interested in, but a problem nontheless. Not sure why you even bothered. 219.73.105.49 (talk) 15:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Thumperward's comments were not a straw-man argument, nor were they sarcastic, nor were they irrelevant, nor were they non-answers or non-arguments. They were perfectly valid reasons why we should not do what you want us to do. Ad hominems are a poor substitute for reasoned discourse. More light and less heat, please. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The idea of using sources to determine whether to use initialism or acronym strikes me as a poor solution. As I believe I said above, it seems like this is a stylistic issue (much like our use of IPA for pronunciation) that doesn't really depend on stringent sourcing and, as an encyclopedia, we want to provide consistency to our readers; if we use the same word to mean different things depending on article or subject, we fail in that regard. Thumperward is right that the anon's proposal is not going to get a consensus, but this doesn't mean that we can't have a consensus about the issue.

Am I correct in surmising that most other people here agree that a distinction between initialism and acronym is appropriate in general Misplaced Pages articles? — Ƶ§œš¹ 03:16, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

What would be the value of a consensus based on emotional attachment as opposed to the policy points raised above?

What would be the significance of a consensus to use a term, if reached by people who cannot even agree on its meaning?

What is the credibility of people claiming that XML is an initialism, asking rudely for evidence to the contrary, and crawling under a rock when such evidence is brought out (quoting reliable sources, not greengrocers' signs)? 218.188.93.139 (talk) 06:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

So now people who believe that the two terms are distinct are emotionally attached? I suppose that means that all of the counterpoints brought up are really just rationalizations to keep us from crying over a pint of rocky road. You've been more-or-less polite through all this, don't slip up now. — Ƶ§œš¹ 14:42, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I can't find any actual disagreement among this conversation's participants as to the meaning of initialism, other than the anon, of course. — Ƶ§œš¹ 14:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: "as opposed to the policy points raised above", Misplaced Pages policy does not say what you think it does. WP:COMMONNAME specifically says that "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." --Guy Macon (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

COMMONNAME does not really apply to article space, so I don't understand why it's relevant to this proposal. That said, ambiguous most positively does apply to "initialism", and I don't see how anything can be ambiguous and accurate. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Can someone please summarize the counterpoints?

One cannot expect civility to go one-way indefinitely.

There's been lots of disagreement and confusion throughout, I'm surprised you missed it. The most obvious one was between Carl and Guy over the "Restricted proposal". Guy thinks that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets, and so sees no problem with the expression, "pronounced as initialism". Carl on the other hand thinks that all acronyms are initialisms, and therefore the same expression makes no sense to him. 219.79.74.116 (talk) 15:49, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: "Guy thinks that acronyms and initialisms are disjoint sets", That is my opinion, but there is also a good argument for acronym being a subset of initialism and both being a subset of abbreviation. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

My point exactly. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Also before your "other than the anon" goes on record to mean that I'm the only person disliking the disproportionate usage of "initialism" on WP, I'd like to point out that so do John Pack Lambert (above) as well as other editors who commented on the move proposals linked at the top of this section. 219.79.74.116 (talk) 16:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

See WP:BAIT.

Nobody, not even JPL nor anyone in the other discussions, denies that the terms are distinct. That is not the same thing as accepting your proposal, though it seems that you have missed that distinction from my previous post. The distinction between Carl and Guy is pretty minimal and there's enough in common to work toward a consensus (you don't determine consensus by where people start out from). Given Carl's citation of the AHD and OED that would contradict his position as you've summarized it, I suspect he doesn't actually believe what you think he believes or that he's as confident/firm as I was regarding initialisms being a subset of acronyms. — Ƶ§œš¹ 17:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, have I ever said that the two terms are identical? Of course they are not, they are spelled differently, they have different histories, and some of the dictionaries (that do mention initialism) provide a different definition(s).

The proposal is about limiting the use of a word that does more harm than good.

JPL "generally think this is a good proposal". To me, that sounds supportive of "I'm the only person disliking the disproportionate usage of "initialism" on WP", if not that he supports the proposal. Would you disagree?

Same goes for Nohat's "nothing would delight me more than to downplay the significance of the rarely-used (outside of Misplaced Pages) term 'initialism'" and BDD's " linguistic jargon".

Carl has stated his belief (sometimes I feel we talking about religion here) thus, "An acronym is an initialism pronounced as a word; an initialism need not be pronounced in any particular way". I don't see much room for interpretation there, and even Guy now says that the definition of initialism is a matter of opinion. 219.79.73.25 (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

This subsection began with Thumperward saying that we're not going to get a consensus your way, i.e. deprecating the use of initialism.

I then suggested we could still find a consensus about how to use initialism

You said that the participants in this discussion "cannot even agree on its meaning"

When I pointed out that there is no substantive disagreement on the meaning of initialism in the discussion, you've pointed to the people who agree with your proposal. But the stance on your proposal is neutral to the definition one has of initialism. You are thus equivocating in ways that muddle the conversation. There's a similar equivocation when I said that you don't see the terms as discrete and you have taken the absurd stance that I must mean that you see them as phonologically and etymologically identical. From context, it should be clear that I am talking about semantic meaning, not phonological structure or etymological history. You're not an idiot, so I'm not sure what purpose this tactic serves.

Pointing out ways in which people differ in the semantics of initialism ignores the substantial core that we all have in common with it. There's so much in common that, not only is it hard to even see how these minor differences would manifest in editing practices, but it's also false to say that we "cannot" come to agreement on such differences when we haven't set out to do so. — Ƶ§œš¹ 00:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

What can I say, maybe I am an idiot! :)

My reading of your "most other people here agree that a distinction between initialism and acronym is appropriate in general Misplaced Pages articles" was different. I thought that not seeing a consensus towards not using initialism, you were looking to seal a consensus on using it, a reference to which consensus would trump WP:V, WP:JARGON etc in future debates about inclusion of initialism.

Well, I thought, thanks but no thanks. I reserve my right to tell people insisting on writing in a WP article "<XYZ> is an initialism" that reliable sources overwhelmingly point to another term, and no bully is then going to point me to a consensus which is essentially built on WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT (still waiting for that summary).

If, on the other hand, as you more recently clarified, you just want to find an agreement about one unique meaning for the term, so that it can be applied consistently to WP articles, then I think it's a noble cause, and good luck to you getting people to agree, but I'm only marginally interested because "initialism" would still read as gibberish to most of us uneducated masses, and as a minor further point it would be still confusing to those few who are educated, but were told that initialism actually carries another meaning. 219.79.74.254 (talk) 12:57, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I have referenced this proposal at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#On_the_applicability_of_WP:JARGON 219.79.74.254 (talk) 13:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is dying. Does anyone care?

Misplaced Pages is dying. That should be obvious to anyone who has been around for a few years.
Does anyone really care?
Until 2005 or so, the number of editors was growing exponentially. Starting 2006, it has been falling exponentially. Experienced editors are leaving, and Misplaced Pages somehow became unable to recruit new ones.
There may be many causes for this situation, but some of them are well known. A couple of years ago, with great fanfare, the Foundation hired a "usability study". It was too limited in time and methods to properly diagnose the causes of the disease; but it did show, very clearly, one of the most obvious: the forbidding complexity of wikisource wiki code.
Believe it or not, when Misplaced Pages was created, the Founders opted for an original markup language because HTML was thought to be too hard to edit. Thus wikisource wiki code used only straight quotes and apostrophes, and very simple markup, easy to master and type (''...'' instead of <it>...</it>, ] instead of <a href="...">...</a>, ==...= instead of <h2>...</h2>, and so on), Frills were capitals sins; editors were supposed to work on contents rather than form.
Ten years later, the people in charge of Misplaced Pages (including the Foudation) seem to have forgotten that stroke of genius. Little by little, rule by rule, template by template, wikisource wiki code has become much harder to edit than straight HTML. Today even a veteran editor cannot write three articles without violating some obscure rule (like linking to a disamb, or using hyphen for en-dash), or being immediately criticized (often by a robot) for not following this or that recommended style, or being invited to add some random bell or whistle. There are many articles that not even a veteran editor will know how to edit an article, because it uses obscure undocumented templates or other weird markup devices. And so on, and on, and on, and on...
Inded, this was the main conclusion of the usability study: many readers who clicked "Edit" for the first time were scared away by the cryptic mess that they saw.
And what has the Foundation done about it?

Nothing.

Nothing. Zilch. Nihil. Nada.

In the wake of that study, not a single bit of complexity has been removed. Not a single rule has been relaxed. Not a single navbox, template, or editorial tag has been deleted, or made less onoxious. Not a single form-over-substance robot has been switched off. Not one of the many useless scaffolds that have been erected without due thought - stub tags, sorting tags, categories, wikiprojects, article grading - have been junked. Not a single improvement was done to the editing interface, to the wikisyntax, or to the talk pages.
The only response to that study was to add another ill-though, useless, time-wasting and screen-wasting trinket, the "feedback tool"; which, in spite of overwhelming disapproval by editors, does not look like it is ever going to be junked.

Why?

All the best, hopefully, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• I have the same general opinion of the issue at hand, though I would have probably expressed it with less vitriol. I have discussed it at length with some Foundation Employees. I have been told in the past that they are working on a WYSIWYG editor. I agree that it is the biggest barrier to entry for new users, and that the article feedback tool is essentially redundant to the article talk page and was largely a waste of effort and resources, though of course the Foundation disagrees vehemently on that point. Let's just say that as far as has been told to me over a couple of beers is that the Foundation is aware of the need of a more user friendly WYSIWYG editor, though they believe that it is less of a problem than you or I do. However, I don't think the "Misplaced Pages is Dying" trope is necessarily true: Misplaced Pages has plateaued for several reasons, mainly because a) much of the easy stuff has been done already, so there's less really interesting stuff for new editors to do and b) the early growth years in membership aren't likely sustainable. Misplaced Pages can't grow at that rate indefinitely, and some leveling off is expected at some point. I think Misplaced Pages isn't dying, it's just matured to the point where nearly everyone who is likely to join Misplaced Pages as an active editor has already done so. The next challenge is involving editors who have a lower overall interest level, and that requires a change in focus from Misplaced Pages's early growth years. A WYSIWYG editor built in to the interface should help that a lot, as the technical aspects of writing can be daunting for new editors. It's gotten better, baby steps have been made in that direction (the reftools integrated into the edit window are a HUGE improvement, and categories work much better than they used to) but there needs to be more effort made in that direction. --Jayron32 05:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

"...as far as has been told to me over a couple of beers is that the Foundation is aware of the need of a more user friendly WYSIWYG editor" - there's no need to make it sound secret and speculative, the prototype has been available since December :-)

Special:Preferences > Editing > tick "Enable VisualEditor". It's limited to some pages and can;t handle some complex features yet, but there's a concerted push to get it up and running, and has been since last summer.

As to who's to blame for this, it's true that the Foundation hasn't taken drastic steps to cut down on the complexity of templates ... but neither has the community. It we want to address the issue of pages that are a deterrent to a new user, we can't simply blame someone else for not making it better; we need to think about why we have this feature creep, why editors choose to incorporate this material, etc. The only thing mentioned above that was a centralised project was AFT - everything else, stubs, templates, dash-fights, wikiprojects, grading - it all came from the community, from us, for good or for ill. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Admittedly, those beers are several months old. It's good to see progress in that direction. --Jayron32 19:01, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I slightly agree that[REDACTED] is facing some problems, I have not been here for very long but in my short span I have seen experienced editors leaving Wikiedia for good. The reason is not the wikisource but disputes which cannot be avoided. However I agree that wiki mark-up language might be the reason why there might be lesser number of new editors.--sarvajna (talk) 06:22, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• The Wikimedia Foundation is actually attempting to do something about the declining editor retention rate and signup rate, though in my opinion it's not enough. The issue lays with the editors and the policies that are used to deal with problematic editor. Like the economic scale of output model, Misplaced Pages has reached its "optimum scale" in terms of the number of new editors that are joining and Misplaced Pages's retention rate. Similarly, Misplaced Pages, like any other company that's surpassed the optimal scale, currently has too much red tape - the process of removing problematic editors other than vandals and sockpuppets is simply too lengthy for anyone to endure, hence it's probably easier and simplier for editors who encounter rogue, overzealous and problematic editors to just simply give up at times. Of course this brings up the concept of WP:DIVA, however occasionally, and probably now often, one can simply lose faith in Misplaced Pages's ability to handle complex issues involving editors that are widely considered problematic in a manner that at least from a superficial level doesn't appear to conflict with policies or guidelines - POV pushers, deliberate guideline misinterpreters and the likes. YuMaNuMa 12:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• I think the author of this piece makes a good point about instruction creep scaring new editors off. Killing that disambiguation notification bot would be a move in the right direction (or make the notifications voluntary by sign up, not sign out). filelakeshoe (talk) 12:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I like the disambiguation notification bot - it seems to be something that's actually genuinely helpful towards article improvement. What have you got against it? Victor Yus (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    • WP:CREEP. As the OP points out, new users are intimidated by how complicated editing Misplaced Pages is and throwing automated messages on new users' talk pages is intimidating - same problem with the "uncategorised bot" on Commons. I have nothing against the bot as an opt-in process, but I don't think it should automatically run on all users. filelakeshoe (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the bot is useful, but why does it have to notify users of its actions on the talk page? That seems rather silly. I can understand the logic of allowing the user to double-check the bots actions to make sure it didn't make a mistake, but I think a vigilant editor probably already has the article on his/her watch list anyway, nullifying the point. And new editors are just going to see it as a useless waste of time. WTF? (talk) 18:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Your comment doesn't make sense to me, because, at least if I recall correctly, the disambiguation notification bot doesn't actually do the disambiguations, that typically requires human input. See, for example, User_talk:Joe_Decker/Archive_9#Disambiguation_link_notification_for_December_29. More or less, you can ask the editor who'd know what was intended: "Did you mean X, or Y?" If new editors are really put off by such questions in the abstract, then either we need to kill the bot entirely or realize that the editors involved are such hothouse flowers that they will never be able to manage working in a collaborative environment. Neither feels particularly appealing ot me. If the problem is more a matter of how that question is communicated, then perhaps there is a more constructive way forward. --j⚛e decker 19:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
      • I would prefer if the bot added {{disambiguation needed}} to the article rather than messages to user talk space - that way more people see it, it gets fixed quicker. filelakeshoe (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
        • Not necessarily - new users might not notice or understand that sort of thing on their watchlist (or use their watchlist at all), and it might be that no-one else (or no-one who cares) is actively watching the article. I don't see why anyone should find these messages intimidating - they don't attack you, they just give you a hint as to how you might change what you've written so as to better achieve your purpose. It might also help you avoid the same mistake in future (I may eventually learn that morphology is ambiguous...) Victor Yus (talk) 14:02, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Is there really a disease? From 2001 to 2005, there were still easy articles to make. At one point, United States was a single paragraph, and we didn't have articles on every modern famous person. So the barrier to entry was very low - I myself made dozens of articles on speedways, governors, subway station, provinces, etc. But then we ran out of easy articles and easy edits to make. Now, unless you want to fix a typo (not very glamorous), pimp your pet cause, or share increasingly obscure information (yes, this person was the vice premier of kerpleckistan for 25 minutes in 1881 during the Monsoon Coup), there's less and less reason to show up. And there's nothing that can really be done about this, we're a victim of our own success. But I do agree - if we made wikimarkup simpler, people would be at least more likely to fix typos. --Golbez (talk) 13:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• Golbez has a point. It is not uncommon for new editors to discover that there is already an article on the topic he/she was interested in writing. Thus there is less incentive for them to become involved in the project. Sure, we still have the task of improving those articles ... but that task is not as fun as writing new articles. It is less of a draw.

The fact is, Misplaced Pages is not dying... it is simply moving to a new phase of its existence... one that is less appealing to the average Joe, and will not attract a lot of participants. We are shifting from "building" an encyclopedia, to improving the one we already have. In this new phase, we can not measure success by the quantity of editors ... we need to measure success by the quality of the edits made by those of us who are still around. Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Moving to a new phase of its existence doesn't mean that it's not going in the wrong direction. The problem as I see it is that the kind of people who were drawn to the project out of the desire to add vast swaths of new content are no longer coming to Misplaced Pages, because the content has indeed plateaued. However, as the new content tasks diminish, the less glamorous maintenance tasks continue to increase. Writing a new article on an interesting subject is a lot more fun and engaging than fending off the constant efforts of vandals, or even fixing common spelling mistakes and grammar errors, and we are not bringing in very many people who are interested in doing maintenance. At that point, we need new strategies to attract and motivate editors. bd2412 T 14:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• A number of these points are discussed on Observations on Misplaced Pages Behaviour. It's true that the easy stuff has been done, most of the basic articles exist, and while there is a lot of work to do, it requires experience with being able to research sources, write good English, debate articulately, and interact with others. The barrier to entry has risen, and the user interface hasn't caught up. In an ideal world, you'd create an article, the software would ask you for sources up front, you'd realise you haven't got any, and ask the help desk. Instead, you create the article, within 2 minutes somebody whacks a great big red template on the front of it and hectors you about some policy. (Example from today). Being slightly facetious, though, I would say the best way to get the WMF to implement a nicer user interface is to pay them to do so. Ritchie333 14:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  I'd say the barrier to entry is extreme. In addition to the non-WYSIWYG editor, WP is the only website I've seen where everyone else's content is submitted to you to be edited!

  You've then got the obscure rule structure.

  Perhaps worst of all, with most pages already written, POV pushing has become much more prominent, with editors treating it as a game, driving away anyone who threatens their ownership of an article through hostility, misquoting rules and calling for bans with all their meat/sockpuppets. WykiP (talk) 21:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The "observations on Misplaced Pages behaviour" essay actually reflects many of the problems of the existing culture on this site - not least of which is the extremely condescending tone adopted in the essay and the dismissiveness of criticism as disruptive rather than potentially constructive or pertinent. FiachraByrne (talk) 12:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that the reality falls in between "the sky is falling" and "since the sky isn't falling, the status quo should not be questioned or changed" folks. It has plateaued out. North8000 (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• Observation It's bizarre that this complaint is phrased as being about the markup language. I am not aware that the markup language has changed at all in the 7.5 years I've been editing Misplaced Pages, though no doubt there have been hundreds if not thousands of obscure little bugfixes. There is some validity in the complaint that policies, guidelines, and procedures have gotten more complicated (that's the hyphen-v-endash thing), but this has nothing whatsoever to do with markup or a WYSIWYG editor. --Trovatore (talk) 17:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

the fucking obsession that so many editors have to put everything in tables with their coding that takes a doctorate to make work right. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 10:30, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Markup has become more difficult in the sense that the expected lavel of mastery of complex features has risen, so that for example citation templates and the like is now almost a requirement which it wasn't in 2005.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  I just don't think that's markup issue. That's an instruction-creep issue. In any case, in theory, you're supposed to be able to dump the citation information into the article in whatever format, and wait for the gnomes to come clean it up. --Trovatore (talk) 18:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  The issue, as much as anything, is what people see when they click "Edit" for the first time. These days, it's horrifically offputting on an average article (ooh that looks complicated, I'm bound break something, and I don't know how I'm supposed to do stuff, never mind), in a way it just wasn't 10 years ago. The idea of "anyone can edit" originally was "anyone can click Edit and dive in" - and that's just no as true as it was originally. A properly working Visual Editor will help, but really it's at least 5 years overdue. Rd232 18:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  I'm more than a little skeptical that a visual editor can be kept synched with templates and such. Templates are supposed to be changeable by consensus at any time; an editor is supposed to work with the core software. How can an editor possibly be kept up to date? Would it become a barrier to changing formats when people want to? I suppose a visual editor could have a boilerplate interface that somewhat facilitates entry of "fields" in templates that have them, but I doubt it would be hugely easier to use than the text markup. (Think about the little "Signature and timestamp" widget at the top of the edit window — when was the last time you used that, instead of typing four tildes?) --Trovatore (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  Dreamweaver certainly could handle the equivalent of templates, but I wouldn't objet to a big shift in how we store and manage article data if that's what it took to make it easier for everyone to edit. --j⚛e decker 19:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

  I can't quite visualize what such a shift would look like. Can you say more about what you mean? --Trovatore (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Over complicated formats like WP:LDR should be eliminated.Moxy (talk) 18:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I think this is actually at one of the cruxes of the problem, but I don't think it's as easily solved. (a) References are important in WP:V and WP:BLP policy and should continue to be. (b) Any way you represent references is hard for new editors to assimilate. (c) The way wikitext handles them is particularly challenging. I'm not ready to throw out (a), and it may always be in conflict with (b), but at least we could use technology to improve the situation with (c). --j⚛e decker 19:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't use it myself because of my own idiosyncratic writing style (I like to bundle citations) but list defined references are a great solution to the problem of writing clutter.FiachraByrne (talk) 11:25, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that what has made more and more of Misplaced Pages inaccessible to newer and medium-experienced editors is the proliferation of templates. Making it worse, each template is only about half documented (people who develop software items never like to do the last 2/3rds of the job which is documentation and instructions, including updating when they make changes.) North8000 (talk) 18:38, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• The OP seems a bit harsh. The powers-that-be are working on a WYSIWYG editor, and I think they even had a prototype last time I looked. On a related note, sometimes when the foundation proposes a change to WP (Pending Changes; Article Feedback Tool), the community reacts with hostility, so perhaps the Foundation is a bit gun-shy? As for the number of new editors/articles declining: that is a natural evolution in the lifespan of the project. The nature of edits & improvements are gradually changing from lots-of-new-stuff, to improving consistency & quality of existing stuff. --Noleander (talk) 18:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

By "gun shy" do you mean "ignore input and don't ask anymore and do it anyway" like pending changes and feedback tool? Or do you mean no longer thinking about some changes that would actually be useful. "Pending changes" reminds me of the liquid metal robot in Terminator 2....I keep thinking "we thought we killed it but it returned....what do we have to do to really kill it?" North8000 (talk) 19:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

:-) Yeah, probably a bit of both :-) --Noleander (talk) 19:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Following an initial suggestion from the WMF in, hrm, 2008(?), Misplaced Pages:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions was developed for enwiki after a lengthy community discussion, and coded to those specifications before being deployed. After this, there was lengthy community debate in which it was honestly very difficult to determine what the answer was, and we pulled it; after more community discussion, a limited form was reenabled. I'm not sure this can really be described as "don't ask and do it anyway"! (For more background, see the 2012 RFC to turn it back on, which has a decent summary at the top). Andrew Gray (talk) 20:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• One would also imagine that the Pedia has competition from other (niche) wiki's that did not exist before; so, those editors who are more attracted to those other niches spend their time there. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Just imagine a newer editor running into "pending changes" seeing their edit mysteriously disappear into no-man's land. North8000 (talk) 19:20, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I would, but I'm busy trying to imagine what a nonspecific VPP discussion does about it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I've certainly seen incidents where I've had discussions, sometimes quite strong ones, where editors here just do not comprehend that other people would rather edit a niche wiki, be it on wikia or self hosted, than come here. Their brains just seem to explode. Ritchie333 10:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is failing and Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is succeeding.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:35, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages inadvertently causing its own decline in participation - Quote = "University of Minnesota research finds that changes made by the Misplaced Pages community to manage quality have crippled the growth they were designed to manage".Moxy (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

• Imminent death of Misplaced Pages predicted. — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
• In Affectionate Remembrance

of

WIKIPEDIA,

which died on the Internet

on

12, Feburary 2013,

Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing

friends and acquaintances

R.I.P.

N.B.—The body will be cremated and the

ashes taken to 4chan. Hasteur (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The reality is that 90% of the problems are things that are under the (headless horsemen in this respect) "control" of the groupthink that runs the English Misplaced Pages. So Wikimedia can't fix most of them. It would take some leadership in the English[REDACTED] to fix it. And by "leadership: I don't mean imposing ideas on people, I mean taking them where they want to go. North8000 (talk) 03:18, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• One thing that could probably be done quite easily, and without any help from WM, is to rewrite the instructions (including policies, guidelines, help pages, etc.) to make them clear and helpful to potential editors rather than the largely unfathomable and offputting trainwrecks that they tend to be. Experience shows, however, that there is huge resistance to any changes to these pages, among a certain group of established editors who don't seem to regard incomprehensibility as a problem even when it's pointed out. Victor Yus (talk) 09:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I find policies and guidelines are just something you need to learn like riding a bike or driving a car. You can read all the instruction manuals in the world, but the only way you'll really understand how things work is by getting involved and screwing up. And that's where Misplaced Pages falls down - I get really annoyed when newcomers, who've never had to deal with our policies, say "I like it!" at AfDs in good faith, and some snot nosed punk cries "OMG! WTF! Get lost, clueless meatpuppets!" Ritchie333 10:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is a vicious, nasty place. It doesn't know that, and it doesn't understand why. You just gave one small good example. Actually, your meatpuppet example covers 2-3 of the ways that it is vicious. North8000 (talk) 10:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with User:North8000 & User:Victor. There should be some attempt to centralise and coordinate the various and often contradictory policy documents into a coherent text. Likewise, I'd favour a simplification of the interminable levels of "process" which are supposed to police content and behaviour (having participated in a couple I'd also add that RFC/U can be particularly destructive opportunity for slandering and bullying editors). Aside from the vitriol and gameplaying that complex & often frankly incoherent levels of policy and process can facilitate, navigating that landscape is extremely difficult and takes a huge investment of time. That level of difficulty means that editors who are correct on content issues can be at a disadvantage to editors who have sufficient mastery of policy and process which they may use (willfully or not) to uphold erroneous positions. I also think that there should be a greater emphasis on policing edit quality rather than editor behaviour, but that would entail favouring expertise (if experts could be recruited); this might be especially useful in areas of ongoing conflict (Israel/Palestine; Falkland Islands/Maldives disupte; Race and Intelligence; etc.). FiachraByrne (talk) 11:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, the level of complexity currently governing interaction on Misplaced Pages suggests the over-riding importance of retaining productive (knowledgeable, non-tribal and non-gameplaying) longterm editors (be they content writers, wikignomes, bot operators, etc.). For a new editor to gain a comparable level of expertise on the operation of[REDACTED] (technical, political, social, writing norms, etc) could take a year or more. FiachraByrne (talk) 11:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that FiachraByrne hit the nail on the head the best of anybody so far. Both with respect to objectives and problems. On "retention objectives" I would add editors with expertise. North8000 (talk) 11:56, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

(ec) I have to say that I've only survived this long on Misplaced Pages because I can take criticism on the chin and just laugh when people tell me to fuck off to my face. On a number of occasions, other people have seen on-wiki conversations I've had and said things to the effect of "You gave a much better response than I did - I'd have told them to get stuffed and left". On the other side of the coin though, once you have got some experience with writing good articles and making good calls at AfD, it is very easy to get complacent and assume cluenessness without even thinking about it - this experience I had this week made me feel a right chump for reverting an edit by one of my favourite musicians. Ritchie333 11:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

In looking at the dynamics of how (English) Misplaced Pages works, I have concluded that 1,000,000 words in forums will not cause it to be fixed. But I have also concluded that 5 (but 20 would be better) experienced editors actively working together could make immense transformations (like move any mountain) if they acted well. I'd be willing to try to organize something like that if some folks are interested. (???) North8000 (talk) 12:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

To organize what exactly?--Ymblanter (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Get >= 5 experienced or understanding people together, decide on what changes are needed to make Misplaced Pages less vicious, and then go to the places that the changes are needed and make them / get them made. North8000 (talk) 12:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that what that editor retention project is about? There are probably other "reform" projects too. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

This one would hopefully have a difference....the "W" option. (W = "Works") North8000 (talk) 14:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I may not be the best person to judge as once, a long time ago, I used to be a computer programmer, but is Misplaced Pages syntax really so difficult? There is always some hurdle to be overcome for new users of anything. If people are interested enough they will persevere. The two or three times I have tried to use Facebook I have found it utterly baffling, and yet millions, maybe billions of people apparently successfully use it every day. One thing that would help a lot, and for a lot less effort than a full WYSIWYG (do people still use that word) editor is colour coding in the edit window. I saw that proposed, and possibly even partially implemented, years ago, so why hasn't it been rolled out yet? 86.167.124.138 (talk) 14:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• HEAR, HEAR! --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 18:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
• The WYSIWYG editor for Misplaced Pages is VisualEditor. Usage instructions can be found at WP:VisualEditor and more detailed info can be found at mw:VisualEditor. Cheers. 64.40.54.86 (talk) 14:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not dying

The notion that the number of editors needs to continually grow is not supportable. The truth is that probably the vast majority of articles get written once, receive fairly minor updates, and then mostly have to protected from vandalism and be subjected to maintenance when categories change or other mechanical updates need to be applied. The supply of people to write about things does eventually exceed the supply of things to write about, and it's not terribly surprising that we may have reached that point.

Likewise, I don't see the markup as being that big of an impediment. Most articles I see that have big markup issues also lack any kind of references and are like as not to be written in a style foreign to every other encyclopedia, and plenty of them get deleted because they do not address notable subjects or indeed sometimes cannot be puzzled out at all.

The places where Misplaced Pages may be "dying" are the perpetual political battlegrounds and the places that require subject expertise which may not intersect with the will to contribute, or which is driven away by well- or ill-meaning amateurs. These are both issues whose solution may and often does involve less participation, not more. Mangoe (talk) 14:17, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

How does this "dying" manifest in terms of the product (Misplaced Pages itself) as opposed to the labour force currently in use (editors)? Like the car industry, we've replaced a lot of tedious manual tasks with automated processes that make such a large labour force unnecessary. Continuing the literary conceit, what we need these days is more specialists to make expert contributions - in our case to enhance the quality of the articles that have been created during the days of mass participation. That said, I welcome each and every potential editor. --Dweller (talk) 14:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• I agree. Misplaced Pages at this stage will progress not by increasing the quantity of its contributors but their quality, and by focusing on improving those areas that are underdeveloped due to systemic bias. Misplaced Pages should do more to attract expert editors and specifically in areas that are poorly covered. Whether Randy in Boise is dissapointed in[REDACTED] when someone reverts his skeleton theory is less important for the continued progress of[REDACTED] towards becoming not only a repository of large amounts of knowledge - but also an encyclopedia where the overall quality of coverage is not solely a function of what topics are of particular interest to male, socially dysfunctional American kids. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

(ec)So the question becomes... what can we do to attract such expert editors. and the specialists who can cover poorly covered areas? Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest soliciting review articles from experts directly, like other encyclopedias do. However, because the wikiformat requires subsequent editing by others which most experts are unlikely to be comfortable with, probably what we should do would be to host the articles on an external site (e.g. commons or wikiquote or some such), where they will remain in their original form, but make sure that they are released in a form so that we can incorporate the text directly in to articles with attribution to the off-site text. The only requirement would be that the off-site repository be considered a reliable source and that they be released with no restrictions on reproduction. In that way we will be able to get good coverage and experts are less likely to be offended or disheartened by the editing process or to become engaged in disputes. I think many experts would be willing to do this since it will bring some prestige and visibility to them to have text cited freqeuently within the[REDACTED] article on their topic of expertise. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:31, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

This AfD is a good example of me getting annoyed with systematic bias and the general air of "If I can't prove notability, nobody can". Ritchie333 15:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, AfDs like the one you point to can be annoying for the editors working on the article, but they are nothing new (we have had similar AfDs since the early days of Misplaced Pages). More importantly, they actually serve a useful purpose... The article was woefully under-sourced. Bringing the article to AfD highlighted that fact, and forced editors to look for sources in order to justify keeping the article... these sources can now be used to improve the article. In other words... such AfDs, as annoying as they might be in the short term, result in improving the article in the long term, and thus improving Misplaced Pages. Blueboar (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I take your point, but I think the cleanup happened despite the nominator, who made no edits other than the AfD nomination, and seemed more content on shouting "No sources! No sources! No sources!" a lot. Hey ho. Ritchie333 16:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I've seen similar: Some one nominated an article for deletion as non-notable and containing many BLP violations. (This was the mayor of a major Australian city.) One Google search found the top five search results were newspaper articles substantially about the person, and that the person was dead. The subject was notable and the article was not a BLP violation. Often, people do a 2 weeks on Google news that shows up as the default and call it a day. No effort is made beyond that. Articles about Indonesians or Norwegians? Why should Indonesian and Norwegian newspapers be looked at? (And then if loads of sources are found, the newspapers are often belittled as minor and not usable for notability, even if the newspaper is the leading national newspaper in the country.) There really should be a check box that certifies a person nominating for AfD on any notability grounds has done a comprehensive search of sources before making the nomination. --LauraHale (talk) 17:20, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

This is correct, I intervene into AfD discussions on articles related to Russia on a regular basis. For instance, on the last occasion the article was AfDed because it stayed unsourced for five years. I managed to expand it using Russian language sources, and it is now on its way to be closed as keep. However, I can not do it for all articles, and there are many topics I am not competent or just not interested in.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:46, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Even with well-meaning editors, articles about subjects whose only sourcing comes from non-English sources represent an enormous difficulty for the encyclopedia, and even more so for cases where automated translation is not available (e.g., Urdu) or is pathetically, unusably bad (e.g., Thai.) The community and the Foundation have both made it clear that they are not, in the long run, comfortable with the prospect of indefinitely unsourced or poorly sourced biographies, and the spot that we're in, between the language issues and the biography issues is not an entirely comfortable one. The only thing that makes it better is the work of knowledgable editors competent in those languages being willing to go improve the articles before they're proposed for deletion, or to monitor and work on those that are nominated. (Which I've seen you do, thank you.) Yes, we need to address indefensible nominations, but those are, in my experience, a small fraction of this larger problem. --j⚛e decker 18:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is vicious and hostile to newer expert editors. I have been through that myself in areas where I write the sources that others are citing. I've also mentored some new expert editors who were about to bail. So how 'bout we start with stopping the beatings before we worry about getting more people to beat up? North8000 (talk) 15:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

In what way is Misplaced Pages "vicious and hostile"? Blueboar (talk) 16:08, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I once was overruled by two other editors who did not want to listen to what I was saying about my expert area (I am a full professor in a major university). The things I was referring to are textbook material. Then I just unwatched the page and walked out, since I obviously have more interesting things to do than quarreling with the people with little understanding of the research field. A vast majority (over 99%) of my edits are not related to my expert area.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:43, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't Misplaced Pages sort of like your school job?..... Except (minor difference) you work for free and any two students can overrule you and any three students can get you banned from that classroom. That's all a part of the plan to retain expert editors. North8000 (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I left an article in a wreckage state in disgust in a field where I author sources that other people are citing. A really creepy person was following me around Misplaced Pages and fighting (vis wiki-lawyering) just for the sake of fighting. North8000 (talk) 18:53, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Way #1 In many arguments, the aggressive anti-social person wins, if they are wiki-saavy. This is a product that the rules (if taken rigorously) are more stringent than the reality of how things work, and the every person in Misplaced Pages is given a badge and a gun, and switch from reality to rigorousnesses if it serves a POV or pissing war. North8000 (talk) 18:01, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

That strikes me as a fairly odd argument since you seem to be suggesting that having fewer strict rules would make it easier for easy-going experts with little wiki-knowledge to stand up to aggressive anti-social people with no knowledge of the topic. I don't see how that would work. I think you are confusing two separate problems. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I was clear enough on what my core point was. When a policy is unrealistic to the point where the accepted practice and need is to technically violate it, you have a problem, everybody is vulnerable to getting smacked. And the remedy is simply to have the policies match the accepted norm.North8000 (talk) 03:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

• Way #2 In the real world a civic minded person who rallies to support causes is called a model, high-minded citizen. When they come to Misplaced Pages and do the same thing, they are called a meatpuppet. North8000 (talk) 18:05, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that allowing canvassing would make POV wars more easy to handle?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

That's 2-3 questions and 1 implied premise in one. But on one of the them the answer is simple. Get rid of the awful word "meatpuppet"North8000 (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Way #3 It takes a few thousand edits before a person half understands how Misplaced Pages really works, and that it is an alternate universe compared to the real world. For example, that Albert Einstein couldn't write about relativity in Misplaced Pages unless they cited a work, but a grade school kid could if the cited a source. It takes them a while to learn this; until then they will try to operate like in the real world and and get beat up big time as a misbehaving editor.North8000 (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

This only works up to a point. I think the only time I've technically breached 3RR was when an IP kept adding unsourced stuff about someone being an alleged murder accomplice, and didn't understand why I kept reverting him. He wouldn't have understood WP:BLP, so I just pleaded with him to stop. Ritchie333 19:52, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages is structured so that gang warfare almost always wins, if the gang members are wiki-savvy. North8000 (talk) 18:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Way #4 Another example of the police state situation where the norm requires violating the rules and anybody can use that against you. If you make 2 edits anywhere on an article in one day you are violating 1 RR, and 4 edits anywhere on an article in on day you are violating 3RR. This is because nearly every edit is technically a "revert" even if it is to 5 year old material. North8000 (talk) 18:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Way #5 Rightly so you can't put material in from your expertise, but there is a persistent urban legend that any application of expertise (such as to leave out erroneous material) is illegitimate. North8000 (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Way #6 There are rules in Misplaced Pages against calling somebody a bad word, but not against making false and baseless accusations against them. So that is a common tactic. And a great way to beat them up with immunity. North8000 (talk) 18:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
• Way #7 Until you get very very very experienced, wiki-lawyering will always win against you. North8000 (talk) 18:48, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I echo User:North8000's sentiment 100%. I don't know how widespread POV-pushing Wiki-savvy editors are, but they WP:OWN most protoscience articles.

I have little idea what can be done about it, but the first step is admitting there's a problem. WykiP (talk) 00:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Blueboar said above that "So the question becomes... what can we do to attract such expert editors. and the specialists who can cover poorly covered areas?" I have a few answers at the moment: 1) start walking around Universities introducing professors to Misplaced Pages, and seeing if they might contribute or competently run a WP:AFSE. I've had two Skype meetings today, one with a graduate level class, and other with a Ph.D. in education (or something like that) at a big University. 2) Start academic journals/publishing, centered around productive Wikiprojects. O and maybe 3) this. 4) Institutional ambassadors/Wikimedians in residence. Such as this: college kids are looking for internships, why not start managing a volunteer internship program at a local, big-city newspaper to help a) Misplaced Pages improve and b) the publication get cited on Misplaced Pages, and c) claim credit for doing public outreach/eduction, instead of letting newspaper articles go to archives and forgotten. Or maybe a bright undergraduate could get an assignment from a local government agency, company, or organization to improve a Misplaced Pages article about an important concept that relates to the organization. A student or volunteer or intern or worker at CARE (relief agency) might get maternal health up to GA status. That kind of stuff. Biosthmors (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I know we have WP:Ambassadors to Universities. Let's have them to organizations and institutions without prejudice, as long as it is done in the open then experienced Wikipedians can monitor things for neutrality. Biosthmors (talk) 19:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

A metaphor

The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System involved tens of thousands of people. An entire highway had to be built just to get the project started, then over 800 miles of pipe was laid across some very wild, inhospitable territory. Thirty-two people dies working on it.

Today the company that built and maintains the pipeline employs less than a thousand people. Why? Because the company was created for one sole purpose, to build a pipeline. The main part of that was done in 1977 and most of those workers went back home and found new jobs.

Semi-common bumper sticker in Alaska: "Lord, give me another pipeline, I promise I won't piss it away this time."

The wiki-pipe is laid. The pumping stations are running. Large, new discoveries of wiki-oil are unlikely.

</end metaphor>

A core group will always be needed to keep things running smoothly and some turnover is natural and desirable, but the days of needing thousands upon thousands of users solely to create content are basically over. There are certainly vast quantities of content in need of improvement, but there are at least stubs on just about anything you can think of, to the point where we're covering sandwich shops and small town mayors.

We should be less concerned with sheer numbers of new users and more concerned with the diversity of new recruits and the ability of the community to retain valued content contributors. En.Misplaced Pages is still largely white males from the "developed world". The content we don't have is the content that people not fitting that description are more likely to write. Things are being done at the Foundation level to encourage such persons, but I don't know how well we, as a community are doing at it. Rather than having "is the sky falling or isn't it" discussion about sheer numbers of users or successful RFAs we should be addressing these issues. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:01, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I like it toom but disagree with it. Yes the common ones are build but its easy to find tens of thousands that are needed. Misplaced Pages's converage of topics related to India and China are extremely weak even though these 2 civilizations have been around for thousands of years and and between them have 2/5ths of the worlds population. There are hundreds of Medal of Honor recipients still, tens of thousands of plants and animals, etc. Not to mention all the edits that need to be done to existing articles. So I don't agree that we are running out of content to create or edit. I think the problems lie in how we treat those that are doing it. 108.28.162.125 (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

It's only fair that participants in this discussion know that IP 108...125 is User:Kumioko Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:51, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I like this analogy very much, but interpret it completely differently. When the pipeline was done, it was an FA class article and only minor tweeks were needed to keep it updated. On Misplaced Pages, every article is a pipeline. It takes tens, sometimes hundreds of people to get an article to FA class.

• It needs people to reseach it
• It needs people expand it
• It needs people add references
• It needs people organize it
• It needs people to format it to MOS standards
• It needs people to write high quality prose

Every FA class article has hudreds if not thosands of man-hours put in to it. And every Misplaced Pages article needs to get to FA class. This cannot be done by a small group of people. Getting 4 million articles to FA class is going to take a lot of people. If there is only a small group working on that, then the goal won't be reached for thousands of years. And in a thousand years there won't be just 4 million articles. This type of massive undertaking can only be done by large groups of people and the more the project expands, the more people are needed to make a decent encyclopedia. If we continue to have a dwindling number of editors, then our quality will be as poor as it is now, with only a fraction of a percent of FA class articles and 99%+ of low quality articles. Here's the basic question;

• How many man-hours of effort will it take to get 4 million articles to FA class?

This question puts everything in to perspective. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 10:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

You would also have to get all those people to buy into FA process and issues and review. Which seems unlikely, unless you find a huge group of people that think pretty much the same about all that and indoctrinate them into it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, I did a very rough calculation and reworked a familiar table from WP:1.0. I listed the experience required to work n a class of article and the number of hours it would take to get that article to the next class. This tells us how much work we need by the differnt experience levels.

Quality	Articles	Effort to next class	Total	Experience required
FA	4,363
FL	1,788
A	1,157
GA	17,604	50 hrs.	880,200 hrs.	300 hrs.
B	85,496	50 hrs.	4,274,800 hrs.	200 hrs.
C	139,077	15 hrs.	2,086,155 hrs.	100 hrs.
Start	936,324	10 hrs.	9,363,240 hrs.	10 hrs.
Stub	2,264,053	1 hr.	2,264,053 hrs.	1 hr.
List	109,715
Assessed	3,559,577
Unassessed	479,893
Total	4,039,470

This is a very rough calculation and is completely inaccurate. But it gives a rough idea of how many people we need to be working on the project and the different levels of experience required to work at each level. I think this shows that we could easily use the efforts of 50,000 new users. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 11:34, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

50,000 volunteers who all think the same about those things? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

50,000 inexperienced users to work on stub articles to get them to at least start class. Almost anything done to stub is an improvement (except outright vandalism). It would seem to be a worthy goal to at least have any article over a year old to be at least start class. In my humble opinion anyway. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 13:05, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Just adding, I think having 2+ million stub articles is kind of a disgrace for a project that's been around for more than 10 years. Just my opinion. 64.40.54.22 (talk) 13:10, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Seems reasonable but they would actually need to be experienced enough to know what is a stub and what a start is and have the topic/knowledge skills to source, etc., and then it only get harder and more conflicted as you go up the (somewhat arbitrary?) ladder. At present, it's not uncommon to run across articles and think (how was that graded? and does it matter?) -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is a volunteer organization, and volunteers will only contribute to articles on topics that interest them. This is why popular topics now have relatively solid articles while less popular topics are still in the stub stage... with the popular topics, lots of people were interested in the topic and cared enough about it to add information, find sources, work on language, etc. With less popular topics, few people are interested, and few really care enough about them to research and improve the article.

So... simply recruiting lots of new editors is not going to be enough to solve the perma-stub issue. Most of the recruits will quickly go to the articles on the popular topics (which are now relatively complete) and say... "hmmm, nothing for me to do here"... and leave.

We need to find a way to recruit editors who are actually interested in working on obscure (less interesting) topics (since these are the articles that most need improvement)... either that or we need to recruit editors who are willing to be assigned articles to research and edit (which is unlikely). Blueboar (talk) 15:14, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, many of the articles on difficult (technical, scholarly, legal etc) topics have plateaud out and we need experts that can develop them further. North8000 (talk) 15:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

True. Although there does seem to be a subset that are intent on creating an article and running it up that flag pole/gauntlet to its top. Which, is nice for them and generally for the pedia, if that floats their boat. The Project drives for a particular article also got some play, at one point. I wonder if anyone has studied the successes/failures of the Project drives. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, already finding people who speak languages and are able to search for sources in these languages would be a good achievement. My estimate is that the activities here I am involved with, at least with the current pace, will be sufficient to keep me busy for the rest of my life.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:38, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I would not assume that there are this many stubs. A very quick, small sample of the Maryland articles showed that those I looked at were all at least start class, with one borderline stub. Possibly the message here is that nobody wants to go and assess a few million articles. Mangoe (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Some estimates I did a while back suggests that conservatively at least 25% of stubs should be rated higher (and probably a nontrivial fraction of start). Part of the issue is that there's no easy way to date ratings - so it's not apparent when they go obsolete - and most people's workflow doesn't extend to updating them. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I think that this illustrates two of my pet peeves.....it seems that the only time we take a hard look at the status quo, the only lens/objective we use is quantity of editors. And the second is that only two choices are:

1. The sky is falling
2. The status quo is just fine

With no choice for the in-between reality. I tend to think that the problem is that it has plateaud out, with the two biggest problems being:

• The articles requiring expertise to take to the next level often aren't progressing
• The contentious articles are in permanent junk-article status

North8000 (talk) 17:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Just to throw another example in the mix, you'd have thought there wouldn't be that much work to do on Pink Floyd anymore, what with that article, and several others, reaching FA and GA status. But then I was presented with this list and noticed there was actually a substantial amount of work to be done, just most of it's tricky and requires offline sources, which requires more determination and interest. I might buy or borrow a book to read, and use it for sourcing on here if it's reliable, but I'm not sure I'd specifically go out and do that for a topic I didn't have great interest to start with. Ritchie333 17:28, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Yup... There is still a lot of work for editors to do... the question is, is anyone willing to do it? I think so... but a lot of what needs to be done is difficult and somewhat boring, and this means we do need to accept that Misplaced Pages will not attract the kind of numbers we used to get. Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, the point here is that this sort of work doesn't create content. Mangoe (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think so? Usually, it does. Very few people dig out off-line sources and sources in foreign language just to add them to the articles, usually they expand articles as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to respond to earlier remarks. Sure, some big topics can continue to accrue info. But the stats on assessment don't show that. If the reason that we appear to have so many stubs is because most of them actually would assess out higher, we don't get more content by fixing that. And I have to wonder how attractive it is to new editors to slog through a list of articles simply to assess them. Mangoe (talk) 22:02, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages - "The encyclopedia where anyone can assess articles and do other background administrative tasks!" that will get them signing up in droves! Blueboar (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, it seems that there are at least a dozen people who do care. And another dozen who say that they don't care because everything is fine and there is nothing to care about. 8-(. Some random comments:

• "All important inventions have been invented and now we need only systematize what we know." I gather that was the opinion of a famous Roman engineer two millennia ago. The claim that "Misplaced Pages is naturally slowing down because has matured" is flatly denied by the 2.2 million stubs and millions of red links. In some area like biology and chemistry the scope for new articles is nearly infinite, and there are millions of people who could contribute new articles on topics that they care about and are not covered yet. Why aren't they doing so?
• It seems that a major cause of the problem is precisely the refusal, by many of the "people in charge", to acknowledge that the problem exists. Perhaps because they are afraid that the cause may turn out to be what they have been doing all along?
• It is undeniable that editing wiki code now is much less pleasant today than it was 8 years ago. The basic syntax did not change, but the templates, rules, and the standard article format have become forbidding. For example, the rule against linking to a disamb forces the editor to check every link he types; and then turn any one that happens to be a disamb into a pipe. So a sentence that before could be written in 5 seconds may now take 10 minutes -- to an experienced editor. And that is just one tiny example in a thousand problems.
• To an editor, it makes no difference whether a feature is implemented as a template or in the low-level engines; it is all "wikisource syntax" to him. So every new template effectively adds complexity to the wiki source. I have seen hundreds of templates, and can think of only one that is actually good: the {{chem}} template for chemical formulas. Over 99% of the templates out there certainly do far more harm than good, and should be deleted. Templates should be created only by the Wikimedia foundation, and only when really, really needed (say, a new one every five years).
• Obviously it is much easier to create a new template than to get rid of it once it has been used in a hundred articles. Therefore, under the current "self-policing" policy, templates will only keep proliferating, no matter how harmful they are. The same goes for most other features, including "wikipedia policies" and style rules.
• Beware of tools that will make life easier only for the editors who use them. For example, there is a robo-vandal out there that turns plain <ref>...</ref> citations into <ref>{{cite...}}</ref> templates. That replacement only makes a messy wikisource even messier, with no benefit whatsoever to the reader. Yet the person driving that robot seem unable to understand the harm he is doing to wikipedia; presumably because he has a nice tool interface, that does not show him the mess he is creating. So, will that wysiwyg editor be used by absolutely everybody? Will it produce clean readable wikisource, or will it turn it into absolutely uneditable machine code (like Inkscape does to SVG files)?

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, one more thing:

• The article assessment mechanism may be also part of the problem. For one thing, it does not actually improve Misplaced Pages, and does not actually increase the total amount of editor-hours that get contributed to the project; all it can do is to redistribute that scarce resource among articles. Is that a good thing? I suspect that it tends to concentrate the work on the articles that least need it, instead of encouraging people to fill the "holes" by starting new articles. Moreover, its definition of what is a "good article" seems to include length as the main criterion. That is having a terrible effect on Misplaced Pages; it encourages people to write lengthy and messy all-in-one monographs or book chapters instead of many short and clear single-topic encyclopedia articles. And yet even the Featured Articles are often very poor by the standards of journals. The assessment machinery seems to be yet another "feature" of Misplaced Pages that lost sight of the project's ultimate goal and exists only for the sake of old-time editors. Has anyone bothered to check whether there is any correlation between the assessed quality of an article and its usefulness to readers? Or which articles would yield the best return (usefulness to readers) on investment (editing work)? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:46, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

User:Ritchie333/How newbies see templates Ritchie333 00:21, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Making a list

Did we ever make that list of all the discussions like this over the years? If so, can someone give me the link? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages WILL not die

Misplaced Pages is NOT dying and there has been too much time and money spent on it to let it die. Also, it is an increasingly valuable resource to let it die. There are many problems that need sorting out and the editing interface issues pointed out in the original posting is but one of the minor ones. BTW, there is a WYSIWYG editor being worked on apparently. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 09:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Time and money has no bearing on the death of a thing. Plenty of things have died after large amounts of time and money have been invested. All around the pedia things are falling apart. Increased vandals, decreasing editors, decreasing RFA's, WikiProjects being abandoned, stress levels rising due to the increased workload on the reduced workforce. Arbcom getting more and more power by the minute, etc. The reason I agree that Misplaced Pages is dying is 2 fold: A lack of strategic vision for the project and a failure by the community to do the right thing too often.

On the first, we as editors and the foundation itself just let the pedia meander along with no vision of where it should go or how it should get their.

The second is really more critical. We run off veteran editors over petty issues like telling them they can't be trusted after years of faithful service and potential for years more. We run off new editors because they didn't instantly learn the thousands of rules and they make a mistake, so we indefinately block them. Even worse, in cases where we don't agree we can't simply undo it and give the editor another chance. This more often turns a good faith editor into a vandal. Its nearly impossible to do a dozen edits these days without someone complaining about something and meaningful or not we are forced to cater to it until we get so frustrated we either give up editing or explode on the editor who wouldn't listen to reason in the first place. Largely because anything goes. Over standardization is a bad thing, but standardizing some things is not. There is also the discouraging elitist attitude between many of the admins and the non admin editors. This is just a short list, there are plenty more. But I concur with the original poster, Misplaced Pages is dying and I for one unfortunately feel like no one or too few have the political will or the influence to do whats right or what needs to be done. Those that do won't including Jimbo who has even said lately that he will be relinquishing his powers. Personally I think he sees the writing on the wall and is trying to distance himself from Misplaced Pages before it implodes. Leaving now gives him some deniability (it was doing fine before I left, its not my fault). 108.28.162.125 (talk) 13:49, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with 108.28.162.125 (talk · contribs). Misplaced Pages's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness—it's a volunteer run project. Without volunteers, it doesn't run—and we've been losing volunteers for years. The chart I posted above shows that there's a lot of work to be done before we are a high-quality encyclopedia. We've just scratched the surface. Who is going to improve our articles? Of course the answer is volunteers, but we are running out of them. That is a problem we need to fix if we ever want to be a quality encyclopedia. 64.40.54.59 (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

BTW, the WYSIWYG editor that everybody mentions is mw:VisualEditor in case anybody is curious. 64.40.54.59 (talk) 18:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know whether Misplaced Pages is dying, though it does seem grinding to a halt. The machinery of Misplaced Pages has become clogged by a terminally dysfunction admin system. Very few editors actually build content on Misplaced Pages these days, and the ones that do are largely invisible and demoralised. Misplaced Pages is now a playground for self promotional users who make minuscule content contributions, and are here to control others.

A functional admin system would have one core goal: to support and facilitate the work of content building. Misplaced Pages does the opposite. It doesn't take long before able new content builders realize the only perceived value they have on Misplaced Pages is as fodder for the above control group. A well known group of hard line blocking admins are allowed to function as front line shock troops. This group leaves a trail of wreckage in their wake with their indefinite blocks and indifference to the humiliation and pain they are responsible for. The damage this group does to Misplaced Pages goes far beyond the effects on the editors they directly attack. Spectators are chilled all round Misplaced Pages, and the real damage can only be guessed at.

One of the most dysfuction myths being used to dismantle Misplaced Pages is the quixotic idea that users who pass a RfA have "the trust of the community". There is a very small, self selecting group who are responsible for most of the votes at RfAs. Users who pass a RfA have only the trust of this group, which includes few real content builders. There is no voice on Misplaced Pages, or on pages like this, for content builders. Unless this can be turned round, there is no future for Misplaced Pages. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the admins and some high edit count editors are responsible for chasing others away. I have had first hand experience of the irrational behaviour of admins. I tried to give it all up because the politics made it al too hard but I see WP as being too important to let the behaviour of the few ruin something that is useful to the many. As for WP grinding to a halt, I don't agree. The graph to the right (from 2011 admittedly - will try and get an update) shows that the number of days between every 10 million edits is about constant. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

By "grinding to a halt" I was referring to improvements in the real content of Misplaced Pages. Your graph indicated nothing about the quality of the edits. There is little sign that the hectoring, promenading and dramas being played out on the notice boards are diminishing. --Epipelagic (talk) 03:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Yep. Point taken. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Another metaphor

I am not in agreement with Jorge on many of his statements, but I do feel that Misplaced Pages is not going in the right direction. However, I believe that greater editorial control, combined with a more welcoming user interface and less convoluted and more centralized governance, as well as active steps to engage new editors, will both allow us to attract quality editors to our site and retain experienced ones (reaching out on social media, ie with Facebook "Like" buttons designed for user privacy, will also help in this regard). However, let me bring up a quote (see levée en masse:

"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old lint into linen; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic." At the present time we have too many proverbial old men on Misplaced Pages, on both sides; one group, as mentioned earlier, is the self-selecting group which constantly argues about issues on policies which have little relation to the work of the average editor; another group of old men is those like Jorge Stolfi, who genuinely petition for the cause of the encyclopedia rather than for individual gain in an online community. (As I stated, I do not endorse many of Stolfi's specific proposals, but feel that he is genuinely trying to help and admire him for that.) But without the proverbial young and married men, the women, and the children, the efforts of the old men would be useless. With that, I believe that Wikipedians, in addition to doing genuine policy reform, should try to cast off the roles of old men to the greatest extent possible and take the roles of the others. Old men are necessary insofar as they are catalysts for improvement; however, the remainder of the population is the one which actually does the work. If those groups which chronically argue and contribute to our downward spiral should instead focus on adding, improving, and maintaining content, our fall into the black hole will be averted. But at some point, we'll reach the event horizon if we don't act, and it's getting harder by the minute to escape from it. Wer900 • talk 05:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

What Misplaced Pages works on the most

Using the numbers from Special:Statistics, we can determine where the writing efforts of Wikipedians are used the most.

Quality	Number	Percent of all pages
FA	4,371	0.015%
FL	1,790	0.006%
A	1,159	0.004%
GA	17,685	0.060%
B	85,671	0.291%
C	139,453	0.473%
Start	938,704	3.184%
Stub	2,271,070	7.704%
List	110,002	0.373%
Unassessed	480,047	1.628%
Non-article Pages	25,430,343	86.262%
Total Pages	29,480,295	100.000%

Ahhh. 86% on non-article space. That sounds about right. 64.40.54.132 (talk) 18:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

If it's calculated by the amount of text changed/added/subtracted, then it makes perfect sense, when one consider how small the large majority of edits are -- hell not to many edits will be even as long as this comment. Ah I see, that's just NUMBER OF PAGES. Nothing to do with number of edits. As described below, there's absolutely nothing weird about that number. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:19, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Er, that's number of pages, rather than number of edits. And your interpretation is skewed by a lack of understanding of what those numbers actually mean. First, every article on Misplaced Pages potentially has an associated talk page, on which editors discuss and debate how to improve that article. On some small articles the talk page will be tiny or nonexistent, but most articles have them. Any article that has been 'rated' (featured, good, start, class B, whatever) will have a talk page where the rating template appears. In other words, if Misplaced Pages were all articles and nothing else, it would only show up as 50% 'articles'—because each article would have a talk page that falls into your 'non-article pages' category.

Second, more extensive or contentious articles often have extensive associated talk page discussion, to the point where older talk page discussion is moved off onto one or more archive pages. The contents of these archives are all directly aimed at improving the articles, but fall into the 'non-article pages' category. For instance, Cancer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has one page of talk, plus five pages of talk archives. United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has one page of active talk and forty-five pages of talk archives. As articles receive more attention and more discussion and more improvement, their associated discussion pages swell and multiply—again increasing the number of 'non-article pages' that nevertheless directly contribute to directly building the encyclopedia.

Third, the 'non-article pages' count includes all redirect pages. Our article on cancer, for instance, has more than forty different redirects pointing to it, including things like malignant neoplasm, cancerous, cancer (disease), invasive cancer, and so forth.

Fourth, templates all fall into 'non-article pages'. At the bottom of our article on cancer, there are two navigational templates that help our readers find more information: Template:Tumors and Template:Carcinogen.

Put all those pieces together, and what do you get? For cancer, we have one article, six pages of talk and associated archives, more than forty redirects, and at least a couple of templates. In other words, 98% of the pages in question would fall into your 'non-article pages' category, but all of those pages and edits are actually directly aimed at improving the article and how it fits into the encyclopedia as a whole. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the statistics! However the analysis is not that simple. There are also *many* edits to article pages that do not add any real contents (like adding tags and categories, enforcing minute style rules, etc.). I would bet that the percentage of such edits is now quite high. It would be nice to look into a sample of a 100 random edits and tabulate those. I will try to do that... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Well, I looked at 186 consecutive edits in the "Recent Changes" list, spanning about 2 minutes.

Here is the tabulation BY NAME SPACE:

 +-----+----------------+-----+------
! Tag ! Space          ! Num ! Bytes
+-----+----------------+-----+------
| Art | Article:       | 130 | 20856
| ATk | ArticleTalk:   |  15 |  2045
| Cat | Category:      |   5 |    12
| Ptl | Portal:        |   1 |   215
| Tmp | Template:      |   7 |  5033
| UTk | UserTalk:      |   7 |  3883
| Usr | User:          |  12 | 21738
| WTk | WikipediaTalk: |   5 |   590
| Wik | Misplaced Pages:     |   4 |  2437
+-----+----------------+-----+------
|     | TOTAL          | 186 | 56809
+-----+----------------+-----+------

It may not look so bad: - 130 out of 186 edits in Article space. But I looked at what exactly were those edits, here is the breakdown BY TYPE OF EDIT:

+-----+-----------------+-----+------
! Tag ! Edit type       ! Num ! Bytes
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
| V3  | ArticEdit/Val=3 |   5 |  3156
| V2  | ArticEdit/Val=2 |  32 | 11633
| V1  | ArticEdit/Val=1 |  34 |  2371
| V0  | ArticEdit/Val=0 |  26 |  4403
| Bg  | BugReport       |   1 |   704
| Rb  | RobotNote       |   1 |  1232
| Bu  | Bureaucracy     |  13 |  2691
| Ca  | Category        |   7 |    81
| De  | Deletionism     |   1 |  1535
| Di  | LinkDisamb      |  10 |   396
| Ec  | EditorConflict  |   4 |  1855
| Er  | EditorErrors    |   8 |    98
| Nv  | Navbox          |   8 |   335
| St  | StubTags        |   4 |    74
| Tg  | Tags            |   2 |   905
| Tp  | Template        |   1 |  4747
| Us  | UserSpace       |   6 | 17354
| Uv  | UndoVandalism   |  11 |  2928
| Va  | Vandalism       |   2 |   129
| Wp  | Wikiproject     |  10 |   182
+-----+-----------------+-----+------
|     | TOTAL           | 186 | 56809
+-----+-----------------+-----+------

I will try to explain this table better tomorrow. Briefly, "ArticEdit/Val=3" is an edit to the article proper, that adds about one paragraph of useful nontrivial information; "ArticEdit/Val=2" adds just a little (a name in a list, a line in paragraph; "ArticEdit/Val=1" adds no information but fixes spelling or grammar of a few words; "ArticEdit/Val=0" is purely cosmetic (spaces, ref format, etc.) "Bureaucracy" is page protection/unprotection, tag removal, etc; "Category" is category frobnication; "LinkDisamb" is disambiguation of wikilinks; "EditorConflict" is complaints between editors; EditorErrors is users who tried to edit but failed because they did not know the syntax; "Navbox" is fixing navboxes or adding them to pages; "StubTags" is replacement of a stub tag by another; "UserSpace" is users editing their own pages; "UndoVandalism" is obvious; "Wikiproject" is edits to Wikiproject templates on Talk pages.
I counted as "ArticEdit/Val=n" any edits in users' sandboxes and the like that looked like edits to a draft of a future article.
There were no substantial contributions of new information (that would have been "ArticEdit/Val=4" or more). All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 08:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, some comments on these numbers:

• The survey is not scientifically sound, of course: the variance is very large so one should take at least 10x as many samples scattered over one or two weeks. That's for homework.
• I was pleasantly surprised to see five "Value 3" edits (adding/fixing a line or two of real contents) and 32 "Value 2" edits (adding/fixing a single name or number). I was expecting even less content editing and more "Value 1" (spelling/wording), "Value 0" (formatting/looks), and other non-article edits. However, it still the case that, in that sample, 80% of the edits did not contribute a single bit of information to Misplaced Pages.
• On the other hand, I was disappointed and scared by the lack of any higher-value edits (such as adding a paragraph or more on some aspect of the topic that was not curently covered by the article). The five edits that I counted as "Value 3" were:
  • Added one line to the Timeline of the Syrian civil war (from January 2013);
  • Updated the number of victims in a Current Events entry about bombing in Pakistan;
  • Added two lines to a list of 18th-19th century reports of eruptions of Mount Wrangell;
  • Added three paragraphs to the description of how to play the videogame 1830: Railroads & Robber Barons;
  • Provided a prompt, short and helpful answer to a reader query on the Misplaced Pages:Reference desk/Science about whether elk can catch rabies.
• The 32 "Value 2" edits above (added/fixed a single significant word, table entry or number) include two edits to ArticleTalk pages that discussed article contents (rather than formatting or policies) and two edits by users who were obviously working on drafts in their sandboxes. The other 28 "Value 2" edits break down as follows: Movie/TV trivia (3), Sports trivia (3), Album trivia (3), Modern books (3), Obscure lists (3), Fictional character (1), Living politician (1), Papal candidate (1), Miscellaneous (10).
• The 34 "Value 1" article edits above break down as follows: Edits to unimportant names or dates, not backed by references, that may actually be "Value 2" but may also be vandalism/errors (5); Inappropriate additions such as opinions, spam-links, adverts, and personnel listings (9); minor spelling, grammar, and wording fixes, not always for the better (18), Non-helpful contributions to content discussions in Article Talk (2).
• The 26 "Value 0" article edits break down as follows: Fiddling with markup and spacing (5), Pointless replacement or reordering of words/data (6), Changes to field names in tables and infoboxes (3), Fixing errors in markup and template calls (3), Superfluous or invisible observations (2), Replacing external links by specialized link-producing templates (2), Policy and formatting discussions in Talk pages (2), Pointless sectioning (1), Robot adding "title=" field to web refs (1), Un-piping wikilinks (1).
• Of the 186 edits, 31 (17%) were exclusively related to Misplaced Pages features that, as far as I can tell, have zero or negative value: WikiProjects (10), Navboxes (8), Categories (7), Stub tags (4), and Article-side editorial tags (2). Furthermore, even if these features were useful, almost all of those 31 edits were quite silly. The 10 WikiProject-related edits updated the "importance" field in the Project template of the Talk page of individual soccer players, often from blank to "low". Five of the seven Category edits were due to a category "Bla bla World War One" having been renamed "Bla bla World War I". Six of the eight Navbox-related edits added a "collapsible" option to various navboxes related to South Africa. And all four stub-related edits changed a generic "bio-stub" tag into "colombia-footy-bio-stub", "India-royalty-stub", etc..
• But the number I found most surprising and worrisome was the "EditorErrors" (8). One was just a typo. The other seven were:
  • Two novice editors tried to fake section headers with boldface instead of ==...==. That's puzzling because the latter is so easy to understand. But perhaps they clicked the Section Edit button, and therefore got an edit window without any example of ==...== that they could have learned from.
  • Two novice editors tried to edit infoboxes, but messed up the brackets and other syntax.
  • One editor tried to update a logo image in an infobox, but replaced it with a non-existent image name. The original image name was something like "Blabla logo color.jpg", with spaces instead of underscores. He replaced it with something like "Blaba logo 2013.jpg". Maybe he thought that the image would be updated automagically?
  • One editor tried to improve the looks of the text by adding two spaces of indentation to each paragraph. You can guess what happened.
  • One editor added a line at the bottom of the article, "THIS ARTICLE WAS LAST EDITED ON ...".

So, in less than 2 minutes we had half a dozen frustrated novice editors....

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:02, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

As long as your attitude is that making Misplaced Pages articles clearer, better written, or easier to navigate is somehow lacking in value, I'm afraid it's difficult to take you seriously. It's like saying that the only value of librarians is in buying books. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixing typos and grammar errors does have value; but small compared to adding information and improving clarity on a larger scale (reorganizing material across sections and articles, condensing, expanding, etc.). We have 2 million stubs, perhaps another 2 million bad articles, millions of red links, and uncountably many missing articles; Misplaced Pages should try convince people to work on those gaps rather than on formatting.
Navboxes, categories, stub tags and WikiProject templates have no value precisely because they do not make articles clearer or easier to find, directly or indirectly. Yes, categories are important for physical libraries: because a physical book cannot be in two shelves at the same time, shelves can be 50 yards apart, there is no tool to find books by contents, and there is no way to connect pages of different books. But all 6 million Misplaced Pages articles are instantly accessible to any reader, can be searched by title or by contents, and can be connected in any way one may wish by wikilinks.
My claim is that the alleged (and so far undemonstrated) utility of categories and navboxes can be (and already is) provided at much smaller cost, and much more effectively, by proper use of wikilinks in ordinary articles. Is there any evidence to the contrary?
All the best,

These are interesting statistics, but we should bear in mind that "effort" is not equivalent to "number of edits". I would expect most edits to be trivial (as found), simply because the same amount of effort can produce many more trivial edits than substantial ones, so the former are going to dominate, even if roughly similar numbers of editors are putting their efforts into the two kinds (and especially if trivial edits are being made by automated means). And since both kinds of edit (if done well) contribute to improving Misplaced Pages, I don't see any cause for concern. Victor Yus (talk) 18:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• It does not bother me that there are many small positive edits, such as fixing typos. My gripe is that 60-70% of the edits seems to be purely wasted effort. Misplaced Pages makes content-oriented editors feel like they must work on bureaucratic tasks, e.g. by updating navboxes and adding categories whenever they create a new article on some topic. But those things are time-consuming, difficult, and boring. No wonder those editors are leaving... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I need to challenge several of your claims. Nav boxes (and templates in general) serve a key and important role. Categories are one of the most important features Misplaced Pages has. There are several improvements on my wishlist but for finding related information categories are critical. I and I know others use the category system daily. Werieth (talk) 19:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Obviously there are hundreds if not thousands of editors who think so. But is it true? Are the readers using the category system at all? Are any editors using it for any purpose other than maintaining it? Ditto for navboxes. I would love to see such statistics. (Unfortunately I do not see how I could get them myself.) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Anecdotal evidence isn't much, I know, but I have just today come back from a meeting with a group of historians who, unexpectedly, broke into praise at the mention of footer and sidebar navigational boxes! As to categories, I've definitely observed them being used "in the wild" by readers; they may not be our most-used feature, but they're a useful one for a set of readers. Andrew Gray (talk) 16:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with Jorge Stolfi. The value of Misplaced Pages is in the information it contains. Ease of reading, navigation, etc. are also important, but those things support the information. Without the information, those things have no value. We have 2 million stubs that are easy to navigate, easy to read, well catagorized, but they provide very little useful information to our readers. Improving the information in the 2 million stubs would seem to be far more important than their ease of navigation. 64.40.54.86 (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Are interlanguage links unnecessary now?

Have the interlanguage links been made redundant by the introduction of Wikidata? They all seem to appear to the left of the article even if they're deleted from the wikicode (at least in previews). Can they be removed from the code now?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 01:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

If they still don't exist in the wikicode, how will Wikidata know about the interlanguage links? Will we need to go to wikidata to create them from now on? That wouldn't make any sense. In addition, how will we address issues in the future where interlanguage links are incorrect? Ryan Vesey 02:14, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

IL links can be edited normally. All Wikidata does is store all of them in the same place. And there shouldn't be incorrect links anymore due to that. Yes, you will need to go to Wikidata to create/edit them. There are a few exceptions of course. --Izno (talk) 03:46, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

That's incredibly annoying, where can I find out more about this? Will they be creating a way to modify Wikidata by proxy from Misplaced Pages? Ryan Vesey 03:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one that's confused. I asked some questions this morning at WP:HD#Wikidata. There is some information at WP:AN#Wikidata deployed to the English Misplaced Pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Biddulph (talk • contribs) 03:59, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

... and the answer to your specific question on how to edit the Wikidata is that there is a link labelled "Edit links" at the bottom of the list of language links. Interestingly, if I use this page (VPP) as an example that link doesn't find a relevant Wikidata page, but for most pages with iw links it will lead you to the relevant Wikidata page. - David Biddulph (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Something seems to be broken with the non-mainspace links, but for mainspace articles it should work as long as the item exists. I'm told that a JavaScript tool will be installed locally to allow links to be added, but it (as well as much of the Wikidata site) is under construction. --Rschen7754 06:19, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Reported to bugzilla. Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 06:31, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

There is an additional problem that the Wikidata edit function doesn't work in IE8, though it does in IE9. Apparently a bug cure is awaiting deployment. - David Biddulph (talk) 10:53, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

@Ryan: The whole point of wikidata is a central database, as opposed to having langlinks split up across all projects, and then using an army of bots to transfer them from project to project. Legoktm (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I didn't realize how easy it would be to modify. I just picked a random article and checked the page . I was under the impression that you'd have to dive into some data dump like thing to modify things. This should solve a ton of problems where we have articles with an incorrect interlanguage links that bots edit war to restore. Ryan Vesey 15:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

To go back to the original question, can the interlanguage links on[REDACTED] (those like ]) be removed now?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 14:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, if and only if the Wikidata item exists. If not, its advised you create it yourself using some of the scripts available on Wikidata (d:WD:Tools). Its possible that an interwiki bot may revert you, however we've messaged all bot owners, who have 24h to update their scripts. Legoktm (talk) 15:00, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

However, it would be good not just removing them all in once, contaminating the watchlists, but doing it gradually, when one edits an article for whatever purpose, also to remove the interwiki links.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

As above, there's no urgent need to remove them, so you may as well leave them be unless you're doing some other tidying up, and they'll get removed in time. One important caveat is that the FA/GA link templates are not yet included in Wikidata, so these need to be left in place even if the interwikis themselves are removed. Andrew Gray (talk) 15:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I made a start of a description page for Misplaced Pages at WP:Wikidata. People are welcome to improve it! --Izno (talk) 16:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Subpages don't appear to be disabled

I just created Test/test.

But Misplaced Pages:Subpages says that subpages are disabled in the main namespace.

I was about to update the Misplaced Pages:Tip of the day/February 19 ("When to use subpages"), which states that they are disabled. But when I tried to create a subpage, it worked.

What is going on? The Transhumanist 04:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you see any note below the title like on Talk:9/11? If not, then there is no subpage, but rather a title with a slash in it. Chris857 (talk) 04:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Didn't think of looking for the back link. Thank you. The Transhumanist 05:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Subpages are enabled in every namespace but the article namespace. --Izno (talk) 04:57, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Probably a dumb question, but why can't we have subpages in the article namespace? That would help avoid awkwardly titled forks and articles that are de facto subpages already (filmographies, list of television series episodes, etc.). Evanh2008  05:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

They're cumbersome (they can result in super long titles). And awkward when an article could have two parents, but back links to just one. The Transhumanist 05:20, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:Subpages should give you the background. --Izno (talk) 13:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

It is a sub page but it isn't really a sub page. It isn't disabled so that we can have titles with slashes in them. If you make a real sub page it will be deleted. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:13, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

More to the point, I think: it is disabled so that we can have titles with slashes in them (without the pages with those titles being treated as subpages). As noted above, in the Talk: space this isn't corrected, so Talk:9/11 is treated as a subpage of Talk:9. Victor Yus (talk) 12:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

One of the absolutely genial ideas of Misplaced Pages was the flat article name space. It saves people from the temptation of organizing articles into trees. Articles should be linked by wikilinks, and each should stand on its own; no topic should be declared "sub-topic" of another.
Facts, things, people, and ideas do not have a tree structure. Our compulsion to hammer them into trees may be the best proof yet that Darwin was right... 8-) --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Do "plot summaries" get a pass from WP:Verifiability core policy?

I was not previously aware that a plot summary for a fictional work, described on Misplaced Pages, has a special dispensation and need not follow standard Misplaced Pages policy on verifiability and original research. I was so informed by an editor on this matter about a month ago, on the Talk page here: Talk:The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sources_for_claims_in_the_plot_summaries.

Once that editor gained consensus support for that position, I backed away and accepted that as the consensus for that particular article, with respect to plot summaries. That was about a month ago. It seemed a bit odd, but I did not follow up to see about WP policy for plot summaries in general. But now, I'd like to see about that concept more generally.

My question here is broader: Is it really the case that there is a WP guideline or WP policy somewhere that documents this as a general policy for plot summaries? Something that says Misplaced Pages editors may freely write plot summaries for fictional works without regard to WP:V, WP:OR and WP:RS? If so, can someone please point me to that policy or guideline. Thanks. N2e (talk) 00:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Plot summaries is simply the worst areas on Misplaced Pages by far - So bad there have been news article written about them over the years. For some odd reason they are ok with OR in them.Moxy (talk) 00:50, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

We don't accept OR in plot summaries, and that's never been the case. Yes, they are "unsourced" but the assumption on plot summaries is that the work itself is the source required for WP:V. If one can find sources beyond the work to support the plot summary, that would be great to add them too. It is also not a bad idea to drop "placeholder" references to the primary work to help guide where actions are taking place if the work is long enough, but these are far from required.

That said, as outlined at WP:WAF plot summaries must not attempt intepretion or synthesis from the primary work. If a character's motive is not clear, we can't fill in that gap in writing it. We can summarize appropriately, but that's it. If one sees synthesis - in other words what is not easily apparent from a causal first read of the work - that needs to be marked and tagged and removed appropriately. --MASEM (t) 00:54, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Plot summaries most definitely do need to pass WP:Verifiability and WP:NOR. A proper plot summary will stick to purely descriptive (non-OR) statements that are verifiable by the work itself (thus passing both policies). It is important to note the difference between plot summary and plot analysis (or analytical commentary about the plot). Analysis needs to be supported by a secondary source. It is also important to note information can be verifiable without actually having a source cited in the article. In the case of plot summaries, we can assume that the citation is to the work itself, and therefor there is no need to actually include a citation in the article. Blueboar (talk) 01:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Plot summaries can be nightmares in numerous ways; generally (especially with less-known literature), the book is the only possible source for much of the information. Content writing standards, of course, always apply, no matter the subject. dci | TALK 01:38, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, if what you say is true than plot summaries get a dispensation from WP:V standards for inline citation. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:05, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm basically echoing what Blueboar said above. dci | TALK 02:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:V doesn't require an inline citation for everything, and never has. See WP:MINREF for the actual minimum requirements. WP:V requires that it must be possible for a sufficiently motivated and sufficiently resourced editor to provide a citation if necessary. It does not require that any be added except in three specific, defined instances (and BLP adds a fourth instance). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

For everything? No, and that's not what was said. The Policy standards for inline citation are laid out in WP:unsourced in WP:V. Where the dispensation comes in is that apparently, it is a priori rule that there is nothing likely to be challenged in plots, which is not how we treat any other text. That's fine (and apparently its felt there is good reason for that), but it's not like it's riskless, because with other text we ask editors to be aware of the likely to be challenged and to inline cite (so they focus on getting detail right) but the plot writer writes under the assumption that no cite is needed blowing past all that. (And one just hopes that does not turn into people arguing it can't be challenged and settled in the normal way). Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is no such rule or dispensation. "Likely to be challenged" is defined by the editors' best judgment about whether there is a >50% (i.e., "likely", using any standard dictionary definition) chance of someone actually challenging it. Basic plot summaries are, according to our collective experience, distinctly unlikely to be challenged. Complex plot summaries sometimes are challenged, and contentious plot summaries fairly often are challenged. So what matters is exactly what you write for your plot summary, not simply the fact that it's a plot summary. If you summarize Goldilocks and the Three Bears in a way that is easily recognizable to anyone who's read the fairy tale, then you should not think it likely to have your summary challenged—just like if you type equally obvious statements into other articles, like "Heart disease is a disease that affects the heart" or "Lions are a kind of mammal". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You just announced a specific rule for this particular kind of text: "Basic plot summaries are, according to our collective experience, distinctly unlikely to be challenged." When we summarize any other text, there is no such a priori assumption for a specific source material. So, summarizing plots is different (according to our collective experience) you say. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The cited "rule" is not specific to plot summaries. Read the essay Misplaced Pages:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue. While it's not policy, it states the reasons why editors sometimes turn a blind eye towards strict interpretations of WP:V (mainly to avoid disruptive, POINTy edit wars and to keep over-citing and over-tagging away). Those reasons apply to all cases where common sense indicates that direct inline citation is not needed. Another case would be explanations written by Wikipedians that reflect facts in a field of study that not necessarily can be found in sources word by word (nor "assertion by assertion"), but there's editorial judgement that they still correctly describe the general knowledge. In such cases, only outstanding assertions are likely to be challenged. Diego (talk) 12:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

That's not analogous because the summarizer of a plot does not "fill in gaps" left by the author of the source text. If they did, the summarizer would be making up the plot and not summarizing it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:52, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

That's not a "rule", Alan. That's a statement of fact. If the facts were to change (i.e., we started seeing a lot of people adding {{fact}} tags to simple plot summaries), then we would start citing the plot summaries inline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the issue is that a plot summary should be of the same nature as a statement like "the sky is blue". Many articles need a plot summary, and it is not feasible to restrict them to fully verified text, although the text shold be verifiable in principle, and should follow normal rules regarding things like WP:DUE. An unusual claim in a plot summary should be removed, and there should be an explanation or reference to justify reinclusion. If the level of referencing wanted for article text were required for plot summaries, we would either have very few summaries, or we would have a lot of copyvios where a published review had been plagiarised. Johnuniq (talk) 02:12, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

A plot summary (which has only "descriptive statements", and not "interpretation", in the language of WP:NOR), can be cited to the work in question. There is no exception about the requirement for citations - if someone really complains, then we can just add a citation to the work itself, which is acceptable as a primary source for purely descriptive statements. Now, in practice, the source is so obvious that people may not bother adding the citation, but if anyone wants to be fussy it can be added very easily. It would be silly to remove a descriptive plot summary merely because no source was cited - just add the source... — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:14, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

What happens when someone says a plot summary is wrong and there is a disagreement? In the non plot case, a citation would be the way to settle it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:19, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Do the same thing you would do it the obvious citation was added: read the book or watch the movie and find out. This is no different than what would happen if people disagreed about whether a non-plot citation was accurate. The key point is that that citation itself is not what verifies correctness - it is the act of checking the citation that verifies it. A citation is only the means to verification, it does not verify anything by its mere presence. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:23, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

No. In a normal citation we require a page number, so we definitely do not say, oh somewhere in that book it says that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:28, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Right, but the prerequisite for having any credibility when editing an article about a book or movie is... reading the book or watching the movie. If you haven't done that you are in no position to "challenge" the plot summary in the first place. If you still think that something is not in the book after reading it, raise it for discussion on the talk page of the article. The first step in source based research is the RTFS: read the source first. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:31, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, if it wasn't clear, we're talking about a disagreement between people who have read the book. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:39, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is not what I was thinking of. If someone has read the book, and they didn't see something, they should ask on the talk page (as part of AGF) and then, if nobody can satisfy their doubt, they should remove the claim from the article after a reasonable wait (at least a few days). So for things that are uncontroversial - because everyone who reads the book agrees - we don't force citations to be added. But if someone reads the book and can't find a claim, then they are justified in asking about it. The same is true even for claims that do have a citation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

And do remember that if there's ambiguity and parts open to interpretation, one can simply give a little more detail to explain that something is ambiguous. For instance, if the fate of Character X is left ambiguous, once could say something along the lines of "the book does not clarify the fate of character X, only stating her pack was found three days later" (and if a reliable source puts the evidence together and reaches a conclusion, you could cite that source for more information). Adam Cuerden 03:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There is no required format for citations. If I write that the final scene in Mystery Movie X reveals that the butler did it, that is a citation. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• Assuming the Butler did do it, yes. Featured and good articles on films and novels (like Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, Atheis, Ruma Maida, and Mother India) have the plot summary sourced (but not cited) to the work in question. If a direct quotation is provided, like at Frank's Cock, then a citation should be given. Otherwise, no. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

If you think a plot summary is inaccurate, it is perfectly acceptable to rewrite it... to make it more accurate. If someone objects... or reverts your rewrite, go to the talk page and discuss it. Challenge the accuracy of the plot summary on the talk page. You can say something like... "Our plot summary says the Butler did it... but I read the book, and on page 345 it actually says that the maid did it... did I miss something? Is our plot summary accurate? Could someone give me the page in the book where it says that the butler did it?" Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

As the editor who kicked off this active conversation a half-day ago, I'm still interested in two specific questions:

• Is there a WP guideline or WP policy re WP:V/WP:RS/WP:NoOriginalResearch and plot summaries? Is there somewhere that documents what I read as the general view of the commenters above: for plot summaries, it is "okay to assume the source is the book/film/work" as a general policy, and no citation is generally required, etc.? And furthermore, it is okay for the Original Research to be done by the readers of the book or the viewers of the film, who then come over, as Misplaced Pages editors, to write the plot summary on Misplaced Pages? And perhaps that, as one commenter stated above, it would then not be acceptable for any Misplaced Pages editor who has not read the book (or seen the film, etc.) to request a citation since only the small circle of fans for that work can have a say in what Misplaced Pages has to say about that particular plot summary.
• When a dispute arises on a Talk page of a particular fictional work related to Verifiability/OriginalResearch issues, where would be the place to request comment, where one might find a mix of WP editors who perhaps have opinions on both sides of the verifiability debate, but to help bring in other editors who are not merely fans of the particular fictional work in question.

— Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:41, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• • It's been long in practice but I know I couldn't find any policy that I can point to that says "the work is implicitly the source for plot summary". But very few question that.
  • I think you're confusing "lack of sourcing" for "original research", in general. Summarizing any source without introducing OR is standard practice for all editing, writing a plot summary is no different. The argument that only a small number of editors that have read the work can have a say exists for any topic where the source may be difficult to get but still available (meeting WP:V). Verifiability is met as long as the work has been published.
  • If the talk page of an article about the work cannot resolve the summary issues, standard dispute process resolution steps should be taken. But the talk page should always be the first step. --MASEM (t) 15:58, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
• "Is there a WP guideline or WP policy re WP:V/WP:RS/WP:NoOriginalResearch and plot summaries? Is there somewhere that documents what I read as the general view of the commenters above: for plot summaries" The guideline for film (Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Film#Plot) states;

Since films are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source.

I don't know the others off the top of my head, but there was one guideline that said the infobox for the article was to be considered the citation for the plot section, or something like that. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 17:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

• Found it at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Television#Plot section

Since the episode is the primary source and the infobox provides details about it, citing the episode explicitly in the plot summary's section is not necessary.

Hope that helps. 64.40.54.4 (talk) 17:57, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

That said if you find something that is either does not meet the criteria or being directly mentioned in the work of fiction or not directly stated but extremely obvious (saying that two characters are fighting due to the fact that they are both trying to punch each other in the face) then it would be a could very well be a case or original research and it may need to be removed. However, it would be best not to go too far and start removing the painfully obvious. The best approach would be after seeing the work in question asking yourself it there plausible concerns regarding the accuracy of the summary, if not it would be best to leave it alone--174.93.160.57 (talk) 00:30, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Do away with Harvard referencing

I understand that "establishing a house citation style" is listed at Misplaced Pages:Perennial proposals; however, I believe my proposal does not necessarily involve the establishment of a house citation style. The overwhelming majority of articles in Misplaced Pages use some form of footnote citation style. This still allows a wide degree of variations. I would like to propose that we commit to some form of linked footnotes. Those articles that currently use parenthetical citations can be modified as editors come across them. Ryan Vesey 03:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Have you discussed this with the WikiProjects that primarily use Harvard referencing? If not, it seems a bit premature to bring it here. – Philosopher  21:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)-

Can someone point me to an article or WikiProject that uses Harvard referencing? I've been searching but have been unable to find one. Ryan Vesey 21:23, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Take you pick from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Harvard_citation. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Am I entirely confused as to what Harvard citations are? I assumed Harvard citations and parenthetical citations were the same thing. I checked two articles from the list you gave me Albert Einstein and Anadyr River and neither used parenthetical citations. Ryan Vesey 03:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

See Parenthetical referencing. It is the likes of {Smith 1936) and (Jones 2001) in the text. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Sharply oppose. The great merit of Harvard referencing is that explanatory notes become clearly and automatically distinguished from citation notes. Footnote citation has a mechanism for making the distinction (using "note 1" instead of "1" as the superscript), but unfortunately, people don't use it enough. With Harvard, the distinction is clear and automatic — every footnote is explanatory and all citations are parenthetical. --Trovatore (talk) 21:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Harvard referencing is by far the best and most readable citation style. Exclusive use of footnote referencing is just sloppy editing. I am not going to stop using it even if this proposal is passed. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Harvard referencing are not that bad = its the list defining refs that cause us so many problems. Every day a group of us look at Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and try to fix all the problrms - oh look Karl Marx there again for the 100 time,,, get rid of this crap format,Moxy (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

List defining refs are a separate issue. I have struggled with them myself. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Sharply oppose I find Harvard referencing an efficient method. — Maile (talk) 21:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:REFTOOLBAR is even more efficient. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• oppose Harvard is a well-defined and well-used style.

As to List-defined references, that feature was not added just for the hell of it; it was requested multiple times. --— Gadget850 (Ed) 21:52, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

What does my proposal have to do with List-defined references? Ryan Vesey 21:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Harvard citations are familiar to many new editors and and can be used without learning a bunch of arcane Misplaced Pages markup. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:REFTOOLBAR is even easier to use. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Strong support for getting rid of the Harvard referencing BUT lets do it in conjunction with tidying up all the referencing styles. Some work may be happening behind the scenes already? Another ting, should we use the new Wikidata initiative for all of our ISBN, doi, PMID, etc data? BTW, as a general use encyclopedia I feel that Harvard referencing should not be used. It is good for academia but not for general consumption. And please realise that this is 21st century internet, not 19th century dead tree format. And another thing, doing the mouse hover over the ref link now brings up the ref in full (or highlights the entry in the reflist). It makes Harvard referencing completely redundant. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

  Redundant? Not at all. The most important merit of Harvard is the extremely clear distinction between citations and explanatory notes. If we were to make a prescriptive change to citation styles, the best one we could do is: Never never never mix citations and explanatory notes. Each must have its own section, and it must be obvious to the reader which is which without having to go down to the notes sections themselves. --Trovatore (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

We can, and do, that without the old school Harvard system. BTW, I agree on separating notes and refs (I assume you mean notes like this change I had done: ) -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

We can, but Harvard makes it clearer, because superscripts are used for only one purpose rather than two. --Trovatore (talk) 04:37, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

True, but we could standardise the superscripts so that the notes are alphabetical and refs are numerical. I think that is a system sometimes used. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:40, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose This is often the best choice for newbies who are creating their first articles, because it doesn't involve complex wiki markup.
  Also, Ryan, I see a proposal above to "do this", but not a single explicit reason why it would be desirable to do this. Do you have one? Is the statement of fact that ~70% of articles use ref tags for some purpose (another ~25% are tagged as unsourced, the last time I checked) supposed to be the reason?
  I just went through a dispiriting discussion at Breast cancer awareness a little while ago, in which people asserted that changing from parens to SFNs would magically show them which phrases were supported by the cited sources, and which were ideas discussed in the immediately preceding paragraphs that could then be called "unverifiable" and removed (because readers can't possibly remember something if you've just spent an entire, fully cited section talking about it). I didn't hear any good reason for the change there, just some nonsense and a good dose of IDONTLIKEIT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

It is true that newbies may find it easier to use Harvard referencing but it is easy for newbies to use plain text instead of wiki markup as well. Old hand editors are forever cleaning up after newbies so why not clean up the refs? We are in desperate need of standardisation for referencing and we should use that which is now widely used - i.e. not Harvard. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:27, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

'Why are we in desperate need of standardization? You seem to be a big fan of standardization (I'm remembering the flap over {{maths rating}}) but my opinion in general is that standardization is overrated. Why is your preference better than mine? --Trovatore (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Not so much your standard or my standard but the standard of whatever the community decides which should be one that gives the best Reader Experience. Also, if we have standardisation all editors know exactly what to do instead of the current system where every corner of WP has its own style and whoa betide someone who comes in and changes it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You misunderstand — my preference is against standardization, rather than for a particular standard. --Trovatore (talk) 05:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh. Sorry. So now I have to ask you: Why? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Because different subject areas are best suited to different styles. Misplaced Pages is many things to many people (essay). There's not much point in putting expository notes in a Pokemon article, so the advantage of Harvard refs is lost there. But in highly technical articles, they're very useful. --Trovatore (talk) 06:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that WP is many things to many people but that does not mean we have to use Harvard refs. They are archaic and not needed in the Misplaced Pages page format. As alluded by yoy technical articles are written differently, i.e we can actually mention the name and date of the ref in the sentence itself. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Who says they're archaic? --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

They are like sooo 19th century... Old school... (according to Misplaced Pages - Harvard referencing) -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The only relevant thing I see in that article is that they date to the 19th century. That strikes me as having very little to do with whether they're outdated now. What does it even mean for a citation method to be outdated? --Trovatore (talk) 06:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean to say that I reject something because it is old but as I mentioned in my !vote above Harvard refs are archaic because they are fine for paper format but not in the super dooper, whiz bang Misplaced Pages pages. We've got hyperlinks to the refs from the article, we have got info on mouse hover, we've got highlighting of refs o mouse hover. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see that mouse hover is particularly relevant. It shows you the note. So? That's much more useful for explanatory notes than it is for cites. --Trovatore (talk) 07:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

It is better because it shows the complete ref rather than just the author surname and date. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:10, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The only time you need the complete ref is when you actually want to look it up (either to check that the ref says what the article claims it does, or to find out more). If you're already going to go to that much trouble, clicking the Harvard link to get to the actual spot on the page is negligible overhead. --Trovatore (talk) 07:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Question: I am a little confused by the heading. Is "Harvard referencing" meant to include "ref=harv" in combination with templates like {{sfn}}? --Boson (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"Harvard" is anything that results in (Smith 2001, page 13) appearing in the text and the full citation being placed in the ref section. They might or might not be wikilinked. In the simplest version, you just type it out, with no wikilinks.

Shortened footnotes, technically speaking, gives you one of those little blue superscripted numbers, but contrary to assertions above that it gives you the full citation on mouse hover, in the short cite system (which might be created with the sfn template, minus the ref=harv attribute, or might just be typed out like any other citation, except for being much shorter, as seen at Breast_cancer#cite_note-Olson102-112), you only see the short cite (that is, Smith 2001, page 13.) on mouse hover. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Strongly indifferent. The Rule should be: "Use whatever citation style you think is best for the article (but don't fight with other editors about it); feel free to change the style of existing citations (but don't waste your time doing so)." All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Different referencing styles have different features and faults, and I'm not sure the proposal considers those issues.

An article might refer to thirty different sources, or an article might make ten references each to three different sources. Harvard referencing isn't very good in the former because it may introduce a useless level of indirection without any benefit, but it can shine in the latter where the indirection is present to avoid repetition. Look at the many-to-one referencing at FA pi; many of the footnotes consist of just Harvard references with varying page numbers.

In some situations, the identity of the source is significant and should not be buried in a footnote (even if a mouseover would reveal the footnote). Court opinions use parenthetical references because the reader wants to know which source made the statement because that concerns credibility. When fields involve opinion, the speaker is important -- especially when the views are opposing.

Sometimes the speaker is so important that he is mentioned in the text, and Harvard reference templates work well there. See Akaike information criterion that uses Harvard references in both inline text and footnotes.

This matter is a style issue. Does it really matter whether a reference appears in parentheses or a footnote? Both methods suggest skipping over the text if one is not interested in the details. Harvard parenthetical referencing can avoid a level of indirection.

Many articles have a tortured/nonstandard/mixed footnote style. An example is Monty Hall problem. They don't bother me. I do not need to see such articles edited (and possibly broken) to gain a slightly more consistent style. I'm happy that the ref info is there.

If there were one true way to do references, then choosing a house style would be easy.

Glrx (talk) 18:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Example If anyone wishes to see how Harvard Referencing looks in an biographical article, go to Thomas Pynchon. Angryapathy (talk) 19:39, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. If anything, I'd prefer to standardize on using harvard referencing. But barring that, the reasons given for doing away with harvard referencing are thoroughly unconvincing. older ≠ wiser 19:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Article feedback request for comments scheduled to end Thursday, February 21

Hi. This is just a gentle reminder that Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Article feedback is scheduled to wrap up on Thursday, February 21. Any and all editors are encouraged to participate in the discussion. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

User's manuals, spare part catalogues and brochures as sources

Hi! I am working on an article about a quite rare vehicle model from early 1960s. A large part of the information I have is in the user's manual, spare part catalogue and sales brochures - I have got scanned views from an enthusiast who has collected all the available information. But are these valid sources which can be used in Misplaced Pages? I assume there is no problem with the user's manual and spare parts catalogue as they can be regarded as normal books, but how about the brochures? They rarely contain any info about the printing date and place etc. --Gwafton (talk) 12:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You should probably ask this at WP:RSN (our Reliable Sources Noticeboard) rather than here at the Village Pump. One thing they will tell you is that reliability depends on context... in other words, we can not really answer your question without knowing the exact context in which you wish to use these sources. What statements are you trying to make?... what information are you trying to convey? etc. Blueboar (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. The started article is here: User:Gwafton/Sisu K-44 (I will keep it as a user page until it is complete enough for Misplaced Pages). A large part of the technical data is from the manufacturer's brochures, manual and spare part catalogue. What comes to general technical data, as dimensions, weights etc., I can't imagine a more reliable source than the producer. I don't see any problem with the reliability but the question is are brochures appropriate for sources? It is difficult to give any specific info for identifying them. The only info I can type there is the title of the brochure, the publisher (=the producer) and maybe some estimate for the year of printing. The problem is that it is difficult to anyone to check a such source. --Gwafton (talk) 22:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

That will generally be considered an acceptable but self-published source. You can use that just like you would use a website from the manufacturer or an advertisement they ran that said the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for your help. --Gwafton (talk) 10:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Having to rely on user's manuals, spare part catalogues and brochures suggests that the topic may not be sufficiently notable for Misplaced Pages. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:19, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Here are many articles about prototype vehicles for which spare part catalogues, brochures and user's manuals were never even printed. Based on that it would need strong arguments to justify why serial produced vehicle models would not be notable. --Gwafton (talk) 10:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

If notability has been established through other means, but catalogs and brochures are being used to fill in details that can't be found in other sources, I fail to see the problem here. I agree that the brochures and such are not sufficient by themselves to establish notability, but that isn't the question being asked. As mentioned above, such information is equivalent to getting details from a manufacturer's official website. While it certainly is biased information, it is considered a primary source and certainly can be used on Misplaced Pages... within constraints of other primary sources of information. --Robert Horning (talk) 14:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I managed to solve the source issue by kind help of a person who hosts a website dedicated for Sisu vehicles - he has put the brochures visible to anyone (just to tell in case someone is concerned: the copyright is expired). Regarding notability, I became curious - can someone give me an example of a vehicle model that is not notable in terms of Misplaced Pages guidelines? --Gwafton (talk) 22:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

pagerank[REDACTED] search

Does wikipedia's search consider link structure (e.g. page rank) in its ranked list? If yes: Is the link structure internal to just Wiki pages or is influenced by external in-links or out-links? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.121.125.137 (talk) 09:46, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

noindex

I think that user talk pages are automatically noindex but user pages aren't. Assuming that is correct can someone tell me why? RJFJR (talk) 14:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that the noindex is for privacy on the user talk page. On the other hand many users like having their userpage in google.84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that this would be a better question for the VPT boys. As I recall, the User Talk space is noindexed by the software, automagically. Other pages, such as Talk pages for BLPs, are noindexed by template. UltraExactZZ ~ Did 13:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Ampersands should be used between the names of two writers in episode lists of TV shows based on the credits.

I think it would be more appopriate if episode lists of TV shows had ampersands between writing duos since that's how it looks in the credits. If it's alright with most television episode lists, why shouldn't it be alright with the list of Cheers episodes? --StewieBaby05 (talk) 20:16, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

List of... writers/directors/etc.

We gotta do something about the list of these things, like List of Cheers writers and List of Frasier directors. They have no redeeming qualities, and they consist of mere information, violating WP:NOT. Any suggestions? --George Ho (talk) 03:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I would prefer if[REDACTED] didn't have any articles about movies and series. This is not the case however. I don't see aditional damage from a bit of elaboration. You could ignore it and go do something constructive? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 11:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

If there is a list of Cheers or Frasier episodes, the two lists you mention might be merged into those instead. Bjelleklang - talk 11:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I have always thought that an Encyclopedia should not have any stand-alone list articles... the format is simply wrong for an encyclopedia. Listings of things are what Almanacs are for.

However, it is also clear that many of our editors absolutely love to make lists of things. So here is my solution... The foundation should create a sister project (along the lines of Wiktionary and WikiNews) that would give those who want to work on lists a more appropriate venue in which to do so... a WikiAlmanac. Blueboar (talk) 14:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Read the Five Pillars again. There's more to Misplaced Pages than just an encyclopedia. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:14, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is currently more to Misplaced Pages than "just" a traditional encyclopedia... I am saying that I think this should be changed... by creating a sister project. Blueboar (talk) 15:35, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Well you're wrong, because much of the time the lists are quite encyclopedic. Trying to get rid of things such as List of compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky or even List of LucasArts games is extremely laughable. This is core info, they just have their own articles because of size. In a 'traditional' encyclopedia this info would be there, just it wouldn't look like it was separate given the medium. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hear hear, Melodia. There's a reason we have featured lists; these subjects, which may not lend themselves to full prose articles, can be entirely encyclopedic. List of films of the Dutch East Indies, for example, contains several entries for which an article is unlikely to ever be created, as much of the documentation has been lost. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:14, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

What is so laughable about suggesting that a list of Tchaikovsky compositions would be more appropriately presented in an almanac. I was not proposing that we "get rid of" anything... I am just suggesting that we house it in the appropriate venue. If the foundation created a WikiAlmanac project, I would expect the two projects would be intimately connected. Misplaced Pages articles would contain links any relevant almanac list pages, and vise-versa. Featured lists could remain featured lists. No information is lost. It's really just a case of where the information would be hosted. I simply think an almanac is a more appropriate venue for information that is best presented in listified format. No point in telling me: "your wrong" ... because nothing you can say will convince me that I am wrong. Lists are what almanacs are for.Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

And if you want to enforce your opinion that Misplaced Pages should not be an almanac or gazetteer, open an RFC and prepare yourself for heavy opposition. Until policy is changed, you'll find yourself without a leg to stand on. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:47, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

A proper list on these subjects is possible, by providing context specific to these directors. An episode list is for the episodes, not the directors, and shouldn't be counted as one. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

It should be a basic criteria for list articles that the entities listed should be notable as demonstrated through non-trivial coverage in reliable source.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

We have WP:NLIST, which also includes provisions for splits if the main article gets too long. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:12, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

There's also WP:SAL. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Take them to WP:AfD, if you get consensus to delete, then you can come back here with a suggested policy to prohibit their creation in the future. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 18:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd love to, but I need a logical rationale to have them deleted. I could nominate just one, right? Or more? --George Ho (talk) 01:58, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually that was sarcasm. But yes if you really feel they are inappropriate for Misplaced Pages, take the one that you feel most strongly about to AfD. Logic often has little or no bearing there, so just make your best argument. If there is a policy that supports your position mention it. If there are policies that are counter to position have a rebuttal planned to use if needed. Try not to get overly involved in the discussion. Make your argument and let it stand, not everyone is going to agree with you, that is fine. If someone votes keep with a rationale that you don't have a strong rebuttal for leave it alone. Most importantly keep this in mind, don't let yourself get dragged in to defending your suggestion or your ideas. put it out there, give brief, strong and infrequent rebuttals. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:35, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Right now, I guess proposing a merger is the best way to go. --George Ho (talk) 11:44, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Boy, look at List of EastEnders crew members. It has directors, writers, and staff. --George Ho (talk) 06:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

These lists are pointless -- especially that last one -- but again, that doesn't make ALL lists wrong for WP. For the writers lists, the info should be on the episode list, and if someone really wanted to be able to see who wrote what at a glace they could turn said list into a sortable table. For the crew members....that's just ridiculous, as WP isn't IMSLP. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

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