Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 180

In the last few weeks there has been a flood of deletion of sports templates at

• I am an old fart who finds even the use of templates confusing. That said, I took a look at the LST page, and I am lost. It seems to be written for coders by coders - and not for the average user. I have no clue what WP:LST is saying or what I would use it for. If I needed to edit a page that used LST - I simply couldn’t.
  I am increasingly thinking that WP is no longer “an encyclopedia that anyone can edit”… since the amount of technical knowledge required to do so is growing beyond my abilities. Sad. Blueboar (talk) 18:03, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• Labeled section transclusion introduces a dependency between the source article and the articles transcluding the sections in question. The source article needs to preserve the labels being used to identify the transcluded text, whether those are the section headers or special transclusion labels. You didn't specify how they were being used for the content you were referring to, but I'm guessing for sports templates, it was tabular data. Tables are generally maintainable as standalone entities and so are well-suited for being placed on a separate template page. Personally I feel even if the table is only being used in a small number of places (or even one), it can be desirable to keep a frequently updated table on a separate page. In theory if the updates end (say, at the end of a season), the template could be substituted onto the one page it was used, but I don't see much benefit at that point. (It would shorten any applicable lists of template categories, but I don't think that will have much practical effect.)
• Labeled section transclusion in mainspace is an interesting possibility for reusing a section of text between related articles. Text is generally not as easy to maintain in a standalone template, though, as the surrounding context plays a role crafting the text appropriately. Labeled section transclusion allows context for one location to be immediately visible, but not the context for the other places where it is used. Comments can be used to point to the other places (which would also help avoid the labels being changed inadvertently). Given the additional technical complexity, though, it might be preferable to just use comments to point to other places that should be updated, and rely on them being updated manually instead of automatically through transclusion. Labeled section transclusion for text sections is, I feel, a better fit for some content in the Wikipedia namespace, in specific cases where dealing with possible breakage is more manageable.
• On a side note, labeled section transclusion isn't new; it's been around for a decade (I'm not sure how long the feature to include text based on the headings has been around, but based on the help page history, at least nine years). isaacl (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  It sounds interesting and possibly useful, but I would agree with Blueboar that

  WP:LST is nearly incomprehensible to someone not already well versed in the nuances. Even looking at the few pages listed there as examples wasn't helpful in trying to understand how the tables/text interact, where to update information, or generally how/when to use LST. I'd agree with the original poster that more consensus (and probably explanation/education) is needed before LST is used as a replacement for templates. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk

  ) 19:32, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Blueboar and Tcr25: The WP:LST page is complicated, because it's trying to describe all of the possible syntactical forms. Basically, if you have two articles, Foo and Bar, and you want some content to appear identically in both, you would first choose which one is to actually have this as editable content. Let's say that it's Foo - in this article, you would have:

  ... content that is only relevant to Foo. <section begin=MySection />This content is relevant to both articles.<section end=MySection /> More content that is only relevant to Foo ...
  

  and this displays as

  ... content that is only relevant to Foo. This content is relevant to both articles. More content that is only relevant to Foo ...

  Then in the article Bar, you would have:

  ... content that is only relevant to Bar. {{#lst:Foo|MySection}} More content that is only relevant to Bar ...
  

  and this would display as

  ... content that is only relevant to Bar. This content is relevant to both articles. More content that is only relevant to Bar ...

  Then when at some future point you edit that part of Foo that is between the two <section /> tags, the change will propagate to Bar exactly like an edit to a template would. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:36, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• It looks like there are several things that need to be made more comprehensible.
  Phil Bridger (talk
  ) 20:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  @

  WP:FAITACCOMPLI to voters. There ought to be clear consensus from the larger community about the necessity of this before doing such large scale deletion for questionable benefit. Many of these templates have been around for over a decade and present in hundreds of old revisions of articles. This kind of deletion of harmless templates shows a mass of red links in old article versions. I have not seen any clear argument as to what advantage LST has over templates. In fact in my experience LST content is harder to edit than templates, harder than even Wikidata. At least for templates you have "V. T. E" buttons and pencil icon for wikidata items that take you to the page that needs to be edited. This is not always present in LST, you have to see page source to try and figure out where it is coming from, which is not easy. Many times I have just given up instead of going through such hassle for updating Cricket stats. Tables from LST cannot be edited using visual editor, with no indication that it is coming from some other page. All of these are barriers for editing Wikipedia. 2409:408C:AE10:FC75:0:0:4348:8811 (talk

  ) 06:12, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I'm sure there was an explicit rule against orphaning templates before sending them to TfD as "unused". All I can find for now is

  WP:TFD#Discussion which does say Templates are rarely orphaned—that is, removed from pages that transclude them—before the discussion is closed. I unfortunately didn't supply a link in this post or this post eight years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk

  ) 10:21, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I think those who are maintaining the content should be able to decide for themselves the mechanism that works best for them. Thus I disagree with the example of changing a list of athletes from a template to labeled section transclusion if those who are interested in maintaining the content prefer using a template. I appreciate that the content may be complete in terms of membership, but in addition to monitoring for vandalism, it could undergo future revisions in formatting or associated information. Let those interested in doing the work manage how they want to do it. isaacl (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I point you to

  WP:OWN. Gonnym (talk

  ) 20:13, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  A collaborative project shouldn't decide to hand an ongoing bill to a group of people working on a task and say, here, keep paying this bill for something I bought. That's one group of people taking ownership of a decision but not paying for it. isaacl (talk) 21:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with you, but on the other side, do you remember the jokes about the coder who couldn't be fired, because he made the payroll system such a mess of spaghetti code, and if he left, nobody else could get paid? We don't want to interfere with the people who are doing the work, but we also don't want to be left with a system that nobody else can use. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, as I mentioned in another comment, I agree there is a longer-term issue with generational turnover of page watchers. However it's not clear to me that deleting these particular nominated templates will make much difference. isaacl (talk) 20:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• I am familiar with LST. I've used it recently for selective table row transclusion. Templates should not consist of article content that needs verification, even if the content is in tabular form. I support pivoting from templates to LST in this set of cases, despite the fact that some maintainers will have difficulty adapting for a certain period. It's worth it. I support Frietjes nominations and actions taken at TFD. Whenever transcluding, it is important to point editors to the source page where they can edit the content. Sometimes, custom hatnotes are needed for this. Editing transcluded content is not more complicated than editing a templated table with no edit button. —Alalch E. 19:48, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  Is the crux of the issue that LST content may contain sourcing information when a template doesn't? I'm trying to understand the benefit of LST over templates and while some editors may prefer LST over templates for a table (for example) no usability or reliability benefits are readily evident to me. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:29, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  Templates with such content get vandalized and subjected to disruptive editing (changes that fail

  WP:V), but this often goes unnoticed because these changes may be subtle and editors don't put such templates in their watchlist. —Alalch E.

  20:33, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  Same for an article transcluding parts of a less-watched article. "Templates might get vandalized" is a rather weak argument for making it harder to learn to edit articles. —Kusma (talk) 22:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  Are there examples of this happening that can be pointed to? How widespread is it? Vandalism and bad-faith edits can happen in all sorts of places. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• The example given above by OP does seem like a very explicit case of
  WP:GAMING. It's similar to someone removing a category from all its relevant articles and then nominating the category for deletion with the argument that it's empty and un-used. A blatant gaming situation that appears to be conducted by an echo chamber of editors trying to push LST into usage on their own, without actually gathering input from the community as a whole. Silverseren^C
  22:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• To me, LSTs do like they will offer improvements over at least some uses for templates. But I don't feel they should be used to replace templates until there's both (1) community awareness of LSTs and (2) documentation that's intelligible to less technical people.—S Marshall T/C 23:48, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• LST (labeled section transclusion) is a can of worms. It requires incomprehensible wikitext in the source article (where the content comes from) and the target (where the copy is displayed). No amount of all-caps hidden comments will make the system resist the ravages of time when gnomes nibble away either at the source or target articles. Also, what is the point of duplicating article text? Phrases that work in the source article should probably be altered and abbreviated in the target. Johnuniq (talk) 00:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
• A couple years ago when LST usage was new even to more technical editors I was considering different ways to make the LST system more robust and comprehensible. The main thing was introducing a bot that kept track of LST being broken fixing it or notifying the editor that broke it depending on context, but that would be a lot of work. Making the Wikitext more comprehensible was also a part of it introducing templates like {{
  WP:BURO argument is quite strong here given the number of previous nominations. --Trialpears (talk
  ) 02:48, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  If the LST is already implemented the template can just be deleted after the discussion is over

  But is the implementation even something being discussed or are the editors involved unilaterally implementing it without discussion with anyone, let alone the community at large? Because I can certainly say that I oppose any implementation of LST as is currently being done. The actual usefulness for Wikipedia and especially for editors trying to improve articles having to deal with LST coding is severely lacking in evidence right now. Silverseren^C 03:06, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  TfD regularly discuss implementation details and is generally quite good at soliciting input from a lot of non-template editors for large discussions through the TfD notices displayed everywhere the template is used. That can result in a TfD being advertised on literally millions of pages at times. It appears however that LST nominations are somewhat of a perfect storm for forming a local consensus anyway since each individual nomination is only advertised on a handful of pages which always leads to TfD regulars being in a majority even though there is occasional opposition. Since lots of nominations have occurred the nominators and closers feel like there significant precedent and large scale consensus even though that may not be true. Nothing malicious is going on, but rather the structure of the discussion has lead to this type of nomination being under advertised. After seeing the page count at Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections just now I'm also feeling that something has to be done to improve the situation. --Trialpears (talk) 04:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Based on Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections and some searches I estimate that 15-20% of LST uses are broken, which is unacceptable in my eyes. Something really should be done here. Bot plus fixing existing ones is what I would suggest. --Trialpears (talk) 04:29, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections was created only a few weeks ago, so there's a large pre-existing backlog. There was at one point in the past a similarly huge backlog at Special:WantedTemplates, but lots of people are working to keep it under control. I'm still not convinced that this is actually a problem. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:31, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Trialpears and Pppery, I think Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections has false positives. For example, 1911–12 in Swedish football is in the category just because there are no quote marks around "table" in 1911–12 Svenska Serien. LST is clearly working, so, not sure why that page is in the category. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  There was an old bug that caused some pages which shouldn't be in the category to be in it, which was fixed a few weeks ago, but it appears some pages are still in the category due to bad caching. I

  WP:NULLEDITed the page, and it's no longer in the category. * Pppery * _{it has begun...}

  16:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  introducing a bot that kept track of LST being broken - we already have Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:17, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Oh god, that's even worse than I thought. I still think a bot should be used as well since it can notify editors who accidentally broke it or in some cases fix it automatically. --Trialpears (talk) 03:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• I've created
  WP:LST could read in the future if the improvements suggest above are implemented. If someone who thought the current help page was overly complicated wants to read this and see if this makes the feature seem more manageable that would be appreciated! Everything but the bot should be manageable for me to get done in a week if this is something we want. --Trialpears (talk
  ) 06:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I think it's more intuitive than

  WP:LST. However, I would also add an example similar to the one of @Redrose64 above. Irecorsan (talk

  ) 14:22, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Replacing templated tables by LST seems to have no upsides that I can see, only considerable downsides (in some TfDs a year ago or so, I have seen many non-arguments such as "templates should have more than X transclusions"). If an editorial decision is made to replace the table in the "source" article by something else, all uses in other articles will break. There should be no pressure to revert such an edit: editors should use their best judgement to make the article they are working on as good as possible. If that breaks other articles, fix it at the target (it is the target article editors'responsibility to watch everything they transclude and to make sure it is what they want). Editing is hard enough as it is without the kind of interdependency introduced by LST. Unlike section anchors (another interdependence), it does not fail gracefully. —Kusma (talk) 07:40, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  This section has the wrong title. It sounds as if someone is trying to abolish templates and replace them with LST across Wikipedia. No, the starter of this discussion talks specifically about certain sports templates which bear article content (so they are non-standard templates) and are used usually in two articles (a comprehensive list and an article that benefits from the inclusion of a portion of that list), and which were, and some still are, nominated and TfD, and have generally been deleted there. In this, relevant, context, it's unconceivable that there could be a reasonable editorial decision to replace, say, a country's men's team roster in Basketball at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's team rosters with something else. Just unconceivable. If such a change were made, editors who have this page on their watchlist would revert it. The same can not be said for individual templates, which have underwent undesirable and undetected changes historically. LST is sometimes a bad idea for the reasons you state, but not always. Editorial judgement is required, and here it was properly excercised. —Alalch E. 14:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Here is an upside you missed - templates always have less watchers than articles. Moving the tables into the parent article means that there are many more eyes watching for changes. Gonnym (talk) 15:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I am not convinced that this makes a substantial difference in practice for our less popular articles. Five barely active watchers of an article isn't better than one person actively looking out for the template. —Kusma (talk) 18:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• I do not have a clear enough understanding of LST and its downsides at the moment. IMO, Sports "data" (win-loss/scores etc), specially after an event is complete should preferably be in articles, while any "styling" should be templated out. But that aside, I do think @Frietjes: should have first gotten a consensus, preferably a full RFC, before starting this work. There's 1000+ articles and templates affected, probably more, and changing/deleting that many pages ought to involve some larger discussions. So far I can find no such RFCs, and so would recomment Frietjes to stop this conversion until consensus is obtained. Soni (talk) 18:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  Support, per

  WP:CONLEVEL. Mathglot (talk

  ) 09:12, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

• The part that concerns me is presenting to TfD as empty templates. That circumvents the widespread notice the system is meant to provide. There should either be community wide consensus to implement LST or the TfD should be nominated before any attempt to use LST and the rationale should include using LST as replacement. There is often more than one way to do something and it is rare the community has mandated a specific way (Engvar, citation styles, etc.)Slywriter (talk) 21:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

  The actual text used on TfD pages is unused after being merged with the parent article with attribution and transcluding articles update to use WP:LST. That makes it clear what happend and that it wasn't unused before. That the LST convertion happend before the page is nominated for deletion isn't necessarily a notification problem since it causes an edit that shows up in watchlists instead of being visible if you visit the article. The problem I see is that edits like this has a summary like update template syntax rather than something like convert template to LST template nominated for deletion at TfD. It also appears like there will now be a bit of a pause for these nominations and Category:Pages transcluding nonexistent sections are being activley dealt with by @Frietjes and Plasticspork: who have been involved with implementing LST. --Trialpears (talk) 21:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• I have used both LST as well as Templates, and have authored both. But to my mind, no one has elucidated a common thread that I hear running through many of the comments above, which I believe is key, and that is this: editors are becoming enslaved to the technology, instead of the technology serving our editors (and through them, our readers). That is completely backwards. In my mind, it is the height of absurdity to argue that we must use LST instead of Templates, because LST text exists in namespace zero (articles) where sourcing is required, and Templates exist in namespace ten, where sourcing is not required, or is excluded. If we made these rules, we can change them. First, we must see what user needs are, and then we must mold the technology to serve them/us, not vice versa. Is there consensus to make Template content sourceable and subject to
  P&G, in order to provide a (conceptually) simple resolution to this type of problem? Make it so. Finally, if you see someone changing transclusion of a template in an article you have a stake in to LST and it's getting in your way, just revert it and change it right back again to using the template. There's nothing to stop you from doing so, and perhaps you'll end up living in the last house standing, that is blocking the bulldozers from flattening everything in order to build that supermall parking lot, but I think you'll find a lot of people tend to support that when they see it, and may even start pushing back and helping you. I live on both sides of this, as I do truly enjoy and appreciate the technology and use it to the max, delighting in every new useful-but-maybe-obscure tecchie gadget that I can find, and I also love writing content and finding sourcing for it, and doing both at once is double the pleasure; however, and this is a *big* however: it is very clear to me where the priority lies, and that is that the technology must serve our needs, full stop, no exceptions. Anything else, is completely wrong-headed. If the technology isn't doing what it should, or is getting in your way, discuss it here, or raise a ticket on Phabricator. Mathglot (talk
  ) 09:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  No one's made an argument that content in templates doesn't have to be sourced. If it appears in mainspace, whether through transclusion or not, then it must be verifiable. Many editors have commented on letting those creating the content use the wikitext features that suit their workflow best (including both creation and later maintenance), rather than have someone else decide on their behalf that they must use a specific feature and watch a certain page. In the long run, as generations of editors turn over, we will need a way to ensure pages remain monitored. Given the existing amount of resuse of content through templates, though, it's not clear to me that eliminating the ones being proposed for deletion will have a significant effect on this problem. isaacl (talk) 18:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  I suspect that @Mathglot is responding to comments like the one above that says Templates should not consist of article content that needs verification, even if the content is in tabular form.

  A quick check indicates that there are already 70K pages in the Template: namespace with ref tags, so that's not a problem; it's already possible to source anything that you want to transclude from the Template: namespace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, that is what I meant, thanks; and my apologies if my meaning was less than clear. Mathglot (talk) 10:25, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

There is an ongoing RfC to get a clarification of

There is currently a discussion that may interest you.

Just to be clear, this RFC is still open. It was moved to a dedicated page at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Using maps as sources. Dave (talk) 15:19, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

The RfC has been expanded since being moved to this forum. The proposals are now:

• Proposal 1: original research
  • Alternative to proposal 1
• Proposal 2: What can be cited to a map?
  • Proposal 2a: reliable sourcing
  • Proposal 2b: image layers
• Proposal 3: history
• Proposal 4: notability
  • Proposal 4a: Notability - Significant coverage
  • Proposal 4b: Notability - Sourced only to maps
• Proposal 5: Reliability

New proposals are marked in bold. BilledMammal (talk) 23:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a

WP:COSMETICBOT? Schazjmd (talk)

16:33, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

(

WP:COSMETIC in the context of bots, but that's the only one I can think of/find. I too remember something about this at arbcom, I don't think it wasn't the focus of the case but probably in the context of bots and/or MOS issues. Thryduulf (talk

) 16:34, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Special:Permanentlink/1102131437#Problems with cosmetic edits is a related finding. –xeno^talk 16:43, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you all, I think that was what I recalled reading. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:54, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive218#Proposed editing restriction: Rich Farmbrough was another thing along those lines. Anomie⚔ 21:46, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment (Have !voted above) I was unaware when I made my comment above, but this RfC appears to be a new attempt to open the G5 question following opposition to this idea at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Amend G5 to say that uninvolved editors may request undeletion, which itself followed opposition to the idea at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2023 February 27. CMD (talk) 10:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I would suggest to remove the G5 part from the proposal as it has been rejected elsewhere and shouldn't just be forum shopped here. —Kusma (talk) 11:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  That has to do with the wording of G5 which seems to be opposed (and it never specified user or draftspace as opposed to mainspace). There was also differences in opinion on why it should not be added, with some basing it on the fact they oppose G5 restoration and some opposing because they simply did not like how it singled out this specific CSD. And there was also support at the deletion review which is why a centralized discussion to formally decide this for future articles is better. You can not just try to invalidate this discussion that stands on its own merits because you personally oppose it. The current half of the votes above that support show there is a discussion to be had. Why? I Ask (talk) 11:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't oppose the discussion, but I would oppose the discussion being

  WP:FORUMSHOPPED. As mentioned, I did not participate in the previous two discussions, and upon finding them I see that my time was taken up by something which seems to be already trending towards consensus against in two existing locations. If you want to bring more attention to ongoing discussions, the correct course of action is to leave a neutral note here pointing towards that discussion. CMD (talk

  ) 11:20, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  That you have supporters for your cause here does not change the fact that this is textbook

  WP:FORUMSHOPping, especially as you have failed to mention the other discussions that CMD has now linked to, which should be taken into account by the closer of this discussion. —Kusma (talk

  ) 11:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  CMD and Kusma, these two (I guess three) discussions have different scopes. The DRV determines if G5 was applied correctly (and it was). The discussion at CSD determines if text is added to G5 that says that editors may request undeletion (and there is no consensus to add the text there). This is a separate issue involving four CSD criteria where it is asking if there consensus to support the general restoration of content deleted to non-mainspace venues to work on. Why? I Ask (talk) 11:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  This proposal, if I can call it that, seems to be about

  WP:REFUND, and removing "A7, A9, A11" from the list which says "Please do not request that pages deleted under speedy deletion criteria F7, F9, F11, U5, A7, A9, A11, G3, G4, G10, G11 or G12 be undeleted here". Although it's obvious you want G5 involved somehow, I'm unclear what changes you actually want. The page already says, at least implies through its current structure, that you can already request a G5 undeletion. What changes are you looking for? -- zzuuzz ^(talk)

  11:28, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  Through the other discussion you have been a part of, some editors have opposed the notion that you should be able to request a G5 deletion or held that it should never be restored no matter what (rendering the ability to request moot). This RfC attempts to formally establish whether or not that is the case. Why? I Ask (talk) 11:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I find it painfully clear through the whole of policy that a G5 restoration can be both requested and fulfilled. Though I also understand there is no obligation. Thus I still don't understand what's being proposed. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:37, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  So you support that users can appeal a G5 deletion and have the content userfied or drafted? Aside from that, it also asks whether or not administrators have the full right to deny such a request purely and systematically on the basis of it being deleted by the four criteria. (This is how most G5 requests for undeletion end up as some administrators believe that no material by editors who were banned should ever be restored without necessarily weighing in on the content of the deleted article in question.) Why? I Ask (talk) 11:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  Admins can say no to pretty much whatever they want, and rightfully so. They can't always speak for everyone. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I find that attitude highly problematic. Why? I Ask (talk) 12:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  You can tell me all about that one day. We're all volunteers and (pretty much) don't have to do anything. We have more than one admin for many reasons and many occasions. This is one of them. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  You said that we have more than one admin for a reason, but could you clarify what you mean by that? Why? I Ask (talk) 12:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  As I said above, there's nothing prohibiting a request for G5'd content. If you find an admin who says no they won't do something, find another admin who will, if you can. There's a lot of stuff I won't do but it doesn't mean it can't be done. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:52, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  If I go admin to admin, is that not forum shopping? Why? I Ask (talk) 14:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  It is fine, and we even have categories to facilitate finding an admin who might help you with a specific issue: Category:Wikipedia administrators by inclination. —Kusma (talk) 15:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  That seems strange to be able to get userfication of articles deleted by G5 by raising the issue at multiple admin talk pages to see which one is willing to do so. Why? I Ask (talk) 16:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• Not a clear RFC proposal, but as a frequent refunder I will comment. When someone requests a G5 overturn, there is a high chance that they are a sock of the banned user. I like to refer the request to the deleter or blocker of the banned user to make a more informed decision about whether to block the requestor. When it comes to things that were deleted for invalid reasons, I may restore (eg if the file was deleted as a copyvio, but the copy was of a Wikipedia mirror). Even a G5 may be inappropriate if it was edited significantly by someone else. If the deleter is still active, then notifying them of the erroneous delete is a good idea so they can rectify it. Other situations where the circumstances have changed would require a good reason to be given by the requestor. Eg if an A7ed topic is now notable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  This proposal specifies user and draft spaces where notability does not apply. Do you still think a reason should have to always be given for A7, A9, and A11 requests? Why? I Ask (talk) 12:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support for A7, A9, and A11. But Oppose /conditional support for G5. Conditional in the sense that we should have some guidance about how to handle those requests. It depends what the user was blocked for. Someone blocked for chronic copyright violations shouldn't have anything restored to public view without a thorough check first. That probably means emailing a draft to the requesting user with a warning rather than a userfication/draftification. Someone blocked for egregious harassment and personal attacks shouldn't have their material restored under any circumstance, because we need to prioritize the health of our community. What's unclear are the other cases. If someone's a chronic edit warrior, did some stupid sock puppetry, couldn't stop making cosmetic edits, or blocked for any of the other more IMO trivial offenses, I don't see a reason why a refund shouldn't be granted. In other words, a refund can be requested, but if we're going down that road we should have some documentation for admins outlining the conditions when it is or isn't ok. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  So you would support an edit or proposal that documents when G5 restorations should be allowed? I think there is room to explore that idea, but that may be a different RfC. Why? I Ask (talk) 12:28, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I've struck "conditional support" for now, as I'd prefer to err on the side of not refunding banned users' content, but think that there are exceptions to that rule that could conceivably be documented in a way that would add it to the list. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  Nothing in this proposal would require anybody to refund anything, it would simply explicitly permit them to do so if they wished. Obviously some content should not be restored (copyvios, attacks, etc), some content that should be cleaned before being put in mainspace (very promotional, highly POV, etc), some content that can be cleaned in mainspace (occasional POV problems, suboptimal formatting, globalisation needed, etc) and some content that was deleted solely because some admins believe that "banned means banned" is of greater importance than providing (even occasionally GA or FA-standard) encyclopaedic content to readers (I vehemently disagree with this, but recognise that it is widely held view). There examples of every type that are deleted per G5. Thryduulf (talk) 13:12, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  Nothing in this proposal would require anybody to refund anything - But, as with some admins believe that "banned means banned", there's disagreement about when it should apply. G5 isn't an area I'd feel comfortable just leaving open to individual discretion because some feel that the immediate availability of decent content trumps anything else. While there are absolutely exceptions, I'd want us to err on the side of excluding the content. believe that "banned means banned" is of greater importance than providing (even occasionally GA or FA-standard) encyclopaedic content to readers - You've provided one extreme interpretation of the dispute you're referencing. Here's the other extreme: some admins believe there's no abuse, harassment, or sockpuppetry that's too severe to salvage content because "it's all about the readers", as though encouraging sockpuppetry by toxic personalities doesn't do immeasurable damage to specific individuals/groups or the greater community, doesn't discourage people from contributing, or doesn't dissuade people from participating in the first place. Some believe that damage is just too abstract, so why bother with uncountable hypothetical articles and other contributions from uncountable discouraged/put off users in the future when we can have one more decent article "for the readers" today. A bit stronger than I'd typically use it, but it seemed like a fitting counterpart to a reduction to "solely believe that banned means banned". — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support A7/A9/A11, Oppose G5 as worded, per Rhododendrites and Galobtter - particularly, I think that G5 merits a separate discussion. casualdejekyll 14:15, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support A7/A9/A11. I'm less enthusiastic about A11, but whatever. Oppose G5. Recreating content previously created by a known sock is itself prima-facie evidence of socking. We're already losing the sock battle, no need to give them additional assistance. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I'm honestly surprised you would make this argument, RoySmith, considering your block of User:Lettler as a sockpuppet when they weren't one. And it appears it likely drove them from the project. A bunch of their articles were also deleted under G5 during the period of your block and you appear to have made no effort to rectify that (I got around to fixing it myself today). Silverseren^C 21:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Silver seren there's very little I can say publicly about that case other than to note that it was an extraordinary situation and policy should not be driven by extraordinary events. If there were pages created by Lettler which were deleted under G5, I have no objection to those specific pages being refunded. Looking over Deleted user contributions for Lettler right now, I don't see any such entries. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  Because I had them undeleted just now. I think policy discussions should however include cases where prior policy and methods failed and were harmful to editors on the project. In this case, why isn't there a system for someone's articles to be undeleted if they were deleted under false pretenses? We can argue all we want of deletion review or anything else, but the fact of the matter is that it's been over a month and there was no action taken to fix this issue until I noticed it and happened to make the effort to correct it. When it's something that should have been done immediately after Lettler was unblocked. Silverseren^C 23:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support A7/A9/A11. As with the above, I Oppose G5, but I'm willing to be convinced in a separate discussion; G5 carries too many other issues to be bundled with the others. --Jayron32 15:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support removing A7, A9, and G4 (I gave an explanation for the latter on the REFUND talk page). – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 15:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Filelakeshoe: I assume you meant G5 and not G4? Why? I Ask (talk) 15:39, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  No I mean G4 - see my comments on Wikipedia talk:Requests for undeletion#Which CSD shouldn't get refunded here? – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 15:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  I see! I believe most administrators are usually willing to userfy such content. I've never seen a request for that get opposed. I would be willing to add G4 to the RfC, as well. Why? I Ask (talk) 15:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support for the A-series criteria: these are meant to apply to articles; the deletion concern is addressed by moving the page out of article space. Oppose for G5 per
  WP:FORUMSHOPPING *cough*), I'll gladly provide email copies of G5-deleted articles to any editor in good standing who asks so that they can write an article in their own words, but I won't restore them. I intend to continue this practice regardless of the outcome of these two discussions. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits
  ) 15:52, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
• Just a small request: Undeletion policy should provide enough flexibility to provide list of citations and references. So some who wishes to take stalk of earlier used references in deleted article while working fresh should be possible in most circumstances. Also some flexibility when some one wants to use deleted article just for retaining article history for credits but will be writing article almost afresh.
  Sorry for not being able to visit RFC proposal in detail and commenting for minimal expectation. I hope my comment is relevant enough and would make some sense. Bookku (talk) 12:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, the main reason this is so important is because of

  WP:RUD. If a user wishes to use deleted content, it must be restored for attribution per the legal policy. Why? I Ask (talk

  ) 12:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose allowing restoration of G5ed articles at REFUND, per
  WT:CSD to add a right to get G5ed pages restored didn't go well. Hut 8.5
  19:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

  Can you point out the policy that says G5 is considered "controversial". From my understanding, everything deleted without a discussion (e.g., PRODs) is considered uncontroversial. If what you are saying is true, then the text at

  WP:REFUND needs to update to clarify what is considered "controversial". Also, looking through the archives, there are multiple instances of some experienced editors having their request for pages deleted under A7–11 criteria restored denied. The text may need to be more explicit in how such cases can be restored to non-mainspace venues if that is the case already. Why? I Ask (talk

  ) 21:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Question Is there a question to be decided here, or is this just a general discussion? I am seeing supports. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  The question is literally the name of topic of the discussion. It starts with a capital letter and ends with a question mark. --Jayron32 18:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support yes they can even be restored straight to mainspace if requested. Contributions are under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License so even if banned anyone uninvolved in good standing should be free to request undeletion and in most cases it should be accepted though we shouldn't ignore the fact this may encorage users to evade bans though so maybe not in all cases but I'd say if uninvolved and in good standing its generally fine. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:42, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose detail restrictive / prescriptive instructions at WP:REFUND. It is the right place for a newcomer’s first request. The responsibility for refunding lies with the admin. If an admin doesn’t know when it’s appropriate to refund a G5, either they shouldn’t be an admin, or should be undeletion G5 deletions. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• As others have said, I don't think it makes sense to bundle these questions together. Support A7 and A9; they should clearly be restorable because they are about simple, straightforward flaws that may in fact be easy to correct, sometimes with nothing more than a single sentence cited to sources already in the article or with the addition of an easily-found source or to. A11, definitely no, not ever - unless someone completely screwed up there is nothing of value to the project in an A11 undeletion; and if someone screwed up we have proper channels for that. When people post made-up stuff in article space we want them to stop it and either work on not-made-up stuff or go away, we don't want them to move it to userspace; and unlike A7/A9 the flaw that got the article deleted is not fixable. G5 is more complex in that we have to weigh the desire to discourage block-evasion with the potential to recover stuff of value, but I'd say no to G5 because making it too easy for blocked users to leave meaningful impacts on Wikipedia encourages block-evasion. This is especially true for editors who were blocked for tendentious / POV editing; assuming their POV is a widespread one and therefore inevitably well-represented among editors, they could almost always count on an editor who shares their beliefs recovering their deleted articles, which would defeat the whole purpose of blocking them in the first place. --Aquillion (talk) 21:20, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Support as an option for A7, A9, and G5; making it clear that "yes an admin can do this", not "yes someone must do this". I think there should also be an option in these cases of "restore / provide the list of sources" (or provide confirmation that there were no sources), leaving the article text deleted. DavidLeeLambert (talk) 19:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support A7, A9, A11. Oppose G5. Since undeletions are subject to review, not automatic, it's reasonable to allow these requests if the requestor makes a credible claim of importance. The only reason for an outright ban would be if the reviewer workload becomes too great. –dlthewave ☎ 15:37, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

(moved to Wikipedia talk:Large language models) Prompted by some responses in the Wikimedia Community Discord to a query I had about using AI tools (such as LLM's or

3 potential wordings of a policy/guideline on the inclusion use of AI Generated content, such as for example that from LLM's :-

1. " Wikipedia is a entirely work of collaborative human authorship, Use or contribution of material generated wholly or mostly in part from non human sources (such as LLM based generation) is prohibited."

2. "Wikipedia is a primarily a work of human authorship, Use of content generated from AI's s (such as LLM based generation) should be used sparingly and content generated with it's assistance should be clearly identifiable as such, with full attribution of the tools or models used."

3. "Wikipedia is a collabrative work, and users may make use of appropriate tools such as LLM's (with appropriate attribution), in order to further this aim."

This of course assumes that the generated content meets all other considerations for content that would apply irrespective of human vs AI generation.

I'm not going to argue for any specific position, but my concerns about AI generated content, are the lack of clarity and transparency about usage rights under compatible license, and the possibility of copyright material 'leaking' into an otherwise 'freely' licensed wiki.

English Wikipedia should have a clearly documented policy, on what 'AI/machine-generated' content can or cannot be included.

I also appreciate that there are plenty of passive bots on Wikipedia that assist skilled users in performing taks that would be time consuming to do manually. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@

WP:LLM. Its talk page also lists the various discussions on the issue. Schazjmd (talk)

12:22, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Can admins move threads, with a Courtesy redirect on Wikipedia currently? Further discussion should take place on the talk page of the 'draft' policy mentioned. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Please contribute. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:53, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

There is an RfC on joke AfDs about BLPs on April fools day at Wikipedia_talk:April_Fools#RfC:_Ban_joke_AfD_of_living_people. All are invited to participate. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

There is a discussion on meta about establishing a global CheckUser activity policy. All are invited to participate at: m:Requests for comment/CheckUser activity RFC. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:37, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

There is a discussion about the notability of disasters and mass casualty events at Wikipedia talk:Notability (events). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Make Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions a guideline

 – Levivich (talk) 17:57, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Should

Survey (RM closing instructions)

• Support as proposer. The idea that
  WP:RMCI is not vetted by the community is laughably inaccurate; yes, it has been. It's guided requested move closures for nearly two decades, its talk page (merged with the overall WP:RM talk page) spans thirty-four archives, and drawn-out discussions are common (I arbitrarily picked Wikipedia_talk:Requested_moves/Archive_25 and found... a LOT of discussion on the precise wording of WP:RMCI). It is a fully vetted part of Wikipedia. It's not purely advisory--it's literally the only instructions we have on closing move requests. It's not an essay, it has never been an essay, it bears none of the hallmarks of an essay, and its currently listed status as an essay is a mistake. It's not an inconsequential mistake, either; people feel like they can ignore it freely, and that's leading to chaos--you have a 50/50 shot of the person who closes your move request being someone who takes our well-vetted closing procedures (up to and including don't close a move request twice) seriously, or who views them as merely "good advice" that can be freely ignored. Red Slash
  23:15, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. The principles and concepts are tried and tested. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:30, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment I am not saying it is perfect as-is, I'm just saying I support it becoming a guideline rather than remaining an essay. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. – robertsky (talk) 00:45, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support — if it looks like a guideline, quacks like a guideline, and is functionally considered a guideline, it should be formally treated as such. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 00:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Established and widely followed de facto guideline. {{ping|ClydeFranklin}} (t/c) 01:14, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support to stop wikilawyering about whether something is "just an essay" or not. Best practices should be followed, regardless of where they are documented. But for the sake of clarity, let's make it official that this has the support of the community. HouseBlaster^talk 01:33, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom, I see no reason to oppose. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:41, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 07:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Most of RMCI are basic instructions. These exist all over Wikipedia, but none of them should be turned into guidelines because there is no benefit from doing so, and because doing so causes
  when a policy and guideline conflict editors should assume that the policy takes priority.

  I also don't believe it makes sense to make closers involved for RM's but not other discussions - if this is an issue then it is an issue in all areas, not just requested moves. BilledMammal (talk
  ) 10:19, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  But WP:INVOLVED is dealing with administrators doing things in an administrative capacity (which does not include requested moves), and WP:RMCI is not. Closing move requests is neither restricted to administrators nor is it an administrative task. There's no overlap at all. See below for my more detailed take on why and how this is different. Red Slash 17:19, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Both of us cannot close this discussion because

  WP:INVOLVED forbids us from doing so, despite neither of us being admins nor the close requiring admin tools. INVOLVED applies to all editors who are acting in an admin capacity, and that includes closing discussions - if it didn't, either of us could close this discussion now. BilledMammal (talk

  ) 23:19, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  That's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered. I think, perhaps, an explicit (though brief) delineation of why WP:RMCI is more expansive than INVOLVED would be appropriate. Thank you. Red Slash 23:43, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  I don't believe that would solve the issue; the explanation won't remove the conflict, and it won't change the fact that when a policy and guideline conflict editors should assume the policy takes precedence. BilledMammal (talk) 00:00, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  @

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 10:56, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  Formal closures are an "admin capacity" or, to use the wording from

  WP:ADMIN as I have had debates where editors have claimed that it is appropriate for them to formally close a discussion they were involved in because they were not an administrator. BilledMammal (talk

  ) 11:13, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  It is an essay also, but

  WP:NACINV says about non-admin closures: Closing editors must abide by the standard of being uninvolved as described at Wikipedia:Administrators#Involved admins. Vpab15 (talk

  ) 11:14, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  @

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 07:11, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  By using the phrasing editors should not act as administrators in disputes INVOLVED makes it clear that one isn't required to use the tools to engage in admin activity ("act as administrators"), and makes it clear that it applies to all editors, not just admins ("editors", not "administrators").

  This can be seen in how the community responds to involved closures of discussions; the closure is overturned, and sanctions imposed if the editor continues to insist that because they are not admins INVOLVED doesn't apply to then. Whether this was intended to be the original meaning is not relevant; it is now the meaning accepted by the community, and in my opinion the correct meaning. BilledMammal (talk) 09:10, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  @

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 12:12, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:13, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
  Withdrawn until the conflict with WP:INVOLVED is fixed. I consider closing to be an administrative action, as it theoretically does not involve the opinions of the closer on the content of the article, but does involve the interpretation of policy and guidance and their application to a discussion, as well as assessing consensus, and requires competence. Their are many experienced non-admin editors with the required competence in general, and fewer people with the required competence for closing any given discussion, as each topic has its own special circumstances, and we do not need closers who are ignorant of those special circumstances. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support This is a high stakes fundamental process. When any process is as established, accepted, and in-use as this one, then I am in favor of labeling it as a guideline. The guideline label carries weight both for users and to legitimize the activities of the Wikimedia editorial community and its governance process. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:25, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
• I'd rather have this become a information page. Also, this sentence: NACs are not discouraged for requested moves, as long as the non-admin is highly experienced with RMs and our closing procedures sounds pretty discouraging to me. How is someone supposed to become "highly experienced", if you're not allowed to do it? And is this actually different from what we hope for with admins? IMO thoughtful NACs should be strongly encouraged to handle RMs, and admins (who have no similar requirements about knowing how RM works?) should only be involved (in their admin role) if specific buttons are needed for technical moves. Page titles are basically content decisions, and admins get no special rights in content decisions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  That could definitely be rewritten. Over the years, we've gone from prohibiting NACs, to discouraging them, to restricting them, to permitting them, and it might now be time to start explicitly encouraging them. I love it. I don't think that has much to do with the fate of this page as a guideline or not, but I love it. (BTW, having it be just an informational page, in my opinion, wouldn't solve the problem of people not taking a WP page seriously if it doesn't have a little checkmark next to it.) Red Slash 01:25, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I agree, if RMCI needs fixing, clarification and whatnot we can do that just as for any other page, should not affect the decision to make it a guideline imo. Selfstudier (talk) 06:27, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I dunno. Once a policy or guideline label gets slapped on a page, editors frequently tell me that it's more difficult to get substantive changes made. Also, it's customary to solve the more obvious problems before proposing guideline status.

  Let me pick on a few people: @Pppery, @Kj cheetham, @Robertsky, @WhinyTheYounger, @ClydeFranklin, @HouseBlaster: You were the first folks to support the proposal. The OP's primary concern is the tag that says it hasn't been vetted. How many minutes did it take you to read the page before you voted to support it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:34, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  It is hard to quantify the time spent going through the page line by line, familiarising and refamiliarising the process in the last few months (somewhen between 4-6 months) when I decided to dive into RMs, as such it may not have been obvious to me. What's actually humourous is that those you have pinged are mostly non-admins ourselves, albeit some with pagemover rights, and we might certainly be censured by others if we had started out with this being the guidelines just by this line. Just recently, there is an editor, green in doing NACs, going through RMs, and no one is stopping them, but rather experienced closers are have been encouraging them and guiding them on their talk page. We can always have this tweaked to something more platable: i.e. NACs are acceptable for requested moves provided that the non-admin editor closing the request is familiar with the closing instructions. – robertsky (talk) 05:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  I think your wording would be an improvement. Personally, I'd also discourage editors from handling RMs on pages that they are unable to move themselves. IMO some RMs should be left to admins and page movers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Good question - I have no idea really. I have been involved with page moves for a while (mostly technical requests), and have looked over it multiple times in the past year or two. It's not something I read for the first time after seeing this RFC. I can't say I've fully analysed every part of it, or that it is perfect. Also, "discouraged" is not the same as "not allowed". -Kj cheetham (talk) 17:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Whatareyoudoing, I agree with Kj cheetham on a lot of this. I have no idea in terms of an exact number, but I have gone over it multiple times every so often, and I have in no means fully analyzed it. {{ping|ClydeFranklin}} (t/c) 23:22, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Well, at the moment, I seem to be confirming my long-standing belief that

  Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. We guess what the WP:UPPERCASE

  might mean, and we look up little specific sections when we need to quote The Rules™ at someone or remember the name of a specific template (or similar detail), but we don't really read them.

  This RFC started because someone didn't want this page to have a tag at the top that says "it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community." It sounds from the responses here that even if it were to pass, that's still not happening. If your responses are typical, then the people who are voting for it haven't really read it (recently, or ever), and I suspect that the people opposing only read far enough along to find something they disagree with, and then stop. On a more general level, I wonder if

  WP:PROPOSAL

  should advise would-be promoters to tell editors that they really need to read the entire current version of the page, before voting to support the promotion. We don't get many such proposals in a year, and actually reading the page that you want to have marked as having been thoroughly vetted does not seem to me like an unreasonable expectation.

  BTW, if you have average reading speed for a native English speaker, it'll take you 20 minutes to read that proposed guideline from top to bottom. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don’t really understand why this should be an information page, IMO it’s not factual or technical information but the community accepted procedure. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:16, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Aaron Liu, information pages provide information. This includes information about what the community's accepted procedures are. Consider, for example, the information page on the accepted procedure if you want to Wikipedia:Contact VRT. Or for Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia. Or if you need Wikipedia:Access to nonpublic information. Or if you want to follow the community-accepted procedure for Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Or, very relevantly, for Wikipedia:Closing discussions. Why should Wikipedia:Closing discussions be an information page, but not the move-specific version of that page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. The issues are (a) inconsistency in the way we use the terms (or apply the templates for) guidelines, information pages, explanatory supplements, essays, etc., and (b) letting time-wasting by wikilawyers determine those applications. We should be more consistent. Why would this need to be a guideline, but
  WP:PAG lumps the various types of essays together despite practically being treated very different by the community. Maybe one step is to remove "information pages" from the essay of "header" and combine them with "administration" (or "process") pages to produce something that assumes guideline-like adherence, or maybe such is the state we're in that we should actually slap guideline templates on all of these pages just to stop people from extending "just an essay" to "just a page that documents a process for which there's broad support"... — Rhododendrites ^talk
  \\ 02:14, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I appreciate your perspective. "we should actually slap guideline templates on all of these pages just to stop people from extending "just an essay" to "just a page that documents a process for which there's broad support"..." is actually probably the best solution, because otherwise, in practice, you get people who say "but it's just an essay!" In the meantime, though, I think the proposal is the best solution for the reasons I explained above. Red Slash 07:45, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Some of the pages you linked are discussion venues, not pages. AfD and DRV are discussion venues that have their process page at

  WP:DPR which is a guideline. Aaron Liu (talk

  ) 14:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Rhododendrites: Apologies, I had to slightly modify your vote as to correct for the loss of context when the support and oppose sections were merged. BilledMammal (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support Seems like a good idea to give a bit of formality to existing practice. If this or that wording needs sprucing up, that can be done in the usual way and shouldn't affect the decision whether to make it a guideline imo.Selfstudier (talk) 06:32, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think there is one problematic sentence at WP:RMCI that needs to be fixed. It defines involved as: You have ever closed such a move request. That contradicts the wording at
  WP:INVOLVED and places an unreasonable burden on RM closers, who will have to remember all the previous RM dicussions they have closed. Per discussion below, it is not even clear if "such a move request" only includes the same article, or any article in the same topic. I have no objection to the rest of the essay. Vpab15 (talk
  ) 10:23, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support this proposal, but clarity as discussed above needs to be added to the guideline page soon, and re-organizing non-policy pages via template as discussed below needs to happen also. GenQuest ^"scribble" 16:14, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support, no-brainer.—S Marshall T/C 18:24, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom
  The Night Watch (talk)
  02:41, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nominator. Additionally, I support robertsky's proposal below. echidnaLives - talk - edits 02:55, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as written, at least until contentious points with "involvement" and declaring NAC closes are vetted by the community, since they contradict broader policies. Some parts of RMCI have obviously been written out of one's whim at a time, and do not even enjoy local
  No such user (talk
  ) 08:37, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  "do not even enjoy local WP:CONLEVEL among the closers' 'community'" - can you be specific as to what you're referring to? Wikipedia is a wiki, there's nothing in WP:RMCI which has "snuck through" or exists without the community's support. The INVOLVED part, in particular, was extensively debated, even as small a point as whether or not an involved editor can "relist" a discussion. Everything has been vetted. Red Slash 23:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  I missed that 2019 discussion, which did not have a terribly broad input. Even if I can agree there was a local consensus at the time,

  No such user (talk

  ) 08:59, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support: The 'explanatory essay' has already been discussed more than sufficiently to qualify as a guideline, which obviously would still not mean that it was as hard and fast and as ironclad as a policy, but would cease the confusion whereby some editors seem to think it is optional - a confusion that needs clearing up. There will still be exceptional cases, admins may still need to weigh in, and there will be still be need and scope for a human touch at Move Review, but there will not cause for actual confusion as to what the guidelines are, and what the basic expectations of the process are.
  Iskandar323 (talk
  ) 11:03, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose mostly per No such user. I, as well, have serious problems that the NAC closure section is in clear contradiction to Wikipedia principles. Also, Rhododendrites makes some good points above. --Jayron32 13:34, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I'm not opposed to a guideline about moving pages but RMCI as currently written is not it. I don't agree with its instructions, such as the language about involved, as pointed out by others, and the page is too long as currently written. I think there is maybe an opportunity to either rewrite RMCI into a guideline, or rewrite it and promote it to an info page, or maybe split it into a guideline page and an instructions page. There is some possibility for something here, but I oppose putting the guideline template on RMCI as currently written. Levivich (talk) 14:20, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  Reads like a "support with some copyediting" to me.—S Marshall T/C 14:26, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  Copyediting doesn't change the meaning of the text; that's editing. But yeah, I might support if we changed the meaning of the text to something else. Levivich (talk) 19:35, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose currently. I agree that the provision "You have ever closed such a move request" is contrary to
  WP:INVOLVED, which explains that administrative actions do not constitute involvement. Sandstein
  16:24, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Temporary oppose. I think
  WP:NOTCURRENTTITLE has been added to the page very recently, and – while I agree with its inclusion myself – I'd like to see it receive more affirmative support from the community before letting it rise to guideline status. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs
  ) 17:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  On further thought, switching to weak support. The involvement issues can be hashed out whether RMCI is a guideline or not, so there's no need to hold up an ultimately productive goal on those grounds alone. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 17:35, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

  WP:NOTCURRENTTITLE has been there since 20 February 2015: it is determined that the current title should not host the article.... Ofcourse, it has undergone several updates and clarifications over the years but the core remains the same. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X}

  }) 09:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom --- Tbf69 P • T 17:22, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as needing more work, per points raised above (e.g. "You have ever closed such a move request"). Also, the NAC instructions differ substantially from our other procedures: to bring them in line with the spirit of NAC, I think admins and page movers should be allowed to close any RM, while other users should only close uncontroversial discussions. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:03, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support, the involved bit isn't prohibitive - for the general reasoning, the nom's covers it nicely. On the INVOLVED bit, my interpretation is that that sets minimum standards. It doesn't invalidate any guideline to have stricter rules. Now, whether the guideline should have stricter rules is really rather more dubious, but fundamentally, it's not so egregious as to undermine the guidelineification (to my concern, that isn't being flagged as a typo). Nosebagbear (talk) 23:24, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  INVOLVED also sets a maximum standard, by telling us when someone is not involved. The standard at RMCI exceeds this. BilledMammal (talk) 23:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

  An actual or perceived conflict of interest is what needs to be avoided, how that is achieved is the question. Selfstudier (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  If closing a discussion creates a perceived conflict of interest than that can only be addressed at

  WP:POLCON, and because if it is an issue at RM’s it is also an issue at AFD’s and other formal discussions. BilledMammal (talk

  ) 00:13, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Which you did and is why this RFC exists. Many don't agree with that position though. It is of some interest that you only brought it up in order to support a !vote at an RM when most people pointed to an obvious conflict of interest. Selfstudier (talk) 00:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  If many don’t agree with that position then you should have no issue changing the policy that supports that position, and I encourage you to open an RFC proposing to do so.

  I brought it up to push back against the notion that engaging in administrative actions made an editor involved and have not considered the rest of the RM as most of the support for overturning was solely on that basis; how is it of some interest? BilledMammal (talk) 00:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  No need, as I said, discussion should start at RMCI talk per usual practice. Selfstudier (talk) 00:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Since this RFC is already open and at CENT, you can of course start a subRFC within it for anything that concerns you specifically (as per "Discussion on changing the wording" below). Selfstudier (talk) 00:34, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support. As per Bluerasberry. This process is well-tested, it should be as streamlined as possible and such a formal tag contributes to this as well as provides legitimacy. Any contentious points (involvement, etc.) should be resolved before promoting this page to a guideline though. Any user in good standing should be allowed to close any RMs where they are not directly involved. We could set up some general conditions though that are not dependent on public voting, such as it has been done at WP:AFC. --TadejM ^{my talk} 06:22, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

  Any contentious points (involvement, etc.) should be resolved before promoting this page to a guideline though. I’m planning to open an RFC asking questions about individual contentious points should this RFC pass, which should help resolve them. BilledMammal (talk) 00:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  First discuss them on the talk page as already suggested by the RMCI guidance so that there is a proper RFCbefore should it come to that. Selfstudier (talk) 00:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  I was planning to discuss at

  WP:VPI for broader input. BilledMammal (talk

  ) 00:09, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  RMCI talk first, just like we begin all other discussions regardless of the article. Selfstudier (talk) 00:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per CREEP, among other arguments presented above. Lots of WP processes have instructions/rules and we don't make them guidelines. Guidelines are for content editing and for user behavior, not for internal bureacracy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as BilledMammal, No such user, and others have argued.
  To comment in particular on the "involved" clause, the suggestion that RMs need a special rule above
  WP:INVOLVED is unpersuasive. Being "urgent" or not doesn't somehow uniquely distinguish RMs from other processes with formal closures. A typical RFC, AFD, RFD, etc. is no more urgent than a typical RM, with no acute consequences to closing it a couple days or weeks later. Similarly, seeking to overturn a closure at move review is not materially different in difficulty from seeking to overturn another type of closure at deletion review. I see the impetus of the RFC is the case of the 1948 Palestinian exodus RM closure and MR; it features a closer who previous RM closure had already been taken to move review and itself was so controversial that it got no consensus to endorse or overturn. That extraordinary set of circumstances does not justify the proposed broad rule of "You have ever closed...", nor have I seen any other case that does. ("Hard cases make bad law".) There should just be one uniform policy about what "involved" means, and fragmenting the definition is CREEP. Adumbrativus (talk
  ) 06:46, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. If following these over-long "instructions" leads to the kind of close the OP did here and the following extended drama at
  WP:NOTBURO. Bon courage (talk
  ) 04:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  A little ad hominem no? Addressing the OP more than the topic, with a dash of conspiracy.

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 05:59, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Well, the evidence is that the apparent application of these "instructions" is an issue. The editor who wrote most of them[17] wants their work elevated to have

  WP:PAG force so that they can be used to 'forbid' things (as if guidelines do that). Bon courage (talk

  ) 07:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Quite. A guideline doesn't enforce anything. It just elevates something away from being a mere essay, and, in this instance, dismissible as a mere nicety, even if it is established by consensus and decades of practical use.

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 10:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose I fail to see why this can't be an Information page, and there seem to be too many contentious aspects currently. Suggest this idea is parked until the page is better. People will wikilawyer if they are unhappy with any process even if given guideline status. As other note, it is way too long. Well that's a problem with many guidelines and other pages too, but I think the step before attempting to elevate this page's status should be that you first request help to shorten it, trim the cruft, and remove contentious aspects until those have been thrashed out on talk. I get the need for "official guideline" for article content advice, but as a wiki, I think our processes and procedures should generally be described in as lightweight way as we can. Also, be careful what you wish for... making this "official" may make it harder for you to change the bits you want changed in future. -- Colin°^Talk 09:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose guideline, support information page if issues are dealt with. RMCI is useful, but I do have concerns with page as written. As the closer of the Palestinian exodus RMs, I was somewhat non-plussed at the "closing an RM makes you permanently INVOLVED" part being brought up at MRV as a gospel truth; it runs counter to how discussion closures go elsewhere on the encyclopedia, where INVOLVED is basically formalising the common-sense "don't close discussions you've participated and opined in" rule. And this RfC… I'll be honest, it feels less like codifying RMCI, and more like trying to redefine INVOLVED in without proper scrutiny at
  WT:ADMIN, where discussions about INVOLVED should be. RMCI should not be too prescriptive; it should just detail agreed best practice. If that's the case, I have no problem with it being an information page. Sceptre (talk
  ) 18:48, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
• Reluctant Support We really need another category like vetted approved "core essays"/"information pages" the best 10% of essays like these which do a good job of giving guidance of explaining how Wikipedia works or give good guidance but don't go to the extent of authoritatively say "this is what to do /not do" which in practice guidelines sort of do. The latter shouldn't creep larger because first, it is creep, it's hard to get the carefulness / perfection needed for give it that amount of clout. But I did support" anyway because I think this is an edge case where it could pass as a guideline given its history of scrutiny, tweaking, acceptance, usage, and being in good enough shape to be a guideline. Also it should be acknowledged that a "yes" here means only to make it a guideline, not an individual endorsement of every sentence in it. And knowing that it may need a few tweaks and changes to fully meet its new status. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:14, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose in practice. Although I am sympathetic to the idea that this could be a guideline, I disagree that it has been clearly vetted by the community. In fact, for 15 or so years I have often avoided trying to sort out small changes to that page precisely because it was never necessary to do so; I could just continue closing as usual without needing to refer to instructions for new closers. In theory, I think we could start with a rewrite of that page, build up consensus, and then bring up the issue again, but I do not believe that the page as written reflects the best practices that have been developed at
  WT:RM#Involved. Dekimasuよ!
  17:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Both in substance and function, this corresponds to a guideline, and has a clear niche in the systematization of PAGs: This page is to the move processes what Wikipedia:Deletion process is to the deletion process. —Alalch E. 20:16, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose RM's are not so special they need their own definition of INVOLVEment, and I cannot support writing this clearly incongruous expanded definition of it into our policies. In the broader sense, codifying this as a guideline is an instruction creep problem. Courcelles (talk) 13:40, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support tweeks that could result in a promotion to a guideline. If it fails to garner enough support to pass then Support classifying the essay as
  explanatory supplement. -- Otr500 (talk
  ) 16:14, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• Note: I have a concern, that may not be justified, that a failed proposed policy or guideline generally carries the scarlet banner N This is a failed proposal.
  The hierarchy of essays, according to Wikipedia, is that an essay is an essay as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. However, in these essays, there is an added level when an "essay" represents widespread norms over a "minority viewpoint". The template uses "Supplement" or "explanatory supplement" that renders an "explanatory essay". If there is an "interprets" parameter, especially if the page provides "additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements", more especially if the "essay" provides this information about policies and guidelines, it is not just a run-of-the-mill essay.
  "Following the instructions or advice given in essays is optional". If this were actually true nobody could ever be subjected to sanctions for not following the "optional" essay. I am sure most here know that in some cases that is a fallacy. I am sure any of our "techies" could pull up the record of how many editors have been blocked or banned for not being
  Citing Sources guideline.

  Pure essays are optional, but essays that provide a different aspect, providing sometimes valuable information on the "normal" communitywide practices usually go further.

  Essays have no official status and do not speak for the Wikipedia community because they may be created and edited without overall community oversight. Following the instructions or advice given in an essay is optional. Generally soft advice belongs in an essay, thus avoiding instruction creep in Wikipedia's official protocols. This is in direct conflict with the content of the "explanatory essay" Wikipedia:Here to build an encyclopedia. That "essay" carries multiple warnings. This page in a nutshell States: Users whose behavior suggests they are here for some other purpose risk being blocked or banned. The first paragraph after the quote states, Because Wikipedia is a collaborative community, editors whose personal agendas and actions appear to conflict with its purpose risk having their editing privileges removed. The only thing "soft" is the using of soft wordings "risk being" and risk having.

  I don't think it would be out of the norm or too big of an adjustment to classify certain essays as explanatory supplements. This would still be an essay, not a guideline, so will not violate those editors not wanting any instruction creep. -- Otr500 (talk
  ) 16:14, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Otr500, when a proposal fails, sometimes we mark it as a failed proposal, but other times we just tag it as an essay. Some things are perfectly fine as essays. See, e.g., Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, which has been proposed for policy or guideline status at least three times since I started editing, and still carries no badge of shame at the top. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Involved

Is the difference in wording between

• Oppose- unlike admin activities, RM closes are never urgent, so there's time to make sure that we get someone who's never closed a request on it before. Also unlike admin activities, it's excruciatingly hard to overturn a page move close if the closer won't self-revert. Also unlike admin activities, if the closer does recognize "oops, shouldn't have done that", it's extremely easy to just self-revert--nobody needs to live in fear that they're too "involved", since a self-revert of a move (e.g., "You just closed the request on Kyiv, maybe don't close the one on Odesa" -> "oops, my bad, self-reverting") is very easy for a good-faith closer to do. Also, closing move requests isn't really an administrative task, and is more an editorial one. Without these guidelines as written, the same editor could literally just close the same exact move request over and over and over and over again, stonewalling "progress" in a violation of
  WP:OWNership. It's one thing to watch your beloved perennial proposal fail; it's quite another when it's one single editor over and over again who keeps closing the request to shut it down. Red Slash
  16:34, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  the same editor could literally just close the same exact move request over and over and over and over again, stonewalling "progress". The flipside of that is an editor who raises the same request with same arguments over and over again until a sympathetic closer gets their turn. We would be basically encouraging

  WP:FORUMSHOPing. Vpab15 (talk

  ) 17:56, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  How is that the flipside? The problem is conflict of interest in the first case and disruption in the second case. Are you saying that the wording should be changed to allow the first case or that the wording already allows it? Selfstudier (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  Personally, I don't see the necessity of waiting for someone who's never closed a move request on the topic. Closing RMs is administrative in the same capacity that closing any discussion is: the closer's task is to identify and implement the consensus of other users, rather than acting independently to make content changes. A closer can analyze an individual discussion and its consensus without inherently being influenced by unrelated discussions on similar topics; there's no reason for them to recuse themselves from future closures in the topic area unless they've formed an opinion that would preclude them from being able to close impartially.

  You mention the hypothetical example of an editor who closes the same RM repeatedly, but there are two possible scenarios this encompasses. First, that editor closes each discussion in line with the relevant protocols (fairly assessing consensus, waiting the full week, etc.); in this scenario, the closures are good, so there's no reason to prevent the editor from making them. The other scenario is that the editor flouts the protocols in their closures (closing against consensus, making inappropriate SNOW closes, etc.); this is disruptive for reasons beyond "they've closed RMs in this area before", so there's no need to maintain such a proviso in order to sanction people who perform these disruptive closures. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  While that may theoretically true in general, I think that in the specific case (referred to in the discussion as a "kerfuffle" but which actually need not concern us as it will be resolved in MR and not here) there is the appearance of a conflict of interest and as we all know, the appearance of a conflict can be just as bad as an actual conflict. So even if it may be theoretically true, I still think this is something that ought to be avoided, particularly in CT areas. Selfstudier (talk) 16:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  That's certainly true for controversial proposals, and I can definitely understand where you're coming from in that regard, but I think a bright-line "you have ever closed such a move request" restriction would also shut down a number of productive and low-risk closures. It's not uncommon for someone to propose a series of RMs on a shared topic - RMs which could easily be bundled, but for one reason or another, are not - and forcing those RMs to all be closed by different people puts a lot of additional strain on that practice.

  I wonder if "you have ever closed a move request on this article" would be a good alternative restriction? In my view, it'd be nearly as effective at reducing the appearance of conflicts of interest, while also minimizing the added administrative burden on RM closers. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:48, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  That seems like a good proposal, I would support that. Selfstudier (talk) 16:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  This is actually what it means, which I think a lot of people seem to be overlooking. The third (and second) points refer back to the first. They say "such a move request", referring to "a move request about the article in question" - but a lot of people seem to be looking at the third point in isolation and coming up with their own sense, out of context, of what "such a move request" means. So, "a move request about the article in question" would best be repeated thrice.

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 10:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think this is true: Also unlike admin activities, it's excruciatingly hard to overturn a page move close if the closer won't self-revert.

  Even if it were true, I think it's not an important thing to worry about because it's not a problem we experience. People don't post RMs over and over and over again; therefore, there aren't identical RMs for someone to close over and over and over again. If that becomes a problem, folks can ask at WP:AN for help. Most admins are very willing to let someone else take over, if they're told that their actions aren't resulting in editors feeling like they can trust the outcome.

  And frankly, if you've got someone who knows something about the correct nomenclature for some niche subject, you want that person involved in all RMs for that area. RMs, like any other discussion, would ideally be closed by people who can identify which arguments are stronger or weaker, and sometimes that means having domain-specific knowledge. Like any other discussion, an RM can appear to be evenly divided by superficial vote counting, but if one says X because Crackpots'R'Us uses that name, and the other says Y because reputable scholars use that name, then you should be going with the good sources – and that can only happen if the closer knows that the International Journal of Science is highly reputable, and the very similarly named Journal of International Science is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Wording should be changed to make it clear that the restriction on multiple closures applies to the same article (regardless of what titles it may have gone through} and not to other articles within the same topic area. A statute of limitations could also be applied, maybe a year. Contentious and persistent incompetent closing is a behavioural problem and can be managed by a topic ban if it becomes necessary.
  Also agree with what WhatamIdoing says. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Any change that allows an obvious conflict of interest. Selfstudier (talk) 12:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

  Well, obviously... · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Apparently not. Selfstudier (talk) 08:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  @

  iPhone 6SE? WhatamIdoing (talk

  ) 04:18, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

• A much more detailed conversation about some aspects of this is ongoing at
  WT:RM#Involved. Dekimasuよ!
  17:21, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose in essence; support clarification by WhatamIdoing. Agree with Red Slash about the first part. —Alalch E. 20:22, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (RM closing instructions)

• Comment. The objection to WP:RMCI was that it defines involved as You have ever closed such a move request, whereas the current policy at
  WP:INVOLVED says: an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits that do not show bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. It does seem they contradict each other. Should the wording at WP:INVOLVED be changed if WP:RMCI becomes a guideline? Vpab15 (talk
  ) 23:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

  INVOLVED is policy, so I think fixing this is better resolved the other way around. Updating RMCI so that it more closely matches INVOLVED seems like the solution, as ultimately that set of instructions are based off of the policy and not the other way around. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  So, they're definitely different issues, and the RMCI "involved" stuff is different on purpose and for a reason. The TL;DR is that WP:INVOLVED prohibits involvement with the same user (or topic area), while WP:RMCI just prohibits it from having a certain pre-expressed position on a topic. Great question though.

  Why WP:INVOLVED is as loose as it is:

  1. Administrators interact with a LOT of users. If we prohibited any administrator from ever interacting with the same user twice even in an administrative sense, we'd have a complete clusterbomb of suckiness on our hands.
  2. Oftentimes, admin action is urgent; we have way too few administrators and way too many things to be getting done, and sometimes if you waited for someone who has never been involved, the issue would take too long to get resolved (say, Admin Joe finds a rogue user who's wildly vandalizing tons of articles, but Admin Joe has already sanctioned the guy once before; it would hurt the encyclopedia to say that Admin Joe needs to wait to find someone else to ban the dude).
  3. Administrators are very well-vetted in our rules and policies. They shouldn't need someone to hold their hand and tell them when they're too involved to be impartial. It's the same reason Supreme Court Justices in the United States (at least) don't need to be told to recuse themselves.

  On the other hand, move closers:

  1. Most move closers do not interact with most articles. I've been an editor for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time and have a loooooooooooooooooooooot of edits and have been involved in a loooooooooooooooooot of move requests, and I just looked through
     WP:RM
     and I could not find a single article listed there which I have ever interacted with. I could close literally any of those requested moves. I'd bet you that, of the fifty or so editors who commonly (once or more per month) close requested moves, probably forty-five to forty-eight of us could serve as impartial movers on any given requested move.
  2. There is zero urgency with requested moves. If Page Mover Tom sees a request on Talk:Foo that he could move, but, shoot, he's been involved in similar discussions at Talk:Foobar... well, it's not going to cause any problem for that move request just to sit tight for another few days until Page Mover Sally happens across it. Requested Moves are important, certainly... but definitely not urgent.
  3. The people who close move requests are almost never administrators. There's about four admins who regularly close move requests and about ten others who do it once in a blue moon, and I'd ballpark-estimate that 90% of moves closed are closed by non-admins. I highly respect my fellow non-admin page movers, of course, but let's be real: as a group, we obviously aren't as vetted by the community. In fact, this is why WP:RMCI's "involved" criteria is as explicit as it is. I pushed hard in the discussion for it to be painfully obvious where the bright lines were, because as a group, we needed those bright lines.

  So, no, I would absolutely not suggest following

  WP:INVOLVED's wording or vice-versa. Different rules for different reasons, just like how categories have different rules than articles. Red Slash

  05:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Right now there is a move review about an article related to the Arab–Israeli conflict and another about a New Zealand term. Both areas have RM discussions relatively regularly. If we are saying that a closer can only close one discussion in either area, that goes against the letter and the spirit of WP:INVOLVED. I don't think that would be feasible, we would run out of RM closers in no time. Vpab15 (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  With love, no, I'm very confident there are plenty of well-informed RM closers who haven't committed themselves to either of those issues yet. I could list several of them who aren't involved at all. There's not THAT many of us, but there's not too few, either.

  Again, these are two separate issues. WP:INVOLVED deals with administrators performing administrative actions. WP:RMCI's "involved" section deals with neither. Red Slash 17:22, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Are you saying the same closer shouldn't close two RM discussions that belong to the same topic? For example Slava Ukraini and Odesa, both related to Ukraine? Because that's exactly what you did. Applying that rule would disqualify regular RM closers from closing most discussions. As a closer I would have to go though the hundreds of discussions I have closed to make sure I don't meet the new "involved" criteria. That is a huge burden and I can't see that working in practice. Vpab15 (talk) 18:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  It already does work in practice! (FYI, these criteria are several years old and have worked for us for several years; they're not new.)

  The restrictions aren't "you've ever edited the article or anything like it". The restrictions are: "You have ever commented on any talk page in such a way as to make clear your position on the move request" or "Your editing on the page in question or about the page in question makes clear your position on the move request".

  For mine, the Slava Ukraini request hinged on

  WP:COMMONNAME

  about whether the slogan should remain translated into English or not; the way in which I closed it does not in any implicate how I would later close the Odesa request, which hinged on whether the one-S version or the two-S version were more common in English when referring to the Ukrainian city. The proof is in the pudding; I closed the Odesa request back in July, just three months after the Slava Ukraini one, and no editor even suggested that I had been too "involved" to close. (I would've painlessly self-reverted if someone would've brought a legitimate claim of violating those rules; again, there are no shortage of people who could've done a great job closing Odesa.) On the other hand, if I had been the one who closed the Kyiv/Kiev one, or if I had !voted on it, maybe I would've shied away from closing the Odesa one; if there's another Ukrainian city with a Russian name that's proposed to be moved to the Ukrainian name, I will avoid closing that one. I consider this common sense, which is why the discussion ultimately ended up where it did and the page reads how it reads.

  In short (too late!), the list of requirements on RMCI with regard to involvement were heavily discussed and meticulously crafted to avoid the sort of wacky prohibitions that you are correctly wary of. No worries, homie; it's not as scary as you think ! Red Slash 23:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Even on a per article level, are you sure that this is current practice? When looking at the CoI part, a closer is considered involved if You have ever closed such a move request. By a plain reading this means that if:

  • Some user proposes moving
    Foo to Bar
  • Bunch of editors support and oppose
  • 7 days pass, I make a determination of the consensus based on what editors have said. Article is not moved.
  • Significant amount of time passes, eg 6 months to several years, some other user proposes moving
    Foo to baz
  • 7 days pass, I cannot make determination of the consensus based on what the editors have said, because I closed another RM on the same page at some point in the past

  When we have 6.6 million articles, but only 130,000 active editors, at some point we will run out of editors who can close move requests on articles that have had multiple move requests. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:33, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  That is correct, that is current practice, you could not make that determination. We have 6.6 million articles, but I assure you, we don't have that many requested moves No worries, we've never even begun to come close to a situation where we've run out of possible closers. Red Slash 01:37, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry to interrupt the thread here, but I do not believe there has ever been consensus to make that "common practice". Until 2019, the directive was to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest (which is good!), but there was no prohibition on closing a second move on the same page, and no indication that the very existence of a previous close itself would be considered indicative of a conflict of interest. Since that change (which I didn't know about, since I don't monitor that page, although I would have objected to it), the page has not had guideline status. I have closed subsequent moves on the same pages many times, sometimes so far apart that I couldn't even remember having closed a move request there previously. When the reading of consensus is clear and accurate, there is no appearance of a conflict of interest. When the reading of consensus is not clear or accurate, there is a problem regardless of whether there has been a previous close on the same page. Dekimasuよ! 17:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

  Why is RMCI so much stricter in this regard when compared to how we handle INVOLVED at the admin level, or non-admin closures everywhere else on enwiki? The purpose of the closer of any discussion is to summarise the consensus that already exists, and doing so is usually not considered involvement by any other standard. What's special about move requests that make it so that we need this restriction? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:11, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I explained it in much more detail above, but it boils down to A) administrative actions are far more urgent than RM moves, so we can afford to be choosier when it comes to involvement, and B) move request outcomes are much more difficult to overturn. Again, the part that you're concerned about--which I get, again, I understand your concern--was exhaustively discussed a few years ago when it was added to RMCI. Red Slash 07:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  @

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 11:12, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  And then

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 11:15, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

  It seems really important to clear up whether RM closure is an "admin capacity" covered by

  Iskandar323 (talk

  ) 07:25, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

  Admin actions are not more urgent than RMs. There is no urgency to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, for example. Some admin actions are urgent, but most aren't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Question. Should we include the bit about
  WP:RM as a post closure section? This will lay out (or affirm ) the current dispute resolution path if someone wishes to contest the closure (before the interested party takes the case up to ANI). Duplicating the paragraph here for everyone's convenience:

  Wikipedia:Move review can be used to contest the outcome of a move request as long as all steps are followed. If a discussion on the closer's talk page does not resolve an issue, then a move review will evaluate the close of the move discussion to determine whether or not the contested close was reasonable and consistent with the spirit and intent of common practice, policies, and guidelines.

  – robertsky (talk
  ) 00:52, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Not a bad idea. Red Slash 05:04, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I don't believe the RfC statement or this notification meet the neutrality requirements. Red Slash, can you update them so as to not bias the RfC? BilledMammal (talk) 12:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Can you point to anything in particular? Red Slash 17:23, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Almost all of it; it is advocating for this change, and trying to present RMCI as more than an essay. I suggest you remove the second sentence from your notification, and reduce your statement down the concise and neutral statement Should WP:RMCI be formally elevated to the official status of a

  WP:GUIDELINE? BilledMammal (talk

  ) 23:22, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  First paragraph:

  There has existed for eighteen years a set of instructions for how to formally close a requested move. It was initially titled as Wikipedia:Moving guidelines for administrators, later changed to Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions (hereafter WP:RMCI). Over the years, it has grown from a simple set of how-to steps to a comprehensive list of guidelines for determining consensus (which began as early as 2006 and has continued to expand through the years). It also has included instructions on who should close requests--first in 2009 when the authority to move pages was explicitly granted to non-administrators, then later in 2019 (following lots of discussion) we introduced rules on how editors who are involved need to not close requests.

  is completely factual and non-biased. The instructions have existed for 18 years. It was titled that way initially. Etc.

  Second:

  The instructional page wasn't classified as anything (guideline, policy, or essay) through 2021, even though it had been originally written as a guideline. Following a post on the talk page that saw no response, it was listed as an explanatory essay in 2021.

  Also completely factual.

  First part of third paragraph:

  Recently, at least one editor has asserted that, as WP:RMCI is "only" an essay, its procedures do not need to be followed; therefore, as one concrete example, editors may feel free to close move requests that they are fully involved in, so long as they think it's the right thing to do.

  A quick look at WP:MRV will show you that at least one editor has asserted that.

  WP:RMCI has been called "purely advisory", "not vetted", etc., leading to questions as regarding its authority--this in spite of the fact that it was written as a guideline and has guided literally thousands of move closures.

  The first part of this sentence is strictly factual. The second part is also true; are you perhaps upset at the fact that I said "in spite of"? I suppose that could be considered biased language, perhaps. How would you rewrite this without omitting any of the factual details contained in this sentence?

  This has unquestionably led to no small amount of chaos at Wikipedia:Move review following an editor who closed the same move request twice in a row (which is against the closing instructions), both with the same result, and who claimed that the closing instructions that forbid such a close by an involved user were merely "advice".

  "No small amount of chaos" is certainly an opinion, but I don't see how it's biased. IDK , you go look at MRV and tell me if you see chaos or not. Note: me saying that there is unquestionable chaos is not telling people how they should !vote. It is saying why they should vote: because there is currently confusion. If there were no confusion, there would not need to be an RfC.

  Everything from "an editor who" onward is completely factual.

  Should WP:RMCI be formally elevated to the official status of a WP:GUIDELINE?

  Gotta have the question we're !voting on listed in the RfC, don't we?

  All told, I can't see where you're seeing bias, or that I advocated for change in a specific direction in the RfC itself. All I did was provide factual context (though admittedly, perhaps that phrase "in spite of" is too loaded and pushes the reader in a certain direction) for why it is good for the RfC to be brought up. Trust me, this RfC being decisively rejected would have been much, much better than the status quo, where something that "looks, talks, and quacks" like a guideline is being treated by many editors as a guideline while others treat it as an essay. Red Slash 23:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  Much of this is evidence for why it should be a guideline. It's factual, but that doesn't make it unbiased, because it doesn't include the evidence for why it shouldn't be a guideline. BilledMammal (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

  BilledMammal, I wouldn't worry about this. Sometimes an RFC needs an explanation, and sometimes a fair explanation is going to tip editors towards one side or the other. RFC questions, especially procedural ones, shouldn't necessarily try to give equal validity to all options. We can safely assume that Wikipedia editors are smart enough to figure it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I don't believe an explanation is needed here; the question is one that Wikipedia editors are smart enough to understand without explanation, and while the justification is more extensive the justification should be part of a !vote, note the statement. BilledMammal (talk) 00:19, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  It might be unneeded, but I doubt that it's done any harm, even though you and I are the only editors who have voted against it so far. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  My advice for the future… when writing an RFC: At the top, just ask the question. Don’t add any explanation. If you think background or explanation is needed, add it to the comments section, or as a separate section entitled “Background” (or something) - By physically separating the question from the background of why you are asking it, you limit accusations of non-neutrality. Blueboar (talk) 02:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Yep, write anything else as part of a !vote (or a comment) after the RFC body so it doesn't clog up the RFC listing pages. As for neutrality, I don't think it is crucial for this particular discussion as this is not a contentious topic. Selfstudier (talk) 06:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  I've written maybe six RfCs in my entire career, so this is something I'm definitely not super experienced in. Your advice--all y'all's advice--is well taken, thank you. Red Slash 07:50, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

• Procedural close for the non-neutral RfC statement and lack of RFCBEFORE (including poor format choice with separate supp/opp sections, not previously discussed AFAICT), first choice. Second choice: oppose per Rhodo. I do not believe it's really been vetted by the community, MR and RMs are a walled garden, and RMCI is its Bible. It differs in some major respects from standard practice elsewhere (e.g. NACs, interpretation of involved), and I think that's more due to the walled garden nature of it than any kind of community vetting. We need fewer policies and guidelines, not more. Also, it's noticeable that the impetus for this is a recent kerfuffle and I don't think it's a good idea to promote RMCI to a guideline in an effort to "win" an argument over RM/MR procedure. Levivich (talk) 14:37, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  To some extent, the "kerfuffle" is the RFCbefore. If there are problems with RMCI then that needs to be addressed someplace, like, er...here? Two of three/four editors opining in a move review that RMCI has problems are here opposing so any issues are getting addressed in proper place and not in a move review. Selfstudier (talk) 14:44, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  A contentious RM followed by a contentious MR (aka, a kerfuffle) makes for a lousy RFCBEFORE and this very obviously non-neutral RfC statement demonstrates why. And contra to some surprising advice below, RFCNEUTRAL is for all RFCs, not just contentious topics. Also, this RfC doesn't comply with

  WP:CENT. This ought to be shut down and restarted the right way: an RFCBEFORE at the PG page, followed by a neutral RfC at the policy pump listed on CENT. Otherwise, it's not really global consensus. Levivich (talk

  ) 16:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Nah. PGCHANGE is for changes to policies and guidelines, this isn't that. Policy pump is for existing and proposed policies, isn't that either. No need to list this at WP:CENT afaics. The only procedural screw up was people not raising their disagreement with RMCI at move review talk instead of during a move review. I can do the same thing and just assert that

  WP:RFCNEUTRAL is only an information page and doesn't apply:) Selfstudier (talk

  ) 16:24, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Oh come on man.

  WP:PG policy. Similarly there can be no argument that this RfC question isn't RFCNEUTRAL. If you like the idea, that's fine, but the failure to follow our consensus procedure here is indisputable. Levivich (talk

  ) 16:42, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  The proposal, apart from some suggested wording tweaks, seems actionable to me. RMCI has been treated as a guideline in practice and the only issues that have been raised against it are the ones raised in an ongoing move review (by objectors to it). Selfstudier (talk) 16:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  I've just double-checked, and WP:PROPOSAL, WP:VPP, and WP:VPR are all unanimous in saying that proposals for new PGs or to change PGs should be at the VPP and widely-advertised, so I've moved this from VPR to VPP and listed it at CENT. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  I've collapsed the initial statement and replaced it with a neutral one; if we are going to try and fix this RfC, rather than making a procedural close and opening a new one, then that issue also needs to be fixed - although I hope that the closer considers that prior to 18:05, 26 February 2023 (UTC) the RfC was lead by a non-neutral statement that might have biased the result.

  I am also wondering if we should merge the support and oppose sections, per

  WP:NOTVOTE? BilledMammal (talk

  ) 18:09, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  I've struck my !vote and moved it down to discussion, since it's all based on procedure anyway and the procedure is getting fixed. Yes, I think we should combine the support/oppose into one survey section as well. Levivich (talk) 18:14, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  Done. BilledMammal (talk) 18:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Some editors are apparently objecting to the wording rather than the principle. So how to deal with this? Do we fix it now? (subRFCs?) Do we send this back to where it was to start with-proposals? Selfstudier (talk) 17:28, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be a discrepancy in text between these two pages (all bolding mine):

• If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event.
• If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual. Biographies in these cases can give undue weight to the event and conflict with neutral point of view. In such cases, it is usually better to merge the information and redirect the person's name to the event article.
• If the event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented. John Hinckley Jr., for example, has a separate article because the single event he was associated with, the Reagan assassination attempt, was significant, and his role was both substantial and well documented.

Basically, BLP1E sets a different and more permissive threshold; the second condition requires a person to both "otherwise remain" and be "likely to remain" a low-profile individual, and there is a third condition not mentioned in NSUSTAINED. Since the two seem to be in direct conflict, which applies? (For full disclosure, the AfD that prompted this question was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jack Teixeira; I don't really have a strong opinion on that article, but both of these pages are being quoted at the same time, and there's some fuzziness as to how many conditions need to be met.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:58, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't see these as being in conflict, instead they are complementary to each other. In my opinion, in order for an article about an individual whose notability is from a single event, you need to meet both NSUSTAINED and BLP1E. It's possible for coverage of a person to be focused on an event and sustained, but the volume of the coverage results in it being low profile. It's also possible for coverage to be high volume, but not sustained over a long period. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

This would seem to override BLP1E then -- logically speaking, if both a stricter and more permissive threshold are in play, then the permissive threshold no longer applies. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's weird for a policy and a guideline to give otherwise-word-for-word-identical criteria "if reliable sources cover [the|a] person only in the context of a single event [and] if that person otherwise remains, [and|or] is likely to remain, a low-profile individual" where the only substantive difference is that the policy says "and" while the guideline sets a more restrictive standard of "or". Was there a discussion and consensus somewhere to make NSUSTAINED more restrictive in this respect than BLP1E? Or is "or" a mere oversight in that paragraph of the guideline which seems to have been intended to simply quote the policy, and which it would be reasonable to harmonize with the policy's "and"? -sche (talk) 06:16, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

The diff for

WP:BLP1E had the same wording; the "and" was introduced here as part of an edit to "clarify writing." (The user who made this edit has since passed away, so unfortunately we can't just ask about it.) The "each of three conditions" language was added here as a response to this talk page discussion

, with emphasis in the edit summary that "this reformat is NOT meant as a change in policy. Same policy, hopefully more clear."

So it looks like a series of rewrites that weren't intended to loosen the threshold but did in practice, and people have since run with one or the other for more than 10 years. Given how contentious BLP1E issues are I'm surprised this hasn't come up sooner. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

To me, these sentences read like a difference without a distinction. This is not boolean algebra, this is plain English language, and words like "and" can be used to separate a list of possibilities, not only to mandate a set of requirements. I can say "The restaurant served chicken, steak, lamb, and fish" I know of zero English speakers who think the use of "and" there means that every dish arrived with all four proteins on it. The sentence is functionally the same as "The restaurant served chicken, steak, lamb, or fish", and we needn't wring our hands over misunderstandings of this nature. It's giving a menu of options, not a set of required conditions, and as such the use of "and" should not be viewed as establishing a different set of requirements than the use of "or" might. --Jayron32 17:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd quibble with the example given: The restaurant served chicken, steak, lamb, and fish describes a restaurant with four meats on the menu. The restaurant served chicken, steak, lamb, or fish describes a restaurant whose menu the speaker does not remember precisely. That having been said, in the actual guidelines at-issue If that person otherwise remains, and|or is likely to remain the only scenario where their logical value differs is where "is-low-profile" is True and "will-stay-low-profile" is False, as P2 entails P1. BUT, it's worth noting that evaluating "will-stay-low-profile" is arguably a case of

WP:CRYSTAL and something we should consider removing from the guidelines entirely. _signed, Rosguill ^talk

18:06, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I mean, not exactly. A better analogy would be that if you say "the restaurant served chicken, steak, lamb, and fish," one would expect the menu to have all four of those, and if you heard that and then were handed a menu with just chicken, you'd probably wonder whether there was some sort of off-menu ordering system.

But more to the point, BLP1E is formatted more like a three-criterion legal test than plain English language, and if a policy is formatted like a legal test, then it's understandable that people will treat it like one. Not sure what they expected honestly when they made the edit. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

It isn't formatted like a three-criterion legal test. Nothing at Wikipedia should be understood to be a formal legal test or anything of the sort. It should be understood to be a plain English description of best practices, no more and no less.

WP:NOTBURO captures this spirit well. If we're treating policy like a checklist ever for anything, we're doing it wrong. --Jayron32

18:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

This wording was originally the same. Gavin.collins originally

☖

19:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, I've boldly tweaked the guideline to match the policy, since it seems like everyone who's commented either supports that or says they don't interpret "and" vs "or" as meaning different/conflicting things (which means they shouldn't object to harmonizing them, since they're saying they don't view the use of one word or the other as involving any change to the meaning or effect). -sche (talk) 19:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I have noticed that there seems to be a marked left-wing orientation within Wikipedia (in the United States, it corresponds to the Democratic Party). I would like an explanation as to whether this is really the case, or whether it is just my impression; furthermore, I would like to know, with proof, whether Wikipedia, according to its own laws, can have political orientations, or must, by necessity, always be neutral. I repeat: it would seem, in my opinion, that there is a not inconsiderable left-wing political orientation here on Wikipedia. JackkBrown (talk) 13:45, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

• You are not the first to make such an observation. Officially, we are supposed to maintain a WP:Neutral point of view. Whether we achieve this (or not) often depends on the reader’s own neutrality… those on the right complain that we don’t give their view enough coverage, while those on the left complain that we give it too much coverage. Blueboar (talk) 13:59, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
  • @Blueboar: so (not Wikipedia's fault in any case), is there really a predominantly left-wing orientation on Wikipedia? Even on en.wiki? I would be very sorry if that were indeed the case, because the information itself would suffer greatly. JackkBrown (talk) 14:09, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
    • I would say there is a slight left wing orientation, but not a predominant one. Part of the issue is that we require reliable sources, and reliable sources tend to skew left wing. This is especially true with academic sources. Since academics tend to be left of center, this will impact our coverage a bit. Meanwhile, right wing sources tend to be considered unreliable (often for good reasons). As one experienced Wikipedian put it: “The fact is, Reality skews left of center… thus, so does WP.” Blueboar (talk) 14:35, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

  "Left wing" - "right wing" is only one dimension of the political space. Note that

  libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead; and more recently as "center-right" and "centrist". The culture of Wikipedia is more libertarian than authoritarian (a political dimension that is orthogonal to left/right), and is very much bedded in building an encyclopedia free for all to read and edit, requiring all content to be verifiable from reliable sources, and presenting all content with a neutral point of view. Editing Wikipedia is open to all, with no political test, as long as an editor remains civil and abides with our policies and guidelines. Many editors have some sort of inherent political bias, but many of us, no matter what our political leanings, are dedicated to keeping Wikipeida based on reliable sources and presented with a neutral point of view. Donald Albury

  16:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

• As well as everything that has been said above, I would point out that this is a global encyclopedia, not just a United States one. Certain goods, such as universal healthcare, are accepted in nearly all of the world as beneficial (even by those on the right of politics), but not in the US. Even, and probably more so than in much of the world, universal education is considered to be a public good by right-wingers in the United States.
  Phil Bridger (talk
  ) 19:01, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• In a Poli Sci class twenty plus years ago, the professor drew a line on the board and then placed one in the center and wrote Dem on left, Rep on Right. At that time, US politics was considered centrist and two sides of the same coin when it came to global politics. The 21st century has brought significant divergence from those positions and I wonder how the professor would define them now. As to Wikipedia, personalities play a far bigger part in being a productive editor and those who believe Wikipedia is hopelessly flawed are of no use to the project and generally fail to abide by civility and verifiability. In short, much of the US "far-right" winds up self-excluding themselves from the project through behavioral activites incompatible with the project as they mistake this for social media where unsourced debate is welcome.Slywriter (talk) 19:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• Do you JackkBrown have any specific example where wikipedia is supposed to be left leaning towards the Democratic Party? That there exist certain Republicans who believe conspiracy theories like Qanon or that Obama is not an US citizen doesn't make Wikipedia left-wing but much more academic.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:43, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• Using the US definition of left and right I think it clearly has a left bias on articles related to US politics, and I could come up with various slam dunk examples of that. I tend to not worry about that unless it gets so bad that it harms the informativeness of the article, which does sometimes happen. I think that the cause is a combination of systemic issues combined with people who want it that way. It would be good to fix the systemic issues enough to meet the lower bar of fixing those where it harms the informativeness of the articles. Those fixes would help in many other areas besides bias. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
  • It would be much more helpful for the OP and any other concerned people to provide a couple of examples—it's impossible to hold a meaningful discussion without something concrete. Johnuniq (talk) 05:15, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
• Wikipedia presents the facts as understood by the scholarly consensus in the democratic global west, because of our rules. This makes it "left wing" by US standards, but not particularly left wing by the standards of other advanced democracies. The "alternative facts" of the US right are unwelcome here.—S Marshall T/C 07:47, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
• From the UK perspective, the Democrats are to the right of our Conservative party. And the Republicans off the chart. There is no equivalent of our left or even centre in mainstream US politics. So your view of left/right bias reflects a US idea of where the "middle" is. But to emphasise S Marshall's point, current political parties and commentators that lie on the right of wherever your spectrum is have adopted a "the facts are unimportant/inconvenient" playbook that is very much at odds with Wikipedia's values. A populist, reckless-with-the-truth, "strong man" political approach isn't necessarily right wing, it just seems to be the current fashion. This, and not economic beliefs, is I think the source of most of the complaints by right wing politicians and commentators about bias on Wikipedia. Why there should be this correlation between economic beliefs and honesty I don't know, and future generations of politicians might change. -- Colin°^Talk 10:43, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
• To add to and emphasize something in my previous post, I don't think that overall left/right bias can even be defined much less measured and so I don't think that one can say that such exists. I think that you have to get more specific / granular to really say anything about it. My post was about US politics specifically using the US definitions of the two sides. By saying "US definition", I wasn't talking about where it sits in some large right/left measurement, I meant that even the metrics of the scale are different. For example, in some areas, "liberal" has a very different meaning in the US compared to Europe. Also, in the US the existence of the two "teams" dominates everything; even ideology and viewpoints are often subservient to / determined by team membership instead of the reverse. Also, the types of media where each side predominates in the US are different. Once side is stronger in the legacy media, the other on the internet and talk radio and Fox. Internet and radio are inherently less filtered which means the whackiest stuff comes from there. Also structurally, they are less likely to have an internal review layer which wikipedia policies lean towards. Which in turn, enables people to point to those things and with a broad overgeneralization brush deprecate or de-emphasize those sources. BTW, this isn't just about trustworthiness for wp:verifiability, more importantly here is that deprecation or de-emphasis snowballs into wp:weight which has large impacts. In that realm, it's not about verifiability, it's about which totally verifiable things and views do and don't get covered and get emphasized/de-emphasized IMO the bias in in areas like which aspects get emphasized / de-emphasized/ covered / not covered, existence/non-existence and titles of articles. For example, an article about a conservative figure or organization will be very heavy on what their opponents said about them. North8000 (talk) 12:08, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  With very few (unusually erudite) exceptions, people perceiving and commenting on a supposed political bias of enwiki in general are providing much stronger evidence about their own political standpoints than they are about enwiki and its culture. On specific topics, on the other hand, articles may indeed reflect various kinds of biases including left/right political ones, though outside of recent U.S. politics, political spectrum bias is seldom the most prominent among these, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 13:27, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• 

  Wikipedia tries to be neutral, but due to its reliance on published sources, it picks up some of their bias. It might be true that there is a left bias in certain topic areas, probably inherited from the sources that are useful for them. But the biases on here that are really significant IMO are the ones described at wp:systemic bias. None of these are about the left vs right debate, but about the general lack of coverage of topics in non-western nations, disproportionate lack of female biographies, the way articles are written to suit a certain demographic which isn't representative of wikipedia's overall readership, etc.. Compared to these issues, worries about subtle political biases are just a distraction. small jars tc 22:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

  For example, many (most?) people believe in ghosts, and Ghost does not say what our overall readers believe. But as you say, that has nothing to do with a right–left political bias. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is also affected by recentism. So political ideas of the last few years will be pushed harder over ideas from a few decades back. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:06, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

  My personal opinion is that there certainly are some pages that do have a bias, but not too many have an extreme one. I think that we should further our efforts to inform newer users about the

  POV noticeboard for the most extreme cases. I've been a registered user on the site since 2018 and have read Wikipedia since I was 7; I haven't heard about it since January of this year. Maybe include noticeboards on some of the Welcome templates? InvadingInvader (userpage, talk

  ) 22:45, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• I would just note that if you look at our thousands of articles on cricketers and pop albums and Pokemon, there is no discernible political bias. Even our thousands of articles on American state court and lower federal court judges tend to have no political dimension whatsoever. BD2412 T 20:24, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
• As a global encyclopaedia we are going to struggle to cover some topics in ways that every country accepts as neutral. Just think for a second about the differing perspectives between Americans, Canadians and Brits re the war of 1812, or the contrasting views on gun control between some Americans and pretty much all Brits, Canadians, Australians, Indians, Kiwis and Irish. With US politics we have the additional problem that some of the litmus tests are ones where one party accepts the science and the other doesn't - Climate Change, Evolution and Geology being obvious examples. Of course a Young Earth Creationist Climate Change denier is going to think Wikipedia is biased against them, and such people are more common on one side of the US political spectrum than the other. But on scientific topics like those our aim is to summarise academic sources, not to try and work out where the mid point is between AOC and MTG. ϢereSpielChequers 20:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
• @JackkBrown: Some of us have noticed a marked right-wing bias. Hey ho. DuncanHill (talk) 20:35, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
• Only a bit facetiously -- perhaps one could ask ChatGPT what Wikpedia's bias is? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:46, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
• I am so incredibly tired of hearing that Wikipedia has a left-wing bias. In oint of fact. Wikipedia has a distinct and justifiable bias towards the accurate reflection of facts and reality. It's not Wikipedia's fault that -- generally speaking -- the American right-wing seems to have completely lost its hold on reality, while the left-wing has managed to hold on to a least a vestige of it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
• Wikipedia absolutely has a left-wing bias. That's not necessarily a problem, one just needs to bear it in mind whilst reading. Stifle (talk) 10:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

There is an RfC on categorization by heritage at [[18]]. All are invited to participate. — Biruitorul ^Talk 17:47, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Is it right to use Amazon cited references. For example, on the

Citing Amazon or using ASINs is often discouraged but not generally outlawed, and is sometimes useful. See

WP:AMAZON and discussions linked from there. I don't see a need to assume bad faith here. —Kusma (talk

) 17:50, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Should Notable fans section be governed with the same guidelines as WP:IPC In popular culture" sections should contain verifiable information with sources that establish its significance to the article's subject. On the grounds each entry should have a reliable source that supports the fandom? Discussion at article talk page Talk:Los Angeles Rams#Notable fans (Note:Most of the sources were added after the discussion started) - FlightTime (open channel) 20:18, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The issue is moot. 5 responses, all favored deleting the section. Alsee (talk) 09:19, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

If there is consensus for such a statement, where the simply fact of not having a citation is grounds for removal even when the statements themselves aren't contested, why not codify that rather than leave it between the lines?

If there is not consensus for such a statement, what are the necessary conditions for someone to remove content citing WP:BURDEN?

Is there middleground? From my perspective, the middleground has traditionally been knowing that because of "The Wiki Way", nobody would try to use WP:BURDEN to try to remove statements just for lacking a citation. It would require a challenge to the content, judging it to be unverifiable, failing verification, failing NPOV, or something else which requires more than looking at the statement and seeing it lacks a citation. Over the last few years (maybe longer), I have begun to feel that my perspective may be outdated, which is to say there are more and more people who seem to view WP:BURDEN as an any-purpose tool to purge the 'pedia of unsourced content, regardless of the content. I suspect there's been an RfC about this, but I'm not seeing something conclusive. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:29, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

If there is consensus for this statement, we should write a bot and fire it up and remove every unsourced statement on this site, and delete every article with no citations.

But that seems irresponsible to me. And it is. --Rschen7754 22:32, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

To put a number on "every article with no citations," this would entail deleting, as of right now, 126,401 articles. Many are on high-profile subjects that are unquestionably, beyond any shadow of a doubt, notable. (Some articles I have expanded/sourced are by authors including Mark Twain, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood, and Italo Calvino.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:12, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Rschen7754 To challenge info per bot is a weird idea. There are four kinds of info listed under WP:BURDEN..

• all quotations,
• all material whose verifiability has been challenged,
• all material that is likely to be challenged, and
• all contentious matter about living and recently deceased persons.

As to me challenges should be made by editors and not by bots. and I support WP:BURDEN as it is for the moment. In the text editor, we are warned before every hit on the button publish that Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources.

Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:41, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

The thing I dislike about that text is that the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy does not say that content must be verifiable through citations. It only says that it must be verifiable, full stop. "Smoking tobacco causes lung cancer" is a verifiable statement regardless of whether it is followed by a citation. The text in MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn confuses Wikipedia:Glossary#uncited content with being Wikipedia:Glossary#unverifiable content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

The most obvious and most directly policy-based exception is for material that is not likely to be challenged. I.e.

WP:BLUESKY. Loki (talk

) 22:42, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

The policy also says that if an editor thinks the text is verifiable, they should look for text. IOW, they should only remove material that they question.

So for example if you saw an article about a minor 19th century figure that had been created 20 years ago and had few edits, you could look for sources, but if chose not to, the best approach would be to leave it alone. OTOH, if someone added unsourced text to the article about Charles III, who is well covered in secondary sources and whose article is fully sourced, you might want to remove it.

Editors are supposed to use judgment and can be held to account for obviously disruptive behavior. TFD (talk) 22:45, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced statements about a living person (

WP:Copyvio for leaving it alone rto be considered the best policy any more. If there is any doubt whatsoever about the factual accuracy of a statement, then it should be removed. Hawkeye7 (discuss)

23:13, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Agree! Donald Albury 00:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

My third click on

Toyota Camry TS-01. Should we send it to AFD? --Rschen7754

00:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I just added {{unreferenced}} to the article. The next step would be removing any content for which you cannot find a reliable source after a reasonable search. If it looks like the subject is not notable after a reasonable search for sources, then you can take it to AfD. I personally prefer to find reliable sources to support existing and new content in an article, but I will prod or send to AfD an article that I cannot find reliable sources for. Donald Albury 00:33, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Several more clicks brings me to Denis Lazure, half of that article has to be thrown out. Same with Sallustio Bandini. Significant statements of Ali Kazemaini have to go. Half of Mario Fenech should be thrown out (that is a BLP, actually). So does the last part of Salvia 'Celestial Blue'. List of Malayalam films of 2004 is completely unsourced. Most of 7 Wonders (board game) has to be thrown away. The point is - I don't think that some of you realize the sort of impact that these interpretations of policy have. --Rschen7754 00:38, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't have to the thrown out... Nobody is forced to remove content, as you just proved by not removing that content. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Hawkeye7's interpretation of policy very strongly implies that someone seeing unsourced content is obligated to remove it. You cannot both be right, hence this discussion to see where consensus lies. Thryduulf (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

The way some are interpreting BURDEN, anyone can remove any uncited statement for any reason, and anyone reverting is immediately sanctionable for disruptive behavior. And no, nobody is forced to remove content, but everybody should remove that content if they are following the logical conclusions of what Hawkeye said. Rschen7754 01:07, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course not, if the person reverting sources the content there is nothing wrong with that. If they never source it yeah thats a problem. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Deleting content is much faster than finding sources. Rschen7754 01:15, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

And reverting is faster still. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:18, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Hawkeye7 is only talking about BLP and that isn't their interpretation, its pretty much a direct quote: "Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:10, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

What is "contentious", "poorly sourced" and "questionable" are all subjective metrics. And even where everybody agrees that this applies, it is always better to find a (better) source if you can than to just remove it. Thryduulf (talk) 09:49, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they're all subjective which is why AGF applies. To revert such a removal is to question the good faith or competence of the person who removed it, thats a very serious thing... And unless you can source it no you aren't allowed to restore it, that is *not* subjective. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:25, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 5) If there is any doubt whatsoever about the factual accuracy of a statement but not every statement that is presently unsourced is of doubtful factual accuracy. The correct reaction to seeing something unsourced should be a series of questions to yourself, starting with:

• Does this need a citation? e.g. statements of a
  WP:SKYISBLUE
  nature do not need a source, if the answer is no then do nothing.

  If it does need a citation, then you should always try and verify it yourself first, adding the citation if you find one removing or tagging if a thorough search failed to verify it. If for some reason you cannot definitely state it is as correct or incorrect yourself, then deal with it by tagging, moving to the talk page or, only if no other action is suitable, removing it.

• If it's completely implausible then remove it without a second thought, if extremely plausible then tag it or discuss it.
• If an incorrect statement would be harmless then just tag it or leave it, if it would cause significant harm then move or remove it.
• If it's been tagged for years then the threshold for removal is lower than if it's never been tagged.
• How important is it to the article? Statements that are key have a much higher threshold for removal than those which are only a little more than trivia (statements that are trivia should be removed regardless of sourcing circumstances).
• How easy is it likely to be to find a source? Plot details of a Netflix original series are highly likely to be in an online reliable source that Google has indexed so just tagging it will lead to someone conclusively determining the veracity. Details of the traditional cultural practices of a southern African tribe as reported by an 18th century Portuguese explorer are something that is very going to require access to offline sources, probably not in English, to verify or not verify - this needs flagging somewhere that those with access to the relevant sources and subject expertise will know that verification is required. Thryduulf (talk) 00:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

BURDEN isn’t about removing material… it’s about returning material that has already been removed. Blueboar (talk) 00:23, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course it's about removing material. Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the material may be removed and so on. The wording of the section effectively says "I can remove anything that's unsourced and the burden is on you to find a citation", in other words "I can require everything to have a citation".... unless we choose not to interpret it that way. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the section says: ”…may be removed”, but that does not mean must be removed (or even should be removed). What it makes clear is: IF removed, it must be cited to return it. Blueboar (talk) 14:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't force it to be sourced, it just requires it to be sourced if someone wishes to restore it after its been removed in good faith. Nobody is forced to restore it, restoration is a voluntary and consensual procedure. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:42, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Force it to be sourced for it to continue existing, regardless of the reason for removing it. The question is more about whether it's appropriate to remove something just because it doesn't have a source. Once that's done, regardless of the justification, verifiability, etc., a conservative interpretation of WP:BURDEN closes the door. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Isn't the question whether its appropriate to add something which doesn't have a source? If the answer is no then what's the issue with removing something which was never supposed to be there in the first place? Also note that removing is challenging, you treat them separately in your OP but anything which has been removed has been challenged, removal *is* a challenge to the content. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:32, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Isn't the question whether its appropriate to add something which doesn't have a source? Not exactly. Another formulation would be "Is it appropriate to add something which doesn't have a citation". That's a fine way to approach the question, but the thing is, there's no policy that says adding a citation is required while we do have a policy that [by some interpretations] says that anything without a source can be removed just for not having a citation. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

These days people who go around adding volumes of unsourced content get blocked or banned, that hasn't been tolerated by the community for at least a decade (it does appear to have been highly tolerated during the first few years of the project). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about

WP:BURDEN

per se, and other editors have already chimed in on what that specifically covers, but I think there's how one could technically interpret it, versus how it is and is likely to be interpreted by most editors in most cases...which is to say, sure, I delete a lot of unsourced content, but not all unsourced content I come across, and it's ridiculous and unenforceable to embrace the idea that any editor is obligated to remove unsourced content.

But as has been said before and will inevitably be said again, a lot of peoples' time would be saved if editors would spend less time focusing on whether or not it was proper to remove unsourced content and more time focusing on simply providing sources when unsourced content is challenged. DonIago (talk) 03:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

But as has been said before and will inevitably be said again, a lot of peoples' time would be saved if editors would spend less time focusing on whether or not it was proper to remove unsourced content and more time focusing on simply providing sources when unsourced content is challenged. Here Here!.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:11, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point. I could probably remove a few hundred statements within the timespan of 1 hour, but it will take a lot longer than that to restore those statements with proper sources. It puts unreasonable pressure on those who work in that subject area, when

WP:NODEADLINE - just like sending a bunch of articles to AFD puts pressure on the article creator and others to defend that article. You want to burn editors out? This is a good way to do it. --Rschen7754

06:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

If there's no deadline for restoring unsourced material then why is there any pressure being put on editors? They can restore it if/when they have the time to do so and can provide sources, or not, as they see fit. DonIago (talk) 14:42, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

When you write articles, do you go through the history just to see what someone removed in the past because it was unsourced? I sure don't. Once material has been removed and it's been a few days (i.e. fallen off people's watchlists), it's effectively gone. --Rschen7754 18:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

On the contrary, in my years of editing on many occasions I've found that when I reverted unsourced additions that either the person who originally added the material or another editor restored it with a source.

Of course, if unsourced information is longstanding I also tag it rather than outright deleting it. Nobody should be surprised if previously-tagged unsourced information is ultimately removed at some point down the line. DonIago (talk) 23:46, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

A few hundred in 1 hour? Sounds dubious, it takes about a minute to check context and sourcing or a lack thereof in all except cases of obvious vandalism. I bet you could do 60 in an hour (if of course instead of sourcing ones you found to be sourceable you abandoned instead of sourcing) but a few hundred? Hard to imagine you could do that in good faith. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

It puts unreasonable pressure on those who work in that subject area, when

WP:NODEADLINE

- just like sending a bunch of articles to AFD puts pressure on the article creator and others to defend that article. You want to burn editors out? This is a good way to do it.

WP:BLP

immediately, because these violations cause broad issues both on and off-wiki.

In regards to burning editors out, the best way to address that would have been to prevent the issue building up, by requiring all added content, unless

WP:BLUE applies, be properly sourced, and immediately removing it if it is not. This would have kept the level of removed content at a managable level, and it would have increased the chance that the editor who added the content - and who hopefully had a source for the content - would have been able to provide the source with minimal effort. Instead, we allowed a huge backlog to build up - at the very least, we should be attempting to prevent this backlog increasing by removing all new unsourced content. BilledMammal (talk

) 12:13, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

The OP's statement does not represent consensus. This is easy to see if we consider the

Main page which is Wikipedia's front window. The main page contains lots of statements and, by convention, none of them have any inline citations. Then, looking at the article, we notice that it starts with two substantial paragraphs and again, by convention, they have no inline citations. There's an infobox and most of its entries have an inline citation but one of them does not – that the parent range is Garibaldi Ranges

. Why is this excepted? It's not clear but doesn't appear to be a problem. Reading on, one finds more inline citations but they seem sporadic rather than systematic.

Now, if some

WP:BURDEN

to be a strong defence, right? The key requirement for a citation is that the statement is controversial and so likely to be challenged. Mountains are not especially controversial.

Most of our readership does not care about this issue because they mostly use the mobile interface which, by default, only shows the lead of articles. They therefore see little of the references and don't click through to them even if they do. These things are niceties not necessities and Wikipedia mostly works fine without them.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:28, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

That articles shows how citations should work - that the next immediate citation covers all the material up until the last previous citation. In that case, each paragraph that has one final citation should be considered sourced to that citation. We absolutely do not want one citation per sentence, though there are cases where this is necessary, and a one citation per paragraph is as loose as we can go within policy. Masem (t) 13:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

A griefer or jobsworth would not find burden to be a strong defence because burden is easily met. This is an example for in-line citations, which that article is chock-full of. CMD (talk) 13:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Our readership indirectly cares about this issue; they care that our articles are reliable and verifiability, including inline citations, is how we make them reliable. BilledMammal (talk) 11:59, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

What's your evidence for this belief?

How do you square your belief that readers want citations with the fact that they don't click on any citations 99.7% of the time? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Content policies are written to help resolve disputes between good faith Wikipedians. Where you've got an editor doubting every single statement in an article, then either that editor is griefing, or the article's authors are hoaxers, or both. In other words, at the point where you're using CN on every statement, you need to move from content policy to conduct policy in order to determine what to do.—S Marshall T/C 08:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, and disagree with the statement in the section head. The sad truth is that unreferenced statements are in reality not much more likely to be inaccurate than referenced ones. Frequent citation taggers tend not to worry about how "good" an article is at describing its ubject; they just like to see lots of little numbers, whose quality or appropriateness they rarely check. There are of course many exceptions, who only tag when they have reason to doubt a particular statement. But most taggers are the other sort. Johnbod (talk) 14:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Citation needed for that last statement. :p DonIago (talk) 15:08, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Aren't we all taggers? An editor who doesn't use editing marks isn't much of an editor... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:37, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, no one could accuse you of not being a tagger. Johnbod (talk) 14:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Why is it an accusation? Being a tagger is a good thing, to be a competent editors you have to know how to use and interact with tags. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:16, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think being a tagger is necessarily a good thing. If you can see a problem then I'd much rather you fixed it than tagged it.—S Marshall T/C 16:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

We all have our limitations; I'd rather an editor tag a problem if they can't fix it, rather than ignoring it entirely. While there's room to argue whether tagging ultimately leads to positive change, not tagging is far less likely to result in any change. DonIago (talk) 16:25, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Tagging is part of the fixing process, thats why tags exist and are a core part of our editing tool set. Like with all core parts of the editing tool set editors aren't required to use them, they are however required to understand how to use them in order to meet our basic competence requirements. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

IMHO, tagging should be a last resort for when someone tried to fix a problem with an article, and couldn't. It's basically a way of saying "I tried, but I need help to fix this". Given tagging the article actually degrades its quality even more, I'd argue that someone who fixes a problem with an article is doing more to build this encyclopedia than someone who tags 10 articles. Dave (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Tagging improves the quality of an article, an article with tags is higher quality than the same article without tags (both are lower quality than the same article but with appropriate sourcing). Someone who has tagged 10 articles has done more for the encyclopedia than someone who read the same ten articles but did nothing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:13, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Trouble with that mentality is, it leads people not to fix stuff. They just skim an article, slap a tag in a couple of places and move onto the next one. That's a quick, simple way of editing that leads to insurmountable backlogs everywhere in the encyclopaedia. If only there was a way to make them put the effort into adding sources and properly copyediting one article, instead of tagging ten articles, this would be a better place.—S Marshall T/C 20:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It also leads people to fix stuff. Often a tag will inspire editing which wouldn't have happened otherwise, even if only because it forces people who hate tags for aesthetic reasons to put their money where their mouth is in terms of contributing positively to the project. If those ten tags from an editor with superficial experience in a topic area cause ten editors with deep experience in a topic area to either source or correct ten pages thats a major gain for the project and not something which that editor could do on their own without great effort. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It also leads people to fix stuff. Often a tag will inspire editing which wouldn't have happened otherwise

Why do you believe this? Do you have any evidence to support your belief? AFAIK nobody has ever demonstrated that maintenance tags make any significant difference in behavior, especially if you exclude simple fixes that happen as soon as the tag is added (e.g., the editors who spam in {{

nocats}} as soon as a page is created, sometimes edit-conflicting with the person who's adding the cats). WhatamIdoing (talk

) 20:39, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

The trouble with that mentality is that it discourages anyone who is not already a full-time, dyed-in-the-wool editor with full topic knowledge on any page he sees from being involved in Wikipedia at all. The goal should be for every edit to be an improvement, not for every edit to achieve perfection. Anything that moves the ball toward the goal should be considered good, and anything that stands in the way of that should be considered bad. Even those of us who put a lot of time into this project have times when we identify a problem where we may not have the time, skills, or knowledge to deal with it. A third of the page is in Portuguese? I can't translate that into English, but I can put a tag that will call attention to the problem and bring it closer to being taken care of. The amount of energy I've seen on this project misdirected by folks lecturing others on, say, bare URLs (which are a big improvement on no source) saddens me. The only thing needed to justify someone tagging a page is that it's an accurate tag. --Nat Gertler (talk) 21:21, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

It's interesting...at one point I'd started to inquire about the possibility of enabling editors to tag an edit "for review", in cases where they lacked enough confidence that there was an issue with it to revert it (or perhaps didn't have the time/skills to dig deeper into the edit), yet still had doubts that the edit was improving the article in question. I seem to recall there was some interest in such a feature, but not enough for it to gain traction. Unfortunately, without such a feature, editors who find an edit that tickles their spidey-sense but doesn't reach the level where the editor can confidently say "this isn't right" are faced with options of: 1) doing nothing, 2) reverting and seeing what may come, and potentially looking like a fool in the process, 3) starting a Talk page discussion that might also make them look like a fool and may not get a response unless the editor is willing to escalate the matter that they weren't even sure was a legitimate concern to begin with. DonIago (talk) 01:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

For the first ten years I edited, I thought clicking the "watch this page" button in the edit box flagged my edit as needing scrutiny (because it's right there next to "minor edit"). By the time I discovered my watchlist I had hundreds of articles watched... JoelleJay (talk) 22:51, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

IMHO, these policies were intended for people who while reading a Wikipedia article stumble across something that sounds suspect, who then attempt to verify the claim using the given sources but can't. These policies did not anticipate people who go out looking for problems. If someone feels they are better suited to finding problems in articles than writing content, that's fine. We are all volunteers here and any help is welcome. However, policies should then clarified to encourage fixing articles over tagging or blanking content in them. IMHO blanking is appropriate for statements that are tangential or trivial details. However, for relevant details, an attempt should at least be made to find a source before blanking. IMHO, tagging should be a last resort after trying, but not succeeding, to fix an article. Someone who fixes one problem with an article adds more value to the encyclopedia than someone who tags 10. Dave (talk) 19:23, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with forcing WP:BURDEN, except on contentious issues or statements.

You don't have to cite that the sky is blue, but you also should be prepared to defend a statement if a reasonable challenge or skepticism is presented against it. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk

) 01:41, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

The OP statement is really about wp:ver, not about wp:burden. It is basically a statement endorsing a potential mis-use of wp:ver which of course should not be added. Or, if they meant it as a devil's advocate statement, then it does point to am IMO needed fix with wp:ver....that a wp:ver "challenge" must include expressing a concern about the sourcability or veracity of the challenged statement. North8000 (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

How many times have we gone round-and-round on this?… Removing material IS ITSELF a statement of concern about the material. You don’t need someone to explicitly say “I think this needs a citation”… you can assume it. Blueboar (talk) 16:40, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

So you're saying yes, anything can be removed just for not having a citation (that "it doesn't have a citation" is a valid reason for a challenge). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Ultimately, yes… anything can be removed for not having a citation. That does not mean it should be removed. There are a LOT of nuances involved, and there are other options (such as tagging). But… we are allowed to remove any material we think is unverifiable.

And one thing is very clear… WHEN something is removed we both must and should provide a citation to return it. (Note… pointing out that it is covered by an existing citation counts as providing a citation). Blueboar (talk) 17:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Blueboar, yes, we've disagreed for years on this but let me argue my rationale. IMO your rationale is "when in doubt, provide a source" which in spirit I agree with. But we must look at more complex realities which a requirement to state a sincere-concern challenge would solve. That is when there is no concern about the veracity of the material and a source is provided. And with respect to the cited material, the expertise and objectivity of the source is sufficient to support the statement, but the source (as about 75% of sufficiently reliable sources are) is still wikilawyer-nitpickable as not having the trappings to 100% comply with wp:RS. And, in the example its hard to find an alternate unusually un-nitpickable source that makes the sky is blue statement, because sources usually don't make sky-is-blue statements. And so so the wikilawyer POV warrior uses the interaction of two two policies in tandem to knock out a sourced sky-is-blue statement. A requirement that the POV warrior look silly by saying "I have a concern about the veracity or sourcability of the statement that the sky is blue" would significantly reduce that type of a problem. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:27, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I have to disagree. If you are having a problem finding a reliable source that verifies a “he sky is blue” statement… then I have to doubt whether it actually qualifies as a “sky is blue” statement after all. Such statements should be easy to verify. Can you give me an example of such a statement (BLUE SKY but difficult to verify)? Blueboar (talk) 19:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

The example off the top of my head is not quite SKYISBLUE but similar. The first two types of Docklands Light Railway rolling stock were named P86 and P89, they were primarily maintained at Poplar Depot. All subsequent stock, named B92, B2K, B07 and B23, have been primarily maintained at Beckton Depot. Everybody assumes that The P and B in the type codes refers to the depot, and the article makes this claim, because it makes logical sense and nothing else does (although the B92-B07 were built by Bombardier, the P86, P89 and B23 stock were/are being built by Linke-Hofmann-Busch, BREL and CAF respectively) but nowhere have I ever been able to find a reliable source stating this. Thryduulf (talk) 21:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

A nearly identical example to that is a frequent addition to the article California State Route 49, namely that the number 49 was deliberately chosen. However, the claim is not currently in the article, I removed it a month or so ago. It is well sourced and undisputed that historians lobbied for the creation of route 49 in an effort to preserve and promote the history of the 49ers and the 1849 California gold rush. It's also documented that the route of highway 49 was deliberately chosen to connect most of the relevant locations to the 1849 California gold rush. It's also well documented that the shape of the shield used to sign route 49, and all other California state highways, is in the shape of a minors spade to honor the 1849 gold rush. So it sure seems logical that the number 49 was deliberately chosen for this highway. But unless and until some state legislature from that era publishes the conversations he had with historian lobbyists, no source that meets Wikipedia's standards as reliable that I'm aware of today makes that connection, logical and obvious as it is. Dave (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

That sounds like a really good thing to strike from the article. If it's so obvious that "everyone assumes" it, then it should be obvious to the reader and not need to be stated... but by stating an assumption as an unsourced fact, not only are we overlooking the fact that unsourced assumptions are often wrong (I caught today an assumption I'd been making for years), but also putting it in increases the odds that someone will find it, use it in some seemingly RS article... and then when someone really does challenge the claim, hey, there's an RS to back it up! (

WP:CIRCULAR can be hard to detect and should not be encouraged.) --Nat Gertler (talk

) 21:41, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

If you've never been able to find a reliable source which says it then why do you feel that is DUE for the article? An IAR situation? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Blueboar, BTW by "sky is blue" I meant that nobody questions the veracity of it, not that everybody already knows it. The most common examples are boring details which sources with full wp:independent secondary sources don't buther to cover. Like this: "POV warrior A" does not like the XYZ organization. The XYZ organization web site says that they have a facility on 142nd street dedicated to saving orphaned puppies. "POV warrior A" doesn't want anything about them saving orphaned puppies in the article and so they delete it saying "Not a RS". So they have just used wp:Ver in tandem with RS criteria to knock out sky is blue sourced material. North8000 (talk) 13:35, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

If the website has been cited, that’s not a BURDEN issue… that’s an RS issue. Somewhat different. That said, if the org really does operate a puppy rescue, then surely there is some independent source that mentions this. If not, it is probably UNDUE for us to mention it. Blueboar (talk) 14:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

It's a wp:ver issue because that's what was used to knock it out. And that's what would be solved by requiring an actual challenge in order to be considered to be a challenge. North8000 (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Well this hasn't exactly cleared anything up so far. :) I wonder if it's worth trying to come up with a simple an RfC as possible. Perhaps "Do our policies permit material to be removed because it does not include a citation, without challenging the material on the grounds of WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, or WP:BLP? If so, does WP:BURDEN prevent restoration of material removed for lacking a citation, absent a specific policy-based challenge beyond lack of citation?" I can't think of anytime I've seen a direct question like that put to the community (which isn't to say it hasn't happened). It might be for naught, but I see a whole lot of heated disagreement on the issue such that it might be useful to try to resolve. What issues am I not foreseeing? Updated: Added the second question because of course something can be removed per

I actually quite often have trouble finding a clear source for statements that are so obvious and fundamental to a subject that no RS bothers to state them clearly, applying a sort of expert's blue sky approach. And yet they certainly need to be explained to our readers. A recent example was at Lithophane. The whole and entire point of these decorative pieces is that the image only reads properly when lit from behind. But as you can see from the DYK nom discussion on the talk page, I could find no RS that clearly states this, & we had to settle for a mealy-mouthed & potentially misleading hook. Johnbod (talk) 14:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

This happens all the time and is beyond frustrating. A recent example I came across: Pincer (biology). I know what these are. You know what these are. Everybody who is even slightly familiar with insects knows what these are. Yet I have been unable to find a single source that discusses them in a general sense -- i.e., not the pincers of scorpions or whatnot -- and so in unreferenced it stays. Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:13, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps there are military or other academic sources that use "pincer" terminology and go into some depth to explain the origin in broad terms? JoelleJay (talk) 16:53, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Biology isn't a subject I studied, even at high school, so I have no expertise. It sounds correct to the non-expert, but when I searched for it nothing turned up. Instead, I found a lot of books that referred to "pincer-like" claws. Whereas, when I look for the military term, pincer movement, it immediately turns up: "a pincer movement is a variation of an envelopment but instead of a single maneuver element it has two." I would therefore conclude that the biology article is probably incorrect, that "pincer" is not the term the experts use, and the article should probably be deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I had a look at this the other day and came to the same conclusion. OED defines pincer as "Either of a pair of opposed hinged claws, mandibles, etc., with which an arthropod grasps or grips; esp. a chela of a crab or other crustacean". I'm also no biologist, but this suggests to me that pincer is a synonym for mandible or chela, or for any other animal body-part that resembles pincers (tool). In this case, it appears that "what everybody knows" is wrong (non-specialists like myself might call these body-parts "pincers" due to ignorance of the correct terminology, but reliable sources express themselves more accurately), so it's not unreasonable to request citations even for "obvious" claims like this. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 06:11, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

This was my gut feeling, yeah, that there is some sort of merge or redirect target (and is also why I'm hesitant to use books for children, they're certainly not going to make those distinctions). But I don't actually know for sure -- basically it comes down to absence of proof versus proof of absence. Which seems to be the overarching point of this discussion. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:13, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Just because a term is only used by non-specialists, does that really make it "wrong" or somehow non-existent? It seems like "pincer" is a non-precise grouping of appendages with a similar form and/or function that is sufficient and useful for most people in everyday life even if it isn't precise enough for specialists. Thryduulf (talk) 11:54, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't -- biology isn't really my lane, and with over 126,000 unsourced articles I don't want to obsess over something that's taking me a while.

This problem seems to be especially bad with common objects -- not brands or products, per se, but everyday, really common things or tools, where lots of people talk about specifics or research breakthroughs, but nobody just writes an overview of what a widget spinning machine actually is, what it's made of, and who invented it. The dream source would be something like the Object Lessons books -- in a way, this very problem is the whole reason that series exists! Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:38, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Chela is the biological term used the most for these structures. I had assumed the article on pincer was where chela redirected, I didn't realize it was an article itself. I think pincer should be merged there. JoelleJay (talk) 21:06, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

If someone is going around making removals which are not policy based thats an issue with disruptive editing, not with the policies. There is no requirement to make a laundry list of applicable policies to your edit, that would impose a large burden on all editors which is massively disproportionate to the burden you claim exists due to unsourced content removal. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

If you made good faith research/effort and could not verify a statement, that’s a reasonable reason to remove it. Meatbot like behaviour that simply scours random articles to remove unreferenced inline content is another story. We make an explicit exception for BLP claims, so if there’s a codified policy it’s to NOT remove content for the sake of missing inline citation.

Often missing citations can be reincluded from present sources that are used elsewhere in the body. Should all new edits include inline citations? Definitely. I know the WMF team is making improvements to prompts to remind editors to include citations for bare text additions. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

mw:Edit check is the feature in development ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:45, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Removing material and citing BURDEN in order to win the edit war is highly inappropriate. Perhaps in order to use BURDEN in this way, the removing editor needs to cite an explicit reason why they are removing (stolen From Rhododendrites' list above): 1) they don't think it's true or can be sourced 2) the tone is inappropriate/POV 3) it is tangential/irrelevant (which I would argue is an inappropriate use of BURDEN) 4) BLP. No reason given = the use of BURDEN is invalid. This disincentivizes users from running through articles and mass deleting content. --Rschen7754 17:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

But the entire point of BURDEN is to prevent edit wars from starting. If someone removes uncited information, DO NOT return it without a citation. Period. That’s core policy. Follow this and there should be no edit war to “win”. Blueboar (talk) 18:44, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Removing material and citing Burden as a reason not to restore it is highly appropriate. Simply saying "if this is true and important enough to include, you should be able to find a source" is a reasonable response to someone wanting to restore an unsourced claim. As for the central question of this thread, Burden is not enough for deleting every unsourced claim, as mass removal like that would require to much attention from other editors to address, and thus someone using it to delete everything unsourced is being disruptive and likely

WP:BLUESKY. There shouldn't be more onus on the person for removing the statement than there was for putting it in. Assuming good faith is not the same as assuming competency. --Nat Gertler (talk

) 18:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

This is an extremely narrow view of BURDEN. Supposing someone were to remove entries from a notable list citing BURDEN, and saying they are unsourced? Should they not be restored when most of these lists typically have entries linking to Wikipedia articles, and usually don't use citations? Huggums537 (talk) 07:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Thinking it through: a "Yes" consensus on both questions would lead to no change to

WP:BURDEN

, while a "No" consensus would create a requirement that someone cite a policy if they want to remove unsourced material. If they don't, they can be reverted and must go to the talk page, all to remove material that's unsourced (and potentially unverifiable/false).

To me, this "proves" that Blueboar's view is right, since any other reading of

WP:V. Besides, when someone removes stuff with edit summary “rm unsourced”, usually they do have policy-based concerns, like accuracy, even if it's not stated. DFlhb (talk

) 23:24, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Disagree on both points,

WP:PRESERVE, so "yes" to both would likely mean adding a pointer/clarification to WP:BURDEN pointing to the latter. "No" to both doesn't requiring citing policy, it would require basing it on policy (as opposed to just because it doesn't have a citation). — Rhododendrites ^talk

\\ 14:27, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Editors should not have to have policy knowledge to challenge unsourced content. That could create situations where people edit war to keep incorrect information, rather than trying to find a source and discovering it's incorrect. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:07, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Then pretend I said "cite a policy-based reason" rather than "cite a policy"; when someone removes something due to a lack of citation, I interpret that as a challenge of the statement's verifiability even if it's not said explicitly.

And one might argue that currently, it's

WP:V for how to handle unsourced material. This implies that BURDEN currently takes precedence, therefore, no conflict. Though this point is admittedly quite wikilawyer-y. DFlhb (talk

) 20:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Deleting all unsourced material would be disruptive, however if something is challenged then it shouldn't be restored without sourcing. Also we should remember that many people editing don't have in-depth knowledge of Wikipedias practices, so there shouldn't be hoops for them to jump through to challenge something. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:03, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

To be clear editors shouldn't be required to know a load of in-group word salad to challenge content. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:11, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The OP's initial statement lacks context. What specific unsourced statements were removed from what specific articles that led to the