Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.
This is not the place to resolve disputes over how a policy should be implemented. Please see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for how to proceed in such cases.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequently rejected or ignored proposals.

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SourceForge

• sourceforge.net: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Given SourceForge's history of adding advertising "malware" to downloads, should we blacklist it and send {{SourceForge}} for deletion? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Some notable projects may still be using SF for their project's hosting, though could be providing clean downloads elsewhere. I would say that if this is not the case, then yes, the SF link should be removed and use the more official one, but I don't think we can readily blacklist SF. I wouldn't be against it, just that we should use caution in doing so. --MASEM (t) 15:50, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I would oppose blacklisting, but nominating {{SourceForge}} for deletion seems like an excellent idea. Especially if we replace it with some sort of notice cautioning editors about why we think SF links should be avoided. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:52, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

@Beetstra: and other editors familiar with WT:SPAM should know about this discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know in how far this has been spammed. I would say that these links basically fail our inclusion standards per WP:NOT and WP:EL - We would link to the official site of a piece of software, an article may mention that it is available on SourceForge, but we do not need to provide the direct download link or a link to their 'site' on SourceForge. Sure, there may be some 'spamming' of this (someone with a COI adding a link to their own download on SourceForge), but no wide scale efforts to have it linked everywhere. I think we should first have it for some time on XLinkBot, and if that turns out to be still a too large a burden on editors to remove the stuff, we might consider further actions. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 03:35, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

SourceForge's behaviour has been rather reprehensible and I personally would view it as a dubious place to host FLOSS software. But Wikipedia is not here to "right great wrongs". If a project continues to use Sourceforge as the host for their project site, we should link to it. This article (and plenty more on Google) note that SourceForge have responded to criticism and have said they won't do any more adware binary bundling. We should link to the official site, but sometimes that official site is on SourceForge, in which case we should link to that. It is really up to the project maintainers to move their hosting away from SourceForge if they are concerned about it. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Policy on opening hours and addresses

Is there a policy on whether or not opening hours should be listed?

Also, is there a policy on listing the physical addresses of each branch of a business or organization?

I thought it would have been discussed before, but have not been able to find any official policy nor essay.

For instance, Lifehouse International Church lists the addresses and service hours for each one of their local churches, is it desirable or should it be removed? Thanks! Jlicy (talk) 03:37, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

This would fall under the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, specifically WP:NOTDIR: "Contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses are not encyclopedic." I would tend to toss service hours and addresses in there as well unless there is some compelling reason to believe those are relevant to understanding the subject (an article about a specific building will include the address, for instance). The Wikipedia article is meant as a resource for people looking to learn about the church, not a resource for people trying to contact them. For that, they can click on the link to the church's own website. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:52, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Out of scope for Wikipedia, I think, but do feel free to add them to OpenStreetMap! Relevant OSM wiki pages: opening hours (and for churches and other places of worship, you might want service times), addresses, phone. —Tom Morris (talk) 16:34, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Hours are normally out of scope, but there are always exceptions. Imagine something that's closely tied to the organisation's identity; the following quote (from an actual article) is appropriate in my mind: Many Steak 'n Shake restaurants are open 24 (hours)/7 (days per week. If you know anything about the chain, you expect that they'll be open around the clock; that's perhaps the biggest part of their identity (aside from their menu and restaurant architecture, of course), and it's not at all a routine schedulling decision. Or imagine that one church's congregations all have worship services at the same time because it's a requirement (again, a part of their identity), while another church's congregations all worship at the same time except for one oddball (a part of the identity, and the oddball is rejecting it). We need to note that these situations are exceptions, because of course the large majority of opening times aren't appropriate. Same with branch locations, because unless they're branches with particularly significant addresses, they should be excluded; we don't need to mention locations for most places, but the addresses of transportation stops (e.g. a list of stations on a subway line) might be appropriate. And finally, when an article deals with one specific place, the address is pretty much always appropriate, at least in the infobox. Nyttend (talk) 00:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOTDIRECTORY - simple listings

Considering common promotional activity in business-related articles, I propose to clarify WP:NOTDIRECTORY with an additional point for specific listings, that are considered unsuitable for articles. I am aware, that some of those cases may be already covered in other guidelines or in project-specific instructions (and have recently asked for clarification at WP:Companies). But these relatively common cases need a more focussed coverage in a central policy.

Suggested new point (feel free to provide tweaks for my English):

7. Simple listings without context information. Examples include, but are not limited to: listings of business alliances, clients, competitors, employees (except CEOs, supervisory directors and similar top functionaries), equipment, estates, offices, products and services, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions. Information about relevant single entries with encyclopedic information should be added as sourced prose. Lists of creative works in a wider context are permitted.

GermanJoe (talk) 13:24, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Seems fair. I'm wondering if we can stated that lists that have been selected or curated by editors to reflect relevant points is fair (what I think the last sentence somewhat captures). --MASEM (t) 14:13, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

That should be covered by "without context information" (but I'd appreciate improvement suggestions). Lists embedded within the article's greater context to illustrate an already existing aspect should be OK (if they are sourced). The proposal aims primarily at unreflected repetition of trivial company information, which should be on the company's homepage, and serves no purpose in an encyclopedia. GermanJoe (talk) 15:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm thinking if there's non-business related lists that would fall into a similar situation that could be included to flesh out the idea here better. For example, with a city, a listing of tourist spots without context would be a problem. We do have to be careful that we would allow things like discographies and filmographies where not necessarily all elements on the list are notable but still encyclopedic too (eg I would not call these "simple listings"). --MASEM (t) 15:53, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Just to note that WP:NOTDIRECTORY does not override the legitimate use of WP:LIST articles to organize information or collect information which may not stand alone as an article by itself. There's a danger that people use something like this as a means to excise useful information at Wikipedia. The main point of WP:NOTDIRECTORY is that Wikipedia does not contain everything merely because you can prove it exists. It should not be expanded to indicate that it would be OK to use it as a rationale to override other well-established uses of indexes, lists, portals, etc. --Jayron32 16:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Noted and agree. But a risk of misuse is inherent in all parts of WP:What Wikipedia is not to a degree (editors' opinions can vary widely about the exact definitions between "vital encyclopedic info" and "trivial clutter"). In unclear cases, common sense and case by case discussions for consensus need to be applied. GermanJoe (talk) 17:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

If anyone has a good suggestion for a wording to exclude common "....graphies" and pure list articles, feel free to share it ;). Note: I added tourist attractions as common case for now, but we need to be careful not to overload the list with too many examples. GermanJoe (talk) 14:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I think a fair argument can be said that a person or group that is notable as a creative person (whether writing, music, acting, etc.) that the list of works is part of that notable even if none of the works themselves are notable (this is very much unlikely to be the case if the person is notable; if anything, that begs if the person themselves is notable). Or another way, nearly every -ology list is going to have at least one or two (if not more) blue-linked entries. It's also that such works are generally finite simply due to being creative output, compared to the examples of the lists above where there's no equivalent limit. I don't know how to easily word this or if it even needs to be worded, beyond noting that such lists are exempt from this part of NOT. --MASEM (t) 14:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd add "services" to the list, since some organizations' "products" are services. This applies to many non-profits, as well as to hospitals and clinics. I appreciate the inclusion of "tourist attractions" since I'm battling one of those at AfC. LaMona (talk) 17:27, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Note 2: Added services to products, and tried to address Masem's discography concern with a small additional clarification. GermanJoe (talk) 10:23, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Come see the New WikiProject Wikipedia!

{{WPW Referral}}

A Modest Proposal

Taking this ride with a block-evading malcontent ends. Doc talk 08:13, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

A Modest Proposal Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to bury Wikipedia, not to praise it. Wikipedia has a serious problem, my friends, or to speak frankly, is threatened by an existential crisis which imperils its status as a collection of true knowledge, rather than mere trivia. As anyone with eyes can plainly see, the quality of articles on this once-fine website is rapidly declining; nearly all of the articles that do not wholly consist of episode-by-episode recaps of the author's favorite television programmes or comparisons detailing the precise differences between models of 1950's automobiles have fallen into gross disrepair. When knowledgeable persons and professionals invest hard work into improving the decrepit articles on topics where expertise and a serious amount of background reading are necessary to have anything at all of value to say on a topic, they are invariably chased away by a mob of surly, resentful editors who never quite managed to finish their education, and who substitute for this painful lack by flaunting their admin status and deep knowledge of the arcana of Wikipedia rules, rather than their deep knowledge of the topic at hand. Although the good Jimbo Wales in his infinite wisdom has declared that "Ignore all rules has always been policy here", this statement has obviously been sadly forgotten, as editors' improvements are routinely discarded out of a fetishistic adherence to rules by editors on topics they by no means understand, and have never even successfully finished a single college course in, let alone having possesion of the long years of experience that alone can tell someone what is and is not relevant and representative of current academic consensus. Given that Wikipedia threatens to devolve into a hyperbolically detailed list of Pokemon characters, variant rules of favorite board games, mind-numbing recounting of the minutiae of long-cancelled television programmes, and worthlessly detailed comparisons between automobiles that are no longer produced, I would like to propose a *bold* solution to the impending doom of Wikipedia, a fate which is already reflected in the laughingstock status which Wikipedia already enjoys in scholarly, academic, and policy circles, or other places where serious persons who care about the fate of knowledge congregate. The solution, friends, is this: to continue editing on Wikipedia, all editors must display evidence that they have completed a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in some area of academic study, or, failing this, demonstrate some other serious evidence of academic achievement and contribution and commitment to the world of knowledge. No one who has not yet finished the meagre requirements of a bachelor’s degree deserves to be editing the world’s compendium of knowledge, and chasing away persons with years more topic experience in the subject at hand in order to sate their petty feelings of ressentiment. This is an extremely minimal requirement that would vastly raise the level of discourse in this place, and make the articles on actually notable topics that are traditionally judged as the reason to have encyclopedias in the first place far more useful to users (hint: traditionally, encyclopedias were not invented in order to spell out all the differences between models of defunct cars, or Pokemon characters, or to recap episodes of the Bachelor). It will also make this place far more hospitable to those who actually have knowledge to share, and will vastly increase its reputational standing in the wider world of knowledge, in which, Wikipedia is currently considered an unmitigated disaster and bad joke. It is hard to get a precise accounting of such things, but judging by the quality of the prose on here, and the level of information which is imparted on the serious, traditionally encyclopedic topics, I would estimate that no more than 10 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by someone who has successfully completed their undergraduate education. This is a tragedy, my friends, given the opportunity to create a truly rigorous and free compendium of knowledge which we have here. Persons who have not yet managed to complete college should demonstrate their commitment to the world of knowledge by fulfilling the requirements of a bachelor’s degree and mastering some subject to at least the undergraduate level in depth, before they are able to edit what purports to be the world’s foremost source and compendium of knowledge. This is by no means too much to ask, and such a policy will serve these editors themselves, who ought to be studying for their college exams, rather than brushing up on their Pokemon, who ought to be penning undergraduate essays rather than Bachelor or Walking Dead recaps, who ought to be learning the inside-out of real fields of knowledge, rather than masturbatorily mastering the intricacies of different models of 1950’s automobiles. It would be quite simple to ask editors to upload a scanned copy of their college diploma before making edits. B.A, B.S. B.F.A, B.B.S, etc, all will be sufficient— I am merely proposing that some evidence of actual interest and serious commitment to knowledge at at least the elementary level be demonstrated before contributions shall be accepted to what claims to be the world’s collection of knowledge. . It is not too late to save Wikipedia, I implore you. The choice rests in your hands: do you wish to demonstrate your allegiance to abstract principles of “inclusivity” to those who do not have the slightest clue about what they are speaking about, or do you wish to make this place the world’s foremost collection of free knowledge, a safe haven for the wise and those who know thereof of which they speak? Thank you for your time friends. I trust you will do the right thing. The fate of Wikipedia-- as a pathetic collection of trivia for intellectual children, or a true and free collection of the world's knowledge --is in your hands. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1017:B419:5D56:8905:B339:1A5A:D8E2 (talk) 17:35, 2 September 2015 (UTC) That is an idea which has been tried and, despite the best efforts of its founders, failed; see Citizendium. Our standards, such as verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view exist to insure that articles are accurate over the long run without the need for personal qualifications. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 18:00, 2 September 2015 (UTC) The thesis is demonstrably false, so the rest of it is not even worth reading. The number of featured articles and good articles has increased over time, and continues to increase on a weekly basis. Rather than degrading over time, article quality has increased over time, and continues to do so, inexorably. The standard process of making Wikipedia works as follows: 1) Someone creates a crappy article because they don't know how to make a good one. 2) It sits around a while until 3) Someone who knows better, and cares, makes it good. That is how it worked in 2005, and that's how it still works today. The "oh, woe is us, the sky is falling" bullshit isn't helpful in improving the encyclopedia. If you don't like the quality of any particular article, make it better. Those that are busy doing work should not be bothered by those who merely want to complain about the work that others are doing. --Jayron32 18:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC) ↑ That. There is a genuine issue regarding the number of Wikipedia's articles growing faster than the number of Wikipedia's editors and thus making patrolling and cleanup increasingly difficult, but the "there's nothing valid on Wikipedia" meme has never been valid and becomes steadily less valid. ‑ iridescent 20:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC) My thesis on the weak grasp of the ancient arts of logical reasoning, reading comprehension, and verbal argument by Wikipedians has just been borne out in dramatic form. Need I say anything more when such obvious examples of logical fallacies and failure to comprehend written text have just been graphically provided? For all of your sakes, I will attempt to do so all the same. Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear. The articles which Wikipedia contains providing minute episode recaps on the latest zany antics of the Kardashians, or Walking Dead, or explaining the characteristics of particular Pokemon, or the detailed features of and options available for certain models of Cars, are indeed exquisite examples of what they are, stuffed full of accurate information, and are the creme de la creme of the Internet on such topics. Unfortunately, it is a significant stretch to say that such articles constitute encyclopedic content at all, and such bears virtually no relation to the traditional mission of encyclopedias, which quite obviously is to collect significant knowledge on topics of perennial interest to mankind, rather than to serve as a highly accurate garbage dump of all the world's trivia. The fact that you draw a line at including information on "my friend's band" or "my high school debate team" or the "comic book I wrote" does not in any way solve the problem, since highly detailed entries on individual Pokemon characters and out-of-production automobiles and Bachelor-recaps were certainly not what Diderot had in mind in creating the Encyclopedia. Since such pointless articles, no matter how accurate, never constitute meaningful knowledge, but rather are the epistemic equivalents of pseudo-foods like cotton candy and jelly beans, such articles, no matter how accurate, never actually contribute one whit to the value of an encyclopedia. QED. The vast majority of Wikipedia is constituted by such non-encylopedic, frankly sophomoric drivel, ergo the cited statistics have no relevance or meaning, unless you were attempting to build the world's largest collection of meaningless, valueless trivia. Improving the accuracy of such articles is a pointless task that has nothing to do with knowledge, if language is not being abused. Again such epistemically valueless articles constitute, numerically, the majority of Wikipedia's content. It would be surprising if there were not more reality show episode recaps than all of the philosophy articles on here put together. No matter the percentage of "accuracy" such articles obtain, their contribution to knowledge and the original and proper aims of a collection of all knowledge, or an encyclopedia, remains zero, for, as some of you may be aware, any number multiplied by zero remains zero. So much for your bloated, laughable claims of accuracy. Now, as for the articles which have any right to exist, and which do not amount to the sheer pissing away of time by both writer and reader, which treat subjects that are indeed properly called knowledge and which actually ought to be in an encyclopedia, Wikipedia's accuracy is obviously in terminal decline. Why is this? The answer is obvious: the number of editors who primarily confine themselves to "contributing" to the worthless detritus on models of cars, or particular comic books, or TV episodes, or Pokemon characters vastly outnumbers the number of contributors to reasonable articles in the Natural Sciences, the Arts, the Humanities, Geography, Economics, Philosophy, the Human Sciences, Law, Politics, Technology, Mathematics-- you know, all of the articles which one might have thought it was the role of an encyclopedia to represent the current state of knowledge on. And yet, such articles are in a laughable state of disrepair because sadly ignorant editors, flush from their latest "triumph" in getting their board game variant or Pokemon character article to "good article" status, ignorantly chase away the only people with any hope of contributing to the articles that represent the only reason for spending one's time in constructing or reading an encyclopedia in the first place; i.e. they chase away those people who have an education and what such provides, namely, knowledge, rather than those poor souls who instead content themselves with their possesion of disconnected facts which amount to mere, worthless trivia on which they have wasted their brain and one life. Please have a look for yourselves at what a real encyclopedic article looks like on any of Wikipedia's competitors, such as Scholarpedia, or SEP, or IEP, and then compare it to the corresponding Wikipedia article and you will concur with me that the entirety of Wikipedia ought to be nominated for speedy deletion; given that, of any article on here, it is either a gross distortion of scholarly consensus on the topic at hand, written largely by persons with a high school education and no first hand knowledge of the topic on which they write, or it is a mere compendia of valueless trivia that has no rights to inclusion in any encyclopedia worthy of the name. Perhaps if you reject this proposal, you will accept my second one, that Wikipedia be renamed "Triviapedia" for its dogged focus on what is worthless to know and its astonishing over-valuation of the opinions and contributions of the ignorant, and its open hatred of real, costly expertise or knowledge of any kind. Thanks for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.199.71.146 (talk) 21:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC) As an addendum, Jayron gives voice to the common canard that the "quality" and "number of good articles" has increased "inexorably" over time. Unfortunately, such statistics are meaningless without further interpretation; namely, without some measure of how relevant the articles in question are to the mission of encyclopedias, namely collecting all notable and significant knowledge. One can "inexorably" increase the number of good articles about Pokemon and 1950's automobiles and reality show episode recaps to one's heart content; this hardly an encyclopedia makes. Is there, for example, even one good article on a philosopher in this entire encyclopedia? Even by your own intellectually worthless standards, which bear no correlation to scholarly standards for knowledge in the world at large, surely not. If I am wrong, please direct me to any "good articles" on an important philosopher. Without even checking, I am absolutely sure there are none. The presence of 1000 "superb" Pokemon articles is not going to make up for the absolute and utter failure to produce any good articles on any matter of substance that the knowledge-producing world outside Wikipedia would count as real knowledge, friends. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.199.71.146 (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2015 (UTC) Please, I beg-- can anyone direct me to even one single "top-importance" philosophy article that has current "good article" status? As a reminder, I am not looking for, nor am I concerned with, how many Pokemon have good articles associated with them, as Jayron with the best of intentions but unhelpfully pointed me towards. Rather, I am looking for a single Top-importance philosophy article that you yourselves have rated as good. This should be easy, given that you have had 10 years to achieve this goal, and I am told, the quality of articles on here, improves "inexorably" and that my thesis is "demonstrably false." You will never have a real encyclopedia if you cannot produce good articles on matters of substance, rather than worthless trivia. Please direct me to any important good article within Philosophy, if I am mistaken, and there are as many good important philosophy articles as there are good articles on the author's most beloved TV episodes, or board game variants, for which I am laughably told that "good articles inexorably improve over time" with no attention to whether the topic in question has any business in an encyclopedia or being called knowledge to begin with. Be well, my friends. Finally, since Iridiscent seems to have no comprehension of what I wrote at all, let me spell it out in the clearest possible terms: I am not repeating a "meme" (as a note, the use of this word is almost always an indication that the author has no idea what he is talking about on the topic in question-- Dawkins uses the word, but whatever his merits as a biologist which I have no desire to dispute, he has almost no knowledge of human culture, and I cannot think of a single Historian, Anthropologist, or Sociologist who regards the "meme" concept as useful in describing human ideas or thought) that "nothing on Wikipedia is valid" but am instead saying that almost everything that is "valid" on Wikipedia has no business at all being in an encyclopedia, as it constitutes mere trivia rather than knowledge; and everything on Wikipedia that traditionally belongs in an encyclopedia (and which is covered by its competitors) has almost no validity, and reads as though it is the spirited attempt of a middle school class project. Clear enough for you? I expect I shall be waiting a rather long time for one of you to point me towards that mythical beast, namely, a good Wikipedia article on any high-importance Philosophy topic, given that the rapidly formed pitchfork mobs of angry plebeians almost immediately chase away and banish anyone who has actually studied the subject from this place. Adieu. You want high quality articles on philosophy? Ask and you shall receive. Wikipedia has 12 featured articles classified under "Philosophy and psychology" including such figures Hilary Putnam and Bernard Williams. Wikipedia also has 394 good articles classified under "Philosophy and religion" including articles such as Agnosticism, Cynicism (philosophy), and Max Weber. You can find the list here. Of course these numbers exclude people who are primarily classified under other topics. For comparison, there are only three good articles on Pokemon. All featured and good articles have passed peer review processes and you can find more information about that here. Winner 42 Talk to me! 22:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC) Here's a list from the Philosophy project: Philosophy of mind, Anekantavada, Archimedes, Atheism, Bernard Williams, Emma Goldman, Hilary Putnam, History of evolutionary thought, Problem of religious language, Agnosticism, Albert Einstein, Alfred North Whitehead, Anarchism, Chrysippus, Conscience, Consciousness, Eliminative materialism, Galileo Galilei, I Ching, Isaac Newton, Jerry Fodor , Kantian ethics, Karl Marx , Laozi, Mahatma Gandhi, Max Weber, Menocchio, Stoicism, Sun Tzu, Swami Vivekananda, Taoism, Teleological argument, The Renaissance, Upanishads, Zhuangzi (book) We should probably include B-Class articles, as well, which would give us a lot more. --Boson (talk) 00:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC) At first, I was tempted to follow WP:Do not feed the trolls and not even comment here, but something needs to be said about this elitist view: This proposal would prohibit articles by numerous successful people. Here are just a few that came immediately to mind (some of the folks on this list are deceased, but I'm using them to be a bit pointy): Abraham Lincoln (self taught, former US President); Andrew Jackson (another self-taught former US President); Benjamin Franklin (home schooled and self-taught); Amadeo Peter Giannini (high school dropout, founded Bank of America); JR Simplot (8th grade dropout, multi-billionaire Idaho potato farmer); Ansel Adams (high school dropout, world famous painter); David Karp (high school dropout, founded Tumblr); Harlan Sanders (elementary school dropout, earned law degree via correspondence courses, founded KFC); Frank Lloyd Wright (never attended high school, architect). I think that given a few days to research, I could probably come up with hundreds of notable people who do not have formal degrees. This idea would prohibit the next Benjamin Franklin or Frank Lloyd Write from contributing to Wikipedia. If the anonymous editor who made this "modest proposal" really wants to see articles improved, then I respectfully suggest writing said improved articles him- or herself, and quit wasting time reading about fictional characters and esoteric features of long-since discontinued automobiles. Oh, and for the record, this counts as Oppose for the reasons stated. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  01:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Additional comment: Anyone can buy a diploma from a diploma mill, and often, so-called "replacement" diplomas are available from the same sources. Such services don't verify the person's credentials, they just print a diploma with any information requested by the customer. This proposal would be a minor boon to such businesses, but would be unlikely to improve the articles on Wikipedia, and would give the boot to many productive editors. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  In summation: Good content is good content; it doesn't matter who produces it. It doesn't stop being good because the person who wrote it didn't have a particular degree, and crap content doesn't magically become good because the person who created has any particular degree. Content is judged of its own accords, according to measurable standards of quality. It doesn't really matter who made it. - -Jayron32 02:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Thank you for your excellent replies, my esteemed colleagues. I am pleased that at least one of you caught my modest proposal reference. And while I had expected to have names like Jobs, Zuckerburg, and Gates thrown my way, surely Franklin, Lincoln, and Wright are good company for anyone and would have made fine encyclopedists as well. Perhaps then I ought to put the central point somewhat differently, as I fear it has been obscured by my attempt at Juvenalian satire. Because I am so kind, and love serving Truth so greatly, I have undertaken a small bit of research in service of our mutually shared end, of improving the world's store of real knowledge. The little experiment I conducted was this: does Wikipedia have more pages on philosophers or more pages on reality show participants? I used List of American philosophers and Category: Participants in American reality television series as proxies for the larger group, which I hope no one will object to. Sadly for us all, there are 1202 unclassified American Reality Show Participant articles, a|nd another 1136 in subcategories, making a total of 2338 Wikipedia pages on that crucial encyclopedic entity, American reality show participants. (Mind you, I haven't counted the shows themselves, nor the "season recaps" or "episode recaps" or any of the other related bullshit on here, masquerading as knowledge. Merely the individuals notable enough to be deserving of their own pages themselves, authored by some of our hard-working colleagues on here.) By comparison there are a total of 614 American Philosophers, and the list includes some persons whose inclusion as either philosophers, or Americans, is shall we say, rather generous. Q.E.D. Thanks for playing, friends. Wholly irrelevant. We have articles generally in proportion to the subjects that our writers find interesting. If we have more writers who like reality TV than philosophy, that's not ipso facto the fault of the system. If your goal is to eliminate articles on subjects you personally deem unencyclopedic, then eliminating editors without proper credentials may accomplish that. If it is your goal to increase the number of articles on topics you deem encyclopedic, well, I am utterly unconvinced this will accomplish it. You seem to believe that there are just hoards of expert editors who would have written for Wikipedia but were chased away by uneducated jerks. I think you'll find that some of our finest and most cooperative writers have no formal education in the areas they write about, and many of the biggest assholes to grace the site edit entirely within their field of expertise, and have done a very good job chasing people away. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:37, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Perhaps you misunderstand the concept of relevance, because it is quite relevant. As the Jonathan Swift reference was supposed to indicate, the proposed solution was not meant (entirely) seriously, although the diagnosis is deadly serious. To make it absolutely clear: having 2300 pages on American reality show participants shows clearly to anyone with any intellectual seriousness, whether they are self-taught or not, that Wikipedia is not a place for serious people and is not a real encyclopedia, but has become a sad farce. I could name hundreds of renowned American scholars with numerous books to their credit who aren't covered here, but you somehow seek to think that every god-forsaken attention-seeking narcissist who has ever prostituted themselves publicly on reality TV is deserving of their own page (and that despite this, Wikipedia is still deserving of being called an encylopedia, rather than, say, a garbage dump.) And the example is only of many I could have used. The truly tragic amount of loving careful attention lavished upon the "list of Pokemon chars" page ought to alone demonstrate to anyone with eyes that Wikipedia has clearly failed at being a real encylopedia. Don't believe me? Look at literally any other encylopedia, online or print or whatever. An encyclopedia is supposed to collect significant knowledge. Knowledge is not made by reality television show participants, nor does a collection of facts about these persons constitute notable or significant knowledge in any meaningful sense. Bachelor recaps are not contributions to the world's store of knowledge, no matter how high a percentage of Wikipedia editors just love the bachelor. Wikipedia's apparent criteria for notability or significance make it an absolute laughingstock in the circles it has pretensions to run in, I.e, the world of knowledge, rather than the world of trivia. You actually actively support the presence of 2300 pages on American reality show participants alone , and call that encyclopedic? You, friend, are a lost cause then. It is too late for you and I speak to those others whose minds have not been sadly ruined so into thinking reality show participants mark a "notable" or "significant" category in nature, or category in anything. Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1017:B423:943:704A:1DCA:6C37:DC9A (talk) 05:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC) You make the mistake of implicitly thinking there are only 614 American philosopher articles because there are 2300 American reality show participant articles. In fact, there's no linkage - that displays thinking that's applicable to a "paper" encyclopedia which has to be finite. A page on something worthless means that's a page less for something worthwhile. For Wikipedia, one does not limit or impact on the other. If there were no American reality show participant articles there would still be only 614 American philosopher articles. DeCausa (talk) 05:59, 3 September 2015 (UTC) This is an interesting reply, but it suffers from several problems. One, the time of Wikipedia editors is finite. Editors posting excruciatingly detailed recaps of The Apprentice and board game variants played by their friends cannot use that time to post anything on articles that have even some legitimate claim on being in an encylopedia--politics, technology, math, history, arts, science, philosophy, social sciences, religion, psychology, and so on. Two, and more seriously, if reality television/Pokemon editors come to numerically dominate Wikipedia, as undoubtedly and demonstrably they have, then Wikiepdia's entire reliance on consensus is broken, because this swarm of plebs drowns out the real voices looking to contribute to articles of substance that have some claim to be in an encylopedia, some claim on being KNOWLEDGE in the first place, who find their contributions quickly deleted by know-nothing editors and admins who have been falsely elevated because they authored many pointless articles that do not educate anyone on anything worth being educated about and that cannot be called knowledge without abuse of language. Thanks for the counterpoint. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1017:B423:943:704A:1DCA:6C37:DC9A (talk) 06:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Again, you're thinking in "book" terms. The articles on Pokemon can't "drown out" articles related to the French Wars of Religion (say) as they might in paper form. If I'm interested in the French Wars of Religion and look it and related articles up I won't even be aware that Pokemon-related articles exist. It's not apparent what the "balance" is - you have to look hard to discover it. The same applies if I want to edit French Wars of Religion articles. There is a fallacy in your post if only thee editors weren't wasting their time on Pokemon, then articles x, y, z would be better. It's fanciful that there is such a crossover of interests. There's a hygiene factor in deleting non-notable articles, but essentially there is no connection between "what there is" and "what there isn't" in Wikipedia. DeCausa talk) 07:08, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Wikipedia should aim to be accessible to a wide range of the general public. According to readability-score.com, our article Charles Darwin is written at a grade level of about 11.6, or roughly high-school graduate in the U.S. Your writing in this thread gets a 16.0, and it's unlikely you are able to adjust your writing level downward when you write for article content. I'm not an expert on the subject, but that site says, "Text to be read by the general public should aim for a grade level of around 8." That seems low to me — I try to write at what I believe to be a grade 10 level — but I think it's fair to say that 11.6 is a lot better for Wikipedia's mission than 16.0. For the Flesch-Kincaid Raading Ease score given on that site, in which a higher number means better readability, Charles Darwin gets 46.9 and your writing gets 31.4. Good Wikipedia editing, then, is about far more than education, and, in fact, too much education can be bad for Wikipedia content. The less educated among us are necessary to keep the reading level well below 16.0. By the way, I have only a smattering of formal education above high school level. As for the abundance of pap content, it's one of many sad commentaries on the intelligence of the general public (or their use of their intelligence), but it does not get in the way of better content at Wikipedia. WMF's servers are not lacking for space or bandwidth as far as I know. If that stuff passes WP:N, that's good enough for me. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC) (My comments above get grade level 6.6, so much for aiming for grade 10. They also get a FKRE score of 70.9.) ―Mandruss ☎ 08:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Motion: AUSC Extension

The Arbitration Committee is currently examining several reforms of the Audit Subcommittee and asks for community input on how they would like to see the Subcommittee function in the future. Because of this, the current Audit Subcommittee (AUSC) members' terms are hereby extended to 23:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC).

Supporting: AGK, Doug Weller, GorillaWarfare, Guerillero, LFaraone, NativeForeigner, Salvio giuliano, Thryduulf, Yunshui

Opposing: Courcelles

For the Arbitration Committee, --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 02:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Discuss this and the future of the AUSC at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Motion: AUSC Extension

RfC on MEDRS

RfC regarding an amendment to MEDRS, specifically asking if we should or shouldn't allow high-quality sources to be rejected because of the country in which the research is published. Any interested editors are welcome to comment. LesVegas (talk) 00:11, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Königsberg/Królewiec

During the last weeks someone has persistently been changing "Königsberg" into "Königsberg (Królewiec)" and "Prussia" into "Ducal Prussia, a Polish fief" in articles about people who lived in Königsberg during the 17th century, like Simon Dach and Robert Roberthin. To justify his doings he refers to the "Danzig vote", which is unknown to me. Did the community indeed prescribe these changes for articles that are not about Prussia or Königsberg, but about people who happened to live there? Can someone give me a link to this community decision? Personally I think these changes are superfluous and even confusing, but if the community wants them, so be it. Sijtze Reurich (talk) 09:53, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

No one interested? No one even willing to give me the link to the text of the Danzig vote? Sijtze Reurich (talk) 17:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I looked around a bit. There is a Template:Gdansk-Vote-Notice (Gdansk is the Polish version of Danzig). The rules outlined there and on the Gdansk (Danzig) (and the reference to the Vote meta page [1]), suggest the use of Danzig (Gdansk) for people with predominant German identity. That might transfer to the Konigsberg situation to some extent. This makes sense to some extent, as the current formal name is Gdansk. However, one to one application to Konigsberg goes wrong. The current name of Konigsberg is NOT Krolewiec but Kaliningrad. For that reason alone these ideas should not be appliedwithout prior consensus in my view.

In none of the Danzig vote pages I looked at was ever any mention about Polish fiefs etcetera. Nor do either extend the Danzig/Gdansk situation to any other territories renamed. So that also seems to be problematic.

Finally, while the intention of the Danzig vote seems to be an honest effort to solve endless edit wars, this was organized in 2005 when Wikipedia was still young and many procedures of dealing with such issues were being tested out. I seriously doubt whether a vote would today still be held that way and given that weight.

Altogether, I would say the reference to Danzig vote could be an argument and a suggestion for solution to solve ongoing edit wars, but I would not consider it sufficiently relevant to Konigsberg, nor sufficiently following current day Wikipedia customs to do so without prior discussion / consensus. Arnoutf (talk) 17:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I have also seen the Gdansk/Danzig vote mentioned in a number of places, and even a general rule that the preferred name of the current national government always be used, but that was ten years ago, and I strongly doubt that the decision would be the same today. WP:Consensus can change, and often does in the course of a decade. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I did not write about Danzig for the English Wikipedia, but I did write two articles about Danzig/Gdańsk for its Dutch counterpart. I do not see any problem in telling that Danzig's present-day name is Gdańsk, but adding Królewiec to Königsberg is another matter. Few people living in Königsberg ever called their city Królewiec. Few people outside Poland even know the city's Polish name. So in an article about someone who just happened to live in Königsberg the Polish name is only confusing.

I am glad to find out that the Danzig vote was not a decision about Königsberg. Adding the name Królewiec to articles, where Königsberg is not the main theme, appears to be no more than a very dubious interpretation of the Danzig vote, not a community decision. So I can safely undo these unwelcome changes. Sijtze Reurich (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Requesting closing statements for archived discussions

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I just cleaned out a bit of WP:ANRFC. If you haven't been over there in a while, it had about 75 "requests for closure", and about 65 of them were posted by the same editor. I removed eight "requests" from him that were made for already-archived discussions. (More of them have probably been archived since he requested closure, but these eight were already archived at the time he posted his request.) I guess he wants someone to go back into the archives and add a closing statement, which is pointless:

• Almost nobody watches the archives, so nobody will read the closing statement even if one is added.
• Generally speaking, editing an archive is a Bad Idea, and editing it to make it look like some closing statement was relevant and accepted at the time is a doubly bad idea. Nobody reading the archives later is likely to check the history to see when that closing statement was added. If the close is wrong or materially deficient, then nobody has had a fair opportunity to object to it.
• If the participants in the discussion stopped talking about it long enough for it to get archived uncontested, then it's a safe bet that they don't need some WP:NAC to come round and write down what the NAC believes the consensus is.

Here is my proposal: Let's amend both WP:RFC and WP:TPG to say that closing statements should neither be requested for, nor added to, discussions that have been archived.

(I'll post notes at RFC and TPG about this in a bit.) What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

? Some RfC's are (automatically) archived, some even before an RfC (template) has run its normal time. What I've seen closers do, is bring the RfC section back to the talk page, and close it. What's the problem with that? --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

1. Some NACs are directly editing the archive pages instead of bringing it back to the talk page, where editors might see the closing statement.
2. What's the point of adding a closing statement on 20 July, to a discussion that ended on 24 June (because even proponents figured out by then that there was no consensus for their proposal) and was archived without complaint or apparent regret on 2 July? If none of the 20+ people involved in that discussion felt the need to continue that discussion during those 18 days that it was in the archives, or to keep talking about it at all after 24 June, and none of the 20+ participants felt the need to request a closing statement, then why should we encourage (or even permit) someone to edit the archives to add a pointless and potentially misleading closing statement? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Re. #1 I totally agree, that's not the way to do this (although for "no consensus" formal closures there's maybe not too much reason to bring it back to the active page either). But I totally disagree with your solution: the recommendation should be to do it like it should be done, not to avoid closers doing their closing properly. Also, I'd rather have a non-admin closer helping out with the backlog (and making some errors in the process), than the backlog growing and in the end a clever guy saying, well let's cut the backlog by impeding the inflow...

Re. #2 Here also, the encouragement would be to keep the backlog at WP:ANRFC down, not to avoid people asking for closure. I've recently added a WP:ANRFC request for an RfC that was archived months ago, and I got the thoughtful attention of a closer. So where's the problem? --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:16, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with the original comment that closing statements should neither be requested nor added to discussions that have been archived. Sometimes the discussion has been archived because the archival bot parameters are too quick to archive, and there was consensus in the first two weeks of the 30-day discussion period, and then contributions stopped, or sometimes the discussion has been archived because the RFC bot pulled the tag after 30 days, so that contributions stopped, and then the RFC waited for a closer for a long time. Formal closure is still a good idea in those cases, because there might have been a consensus to do something. I agree that, if there is a consensus to do something, the RFC should be moved back from the archive talk page to the active talk page. A rule that archived RFCs should not be closed, however, is the wrong answer. Closing the RFC, even if it was archived, is a better answer. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:30, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Francis Schonken and Robert McClenon that close requests for archived discussions should be permitted per my comments here. I also agree with their comments that "no consensus" closes of archived discussions probably don't need to be moved back to the main talk page. Specifically, these are good rules of thumb:

1. Robert McClenon's comment "I agree that, if there is a consensus to do something, the RFC should be moved back from the archive talk page to the active talk page."
2. Francisc Schonken's comment "although for 'no consensus' formal closures there's maybe not too much reason to bring it back to the active page either".

Cunard (talk) 05:57, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

For those who didn't click the links, Robert McClenon, of course, is the editor who just added closing statements to the archives, and Cunard is the editor who lists about 90% of all expired RFCs at ANRFC, including all eight of the archived ones. It is not exactly surprising that they believe they are being useful by requesting and closing long-dead discussions; if they thought that it was inappropriate or a waste of time, then they wouldn't be doing it in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with User:WhatamIdoing that such discussions shouldn't be "closed" by merely editing a talkpage archive subpage. If such a discussion still needs closure, restore it to the talk page, and close it there - thus giving it a new timestamp for the bots, as well as an edit for watchlists. - jc37 11:37, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Default: Just unarchive and close; the archiver bot will re-archive it later. It's perfectly legitimate to unarchive a discussion that hasn't concluded; we are not servants of bots, they serve us. If someone manually archived it without comment, do the same. If someone manually archived it with an edit summary that the discussion is closed, moot, stale, etc., edit the archive and close the archive with their summary and attribution and a note that you refactored, since it was just a sloppy attempt to close it originally (if their close was questionable, that's not your problem; anyone who cares to challenge it has a process for doing so). It is not true that no one reads archives; we refer to them all the time, so properly closing an archived discussion that shouldn't be unarchived but which wasn't closed with the right tagging and summary serves the interests of the community.

It also isn't true that there's no point to adding a closing statement to a month old (or whatever) discussion. Many participants in discussions are not semi-pro arguers, but say their piece and move on, and are not going to be aware that a discussion did not close and got archived while still open. It's very frustrating to come back to an issue you participated in trying to resolve, only to find that no one bothered to close it simply out of backlog or apathy or oversight (in the "missed it" sense). There are no legitimate grounds on which to argue that it "can't" be unarchived or closed or both, per WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:IAR and WP:BOLD and WP:LAWYER and the spirit of WP:CONSENSUS. I've been unarchiving non-ancient archived discussions that needed resolution for over 8 years, and only one person has ever reverted me; they even accepted my explanation when I clarified. I'm OK with the idea that if the close is going to be "no consensus" (or equivalent, e.g. "not moved" at WP:RM) then unarchival is not necessary to close; but I prefer it be unarchived because it hits people's watchlists. And I also disagree with the idea that closing statements should not be requested for discussions that have been archived. They should probably be requested more often, because a) it will result in less rehash, strife, and editor burn-out by obviating repeat discussions, and 2) the very fact that it got archived means commentary had stopped, means it was ripe for closure.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:00, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree that it's perfectly legitimate to unarchive a recent discussion if you have an interest in continuing it. (For old discussions, WP:TPG recommends starting a new one instead of reviving months- or years-old ones. TPG's recommendation is consistent with the policy that WP:Consensus can change.)

But the question here is not whether you want to continue an occasional discussion; a quick trip through your contributions shows that you've done this once in the last three years, when a bot archived the discussion while you were typing. That's perfectly reasonable and desirable, but not what I'm talking about.

The question is more like this:

Given that the person making the request for closure has no interest whatsoever in continuing the discussion or what the outcome is, and is merely making the request out of habit;

given that the person writing the closing statement has no interest whatsoever in continuing the discussion, and probably also has neither any interest in or knowledge about the subject;

given that the discussion is already archived, and that nobody interested in the discussion has tried to prevent or reverse this archiving;

given that, as a general rule of thumb, most of our editors with any experience can figure out the result of most discussions (i.e., more than 50% of discussions) without outside assistance, especially from a non-admin who probably has neither knowledge or interest in the subject matter;

given that nobody interested in the specific discussion has expressed any confusion about the result of the discussion or requested any assistance with understanding the outcome;

given that there is no clear reason to un-archive the discussion merely to add a closing statement (neither any IAR-style reason nor any justification that would pass muster under the TPG guideline); and

given that nobody is likely to notice someone adding a closing statement to the archives –

given all this, is there any actual, practical, non-bureaucratic value in either requesting or adding that closing statement? Mightn't it be just a little less bureaucratic to wait until there is evidence that someone actually wants or needs the help of a closing statement for the discussion in question?

Or maybe this will be a more useful question: if the closing statement is so unimportant, or the result so obvious, that it's not worth un-archiving the discussion so that other people will read what you're adding, should you add the closing statement at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll try to just hit the highlights (not point-by-point matching your list):

• Unarchiving to close the discussion formally is continuing the discussion, if only briefly, to its proper conclusion. Someone who pitched a fit about it on semantic grounds would be WP:WIKILAWYERing.
• The "nobody is interested" assumptions running through this are generally not true; not everyone wants to go on and on about something, but just give their input and wait for the result. Most of us don't vigilantly watchlist everything we comment on here, and pages have radically different archival speeds (and some are only manually archived). This means that many things get archived without closure.
• WP:BUREAUCRACY and WP:COMMONSENSE implicitly tell us not to fall for the idea that discussions can't be unarchived within sane limits, even aside from what WP:TPG says (and I do so more often than you found in your looking around).
• Other than requests for speedy closure of stupid stuff, any time someone comments on an RfC or similar discussion, they do so because they want to see a consensus resolution emerge one way or the other, or they would not bother. I.e., there probably is no class of users at all who in good faith, want to ever see such discussions fail to close after having participated in them.
• Maybe (I'm skeptical) that most long-term editors can, with effort, determine what the consensus of a contentious discussion is; nevertheless, a largely number of people WP:GAME any unclosed discussion if they feel they'll get their way by doing so. We all know this.
• I already gave a reason why to add a closure sometimes without unarchiving, since people use archives as "reference" material; the are not only of value when they are "live". But it is clearly better in most cases to unarchive and close, so people can see it was closed and what the result was. This is good for transparency, too: If the close is boneheaded, people should be able to notice this and seek to have it reviewed, not have it sit that way for a long time until it's too old to be reviewed.
• Your closing question is basically invalid, assuming but not demonstrating the proposition that something shouldn't be unarchived for closure, then criticizing the idea of archived closure, when most of what's been said here is arguing the opposite direction. Closure while still archived would have limited applicability, and some aren't in favor of it at all, for the "watchlist ping" reason. Personally, I think that's very compelling for any non-"no consensus" close but not for a "no consensus" close, since just sitting in the archive unclosed indicates no consensus by default.
• The core problem is that many of those discussions did reach a clear consensus but then some bot got in the way. We are not at the mercy of bots (nor of people manually archive unclosed discussion to thwart closure!).
• I don't know where the "nobody ... has expressed any confusion about the result ..." line is coming from; in many cases an ANRFC request is made specifically because there is interpretational conflict, and it will continue until there's a formal close.
• If you really really need something here, maybe there could be a rule at ANRFC that if the discussion has been closed, the requester of closure must unarchive it (i.e. express a desire that it continue and a position that it was archived too soon) first; doing so should be enough: If a bot re-archives it because of ANRFC backlog, or another editor tries to WP:GAME the process by re-archiving it, e.g. because they think they close will go against them, the requester's unarchival still stands, and the ANRFC-responding closer would re-unarchive it to close. But having such an unarchive-first rule seems silly and WP:CREEPing to me.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@Cunard: of course not every RfC "needs" formal closure. Is there a selection on which RfC's you think most in need of formal closure? Alternatively, did you ever think suggesting it as a bot job to get RfC's listed at ANRFC once the RfC tag is removed (usually by bot)? E.g. the time spent listing them manually might be used also to close a few you're not involved in (or do you only list the ones you can't close)? Indiscriminate listing of expired RfC's may of course have a negative effect that those most in need of attention (often also the ones most difficult to close with walls of text and uncountable ramifications) get snowed in by those where participants came to live with the "apparent" outcome and moved on? Sorry for the many questions, but backlog is a problem (as correctly indicated by WhatamIdoing), and I see this discussion here as an opportunity to develop a strategy on how to deal with that. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:RFC says that most (i.e., >50%) of discussions don't require closing statements; WP:ANRFC says that "many" shouldn't be listed there (and, if memory serves, used to say "most"). I and other editors have suggested that closing statements for most RFCs (e.g., these) are unnecessary. They did not need to be listed, they did not need to be closed, and the closing statements provide no value to anyone who might read them. They are wastes of time – which would be fine, if some volunteer really wanted to waste his time (or open himself to derogatory speculation about planning for an unsuccessful RFA run by doing a bunch of pointless makework). But they are also damaging to the WP:Be bold and WP:Consensus can change ethos: when we provide closing statements for discussions with perfectly obvious results, we are telling new people that WP:NOTBURO is unimportant words on paper, and we are telling experienced editors that we are concerned that they are either too stupid or too tendentious to figure out what the consensus is. And, as you say, filling up ANRFC with unimportant requests for closure prevents people from finding the ones that would actually benefit from it. Indiscriminate (by bot) or nearly indiscriminate (what we have now) listing kills the signal:noise ratio for that page. I suspect that it also has the effect of making some admins feel discouraged, because it's yet another "backlog", albeit an artificial one, that makes their efforts seem futile.

I believe that these proposals have been considered in the past:

• not listing requests that you personally don't care about;
• asking participants whether they to list it;
• asking participants whether they would object to listing it; and now
• not requesting a close for already archived discussions or adding closing statements to the archives.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

OP (Francis): ANRFC already has way too much backlog, so having a bot dectuple the requests would be worse than unproductive. I'm confused about why you'd suggest that while also noting the backlog problem.

Unnecessary listings (WhatamIdoing): Whether an RfC needs listing or not is subjective. There's (usually!) no bad faith in making a request for closure, or in rejecting the request as unnecessary. It's just part of the normal churn of WP:ANRFC.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:54, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to hear Cunard's rationale why they picked the ones they picked for listing at ANRFC, and whether we can come to some agreement here.

I'm a directly interested party here, because I've got one listed that won't go away (even when archived...) unless closed formally. When I see all the others listed (I had a glance this morning whether there were some others I could help close but can't find one that would accept NAC closure and for which I'm not completely unfamiliar with the topic area) seems like kinda desperate. I think an understanding is best so that this doesn't go WP:COSMETICBOT or whatever way we don't want this to go. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree that Cunard is fishing too many of these RfC's out of the waste bin and spamming WP:ANRFC with them. I will also make a mental note about unarchiving any RfC's that still need closures and closure statements but have been archived. That said, I disagree with the idea that all RfC's that have been archived shouldn't be closed at that point, or that all of the RfC's that Cunard has been spamming to WP:ANRFC don't belong there. I think, in conclusion, I'd like to ask Cunard to be more careful in choosing which RfC's to post up to WP:ANRFC, and not to dump 80 RfC's (many of which aren't even "formal" RfC's and/or which don't need "formal closes") there all at once. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:37, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be a good idea to write some guidance describing cases when a request for closure is or isn't appropriate? I'm only aware of WP:CLOSE#Which_discussions_need_to_be_closed, which is quite vague. I'd also like to put in an argument for not de-archiving discussions, especially if the issue is contentious - a few days between the closure and post-closure discussion can make the procedure seem more measured and reduce the feeling of immediacy from editors who feel strongly about the issue. My feeling is to say that there's WP:NODEADLINE, and if nobody ever checks, then the RfC question is probably no longer an important issue. Sunrise (talk) 00:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I can see the potential "fishing" problem. In my above support for unarchival-to-close, I'm not suggesting it should be allowed for bad-faith reasons, nor am I non-amenable to some kind of guideline or just a "don't do the following lame things" note on the top of the ANRFC page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• WhatamIdoing has raised this issue repeatedly. Two previous discussions are Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure/Archive 1#Cunard is still adding dozens of requests (July 2014) and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive268#Severe backlog at WP:ANRFC (January 2015). In both discussions, I explained my closure requests in detail.

  I think Scott summarized it very well at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure/Archive 1#Too many discussions being added:

  Lack of resolution to ongoing debates is a continuing issue on this project. If there are too many things listed here, it's because there are too many things left unfinished. It's a reflection of reality. As Cunard points out in his admirable response in the "September 2013" link above, not having a formal closure can also lead to misinterpretations (or deliberate ignorance) of consensus by persons in disputes, and not provide a recourse for editors attempting to enforce consensus. Having an accepted closure to point to will be immensely useful in many subsequent debates. We should encourage these. Making them is tough work, and I think that's what's putting editors off doing it, not seeing the number that need to be done.

  Robert McClenon, one of RfC's dedicated and hard-working closers, explained why formal closure of even seemingly "consensus is clear discussions" is helpful at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive268#Benefits of Formal Closure:

  I have closed several RFCs where I thought that consensus was clear, but that required follow-up for either of two reasons. Either one of the posters ignored the consensus, in spite of the formal closure stating the consensus, or one of the posters objected to the close and requested that I re-open the RFC to allow them to insert a statement. When there was move-warring against consensus or edit-warring against consensus, formal closure put the enforcing administrator on firmer ground in enforcing consensus. Formal closure establishes what the consensus is, unless reviewed. Otherwise the resulting WP:ANI thread would itself have had to establish consensus before warning or blocking, causing drama on a drama board. In cases where I have been asked to re-open a closure, I have instead asked for closure review. Without closure and closure review, the most likely result would have been edit-warring.

  The recent backlog is because I did not update the closure requests list for around four weeks. (In the past, I updated it every two or three weeks.) In the past when a large number of requests has been added, the backlog has returned to a reasonable number within two weeks. Cunard (talk) 03:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• But the point still stands: you have been including "non-formal" RfC's in your additions to the list at WP:ANRFC, as well as RfC's that almost certainly don't need "formal" closes. What would be far more helpful if you'd leave these out of your inclusions to WP:ANRFC, and instead focus just on RfC's past the 30-days mark that clearly do need "formal" closures (for whatever reason). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:04, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Discussion-stalker interjection: It's perfectly fine to seek closure of a "non-formal RfC", like a merge discussion or whatever, for legitimate reasons. I.e., the "almost certainly don't need 'formal' closes" cutoff (vague as it is) applies to any consensus discussion, not just those with an RfC tag. I list RfC-like things and they do get closed, so there's clearly an operating consensus that they can be listed there.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• My point is that I've seen more than a couple of requests on WP:ANRFC that either absolutely don't need a "formal" close at all, or which are not really amenable to "closing". I'm just saying those RfC's (etc.) don't belong at ANFRC in the first place. That's all... But I definitely agree with you on the "unarchiving-to-properly-close" RfC's point. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 07:25, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• Sure. I think my comment above (but after yours here) gets at this issue: "Whether an RfC needs listing or not is subjective. There's (usually!) no bad faith in making a request for closure, or in rejecting the request as unnecessary. It's just part of the normal churn of WP:ANRFC". If some disruptive doofus is listing reams of stuff that doesn't need closure, any admin can tell them it's disruptive (really, any non-involved editor can), and if they don't stop, then we'll see them at WP:ANI. (Or someone will; I virtually never bother with ANI, AE, etc., any more; massive pits of WP:DRAMA-mongering are "what happens when you call the Feds". One should always quote from Firefly when possible.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

• Request / suggestion: Shouldn't we fork the distinct discussions of "how WP should generally deal with requests for closure archived discussions" and "concerns about a particular user's closure requests"? All this "I explained my closure requests ..." and "I'd like to hear X's rationale why they picked the ones they picked ..." specific-editor-level stuff is clouding the more important issue, the general one. WP:VPPOL isn't WP:ANI, and user behavior concerns about specific requests or patterns of requests doesn't belong here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
• Evidence that unarchival to reach resolution is not controversial: See the ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Can we get a bot to check the Internet Archive for dead link solutions?; it's been unarchived twice, over a considerable span of time, from multiple archive pages, and no one's head asplode about it. It did in fact reach a positive conclusion to take action, so the repeated unarchival for closure was genuinely productive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:50, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes, but you're missing the point. Unarchiving a recent discussion to continue talking about it is fine. The examples I gave had already reached resolution. They did not have a piece of petty bureaucratic paperwork attached to them, but every single person interested in those discussions already knew the outcome. This isn't about discussions whose lack of resolution is still causing actual, demonstrable, provable-with-diffs problems, or even discussions that people just want to keep talking about. This is about discussions that are dead and done and whose outcomes are so obvious that anyone with half a brain can figure out the result. Go look at the example again. Would you personally have un-archived that month-old discussion just to slap a "Hey, there was no consensus to change the rules – I guess that's why none of you did it!" tag on it? Do you honestly believe that any editor at all would try to use that discussion (80% opposed!) as proof of a consensus in favor of the proposed rule change? Or do you think that was probably an example of an unnecessary action? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:28, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Rationale

The reason why the rationale is important to decide on the policy issue is to check whether Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point applies.

• The point being made: "all RfCs merit formal closure"
• The "illustration" of that point is made by clogging up WP:ANRFC, without any distinction between those RfC's that are most in need of formal closure, and those for which it is primarily "a nice thing to have" without there being an indication (yet) that the unclosed RfC (or discussion) has led to abuse.

So my proposal to address this is not to write a new rule about when RfC's can or cannot be listed at WP:ANRFC. That ship has sailed I think (seen the "prior" which I was unaware about). However, this is what should be added to Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point#Examples imho:

---

• If you think around 90% of all RfC's merit formal closure...
  • do close a few you think most in need of closure, and ask at the active talk page of those which you can't close whether there is a consensus that formal closure is the way to go.
  • do not clog up WP:ANRFC by randomly adding RfC's and discussions for which need of formal closure has not been established.

---

Really, such things should not be spelled out so explicitly at Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, that's why I proposed an "agreement" as a first step. But as "agreement" also seems to have been a ship that has sailed, adding this to Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point seems to be the best way forward. In the mean while, I think a few RfC's for which desirability of formal closure has not been established can either be removed or marked as "done" at WP:ANRFC with the rationale that need of formal closure is tenuous. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:58, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I see no harm in an addition somewhat along these lines, but the lead-in rationale for it, 'The point being made: "all RfCs merit formal closure"' is a straw man. Nothing about the overall thread here, about unarchiving for closure, proposes that all RfC's merit formal closure, only that RfCs (or similar discussions) that do merit closure can be unarchived for closure, since bots do not determine consensus. If someone wants such an addition, just propose it at WT:POINT, with a clearer rationale. I'd support something similar to it, but not this exact wording, which POINTily itself suggests that "all RfC's merit formal closure" is a valid approach and one that we need special advice for. It isn't; we already have WP-wide consensus against that idea, and it's spelled out clearly at WP:RFC. A better characterization would be "if you think more RfCs merit formal closure ...". The rationale for that would be that enough editors do feel this way that ANRFC is being overrun; that seems to be factual.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

'The point being made: "all RfCs merit formal closure"' is an overstatement; Cunard has said in the past that he only lists about 90% of them. Whether the RFC needs a closing statement does not appear to be one of his considerations. As it is implausible for any editor to be interested in 90% of the RFCs on wiki, we can safely assume that he has no interest in the outcomes of these discussions, and we have no evidence that systematically listing nearly all RFCs for non-admin closing statements provides any benefit to the project. I have already outlined the harms above, e.g., that providing a formal closing statement implies that even in the most patently obvious cases, you cannot be trusted to figure out that whether or not there was a consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

If this is really just about one editor's behavior, that's an ANI matter, not a need for site-wide changes to pages like WP:RFC or WP:POINT. This is why I suggested above that the discussion's commingling of user-behavior and policy matters be forked into separate discussions.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Added "around 90% of" for clarity. Note that I do think 100% of RfC's and many other discussions merit formal closure, so there's no overstatement in "all RfCs merit formal closure". However whether it is added as an example to WP:POINT or not (and if so with what percentage) is not what this is about. This is implied by WP:POINT whether it is written out as an example or not. I'm against new rules to regulate influx at WP:ANRFC (WP:POINT is not a new rule, and that it applies should have been recognised a long time ago). Further:

• WT:POINT has been notified, so the guideline can be updated with consensus here. No need to split up the discussion.
• Whether this should go to WP:ANI: a clarification of the applicable guidance has been given, if this has clarified the matter sufficiently to interested parties, I don't see a need to take wherever else. If indiscriminate listings at WP:ANRFC would continue: warn editor(s) who follow that course of action of WP:POINT's applicability (possibly with a link to this VPP section). When such warnings are ignored, escalate to appropriate admin actions, e.g. via ANI. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:53, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The closing statement was modified from "Archiving" to "Closure" because I used the wrong word. SPACKlick (talk) 17:02, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Renaming bots

When a user having a bot is renamed, the bot should also be renamed. Bot talk pages often redirect to the talk page of the operator, and in this case, the old bot talk page will become a triple redirect and the new bot talk page will become a double redirect, so their targets will have to be changed to the talk page of the operator with a new name. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

This would work if all bots were named after the user that controls them, such as "Godsybot". However bots don't follow that naming convention. Better to just fix the redirect if there is one. As you pointed out, bot pages don't always redirect in this manner, so it wouldn't be universally needed in all cases. Furthermore, bot operators may not want the bot to be renamed, and what is proposed shouldn't be a standard practice forced upon them.—Godsy^(TALK_CONT) 11:45, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Template:db-author and screenshots

In the words of DESiegel (DES), "The[re] is now [a] discussion in progress at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Template:db-author and non-free content that I think will be of interest to editors who follow this page, and I would welcome additional views. [...] The question, or at least the part of it relevant to this page, is the degree to which it is proper to use {{db-author}} to delete a screenshot image uploaded to be used under fair use. Please comment at the WT:NFC page." A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 (talk) 13:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)