Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 55

Multiple issues

I think you actually have about three issues wrapped together here. At the top, well, I don't know about Dunbar's number; Brook's The Mythical Man-Month#The Mythical Man-Month would seem more applicable here. (Basically, an unstructured group of N people has N*N ways to communicate; as the group gets bigger communication becomes infeasible. This is implictly why "town-hall democracy" doesn't work at large scales – no one has the time to study all the issues.) But the solution to this is well-known: structure. Which, I hasten to add, need not be authoritarian and heirarchial. E.g., if a large group arranges itself as a collection of smaller groups (presumably the smaller groups have charge of or authority for certain areas or tasks), then only the smaller group needs to cross-communicate on the group's task, and the inter-group communications are simpler because because only a single channel is needed to each group. (Presumably the group has a spokesman or manager or some such external representor.) This should not seem novel, as it is pretty much how things are now on Wikipedia (though very informally).

The second issue stems from the inherent chaos of the idealistic "let everyone/anyone edit". I think we have plenty of evidence that not everyone is pointed in the same direction. Reality is more like a talented two-year old trying to stack some blocks while the rest of the kids run around, constantly knocking down his work. "Let everyone edit" arrays a lot of seeming randomness against any effort to order or structure anything. I don't think it is "anti-social" to resist this tyranny of the lowest common denominator of behavior (or goals). Sociality is the whole matter of how live in groups, which here transforms into the question of how to conserve the result of our efforts from the depradations of others. (In that sense I am all for "conservatism".) This leads to standards (e.g., references), the watchlist function, vandalism patrols, etc. For sure, this amounts to resistance to change. But consider the analogy of an electrical circuit (how appropriate!): certainly won't work without conductance, but also won't work without insulation. (Unless you want a big flash of self-destruction.)

The third issue, of how to organize the group, which includes the implicit sub-issue of how to govern the group, is thus driven by the need to conserve our efforts (else why bother?) and to organize generally, and constrained by the effective impossibility of doing this through simple, universal consensus. Which then gets deep....  :-)

I hope that helps to clarify matters. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:34, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Why should the choice of government be driven by "the need to conserve our efforts"? After all wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, so I would think it's main focus would be on facilitating collaboration, encouraging people to improve each others contributions.

Of course maintenance of wikipedia is essential to guaranty the quality of its content, but restricting edits is not the only way to achieve that goal. And it should not in any case become the main focus of wikipedia, it would be like transforming a mean into an end.

...

This has probably already been discussed a lot so I'll stop here, but I guess we're already seeing the 2 parties Camelbinky talked about ;-) -- Ryk V (talk) 01:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The conservation (or retention?) of effort means our results have some kind of endurance. (Why even bother if our efforts have no persisting result? Aside, that is, from some kind of performance art.) I once saw a group that had to repeatedly re-visit and re-decide a certain question because they were not able to retain/conserve their collective decisions. It is not at all a matter of artificial restrictions (as distinct from "liberty!" in the Hobbesian sense) on the means controlling the ends; it is a matter of arranging the means in order to attain (and conserve) the ends. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Decision making

Going back to the main issue which is, as I understand it : how to improve the decision making process on wikipedia, seeing as the current one, based on simple consensus, leads to immobility.

The initial proposition was to elect a governing body by, for example, expanding on the idea of the Arbitration Committee. I actually think that the wmf:Board of Trustees (at least the part interested in wikipedia) would be a more fitting starting point : unlike ArbCom which mainly arbitrates disputes the board is already the closest thing wikipedia has to a governing body.

Another existing project that could address part of the issue under discussion is the Wikimedia Strategic Planning. This is not a republican system as anyone who wants (and has the time and motivation) can participate. It is also designed to avoid the immobility seen on wikipedia by organizing participants into focused task-forces (obviously under the Dunbar's number threshold :-) that will assemble as much data as possible on their respective subject before discussing possible improvements. This process should allow them to avoid the kind of unresearched discussions sometime found on this page where each side gives its opinion without supporting it with verifiable data and without trying to address the other side argumentation, thus leading to no consensus.

Contrary to what is implied on m:Strategic planning 2009, this project should evolve into a continuous improvement process. However, it remains to be seen how the decision about each proposed change will be taken (if someone know, please explain) : a vote or maybe a less formal submission to the community with all the adequate research and argumentation ... -- Ryk V (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry to be late here. Wish I'd have seen this earlier. I agree with the proposer -- the whole consensus thing is getting to be almost arbitrary. Appropriate results are never insured because there are so many people with so equal a say and so little structure. There's a reason large organizations need structure, and I'm not sure how Wikipedia is any different. I used to believe in the ideals, being as the proposer is, on the liberal side of things, but lately I've been losing confidence in this having the ability to remain a fair and effective system that actually produces results in the encyclopedia's best interests, and those of the editors.

I posted a rudimentary administrative hierarchy proposal at Strategy Wiki a while ago, if anyone is interested. Equazcion (talk) 16:56, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Equazcion, you already know my view on Wikipedia and my dislike of any class structure so I'm sure you can guess that I must now take an opposing view on your hierachy system. Yes, a loud, tenacious minority can and often does prevent good changes (as you and I know all too well); but is the solution to that really to create a hierachy and more bureaucracy? A bureaucracy's first and foremost priority is to protect its "turf", once we create one it will protect whatever rights and abilities we give it and we'll never be able to destroy it, control it, or reign it in, it will appropriate new abilities it sees fit in order to do its job, whether we originally thought it should have those abilities or explicitely thought it should not, if it needs them for its job it will give it to itself. Arbcom was a mistake in my opinion and still is. We dont need more levels with more fancy titles and more rules and more bureaucracy that has nothing better to do than create more rules and enforcement, and editors out there thinking a fancy title gives their opinions more say (we see that problem with certain admins, and think about how hard it is to strip an admin compared to giving the title!). This is an encyclopedia, isnt our job to create and edit articles, this isnt an experiment in nation-building; I wait for the day when someone proposes a Wikipedia national anthem and flag.Camelbinky (talk) 00:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Perennial proposal

Perennial proposal. Activitiy on any single page tends to have rather less participants than Dunbar's number. Another way to put that: A wiki has its own structure. This is an interesting enough phenomenon that you could almost call a wiki a novel kind of political system all by itself. Yes yes, I said Almost. ;-)

Most "Real World" political systems have already been proven to fail on-line, because -hey- on-line is a different environment.

Wikis work better than most. I think the current community and system wikipedia uses is pretty much on its way to break the world record for longest-lived online community. (It has already broken the record for largest, AFAIK).

If you want to (re-)introduce concepts that have already been proven not to work, or that work contrary to what you can do on a wiki? No thanks!

On the other hand, would you like to design something that's actually better? I'm all ears!

Just realize that we already have something of a system, and that system still sort of works (however badly), which is a huge accomplishment by itself. Try to figure why the system works, and use that to build on. Don't blindly grab random system X you read about in a schoolbook yesterday. ;-)

• Existing System X probably won't magically transform the wiki into something useful. That's because most existing systems are not designed for online communities, let alone wiki-communities. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's unlikely.
• In fact, just blindly implementing any philosophy or paradigm has never really worked out too well anywhere or anytime in history. Don't start a cargo cult, Make sure you Know What You're Doing.
• Several traditional systems can lead to rapid death of a community (see even just work by Alvin Toffler for predictions and reasoning on this)
• Anything that will actually work is therefore likely to be either esoteric, custom designed, or both.
• What I said above: wikis are interesting. An empty wiki already has quite some elements of a successful political system. You can create projects rapidly and cross-link them. If people participate in the projects, you have a running system. Wikis are just at fast at politics as at writing encyclopedias. ;-) The trick is to get people to actually participate.
• I'm not married to wikis, (dangit, I demonstrated mediawikiwave at wikimania!). Other paradigms exist. Investigate them!
• Never underestimate the power or utility of a good programmer in an online community.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 04:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC) I tend to get a little worried when a self-professed-republican tries to call me 'conservative'. On the other hand, maybe I'm not the one to be worried <innocent look>

If anyone else, like me, is seriously (or even not seriously) worried about any move to a representative body that would create, maintain, enforce, and hand down policies and judgements for us, thereby taking that right from the Community at-large I have created a page here where we can show support for the basic ideals of Wikipedia that are most likely to be attacked by such a move. Even if such a republican form is never adopted it will still be of good use in giving a forum for those that agree with things like IAR, consensus, wp:notstatute, and common sense. It is a liberal view of Wikipedia as a place where all are equal editors with equal say and opposed to hierarchies or more bureaucracy.Camelbinky (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a distinct sub-issue here, which really warrants a separate discussion. And I wish I had more time to get into this, but for a quicky overview: Are all editors – and implicitly, all editing – really equal? There is a certain sense or aspect where I think this should be the case (and this really needs to explicated), but in other respects (such as quality, depth, "tone", etc.) it is clear and obvious that editors and editing are not "equal". The connection with the separate issue(s?) of hierarchies/bureauracy/authoritarianism is that solutions for dealing with the first issue are being sought in the realm of the latter, but this need not be the case. In summary: I think (yeah, on a good day) that we need to better refine just what "equality" means, and to work up better (more nuanced?) possible solutions to some of the problems. In particular, I think the idealistic "everyone's equal, every edit is good" view needs some realistic reconsideration, but that does not mean submission to some kind of overlord. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Back

Interesting. I took a bit of a break from Wikipedia, but this topic is still here. It's funny how almost random, seemingly inconsequential thoughts can sometimes turn out to be more substantial then the more normal Village Pump topics, isn't it?

Anyway, there's some good thoughts here, and their still percolating in my own thoughts. I think that it's important to point out that I personally don't think that anything drastic needs to change with Wikipedia. One of the things that I did during my "wikibreak" is to look around at the off-site Wikipedia related forums. My sense is that there is a tendency for those who have been "jilted" by what passes for the Wikipedia community to immediately jump to attack the site. I understand the reaction, but at the same time it's not constructive at all in my opinion.

What strikes me at being the most problematic aspect of Wikipedia's "governance" is that there effectively isn't any. Currently, Wikipedia is essentially an Anarchist state, and it seems to be more so now then it was in the not to distant past. My (possibly, or even probably incorrect) personal perception is that "Jimbo" is less active now, but that he has acted as the single Wikipedia "Moderator at large" (for want of a better title) for several years. It seems to be appropriate for him to move on, or move away, for various reasons which I'm certain that many others are more familiar with then myself. However, that leaves all of us in something of an in-between period, and personally I'd rather see what I perceive as an ongoing transition be actively managed by us as a community rather then simply bearing through it in an ad-hoc manner, hoping for the best.

As I sort of said in the opening post to this thread, I personally tend to hold onto Libertarian ideals. That being the case, I would love to see Wikipedia uphold as much of it's current "

do what you think is right

" attitude as possible. However, my Libertarian views are decidedly colored by a desire for structure, order, or (gasp) lawfulness. Chaos tends to bother me personally, and ultimately I think that rampant chaos is what is currently harming the Wikipedia project the most.

As should be clear from my replies above, I don't have any clear answers myself. Since this topic has continued on for a while at least, I do think that it could be constructuve for more of us to comment here however. Thanks for reading!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 04:41, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

"Chaos" is a bit ambiguous, but in the sense of "entropy" – yes, in whatever we do, it is usually because we want something better than would be produced by merely random or chaotic processes. Which generally requires structure, etc. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

democracy is bad?

I was just now reading through (you might say "dredging through"...) most of the commetary at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2. What struck me, in relation to this topic and that discussion, is the seemingly dogmatic and ideological position offered by many that essentially boils down to "democracy is bad". I recognize that I'm risking the start of an ideological political battle here, but I find that I'm almost compelled to continue. Let's start with this question: Is the "democracy is bad" viewpoint really something that has become dogmatic here on Wikipedia?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, let us step carefully. The specific and literal question you are asking is whether a certain viewpoint "has become dogmatic". Which I don't know, but I would say that is the wrong question. To see the real issue we need to back up one step and look closer at just what this viewpoint is. Particularly, the viewpoint (of many of us, including myself) generally (but imperfectly!) formulated as "editing should be restricted" (see discussion below at #Edits by anonymous users), and even my questioning (above) of the idealistic "everyone's equal, every edit is good", does NOT equate to "democracy is bad". This may require some careful distangling.

Note that the two views "everyone should be able to edit" and "editing should be restricted" are not necessarily incompatible. It depends on the nature of the restriction. These are analogous to "everyone can come into my house" and "no one can come in by the back door". (Because I don't have one!!) No problem, because "everyone" have the option of using the front door. Same way with editing: does "everyone should be able edit" mean "everybody should be able to edit anonymously"? Well, golly, is that a requirement, or not? It wasn't specified, and whether one implicitly assumes it, or not, leads to different results.

Similarly with the assumption that "everybody should be able to edit" is the same as "democracy". The latter certainly incorporates the idea of "everybody" (as in universal participation), but while the former might be deemed democratic (because it is like democracy), I think it is a profound error to conflate the two contexts. E.g., just because I live in a democracy doesn't mean that a bus driver has to let me drive. Well, I've run out of time, so here's long shot to beat the buzzer: taking this back to the top, I would say that some of the concerns about "republicanism" involve similar misperceptions as to the nature of democray. But that's for another day. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:19, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

As someone who's degree is in poli sci and is a grad student in poli sci with comparative politics as my discipline I most definitely do know what democracy is and how it works. On this I am most definitely an expert and know more than the average person/Wikipedian. I have got to say I dont quite understand the bus driver analogy, as "freedom of ability to do something" does not equal "democracy", the bus driver doesnt have to let you drive the bus because he's the bus driver, in the purest democracy a bus driver still doesnt have any obligation to let you drive unless you are saying the bus itself has been declared a democracy, in which case yes the bus driver does have to let you drive if the bus took a vote and the winner was you. The way Wikipedia is today is closest to pure communism than to "democracy", if people seem to have problem wrapping around that I can explain on an essay if you wish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camelbinky (talk • contribs) 01:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

So my analogy wasn't the best. Let's try a different one: airplane pilots. Not every is a "Sully"; do you want just anyone having a turn up front? No. This why piloting is restricted to those with the training, etc. Is this undemocratic? I would say no, because the context of democracy is political, and whereas expert competency in technical matters is not political. (Or shouldn't be.) To take this back to the issue that was raised, I would say that it is not so much a matter of whether democracy per se is "bad", but whether the application of certain democratic concepts is valid in a given context. E.g., democracy applied in a cockpit is bad, but that is not the same as "democracy is bad". (And if I can squeeze in a few more minutes, a further comment in the next subsection.) - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Fears

What I am scared of in any move towards an elected body is that the elected body will be given x "powers" and "responsibilities" regarding our policies/guidelines. Factions/parties will form around specific core ideologies here on Wikipedia and an ideology that is currently a minority view may end up being carried by the majority on the elected body. Secondly- it is a fact that any representative body/bureaucracy (whether a legislature or a just a department within a government) will always take on powers and authorities beyond that given to it even if those powers were originally explicitely left out on purpose, if that body believes that those powers are absolutely necessary to fulfill its given function (as interpreted by the body itself). It is the "law of bureaucracies" and is the fundamental fact needed in order to understand how bureaucracies work, the most common example given is that the US Constitution in no way provides for the [U.s.] Supreme Court to have the ability to declare laws unconstitutional (or presidential acts), Marbury v Madison was a ruling by the Supreme that gave itself that power. We should all be aware of true bureaucracies and political structures before we attempt to construct one of our own. And of course- Wikipedia is an exercise in creating an encyclopedia, not an exercise in creating a better bureaucracy or "proto-state".Camelbinky (talk) 01:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The whole point of "creating a better bureaucracy" is to better manage the encyclopedia making. There is a widespread attitude that "bureaucracies are bad", therefore we should have no "bureaucracy". And by implication no management, no leadership, no anything by which the limitations of small groups can be transcended.

I think the reason for this attitude is just as you stated: fears. I suspect that at the bottom of the pile of fears is the particular one that someone else will interfere with what I want to do. Well, what if the ability to control certain aspects of one's environment ("power") were parcelled out so that you get to have exclusive control over there, and I get to have exclusive control here? (Like how it works out regarding property.) That is, decentralization. Which is not to say that different little entities are not trying to take on more power, but in being dispersed they are less powerful. (Just like the free market model.) My point is that though there are many possibilities of which we ought to be scared of, there are many other possibilities. And we should not let fears of some prevent us from considering others. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 01:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Very good points JJ, that definitely got me to thinking. It is true that what I am afraid of is can, perhaps, be summed up as "fear of the unknown". I like your analogy regarding property, but remember if we have a bureaucracy (or proto-state as some of these proposals seem), yes, we may end up having "me control this" and "you control that" but at least in the US remember there are zoning regulations, fence height regulation, property taxes, and etc (to continue your analogy's theme); perhaps some of these bureaucratic/"legislative"/"republicanism" ideas, if not well-thought out and properly vetted could end up costing us some freedoms we currently hold dear on our "little plots of land". To end my post on the analogy note- remember it wasnt that long ago that zoning regulations by local governments were considered unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, now pretty much every municipality has zoning or at least some form of regulation, so in Wikipedia things we currently think "oh, that would never be made a policy" or "that would never be taken out of policy" may one day be taken out or added against the majority opinion because our "elected body" deems it in "our best interest".Camelbinky (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This closes in on the fundamental philosophical issue (and fear): that some entity might diminish my ability ("freedom") to do what I think is best, might impose on me in some way. The problem is the difficulty in having a say in every issue and at every point where we might perceive an interest. This is why in every sphere of society we necessarily delegate (or at least defer) to others: to "bureaucrats" in exective matters, to "representative government" in political matters, to various experts in other matters. Basically, we learn that we can't control or even influence everything, so we sort out and focus on where we have the greatest concerns, leaving other matters to others. In essence, just as I may claim some special authority (based on expertise, experience, or whatever) to impose certain decisions on you, I also respect a similar claim of authority by you. And on the whole this can work. (Indeed, there are whole areas I hope some one else will handle, because I can't. It can also fail, such as where authority is corrupted, but that is not so much a refutation of the principal as a matter of implementation.) And that, I believe, is the fundamental basis of 'republicanism': that yielding authority to others can work. - J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProjects

What about giving WikiProjects a more prominent role in the governance of the system? If we need structure, start from a solid foundation at the bottom. WikiProjects are already a very grass-roots method of applying structure to small areas of interest. Perhaps the WikiProjects should collaborate on a more formal level to form a larger structure and giving the WikiProject_Council a community mandate to do this would be the way forward. How to implement this idea is, naturally, left to the community consensus at large, but I think this would work better than a top-down traditional politic route. -- M2Ys4U ^(talk) 19:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's not fix what ain't broken

The most amazing thing about Wikipedia is that it works — and works incredibly well — without any organized editorial structure. In fact, I contend that the "problems" that this proposal is meant to solve simply do not exist. The "chaos" that some perceive is of no consequence to readers, and does not prevent editors from contributing. Those "problems" only seem to be perceived by a minority of people who like to discuss editorial policies; or who assume that one of WP's goals is to become as stylistically homogeneous as a classical encyclopedia. The latter is, to say the least, an exceedingly naive notion.
On the contrary, if more old editors are leaving than new editors are joining (as some statistics seem to indicate), it is probably because WP is becoming more structured and bureaucratic; so that contributing is becoming harder and less fun. Back in 2003, all that an editor needed to know before contributing was the wiki markup syntax. Today there are hundreds of style and policy pages that one is urged to read before typing the first sentence.
Wikiprojects (or any other federative structure one may invent) only contribute to this burden. Many editors can and do contribute to articles that fall under the purview of dozens of different WikiProjects. One cannot expect that every such editor will read and honor the policies of each project, much less take the time to join them or discuss and vote on their policies. Most editors would probably give up and find a more pleasant and productive way to waste their free time.
In fact, I conjecture that, for any WikiProject, most of the improvement that has occurred on articles under its purview would have been occurred just as well and quickly (if not even better and more quickly) if the WikiProject did not exist. For one thing, the time that was wasted by editors in purely bureaucratic Project maintenance tasks (such as slapping the Project's template on Talk pages) would have been better employed in editing contents.
As others have pointed out, Wikipedia editors are not meant to interact with each other; so Dunbar's number and other sociological theories are simply irrelevant. Editors do and should interact only with articles. When someone decides to edit an article, he/she should not have to know who else edited it, much less depend on their consent; all he needs (or should need) to know is the article itself, and possibly its talk page. (The fact that comments in talk pages are signed is irrelevant; there too, only the contents of the remarks matter, not who posted them.)
PLEASE, let's not try to "fix" what is working so well. If anything needs to be changed, it should be in the direction making WP more chaotic and less organized, with fewer policies and simpler editing protocols. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Completely agree with Jorge! What if we all decided- no more VPP, OR/N, RS/N, no more discussion on policies and what they should say, what the next new policy is, how it should be interpreted, should this be promoted to a guideline, etc? And everyone instead only worked on editing articles. If everyone simply did what Wikipedia is supposed to be used for (editing articles) we'd have fewer conflicts and I think it would work out better.Camelbinky (talk) 04:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A regular and recurring debate over whether or not certain types of geographical locations articles (cities, streets, rivers, mountains, etc) meet the general notability guidelines typically results in some kind of assertion that a certain class of articles has been granted "inherent notability". Nothing to this effect has ever been formalized, and these classes of "inherently notable" topics appear to exist only in the mind of the community, not "on paper" as it were. As a result, this creates the following kind of circular debate at AfD (and other types of) discussions : "Delete, no notability established" -> "Keep, X are inherently notable" -> "Why are/who says X are inherently notable" -> "Well that's what we said the last time someone nominated an X for deletion" ...

The breakdown in this process is that subjects for which no sources to indicate notability can be found, are nevertheless deemed "inherently notable". This flies in the face of logic; a subject that is "inherently notable" should have abundant proof of notability. We have guidelines that set down requirements to determine when a topic is or is not notable, but then we have this informal notion that certain subjects are notable just because we say they are? This kind of reasoning is confusing at best and outright contradictory at worst. A large part of the problem comes about from the fact that

I used to consistently argue against the inclusion of articles that did not meet the general notability guidelines, in spite of being deemed "inherently notable" at some point, but I was consistently in the minority opinion in these discussions. The community as a whole clearly has no will to delete articles on things like cities and asteroids and species, even when there is not one shred of

At this point I'm not really talking about details of how to implement a change to this effect, rather, I am trying to get some kind of feel from the community on how these things are handled. The fact that these kinds of discussions come up at fairly regular intervals seems to indicate that the problem is real and not imagined. What I am not entirely clear on is whether the severity of the problem is real or something I have merely invented in my head. Does the community as a whole have a desire to treat these atlas/almanac/gazetteer style articles as such and create some kind of process to deal with them, or would we really prefer to treat them like any old encyclopedia article and cling to the "inherent notability" concept? Shereth 17:40, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this is an effect of the fact that we present presume notability (and this is the WP-version of the word) is our only inclusion metric, when in reality there are several community-based inclusion principles that are unwritten that guide what content is included; the notability and GNG there usually for topics that don't fall under these. I've long argued for creating a more over-arching inclusion approach, with our current notability guidelines being supportive of that, but better asserting that we also immediately assume that every documented city, species, asteroid, road, etc should be covered here because of WP's goal to summarize human knowledge, and if they happen to also meet notability guidelines, great.

Now, of course, we have created sister projects specific for certain types of knowledge that split off well from WP: dictionary terms, how-to guides, etc - all part of human knowledge the Foundation wants to document. All these represent things that don't fit well into an encyclopedic format. So the question is, can we have a sister project or an equivalent means of separation of content from the rest of the encyclopedia? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no for most of these, because while there are a large number of articles that are stubby for an encyclopedia, the ones that are certainly not stubs are too inseparable in encyclopedic and reference content to work for the entire class. Take some cases:

If we were to create an atlas sister project for all documented habitated cities, articles on cities like New York City and Paris would be at a loss here because there is a lot more than just describing the location and population of the city.

If we were to create a gazetter project, you'd have the same thing for roads like

I-35

Thus, for these types of classes, we can't split off a complete comprehensive project without harming the core WP content. Thus, we need to realize that either we need to be complete with them, and include all (within reasonable discrimination) of the classes as WP articles even if they are stubby and don't show notability, or try to assert notability and make this collection incomplete and not comprehensive. Preferably, I think we are satisfying the project's goals better with the former, including all of a class even if that negates notability, because at the end of the day, notability is a consensus-driven guideline - we define what it means we have to loosen it to complete our need to document human knowledge, so be it. --MASEM (t) 18:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget that the point of a gazetteer, which wikipedia already is, is to have these articles. All places are notable, they just haven't necessarily had any notable events in them. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

And remember that just because notability cannot be established about a town in, say, Djibouti, through our regular means of checking articles in primarily English-language sources, doesn't mean that the local newspaper, television, or radio news there hasn't covered it possibly extensively. Personally, I think the realization that the majority of those which might be of dubious "notability" are in fact probably very notable in their own country, but that little of that information is readily available to us outsiders, is one of the primary reasons, if not the primary reason, for this "pass" some such articles are given. In time, of course, if we really find that there actually isn't anything substantive to say about a given area, there is always a very real chance that the artcle will be merged. John Carter (talk) 18:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Let's take

American High Schools as an example. In America, High Schools which grant diplomas are generally presumed notable unless someone makes a convincing case that they are not. Generally, those that would fail at AfD are those which are 1) relatively unknown even by locals, 2) are special-purpose, such as schools for dropouts or schools for students with discipline problems, and most importantly, 3) unlike most high schools, there is nothing about them such as interscholastic sporting events which causes them to make local and regional papers on a regular basis. Of course, some of these schools, such as Serenity High School

, a high school in Texas for recovering substance abusers, meet notability requirements even if they don't have the usual "notability generating" things that a traditional high school has.

Yes, this "presumption of notability" does let some very small high schools that are basically unknown outside their own county or adjacent counties to have articles without risking defeat in AfD, but at the same time it's not an automatic "you are a high school, you get a free pass." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem with "presumption of notability" is exactly that it is treated as a "you are an X, you get a free pass". Regardless of the original intent in deciding that high schools are presumed notable, the end result has been that any attempt to delete articles on high schools is pretty much aborted at launch by opponents parroting exactly that line : "Keep, all schools are notable". Now, I don't have a specific problem with the community deciding that all high schools are inclusion-worthy regardless of their notability, and that is at the heart of this discussion. "Presumed notability" is poorly worded, poorly understood and often misused, especially within the context of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I am hoping that an alternate solution, one that does not rely upon nebulous concepts of presumed/inherent notability and more upon simple inclusion criteria. Dispense with the assumptions that schools "probably have some kind of coverage" and instead rely on a policy/guideline that states, in simple fashion, "High schools are always inclusion worthy to fulfill Wikipedia's role as an almanac". Shereth 20:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of this comes down to the (mis)conception that "notability is the GNG". Which is not true. Notability is what we as editors determine is notable, with one common case being the GNG because the fact that others (reliable experts, to wit) have talked about the topic means that it notable, and thus is a good semi-objective measure. But we do not have to limit ourselves to this, because we are consensus driven. We want reliability, for certain, and we need to avoid indiscriminate, so listing every person or the like is inappropriate. But if the community feels we should be included roads and villages and (discovered) asteroids and species, each which has a finite (if not large) number and can be sourced to at least a single reliable source, then that's the community assessment of these being notable, and thus we should include them. The problem is that too many people see the GNG as an absolute must for an article, and for several topics, I would assume to be the case. But the GNG is too artificially limiting if we are attempting to assemble the whole of human knowledge in an indiscriminate manner. --MASEM (t) 22:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I wholly support getting rid of the maligned "inherent notability" terminology in favor of the more accurate statement that notability is only one of several inclusion criteria the community recognizes. We could use

WP:NOT, but it seems little-used by links or visits); if I get time and motivation I may draft something along these lines in my userspace. Anomie⚔

23:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I started something at User:Anomie/Inclusion criteria. But without help, it's not going to get anywhere because I don't know enough about all the various areas. Feel free to edit it if you want to help. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Sister projects, or even independent projects, probably make the most sense in the long run. Wikipedia is not a repository of all human knowledge. Once WikiSpecies gets going strong, transwiking articles about most species that most people have never heard of or which are only in the news the month of their discovery would be in order, saving Wikipedia proper for animals which a large number of laypeople have already heard of. Similar projects can be set up for planets, schools, geographical locations, government entities, and other things where most individual examples have no real notability beyond existence. In the short and medium run, things will probably continue the way they are, with more and more articles being written in WikiSpecies and other projects and fewer and fewer minor articles in Wikipedia. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

But will those articles on WikiSpecies for animals I've (so I'm told) never heard of be redirected to from the Wikipedia article of the same name, or will the wikipedia article redirect to a species that I have heard of (so I'm told)? How long before wikipedia is just redirects to other wikis? "Wikipedia is not a repository of all human knowledge" funny that Jimbo Wales said otherwise. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:43, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Anomie's work-in-progress looks promising. However, perma-sub-stubs on non-

notable subjects aren't useful unless a proper listing and navigation system is used (like taxoboxes for species). Otherwise the only people who will see the entries are people who already know about them (or click "random article"). If a similarly effective system were set up for human settlements, roads, chemical compounds, stars, etc. then I would be less unhappy with their existence. On the whole, I'd prefer for the encyclopedia to concentrate on encylopedic articles, rather than amassing data with the excuse that "we're not paper". OrangeDog (τ • ε

) 01:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The idea of adding a namespace is something that I brought up in the linked to discussion we were having on VP (policy). I'm not extremely attached to the idea, but I don't mind "selling it" a little bit. I think that it makes sense for at least location based articles (Cities, administrative districts, roads, etc...) simply because it seems as though most agree that there is a fairly clear distinction in character between location based articles and other encyclopedic content. That seems to be the reason that we're "perennially" running into inclusion issues with these articles (some of the conversation above are touching on the deeper reasons for that). I think that using a (presdu-?)namespace would help to clarify the problem because we could then talk about policies and guidelines for location based articles without affecting the treatment of the "normal" encyclopedia articles. There may be some merit in extending a similar idea into other topic areas as well, but we should probably leave that question for later on (let's tackle one problem at a time). I might be overlooking some obvious problem with such an approach, but if there is such a problem then I'm missing it.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean things like Paris and Rome aren't encyclopedic topics? Mr.Z-man 23:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

*scratches head* Is that really what comes across from the above? Of course their encyclopedic, but they have slightly different character to them as a group. I'm fairly certain that is where the "inherent notability" idea came from, because... well, places aren't really notable, but their importance as landmarks, cultural references, and just as parts of our lives makes them something that everyone wants to know about.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 11:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Surely "something that everyone wants to know about" is a large part of notability. Notability isn't a physical quantity like volume or mass. Pseudomonas_(talk) 11:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

"everyone" is really over stating things, on my part. There does seem to be a consistent (apparent minority) group of people who are uncomfortable with including... less significant locations in Wikipedia, and they generally seem to cite notability as their concern. The thing is that locations can be kind of tough to make them appear "notable" to those unfamiliar with the locale, simply because their "part of the scenery". If you go to the area then the places (buildings, towns, roads, schools, etc...) gain an instant and obvious importance. The problem is that importance is localized, because the importance of an oasis in Arabia is vital to the people and the character of that region but the importance of it fades quickly with distance, and essentially becomes nothing to people living in Europe, America, or India. That's my main point here, that there needs to be a different and separate standard specifically for location articles so that we can effectively deal with them while not damaging the normal Wikipedia:Notability guideline.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess maybe it's just that I'm more of an inclusionist about places than about a lot of other things. I disagree with your assertion that places are in a particular category of being more interesting locally; a politician will be of more interest in their own constituency than on the other side of the world too; a transportation system likewise, and so on. Even if we could somehow make criteria for things that are locally but not globally notable a)it would seem to increase systematic bias, and b) I don't see how a new namespace would help. Pseudomonas_(talk) 12:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

You're seemingly not alone in the desire to be more inclusionist when it comes to articles about places, though. What I'm trying to convey (poorly, obviously) is some of the possible reasons that many (if not most) of us feel the same way about this class of articles. Their fundamentally different from, to use one of your examples, articles about more local politicians, simply because places seem to be more universally important to us as people. A politician is likely to never be important to outsiders simply because there's usually nothing that a local politician does that impacts an outsider's life at all. A physical location is fundamentally different though, because... well, it's there, for one thing. The (at least apparent) permanence for physical features is probably a huge psychological factor here, for most people. It just seems to me that the main problem here is that we continually try to ignore the fundamental difference in character that information about physical locations have to us, which is why terms such as "inherent notability" have been both accepted and reviled by many. I don't think that continuing to adjust policy or guidelines in order to address all articles as a monolithic whole is going to be effective.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Too add to that: People come and go, popularity rises and fades. Places stay. The history of places is added to constantly. The same is not true of other topics. Why is that we can include every acknowledged medical condition and disease on the planet, but not every acknowledged location? Why is that one of the first things done on the encyclopedia was to set a bot loose that created village, town, city, county, parish, and district articles for every single political division in the United States, but that otherwise geography must follow general notability guidelines? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure someone couldn't get that from your proposal. You said that "location based articles" (specifically including cities) are distinct from "'normal' encyclopedia articles." Yes Rome and Paris aren't notable for their location, but their location is certainly relevant to the reason that they're notable (If Paris was founded in the Sahara desert, I imagine it wouldn't be quite the same) and they're inherently tied to their location. Trying to discuss a city without mentioning its location would just be silly, if not its actual location, its relative location in terms of rivers and other natural features. Mr.Z-man 19:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Humm... I think that you might be misreading one sentence slightly. In the original post above I said: "simply because it seems as though most agree that there is a fairly clear distinction in character between location based articles and other encyclopedic content.". Maybe I'm not punctuating that correctly somehow, but the intent was to draw the character distinction between articles such as Paris and articles such as (Just using Random Article here) Robert Morris (writer). I did say "and other", rather then saying something like "unlike other". Later in the paragraph I was trying to communicate the way in which using a namespace would help us deal with location articles specifically, which is where the comparison to "normal" articles came from. I certainly don't see location articles as fundamentally unencyclopedic or anything (actually, the exact opposite is probably more accurate). I most certainly agree with the point that trying to discuss a city (or any other location) outside of it's surroundings won't work, but that's not even remotely what I was attempting to talk about.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess I just don't quite see why we need to treat locations differently. If they're encyclopedic, what's the problem with keeping them with the rest of the encyclopedia? Mr.Z-man 20:28, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I think when it comes down to it, a separate workspace is redundant. If anything it creates an extra step in finding the location you are looking for. The question simply comes down to is: are, or can, geographical locations be exempt from notability? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:36, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

See, I don't think that we need to even think about notability when it comes to location articles. The paradigm just doesn't fit. I don't like the "inherent notability" idea any more then Shareth or others do, but the difference is that they hold dear to the fact that notability is the primary issue when it comes to articles, which is an ideology that I don't share at all personally. Notability is important to consider, but it shouldn't be the only consideration. When it comes to location articles though, I don't see a notability standard as being relevent to the discussion. As I've mentioned before, the fact that a place (city, town, road, etc...) exists is self evident. Personal property does not need to be covered simply for the fact that no one really cares about personal property (including most property owned by corporations, by the way. Buildings are an obvious exception). Community property, on the other hand, is something that we're all generally so interested in that we hardly even think about it. As I've been saying all along, there's a fundamental difference in character between location articles and other articles.

I don't at all support forking such content to a separate wiki. That "solution" strikes me as being rather Pyrrhic, for all concerned. Using a namespace is simply something that I thought would be helpful for us to show: "here are these encyclopedia articles that are slightly different from the rest". It just seems to be a logical solution, even if it is slightly imperfect in some manner. One of the best things about it is that all autoconfirmed users can maintain such a solution easily, which will prevent widespread issues with it's implementation.

PS: to answer the "extra step" criticism above, that is relatively easily solved. The "namespace" doesn't need to be different from the main article namespace.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

But how are they different? How is

Syrianska Botkyrka IF? Mr.Z-man

20:59, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Permanence? The simple fact that it's a place, rather then a person or a thing (or organization, in the case of Syrianska Botkyrka IF)... I'm not sure if there is a good answer to that question, which is what we all seem to be struggling with. The difference seems so self evident to me that maybe I'm missing something, and I'm very willing to accept the possibility that some of us may be viewing this from a different paradigm then others are, so I guess that turnabout may be useful here. Is Paris fundamentally similar to the Mauritian rupee or Syrianska Botkyrka IF in some manner (other then that they exist, obviously)?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:02, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

It is important to note that we're primarily discussing the policy treatment of location articles here, rather then any sort of... encyclopedic value metric, or some such thing. There seems to be some uncertainty on how to apply notability, in particular, consistently to location articles and other articles without giving anything special status. I honestly don't have too much of an issue with essentially doing nothing, but there seems to be quite a bit of angst over consistently "bending the rules" for location articles, so this seemed like a logical compromise.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 22:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

General Notability Guideline

I believe that we should stick with the general notability guideline as much as possible and avoid branching out into other ideas about notability just because "we're not paper". (I know we're well down this road already, but I've felt this way for quite a while.) If our goal is verifiability and encyclopedicness, then we need to phrase our debates in terms of the GNG. That's what I believe, though I know there's a huge faction that disagrees with me completely.

But even if we take the GNG as the gold standard (which we should), we can agree to be lenient in our enforcement (not lenient in the policy itself). Cities and towns have economies and politics, even small ones; most meet the general notability guideline because most have been written about in multiple sources. We give them a "free pass" (i.e. we won't indiscriminately delete them, but we can challenge notability if we choose) because there are simply too many cities to debate each one individually; it is more useful to have database-driven information on them, with the understanding that real source-based (encyclopedic) articles will arise as necessary, then to have tens of thousands of deletion discussions to weed out the minority of non-notable ones. We can aim for good rather than perfect.

Streets and mountains and rivers are more troublesome. We're not a database, and these things are not overwhelmingly notable. We should not be aggressive about these things, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Giving special status to rivers but not primary schools is the kind of thing that turns us from a republic into some kind of a democracy–bureaucracy, which is the worst possible structure for this kind of project. —Noisalt (talk) 22:45, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Verifiability and encyclopedicness is a wholly separate issue from notability. However, I'd be happy to see the notability requirement for geographic locations solely be verification. Is there a reliable article anywhere at all about this location? If so, its verifiable. Encyclopedic is a metter of writing style. Any topic can be made encyclopedic. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 23:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious about this thinking, though. What is it, specifically, that makes the notability guideline so important in your view? I mean, you're sort of deriding the "not paper" aspect of Wikipedia above (mildly, at least), which seems to be a common thread among those who hold the notability guideline to a similar standard, but... well, the fact is that Wikipedia is not really bound by any physical limits. I personally think that a notability guideline is a good thing to have, but frankly the number of AFD's started with "not notable" seriously damages not only the guideline but the entire encyclopedia. Not that this should turn into a discussion about AFD's, but it's worth mentioning in order to frame the conversation. I just want to know what it is about the notability guideline that makes it so important to some.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Requiring articles to be covered in multiple, reliable, secondary sources helps to ensure that articles can be verifiable and NPOV. If there are no sources at all, the content can't be verifiable. If the only coverage is in primary sources, unreliable sources, or sources connected with the subject, then writing a fully verifiable and NPOV article will likely be difficult, if not impossible. Mr.Z-man 01:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. —Noisalt (talk) 05:29, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

So then why isn't the criteria for inclusion verifiability? Notability is subjective, verifiability is objective. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Because verifiability is a content issue. Every individual statement has to be verifiable. Notability is an inclusion/exclusion issue: is there sufficient independently verifiable content to have at least a basic article? Furthermore, NOTPAPER does not mean "indiscriminate". We, as a community, are free to decide where the bounds of this encyclopedia are. If enough people wanted it to list every human that ever lived on Earth, then that would be the boundary. Because many people feel that that would make us less useful (a disambiguation page with thousands of "John Smith"s is not really practical for most people who will be looking for one of the more well-known ones), and would hugely increase the risk of vandalism, and for probably a myriad of other reasons, we have decided that we should not have articles on everything, but only on those subjects that have received considerable attention in reliable independent sources. However, due to an aim to have completeness in some areas, exceptions (implicit or explicit) have been made for localities and other geographic features, species (flora and fauna), astronomical objects, genes (I think), and perhaps a few others basic building blocks of humanity, the world and the universe.

Fram (talk

) 09:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's from a "desire to have completeness", so much as just some desire to have permastubs. That stuff could be much better handled using lists and aggregating hundreds in a shot (List of populated places in Somewhere County), and I'm not really sure why we don't. What we really need for the GNG is enforcement, with extremely rare exception, and to quit making blanket exceptions for someone who

got a paper cited a lot or got considered in the census or whatever other criterion du jour the case may be. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me}

09:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

We want a little bit more than verifiability. We also want to ensure there is enough information to have a useful, somewhat comprehensive article, hence the requirement for multiple sources. If all we required was verifiability, we would end up with stubs on almost every person who died in a 1st world country (through their death notice in a local newspaper) and thousands of substubs about high school sports players. Mr.Z-man 19:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Allow established users the ability to change protection and delete pages in their own user space and/or user talk space upon request, similar to rollbacker or autoconfirmed