text:
money for more equipment? Anyway, editing issues... and readability issues.... if they are neither minor nor major issues, how can condensation and splitting resolve them? --George Ho (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Your style of writing affects how something is read, and we don't want to disrupt that at all with SIZE. But readability is also affected by length: no matter how good your writing is, an article that goes on and on and on is not well-suited to reading. At some point you need to think how to organize the information; which pieces of information start to get into trivial coverage and can be removed (with the understand that we are meant to be tertiary and a summary work) and to put the most relevant stuff up front and the more detailed information elsewhere. --M ASEM  (t) 13:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We have seen several cases about content forking of celebrities that may violate WP:BLP and WP:NOT, like Personal life of Jennifer Lopez. If WP:SIZE has nothing to do with this, then is this article consistent with other policies and guidelines? --George Ho (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know anything about Jennnifer Lopez but I feel if Elizabeth II of England can fit that sort of stuff in okay and practically every hour of her life is documented in reliable sources, then a whole article about Jennifer Lopez's personal life might just be fancruft rather than having separate notability. Dmcq (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been in discussion on WT:Article size about the problems of what the rule of thumb about article size is in aid of and what additional considerations should also apply. It is quite interesting the arguments it seems have been put forward in featured articles to justify pushing their size way beyond even what is agreed is a reasonable size for reading in an hour and for duplicating large chunks of subtopics rather than just including a short summary. Dmcq (talk) 11:52, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The fourth criterion of a featured article is that it has an appropriate length. I think people focus more on the "comprehensive" aspect. I think we should be as much concise as we are comprehensive in each article, actively using summary style and leaving lesser details to sub-articles. I have not seen the length criterion strictly applied at the review stage. SFB 18:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you think of this argument for including more from a subtopic in a main article "These 100-to-1 or worse readership drop-off ratios are common, I've seen them across many time periods and article/subarticle combinations. So if there's something important about any of these topics, editors know it had better go in the main article, otherwise 99 percent of their readers will never see it.".
 * Also and perhaps more relevant to George Ho's query what do you think of my 'I see a bit in the guideline about size not being a reason to remove stuff. Sort of, but not quite true either. Size is a very good indicator that trivia is being put into an article if it can't be split out into subtopics that have some notability. It doesn't apply that way for lists but lists can be arbitrarily split for instance by ones starting A-E so the bits don't become too huge.' Dmcq (talk) 18:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Your arguments are reasonable and decent. Somehow, they do not reflect which information is or is not important. I don't know what else to say, but right now I'm losing my opposition to this guideline because... length issues cannot go away. Still, this guideline could force editors into pleasing mobile phones, laptops, older browsers and operating systems, and obscure, old equipment without considering article quality. Now I'll have no choice but to follow it and to "section it up" (or restructure and condense). At least I'm working more on subtopics than main topic itself; they are easier to edit than main topic itself. As for page views that you mentioned, well, I guess general knowledge is everybody's goal. When people do not often surf to subtopics, as I guess, quick learning and quick knowledge are a reader's goals. So sad that, even with hard work on subtopics, main topics are reader's priorities. --George Ho (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I have yet to see an article that is long that cannot have some reasonable section split off naturally that would still remain comprehensive after said split (usually through the use of a 2-3 sentence summary left behind). It may require editors to reconsider their present breakdown of an article if it is in a non-standard format, but usually this isn't the case. The harder part is knowing what that natural split is.  Generally, as per advice at Summary style, detailed information that may not be necessary for the reader, learning about the topic for the first time, needs to know about, for example, if talking about a musical artist, their full discography is likely less important that their bio, musical background, styles, and success. It is not as difficult as it is being made out to seem here.  --M ASEM  (t) 20:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * My feelings entirely. I thought there was some advice in the Summary style guideline to base a summary on the lead but I see in fact it talks about the summary often being twice the size of the lead. That would be at my top limit as I would be wondering what is the criterion for information to be put in a summary, it just seems like a pass to stick the whole subtopic in I think.

 * As to shoving stuff into the main article because it won't be read if in a subtopic article, that is quite a wrong headed argument I think, but it isn't straightforward to explain exactly what is wrong with it. Just saying it is against WP:NOTPAPER won't convince someone who believes in doing that. I see Wikipedia as like a shop selling information, how should one go about selling the most information to a customer? Putting more and more information into an article does not mean that readers on average will take more and more information away from the article nor does it I believe encourage them to look at other articles. I don't know however if anyone has even formulated the right questions about what we want a reader to do or take away never mind how we measure or improve on how well we do that. Dmcq (talk) 00:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Am I the only one sensing that this guideline could also be a disclaimer? Look, why not mentioning phones, dialup, and older equipment as disclaimers? That way, we'd be concerned less about them, as we did to "spoiler" templates? --George Ho (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Makes no sense that way. We actually have reasons to make sure we can serve information to devices on limited bandwidth, and to wave it away as a disclaimer saying that WP's only targeting large bandwidth devices is not a good idea at all. --M ASEM  (t) 09:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Masem. We don't really cater to the low-end of users, but then neither does any aspect of the internet (issues run from complex coding styles, to high memory usage in browsers, to the lack of options for throttling high memory/cpu web content). Also I think the size issues and solutions of articles and those of lists are profoundly different so it is not a great idea to consider them equally. George – can you demonstrate an instance where key information on a topic has been deleted from of an article and moved to its sub-article? I've never come across this problem. The sub-article readership stats aren't relevant if the information is appropriately summarised. I would expect to see large viewing variations within the very sections of an article (if we could magically see what readers were viewing). SFB 16:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll try: Social Security (United States) and History of Social Security in the United States. I'm not sure if they are right or wrong examples. However, here's a bad example: List of Codename: Kids Next Door episodes. --George Ho (talk) 16:43, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I follow what you're saying there. I think the lead of the History of Social Security in the United States could be expanded a bit more in line with the summary in Social Security (United States) which could have a bit of cleanup on it, but overall nothing too untoward seems to be happening there that I can see. What I see in the list of Kids Next Door episodes is that it doesn't seem to have any real citations even as a list topic and I really wish people would leave out such lists unless a number of the entries have some notability, however I haven't figured out what it is you're trying to say about it. Dmcq (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I vehemently object to characterizing mobile device users "the low-end of users." There are large swaths of the world where mobile Internet access is the economic and cultural norm.  Moreover, even in the U.S. there are particular populations where mobile Internet access is more prevalent.  To dismiss those people as "the low-end" is ignorant at best and outright offensive at worst. ElKevbo (talk) 18:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I mean technically low-end. This phrase is not derogatory in any way and is in wide use. If you have low memory connection/equipment, then you are a low-end user. SFB 06:38, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

When I first started here some 4 years ago, I tried to follow WP:SIZE whenever I could. However, I really no longer do, at least on the technical side. That is because I have realized that technology and bandwidth have been ever-increasing for many years, now – moreso than the recommended 30KB recommendation that we used to have for a long time.

That being said, readability is different and separate issue altogether, which I would argue is a more important issue when merging or splitting articles than mere physical size. Sometimes that simply cannot be avoided; Abraham Lincoln is a good example of this, and a lot of people I think would reasonably expect that to be a big article (which it is) with a lot of information in it. That is where Masem's WP:NOTPAPER argument comes in; we don't have a strict limit on how large (or even small) articles can be, and not all articles are uniform and equal. --MuZemike 21:37, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:SIZE is a good idea so long as we make it clear that splitoffs made purely due to size are not independently subject to notability requirements. I have seen far too many AFDs in which it is claimed that "the early life of John Foo is not notable" or "the list of episodes from Foo: The Series is not notable, with arguments that John Foo or Foo: The Series are notable, their articles overly long, and these are encyclopedic subtopics and thus valid splitoffs, wrongly dismissed as WP:NOTINHERITED arguments. This is not only an incoherent way of analyzing the content, but it also fails to serve the underlying purpose of notability guidelines, and serves only to improperly constrain article content growth. So I'd like to see a way to preclude such AFDs, so that the decisions of how much detail is merited for a subtopic/section, and when a section should be split off because of article size, are clearly identified as purely ordinary editing decisions, not deletion decisions. postdlf (talk) 23:27, 11 July 2012 (UTC) (painstakingly typed on a mobile browser)
 * Even when mobile phones will evolve, the readability issues won't go away? Is there a way or no way to resolve readability issues, even when we can edit articles very well? Either way, what's the point of having this guideline if readability, editing, and loading issues will go away or won't go away, even after evolution of technology? --George Ho (talk) 23:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We do have a very basic readability guide at WP:Article size "A page of about 30kB to 50kB of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is right on the limit of the average concentration span of 40 to 50 minutes." If you have anything bigger than that you definitely start degrading the user experience is my feeling compared to having separately loaded pages. If something is larger than that readers will be spending quite a bit of their time skimming not reading - and we should enable them to skim better to find out what they  do want to read. The Abraham Lincoln article is a very good one - as a paper article. It is not so good as an internet resource. The bits that are dealt with as subtopics should be summarized a bit more and have less in them. Have a look at a shop window. Do they cram everything they've got into it? They summarize and entice you in by quickly showing the main things and how good they are.
 * As to the business of splitting without any notability constraint - the current size limits are way far beyond causing problems that way except for the most fanatic collector of trivia or for list articles which simply are long lists. If one goes beyond the current guidelines that is an obvious indicator of a problem. People are shoving too much that should be in subtopics into a main topic. The subtopics are notable in the case of good articles, it is just editors can't bear not to have the pageviews denied to their nuggets of information that makes them pad out the main article. But what they really do is clutter up the shop front window and hide the inportant stuff amongst the clutter. Dmcq (talk) 07:51, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Further to that, while WP:Article size states that the average concentration span is 40 to 50 minutes, our average reader spends less than 5 minutes on Wikipedia according to Alexa stats, and as our articles increase in length, the tendency has been to spend less and less time on Wikipedia, with the recent drop below the 4 minutes mark. This is compared to people spending over 20 minutes on facebook and over 15 minutes on youtube. This also explains why readers prefer GA articles to FA articles. I think we need much more summary style than we currently have. It is too often assumed the quantity = quality, which is detrimental to the project. -- ELEKHHT 08:15, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess quite a few would find "Abraham Lincoln i/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865" gave them everything they wanted, if they'd only read the snippet of text in their Google results they needn't have bothered coming to Wikipedia. People might like looking at the Google results and see how they can help us. I was proposing something at WP:VPT but I don't think people really see what the gain would be. Dmcq (talk) 08:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's worth noting that that tiny figure of our average reader spending less than 5 minutes on Wikipedia might have something to do with the Wikipedia game, in which players jump from wiki-article to the next..--Coin945 (talk) 17:28, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Woody Interruptus and conflicts with policies and guidelines
Many proposals to make a special notability guideline for fiction were attempted but failed. Therefore, we have something to reduce more preposterous, like Woody Interruptus, which I have copied-and-pasted into List of Cheers episodes. WP:PLOT doesn't apply to this topic due to its Directing Award win, but Outstanding Directing? Unfortunately, I have twice proposed merger and then failed because compelling arguments are weighing on awards that do not relate to writing or do not indicate why episodes were awarded for such. Still, there is nothing I can do to change consensus of that article. Maybe I can propose a general consideration, but not now.

Why not Writing? Look, there may be other stand-alone articles written like this article, but we must do something about them for notability considerations of episodes before we have more articles like this. And I don't think "idea lab" is a good idea right now, but I wonder if I must establish a straw poll. --George Ho (talk) 09:33, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Why are the awards not sufficient notability grounds? Why exactly would one want to have more than a one or two line description of those episodes in the list? The list is a list of episodes, it is not about each episode - that is one remove and that sort of thing should only be done for short lists where each entry is a significant part of the whole. If you want to remove the article propose it for deletion and see what the consensus says. If you think the consensus is against you then don't do what you were trying to do. Dmcq (talk) 10:04, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This is an episode, not a book or a film. How would this article help readers recognize significance if it won Outstanding Direction (even if more than one)? Also, a plot summary in a list can be 100-300 words. --George Ho (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC) Template:episode list says so, as well as WP:MOSTV. --George Ho (talk) 16:19, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * As said before, I've proposed merger twice, and they want it kept. --George Ho (talk) 16:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You're getting off topic George. You're not going to get a page merged here. You said you were coming here for clarification after I removed the banner you posted stating editors are not allowed to use arguments you don't like. Joefromrandb (talk) 17:38, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

 * There must be coming on to 300 episodes of the business. Just 100 words by 300 comes to 30000 words which is far more than is reasonable for any article never mind going to 300 words each. One can split list articles into pieces much more easily than normal articles but this just strikes me again as stuffing content up front and disimproving the user experience. If there were only 30 episodes I might see a point but I don't see what is being gained here.

 * Anyway you seem to be saying the article would not be deleted. Fine, in that case accept the consensus and delete the stuff you stuck into the list. As far as the article is concerned the way to get outside editors to overrule the local consensus is with an WP:AfD or a WP:RfC. If you think a policy or guideline needs changing they have their talk pages and there are RfC's for them too and you could say a bit more here if that's what you're doing. But at the very least the stuff shouldn't be in the list in the meantime.

 * As to episodes just try deleting one of the Star Trek episodes and see where it gets you. They are all notable by that test. The policies and guidelines are supposed to follow practice, and AfD are a very good way of establishing their limits. Dmcq (talk) 17:45, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * In other words, just one plot and one rating in one article, right, even if no awards? --George Ho (talk) 17:51, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Anyways, I am planning to split all Seasons into stand-alone articles, but I'm doing the Season 1 first before others. Therefore, I'm doing the best that I can. By the way, I'm not planning to remove that entry from the list just because it must be very, very short. --George Ho (talk) 17:55, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

 * If you split the list by seasons I guess that might fix the problem about shovelling stuff into the list. That is definitely a good idea before you go back to the talk page of that episode and stick in a third merge proposal and really get their backs up. Dmcq (talk) 18:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Regulating content on user pages
Questions have arisen on how much regulation should be applied to the content editors put on their userpages. Generally, policy has stayed clear of this, leaving it to the editor to decide what they like to do there within reason. Lately it's been brought to the attention of a few that some users like to redirect their userpage into article space, with the ensuing discussions moving in the direction of regulation.

Some of the suggestions go towards the content of a userpage and it's purpose, which would see regulation of the content itself, which side-steps the issue of how it got there, through a redirect, or transclusion, or straight copying. Regulating the content naturally is a dynamic which goes on and on and on and on and on.

Some suggestions circle around idiot-proofing, so people don't leave personal messages to their favourite article by following the link from the article they have arrived at to it's talkpage instead of the user-talkpage. A valid point, as there is no shortage of idiots out there, hmm, must be a factory or something.

So on one hand, we either put up with the occasional note to Elvis on the article talkpage about his reverting my blue suede editing, or we merrily head down the tack of regulating content, WooHOO!!!! more Dramas and how. (no I'm not trying to sway anyone, honest) Penyulap  ☏  07:57, 14 Jul 2012 (UTC)
 * It is already regulated to some extant WP:UP. Jeepday (talk) 10:13, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

yes, I like this part, the way it speaks of community building.

Penyulap  ☏  11:08, 14 Jul 2012 (UTC)

Fry (Futurama) vs. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
Great, I even did it. I learn how to spell Apu's surname... Ack... Even I didn't copy-and-paste... I did it.... I did it.... I did it.... I did it...

....Immaturity aside, Apu's surname is preferred over parenthetical disambiguation per WP:PRECISION. However, this may contradict "Fry (Futurama)", which is now an official title, while Philip J. Fry is now a redirect. Is there a need to treat fictional character naturally or parenthetically? If either, I wonder. If neither, I somehow wonder if we can continue using another case or a policy for a reason to either move or not move. Right now, I'm confused... --George Ho (talk) 13:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Doesn't this come down to using a bit of common sense, rather than going into the intricacies of what exactly policy mandates? I've watched Futurama enough to know who Fry is, but wouldn't know his full name. On the other hand, though I surely couldn't spell Apu's surname, when I see it written out, I know who it refers to. Anyway, Apu (Simpsons)) is a redirect, and entering 'Apu' in the search box would have found him quick enough. What exactly is the problem? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:48, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Does a policy, like WP:article titles, need amendments? If not, shall I propose a renaming back to "Philip J. Fry"? If not, is a guideline about naming a fictional character needed? (Honestly, there is no guideline about what to do with naming a fictional character. WP:NCP doesn't apply.) If not, what else can I do? I mean, Kendall Hart Slater became Kendall Hart by a move consensus. There are some editors who prefer Lucas Horton because he recently changed his name, but the consensus chose "Lucas Roberts". --George Ho (talk) 14:01, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You've not really explained what you think the problem is. What needs fixing? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * ...and why is it a Village Pump issue, instead of something you could just resolve on the articles' talk pages? This is getting to be a habit. See also WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, re: your apparent need to have every content issue specifically provided for by written rules. postdlf (talk) 15:44, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard no longer marked as a guideline
has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Canvassing
Im looking for clarification on a current Canvassing. On 11 July the following AFD was created, well over one hundred nomination and no article creators informed, some articles were still being tagged over 24 hours later. As courtesy if not policy would suggest i advised two creators out of the six who created them using the standard notification template. An admin warned me that by doing so i was canvasing. Other commentators at the AFD pointed out that this was not canvasing.

Having read the policy if this is the case it needs clarification.

 * Spamming says Posting an excessive number of messages to individual users, or to users with no significant connection to the topic at hand.
 * Campaigning: Posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner.
 * Vote-stacking: Posting messages to users selected based on their known opinions (which may be made known by a userbox, user category, or prior statement). Vote-banking involves recruiting editors perceived as having a common viewpoint for a group, similar to a political party, in the expectation that notifying the group of any discussion related to that viewpoint will result in a numerical advantage, much as a form of prearranged vote stacking
 * Stealth canvassing: Contacting users off-wiki (by e-mail or IRC, for example) to persuade them to join in discussions
 * Soliciting support other than by posting direct messages, such as using a custom signature with a message promoting a specific position on any issue being discussed.

Ill address my view on these points. Spamming two or even six is not an excessive number and in this case they all had a concoction to the topic as they created these articles. Campaigning a standard notification is posting in a neutral manor. Vote-stacking posting based on knowing opinions, i do not know there opinions or have even conversed with them in the past. Or actually edited that topic ever. Stealth canvassing, a notification is on wiki so its not that. And finally Soliciting a standard notification does not cover that section.

If it is agreed that this is canvasing then Canvassing needs update to include advice on AFDS. I feel advice here [] in section Notifying substantial contributors to the article allows standard notification. Edinburgh  Wanderer  14:55, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Even if hundreds of editors have contributed to articles later nominated for deletion, maybe that should "skew" the discussion. I certainly don't see any real concern over notifying six. That's what you get when you nominate over a hundred articles for deletion. (Incidentally, I learned of this AFD through deletion sorting lists, and don't recall ever editing these myself). postdlf (talk) 15:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Neithier did i never edited them, only came across them because of an edit war report on the nominator let me to look why he was still tagging over 24 hours later never tagged them all, or notified even one editor.
 * As the admin in question, I don't have a great problem with two. The discussion was whether to notify all article creators on a large AFD: that would have resulted in six people being notified, all of whom were likely to vote to keep, based on the fact that they had created one or more of the articles. It goes against the vote-stacking issue, even if the notifications were in good faith, because the voters were all more likely to vote one way than the other. Six votes is enough to distort any AFD result.—Kww(talk) 15:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You cannot prove six is excessive and [] seems very clearly to allow use of a standard notification template. That is shown in this section Notifying substantial contributors to the article Edinburgh   Wanderer  16:20, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you want for proof that six is excessive? A statistical analysis of how many articles attract six voters? Omitting a courtesy notification is harmless, and notifying a biased group of editors is not. Erring on the side of caution would argue for not notifying in a case like this.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * There is something wrong with your sig causing and error to appear every time you reply until i reply. Other commentators disagreed with you in the AFD, also the link i provided shows you should notify as a common courtesy. Your accusation and threat against me is unfounded based on the current wording at canvasing and by the link at the AFD page. That AFD was well over one hundred nominations some weren't even tagged six creators is not canvassing. Unless you can prove that six notifications when people viewing over one hundred noms would only lead to six replys you don't have a valid point. there were more than six replies in just over 24 hours with six days left to run most of them in a few hour period none of them were who i advised. Since you cant back up that claim the why don't we let other people reply. Did you read the comments made at the AFD that it was not canvassing. Edinburgh  Wanderer  16:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Well the real question here is not the number of people but specifically whether you can count these article authors as a "Partisan" audience, per the Canvassing guideline. Obviously, we are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and those who have actually taken an interest in an article actually have a stake in the outcome, since they've invested time in the article. Does this necessarily mean they will vote 'Keep' as a rule? Are they partisan? Our general principle at Wikipedia is that anyone is welcome to edit any article, and that we want to encourage more of that. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, a poorly attended AfD is just as partisan-biased if people aren't able to pay attention during the short window it may be active. The Wikipedia Deletion policy has a strong bias in favor of finding alternatives to deletion, and the AfD guideline even says "While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion". AfD debates should be decided on the merits and strength of arguments not the number of people who show up and !vote Keep or Delete. If admins or editors are not closing debates on that basis, then we need to remind AfD closers what the actual policy is and enforce that. But keeping people out of a debate who have an obvious stake in it, especially if it is a neutrally worded notice seems to fly in the face of our Deletion policy, our AfD process, and our Civility pillar. -- Avanu (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This does not "fly in the face" of anything. The purpose of an AFD is to have an objective evaluation of whether the article merits inclusion, and that means that one should not invite any group of people that are predisposed to either delete or to keep. I don't know how you can argue that people don't have a predisposition to keep their own work.—Kww(talk) 06:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * By that metric, having the nominator put their reasoning at the top of the AfD for all to see is another largely predisposing thing. For objective evaluation, the article should simply be anonymously listed, and then anyone who wishes to participate in the discussion must investigate the article for themselves to see if it merits inclusion. Objectively, of course. Anyways, so long as AfD isn't just a vote, but an evaluation of arguments, six people that are voting keep just because it's their article shouldn't be hard to discount, since we're assuming the case where their reasons don't actually justify their votes. Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:38, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

This is the exact wording on the notification page
 * While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion. One should not notify bot accounts, people who have made only insignificant 'minor' edits, or people who have never edited the article. To find the main contributors, look in the page history or talk page of the article and/or use Duesentrieb's ActiveUsers tool or Wikipedia Page History Statistics. Use . At this point, you've done all you need to do as nominator. Sometime after seven days has passed, someone will either close the discussion or, where needed, "relist" it for another seven days of discussion.  (The "someone" must not be you the nominator, but if you want to see how it's done see the next section.)

Edinburgh  Wanderer  16:46, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Whether the admin that closes a discussion looks at whether there may be a conflict of interest that is there role not the nominator or someone who notifies them. A standard notification template isn't canvassing when following the above policy, it even states main contributors not just the article creators. Edinburgh   Wanderer  16:50, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I take great issue with the notion that participation from the content creators or contributors at an AFD causes "distortion," as if the policy-wonks likely to wander through an average AFD (myself included) are somehow a more important community than the editors who have actually worked on the content. If there are so many creators of the content you have nominated in a single AFD that their participation will outweigh others, then that says something about the scale of the nomination; and compare a situation in which one editor has unilaterally created a mass of articles no one else supports with what we had here. I simply see no merit to excluding notification of creators because there were a lot of creators, instead quite the opposite. One might as well argue against putting AFD notices on articles at all, on the claim that the greater number of visiting readers interested and editors who have it watchlisted will "distort" the results. Kww was wrong here. postdlf (talk) 16:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * If a policy or guideline requires or even suggests that you notify certain individuals, making a neutral template notification should never be considered impermissible canvasing. Maybe the wisdom of the AfD notification should be evaluated, but as long as it tells you to notify people the notifications are permissible. Monty  845  17:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a very good point; when done with the AFD of a single article, that's not going to be a problem, but a nominator should be aware that nominating 100+ articles at the same time and expected to get a delete needs to realize how the potential number of article creators should be notified and what their disposition will be to the mass AFD. If they know they're knocking on a wasp's net, maybe the solution is not a mass AFD but an open discussion on the matter at an appropriate talk page. --M ASEM  (t) 15:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I entirely agree with postdlf, Monty845 and Masem: who is more likely to give (or not give) appropriate reasoning to keep an article than those who created it? AFD is not a vote: a poorly reasoned keep by an article's author will likely work against an effort to keep it. Not notifying content creators is frankly offensive to their work and only re-enforces the impression that AFD is frequented by people who are not involved in content creation. SFB 15:55, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe that notifying the authors would be fine, but if you didn't want to do that for some reason, it would probably be just as good to notify the relevant WikiProject, which is another thing that the AFD advice suggests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Kww, if people follow the rules of closure, then even 1000 people showing up shouldn't be a problem. AfDs are supposed to be based on consensus, which is supposed to be grounded in good arguments, based in policy and guidelines. If people don't base their arguments on that, the argument should be tossed. Consensus is not supposed to just be what is popular, unless you feel that WP:Ignore All Rules is the best way to close AfDs. -- Avanu (talk) 06:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I wish I shared your faith that other admins would stop counting votes. I've found that any effort to evaluate consensus that results in an evaluation different than simple counting would achieve causes controversy.—Kww(talk) 12:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no faith that they are doing it correctly, simply that I know what the rules are supposed to be on AfDs. If these are being run like votes, then we need to either change the rules, which I think would be a bad idea, or enforce the rules, which is what we should be doing regardless. -- Avanu (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Concur with Avanu, if anyone has a reasonable argument that an AfD was closed as a simple vote count, over consensus grounded in good arguments, they should bring it up for discussion. If there are 100 "Keep because I like it" votes and 3 "Delete per BLP" it should close delete. There will always be border line cases, but where it is clear, bring it up, first with the closing editor (tactfully). Then elevate as needed. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I agree with everyone above concerning contacting those who may have edited a page (indeed, it's part of why we place a notice on the page - the idea that those who may read or edit the page may have it on their watchlist. However, Kww makes a very good point. All too many closers count "votes". Part of the problem of course is that when a closer doesn't, there's often a firestorm. If we find a way to deal with these issues, then the canvassing issue becomes less of a concern. - jc37 15:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I looked at this and Village pump (idea lab) and wonder - would some sort of informal optional checklist for closer of AfD discussion (recommending, among other things, let's say, to list the arguments and judge what support each of them has) help..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:52, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I for one would be all for upgrading the notification of major contributors into a formal requirement to nominating an article for AFD. I've nominated several articles for deletion, but I always inform the major contributors, even if there are many of them; it seems to me unethical not to. If you've contributed significant content to an article, then you should be informed when that content is about to get deleted. Some people seem to take the attitude "Well, if they care about the article, they should keep it on their watchlist", but that just seems disrespectful to content creators. And if you're saying "But that means I would have to notify 40 people after nominating this article! And they'd probably all say keep!" - well, maybe that's a sign you should think twice before nominating that well-established article, isn't it? If you don't have a solid argument that would result in a delete outcome at AFD, and are hoping to 'win' merely because the article's supporters don't turn up, you shouldn't be there in the first place. Robofish (talk) 16:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I never notify the creator. Never have, never will. It's not "unethical" at all, it's simply avoiding the presence of an inherently biased !vote.—Kww(talk) 17:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Regardless of whether a deletion nominator should feel compelled to notify creators, I think we have a clear consensus in this discussion that it was inappropriate to warn someone with a block for doing so. So let's not see that happen again. postdlf (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

File:Paint 7.png
Um... it should use the Microsoft screenshot template? <IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 16:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It probably could. I also suspect the drawing needs a separate notice. Anomie⚔ 20:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * On closer look, maybe not. One of the requirements for Non-free Microsoft screenshot is that the screenshot not contain third-party content, which might include the drawing. That might be a question for WP:MCQ. Anomie⚔ 20:56, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Blocking policy
The blocking policy is one of the key policies used to stop wikipedia from suffering harm. It also shows that Admins don't have the right to block a user they have a conflict of interest with or are in dispute with.

This is an RFC to re clarify consensus on Wikipedia's blocking policy. Specifically the section on Conflicts of interest it states

 * Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute; instead, they should report the problem to other administrators. Administrators should also be aware of potential conflicts of interest involving pages or subject areas with which they are involved.

This is not being followed by all admins at the present time for a varying reasons. I request the community decide whether we still feel this statement is appropriate and must be followed. Also do the community think actions should be taken against said admin if they do not follow the blocking policy.Edinburgh Wanderer 19:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

 * If the block was otherwise good, and the only issue is they made the block while involved, the admin should be summarily trouted and then everyone should move on. If the block was bad, and they were involved, and it can't be resolved to satisfaction at WP:AN/I it should be sent to WP:RFC/U and eventually Arbcom if the recalcitrant admin doesn't respond to the problem appropriately. Monty  845  20:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * A block can be good or bad by nature, to me the problem then is the wording. I think we have to be clear on something as important as the blocking policy, if the policy states Must Not then they are not allowed to do so for any reason. If we feel there may be circumstances where they can block then the wording should be made less harsh. An admin will know whether they are involved or not before they block, or be aware they could be considered involved.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, no. I've seen plenty of instances where "But you were involved!" was followed by a rejection of that assertion either by consensus, WP:IAR, or WP:COMMONSENSE. Determining involvement is sometimes a matter of judgement and if an admin, who has a good record, errs, they shouldn't be raked over the coals. -- Neil N   talk to me  22:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Right, the rule against acting while involved serves two purposes. First and most importantly, it is designed to stop an admin from letting the heat of the moment get the better of them and using their tools to give themselves an advantage in an editing dispute. The second purpose is avoid the appearance that an admin may have used there tools to give themselves such an advantage. If the block was otherwise good, the second purpose is still at issue, but its not as big a deal. If the first purpose is at issue, it raises a question about their fundamental suitability to remain an admin. Monty  845  22:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

In case it is not clear, this issue was raised here WP:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents. Leaky Caldron  22:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Thanks for that Leaky but lets make this clearer. This is not about one admin or one particular situation if it had been i would of named several admins. this is about whether in general the community feels it correct to allow an admin to not follow the blocking policy specifically word such as Must Not. If the community feels they can under certain circumstances then the blocking policy has to be changed to exclude the words must not, possibly admins are strongly advised not to would be a better wording. Admins have the extreme trust of the community to follow key policy and that includes the blocking policy. Therefore the community needs to decide whether we trust our admins judgement fully and allow them to make that decision, or we feel they cannot exercise judgement in a situation where they are perceived as involved. Edinburgh Wanderer (talk) 23:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds like WP:CREEP to me. -- Neil N   talk to me  00:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The Atlantic article on declining ranks of Wikipedia admins
I wanted to steer people's attention to today's article in The Atlantic online: 3 Charts That Show How Wikipedia Is Running Out of Admins. The author, Robinson Meyer, discusses several charts shown at Wikimania and discusses the drop-off in admin counts at en-wiki:
 * In June 2010, six people became admins. March of that year saw only two promotions...

 * There are reasons for this. Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution and a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, told me the process by which new admins are promoted is arduous and extensive...

 * "The vetting process is akin to putting someone through the Supreme Court," he said. "It's pretty much a hazing ritual at this point..."

 * For the past few months of 2012, no more than one or two Wikipedia users have been promoted to admin status. This slow trickle of new talent means fewer people perform the encyclopedia's upkeep -- sorting, categorizing, correcting vandalism. And the arduous application process also fails to provide a little karmic reward for involved editors, which means they're less likely to devote time to improving the encyclopedia's structural weaknesses, like how, for example, to adapt the encyclopedia's sourcing to an age of social media.

I'm deeply concerned that we have a culture that pushes away many of our best contributors and a process that seeks to promote only those editors best able to worm their way through an incredibly bureaucratic and adversarial process. If we want Wikipedia to be a more welcoming and less fighty place, then it doesn't make sense to select our admins through a trial by fire that is anything but. It seems to me that one of two paths is worth seriously pursuing at this point:

 * Radically refining the RfA process to grant the tools upon request, or at least most of them, to relatively active users in good standing without any of the usual 20+ question grilling, endless hypothetical, digging through every past edit that could be seen in a remotely negative light, wildly different definitions of required qualifications from different users, requirements for article work, requirements for non-article work, expectations that the user be an expert in virtually everything, etc... In short, the community should agree on a much more clearly defined criteria and apply that criteria to all requests without interposing personal judgements on what that criteria should be. If a user has a concern about the criteria, then they should put that up for discussion, not make every candidate uphold individual personal standards. Going along with this, we should feel free to remove the admin bits from users when things don't work out, with an explicit promise to fairly reconsider in a few months if improvement is demonstrated.

 * Eliminate adminship entirely and spread its constituent privileges across a range of smaller permissions. Editors could separately request the right to handle deletions, blocks, interface changes, protect pages, etc... Each privilege would be comparatively easy to obtain and would be available to editors with relevant experience in a particular area. This approach would de-emphasize the role of administrators by focusing on the actual tasks to be performed rather than conferring an overall status of authority.

Zachlipton (talk) 21:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * RFA is to a veteran user, what Wikipedia is to a new user. It is a symptom of the community being overly critical. It will only change when the community decides to change itself. Nothing else will fix it. It's that simple. <IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 23:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Seriously, adminship really isn't that big of a deal, and the special tools available really aren't necessary for doing most things on Wikipedia. You mention "sorting, categorizing, correcting vandalism" -- none of those actions require admin tools -- although in some cases they could be handy, I could see. Where admins are particularly needed is cases of persistent vandalism, or when a particular topic is in the news. Then, you need someone with extra tools to protect pages until it calms down. But 99.9% of what Wikipedia needs is more people to actually improve articles. Who really cares that we now have 4 million plus articles on the English Wikipedia when there's only about 20,000 that are rated as Featured or Good, and even only about 100,000 are B-class. That's only about 3% of our articles that are even halfway decent (and there's a lot of grey area because B-class really doesn't have any specific or enforced standards like FA & GA do).

 * I've been editing here since about 2004 or 2005 -- under a different username earlier. I was here in the heyday of editing, and I even was nominated for adminship (failed). Yes, the adminship process is ridiculous. It's easier to defend a Ph.D. Dissertation than a successful RfA! Even Jesus Christ would probably fail at RfA. So, I no longer care about adminship. Today, most ofusers what I care about here is improving articles and helping to develop some sort of consistency in articles such that people can generally trust the encyclopedia for the information that is here. I really don't care to get too involved in hot button topics prone to edit wars -- I don't have time for that. I tend to focus my efforts more in some of the smaller articles and ones that may not have been touched in awhile but desperately need attention. I don't need admin rights to do that. WTF? (talk) 02:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The other problem is strong disincentives for existing admins to use the tools: they get nothing but stick for it. In an all-stick and no-carrot environment, dedication to duty only goes so far and only increases the burnout. (And that's not even considering stalking from lunatic troll sites or gibberingly weird arbcom decisions.) We have an impending serious problem with lack of administrative effort on the way, because the incentive structure is completely wrong. I'm at a loss to think what would make a suitable carrot, but surely something could be done about the amount of stick - David Gerard (talk) 11:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Special case of CSD G7
Is one allowed to nominate mainspace titles for CSD G7 where (s)he: This is for the sole purpose of upping article creation count. GotR Talk 05:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Has overridden an existing redirect with an article ( because RFD takes at least a week and is too slow )
 * 2) Has been the only substantial contributor to that article ever since
 * 3) After the nomination, the prior article content will be immediately used to recreate.
 * The answer is 'no'. Ruslik_ Zero 15:01, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Is there a "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right" policy?
Hi All,

I think there is a policy that says, "Just because there is a mistake on one page does not mean the mistake should be proliferated or tolerated on another page." Am I right, or is there something at least similar? If so, please post a link. Many thanks! Ebikeguy (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you're looking for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. rdfox 76 (talk) 16:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Otherstuff is a good argument, but note the message that "it is not a Wikipedia policy or guideline". The actual relevant policy for your case is WP:Consensus. Civility and Ignore all rules may also apply. Diego (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Notability (geography)
A draft proposal for the notability of geographic features is being developed at the frequently-cited Notability (geography). Many AfD discussions suggest a threshold for notability below Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline and cite this essay as support. A failed proposal can be viewed at Notability (Geographic locations). G. C. Hood (talk) 03:17, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The draft and discussion have moved to Notability (geographical features). G. C. Hood (talk) 00:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Are there any concrete Wikipedia policies to oppose bribery?
I brought up this issue at Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines to which User:Dmcq recommended that that this place would be better to address the issue. I have encountered a user who attempted to bribe me with an offer that he/she would support a position that I had taken on a talk page, and abandon their previous opposition, on the condition of an exchange where I would support that user's stance on another article that I was not involved with. Other users noticed that this involved a violation of WP:CANVASS, but they noted that there is no such thing as a Wikipedia policy opposing bribery. The user who bribed me was blocked on grounds of WP:CANVASS and WP:UNCIVIL. User:Art_LaPella claims that bribery could fall under Conflict of interest and particularly Conflict of interest. The problem I have with this is that I have had no close relationship with the user who bribed me, in fact I have strongly disagreed with the user in the past. I believe that bribery of any sorts - be it financial offers or an offer of favours - is contrary to the principles of Wikipedia.

User:Dmcq has supported the intention of my request, saying: "I have come across the same sort of thing myself with people trying to do horse trading between different articles, not just whether something would be better covered in one or the other but actually offering to suppor an RfC in one if others would support another RfC in a different article. I do think it may be worth a paragraph and a WP link about it somewhere." If there are no existing policies that deal with this, I suggest that such a policy needs to be created, I think it should be placed within the Conflict of Interest with its own section titled Conflict of Interest - from the blue colour of the link, it appears that such a policy did exist but has since been removed, the policy could be linked through shortcut links titled WP:BRIBE, WP:BRIBERY.--R-41 (talk) 16:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Sorry, but calling such behaviour 'bribery' is not only misleading, but possibly libellous. Yes, it is wrong, and yes, it may well need explicitly spelling out in policy somewhere, but giving it a dubious label isn't going to help. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * The link is blue because the COI page exists; the software doesn't evaluate section headings. Conflict of Interest is also blue.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Do we really need to spell out every instance of Things Wikipedia Editors Should Not Do? If someone's only excuse for doing something or not doing something is "Nothing says I have to/Nothing says I can't", then they have failed to be a good editor. postdlf (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

What is with the aggressive, cynical attitude of some users here? I mean is this a place for users to address issues or not? Because I think that my contributions are neither being respected nor welcomed here at all. So much for the Wikipedia guideline "Be welcoming"! If you are a user who is too worn out, too tired out, or too cynical to even address issues here presented by concerned users, then just say so, because being aggressive to two users (me and the User:Dmcq who agrees that the problem I addressed is real), is not helpful.--R-41 (talk) 18:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * How is it cynical to expect that editors refrain from bad behavior even when there is no rule prohibiting each and every type of possible bad behavior? Or that people not simply do whatever they think they can get away with according to what the rules say? Rather the opposite, I'd think. I was commenting on the assertion by the blocked user that he did nothing wrong only because "there is no such thing as a Wikipedia policy opposing bribery." postdlf (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I could not think of another word at the time other than "bribery" to describe it, perhaps a better term of reference is vote trading. The user who Andy says I'm being "libelous" to, was banned for canvassing, gross misconduct, and immediately prior to being blocked, the user even admitted to being a sock puppet of the banned User:Chaosname. at the time to describe someone offering to support an edit of mine on the condition that I support one of their edits. I have seen policies that oppose financial offers - that deals with one aspect of what I addressed. User:Dmcq says that he/she has run into this editing as well. Due to Andy's address, I will revise the issue to vote trading, and propose a WP:NOVOTETRADE or WP:VOTETRADE to be added as a part of Conflict of Interest.--R-41 (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * The scenario you describe is already covered under our WP:SOCK policy, specifically the WP:MEAT section. -- Avanu (talk) 18:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * The sock issue I know about. The issue is the evidence of vote trading, regardless of whether the user was a sockpuppet. It is an issue separate from that.--R-41 (talk) 18:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be explicitly stated, it's already covered by the use of WP:COMMONSENSE. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Understandable, but that is just an essay regardless of its relevance. The user in question attempted to argue that there is nothing wrong with vote trading.--R-41 (talk) 18:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Thinking about it, WP:NPOV already covers this. Horse-traded 'support' is self-evidently not 'neutral'. I see no need for further policy. If someone is 'trading' their credibility for support (or is offering to 'trade' support), they will soon cease to have any credibility at all - and can be shown the door per WP:NOTHERE as displaying "editorial dishonesty". AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That is the response I was looking for, evidence of policy that bars vote trading. It is settled then.--R-41 (talk) 18:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Just make sure to distinguish from situations where editors compromise as part of positive dispute resolution, such as agreeing to stay out of each others' areas of interest. Agreeing that A will not edit Article One if B will not edit Article Two is still horse trading, but if it ends a stream of endless disputes it would be a good thing. Monty  845  19:54, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Making an offer to stay out of an area of interest of another editor if they stay out of yours is very wrong behaviour I think. It is coercion with threats. Soliciting votes by swapping yours is bad enough without descending to that level. Dmcq (talk) 20:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It should also probably be distinguished from compromises on content concerning matters like due weight; e.g. I think it would be ethical for an editor to support calling the UK a "parliamentary democracy" in one place on the condition that the term "constitutional monarchy" is used in another place. Editors should be able to "haggle" over which aspect should be given prominence, i.e. what constitutes due weight and how to express it. --Boson (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Already covered under WP:CANVASS and WP:MEATPUPPET. As you say, in your example the offending editor has been blocked.  The fact that a deal was offered could be taken into account when the offending editor is sanctioned.  However, it does not meet the criteria for bribery, unless you think you can prosecute offenders in criminal courts.  Also see WP:BEANS - we do not want to explain to tendentious editors all the techniques they can use.  TFD (talk) 20:53, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * WP:Beans is exactly what came to mind as I read the OP's comment (though his inquiry is an understandable one, all the same). Yes, this is clearly unacceptable behaviour, but of the sort that is not likely to be overlooked simply because it has limited representation on policy pages.  That is to say, anyone vote-swapping or otherwise offering tit-for-tat in discussion of content has already shot themselves in the foot; their opinion will quickly be discounted by other contributors in the relevant discussion(s) and their willingness to game the system and make arguments that are based on anything but their genuine interpretation of policy will make them susceptible to sanction regardless of the specific impetus for their misrepresentation.   Honestly, I don't see the need to formulate a specific policy in this instance, as I don't see that the motive for the dishonesty is entirely germane other than its probative value in establishing that they were not acting in good faith, period.   Honestly, what it boils down to is that "support trading" is such a wikiethics no-brainer -- that is based on more fundemental principles that every experienced editor should be familiar with -- that explaining it explicitly is unlikely to change the behaviour of anyone unknowledgeable or dishonest enough to engage in it in the first place.   So there's very little benefit to spelling it out, wheras, the down-side (new editors forever citing it improperly against other contributors who make good faith compromises which do not violate the same ethical principles) could be considerable.  All of that being said, although R-41 seems satisfied with the policies that have been cited now, he could always write a user essay on the matter connecting all of the dots if he thinks it could prove useful.  Snow (talk) 00:34, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I don't think language needs to be in policy to spell out what can be said and what cannot be said because that would be instruction creep. The editor offering to "trade votes" can gently be chided about the impropriety of that and be done with it. Sorry. Not meaning to get on R-41's case. I see no harm in bringing this up. But I would be opposed to policy explicitly spelling how to behave in every nook and cranny of human interaction. I see it as making a mountain out of a molehill even if the underlying question is idealistic and an ideal that we all should be able to recognize. Bus stop (talk) 01:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Also, if one follows NPOV in one's edits, one is unlikely to attract tendentious editors wanting to maker deals. TFD (talk) 04:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I think some people may mistake vote trading or agreeing to not tread in another editor's backyard as consensus building, and the closest we have to a policy against it is WP:Consensus in "WikiProjects, or editors are permitted; but actions that could reasonably be interpreted as an attempt to "stuff the ballot box" or otherwise compromise the consensus-building process are considered disruptive editing." I think it is interesting there is such a diverse set of policies people consider it might be closest to and yet there are people who think actions like this are okay.  Dmcq (talk) 07:15, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback v5 RfC
You are invited to comment on an RfC on developing a guideline for responding to AFTv5 feedback. David 1217  What I've done 20:39, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

How to fix Wikipedia
A lot of people have been leaving Wikipedia lately, and I think it's because of hostility, infighting, bureaucracy, and Wikipedia's no-longer-welcoming environment. For example, User:Fastily left for those reasons, and membership has been dropping off. To save the encyclopedia from more users leaving, I propose the following:

1. Scrap 3RR -- there are too many exceptions, it doesn't catch edit warriors (one can still edit war without breaking it, and still get blocked), it encourages wikilawyering, and overall it's just more trouble than it's worth.

2. Scrap the MoS -- it's more complicated than the U.S. tax code (it even has its own search bar!), it encourages admins to bite new users who haven't read it, it's much too long for anyone to read all of it, it's overly bureaucratic, and enforcing it wastes valuable time that could be spent creating new content and/or improving existing content.

3. Enforce WP:BITE and apply it to deletion -- When newbies are insulted via deletion by either having their pages deleted without explanation or with a rude explanation or being attacked in an XfD, they will not want to stay and contribute. We should also encourage newbies to be bold instead of belittling their contributions. If something a newbie does violates our standards, they should be gently reminded rather than slammed and belittled. WP:BITE should be made an official policy rather than mere guideline (so people will be less inclined to ignore it), and be enforceable with blocks and bans. Same goes for WP:AGF.

4. Recognize that admins are part of the problem, and take steps to restore the honor of being an admin -- My idea is to create a discussion board called something along the lines of Administrator grievances where users could post grievances about admins. If an uninvolved crat decided that the grievance was real, he or she would then place the admin on probation (i.e., take away their admin tools temporarily) so the community could discuss the grievance (the crat would open the discussion). After 2 weeks, the following action would be taken:
 * If the result was Retain: The crat would close the discussion as such, and the matter would be over, with admin tools given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found not guilty).
 * If the result was Caution or No consensus: The crat would close the discussion as such and give the admin tools back, but the admin would be warned not to do whatever it is they did again, and the discussion and items from it would be able to be used as evidence in future discussions regarding the administrator's conduct.
 * If the result was Desysop: Again, the crat would close the discussion as such, and admin tools would not be given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found guilty).

5. Encourage people (especially inclusionists and deletionists) to work together to build the encyclopedia rather than constantly fight. Everyone has things to offer the encyclopedia, and when we work together, we are equal to more than the sum of our parts. Let us take advantage of that fact and encourage peace and collaboration rather than strife and competition.

I know this is a big proposal, but when they left, Fastily and other users gave us a clear message: "This is what's wrong with Wikipedia. Fix it." That is why I am here today, writing this proposal. Please, take the time to think about this before !voting "oppose". C h r o m a Nebula  (talk)   21:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * 1: 3RR is not a hard-fast rule, users can and are blocked for "edit-warring", regardless of numbers or time-span, but at the same time 3RR is a good way of saying "ok you've reverted this twice now, one more and you'll be eligible for a block".
 * 2: Do you actually understand what the MOS style is? It's just about trying to keep articles uniform and general project wide consistency, it's what stops people changing english variations every ten minutes, randomly bolding for emphasis and capitalising Hims when referring to the big guy.
 * 3:It's not biting to delete an article which doesn't belong here. Yes people should be nice to new users and yes people should be called out on it if they go yell at the new kid cos they wrote an article about their awesome band they just started in their garage, but trying to make a rule that says be super-nice and make sure you don't offend them otherwise you're blocked is just silly and unworkable.
 * 4:Admins are part of the problem, sure they are. How exactly? If admins are part of the problem then all the non-admins must be the rest of problem, you can't just say "admins are causing all the trouble so they need to be kept in place" just like you can't say "the french are stealing all our women they must be kept in place" after one french bloke marries the girl next door. Yes we all know that there needs to be a better way of dealing with editors who have the bit and who misuse it and yes there should probably be a better way to create admins, but creating a big board for anyone to go have a bitch about the admin who just deleted their article or made a decision they don't agree with is just going to make things worse.
 * 5:Not to be rude but is this your big Miss World ending? The whole point of wikipedia is to encourage people to work together, with so many people of course there will be fights, there is no way of preventing arguments-- Jac 16888 Talk 21:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I did not recommend not deleting any articles. If a newbie creates an article in good faith that doesn't meet our standards, the article should be deleted, but the creator should be gently reminded of our standards rather than having policies shoved in their face. Likewise, terms like "trash" and "worthless junk" should only be applied to articles created in bad faith. Creators of deleted articles should be informed of our standards, but civilly, politely and without insult. As for the MoS thing, people know what proper English is, and any genuine mistakes can be easily corrected without an MoS. And I never said administrators were all of the problem, only some of it. Incivility from regular editors is dealt with via blocks and bans, but there's currently no way to discipline an admin (they can easily unblock themselves) apart from ArbCom, and ArbCom only handles the most serious cases. (By the way, I hope the noticeboard would rarely be used). As for 3RR, the edit warring/3RR noticeboard is mostly focused on 3RR, and as I said before, exceptions and the "you-don't-have-to-break-this-rule-to-get-blocked" clause make the rule pretty darn complicated and, in my opinion, more trouble than it's worth. I know there will be fights, but there have to be things we can do to discourage fighting and encourage collaboration and peace. We can't stop all fights, but surely we can reduce the number and severity of fights. How? Maybe a clause that says that the more aggressive warrior automatically loses the argument? C h r o m a Nebula   (talk)   01:16, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The deletion notices that are generally provided are informative and polite, are there specific cases you know of where new users are being repeatedly insulted because I'm not aware of any major problem except for some robotism. Mos wise, the whole point is that people don't know what proper English is, or rather everybody has their own version, hence MOS, if everybody had perfect grammar and those yanks got over their z fetish then maybe we wouldn't need one. Well you've got one fact wrong right there, yes an admin can unblock themself, except that to do so is cause for an immediate desyop, as has been demonstrated on more than one occasion, and I suggest you start reading ANI if you think such a noticeboard would be rarely used, why not see how many cases of "Admin abuse" you can spot, and how many are actually "admin abused". If you think it's complicated now, how bad would it being if there were no rules at all, 3RR does in fact stop more experienced users from going crazy with the reverting, and can be a way to quickly stop an edit war if, just like a warning to both users in an edit war regardless of 3RR that if they carry on they'll be blocked can stop it too. Ff the noticeboard is that difficult to work with then its the noticeboard that is the issue, why not try to create change there? The simple truth is that so many people with such different backgrounds spread out so thinly that arguments are inevitable and finding them is hard enough, let alone preventing them. With most arguments the only way to fix things is look for common ground and reach out to other parties to form a consensus, having "because x did this, y wins the argument and z goes in the article" is just unpractical-- Jac 16888 Talk 09:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Jac16888. But if we're doing some blue sky thinking, how about giving two extra reverts to the person who starts talkpage discussion about a dispute? If you do that, then the person to start discussion effectively wins. Knowing that would dramatically change the dynamics of edit wars. Hard to say exactly how it might work out in practice (definitional issues about "starting" and "discussion" might be a problem, possibly solvable by application of common sense), but it might be interesting to try. Maybe we can figure out a way to apply it on a limited basis to certain edit-warry articles, as a way to test it. Rd232 talk 22:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Vast thousands are still here, but not talking about WP:MOS: After months of examining the editor-count statistics, I have tried to explain that the "editors-leaving" view is something of an illusion, because many editors are also joining, but the edit-stats show only limited use of talk-pages. In fact, I am fairly certain it can be said: the majority of Wikipedia editors do not edit talk-pages much, but rather focus on article-edits. Meanwhile, the WP:MOS rules are only "suggestions", so the admins should be reminded to allow some slack there. However, we really need all those MOS rules, when people want to force a choice; otherwise, someone will claim there is no rule to prevent 1 million ("1,000,000") from being changed to a "better" format as "<IP_ADDRESS>" or "1\000\000". Ifever people want to add too much wild text, then WP:MOS provides a clear foundation to explain the typical format for articles. Part of the illusion of "fewer editors" (by comparing editor-counts) is because experienced editors, who formerly made over 100 small article-edits per month, now have learned to branch out into other namespaces. The count of active editors with "100+ edits" is for the main article namespace, where talk-page edits, templates, files (images), categories, and "Help:" or "WP:" edits do not add into that "100+ level". Hence, as editors learn to edit categories, or make minor changes to "WP:" guideline pages, those edits are not counted in the main editor-counts, but rather, as talk-page counts, or "other" counts. We even have some admins who make "147 edits" in a month, many crucial edits, daily, fixing 50 grammar errors in an article as 1-edit-per-page, but at the end of June, have a total of only "78 edits" or such (in article namespace), appearing to fall from the core "100+ edit" group into the occasional "5+ edits" group. Instead, looking closely at the editor counts, at the monthly editor-statistics data, reveals there are over 10,000 editors who edit Wikipedia on a daily basis, just not all article-edits every day. That count of 10 thousand editors helps explain why so much happens every day in Wikipedia, but remember most of those people are not posting messages in talk-pages. They truly are the "silent majority" who are rapidly changing articles but not talking about it for several days at a time. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * They are not "only suggestions." If they were, it would not be possible to punish anyone for violating them. I got brought up on AN/I for going against WP:LQ. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Yes we have a problem with editor retention, but it isn't a huge problem as overall numbers are fairly stable, and we are still getting around 200,000 edits a day. Perhaps MOS could do with being shorter, but what we need there is proposals for simplification not wholesale deletion. Deletion errors are a problem, and while it is rare that people delete or tag articles for deletion without informing the creator it is a damaging anomaly that we allow people to tag articles for deletion without informing the authors. We don't allow people to file an AN/I complaint on someone without telling them, and we shouldn't allow people to tag articles for deletion without informing the authors (except for a few exceptions such as dead, banned and retired editors).  We do have a serious problem in that our number of active admins is declining, we have 300 less than at peak and recruitment of new admins is way below replacement level. One of the parts of the project that works fairly well is our desysoping process. Replacing or supplementing Arbcom with an easy desysop system that omits such elementary safeguards as dispute resolution would make the admin recruitment problem worse.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  00:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I would argue differently as there is a huge editor retention issue right now, and those who claim there isn't are mainly those who like the status quo which has been going on for several years now. I see it particularly when I get into a group of people who are tech savvy but are as a rule not involved with Wikipedia.  Their experiences are all across the board with mainly negative experiences.  Some of them don't really understand the core philosophies of the project like the five pillars, several of them have had very negative experiences with admins or the new page patrol, and a few just got confused from the firehose of information expected to be understood out of brand new editor/contributors.

 * My largest complaint is the automated tools that are used. I've gone the rounds with this and some of those who are trying to help out the proejct, but that personal touch from one person to another is really lacking right now on Wikipedia.  With much of the automated bot editing and standard forms that people paste onto new user pages, they feel they are talking more to machines than to people and view the whole editing process as extremely impersonal.  When I've gone out of my way (I'll admit not nearly as much as I could) to welcome new users to Wikipedia and even leave a paragraph of a personal nature behind usually commenting about the work they are doing that brought them to Wikipedia in the first place, I usually get a response like "wow, I didn't know that real people still existed on Wikipedia".  That should be a more normal reaction than an exception.

 * If new editors are viewed as a pure statistic and some sort of flow of people from the aether that will magically or not contribute to the project over time, something is most definitely lost. It is the attitude of those on the front line of the project who are interacting with these new contributors that makes a huge difference.  Sometimes when you are on something like the new page patrol (or simply reviewing edits in general) those people (particularly admins) see so much garbage from spamming, vandalism, and simply trolls who damage the project that it is natural to think everybody who has an IP address account or is a new user is a similar kind of troll wanting to destroy the project.  It couldn't be further from the truth.

 * I'd argue that some of this is a training issue, and teaching people about Wikipedia, how to use Wikipedia, and in particular training those who are on the front lines of the project meeting these new users so they don't make an ass out of themselves or drive away those who might be beneficial to the project. None of that is happening right now, where the training consists of reading a bunch of dry policy pages, "on the job" training where you are forced to sink or swim (more sink than swim), and if you are very lucky you might be able to attend a Wikimania conference where one of the talks/discussions might be about how to be a more effective admin.  The process of developing a competent editor on Wikipedia is a very Darwinian attitude right now, and Wikipedia is weaker because of that too.  --Robert Horning (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You aren't arguing that differently to me. I acknowledged that deletion errors are a problem, and you've given some excellent reasons why they are a problem. You also raised the issue of newbies and how poorly we handle them, I'd agree with you there as well. But neither of these are about people leaving the project, which is what started the thread, they are really more about people not being able to properly join the project. Yes we have huge problems in the way we treat good faith newbies, and its an important topic, but there are big differences between our problems in retaining experienced editors and our problems in recruiting new ones. There are some developments in the pipeline, WYSIWYG editing will make a big difference to newbies, though as with any change it may not be welcome to the regulars. There are some relatively easy fixes, template bombing would be reduced if we replaced maintenance templates such as deadend, uncategorised and orphan with automatically generated hidden cats. One of the most bitey aspects of deletions could be ended if we put an obligation on deletion taggers to inform authors. Other problems are more difficult, not least because the community doesn't agree on the problems. BTW don't assume that it is the admins who are most jaded when it comes to IPs and Newbies. most admins don't do ether newpage patrol or recent changes, and our most active hugglers and many of our most active patrollers are not admins.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  07:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I don't think the WYSIWYG editor is going to make all that much of a difference. I've seen what it does on the Wikia projects, where it is already in widespread use and even on wikis where it is the primary editing tool (turned on by default for new projects) where I've even volunteered as an admin simply because I'm familiar with project administration in general.  There are a few people who are new to the whole notion of wiki editing that it does seem to help, but they tend to make just as many mistakes as if they were using the more traditional wiki mark-up language... if not more so.  On top of that it tends to produce a whole lot of bloat to the size of the articles (see also the WP:SIZE discussion and note that relates directly to the WYSIWYG interface in a hugely negative manner if followed closely about keeping article sizes down) and in general it doesn't help as much as everybody hopes.  You can't pretty up the interface for simply adding raw content, as that still simply takes writing skills that are hard to develop.  It is a good thing if that 1% of those who would be turned away due to being technophobic but otherwise have the skills to participate decide to stay because the WYSIWYG interface is implemented, but it doesn't solve the much larger issues at hand.  I still say that the reason why those on new page patrol and the admins who back them up are bitey is mostly due to a lack of training and skill in how to perform that task, knowing that it is a very steep learning curve in how to use those tools properly and how to perform that very important task.  Some are very skilled at the task, some are eager learners, and a few in the NPP are destroying the project due to being over zealous, where they don't get stopped until they've stomped on far too many people.  --Robert Horning (talk) 00:14, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

We desperately need new editors because we desperately need to improve the quality of our content. Our content needs to be GA quality or better, in my opinion. Of our core editors, I'd say maybe 10% are able to improve the quality of our articles in one way or another. Here's the numbers I think we need. That's 50,000 editors just to fix our existing quality problems. If only 10% of new users fit into one of the above groups, that means we need to go through 500,000 new editors just to get the fifty thousand we need to become a decent quality encyclopedia. I say we desperately need new editors because our quality depends upon it. <IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 07:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * We need 10,000 people that can properly reference an article with high quality references from reliable sources
 * We need another 10,000 that can write high-quality prose
 * We need another 10,000 that can organize content in a meaningful way for a proper encyclopedia article
 * We need another 10,000 that can properly copyedit an article
 * We need another 10,000 that are able to research and expand our stubs
 * The way to encourage good new editors, and to retain good experienced editors, would be to more rigorously enforce existing procedures with much less tolerance of "but I'm only new and I can't take the time to read all those links on my talk page because I have to tell the world about my wonderful news". Johnuniq (talk) 07:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly, there is nothing wrong with the existing procedures and policies, there is something wrong with US as a community. Adding more red tape will not fix the problem, calling each other on grounds of civility and creating better tools to manage the information is the trick. WikiHow and the FB Places Editor have proven that last point to me. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I would also add a couple more topics to this debate. W
 * 1) We need to stop this nonsense of blocking all the bots because they perform a few minor edits. We are taking minor edits way way too seriously and its even leading to editors being banned from automation or kicked off the site entirely. Thier minor, IE not that big of a deal and although some, arguably don't need to be done, many others do including deleting deprecated parameters from templates and a wide range of other things that we are currently forced to keep cluttering up templates and articles because a few strong handed and high ranking editors refuse to allow these to be removed because they don't render changes to the page, of course they don't there broken and deprecated.
 * 2) There are a lot of other things we need to do in Wikipedia too, some are outlined here and in other places. What needs to be done is to create a place for these topics to be discussed at length rather than continuously closing them for being in the wrong venue. If its wrong then fine, move it to the correct one but don't close it completely.
 * 3) The list goes on, there are just too many problems to list and no good way to deal with them. Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

See WikiProject Editor Retention (WP:WER). (See also Help:Talk pages. How can I follow it here now?) —Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Well we shouldn't scrap the MoS, but maybe there should be a way to keep people's whims out of it. For example, there's a rule called WP:LQ that requires British punctuation throughout Wikipedia, even on articles that are otherwise written in other varieties of English.  An article on the American Civil War shouldn't use British punctuation.  As a trained writer and editor, I find it insulting that I am required to use punctuation that is flat-out wrong within the context of American English.
 * I don't think that the length of the MoS is as big of an issue as it might seem. Most manuals of style are meant to be spot-used rather than read cover to cover.  The table of contents (and CTRL-F) help users find the passages they need pretty quickly.
 * The MoS should be held to a standard at least as high as regular articles: every rule in it must be backed up by reliable sources, not people's pet peeves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Some elements of the MoS can be sourced of course, but others are a choice - quotation marks, serial comma etc vary between publications in the same country depending on a choice of house style, not reliable sources. pablo  08:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That is true of the serial comma and title-style vs. sentence-style capitalization but not of American vs. British punctuation. In U.S. English the overwhelming majority of sources say, "putting periods and commas inside the quotation marks is right and leaving them outside is wrong." The overwhelming majority of British sources say "place periods and commas inside or outside depending on whether they apply to the quoted portion or the entire sentence." It's not optional. This is an ENGVAR issue and should be treated like one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I would like an alternative to just blanking a page which does not meet the exacting specifications of the manual of style. rather than delete the page outright, place it in a user space or slap an under construction sign on it with a link to an article on how to wikify articles. Because an unfinished article is like an unfinished house, it may look rough, but given work it may be a featured article one day. And if you delete all the half finished articles there will be no new finished articles....  Washuchan (talk) 18:05, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Kind of a side issue, but would someone mind collecting links to the many, many archived discussions about editor retention problems? Most editors who start discussions like this are inexperienced, like Chroma here, whose first edit was less than seven months ago. So one of your friends leaves (or says he's leaving, which isn't the same thing; see GoodBye), and it seems like the sky is falling and Wikipedia's going to be abandoned forthwith. But you know what? People have been saying that for at least five years, since the number of editors peaked, and guess what? We're still here, and since then, people like you have joined us.

I think that if we did a better job of documenting these conversations, new people would have a better perspective on the reality of userbase churn, and those trying to solve the problem would have quick access to some of the many suggestions that have been made. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Just to throw my own tuppence into the mix, one of the problems I have seen with Wikipedia, that is completely invisible on the site, is I personally know people who could contribute to Wikipedia and get several articles up to GAN / FAC without too much sweat, but refuse to do so because of drive by biting, primarily due to a number of admins not recognising their research as being serious, threatening to take all their work to WP:RS/N and marking it as unreliable. There also was one instance of a bad speedy deletion which was challenged on the admin's talk page to no response - I can't remember what the article was, so the speedy delete might have been justified, but for an admin to blank discussion about it and not explain the deletion rules to newbies is very poor form and a great way to alienate people. I don't want to name names and give specifics, but I can if required. It's probably all ancient history to the admins involved, but it happened to rub enough people up the wrong way who are now giving a strong and consistent POV of "Wikipedia's crap, it's full of wonks, look at 'x', 'y' and 'z'" elsewhere on the internet, that people have no reason to disbelieve. In all fairness, this was all quite a few years back and I think things have got better since then, but the shit has still stuck. -- Ritchie333  (talk)  16:58, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

1. Possibly. WP:EW should simply say "don't edit war, if you get edited you get blocked", but there should still be a bright line to stop disruption.

2. Sounds good in practice, but would only lead to chaos.

3. I'd suggested that myself - see WP:DANNO - but my suggestions that there should be a 'time limit' on speedy deletion tags following article creation get pooh-poohed. Perhaps the ability to propose deletion should be a user right a la being autoconfirmed?

4. Absolutely not. Yes, there are bad eggs in the admin corps. But there are just as many if not more in the 'Admin Abuse cheer squad' who would rub their hands with glee at the thought they could get an admin's tools taken away just like that - I've seen far too much on AN/I to be able to have good faith that such a process, although it sounds good in theory, wouldn't be instantly gamed for petty purposes - the only thing it would do would be to drive admins away from the project, without replacement, and create an atmosphere where nobody would dare do anything controverial (including enforcing policy against 'vested contributors') for fear of being 'hauled before the court'. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:47, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Also: one thing the people who wring their hands about editors leaving, lack of new content, etc. need to realise is that this is a natural part of the process. There's a lot of subjects on which articles have yet to be written, and zillions of articles needing improvement, sure. But as far as "having an article (however stubby) on X" goes, I'd wager that the vast majority of articles are already here - the rush of "I can start an article on my favourite subject, X!" is no longer there, as X already has an article in most cases. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I have found punctilious adherence to WP:MOS to be problematic. In some instances it is tantamount to polishing up a problem. I don't find it to be a major problem in some instances for an article to have a rough-hewn appearance. I think in many cases we should be less concerned with giving a professional appearance and more concerned with getting the overall thrust of an article right. It is important that style be followed but always after getting the general shape of an article right. It often occurs to me that articles would be better if they were crudely put together but with an overall form that best said what needed to be said on a given topic. Style concerns I think should always come second to the broad form that is called for in a given article. I commend ChromaNebula for bringing this up. I think we are in agreement about this. Bus stop (talk) 01:57, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * A few counterpoints:
 * As already touched on above, 3RR is not a hard-and-fast rule. It provides a convenient point for deciding when enough is enough.
 * Throwing out the Manual of Style would not solve any problems. It would only create them. The MoS exists to ensure consistency across the project. By removing it, you're inviting endless edit wars over how to title an article or best use a period. And worse, you've just killed the thing sticking the project together style-wise, which is a huge detriment. At the very least, the Manual of Style provides a policy people can point back to. (As a reference, I own a copy of the AP Stylebook as part of journalistic work I do. I'm not familiar with every single page of it, but it's still a helpful reference when I'm confused on something, and by sticking to it, I ensure that my work is at the same quality as the work of everyone else who's doing reporting.)
 * While I can certainly why we need to improve relations with users, I'm not sure how transforming the site into a virtual police state of "BE NICE OR ELSE" helps. The biggest problem at NPP is that the process is ill-equipped to not make it frustrating for new users: a lot of new people spend a lot of time on something that probably wouldn't have been accepted here anyway, or have large content concerns that would need to be addressed. A better solution IMHO would be to have new editors head through a process such as WP:AFC first; it would ensure them time to work on the article and get feedback on it without suddenly being slapped with a deletion tag and warned for it.
 * There's a huge problem with "restoring the honor of being an admin." Possessing Wikipedia's mop is "no big deal." If anything, we need to be making it easier to become an admin, not harder. (Indeed, one of the biggest pushes I've seen the past two years is a reform of RfA, which is long overdue.) The board you're proposing is more or less identical to what AN/I already does, and would only serve to be yet another place for people to create absurd amounts of drama because an admin made one bad move. That's not going to keep people here. It's going to further drive people away.
 * That goes without saying.
 *  elektrik SHOOS  (talk) 19:07, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Kudos to you for bringing up an important strategic subject. Above I see the most common "shut-down" response which goes something like this: "Claims of the worse case scenario ("sky is falling") are false, therefore, no significant changes are called-for." I tend to think that the biggest symptoms of problems are that Wikipedia has "plateaued out" in two major areas: I tend to think that some changes in main policies are the most important part of the fix. And in general, we need to start recognizing that the persistent problems involve MISUSE of the rules, NOT violation of the rules, and work on policies should start to be guided by that understanding. Of course the total number of editors is has either an effect on or is affected by this, but is not the direct measure. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:01, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Articles involving contentious areas (or more specifically, areas where there is a real world conflict or contest going on) are almost all permanently disasters. These are almost all of low quality, biased and misleading.  People who value their sanity have mostly left them as being hopeless situations, and the talk pages of those articles are usually vicious nasty places.
 * There is a lack of expert editors participating at many articles that need them, and so many many the articles have "plateaued out" at a mediocre level.

WP:WAF conflict with WP:NOR?
We're having a discussion about tweaking WP:PSTS on the WP:NOR talk page here and I thought some of you might want to join in. The issue is that some editors of fictional subjects (and others, I presume) want to allow a broader understanding of "interpreting primary sources" (which, of course, include the fictional work itself, see here) than what some other editors might allow. All comments are welcome. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 11:39, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't really see much about tweaking in there. I do see a large chunk of confusion over whether "primary" sources are acceptable as sources because WP:PSTS happens to live inside WP:OR and makes such a huge deal over this irrelevant distinction, and some confusion over "original synthesis" versus "encyclopedic summary" because WP:SYN itself does not do a good job of making this distinction.
 * The bottom line is that we may not include any analysis, interpretation, or synthesis that is not already present in whatever source we're using, be it "primary", "secondary", or "tertiary". While it's true that a "secondary" source is more likely to contain useful analysis or interpretation than a "primary" source, we may not add any additional analysis or interpretation in any case so the distinction is not relevant beyond a broad, vague suggestion as to what sort of source to look for. Making this irrelevant distinction in policy just leads to what I call "primary source paranoia".
 * Even in the case of WP:N, the "primary"/"secondary" distinction is irrelevant. What we really are aiming for there is an evaluation of the degree to which the source is independent of the subject and to which the coverage indicates that the author of the source considers the subject worthy of note versus just mentions the subject in passing or covers the subject as part of an exhaustive overview of a larger topic.
 * As for WP:SYN, it too needs cleanup. And IMO the example about Smith and Jones needs to be killed—the issue there isn't "original synthesis", it's POV-pushing and "what the Harvard Writing with Sources manual says is entirely irrelevant to the topic".
 * TL;DR summary: IMO, WP:PSTS should be moved out into an essay, and WP:OR, WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, and other policies/guidelines should be cleaned up to remove any reference to the irrelevant "primary"/"secondary" distinction. But I doubt that will ever happen, too many are too invested in the status quo. Anomie⚔ 15:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Just a point: Even in the case of WP:N, the "primary"/"secondary" distinction is irrelevant. is wrong. WP:N requires secondary sources that put the topic into some type of encyclopedic context that cannot be determined from primary sources. There is a significant distinction between primary and secondary sources for notability evaluation. --M ASEM  (t) 15:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I used to think that too. But what WP:N really wants are reliable sources that are independent of the subject and that are not "trivial" mentions of the subject. While it is true that such a source will almost always be "secondary", the converse (any "secondary" source is independent of the subject) is not true. IMO we should discuss the actual requirements for Notability rather than a fallible heuristic. Anomie⚔ 15:52, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

 * WP:Secondary does not mean independent. Many independent sources, including most news stories are primary sources.
 * I agree though that WP:N ought to care more about independence than about the analytical, comparative, etc. commentary that turns a source into a secondary one. But it's definitely best to have both, because without a secondary source it's difficult to provide encyclopedic context for your subject.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Discourage alphabetical order
Could we discourage the use of alphabetical order, especially within articles, where a more natural order exists? For instance: chronological order, order of size, or (in sport) order of merit? These other orders all have the advantage of being informative, unlike alphabetical. The only advantage of alphabetical is that it is easy to find a given name: but most browsers have a "find" facility that reduces the value of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pete Ridges (talk • contribs) 15:06, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you clarify what you are talking about? Order of what? What is "order of merit" in sport(s)? Order of size of what? I completely fail to understand your query/suggestion. -- Orange Mike |  Talk  17:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I assume that by "order of merit" he means that the best athlete should be listed first, e.g., the winner of the race, and so forth, until you come to the worst athlete, who is at the end of the list. For "order of size", I assume that it would be a class of objects whose size varied, e.g., the planets in this solar system, which could be listed from smallest to largest or the other way around.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Are there any particular articles where this is a problem? Most tables should be sortable by the items mentioned. Chris857 (talk) 23:15, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec) In some cases, the issue can be resolved (or at least ameliorated to an extent) by replacing a plain bulleted list with a formatted, sortable table. For example, List of longest suspension bridge spans offers a table that permits the reader to (re)order the rows by bridge length, date of completion, name, or location by clicking on the 'sort' double arrow at the head of each column. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Same theme: there's often a fairly obvious chronological order to categories when it comes to biographies. Some decent stab at chrono order makes it easier to digest the categories at the bottom of the bio than if they're alphabetical (or random, or some arbitrary sense of importance). Rd232 talk 00:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

A fundamental problem with administrators and inactivity
About 6 months ago, I noticed that the number of administrators and the number of semi-active/inactive administrators was at near 50% with slightly more semi-active/inactive admins than active. Right now we sit at 697 active and 773 semi-active/inactive, or 47% active. Semi-active is fewer than 30 edits in the past 2 months, but at least 1 edit in the past 3 months. Inactive is 0 edits in the past 3 months.

The problem I'm addressing isn't inactivity, but rather competence of semi-active/inactive administrators who may not be informed of current practices on Wikipedia since they have been away. Our policy on removing administrator access to inactive accounts is good, but it's easy for someone to game the system to just keep their admin bit, and their status of trust, within the community. All we require is a single edit or single admin task to keep it. The problem is that all they have to do is come back once a year to make a single edit to continue holding their status. The status of administrator on Wikipedia isn't just the tools, which anything they can do can be easily reverted, but rather a pedestal of high regard and respect in the community that, without proper evidence or reasoning, usually isn't challenged. The problem with this is that with over 770 inactive or partially active accounts with admin, not all of them could be informed on our current practices after being inactive so long. Like I said, one non-binding edit confirms that they own the account, which is great, but it doesn't address them coming back with stature within the community and potentially being uninformed. Here are a few different examples in what I am talking about (these particular users were taken partially at random):

 * - This is an example of an administrator who is semi-active I have no problem with having adminship. Their last fifty edits date back to the beginning of this year and he comes back infrequently to edit and do administrative tasks. It's clear that he is is still capable of holding his position.
 * - This administrators last fifty edits date back from 2012 all the way back to 2009 with 15 of those 50 edits came on the same sessions of editing and 10 of them are in his own user space. In three years, I don't know if he/she is still capable or knowledgeable of different changes that have occurred in guidelines and policies.
 * - This administrator's last 50 contributions go back to 2007, with 0 edits since 2010 and only 12 edits since 2007. They avoided having their administrative bit removed by deleting the How do i add content test page in 2011 and hasn't edited since. 19 of 50 of their last edits were in their own user space. Again, I don't know whether they're informed of everything that has changed since 2007.

There is a tipping point that was established when User:LC, who had his adminship removed in 2011 for inactivity, came back to get his adminship restored and was denied because he had not edited since 2002. There was a fear of giving LC his adminship back for reasons of the myriad of changes over a 9 year period that he may not be informed of (also it was not sufficiently proven that the account was controlled by LC himself, and he did not reply to queries). At what point do we decide who is equipped and knowledgeable of our current policies and guidelines to still be valuable to the community with the tools or to have the tools restored to them?

If you're looking to skip to the proposal here it is. I think the answer is really simple, all that it requires is a different method of determining who is an active administrator and deprecating the current "one year inactive" de-adminship. It's fairly straight forward: If you do a combined 50 edits or admin actions outside of your own user space within a calendar year, you are considered an active administrator. If you make less than 50, your adminship is removed for inactivity. It actually benefits the encyclopedia in various ways:
 * It stops inactive administrators from simply coming back and doing a null edit to their user page to keep their adminship for another year and leaving the community to wonder if they are coming back or not.
 * It forces administrators at least provide a bare minimum of contributions or administrative duties to give us something to base their work on. We won't have to wonder whether they are equipped to handle to tools anymore.
 * The difference between a bare minimum of 1 edit/log to confirm they are here and my proposed 50 is this:
 * 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 1 edit to confirm they are still admin under our current system is 773 edits/logs (which could be as little as a user page edit.)
 * 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 50 edits/logs outside their user space is 38,650 productive edits, and all of them could keep their adminship and be considered active.
 * For administrators who fall inactive, the method of restoring their admin bit is slightly the same: all the former admin has to do is make 50 edits (outside their user space) to confirm that they are active, and they make request at WP:BN to get their admin bit back (at the bureaucrats discretion as always).

An example of this proposal in action is as straight forward as it's worded. For example, between 00:00 January 1, 2013 and 23:59 December 31, 2013, all an admin would have to do is make their combined 50 edits or administrative logs, and they keep it until 2014. In 2014, they just have to make another minimum 50, and so on into the future. The only way I see this being debated is because the proposal actually enforces that an administrator has to make a bare minimum number of edits, but is that a bad thing compared to accounts sitting there and rotting with an admin bit? Normally active administrators are unaffected, admins aren't forced to be here any longer than normal, and it makes inactive administrators only spend minimal time here if they want to keep being administrators. At 50 contributions per administrator who are inactive at this point, we can gain tons of useful contributions and the rate of completion for doing the minimum number is achievable within a single day. I look forward to seeing responses about this. — Moe   ε  13:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

 * The inherent flaw in your proposal is that you assume the inactive admin has not simply been reading, rather than taking an active role. Further, it's inherently "forcing" admins to meet a quota, something that really flies in the face of making good decisions. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 18:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't assume that they aren't reading, and if that is the case, they could be very informed which is good. But if that's the case, if you make 50 edits in less than a year, you're not doing your part, are you? Out of the 1,400+ people entrusted on the entire website to be here and actually do something when there are problems, are the people we allow to sit and do nothing? Do you knowingly pass a user on RFA, if it said in their nomination "After I'm give admin, I'm going to rarely be here at all, but I'll keep informed and make an edit or two a year."? No, you won't. Like I said, is enforcing a quota a bad thing? Why do we tolerate administrators to sit back and not do anything? If you gave a janitor a mop and bucket and he only came by once a year to adjust their locker and leave, I'd be pretty pissed nothing is being done. We have 697 active and 773 snoozing. 50 administrative logs or edits combined, is such a minor task for someone at the level of an administrator. It's achievable by them logging in once and year a doing something, which is all I'm asking really. — Moe   ε  23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the delay in responding. Took a short Wikibreak.
 * The reason your janitor analogy fails is in two parts: A) this is a volunteer service, so no one is required to be here at X time or X days a week, and B) there is not a limiting factor on the number of admins, ie. we aren't "over budget" or running out of "space" for people. If someone works that hard to get the bit, then goes idle, that's their business. As long as they haven't abused the bit, I see no reason to remove it due to lack of activity. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 16:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Hell, I've been active here for eight years and I don't even know our current practices. The problem isn't inactivity among admins, the problem is in informing everyone of evolving standards and practices. --Golbez (talk) 19:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * And that's fine Golbez :) I'm not expecting someone to re-invent the wheel or be some kind of connoisseur of the English Wikipedia. All I'm asking for is a simple minimum number of duties, a combined 50 edits and/or administrative logs (outside their userspace) that you do within a year. It's just a simple recognition that you are here and that you actually do something still, something very minor to prove you are still competent in holding the tools. — Moe   ε  23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Ah, the only problem I have with this proposal is that you mischaracterize the background. Logging in once a year to make one edit is not "gaming the system", since desysopping inactive accounts is a procedural matter only. And LC was not denied a resysop because he had been inactive too long to know what he was doing. That was claimed, sure, but there was no consensus on it. His resysop was actually declined because even the bureaucrats who didn't care how active he was weren't sure if his account had been compromised, or why he was asking. But getting back to the actual proposal, this seems to me like a solution in search of a problem. Please show me the administrator who, as a result of ignorance of policy changes, started screwing up the encyclopedia and resisted all attempts at being educated. An RFA is a stamp of a approval on an editor for not only being knowledgeable of policy, but also having clue. I choose to believe that any editor capable of passing RFA is at least cognizant of the fact that policies change. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I too would like to assume that anyone we give a stamp of approval on is aware of our every-changing policies and guidelines, but the reality is that most of them are probably not actively reading every day. If they are, that is one thing, and doing a bare minimum of 50 edits/administrative logs isn't very hard for someone reading Wikipedia every day. In the case of those who are not, then they don't have a clue what the current policies and guidelines are, because they are never here. In the case of Lightdarkness above, are you sufficiently satisfied that he is still able to perform administrative duties within Wikipedia based on his last bout of active editing stemming from 2007? The problem, as I said from the beginning, is accounts sitting there and rotting under the guise of they are an administrator for life, as long as they come back and make a null edit. I don't need to be convinced they are superlative at handling the admin bit, or that they know every policy, but rather confirmation that they are here and at least trying. Why would we give someone special privileges and stature in our community for them to sit and idle on it? — Moe   ε  23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Rd232 talk 21:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW, both Meta and Commons have (different) substantive activity requirements:
 * Commons: less than 5 admin actions in 6 months: 30 days' notice to confirm intention to return; then desysop without warning if again less than 5 actions in 6 months. See Commons:Commons:Administrators/De-adminship.
 * Meta: less than 10 edits in 6 months: immediate desysop; 10+ edits but fewer than 10 admin actions: 1 week to confirm intention to remain admin. See meta:Meta:Administrators.
 * The Commons policy of harassing administrators in otherwise good standing to perform work to maintain that standing is, to be frank, bullshit. --Golbez (talk) 22:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * And if anyone missed in my proposal, as long as you come back and do your minimum number of duties, even if you are de-admined for inactivity, you are given back to the tools procedurally like we do now. It's just changing 1 edit to prove that you're alive, to 50 to prove you're still functional. — Moe   ε  23:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a good proposal. Unscintillating (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I also support more substantive activity requirements. --99of9 (talk) 05:00, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Support This just seems like common sense. If you can't make at least 50 edits a year, then it is extremely unlikely that you are keeping up on policy changes and admin responsibilities and activities. Sure, there might be a few outlier admins, but the possible amount of those is so low as to be negligible for the main purpose of this proposal. Silver  seren C 05:13, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. On these criteria, we would have lost User:Moreschi, an excellent administrator. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * They can easily do RfA again. I mean, if they're good admins, then it should be pretty easy to get reinstated and it would further show community support for them in general. And, heck, we could use some more RfAs in general for our current dismal stats in that area. Silver  seren C 05:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello Future Perfect at Sunrise. Actually, Moreschi would be fine, re-review the actual proposal. He has made 50 edits and administrative logs combined this year alone, so under this, he would retain adminship. If he was inactive for a long period of time previously (assuming he was gone for a very long time?), his edits proving him being active now means he would have got his adminship restored if it was removed. The only difference between our current practice and this proposal, is that it's 50 edits or administrative logs combined (outside of the user's own userspace) in a year, as compared to a single edit anyone on Wikipedia in one year. He actually wouldn't need to go through RFA again, Silver seren, he would just have to prove he is active on Wikipedia. This is to prevent administrators from idling for an entire year and committing a single edit to retain adminship without providing any service to the site. — Moe   ε  06:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Strongly Oppose. What we need are admins who are capable of fair, judicious and impartial actions. Those qualities do not degrade over time. The argument that a period of inactivity should of itself be a disqualification is flawed for several reasons (as mentioned above they may be observing but not editing, or they may be completely absent but prepared to spend time getting up to speed when returning).
 * RfA discussion is not just about technical knowledge of current policy, it's about assessing intent, motivation and character. And from the point of view of this longstanding, but not especially active editor, it works. The quality of admin work here that I have seen has been outstanding: not because of detailed current knowledge of every last policy, but because it has been thoughtful.
 * Now I'm sure there are examples of misuse or incompetence, and that might be the motivation behind this proposal, but the way to address that concern is to streamline the process for de-adminship (for action rather than inaction).
 * Another legitimate concern is that requests for administrative action be dealt with promptly - let's achieve that by encouraging communication by means other than the talk page of an administrator. I would support a proposal to put a "Seems to be inactive" notice there.
 * Finally, (sorry this is so long), it's hard enough to get properly engaged editors, let alone properly-motivated admins so please let's not let impose an arbitrary technical requirement. Mcewan (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello, Mcewan. I'm not rather questioning their past usefulness to Wikipedia, which is self-evident because they are administrator, but rather wanting to expand what is considered inactive for the sake of the website. It's rather preposterous, the little amount of requirements it takes to retain adminship, don't you think? If admin X left now, July 3, 2012, under our current policy, he could do a total of ten edits and/or administrative actions, once a year, from now until 2022 and retain adminship without a further glance. We have continued to push a mantra of "administrator for life" to the point of ridiculousness. The whole premise behind that makes things very difficult to retain administrators, because they can come back anytime they like, make their minimum requirement of 1 edit and move on. After that, they can come back and by the time they do, it's not the same Wikipedia they left with. You can check any policy or guideline page on Wikipedia to exactly 5 years ago, it isn't the same as today. That mantra is fine for people who are here every day contributing, but it's the 1 edit admin a year this isn't fine for. All this proposal does, is makes someone who is an administrator fill a quota of 50 edits or administrative logs (blocks, protections, deletions, etc.) so that we can be sure that they are somewhat familiar with the site on a yearly basis. — Moe   ε  06:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi. I suppose my point is that if we trust someone to be an admin then we implicitly also trust them to keep current on policy before acting. There is no correlation between knowledge of policy and number of edits, so why impose any activity requirement at all? Personally I would be happy with none. Mcewan (talk) 11:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Oppose, proposal doesn't actually solve any problem. 5 or 10 or 50 admin actions per year don't help me keep up with what is going on (unlike a month of lurking at ANI). We already have an arbitrary automatic desysop cutoff, and you have not demonstrated any actual problems (bad admin actions) that have resulted from making it easy to stay an admin. —Kusma (t·c) 09:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record: on nowiki there is a gadget which helps people to keep track of who is active on which administrative tasks. See [//no.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-show-sysop-activity.js?uselang=en MediaWiki:Gadget-show-sysop-activity.js]. Maybe someone finds it useful here as well. Helder 13:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I'm not seeing the problem. Or, the problem that this would solve is not a problem that I've seen or that is being complained about.  If we have signs that someone kept the bit (e.g., by making one edit every 12 months) and later screwed up with the admin tools (more than the average admin might), then de-sysopping due to inactivity (by any measure) would be reasonable.  But I'm not seeing any examples of this happening, and failing any such evidence, the OP wants us to pretend that having the tools is a great big deal.  Also, there are some admins who rarely do anything on the English Wikipedia, but who are sometimes enormously useful to us, e.g., dealing with multi-project copyright violations.  Some of our "inactive" admins are actually quite valuable to us.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

 * There are also uses to being an admin that don't involve performing any admin actions. A lot of feedback issues, help desk questions, and OTRS queries require looking through deleted edits. You could theoretically have an admin who uses his tools all the time, just not the ones that log. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

 * This is a solution looking for a problem. I took a lengthy wikibreak at one point, probably near two years, but came back around occasionally during it. I still read the articles, after all, and I just can't see a typo or easily fixed problem here without, well, fixing it. I was never intending to leave the project permanently, just to take a long break. This being a volunteer project, I have every right to take a "leave of absence" whenever, for whatever reason, and for whatever period of time I want, and so long as I'm not leaving to evade likely sanctions, to come back in just as good of standing as when I left. Coming back to make a null edit every so often isn't "gaming," since inactivity desysops are strictly procedural and are immediately reversible upon a simple request to the 'crats anyway. It's just a way of saying "I'm still interested in working on the project, I just am not doing it right now." Obviously, it would be incumbent upon someone who takes a long break to carefully review any changes that have occurred in their absence, as I did when I returned, but admins have passed a community process showing trust in their judgment. I should think it very basic good judgment to say "Hrm, I've been away for X years, and this project is pretty fluid. I'd better make sure I check on current community expectations before I wade in to hit the big red buttons." If someone fails to do that and fails to respond to feedback when they're told we don't do it that way anymore, we can handle that through normal processes and ultimately ArbCom, but I know of no such actual circumstance. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello, Seraphimblade. We can only hope that people who come back to their former hobby they no longer participate in actively are as willing to realize this. I know most of them would be, but there's always that exception :) In your case, since you came back, you would have had your admin bit restored procedurally just like our current policy after proving that you are active again. There have been a fair share of administrators who have come back for their admin bit on the 'crat noticeboard, then proceeded to disappear again. With this proposal, all it does is make those editors participate minimally in the community rather than not at all. — Moe   ε  07:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. The most common oppose I have read from the above oppose !votes to my proposal have been based around no current problem and there not being any examples of there being an issue. I understand the premise behind that understanding, which is something we usually base our policies and guidelines on, but this is rather a solution to a future problem which is going to arrive since we have nearing 800 inactive/semi-active administrators. Active administrators are actually a minority that is steadily declining. Just keep that in mind. :P I may write a formal WP policy proposal based on the idea, since a few people did say they supported it. I'll be around to read comments until the thread dies. Regards, — Moe   ε  07:32, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Support A good administrator deactivated through inactivity shouldn't have any problem going through RfA again, and we should welcome the chance to review their credentials for currency. --BDD (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Strong oppose - The whole idea is that the community chose to trust the individual with adminship. The proposal would de facto be a way for Removal of adminship. We have had a tradition that any admin who has not had the tools removed "under a cloud" may have adminship restored by any bureaucrat. This proposal is contrary to that common practice.
 * And by the way, no offense to anyone asserting this idea, but the argument that someone coming back after a few years wouldn't know or understand the continually evolving common practice, and so should have adminship removed is straight up BS.
 * First, you have NO CLUE whether they have been reading during this time. To use myself as an example, at one point I had severe technical issues. And while I don't mind reading wikipedia at the local library or other such places. I strongly preferred to not sign in and edit from such places.
 * "Second, if we as a community decided to entrust them with the tools, and that includes to not mis-use the tools, then it follows that we should trust them to not misuse them after a lengthy wikibreak. This proposal just violates long common practice here.
 * So to re-affirm: Strong oppose - jc37 16:35, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello, Jc37. To reply to your concerns:
 * If an administrators tools were removed for not being active (50 edits/administrative logs in a calendar year) under this, they would get them restored procedurally just like we do now at WP:BN, but the only difference is instead of 1 edit/log, it would be 50, to prove activity.
 * The notion that the semi-active and inactive administrators who only make an occasional edit to the encyclopedia and their request adminship back, but simultaneously sit and watch policy and guideline pages, is preposterous. There are semi-active adminstrators who do a fair share of edits around the encyclopedia, 2-3 every week, who would be unaffected by this. It's essentially only those who come back to WP:BN, request their adminiship back, then idle again are the ones who are directly affected for the most part since even semi-active admins make the bare minimum number of contributions of 50 edits/logs a year.
 * Even if there was "reader" admins who sit and make no edits but request their adminship back, what good can come of giving the occasional reader of Wikipedia adminship? Why don't we give adminship back once they no longer have technical issues or once they are ready to actively return and make a bare minimum number of contributions? Like I said, the process is still procedural that they get the tools back once they are active and ready to contribute using the tools. I hate the thought of giving someone access to tools when they aren't here for a majority of the time. It's true, we don't know whether they are caught up-to-date on policy or not, but being inactive suggests that they are not here, rather than that they are.
 * Regards, — Moe   ε  07:41, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The reason is that this creates needless bureaucracy. Someone gets to baby-sit the logs (or develop an automated process) to watch every admin's contributions, and remove the bit if they don't meet their quota. Then, if the admin comes back, they have to pester the 'crats to get it back. It's creating more work for no real benefit. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 16:30, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Moe. I disagree with several of your points, but that's fine, neither of us can read minds, nor has the ability to see the future, so we're welcome to have a difference of opinion.
 * But to just address your 50 edits idea. Why is the amount higher than what we require for autoconfirming an editor? that seems a bit much. Once upon a time, we had a consensus for autoconfirmed to be changed to 7 days 20 edits. but the devs implemented a smaller amount (erring on the side of caution, which I can understand). This might be almost worth discussing if the numbers were down in that range. But 50 just seems ridiculous (as several above have noted).
 * Though again, I'm pretty much opposed due to the fact that trust includes not using the tools just as much as using them. So I think the entire premise of this proposal is flawed on those grounds. - jc37 15:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Strong oppose - the solution to the problem of having so many inactive admins is to have more active admins and to seek reduce the reasons that cause active admins to leave in the first place. See, for instance, today's Atlantic article on the decline in our admin ranks. Taking away admin rights from proven members is exactly the opposite approach from what we should be doing. Indeed, that would likely be the final slamming of the door to keep out those who have already made substantial contributions to the project. Removing admin bits from users who have been completely dormant for years makes good sense from an account security perspective, but the goal here is to increase the total number of active admins, not eliminate the inactive ones out of some kind of unsubstantiated fear of a future problem. Zachlipton (talk) 20:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose - As previously mentioned, this doesn't seem to be a problem needing fixing. User:Moe_Epsilon hasn't shown that changing the arbitrary definition of admin inactivity will reduce the number of admins who misunderstand Wikipedia policies. There are already procedures in place for dealing with admins who don't follow policy. Matt (talk) 04:39, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. My most important criterion for adminship is maturity - a quality that does not degenerate with absence from the project. That said, we do need a more accurate criterion of 'active' admin; from what I see, the majority of admin work appears to be done in reality by a group of around only 50 - 100 regular sysops. We'd be better served by looking for ways to revive interest in being an admin than in looking for more reasons to strike more off the list. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:01, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

How to fix Wikipedia? Tags
I guess the big hot topic of the month is the declining number of editors we have here on Wikipedia, and ways to help remedy that situation. One of the things I've noticed develop is an overall increase in the number of articles being littered with tags of all sorts. Either the article needs to be tagged because it doesn't have enough references, or it needs images, or it's NPOV, or it doesn't have an appropriate "worldview", etc, etc,. . . ad nauseum. While I do understand that there is a certain purpose to these tags, as they do seem to warn editors that the content may not be up to par, and many of them do add articles to various categories for easy tracking, I also question the necessity of many of these tags. I also see lots of editors who seem to have developed a favorite pasttime of not really editing by just sprinkling random articles with various tags at their whim -- the favorite one these folks like to use is the "citation needed" tag. And I notice many of these tags are simply added by someone who neither provides a reasonable explanation in the edit summary nor explains why the tag is being added in the talk page.

Maybe what we should do to help remedy this is to encourage editors to use tags more sparingly, and try to improve the article first before randomly tagging it? If you add a tag, make sure to explain on the talk page why you're adding the tag, and give your rationale. We could also go ahead and remove tags immediately if no rationale is provided for them? Perhaps the tags could be redesigned to be a little less intrusive or less annoying as well? Does anyone have any other suggestions? WTF? (talk) 03:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure this is a perennial proposal by now... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * I'd personally rather that editors always endeavoured to flag issues with articles wherever they exist. Tags are the fastest and most effective way of drawing attention to problems with articles. Articles which are tagged are improved faster than articles which aren't tagged. The tagging system has been a phenomenal success. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Your suggestions in the second para are good ones, but I think tags are a service to the reader: they warn people that (a) Wikipedia has rough edges (b) they're on one right now. Wikipedia is useful but not reliable, and papering over this strikes me as a disservice to the people using it - David Gerard (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Part of the problem is that we undeniably have over-tagging, because people are sometimes reticient about removing tags from articles ("I haven't cleaned it all up", "I don't know if I'm allowed to") or simply forget to (especially with section editing). Even if the proportion of problem articles is constant, the number tagged will thus seem to balloon.
 * One approach that would help a lot is to get readers to interact the tags - I've wondered before about the practicality of a one-click system, a la HotCat, which allows readers to easily remove no-longer-appropriate tagging... Andrew Gray (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags. It is simply false that there is presently an "over-tagging problem". What's more, it is undeniably better to have an article with superfluous tags (which any competent editor can remove at will) than an article which is missing tags that apply (which means that it isn't categorised for appropriate cleanup and bears no simple indication of how to improve it). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What constitutes "tiny proportion" in your mind? Last I looked, about 6% of articles were tagged with unref—and that's just one template alone.  About a quarter of WPMED's articles are tagged with some sort of clean-up template.  I suspect that's reasonably typical, and I don't think that counts as "tiny proportion".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm at a loss as to what your answer is to 6% of pages being tagged as unreferenced. Should they not be tagged? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't bother tagging unreferenced stubs, since a glance at the page shows they are unreferenced, but you said, "Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags." I do not agree with your assertion that "Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags."  I believe that up to a quarter of our articles have some type of tag, which is an entire an order of magnitude above what I'd call "a tiny proportion".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

 * My use of "over-tagging" here is on a per-article basis, not an overall one - I do think that many more articles have problems than have problem tags, but at the same time there are a substantial number of articles which have too many tags because the problems are since resolved (or were never really present, in a few cases). I don't think these two issues are antagonistic, or that improving one is at the cost of the other - in fact, some of the root causes may be the same. Andrew Gray (talk)

source: wikimedia

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 97