Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 197

To the Wikipedia staff members and users. Over the 20 years that Wikipedia was in business. I noticed that you have a slogan in the main page "The Free Encyclopedia anyone can edit" I personally have issues with that Wikipedia slogan. "Anyone can edit" and here's why.

I've noticed in the news articles concerning Wikipedia vandalism being caused by visitors not logged in or sometimes even the Wikipedia users who misuse and abuse the Wikipedia articles or POV Pushers with Agendas causing trouble and article vandalism or taking advantage of the slogan "Anyone can edit"

Also the slogan "Anyone can edit" is misleading and confusing for newcomers on Wikipedia and that concerns me very much as I'm very against vandalism and misinformation on Wikipedia. And I'm worried about the Wikipedia security being vulnerable.

So, I have a proposal for the entire Wikipedia staff and users, to retire and replace the outdated slogan. Can we replace the 2000s slogan "The Free Encyclopedia anyone can edit" to a brand new slogan for the 2020s Wikipedia website? Here's my proposal slogan ideas. "The Free Encyclopedia respect in edit", "The Free Encyclopedia respect for Wikipedia", "The Free Encyclopedia members only", "The Free Encyclopedia respect for articles"

Also, in the future I think we the Wikipedia Staff and Veteran Users need to at some point stop allowing unsigned visitors to edit Wikipedia pages whenever they want because it's harder to protect the thousands of Wikipedia articles when we allow unsigned visitors to randomly edit pages, especially if they do prank articles or spam it with dangerous website link scams or attack the pages with profanity or slander or vandalism or fake information. If we make it a requirement to have Wikipedia members only. Then it would be easier to protect the Wikipedia articles and if the Wikipedia user is not following the rules and is out of control, we can block them.

Let me know what you think. I really want to see Wikipedia staff members including the CEO change their 2000s Wikipedia slogan "Anyone can edit". If the Wikipedia staff members and users have any good ideas for replacing and retiring the slogan "Anyone can edit" let me know because I'm ready to see a new slogan on Wikipedia that's up to date since "Anyone can edit" slogan is no longer considered acceptable for 2020s Wikipedia website. CrosswalkX (talk) 13:17, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The slogan is time-tested and historically important, and should stay. Please realize that "Anyone can edit" doesn't mean that anyone's edit will stick, or that an editing vandal won't get reverted and banned. It just means that anyone can edit one of Wikipedia's pages, which is 100% true. There is a vast difference between "can" and "permanent". As for IP users, there seems to be a consensus that, on a whole, IP edits have more value to the encyclopedia than not, so the slogan "Anyone can edit" would remain true until that consensus changes. Question: What do you call an IP Wikipedia user? Answer: A

Wikipedian. Randy Kryn (talk

) 13:23, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

This right here. The phrase is still 100% true and appropriate, just that editors have to be aware that anyone else can undo their edit too, particularly if it is not constructive or vandalizing. Masem (t) 15:29, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, quite. "Anyone can edit" includes other people, as well as you (I mean "you" as the person who reads the slogan, not anyone in particular).

Phil Bridger (talk

) 21:00, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

@Randy Kryn the line "anyone can edit" could reasonably be viewed to be true even if the Community moved to no IP editing (though I remain with the retain majority unless and until IP masking substantially impairs things), so long as no new limits on account creation were imposed. Although the current scale of proxy blocks (peer2peer, new apple relay etc etc) is actually a more reasonable question to if the line remains accurate Nosebagbear (talk) 11:31, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello

Niece and Nephew for 2 years and 8 months (see the talk page section at or near the bottom, quite the "how did that last so long?" long-term error), wants to fix it, but doesn't have time to leave the page, figure out how to make an account, make an account, come back to the page, and edit the error while learning how to sign in and having no intention of ever editing Wikipedia again. Just fixing the error the second they read it, without the rigamarole, makes the wording "Anyone can edit" a bit more real in practice. Randy Kryn (talk

) 13:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh I agree (if I didn't then given the benefits of individuals then having accounts, it would be an absolute no-brainer to scrap it) Nosebagbear (talk) 13:54, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Is an IP or a normal account better for avodiing being data mined? I think don't change the anyone can edit, but do fix underlying issues

I just did a trial and maybe there are some tweaks we could do.

1. The editing a page warning is intext

You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to a username, among other benefits.

2. When you save a page, there is no prompt to create an account, or the option to say don't ask me again

3. On user page

"This edit has been prevented because you attempted to edit a user page other than the one associated with your account. Please note that unregistered and newly registered editors cannot modify other editors' user pages. If you would like to contact this editor, please do so at the editor's talk page. If this is your user page, you can log in to edit it. Note: If you are an experienced user seeing this message, you might have tried to add or remove from the page, which can only be done by the user themselves or an administrator."

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 10:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

About #2: Past research indicated that if you asked people to edit an account before publishing their changes, they abandoned their edits. I don't know if research was done for a prompt after editing, but there's the additional problem that (a) your IP would already be exposed and (b) the account creation would be permanently, temporally associated with the IP edit. The more active the wiki, the smaller the problem (if lots of IPs edit today, and lots people create accounts today, then there's a chance that someone else's edit or account creation will happen in between your two logged actions), but at small wikis, which might see only a dozen actions a day, it would be very obvious that the edit made at 10:01 by an IP was associated with the account created at 10:02. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

"Past research indicated that if you asked people to edit an account before publishing their changes, they abandoned their edits." Do you remember if the account prompt was done post edit or pre-edit?

Use case with post edit and pre edit options

A/Alice (a brand new editor at IP address XYZ) selects edit for page ABCD

B/ Intext warning appears "You are not logged in. Your IP address ..."

Alternate Pre Edit/ Change the intext warning a prompt (switchable off in preferences) saying how many edits have done this at IP

C/ Alice completes their edits

D/ They select publish button

D 'Alternate Post Edit/ Choice of create account or publish.'

E/ ABCD is updated, ABCD history is updated, with editor details

E1/ If Alice chooses to create an account, then limbo for 5 minutes Wikipedia:Reviewing_pending_changes , and then it is it is published as an IP. But then the issue is contention

E2 'as above but, Contention'

Placeholder / Save to a placeholder account then update to real account in 5 minutes

Alternate Alice : Existing contention process occours after they save account, if they give up default is done

Alternate Bob Warning : "Hi Bob, Alice is creating an account to publish their edits - please wait 5"

Alternate Bob has to fix : Same as Bob Warning, but Alice has priority, existing editor Bob is reverted if there is contention

F/ Alice can not claim these IP edits later. Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

This was a pre-edit prompt. As I said, I don't know whether any research was done on post-edit prompts.

A same-as-edit prompt (which you propose) could add the account registration form into the same page (for the 2003 and 2010 wikitext editors). You could see:

• "You are not logged in. Your IP address ..."
• The editing window
• The edit summary
• A small form for registering an account (new)
• The license statement
• The big blue Publish changes button

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

This article [1] from august seems to say that "Anyone can edit" is alive and constructively kicking. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:18, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The proposed alternatives appear to be written in very poor English. While we do have great respect for edits and articles, when referring to "respect", a noun, it is necessary to use a modifier like "with". BD2412 T 16:44, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

"In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Wikipedia's famous motto, 'Anyone can edit.' But I realize, only now do I truly understand what it meant. Not everyone can become a great editor; but a great editor can come from anywhere." – Ratatouille (film), I think. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:38, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I like your slogan better. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I've always described Wikipedia to my friends as "the encyclopedia anyone can try to edit". _signed, Rosguill ^talk 20:42, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The proposed alternatives aren't better and "respect" makes absolutely no sense in this context.... But a good point is raised on its redundancy. Why do we even still need "the free encyclopedia anybody can edit"? It's not the early 2000s anymore, everybody knows what Wikipedia is and that they can edit and that's free. In some ways it cheapens the site and asserts that we're amateurish and unreliable. I would be in favour of removing the slogan entirely and simply "Wikipedia encyclopedia". When fundraisers come around, people know that they have to contribute to help keep it free.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:26, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, since the word Wikipedia is a blend of wiki and encyclopedia, isn't encyclopedia redundant too? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Thebiguglyalien, is that really a quote from the film? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:25, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

The movie is about a chef that believes "anyone can cook". I replaced the chef's name with Wikipedia and the word cook with edit. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:31, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

How about “anyone can edit, that doesn’t mean anyone SHOULD” -Remy Dronebogus (talk) 15:30, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

A dewiki contributor once wrote: "can" in "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is ambiguous: Everyone may, but not everyone is able to. Anyway, I don't see any reason to change the logo, and I think your other suggestions are quite faulty as well. The Citizendium model has already been tried, and we all know how that worked out. You're always welcome to fork if you think you've found a better way. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

As with any brief statement / slogan, it isn't perfect / all-explaining. But such is the norm for such, including very useful ones such as this one. IMO leave it as is. North8000 (talk) 00:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Short and sweet, and conveying the correct sentiment, it still works for me. I can think of nothing better. Paul August ☎ 00:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

• WP:ACPERM is a prime example how early ideology can and must be open to change. According to one Wikipedia, the introduction of registration has had a significant positive impact; anyone can still edit but like most other editable websites or ones on which comment is allowed, registration is the norm. Look at it like 'the car anyone can drive, but to be used on a public road it needs a licence plate'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk
  ) 02:36, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

• As with most brief slogans, there are implied parentheticals: "Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit (as long as they follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines)" and "Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit (as long as they do not behave like a complete jackass)". Cullen328 (talk) 02:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it assumes good faith. I agree with that. I don't think that "anyone" was ever intended to include vandals and the like. Zero^talk 12:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Just playing devil's advocate, if we were to make a change, we could shift to something along the lines of "Wikipedia: written by millions, read by billions". BD2412 T 14:41, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Weaker stance since that suggests not all readers can become editors, which is what we do want to encourage. Masem (t) 14:44, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

(ec) I like that, but I doubt it is true. Yes we have had millions of accounts created and millions of IPs used for editing. But if we could count the number of people who'd made all those edits, would we really have millions of different actual people? Maybe we would, but once you take out all the people who haven't written the current version of Wikipedia because their only edits have been reverted as vandalism, unnotable, spam or unsourced, then no, I'm pretty sure the number of people who've written at least some part of the current pedia is less than a million. ϢereSpielChequers 14:52, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

More than 10 million registered accounts have made at least one edit here at the English Wikipedia, plus IP editors. I think the slogan suggestion from @BD2412 is factually accurate as well as being a good slogan.

If we were specifically concerned about "anyone", I'd like to see something along the lines of "The encyclopedia written by the general public". I want the slogan to indicate that Wikipedia is not written by trusted experts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: I have zero doubt that the number of people who have made at least one productive edit to Wikipedia is over a million. I wonder if there is some way to confirm this, though. BD2412 T 16:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

That’s a… well, bluntly, terrible slogan that only works for enwiki, is barely even true (there’s millions of users but active, constructive editors is in like the hundreds of thousands and that’s generous) and puts popularity over content. Dronebogus (talk) 15:37, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

• Credit to User:Lowellian who first used this phrase in 2004! Archived in Wikiquote and still provocative! Bluerasberry (talk) 15:23, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

That's interesting

edit an article, or experiment in the sandbox

.

From which I take that to mean the emphasis was on articles and not necessarily the labyrinth of around 5,000 policies, guidelines, and other help pages and essays, many of which are not only redundant but also contradictory. There's almost enough in there for a degree course in Wikipedia governance. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it is fine (that is the nature of a wiki). It is also informational for readers, like caveat emptor. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The slogan is fine. Anyone can edit Wikipedia provided that they are not setting out to cause trouble.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 17:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I'll join with those who are uncomfortable with the current slogan, because it's well known not anyone can edit Wikipedia. While once the solid truth, by now it is more of a marketing slogan than the truth. But as others have pointed out, it's a better slogan than others proposed. (My best suggestion would be, "The encyclopedia everyone is invited to edit". This indicates that while we invite contributors, some would-be contributors -- due to attitude, competence, or vested interests -- may not be allowed to stay.) I doubt we will come up with a better slogan to satisfy enough of us (aka a consensus), but I hope we acknowledge there is an issue & consider how to update it & what the new wording should be. -- llywrch (talk) 23:06, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I have reservations about the slogan. I support registration as it would stop one thing that hit me as a presumed "trusted" editor. Mass range IP blocks. I was not only a victim of one I was also globally blocked. I never did get resolution (possible cell phone edit) as to why it happened so imagine a new editor?However, if we are going to continue to support IP edits then mass IP blocks should be severely limited and not permanent.

When a slogan becomes "time-tested and historically important", even if there are flaws, it cannot just be retired. It has to be replaced with something the vast majority of the community considers appropriate. Until that accepted version materialized it should remain as is. -- Otr500 (talk) 10:21, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

The idea that the statement that "anyone can edit" is "well-known" is palpably untrue. Surely all of us have encountered people who have no idea of who edits articles, and are bemused and amazed when it is explained to them that, literally, anyone can edit it. The slogan needs to stay. Not everyone can edit well, or have their edits retained, but that is another matter entirely. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:14, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

• No. Don’t change the slogan. One, and most obviously, this is a huge waste of time that can’t just be done on a whim; two, the current slogan is extremely iconic— changing it would be a marketing fiasco akin to New Coke (“Newikipedia?”); three, it’s not wrong, with the caveat that Wikipedia:Competence is required and the more obvious exception of blocked users. Dronebogus (talk) 15:34, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
• No. Don’t change the slogan per Dronebogus. Anyone can edit ... if they have a computer and an internet connection, and if they are literate and have a clue. The slogan does not say that anyone's edit will be retained. Johnuniq (talk) 02:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Cross-posting for a better visibility: in the technical section, the Web team has posted an update on the deployment of Vector 2022. We will also be having three open meetings for anyone wanting to ask questions. Thanks! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not necessary to be overly-prescriptive in Wikipedia:Do your own homework. Feel free to kindly tell commenters that article talk pages aren't for answering questions about the article's subject or related matters. isaacl (talk) 21:52, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I would be surprised if there's a lot of it. I doubt if talk page commenters would answer questions within the timeframe demanded for homework, and so completely as to satisfy tthe teacher. Surely there are better places for homework answering than WP? Wehwalt (talk) 23:19, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a template or a semi-automated message that directs people to the

reference desk would be beneficial. Thebiguglyalien (talk

) 23:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Many edits of this kind will likely blow past any and all notices, but it might help at least somewhat on particularly problematic pages. If possible I'd like to limit the notices to IPs and non-autoconfirmed, but I'm not sure whether edit notices support that selectivity. If not, edit filters might work for selective notices. Alsee (talk) 00:54, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Given the problem of banner blindness, personally I don't feel there's enough of an issue, nor enough benefit gained in having an edit notice solely to discourage editors from using article talk pages for purposes other than improving the article. isaacl (talk) 05:04, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I feel that it would be a benefit even if only a few off-topic editors were to heed the edit notice. It looks like there are some talk pages listed above with weekly problems and any reduction in problems would also mean a reduction in editors having to remove the problematic conversations. --Super Goku V (talk) 11:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Banner blindness kicks in really, really quickly. Occasional questions that are ignored are not, in my view, a problem. Do you have any examples of talk pages that are difficult to use for article improvement as a result of many posts unrelated to improving the corresponding article? Plus I don't see any evidence that an edit notice is going to deter someone who isn't able to infer from context that no one is answering questions about the article's subject on the talk page. isaacl (talk) 04:46, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

The problem to me isn't that the questions are being ignored, but that these violations also have to be removed regularly to keep the talk pages clear. Right now, the words revert or reverted appear 63 times in the last 200 edits to Talk:Mathematics. Talk:English language is worse with it appearing 160 times in the last 200 edits. It is clear that there is a problem, not just occasional incidents. Personally, we should try to avoid protecting talk pages if we can find an alternative solution. --Super Goku V (talk) 09:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I went through the last 500 edits for Talk:Mathematics and looked at all the edits that removed text (other than the archiving bot). I agree there's a significant test-edit issue on that page. Leaving aside three posts that appear to be in a foreign language that I didn't try to translate, I counted about five posts that might be problems to solve, but to be honest, given the numerous non-productive, non-sequitur edits, I assume they were just one of those and not good-faith attempts to ask a math question. Thus I don't think an edit notice will help. (I spot-checked a very small number of the reverts on Talk:English language; in that sample, they were all non-productive, non-sequitur edits.) isaacl (talk) 18:32, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Alright then. Maybe the only thing that can be done is to protect the talk page like ChatGPT and OpenAI or to leave them alone and just keep reverting, I guess. --Super Goku V (talk) 06:43, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

May be of interest to editors:  You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022 § Graphic images in Vector 2022 search results. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:40, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia's new redesign attempts to align with trendy 'modern' themes, to the setback of usability. Why is there now a large amount of whitespace to the left and right of the page? That's space that could be used for text, content, or links, but is rather now an empty void. And I must also now make an unnecessary click to access the sidebar links or my talk/contribution pages.

This change is, in my opinion, detrimental to the site's usability. I therefore propose an option is provided to logged out viewers to return to the old site design. 78.151.201.169 (talk) 21:52, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Why not make an account? Then you can revert to the old version, or disable fixed width in the new version. Garuda3 (talk) 21:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

phab:T91201 is blocking this (there is currently nowhere for logged out users to store a preference). As such, this is a non-starter; see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Vector_2022_deployment_update and/or Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022 for more on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I didn't see that fixed width thing, thanks! Selfstudier (talk) 22:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Selfstudier: in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering uncheck "Enable limited width mode". — xaosflux ^Talk 23:10, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

There is further discussion, including a solution which works for readers who are not logged in, at Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022#Use 2010 Vector as an IP. Certes (talk) 13:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

[copied here per request from main VP talk page. — kwami (talk) 18:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)]

Despite sizing images in absolute pixels being deprecated, that's how most of our images are. I think part of the problem might be that "upright" is not an intuitive parameter name. It certainly took me long enough to figure it out. When used on its own, "upright" makes perfect sense for scaling to 75% (of user default) for imgs in portrait orientation, but once you get to "upright=1.5" for wide images it's pretty much gibberish. I think if we introduced a more intuitive label, such as maybe "scale", we might have more success with people switching over. ("Upright" would continue to be supported, of course, but we'd have a more-easily memorized term as well.) I thought I might make a request at phabricator.wikimedia.org, but wanted to run it by here first. Would people support this, and would anyone prefer a different word than "scale"? — kwami (talk) 01:12, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good, for those who are still learning to write Wikisource. Of course, most editors who joined in the past few years are inserting and adjusting pictures by Visual Editor, so they have no need to learn the markup language anyway. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

[made a Phabricator request here.]

@

WP:VPR? As I have said in the phab task, the technical part of adding an alias is easy, I have "scale" ready to commit. But they may not approve it if they think there is insufficient support for this. So proposing a specific word "scale" or something else at VPR and getting consensus for it will increase the likelihood of this being approved. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk

) 18:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, copied here. — kwami (talk) 18:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, support!

talk

) 00:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Its not really a scaling parameter either and it is intended that it can be used without argument to call out an image that show be displayed/formatted as upright than lengthwise. We would need more tech support to implement a scale parameter (eg where scale=0.5 means display at 50%). Masem (t) 00:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

But that is exactly what it means: "Upright=0.5" means display at 50%. I'm proposing "scale=0.5" as more intuitive phrasing for display at 50%. — kwami (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

As for the comment above that most new editors use Visual Edit and don't need to know the code, people reviewing edits will still see it, won't they? When I change pixels to upright for a wide image (say 400 or 500px to uprigt=1.5 or 2), people occasionally revert me with the edit summary that "upright" is only used for upright (portrait) images. So I suspect that a more intuitive word like "scale" would be useful even for people who use Visual Edit. — kwami (talk) 19:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

If memory serves, VisualEditor doesn't support this anyway, because the future of the |upright parameter was unclear back when they were deciding what to put in the Media dialog box. Obviously, it hasn't been removed since then, but I'm not sure that you need to worry about VisualEditor at this stage. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

But visual editor is exactly the problem.

When an editor simply clicks on an image in an article and drags it to a larger or smaller size, the underlying code uses "px" (specific pixel size) instead of "upright".

My personal experience, and thus for proposing this is that, as a newer editor, I edited ~30 articles using the visual editor before I realized that this was happening. It seems like a straight-forward upgrade to the visual editor (to apply upright instead of px). By the way, I went back and modified those 30 edited articles using "upright". I have since noticed many articles with specific "px" instead of upright and manually fix those myself; so this seems to be a fairly widespread problem.

I can no longer do the easy thing of clicking on the corner of an image, I must now go from visual editor to the old editor and then somewhat guess what upright size to specify.

If someone wanted to implement "scale" in this similar manner, that would be fine with me too. Countercheck (talk) 15:51, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have

"scale = 50%"

as even more intuitive. (Though perhaps people might confuse this 50% of preferred image size with 50% of the page width?) — kwami (talk) 20:24, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022

 – InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:09, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello, haven't edited here in a while but I feel like if we're gonna change the site layout, it might also make sense to make dark mode more accessible to users. Specifically, it should be available without needing to make an account and also at least shouldn't buried deep in the Gadgets menu, it should just be in the Appearance settings like you'd expect it to be. SemiHypercube 19:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

• @
  VPT that V22 makes a WMF dark mode more likely. — Qwerfjkltalk
  22:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd refactor this proposal as "put dark mode explicitly on the road map for the default skin". It's possible, now we let's make it so. This would free up the time of the people who work sporadically on less official dark mode options. – SJ +

An interesting way to do this for the new skin might be to make use of the prefers-color-scheme media query. I'd be way of changing old skins in this way though, at least without an opt-in. Anomie⚔ 11:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

prefers-color-scheme is the way to go. There shouldn't be so many different ways for enabling dark mode for each website, and cookies/accounts shouldn't be needed to keep them enabled. Looking at the MDN article you linked, all major browsers support the media query. small jars tc 22:26, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi @SemiHypercube:, thank you for your feedback. Please look at this section of our FAQ and this answer.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

prefers-color-scheme is indeed one way to do this, but it doesn't allow switching on demand, If I remember correctly, so we still need some additional work for that mode. But the more important thing is that the skin sort of needs to support CSS variables in order to be able to scale switching the color schema. CSS variables are currently supported by some 96% of the user base's browser, and I think its pretty achievable with the new skin setup to introduce them, with a few weeks/months of work (currently not planned nor budgeted). But we should not forget that much of the CONTENT is completely not dark mode compatible and fixing that is a separate issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:35, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The 'diff ' for an edit should reflect all the changes made in that edit. However, if a paragraph break is added to pre-existing text and, in the same edit, changes are made to the text immediately following the break (prior to the next break), the text changes do not show up in the diff. For example, in this edit, I added a paragraph break and also changed "firmament" to "dome" following the break; the text changes are not visible in the diff unless one compares the original text to the changed material word by word. To avoid this, the text changes and the paragraph break need to be made in separate edits. I propose that edits changing both at once be blocked and the editor be advised that two edits are required. Alternatively, the software might be changed so that changes to both somehow show up in the diff.
Peter Brown (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Improving the diff sounds like a good proposal, and better than preventing legitimate edits. There are a few tools around that provide alternative diffs. For example, User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff (available as a gadget in Preferences) handles your example edit above well. Certes (talk) 23:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

There's currently a project ongoing at the WMF to improve the diffs in this scenario: m:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Better diff handling of paragraph splits. Disallowing these edits it seems would do more harm than good. Matma Rex talk 08:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

This really is an issue with the diff highlighter. Making two edits instead of one would flag the change when viewing a single edit diff but not when viewing the two-edit diff. —Kusma (talk) 09:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

I would oppose blocking the edit. Even with an explanation it may confuse newer editors as to why their edit was not allowed. I had to look twice to see what the problem was. Improve the diffs. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 18:35, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• Strong oppose we should not block an edit that could be legitimate over some text highlighting in that tool, the edit is fully reviewable. Follow up on phab:T7072 / phab:T156439 as desired. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:16, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

^[b]

Reasons given by Tim O'Doherty

1. It should not matter if the shortened version, e.g. "Elizabeth I" is more commonly used. The article titles for UK monarchs are becoming inconsistent, a violation of the policy

moved to the aforementioned format, e.g. Elizabeth I → Elizabeth I of England

2. Far more monarchs use the aforementioned format rather than the "[Name] [Ordinal]" format: 27 do, with only 12 not and 2 using neither format, those being James VI and I and Queen Victoria.^[c]

3. If moved, the old titles would become redirects (e.g. Elizabeth I would still redirect to Elizabeth I of England) so that the everyday Wikipedia user has the same ease of navigation between the articles.

4. The guideline

WP:SOVEREIGN

states "kings, queens regnant and emperors and empresses regnant who are known as "first name + ordinal"...have article titles in the form "{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}"." We propose to make this policy specifically for British monarchs.

5. If accepted, this policy should override

WP:COMMONNAME on future RMs

concerning such articles for the reasons mentioned above, and the fact that this is written specifically for British monarchs (and therefore have their pages in the best interest) whilst COMMONNAME does not.

Reasons given by GoodDay

7. Elizabeth II & Charles III are most associated with the United Kingdom, they lived & live in that realm. Elizabeth II is buried in the UK, Charles III & his successors will most likely (in future) also be buried in the UK. Note - Because the UK is the primary resident realm? it has no governor-general.

Notes

Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion - Articles on UK Monarchs

I have no great interest in this topic, as I can support anything that makes it obvious what the title means, but I must say that I am very wary of anything that uses the words "always" and "without exception", especially if those words are bolded and especially if we immediately have to have exceptions spelt out in footnotes. It seems that this proposal is to apply "without exception" except in the cases where we have exceptions.

Phil Bridger (talk

) 17:40, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

There is a clarification, not an exception. If you want the article titled

James I of England and VI of Scotland then be my guest, but the reason as to why there really shouldn't be any exceptions is because this proposal is to bring consistency to British monarchs' articles. One exception leads to another, two exceptions is a precedent and then consistency unravels once more, which defeats the point. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 17:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Phil Bridger (talk

) 19:12, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not maliciously creating an exception; it's easier to just begin with William II because he is the first monarch after the Norman Conquest to be styled with ordinals. I could add William the Conqueror, but he would just end up in point 2 as another that doesn't follow any other format, so there wouldn't be much point in it at all. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 19:24, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I can think of no reason whatsoever why Wikipedia would need a policy on this particular matter. How is it any different from any of the umpteen other things that people find it necessary to bicker about? You can't create an encyclopaedia by formulating endless rules... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:00, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

But there is a need for consistency. Having RMs for monarchical articles every other week doesn't build an encyclopaedia either. It does no harm to have a policy on it. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

You could write an essay/guideline, if it's good, people will buy into it even if it's not a policy. Selfstudier (talk) 18:10, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but it's not ideal as policy overrides guidelines and so, again, it defeats the point of creating a fixed standard for the titles. This policy proposal only really works if it is policy rather than guideline, otherwise I may as well not bother with it. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:19, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I guess one concern I'd have is that this would effectively override the recent Charles III RM, which gained very wide participation before being closed in the negative, on whether to move the article to Charles III of the United Kingdom, discussion here, with the RM close upheld here, with the closer on that review (who has since passed an RfA) noting that the participation in the RM was "abnormally heavy". Possibly that result should be respected here.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I admit that did cross my mind (I even supported Charles III rather than Charles III of the United Kingdom) but I do think that broader consistency is more important than the result of an RM on one page. If this RfC is heavily interacted with as well, then that will sort the matter. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:23, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I doubt you'll get quite the number of opinions in such a short period ... would the policy ensure that the old names (say Charles III) remain redirects? I suspect there will be some seeking equal treatment for Charles III of Spain etc (as in the RM), who will be anxious to make Charles III a disambiguation page, as they suggested in the RM. Wehwalt (talk) 18:39, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they would, as point 3 states. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:43, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

But William III and George I and George II and probably others point to disambiguation pages so there's still going to be inconsistency. Wehwalt (talk) 19:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

That comes down to whether they are the primary topic or not, which is out of my control. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 19:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

• The policy that governs this is our
  WP:AT policy, which does list Consistency as one of the factors we must consider when determining the best title for an article. However, the policy makes it clear that we must also consider Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, and Conciseness - and I am not at all sure that the proposal takes those other factors into consideration. Indeed, my experience is that, of these five factors, Consistency is arguably the weakest (the one most often over-ridden by the others). Blueboar (talk
  ) 19:21, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

• This is claimed to apply to English, Scottish, Irish and British monarchs from William II of England onwards. But it is not obvious why William II of England is a sensible starting point for Scottish monarchs or for High Kings of Ireland. It is also not clear why Welsh monarchs are not included.
• The argument for retaining William the Conqueror as an exception might legitimately apply to later monarchs such as Robert the Bruce. There are other Scottish, Welsh and Irish monarchs who are primarily known by names outside this pattern such as John Balliol and Owain Glyndŵr. There is also the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, who is almost never called Mary I, even though Scotland did have Mary II.
• After the Statute of Westminster, the Crown is split, so it is not clear that George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II and Charles III should be treated as monarchs solely of the United Kingdom.
• While
  William III and II
  are not treated as exceptions.
• British Monarchs started referring to themselves as monarch of Great Britain in 1604, long before the Act of Union. It is not clear whether this proposal intends to refer to these as kings and queens of Great Britain, of England, Scotland and Ireland, of England and Scotland, of England, of Scotland or something else.
  • If they are to be called monarchs of something other than Great Britain it is not clear how Queen Anne fits in to this, given that she was monarch at the time of the union that created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
  • If they are to be called monarchs of something other than England and Scotland or England, Scotland and Ireland it is not clear how James VI and I fits in to this, given that he had been King of Scots for 35 years by the time he inherited the English throne.
• It is not obvious why Scottish kings should be of Scotland and not of Scots.
• It is not obvious why Irish high kings should be King of Ireland and not High King of Ireland.
• There is an issue with Henry the Young King, who by this standard should presumably be Henry, King of England, a name that nobody will recognise.
• There is a question of whether Henry VI of England, by this standard should also be listed as a King of France, given the circumstances of the dual monarchy of England and France.

It appears to me that this is a proposal that tries to create consistency where consistency is not necessarily desirable, and thus I am inclined to oppose it. Kahastok talk 19:23, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Nobody's claiming that George V to Charles III are soley British Monarchs. We're merely pointing out that they've resided in & are mostly associated with the United Kingdom. It's not often (for example) that we read or hear about "King Charles III of Tuvalu" or "Queen Elizabeth II of Saint Lucia". GoodDay (talk) 19:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

• We did not mean Monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland as the monarchs of the separate kingdoms, but monarchs of Britain that were at some point monarchs of those countries (e.g. George IV was King of the United Kingdom, which included England, Scotland and Ireland, but not the individual kingdoms of said countries). We are not dealing with monarchs who were only monarch of Scotland or Ireland, e.g. Mary, Queen of Scots. I did provide the list in the original statement, but apologies if the wording was not clear.
• All those examples listed are from the individual kingdoms, so see the paragraph above.
• They are primarily known as monarchs of the UK rather than the countries in the Commonwealth, as their leads state (e.g. "Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms" puts clear emphasis on the fact that she was Queen of the United Kingdom).
• They are not treated as "exceptions" because their articles are not titled as such...
• I am not the one responsible for this. Monarch's articles from 1604 to 1707 practically always have "of England" after then, e.g. Charles I of England, Charles II of England. I am simply continuing this, so the problem is not with this proposal.
  • It is clear how Queen Anne fits into it as her article is called "Anne, Queen of Great Britain" and should continue to be titled as such.
  • The proposal says that "James VI and I" should remain the title of his article.
• See paragraph one of this reply.
• See paragraph one of this reply.
• Apologies for not listing Henry the Young King in the first note. The proposal does not cover him.
• No, similar reasoning as given in the third paragraph of this reply. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the proposal that then becomes, they all have to be consistent with this pattern, without exception except the ones that do not have to be consistent with the pattern.

If there is some great need for consistency here, then James VI and I becomes a huge problem because the proposal admits that it remains as is, which is inconsistent with all the others. I do not think you can claim to be creating consistency without resolving that. And I feel your proposed guideline really needs to clear up the question of all of period from 1603-1707 if it's aiming to enforce consistency. I don't think saying well they're all already at [Name] [Ordinal] of England so they don't need to be covered is adequate - not least because I feel a guideline on this point should at least consider the fact that they were also Kings and Queens of Scots.

I also don't see why the proposal should cover pre-Union monarchs from England, but not pre-Union monarchs from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. I note that only two articles for English pre-union monarchs are within scope and not already of the form [Name] [Ordinal] of England or [Name], King of England. These are James VI and I and Elizabeth I. And since James VI and I is excluded anyway, it's not obvious to me that adding Elizabeth I adds much. Perhaps if your proposal started from Queen Anne instead of William II it might better cover what you intend it to cover and get rid of a lot of the exceptions and oddities?

And I am still concerned that there is a problem with acknowledging the UK and not the other Commonwealth Realms - at least after 1931. You say that the article starts with Elizabeth II... was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms - well the implied article name in that case would surely therefore be Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, which feels a bit of a mouthful. Kahastok talk 21:15, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Why are you concerned? If we had to choose one of the realms, it would be the United Kingdom. I doubt a RM proposal to move to "Charles III of Australia" or "Charles III of Canada" would garner much support. Last time I checked, his coronation is going to be held in London, UK. It's not going to be repeated 14 more times, in each of the other realms' capitals. GoodDay (talk) 21:54, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not accept that we necessarily have to choose one of the 15 realms, and I feel that there are significant problems with doing so. Kahastok talk 17:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Just like before, you & I are likely never going to agree on this topic. GoodDay (talk) 17:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

When was "before", exactly? I'm fairly certain I've never discussed naming of these articles before on Wikipedia, with you or otherwise. Kahastok talk 18:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I have said that monarchs from 1087-1707 should by titled "[Name] [Ordinal] of England". I view James I as a sensible transition monarch between the pre-Union monarchs and the monarchs that reigned after the Union of the Crowns; it addresses that he was King of Scotland, but also the first King of Scotland to be King of England as well. The alternative is

James I of England

. At a push, I'd go for the latter, but that would, no doubt, cause Scottish Wikipedians to (rightfully) protest, which is a situation best avoided and a situation that should be treated with tact.

It only covers monarchs of England before 1603 because that is what the policy was written to do. There is no issue that needs fixed with Scottish monarchs, so no need to cover them in a policy.

I used the opening sentence to rebut what you had said about the proposed titling not covering the other realms, I did not intend to imply that Elizabeth II's article should be called "

WP:CONCISE. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 23:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

If the Scots rightfully protest at

James I of England, why is it not equally rightful that they protest at Charles I of England

?

Overall, I find this proposal worryingly anglocentric. For those monarchs who were equally king or queen of multiple countries, we need to find a way of naming the articles that does not treat countries that are not England as unimportant. Kahastok talk 17:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd rather we had William I of Scotland, keep Richard I of England & have William I of England, Catherine II of Russia, Frederick II of Prussia, Mary I of Scotland, etc. Not the nickname titles. GoodDay (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The "nickname titles" - by which I assume you mean names that don't fit your pattern - tend to score quite highly in terms of the

naming criteria. And in some cases - like English kings from before 1066 - they're pretty much the only names we have. History doesn't always fit a pattern and it doesn't always do to try to shoehorn it into one. Kahastok talk

18:23, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Can we momentarily bring this back to the proposal rather than debating on monarchs of different kingdoms? The fact is that the monarchs that this proposal covers are not known by epithets and all employ ordinals in their current titles. Monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland (before 1603), Russia, and Prussia are irrelevant. We don't need to debate on whether we should use epithets or ordinals because they all already use ordinals. The discussion is on whether or not we should have a consistent policy on UK monarch titling. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not accept that monarchs of Scotland are irrelevant. Because if there is a problem with English and post-1603 Scottish monarchs, then there is also a problem with pre-1603 Scottish monarchs. If there is not a problem with pre-1603 Scottish monarchs, then there is also not a problem with English and post-1603 Scottish monarchs. It makes no sense to me that we should have a special guideline for English and post-1603 Scottish monarchs that does not apply anywhere else, including Scotland before 1603.

I would add as a separate point that I am concerned that this may in practice be an

WP:RM

that has not been adequately notified to the affected articles. Yes, the proposal is that a separate RM would be required, but that RM would surely come, and this proposal essentially defines the outcome of the RM. So the risk of accepting this is that we do an end run around the standard RM process and its notification requirements.

I'm going to boil this down I guess. I oppose because (a) I don't think this specific point needs its own separate guideline, (b) I don't think the proposed move targets are appropriate and (c) because of procedural concerns. Kahastok talk 23:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll notify the concerned articles with RMs if this passes. If this doesn't pass, they'll just have to be withdrawn anyway as the policy to back them up won't exist.

Also, the monarchs of Scotland pre 1603 aren't irrelevant, but that's not what this proposal was written to cover. The are an entirely different case-sensitive can of worms. I am not proposing, for example, that

Mary I of Scotland. I would need to write a different proposal on it to cover those cases. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 23:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting that countries outside of the UK are unimportant (they all get fair treatment within the article body) but the alternative is to have such articles titled things like "Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanganyika, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Malta, The Gambia, Rhodesia, Barbados, Mauritius, Fiji, The Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis". We can't have them all. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 18:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@

George III of the United Kingdom? Or something else? A firm rule would work best if we all knew what the result was supposed to be. WhatamIdoing (talk

) 21:59, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Its previous title, George III of the United Kingdom. GoodDay (talk) 22:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

It would be George III of the United Kingdom. If you want a list of all the new names that would be if the proposal is accepted, I'll gladly write them down in my second sandbox. If not, point 6 provides some instruction on the point you've raised. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:13, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Note to everybody: the list of titles under the proposal if accepted is here. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

In Australia, this will be taken as a polemical political statement, arguing against the de jure status of Australia as a monarchy. This alone would be enough for me to oppose under our

Saying this is against NPOV is surely a bit of a stretch. All monarch's articles address that they are monarch of the Commonwealth realms. They are known as monarch of the United Kingdom, and if you find this proposal problematic, then surely you must also find

WP:COMMONNAME problematic too, which argues for the common name, which is what "of the United Kingdom" is. This "problem" already exists too; take Charles II of England as an example. He was king of Scotland and Ireland as well, but nobody is arguing that that is against NPOV. The issue that you take with it is not exclusive to this proposal. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 20:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I personally think that including some sort of country in the article name would be ideal under

WP:GLOBAL, because, and this may surprise some people, countries other than England exist. I just have no clue what country name that would be, in some cases, and this proposal seems to create more problems then it solves. casualdejekyll

20:22, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Not really a problem. The Stuarts 1603-1707, are more recognisable as English monarchs. Meanwhile, after the Union Acts, George I to Charles III, are more recognisable as British monarchs. GoodDay (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Utter waste of time. Firstly this is a MOS issue, not a policy issue. Secondly the point of MOS is to provide a standard framework for consistency, where it cannot provide that consistency, it just causes more trouble than it solves. Thirdly, any time you proscribe something and say "this is the way it must be done" and even before the ink is wet you have a dozen exceptions, it's just a deliberate act of riling people up at that stage. No, god no. Only in death does duty end (talk) 21:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

It absolutely is not a MoS issue as we already have

WP:AT which isn't a part of the Manual of Style. Furthermore, there are topic-specific titling guidelines, none of which are in the MoS. This is just another topic specific AT regulation, to say it should be in the Manual of Style when none of the others are and then calling it an "utter waste of time" is not really justifiable. And I'm not saying "this is how it should be done"; you could say that about any policy. I'm suggesting it as a proposal for the way it might be done, and if passed as policy, then yes, it should be done that way. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 22:13, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per all of the abovementioned objections, this is a clear case of a solution in search of a problem. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:32, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Firstly this does not need to be a policy - if there is a problem that needs solving (and I'm not convinced there is) then a naming convention is the way to go. Secondly, there is almost never a good reason for a policy to prohibit all exceptions and require absolute conformity (
  WP:CSD is the only one not dealing with legal issues I can think of). Thirdly, even if there was a problem that needed solving, required a policy to solve it, and required there to be no exceptions to that policy, this proposal would not (per pretty much everyone above) solve it. Thryduulf (talk
  ) 10:19, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't see anything wrong with sticking to
  Kings of England would have Henry II, but a list of Henries would have Henry VIII of England) JeffUK
  15:22, 3 January 2023 (UTC) (Struck by me, see below)
• Oppose the unusually harsh absolutism language is completely undone by the growing list of exceptions/clarifications. This will just be used to aggravate editors especially new ones and should not be policy. Slywriter (talk) 22:36, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

  In case you haven't seen, you can view the list of titles here if you are concerned about the "undo[ing] of the proposal. Cordially, Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:42, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

  That doesn't improve the situation. In fact, it highlights the arbitrary nature of choices. Elizabeth I is Queen of England and Ireland, yet Ireland is dropped. I'm sure there are reasons obvious to proposers but this just seems like a blanket attempt to codify a particular desire, rather than actually improve the encyclopedia. Slywriter (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

  Elizabeth I is remembered much more for being Queen of England, then Queen of Ireland. Besides, her being Queen of Ireland is already mentioned in the intro & infobox of her page. So we don't need Ireland mentioned in the article title. She resided in England, not Ireland. GoodDay (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

  It's not my choice. Henry VII was Lord (King) of Ireland, and yet he is Henry VII of England. I'm simply making all of the articles consistent with one another. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 23:02, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Policies should provide general rules on article content, rather than attempting to lay down the law for a single subject. Absolutely no evidence has been offered to demonstrate that there is any specific issue here that requires such exceptionalism. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:22, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
• Agree (sort of.) I think there is actually a case of
  Systematic Bias here, and maybe WP:Recentism? If we say, for example, that 'Charles III' is THE 'Charles III', because of course he is, he's the one we see on the telly all the time. That elevates the specific Charles III who's most known in western culture to some higher level than others. I think the suggestion is valid, IF there are other sovereigns who are titled in the same way, we should not have 'primary article' pointing to one of them. For example, there is no other Elizabeth I, so we do not need to be more specific that Elizabeth I. I don't know if this is the problem the proposers were aiming to solve, but I do think it is something worth at least considering. I don't think this should be specific to English/British sovereigns, it should be across the board that multiple sovereigns with the same styling get the same treatment. This is pretty much what Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(royalty_and_nobility)#Sovereigns says already. JeffUK
  10:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  By my reckoning, as the only articles where there is another monarch primarily styled with the same name, only Georges 3,4,5 and 6, and Charles III should be renamed to the styling recommended above (But with deference to the recent move discussion, Charles III should be left alone) and having all the King Georges in the same format does seem eminently sensible.

  Elizabeth I & II, William IV, Queen Victoria, and Edward VII&VIII are entirely unambiguous as sovereigns, so don't need disambiguating. Henry VIII is borderline as there was another Henry VIII who later because king, but I think he was the 8th Duke, and 4th King... so probably Henry VIII stays too. JeffUK 12:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  @JeffUK I'm confused as you partially contradict yourself (Charles III should be renamed ... Charles III should be left alone), but you seem to arguing that each article's title should be determined individually (sometimes with reference to other English/British monarchs of the same name) based on their ambiguity with other topics. This is basically the status quo and exactly the opposite of the proposal, which is to establish a single format that every article in the set must follow without regard to other factors like primary topic or (lack of) ambiguity. Thryduulf (talk) 12:54, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, hence the 'Sort of'. I'm ignoring the way it's been worded and focusing on the intent; I do find some merit in more strongly suggesting (Maybe in the naming convention) that articles are titled using the normal format if there are other sovereigns with the same style, even if they are less well known. There should, as always, be no absolutes. JeffUK 14:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

  It shouldn't matter if the monarchs are unambiguous. It does no harm to add "of England/of Great Britain/of the United Kingdom". In fact, in most cases, it does quite a lot of good. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:41, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: Like the rest of the opposers, I don't see any compelling need for a specific naming convention for a very narrow set of articles to be enshrined in policy. This seems like unnecessary policy creep which would open the door to naming policies on every other narrow set of articles that someone or other gets a bee in their bonnet about. Despite being justified by reference to
  WP:CONSISTENT and including the phrases "always" and "without exception" in bold in the proposed text, there are already several exceptions enumerated in the text of the proposal; this does not suggest to me a policy which should be enacted without exception, and recent (well-attended!) move requests have clearly come to a consensus which contradicts this proposal, which also suggests that it does not represent community consensus. We already have Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility): if more specific guidelines for UK royalty are really desired, write a supplement to that. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk
  ) 15:45, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, consistency in following
  WP:CONSISTENT was boldly changed last year; I have just undone this change and returned to the less prescriptive language that has served us well before. —Kusma (talk
  ) 22:12, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I undid your change there, as it did't seem to have consensus to be made. GoodDay (talk) 22:28, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@

WP:DRNC. For the record I can see no indication of any formal consensus for the edit I reverted, either, and I disagree with it because foolish consistency is something that Wikipedia has been good at wisely avoiding for 20 years. —Kusma (talk

) 22:38, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I reverted you, because the change had been in place for quite sometime. Your (today) alterations appeared as an attempt to influence the discussion 'here'. It just doesn't look good, to make alterations on a related page, in the middle of a Village Pump RFC. GoodDay (talk) 22:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

That's why I was very open about making this revert. But perhaps this discussion can serve as a counterpoint to the edit I reverted and you reinstated. —Kusma (talk) 09:09, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing foolish about consistency. If you or I had a physical, paper and ink encyclopedia in front of us, then all the titles of the entries there would be consistent with one another: not have arbitrary and random inconsistencies between them. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The real world has arbitrary and random inconsistencies in it. Names of Chinese people, for example, are sometimes commonly written in Chinese order, sometimes in Western order (consider Ang Lee versus Wong Kar-wai for two people in the same category of "film directors"). Enforcing consistency there would just make our article titles unrecognisable. Of course consistency is nice, but not if it leads to article names that nobody in the real world uses. —Kusma (talk) 09:06, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not believe that Chinese names in the Chinese/Western order is analogous to this. Sure, some Chinese people may be better known by the name put one way or the other, and I am not arguing for or against the use of either. However, the consistency proposed here makes article titles more recognisable. I defy you to look at any of the titles here and say that they are unrecognisable. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 16:39, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

They aren't unrecognisable but the consistency you favour makes some of them less recognisable (not more as you claim), particularly

Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom. The real world being messy and inconsistent, partly due to the regnal titles being inconsistent (and your list being inconsistent and using the full area for some but only a partial one for others really doesn't help that), and so the common names (which are the most recognisable by definition) are messy and inconsistent. Thryduulf (talk

) 17:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

But, as the proposal says, the common names shouldn't matter in this very narrow, isolated instance.

Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom provides all the information of Queen Victoria and more: she was a Queen, of the United Kingdom, called Victoria. And the point of only using the "partial" area: that does not make the titles inconsistent. I can't very well have "Henry VII of England, France and Ireland" or "Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms". While the titles may not include every single country they ever ruled over, a.) if they did, they would be less, not more consistent, b.) too long, and c.) unrecognisable and impractical for the everyday user. Tim O'Doherty (talk

) 17:31, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

The goal of the article title is not to provide information, it is to identify the topic of the article. Consistency is only beneficial if it aids this goal, which is why

WP:COMMONNAME

is the ruling factor and we don't make titles longer than they need to be. Your proposal does say that the common name shouldn't matter in this instance, but none of your justifications for why it shouldn't matter have convinced me (or pretty much anyone else) that this is beneficial to the project, let alone that it needs to be a policy more rigid than almost any other.

Yes, using every single country would make the titles too long and less recognisable (but not unrecognisable) but they would be more consistent than your proposal which sometimes uses all and sometimes uses a subset - which is only a problem if your goal is consistency. Thryduulf (talk) 19:40, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe a good idea, but a bad idea to make a mere good idea mandatory. And unthinkable to make a policy dedicated to this. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:48, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose and Alternative proposal: All time-wasting renaming proposals for British monarchs should be forbidden from now until the end of time. Johnbod (talk) 23:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

  Oppose alternative proposal. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 23:33, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Because this is a
  WP:COMMONNAME should be the more important principle in this case. --Jayron32
  14:47, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose This proposal attempts to fix what isn't broken. I restate the concerns I expressed in questions above, including that it attempts to reverse a RM on Charles III that failed overwhelmingly and thus expresses a recent consensus. This seems a good candidate for a close per
  WP:SNOW.--Wehwalt (talk
  ) 15:32, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for the numerous reasons mentioned. Graham (talk) 20:44, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

  It's been withdrawn. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to increase the font size of the [show]/[hide] buttons in Template:Collapse and Template:Collapse top to the same size as their title text. It is currently smaller than usual, which also causes it to be vertically misaligned. I filed an edit request first but folks thought this required discussion.

For reference, the templates:

Matma Rex talk 09:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex they look vertically aligned to me, how are they off? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:19, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux On my screen there is significantly more space below the buttons than above them: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F36457042 Matma Rex talk 11:32, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex it looks like there isn't an equal size above and below the text line in the entire horizontal element, notice more space under the letters than above them here - are you sure this a font-size issue and not the 2em manual padding that is only on the top of the block? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:59, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux I mean… you're saying that there are other ways to adjust this, and I don't disagree, but this is the one I like the most. Matma Rex talk 15:22, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex no I was suggesting that the entire text line is not vertically aligned in the box, regardless of the font size - the 100% size text is also not vertically aligned. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a vertical difference in Vector 2010 in my browser. Is this skin-dependent? Does it happen only in the beta Vector 2022 skin, which is still going through various tweaks to fix font sizes, white space, and other significant display bugs? The font sizes in these templates have been the same for at least seven years, maybe more than twelve years, and the templates are used on more than 50,000 pages, so any changes should be for a good reason. I welcome details on the conditions under which this misalignment happens, and changes in the sandbox along with testcases that show better alignment using the same font sizes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:32, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I think it depends on what you're looking at. If you look at phab:F36487116, you can see that the baseline of the "Collapse" title and the square brackets are aligned, but the baseline of the word "show" is elevated. The tops all look vertically aligned. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed screen shot. This shows that the outer brackets appear to be on the same line as the "Collapse" title, which makes sense, and that the word "show" is centered within the brackets, which also makes sense. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:26, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi dear Wikipedia users and admins!

I have a request. I want from someone to create Borgward article on Boarisch (Bavarian) Wikipedia Borgward. It has been created many times there, but it was deleted with unspecific reasons. I would like to see this article there, so anyone who understand this language and requests the article to be kept there and not to be deleted anymore, please do it for me.

Thanks 188.172.109.176 (talk) 22:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Please note that the various language versions of Wikipedia are independent projects. Each has unique rules about what is and is not accepted as an article. We here at the English version have no say over what is accepted at the German version. In other words, you are complaining at the wrong place. We can not help you. Blueboar (talk) 22:24, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

While what Blueboar said is true, I want to make it clear that "but it was deleted with unspecific reasons" was misleading. The article was removed as it was a problematic machine translation from an article on one of the different versions of Wikipedia. For the English Wikipedia, there is a policy called

WP:MACHINETRANSLATION that explains the problems with articles that are machine translated into English. I would say that the German Wikipedia likely has an comparable policy. --Super Goku V (talk

) 17:05, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Just some thoughts. Praemonitus (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Most of the above may be implemented now at the discretion of editors. There is

WP:SFN

that cover issues raised above. Visual editing tools also help. The idea that Wikipedia references could be valid Wikidata or data in a Wikipedia Library is a non-starter. Wikipedia references are not formally validated for reliability, contextual integrity or accuracy (occasional informal checks by concerned editors are hardly sufficient). Until such happens as a standard part of referencing/article submission, they are as unreliable as the rest of Wikipedia or Wikidata.

However I agree that edits (including, and especially structured edits such as some of the Wikipedia short and full citation methods) could be best represented by data-input forms. That is however another discussion. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 18:00, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

I already use many of those methods, so I don't see them as a complete solution. But I'm fine with not using WikiData; just have them on a separate page for parallel editing. Praemonitus (talk) 18:54, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Inline references are generally superior because they don't get out of sync with a separated section as the article is edited. Moving references to Wikidata is a terrible idea - we rely on these citations to meet our core policy burdens, they need to be in the article and a part of the article's editing history. Exporting that to a separate project where they can be separately changed (or vandalized) will cause many problems.

MrOllie (talk

) 18:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Inline references tend to gum up the works when you want to edit the text. I only find them acceptable in low usage and at the end of paragraphs. Praemonitus (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

This is great in theory (I use BibTeX in the real world) but no good on Wikipedia in practice. We used to have {{cite doi}} with citation data stored in subpages but that system was deprecated, and there is a lot of opposition to the Wikidata version {{cite Q}}. Better to keep critical information like citations in the article. —Kusma (talk) 18:48, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

• "There would be no need to edit the entire article to add a named reference at the bottom. That would reduce the number of edit collisions." is wrong. Migrating references to a different location means any additions need two edits, one at the location where the reference is used, and one at the external reflist, doubling the potential chances of "collisions". Regarding your issues regarding wikitext confusion, have you tried using
  WP:VISUALEDITOR? CMD (talk
  ) 18:08, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I originally raised the edit-a-thon proposal to the WikiProject Vital Articles, but because in combination of the WikiProject's inactivity and that the edit-a-thon would touch on a lot of WikiProject's core articles, I think that the proposal should be seen by a wider Wikipedian community. Editors can add articles that is not in the Vital list, as long as the article is covering a topic just as broad as many of the vital articles listed.

The edit-a-thon would focus on making the information inside Vital articles verifiable, by citing uncited statements, checking cited claims and removing

Here are a fair number of tools and pages that can be used by drive participants to speed up their works:

• Bad source detectors: User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen, User:Headbomb/unreliable, User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter (you can combine CiteUnseen + Headbomb's script, or CiteUnseen + CiteHighlighter)
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources as a rough indicator of quality
• Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library for free access to paywalled sources
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange for people to email you paywalled sources
• Help:Find sources for sourcing suggestions

CactiStaccingCrane 15:23, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content § Non-free images in search results (redux). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 16:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Further discussion on what to do with the language selector may be warranted on

Incorrect date above?

The RFC just above here says "On 18 January 2022, shortly after ..." Isn't that year wrong? David10244 (talk) 07:25, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but that's kind of irrelevant for a closed proposal... Izno (talk) 21:19, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I want to figure out what would I need to do if I want to reopen this proposal in the future? It might have been a case of

Wikipedia:TOOSOON. Maybe when WMF adapts the Vector 2022 skin to Mobile Frontend this can be reopened. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis

❄️ 16:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

When you can actually use it like Minerva on a phone, yes. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Post closure discussion on Wikidata lists

• Andrevan, just to clarify/confirm, this is a no consensus outcome? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Good question… is “lack of consensus” the same as “no consensus”? Blueboar (talk) 12:30, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

No consensus to change the existing consensus of past RFCs. Andre🚐 15:38, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

So the existing consensus at prior RFCs still stands. Blueboar (talk) 17:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes Andre🚐 17:08, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for closing, but I think the wording needs clarifying. As I pointed out above, there is no previous consensus on using Wikidata in tables, so this does not get us anywhere different as there is no previous consensus to go back to. The close of the 2013 discussion includes There is a valid point raised that while running text is clearly not suitable for Wikidata use, it might be worth discussing use in tables specifically – but no consensus regarding this has been reached in this discussion. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:58, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a previous consensus on using Wikidata in tables. It's Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard/Archive 13#Re-examination of ListeriaBot and Template talk:Wikidata list#"Not permitted" in mainspace. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:36, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

It's funny I had also drafted a comment saying "Thanks for closing" and requesting the closing text be more clear, as there was clearly a dispute over how to interpret the previous consensus. However on reconsideration, I hoped that no consensus to permit was sufficiently clear. It is not possible to read this as allowing Wikidata lists, as that opposite interpretation would have required no consensus to prohibit phrasing.

In any case, this closure has already resulted in an editing conflict. Andrevan I thank you for your close, and I request a more clear close-text to avoid further conflicts. Specifically are editors (1) prohibited from converting Wikidata lists to non-wikidata? (2) Are editors prohibited from creating new wikidata lists? Or (3) both are permitted. Alsee (talk) 20:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

There is no consensus to permit using wikidata in article text. My understanding of the prior consensus is that the prior consensus did not permit wikidata in article text. I don't see any consensus here to change the status quo. No specific consensus was reached to allow use in tables, but I didn't review the previous close to see if the use in tables was permitted, but I'm guessing if it wasn't expressly prohibited, then existing usage of it could be justified under whatever prior justification existed. It's a no consensus close with no change to the existing status quo and no new resolution obtained as to new usage of wikidata. Andre🚐 21:12, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

My understanding of the prior consensus is that the prior consensus did not permit wikidata in article text. This is false. Some of those opposed to Wikidata use tried to imply that, by saying it would run counter to, as one !voter put it, the spirit of the various RFCs on Wikidata use, but that was heavily contested. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:21, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

If you are asking me to vacate the close I will vacate it, but the close was a no consensus for any new proposal being enacted close. If the existing state of things was a limbo then it should still be in limbo. I will admit that in the section of the RFC that discussed this I took the word of the participants on the state of the status quo ante, but it didn't factor into this close being a no consensus one. If you really think someone else would close this differently, I am happy to revert myself. Andre🚐 23:29, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see a need for you to vacate the close currently; I suspect a different closer would arrive at the same no consensus result. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:32, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

For me, the ambiguity lies not in the statement that it is not appropriate to use Wikidata in article text on English Wikipedia, but in the fact that a table is structured content and not article text. The 2013 discussion specifically excluded tables in its close, so there is certainly no existing status quo in this respect. If the closer had written article article prose then it would have been clearer still. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:38, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Lists are article text. Tables (unless images) are article text as well. Article text does not need to be in prose form. Blueboar (talk) 00:35, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Well that's not how I understand the term. And why else would Coren (the closer) specifically contrast running text with tabular content? Infoboxes are mini-tables, and the usage of Wikidata on them is widely accepted. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@MSGJ you are attempting to argue that calling wikidata in lists was previously permissible, but you are forgetting the consensus banning Wikidata links in the body of the article. There is no interpretation of this RFC or any other RFC granting an exception to that ban. That leaves the options of (1) accepting elimination of these lists, or (2) eliminating wikidata links from these lists and then we can resume debate on how to interpret other past RFCs. Alsee (talk) 15:37, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Ping

RexxS has not - alas - edited for two years. It might be said that if something they did has persisted for that long, then there is consensus for it to be so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:28, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Either that or it simply flew under the radar. I suspect the latter is more likely. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:36, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

The closing statement is pretty jarring given the discussion it intends to summarize. If there's any consensus to be found here, it's that many people have reservations about Wikidata lists, and many people see the potential to use them in certain circumstances, and only a handful of people want either a total ban or blanket permission. There are so many opinions here with extended conditions, qualifications, thoughts, and suggestions, that I don't see anything like consensus for a simple thumbs up or thumbs down (which the closing statement grants, given no clear prior position). If this really needs closure (and I'm not sure that it does), probably just "no consensus" with a recommendation to narrow the question to be about certain cases/uses. Also, as an aside, the Community Wishlist is going on now. If you want better tooling, this may be a good time to propose it. If anyone knows of any really good ideas to address Wikidata editing through Wikipedia, I'm happy to be canvassed to that proposal. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:10, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

"Many people have reservations but see the potential but NOTNOW" is akin to my reading. There's no consensus to permit new things. If there are gray areas before there are gray areas now. The intention is not a consensus for a thumbs down but no consensus for a thumbs up. I'm happy to vacate the close and let someone else close if there are concerns, though. Andre🚐 21:13, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

• I've amended the close to address this discussion. Let me know if you have further concerns. I am sorry that this outcome isn't very useful but I do not see how it can be closed other than a no consensus for a new proposal to be enacted regarding wikidata lists. Andre🚐 23:39, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Background for assessments on inactive wikiproject banners

A wikiproject is considered inactive if there has been no significant activity for three months. The wikiproject templates that appear on talk pages of associated articles are often changed to invoke {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}} instead of {{WPBannerMeta}}. This has the effect of suppressing display of the quality ratings. Instead of a banner like:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ruritania Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

the wikiproject template now displays a message like:

The template no longer assigns the article talk page to assessment categories for the project. This was discussed at some length at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Improper handling of assessment for inactive WikiProjects, with general agreement that there was no reason to suppress quality and importance assessments because the project was not particularly active.

Proposal about assessments on inactive wikiproject banners

This is to propose:

• Modify {{WPBannerMeta}} to accept an |inactive=y parameter, and if present note that the project is inactive, but display assessments in the same way as active projects
• Modify {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}} to invoke {{WPBannerMeta}} passing all the standard parameters plus the |inactive=y parameter

Note that the inactive project categories like Category:Start-Class Ruritania articles and Category:Low-importance Ruritania articles may have been deleted after they became empty, so will have to be restored. There are about 340 inactive projects, so this will take some effort, and possibly could be partially mechanized. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion about assessments on inactive wikiproject banners

Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 15:13, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• Support. To clarify from previous discussions, the assessments are not just suppressed (hidden), the are detached and no longer included in the total assessment scheme for articles that have only inactive project banners (example: Talk:Ork (Warhammer 40,000), within the scope of defunct WH project and without any active WP project banners, was rated as start, but now is considered unassessed). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:42, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
• Partial support per my reasoning on Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). I support the display of the quality assessment on the template. But I do not support the recreation of hundreds of categories deleted over many years. I have put some code on Template:Inactive WikiProject banner/sandbox which will display the class rating and also repopulate the PageAssessments database, which will mean that most of the tools should work correctly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

  *Oppose. This strikes me as a waste of time. Just because there hasn't been a recorded action by a project for three months, doesn't mean that the assessments need to be, well, assessed differently. If they were valid when they were posted, they are very likely valid now, and someone could come along any time and renew activity at the particular project. If the assessments strike someone as needing to be revised, then revise them, but that doesn't require changing the template content in that way. We should be making it easy for projects that have temporarily gone quiet to become active again, not rush to sweep them out the door. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:58, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

  @Tryptofish, I read the proposal as doing what you suggest, and don't understand why you oppose. —Kusma (talk) 23:10, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

  You're right, and I struck what I said. I misread it. Sorry for my mistake. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• Support per what I should have understood from the start. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
• Support making assessments independent of project activity. Ideally assessment should not be connected to WikiProjects at all, but we certainly should not delete the working infrastructure just because a project seems dormant. —Kusma (talk) 23:08, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
• Weak oppose, I guess. The inactive project banners give the impression that the project assessments are not being maintained because the associated project is inactive and have therefore been deactivated. This is silly, as normally, quality assessment and other banner flagging (such as needing infoboxes or images) is updated for all project banners by an editor who usually has nothing to do with any of them, and often this editor will make the importance assessment too, even though they're usually just guessing based on what the article says about its topic. With a couple of exceptions, such as
  WP:MILHIST's A-class reviews, messing with the project banners is not a project-related activity. Consequently, WP banners for inactive projects are pretty much redundant, unless the goal is to use the inactive projects' banners as a proxy for "Article condition by topic" categories, in which case I think the correct way to move forward is re-open that functionally fully and retire {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}}. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C
  ) 04:24, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

  We could convert project templates that use {{WPBannerMeta/inactive}} to instead use {{WPBannerMeta|inactive=y}}. But the main assumption is that if an article has been assessed, there is no reason to drop the quality and/or importance assessment when the project goes inactive. I imagine some projects sporadically become inactive and later become active again. If a project is deleted, that is a different question. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

  Unless the parallel discussion on VPI is successful :) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:18, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

  As someone who does a fair number of quality assessments, I don't really treat it as a Wikiproject activity. And since all the projects mostly use the same scale, I'd support just creating a global assessment system (with importance remaining within WikiProjects' domain). —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 02:50, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

  @Pythoncoder that is exactly what we are discussing at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Project-independent quality assessments. If that passes this whole proposal is moot — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:38, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

  Not really because importance parameters still continue to exist for most projects. And no proposal has been floated to deprecate them yet. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 18:24, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

  A rating for how important an article is to an inactive/defunct project? That would be absolutely useless information, unless the project is revived — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:28, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

  @Compassionate727 I am not sure I understand why you oppose this? For me, per the reasons explained at the Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 73#Improper_handling_of_assessment_for_inactive_WikiProjects, one of the main issues is that the current way we are doing so consings numerous, perfectly fine assessments, to oblivion, as soon as a project is declared inactive. For articles for which this was the only banner present, those assessments become removed from the assessment scheme and the the page will now show as unassessed in the assessment scheme (see links in my comment a bit above). Any solution to fix this glaring error is a step in the right direction, no? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

• Weak support, but the third banner is my personal favorite as it both addresses the presence of the WikiProject and preserves its older ratings. It would be nice, however, to see when the WikiProject was declared inactive. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 21:49, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  In an attempt to find how many articles may be left unassessed due to inactive project banners I have created a tracking category Category:Articles possibly without an active WikiProject. It might take a few days to populate and then we'll see what there is — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

  @MSGJ: I think it includes articles with an active project but not assessed. E.g. Talk:9th Annual BFJA Awards- Aymatth2 (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

  It's only looking for banners of the form {{WikiProject... - a rather crude search with many false positives. Probably not worth keeping unless I can improve the regex — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:49, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• Support, assessing is a lost art, and mostly ignored even in active WikiProjects. Abductive (reasoning) 08:44, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Just like Abductive, I've seen plenty of active WikiProjects where the assessments are woefully out of date. People tend to remove assessments from talk pages for projects with inactive banners; but let's say I want to revive a WikiProject, or turn it into a task force; do I now need to manually reassess thousands of articles? It's silly. DFlhb (talk) 09:23, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

  People remove assessments from talk pages for projects with inactive banners? I've not seen this, and I'm not sure why anyone would do this. CMD (talk) 18:24, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. It is often the case that members of a wikiproject make edits and improvements in the filed covered by the wikiproject, but whatever method the person who decides to mark it inactive uses to detect activity does not notice these edits and improvements. Thus the inactivity marker is wrong. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
• Support Assessments (mostly quality, not so much importance) can still be of value to editors outside of the Wikiproject, regardless of its status. Pinguinn 🐧 10:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

  If an article already has active projects containing assessments, is there any benefit in adding the (duplicate) assessment of an inactive project? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:45, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

  Only if the assessments would differ, which can occasionally happen with quality but is far more common with importance. Pinguinn 🐧 11:37, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose along the same lines as Compassionate. Having inactive values displayed (you could sell me on categorized) is inevitably makework for the users who come along and find assessments differ between projects. One might call these nuisance edits (because we shouldn't have to make them), as we maintain a system that there are even people who have considered tearing it down entirely. Izno (talk) 21:15, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
• Support per all the lengthy discussions we already had at
  WP:VPM and earlier, where I was a participant. Let us not lose all the assessment data, which makes it incredibly difficult for (a) new interested editors to reactivate a project, and (b) statisticians to find where Wikipedia is putting out our best and needs more attention. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X}
  }) 16:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I would say the "supports" have it. If the proposal below, #Project-independent quality assessments is accepted, this change could be implemented at the same time. That would alleviate the concerns of the two "opposes", since quality ratings would generally move up into the {{WikiProject banner shell}}, maintained for all projects.The iImportance rating does not need much maintenance: if the subject is mid-importance to a project it will generally remain mid-importance regardless of how the article evolves. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:08, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, absolutely the proposal below will help immensely. In that case we are not relying on inactive banners to give us anything valuable anymore, right? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• COMMENT I think it should display importance but should suppress quality display. The quality would not be updated unless there is some other wikiproject also signed on to the page. The importance would usually not change much unless some drastic event happened in the real world. However quality shifts with editing. -- 64.229.90.199 (talk) 03:22, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

  Who actually cares what importance an article is to an inactive project? That rating is of use to that particular project alone, and does not reflect importance of the article generally. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:29, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  People may care about the importance of a topic to a topic area, which is represented by proxy via the wikiproject that is aligned with the topic area. This may spur them to improve higher importance articles, or even revive the project. When I say suppress display of quality, I still think they should be categorized, to maintain banner functions, just not displayed in the banner. -- 64.229.90.199 (talk) 05:16, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose The assessment and importance information implies that the article's status is being maintained. If the project is defunct, that isn't true. The assessment and importance data can be recovered from the talk page history if the project gets restarted again, so that seems like a non-starter in terms of problems for me. --Jayron32 19:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Jayron32 You are missing a key point: may articles are assessed (maintained...) by people who are not members of the project. I've assed many articles for many wikiprojects without being their member, and I don't see why I shouln't be allowed to do so, nor why should my assessment be blanked once a relevant WikiProject becomes inactive? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:55, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  The assessment is not blanked, not is it hidden in the talkpage history. It remains right there in the untouched wikicode. Whether a project is active or inactive has zero bearing on editing its article quality assessment parameter in any particular article. CMD (talk) 08:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis But the problem is that right now the assessment is not piped to the aggregate assessment data, as the categories are deleted. We are also loosing information on statistics of past assessmensts. Ex. once Project Foo is declared inactive, the desctruction of the category system means that all of articles that were assessed just by Project Foo revert to "unassessed" in the main stats for how many assessed articles we have, and the table matrix for how many articles Project Foo tagged and how was it assessed is destroyed as well. See example I give in my support vote at the very top. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:33, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  That's understandable, but the assessment is not blanked. It remains on the article talk page, and high-level category tweaks will be able to immediately pick up on all that existing data if desired. CMD (talk) 05:53, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis Well then, my point is that it is desired and they should do it. Plus, what's wrong with the low-level categories? They hurt noone and were useful. I would like to know what were and are the breakdowns of articles assessed by some defunct projects. Why is that knowledge denied to me and others? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  No, Piotrus, I got that point abundantly it just didn't affect my vote on this proposal. See the vote below, however, for perhaps a more relevant view of what I do or don't get about your key point. --Jayron32 15:34, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

• Support granted a page supported by only inactive projects is going to have its rating checked marginally less frequently, but at the end of the day the error rate isn't going to be dramatically different and if once in a blue moon a project does get reactivated because a new enthusiastic group of editors comes to us then all the better. The whole point of placing quality assessments in the banner shell is that a stub is a stub regardless of which project is assessing, and if we really wanted to we could create a taskforce dedicated to checking all pages that have no associated active project; in fact tools could probaly do most of the work, flagging for review only those pages who's quality rating is suspect. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  Isn't that exactly what the proposal below is going to resolve? I agree that all articles should have a rating, but the rating of an inactive project is not going to help much, if there are other banners of active projects on the page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  The point is that baring certain idiosyncratic rankings (e.g. the MILHIST list stuff) the quality should be the same throughout. It doesn't help much, but it's harmless and potentially beneficial in that it both facilitates reactivation of a project if interested editors emerge and offers a different way to explore content. In the past when I was more active I sometimes sought out low-hanging fruit by looking at WikiProjects covering topics of interest and seeing which high and top importance articles were stubs; usually those were excellent candidates for expansion with sources that were easy to find. I doubt I'm the only one to ever explore content that way, and a project doesn't need to be active for that kind of organization to be helpful. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 04:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

1. It can be useful for vandalism patrol, as well as monitoring false positives produced by the title blacklist.
2. I see no reason why someone trusted to view private filters and their logs can't be trusted to view the log of a publicly viewable blacklist. It's not like an EFM will suddenly go rogue and create a bunch of nonsense pages.

137a (talk • edits) 14:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be currently a technical matter for the devs. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T68450 --Jayron32 15:32, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

@137a as noted by Jayron32 this proposal (which would effectively be "Give (titleblacklistlogs) access to group x, group y") is useless. Not even admins who have this permission can see this, because it isn't logged at all. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:13, 12 February 2023 (UTC)