Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals): Difference between revisions

Wait.. you are the one who started IPC? This is notable Wikipedia history, given how influential it has been (for better or worse!). If you don't mind, this should be in a "history" section at

WP:IPC -- GreenC 15:48, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Wikipedia:"In_popular_culture"_content#History -- GreenC 15:55, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I'd coined the phrase, but on doing some digging there were already a few IPC pages existing prior to that—the oldest I can find on a very quick dig is

Iridescent 16:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

The oldest deleted page titled "...in popular culture" - where I can't find evidence that it was moved there later, like, say,

Cryptic 18:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

IIRC these started showing up as sections in articles in early 2004, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone dug up a diff from late 2003, see for example 1 2 3; even

Cultural influence of Plato's Republic, Venus in culture, Cultural references to Hamlet , Women warriors in literature and culture, Synesthesia in fiction etc. Doubtless someone with a bit more free time available will be able to find other formulations in current use. Regards, 81.177.3.8 (talk) 19:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Might I suggest Wikipedia:"In_popular_culture"_In_popular_culture pending this RFC? @GreenC Shushugah (he/him • talk) 02:20, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What I was thinking was using "Cultural influence" or "Cultural allusions" or maybe "Cultural influence and allusions". in WP:VG, we don't have "in pop culture" sections but just "Legacy" sections instead.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 16:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oh but now here's a thought regarding the content rather than the name of these sections. There's plusses and minuses, but to my mind, the purpose of these sections is to indicate how well known the entity is. So, let's take "Do not go gentle into that good night"... is this an obscure poem like say "The Legend of Novgorode" or thousands of others, or is it more well known? That's a very important point for the reader to know! But we can't just assert it. If we have a source saying "This poem is super well known!" fine, but first of all we usually don't, and second even if we do it's just one guy asserting it.

But... remember Writing 101: show, not tell. Well, Do not go gentle into that good night#Use and references in other works shows very well that the poem's reasonably famous. Important info. Even minor examples can help with that. If somebody says a line in passing on some HBO show, that that's another demonstration that it's floating around in the culturespace, unlike say Trilce.

But then: as we all know, these sections can grow out of control, too. So here's what I've tried, and I think it maybe works OK: Make the "References in other works" short but dump the excess examples down into either the Notes or the References sections, where they are they are still there but don't bother anybody. At Anyone for tennis? I gave some examples (basically the bluelinked ones), then added "And so forth" with the ref for that containing all the extra non-bluelinked examples. You can also use a Note instead. Reasonable approach? Herostratus (talk) 16:16, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think that works particularly well— feels like hiding cruft that shouldn’t really be in the article. But I have no problem with ‘in popular culture’ sections at all, when put together properly. This whole discussion seems, to me, a waste of energy that would be more productively expended in other endeavors, such as writing content. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 16:26, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah how about not telling other people how to spend their volunteer hobby time maybe. I've got 500 articles created and many thousands of article edits, how about you. Herostratus (talk) 16:43, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

…I’m just suggesting that I don’t think this is the most productive thread Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:18, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

since you asked, in the past five years since I began editing, I’ve created over 300 articles and made over 40,000 edits and written several featured content (incl one fa with an in popular culture section) and had almost 100 dyks. In that time, you’ve created 156 articles and made about 11,000 edits. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to nicely ask to stay on topic and remain civil. And if you feel its a waste of time, you can contribute to the articles you want. it's ok to not find a topic productive. Others don't feel the same way.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

? I don’t see the problem with my conduct. I said what I thought, herostratus replied to say ‘yeah, no’— which I understand— and I answered his explicitly posed question. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:55, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since it has come up, I have over 1,800,000 edits, with over a million being article edits. I have created over 6,000 articles. To reiterate my earlier position, I think "in popular culture" sections are fine. If you want to police them for proper citation to sources, go ahead. If you want to structure them into prose, have at it. Trying to remove them altogether is counter to the information-sharing function of the encyclopedia, and is indeed a waste of volunteer time. BD2412 T 20:09, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Whatever such sections should be called, they should not encourage every casual reader to think, "Hey, this list doesn't include the fact that in the third episode of the fifth season of Family Man, it is revealed that the neighbor's cat is named
  Crookshanks." Calling them "In popular culture" seems to do exactly that. —valereee (talk) 17:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • This also brings up that, it's also the list format that many of these take. Lists "look" easy to add onto so draw in every trivial mention. It is far better to try to encapsulate how a topic has entered popular culture by prose, if possible, as I've found new editors tend to be a bit more adverse to trying to alter that and making a mistake. --Masem (t) 17:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • It does draw in every trivial mention, but that also means it's drawing in first posts by readers, sometimes. That's key. We get them to add a reference to say something the saw on American Dad. That's the start. Then we sloooowly reel them into our dysfunctional little group here, and one day they wake up and they're writing articles about ninth-century Inner Mongolian minor poets. But by then it's too late for them to rejoin the world of normal people. BWAHAHAHAHA Herostratus (talk) 19:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      OTOH, when that edit gets reverted five minutes later with an annoyed edit summary of "rem trivia"...the bait is doing its job, the reel not so much. :D —valereee (talk) 19:17, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      While lists are a good way for first edits of new editors, 99 times out of 100, when added to a pop culture section, it is unsourced. Which if unchecked creates a self-replicating problem. --Masem (t) 20:54, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      I think this gets well off-topic, but it's not specific to IPC: we have a huge problem because no-one's first 100 edits are good, but 100 bad edits in 2006 is alright because at least it creates something new, and 100 bad edits in 2021 is not fine because it makes existing alright content worse. So whatever you do is wrong and you'll get reverted and scared off the website. Or you don't get reverted initially, but someone finally notices you and tells you everything you've spent many hours on is wrong, and now you get scared off the website but you're also in tears. My best answer to this so far is "people should start off at Fandom and then come here when they're already used to the website design and some of the culture". — Bilorv (talk) 01:29, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      Oh $deity no don't send people to Fandom for a good experience. It's as good as testwiki for learning Wikitext I suppose, but does absolutely nothing for learning to edit in a collaborative environment. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 03:51, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

      With the levels of hostility expressed to both newcomers and old hands, there's not much collaborative environment in Wikipedia either. — Bilorv (talk) 12:15, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I think that is an excellent point. Lists absolutely beg people to add to them. Maybe such sections shouldn't usually be lists? —valereee (talk) 19:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I think that most of the posts are getting away from the main point, which is that the word "popular" shouldn't be used here. For example opera and ballet are not considered "popular", but mentions in such are just as valid or invalid as mentions in Hollywood films or pop music or computer games.
  Phil Bridger (talk) 19:37, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• This is a fairly interesting point, and I would add my voice to those that more or less hate these sections as they almost inevitably become long lists of unsourced cruft. I'm not sure changing the name will solve that core problem, but I'm nt opposed to the idea of trying it. My personal approach is to just remove anything without a source since that's pretty basic, and also remove mentions based on one throwaway line from a tv show, and maybe add things like hidden comments or edit notices if they persist. (Not that it always works, it's been over a decade of trying get people to stop posting that
  talk) 20:29, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Where there are also things like opera & novels, I tend to use headings like "Cultural references", which might also cover a whole themed episode of say South Park, but not a passing reference. Johnbod (talk) 01:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I have no real opinion on the title discussion, "popular culture" is intuitive if not dictionary perfect. Like many above I too generally dislike these sections, principally because they are usually an unsourced dumping ground for passing mentions in an single episode of a sitcom or the like. I think a good start may be to make
  MOS:POPCULT more succinct and punchy, emphasising the 2015 RfC, possibly elevating the sourcing requirements from that RfC into a guideline itself. Cavalryman (talk) 04:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC).[reply
  ]
• I suggest "Society and culture" as a title (used in
  WP:TRIVIA and could be completely blanked.Tom (LT) (talk) 10:32, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Strong oppose to a change (although hopefully this isn't a decision that is being taken here). On individual pages I'd guess that 'In popular culture' sections are themselves quite popular, have likely been a Wikipedia mainstay since 2001, and have a name which is both extremely recognizable and a more-than-adequate descriptor. On stand-alone article pages the idea of changing this ramps the "Huh?" factor up a level or six. Important pages such as World War I in popular culture, World War II in popular culture, Apollo 11 in popular culture and dozens if not hundreds more have educated readers about cultural events which have themselves educated the public since their inception. A good discussion, but let's leave it at that. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:12, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't know. Who cares. This seems like something that should be handled on an article-by-article basis.--WaltCip-(talk) 17:08, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I think that the underlying issue is this. The normal practice is that In the normal inclusion / exclusion decisions are made based on a multitude of factors including degree of relevance and degree of importance to the topic. Headings should be for material that inherently belongs in the article. Certain headings distort that process towards bringing in material that would not have otherwise been included. Headings like "in popular culture" are of that type. Particularly promotional or fandom items. North8000 (talk) 17:28, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. I'm not going to talk about whether or not we should have these sections in the first place, because that doesn't seem to be the point of this RfC. But I don't think most people intend a negative implication when they're talking about popular culture. I also agree with Randy Kryn's reasoning. Clovermoss (talk) 22:03, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• The existence of the article Mermaids in popular culture is presumably what allows the article Mermaid to pursue a purely zoological examination of these alluring beasts. The former article includes such pop culture phenomena as Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau; which seems only right as Die Seejungfrau has been put out on at least ten commercial recordings, AFAIK five times as many as there have been of Tubular Bells. -- Hoary (talk) 22:34, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose any across-the-board deprecation of "in popular culture" sections, which to me is where you place mentions of snippets of musical pieces heard in video games, TV shows, etc., instead of discussing modalities, orchestration, and influences (which probably fairly applies to the Dylan poem referenced above), etc. The lack of sourcing in such sections is notorious, but that's for editors of individual articles to decide how much original reporting to let in. Dhtwiki (talk) 09:03, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lack of sourcing in such sections is notorious, but that's for editors of individual articles to decide how much original reporting to let in. We already decided that; the answer is "none," and we wrote that up on a core content policy page called WP:No original research, which is global consensus that editors of individual articles cannot change. Levivich 14:39, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I tend to let plausible, innocuous statements stand, not to violate policy but in the hope that other editors will come along and find sources for them. Leaving unsourced a statement that a subway's door-closing chime is inspired by a piece by Handel isn't at the same level as, say, leaving an unsourced statement alleging criminal wrongdoing. If left unsourced, even the innocuous statements may eventually be swept away by more deletionist editors; and I won't object. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose deprecating the term 'in popular culture'. It's merely one of several acceptable titles for such sections/articles, and I see no need for any new rules.
  LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Deprecate such sections. Listing every time X appears in fiction (or popular culture, or whatever) is what
  WP:CARGO—fiction is not fact and collecting raw data does not produce analysis. TompaDompa (talk) 01:32, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • You are iVoting in the wrong discussion, TompaDompa. This is just about the changing of the section title, "In popular culture", not about whether the sections should exist or not. (That is for a whole different discussion.) GenQuest ^"scribble" 07:02, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not at the wrong discussion, I'm just proposing a more radical solution – one that would
      T:CENT says Should articles continue to have sections titled "in popular culture"? My answer is no—not because the title is bad, but because having such sections is. TompaDompa (talk) 03:24, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
      ]
• Oppose deprecating the term 'in popular culture'. Like it or not, this content is going to continue to be added to the articles, and we have to put this junk somewhere, and the un-cited and trivia can then be easily deleted from these sections. Now, someone start a discussion about whether these sections should even continue to exist and things will get quite interesting. GenQuest ^"scribble" 07:02, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I don't understand your reasoning for the opposition. You just commented that this discussion isn't about removal of these sections, but you used that very reason for that. What do you mean by "we have to put this junk somewhere". Would it hurt the article if we don't?Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 16:13, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So I'm seeing kind of three questions:

1) There's the question of whether sections should even exist' at the end of articles that have things "In Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 novel Blonde, the character of The Ex-Athlete is based on DiMaggio" and "In Seinfeld, Season 3, episode 1 "The Note, Kramer spots DiMaggio in a Dinky Donuts" and "DiMaggio appears in Harvey Comics' Babe Ruth Sports Comics (August 1949)"

2) There's the question of, if they do continue to exist, (and they will) how should they be named (the original and basic question of this thread).

3) And then there's also always the eternal the question of, if they do exist, how to curate? Should stuff like the first item above (important character in a serious novel) be in them and stuff like the second (passing mention in a vulgar and witless, but very popular, TV program) or the third (cover appearance in a long forgotten and lost children's comic) not? (And other questions of details.) And what practical procedures might be used to curate them?

So, for the first question, there are a lot of decent arguments either way, but as a practical matter, come on. We're always going to have these sections. It's entirely legit to express your opinion for/against them, but it's not going to change anything. So moving on.

For the third, well the current procedure is for editors -- driveby anon readers often enough -- to keep adding stuff (some good, some marginal, a whole lot silly; some well ref'd, some poorly ref'd, some unref'd) and for other editors to come across them, mutter "oh my God" under their breath and trim them (or even delete them), and for people to occasionally argue about it, since ultimately it's a matter of opinion how to curate. That's kind of kludging along (like a lot of the Wikipedia!), but it's OK, and I honesty don't think there's a better way. It's alright. It works OK. The project is not going to collapse over this. I can't imagine any rules that could be put in place ("No more than ten items" or "No refs to non-bluelinked sources" or whatever).

For the second, that's the question.

• Should these sections continue to be named "In popular culture" as is usual (altho far from universal)?
• If not, should they mostly be named one other single name, or let 1000 flowers bloom?

I just don't think there's any way to make a rule. There is the general practice of naming them "In popular culture", and rules are to codify common practice, so there could be a formal guideline made to that effect, such that someone could come along and rename your "In art and literature" to "In popular culture" and have the high ground. But I mean that's not going to happen. You're not going to get even 60% of a large group to agree to that. So just forget it. Trying to make a rule to have the sections be named some other thing is forget it squared.

It would be preferable to have a (generally common) name. As we do for "Early life" and "Personal life" "Discography" and "See also" etc. That's a good point. And they only possible generally common name is "In popular culture", barring a long-term sea change. So it's fine for individual editors to keep doing that.

For my part, personally, in my personal opinion it just sticks in my

So... different names in different articles for sections that are pretty much the same content? Oh well. Least bad option IMO. Herostratus (talk) 18:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose deprecating the Popular Culture sections. That is the name that Wikipedia has had for those sections, and usually they are useful additions to the encyclopedia. In cases where they are silly or useless, we can get into ugly edit-wars that go to
  WP:ANI a little less heavy. That's only half humorous. But the sections are useful and the name is as good as anything else. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:45, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Deprecate the sections as
  WP:OR because it's including something in the Wikipedia article Foo that isn't mentioned in any of the RSes about Foo. Anything not mentioned in the Foo RSes doesn't belong in the Foo Wikipedia article at all. Levivich 14:34, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I seriously doubt that changing the typical name for these sections would stop them from accumulating cruft.
  talk) 22:24, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Meh. There are probably far more important things to be doing right now, this feels very navel-gazey. Stifle (talk) 09:54, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose change This is a solution looking for a problem. There is nothing wrong with the phrase "in popular culture"; everyone knows what it means. I don't see any good reason to change it. Mlb96 (talk) 20:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support change. I just had to wipe out the entire "In Popular Culture" section in
  WP:UNSOURCED issues. I suspect that renaming the sections will reduce the affinity for people adding random trivia. I would also lean towards User:Levivich's position of a general depreciation, but that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 07:02, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Background

This is a proposal to expand the functionality of {{find sources}}, a template frequently used in {{Talk header}} (example) to help editors find sources to improve articles. Specifically, we seek to make it possible for different sets of links to appear for different types of articles, such as links to medical sources for medical articles.

Currently, there are three four related templates that generate find sources links:

• {{find sources}}, the basic set of sources starting with five Google links, plus JSTOR, NYT, and a couple more
• {{find video game sources}}, which contains the basic set above, plus three more links targeted to video gaming
• {{
  WP:MEDRS
  -compliant sourcing
• {{find biographical sources}}, a set of links aimed at supporting biographies.

We anticipate that additional templates in this family for other subject areas may be created in the future. Under this proposal, talk header will choose between the available templates, either automatically or on the basis of a manually set parameter, to display the one most appropriate for a given page.

Approaches for selection

We are considering several possible approaches for how to select which set of links to use:

1. Through a new parameter that can be manually set (i.e. to display medical links at Talk:Giardiasis, we'd change {{talk header}} to {{talk header|search-domain=medical}} at that page)
2. Through auto-detection of WikiProject banners (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because it includes the {{WikiProject Medicine}} banner)
3. Through auto-detection of Wikidata properties (i.e. Talk:Giardiasis would switch to using medical links because an automated analysis of its Wikidata item identifies it as a medical topic)

It would be possible to combine these approaches, such as implementing a combined option 2 – 1 approach, which in the case of {{Talk header}} would default to option 2 (project auto-detect) but would allow any editor to set a parameter (e.g., {{talk header|search-domain=medical}}) which would then take precedence over the project auto-detect. Having the parameter available would also be extensible to use by other templates on article pages where project detection isn't applicable; see below.

Previous discussion is at Template talk:Talk header, and we have created functional prototypes of options 1 and 2 in the talk header sandbox, which can be seen at the associated test page. (Current sandbox revision uses method 2, so testcases for method 1 currently fail, but pass successfully with the correct sandbox revision in place.)

Which approach(es) would you prefer?

Design

We are considering implementation via a wrapper template (here) which does all the detection of search domain, and transcludes the correct flavor of template. By placing the wrapper template at the current title (Template:Find sources) and moving the old content to Template:Find general sources, this remains transparent at the top level; all current transclusions of Template:Find sources after the changeover will invoke the wrapper, which invokes {{Find general sources}} by default. Outside of the Talk header template, this means a seamless transition for all other transclusions which will do exactly the same thing after go-live as they did before; that is, they will continue to invoke the basic "Find sources" link set, albeit by one extra call where {{Find sources}} transcludes {{Find general sources}} which invokes the Module.

Currently Template:Talk header includes the basic set of source links for all articles where it is not suppressed by parameter. After go-live, the behavior of "find sources" in Template:Talk header may change, depending which solution is chosen. If the parameter method is chosen, then the links in the Talk header would remain the same, until someone added the parameter. If auto-detect by WikiProject is chosen, then the links in the Talk header of pages on medically-related topics will switch to the medical links, and on video-related topics will switch to the video links; all other Talk headers would remain as before.

Impact on other templates

Other templates use the {{

We look forward to your feedback on the considerations above and the proposal overall. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) and {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:20, 12 August 2021 (UTC) updatedto add biographical sources; by Mathglot (talk) 22:32, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Listed at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Listed at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games. Mathglot (talk) 23:53, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as helpfully expanding the utility of this talk page banner. I would in particular be a fan of the wrapper template idea, as it is the least disruptive imo. I think the parameter approach via "search-domain=medical" is the best solution for how to label pages as needing MEDRS in the banner, though I think the auto-labelling is a good idea. My suggestion would be to try the auto-labelling first, and revert to manual labelling anything that is medical if it goes haywire and labels a lot of unnecessary things.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:57, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• As co-nominator, I obviously support this. Given how widely the find sources links appear, I think it's important that they are as useful as possible, and this will help with that by making them more appropriate to their context.
  Regarding selection approaches, I favor mainly option 2 (project banners), with the ability to override via option 1 (manual parameter setting). That's because I think it's important to have an element of automation to get this adopted on a wide scale. Option 3 (Wikidata) doesn't seem technically feasible, so that leaves project banners. I think "Is this tagged with {{WikiProject Medicine}}?" is an excellent metric, because the project tag belongs on all medicine-related articles, which is also basically the set we want to have the medicine links. However, it's nice to have the ability to override the default for the rare cases where it isn't working as expected, and having the parameters from option 1 will allow that. The only thing weighing against them is added code complexity, which isn't a huge downside.
  Regarding the wrapper template implementation, that's been more Mathglot's area of focus, so I'll defer to them and others who comment here. Also, I realize all this is more complex than some of the stuff that comes across VPR, so if anyone has questions or wants clarification, please don't be afraid to ask! Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I support the general proposal. I do have some questions about the implementation - I think if an automated detection system is implemented it will need to have a bit more subtlety than 'does this have a WikiProject Medicine banner?'. Articles about people in medicine, healthcare companies, medical books or journals, the history or social/political aspects of medicine, etc. are usually tagged with WPMed, but these articles do not necessarily require MEDRS sourcing for all claims. I wouldn't say this is a 'rare' case. If it's possible to take the intersection of WikiProject banners into account (e.g. don't default to 'find medical sources' if there is a WPBiography tag on the page in addition to WPMed) that might help, but I think this might need to be handled via a supervised AWB run or similar. Also, a hybrid of the 'find medical sources' and 'find general sources' template could be helpful for topics that might contain claims needing MEDRS sources but which are not strictly medical. Spicy (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I like the thought of the hybrid template, since for the examples you gave, most sources wouldn't need the MEDRS standard but several might. For instance, a medical researcher would need it for the part of the page discussing their discoveries, a company for discussing their products, a journal for discussing medical controversies about their work, a history page for discussing medical details about viruses involved in a pandemic, etc. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Spicy:, regarding "don't default to 'find medical sources' if there is a WPBiography tag on the page in addition to WPMed" this could definitely be added; it poses no great difficulty and would be isolated in the wrapper. It just depends on whether that idea gains consensus.

  Another option to consider, is that there's no need to choose only one set of "find sources" links. If the article is in both projects as in your example, one could imagine various outcomes: we could let the Talk header template grab the medical links automatically, and then add a biographical links below it, the second one either added automatically as well, or manually by adding {{

  biographical sources box

  }}. Yet another possibility, would be to have the order of WikiProjects matter: if Med is first and Biog second, then you only get the "find medical links" automatically, anything else you'd have to add manually; if Biography WikiProject was first, then it would be the other way round. But maybe it's too subtle operationally, even if well documented ("You mean, I'm spozed to read the stinkin' documentation?") Not sure why AWB would be involved; I think it's all doable in the wrapper.

  Sometimes having too much choice gets to be a problem because you can get

  paralyzed with all the possibilities, so at the outset I'm inclined to go with the simplest useful proposal that gains consensus; not because that makes it easier for template writers, but because that will give editors some time to see and use the new functionality, which may subsequently percolate into a more specific and informed wish list of increased functionality based on their real-world experience with the early version. Mathglot (talk) 22:11, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  The reason why I suggested AWB is because I think human judgment could be required for some of the edge cases - I don't think we should be giving people the impression that a MEDRS-compliant source is required to cite a medical device company's yearly revenue, for example. I suppose this could be handled in other ways, like the system you've described or Sdkb's hybrid template idea (although both of those rely on the assumption that the WikiProject tagging is accurate, which isn't always the case)... Spicy (talk) 06:16, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Not too familiar with

  AWB but would there be any significant downside to first using Mathglot's logic-based approached based on WikiProject with a manual override? Centralizing the logic where possible seems preferable. In the case of a medical company, maybe just add priority logic to check for 'WikiProject Companies' and assign those topics to display the general link set. AWB could still be used to mass apply overrides if there's a scenario that can't be accounted for in the root logic. - Wikmoz (talk) 20:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  @Spicy:, Hopefully as people see it live and perhaps read the expanded /doc, they'll see some of the options and apply whatever makes sense to get the desired display. As far as not requiring MEDRS links for the medical devices company revenue case, two possibilities occur to me without changing anything said prior (although these examples are no doubt not obvious since it's not live, and there's no doc):

  • Add an additional set of links to the header outside the scope of the new header functionality, by separately adding {{
    General sources box}} after the Talk header, so that you have both the medrs links automatically added by the new template functionality per Med project presence, and the "regular" links. You can see how this would look in this mocked up Talk page
    for the "Cochlear Limited" article (note: the actual Cochlear article TP does *not* have WikiProject Medicine on the Talk page; I had to add it to the mockup for the purposes of this test)
  • turn off find-source links with the existing 'hide' param, and add {{
    General sources box
    }} (i.e., the Talk page will look the way it does now) (the third, "hybrid" solution has been mentioned already)

  I was trying to find a medical devices company with the Medicine WikiProject already present so it would be a good example of your concern, but I gave up and had to force project medicine into the mockup for the test. (I didn't look very hard.) The question, I suppose, is this: "Is the benefit of having medrs links produced automatically via project detection worth the disruption that might be caused by losing the general "find sources" links for cases like medical device companies tagged with project Medicine, or in other cases where the correct WikiProjects are not applied and so the general link set would be better?" Is that a fair statement of your concern? I'm not sure we know the answer to that until we try it, unless someone wants to do some clever analysis and see what's out there now. I'm not opposed to undoing the installation after the fact, if on balance it turns out that the new approach is not helping editors improve the articles concerned by proposing a better set of reliable source links for most articles most of the time, because that is the whole point, right? Mathglot (talk) 01:47, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I broadly support the idea, allowing for tweaks to get the usability issues right. It's worth steering people towards suitale sources somehow. Shooterwalker (talk) 22:18, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. I think this is a good idea. Clovermoss (talk) 22:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Listed at: Module talk:Find sources. Mathglot (talk) 22:28, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Listed at: WT:WikiProject Biography. Mathglot (talk) 23:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Very cool idea and great work Mathglot and Sdkb! I think Option 2 (with the manual override function) sounds like the best approach. It's probably not worth getting too hung up on the edge cases. For those, I'd favor whichever approach is easiest to engineer and maintain with a slight preference to avoid hybrid or stacked link sets. - Wikmoz (talk) 01:35, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Mathglot, Sdkb: What would be the next steps? - Wikmoz (talk) 04:46, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  ​Thanks for the follow-up, Wikmoz. This hasn't garnered too much participation, but since it's been in a visible location and reactions so far have been positive, I'd say it's safe to move forward with implementation using option 2 with manual override function. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:31, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, that sounds reasonable to me. Once it's been moved live in template form and had time to gain some page views, we could take another look to see if more tweaks or other changes are needed based on any feedback from those encountering it for the first time. Perhaps subsequent to that, I imagine one would check to see about moving parts of it into the module. Adding Sdkb. Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Similar to HTML Tidy, a bot or tool to improve the layout and indent style of markup. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 04:01, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:COSMETICBOT. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 04:26, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

@192.76.8.74: Like pretty printing for programming languages, there could be a tool that receives MediaWiki markup and formats it via standard rules, as a server-side tool, to present, to the editor, an alternative to browser-heavy syntax highlighting, similar to https://refill.toolforge.org/ or https://refill.toolforge.org/ng/ . .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 04:52, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

unfortunately there isn't really such a tool possible, as whitespace is very important in wikicode (unlike in most other programming languages). There is a syntax highlighter tool available in the editor though; the , left of "Advanced" in some toolbars (not the pencil icon on the far right). If "New wikitext mode" or "Automatically enable all new beta features" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures then it is available on the menu icon . —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:11, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@TheDJ:@192.76.8.74:Actually, some pretty formatting is possible, such as:
<ref name="N">NEWLINE{{cite web |last1=L |first1=F |title=T |url=U |website=W |access-date=D}}NEWLINE</ref>
and naming refs then putting cites between refbegin and refend. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 00:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a (near-unanimous) consensus for the proposal; and with comments only trickling in very sporadically in the past week or so, it's clear that

WP:SNOW applies, too. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

---

Should administrators be allowed to apply extended-confirmed protection to

high risk templates

? 03:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard § TemplateProtector bot updated; Should we use ECP on templates?

 – Wug·a·po·des​ 20:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In response to the

August 16 incident (permalink), and subsequent pings I've received on several of platforms, I've gone ahead and changed the behaviour of User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector to elevate protection levels based on the configuration. Prior to today, the bot only looked for templates that were completely unprotected. In the past this was mainly a necessity for performance, but I believe this is no longer a problem

. After today's events, I hope we recognize the necessity for this extra layer of automation.

That said, prior to running the bot, I tediously reviewed the full list of affected pages. The ones that have had their protection changed I'm fairly confident in. I either verified few or no previous editors would be unable to edit it, or that the content rarely if ever changes (i.e. redirects). For the few outliers, I used a little

extended-confirmed protection

so that prior editors can still contribute. A few others I added to the bot's exclusion list so they will forever be ignored.

Which brings me to my next question, should we allow preemptive use of ECP on templates? Currently the

policy states Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred. I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly, but the situation is obviously different for templates and modules that are vulnerable to causing massive disruption. Take Template:Australian politics/party colours

as an example. It is regularly edited by experienced users. All are extended confirmed, but none are template editors, and probably wouldn't become one solely to edit a template like this. The transclusions meanwhile are political in nature and hence are higher risk for targeted vandalism. So extended confirmed seems like a very nice compromise, which is why I applied it in this case (the bot would have otherwise raised to template protection).

If we do formally permit use of ECP for preemptive purposes, I suggest modifying the bot configuration to say, >500 transclusions for autoconfirmed (status-quo), then >5000 for extended confirmed, and perhaps >8000-10000 for template editor (currently set to >5000). With ECP in the picture, that should in my opinion take out a lot of potential for vandalism. However it's worth mentioning that, to my knowledge, since February 2019 there have been a but a handful of cases where someone lowered from template protection after the bot applied it. So that suggests 5000 is reasonable for template editor, in which case you might put ECP at 3000 or something. But we have to agree on using ECP first :)

Thoughts? Previous discussion on this topic can be found in the original bot proposal. Warm regards, — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:38, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree that this would be a reasonable compromise, especially for templates that are more content-oriented than technical. I'd also be interested in the viability of, for some highly visible content-oriented templates, breaking them into a TPE-protected template that covers the logic and XCP-protected subtemplates that cover the content (maybe with a mediating Lua module to sanitize potential attempts at CSS vandalism). But that's just spitballing there. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 03:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I also agree that this makes sense. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 03:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Thanks for all the work and I support preemptive ECP. Perhaps there should be an exclusion method to allow only semi-protection for templates/modules in a certain category, but the exclusion would be ignored if the translusion count is above some threshold. The numbers proposed for the thresholds are too high. We don't want 3000 articles easily damaged by one malcontent. Johnuniq (talk) 04:04, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Thanks for your work on this, MusikAnimal. I also support ECP, and I concur with Johnuniq that the thresholds are too high. The 2018 RfC found consensus for semi-protecting above 200–250, so I'd suggest that as a better cutoff. I think often, as humans, we're bad at grasping what big numbers mean, so here's a way to look at it: How would we feel if an unconfirmed or IP editor decided to rapidly make 500 similar edits to a set of pages? Even if they were good faith, I think the response would be (ideally a friendly version of) "woah, slow down a bit, take some time to get acquainted with things around here before doing something that substantial". That isn't quite analogous to editing a template with 500 transclusions since the latter is more easily reverted, but still, we're talking about the same impact, and it should come with a similar level of restriction to prevent disruption. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:41, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I support these measures and also feel that the 3000-threshold should be lowered. Schwede66 04:56, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, absolutely. I'm not seeing a significant downside here. If we have pages we're reluctant to use TP on, this is a good compromise. As with Schwede66 above, I would support lowering the threshold. Vanamonde (Talk) 06:26, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support pre-emptive ECP at whatever threshold is deemed appropriate within the 4-digit range. ECP is widely available, so this should not be a significant block on updates. If such a change would allow for an increase in the Template protected threshold, so much the better as that remains quite an exclusive right. CMD (talk) 09:33, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes; I would even put the threshold for ECP a little lower, tbh, to around >1500. Thanks for the hard work, MusikAnimal. Lectonar (talk) 10:02, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• No, there was an RfC prohibiting the use of EC here, for good reasons (like EC doesn’t correlate well with template writing ability). Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed protection policy 2. At minimum there should be another RfC on this, rather than an AN discussion. The thresholds of EC are ridiculous anyway, and it’s overly prohibitive in the topic areas on which it’s blanket applied ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:11, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, would non-EC TEs now also need EC to edit ‘less high visibility’ templates?
    I’d be more happy with this proposal if EC could be granted at WP:PERM, so editors with less than 500 edits can request the perm if they have a need to edit one of these templates. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:27, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    "EC doesn’t correlate well with template writing ability" - It's not the correlation to template writing which is the issue. Some vandals, as yesterday's episode proved, are quite adept. The key is that EC has some correlation to a common investment in the Wiki. Cabayi (talk) 10:33, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    It goes over the top. It may well exclude all vandals, but it excludes legitimate editors too. One editor adding Nazi symbols shouldn’t cause us to knee-jerk stop the thousands who edit them productively. Let them request it at WP:PERM. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:35, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I'd like to see some actual examples of editors who would be shut out and

    bitten by this. As a general rule of them, somebody with less than 30 days' tenure and 500 edits is only interested in writing articles or improving content. The back end work of templates is only of interest to experienced editors who've been around the block a bit. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:42, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

    ]

    There's not really a roadmap like that. Some editors only do anti-vandalism, some editors only write templates, some editors only write content, some do a mix of them all. I think we can all think of editors in each of these groups. I'd have been shut out by this, if I didn't happen to have my account registered earlier than I actually started editing. If I registered slightly later, would I have been any more of a vandal?

    Also it only just occurs to me... The two things that fix this Nazi issue are: 1) the protection bot not skipping already-protected pages, which is critical; 2) the change to the filter MusikAnimal applied. Those two things have already been done. It's not clear what this third change is preventing. The current config TE-protects >5000. This is proposing changing that to 8000-10000, and doing ECP for >5000. So... we're proposing letting more editors edit through the protection? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:05, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Agreed with Ritchie. Additionally, anyone who cannot edit a template directly can always make an edit request on its talk page. Doing that from the view source page is not hard (and if someone finds it hard...maybe they aren't ready to be editing templates yet). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 11:06, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I remember before I had the TE perm it was pretty frustrating having to make edit requests. Anything more complex takes ages to get reviewed, or just doesn't get reviewed, because someone else (likely someone unfamiliar with the template) has to take responsibility for the code being functioning and fairly representing consensus, which sucks up so much time even reviewing them. I suspect that'll be less-so for ECP, since a lot more editors have the perm, but at the same time only a subset of ECP editors will review requests to edit templates (likely the same subset as those who are TEs, so similar numbers). There's also various changes one wouldn't want to approve but also wouldn't revert, and those are all incremental improvements. I don't think being able to edit a sandbox and request an edit is a replacement for being able to edit directly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:21, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    ProcrastinatingReader, [a]lso, would non-EC TEs now also need EC to edit ‘less high visibility’ templates. I honestly cannot see a case where someone gets TPE before becoming extended-confirmed. firefly ( t · c ) 11:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Firefly, Well I suppose a sock of a banned editor might want to give it a go, but hopefully they'd be spotted. :-) Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:52, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Ritchie333, indeed, I can understand that people might request it but as you say I doubt it'd actually be granted absent exceptional circumstances! firefly ( t · c ) 13:18, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @

    WP:PERM/EC. Also remember this isn't about template writing ability, it's about guarding highly visible templates from disruption. Many of these templates require no template editing skills whatsoever, but any intentional vandalism will have far-reaching effects. Right now we go from semi to template protection, which is quite a big jump. It'd be nice to have an in between in there. The 2016 RfC also predates the many waves of template vandalism we've had. I do not believe the points raised there have merit today, which is why many admins, myself included, have continued to use ECP on templates when it made sense to do so (high number of transclusions, but the regular editors are not TEs). I don't have the time or energy for another RfC, so if we feel that is needed, someone else will have to spearhead that effort. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:37, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

    ]

    People can request it for alt accounts. All other requests are denied. So I don’t think it really counts. As I understand, the change you made to your bot would’ve prevented this Nazi issue, as it has 55k transclusions, so I don’t see the need for even more layers of pre-emptive protections when the problem has already been patched. The only other reasonable idea is to TE protect, in addition to the automatic protections, any simple template that realistically does not need to be changed. (eg a hypothetical 1k transclusions variant of Template:Wbr.) But EC protecting basically anything meaningful in the template space seems overkill. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:46, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:IAR does. If there were a situation where it would clearly benefit the encyclopedia for a non-EC editor to start editing ECP templates, it would be within standard administrative discretion to grant them the perm. I do know of at least one newer user who was offered EC for merit by several admins and declined. (An eon ago in 2012, I was given confirmed at the 3-day mark and rollback at the 13-day mark; that probably doesn't happen anymore.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 18:00, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

    ]

    @Tamzin: Can you link me a successful EC request by a non-EC editor (with no EC alts, and not a case of ECP being granted after it was initially pulled for gaming the system)? Ideally in the past year or two. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Looking back a few months I don't see any, but that's not my point. My point is that it's allowed by policy, and in a scenario where a good-faith new user starts flooding the system with edit requests for ECP'd templates, any admin has the authority to grant them the bit. It's just that that's a rather unlikely scenario to occur. Under the current use cases for ECP, on the other hand, it's hard to think of a need-based reason to grant the bit, especially since, IIRC, granting ECP to a not-usually-eligible editor doesn't exempt them from DS/GS 30/500 sanctions. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 18:34, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    @ProcrastinatingReader: I'm not going to go dig through my logs, but I have rarely given out ECP early, think it was related to a well established editor on another project wanting to do content translation here. It came with a strong reminder that it does not override the 500/30 arbcom remedies that they should now take extra care to avoid. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:00, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• The more important decision is to let the bot re-assess templates which have already been protected. Semi protection on a template which has crept up to 10 times the threshold for TE protection is a major red flag (without any embellishment). Cabayi (talk) 10:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose for all the reasons ProcrastinatingReader raised. I think Cabayi's idea is a good one, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:31, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support increasing the preemptive usage for security reasons, and also encouraging editors to get more involved with Template editing practices in general. Not discussed here, but of inverse concern are lightly transcluded templates, that are added to several popular pages, but I don't have a policy change for that. Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:30, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: does anyone know how long the disruption yesterday actually went on for? It seems to me that a large part of the problem is that vandalism can be undone on the template within 5 minutes but may not quickly propagate to all of the pages it's transcluded on for caching reasons. Anyone can manually purge a page but is there a tool to automatically purge all pages in a particular category or list (here, the list of transclusions)? If not, can one be created or does that open us up to some
  denial of service attack?

  If vandalism like this can be undone in 5 minutes then I will likely oppose an increase in stringency, but if there's no other way to stop a repeat of yesterday then I'll likely support it. Notice that all we needed to stop this attack was the MusikBox elevation fix (which I completely support). — Bilorv (talk) 15:39, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Yes,

  certain types that take longer (those types are not applicable here). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:48, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Okay, so was it really just a few minutes or so (5? 10? 20?) that the vandalism yesterday was up for? Also, just spitballing, but has anyone considered some method of bot protection that gets to the root cause of the aim of this vandalism—to damage highly-viewed pages? A vandal wouldn't do this on 50,000 less-than-a-view-per-day non-mainspace pages, I would guess. We could have a cascading protection like we use for the main page but on a lower scale, applied by bot to anything with above X views in the last month. Just interested in the feasibility. — Bilorv (talk) 16:06, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Fucking magnets, how do they work? El_C 22:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  @Bilorv: I suspect, after the change was reverted, that propagated to the pages within a minute. (It would take my bot 1 minute to purge 55k pages; job queue is currently not backlogged, and rarely is, if the statistics are accurate.) As for your idea, it sounds feasible. One possible approach: WMF provides this data dump that can be used. Using that, one can bulk fetch the templates used by each page above X pageviews and then sum it all up. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:07, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes

  WP:VRT and at least one press enquiry (just counting the ones I saw & handled myself), 2+ press reports, and the reputational damage to Wikipedia. The loss of 5 minutes effort was the least of the damage. Cabayi (talk) 09:51, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Support. Good stuff, MusikAnimal. Make sure to give the bot extra treats. El_C 17:06, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• An update to our
  WP:AN is not that location. --Izno (talk) 19:19, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support and I'm frankly surprised this wasn't already done. Arguments about how this might bite new template editors aren't compelling: you can be patient and get your 500 edits! It's not hard! Further, we should do what we can to minimize harm done to readers and our subjects (especially BLP pages); "accidentally" suggesting that someone is a Nazi in a BLP seems like a bright line we shouldn't be crossing - or even provide the road that could be used to cross it. Jorm (talk) 19:33, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. If they'd done this on some template that is used on fewer, it probably wouldn't have been caught for much longer. I get that this means there are some people who could make positive direct contributions and instead for a short time will have to make edit requests, but that's true for many articles, and those are single articles. —valereee (talk) 21:11, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support reasonable actions to make it harder to vandalize thousands of our most highly viewed pages in a few mouseclicks. Unprotected templates transcluded into huge numbers of highly salient pages, especially BLPs, make mass-scale vandalism ridiculously too easy and common. - Astrophobe (talk) 21:31, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support this makes sense. Also support lowering the threshold for ECP to 3000 pages (or even lower). Jake Wartenberg (talk) 21:38, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• ’’’Support’’’ templates are highly visible so the impact of vandalism / test edits / not understanding template workings/code or formatting is high. I support lower thresholds for this reason: eg > 100 transclusions for autoconfirmed > 250 for EC and > 1000 for TE. Tom (LT) (talk) 22:00, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Our long-standing policy on High-risk templates (and it is a policy despite its guideline tag) pre-dates the EC policy by a long way. I'm never a fan of specifying exact thresholds for these things, but should we use EC for high-risk templates where appropriate? Sure. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:18, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support protection, regardless of whether we classify it as ECP. Regarding "high-risk", I'd go so far as to say that the template namespace should be protected by default, with a whitelist to allow editing e.g. DYK nominations. Has anyone ever seen a new user make meaningful positive contributions to any template such that it wouldn't be better handled through a protected edit request? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:35, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, lots. Some templates are maintained almost entirely by anons - notably sports templates but also many other types. To get some idea of the massive backlogs and content deficit that would create, take a look at recent changes. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:46, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree that protecting the entire template space would be a significant change and that it's not unusual for templates such as sports season standings to be updated productively by new or unregistered editors. Plus since transclusion from any namespace is permitted, editors would just start putting more templates into project space. isaacl (talk) 23:14, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    It might be worth having an edit filter that watches for new images being added to templates by non-EC editors. If we can't restrict access to the whole namespace we can at least make oversight easier. I'll run it over to

    WP:EFN. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:30, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

    ]

    Thanks for the link. I guess they're just not in any of the topic areas I watch. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:02, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, especially for content templates like {{Color topics}} where template-protection may unduly interfere with productive revisions. That template has 233 transclusions in mainspace, just short of the proposed EC cutoff proposed by Tom (LT). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:16, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for so many reasons it would take all day to list them. Worthwhile, though, to verify that the template editor permission will allow editing of ECP-protected templates. There may be occasional rare exceptions where this is warranted. Risker (talk) 02:42, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support This is the only viable alternative to more extensive use of full protection. I think however that admins will need to be reminded they can grant EC. I had forgotten until I saw this here. DGG ( talk ) 03:24, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as there is a clear need for templates with more than auto-confirmed and less than template-editor protection. The language Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred should be removed from the ECP policy page. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 03:54, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - as a very reasonable compromise between semi-protection, and TPE protection (which it seems would impose barriers to some content templates being updated). I am also very glad to see that MusikBot II will now raise protection levels as transclusion counts increase, given the performance issues have been elided. Nice work MusikAnimal :) firefly ( t · c ) 06:24, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I have long supported this and believe it could have a significant impact on reducing template vandalism while minimizing the harm for legitimate users. --Trialpears (talk) 08:39, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support the introduction of ECP as an extra level in protecting templates. Oppose the increase in threshold for TE protection. Support the bot re-assessing previously assessed templates. Noting the need for the bot to respect manual adjustments to the protection, preferably it would flag up somewhere (pinging the adjusting admin) that the protection level is out of sync with the norm. Also noting that many sensitive templates are substed & that the transclusion numbers are not the whole story. Cabayi (talk) 09:57, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. ― Qwerfjkltalk 10:06, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Pile on support per above.--
  John Cline (talk) 13:21, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose - I realize I'm coming to this late and it's already
  snowing, but hear me out. ECP is a game-able protection level - it takes a more dedicated vandal to game it but trust from my experience at SPI that it's very little deterrent over semi, and with templates the payoff is having your vandalism immediately appear in maybe tens of thousands of articles all at once. Plus, the disruption you cause still produces ANI complaints three days later and serious reactions like this proposal here with widespread ramifications. In exchange for 500 nonsense edits (or one edit plus a script that clicks undo 499 times over a few days) and a 30 day hold (set a reminder in your calendar), this would've been a pretty sweet deal for our recent Nazi vandal. On the other hand, template protection secures high-risk templates to only editors who have been vetted by other members of the community, which is a process that's far more difficult to game. If template vandalism is becoming a widespread problem (I would argue it has been for quite some time already) then we should consider some form of pending changes protection for templates that appear in article space. Ivanvector's squirrel (^trees/_nuts) 13:55, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • If I understand correctly (in no way a given!), this proposal is whether to allow ECP on templates, with the specific levels to be determined later. On re-reading the proposal it seems that the example given would indeed lower the protection of some templates - which I would disagree with were it proposed formally. I'd probably suggest keeping the current thresholds and then inserting another at 2500 transclusions for ECP. MusikAnimal - thoughts? :) firefly ( t · c ) 14:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes, we will decide on adjustments to the thresholds in a separate discussion (I don't think that requires an RfC). Regardless, even if the bot doesn't use ECP, I would still like to see use of it in preemptive fashion written in our policy. As noted above, Template:Australian politics/party colours is a prime example, given the usual template editor protection would have shut out all editors. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:13, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

    • Agreed, and I assumed as much. Thanks! firefly ( t · c ) 16:46, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. It seems like it would be sensible to have another level of protection available here, since the two current options are basically "everyone can edit" and "only administrators + a very small number of users can edit". Yes, of course it is possible to game the EC permission, but I don't see how restricting ourselves to a permission that is even easier to game is the right solution. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 21:28, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. This seems reasonable, especially if it helps to prevent the mass vandalism we saw yesterday. Clovermoss (talk) 22:29, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support entirely reasonable proposal.-- Jezebel's Ponyo^{bons mots} 16:38, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. This proposal could enable us to reduce template vandalism, even if it doesn't eliminate it. And anything that reduces vandalism is still worth doing, per the nirvana fallacy.— Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:31, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support adding ECP as an intermediary step, but Oppose raising the 5000 transclusion threshold for TEP. I think something like the 250/2500/5000 proposed above would make more sense than lowering the protection levels on highly-used templates. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 21:30, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Making ten edits and waiting four days? Easy. Making five hundred edits and waiting thirty days? Not so much. 🐔 Chicdat  ^{Bawk to me!} 10:31, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support — As for Ivanvector's oppose, I think that instead of lowering the threshold for template protection, this should mainly be used for templates that are currently semi-protected but are high-risk enough to warrant extended-confirmed protection. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:25, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support with a certain transclusion count or otherwise high risk such as the template appears on controversial or popular topics. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:51, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Support: Could be useful as another option for those templates in a dead zone of high use; too highly used to use semi, but not high enough to necessarily use template protection. Regards,

  Contact me | Contributions). 21:44, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

Discussion (ECP & templates)

• I was just about to ask someone close this, because I don't have the stomach for a proper RfC, but it looks like we're doing it anyway! For those of you who are just now seeing this thread: This started as an update about the bot I maintain, in response to a recent vandalism incident. I was gauging interest on using ECP, as many of the articles that would have been raised to template protection by the bot seemed to call for it. So anyway, for the purposes of this RfC, !voters can ignore all the proposals regarding the bot such as what thresholds we will use. That can be ironed out later once consensus for the use of ECP is established. Thanks, — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the clarification. I was about to say essentially what you said about dealing separately with any changes to the bot. I have a personal bias that appreciates having a step between semi-protected and template-editor protected, so this may be hindering me from evaluating the downside of using extended-confirmed protection. (There is a module I wrote, before the template editor role existed, that later got template-editor protected; an admin kindly lowered it and the corresponding template to semi-protected so I could continue to support it as needed. I know it could get raised back to template-editor protected any time and then I'd have to rely on edit requests. It's not a huge deal and changes are infrequent, but it's a potential future impediment.) isaacl (talk) 21:37, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - although ECP is certainly a lot safer than semi-protection, it's still something a dedicated vandal could overcome without anyone else needing to cast eyes on them. Signing up a new account, doing 500 edits, and waiting 30 days, is not beyond the realm of imagination. Wouldn't it be better for us to use template protection for these high-visibility templates? Obviously this will cause irritation for other legitimate users wishing to make tweaks to those, but I think that's a better solution than risking the 16 August fiasco again.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:14, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Some vandals might go to that extent - we always see it elsewhere - although it is definitely a significant barrier. Many will be caught on their way to EC, but some will get there. At least we might get a few typos fixed in the process. We've previously had administrators who are mass sockpuppeteers and some who have deleted the main page, so nothing will ever be perfect. It's just a matter of getting the cost/benefit balance right, and this proposal gives us an extra option to do that. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 09:02, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Please excuse me if I've missed some discussion, I haven't read everything related to this incident. I know MusikBOT doesn't escalate protections to avoid the bot overriding admins delibretly setting a lower protection level. Wouldn't it make more sense to control these cases using the {{bots}} template to prevent the bot from changing it in those cases? --Trialpears (talk) 08:34, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  By "using the template", I'm assuming you mean {{bots}}? I don't think this task should be exclusion compliant in this way because a vandal could also do this to prevent it from being protected, say right before they transclude it into a much more visible template (which should also be automatically protected, but for the sake of the argument let's pretend that's not the case). The bot only ignores pages with recent page protection changes in the past 7 days, according to the ignore_offset option in the User:MusikBot II/TemplateProtector/config. We don't want this to last for eternity because humans won't bother to go back and check that a template with just 500 transclusions now has several million. Humans forget, the bot will not :) However admins can also explicitly exclude specific pages via the config, so there's still a means to make the bot ignore a template. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:53, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  That's indeed the template, just forgot the {{

  t}}. You're probably right about the bot being exclusion complaint isn't a great idea, but your config solution seems sufficient. The ignore offset of 7 days also seems find, but then why didn't it escalate protection at {{wbr}} and others mentioned in related discussions. --Trialpears (talk) 21:31, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Up until yesterday, the bot only acted on templates that were completely unprotected. Now it will escalate from semi to template editor in accordance with the configuration. The technical means to do this was only made possible some months ago. So while the bot came too late to the rescue in this case, we should at least be glad our new database replicas are fast enough to make this functionality possible :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 03:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I appreciate the desire to review the transclusion count periodically, but am not sure if a seven-day minimum period is long enough. For bot-set protection, it doesn't matter, but if an admin set the protection level, surely they considered the future potential usage of the template for more than the next week? isaacl (talk) 20:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.

If you visit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa while logged in, you'll see the "Article Talk" tab bar. ("minerva__tab-container" element) But if you're logged out, this tab bar goes missing and there's no way to access the talk page unless you manually alter the URL. This turns out to be by design and now consensus is required for a configuration change to ensure that anyone who can edit can also reach talk pages. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as proposer. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, Obviously. Sometimes I really do question if the WMF understands the site that they run, this is supposed to be a collaborative encyclopaedia building site - how on earth is collaboration supposed to occur when you hide the main methods of communicating from the vast majority of users? The requirement for consensus seems to be backward here - removing the ability for anonns to communicate on mobile should have required community engagement, restoring longstanding functionality should be the default. The rationale for removing talk page access for all mobile annons seems to be a combination of "mobile IP users are obviously too stupid to understand the concept of a talk page and would just fill them up with nonsense and spam" (I'd like to see the data that supports this, according to the phabricator task this is based on them putting a talk page link in a rarely visited settings page and being surprised that people didn't understand what it did???) and that the mobile talk pages are too buggy to be publicly available (In which case they need fixing, not hiding.). I just can't see the sense in having a huge body of users who are allowed to edit the site but are barred from discussing their editing - it just seems dumb. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 12:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  For background, talk pages were never removed, rather they were added. The mobile site was built from the ground up. In fact, we didn't have editing for a long time as it was communicated to WMF by editors that notifications were mandatory before we could do that. We added notifications, then editing. Talk page access was only added in current form circa 2019 because communities spoke up and helped drive that priority.

  Building the mobile site has always been based on priorities, so nobody in WMF has ever removed this functionality as you are alleging here. Please assume good faith. Our software is extremely complex with very few maintainers. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:16, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• ? @Jdlrobson: - any reason someone is going to try to block setting $wgMinervaTalkAtTop = [ "base" => true ]; if the enwiki community asks for it? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:49, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Replied with suggestions: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T54165#7301936 Jdlrobson (talk) 19:17, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm a bit torn here, in that I only partially agree that this is supposed to be a collaborative encyclopaedia building site. The primary purpose of this site is to be an encyclopedia serving our readers. Obviously, to have an encyclopedia, you need to write an encyclopedia, but the writing is not the primary purpose. It's just a means to the end. Screen real estate on a mobile device is precious, and wasting pixels on a feature that's mainly of benefit to writers degrades the experience of our readers. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  RoySmith, that's a valid argument, but you can't have it both ways. Either mobile anon users can edit (which they currently can) and they need to be able to reach talk pages. Or you remove their edit button (that saves even more pixels) so they won't have a pressing need for talk pages anymore, but that's a difficult topic. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:09, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd be happy to see all anonymous editing go away. Want to edit? Make an account and the editing buttons and links become visible. IMHO, the amount of effort we put into making anonymous editing work isn't justified by the value it adds. For example, the whole "IP Masking" effort that's currently underway. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:41, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  RoySmith, I don't oppose, but unless/until we manage to establish a consensus to end IP-editing (this recent effort went nowhere) we have to deal with it. So that's what I'm trying to do. As long as they have an edit button, they should have a talk page link. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:04, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @RoySmith and Alexis Jazz: I don't think we should make the fork for showing editing features logged in vs. not. We want users to log in even if they never plan to edit so that if they do decide later on to fix a typo it'll be a smoother journey from there down the editing rabbit hole. But if their first reaction when they create an account is "ack, this just introduced all these ugly buttons I don't want", they'll never stay logged in. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:23, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• We should block all edits from all platforms that do not have full access. —Kusma (talk) 16:50, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom with my thanks for stewarding this issue. Not giving mobile IP editors access to talk pages is just stupid, I have no other words for it. WP:Communication is required. Levivich 06:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Paid employees have missed the boat here. An IP user edits, is constantly reverted, but doesn't see explanations on their talk page. Effectively a campaign to frustrate and drive away IP editors, while further stigmatizing IP users to the community.—Bagumba (talk) 11:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• This is now a forked discussion, can I suggest redirecting this back to the
  WP:VPP section, as that is also diverging into something separate from what the section author originally wrote. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:34, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  This is a specific request for the mobile platform software, the other is a high-level policy proposal.—Bagumba (talk) 14:23, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with Bagumba: this is a specific proposal for a skin and should be allowed to reach its own conclusion. The other discussion is a broader one covering all clients. Regardless of its outcome, the skin can be changed as per community consensus. isaacl (talk) 15:20, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @RoySmith: oppose early closure. This is a specific proposal to do a specific actionable thing. The thing is boolean as well so it is very easy to determine the result. That VPP discussion is extremely broad and vague. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:49, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  No problem, I've backed out my close. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:54, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support If a given setup supports editing, it should support talk pages.
  WP:ENGAGE. MarioGom (talk) 16:59, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• 

  Question I agree that giving everyone (including logged-out folks) access to the talk page is a good idea. However screen space is indeed limited on mobile, as RoySmith mentioned, and we know from our data that most logged-out people are not visiting Wikipedia with the intention of editing. They want to read articles, and the Article Talk tabs push the article down the page a bit, so does that design align with what they want? Additionally I wonder if the "Talk" tab, as it is currently presented to logged-in folks, might be confusing logged-out folks and newcomers in general (i.e. what does "Talk" mean? what will happen if I tap on it?)? Which brings me to these mockups made a few years ago by User:Npangarkar_(WMF), of an expanded article footer that has additional tools and information (including a link to the talk page). I feel like the inclusion of an icon, and the more descriptive title ("Discuss" vs. "Talk") make it easier for newcomers to understand what they might find if they tap on it. It could be even more helpful if the button/link included the number of discussions (something like "2 active discussions"), which was an idea explored in Winter. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @AHollender (WMF): The note about screen real estate makes sense, but nobody really scrolls to the bottom either. There is a pencil icon on each section to edit it. Editing and discussion workflows should ideally go hand in hand, so if it's prominent and easy to edit there needs to be a complimentary method of discussion. Perhaps a button on the warning message that shows up when you click "Edit" is one way forward. For logged in users, the 'advanced mobile' mode (which shows the talk button) should perhaps be default, since most logged-in people do probably edit (?) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  That's a good point about wanting the workflows to go hand in hand, ProcReader. Maybe we want some more mockups of what that could look like.

  AHollender, regarding "discuss" vs. "talk", I believe the desktop tab used to say "discuss" instead. I'm not sure why it was changed, but that's probably a discussion to seek out. The biggest issue I tend to see is

  WP:NOTFORUM—it's not always intuitive that the discussion page is for discussing improvements to the article, not a general comment thread for discussion about the topic. We designed {{Talk header}} to help explain this, but the mobile developers got fed up with the banner bloat on talk pages and just shoved them into an "about this page" submenu no newcomer will ever click on, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:22, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  A common trap is for people to do mobile mockups in English, then be surprised when the German version is a mess because "Diskussion", "Quelltext bearbeiten" and "Versionsgeschichte" don't fit into the space allotted for "Talk", Edit", and "History". -- RoySmith (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  It traditionally was Talk, then globally it was changed to "discussion" and then en.wp freaked out because "discussion" was too long (taking up more space in their monobook skin) and different from "talk" and they feared that "discussion" would invite discussions on the topic instead of the article, so en.wp changed it back to talk. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  People still use Monobook? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:24, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Back then definitely. And the bar is all filled up with additional portlet actions for administrative actions as well, because dropdown menus are BAD :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I do. I try Vector once per year, but never enjoy it. Too much whitespace and all my buttons are hidden somewhere. —Kusma (talk) 10:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I absolutely do. Tried Vector for a while, but never could get used to it. Too much clutter. Monobook is clean and simple, and that's exactly what I want in an interface. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:56, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Qualified support. This is a classic example of systemic bias toward editor desires over
  WP:READER desires. I agree with everyone that it's essential to have some way to access talk pages from every editable page, but I agree with RoySmith and AHollender (WMF) that we don't want to give it inappropriate emphasis. The mockup of what it could look like from the bottom of the page looks quite nice, although I'd want to see some more discussion around what we'd want to go in the edit overview section or whether we should just keep the current "last edited by JimboWales" bar. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:14, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Readers also use the talk page. An IP's angry post at Talk:F-777 prompted me to fix a redirect we didn't know was broken. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, and (probably deserves its own section) switch from text labels on tabs, to icons with tooltips (ha-ha, the mobile folks won't see the tips). RoySmith's comment about the length of terms like Quelltext bearbeiten raises a good point, but the solution is to follow the example of European road signs and come up with good icons for 'Read', 'Edit', 'History', and so on, and relegate text equivalents to second place. I can visualize one for 'Talk' involving two little talking heads facing each other. It's well established^{[citation needed]} that people process images faster than text, and it would also be a god-send for those of us who occasionally wander off to other language Wikipedias in languages we can't read, and just want to check history, or find a related discussion or compose a diff or something. Mathglot (talk) 22:16, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Icons works well in addition to text, but on their own are known to sometimes increase confusion, esp the more there are and the more esoteric they become to try to convey the many meanings that have to be conveyed. Especially on mobile, where you have no hover labels etc this actually reduces discovery. Anyways, mobile already uses a lot more icons than desktop does. The Advanced mode for editors on mobile, currently has language, a watch star, a clock winding back, a pencil and a dropdown menu.... and I think most people on first glance have no idea what any of them do...... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:25, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. However, as other editors have suggested, it might be better to find an alternative to the [Article | Talk] tabs to save some screen real estate. There's a lot of blank space between the language icon and the edit icon. Maybe slip in a Talk page icon in that row? Alternatively, the proposed Tools section at the end of the page looks great. - Wikmoz (talk) 04:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it looks like the problem was already solved in the Wikipedia app. At the bottom of each article, there is an ABOUT THIS ARTICLE section with links to View talk page and View edit history. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as at least a start. Mobile or not, we should always make the channels of communication clear and easy to find, and treat every reader as a potential editor. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. It doesn't make sense that a group that is allowed to edit cannot even view talkpages and edit-histories. Why not make pressing the existing "edit" button on the mobile site open up a sub-menu with the options "Edit article", "Go to talk page", and "View history"? I think it's unlikely that anyone technically inclined enough to edit a page would be confused by this additional step. Rabbitflyer (talk) 22:19, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong support - Talk pages are the backbone of Wikipedia. It would help me tremendously with my work on Wikipedia in mobile. If we did it in the userspace, we should do it to others as well. Interstellarity (talk) 16:34, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Request from Editing Team

Comment: Hi y'all – I work as the product manager for the Editing Team. We're actively working on a series of improvements to talk pages on desktop, and within the next few months, we'll be shifting our focus to improving talk pages on mobile.

With this in mind, can you please review – what I currently understand to be – the issues you all have raised here and let us know what issues you think are missing from this list and/or what about this list needs to be edited?

For added context: I'm asking the above because it's important to me that our team accurately and exhaustively understand the issues y'all are raising here, so that we can make sure the issues we prioritize working on in the next few months are the issues that will be the most impactful to address.

Issues

1. Meta
   1. Talking is a core part of editing and there is a large segment of people who can edit and not talk. As 192.76.8.74^[1], @Alexis Jazz^[2], @RoySmith^[3], @MarioGom^[4], @ProcrastinatingReader^[5] , and others in previous conversations have articulated^{[6] [7] [8] [9] [10]}: collaborating is an important part of writing an encyclopedia. In order to collaborate, you need to be able to talk to people. Currently, there is a large segment of people (anons editing on mobile), who are: A) able to edit and B) not able to collaborate, by way of them not having access to talk pages.
      1. The above, "...wastes time and energy for editors to post explanations/guidance/warnings for contributors who cannot respond" @Johnuniq^[11]
      2. It also helps contextualize why anons editing on mobile not having access to talk pages is problematic.
   2. It's disconcerting to learn that we – volunteers and WMF staff – do not seem to share a core assumption/understanding that people who can edit, must also need to be able to talk.
2. Talk page design
   1. People do not intuitively recognize discussion pages as places to talk about improvements to articles.^[12]
   2. People accessing talk pages on mobile lack access to important context about the conventions that guide how these pages can be used constructively. E.g. Talk page banners/templates are difficult to discover and edit notices are absent.^[13].

Additional context

Considering there are three teams within the Foundation working on improvements to talk pages, I thought it would be worth making sure you all were aware of the work that is being planned and done to improve volunteers' ability to communicate with one another.

• Editing Team | Talk pages project
  • *Reply Tool: a way to reply to talk page comments in one click
  • *New Discussion Tool: an inline form for adding new topics with keyboard shortcuts for pinging and inserting links
  • **Notifications: subscribe to receive notifications about comments posted in specific topics/sections
  • Usability Improvements: a series of improvements to help people instinctively recognize and use talk pages as spaces to communicate with other people
  • Mobile: we'll be introducing all of the above on mobile as well.
• Android Team | Communication Improvements
  • Implementing talk pages and the Watchlist natively within the Android app
  • Improving notifications so people can be aware when others are contacting them
• iOS | Notification improvements
  • A series of improvements intended to help iOS participants to know when they have a new notification without them having to check Wikipedia’s website or check pages in the app, so that they can take timely action on their notifications.

*You can experiment with the Reply and New Discussion Tools right on desktop, by enabling the DiscussionTools beta feature in Special:Preferences.

**You can experiment with Topic Subscriptions on desktop by appending ?dtenable=1 to any talk page URL like this. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I inserted a subheading to make this more easy to respond to. A quick additional point is that there needs to be a way of alerting users of mobile devices that is different from the normal semi-spam that occurs with nearly all apps competing for user attention. I have seen phones where a dozen apps have badges showing notifications—the owner ignores them as background noise. For Wikipedia use, when a user opens their browser or app, and if there are outstanding talk-page messages, there must be something like the orange-bar-of-death that more or less compels the user to respond. The suggestion that real-estate on a phone is important completely misses the point that the first thing the user should do is at least view their talk. That raises another tricky point. By convention, we bottom-post, but on a phone that might require a bunch of scrolling. I'm not sure what to do about that but ideally the current sections would be shown. Johnuniq (talk) 00:18, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I inserted a subheading to make this more easy to respond to.

Oh, wonderful! Thank you for doing that @Johnuniq.

As for the additional issue you are raising, I'm glad you drew out this nuance. You can expect a response from me about this point next week. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

there needs to be a way of alerting users of mobile devices that is different from the normal semi-spam that occurs with nearly all apps competing for user attention.

@Johnuniq: would it be accurate for me to understand the issue that's prompted you to share the above as: "Anonymous editors do not respond to the messages others leave for them on their talk pages."

Note: I appreciate the language I proposed above does not include the solution/requirement you proposed. I've done this intentionally so as to ensure I'm accurately understanding the underlying issue any solution(s) would need to address.

By convention, we bottom-post, but on a phone that might require a bunch of scrolling.

This is a great callout and something we will need to consider as part of the work we have planned to help people identify new talk page activity. I've documented – what I understand to be – the question inside of what you are saying on Phabricator: "How might bottom-posting impact the likelihood that people accessing talk pages, particularly on mobile, will see the new messages others have left for them?". PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:47, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PPelberg (WMF): It's not quite right to sum up the issue that's prompted me in the terms above. First, some IP editors are experienced and do respond to talk page messages (so "do not respond" is over generalized). Second, that wording makes it sound as if the anonymous editor might have made a choice to not respond whereas my original concern was for the many edits made by mobile IPs and accounts where the UI does not show them that they have a talk message, and/or does not rub it in their face that the message might be something they "must" see as opposed to the normal spam from many social media platforms, and/or does not provide a simple way to respond. Finally, I am one of many editors who occasionally write detailed explanations for new users and it is destructive for editors like me to later learn that the recipient probably never even knew about my explanation. My point is that the UI is damaging the collaborative community because people like me now think that all IPs/accounts using inoperative software should be banned. Regarding "simple way to respond": I think there should be an orange bar with suitable wording that is hard to avoid. Clicking that bar would take them to the first section on their talk with the most recent date. I understand enough about code to know that would be difficult, but something much better is needed. Perhaps force all new contributors (with a cookie?) to follow a quick tutorial. That might be mandatory if any of their edits have been reverted. Thanks for taking the time to engage here. Johnuniq (talk) 05:11, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Anonymous editors do not respond to the messages others leave for them on their talk pages." I'd say "Anonymous users do not realize that there are messages/that others are trying to tell them something, and if by chance they do realize, they have a hard time responding to those messages/notifications" —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I assume we're talking about talk pages only here? If so, I think this question is broken down into two parts. The first is deficiencies compared to the desktop editing experience. However, deficiencies compared to desktop is not the full list of problems with mobile talk pages or things that should be done differently on mobile, but I would have to think harder on that part to produce a list. One example: if you see a protected page and want to edit it, the workflow on enwiki is via a talk page edit request. It's a pretty poor UI esp on mobile (you can explore it by going to Donald Trump in incognito on your phone and trying to edit). Some of this falls on the community but there's not really a much better workflow possible without software changes. IIRC(?) not too long ago the "View source" button wasn't shown at all so it wasn't clear how to request a change, so I guess the situation is improving...

Although I suspect 'solutions' is separate to 'issues' I would like to take the opportunity to note, in regards to 2.2 (talk page banners), that I have some feelings on the usefulness of the banners on many talk pages. They're a mess, like look at this. It wouldn't be reasonable to show it all to mobile users, and very often there is nothing useful in them IMO (but I suspect I may be a minority view there). Conversely, see here for a useful non-generic banner and toggle "read as wiki page" on and off to see it. It's a hack used to make the message visible on mobile but apparently still only displays when you "read as wiki page"; I don't know why that feature even exists? If a solution to the talk banner issue can't be figured out, showing editnotices (somehow) would be a feasible solution. A talk page editnotice should only be placed when there's something substantive to say about that particular article. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with not showing banners to mobile users is that we expect all users who use the talk page to have read them. It is not reasonable to expect Desktop users to be aware which banners are visible to other editors and which are not. —Kusma (talk) 19:09, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But I agree that we have far too many banners (and many of them are useless). The whole Wikiproject and assessment stuff really should be in a "meta" area, not taking up space on a discussion page. —Kusma (talk) 19:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@ProcrastinatingReader – I appreciate you sharing these thoughts. Comments and questions in response to the points you raised are below...

I assume we're talking about talk pages only here?

Yep, exactly.

if you see a protected page and want to edit it, the workflow on enwiki is via a talk page edit request. It's a pretty poor UI esp on mobile...

To confirm: are you referring to how people wanting to edit a protected page on mobile need to submit an edit request by way of starting a conversation on said page's talk page and that workflow not being straightforward? [i]

...the usefulness of the banners on many talk pages. They're a mess, like look at this. It wouldn't be reasonable to show it all to mobile users, and very often there is nothing useful in them IMO...Conversely, see here for a useful non-generic banner and toggle "read as wiki page" on and off to see it.

I've tried to put what you described into my "own words" to ensure I'm understanding this as you intended it. Can you please let me know if there is anything you would change in order for it to better reflect what you are communicating?

Peter's "own words": "Volunteers need to be able to display information to people, across devices, in ways that will enhance their understanding of: A) The subject page they are likely reading about and/or B) What to consider before participating on the talk page."

Also, these examples are great. Particularly the Talk:COVID-19 lab leak theory example. Thank you for sharing them; it's clarifying to be able to see what you are imagining in your mind.

---

i.The workflow for submitting an edit request as an anon volunteer on mobile, by my count, requires ~7 less-than-intuitive steps: 1) Click edit pencil, 2) Click the View source link that temporarily appears at the bottom of the page, 3) Scroll the page, 4) Locate and click the Submit an edit request button, 5) Scroll to the bottom of the talk page's source, 6) Draft a message, and 7) Post said message. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @PPelberg (WMF): I find the "new section" interface is pretty intuitive for new users. If that link could be more easily accessible, not just the talk page link, I think it would be more useful. I tend to use the &preloadtitle=Foo so that the subject line is filled with some default text, and I've found this useful for action links like leaving me messages about user scripts or questions about things from other projects. — Wug·a·po·des​ 17:53, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Wugapodes: you sharing the experience you've had with, what we've been calling, the New Discussion Tool is helpful to know, especially as we approach offering as an on-by-default feature at the first set of Wikipedias in the coming weeks (see: phab:T271964).

  If that link could be more easily accessible, not just the talk page link, I think it would be more useful.

  Agreed...can you say a bit more here? What about its current location, how it appears, etc. do you think detracts from it's usefulness? Also: have you seen gadgets here, or on other wikis, that you think are effective at addressing the issue(s) that prompted you to share this feedback? For context: you sharing this is timely as well because we will soon be thinking about ways to make the affordance for starting new discussions easier for people to identify and access, regardless of where they are on a given page.

  I tend to use the &preloadtitle=Foo so that the subject line is filled with some default text, and I've found this useful for action links like leaving me messages about user scripts or questions about things from other projects.

  Interesting! Are you able to share a link to a diff and/or page where I can see what you're describing "in action"? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @PPelberg (WMF): You can see an example at User:Wugapodes/Capricorn#Feedback and bugs. The feedback link is created using the fullurl parser function which also allows you to specify the url query. So for that link, I have it add action=edit&section=new to the url which opens the new section interface as well as preloadtitle=... which fills the subject line with the currentuser parser function so that the title is unique and I know who sent it regardless of whether they remember to sign. The full code for that link is {{fullurl:User_talk:Wugapodes|action=edit&section=new&preloadtitle=Message%20regarding%20Capricorn%20from%20%7B%7Bsubst%3Acurrentuser%7D%7D}} At Wikipedia:20th anniversary we did something very similar for the "Say happy birthday" button. I set that button up so that it opened a specific section on the talk page that we made for the purpose, and it used &summary=Wishing Wikipedia a happy birthday to prefill the edit summary for readers.

  W/r/t the link placement, full disclosure, I use responsive monobook on my mobile so take my feedback with a grain of salt. At least as I've seen, the links on articles tend to just be to the talk page which for lots of readers doesn't mean much. Getting from article to talk post is a couple extra clicks in my experience. If the link were "ask a question" or "suggest an improvement" instead of (or in addition to) a talk page link, I think it would encourage more use of talk and depending on the phrasing make the posts more useful. — Wug·a·po·des​ 07:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for that info, PPelberg. At a glance, the issues summary you put together looks good and seems to capture the main points. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  At a glance, the issues summary you put together looks good and seems to capture the main points.

  Oh good. This is helpful to know...I appreciate you stopping back by to say as much, @Sdkb. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:43, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is

• https://uslaw.link/citation/stat/80/92

and mentions:

• https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/89/hr8030

it needs to also point to:

• https://www.congress.gov/bill/89th-congress/house-bill/8030

also, is there a template for congress bills ?

{{uscongress bill|house|89|8030}}

.... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 04:45, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template_talk:USStat may be the correct venue for this request. Template:USBill may be the template you seek. Folly Mox (talk) 05:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The biographies are in 3 levels. I think it would be beneficial to split them off into their own list with 5 levels rather than the current list. If you oppose this, I would like to know your thoughts on adding in-between levels such as level 3.5 or level 4.5. I look forward to your comments. Interstellarity (talk) 14:56, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please see the previous discussion on the vital articles talk page here. One editor suggested opening up the discussion here for greater visibility. Interstellarity (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose for the same reasons I and others opposed at the previous discussion. The Vital Articles lists are hard enough to maintain at their present size without expanding them further, and I've seen no justification for this other than as a way to create more room in (i.e. expand) the sets. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. As I see it, the main purpose of
  WP:VA is to identify sets of 100, 1000 and 10,000 articles which are considered the most important, to help endeavours like WP:The Core Contest
  , classify the quality of our most important articles, and also to give editors a hand in choosing which articles to prioritize for work. None of that benefits from splitting the list into people and non-people though. Rather, it just creates inconsistency with editors having to check both lists, with perhaps lower participation by those selecting the articles. Note that Wikipedia is not split along these lines in any other area - we don't have Featured articles / Featured people, or Articles for deletion / People for deletion. Finally, to address some specific points:
  • I can see the argument that biographies and non-biographies are hard to compare with each other as to which is more important, the same goes for any other diverse categories. Evaluating which of Jupiter, World War II, Clothing and Christianity is the most "vital" is almost meaningless, but the VA project still lumps them together.
  • It's been said that an advantage is the freeing up of 127 new slots for articles at level 3, but that's not something I think we want. Per Sdkb the lists are intentionally kept at specific levels, and if the 1000 level 3s are not enough then either look at level 4, or get consensus to expand it to 1200.
  • As for needing to classify people into 5 separate levels, I again don't see the need or rationale for that. Looking at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/People/Writers and journalists, I already don't know who the majority of those are, and I think they rightly represent the lower bound of vitality. Yes, they're important people, but anyone below that shouldn't be classified as such IMHO, and the exercise becomes increasingly unwieldy and arbitrary too. A desire to add a level 6 probably exists in other areas too, but I'd oppose that for similar reasons.
  • In summary, I think the VA process has worked well down the years, and this large-scale split down the middle wouldn't be beneficial. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 08:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I am neutral on this, but the project pages should be placed under Wikipedia:WikiProject Vital Articles if it is needed to get rid of unnecessary essay templates. They are unintentionally undermining, they don't encourage to edit pages when the opposite is needed. Interstellarity's project has already been useful. Currently Level 5 needs more development and alternative listing would be useful in finding the most vital biographies and for example listing them alphabetically. --Thi (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Talk:Main Page § Add Albanian Wikipedia to the bottom of English Wikipedia page - section 50.000 articled

 –  ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have started a 2021 RfA review and accompanying RfC to identify what issues, if any, there are with RfA. Interested editors are invited to participate. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requirement of 2 votes for template deletion. I understand most experienced editors avoid deletion talks like a plague ....but...Think we need a basic number of votes for template deletion. As of now we have many templates deleted by 1 vote...in many cases that 1 vote is by an editor here editing for only a year or so.--Moxy- 20:03, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bad idea. A ton of TfDs are rubber stamping following cleanups like migrations of rail templates to

WP:SOFTDELETE). Is there actually any evidence of a problem here, such as links to DRVs showing TfDs closed in this manner reached incorrect decisions and thus were overturned? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Correct as per

WP:NPASR...just to bad that area of Wikipedia does not have better oversite....one day one can hope for better.Moxy- 00:58, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Agree with proc. A lot of TfDs don't get any votes, and like AfD and RfD, those can be deleted after a week. Of course, I think most admins would be willing to undelete upon request if the consensus is very weak. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:12, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proc said it well. A ton of TfDs are completely uncontroversial with many similar deletions occurring in the past with more discussion. These are often unused and not used on hundreds or thousands of pages like most of the templates that editors know about. If you have concrete TfDs you have issues with I'm sure the regulars are willing to discuss or change as appropriate. While there are a lot of problems with having a quite small pool of closers it does make changing norms a lot easier. --Trialpears (talk) 20:28, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Agree with Proc's analysis of the situation. Also, strictly speaking, there are no votes in deletion discussions. Editors make recommendations, and the closing party decides based on quality of arguments as well as quantity. —C.Fred (talk) 20:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Proc. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I guess per above. It the closers are admins, they're probably pretty good at figuring it out. Just treat it like a PROD I guess... somebody nominated it, nobody objected after a fair amount of time, the admin can deleted BUT use her discretion not to, and anyway yea undelete upon request in a case like that. I guess. Herostratus (talk) 00:47, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's very obvious that these two options would make the mobile version of Wikipedia more user-friendly. Interstellarity (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as nom. Interstellarity (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Would the proposed “contact us” button link to the article’s talk page, or are you proposing something different? Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikipedia:Growth_Team_features#Help_panel is already being developed. If you're talking about the mobile left sidebar, that could probably benefit from some broader discussion. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:57, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've found that newbies make good use of the growth team features for essentially this purpose. I agree we should look into expanding its use if possible. — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:28, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• ? @Interstellarity: which mobile view (please be specific)? What do you propose the target of these be? Is this something that we, the English Wikipedia editors, can technically implement? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:56, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Hi all,

The proposed contact us link would link to Wikipedia:Contact us and the help link would like to Help:Contents. In the mobile sidebar (the image to the right), I think both links are best placed next to the About Wikipedia and Disclaimers link. I'm not sure if it can be technically implemented by English Wikipedia editors, but I hope I provided enough information on this in detail. Interstellarity (talk) 18:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There does not appear to be anywhere for us to do this locally, you could start by inquiring with the mobilefrontend developers to see if: (a) project-specific sidebar links could be supported here such as they are on the webui; (b) possibly if project specific parameters would be supported here; (c) if this is something they would want to incorporate in to the master extension. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:53, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi everyone – I'm Marshall Miller, the product manager for the Growth team at WMF. Over the past three years, the Growth team has been developing a set of features meant to improve the experience for new editors. The goal of our work is to help newcomers make successful first edits, instead of them leaving from frustration or confusion. Thank you to the many community members who participated on this page and helped put together this proposal!

Following a VPR discussion in April 2021, the features have been applied to 2% of new accounts as a trial. The community members following along have agreed that the initial trial has had positive outcomes, and so we now propose increasing the share of new accounts receiving the features from 2% to 25% (with some caveats).

The Growth features aim to guide newcomers as explained on the project page. The most important elements are:

• Newcomer homepage: a special page with useful actions that newcomers are encouraged to visit immediately after account creation.
• Suggested edits: a feed of articles that have maintenance templates such as {{Advert}} and {{Underlinked}}. Newcomers can choose topics of interest to filter the feed, like "Fashion", "History", or "Physics".
• Mentorship: newcomers are assigned a mentor from a list of experienced volunteers. A pop-up form helps them submit a question to their mentor's talk page using a simple interface. Whereas Adopt-a-user is meant to be an enduring connection for a newcomer, "mentorship" in the Growth features is meant for quick questions.
• Help panel: when the newcomer is editing an article, the help panel is like a collapsible mini-homepage, providing relevant help links and the ability to ask mentor questions.

The Growth features are now on 50 Wikipedias, including large ones like French, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese -- and with German and Dutch Wikipedias having recently started trials. Evidence shows that the features improve newcomer engagement without burdening communities.

In April 2021 we discussed testing the features on the English Wikipedia at this page. We started giving the features to 2% of new accounts in June (about 2,000 new accounts per month), and posted data and results after a month. There were two main outcomes:

• The "suggested edits" feature seems to be leading to many good edits with low revert rates. During the test period in June, the revert rate was 9% (with the baseline revert rate for newcomer edits that month being 27%). To date, 2,325 article edits have been made. Many users do dozens of these edits. You can see these diffs by filtering to the "newcomer task" edit tag in Recent Changes.
• The "mentorship" feature yields some good questions and some low-quality or nonsense questions. To date, there have been 329 questions asked to the 22 mentors who have signed up. We're still discussing how best to scale up the mentor capacity and how to encourage high-quality questions. You can see these diffs by filtering to the "mentorship module question" and "mentorship panel question" edit tags in Recent Changes.

We think the next step is to give the Growth features to 25% of new accounts for one month (about 25,000 new accounts). The exception would be the mentorship features, for which we have open questions mostly discussed here. We want to increase the share of newcomers getting mentorship to only 5%, so as not to overwhelm the mentors. We would run this phase of the test for one month, and then bring the results back here to decide whether to further increase the share of newcomers with the features. In looking at the data, we will think about these questions:

• Revert rate of suggested edits. Are high-quality edits being generated without an undue burden on patrollers?
• Volume of mentor questions. This would allow us to extrapolate how many mentors would be needed to handle 100% of new accounts, or how the mentorship features might need to be improved to handle increased volume.
• Quality of mentor questions. Are there improvements we could make to the features to help newcomers ask useful questions?

We're interested to hear any questions, ideas, or concerns -- and we're hoping there's general support for moving to this next phase of testing the Growth features. We also are looking for about 20 more people to sign up as mentors to handle the increased volume of questions that will come in with the next phase. Mentors should expect to get 3-4 questions per week on their talk page. You can learn more about that and sign up on this page. Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I like the "Your impact" section. It can be really discouraging when you're starting out with something new to not get any feedback on whether what you're doing is making a difference. I'd be interested to learn more about what goes into picking the suggested edits, but certainly the idea of presenting a newbie with specific things they can do right now is great. And I like the tinder-esque "swipe left, swipe right" U/I in the mockup. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:00, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking things out, @RoySmith! Seeing your questions made me realize I should have posted instructions for how anyone can turn on the Growth features and try them out. You can do it with these instructions.

About your comments and questions: I'm glad to hear that you think the Impact module is on the right track. The goal is to help newcomers have that realization that editing Wikipedia is valuable and exciting. It's definitely really rudimentary right now, and we're planning to make it more powerful in the coming year (we'll eventually be posting ideas on this currently barebones page).

In terms of suggested edits, we want newcomers to find interesting pages that need easy edits, so they can quickly have success on the wiki. We're currently sourcing them through maintenance templates, like {{Advert}}, which is one of the templates we draw on to find articles for the "copyediting" task. You can actually see (and edit!) exactly which templates are used for which type of task through a new Special page we created to enable community members to configure the Growth features: Special:EditGrowthConfig. With this page, much of the control over how newcomers experience the Growth features is in the hands of community admins.

Beyond the user-applied maintenance templates, we've been experimenting with creating suggested edits algorithmically. One way that's currently being tested on several wikis is called "add a link", which uses an algorithm to suggest words and phrases that could be made into wikilinks. It's going well so far, and the details are here on this project page. And in that vein, we're also building a first attempt at a task that suggests images that could be added to unillustrated articles. That one has many more open questions and risks, and so we hope to hear from more community members on its talk page.

And in terms of allowing users to choose topics of interest (e.g. "Music", "Sports", "Europe"), those come from a machine-learning model that tries to assess which topics an article is about based on the words used in it. It is trained using WikiProject tags from English Wikipedia, and tends to be pretty accurate. The information about how that model works is here.

I'm happy to answer any other questions or hear any other ideas! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Support the increase to 25%. MMiller and the rest of the Growth team have done an exemplary job collaborating with us in the community on the development of these features, and as summarized above, the results have been very promising so far. This rollout is suitably cautious and will allow more newcomers to benefit from them while giving us more information to inform the final launch. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:20, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - MMiller and his team have both an excellent project and have been doing a fantastic job at working with the community, adapting to our specific requests (one example is they added the functionality to decouple the % getting the Growth panel and the % getting mentors to adapt to our trialling wishes). I think this is a great next step in rolling it out, and will give enough trial data to better predict benefits and risks. Nosebagbear (talk) 00:53, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Seems like a reasonable next step. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:56, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Just in case it's not clear from my comments above, making this explicit. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:06, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• This seems very worthwhile and I support moving forward as suggested. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:25, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I think this is a very worthwhile project. The WMF team in charge of this has been very responsive to the community. Calliopejen1 (talk) 18:41, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to the current tally, the number of articles with link rot issues slowly but steadily approaches the 300K mark. Even though that's less than 5% of the English Wikipedia and mostly we deal with articles that have most of the citations being all right, I believe that becomes quite a problem when we have articles referenced to a page which can't be found on any archive, and in particular favts referenced to that source. The info, in that case, might require update, deletion (based on

Since this is my first post at Village Pump, please assure me this is the proper venue for that proposal (or else redirect me to another forum), and, of course, I'd like to hear your opinions on it. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the idea, Szmenderowiecki! This village pump is used for proposals like this all the time, so you're at the proper venue. Resolving link rot is certainly a plus, so anyone who helps resolve it is doing good. I wouldn't say it's our most urgent backlog, though, as it's less severe than {{Citation needed}} (dead references at least likely supported the material, even if they're no longer verifiable, whereas citation needed references mark totally unsupported material) and we're never going to get through the citation needed backlog without radically increasing the number of editors.

One thing I'm wondering is where the more recently tagged instances of link rot are coming from, as Internet Archive is theoretically supposed to be archiving every outgoing link from Wikipedia. Are they old links from before IA was doing that, or editors mistaking links as permanently dead when actually they're available through IA, or is IA failing to capture everything? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:55, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably all those things. Systematic saving of links at Wayback and Archive.today wasn't done prior to about 2012. Current save methods are not 100% for a couple reasons. Some percentage of {{dead link}} tags are resolvable but a bot or person has not done so yet. IMO a bigger problem is false negatives ie. links that are dead but not marked or being saved by the bots due to soft-404s and other issues. The methods we are using are problematic. The solution is every link is born archived ie. the archive URL is part of the rendered page automatically, no bots. -- GreenC 19:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]