If you expected a reply on another page and didn't get it, then please feel free to remind me. I've given up on my watchlist. You can also use the magic summoning tool if you remember to link my userpage in the same edit in which you sign the message.
Please add notes to the end of this page. If you notice the page size getting out of control (>100,000 bytes), then please tell me. I'll probably reply here unless you suggest another page for a reply. Thanks, WhatamIdoing
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 |
Your essay is good and I want to publish it
I read User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die and it was pretty good. Can I run it in the next Signpost issue? jp×g🗯️ 11:19, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- If you want, then I don't mind, @JPxG. The title is a bit shocking, so you might consider whether you want to change it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:08, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- I like it and would encourage you to make it a formal essay with a nutshell, shortcuts, and categorization. Maybe even develop the lead a bit more. You can keep it as a personal essay, and thus retain full control, or you can make it an essay in mainspace. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- The main problem with making it a general essay is that we lose the connection to the "I" whose stats are given. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- Then keep it in your userspace, but make it an official essay. That way more editors will discover it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:05, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- You forgot about our inevitable AGI progeny. One ought to be enough. — The Transhumanist 20:16, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- Then keep it in your userspace, but make it an official essay. That way more editors will discover it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:05, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- The main problem with making it a general essay is that we lose the connection to the "I" whose stats are given. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
- Well, heaven forfend we have a shocking title, people might actually read it ;^) jp×g🗯️ 22:06, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
- We can add that to the list of risks you are undertaking. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
- I like it and would encourage you to make it a formal essay with a nutshell, shortcuts, and categorization. Maybe even develop the lead a bit more. You can keep it as a personal essay, and thus retain full control, or you can make it an essay in mainspace. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:43, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
You might like this thread...
— The Transhumanist 02:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Oops. The link works now. — The Transhumanist 19:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, which of those tools do you use? — The Transhumanist 19:14, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
- None. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
"Red is a color"
I didn't get to comment on that before the discussion was closed, but had some relevant (I think) thoughts:
It seems to me that "red is a colo[u]r" is absolutely verifiable, with only seconds of minimal effort. But maybe more importantly, "verifiable" doesn't mean "already verified", and people get these concepts confused very often, claiming that something simple isn't "verifiable" because a citation isn't present for it (inline or otherwise), or just reverting it without comment when a cite isn't already present for it, when it is actually easily and completely verifiable (either by 15 seconds on Google – what the end reader is apt to do – or by looking at the main WP article on whatever it is which already has the citation[s], which someone can copy-paste in a quick moment from one article to the other).
Just yesterday I saw someone revert a claim about Blade Runner on the grounds that it wasn't referenced, when the claim is the very first sentence, with citation, in the main article about the term in the claim. Just downright lazy and destructive. Someone made our article factually wrong because they wouldn't spend about the same amount of time it takes to do a revert and write a snarky summary instead to go to the other article and copy-paste an obvious citation from it.
Way too much of this is going on. Editors can get mired in gate-keeping an article in an "every claim must have an inline citation" manner, when policy doesn't actually require that, and it can be done to the detriment of the encyclopedia content. If someone is spending more effort on fighting with others about this than just fixing the claim with an easy citation, they are making a mistake. I understand the urge, since I'm a curmudgeon and I especially distrust IP editors, but just in the last couple of days questionable IP edits without sources have come across my watchlist, and I resisted the urge to reflexively revert, instead looked for a source for their claims, and found they were correct, so inserted citations for them. That urge when it comes up is often worth resisting.
But I'm not sure how to encourage more judgment in this regard, if that's even practical to do. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Very good points. It is often easy to find references for unsourced content that is legitimate, but sometimes not.
- Per your point that "verifiable" doesn't mean "already verified", my inclusionist bent tells me we should be consistent, policy-wise, and expect/require that experienced editors provide/verify content that is likely to be challenged. We should not be lazy and expect others to do that for us. We, as experienced editors, should prove we aren't getting ideas for content from our own minds, from our own opinions, IOW that we are not performing OR. As the policy says, we do that by "providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[a] the contribution."[b]
- The policy says: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing..." The word that should be fixed is to change "verifiable" to "verified" (by editors). It would then read:
- "All content must be verified by the provision of an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."
- Now, to make a cohesive statement, we rearrange the existing wording and combine it with the idea in the improved wording above, but without the need to write "verified" (because we are doing it):
- For any material that is likely to be challenged, the burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. They must do this by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."
- That wording would end the current détente that creates the existing ambiguity. There should be no doubt.
- Newbies cannot be expected to understand this, so we should do it for them and add the sources, but if they aren't easy to find, we can either ask them where they got that idea or we can delete their addition.
- Otherwise, editors who understand policy should not be in doubt. They should provide their sources, especially for controversial content. It would save a lot of wasted time on discussions. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:24, 5 November 2023 (UTC) Ping SMcCandlish
- @SMcCandlish, the phenomenon of reverting uncited but accurate and verifiable text is real, and it is seen as a desirable behavior. In fact, the WMF's Editing team has been working on mw:Edit check, to prompt editors to add a source, and they've received at least two complaints this year from enwiki enforcers saying that this is a bad idea, because if newbies add sources, then it'll be harder to justify reverting them.
- The wording of the policy is such that editors can, if they squint, they can pretend that "Red is a color" is not verifiable unless there is a little blue clicky number pointing to (e.g.) a dictionary definition. We have been afraid to change that, because we are afraid that it will be abused.
- @Valjean, the policy already requires a citation for content whose verifiability is likely to be challenged. We don't need to change the policy to say that, because it already says that. It even uses the word must when doing so. I wish you could rest easy in the belief that when the policy says that an inline citation must be included for LIKELY material, that it actually means that this material at least "should" have a citation. I don't know if you noticed, but your proposal says that every single claim must have an inline citation, even if the claim is as simple as "Red is a color".
- The changes I think we could make are:
- Declare that Wikipedia is not a collaborative project, so if you don't add a citation for "your" content yourself, nobody else can/will, so uncited but LIKELY information is an incurable defect (by anyone else) and must be removed as a policy violation (unless and until you personally add the citation because the burden is always on YOU NOT ME!!!1!!); or
- Explicitly declare the mirror of the requirement, namely that, whereas information that is a quotation, is already challenged, is LIKELY, or is contentious matter about a BLP is required to have an inline citation, information that is not a quotation, not already challenged, not LIKELY, and also not contentious matter about a BLP (e.g.,"Red is a color") is not required to have an inline citation.
- (Verified is usually used to indicate that someone else read the cited source and agrees that the source says whatever the article says about the subject. A clearer statement would be "All content must be cited", assuming that you actually want all content to be cited, including things that editors will believe is unreasonable to challenge the verifiability of.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:15, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Without reading your last comment, I had reworded by comment, but ran into a couple edit conflicts, so read it again. It doesn't say what you imply. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- And an "All content must be cited to/verified by a source in the article" (inline or not) policy would be a truly massive change, and would result in a really large percentage of our content having to be deleted. That would produce probably a more end-user-reliable work, but at a very high utility cost, for missing articles and missing complete information in most articles that survived the purge. E.g., when I come here as a reader and put in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon [random example, and I'm assuming it has some uncited details in it, without actually checking], I expect (and happily find) all the basic info I'm looking for in in there. But if that article were denuded of cast, release-date, and other details in random places throughout it, on the dubious basis that because some of it didn't have a citation that those claims were probably lies, then my experience of WP as useful would be seriously harmed. The average reader isn't verifying our citations, but trusting that editors are doing so, adding more of them, and reverting the dubious in the interim, with most claims probably being more-or-less correct, especially when they are not saying something dubious. And this general operating model has served us very well, even if once in a while some nonsense, distortion, or hoax gets through. When this happens, it is almost always because of anonymous IP editors, and I would love to see them banned, but it will not happen in my lifetime probably. The other most common case is inveterate PoV pushers, and we need to take a much more proactive position in banning them instead of really, really reluctantly narrowly topic-banning them only to have them pull the same crap on a different topic. But that, too, will not change much in the foreseeable future because we apply AGF too broadly and wring our hands too much at the notion of losing an "editor", even when it's some clown who costs the project more than they contribute. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Valjean, I was talking about the proposal 'The word that should be fixed is to change "verifiable" to "verified"', such that the current rule (All content must be verifiable) becomes a requirement for 100%, zero-exceptions citation (All content must be verified).
- Your second proposal ("For any material that is likely to be challenged, the burden to demonstrate verifiability...") requires fewer sources than the existing policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Does it? I don't think so. It's basically rewording what we already do and what the policy already says. I have never proposed "a requirement for 100%, zero-exceptions citation". I am uncomfortable with the current wording, hence my tweak below. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:53, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- And an "All content must be cited to/verified by a source in the article" (inline or not) policy would be a truly massive change, and would result in a really large percentage of our content having to be deleted. That would produce probably a more end-user-reliable work, but at a very high utility cost, for missing articles and missing complete information in most articles that survived the purge. E.g., when I come here as a reader and put in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon [random example, and I'm assuming it has some uncited details in it, without actually checking], I expect (and happily find) all the basic info I'm looking for in in there. But if that article were denuded of cast, release-date, and other details in random places throughout it, on the dubious basis that because some of it didn't have a citation that those claims were probably lies, then my experience of WP as useful would be seriously harmed. The average reader isn't verifying our citations, but trusting that editors are doing so, adding more of them, and reverting the dubious in the interim, with most claims probably being more-or-less correct, especially when they are not saying something dubious. And this general operating model has served us very well, even if once in a while some nonsense, distortion, or hoax gets through. When this happens, it is almost always because of anonymous IP editors, and I would love to see them banned, but it will not happen in my lifetime probably. The other most common case is inveterate PoV pushers, and we need to take a much more proactive position in banning them instead of really, really reluctantly narrowly topic-banning them only to have them pull the same crap on a different topic. But that, too, will not change much in the foreseeable future because we apply AGF too broadly and wring our hands too much at the notion of losing an "editor", even when it's some clown who costs the project more than they contribute. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Without reading your last comment, I had reworded by comment, but ran into a couple edit conflicts, so read it again. It doesn't say what you imply. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
Edit conflict again...
With regard to "challenged", the current wording doesn't clue the reader into the fact it will be mentioned later:
- "All content must be verifiable. "The burden to demonstrate...."
We should change that to:
- "With few exceptions, all content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. They must do this by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports..."
Then the fact that they are enumerated later makes sense. The reader is already primed to expect an explanation of those "few exceptions". -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:46, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Valjean, about these edit conflicts, do you see the Reply buttons on this page? If not, then I suggest going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turning it on, because one of its many features is a magical ability to resolve nearly all edit conflicts. Note the "Visual" and "Source" tabs on its upper left corner, in case it doesn't default to the one that you prefer.
- As for this proposal, the current rule is:
- [stated] All content, without exception, must match whatever that was said in some reliable source(s) in the real world.
- [stated] Most content (i.e., all content of the four enumerated types) must have a reliable source listed in the article.
- [unstated] Some content (i.e., content that is not any of the four enumerated types; e.g., "Red is a color") is permitted but not required to have a reliable source listed in the article.
- Is this the rule that you want to have? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- I don't know of a "without exception" rule. Is that hyperbole?
- I generally agree with the next two statements, unless there is some hidden trick there. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:54, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- That is not hyperbole. If you put content into an article that does not match whatever was said in a reliable source (a source, any source, anywhere in the world, whether that source is cited in the article or not), then you have committed the sin of original research.
- The only reason you can write "Red is a color" in Wikipedia is because there exist sources (e.g., dictionaries) in the real world that say red is a color. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- I agree. I just hadn't seen it expressed that way before.
- It's a three-phased system, but with some exceptions:
- The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
- Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).
- That is done "by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."
- Note there is no hint of any exceptions there, and I think that's unfortunate. We know there are four named types of information that require an inline citation, but there are more than many more types of information. That's why I favor including mention of the exceptions. This wording covers that problem:
- Current: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."
- Revised: "All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and, with some exceptions, that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." (bold change)
- I think we're getting closer to an improvement. Do you see any problem with that wording? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:42, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- The editors who like to quote that sentence from BURDEN will be unhappy about it mentioning anything about exceptions.
- As a practical matter, the grammar's off. It says that the burden is only sometimes satisfied by adding an inline citation. It doesn't move us towards a world in which we admit that 100% of content must be verifiable but only n% of content must be cited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Before I answer, is there a typo above? Do you mean "but only" when you write "by only"?
- BTW, my grammar is far from perfect. Although I'm a native speaker of American English, I have lived in six countries and speak two languages every day. That means I'm a bit "language confused" at times. I may, without realizing it, translate in my mind and thus carry over the syntax, grammar, or punctuation from one language into what I write in English, and what I write will thus contain errors. I really appreciate it when people catch such errors and bother to let me know. I also appreciate it when they just fix it, but I appreciate the opportunity to learn so I stop making that error. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:01, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Valjean, yes, that's what I meant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Okay, I fixed it. Now I'll respond. What would be the better way to get my point across? Where is the error in grammar? (Thanks so much for your patience with me!) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- The grammar's the easier one. You've written:
- (The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material,)
- and,
- (with some exceptions, that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution).
- The "exceptions" was in the second independent clause but has nothing to do with the satisfying the burden; the exceptions are about not having a burden in the first place. You probably wanted to write something like:
- The burden to demonstrate verifiability – whenever that needs to be done – lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and that burden is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Okay, I fixed it. Now I'll respond. What would be the better way to get my point across? Where is the error in grammar? (Thanks so much for your patience with me!) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Valjean, yes, that's what I meant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
@Valjean, I'd like to take you back to the bit that runs:
- The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
- Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).
I think you skipped a step between these two (unless "then" is doing heavy duty). It looks a bit more like this:
Step 1 | All material in articles must be verifiable in the real world, with absolutely no exceptions. This means that, if necessary, it is possible for an editor to find a reliable source to cite in the article. | |
Step 2 | Material that is one of the four enumerated types (e.g., a quotation) must be cited in the article. | Material that is not one of the four enumerated types (e.g., "Red is a color") is permitted but not required to be cited in the article. |
I would therefore make your list like this:
- The info must be mentioned in a RS somewhere (ergo, it's "verifiable").
- The info has been determined to be one of the four enumerated types.
- Then the editor has the burden to demonstrate verifiability (ergo, to "verify" it).
Does that make sense? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Indeed! Very well parsed. BTW, I added what I think is a missing word. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:47, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Here's the tricky bit: Do you want to acknowledge the existence of the material that is not required to be cited? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Why would that be "tricky" for me? Sky is blue stuff doesn't need to be cited unless it is later challenged. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- If we publicly acknowledge that "some" material does not have to be cited, then we will see disputes over whether _____ is part of the "some" material. At the moment, it is possible to quote isolated lines from the policy to support a claim that a given bit of material must be cited, and it is not possible to quote a short, pithy line back that says that some material does not require citations.
- It's possible that if we write, e.g., "All material must be verifiable; however, some of it does not require an inline citation", that we will weaken the righteous certainty of the editors who demand that others add sources to articles, and prompt the content creators to respond to a demand with "See? WP:V says that 'some of it does not require an inline citation', and this is part of that 'some'."
- If that's an outcome you can live with, then I can suggest three possible changes offhand:
- [for BURDEN] All material must be verifiable, and most of it must also be cited.
- [First sentence] In the English Wikipedia, verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source (e.g., by reading the cited source or by finding a new source if none is already cited).
- Add the definitions from the WP:Glossary for uncited and verifiable as a sidebox, and try for the bigger change in two years (=about how long it takes for a change in the written advice to get incorporated).
- WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- Why would that be "tricky" for me? Sky is blue stuff doesn't need to be cited unless it is later challenged. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:37, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Here's the tricky bit: Do you want to acknowledge the existence of the material that is not required to be cited? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Nutshells
Current nutshell:
Proposed nutshell:
Changes are highlighted. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:05, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Quibble: 'That is done "by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution."' is only true of certain classes of claims (even if it covers most of them). We actually do permit "general references" (even if they are discouraged) and they are technically good enough for claims that don't fall into the enumerated categories of claims that require an inline citation. As for the nutshell rewrite, "Such material refers to" doesn't really parse, and more importantly the change loses a crucial point (perhaps the most crucial one). Maybe something like this instead:
Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. Additionally, nearly all material must be attributed to such sources with inline citations; this includes quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 12:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)- I believe that Valjean is aware of this; he just seems to believe that "nearly all material" is Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Maybe that's true. I believe that everything but "sky is blue" stuff is likely to be challenged, and because of basic ignorance or cultural differences, sometimes even that is challenged and we then provide a reference, or even easier, a wikilink. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- I believe that Valjean is aware of this; he just seems to believe that "nearly all material" is Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
RFC close at COVID-19 lab leak theory
It's a bit late but I just saw you it and wanted to say thanks for such a thorough and well thought out close. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:29, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the nice note. Since it's a hot-button subject, I thought that a thorough explanation would be a good idea. I didn't want anyone who felt like they were on the "losing" side to feel like it was just a knee-jerk dismissal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm glad it was well done. Otherwise, dramah would have ensued. On another note WAID, I could've sworn you were a sysop at some point. I am misremembering? Bon courage (talk) 13:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- You are misremembering. I have never endured RFA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- I can understand that, but you'd be fine. Bon courage (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Or not. I was at the WMF for ten years, which is a permanent taint. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- There is that, but you could spin it to your advantage in a poacher-turned-gamekeeper kind of way. Everybody loves you. Bon courage (talk) 19:27, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Love is a strong word, but you'd have my vote. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:46, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for the compliments. I won't run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- I came here to also comment that your closure was excellent. I am not surprised I was not the only one to notice. Great work, that was an intense close to tackle. (And I voted on the "loosing" side!). {{u|Gtoffoletto}} talk 22:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you. Having someone who "lost" feel like I provided a decent explanation is the highest level of compliment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
- I came here to also comment that your closure was excellent. I am not surprised I was not the only one to notice. Great work, that was an intense close to tackle. (And I voted on the "loosing" side!). {{u|Gtoffoletto}} talk 22:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for the compliments. I won't run. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
- Or not. I was at the WMF for ten years, which is a permanent taint. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- I can understand that, but you'd be fine. Bon courage (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- You are misremembering. I have never endured RFA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, I'm glad it was well done. Otherwise, dramah would have ensued. On another note WAID, I could've sworn you were a sysop at some point. I am misremembering? Bon courage (talk) 13:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
Barnstar
You Got A Star! A barnstar, that is... | |
For your contributions to the 2023 Bowdoin–Yarmouth shootings article. ★ The Green Star Collector ★ (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2023 (UTC) |
- An editor at a different Wikipedia told me in September that barnstars had become rare there. This sounded sad to me, so seeing this barnstar today made me doubly happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
Wikitravel for WP Tombstone tourist
Following your suggestion, I tried some editing on WikiVoyage. (Its been a few years since I contributed on that venue.) But it has a different editing protocol, so I wasn't to successful. I managed to make some changes to Wikivoyage Cemeteries. But I can't find a WikiVoyage page titled "Tombstone tourist". But I can't remember how to get a link between Tombstone tourist and the Wikivoyage Cemeteries page. (This is one of the joys of being a WikiGnome – there is challenge and learning combined.) – S. Rich (talk) 01:41, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
- Do you prefer the 2010 wikitext editor? If so, then try this link: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Cemeteries?action=submit I'm not sure what your prefs are, but that should open the old wikitext editor, and it will probably make that setting "stick". Go to voy:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-editor if you want to change the visual-vs-wikitext settings there.
- If the cemeteries article is getting too big and you have more content that you'd like to add, then start a new page. Pull the templates/codes from top and bottom of the Cemeteries article or maybe from https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Funeral_travel?action=submit, but for the most part, it should be very simple. Once you've got the page created, the Wikidata step isn't difficult. Find the Wikidata item (e.g., by looking for the link to it on the Wikipedia page), scroll all the way to the bottom, and click the little edit button for the right sister project. It'll probably say "Wikivoyage (0 entries)" before you add yours. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
Edit counts
You wrote: "says on their talk page that "extremely low edit counts" is less than 500, a level of participation that applies to more than 99% of all registered editors. They did not tag editors in the top 1%."
I'm not going to revisit the argument that "registered editors" is a pointless metric vs editors who, you know, actually ever made even one edit. But I think that regardless of which baseline you take, it isn't appropriate for commenting on the participants at an RFC. The statistics on editors who long ago gave up or who joined and edited enthusiastically in the boom early years but faded away.
What you need is some metric that looks at all the edits being made today (or this week or other contemporary period) and examine how many edits each of those editors had when they made that edit. This should then be further refined by namespace, since I bet the "newbie" edit is typically first made directly to an article and less commonly to a talk page and rarely to a Wikipedia discussion like VP. That would give a fairer reflection on the question of "If a random person turns up here on a talk page to vote, what's the typical spread of edit-count I'd expect to see, assuming the vote wasn't canvassed offline?"
Alternatively, one could ask for some self reflection, and ask whether the earliest edits that editor made here, under a previous account deserved to be dismissed as suspicious on the basis that they were not very experienced. Or that it took them thirteen years to amass 500 edits. -- Colin°Talk 08:50, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
- That is the statistic for the editors that "actually ever made even one edit". See also Wikipedia:Request a query#Number of active high-volume editors for a number that I think will interest you more. If they aren't tired of me yet, we might be able to get an edit-count distribution for a given week (it'd have to be a full week, because editing patterns vary by week).
- I am fully convinced that at least most (and possibly all) of the tagged comments appeared because they learned about the discussion off wiki. However, I'm separately and additionally concerned about creating a standard that says only one out of 500,000 internet users worldwide are allowed to contribute to this discussion. It is very difficult for highly active Wikipedia editors to remember that we are a tiny minority, and that the mass of editors aren't like us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
- Oh, I thought last time we discussed this your "registered editors" was "accounts" rather than "people who have edited". Anyway, yes being canvassed is an issue. I'm not active on Twitter, just occasionally follow links people post, but it seems to be a site that brings people with conflicting views into awareness of each other, so they can re-post things they think are either hateful or stupid and attack or mock them (as well as posts they like). So I wonder what the effect of posting at e.g., some GCF's Twitter account that Wikipedia is having a poll about the definition of sex and whether that actually ends up on a whole lot of trans-activism Twitter accounts too. All it takes, surely, is for someone to re-post with "Look what those GCFs are up to now. Let's stop them." and the canvassing for the 'other side' is in effect too.
- I think it would be interesting to know the spread for article and talk pages of how many participating editors are newbies, relative beginners, modestly competent, highly competent, tending towards wiki senility. -- Colin°Talk 08:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
- According to our newly expanded table, 0.75% of accounts that have completed an edited and 0.25% of all accounts that have registered (most of which never completed an edit) have made 500 edits.
- So far, the off-wiki discussion seems to have brought it people who know something about non-human biology. I might wish that they had turned their attention towards publishers of biology textbooks instead of us (and I don't think it will change the outcome; it just makes it more lopsided). On the RFC overall, I feel like we've identified a problem with how we're explaining it. We need to be clearer about the difference between taking two existing, pre-divided groups and deciding which one's male (called "reproductive" in the RFC) vs trying to figure out which group an individual belongs to (called "multifactorial" in the RFC). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
Help me as usual, please
Hello @WhatamIdoing, I would like to continue being an admin on the Haitian Wikipedia. Can you support me getting contributors to vote on the "Kafe" page? Gilles2014 (talk) 20:07, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
- Absolutely! WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
Maximum featured article size
hi @WhatamIdoing, thank you for estimating the lead lengths of featured articles! In 2023 the largest article promoted to featured might be 12,000 readable prose words [1]. Please may you calculate the largest promoted each year 2020-23, at the time of promotion, if it doesn't take too long or tell me who can? This might provide an idea on what the length guideline should be or it might just circulate back to the current guideline! Wikipedia_talk:Article_size#Summarising_evidence,_arguments_on_limits Tom B (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
- As far as I know, the only way to do this is to open every article and count the words on the page. The Wikipedia:Prosesize gadget (towards the end of the first section of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets) will save you some time. Find the version on the day it was promoted (linked on the talk page), and then use Tools > Page size to get the count. For example, today's FA is Art Deco architecture of New York City, and Talk:Art Deco architecture of New York City says it was promoted on September 5, 2023, with a link to the correct version. Click that link, click on Page size, wait for a moment, and it spits out some statistics, including a line that says:
- Prose size (text only): 33 kB (5143 words) "readable prose size"
- You would have to do that for each one in turn. I don't know of any automated way to do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
- thank you, yes this was the exact method i was using! So you simply did this manually, [2] righty ho. I'll look for shortcuts! Do you know anyone who might know please? Tom B (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia:Request a query can't handle this, so if you want a tediously large sample, then I think you would be best inquiring at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). You might leave a friendly "Please see" pointer to the VPT section at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard. You wouldn't really use a bot to do this, but the programming skills probably overlap. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
- thank you, yes this was the exact method i was using! So you simply did this manually, [2] righty ho. I'll look for shortcuts! Do you know anyone who might know please? Tom B (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
- On the more general question, have you seen @ScottishFinnishRadish using the humorous "tomats" unit? It compares the length of a page/discussion to the length of The Old Man and the Sea, which is 26,531 words long. (SFR, we should create Template:Tomats to auto-calculate the length.) It came up in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 187#Wikipedia:Article Size and consensus, among other places.
- One of the general principles for article length is – presumably; I don't remember seeing this discussed explicitly – "Wikipedia articles should be encyclopedia articles, not books", so an "article" as long as a book would be inappropriate. "Must be significantly less than one tomats, else it has stopped being an article and started being a book" feels like a good rule to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Here's what Dr pda did a decade ago (many of the old beasts have been defeatured):
He had a script that calculated readable prose, but these were measured in KB back then ... after Dr pda retired, no one kept good data. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
¶ Pardon my barging in at the edges (periphery) of this discussion, but article length in general has been a very lively discussion/debate at both Talk:Manhattan and Talk:New York City/Archive 21, In the course of those debates. I've found that the easiest way to measure the kB count was to open History and see the most recent edit. [But you may already know a more efficient way of measuring an article's length.] I've used this method in a rather different context, when comparing New York City's length with that of comparable major world cities, such as London. @Tpbradbury, Nikkimaria, and SandyGeorgia: —— Shakescene (talk) 10:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
- Shakescene, That will get you KB (a frequent source of misunderstanding), but not readable prose in words, which is what we're after. To get the readable prose, you can follow the instructions to install Wikipedia:Prosesize. But since we're also after the readable prose from the promoted version of an FA, a script to look in articlehistory for the promoted version is also needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
- The problem with KB is it measures the size of the wikitext. The same article, if you change whether it uses citation templates becomes "longer" or "shorter" in KB, even though it doesn't change the text at all. At the moment, Manhattan is 12,173 words long, and New York City is 14,569 words long according to Prosesize. That gadget is not perfect (e.g., fails completely on lists) but it's convenient and if it has some limitations, at least the folks who use it regularly know what those limitations are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
ArbCom 2023 Elections voter message
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2023 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}}
to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:30, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
Nomination of Safetyism for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Safetyism, to which you have significantly contributed, is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or if it should be deleted.
The discussion will take place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Safetyism until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.
To customise your preferences for automated AfD notifications for articles to which you've significantly contributed (or to opt-out entirely), please visit the configuration page. Delivered by SDZeroBot (talk) 01:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Underlinked tags
Hi, can I ask what your rationale is for placing this tag on some articles recently? They seem very adequately linked to me. I removed one of the tags before I realized you'd added at least a couple. I keep an eye on the underlinked articles category because, as a newcomer task, anything in there gets almost immediately deluged by well-meaning newbies who don't realize they should remove the tags when they're done, which very quickly results in massive overlinking. -- asilvering (talk) 18:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- @Asilvering, I tagged them because I think they're underlinked. The goal isn't a certain percentage of blue. The main goal is to link to articles that people might want to read, and the secondary goal is to link to terms that typical readers might not know the meaning of (so they can hover over the word and get a hint from the preview). If you take a look at the links I just added to the first paragraph of that article, which contains a lot of technical terminology (I know what Peyronie's disease is, but most people don't) in addition to links to highly relevant subjects (e.g., this is a sub-piece of a physical examination, so link back to Physical examination), you can see what I'm looking for. I suggest restoring the tag so that someone can do the same for the rest of the article.
- BTW, if the community as a whole is concerned by newbies adding links to underlinked articles, then you should probably check that the Wikipedia:Growth Team features has mw:Growth/Personalized first day/Structured tasks/Add a link turned off locally. Otherwise, I think I'm not sure how (actual) newbies would find such articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- No, I think add a link is a very useful newcomer task. (It's actually the task I started on, as one of the first editors through the pilot of the newcomer homepage.) It's just that when articles are unnecessarily tagged with "underlinked" that it becomes a problem. Since you found so many words in the lead you'd prefer to have wikilinked, I'll happily accept your tagging here as "tagging editor genuinely does desire a great many more links", and I've restored the tag and won't touch the others. -- asilvering (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- I wonder if you'd be interested in User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die. I ask because if you think the task is very useful for new editors, and you believed that we need new editors, then it seems sort of self-sabotaging to reduce the number of opportunities for new editors to encounter that very useful task (e.g., by removing the tags from the articles). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- I'm struggling to understand why you've said this in response to my comments. I was not being disingenuous or sarcastic. -- asilvering (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- I didn't interpret them as sarcastic or as anything other than 100% sincere. What I'd like you to do is to think about these two pathways:
- We dump a lot articles in the underlinked category.
- An editor removes nearly all of them, because if they aren't removed, then newbies will add (more and more and more) links.
- Result: No overlinking, but also no newbies.
- versus:
- We dump a lot articles in the underlinked category.
- Newbies successfully make their first edits.
- And we have to clean up after them, because there are no meaningful tasks that newcomers can do perfectly.
- Result: More editors.
- I agree that getting newcomers to remove the tag is a problem. But perhaps you'd be more effective at that if you check for whether the work has (supposedly) been done via this RecentChanges link, instead of looking at what's in the category. In an ideal world, we'd probably have a hundred articles in that category per day, so that we could get 50 new editors to try a potentially helpful task. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- This is a bizarre strawman proposition. Who is this editor removing nearly all of the articles in the underlinked category? It isn't me, nor will you see me advocating for that. If you find that person, feel free to engage them in this thought experiment. -- asilvering (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- I didn't interpret them as sarcastic or as anything other than 100% sincere. What I'd like you to do is to think about these two pathways:
- I'm struggling to understand why you've said this in response to my comments. I was not being disingenuous or sarcastic. -- asilvering (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- I wonder if you'd be interested in User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die. I ask because if you think the task is very useful for new editors, and you believed that we need new editors, then it seems sort of self-sabotaging to reduce the number of opportunities for new editors to encounter that very useful task (e.g., by removing the tags from the articles). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- No, I think add a link is a very useful newcomer task. (It's actually the task I started on, as one of the first editors through the pilot of the newcomer homepage.) It's just that when articles are unnecessarily tagged with "underlinked" that it becomes a problem. Since you found so many words in the lead you'd prefer to have wikilinked, I'll happily accept your tagging here as "tagging editor genuinely does desire a great many more links", and I've restored the tag and won't touch the others. -- asilvering (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Editor experience invitation
Hi WhatamIdoing :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your essay
my story today |
---|
... now also in the Signpost! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:41, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
- This is the same thing that brought Aafi here. You have very eloquently put your thoughts, @WhatamIdoing. Thanks for this. I recently encountered that AfC reviewing has become more of a witch-hunting culture, on this encyclopedia. A new editor created an article on a professor meeting WP:NACADEMIC#6, and it was declined twice (within minutes) for pretty much very obscure reasons when there was an open-way to offer more help. Your essay resonates very well. Thank you again, and Yes, I am going to die. ─ The Aafī (talk) 18:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for your kind note. I hope that you have a long and happy life. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
- I also came here to say that I appreciated your essay. Happy to see it in the Signpost. /Julle (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Whatareyoudoing, WhatamIdoing?
Our BLP conversation has a weird cross-examiner vibe to it from my perspective. I feel like the info I'm providing is quite basic in nature, surely this is stuff we both know already with our combined >30 years of WP experience? What am I missing/where are you going with this? Not trying to be confrontational, I'm just confused. VQuakr (talk) 00:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Your !vote there says, if you will allow me to oversimplify, that BLP applies to dead people for an unknown length of time that cannot be determined by actual consensus because LOCALCON (which I wrote originally, BTW, so you may assume I'm familiar with its contents and history) says you can't overrule a policy with a local (i.e., non-representative) consensus.
- I'm asking questions because I can't understand why you would take this approach. My basic question is: How the heck are editors supposed to figure out how long that length of time is? In one sentence, you have simultaneously rejected both Wikipedia's ordinary daily operation (i.e., ordinary editing without discussions + consensus-oriented discussions) and the specific proposal (i.e., actual consensus), and claimed that actual consensus is prohibited by a rule against fake consensus. What do you expect editors to do now? Just not edit the articles until the person has been dead for two years, because there's no way to figure out whether BLP still applies before then? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- A few things. First, it'd be more efficient if you had just said that rather than asking questions that in the fashion of a cross examiner, where we're clearly going somewhere but weren't clear as to exactly what you were driving at. Second, the policy already provides a loose length guideline, changes to which are not being considered per the letter of the RfC, of 0.5-2 years. Third, yes, I know you know this stuff, which is why your playing dumb on the talk page is so confounding to me. But as to "what the heck editors are supposed to do now" during that loosely-defined time period: be conservative, provide good sourcing for statements, and discuss proposed changes. Which are all excellent practices anywhere, not just on BLPs and BDPs. If our worst case is sourcing has to be excellent, then the stakes are quite low. I'm unsure where the "just not edit" rhetoric is coming from, is that just more playing dumb? VQuakr (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Either:
- the range of 0.5–2 years specified by the policy actually means "minimum of 2 years" (because during that range, editors should continue to apply the policy) or
- the entire range specified by the policy is real, and there must be some way of determining whether it is 0.5 years for this particular article.
- Which do you pick?
- NB that I don't actually care what the rule is. My interest is in having the policy accurately reflect reality and useful to editors. If the rule is that it applies for a full two years, then fine – but let's just say that, and not mislead people into thinking that normal rules could apply after six months. If the rule is that it applies for 6 months, then fine – but let's remove the stuff about it applying up to two years. If the rule is that it applies for a time period that is different for each article, then fine – but let's tell people how to figure out what the time period for that particular article is. I do not like gotcha rules; it's unfair to tell people "could be as short as six months" and then secretly enforce it for 24 months anyway, and it's unwiki to say "could be anything in this whole range" but not let the community decide which part of the range is best suited for the particular article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- It's the 2nd bullet point, obviously. It wasn't obvious what you were driving at since you seem to be fixating on a clause of the policy that's not the subject of the RfC?
but not let the community decide which part of the range is best suited for the particular article.
No one is proposing that AFAICT. VQuakr (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2023 (UTC)- The policy says "the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death". If it is possible for BDP to apply for less than 24 months – for it to apply, say, for 8 months and then stop applying – then who do you think determines when it stops applying? You have opposed stating that the determination is made by consensus. If the decision isn't made by consensus, then the community isn't deciding it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Ah ok, now I understand I believe (I do think you could have expressed this far more immediately and concisely, but water under the bridge). To my reading (and by context clues many others' readings) the clause "based on editorial consensus" is being interpreted to mean "BDP is optional, whether to follow it all can be decided locally". I am saying that following BLP is not optional when I say it is "not subject to local consensus". How best to follow (for example, how much time BDP should be applied in order to meet the "taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" directive) is a matter for discussion. I don't think there's any reason to specifically say that, though, since that is the default condition. If you think it is important to specifically say that, let's find a different, unambiguous way to phrase it at least. VQuakr (talk) 07:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- Which I what I assumed from the beginning, which takes me back to my original question:
- You say BDP is "not subject to local consensus". How do you tell the difference between "a local consensus that this person has been dead for 8 months, and BLP rules no longer apply" and "a non-local consensus" that says exactly the same thing?
- If it is possible for BDP to stop applying before 24 months, then there must be a way for editors to figure out whether that has happened. The proposal said "editorial consensus". You assumed that meant "local consensus". None of us want LOCALCON; all of us want true consensus. How do you tell the difference between the two? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- I'm asking you this because we've got a problem. Back in the day, LOCALCON was fairly unimportant but pretty well understood: The handful of editors who write most of the articles about classical composers were not allowed to declare that the community-wide infobox rule ("neither encouraged nor discouraged") did not apply to articles (i.e., written by other editors) about classical composers.
- We were looking at:
- a group of editors
- making decisions about groups of articles
- saying that the usual rules don't apply
- For example:
- WikiProject Composers' self-selected participants
- deciding for all articles on their chosen subject
- that the usual rules about making article-by-article individual decisions about infoboxes do not apply, and specifically that nobody is allowed to put an infobox on "our" articles.
- Today, we have editors who seem to think that any decision they disagree with is a local consensus, even when that decision explicitly affirms and complies with the written policy.
- For example:
- The editors working on an article
- deciding for this one article that they are working on
- that the usual rules about BLPs (e.g., the policy's exemption from edit-warring rules for content that is sourced but the reverted deems the content "contentious" and the source "poor") for dead people ending somewhere between 6 and 24 months do apply, and specifically that we're going to identify the transition point as n months (with the chosen point needing to be within the policy-stated range).
- This has not traditionally been considered a "local consensus"; this has traditionally been considered the ordinary and correct application of policy by editors working in a true consensus-oriented collaboration. But today we have editors, probably misled by the WP:UPPERCASE shortcut (because WP:Nobody reads the directions), who think that this is a "local" consensus.
- If you support this approach, then I think your vote is misplaced. If you believe that BLP rules could end before 24 months (as the policy says) and you reject this method for figuring out when the subject transitions from BLP to normal rules, then please tell me how editors are supposed to make that determination (or who's supposed to, if it's not editors). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
* The editors working on an article....within the policy-stated range).
Yup, we agree that looks good, healthy, normal editing, etc. What we (sort of) disagree on is whether that's the change that's under discussion, and therefore whether my !vote should be reconsidered. I think the locus of the issue is that we are interpreting an ambiguously-worded clause in the policy differently. When I read the policy can extend based on editorial consensus for an indeterminate period, I mentally apply "based on editorial consensus" to the policy, not the length of the extension. The length of the extension is of course subject to editorial consensus, which is the default condition so there's no need to explicitly say so. A local consensus (or any consensus, in the exceptional case of WP:BLP) cannot decide that a given BLP is not subject to the policy WP:BLP at all (a position that I think we agree upon). VQuakr (talk) 20:15, 9 December 2023 (UTC)- It may not be the best way to phrase it. I'm not actually thrilled with the existing wording (e.g., "for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend based for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death" – the policy isn't "extending"; it's "still being applied").
- How do you expect editors to figure out when BLP stops applying, and how do you communicate that to other editors?
- (Of course consensus can decide that a given BLP is not subject to BLP; for example, we decide all the time that a given business is too big to count as BLP.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
How do you expect editors to figure out when BLP stops applying, and how do you communicate that to other editors?
Via discussion on the talk page. An article on a business was never a BLP. VQuakr (talk) 18:05, 10 December 2023 (UTC)- Is "a discussion on the talk page" a "local consensus"?
- (According to WP:BLPGROUP, when a business [or other group of people] is "very small", then BLP applies.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
- Ah ok, now I understand I believe (I do think you could have expressed this far more immediately and concisely, but water under the bridge). To my reading (and by context clues many others' readings) the clause "based on editorial consensus" is being interpreted to mean "BDP is optional, whether to follow it all can be decided locally". I am saying that following BLP is not optional when I say it is "not subject to local consensus". How best to follow (for example, how much time BDP should be applied in order to meet the "taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account" directive) is a matter for discussion. I don't think there's any reason to specifically say that, though, since that is the default condition. If you think it is important to specifically say that, let's find a different, unambiguous way to phrase it at least. VQuakr (talk) 07:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- The policy says "the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death". If it is possible for BDP to apply for less than 24 months – for it to apply, say, for 8 months and then stop applying – then who do you think determines when it stops applying? You have opposed stating that the determination is made by consensus. If the decision isn't made by consensus, then the community isn't deciding it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
- It's the 2nd bullet point, obviously. It wasn't obvious what you were driving at since you seem to be fixating on a clause of the policy that's not the subject of the RfC?
- Either:
- A few things. First, it'd be more efficient if you had just said that rather than asking questions that in the fashion of a cross examiner, where we're clearly going somewhere but weren't clear as to exactly what you were driving at. Second, the policy already provides a loose length guideline, changes to which are not being considered per the letter of the RfC, of 0.5-2 years. Third, yes, I know you know this stuff, which is why your playing dumb on the talk page is so confounding to me. But as to "what the heck editors are supposed to do now" during that loosely-defined time period: be conservative, provide good sourcing for statements, and discuss proposed changes. Which are all excellent practices anywhere, not just on BLPs and BDPs. If our worst case is sourcing has to be excellent, then the stakes are quite low. I'm unsure where the "just not edit" rhetoric is coming from, is that just more playing dumb? VQuakr (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha>
tags or {{efn}}
templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}
template or {{notelist}}
template (see the help page).