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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas. Before creating a new section, please note:
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Proposals: policy | other | Discussions | Ideas |
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Contents
- 1 3rd party wikis links
- 2 Extended confirmed protection policy
- 3 Locking Involved Sport Players During Big Final
- 4 Prevention of Link Rots
- 5 Integrating New Research Findings.
- 6 Helper
- 7 Towards another April Fools' RfC
- 8 Better Documentation of Disasters
- 9 Trial criteria for ITN?
- 10 Suggestion - unify "glossaries", "categories","List of.." by automatically assembling 'microarticles', streamline glossary&list creation/maintainance
- 11 Automatic notification if a thread is started about an editor on AN/I
- 12 Documentary Reference Template
- 13 Overlinking - solve technically instead of with guidelines for fallible humans
- 14 Phone view
- 15 Delay on coverage of major events
- 16 Creating redirects and disambiguation pages to influence search engine indexing
3rd party wikis links
Wouldn't it be better if Wikipedia had a 'See also on' section on the sidebar with links to the same subject on other wikis (including the sister-projects under Wikimedia)? I was thinking (for example) of wikia.com, ProofWiki and OSDev wiki - they all offer in-depth information or technical knowledge on specific topics. Also, I think that a link on the sidebar for authors to their Wikisource Author: pages would be more accessible than the same link at the bottom of the page. This would allow Wikipedia to remain a general-purpose encyclopedia, while still offering links for more in-depth technical knowledge. I think it will also help with WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual.2C_guidebook.2C_textbook.2C_or_scientific_journal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mostanes (talk • contribs) 07:45, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
- Please, no. It would be a spam magnet. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
- If those links were appropriate, then they could be included as ==External links==. This is the recommended location for WP:SISTER links.
- Also, you should keep in mind that very few people look at the (gray) side bar, and it's completely invisible for the huge percentage of readers who use the mobile website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
- Wikipedia pages aren't even allowed to have links to other wikis; it's in Wikipedia policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C1:C004:4900:BD04:8B7D:BB53:4F01 (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
- No, it isn't in Wikipedia policy. There is no ban on having links to other wikis. There is a guideline against having links to open wikis, unless they're large and long-lived, but there's no rule against linking to a closed wiki or to a large, stable open wiki such as Wookiepedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:58, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
- Wikipedia pages aren't even allowed to have links to other wikis; it's in Wikipedia policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:2C1:C004:4900:BD04:8B7D:BB53:4F01 (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Extended confirmed protection policy
Discussion
It's become necessary to begin discussing how the community will apply WP:BLUELOCK in articles outside ArbCom jurisdiction or discretionary sanctions. Rather than formulate an RFC in a hurry, let's all take a few days to hash out ideas on how to best implement ECP.
I'll begin by saying that I don't think ECP should be authorized for uses other than sockpuppetry or new, disruptive accounts that can't be controlled by semi-protection. I'm open to other uses but I'm having trouble seeing them right now. Katietalk 15:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
- For me, it should be the last resort. I mean, real last, not just a burst of vandalism or socking. We don't need to have the entire Wiki blue-locked. Sir Joseph (talk) 15:45, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
- First I think we should understand, when we say "community" in the protection policy, whether we mean a priori by the community, with exceptional cases handled at a noticeboard of some sort, or whether all such discussions should be held at a noticeboard, or some other option. Ban discussions are basically required to occur at WP:AN/WP:ANI, yet the most recent case where an editor attempted to have a discussion there about a potential use of ECP is probably going to close as "no consensus" or possibly even "this doesn't seem to be the place to have this discussion", without having had a "wide" community discussion about the policy problem. (ref WP:AN#Reducing List of social networking websites from indefinite full protection to indefinite 30/500 protection). The originating RFC rejected WP:RFPP as a venue for these; what about a WP:RFPP/EPC? --Izno (talk) 15:50, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
- I think an RFC is the way to go in the end. As someone who closes RFCs semi-regularly and is in the process of co-closing a big one that's muddied by a section that basically ended up as "it depends", the questions really have to be stated in a 'support/oppose' or 'yes/no' manner. It's the only way to effectively gauge consensus. How about something like:
- Do administrators have discretion to apply ECP in the same manner as they use discretion to apply other forms of protection?
- Is ECP authorized for persistent sockpuppetry?
- There are obviously other questions to be asked, but these two are a start. I hesitate to propose a 'what if admins do not have discretion' as I think the first question should be answered, well, first. Katietalk 16:02, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
- It may be interesting to see the current usage of blue-lock protection. The following are the articles that have the {{pp-30-500}} template in the article text:
- I think an RFC is the way to go in the end. As someone who closes RFCs semi-regularly and is in the process of co-closing a big one that's muddied by a section that basically ended up as "it depends", the questions really have to be stated in a 'support/oppose' or 'yes/no' manner. It's the only way to effectively gauge consensus. How about something like:
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- The only listed article that doesn't fall under Gamergate, ARBPIA, or the caste sanctions is Real Madrid C.F. I'll notify the admin who placed that protection that we are having a discussion here. Only five *article talk* pages are under blue-lock protection; they are at the end of the list and are all ARBPIA or Gamergate. EdJohnston (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- Going by the presence of
{{pp-30-500}}
doesn't give the full list, since that template is merely a visual reminder: it's not obligatory to add a prot icon template to protected pages. Nor does it provide any reasons for the use of WP:30/500. The full list is here. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:20, 19 May 2016 (UTC)- The number of extended confirmed users won't be confirmed unless everyone edits at least once since 9 April 2016 (UTC). 333-blue 11:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- I notice in comparing the lists, that there are four pages under 30/500 protection not listed by EdJohnston, those omitted are Haaretz, Im Tirtzu, Talk:Nair and Category:Temple Mount. Also, EdJohnston lists Jerusalem, but despite the blue padlock, that page is only semi-protected, and has been since 05:19, 28 February 2011 - it has never been 30/500 prot, so this edit by SSTflyer (talk · contribs) was in error. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- The admin who applied 30-500 protection at Real Madrid F.C. has now changed it back after someone pointed out the issue. EdJohnston (talk) 13:42, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- I notice in comparing the lists, that there are four pages under 30/500 protection not listed by EdJohnston, those omitted are Haaretz, Im Tirtzu, Talk:Nair and Category:Temple Mount. Also, EdJohnston lists Jerusalem, but despite the blue padlock, that page is only semi-protected, and has been since 05:19, 28 February 2011 - it has never been 30/500 prot, so this edit by SSTflyer (talk · contribs) was in error. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:25, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- The number of extended confirmed users won't be confirmed unless everyone edits at least once since 9 April 2016 (UTC). 333-blue 11:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- Going by the presence of
- The only listed article that doesn't fall under Gamergate, ARBPIA, or the caste sanctions is Real Madrid C.F. I'll notify the admin who placed that protection that we are having a discussion here. Only five *article talk* pages are under blue-lock protection; they are at the end of the list and are all ARBPIA or Gamergate. EdJohnston (talk) 03:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
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I don't think Haaretz should have 30/500 protection. It's an article about a newspaper. Has that page experienced vandalism excessive enough to warrant that? Sir Joseph (talk) 13:58, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- If you think Haaretz should be changed, why not ask the protecting admin, User:Rami R. If no agreement can be found, the matter could be raised at WP:AE for a decision. I only saw one recent POV-pushing edit on that article by someone who had less than 500 edits. That User:BoredSocks is now blocked by Rami R. You'd expect a sock to use a more imaginative name. EdJohnston (talk) 20:09, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
- We've needed something like this for a long time. Until now, there was no intermediate level of protection between "anyone with an account, ten edits, and four days' tenure"—which prevents the vast majority of casual vandalism and presents at least a moderate obstacle to all but the most determined sockmasters—and "only administrators". I've seen several cases where articles have ended up under long-term full protection or we've just had to accept that every few weeks somebody is going to have to block a load of socks and oversight some libellous edits. So, used sparingly, I support the use of ECP/bluelock at admin discretion where semi has been/would be ineffective and the alternative would be full protection. Perhaps the protecting admin should be required to record their rationale on the talk page (and preferably link to the diff in the protection log so that it can be easily reviewed)? This might help prevent over-use and might also prevent removal by a well-meaning admin who assumes it's being over-used. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 07:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
- I generally oppose any bluelock that could be enacted by a single or small group of people. So no lone administrator (except where use in a topic area has been authorised) no local consensus (otherwise you will get walled gardens where a small group can easily lock out new editors). So some form of AN discussion with a *wide* notification. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
- I supported the 30/500 protection on any article experiencing vandalism issues. Semi-protection is still inefficent because a vandal account may be autoconfirmed, and to vandalize semi-protected pages, for full protection it seems quite aggervating and stressful to me. KGirlTrucker87 talk what I'm been doing 22:03, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
- I think the thrust of the RfC should be answering 1) who should have the authority to implement this level of protection, and 2) when would implementation be appropriate. Here are a few options:
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- Option A: Allow use only by the Arbitration Committee (community cannot use it; most restrictive)
- Option B: Allow use only by prior community consensus at AN, ANI, village pump or RfC for reasons to be decided on a case-by-case basis
- Option C: Allow administrators to apply at their discretion only against persistent sock puppetry or continued use of new, disruptive accounts where other methods (such as semi protection) have not controlled the disruption (verbatim what ArbCom stipulated for WP:AE and WP:AC/DS 30/500 applications)
- Option C alt: Allow use only by prior community consensus at AN, ANI, village pump or RfC only against persistent sock puppetry or continued use of new, disruptive accounts where other methods (such as semi protection) have not controlled the disruption
- Option D: Allow administrators to apply at their discretion to prevent persistent or egregious disruptive editing (in the same manner semi, PC, and full protection are currently applied; least restrictive)
- We could have the community vote support/oppose for each option. What other options could we make available? Mz7 (talk) 04:03, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
- I don't really understand why this is particularly controversial. Maybe I'm missing something. The ArbCom resolution specifies that it is authorized for certain areas, but does not specify it is unauthorized in others (even though Wikipedia:Protection_policy interprets it both ways in different sections), and if it did, that would be policy making. Furthermore, the wording under expectations clearly opens use broadly beyond ArbCom sanctioned topics.
- Bluelock is objectively a protection level intermediate to semi and full. The same rationale should be applied for escalation and reduction of protection.
- Further, I would support the broad empowerment of admins to reduce fully protected pages to blue locked, with immediate restoration of full if disruption resumes. Overall, I expect it can be a useful tool for reducing the number of fully protected pages, and not, as some seem to fear, of widespread escalation of semi articles. TimothyJosephWood 13:09, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
- In comparison with Full Protection, two particular points of contention spring immediately to mind - Talk pages; Admin removal of the extended confirmed bit - with a third a few moments later - indefinite length. Suggest we should certainly want to put questions on the first two to the community as part of any RfC; and likely the third also. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:48, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Draft RfC
- @KrakatoaKatie: I've started a very rough draft of a possible RfC at User:Mz7/Draft extended confirmed RfC based on my comment above. Feel free to add to it, edit it or comment on it. Should we add any options? Should we scrap a few options? Is this completely the wrong structure for the RfC? I should probably elaborate more on each option, though, if we are using this structure. Mz7 (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
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- I'll take a closer look shortly, but my main problem is that there are too many options that could gain consensus from separate groups of !voters. (If both A and D get consensus, what to do then? It will have wasted everybody's time.) I also think you can combine B and C1 to just say 'community consensus' instead of 'community consensus only for X or Y'; let the community decide what it's going to decide. You want to make the RFC as clear as possible so consensus or the lack thereof is easy to judge. The fewer options the better, and ideally only one choice at a time. Katietalk 19:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
- B and C have too much exclusivity in their verbiage - for example C's "Allow use only" precludes it from being used by other community consensus as in B. — xaosflux Talk 02:24, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
- We need another option between B and C in terms of restrictiveness. Here's what I wrote at a relevant AN thread a moment ago: "If this application is supported by the community, I have a small list of pages that could use 30/500 protection based on the activity documented at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Никита-Родин-2002/Archive, where a couple other editors and I have been playing high frequency whack-a-mole with a particularly sneaky vandal for months. Given my experience there, I strongly support the use of 30/500 protection in cases where sockpuppetry has been highly persistent (longer than a month), highly disruptive (sneaky vandalism, BLP violations, or edits subject to WP:RevDel), and resistant to semi-protection." I think admins should be able to apply this protection level at their discretion, but those highly persistent and highly disruptive aspects are key. It makes little sense to apply 30/500 protection and freeze out legitimate editors to stop easily detectable and fixable vandalism that isn't highly disruptive. It also makes little sense when the sockpuppetry occurs in a brief but highly active period of vandalism, since a CheckUser would be able to find and block the relevant sleeper accounts if they're all popping out of the woodwork for a single mass-"attack". In that instance, SPI is a far more appropriate venue than WP:RFPP. But there needs to be something above semi-protection to prevent a huge waste of editor time in instances like the SPI I listed above. Long-term abuse cases are few and far between, but they're a serious time sink when they're active. ~ RobTalk 17:18, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
- There's also technically the possibility of going with Option A but setting up a section at WP:RFPP to request 30/500, with ArbCom speedily considering the requests privately (well, more speedily than a full case, anyway). I'm not a fan of giving the community or admins no ability to apply this protection level, but this would at least be an improvement over requiring a full ArbCom case to get 30/500. I don't want to file a case just to get 30/500 on some pages related to that SPI I linked above. The thought alone makes me want to sign out for a long period of time. ~ RobTalk 17:37, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
- Option D; second choice option C. I've been helping to patrol RfPP for years, wishing we had something short of full protection to deal with persistent disruption, so I support option D, namely that admins should be allowed to use this as needed, as an alternative to full protection. Realistically, most of those cases are going to be of the option C variety: persistent sockpuppetry and sleeper accounts. SarahSV (talk) 21:25, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- @SlimVirgin: In case you're confused, this isn't the RFC, just getting ideas for what an RFC about EPC needs to look like. --Izno (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Hi Izno, thanks. I realized after I'd posted it that I'd jumped the gun. I like the draft RfC, though it might have too many options. It would be better, in my view, to offer two options: current option B and a combination of C and D. SarahSV (talk) 01:30, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
- @SlimVirgin: In case you're confused, this isn't the RFC, just getting ideas for what an RFC about EPC needs to look like. --Izno (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Draft of an RFC introduction
I started this per the discussion at AN simultaneously with Katie's post here. --Izno (talk) 15:50, 18 May 2016 (UTC) |
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Extended confirmed protection is a new level of protection which prevents certain editors from editing protected pages of that type. Those editors must have made at least 500 edits and have been editing for at least 30 days. The edit protection was instituted due to an RFC earlier this year, mostly with the intent of providing for the then-existing arbitration enforcement scope. The Arbitration Committee recently clarified by motion the extent to which the protection level can be used as a form of arbitration enforcement. They declined to answer the question of how it should be used outside that scope. Current policy allows for the protection level to be added as the result of a community discussion. What a community discussion means in the context of the protection policy seems to be ambiguous: A recent request at WP:AN#Reducing List of social networking websites from indefinite full protection to indefinite 30/500 protection would seem to indicate that many editors at that noticeboard believe it to be of the "widely discussed" kind of community, whereas "community" discussion in the context of a ban is a discussion at a noticeboard such as WP:AN or WP:ANI. In addition, Per WP:AN#Extended confirmed protection, there appear to be administrators applying the protection without either the remit from ARBCOM or the community. Given that this is the case, what does the community think "the community" means in the context of this protection level? The previous RFC indicated that WP:RFPP is not an acceptable level. Is it a discussion at WP:AN/WP:ANI, a discussion at a new community page (such as WP:Requests for page protection/ECP), or should it be authorized broadly within a certain scope a priori by the community (a la the ARBCOM clarification)? If a prior, what is that scope? Straw poll Community discussion is at a noticeboard Community discussion is a broader discussion about use |
Locking Involved Sport Players During Big Final
As seen with Yannick Ferreira Carrasco (forgot how to add link as I'm watching final now), it's become quite noticeable in and out of Wikipedia that during big sports finals, especially football,with the Euro's coming up aswell you get people changing names short facts and intros. I think that maybe we should consider blocking sports personals involved. Though I'm not sure if it will be possible to implement or really stop the problem. I'm sure we'll see changes to the wikipage of the player who scores the winner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DJBay123 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
- Pages are only protected when persistent vandalism has occured, not per-emptively. See WP:NO-PREEMPT. Protection is done on a case-by-case basis and not blanket topics. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
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- Also, during major sporting events is exactly when we don't want to lock the biographies of the players involved, since by definition that's the period when there's most likely to be new information published about them. ‑ Iridescent 17:33, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
- I second the two previous replies (while adding the unsigned template). Jason Quinn (talk) 16:24, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
- I think that inserting a {{Current}} template should be enough warning for most people. The page can always be cleaned up later after the news has died down. Praemonitus (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Prevention of Link Rots
Link rot is starting to become prevalent in many articles with references to old blog posts that no longer exist. My idea is to start using Internet Web Archives as a way to keep the cited resources available for others to access and refer to.
For example: See this article's 1st reference link. If you click on the first reference link, it will link you to "Page not found" error page. This is an issue if Wikipedia continues to cite resources without the ability to obtain a snapshot of what the resources look like.
Tom mai78101 00:25, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
- @Tom mai78101: addressing this problem came up #1 in the wishlist survey a few months ago, and it’s being tackled; see the Meta page for progress reports. There is also a related thread on m:Wikimedia Forum at the moment.—Odysseus1479 05:09, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
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- @Odysseus1479: Thanks for letting me know about this. Tom Mai (talk) 16:43, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
- You may be interested in reading the advice at WP:DEADREF, if you haven't found that yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:03, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
- @Odysseus1479: Thanks for letting me know about this. Tom Mai (talk) 16:43, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Integrating New Research Findings.
New reliable research findings are published regularly. See, for example the PLoS – Public Library of Science at: http://www.plos.org/ and many otters mentioned at: https://www.lib.utexas.edu/engin/guides/alumni.html
When Wikipedia becomes a complete repository of the world’s knowledge, then each of these newly published research findings will: 1) confirm an existing knowledge claim, 2) introduce a new knowledge claim, or 3) cast doubt on an existing knowledge claim.
I recommend we begin thinking about this influx of new knowledge systematically. For example, if Wikipedia provided a place where each newly published journal was analyzed, then each new article could be (tentatively linked) to the corresponding existing Wikipedia page. For example there is a recently published research paper titled: “The Great Migration and African-American Genomic Diversity” See: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006059 If this article presents new and reliable findings, then these findings have some bearing on the existing Wikipedia article on these subjects such as Great Migration (African American)
Under this proposal, the existing Great Migration article might have a (dedicated) Talk page section that links to the newly published research article. This link would have been created (semi-automatically) by the person who browsed the new research article. Over time, editors of the existing article can evaluate the newly published research to determine if it warrants a citation within the existing article, or requires the text of the existing article to be altered to reflect these new findings. In any case, interested readers can browse these newly published research articles to stay up-to-date on the topic. --Lbeaumont (talk) 13:18, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
- We need a lot lot more volunteers to look at all those new papers. The idea is good in principal, and for example I use a Google scholar alert on several topics (eg langbeinites) and can then update articles I have written. Before we can just apply deltas from new publications, we first have to have 100% coverage of the knowledge in old publications. Perhaps a librarian can assess this for the whole of Wikipedia.[1] I suspect Wikipedia is still less than 1%. For some narrow topic we may be able to have 100% coverage though. We also have the deletionists and minimalists that think a lot of what is published is not worth reporting in Wikipedia, or is too deep or technical for existing articles. However I believe that we need to have Wikipedia broader and deeper in knowledge. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:36, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
- ^ Henty, Margaret. "Australian Libraries Gateway (ALG): Help". www.nla.gov.au.
- If memory serves, someone had a bot that did something similar to your idea. It tagged Cochrane review articles that had been updated. User:Doc James will probably know the details. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:26, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
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- Yes in medicine we have Cochrane reviews which basically summarize the literature on a specific question.
- We have a bot that lists which Cochrane reviews have newer reviews we should update to here [2]
- But the editing community is small and we just run it on when there is no more items on the list. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
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Helper
I want to give the idea of new user group known as Helper, and their work is to help all other editors (mostly newusers). But wait, Why we need helpers?? Because new users dont know much about wikipedia, they do vandalism,etc. Example: Me (Mujtaba!). Just Think about it-- 🍁 Mujtaba 🌴 14:37, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Other users also help newbies, but for helpers "Only helping Clearly"-- 🍁 Mujtaba 🌴 14:39, 2 June 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mujtaba! (talk • contribs)
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- We only need user groups if the users require certain privileges that other editors do not have. What privileges would Helpers have? Anyone can provide advice. What else would Helpers do? Robert McClenon (talk) 12:40, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Towards another April Fools' RfC
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20160621013511im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Purple_arrow_right.svg/20px-Purple_arrow_right.svg.png)
Better Documentation of Disasters
Wikipedia articles on disaster events are the number one search query when searching for any disaster. Many of the contributors to these pages are experts in the disaster research community. As a senior research scientist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Center for Disaster Risk Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM), I have reveiewed pages documenting disasters since 2010. The quality of documentation and type of information documented is variable from event to event. I have also found that for events after 2010, 70% of the edits are made within the first two weeks of an event. Some pages such as Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami are getting upwards of 100,000 views - 10 years later. Wikipedia has served as a popular source of information on disasters for the lay person and in many cases, professional and practitioners in the disaster field. The amount of traffic wikipedia gets on disaster information probably makes it one of the most - if not the most - consulted resource for documentation of disasters worldwide.
Globally there are many efforts and international bodies to study properly document disasters. One of this is our own initiative at CEDIM established in 2011 called the Near Real-time Forensic Disaster Analysis research program. We investigate disasters as they are happening and systematically document these events through our reports which are releasted within days of the events and followed up periodically.
The idea
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- Connect the community of experts who are already engaged through a pluarality of initiatives in studying and documenting disasters to contribute information on disaster events as they are unfolding on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is already the first search result on disaster events; it can also become a reliable source of real-time information to support various actors with their time-critical information needs!
How to make it happen
- If the idea has any merit, it will need endorsement by the Wikipedia community of editors and suggestions for how to best implement it.
- Endorsement by the community of editors can be the first step to link Wikipedia to the different international bodies working in this area and getting their support behind it.
- A research project showing the value and reach of wikipedia for information on disasters similar to many studies conducted by the medical community would pave some of the way.
- Organized and focused outreach activities at venues and conferences to engage and mobilize the expert community.
We can hit the road running in the next large disaster event and the idea will show is own value. What do you think? ―Bkhazai ☎ 7:15, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
- I don't understand exactly what your idea is. What do you mean by "Connect [...] experts [...] to contribute information"? Are you suggesting that we let experts write about disasters without citing external sources? That would involve a major change to WP:V, one of the five pillars of Wikipedia and could be open to abuse. Are you suggesting that experts provide reliable sources externally for Wikipedia to use immediately about disasters? That wouldn't involve any change in policy; that's just improving news reporting, and it isn't related to Wikipedia. If you're proposing something else, you'll need to clarify. KSFTC 05:24, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
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- I'd also like to see a little more clarity about the idea. While Wikipedia has been doing an impressive job of getting information out quickly, if there are experts who can improve the process, I'm happy to listen. I'd like to see experts more involved but there is nothing preventing experts from becoming involved. When you suggest it will need endorsement by the Wikipedia community of editors, I need to know more. No formal endorsement is needed if knowledgeable people are interested in helping write articles. Endorsement might be needed, if for example, as KSFT suggested, that the proposal would be to suspend some policies. That would be quite a big deal.
- I think there are some things that could be done. For example, if there were some experts who did not regularly edit Wikipedia who plan to jump in and edit at the time of a disaster, they might find themselves accidentally in violation of rules or ignorant of norms policies and guidelines. It might be helpful to do a workshop for such experts to get them acquainted with the editing environment. Obviously, if a disaster is unfolding, that's not the time to have an in-depth discussion about what 3RR means. Some of these experts may choose to edit in general which would be a good thing some others might choose to edit only during a disaster, but like good disaster preparedness, the training should be done prior to the disaster.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:31, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
- To carry it further, we could even do a mock disaster drill. I'm vaguely aware that such drills exist for professionals trained to deal with disasters, but we could extend it to the reporting aspect. We have a test wiki, so we could do a real-time unfolding of a fake disaster — even on the test wiki we might choose to add some to emphasize that it is a test. That experiment might help identify ways that editors could improve the process.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:34, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
- Firefighters generally spend more time preparing for fires than extinguishing them and I assume the fewer people who handle bigger disasters are similar. Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management seems aimed in the correct direction. So, maybe some of the professionals who work in the public information part of disaster work, ought to revive that apparently inactive Wikiproject. If a number of such experts were to gather in one city, they would be an excellent prospect for a WP:Editathon.
- User:Anthonyhcole has been working on a project to get information from medical experts. He may have some advice for this goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
Trial criteria for ITN?
I was thinking about taking this to WT:ITN, but maybe I'll discuss it here instead. What makes any story "newsworthy" and deserve a blurb? Due to the "success" of RD trial, which the trial runners call it, perhaps we'll try something on ITN as well. I fear it might bring disaster on ITN, so how do we (not just I) construct a looser trial ITN to bring in more stories? --George Ho (talk) 03:44, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Suggestion - unify "glossaries", "categories","List of.." by automatically assembling 'microarticles', streamline glossary&list creation/maintainance
- goal
streamline the generation of glossary & 'list of..' pages using "Micro-articles"; simpler for users and reducing manual redirects/anchors etc.
- ideal situation
- A 'category page' automatically assembles the first 1-2 sentences from each article, and displays it alongside the title, in glossary format.
- Allow "micro-articles" - articles which are just 1-2lines of definition of a term, hyperlinked of course.
- Clicking a link to such "micro-articles" automatically loads a corresponding category/glossary page & locates it's internal anchor.
- Obsoletes all "glossary of.." and "list of.." pages.
- EDIT: consider how this would play with the new 'hover cards feature - imagine if you consistently get a nice definition/summary under any term you hover over..
- transition
Some tool splits existing glossary/'list-of' pages into individual "micro-articles". automatically guess categories for new 'small pages' from wording, 'in foobar, baz is ....'
- benefits
- Less to teach contributors (e.g. template term/defn list markup, bullet point markup); casual editors just need to know [ [ link ] ] format to contribute.
- Adding many 'micro-articles' bridges the gap between wiki and a knowledge graph AI resource.
- Such pages would be subject to additional filtering e.g
- category intersections/unions, ('computer hardware=comp arch+personalcomputers/ 'personal computers'/ 'computer software' / 'computer architecture...' etc etc)
- an advanced 'what links here' result - 'everything related to this..'
- glossary for an individual article?
- Encourage heavy linking with more machine-processable definitions of terms.
- Easier for inter-language translation.
- Easier to manage. (where should a minor definition go?)
- motivation
currently I find myself wanting to create all sorts of redirects to terms & re-work articles to create additional anchors to increase the 'link fidelity' (knowing that links are a potential form of labelled data for AI), but these may be more complex to manage. e.g. what if you create a term in a summary and eventually it gets an article, but there's all sorts of conflicting redirects to either the glossary entry or the full article
- more details
compiling micro-articles, perhaps deal with parsing some standard formats like "in <foo> , <title> is <content>.." which compress to <title> : <content> when rendered in the 'glossary/category' page for <foo> - or do the reverse. Perhaps auto-assign category from 'in <foo> ..'
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Fmadd (talk • contribs)
EDIT: if worried about 'overlinking', the software could filter out some of the links based on importance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fmadd (talk • contribs) 07:14, 20 June 2016
- I changed your six subsections to bold text. I guess you don't want separate discussions below each heading. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:06, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
- This would be a major change in the organization of pages on Wikipedia that you are suggesting, and is not only technical in nature. If you have not already, you should read Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. After that, please address what that guideline specifically says about the advantages of having lists (plus glossaries) and categories as two different ways of organizing information. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
- (Sure it might be a big change. I realise anything like this would have to be implemented gradually as a rolling transition). So to address the advantages of a list- red links= (todo) => perhaps you could do the same job with a placeholder article, and you still have red-links in micro-article content. embellished with annotations => my suggestion is to encourage the first line to include salient information (which it mostly does). I suppose a transitionary measure would be a template in micro articles, but that recovers complexity that the suggestion aims to reduce. included in searches => i think this would benefit search more (and couldn't categories just be added to search anyway?) list formatting styles => software can choose an optimal format based on the content, which might even change depending on the view (e.g. category intersection & even user's browser,mobile vs desktop). more easily edited by newbies => overall this suggestion is trying to streamline what users have to learn. it is of course shifting work into the platform itself. images can be interspersed - I notice the beta-feature of 'page suggestions' uses images - I think a way to highlight a 'key image' associated with the article must already exist. introductory paragraphs for list => split these into a 'introduction to blahblah' page which is automatically assembled by the tool. Fmadd (talk) 20:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
- This would be a major change in the organization of pages on Wikipedia that you are suggesting, and is not only technical in nature. If you have not already, you should read Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. After that, please address what that guideline specifically says about the advantages of having lists (plus glossaries) and categories as two different ways of organizing information. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
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- I would hope that is less hazardous than the scope for mess already; another way to spin is to display 'foo is blah blah...<more>' to emphasise it's a preview of an article. But if people want their articles to be read, I think they'd pay attention to it. Also notice the new 'hover card' beta feature - I think it would play well with that. I would imagine the dynamic nature would be easier to deal with than manual maintenance issues with existing glossaries/lists. (just encountered a merge request today.. 2 pages with different glossary styles..) Fmadd (talk) 03:28, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
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Automatic notification if a thread is started about an editor on AN/I
AN/I seems to have a persistent problem with editors starting threads on other editors and not notifying them. Could some sort of automatic notification be set up to do so? Chickadee46 (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
- There is a big red notice at the top of the page. Editors generally need to learn to read the instructions at the tops of pages, and particularly the big red notices.
The username is not always included in the section heading. Should this automation check every word in the thread to see if it matches an existing username? What about usernames that are multiple words? What about words, or series of words, that happen to match an existing username but are not used as such by the poster?
Failure to notify shows that the poster has failed to read the instructions, or they don't care about them much. Right out of the gate, it provides a useful clue as to their competence to file an ANI complaint.
It might be possible to create a new template for use in naming the user(s) within the text of the thread.{{ANI-notify|username}}
could generate the same link as{{u|username}}
. I don't know, but it might be technically possible for such a template to generate the notification at User talk:username. That would save some effort, but it would not address the problem you describe, that of missed notifications. For the most part, it would only be used by editors who have the competence and the energy to do it the existing way. It might result in a few notifications by posters who know they should notify but are simply too lazy to expend the additional effort, but imo not enough of them to justify the developer effort and the feature creep. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:49, 11 June 2016 (UTC)- @Mandruss:Those are good points, but I was thinking more along the lines of a field (like the one which shows up for asking a question at the Teahouse), which would have a blank to fill in with the name of the user(s) which are being complained about. If someone attempted to post but didn't fill in that blank, the thread would not be posted and a notice could pop up saying something like this:
Please fill in the "username of editor(s) being discussed" field. This will automatically notify the editor(s) you are discussing.
Chickadee46 (talk) 02:21, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
- You can make a report to AN/I for issues that don't necessarily involve a specific editor, or where you don't yet know who it involves. While some of these are gamey attempts to avoid giving the accused a chance to defend themselves, others there really isn't another editor to notify at the start. As a secondary issue, we are pretty good at enforcing the rule with regard to the initial reporter & accused, but technically a notice is required every time a new editor not already participating comes up in discussion, which this also wont address. Monty845 22:06, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Documentary Reference Template
I was wondering if there are any guidelines on whether documentaries can be used as references. In case we can determine that a certain documentary is an acceptable source, then the next step would be creating a specific cite documentary template for them. Which would mention the exact second a certain fact is mentioned, the imdb number e.t.c.--Catlemur (talk) 20:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
- We do, see {{cite AV media}}. Same standards for WP:RS apply. I used a documentary at William Robinson Brown for several footnotes there and it's a FA. Montanabw(talk) 05:35, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Overlinking - solve technically instead of with guidelines for fallible humans
r.e. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking
How about using colour coding to deal with any 'overlinking' hazard; use the similarity between page topics (vector distance? something like word2vec on the graph structure of pages?) to pick out the most important links on a page, and de-emphasise anything deemed an 'overlink' (fainter shade of blue). Also deal with multiple links automatically. (only highlight one).
On another note, colour coding any links to the user's watchlist might be nice too (emphasise the pages away from a users deliberately chosen domain?). (default = de-emphasize probably, but you could make a preference to emphasise instead)
r.e. Red Links, why not just de-emphasize them by default (and keep a user preference to view them , for editors who want to fix them)
Links ,surely, make the wikipedia data resource more valuable - it's labelled text.. the more the better? They could help disambiguate for translation software? .. and accelerate reaching the future where we can make natural language queries and so on.. Fmadd (talk) 23:34, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
- Choosing the right color would be difficult, especially considering Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Color and the fact that many navboxes have links with different background colors. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 02:58, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
- How about only showing these extra link shades in the main article text. for the main part , the 'less important link' could be a blend of regular black text & the blue link shade. I can see 'yet another color' for watchlist could be more problematic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fmadd (talk • contribs) 05:09, 13 June 2016
I'd be slightly concerned that the color inconsistencies could be confusing for people not used to the site. It's easier from a user interface perspective to use a simple, consistent theme. But otherwise, not the worst idea in the world. Praemonitus (talk) 19:14, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Phone view
Most editors change pages on their laptop but most readers check Wikipedia on their phone. What we see is not what the reader gets. An article full of info boxes and images may look good on a laptop and terrible on a smaller screen. An editor can resize their edit window to check, but most would not. And if the server software adapts to the viewing device, that effect will not show. Better to have a button at the bottom of the edit window that prompts the editor to preview how the article would look on a typical phone:
The new button would encourage editors to check how the article looks to the normal reader. Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:50, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- Hi Aymatth2, There is a gadget in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets "Mobile sidebar preview: show page in mobile view while browsing the desktop site" which does this. - NQ (talk) 13:54, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- To clarify, I'm merely pointing out that the functionality already exists if it needs to be integrated to the edit window. The gadget is normally used for testing and development purposes and is well tucked away in preferences and not available to the average user at a glance. - NQ (talk) 14:08, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- I had no idea it was there. It demonstrates that something like this is possible – but the "Phone view" button would be much more likely to be used. I don't know if the server software adapts to the viewing device. If so, more than a change to the preview skin would be needed to really see the effect. But that may be pushing it further than needed. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:18, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- Yea, I do think that a phone display button would be more accessible for new users. a_creeper_won —Preceding undated comment added 17:18, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- Agree. I think that the ability, on the push of a single button, to see a single page in phone view mode while editing it, and then return to normal view on the next page load, would be very useful. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:09, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
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- For what it's worth, this is already available on Chrome by pressing Ctrl-Shift-I and then Ctrl-Shift-M. TimothyJosephWood 17:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
- I didn't know that! That is exactly what is needed, although it should be a button rather than six keys to get there, and it should default to 100%. I assume Chrome is telling WP "I am a mobile with a 360x640 screen", whatever, and WP is formatting accordingly. There must be a way of a pop-up window doing the same. Aymatth2 (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
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- Not sure where the default size comes from, but at the top over the simulated mobile screen, if you hit the drop-down that says "Responsive" by default, you can select different devices to emulate. By clicking "edit" at the bottom of the menu you can select from ~30 supported devices. TimothyJosephWood 18:52, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, this is already available on Chrome by pressing Ctrl-Shift-I and then Ctrl-Shift-M. TimothyJosephWood 17:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
I like the idea of a "mobile preview" button that appears by default. I'm all for seeing how an article looks on multiple platforms, but it's a PITA (pain in the a--) to be tweaking the features in preferences, time-consuming and at times complicated. Montanabw(talk) 03:26, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
- For some reason the gadget does not work properly for me. It shows the phone view sidebar, but does not show a tab to toggle it on or off. Once I press the big "X" to close the sidebar, I have no way to get it back. It is probably fighting with some other preference. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:02, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
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- @Aymatth2: Are you missing the small phone icon next to the More tab? (as shown in the picture attached) - NQ (talk) 13:11, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
- @NQ: Yes. See below for what I see in Chrome. The gadget is selected. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:36, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
- @Aymatth2: The documentation says the gadget is for Vector skin only. - NQ (talk) 13:40, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
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- @NQ: That sort of works, except the tab is not there in edit mode so I can't preview how the article will look. And it just shows the one screen size, not a tablet size. We need something simpler that the average non-technical editor is likely to use. I get the feeling that there is no basic technical issue and general agreement here that a "phone view" button would be useful. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:15, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
- i will add some background, regarding the "mobile view gadget": (1) this gadget is only available in "view" mode, not in "edit" mode, so it can't be used for edit preview. (2) the gadget was written by User:Brion VIBBER (incidentally, the person that created the mediawiki software as we know it). the gadget he created works for vector skin only. some time ago there were some questions in WP:VPT, and i challenged myself to create the absolute minimal change to the gadget which will teach it to work with other skins. what i came up with was this modification: User:קיפודנחש/mobile-sidebarcopy.js. i never meant it as a "solution". it was more like "proof of concept". i left Brion messages about this on several talk pages, hoping he will modify his script to be "skin agnostic". ttbomk, this did not happen yet. i don't think it would be good to use my script - the right thing would be for Brion to teach the master script to be skin agnostic. this will still not enable mobile-view for edit preview - if this functionality is desired, some other solution should be looked for. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 14:43, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
- @קיפודנחש: I did not mean to be critical. Brion's gadget, your script, and the Google Chrome Ctrl-Shift-I and then Ctrl-Shift-M are all much more than I thought were available, and show that technically a "phone view" preview button should be possible, if anyone will volunteer to write it. I suppose the next step is to take this to a more sceptical audience as a village pump proposal, and if it does not get shot down put it into a wishlist somewhere. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:08, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
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Delay on coverage of major events
Early news rushed to slap the terrorism label on the Orlando attack, Wikipedia editors rushed to reflect that in the article, and now it looks like that may have been significantly overstated. From NPR, dated Thursday the 16th: "As investigators continue to delve into the life of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, the evidence is beginning to suggest the killings may have more in common with a traditional mass shooting than an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack."[3]
This is hardly an isolated case. And it's not just about disseminating misleading information. Article talk is often utter chaos as frenzied editors struggle to resolve conflicting early news reports, one minute detail after another. Quite often the conflict cannot be resolved that early, so we are forced to hedge our language in the article—"Some sources say..."—and then a few days later that has to be updated (after another round of discussion about whether it's appropriate to do so). What if we just backed off and waited awhile for things to settle down? My idea is a one-month delay on Wikipedia coverage of major events including airliner crashes and mass killings. Full list of categories to be determined.
I'm certain hundreds of thousands (millions?) of readers are used to coming to Wikipedia for concise summaries of breaking news, and it would be painful to change their habits. I do not discount or dismiss that pain at all. But "real-time encyclopedia" is an oxymoron, and in my opinion we need to cease trying to be that. News outlets often (if not usually) get important things wrong in the beginning, Wikipedia readers read it during the early days and then move on, and they have other things in their lives that prevent them from coming back after two weeks to see what's changed. In our fast-paced and busy world, a huge number of people have short attention spans for current events, and that is not going to get anything but worse. The Wikipedia editors addicted to the newsroom adrenaline rush of working with breaking news would have to move to Wikinews for that fix, and readers would have to gradually make the transition. If Wikinews does not have a single place to go for the concise summary of a breaking news story, it could and should. That certainly belongs there more than here.
I'm aware of the general disclaimer. How many readers do we suppose are aware of that and keep it in mind when they read these articles? I prefer to confine my thinking to the real world, not legalistic arguments. The GD is little more than lawsuit protection.
I would welcome any discussion of this issue here, or a pointer to meta if this is seen as wrong venue (I've never visited meta, and that's probably something I need to learn anyway). ―Mandruss ☎ 08:44, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- a traditional mass shooting - this makes it sound like it's normal to have a mass shooting in the USA every year or so, like Groundhog Day is a tradition. Anyway, we cannot ask people to hold off for a month, because there will always be people who want to get in first, won't read the guidelines, probably are newbies. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:54, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- We already have a speedy deletion mechanism that could handle those cases. ―Mandruss ☎ 10:57, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- I'm opposed to delaying coverage of major events, but maybe there should be something like the {{recent death}} tag which explains that early details of such events may be inaccurate. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 11:18, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- The Orlando article initially used the {{Current}} template. The template was removed almost four days ago, about 47 hours after the perpetrator was killed, because the article was well below the threshold specified in bullet 2 of the template's usage guidelines. News stories are not still "breaking" after 47 hours, and there were certainly not "a hundred or more" editors per day. Sure, it's only a guideline, but what WP:IAR rationale was there for disregarding it? If people are willing to make major changes to that bullet 2, that would be a slight improvement, to whatever extent that readers even read that template message and absorb what it means. It would do nothing to address the chaos in article talk however.
And there's still the principle that we are supposedly WP:NOTNEWS, and yet we are.―Mandruss ☎ 11:27, 18 June 2016 (UTC)- After this happened, I mentioned Howard Unruh on the talk page almost immediately. I didn't say what I was actually thinking about this, which was "Now let's see if this guy had repressed homosexual feelings", which according to current news coverage, he may well have done. A week on, and the CIA also says that it is unlikely that Omar Mateen had any contact with anyone in ISIL. The "Current" template allows for some of this, but it may need to be beefed up given the wildly inaccurate reporting of the Orlando shooting during the first 24 hours.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 12:02, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Further, the decisions on article titling would be far easier after the one-month delay. Many of these articles go through three or more moves in the first week, which is just crazy. All because very few editors can restrain themselves and just hold off for a week or two before any title change discussions. We must get this title right, NOW. Even most very experienced editors do that. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:08, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- The Orlando article initially used the {{Current}} template. The template was removed almost four days ago, about 47 hours after the perpetrator was killed, because the article was well below the threshold specified in bullet 2 of the template's usage guidelines. News stories are not still "breaking" after 47 hours, and there were certainly not "a hundred or more" editors per day. Sure, it's only a guideline, but what WP:IAR rationale was there for disregarding it? If people are willing to make major changes to that bullet 2, that would be a slight improvement, to whatever extent that readers even read that template message and absorb what it means. It would do nothing to address the chaos in article talk however.
- In my opinion, this would be step backwards. Feedback suggests that at least some readers benefit from our agility in presenting up-to-date facts in an organized fashion. I agree that news outlets sometimes incorrectly report facts, but so do history books.- MrX 12:16, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- up-to-date facts and up-to-date fiction. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:30, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- That's why it's important to use the best sources and be conservative about the type of information we include in a breaking news article. I think we do an excellent job removing fiction once we actually know that it's fiction.- MrX 12:41, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Regardless, those same readers could just as easily benefit from Wikinews's agility in presenting up-to-date facts in an organized fashion, after they make the transition. I don't think saving them from that transition is a benefit that outweighs all the points I've made, many of which you haven't addressed. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:54, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, that would be great except that the Wikinews article is viewed by a fraction of a percent the number of readers as the Wikipedia article.- MrX 13:06, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Maybe that would change if there were no Wikipedia article (yet)? I'm thinkin' the Wikipedia percent would fall to about zero. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- It would be an interesting experiment to try.- MrX 13:16, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- I, for one, have never heard of Wikinews until now. How would members of the general public hear about it? Strawberry4Ever (talk) 16:44, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Well I don't know. How did they hear about Wikipedia? It may be largely unknown now, but that would change if we moved our coverage of major developing events there. The change would be reported by all mainstream news, no doubt. Readers who somehow miss that will come here looking for the article on the latest event, not find it, and either go to someplace like WP:HD and ask, or walk away scratching their head and discuss the problem with their friends and family, one of whom might know the answer. It does take a little while for changes to make it into the culture. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:51, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Maybe that would change if there were no Wikipedia article (yet)? I'm thinkin' the Wikipedia percent would fall to about zero. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:10, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, that would be great except that the Wikinews article is viewed by a fraction of a percent the number of readers as the Wikipedia article.- MrX 13:06, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Regardless, those same readers could just as easily benefit from Wikinews's agility in presenting up-to-date facts in an organized fashion, after they make the transition. I don't think saving them from that transition is a benefit that outweighs all the points I've made, many of which you haven't addressed. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:54, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- That's why it's important to use the best sources and be conservative about the type of information we include in a breaking news article. I think we do an excellent job removing fiction once we actually know that it's fiction.- MrX 12:41, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- up-to-date facts and up-to-date fiction. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:30, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
I'll go ahead and ask the question that I know is coming, if this doesn't just die from lack of interest.
Q: Well doesn't this just move all those problems to Wikinews? Same misleading early information, same chaos in article talk, etc.
A: Partly. But in that venue, readers are far more likely to take things with a large grain of salt. Hell, Wikinews could slap a big red disclaimer permanently at the top of every article page. As for the chaos, good point. I guess there's no avoiding that with developing stories, but it would at least be in a news venue rather than an encyclopedia. I doubt they agonize a lot over article titles there, worrying about COMMONNAME and disambiguation and such, so that part of the problem would go away. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:31, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- The creative ferment of readers racing to put together the facts about a breaking news story is one of the best aspects of Wikipedia. The value of this process is recognized by external sites like Google News that link here because these articles are among the best coverage of the topic. Whether something is a minute old or a century old, Wikipedia aspires to put together the best article based on available sources.
- "WP:NOTNEWS" is the most outrageously misnamed and misused policy on Wikipedia. Those who read it beyond the awful shortcut see that it says to treat breaking news like other events. We use the same policies on notability and the same guidelines for writing.
- I feel bad for any in the news industry who realize that, no matter how good they are at what they do, their careers are doomed because there simply is no way to make news pay, unless you are one of a few top eyeball owners, in which case anything will pay. The fact that something happened is not copyrightable, at least outside of certain litigious European countries; even if it were, people will ignore that. We have a broken economic system that relies on the nonsense idea that people can own your thoughts and words. But that is no excuse for the relentless effort to slow down, confuse, dumb down and destroy Wikipedia's attempts to get together the whole story. Wnt (talk) 16:58, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
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- "WP:NOTNEWS" is the most outrageously misnamed and misused policy on Wikipedia. Point taken. I hereby retract that sentence. Nevertheless, "real-time encyclopedia" is an oxymoron. And all the great things you say about developing stories at Wikipedia could be said about developing stories at Wikinews, the more appropriate venue for that. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:47, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think that a delay on creating new articles about stories in the news is ever likely to happen, but the coverage of the Orlando shooting has not been the finest hour of the mainstream media. Wikipedians are expected to go along with the things that "reliable" sources have said, regardless of whether they are reliable or not.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:36, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- @Ianmacm: Do you think it should happen? How much merit do you see in the argument? ―Mandruss ☎ 18:44, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- It is tempting, because many articles about mass shootings are an utter shambles for the first 24 hours. Orlando has set a new benchmark for this sort of thing. However, people do like to create new articles as soon as possible, and I can't see it ever happening.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:50, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
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- Hmmm. Well people would like to do a lot of things that we don't let them do. And none comes to mind at the moment, but there are probably things that people liked to do for a long time and are no longer allowed to do. So that seems pretty thin. If this doesn't happen, I think it will probably be simple resistance to change, protection of the status quo. And that old bugaboo, "no consensus to change", from lack of sufficient participation. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:00, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- It's like the quote by Oliver Cromwell, "Not what they want but what is good for them." This could be proposed formally, but we're already up and running at Death of Jo Cox despite objections. The British media has covered little else for the last 48 hours and some people would complain if there was no Wikipedia article.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:34, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
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- Got it. Mustn't do anything that some would complain about, even if it's good for two wiki projects. Never mind that complaining about things is everyday routine at Wikipedia. I'm ready to be the one walking away scratching my head, discussing the problem with my friends and family. Thanks for the conversation all, I'll now give this up per Wikipedia:How to lose unless I see some support. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:51, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
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- It's like the quote by Oliver Cromwell, "Not what they want but what is good for them." This could be proposed formally, but we're already up and running at Death of Jo Cox despite objections. The British media has covered little else for the last 48 hours and some people would complain if there was no Wikipedia article.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:34, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- Hmmm. Well people would like to do a lot of things that we don't let them do. And none comes to mind at the moment, but there are probably things that people liked to do for a long time and are no longer allowed to do. So that seems pretty thin. If this doesn't happen, I think it will probably be simple resistance to change, protection of the status quo. And that old bugaboo, "no consensus to change", from lack of sufficient participation. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:00, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
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- It is tempting, because many articles about mass shootings are an utter shambles for the first 24 hours. Orlando has set a new benchmark for this sort of thing. However, people do like to create new articles as soon as possible, and I can't see it ever happening.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:50, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- @Ianmacm: Do you think it should happen? How much merit do you see in the argument? ―Mandruss ☎ 18:44, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think that a delay on creating new articles about stories in the news is ever likely to happen, but the coverage of the Orlando shooting has not been the finest hour of the mainstream media. Wikipedians are expected to go along with the things that "reliable" sources have said, regardless of whether they are reliable or not.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:36, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
- "WP:NOTNEWS" is the most outrageously misnamed and misused policy on Wikipedia. Point taken. I hereby retract that sentence. Nevertheless, "real-time encyclopedia" is an oxymoron. And all the great things you say about developing stories at Wikipedia could be said about developing stories at Wikinews, the more appropriate venue for that. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:47, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Creating redirects and disambiguation pages to influence search engine indexing
I'm concerned about a practice I've noticed for many years when articles that would fail to meet notability guidelines are created and then immediately redirected to another (but notable) article and a specific subsection. These redirects are often picked up by Google and other search sites. And perhaps these are useful, however I am concerned when BLP's are involved. Per WP:BLP (emphasis added)
Biographies of living persons ("BLPs") must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives; the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment.
I've raised this at BLP/N, but I think this needs a bit of a wider audience, so please forgive me if this seems like canvassing. The immediate issue at hand is the List of Guantanamo Bay detainees, but this is just an example of one of many lists that may be of concern. The list is comprised of several hundred people. While several of the people on the "list" pass Wikipedia's notability guidelines, the majority do not. So we have a list comprised of no links, blue links and red links. Several of the links such as Mustafa Ahmed Hamlily have been redirected to other articles (in this instance Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay). One can presume that is because it was determined that these people did not meet GNG. Some of the BLP articles were created with just a redirect, bypassing a stub altogether. I apologize for not providing an example, but this "create/redirect" type of articles exists in many "list" type articles. Regardless, a BLP article exists only to redirect a user to another article.
If the subject is not notable, is this not a privacy concern? What if I'm an employer and I google someone who, while not notable returns a hit as a "detainee"? This could obviously be prejudicial. The "red links" also pose a concern for similar reasons. Just having one's name pop up in a Wikipedia article could raise a red flag. At what point does linking cross the line of verifying reliable sources to possibly causing the subject harm? That man from Nantucket (talk) 08:42, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
- Mr Nantucket, you have voiced this concern, in one fora after another.
- I've responded elsewhere. And you have said, multiple times, that you aren't interested in my opinion. One more time, this concern you repeated overlooks a key element of notability. There is a spectrum.
- At one end there are people who are unquestionably notable because a billion educated people know who they are -- like Napoleon Bonaparte, or Yuri Gagarin.
- At the other end there are almost seven billion people who are totally non-notable ... they haven't even been written about in their church newletter, let alone a newspaper, or any other reliable source.
- In between there are the less notable people we cover here in the wikipedia. They fall into two subgroups:
- Individual who measure up to the notability criteria of the GNG, or one of our special purpose notability guidelines, are notable enough for a standalone article. The last time I looked about half the wikipedia's articles were BLPs.
- What you keep overlooking is that the WP:GNG, and various special purpose notability guidelines, like WP:POLITICIAN, all say that individuals who aren't notable enough for a standalone article, can nevertheless be notable enough for some coverage in some other article.
Consider Robert G. Smith (educator). I came across him when I worked on the article on Libby Garvey. He was in charge of the Arlington County Board of Education, for a decade or so, during the time Garvey was a trustee. A exchange they had, during his job interview, was notable enough to be quoted, paraphrased, or referred to, in several RS.
That made him notable enough to merit a wikilink in the Garvey article.
It turned out that Robert G. Smith was a bluelink, but because my guy had a namesake, and I found a redirect. I converted that redirect to a disambiguation page, and added my guy, as per the DAB rules. I added an entry for Robert G. Smith (candidate, 1968) who had been linked in United States House of Representatives elections, 1968 to Robert G. Smith (aviator).
You excised the entry for the educator, with the edit summary "Red link". I've already pointed out to you, that this excision was not consistent with WP:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Red links. Inexplicably, you left the other redlink, to Robert G. Smith (candidate, 1968), although it too was a redlink
As I have tried to discuss with you, contributors are authorized to create wikilinks for individuals when they think they may merit coverage here.
- Mr Nantucket, you quoted from BLP above, adding emphasis, in your quote, to our obligations to "respect [the] privacy" of individuals, and bear in mind the "possibility of harm" from sensationalist reporting. However, from your calls upon the authority of BLP I honestly think you carry your idea of how much protecting individuals are entitled to far beyond what the rest of the wikipedia community agrees with.
- Consider your comment about Libby Garvey, again. You went to several fora, asking contributors to go weigh in on the AFD you initiated. In the this comment, at BLPN, you challenged whether I was editing in good faith, writing: "I'm afraid that my first impression, which I've kept to myself until now is that the raison d'etre for this article may be to attack a living person for a political position they took..."
- Garvey is not a private person, who was covered in RS due to some kind of accident. She is a politician, and has been a politician for twenty years or so. If she was a singer, we'd cover her songs. If she was a film-maker, we'd cover her movies. Because she is a politician, we should cover her political positions.
- I am going to repeat this, since you seem to have so much trouble recognizing it is an important point -- Because Libby Garvey is a politician, we should cover her political positions.
- You decided that compliance with BLP required us to protect Garvey from "harm" from accurately reporting on how she performed her job. Was George W. Bush embarrassed soon after he gave a major speech on Iraq in front of a massive banner that said "Mission Accomplished", when it became painfully obvious the US forces would be bogged down in Iraq for over a decade? Tough. We shouldn't protect George W. Bush from the consquence of his "Mission Accomplished" appearance. Similarly, we shouldn't protect Garvey.
- Unless youare in violation of WP:COI, and know Garvey personally, or worked on her campaign, without disclosing this fact to us, how would you know Garvey even wants' this protection? Some politicians double-down, when criticized. Look at Donald Trump.
- With regard to whether individuals like Algerian Mustafa Ahmed Hamlily should be wikilinked in articles like Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Removing those wikilinks, to "protect" them is not responsible. All the individuals held at Guantanamo are individuals who measure up to the lesser measure of notability to be covered in an article on another topic -- just like Robert G. Smith (educator).
- FWIW, a selection of the individuals who were held at Guantanamo, who are red-linked today, neverthess sail past the inclusion criteria for meriting a standalone biography article Geo Swan (talk) 22:02, 20 June 2016 (UTC)