Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 163

These templates shrink the size of the reference material (cites, references, bibliography, etc.) at the bottom of an article, mimicking the format used by many academic journal and books for this type of stuff. Not bound by the limitations of paper and the corresponding need to cut printing expenses, do these actually add any value to articles on Wiki? I would argue not and I believe that they actually impose a cost on visually impaired readers.

The guidelines in

What would be the downside of eliminating refbegin and refend entirely? The only thing that I can see is that the formatting of some sections will revert back to the baseline format as the additional parameters controlled by those templates are column number and hanging indents. I feel sure that some enterprising programmer can figure out a way to control those parameters outside the reflist template for those editors enamored with those formats. There may well already be such things already being used, although I wouldn't know because I don't about either of those things. Thoughts, comments?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:50, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

• See {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} Wug·a·po·des​ 21:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
• We could probably just change MediaWiki:common.css so that the font size is 100% rather than removing a widely transcluded template. Wug·a·po·des​ 22:02, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
  • True, but is that actually a good reason to keep it? Why have a template that's actually not doing anything? Seems rather inelegant and a waste of processor time (even as cheap as that is nowadays). While I don't think that it would take long to add a task to remove them to a bot, I'll concede it might take a while to remove them from all the pages that it's used on.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:57, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
    • It also adds columns and hanging indents if specified (see the documentation at {{
      WP:TFD#REASONS #2). Wug·a·po·des
      ​ 04:13, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
    • Actually, even better, it uses Template:Refbegin/styles.css for its css which any template editor can change. If there's consensus in a couple days place {{Edit template-protected}} on the template talk with a link to this discussion, or ping me and I can do it. Wug·a·po·des​ 04:23, 30 October 2019 (UTC) Oh wow even better, there's an undocumented parameter that lets the list be full size rather than 90%. We can just swap the default behavior and make small text opt-in. Wug·a·po·des​ 04:26, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
      • I would support swapping the default behavior of the template. Parsecboy (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
        • While the purist in me objects to such a lack of elegance, the practical side says "whatever works easiest, baby".--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
  • As a Wikipedian with ageing eyes I "20 mule team support" the move to a 100% font size :-) MarnetteD|Talk 22:08, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
• This should be at
  WP:TFD, not here. * Pppery * _{it has begun...}
  00:05, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
• We should probably have size reductions as a choice in preferences, eg some skin for those that have trouble reading small text, or a preference option, and another that behaves like the current allowing smaller text. Sure you could use a custom .css, but that is beyond most people's capability to write. Whenever I see an unbalanced <small> tag I remove it. It is quite often used in tables, or infoboxes to specify a date or some qualification. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:13, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
• Leave things be; they've been good enough since 2006 and shouldn't be a matter of individual caprice. Keith-264 (talk) 15:46, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
  • This is not an argument; that you've done something one way for a decade is not evidence that said thing is good (or bad); it is merely evidence that you've done the thing that way. I'll try asking here: what benefit does making text smaller provide to readers? Parsecboy (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

@ Parsec: who made you the judge? I'll humour you by asking a simple question. "How many people have complained that they can't read bibliographical details under refbegin-refend?" Regards Keith-264 (talk) 09:48, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Anyone with a fundamental understanding of logic can tell you the same. It would perhaps shatter your mind the number of times in an average work week where I'm confronted with the argument "but we've always done it this way" and have to repress the urge to respond "well that ain't the damn policy, is it?". And as for your ridiculous counter (as if you imagine there to be some complaint department that tracks such things), if you'd bothered to read this very discussion, you'd see that some here have complained. Parsecboy (talk) 12:45, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

• Not much concerned about how it is done, but I see no benefit in small text. It is hard for some of us to read. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:26, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
• The size change that refbegin makes is also made across the board for all references using <references/>. If all references have consensus, then so does refbegin. If we really want to have this discussion, I expect you should have a full-on RFC changing the default size for references. I anticipate no-consensus. (I question whether the style switch for size in refbegin is valid--we should limit style variation on this point.) --Izno (talk) 16:34, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
  • You're probably right, but I'm trying to get a feel for the arguments against. Right now they seem to be mostly IDONTLIKEIT.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:46, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
    • And nobody seems to be engaging the accessibility guidelines.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:53, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
      • 90% is the understood minimum size on Wikipedia and was arrived at some time ago by quite a bit of hub-bub precisely because it was deemed to be the best consensus between accessible and inaccessible but preferential/lots of references in limited space. --Izno (talk) 01:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
        • Hi Izno, I was trying to find that discussion without luck. It would certainly have a huge bearing on this discussion. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 21:02, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
          • @Cinderella157: This discussion has a decent summary of the early days for referencing specifically. Here's the 2010 discussion making <references/> size consistent with {{reflist}} (smaller), so it must have happened somewhen inbetween. --Izno (talk) 02:33, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I never noticed that before. You can see an example at Andrei Tarkovsky. "Notes" uses <references /> but "Bibliography" uses the refbegin/end pair. The text size is the same between the two. I think I'd have to oppose changing this specific template without wider discussion on reference text size in general. I'm a little more optimistic about finding consensus; I think the accessibility point is an important one, and don't see a compelling reason to keep it small other than aesthetics. Wug·a·po·des​ 17:31, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
    • But the default way to present references, in the various {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, etc. templates, does not reduce the size. In most articles, the size of the full references is 100%, so why are we going out of our way to reduce the size of some of them? Parsecboy (talk) 19:15, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
      • Those do not decrease their font-size precisely because it is known they will predominantly appear inside reflist/refbegin/<references>; no, their use as in a bibliography or similar is not the predominant appearance. And, errors/maintenance messages that appear in these templates do decrease in size (95%). --Izno (talk) 01:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
        • Do you have any evidence for that? For either, actually; the creation of the cite templates predate either of our editing here, and earlier versions (like {{
          book reference}}) are even older. In the early days, there were relatively few footnotes and most references were simply in bulleted lists (all that to say that neither of us were around for the discussions over these templates, and even if what you say about the predominance of one formatting style is correct, you ought not confuse how we do things now with why things were set up originally). As for error messages in the templates, I don't think you're right; see here for instance. Parsecboy (talk
          ) 12:45, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

          {{

          book reference}}, now long, long deprecated, does not appear to have ever specified font-size. Beginning with this edit, the rendered citation was wrapped in a <cite style="font-style:normal;">...</cite> tag. The descendants of that template and all of the other cs1|2 templates do not modify font-size except for the rendered subscription- and registration-required annotation (now deprecated and will be removed) and the value assigned to |format=. For these parameters, font-size is set to 95% in Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css. All other font-size for these templates is inherited from the enclosing block. In this case, {{reflist}} font-size is specified in MediaWiki:Common.css and {{refbegin}} font-size is specified by Template:Refbegin/styles.css. cs1|2 error messages are wrapped in <span class="error">...</span> tags (not sure where that class is defined – here

          , I think). Because the error class makes big red error messages, css in Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css resets the cs1|2 error message font-size to 100%, the same size as the text used in the rendered citation. Thereafter, cs1|2 font-size for the citation-proper and any error messages is controlled by enclosing markup.

          —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

          @

          WP:ACCESS, because a reflist or similar is where the majority of CS1/2 citations are. (I can get into position territory here but I'll decline in the interest of supplying information :).) --Izno (talk

          ) 02:50, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

          • Aye, but those searches don't tell us what you think it does. On the first page of results, I see the Cruiser article, which formats its references the way I was talking about - short cites in the {{reflist}} section and full references at 100% size. Parsecboy (talk) 09:15, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@Parsec, the question is "How many people have complained that they can't read bibliographical details under refbegin-refend?" do you have an answer? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 14:51, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Why would the number of people complaining be relevant? If the size of the text is a problem to some it is a problem worth looking into. The other side of it is what advantage does the smaller text provide? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:03, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Because Keith doesn't actually want a debate; he wants to stonewall and this nonsense is classic

sealioning. Parsecboy (talk

) 18:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Sturmvogel asserts "I would argue not and I believe that they actually impose a cost on visually impaired readers" I would like to debate facts not assertions. I think one person so far has endorsed Sturm's view. Do you struggle to read biblio details? Keith-264 (talk) 15:08, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, one person in this unpublicized discussion says that it's a problem for them. So, at the very least, one reader is disadvantaged by the current format. That's a issue because that one person stands for an unknown number of other readers who aren't aware of this discussion. Let me turn your question around; how will you personally be inconvenienced if the format is changed to 100% text? Other than aesthetically, that is, 'cause that appears to be at the foundation of your argument, however much you cloak it in "that's the way that we've always done it". That's logically fallacious and does not stand when even a single person has admitted readability problems because of the smaller text. You need to address the accessibility guidelines, which are the basis for my entire argument, but you have entirely failed to engage with them thus far. How and why do you believe that the current format for refbegin/refend do not fail the guidelines? It's a simple question, deserving of an direct answer.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:06, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Keith-264: Still waiting for an answer.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 10:18, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

• I too find small text unhelpful (at best) and downright obstructive much of the time. My eyesight is quite good for a man of my age (49), or so my optician tells me. I don't need glasses to read most books. DuncanHill (talk) 16:11, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Two people say it's too small and one infers that many others do too; I think we need something a little more scientific before accepting a change to the status quo. PS I'm a dashing 57. Keith-264 (talk) 16:16, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
    • In a discussion that is not publicised, and does not mention text size or accessibility in the header. "I can read it so it isn't a problem that we should do anything about" is not a great argument. DuncanHill (talk) 16:24, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Isn't the village pump a place for publicising something? If not, get off your backside and publicise it; show me how and I'll help. This is beginning to look like pathetic excuses on (poorly focused) stilts. PS I've been short sighted since I was an early teen, read with varifocals and have never had trouble reading reduced scripts. I haven't come out against a change, merely a capricious one. Did I mention that I was a dashing 57? I'm also debonair. On a technical point, does it have to be all or nothing or can Wiki be arranged for individual preference? Keith-264 (talk) 16:55, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Does Parsec actually have a point or is he whining again? Keith-264 (talk) 19:40, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
  • And here we are, again, trying to derail the conversation with personal attacks. Your stonewalling is pretty transparent, Keith; drop it, or we'll be heading to ANI. Parsecboy (talk) 11:48, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Yet again you claim the victim role and try to frame the debate as hostile; if you don't like retaliation, stop provoking. Simples. I'll set the example. If you make a substantive point I will reply but I will take no more notice of the extraneous comments. My question was simple, "how many people find the biblio details hard to read?" Two or three so far. I suggest
      WP:STICK Keith-264 (talk
      ) 13:45, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • What you're doing is classic
        WP:SEALIONING; your question is BS and you are well aware of that fact. Answer this. Parsecboy (talk
        ) 14:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    • The number of people complaining is a measure of the necessity of a change, particularly when there is a lack of consensus. This [4] was perfectly civil but when I mentioned it here [5] you got uncivil rather quickly, instead of waiting for other editors to venture their opinions like me. Keith-264 (talk) 14:22, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • How many people have complained somewhere besides this thread that you or I don't know about? How many people have had trouble reading the print and haven't said anything? What you're asking is an unanswerable question, and I'm sure you know that. Oh, and here's a thought for you: if in this short discussion, a few people have complained about it, how often do you think it's a problem for the readers who will never see this discussion to tell you they also have trouble with small text?
      • As for the rest, post a diff where I said something uncivil. If you can't handle being called out for dodging questions, maybe try answering them. And if you don't want to be accused of stonewalling, maybe don't engage in behavior that an objective person might reasonably describe as stonewalling. Parsecboy (talk) 14:37, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Why don't you ask around like I did? I thought that after what you disclosed on the Tel el talk page asking on the milhist board was your next step. I got fed up waiting and did it for you. Look how you responded. I humour you here by answering your loaded question and you write "how often do you think it's a problem for the readers who will never see this discussion"? Why don't you do the work like I did on the milhist board, instead of sniping? Keith-264 (talk) 16:03, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • Um, why do you seem to think that Sturmvogel and I are the same person? This is the second time you've conflated the two of us. (And no, you have yet to respond to any question I've seen directed your way [by me or anyone else] in a direct manner; do you see why I label this behavior as stonewalling? Do you see how this is clearly unproductive on your part?) Parsecboy (talk) 16:22, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Your presumption in trying to be judge and jury in your own cause does you no credit. I suggest that you change your approach. What do you want re: refbegin refend? Keith-264 (talk) 17:49, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
      • It would be helpful if you responded to points made, though it seems you have no interest in an actual debate, despite your repeated utterances to the contrary. I suppose I ought to stop trying to squeeze blood from that particular stone. I'll answer your question with one of my own: why do you think yourself entitled to answers when you refuse the same to others? Parsecboy (talk) 18:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• Propose renaming section - I suggest "Keith-264 derails all attempts at debate". It still won't mention font size or accessibility, but it would be more accurate. DuncanHill (talk) 18:23, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• I suggest you get a life; as for PSB he's still sulking so I'll leave it there. Keith-264 (talk) 19:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
• I truly don't care whether the references have font-size: 66.6% or 100%. Somebody else can vote on that. But I do feel strongly that any templates that allow customizing it on a per-page basis should have that feature removed. ―cobaltcigs 05:37, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
  • @Cobaltcigs:Why, though? Lots of things are customized on a per-page basis, including most things to do with references. Why is this specific thing different? Parsecboy (talk) 15:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

So let's suppose the following:

• [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] specifies a default size of font-size: 85% for references.
• [[User:Alice/monobook.css]] overrides it to 60% because she just fixes spelling and doesn't care about refs.
• [[User:Bob/monobook.css]] overrides it to 100% because he's hard of seeing and often clicks the wrong things by accident.
• Both users independently stumble upon [[List of Turkmen jellyfish]] which contains some crap like

  {{reflist|font-size=92.5% !important}}<!-- DO NOT CHANGE PER WP:TMJF CONCENSUS [sic] -->

  (based on a 3–1 vote by members of some WikiProject that neither of them (and none of us) have heard of).

Both users would be rightfully pissed to have their settings nullified. ―cobaltcigs 18:23, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

That's not what we're talking about. The idea is to swap the default behavior of the templates so that the reduced size is opt-in. Parsecboy (talk) 12:42, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Apropos my comment above, I'm not wasting any more time on this; if anyone wants to change the status quo, the burden is on them to make a case. No-one has so the matter rests. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 12:04, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

• That you refuse to see the argument that several of us has advanced is irrelevant (and only goes to further demonstrate your bad faith here); it's really quite simple: the size reduction does zero good (as you yourself have tacitly admitted by refusing to provide any benefit to it) and it causes harm to some readers. That's all we really need to justify the change. Parsecboy (talk) 15:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
• From what I can see, the reduction in size is applied, either directly or indirectly to pretty much all of what is considered "non-readable prose" - ie captions, TOC, info boxes and references etc. In the case of reference templates, they are intended to be used with with RefBegin, which does more than just reduce the size of the text. So, there is more than just one windmill on the field of battle. If one perceives size to be a problem, then the solution lies outside of EN WP (at MediaWiki) but any change will affect every Wiki project? Consequently, this is probably not the place to argue the point without involvement of all of the (potentially) affected stakeholders. I would also suggest that an "opt out" option to then make everything the same size might be an equally valid alternative to the "opt in" option being suggested. Another alternative might be to add a toggle where the text appears. Yet another, we could scale everything up by 111% so that 90% would then be equal to the current normal text size. I also just noticed that the default editor also uses a "reduced" font size. Regards Cinderella157 (talk) 22:37, 8 November 2019 (UTC)
  • @Cinderella157: Reference text size style is specific to the English Wikipedia. It's specified in MediaWiki:Common.css which is a local page in the MediaWiki namespace. The relevant css is the reflist class which mw:Extension:Cite uses so that each project can specify its own styling. Wug·a·po·des​ 07:49, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Thankyou Wugapodes, but is that also true of all of the other cases identified? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 08:03, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
    • PS I take it then, that no other wiki platforms use MediaWiki:Common.css? Cinderella157 (talk) 08:06, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
      • I'm sure they do, but they use their own copy. We use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css, the Chinese Wikipedia uses https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css etc.
        Phil Bridger (talk
        ) 08:13, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
        • @Cinderella157: A change to the reflist class wouldn't change the other instances of reduced font size that you mention. Captions, TOC, and infoboxes use their own CSS classes. Changing the definition of the reflist class would only affect text inside {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} tags or generated by <references /> which includes {{Reflist}}. You can try this out by adding .reflist { color: red; } to your common.css page which will make all references red for you (but not for anyone else). Wug·a·po·des​ 08:32, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
          • That was my understanding (with thanks) but I think it is valid to point out that, if there is a problem, it extends beyond just refs - unless it can be shown why refs are substantially different from the other cases I have identified. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:13, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Hello https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gosha_Kutsenko&diff=885956883&oldid=855597368 We need to return information about "Myrotvorets"

This information is not propaganda. Returning information will make the pack more informative--Bohdan Bondar (talk) 14:22, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

I can see no reason why this argument is on this page. Should be on the article talk page, or possibly discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ukraine, if that is a live project. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Over time, Wikipedia:Sandbox (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has accumulated a number of subpages and redirects that appear to be the result of various sandbox experiments. I propose deleting most of them all and making a fresh start. If there is consensus for deletion, I will post MfDs to make it official, but there is no point doing that if the consensus here is to keep them all.

If any of them have content worth keeping I propose moving that content to a single page.

Here is a complete list of sandbox subpages and redirects.

I suggest a Keep, Delete, Move, Redirect or Blank comment. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Straw Poll

All (comment here for delete all, keep all, etc.) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• Delete all I thought the sandbox was periodically purged, anyway. Also, I'm not sure why you've included many examples above. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 18:46, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
  • This isn't the sandbox. It is subpages to the sandbox. I listed as many subpages as there are are to consider deleting. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:06, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Fair enough, I'd say history merge or delete all as necessary, and then disable future creation of subpages in the sandbox, or if that's not possible have a bot automatically delete them after a while. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:38, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• WP:PARALLELHISTORIES issues. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk
  ) 19:29, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
• Sounds like more work than it's worth. Strong keep on history fragments though per
  provenience. Wikipedia:Historical archive/Earliest sandbox history contains history discovered in a 2003 database dump so history merging it into the sandbox would mix history natively created and retained by the software and those which were recovered post hoc. Wikipedia:Sandbox/Archive was moved in response to the 2008 deletion disaster as a means of history control. The fact that it is separate is useful historical information that would be lost in a merge. Graham87 would probably be able to tell you more. Wug·a·po·des
  ​ 08:09, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep all, more or less per Wugapodes. If a page only contains problematic content in all of its revisions, delete it, otherwise let it be. Also, all of the various sandbox history fragments have their own story attached to them and should be kept as is to preserve them. Graham87 08:55, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sandbox/Word Association

• Delete obvious leftover redirect from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
• Keep – deletion would break many many links, for a start. Graham87 08:55, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Word Association/Archive 2

• Delete obvious leftover redirect from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sandbox/Word Association/Reverse Radial Ultra Cross

• Delete Obvious leftover redirect from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sandbox/Word Association/Word before last

• Delete Obvious leftover redirect from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sandbox/This isn't against guidelines and it will be deleted, but the sandbox is for experimentation

• Delete The page title actually says it is expected that this will be deleted, but is has hung around for six months. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• This one just got deleted. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:06, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Sub-Page Sandbox

• Delete This talk page to a nonexistent page is another obvious leftover from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• This one just got deleted. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:26, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Archive 1

• Delete This talk page to a nonexistent page is another obvious leftover from creating a page in the sandbox. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• This one just got deleted. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:26, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Sandbox/Archive

• Neutral For some reason, this talk page to a nonexistent page contains a history fragment. This might be a good place to merge the other history fragments if merging to the sandbox history is not feasible. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/Earliest sandbox history

• Merge history and delete Yet another place where a fragment of the sandbox's editing history is. Do we really need three? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Related issue. The sandbox gets a lot of edits and the history is quite large (727,150 edit total, 2,872 in the last 30 days). Would it make sense to set up a history page the years 2000 to 2005, another for 2005 to 2010, etc.? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• Delete upon inactive: Suggest Deleting everything that has not received an edit within the past month, on a rolling basis, conducted by a bot. Also, add a prominent note that content will likely be purged after a month; I don't think you want to say 'unless edited' because that will bring out the people who will drop by to edit occassionally just to keep content from disappearing - maybe. This would allow people to work in sandbox and migrate content to another space as they get done with experimentation. It would also highlight those sandbox pages that contain content that people find value in tinkering with, which might in the longer term lead to one or more specialized sandboxes for particular functions - but that wouldn't be an intended outcome, just a potential one. Regards --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:23, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: remove the string native_name - the name of a parameter - from appearing in the rendered version of the Template:infobox person. The content of the parameter, i.e. the person's name in his/her local script and/or language, would still appear in the rendered version of the template.

Example: (as of 03:42, 15 November 2019 (UTC)) of the problem: top of infobox of Seham Sergiwa; سهام سرقيوة is described to the reader as "native name". This proposal would instead give the appearance of the top of the infobox of Abdalla Hamdok (as of 03:42, 15 November 2019 (UTC)).

Original proposal: This was proposed (by me) a few hours ago at Template_talk:Infobox_person#Let's_not_insult_the_natives_(BLP). I pointed out that the string native_name does not appear in the rendered version of Template:infobox officeholder, and it would be more respectful for it to be absent from Infobox person too, when rendered. (I'm not proposing to change it as a parameter name, where its role is more clearly technical; an editor has to cope with technical aspects of editing, while a reader is not required to understand these.)

Reason: European colonial domination of much of the world over several centuries has resulted in certain words sounding derogatory, especially if used generically without checking context; "native" in certain contexts has this problem, especially when applied to living people in former colonies. See ell.stackexchange question 6881 for example: I think what the writer of that definition was trying to say was that the word "native" as a stand-alone noun to mean a person from a non-Western culture with a low level of technology is now considered offensive. (Jay May 28 '13 at 12:40) ... Native is taken as offensive when applied to non-Europeans, for sound historical reasons. (StoneyB May 28 '13 at 12:49) ... Where I see the offensive nature is when you say simply "Jack is a native", meaning "a primitive, uncivilized person". (Jay May 30 '13 at 15:31) In our situation, "native" is strictly speaking an adjective, but I still think that the risk of misinterpretation, especially in the context of

Technical side: Example details of how to enact this suggestion technically are given at Template_talk:Infobox_person#Let's_not_insult_the_natives_(BLP).

Why here: The response over at Template_talk:infobox person was to raise this question here in the wider en.WP community, since the expression "native name" occurs quite a bit in en.Wikipedia, and since I didn't give a citation for the risk of the expression being interpreted as pejorative. I'm not proposing a blanket ban on the expression - just a removal of the term from the Infobox person template, where the removal would be easy and convenient and would improve the look of the rendered infobox (though maybe some other situations could be fixed too). Boud (talk) 03:42, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

• I don't think it's such a big deal, and I'd rather not have to go through this euphemism treadmill. Having said that, if this gains consensus I wouldn't be too terribly opposed to it. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 04:03, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm not proposing to replace the string by a euphemism; I'm proposing to remove the string from appearing in the rendered infobox. We don't have name appearing at the top of the infobox, and we don't have Article: appearing at the top of every Wikipedia article. Boud (talk) 04:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• I really don't see the case for removal. Native name here clearly means the name of a person in their native language when it differs from modern English/Latinized version. If you want to interpret this in a different way, that's on you.
  b
  } 04:40, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• Mmnm, not usually a fan of "political correctness", but here OP makes a good point. Altho its true that "native" is technically value-neutral, it *is* offensive to some. That is what matters. Even supposing that these people are snowflakes (I'm not saying that they are), it's reasonable to not offend people when it can be avoided. Support. Herostratus (talk) 04:49, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• A hypothetical willful misinterpretation of the word "native" in this context doesn't seem to be worth catering to. But I don't oppose the change itself, just the reason given. Template:Infobox officeholder as shown in this example seems to have a good style. Anomie⚔ 12:33, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support to make |native_name= at {{infobox person}} render at the top under the name, the way |native_name= renders at {{infobox officeholder}} (example, example) and |local_name= renders at {{infobox islands}} (example), rather than having it render as the identified "native_name" field under the photograph, that way it does now (example). It looks much better the way the officeholder and islands infoboxes have it, rather than the way the person infobox has it now. – Levivich 19:27, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support, simply because it has a more streamlined look.--Auric talk 20:58, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support. There's no need to concern ourselves with the precise meaning of "native", because this is an obvious improvement anyway.
  Phil Bridger (talk
  ) 08:36, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support. I've no opinion on whether 'native' is offensive or not: it just looks better on the rendered page without the label. Neiltonks (talk) 11:49, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment Editors may be interested in this discussion on infobox organization about updating the native name parameter. Wug·a·po·des​ 04:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support with revision & commentary—First suggested revision is to have an indication of what language the non-English name is in; not sure what would fit best as a parenthetical after the name would be a distraction and a mouseover might not fit the display standards for Wikipedia as user-readable content ... might be best as a parenthetical on the line following the non-english name as "(Non-english name in <language>)". Second suggestion has to do with multiple non-English language renderings. I'm not at all familiar with how people are referred to in other languages, but someone like Stephen King or Albert Einstein might be transliterated into multiple non-English scripts due to their world-wide prominance. One way to deal with this is via WikiData, where the titles of articles across the Wikimedia spectrum appear. In the case of Albert Einstein, dozens of non-English Wikipedia articles exist, many using "Albert Einstein" as the title, several not → Albert Einstein (Q937). A more radical notion: rather than the parameter "native_name", support "<2-letter_language_code>_name" across all 2-letter language codes and include a "display" or "suppress-display" parameter where particular fields can be chosen for display or suppression from display as selected. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:47, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Additional comment in re Roman script non-English—Extending the use of Albert Einstein as an example, he was born in Germany, and his German article is titled de:Albert Einstein, which, according to the e\English article is pronounced, maybe, a bit differently in German. Should 'native name' be used to add "Albert Einstein" to this article's infobox, and how do we manage same glyphform with differing vocalization? Just extending the thinking a bit. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:56, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

The discussion maybe be found here as to whether we should modify the template to allow sections to be collapsed to reduce the length of some infoboxes. Ergo Sum 02:57, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

In principle, the

Can you stay in one area and stop forum shopping all over the place?! You just started this at: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Neutrality_check. Also created a deletion discussion for it [6] days ago that ended in a snow keep. Dream Focus 14:47, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

It was not closed as "snow keep", though. The result, which I find quite questionable since it was only open for several hours was "Cosensus (sic) to Keep and that MfD is not the right solution for the issues raised; no need to prolong." If MfD is not the right solution, why would it be inappropriate to find another venue in search of the right solution? –dlthewave ☎ 22:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I think there is a big problem here. We probably need to shut down your baby. Or maybe we could just topic ban you, User:Andrew Davidson and User:Lightburst from ARC? Might that help things? jps (talk) 14:53, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

There has been broad community support for ARS since it started. Your personal disputes with a couple people are disruptive. Your escalations are disruptive. -- GreenC 15:25, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

That seems like a very skewed perception of the history. There may have been community support back in the bad old days when Wikipedia was "rudimentary, and frequently wrong" (to quote Paul Freedman), then a bunch of ARS members got site-banned (or TBANned and left the project), with it now functioning as little more than a place for like-minded editors to get together and talk shit about people they don't like, and occasionally overrule legitimate delete/merge/improvement discussions. Nowadays, the appearance of broad community support (as seen below) is mainly rooted in a misunderstanding of what ARS's activities usually amount to -- the fact that almost all of the current "oppose" !votes are based on the assumption that ARS's main activity is improving articles that are nominated for deletion in the hopes that those articles won't be deleted bears this out. I plan on doing a broad survey of AFDs listed at ARS over the last 21 months or so (since I discovered it) and see how many articles were actually improved to the point that they merited inclusion in the encyclopedia vs. how many articles were "rescued" with ARS members making minimal effort to improve the article but showing up to !vote at the AFD anyway. (And how many times AFDs listed there saw an influx of disruptive comments from ARS members, irrespective of whether the articles wound up being kept or not -- the fact that Andrew Davidson's comments in this discussion and yours in this one failed to prevent either from ending in consensus in delete doesn't mean that both weren't disruptive/misleading/inflammatory.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:55, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Nothing will come of this thread. It comes up at least once a year and goes something like this:

"can we do something about this page that seems to only serve to canvass keep !votes"

"the general idea of the project is positive, collaborating to find sources and improve articles to save them from deletion"

"but they usually just show up to support keeping, without finding new sources or improving articles. also, the notices are often non-neutral"

"they should be neutral. please work on that, ARS."

"ok"

The problem has never been the idea of ARS, which is why all attempts to shut it down have failed. The problem is when particular users treat it as a keep canvassing club. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:47, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

The problem is people make accusations without checking the actual edit records. There are things that get listed by a regular member that have no one else show up to comment on such as Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_–_Rescue_list#List_of_dimensions_of_the_Discworld. I couldn't find any sources so I didn't participate in that one. Also currently on the list Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_–_Rescue_list#His_Dark_Materials which I did find sources for, listed them there, and stated why it should be kept. No one just shows up and says keep every time, they only do it if they believe there are sources to prove it meets the notability guidelines or its a valid list article. Dream Focus 16:26, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

That there have been instances where members have found sources or have not shown up just to !vote isn't much of a counter-argument (to the extent I was even presenting an argument). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:42, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment
  Wack-A-Mole. We think the disruptions have ended but they have only moved to another section of the project. Lightburst (talk
  ) 15:51, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment- Yes, the ARS is a canvassing club and always has been. No, the community hasn't got the spine or the stomach to do anything about it. Never have, never will. Reyk _YO! 18:26, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - I agree with the sentiment that ARS often functions as a canvassing board. Regardless of intent, it is quite common for a nomination to result in a number of "keep" !votes with no effort made to improve the article. I believe that greater oversight is the solution, with guidelines written by the community instead of project regulars. –dlthewave ☎ 03:56, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I actually disagree that the primary problem with ARS is its essentially being a canvassing board. There are too few members left who haven't been site-banned or essentially forced off the project for them to actually swing the tables on most AFDs. The problem is that every time someone brings up how inappropriate some of the group's behaviour is, they start hounding and attacking that person all across the site, and by always moving in a group they make it near-impossible for ANI or the other relevant fora to deal with their disruptive battleground behaviour (I guess whenever they are brought to ANI the vast swath of "average" Wikipedians' eyes glaze over because they think it's an "inclusionists vs. deletionists" dispute -- I know I did until 21 months ago). Thing is, the community seems to be unwilling to shut down a WikiProject because the majority of its members are extremely tendentious, prone to not only attacking anyone who disagrees with personally but also violating Wikipedia copyright policy left, right, and center. So there isn't really anything that can be done. The disruption that has been going on at Talk:Mottainai since roughly February 2018 is one example, and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Hijiri88 is probably the most blatant recent example. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:53, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I don't think this will be a very popular opinion, but I think we should reform ARS to be a beneficial part of the project by listing articles that have survived an AfD discussion since sources have been demonstrated in the discussion, but still need
  WP:HEY/proper cleanup in order to be a sufficient encyclopaedia article, thereby shifting the project's focus from "saving" articles at AfD to providing effective cleanup on articles which have survived AfD. SportingFlyer T·C
  09:30, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support I am fully in agreement. From my experience, the Rescue Squaddies I've encountered are extremely disruptive, entirely discourteous and bring zero benefit to the project. I am very active in a very small and narrow area of Wikipedia - that of AfDs for companies/organizations. The problem of the Rescue Squaddies is twofold. The first (as has been pointed out above) is that it really is a cavassing club. I see the same editors follow each other around and !vote to Keep articles often with similar reasoning. It is meat-puppetry, plain and simple. Also, an analysis of their !voting patterns and their stats will support this view. Secondly, this type of block !voting works most times. It is very frustrating to see closing admins ignore well-reasoned analysis of (for example) why various sources fail the criteria for establishing notability and instead lend weight to the Rescue Squaddies commenting in unison that all the sources are good. Many AfD's are closed based entirely on their participation. I've also seen the hounding and vilification an admin when they correctly and properly evaluated the reasoning and deleted the article even though the Keep !votes outnumbered the Delete !votes. I can provide links if anybody is interested but I won't until asked. In summary, while I have no doubt that the Rescue Squad was set up with honorable intentions, it is time to recognize that it is now a rallying and canvassing board to "Keep at all costs" and ignore our policies and guidelines.
  HighKing⁺⁺
  14:15, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support per Highking, the removal of any walled garden is never to be pitied. ——SN54129 14:21, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per the 20 or so times it's been nominated for deletion and kept every time, but it's worth exploring whether some of the active members of the project have the right motives (i.e. "oppose all deletion of any content ever for any reason" is not a rational approach to building an encyclopedia). In principle, attracting more eyes to deletion discussions is a good thing, because deletion is disruptive and should be a last resort limited to topics entirely unfit for the encyclopedia, and too often AfD is being used to force article improvements contrary to
  WP:NODEADLINE
  . If ARS results in some of those inappropriately nominated articles being saved from deletion then it's a net positive. Or to put it a different way, the editors crying that ARS participants "never improve articles" should consider dropping this crusade and improving the articles themselves.

Now, if the Article Rescue Squadron is being abused to sway consensus on project-side content discussions, such as Hijiri's SPI MFD, it's being used against its purpose and against

WP:CANVASS, and the editors involved should face sanctions. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits

) 14:25, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Maybe the solution is to engage more with it, and to "rescue" based on improvement, rather than weight of numbers? Andy Dingley (talk) 14:38, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I actually very much support SportingFlyer's proposal (assuming actually shutting the project down is off the table as Andy above seems to believe it to be), and I suspect if it were presented appropriately most of the community would support it. Every defense I've seen of ARS in the past has taken some form of "The ARS does good work fixing articles" -- non-members who are not especially involved seem to generally believe this to be the case, but even members frequently present this as being the case, apparently knowing that it's the only reason the rest of the community tolerates ARS. But this argument isn't borne out by the behaviour of many of ARS's members, who seem to be more interested in !voting down AFDs, regardless of whether the articles are improved. (Occasionally they show up after the AFDs to shut down redirect/merge proposals,[7] and even rewriting/formatting/compromise proposals,[8] apparently for no reason other than revenge against "deletionists".) Some recent listings have indeed been rescued as a result of delete !votes being retracted or ceasing following a series of edits by some members of ARS rewriting the articles during the AFDs. The ARS members in question have my gratitude and admiration for this, but such instances appear to be outnumbered overwhelmingly by cases where a discussion ended in "no consensus" and no ARS member ever touched the article itself either during or after the listing. All of these problems would be solved, or at least ameliorated, if the rules were rewritten so that either (a) only articles that had been nominated for AFD but with the AFD being closed with some non-deletion result could be listed there or (b) for every X articles listed during AFD discussions Y articles that have been AFDed in the past but not deleted need to be listed and noticeably improved by the members of the project. It would also discourage instances like those linked above where ARS members undermine attempts to improve articles after the fact if they were given explicit encouragement to support such efforts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:56, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose We just had an AFD for the project close days ago. [9] So why is this being brought up yet again here by the same person who started that deletion nomination? I think the other place was the correct venue for such things, not here. Also note that on the Rescue List right now are two things that were put there by two different regulars that no one but them showed up to vote KEEP at. [10] [11]. Look through archives and this happens many times in the past as well. So obviously we don't all rush over and say KEEP no matter what. That is not a problem. Dream Focus 15:14, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per
  WP:NOTAVOTE, the quality of the arguments presented matter the most. I think editors get confused with which discussions canvassing has the most impact for. If we were lets say talking about a huge discussion with multiple editors taking a # vote (RfA is a good example), then it would matter much more. - Knowledgekid87 (talk
  ) 15:45, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Excellent point Lightburst (talk) 16:01, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose The question to be asked is what is best for the project. All one needs to do is look in the archives: our last archive 12 deleted articles out of 31 to see how difficult it is to save an article - most of the articles had zero participation from ARS members. Additionally there are about 3 editors who follow the ARS and obstinately !vote Delete on nearly every article listed on ARS. Also as every editor knows, an article can be sent to AfD over and over and over again. Yet a recreated article brings editors shouting SALT. This proposal to scrap the whole project in in bad faith and comes from a tendentious and difficult editor who has an extensive block history for: socking, edit warring, disruptive editing, personal attacks, redirecting articles without consensus, etc. I am also not surprised to see the High King here. The High King is smarting over the fact that I spotted them placing an AfD on an article just hours after that article survived AfD. In any event this is a bad faith nomination by a tendentious editor with a long history of disruption on the project. The only question about anything related to the encyclopedia should be: What is best for the project? Lightburst (talk) 15:48, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Response This perfectly highlights the problems. Let's break down Lightburst's reaction. First, Lightburst creates a strawman argument saying I am "smarting" over being caught re-nominating an article at AfD. Entirely fabricated view. This is the AfD and I clearly acknowledged that it had only just survived AfD and I provided my reasoning for resubmitting it. It also highlights the meat-puppetery of the Rescue Squaddies as can be seen at that AfD. All three ignore the nomination requesting production of references. The allegations that I have a history of socking, edit warring, disrputive editing, etc are no surprise but not the full picture. If anyone cares to check my block log, the last time I've been "in trouble" so to speak was in 2010. That's 9 years ago and was solely in a single topic area - the "British Isles". I haven't been near that since. But hey, why let facts get in the way of smearing another editor, eh? Not just me either - this is part and parcel of the normal everyday tactics from certain members of the Rescue Squad. Attack everything, especially other editors, but when that doesn't work, attack the policies/guidelines and even the closing admin if results don't go their way.
    HighKing⁺⁺
    17:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
    • The block log he linked to is the guy who started this bit, he then talking about you after that. You link to something that was not tagged in the Rescue Article List. At Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Hammerax_(2nd_nomination) you accuse the ARS of always showing up and voting keep but that was not mentioned at the Rescue Squadron's list either. Just one member who had been in the previous AFD that ended days before did comment, and then another regular member happened to show up. Dream Focus 17:54, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Apologies if you thought I was referring to you as the one who has a history of socking, edit warring, disrputive editing etc. I thought it was clear I was referring to the OP, User:JPS and I linked to the extensive block log. However you are what we refer to as a deletionist. You almost never !vote keep. Out of 439 !votes at AfD you !voted to keep 28 times. So I am sure it is inconvienient when editors show up to attempt to improve one of your articles targeted for deletion. I think we can all agree it is easier to delete than improve. The OP is also a deletionist - only came across two article worthy of Keeping. Lightburst (talk) 17:57, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• This is a great example of the toxic paranoid nonsense that seems the sole domain of ARS members (which is not to say all ARS members). The scourge of "deletionist" bogeymen who mindlessly !vote delete contrary to policy! Quick, poison the well! The reality, of course, is that HighKing's !votes are out of line with consensus an incredibly low 4.8% of the time. That's the only thing that matters. Just like HK shouldn't care that you're inclined to only get involved at XfD when it's something you think is worth keeping. You, however, miss the mark more than four times as often. People have different kinds of engagement at XfD. Some people only get involved when there are particularly egregious issues in play. Some people only bother with promotional articles. Some people focus on particular topics. Some try to resolve contentious disputes. Some people only bother if they can justify keeping it. These are all perfectly fine as long as we're acting in good faith. Trying to undermine what people say because they're "deletionists" is not doing that. Canvassing is not doing that. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:59, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Toxic is a bit harsh. We have an attack on the project several times a year and the attack is from deletionists. You cannot blame the sheep for being weary of a wolf. And even paranoid people can have actual antagonists. It is very easy to be on the "winning side" in an AfD. One can assess the majority opinion and vote the majority. The ARS members usually come to an article after a concerted effort to delete, and !votes have been cast. In any event this is about what is best for the project. And your opinion is clearly stated. Lightburst (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Reluctant Support - I think I've opposed this in the past (or maybe abstained) because the central thrust of the oppose arguments is a sensible one: the original idea of the project is not a problem. And I agree with that. Every time we do this, people argue that it's a good project with a good aim, acknowledging that it's often used problematically but that the answer is to set stricter rules or enforce those rules or sanction the problematic editors. But none of that ever happens, and it's still a keep-canvass-club.

It's the exception, rather than the rule, that participants make nontrivial improvements to an article, finding new good sources to keep it based on our guidelines.

Sometimes a user does improve the article (kudos to them, truly), and then uses ARS to canvass keep votes with a "I've improved the article/added a source" notice (again, not what it's for).

Notices are often non-neutral or make no effort to argue why it should be kept, sometimes just making a joke about the subject (because adding something to the list just implies "go keep this").

The people who use the project most operate according to unwritten rules, and those rules are by now well known. Regardless of what it says on the tin, the descriptions of ARS are not what the project is. This isn't a referendum on whether the ARS is a good idea, it's about whether the way it's actually used is beneficial to the project. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:01, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• • Reminds me of some of the arguments against WP:Esperanza before it got decentralized and shut down. Wug·a·po·des​ 17:45, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support (not that it would do much good) While I'm annoyed that whenever I see the usual suspects swoop into an AfD, one can count on the place being peppered with vague "meets GNG" and superficial Google Book title searches... - being personally annoyed should not be a factor here; and as stated, we are after the good of the project. So here's what I see as the actual damage done by this tag-team: they tend to water down the consensus-building in AfDs by piling on with weak Keep arguments. Raw biomass does tell in closing, however much an experienced closer might intend to weigh quality; a finding of "no consensus" is always easier to make than a "delete" that will clearly tick off several !voters. And "no consensus", after all, is a Win: article not deleted. Whether that's a conscious tactic (I suspect so) or an "innocent" outcome of the totally-not-a-canvassing-board list - it's deleterious to article quality. - However, seeing that this is always the same core of half a dozen editors with a few satellites, I don't see how this behaviour would stop if the ARS page went away. Nothing is preventing them from achieving the same effect by just keeping an eye on each other's contribution lists. It's a personal behavioural issue, exploiting a weakness of the consensus process to force a specific philosophy, too subtle for outright sanctioning. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose The contributions to the improvement of articles is considerable and demonstrable. There is no merit to the alleged abuse. Indeed,
  WP:Disruptive nature of these efforts. Nor does it make them more worthwhile or credible. 7&6=thirteen (☎
  ) 17:49, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

*Reluctant, but full, support. In theory, the ARS should be a useful place to improve articles. In practice, the ARS has become a place for people to canvas votes that automatically, and uncritically, vote keep at deletion discussions without any work, forethought, or intention to actually rescue the articles they claim to want to. As a concept, we should have a working ARS. As it works in practice, it needs to be shut down. --Jayron32 18:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Please back up the accusation with some diffs of ARS members votes that automatically, and uncritically, vote keep. Anyone can go through the archives or the present ARS page. You should be able to support these wild claims with diffs. As a member of ARS I have nominated many articles that not one single member !voted on. Lightburst (talk) 18:26, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• I am not a member of ARS, but I have to agree. Most of the people here supporting are not providing backup to their claims nor are they citing policies and guidelines. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:30, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Change to Weak oppose. The chart below provided by SportingFlyer is a good analysis, and has provided me enough evidence to change my vote here. I still think there is too much uncritical voting going on to my liking, but that chart shows that, on the balance, most articles brought to the ARS have attracted some positive editing, which is enough for me. However, I would like to encourage a culture change at ARS that, perhaps, ARS members should refrain from voting on any article brought to ARS, and should instead only improve articles with perhaps a brief note on the AFD regarding improvements they have made. If the organization were used exclusively for editing articles, and avoided issuing opinions in AFD discussions at all it would go a long way towards ameliorating many people's concerns. --Jayron32 18:13, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• Jayron32 Thanks for reconsidering. Lightburst (talk) 18:29, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose as it improves articles and thus helps readers. If a few barely notable subjects are kept which otherwise wouldn't be, that's not much of a problem; certainly not enough bathwater to justify throwing out the baby. Jonathunder (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Good grief, what has it come to when editors trying to
  WP:AALERTS, and indeed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log. If individual editors are using it to canvas, that should be dealt with individually. But I think AfD closers are more than capable of sifting out unsubstantiated arguments on either side. – Joe (talk
  ) 18:47, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• I don't intend to respond to all the opposers here (it's likely a futile exercise, after all), but I find it particularly disheartening to see an arb drop a drive-by straw man into a discussion. Nobody has argued anything like "editors trying to preserve content is a problem". I don't actually expect this to pass, but mainly because of people doing what you're doing -- looking at the purpose of ARS, saying "it looks great!" and moving on. That was my perspective at one point, too. ARS is not a problematic canvassing club by nature. It is a problematic canvassing club by nurture, per what I wrote above. It's a good idea executed in a way that far too often gets away from its intended purpose. If delsort and article alerts got to that point, we could discuss how to remedy it, but it's extremely unlikely because the reason those processes are great is that they're all about attracting participation based on knowledge of the subject/sourcing, not based entirely on their likelihood to !vote a particular way. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: Please don't just assume that I'm arguing from a position of ignorance. I've participated in and closed several thousand AfDs. I know what the ARS is and I don't see a systemic problem with it. I didn't see the point in making an extended argument, but I'll happily elaborate if you want.

AfD has several layers of notifications that in my opinion balance out nicely. The template notifies editors watching the article; delsort and WikiProject article alerts notifies other subject-matter experts; the standard logs tend to bring people who are inclined to delete unless they're convinced otherwise; ARS brings people who are inclined to keep if they can. None of these are canvassing. They're

appropriate notifications to potentially interested editors

. In the case of ARS, it's notifying editors interested in preserving content, which is a Good Thing explicitly favoured in both the deletion and editing policies. All listing there says is "can you save this?" not "back me up no matter what".

Yes, there AfD regulars who always vote the same way and that can be frustrating if you're trying to make a reasoned opposing argument. But tough: suck it up, make a better argument, and trust the closer to recognise the "usual faces" on both sides. Deleting other people's work is not easy by design. – Joe (talk) 07:03, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

All listing there says is "can you save this?" not "back me up no matter what". Have you read the listings there? They have all the rhetorical flourish of a battlecry. User:Dream Focus: Find people who ignore the facts and keep spreading rumors about it, and ban them from Wikipedia until they stop their relentless slanderous lies., User:Lightburst: 7th nomination. Apparently the dissenting voices must be scrubbed from the internet. Can we save the minority voices? Should we? Or must we all speak with one voice? Perhaps we can demonstrate the usefulness of WP:LISTN by organizing the dissenters?.... jps (talk) 11:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Not to mention peevish edit summaries such as dissenting voices have been scrubbed[12], which misrepresent both the discussion and the close. Reyk _YO! 11:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Reyk, I already know about how you feel about me based on your recent personal attack. The AfD that summary is about is accurately described as dissenting voices. However the other side called them cranks, crackpots, deniers, wall of shame and worse. In light of that "dissenting voices" is a rather tame description. Lightburst (talk) 15:51, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose The OP doesn't provide any evidence and the supporters don't seem to have either. What we just seem to have are groundless personal attacks, aspersions and falsehoods. So, there's no case to answer. A couple of points while I'm here though:

1. The ARS has a huge nominal membership which has accumulated over the years – over 400. It would be good if more of these were to participate at AfD so that the few die-hards don't have to try to cover everything. This is a general problem with AfD and other patrolling activities – the number of active volunteers is dwindling and so the remainder get over-stretched and fractious. And it doesn't then help if attacks of this sort are made. I'd quite like to be focussing on other activities like editathons, the six millionth article and many topics of interest. So, I am combing through the ARS membership list to establish who is still active and may then send them out a newsletter, as is done for the New Page Patrol or AfC projects, which have similar issues of overstretch.
2. For a fresh example of an article being rescued, see
   WP:HEY. Uncle G
   is a good example but he likes to do his own thing and doesn't tend to edit much now. If the nay-sayers think they can do better, then they should try it.

Andrew D. (talk) 18:51, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose I believe that I am listed as a "member" of the ARS, althoguh i ahve not been active in their internal discussions. But I have, from time to time, used the ARS list of 'threatened" articles to select ones to try to source and 'escue" and successfully doing so has been among my prouder and more rewarding contributions here. My "rescue" efforts have normally taken the form of finding and adding good sources, although sometimes also of debating the value of sources already found, or the meaning of specialized notability guidelines. I have certainly not engaged in 'tag-teaming" nor have I observed such behavior from the ARS, although it may have occurred. I am thinking of such articles as
  The Narrative (band) , and 500 Miles High, all of which i was involved in sourcing while at AfD. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs}
  19:43, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• I have taken a number of articles that were proposed for deletion on to be
  WP:DYKs
  on the main page. This is part of what you now want to destroy.

Can you say, "Vendetta"? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:01, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. I prefer to plough my own furrow and so occasionally see an article that looks like it's going to be deleted but can find sources myself to stop that happening, or, probably just as often, I look for sources but can't find them and say so. Others prefer to collaborate on such things. I think that the supporters above are only seeing the small minority of cases where people may have given rather dodgy "keep" opinions, rather than the majority where the sourcing of articles has been improved without any fuss.
  Phil Bridger (talk
  ) 20:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
• Question - Can someone help me to see where I'm going wrong here? I'm taking up a lot of space in this thread, admittedly, but I feel like I agree with the underlying reasons given by several of the opposers here (and although I find ARS folks frustrating at times, I do value a lot of the work the users do). So please help me to understand. As per
  WP:CAN
  , "Canvassing is notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way". It therefore seems important to distinguish posts which seek to improve an article and find sourcing from posts which simply influence the outcome of a discussion in a particular way. Nobody will dispute that when someone improves an article and finds sources that it is a very positive thing for Wikipedia. And I won't dispute that has happened via ARS (just like the same happens through the various other mechanisms we have to advertise deletion discussions). My question is about when that's not what it's used for -- what its purposefunction is influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way. There are two scenarios that seem to me most fraught:

(1) Regarding the person posting to ARS: Cases where someone posts about a discussion to ARS just to turn the tide of an AfD. Maybe the person has added sources themselves and thinks it should be kept, maybe they think the people !voting delete are wrong, maybe they just like it, etc. Regardless of the reason, the function is to influence the outcome by attracting people who will agree with you (or, at minimum, certainly won't disagree with you). Is ARS exempted from this kind of canvassing? Is there some way that it is not canvassing? Is it sufficient to issue a catch-all "no, I want them to improve the article, and it's not my fault if they just show up to !vote keep"?

(2) Regarding those responding to posts at ARS: The more complicated one, and complementary to the first scenario. Given that the audience at ARS are people who are likely to !vote keep and will almost never !vote delete, if you learn of a discussion through ARS without the crucial step of finding additional sources or improving the article, and just show up to !vote keep, that would be considered canvassing on basically any other forum on Wikipedia where people are likely to !vote a particular way. Am I wrong? Maybe an easy provision to avoid the problematic responses would just be to make explicit somewhere that if you learn of a discussion through ARS (and we'll take you on good faith as to whether you did or not), you should only act on it if you're going to participate in the rescue beyond !voting keep.

What am I missing? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:05, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I try to improve articles to the extent I can. I can't make sources up.

Sometimes I vote. Sometimes I don't.

Posting on ARS invites others (sometimes with better access to relevant sources than I me) to help improve the article. I've seen it happen. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And sometimes they put the sources into the AFD discussion (See

WP:Before

), but don't bother putting them into the article. I wish they would follow through. But I can't control how editors (they are a cantankerous herd of cats) choose to respond.

In some respects, the

Voter Identification laws

. Clearly not neutral; clearly set up to disadvantage those who want to keep an article.

If we are going to condition participation in AFD discussions, what rules should be imposed on those who seek deletion?

WP:Sauce. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 21:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

This is all well and good indeed, but when it's about finding sources and putting them in the AfD and/or in the article, that's uncontroversial. Where I'm unclear is about those cases when people don't bother with the sources/improvement and instead just !vote keep. It seems often that it's a matter of dispute whether the sources are sufficient to keep, or when someone feels strongly that an article should be kept due to sourcing that's been found, and ARS is a venue where one is most likely to find people to fall on the keep side of those disputes (i.e. cases when posting to ARS isn't about improving the article or improving sourcing, but about supporting the idea that the sourcing is good enough). Regarding rules about those who seek deletion, I'm having trouble thinking of an equivalent on the "other side". Feel free to suggest something? We should impose the same canvassing rules on everyone. The question here is about the extent to which there should be an exception to those rules. There's obviously broad support for advertising articles to people with subject-based interests, but there's no other venue where the common interest is a particular outcome independent of subject. There is no deletion equivalent to ARS (nor should there be). Outside of ARS, everyone follows the same rules for canvassing, and if there's a venue where that's not true, I'd appreciate learning of it so I can make the same arguments there. We do have the language of the deletion policy and

WP:BEFORE, in terms of conditions put on those seeking deletion, but this is all about canvassing, and I don't think there's an equivalent worth talking about. — Rhododendrites ^talk

\\ 21:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

ARS posts should be worded neutrally, and if they aren't that should be fixed. Usually IME they are. There is nothign stopping a person who tends to favor deletion from reading the ARS lists, going to the AfD pages, and posting in favor of deletion. Therefore, i don't see ARS posts as canvassing at all. They are either calls to help find and add sources to an article, or to evaluate the sources already there and give an opinion on whether they are sufficient. Both are perfectly acceptable. A call to "vote keep on XYZ, you don't need to know why" would be improper, but I trust ARS isn't doing anything of that sort. Any specific person doing that can and should be warned and eventually sanctioned. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 21:44, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

ARS posts should be worded neutrally, and if they aren't that should be fixed. How do you propose one goes about doing that? The wagon circling prevents any attempt to fix that. I think the problem here is that the ARS group refuses to take onboard any criticism. The concept in and of itself is not problematic. It's the way this particular group operates that has become the issue. jps (talk) 21:50, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose – I periodically check in on the article rescue squadron, and I'm consistently impressed by the good work they do improving articles. I've popped into a number of deletion discussions where the article has greatly expanded since the discussion began. Clearly a positive to Wikipedia and not seeing any diffs to prove otherwise.Patiodweller (talk) 22:25, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Concerns have been raised in the past to no avail. Several recent dicussions [13] [14] (a proposal to amend the project "guidelines" and a concern about inappropriately-worded entries) show project members unwilling to accept or address valid concerns about their own conduct. Even in this discussion, language alluding to "attacks on the project" and something about wolves and sheep show a battleground mentality among participants. –dlthewave ☎ 22:55, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

• Needs more evidence, oppose till then - for what is a fairly aggressive argument, which would also have to be coupled with significant accusations at a number of users of canvassing (at best, unintentional poor canvassing) I need a significant amount of evidence for this. A review of the last 10-20 AfDs where at least one active ARS editor was involved: did the threatened article get improved, or did a number of editors get summoned, drop keep (!(?))votes and leave? Evidence requirements have not been met by those advocating change. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I think asking editors to always contribute to an article when commenting to keep an article if they learned about the discussion via the rescue squad is essentially a disincentive for people to use the rescue squad's resources. While I'm sure some of those calling for its disbandment wouldn't mind, I don't think is fair to the squad to allow it to continue yet constrain it in that way. Personally I think since the decision to delete or keep should be made based on the suitability of any uncovered sources, or the potential of there being sources not yet found, the question of who brought forth the evidence is in theory of a lesser concern. This is where in the past I'd talk about English Wikipedia discussions being straw polls in reality, but knowing some people will pull out examples where this didn't happen, I'll just say that many discussion closures are influenced by numbers. We need to have more closures not worry as much about numbers and be based on the sources. isaacl (talk) 00:36, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment I like the idea of a group of editors bringing scrutiny to deletion discussions that are slipping under the radar. I've seen a bunch of deletion discussions where there are only about two delete !votes, so if those two people have an agenda (and they sometimes do) then there's a problem. I like the idea of a noticeboard specifically for that situation. I won't cast a !vote here because I can't speak to whether ARS is serving that function, or if it's just a place to go when you feel like The Cabal has it in for you. But I like the idea, and think the idea is useful. ApLundell (talk) 01:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Huh. I see that on the talk page, there's two discussions about whether or not it's ok to ignore the anti-canvassing rules and have non-neutral posts on their noticeboard, and they've apparently come to the conclusion that it's fine. Lovely. Perhaps instead of deleting a potentially useful noticeboard, individual users could be TBANed? ApLundell (talk) 02:27, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose partly due to
  WP:Forumshop. It seems a little silly to be discussing this just days after the ARS page was unanimously kept during a miscellany for deletion discussion. I do disagree that ARS members engage in canvassing, but this isn't really even the time to talk about it. This was already dealt with in detail during the deletion discussion a few days ago, and we ought to wait at least another year for consensus to potentially change before we re-litigate this. Worldlywise (talk
  ) 04:55, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how that argument makes sense. Not only did that MFD see hardly anything discussed in detail, but deleting the "Rescue List" and shutting down the project are different issues. Several editors have historically opposed deletion of the RL on procedural grounds that the project would need to be formally shut down first ("putting the cart before the horse", so to speak), so having this discussion now makes perfect sense. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support
  1. The XfD was ruled not to be the correct forum. It was closed, not as "Keep", but as the wrong place.
  2. I recall only one instance where ARS involvement ended up in improvement of the article, and many where ARS involvement lead to a "Keep" result in spite of no actual arguments against deletion. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:06, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Deleting ARS seems like something that should be listed at PEREN. I personably disagree with some of their stated goals, but there is no harm of the project as given as long as they are engaging in the "R" part of their name, rescuing articles from deletion. What normally becomes the problem is specific editor behavior, which generally includes canvassing to try to get !votes at the AFD, rather than actually working on the article to improve it. Certainly not all members of ARS do that, so you target the bad applies, not the entire barrel here. --Masem (t) 07:34, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

How does one target the bad apples when it looks like there are now at least four who seem to act in consort? The adage is, after all, one bad apple spoils the bunch. What do you suggest? Some sort of omnibus WP:AN thread? A WP:RfC at WP:ARS? A request for arbitration? There doesn't seem to be precedent for dealing with an entrenched group like this who produces evidence in this very section about how they coordinate attacks on their enemies. jps (talk) 11:03, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

You collect evidence that show the select few routinely using CANVASSing and gaming the system, and present that as ANI or the like to seek action. I would have to search but I'm pretty sure that ARS has been warned broadly about CANVAS but even if not , that's a PAG that all WP editors should be aware of. --Masem (t) 15:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment It seems like there is a problem with certain members ignoring the project's code of conduct and the instructions listed at the top of Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron – Rescue list, not the project as a whole. Since those editors have been ignoring efforts to actually enforce those guidelines (per dlthewave's comments above), it seems like it's more time for an ArbCom case to be opened against those editors than yet another easily canvassed community discussion. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 14:58, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I don't know much about the ARS but I think the OP's attack is at best the pot calling the kettle black. The OP seems to be a strong supporter of
  Dmcq (talk
  ) 15:12, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Indeed. In the AfD in question, there were about 13 FTN regulars who came to that discussion and voted as a block. This made a big difference to the outcome and that's why the page was deleted this time rather than being kept, as it had been many times before. The AfD was planned and coordinated at FTN where the nominator admitted that "I should have added a mention that I had left an announcement on this noticeboard at the AFD". FTN exhibits the behaviour which
  sauce! Andrew D. (talk
  ) 16:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Why not just take the contested article to
  WP:DRV for a second closer's opinion? - Knowledgekid87 (talk
  ) 16:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• This discussion is still ongoing and it seems best to do one thing at a time, rather than shopping the issue to numerous forums as the OP has done. See also the discussion below where false claims are made that the ARS makes frivolous appeals at DRV. We don't do that. Andrew D. (talk) 13:06, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Question @Lightburst: et. al.: can you tell me what an inappropriate notice would be for ARS? I think the notice that set off this discussion was clearly inappropriate, and I still can't quite wrap my head around why there was so much resistance to just rewording it. It sounds like many ARS regulars would like it if the project had more contributors, but hostile comments like this one are the sorts of things that make people want to steer clear of a project. I don't understand why participants in the project wouldn't want to be more accommodating. Nblund ^talk 19:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• The general rule on such pages is that you don't mess with other editors' comments and formal nominations. Per
  WP:TPOC, "The basic rule ... is to not edit or delete others' posts without their permission. Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning..." This is necessary so that we don't have chaos in which it is not clear who said what. For example, Nblund created the AfD nomination in question. I considered their nomination to be biased, disruptive and erroneous, misrepresenting the facts of the matter and our policies and restarting a discussion which had been had numerous times before without any new evidence. But I didn't try to alter, amend or suppress Nblund's nomination because that would be out of order. Instead, I started my own entry in which I responded to the nomination – point and counterpoint. That's the way we do things and the same applies to ARS entries. They are not meant to be extended discussions but if you have some point to make, you can append it as an indented observation. But you don't get to change the OP's initial entry, especially if you're involved as a rival nominator. This is elementary wikiquette. Andrew D. (talk
  ) 21:52, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose disbanding, support renaming or otherwise addressing problems. Almost everyone seems to agree with an "Article Rescue Squadron" in principle; some disagree with the way ARS operates in practice, and some of those editors think disbanding ARS is the only solution. The question, it seems to me, isn't "Should we have an ARS?" but rather "Is ARS being disruptive?". I personally don't think so, but here are two examples of something I think is a problem:
  • Gage Creed was nominated for AfD. It ended up at DRV and the DRV close said ... it will be in order for any editor to begin a fresh AfD about this Stephen King character at any time, including immediately after this close ... as an alternative to re-running the whole process, editors may wish to consider discussing the possible merge/redirect targets on the talk page and reaching a consensus there (maybe proceeding to RfC if that discussion stalls or becomes entrenched). So I started a merge proposal at Talk:Pet Sematary#Gage Creed merge proposal. Here's how some oppose !voters commented at the merge discussion:
    • This is like a Stephen King story: the discussion that will not die and keeps resurrecting to enthrall and torment its victims. It's time to put it to sleep – "no fair, no fair, no fair..." ... The key policy here is WP:NOTPAPER and we're proving it by starting numerous additional pages for these discussions.
    • ... this nomination is a blatant failure of WP:DELAFD, WP:PRESERVE and WP:JDL. This is the second time after an AfD that this article has been nominated to try and achieve a new outcome. It’s just ridiculous at this point. It’s obvious the article needs improvement. So rather than constantly trying to delete the article in hopes of a new result, might I suggest assisting in bettering the article?
    • ... That you couldn't get the article deleted (twice) within the last two weeks should govern the outcome here.
  • Tantive IV's AfD was closed with the closer writing The result was no consensus. That is, no consensus between merge and keep. Nobody agrees with deletion. Whether this content should be merged is perhaps better further explored on the article talk page than in an IVth nomination. Piotrus started the merge discussion at Talk:Tantive IV#Notability and merge. Here is how some oppose !voters commented at the merge discussion:
    • That discussion established that there was no consensus for merger let alone deletion of anything. WP:FICTION is an essay which also lacks consensus. Persisting with this is disruptive per WP:FORUMSHOP; WP:DELAFD; WP:STICK, &c. The nominator appears to be here to promote the interests of Wookiepedia – a commercial website which exists to sell advertising and make profits for its shareholders.
    • We've already been through this in the AFD, no sense repeating it here. There is no consensus to delete/merge this article.
    • Please refer to the AFD. There is not a consensus.
    • New forum, new form; old story. Old wine in new bottles. Same result.
  • In both cases, ARS members !voted keep in the AfDs, the AfDs closed with no consensus, with the closers explicitly suggesting a merge discussion, a merge discussion is started, and basically the same ARS members show up at the merge discussion accusing the nominators of being disruptive for starting the merge discussion. In my opinion, making an unfounded accusation of disruption, is itself disruptive.
  • Still, I don't think disbanding ARS is the answer. I think one of the problems is in the name and the mindset. If you're "rescuing" an article, who are you rescuing it from? The evil AfD nominator? That, right there, begins the
    battleground mentality. When you say your mission is to rescue the articles that are falling through the cracks at AfD, you're presupposing that AfD !voters basically can't be trusted to determine which articles should be deleted, and so they need the watchful supervision of ARS. Again, it's a premise that leads to battleground mentality. So I would rename it to the "Article Improvement Squad", and keep in mind that, sometimes, improving the encyclopedia means deleting an article. Sometimes, it means merging two articles. Sometimes, it means finding more sources and expanding an existing article. All of those methods (and more) can improve the encyclopedia, and the point of AfD and merger and other such discussions isn't to "rescue" or save an article from evil or incompetent deletionists, but rather to get together and discuss how to best improve the encyclopedia. It seems too often that too many ARS members show up to discussions ready to do battle, quick to sling accusations of disruption and ALLCAPSPOLICY violations, etc. I hope they'll consider a change in mentality and approach, because at bottom, like others, I think the principle is a great (and necessary) cause, even if the way it's practiced could use some rescue improvement. – Levivich
    19:59, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• There's already a separate Articles for Improvement project – see
  WP:AFI. I get the impression that it is fizzling out as it hasn't had a nomination since August. That's probably because one of its main coordinators – Northamerica1000 – has been busy trying to rescue lots of portals, instead. Why is he having to do that? It's because yet another set of "improvers" are trying hard to delete them all... Andrew D. (talk
  ) 00:17, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  Nobody is trying to delete all portals. Characterizing a group of editors that way is just casting aspersions and "othering". More battleground mentality. – Levivich 07:10, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• There was a recent proposal to delete portal space right here at the Village Pump – see
  WP:ENDPORTALS – which specifically stated that "This would include the deletion of all portal pages". Levivich didn't attend the first proposal; presumably because they only started editing in 2018. In the second recent proposal, Levivich's position was that "I support deleting almost all portals, too...". Q.E.D. Andrew D. (talk
  ) 09:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The above is yet more flagrant and deliberate misrepresentation by Andrew Davidson. The quote provided includes no diff, as he clearly hopes no one will click the archive link he provides and Ctrl+F the quote. The actual diff is here, and expresses support for a proposal to delete most portals (original proposal here: These eight mainpage-linked portals [...] should be kept). Levivich even explicitly distinguished between what he supported and what Andrew misquotes him as supporting in the exact same comment, saying he supported removing the portal namespace, which actually isn't the same thing as deleting all portals. Note also Andrew's repeatedly putting words in my mouth and accusing me of lying a bit further down this page.[15][16] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:20, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The main point here is that the fuss about portals seems to have distracted Northamerica1000 from

Articles for Improvement. There is now a large crowd assembling at arbcom but I find that NA1000 is mostly on leave now for the rest of the month. Hijiri88 is indisposed for a week too and so this should be a general cue to adjourn for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, &c. Andrew D. (talk

) 18:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose Many WikiProjects fall short of their goals and ideals. So does this entire encyclopedia. I can think of egregious examples of ARS involvement (e.g. [17] springs to mind), but I can also think of examples of articles I have personally rescued at AfD that probably should have been deleted (e.g. Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra, as if Milwaukee wasn't bad enough without adding a herd of mandolins). Yes, members have provably engaged in conflict and poor behavior. They have also been blocked and warned, just like other editors who engage in conflict and poor behavior. Of course it would be great if editors could just, you know, improve articles and convince AfD participants that way. Improvement without aggression would be more pleasant for other editors, certainly. But not everyone is capable of improving articles in that way, and some editors need more reinforcement from others as they do their work. In short, while some ARS activities may offer good reasons to laugh and say "Ok boomer", that's true of a lot of Wikipedia editing, and it's not enough reason to shut down a well-intentioned WikiProject. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 00:40, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@

whinging about "deletionists" (see here for the most recent example -- four ARS members show up to an MFD, not of an article to be rescued but of an attack page, and manage to warp an unambiguous consensus for deletion into "no consensus", simply because they don't like the editor the page was attacking) and preventing each other from being "blocked and warned". Ctrl+F this discussion for not supported by evidence and More false claims, two deliberately misleading and inflammatory statements that the editor who made them has refused to retract, and then check the last time that editor was blocked -- six years ago. Hijiri 88 (聖やや

) 01:16, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Since you pinged me: I think that MfD is a bit petty, particularly given that one of the !voting editors was previously the recipient of generosity from admins who blocked their AfD socks and warned them about socking but didn't file an SPI. I also think that your ability to contribute with specialized language and cultural knowledge is important to the project, and that the encyclopedia will survive even if Randy in Boise gets his way sometimes. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 04:10, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

...not if Randy in Boise follows to constructive editors around constantly and makes editing the encyclopedia miserable for them. I see no reason to believe the same thing won't happen (hasn't happened?) to everyone else who gets the Big Four angry. Yeah, I change careers shortly after my first interaction with ARS and so was busy in real life for like a year (then got a new and better but busier job), but the only two editors who ever temporarily forced me off the project before 2018 were this stalker and [[Special:Contributions/WPPilot|this litigious problem] -- I'm not saying any one of the Big Four as as bad as JoshuSasori or WPPilot by themselves, but it's still shocking to me that all of them have avoided being site-banned thus far. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• I don't find any records of Deep voice privilege being placed in the Article Rescue Squadron's rescue list. [18] [19] [20]. So the "egregious example of ARS involvement" that springs to your mind is alas incorrect. Dream Focus 01:48, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  Probably a consequence of me thinking that ARS members participating at AfD to rescue articles is ARS involvement. I can see why you'd want to say it isn't, though. Indignant Flamingo (talk) 02:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  Just because a single ARS member shows up doesn't mean it has anything to do with the Wikiproject at all. Dream Focus 02:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

ARS - Thinking outside the box

If the problem isn’t the goal of ARS, but how it functions... then perhaps we need to change how it functions. Here is an idea: When an article is up for deletion, and an ARS member feels that there is potential for “rescuing” it...

1. the rescue squad issues an “ADOPTED” notification (NOT a “keep” or “delete” !vote) at the AFD stating that they think it can be brought up to standard.
2. the AFD is closed with “ADOPTED” (NOT “keep” or “delete”)
3. the “rescue squad” will then have a set amount of time to improve the article.
4. at the end of the time allotted, if there has been improvement, great... but if there has been no improvement, a second AFD discussion can be held, and closers will be told to give that lack of improvement negative weight in determining whether keep or delete.

I think this (or something like this) would preserve the positive goal of ARS, while also making ARS accountable for performing its positive function as well. Blueboar (talk) 00:01, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose as wrongheaded. Deletion is not clean up; either a topic is notable or it is not. No amount of cleanup can make something pass the
  WP:GNG so unless the idea is to give the ARS more time to find sources (which is what anyone should be doing during an AfD) this isn't going to fix anything. Wug·a·po·des
  ​ 00:33, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Meh... clean up can help demonstrate that an article topic meets GNG. You have to find sources... AND add them to the article with some context (to show that they are relevant). Blueboar (talk) 00:41, 20 November 2019 (UTC)Blueboar (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:N Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article. If the subject has not been covered outside of Wikipedia, no amount of improvements to the Wikipedia content will suddenly make the subject notable. Conversely, if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability. Wug·a·po·des

​ 00:43, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose proposal, but support the meaning behind it. AfDs should not be used as cleanup, but if a cleanup happens because ARS comes in with decent sources during the AfD and saves it, then WP is better for it. I think pausing the AfD itself is counterproductive as there is already a deadline by simply having an AfD in the first place. Add the sources to the discussion to support GNG, then add them to the article if the consensus is they make the topic meet GNG (or an SNG if applicable). I feel that there will be more
  WP:EFFORT-based Keeps even if the sources and content added to the article don't meet GNG. (This comment after a deletion comes to mind, which led to this deletion review. Maybe a limited occurrence, but it was based off an AfD where no extra sources were added by Keep !voters at the time.) Yosemiter (talk
  ) 02:29, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Note that that AFD was not tagged for Rescue, just one regular editor in the ARS happened to go there on his own and didn't tag it asking for help. I don't recognize the names of the others who said it should be kept. So this has nothing to do with the ARS. Dream Focus 02:36, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Never said it was tagged. I am also not opposed to ARS. Just pointing out something that I have seen in general when it comes to claims of

  WP:EFFORT and it is just the most recent one like that. Yosemiter (talk

  ) 02:40, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• @
  WP:EFFORT is the height of hyperbole other sources also exist. Waco Tribune Herald, Dallas Morning News, Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year, Red Cup News, NBC Sports Lightburst (talk
  ) 04:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support This proposal would force the ARS to put their money where their mouth is. A lot of the "oppose" !votes above are based on the assumption that ARS does good work rescuing articles by improving them, but I am not seeing it on anything approaching the rate at which they show up and disrupt otherwise civil AFD discussions with personal attacks and aspersions against the nominators (and other random parties) and bogus "I found all these GBooks hits and I assume they include significant coverage, hence notable" !votes. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:12, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

In particular, points 3 and 4 would prevent frivolous shit-posting about any AFD (nominator) that this or that ARS member doesn't like, by saying that the more articles that are "adopted" the more work ARS members actually have to do and discouraging the listing of articles that have no chance. They would also help prevent cases where articles that should have no chance are kept by default because a few ARS !votes swung a consensus to delete over to "no consensus". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:07, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support something that might make ARS productive. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:58, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Anyone can post they need more time and ask the AFD to be relisted. You can also ask for an article to be moved to draft space to work on. So this is a rather pointless thing and not really enforceable anyway. Dream Focus 09:18, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose This sounds like the
  userfication and that's useful in cases where the history is important. The trouble with all these ideas is that creating content is hard work and most editors would rather goof off to discussion pages like this where they can pontificate at length without the inconvenient requirement for citations to support their opinions. Andrew D. (talk
  ) 10:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose the sheer rate at which AfDs are placed makes this unworkable. Today by 9am central time there are already there are 56 articles nominated for deletion and 101 were listed yesterday. The ARS chooses maybe one article from those 157 articles. We can evaluate the references and article quality, or add references, or determine of they exist. In regard to the chart SportingFlyer made, I thank him for doing so. In my opinion it does not highlight any issues. Certainly no mass canvassing efforts. In addition I have asked the
  Air Canada Flight 018 Stowaway Incident It was a major overhaul which anyone can see...and a Keep at AfD. Sportingflyer appealed and got the close overturned and had the article relisted for more AfD time only to get another strong keep. (this was wasted community time)...and he is still grinding about it? We do our best here. We might save 5-10 articles out of 500. We are building an encyclopedia. Lightburst (talk
  ) 15:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

SportingFlyer T·C 11:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW,

WP:Before was ignored by the nominator.7&6=thirteen (☎

) 13:47, 20 November 2019 (UTC) (modified 13:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC))

(edit conflict) The above is fairly typical of Thirteen's misrepresentation, apparently the result of either (a) an attempt to game the system by clouding the discussion or (b) severe competence issues. Anyone can look at the discussion and see it closed as "No consensus", not as "Keep". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:50, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, nothing in Andrew's AFD comment indicated he had done any research -- he did the same thing he always does, which is copy-paste a bunch of titles from a GBooks search, with no effort to find out what was in those books that could be used to build an article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:52, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:Before is MANDATORY, not discretionary or optional. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 14:03, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is not strictly mandatory. This has been discussed several times in the past. See, for instance, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Archive_88#Is_WP:BEFORE_obligatory? and Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion/Archive_71#Give WP:BEFORE some teeth. Consensus has been that it's good practice but not obligatory, and the reason is that it is frequently used, not to improve the quality of AfDs, but to heap abuse and contempt on the heads of nominators. Reyk _YO! 14:08, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

If you choose to engage in bad practice, it ill behooves you to complain when someone points out that fact. This is a matter of fact, not "abuse." 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing that

WP:BEFORE is not mandatory. Reyk _YO!

14:12, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I was going to stay out of this as I would prefer people comment on the table above, but a quick look at the DRV log here shows the continued discussion was specifically endorsed by the DRV closer. SportingFlyer T·C 14:18, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is good practice and the preferred modus operandi. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 15:02, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@

Standard (unit) (AfD) (diff) which KEEP results were resolved while you were working on the list. It seems more consistent if you add the notes. StrayBolt (talk

) 23:49, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment
  WP:KETTLE This is what actual canvasing looks like. Here the OP and other editors discuss the article which started this whole drama. One editor claims I couldn't find any past AfDs on this, so I went ahead and opened a deletion discussion for the page. FYI there were seven previous AfDs on this article. Perhaps count how many editors participating there subsequently came to sink the AfD. Compare that with the ARS efforts. I posted the article which brought very few participants, but also brought the three editors who routinely vote delete on many ARS posts. Lightburst (talk
  ) 16:17, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  The main purpose of ARS is to keep articles. The fringe theory noticeboard has no such common goal for articles and you'll see votes in both directions (coming here from that noticeboard because someone linked to this discussion). --mfb (talk) 16:24, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• I knew nobody would be bothered to count so I did. I Matched the participants on that fringe theory discussion to the AfD.

Every participant on the Fringe theories/Noticeboard. 12 participants, 9 delete !votes, 1 keep and 2 abstain.

• Hob Gadling Delete
• Alexbrn Delete and Salt
• Littleolive Delete
• mikeu Delete
• Nblund Delete
• Agricolae Delete
• ApLundell Delete
• Dmcq Keep
• XOR'easter Delete
• Guy Macon No participation on the AfD
• jps Delete
• Roxy, the dog. Esq. No Participation on the AfD

This clearly looks like a canvass based on the likeminded editors called to the AfD.

From the ARS list I count four editors !voting keep and 2 !voting delete. Lightburst (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

You forgot my delete comment, but most people were in favor of deletion independent of where they came from. I count 36 to 14 at the AfD, so if we exclude people who are active on the fringe theory noticeboard that still leaves 26 to 13. You need to find the opposite case. A majority wants to keep it but a small group largely argues in a different direction. --mfb (talk) 00:55, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. As presented, this list just shows that some

talk

) 04:17, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Also correlation ≠ causation. I was led to the AfD in question not by FT/N but when it popped up on the that other notorious canvas board, Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Science. Unsurprisingly, many of those who follow DS/S also know a bad article when they see one. Agricolae (talk) 05:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Causation is more often than not literally impossible to prove, so we rely on the next best option, correlation, which is still very useful for understanding phenomenon particularly when the pattern holds over time. -- GreenC 07:25, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Like

talk

) 17:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

How does a list of !votes on one AfD represent a pattern holding over time? My !vote on this particular AfD is in no way best explained by the fact that after I !voted I then made a comment on FT/N, particularly given my voting record on other AfDs, the vast majority of which have been neither preceded nor followed by any interaction with FT/N whatsoever. I struggle to recall more than one instance over the past years in which I !voted on an AfD I first became aware of via FT/N, so my !vote over this single AfD is not really indicative of much of anything, let alone correlating with a pattern that holds over time. Agricolae (talk) 19:01, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

fwiw --mikeu ^talk 11:14, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• I don't think that discussion should have relevance here as it involves one disputed AfD among lots of others that closed without incident. As I stated above, the process works by strength of arguments and not by votes. The ARS in that case failed to convince the closing admin with their arguments. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• To your point about strength of arguments...the word Bullshit is used over and over. Other arguments, crank, crackpot etc. Lightburst (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• I can't say it works all the time like it is supposed to and that is a reason why we have
  WP:CANVASSING. This is a behavior issue that really should be addressed somewhere else if you are looking for resolution. - Knowledgekid87 (talk
  ) 18:08, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Understood. I am going to excuse myself, I am not doing any encyclopedia building in here. Lightburst (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• I wouldn't say that as your points are valid regarding the ARS being kept. Discussions sometimes go off track in general for a lot of editors so I wouldn't worry about it. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 18:13, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• So it was clearly not my intent to have the evidence table just randomly edited by ARS members - I was specifically looking for administrators to independently check to see if the deleted articles were
  WP:HEY as a result of the ARS. However Lightburst went ahead and added their own commentary to the table. Since the purpose of the table was to help users coming to the topic look at the data and try to draw conclusions for themselves based on the data, the fact the table is now presenting one side of the argument is concerning. I've segregated their responses off into another column as opposed to deleting the responses entirely in order to avoid a conflict. SportingFlyer T·C
  05:15, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

So, you have a theory (ARS is HEY), you can't prove it exactly, but hint that it exists and try to rope in an admin to go along with you on it. Meanwhile you make a table with a "comment" section containing errors of omission, personal opinions and biases - and when someone tries to correct it you call them out for being biased, ironically. Stick with mathematical measurements and percentages and leave your opinions out of it, otherwise your not presenting data but an argument for a position. -- GreenC 07:25, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

That seems awfully close to

WP:ASPERSIONS. Several users above wanted evidence, so I provided the last 20 ARS in tabular form, and as neutrally as possible, calling out my own biases in the process. I did not try to "rope any administrators in" but instead requested any interested administrators to look at the history of deleted articles, as I cannot do so. I would love if you called out any errors of admission or opinions/biases not presented in the table. I do not think it is a stretch to segregate the comments added by a noted member of the ARS project from someone trying to present the information neutrally. For instance, on the Gage Creed AfD, only one ARS member contributed to the nomination during the time in which it was nominated, not three (though some have contributed post-AfD.) SportingFlyer T·C

08:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• @SportingFlyer:. I did not expect criticism for doing exactly as you asked regarding the chart. I cannot view deleted articles, so no notes on those - feel free to update or add to this table. I went through each AfD and the articles that and updated the chart because I thought you were requesting that. I see you separated out my comments - perhaps in hopes of diminishing them. However you are welcome to fact check. Sometimes members only post the reliable sources they find in the AfD so while it is factually accurate to say "no improvement during the AfD" it leaves the impression that a member just cast a lazy !vote, and that is not the case. I do not think that was your intent. carry on. Lightburst (talk) 14:22, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Oh my. I see you changed the chart headings as well, to make it look like I was posting in a spot meant for administrators to update your notes section. Tsk Tsk SportingFlyer. ...the record persists. Lightburst (talk) 16:14, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Perhaps someone can hat all of the ARS-unrelated discussion here? Back to the table, it doesn't make sense to base any decision on the most recent cases, during a time of heightened scrutiny (there have been some discussions extending before this thread opened). Any evaluation should really be based on a random sample over the last few years. Maybe the first/last X number from each of the most recent archives. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 19:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

  Click the archives on the side of the current list. Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_–_Rescue_list/Archive_18 you can click on the red links and see how many times one person posted there, even a regular member like myself or Andrew, and no one else showed up to say KEEP. No one goes unless they believe it should be kept. Nothing changes, its always like that. Cherry picking for random examples won't really prove anything. Dream Focus 20:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

  @Dream Focus: but that's the part I don't understand. If ARS's canvassing is so spectacularly unsuccessful, why don't you stop it? By stop it, I don't mean stop leaving notices. I mean stop leaving non neutral notices i.e. do stuff the way the rest of the encyclopaedia works. As I've said elsewhere there may be some concerns that will always arise given the nature of ARS. And maybe you aren't intentionally trying to canvass. But you give the impression by persistently refusing to require neutral notices and I still have no idea why. By following the norms we allow follow elsewhere, you will significantly reduce the concerns about ARS, while making your work no harder. In fact it may be easier since editors will be less concerned about what goes in ARS so may be more willing to join. Nil Einne (talk) 13:39, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

  LOL Take a look at

  WP:RSN for example, people there notify sources with heading of "Holy shitballs", the "fuck no" list, "comedy gold" and various other "neutral" opinions about why entire domains should be deleted from Wikipedia. Find any board where deletion discussions happen and you will find behavior that is pushy, uncivil ("don't need your shitty sources at all"), opinionated, biased, and insular among a core group of like-minded people. We all aspire to be be better, and ARS imo does way better than most deletion boards. The deletionists are way more numerous, powerful and problematic than the 1% of AfD articles ARS gets involved with. -- GreenC

  14:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions, see [21] above, I think they could have applicability in another noticeboard.

Dmcq (talk

) 16:22, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Comment Really, User:Jayron32. Thanks for changing your vote.

However, if I come upon this from ARS and as a member, I am to have my ability to vote at AFDs limited?

But if we put similar limitations on the really problematical notice boards and their participants, e.g., Fringe theories noted above, I might think this a great idea.

In fact, we should start by proposing its deletion, so that we can then transgress to your

Modest proposal in that context. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 18:24, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

The thing is, we want people to improve articles. That is the goal of ARS. An article is not improved by overwhelming deletion discussions with votes. It is improved by editing the article to make it comply with

WP:42 and other policies/guidelines for having an article at Wikipedia. Ultimately, the vote is unimportant. What is important is 1) if an article belongs at Wikipedia, it gets to stay and 2) If an article doesn't belong at Wikipedia, it gets deleted. If an article meets minimum standards for inclusion, it should be kept even if members of the ARS don't vote. If the article doesn't meet minimum standards for inclusion, it shouldn't be kept, even if ARS members do vote. The problem is that the votes influence the discussion in ways that keep articles where the subject doesn't merit one. If instead they focused on editing the article until it becomes blatantly obvious the article shouldn't be deleted, we would all win. If there's no possible way to make it that good, then why are we trying to save it? --Jayron32

18:30, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

There is no empirical evidence to support the accusations or the conclusions.

Articles shouuld stand or fall based on their content, their sources, their potential content and their potential sources. See

WP:Before. It is not what is in the article; it is what the article may become. It is not just about the votes, but editor opinions have weight. And AFD closers need to be educated to that standard. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 18:39, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Exactly correct on the point "in the article; it is what the article may become." Which is why I would invite people to improve articles, not tank votes. --Jayron32 19:25, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

It is not just about the votes, but editor opinions have weight. And AFD closers need to be educated to that standard. Then ... maybe cut it out with the frivolous DRVs every time an AFD closer doesn't simply rely on a vote tally but actually weighs arguments according to policy? The problem with ARS is not only the canvassing (as virtually everyone who recognizes that there is a problem seems to agree) but that every time the canvassing doesn't work ARS either moans about it on their own noticeboard or opens a DRV to moan about it there. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:08, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• In the table above, it appears that only one of those cases was taken to DRV and that wasn't by an ARS member; it was by SportingFlyer, who wanted to delete the
  article in question. In that case, I didn't attend the original AfD nor did I attend the DRV. I did comment when the AfD was relisted after the DRV because the matter had been escalated with a specific request for more input. If the ARS were a canvassing club, as claimed, then why didn't I attend in the first two discussions? Hijiri88's aspersions and insinuations are not supported by evidence and the evidence that we do have contradicts them. Andrew D. (talk
  ) 10:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@

WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. This does not apply to any of the above results, as the closest one that ended in deletion was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of deaths from accidental tree failures in Australia, where it was a 5-10 majority in favour of deletion. Examples of what I am talking about are here (advertised on ARS here) and here (advertised on ARS here). Now, can you or anyone else present evidence that ARS routinely doesn't file frivolous DRVs when an AFD doesn't go their way and they think they can appeal to a !vote count as supporting a "keep" or "no consensus" result? None of the above-linked AFDs provide such evidence, and all the other first seven redlinked entries on Archive 17 that didn't have a frivolous DRV also had an overwhelming majority of delete !votes. (The closest I could find was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cities with the most high-rise buildings, with a 2-1 majority favouring deletion.) Do you want me to go through the entire list? Or are you going to retract your baseless aspersions and insinuations about me? Hijiri 88 (聖やや

) 12:19, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• More false claims. For example, the DRV for
  sauce. Andrew D. (talk
  ) 12:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Umm... I never said you specifically had been involved in either one, or that I had not? And yeah, when an admin closes an AFD against a substantial minority or majority !vote going the other way it's gonna cause hurt feelings even on the part of non-ARS editors whose !votes hadn't been tendentious auto-keeps.

Anyway, I went through the last 30 red-linked articles on the list (the currently live list, plus archives 17 and 18): 7 had had less than 2/3 majorities in favour of deletion, and of those 7, 2 (linked above) were DRVed by ARS members. (Of the other 23, I didn't count precise data, but if I recall correctly 2 had exactly 2:1 majorities in favour of deletion, and the others were all well over 70%.) Auld and Livix were followed by interrogation on the closing admins' talk pages[22][23] that insisted a close !vote-count merited a "no consensus" close (the latter even featured an explicit statement at ARS that closers should be counting !votes); that leaves 3/7 (List of deaths from accidental tree failures in Australia, Battle bag and Nikita Denise) where a less than 2/3 majority !vote ending in deletion didn't lead to some form of tendentious complaining by ARS members.

So, yeah, it seems pretty obvious that ARS supports the idea that AFDs should be about voting and not about discussion and consensus-building, since most of the time there isn't an overwhelming majority in favour of deletion and the discussion ends in deletion anyway, someone at ARS will start dogging the closing admin and/or complaining at ARS that AFD should be about counting votes.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:54, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

See also here, where every single member of ARS's "Big Four" is insisting that a no-consensus close is the same as a "consensus to keep" close (something one had already claimed at ARS) and that subsequent merge discussions should be shut down. (Note also that said Big Four also all showed up at the AFD, where they accounted for 4/6 of the "keep" !votes -- without their involvement there would have already been a clear consensus to redirect/merge.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:53, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

(responding to ping) I concur. ARS is a nice idea. The problem is the behavior of some of its members. Solution is IMHO a selective topic ban for several editors (from deprodding/voting; they could improve article and comment at AFD noting they have done so, without a right to vote). That would solve such issues. Please ping me if there is a proposal about topic bans or such, I can collect some evidence to present. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:47, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree. Such a topic ban for the chief miscreants sounds like a good way to head off future trouble.

talk

) 06:09, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@

Alexbrn: Okay, so how do you propose achieving said topic bans? I've seen multiple attempts (each) on at least three of the Big Four, all of which failed, at least in part, as a result of the other ARS members showing up and derailing the discussion... Hijiri 88 (聖やや

) 07:55, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Start a proposal on

WP:AN (after this discussion closes). Use lots and lots of diffs demonstrating the problematic actions that each useraccount has taken. Explain clearly why a topic ban for each would benefit the project. jps (talk

) 12:48, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:DROPTHESTICK, WP:OLIVEBRANCH, etc. I am giving you an opportunity to open up here. -- GreenC

14:29, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Now you're just being obnoxious. Reyk _YO! 15:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• Pickled cheese on a pizza stick! What a surreal discussion. A more realistic assessment of the ARS would likely conclude the only problem with them is there aren't enough active members. Sadly, it's too rare we find skilled editors with the heroic, resolute temperament of folk like the Colonel, Dream, 7&6=thirteen, Lightburst & GreenC. It's understandable that some AfD nominators don't like the ARS demonstrating that they've been making blatantly inaccurate statements about the articles they try to destroy. Yet there's a simple solution to that. The less cautious noms can just cease putting up articles for deletion, or at least they could start carefully complying with
  WP:Before. As for the wider problem of too few active ARS editors to block more than a fraction of the unwarranted deletion attempts, I'd suggest in the first instance restoring the {{Rescue}} template, and then approaching the various local Wikimedia to see if they'll support ARS editor recruitment events. FeydHuxtable (talk
  ) 19:42, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I think User:Lightburst here has given us a good insight into the mindset of some of the ARS afficionados. Look, I get it. The goal is to preserve what can be preserved. Laudable and admirable. And, actually, I don't mind the canvassing so much as long as it occurs in the right fashion. "Let's all get together and improve an article" is a great way to canvass. I have nothing but praise for that approach. What is problematic is the refusal to suffer fools gladly. What I cannot understand is the outright hostility to people who are also trying to improve Wikipedia but have an approach that is rather more of, "let's not put out on the internet every goddamn flight-of-fancy we've got until we're damnsure there is content that is not suffering from the problems that some content in Wikipedia suffers". Yeah, "work in progress" is fine-and-all but sometimes pulling the plug is the right thing to do or whatever.

These two groups are going to be at odds with each other, but they don't have to be at each other's throats. The only way this is going to happen is if the ARS people let others in to fix issues as they arise. Non-neutral postings, requests for work to be done before piling on, avoiding disaparaging remarks? All these seem reasonable. Yet they are met with a barrage of tu quoque, sturm und drang, carrying on. Just look at this thread. We've, for better or worse, fermented a group of half a dozen editors who are outright hostile to any criticism whatsoever. This simply does not bode well.

There must be ways for us to dislodge this problem. Because it's not going to go away just by closing no consensus and waiting for the next brush fire.

jps (talk) 12:07, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Waiting for the next brush fire... Indeed. This from the the editor who spent three days starting fires all over the project. On Wikipedia you are your record of edits and yours edits show that you enjoy fighting, bickering and causing drama. We have all basically wasted three days putting out the fires you started. I encourage you to look at your actions and see how they were unhelpful. Your actions were rightly viewed as attacks because you refused to come to discussion and instead started drama everywhere: lecturing rather than discussing. It is quite difficult to see you as helpful. Lightburst (talk) 14:48, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

WP:DROPTHESTICK, WP:OLIVEBRANCH, etc. I am giving you an opportunity to open up here. jps (talk

) 17:07, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

"The problem is that certain type of editors may not want any olive branches and such as they believe they did nothing wrong, and see it all as your fault, for attacking their righteous, pure and innocent behavior. How dare you, eh? More seriously, what I am reading here from people replying to you, after you accused them of misbhehavior, does indeed suggest that the mini-essay of mine I've linked before is relevant, sadly :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:54, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard they post messages asking their members to comment at AFDs, but don't post a message in any of those AFDs to inform anyone this has happened. Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Craig_Loehle for an example. They have an article alert list but it doesn't include this AFD or various others. Should the Wikiproject not have a proper deletion list like others do, and be required to post a notification in the AFDs they link to on their project page? Dream Focus 19:06, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support See my post above regarding just one AfD where the members were canvassed. Lightburst (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Dream focus points out a post on the Fringe theories/Noticeboard which is blatant canvassing from User:jps. jps lists an AfD and asks for comment from the likeminded participants. verbatim: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Craig Loehle Please comment. jps (talk) Here is another example of canvassing the like-minded participants of the Fringe project. Lightburst (talk) 19:20, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

And here is a discussion in which Lightburst and Dream Attack vehemently defend blatant canvassing when it's committed by Lightburst. ApLundell (talk) 01:28, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

My first comment in that discussion was "No one has the right to erase someone's message. The message seems neutral to me." That has nothing to do with this discussion, did yo mean to post it in the section above? Dream Focus 01:38, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I meant to post it exactly where I posted it. It provides context. ApLundell (talk) 01:53, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Um, you guys know that isn't a Wikiproject, right? It's just another noticeboard like
  WP:MCQ. It doesn't have members, and it isn't coordinating anything. It's just a place where anyone can post problems for discussion. Posting notices on open noticeboards is not canvassing, because these are not Wikiprojects. --Jayron32
  19:33, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Pretty clear from my above post that it is being used to canvass. See my post above Lightburst (talk) 19:36, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Is this supposed to be a
  WP:FTN is a widely watched community noticeboard. I'm not sure how you can plausibly argue that posting there is canvassing whilst posting a AFD at an inclusionist wiki-project is perfectly fine. Nblund ^talk
  19:45, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Noticeboard vs. project is arbitrary wikilawyering. The effect is the same. Noticeboards can be just as clubby as any other regularly visited forum. When those forums are active in AfDs there should be rules in place to avoid abuse. -- GreenC 20:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Nblund The noticeboard is called "fringe theory" and it is a defacto canvass since the group does not direct participants to !vote on non-fringe theory articles. In regard to the above mentioned List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming - it is clear that you canvassed the participants, and feigned ignorance about previous AfDs on the list. And then of the 12 participants involved in discussion about the AfD you posted on the fringe noticeboard - all but 3 participants came to !vote delete. It is also improper that deletion discussion was taking place on the fringe noticeboard rather than the AfD: The only member to !vote keep mentioned that fact. Might I ask that you discuss at the deletion discussion rather than reinforcing your clique mentality here. Dmcq (talk) The request of Dmcq was dismissed. Lightburst (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I didn't "feign" anything. The prior deletion discussions were under a different title. I just missed them. The accusation of canvassing is too silly to debate. You didn't really answer my question.

• Nblund apologies for the accusation about feigning ignorance. The article had another title in previous AfDs as you have said. Lightburst (talk) 21:19, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: noticeboards are dedicated to Wikipedia policies that everyone should adhere to - it's not canvassing to bring in editors who are interested in NPOV issues to an NPOV discussion, but it might be canvassing to bring in editors with a specific viewpoint. More importantly, "widely watched" noticeboards are less vulnerable to bad behavior because they're more public. At best, you're arguing that ARS and FRN are exactly the same, so then why are you insisting that posting a message at one venue is canvassing while the other is perfectly fine? Nblund ^talk 20:53, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - as Jayron has stated this is not a Wikiproject and doing something like this amounts to
  WP:DRV in place, if you question the rationale of the closing admin for said AfD then it can always be contested. - Knowledgekid87 (talk
  ) 20:24, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Comment

saboteur, for many years. And he is a deletionist by his actions and his postings. You can see his posts written above. I am not maligning him, but his presence belies both your analysis and your conclusion. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 20:31, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

The fact that you call that user a "saboteur" seems to imply that they don't share the goals of the project. I'm not arguing that posting at ARS is canvassing per se, but I'm struggling to see how anyone could say adding a notice at ARS is fine while FRN isn't.Nblund ^talk 20:48, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

It would be a fair statement that he and I are not sympatico. I would say we disagree on most everything; and we no longer interact. Of course, that is not required that we agree. He is as entitled to his opinion as I. My only point is that

WP:ARS

is open to anyone, and some of us want to build articles and keep them; and some of us don't and want to delete them. I would say our goals are in disharmony. I can't answer as to why any of this happens, but I know it exists.

You pays your money; you takes your chance. I will continue to

WP:AGF. 7&6=thirteen (☎

) 21:32, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Are there any instances where an AfD notice has been placed at
  WP:FTN that did not involve a subject that was clearly a fringe theory? BD2412 T
  20:53, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Sure. All the time. It's common for articles about practitioners of fringe science to show up on FTN. Typically once a quack realizes that Wikipedia won't function as free advertising, they try to quietly get their article deleted, so as to not scare away their suckers customers. ApLundell (talk) 01:09, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose- this is a retaliatory proposal aimed at spiting jps. We shouldn't indulge this. Reyk _YO! 21:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  Please assume good faith. I thought it was Wikiproject, but they claim its a noticeboard, but it looks the same and is basically the same as far I can tell, and Wikiprojects do all post a notice in AFDs when they list something. If a lot of people are seeing something listed somewhere and going to vote there because of it, then it should be revealed otherwise its stealth canvassing. Dream Focus 21:14, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - It is actually quite rare for an editor to leave a notice about an AfD at FT/N... the purpose of FT/N is article clean up and advice as it relates to fringe theories (assessing sources, examining UNDUE complaints, etc), and notices are an alert that an examination and clean up is needed. In other words, the notices are usually posted well BEFORE any AfD is contemplated. Yes, sometimes nomination for deletion is the end result of a notice at FT/N... but usually this is well AFTER attempts to bring the article into line with policy have taken place. In fact, I would say that most of the time, “sent to AfD” is the last comment in a long discussion about the article’s content and sources. Blueboar (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  That doesn't seem to be the case on the page now. I see plenty of cases where there is no discussion at all, just one editor posting a link to an AFD. Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#The_Holy_Quran_and_Science_Conference Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Lipid_therapy Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Deletion_discussion_and_content_issues_on_Ritual_Violence Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Craig_Loehle That's fine but you should reveal in the AFD that they were mentioned there, just like Wikiprojects do. Dream Focus 22:13, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

  I have to agree, as I can see no reason why we would treat this notice differently from a WikiProject notice. It seems like a harmless addition. BD2412 T 22:20, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose This is a bad-faith proposal by Dream Focus, whose own behavior could use some scrutiny. However, if this is discussion is closed, it should not poison the well against a more serious proposal by other users. User:@
  Dmcq: recently voiced concerns and I think he or she was considering proposing something along these lines. ApLundell (talk
  ) 22:32, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
• MISLABELED PROPOSAL: The heading says "Fringe theories Wikiproject" and mentions "members" but the actual question is about Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. At least one comment above says "I can see no reason why we would treat this notice differently from a WikiProject notice" but wikiprojects and noticeboards have quite different rules. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:37, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose notification requirement for fringe theories noticeboard or for all noticeboards. Neutral on notification requirement for any wikiproject. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:41, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support but for noticeboards in generalOppose Posting neutral AfD notices is covered by
  Dmcq (talk
  ) 00:46, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I also agree with this, and would consider it a convenience to editors who might want to know that appropriate noticeboards have been pinged without having to check them manually. BD2412 T 00:57, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Is it possible to automate this in some way? I don't see why anyone cares what those little "notes" are on the AfDs, but if it makes people happy and it doesn't require difficulty on the editor's part I doubt anyone would really mind. Seems like a technical request, perhaps. jps (talk) 01:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
      • They care because they want a procedural "gotcha" to invalidate deletion discussions. ApLundell (talk) 01:19, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
        • Yikes! Well, I'll
          assume that's not the underlying rationale. If the process were automated, then everyone wins except for those who are acting in bad faith, I guess. jps (talk
          ) 01:22, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
          • You're right, of course. ApLundell (talk) 02:01, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Grr it is any possible extended discussions on a noticeboard about an article I'd want a note for at the article page. You don't know how a discussion will end up never mind thet thy'll go off to try and AfD it. Personally I don't have a problem with neutral requests for editors to come to the talk page for an article. See the third paragraph in the introduction to

Dmcq (talk

) 01:15, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask to close the discussion then? I definitely think you are in a better place to pose it. jps (talk) 01:16, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I definitly support the idea of closing and starting from scratch with less battleground and better idea of the actual mechanics of what is really wanted. I have to go away for some hours now though and that can be an age on this noticeboard.

Dmcq (talk

) 01:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to just start the same discussion over again because some don't like me or just misread my intentions. Many would then just have to waste time repeating themselves. Dream Focus 01:38, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• No need so long as the notice is neutrally worded, it isn't canvassing to post a message to a relevant noticeboard informing users there of another discussion. —
  click me!)
  03:01, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. Posting a (neutral) notification to a noticeboard is best practice for widening consensus, and is the opposite of canvassing, per
  talk
  ) 03:54, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

  Look at Category:Wikipedia_noticeboards. This noticeboard is not like the others, it is instead like a Wikiproject. Perhaps it should be renamed as such to avoid confusion to what it really is. Dream Focus 04:09, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

  Yup, it's a noticeboard unlike (say)

  talk

  ) 04:15, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• A neutral notice at
  b
  } 09:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm vaguely puzzled that a
    talk
    ) 19:16, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

    For some reason, this feels like deja vu . (I still say a dedicated DELSORT list is the way to go, for what it's worth). –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose It is counterproductive to try to metastasize the discussion from the AfD to wherever else on Wikipedia someone happens to mention it. I would also support DELSORT. Agricolae (talk) 17:36, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: Actual wikiprojects use bots to generate lists of deletion discussions their members may be interested in. Notifications are not posted anywhere about that. A possibility may be a canvassing noticeboard for topics which attract unbalanced discussions. I don't know, but there is definitely a stack of bots going around listing everything topic related you can think of, deletion discussions, new articles, new uploads, article promotions/demotions and discussions about that, RFCs, anything. ~ R.T.G 03:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
• Idea!: Another alternative is to pull canvassing apart. Don't check if people are canvassing about discussions, but have an official canvassing body which examines, for instance, deletion discussions, canvasses all of the site areas and even editors of significant interest, such that if anyone canvassed, it wouldn't even matter! ~ R.T.G 03:35, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus for these proposals:

1. The cascade protection padlock be changed to the current color of the move protection padlock (i.e. WMF Green30).
2. The move protection padlock be reverted to its original color.
3. The color of the interface-protect padlock be changed to WMF Red30 (#b32424  ).

Cunard (talk) 10:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

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

---

Following the previous thread here on this topic, most of the padlock colors were changed to match with WMF logo colors. Most of the changes were perfectly fine, but I didn't notice until recently that because of the new changes, the padlocks for move and cascading protection look almost the same color-wise, which can be confusing. I propose that:

1. The cascade protection padlock be changed to the current color of the move protection padlock (i.e. WMF Green30)
2. The move protection padlock be reverted to its original color

—pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
• Go back to the old color per proposer. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 07:33, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Green and blue are generally unfamiliar as representing negatives like "locked" or "not allowed". Green means go doesn't it. ~ R.T.G 04:12, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to change the interface-protect lock color to a redder color

In the interest of getting all the

bike shed color proposals out of the way as soon as possible, I also propose that the color of the interface-protect padlock be changed to WMF Red30 (#b32424  ), as it's more in keeping with the historical permanent protection color of red and goes along with the spirit of the RfC mentioned above. The current color is #aa4400  . —pythoncoder (talk | contribs

) 21:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Per Yair rand's request, I have created a comparison image visible on the right. Changing the interface lock results in little-to-no visible change. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 22:22, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
• Please make sure to take colorblind users into account when selecting colors for these icons. --Yair rand (talk) 00:38, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Support colourblind support ~ R.T.G 04:12, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

• Indifferent – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 07:33, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

---

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

It's popular isn't it? When an inexperienced editor is templated, they feel like an admin has come along and told them they can't have a discussion. When experienced editors use it, nothing but trouble ensues.

Using the closed discussion template, as a tool of discussion, when a discussion has not been had, is "offensive" in every sense of the word. It equates a soft deletion of the conversation. You cannot delete anothers comments unless they are purposely offensive, advertising, blatantly disregard to the site etc.

Even snowballs should not be templated. There is no need to silence anybody who isn't being disruptive. We do not need offensive tools for discussion.

I propose:

1. A time limit on any part of any discussion before the template can be used.
2. Don't even template snowballs. Are you afraid of something? Are you okay with a battleground mentality?
3. Exempt admins from the limit to prevent disruption.
4. Create in-discussion templates, like  Done, but to signify you believe the discussion is over. In a good faith atmosphere, these templates would begin to gather weight in their visibility. When scanning a lengthy discussion, more use of in-discussion templates would help you examine and join an already lengthy discussion. Post these templates at the top of VP pages for awareness and use.
5. Placeholder for suggestions

~ R.T.G 04:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

What you can do is just continue the discussion under the closed section. Then people will see it is new and can continue discussion. An alternative is to revert the close of the discussion. However I would strongly recommend that you check out why the discussion was closed before reverting or contesting the close.

WP:BRD will apply to this process too. Graeme Bartlett (talk

) 09:53, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I understand the situation. I'm opposing it. Such use of the template is purely disruptive, and offensive in the battleground genre. It's a fairly standard suggestion, ~ R.T.G 10:27, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I think that all file movers should be given the "suppressredirect" when moving files for the following reasons:

• It is useful to instantly suppress a redirect when moving a file that shadows another file that is on Commons (
  WP:FNC#9
  )
• It is useful to suppress a redirect when moving a file under
  WP:FNC#8
• It is useful to suppress a redirect when moving a file that has a misleading name (
  WP:FNC#3
  )

It is the filemover's responsibility to make changes to the filename on articles that use a file that had its redirect suppressed to avoid any broken file links. Most of the file redirects are orphaned so it shouldn't be a problem to suppress them but it should be done only when it is required. Filemovers should not have suppressredirect for any other namespace other than the filespace if they are not an extended mover or an administrator. The suppressredirect tool should not be used for any other purpose other than the three purposes stated above. An alternative plan could be for suppressredirect to only work when the file is orphaned and to make it compulsory to leave a redirect if the file is being used. The suppressredirect tool is already available for filemovers at Commons. I don't expect this proposal to succeed but I thought it would be useful to have a discussion about this. Pkbwcgs (talk) 19:43, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Votes

• Support for the reasons stated. In the cases above, leaving a redirect behind defeats the purpose of the move, so a filemover cannot perform the task, and an admin is required. As noted, the ability is already available to file movers on Commons. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:55, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Bundle - I use suppressredirect (as a page mover) when acting move requests here: Category:Wikipedia files requiring renaming. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:05, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support per above. Could we also have a help page that clearly explains when a redirect should and should not be suppressed? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:06, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support - Part of the rationale on Commons was that Commons didn't have any page mover, and so had no user group whatsoever that has suppress redirect unbundled from the sysop toolkit. But having said that, it makes no sense that file movers should have to apply for page mover in order to suppress redirects on files, when page mover doesn't have anything to do with files. It appears to be an unintentional interaction between these two rights based on the happenstance of how we unbundled the individual bits. GMG^talk 21:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• I posted a while ago at Wikipedia talk:Page mover#File redirect suppression about the fact that, when moving a page, a note is shown that says file movers (who are also page movers) should suppress redirects by default if the file isn't heavily used. Strongly oppose until the guidance that is shown at Mediawiki:movepagetext follows the policy that the community has established; we shouldn't grant file movers this ability without making it clear when redirects should be suppressed. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:14, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
  • @DannyS712: What about Mediawiki:Movepagetext is wrong? Looking at it now it seems to say that redirect suppression should only be done according to policy. Wug·a·po·des​ 00:37, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

    @Wugapodes: the relevant part is only shown in the file namespace - use "view source" DannyS712 (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

    @

    WP:PMRC as #10 and having the MediaWiki page point to it without changing the guidance. Wug·a·po·des

    ​ 00:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

    I went ahead and added it as PMRC#10. Will probably get reverted, but the discrepancy between PMRC and MW:movepagetext will be resolved one way or another. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:20, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support It's annoying to end up creating redirects whose titles were just errors. It's clear that file movers don't always remember (or can be bothered) to ask for them to be deleted. However, it must be made very clear when to suppress redirects, as per the comment above. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:24, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Is this happening sufficiently to bother? Our FM's can just have PMover access added which includes this permission, no? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:54, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Great idea. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• @Xaosflux: (or anyone else) why are file mover and page mover separate anyway? Wug·a·po·des​ 23:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• @Wugapodes: They grew from separate batches of users that were looking to get things done, both were spin-offs from the admin toolkit. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• If it (hypothetically) takes 45 seconds for a sysop at PERM to grant page mover to a file mover (being generous), then all they need to do is save 45 seconds worth of work and it's a net positive. That's a pretty low bar. GMG^talk 23:18, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support for the reasons listed only. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:40, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
• Bundle File movers should just get all the things page movers get. Looking at Wikipedia:User_access_levels#Table I think it will give file movers the ability to move category pages, move subpages, suppress redirects, and override the title blacklist. Those all seem useful for file movers and I don't really see why these perms are separate other than as a historical artifact. Wug·a·po·des​ 00:41, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  @Wugapodes: if we want to go this way, just rename "page movers" back to "Extended Movers", give them movefile, deprecate filemover and move all the users to extendedmover. Creating duplicate user groups with the same bundle of permissions isn't a good idea. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  Or without needing any programming changes, just add all the members to eachothers groups. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:50, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  I'd prefer recreating extended mover and deprecating file mover, but I guess either would be fine. Wug·a·po·des​ 00:55, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

  "page mover" is just local branding for "extendedmover" , just FYI. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support File titles don't seem to be as controversial as article titles. As the permission already implies a level of trust, providing the additional option seems appropriate. Andrew D. (talk) 12:15, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support, I can see no great reason to keep these separate. BD2412 T 05:37, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
• Unless I'm very much mistaken, we can't do this without also granting them suppressredirect for non-files, too. At that point, bundling makes more sense. —
  Cryptic
  06:13, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support per OP and also support consolidating page mover and file mover into one rights group. - MrX 🖋 01:02, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support, but only with an increase in filemover scrutiny/vetting. This has come up before and the proposal was defeated, because the bar is much lower for filemover than for pagemover. If you make these permissions essentially equivalent (and there's no magic sauce that limits a filemover's newly-granted redirect suppression ability to only work on files), then the criteria for getting the filemover bit have to go up to match the clue and trust levels we expect of pagemovers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:08, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose This proposal is either creating doomed-to-be-left-unenforced social rules (if you try to set policy to restrict file-movers who aren't page movers from suppressing redirects from non-files), or extending the file mover user group too far outside of its intended scope (if you don't). Neutral on bundling file mover and page mover into one group. (Neutral on a hypothetical technical restriction of the right to only apply to file pages, which I don't think is possible) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:15, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended discussion

Some statistics:

• There are 297 page movers
• There are 405 file movers
• There are 75 users that are both page movers and file movers

Users:

I took a look at the debate. Shouldn't we be helping a lot more people if we put in a suicide banner? Regardless if they are wikipedians or not— Preceding unsigned comment added by New340 (talk • contribs)

New340 It would help a lot of people to put many different kinds of messages in Wikipedia articles; drug addiction help, anti-suicide messages, domestic violence help, and so on. Where do we draw the line as to what messages are appropriate for a project that is supposed to be an encyclopedia? 331dot (talk) 12:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

When it turns in don't try this at home. It will work until it starts getting unneeded, as in its obvious. Another thing, most people who visit Wikipedia don't go on the projects, they just look at the articles so it would be test of we add them.

As the person who started the original discussions and was dissatisfied with the actual solution that was implemented, although my personal views are that they should have added a Suicide Disclaimer telling those are suicidal to get help, the hatnote they have now may be the best solution for most wikipedians. If you look at the original discussion and look at

Steven Crossin

’s conclusion of the debate, this is what he says:

”I then refer to the alternate compromise proposal, to link to Suicide prevention in the hatnote, which was suggested by Doc James and supported by some of the editors that were opposed to the crisis hotline proposal, and also by editors that overall supported a change and commented in this discussion later. While this may not be a perfect solution, it has the most agreement out of all options in this discussion.“

Thus, I feel like we should not have a Version 2.0 of this discussion until a few years time when circumstances change, as if we discuss this again after the debate that literally took place just 5 months ago, nothing will come out of it. The majority of the people had already decided this. Neon 11:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)