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A fundamental problem with administrators and inactivity

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

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

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

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

If you're looking to skip to the proposal here it is. I think the answer is really simple, all that it requires is a different method of determining who is an active administrator and deprecating the current "one year inactive" de-adminship. It's fairly straight forward: If you do a combined 50 edits or admin actions outside of your own user space within a calendar year, you are considered an active administrator. If you make less than 50, your adminship is removed for inactivity. It actually benefits the encyclopedia in various ways:

• It stops inactive administrators from simply coming back and doing a null edit to their user page to keep their adminship for another year and leaving the community to wonder if they are coming back or not.
• It forces administrators at least provide a bare minimum of contributions or administrative duties to give us something to base their work on. We won't have to wonder whether they are equipped to handle to tools anymore.
• The difference between a bare minimum of 1 edit/log to confirm they are here and my proposed 50 is this:
  • 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 1 edit to confirm they are still admin under our current system is 773 edits/logs (which could be as little as a user page edit.)
  • 773 semi-active/inactive administrators making 50 edits/logs outside their user space is 38,650 productive edits, and all of them could keep their adminship and be considered active.
• For administrators who fall inactive, the method of restoring their admin bit is slightly the same: all the former admin has to do is make 50 edits (outside their user space) to confirm that they are active, and they make request at WP:BN to get their admin bit back (at the bureaucrats discretion as always).

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

• The inherent flaw in your proposal is that you assume the inactive admin has not simply been reading, rather than taking an active role. Further, it's inherently "forcing" admins to meet a quota, something that really flies in the face of making good decisions. — The Hand That Feeds You: 18:52, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I don't assume that they aren't reading, and if that is the case, they could be very informed which is good. But if that's the case, if you make 50 edits in less than a year, you're not doing your part, are you? Out of the 1,400+ people entrusted on the entire website to be here and actually do something when there are problems, are the people we allow to sit and do nothing? Do you knowingly pass a user on RFA, if it said in their nomination "After I'm give admin, I'm going to rarely be here at all, but I'll keep informed and make an edit or two a year."? No, you won't. Like I said, is enforcing a quota a bad thing? Why do we tolerate administrators to sit back and not do anything? If you gave a janitor a mop and bucket and he only came by once a year to adjust their locker and leave, I'd be pretty pissed nothing is being done. We have 697 active and 773 snoozing. 50 administrative logs or edits combined, is such a minor task for someone at the level of an administrator. It's achievable by them logging in once and year a doing something, which is all I'm asking really. — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay in responding. Took a short Wikibreak.

The reason your janitor analogy fails is in two parts: A) this is a volunteer service, so no one is required to be here at X time or X days a week, and B) there is not a limiting factor on the number of admins, ie. we aren't "over budget" or running out of "space" for people. If someone works that hard to get the bit, then goes idle, that's their business. As long as they haven't abused the bit, I see no reason to remove it due to lack of activity. — The Hand That Feeds You: 16:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Hell, I've been active here for eight years and I don't even know our current practices. The problem isn't inactivity among admins, the problem is in informing everyone of evolving standards and practices. --Golbez (talk) 19:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• And that's fine Golbez :) I'm not expecting someone to re-invent the wheel or be some kind of connoisseur of the English Misplaced Pages. All I'm asking for is a simple minimum number of duties, a combined 50 edits and/or administrative logs (outside their userspace) that you do within a year. It's just a simple recognition that you are here and that you actually do something still, something very minor to prove you are still competent in holding the tools. — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, the only problem I have with this proposal is that you mischaracterize the background. Logging in once a year to make one edit is not "gaming the system", since desysopping inactive accounts is a procedural matter only. And LC was not denied a resysop because he had been inactive too long to know what he was doing. That was claimed, sure, but there was no consensus on it. His resysop was actually declined because even the bureaucrats who didn't care how active he was weren't sure if his account had been compromised, or why he was asking. But getting back to the actual proposal, this seems to me like a solution in search of a problem. Please show me the administrator who, as a result of ignorance of policy changes, started screwing up the encyclopedia and resisted all attempts at being educated. An RFA is a stamp of a approval on an editor for not only being knowledgeable of policy, but also having clue. I choose to believe that any editor capable of passing RFA is at least cognizant of the fact that policies change. Someguy1221 (talk) 20:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I too would like to assume that anyone we give a stamp of approval on is aware of our every-changing policies and guidelines, but the reality is that most of them are probably not actively reading every day. If they are, that is one thing, and doing a bare minimum of 50 edits/administrative logs isn't very hard for someone reading Misplaced Pages every day. In the case of those who are not, then they don't have a clue what the current policies and guidelines are, because they are never here. In the case of Lightdarkness above, are you sufficiently satisfied that he is still able to perform administrative duties within Misplaced Pages based on his last bout of active editing stemming from 2007? The problem, as I said from the beginning, is accounts sitting there and rotting under the guise of they are an administrator for life, as long as they come back and make a null edit. I don't need to be convinced they are superlative at handling the admin bit, or that they know every policy, but rather confirmation that they are here and at least trying. Why would we give someone special privileges and stature in our community for them to sit and idle on it? — Moe ε 23:12, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• FWIW, both Meta and Commons have (different) substantive activity requirements:
  • Commons: less than 5 admin actions in 6 months: 30 days' notice to confirm intention to return; then desysop without warning if again less than 5 actions in 6 months. See Commons:Commons:Administrators/De-adminship.
  • Meta: less than 10 edits in 6 months: immediate desysop; 10+ edits but fewer than 10 admin actions: 1 week to confirm intention to remain admin. See meta:Meta:Administrators#Inactivity.

Rd232 21:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• • The Commons policy of harassing administrators in otherwise good standing to perform work to maintain that standing is, to be frank, bullshit. --Golbez (talk) 22:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
    • And if anyone missed in my proposal, as long as you come back and do your minimum number of duties, even if you are de-admined for inactivity, you are given back to the tools procedurally like we do now. It's just changing 1 edit to prove that you're alive, to 50 to prove you're still functional. — Moe ε 23:17, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
• Yes, this is a good proposal.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I also support more substantive activity requirements. --99of9 (talk) 05:00, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Support This just seems like common sense. If you can't make at least 50 edits a year, then it is extremely unlikely that you are keeping up on policy changes and admin responsibilities and activities. Sure, there might be a few outlier admins, but the possible amount of those is so low as to be negligible for the main purpose of this proposal. Silverseren 05:13, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. On these criteria, we would have lost User:Moreschi, an excellent administrator. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• They can easily do RfA again. I mean, if they're good admins, then it should be pretty easy to get reinstated and it would further show community support for them in general. And, heck, we could use some more RfAs in general for our current dismal stats in that area. Silverseren 05:56, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Hello Future Perfect at Sunrise. Actually, Moreschi would be fine, re-review the actual proposal. He has made 50 edits and administrative logs combined this year alone, so under this, he would retain adminship. If he was inactive for a long period of time previously (assuming he was gone for a very long time?), his edits proving him being active now means he would have got his adminship restored if it was removed. The only difference between our current practice and this proposal, is that it's 50 edits or administrative logs combined (outside of the user's own userspace) in a year, as compared to a single edit anyone on Misplaced Pages in one year. He actually wouldn't need to go through RFA again, Silver seren, he would just have to prove he is active on Misplaced Pages. This is to prevent administrators from idling for an entire year and committing a single edit to retain adminship without providing any service to the site. — Moe ε 06:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose. What we need are admins who are capable of fair, judicious and impartial actions. Those qualities do not degrade over time. The argument that a period of inactivity should of itself be a disqualification is flawed for several reasons (as mentioned above they may be observing but not editing, or they may be completely absent but prepared to spend time getting up to speed when returning).

RfA discussion is not just about technical knowledge of current policy, it's about assessing intent, motivation and character. And from the point of view of this longstanding, but not especially active editor, it works. The quality of admin work here that I have seen has been outstanding: not because of detailed current knowledge of every last policy, but because it has been thoughtful.

Now I'm sure there are examples of misuse or incompetence, and that might be the motivation behind this proposal, but the way to address that concern is to streamline the process for de-adminship (for action rather than inaction).

Another legitimate concern is that requests for administrative action be dealt with promptly - let's achieve that by encouraging communication by means other than the talk page of an administrator. I would support a proposal to put a "Seems to be inactive" notice there.

Finally, (sorry this is so long), it's hard enough to get properly engaged editors, let alone properly-motivated admins so please let's not let impose an arbitrary technical requirement. Mcewan (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Hello, Mcewan. I'm not rather questioning their past usefulness to Misplaced Pages, which is self-evident because they are administrator, but rather wanting to expand what is considered inactive for the sake of the website. It's rather preposterous, the little amount of requirements it takes to retain adminship, don't you think? If admin X left now, July 3, 2012, under our current policy, he could do a total of ten edits and/or administrative actions, once a year, from now until 2022 and retain adminship without a further glance. We have continued to push a mantra of "administrator for life" to the point of ridiculousness. The whole premise behind that makes things very difficult to retain administrators, because they can come back anytime they like, make their minimum requirement of 1 edit and move on. After that, they can come back and by the time they do, it's not the same Misplaced Pages they left with. You can check any policy or guideline page on Misplaced Pages to exactly 5 years ago, it isn't the same as today. That mantra is fine for people who are here every day contributing, but it's the 1 edit admin a year this isn't fine for. All this proposal does, is makes someone who is an administrator fill a quota of 50 edits or administrative logs (blocks, protections, deletions, etc.) so that we can be sure that they are somewhat familiar with the site on a yearly basis. — Moe ε 06:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I suppose my point is that if we trust someone to be an admin then we implicitly also trust them to keep current on policy before acting. There is no correlation between knowledge of policy and number of edits, so why impose any activity requirement at all? Personally I would be happy with none. Mcewan (talk) 11:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

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

For the record: on nowiki there is a gadget which helps people to keep track of who is active on which administrative tasks. See MediaWiki:Gadget-show-sysop-activity.js. Maybe someone finds it useful here as well. Helder 13:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

• This is a solution looking for a problem. I took a lengthy wikibreak at one point, probably near two years, but came back around occasionally during it. I still read the articles, after all, and I just can't see a typo or easily fixed problem here without, well, fixing it. I was never intending to leave the project permanently, just to take a long break. This being a volunteer project, I have every right to take a "leave of absence" whenever, for whatever reason, and for whatever period of time I want, and so long as I'm not leaving to evade likely sanctions, to come back in just as good of standing as when I left. Coming back to make a null edit every so often isn't "gaming," since inactivity desysops are strictly procedural and are immediately reversible upon a simple request to the 'crats anyway. It's just a way of saying "I'm still interested in working on the project, I just am not doing it right now." Obviously, it would be incumbent upon someone who takes a long break to carefully review any changes that have occurred in their absence, as I did when I returned, but admins have passed a community process showing trust in their judgment. I should think it very basic good judgment to say "Hrm, I've been away for X years, and this project is pretty fluid. I'd better make sure I check on current community expectations before I wade in to hit the big red buttons." If someone fails to do that and fails to respond to feedback when they're told we don't do it that way anymore, we can handle that through normal processes and ultimately ArbCom, but I know of no such actual circumstance. Seraphimblade 16:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Seraphimblade. We can only hope that people who come back to their former hobby they no longer participate in actively are as willing to realize this. I know most of them would be, but there's always that exception :) In your case, since you came back, you would have had your admin bit restored procedurally just like our current policy after proving that you are active again. There have been a fair share of administrators who have come back for their admin bit on the 'crat noticeboard, then proceeded to disappear again. With this proposal, all it does is make those editors participate minimally in the community rather than not at all. — Moe ε 07:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

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

• Support A good administrator deactivated through inactivity shouldn't have any problem going through RfA again, and we should welcome the chance to review their credentials for currency. --BDD (talk) 15:41, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - The whole idea is that the community chose to trust the individual with adminship. The proposal would de facto be a way for Misplaced Pages:Removal of adminship. We have had a tradition that any admin who has not had the tools removed "under a cloud" may have adminship restored by any bureaucrat. This proposal is contrary to that common practice.

  And by the way, no offense to anyone asserting this idea, but the argument that someone coming back after a few years wouldn't know or understand the continually evolving common practice, and so should have adminship removed is straight up BS.

  First, you have NO CLUE whether they have been reading during this time. To use myself as an example, at one point I had severe technical issues. And while I don't mind reading wikipedia at the local library or other such places. I strongly preferred to not sign in and edit from such places.

  "Second, if we as a community decided to entrust them with the tools, and that includes to not mis-use the tools, then it follows that we should trust them to not misuse them after a lengthy wikibreak. This proposal just violates long common practice here.

  So to re-affirm: Strong oppose - jc37 16:35, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Jc37. To reply to your concerns:

• If an administrators tools were removed for not being active (50 edits/administrative logs in a calendar year) under this, they would get them restored procedurally just like we do now at WP:BN, but the only difference is instead of 1 edit/log, it would be 50, to prove activity.
• The notion that the semi-active and inactive administrators who only make an occasional edit to the encyclopedia and their request adminship back, but simultaneously sit and watch policy and guideline pages, is preposterous. There are semi-active adminstrators who do a fair share of edits around the encyclopedia, 2-3 every week, who would be unaffected by this. It's essentially only those who come back to WP:BN, request their adminiship back, then idle again are the ones who are directly affected for the most part since even semi-active admins make the bare minimum number of contributions of 50 edits/logs a year.
• Even if there was "reader" admins who sit and make no edits but request their adminship back, what good can come of giving the occasional reader of Misplaced Pages adminship? Why don't we give adminship back once they no longer have technical issues or once they are ready to actively return and make a bare minimum number of contributions? Like I said, the process is still procedural that they get the tools back once they are active and ready to contribute using the tools. I hate the thought of giving someone access to tools when they aren't here for a majority of the time. It's true, we don't know whether they are caught up-to-date on policy or not, but being inactive suggests that they are not here, rather than that they are.
• Regards, — Moe ε 07:41, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The reason is that this creates needless bureaucracy. Someone gets to baby-sit the logs (or develop an automated process) to watch every admin's contributions, and remove the bit if they don't meet their quota. Then, if the admin comes back, they have to pester the 'crats to get it back. It's creating more work for no real benefit. — The Hand That Feeds You: 16:30, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Moe. I disagree with several of your points, but that's fine, neither of us can read minds, nor has the ability to see the future, so we're welcome to have a difference of opinion.

But to just address your 50 edits idea. Why is the amount higher than what we require for autoconfirming an editor? that seems a bit much. Once upon a time, we had a consensus for autoconfirmed to be changed to 7 days 20 edits. but the devs implemented a smaller amount (erring on the side of caution, which I can understand). This might be almost worth discussing if the numbers were down in that range. But 50 just seems ridiculous (as several above have noted).

Though again, I'm pretty much opposed due to the fact that trust includes not using the tools just as much as using them. So I think the entire premise of this proposal is flawed on those grounds. - jc37 15:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

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

Appropriateness of "X on Twitter" (or similar) articles

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There's been a lot of issues with behavior problems revolving around various celebrity's "...on Twitter" articles. Examples include

• Lady Gaga on Twitter (Best I know, hasn't seen AFD yet)
• Justin Bieber on Twitter (current AFD
• Ashton Kutcher on Twitter (current AFD

Uncle G has provided a good summary of the poor behavior that these articles are creating (either way), in that we have "empty" AFD !votes, articles at GAN/FAC being sent to AFD, articles at AFD being sent to GAC/FAC, etc. Plus a race to create more, put more to GA (at minimum) as "protection" from AFD, etc. Rightly so, the problem is that these are articles that we don't know what to do with yet, and there are arguments on both sides regarding them.

First, I'd like to propose an informal halt to any meta-activity on these articles, at least until some resolve has been made. No creation, no AFD'ing, no GAN/FAC (allowing the current running ones to complete of course).

But we do need some resolve. I have my own ideas how these articles should be treated, but I don't want to taint the discussion with my opinion here. Instead, I'd like to see what the general community feels about these, are they appropriate, are there better ways of handling it, should they not even exist? Based on what consensus says, we can make appropriate changes to guideline/policy that summarizes that and then and only then can we turn back to what we have to see if the articles themselves may be affected.

Note that I am going to assume that we are talking about "...on Twitter" articles that already meet WP:V in terms of sourcing, and we're talking only those that other sources have clearly recognized, not a random celebrity or nobody. The three examples above are the ones that I would expect of minimum quality for an "on Twitter" article to even exist, so this is not meant to say that we can create a "On Twitter" article for any random person X. But even when they get as largely sourced as the above three, the questions on appropriateness remain.

Note that I'm looking ahead to any type of "X on Y" where Y is some social media application, like YouTube, or Facebook, or whatever. There may not be any articles that meet these now, but we should be considering the potential of what future such services may bring.

Given this, I'm breaking up the discussion into three areas, below. Two for "Generally acceptable" and "Generally unacceptable", and a third for "Other options", which I hope people expand with possible ideas for determining between acceptable and unacceptable. --MASEM (t) 14:26, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles are generally acceptable

• Assuming as the question does, that the twitter account is generally notable and verifiable. To avoid the illegitimate WP:BELONG type arguments, yes. These are similar to articles on noted individual blogs. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:03, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
• It would be foolish to exclude broad categories of article types when they are capable of having their notability established by information discussed in multiple reliable third party sources. Any claims that these sorts of articles are too trivial are foolish as only people who think the subject worthy of study will spend their time reading them. Abyssal (talk) 21:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles are generally inappropriate

• Because of the potential spread, since most subjects here in the entertainment industry have at least the potential for such a page, the standards should be very high. The claim that such a subject is notable is the sort of extraordinary claim that needs extraordinarily good sourcing. It should require a very strict interpretation of the notability guidelines, in which several really substantial non-tabloid sources of unquestionable seriousness and reliability --preferable academic or serious published non-fiction studies devoted primarily to the topic should be required. Otherwise we degenerate into a fansite. DGG ( talk ) 01:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• I would say that notability for these types of articles should be based on impact, and not just activity. Activity will be written about by "reliable sources" every day just because of the incredible size, reach and potential profitability of the industry, but this material is generally of the trivia/tabloid kind. However, sources about the cultural impact or long-term consequences of a person's Twitter account by the kinds of organizations DGG mentions above ("academic o serious published non-fiction studies devoted primarily to the topic") are a completely different animal and would certainly seem to warrant a serious article. Those are understandably rarer, and so given the amount of -- yes, I'm going to say it -- cruft that finds its way into current articles on these subjects, I think saying that "X on Twitter" articles are generally inappropriate is closest to the truth. Nolelover 01:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, WP:notability (fiction) was a notability guideline and tried "impact" as part of notability criterion, but it is now an essay about notability of characters itself. All internet stuff is notable under GNG, but this whole discussion is becoming more about how to write a valuable article. As said, why focusing more on notability than an idea of making MOS guideline about internet topics? --George Ho (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• The issue that is larger than the "...on twitter" articles is the issue of meta-articles in general. These articles are reporting on the reporting of others, which is distinct from using the reporting of others as sources. Said in WP-speak, articles such as these are treating what are normally RS as PRIMARY. By writing an article about what X or Y source thinks about topic Z, we are no longer an encyclopedia but rather a news aggregator. As an example if this, if a Twitter user tweets from their verified account that they are getting married then we may update their BIO to say that they are getting married and source it (BLP allows SPS as sources about themselves) to the tweet. That is writing about the event (getting married), not the medium of distribution (Twitter). When we get into writing about the medium, the line into meta-reporting gets crossed. That is no longer encyclopeadic, but just being an aggregator (at best). That isn't to say that there aren't notable events where there is an intersection. For instance, the race to 1M followers might be notable for both the BIO and the Twitter article. --Tgeairn (talk) 02:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • As a devil's advocate, we have articles on notable fan sites that are pretty much just news aggregation or the like for something else. Take, for example Lostpedia or Equestria Daily. I will not dismiss the idea that a celeb's twitter can be notable on its own as long as the sources are talking about the Twitter account and not just reporting on news reported in the account. There is some reasonable logic here. --MASEM (t) 02:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Right and to add, there is no basis in fact or logic to the claim that "The Washington Post" or a myriad of other sources are "primary sources" about a twitter account. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
      • It depends on how they are reporting it. WashPost stating "Celeb X said on his twitter that he will be getting married" is a primary source. WashPost station "Celeb X's twitter has been used for X to pass along news and personal information faster than through his PR agent." would edge on secondary. --MASEM (t) 03:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
        • • No. The Washington Post is a secondary source; the tweet itself is primary assuming it's the person involved tweeting.Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
            • Wrong. Secondary sources require analysis and transformation of information; otherwise, if they are just repeating a primary source, they remain a primary source. This is why, for news and events, we expect analytic coverage of the event rather than only just rote reporting. --MASEM (t) 03:43, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
            • Also, specifically, the WashPost in the example above would be a third-party source, which does help with WP:V, but doesn't help with notability. --MASEM (t) 03:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
              • No. The Washington Post is almost never a tertiary source. And no, a secondary source reports from a primary source. It is third-party because it is not the first or second party in a communication. (however, its reporter might be the second)Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:49, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Just as Washington Post, a secondary source, weekly reports from soap operas, primary sources. Like soap operas, Washington Post reports primary sources, like Twitter activities and fiction. --George Ho (talk) 03:59, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

As a secondary source, they have editorial control over what they report from a primary source.Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Be aware: primary/secondary/tertiary is one way to classify a source, describing how itself is using other sources,, and first-party/third-party a completely separate way. The WashPost is a third-party (in that it is unrelated at all) to a celeb's twitter, no question. But if all that is being repeated in the WashPost is what is in the twitter with no further comment, that makes it a primary, third-party source. The thing to remember: the primary or secondary nature of WashPost (or any other source) will change depending on the topic and how they report it; we never say that every article WashPost ever publishes is always primary or always secondary. It's context dependent. Please review WP:PSTS for clarity on this. --MASEM (t) 04:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

As that says primary is created by the people involved not by others not involved. The Post is not the primary source. If someone speaks to you in person or writes a note that's the primary source; if someone else tells you what they said or wrote, that is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 04:22, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No, that's assuredly the "first party" source, but even a first party source can be secondary depending on the nature of the topic and method of presentation. --MASEM (t) 04:36, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The nature of the topic is someone else's communication, and the method of presentation is the paper's editorial control over telling you that information is something they want you to inform you about. It is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Again, it's not as simple. If the newspaper is simply repeating what was in the Twitter with no additional analysis or critique, the newspaper is a primary source for that Twitter account because there has been no transformation of information. If the paper goes into an analysis of the Twitter account or critiques on it, or does something otherwise novel than just re-reporting what it said, it is secondary source for that Twitter account. That follows WP:PSTS and long-term discussions on WT:OR. --MASEM (t) 12:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The newspaper is not simply repeating (even if there were the specialized meaning of secondary, which is incorrect), it is picking that information out to highlight. Now, if you are saying the newspaper is primary for its own content, that is unremarkable and true of every source we use, but none of them are primary for other people's communications. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Editing down information from primary sources does not make a work secondary if there's no further analytical aspects added to it. And no, I'm not saying the newspaper is primary for itself. If an article, in the context of the topic of re-reporting what a Twitter account, performed no further analysis of that Twitter account, that article would be a primary source for the Twitter account. That makes no claim that the rest of the newspaper is a primary source, or that the article is only a primary source for any other topic, simply for the coverage of the Twitter account. Again, you need to review WP:PSTS, as we are looking not just for one-step removed but for the analysis that comes with secondary sources. "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, generally at least one step removed from an event. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them". --MASEM (t) 13:04, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The evaluative claim a newspaper makes when reporting is that it is something to be reported. Again, it is secondary. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:12, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

If it happened that the entire article (or at least a very sizable chunk) was about the Twitter account, that might be true. For example, this news article discussing the Twitter "war" between Gaga and Bieber is secondary to both of them. This news article which is supporting a commentary about Bieber via quotes from his Twitter, is a primary source for the Bieber Twitter article on WP. --MASEM (t) 13:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Commentary is a secondary source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The commentary makes the second article a secondary source for Bieber himself but it makes no statement about the Twitter account beyond repeating the quote, so it is a primary source for Bieber on Twitter. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The statement it makes is that it is worth reporting. The tweet, itself, out of his or anyone else many tweets, is the primary source for the tweet. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Your concept of "secondary" is far outside the lines we use on WP. Just repeating information (even if it is the case of editorial oversight to pick out the most relevant quotes) does not create secondary information. Again, please review WP:PSTS. This is standard practice on WP. --MASEM (t) 13:44, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah well, as you have nothing to offer based on the ordinary meaning of policy, words, or reason. I take it that's the end.Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I quoted what WP:PSTS says about secondary sources! You are drastically mis-interpreting that. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Just reading it in its ordinary and common sense meaning. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

So exactly what "analytic or evaluative claims" are being made about the Twitter account by simply requoting the Twitter account? I strongly urge you to review past discussions at WT:OR where its being iterated that newspaper stories just reiterating the facts are typically primary sources, but can be secondary in other context. This is crux to this issue to understand why this articles can be problematic if they're based only on repeating what was said in Twitter. --MASEM (t) 14:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Sorry. We've been through exactly this above and it's best not to repeat. My answer has not changed. If you would care to discuss further come to my page. Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

You never answered this, and it is critical to this discussion not to separate it to a separate page. Understanding the nature of Twitter coverage by sources is critical to whether they pass notability or other tests for article allowance. --MASEM (t) 15:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I've tried in at least three slightly different ways, see the comments beginning: "The newspaper is not simply repeating...,"The evaluative claim. . ."; "The statement it makes. . .". I don't know what more I can do. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

"The evaluative claim a newspaper makes when reporting is that it is something to be reported" is bogus, at least when considering the second article I point above. When a newspaper article dedicates itself to a topic, like the Twitter war article that the first example is, that gives some credence to the evaluative claim. But when it simply pulls a tweet out to support an article about the person, there is zero evaluative claims about the Twitter account. It's just using the Twitter account as a source, like they would use eyewitnesses, press releases, or interview responses as sources; using these first-person accounts as sources as part of a larger topic, without any further comment, does not make the newspaper article a secondary source for the first-person account. --MASEM (t) 15:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

That is the evaluative claim it makes. It doesn't matter if you don't approve of the evaluative claim it makes. It has decided that that information is pertinent and worthy of coverage. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

What happened to the recap thing and stuff? How is reporting real-life events not the same as recapping soap operas? --George Ho (talk) 16:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

You can have a primary source recap an event, a secondary source recap an event, or a tertiary source recap an event, so its not pertinent to the distinction. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:19, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

A recap that only summarizes the event/show/whatever is a primary source. A recap that summarizes and adds commentary or analysis is secondary. --MASEM (t) 20:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect, the categorization is the sources relation to the action and what they use as source{s). Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:46, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Primary/Secondary has nothing to do with the source relation; that's the first party/third party metric. It has to do with where the information is coming from and how it is used. I've read through the discussions on WT:OR to make sure my memory of how these discusses go, and again its pretty clear that reporting without analysis is primary, period. Your viewpoint, specifically on the example above where an article simply republished what the Twitter account says, that this article is a secondary source of information for the twitter account, is flat out wrong. You can check WT:OR if you want but that viewpoint is just not compatable with the normal definitions or how WP uses the terms.

But as to avoid dragging this out. I am making the assumption that when we are talking about this "X on Twitter" articles that they have sourcing that already meets the GNG, so we're not challenging these articles based on notability; ergo, whether certain pieces of coverage are primary or secondary doesn't matter since we're assuming we've got secondary sources aplenty so that notability is not what's being challenged here. There's other factors at play that are more significant to consider. --MASEM (t) 12:31, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Thankyou. The Notability assumption is the one under which this discussion was started. I appreciate that you have come to agree with me that this is not the place to discuss categorization, although your understanding of the categorization is incorrect. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• I can't stand these articles for a pretty simple reason... 95% of what is written is pure trivia, while the useful 5% is already covered (or should be covered) on the subject's main article. They offer excessively fine detail on what is an incredibly small part of any celebrities person. Resolute 03:21, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I will add, however, that getting rid of them is about as likely as dumping the equally silly royal wedding dress articles. Excessive detail on trivial things is something the project will very likely contain until the servers are switched off. Resolute 03:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • What? Articles of wedding dresses worn by celebrity are historical and worth discussing due to royalty, value, and stuff, mergable or not. Of Twitter activities, on the other hand, are children of internet activities and may suffer from recentism. --George Ho (talk) 03:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
      • That is rather my point, actually. Kate Middleton is notable for marrying a royal and her wedding to Will is likewise notable. Her dress is claimed to be notable because she is, which is a borderline POVFORK. I view the ...on Twitter articles the same way. Justin Bieber and his music may be notable, but the fine detail on this trivia is likewise a borderline POVFORK. Bieber uses hashtags when tweeting, and discusses a wide variety of subjects! OMG! So do I! Better write an article about my Twitter activities too! Resolute 13:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
        • ...Well, wedding dresses are not similar to technology. In fact, under Misplaced Pages standards, articles of a dress need reception and analysis to add encyclopedic value, regardless of notability, right? 19th-century dresses may be exceptions due to needs of an offline source. However, an article of an account cannot explain only messages that made impact; it needs background of creation and signifying analysis in general. The current revisions of an account article is bloated and demeaning to general public of five years from now. --George Ho (talk) 17:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• It is a piece of technology, a means of communication. What a famous person may say may be noteworthy, but what means of communication they used is not. This should just be so completely obvious to anyone above a basic grade level that I find it difficult to fathom just why we have to discuss it. Tarc (talk) 13:02, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I explained below, but suffice it to say that I agree with DGG on this. WP:NOT applies. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 14:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• These are WP:SS subarticles of the main article. As such, their topic must not only be separately notable, but their size relative to the main article and other subarticles (if any) must be in proportion to the importance of the topic for the person's biography as a whole. I would be exceptionally surprised if a topic so trivial as a person's Twitter presence would be so important to their biography as to justify the creation of a separate article. Moreover, such articles are at a peril of filling up with vapid tabloid-style content even faster than the main article.  Sandstein  19:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• "...On Twitter" is inherently unencyclopedic since it is essentially original research-type sifting of primary source material to first publish a treatise a topic. Carrite (talk) 20:05, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• See my comment on one of the AFD's - in short: no thank you (✉→BWilkins←✎) 21:32, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Doesn't belong here; shows poor editorial judgement. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 21:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• This is one of those odd cases where you can actually source an article correctly, even though the article itself contains nothing of value. Twitter might be a popular medium, but do we need a separate record to document what individual XYZ had said or done on this service? What about "On LinkedIn" or "On FaceBook", or the tongue in cheek "Caveman on historical clay tablet"?. There is simply no encyclopedic value in these articles - virtually the entire page is trivial information, and the few scraps of decent data can just as well be covered in the main page (And most times it is already covered). "On x" should generally be avoided - we don't want nor need an entire bunch of subpages for every article to document a relation with an external information source. Excirial 22:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Such articles are never appropriate as an article on any site with a desire to be a professional encyclopedia. The test of these things is to swap out one communication mediaum for another. X on a telephone. X on walkie talkies. X on Skype. X on Reddit. Ridiculous. DreamGuy (talk) 01:28, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• It is pretty simple: we are building a serious encyclopaedia. For those who prefer a wiki that does not restrict their behaviour and accepts all kinds of nonsensical content: go install mediawiki on your own server. Arcandam (talk) 12:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Misplaced Pages is not Facebook or Twitter. If there is any notable content in the article, merge it with the celebrity's main article. --Nathan2055 15:50, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Again, I'll copy and paste what I said at two ongoing AFDs:
  ... because this is what Misplaced Pages is WP:NOT. Misplaced Pages is WP:NOTDIARY, WP:NOTCASE study, and WP:NOTDIRECTORY. This is not a simple issue of notability. The fact is, for any major public figure, you're going to be able to assemble sources about a myriad of subtopics. Barack Obama's appearances in Ohio. Justin Bieber's live performances. Lindsay Lohan's substance abuse issues. Those would all technically be sourceable. The problem is, you're starting to get into topic selections that resemble the biases of the editor. You're starting to confuse "the subject" with "what the subject is notable for". It's your standard WP:CONTENTFORK problem where people can write multiple articles that are all basically about the same thing, which would make the encyclopedia even more unmanageable than it already is.
  ... There's my best reading of our policy, in both letter and in spirit. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

  Lindsay Lohan's substance abuse issues might be large enough for a spinout.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

  Great, you managed to stumble upon my worst nightmare. (I'm one of the main editors trying to keep Lindsay Lohan in shape and I am all too familiar with the reams and reams of sources available on the most minor aspects of her life.) I seriously hope the BLP and POV issues of a spinout like that are too obvious for anyone to attempt it. Siawase (talk) 16:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Something like somebody saying they liked some clothes caused some rush that was remarked on in a secondary source then that would be about the limit of the twitter I'd have though was reasonable to include. A secondary source is needed. Dmcq (talk) 16:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Only if there is commentary about the celebrity's use of Twitter, and a sufficient amount of that so that a spinout article is appropriate. The actual tweets by that twit twitterer should not be a factor as to whether there is an article. Otherwise, it really does fall into WP:NOTDIARY. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Here's how I think WP:POVFORK applies. I think it was Tarc who mentioned this in one of the afds, NPOV doesn't just apply to controversial opinions (where it most often gets brought up) but to everything. It wouldn't be NPOV to add 50k text with details of Bieber's twitter activitities to the main Justin Bieber article, that would be giving it undue weight. And the context of the full biography makes due and undue weight and NPOV fairly easy to determine. Creating a separate article on only one aspect ends up skirting around the undue weight issues that would be obvious if it was included in the main article. We're talking about entertainers here, who are notable for their singing, acting etc. And we don't spin out separate articles on that. There is no Justin Bieder's singing career or Lady Gaga's singing career that had to be spun out due to length, but these minor aspects supposedly need to be spun out? Siawase (talk) 16:29, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• "On Twitter" articles should never be considered encyclopedia-worthy. As I said on the AfD discussion about Justin Bieber on Twitter: If your interested in somebody's Tweets, then do you A) read the person's Tweets or B) read about the Tweets on Misplaced Pages? I have a feeling almost everybody answers "A". Also, a topic's verifiability and the fact that it is well-sourced are not enough for it to be included. Perhaps include the information on each person's article, or start a section on the Twitter article about "Notable Twitter Accounts", but individual Twitter accounts do not deserve their own articles. RedSoxFan2434 (talk) 20:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• In almost every case, the media presence of a subject (on Twitter, on their own website, in the New York Times, etc.) is not independently notable of the subject itself, and as such, the default for "Foo on Twitter" should be "REDIRECT:Foo". The number of Twitter followers cannot and should not be used to claim notability pbp 22:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
• Per DGG at the very top above. I suspect that the appropriate number of "X on Twitter" articles is zero (certainly sometimes a tweet is notable but it can be mentioned in the article on the author or subject of the tweet). But that my change as new sources become available . In any event, they should be the exception rather than the rule. Eluchil404 (talk) 07:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• I think DGG and Nolelover together covered it pretty well. I won't say that no X on Twitter article is worthy, but I think they would be exceptionally rare (and I'm not convinced we've had one yet). Anything someone tweets is either not worthy of mention at all, or should be in the main article on the person. We would need high quality (think academic) sources talking about the impact of someone's Twitter (Facebook, Goodreads, what-have-you) account as a notable phenomenon in order to justify an article in an encyclopedia about that account. Misplaced Pages is supposed to be an encyclopedia, WP:NOTPEOPLEMAGAZINE. LadyofShalott 02:31, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
• Like the user just above me (LadyofShalott ) wrote, I too feel that the users DGG (talk · contribs) and Nolelover (talk · contribs) together described the issue pretty well. Nothing much left for me to contribute, however I will say this that the subjects of the articles are not really worth a separate page.  Brendon is here 12:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
• I feel as though I'm mostly reiterating what others have said, but I see no need for separate articles along this vein. The content would be better kept (or moved, or added, as appropriate) to the ... article instead of existing in a ... on twitter article. --Nouniquenames (talk) 00:35, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 21:49, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think that "on Twitter" article are really necessary. If a person's social media profile is notable enough to have many reliable sources documenting it as such, then the person's article should just be expanded to include a "Social media" section. I think it's inappropriate and unencyclopedic to create "on Twitter" articles, as it not only adds to the problem of the already-cluttered navigational system, but gives undue weight to certain celebrities.—Yutsi / Contributions ( 偉特 ) 18:55, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
• Lots of comments above that make sense. Resolute and Sandstein, in particular, are right on the money. My take: X on Twitter articles are almost always inappropriate. The notability of X is completely irrelevant, and neither should it matter how often X tweets or how large an audience X has. The rare exception—and I think this would be very rare—would be in cases where X's tweets are recurrently noteworthy in and of themselves, attracting sustained news coverage and significant discussion among notable secondary sources over a lengthy interval. If we don't limit it to that, we're not only falling prey to recentism and indiscriminate content but also risk participating in the creation of a feedback loop that elevates the status of certain social media outlets and some of their users. Rivertorch (talk) 04:42, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
• X's activity on Twitter (if verifiable via WP:reliable sources) is a subject of coverage in the article about X. In fact, there is no topic for the article "X on Twitter". At all. – Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• What Dmitrij said. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:54, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry but I have to agree that these articles are annoying and "X on Twitter" is so rarely a notable topic which is the primary subject of published sources. Once people finally get used to the strange reality that celebrities are human, use the internet like the rest of us and have twitter accounts, they will be even less appropriate. The only reason we have these articles and not e.g. "X on BBC Radio 4" is because people (including brain dead news sources) make such a big deal out of the amazeballs that celebrities could possibly use social networking sites. The 20th century's that way, folks. - filelakeshoe 12:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
• "...on Twitter" articles are generally inappropriate. Encyclopedic information they might contain should be included on pages about the author or the author's work. For example, if George Orwell had ever tweeted, the information ought to have been included in Journalism of George Orwell. G. C. Hood (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
• There is no reason to have articles about a person's twitter account. It just isn't that notable. --Guerillero | My Talk 02:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
• In my opinion, these types of articles should be avoided. If there was a sincere and big controversy caused by something on Twitter relating to that celebrity, and it created such a large scandal (not just a controversy, but a whole series of events), then a new article should be created about that scandal, with information about how it started on Twitter. However, notable or important Tweets or Twitter activity should generally be kept inside the existing article on that celebrity, and should be confined to referenced sources from reliable media outlets to avoid WP:UNDUE. While it's likely that 20,000 people will retweet a celebrity's message that they are currently eating breakfast (picture attached), it's unlikely that most people on Misplaced Pages will need to read it. --Activism1234 16:40, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

"...on Twitter" articles should not be lumped together but evaluated individually

• I strongly object to the framing of this dispute. Were you to ask me whether I think said articles are generally acceptable or generally inappropriate, I would be compelled to say the latter even though I would vote to keep nearly all the ones currently in existence (the remainder being merge votes) and would move to undelete the one that just got deleted, which I said then and will say again was actually the one that was most worthy of being kept. The idea that there should be some sort of general verdict on the validity of including x-type of article is absurd. So, I will just create a section for people to assert the more basic principle that we shouldn't make judgments on Misplaced Pages content based solely on generalizations and innuendo. Each article is unique and should be judged based on its own independent circumstances not some confluence of hostility towards articles on popular culture and social media. We already have perfectly fine standards for determining whether an article should be kept or not, if we apply them appropriately and do not make judgments based on our preconceptions about the subject matter then it will work out fine.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• On a note separate from the overall status of Twitter account articles I would cover the specific problem of WP:INDISCRIMINATE being used in these discussions. In the Kutcher Twitter AfD, people citing WP:INDISCRIMINATE appeared to be using it as a nice way to get rid of articles on pop-culture subjects they detest by claiming it is an "indiscriminate" collection of gossip material without regard to anything that separates it from the norm (the Bennifer AfD mentioned below is a similar case of the policy being abused to ignore the unique notability of the subject). Now, when I cited that policy in prior AfDs it was for these "rumor" articles that literally just tracked down rumors and gossip about a subject and compiled it all in a single article that actually resembled some subject of pseudo-significance. It was an absurd thing that you could do for just about any subject, which is not the case here. You really wouldn't have the sources to do an article "Rihanna on Twitter" that would not just be a random summarizing of things she has said on Twitter because the actual subject of her use of Twitter does not get much attention. Nothing I can find in connection with her on Twitter has any independent significance. Basically it is just reporting her talking about stuff happening to her. That is the kind of difference I would try to find.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 01:01, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• This. More explanation for why I think this is available in my earlier comment, but the long and short of it is that there is nothing inherent about a Twitter account that means it cannot be notable or written usefully about. If some of the current crop of Twitter articles don't meet our standards, that's fine - we have a deletion process that can deal with non-notable or unencyclopedic articles! However, if/when there are articles about notable Twitter accounts - whether that's today, in six months, in five years, whatever - there will be, and will have been, no value in a blanket prohibition on the very concept. Evaluate an article on its merits, not on whether we like the topic or whether our scry glass says that every article about it always will suck. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:06, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• • To both above, the issue is that we need to figure out some line if there are some that should be kept and some that shouldn't. To say "oh, treat each case-by-case" is not a resolution. I am starting on the assuming that WP:V is met, and that they are GNG-notable in that there are sources that talk about the Twitter account and not just the person or repeating what they post. (All three above examples I felt met that) But from that, based on those that don't think these are appropriate, how do we decide that? What line do we use? There's a confluence of BLP, UNDUE, and SIZE/Summary style issues that work together; some are insisting there's no such line at all, but if there is one, we need a strong definition of it. We can't just wave the problem off as it is causing problems. Please feel free to include specific ideas in new sections for !voting, of course. --MASEM (t) 01:40, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• This discussion is...well, sprawling and confusing, first of all. Regardless, While I agree we need a meter-stick to measure (or whack) things with, I don't think it needs to be a Twitter-stick specifically. The question is more, When does WP:IINFO apply? When doesn't it? What is the motivation of the policy? (cf. WP:WHYN) Does anyone have a clear idea of that? If we have some way to agree to that, then that will be the bright line for any 'on Twitter' article, after things like verifiable and notable have been passed, and judging them individually should cause some small measure less strife. I seem to have forgotten my login, I'll recover it momentarily. ~Darryl From Mars 150.35.244.246 (talk) 07:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Twitter is a communication medium like any other. Probably 100 years ago if there was Misplaced Pages people would be saying should we have articles on radio broadcasts? And 15 years ago, should we have articles on blogs? Like anything else, most examples are non-notable, but there's going to be some that are notable, either because they use the medium in an innovative/clever/successful way, or because the communications have a wider influence/effect, or because they're useful in understanding someone who is sufficiently important to merit that understanding (much as historians and scholars use personal letters and diaries to understand figures of the past). People who pioneered use of Twitter as an advertising/communication medium are likely to be notable for their Twitter use, as are people who used Twitter for artistic or political purposes, but those who don't innovate may not be notable. But this can only be decided by studying the notability of the Twitter feed. (But of course there's a difference between notable twitter feeds and spin-offs from articles that have lower notability standards.) --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I want to be clear, again: For this discussion we need to start from the assumption that for "X on Twitter" (or whatever), notability has firmly been established, so that we're talking about the next step of if there are other aspects that make it appropriate or not. (Notability is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a standalone article). --MASEM (t) 12:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Radio shows are a strange comparison to the social media use of already notable individuals. A more apt comparison from earlier eras would be "Correspondence of" articles, and we have very few of those. Siawase (talk) 13:05, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Not so different, see The Jack Benny Program. See also, Letters of Charles Lamb. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

A comedy show with several writers and a large cast? And yes, look at Category:Correspondences and how few entries it has. Correspondence is not something that appears to be generally notable if we go back in time a bit. Siawase (talk) 15:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure, Particular correspondence is notable and particular writers of correspondence are notable. But I was responding to your ill-formed claim that a famous person is not different from a communication outlet, solely because the person is famous. Thus we have Letter, Book, Radio, TV, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:26, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• This. It feels silly that we're discussing the suitability of articles which can be well-sourced, notable and content-complete. True, it may seem that in the majority of cases a person's Twitter account is not independently notable. But sometimes it can be, and making a decision universally will harm the project. (See also the AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTAD, which I'm a member of.) elektrikSHOOS (talk) 18:42, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Other viewpoints

• Okay, after all considerations, notability of these things are.... not easy to define. Nevertheless, another Manual of Style subpage about internet content is needed. Someone must focus more on that rather than focus on notability criteria on internet. MUST. AVOID. SAME. FATE. AS. WP:notability (fiction), as there is WP:manual of Style/Writing about fiction. --George Ho (talk) 01:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

No special guideline is needed, just the usual WP:GNG. Has anyone written a book about Lady Gaga's twitter account? Are there serious articles from reliable sources that survey the history, behavior, and influence of Lady Gaga's twitter account? I just took a quick look at Lady Gaga on Twitter, and there do appear to be quite a few articles cited, in legitimate newspapers, whose main topic is indeed Lady Gaga's twitter account. There is enough material for a substantial article, with no padding or gratuitous quotations or cherry-picking references. Seems like a slam dunk to me.

OK, now I just took a quick look at Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. It seems to be a little more focused on trivia (do we really need to know the exact second that the account was created? do we need a list of his venture-capital investments? technology-related characters that Kutcher plays?? that he advertises digital cameras???), but there seem to be plenty of serious articles that really have this Twitter account as their main topic. I haven't gone over the article carefully, but it appears that even if the non-salient fluff were pared away, there is still plenty of factual material to make an article. The basis for notability is WP:NOTINHERITED from Kutcher's celebrity, it's that this was the first Twitter account to reach 1,000,000 followers. We don't just have a bunch of miscellaneous press coverage, we have a clear explanation for why the account received so much press coverage, in the form of a main fact that has a lot of closely related facts surrounding it, which got covered because that main fact was so important. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we write encyclopedia articles about.

—Ben Kovitz (talk) 02:04, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Like fictional and nonfictional material, WP:IINFO applies to these types. Notability and referencing are less relevant than content itself. Kutcher account needs an analyst, as Suicide of Tyler Clementi and Sam and Diane have analysts, which I've already said in AFD of Kutcher. --George Ho (talk) 02:17, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Well said Ben Kovitz, the multiple angles the Kuthcher account has been covered in reliable sources -- from business, to communications, to philanthropy, to advertising, to media, to marketing, to (don't tell anyone) celebrity, etc. -- is why we write. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:25, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't our usual metrics apply? Primarily, the one that says develop related content in the main article and only split when the content threatens to become too large? Powers 14:34, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

In part, yes, though checking the history of these articles, that doesn't seem to be how they were created (and using the Bieber article as the example, it certainly wasn't from pulling out a section about his Twitter aspects based on its history, nor if we were to merge the articles back into the bios (ingnoring size) would much of these twitter articles retain their content. So the specific examples raise questions. But it still is entirely possible that a "on Twitter" article could be created as a spinout from a large bio article. That remains the question is that an appropriate spinout to meet SIZE aspects? That's a question to be answered here. --MASEM (t) 15:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm concerned about what I see as a conflation of a couple of issues here. First, there's "are the current '...on Twitter' articles we have up to the encyclopedia's standards?" question. This is why there are AfDs running, and it's important that we do evaluate them. Second, there's "is is possible for an '...on Twitter' topic to be notable enough for us?" This is a valid question, though I think the answer is really "that depends entirely on the account in question, doesn't it?" It matters less to me whether they appear as standalone articles or as article sections, but I think we'll find in the near future that commentary that happens on Twitter is going to turn out to be something people write about in some depth, and pre-emptively prohibiting content about those topics will turn out to have limited us unnecessarily.

Now, both of these two issues are valid discussion points, and it's good to see them raised. However, I think there's a third issue being brought into play here, one that's really, seriously obscuring the discussion we should be having about issues 1 and 2. That issue is "do we, personally, like recentist-type content, especially involving newfangled celebrities or newfangled communication mediums?" and I think the issue of whether we like Twitter, or think Justin Bieber is ridiculous, or wonder why the hell all these news bureaus care about what Ashton Kutcher tweets when there's a war on, etc, is acting as a huge derail from what we should be looking at.

It shouldn't matter whether we think a topic is childish or too new - if that were a criterion for our inclusion, I'd be running around nominating every Pokemon article we have for deletion, because you kids and your newfangled games...!. But the fact is we have documentation and sources to show that Bulbasaur is notable, no matter how much its existence makes me want to headdesk. People talk about Pokemon, they write about them, and no matter how silly I find them, they're notable and sourceable. Can the same be said for "...on Twitter" topics, some or all? I obviously can't say for sure, but I do wish the community would focus on addressing that issue rather than the issue of whether those durn kids today have strange taste in what they write about. Relatedly, I would love to know how I've somehow found myself speaking up for anything having to do with Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. One second I was mid-crotchety-cane-thump, the next I was copyediting a Twitter article! A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 20:41, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Bulbasaur article is diversive: it has merchandise, reception, and creation. "<name> on Twitter", on the other hand, is just retelling of events, suitable for Wikinews, and lacks general signifying viewpoint on account as a whole. Viewpoint on specific message from Twitter... is not that general. --George Ho (talk) 20:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Strong support Twitter accounts are no different than any other topic, they are not presumed to be automatically notable or non-notable, they should be considered notable if there's been enough coverage in multiple reliable sources. Yes, it's true that topics like this are prime symbols in grand narratives of The Decline of Western Civilization, this vague (and empirically unrigorous) feeling that "we used to care about important matters but now all we care about is the Kardashians". But such feelings ought to have no bearing on our consideration of whether these articles actually meet the notability policy. If the current articles don't, I'm fine deleting them, but I'm embarassed to see DGG of all people endorsing the notion that a topic can be presumed inherently unencyclopedic. If more serious publications are starting to cover Twitter accounts on a par with blogs or YouTube series as a creative form, who are we to second guess them? (I've seen trends in this direction, if nothing that yet indicates true notability, for instance Pitchfork Media including "best Twitter account" in their end-of-year music polls).

Maybe it's just the "X on Twitter" framing that's tripping us up here. Shit My Dad Says is an article on a discrete creative product; @FakeAPStylebook could be one if you could find enough sources; so what's inherently wrong with @kanyewest or @justinbieber as a topic (given enough sources)? Of course that's not the same as collating every media reference to "X said something on twitter today". We don't have "X on Youtube" articles either but we do have articles such as The Angry Video Game Nerd whose scope basically coincides with a YouTube channel. 169.231.53.116 (talk) 23:23, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

One significant difference is that Shit My Dad Says is notable for being a twitter account. Entertainers are notable for being... entertainers, singers, actors etc. Their participation in social media is a sideline, just one aspect of many of their life outside of the reason for them being notable in the first place. Siawase (talk) 00:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think that's a valid comparison. There aren't the same WP:CONTENTFORK issues with that twitter account. IMO, if that account were the activities of an already notable comedian, perhaps we would merge them there. But since it's uniquely and separately notable, with no other redundant article, the best way to cover it is as a separate article about twitter activities. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:51, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

And on the flip side, there are personalities that have become notable by their blogs/social media (eg Angry Video Game Nerd, Doug Walker), but we generally keep the person and their blog/social media together. --MASEM (t) 17:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

If there are sources about accounts and they are copious and widespread I don't mind them, but the bar should be higher than the GNG, as for accounts of notable people or organizations they are superfluous and belong in a public relations or social media section of their owner.LuciferWildCat (talk) 03:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Just to be specific, since I want to collect as many opinions of this nature as possible; how much higher than the GNG, exactly, would suffice? Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

...Umm... Shall we move this to WP:village pump (idea lab)? Well, there is no policy on exact accounts used by people; just X on Y policies and guidelines, which might be vague. --George Ho (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Depending on how this discussion goes, this might fall under existing policy (like WP:BLP) or guidelines (WP:BIO). It is something that needs addressing. --MASEM (t) 22:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I think there's a wider discussion that needs to be had on forking out single aspects from BLPs. There was also the recent AfD for Personal life of Jennifer Lopez (and current Articles for deletion/Bennifer.) If we simply use the standard of "possible to cobble together enough news coverage to satisfy WP:GNG" there are almost endless aspects that could be broken out as separate articles for high profile celebrities. Siawase (talk) 20:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know for sure if the scope should be expanded to include general split off of BLPs - I'm not saying that the issues aren't related but I'm more worried on the current issue of this "On Twitter" articles which are starting to pop up. If this goes that way, then we should add it. --MASEM (t) 22:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

• I would have to agree with DGG here, that X on Twitter should be the exception rather than the rule, and only when it has the proper coverage that isn't fansite like, or no more than recent news. There may be a few exceptions, but in general, most X on Twitter articles are not encyclopedic for a host of reasons, particularly those listed in our policy WP:NOT. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 01:39, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I would even agree to that but not for DGG's reasoning that they need extra special scholarly sources and thus a new policy, but because most do not have notability, under current policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• I have listed this discussion at Template:Centralized discussion and added an {{rfc}} tag at the top of the discussion. Cunard (talk) 18:18, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Update: Ashton Kutcher on Twitter is deleted. --George Ho (talk) 19:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• I'm new to this, but is the way this discussion is broken up really going to allow us to draw to anything? Half of this page as a far too indented discussion of 'nuh-uh/yah-huh's on something irrelevant, and the rest is a series of individual knight-templar 'no's and long-winded 'only barely's; there doesn't seem to be any exchange or comparison of the arguments offered, if any? Darryl from Mars (talk) 08:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
  • In response, this whole discussion is getting too big. Administrators, I want to split this discussion into WP:village pump (policy)/On Twitter articles or WP:requests for comment/On Twitter articles or something. Please, admins? --George Ho (talk) 08:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Why would you split it??? Its the same discussion. Moving it to its own page may be a solution if there's more involvement but right now there's actually a pretty clear consensus that has very little rebuttal about it. --MASEM (t) 12:34, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, ignoring for the moment that it's not actually clear to me what that consensus you see is, the fact there's very little but is to my point; this is a good format for collecting a variety of opinions, but I can't fathom having a coherent back-and-forth on the arguments presented in this format.

And, ending the moment of ignoring it, what exactly -is- the 'un-rebutted' consensus you see in this? Darryl from Mars (talk) 12:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

There's about 15 to 1 that say that X on Twitter articles are generally unacceptable (yes, not a vote, but at the same time there's reasoning for each entry that's pretty clear what policies apply). --MASEM (t) 12:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes but that's the nature of the divisions made. I dare say that, if we consider the space of possible noun phrases as essentially infinite, almost all things are generally unacceptable. But I worry that you want to apply these general votes to specific situations? For example, as many as four or five of those fifteen express caveats that would lead to 'keep' votes for some of the specific 'on Twitter' articles under consideration, although they say rightly that this kind of article would be -generally- unacceptable. Moreover, there are arguments outside the first two sections, if you don't consider them to be rebuttals because they aren't directly juxtaposed, I can do something to that effect myself, if you like? Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I wrote the titles as "generally acceptable" etc. because like all policy/guidelines, ultimately IAR comes into play. Yes, the 15-to-1 doesn't mean that no "X on twitter" article should exist, but that they should be avoided. When can they be created? Assuming that this consensus remains, that's the next question, what are good metrics to know when a "... on Twitter" article is appropriate, or alternatively, when it is not. For example, in the latter case, based on the discussion here and at AFDs of the existing ones, issue like WP:IINFO come up, as well as UNDUE, as well as being wary that this is BLP-related material. At the same time we have Barack Obama on Twitter which, while at AFD, doesn't appear to be going to deletion any time soon as it is less a personal Twitter account as opposed to one done in the course of a job. So there's more to discuss, the first step was to get the feel for where consensus agrees things were. --MASEM (t) 13:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hn, put like that, I can't help but feel this was foregone then. But fine, that next question is one worth moving to. Might I suggest consideration of each potentially relevant policy in it's own little section, or something like that? Something that winds the arguments into cohesive threads, because I suspect strength in numbers doesn't reflect strength in policy in this case. Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:52, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

My opinion is to deal with these articles on a case by case basis. By setting a policy in stone, we may find ourselves in a tricky situation in future when there is a highly notable incident involving Twitter's use by a celebrity. However, we should also not get carried away and create an article on Twitter use by top-10 celebrities by the number of followers.EngineerFromVega 07:11, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

• Update: The former article has been userfied into User:TonyTheTiger/Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. --George Ho (talk) 07:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• At first, I thought this discussion was about the "X on Twitter" links, i.e. {{Twitter}}, until I noticed there are such articles xD. --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

• generally acceptable vs generally inappropriate are highly misleading divisions and much of the posting above is therefore wasted energy over it. As such even replying to this discussion seems out far left. The requested comment is perhaps best closed and restarted without this misleading setup. Regards, SunCreator 13:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Those were the two initial options but editors were invited to add other suggestions (as done with the heading about not grouping them together). No one else bothered to do so, suggesting there weren't many other options. However, it is clear discussion has favored the concept that these are generally unacceptable, therefore we work from there. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
    • That doesn't seem like a fair comparison, making a new section all for yourself requires a certain amount of will/ego/indignation, that I wouldn't compare it to just adding another few lines to the given opinions. And I'm still not convinced the 'there' you wish to work from is that different from the 'there' we started at. almost anything is generally unacceptable, cf. buildings, Willis Tower. Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
      • I disagree with the argument about creating new sections in a discussion (At least one editor did). And even if you think the initial discussion breakdown was bad, more than enough arguments in the decision point to a clear consensus about these types of articles not being appropriate except under certain conditions. --MASEM (t) 13:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
        • Yes, but you suggested that 'x editors made new sections' implied 'only x editors had other opinions'. Anyways, the point is that there's always 'certain conditions'. Every article on Misplaced Pages had to/has to meet 'certain conditions'. The interesting discussion isn't learning that those conditions exist, it's coming to consensus on what they are/should be. Darryl from Mars (talk) 14:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
          • But again, its pretty clear from discussion that the times where it is appropriate seem far and few between (but never impossible) that IAR is a perfectly fine means to justify the outliers. In general, we should not have "X on Twitter" articles (there's better means of organizing info about a famous person's twitter account) but there's always exceptions. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Let's translate this to other topics

Let's write similar articles, but about people who are not internet celebrities:

• Rossevelt on stamps. Did you know that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a stamp collector and made several designs for US stamps? And then he was depicted in several stamps. And you can find coverage in books.
• Goebbels on poetry. Did you know that Nazi propagand minister Joseph Goebbels wrote an autobiographic novel, two plays and several poems? And that he used poets to write propaganda? Yes, that side of Goebbels is covered in books

And so on and on. When a person is famous enough, articles about him start digressing about minor aspects of his life. By picking pieces here and there, you can write tomes about any minor aspect of a famous person. (see also Siawase's comment above) --Enric Naval (talk) 11:02, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• You've mistranslated. The "Y" in "X on Y" is supposed to be a social networking WWW site where the person has an account. After all, that's what the "on" connotes. Per our usual naming conventions, your articles would be properly named Joseph Goebbels discography and Franklin D. Roosevelt in popular culture or some such, which aren't really the point at hand and aren't the "X on Y" form.

  For what it's worth: When researching Harriet Hanson Robinson recently, I found that she has two Facebook accounts. ("Activities: Women's Suffrage Interests: Books, Sewing". I kid you not. No, they're not in the mirroring-Misplaced Pages section, obviously, since Misplaced Pages has only just gained an article.) This is fairly good Internet-fu for someone who died in 1911. FDR only gets a page in the mirroring-Misplaced Pages section of Facebook. So come back with FDR only when you can write Franklin D. Roosevelt on Facebook to match Harriet Hanson Robinson on Facebook. ☺

  Uncle G (talk) 11:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Well, Roosevelt has appeared in many stamps of many countries, so I could still write Roosevelt on stamps. "Seventeen foreign countries have honored the stamp-collecting President with total of 85 denominations, more foreign stamps than have been issued for any other American." Heck, I could even write about his stamp collection (OK, OK, I mistranslated that) --Enric Naval (talk) 07:10, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Spinoffs

As near as I can tell, these "Twitter" articles are spinoffs of famous people. Now normally such things are Bibliography of X (for books) or Filmography of Y (for films) or Album of Z. I can't imagine why Social Media Activities of X would be any different, as its just another form of media. Yes, its recent media, yes its hard to judge its impact objectively, but SO much ink has been spilled its hard to see why such activities should be forced onto RandomCeleb's main page. Its a fairly natural sort of break, and obviously some of these activities attract a lot of attention. Treat em as subarticles I say: Consideration must be given to size, notability and potential neutrality issues before proposing or carrying out a split.  The Steve  06:39, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

The "...on twitter" articles have very different contents from spun out bibliographies, filmographies and discographies. The latter are almost always lists of works that are in themselves notable. Siawase (talk) 15:44, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

(EC) But when twitter is being taken as a creative medium, the twitter account is usually taken as a discrete creative unit. Individual tweets are never going to be notable, just as we have articles on blogs and not blog posts. Maybe that's the fundamental disconnect, I think of these articles as no different than an article on a blog, it just happens to be one with a 140-ccharacter limit. Not all blogs are independently notable of their authors but some are. Regarding X on the phone, Y on Facebook, I have never seen those discussed as creative forms ( though you could make a case for the Obama campaign's use of Facebook). If we just get away from the distracting "X on Twitter" formulation, the question at stake is whether @justinbieber is independently notable of Justin Bieber. Just like we might argue about whether The Daily Dish is independently notable of Andrew Sullivan.169.231.55.10 (talk) 16:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm saying we should take the whole twitter account as a single work of new media (starring Celeb X), with each tweet being similar to a line of lyrics in a song or a line of dialog in a movie. Obviously very few twitter/facebook/whathaveyou should be split, but we already have a guideline on splitting articles - use that one.  The Steve  05:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Considering the exceptions

By no means am I trying to infer that these two are acceptable, but while the Bieber and Kutcher's have been deleted:

• Lady Gaga on Twitter seems to be accepted
• The Barack Obama on Twitter has an AFD that seems to be heading for keep at this stage, and at least to me, does seem to be a different function/approach than either the Bieber or Kutcher articles.

If we recognize these as exemptions to the general !voting trend about that "'X on Twitter' articles are generally not appropriate" above, then what type of advice can we give to reconcile these exceptions?

My observations is the argument WP:NOTDIARY is strong and prevailing in both previous AFD closures; when much of the page is repeating the events of the person's life as lived out by twitter, the "...on Twitter" article becomes redundant and/or excessively detailed. This is combined with the overall BLP aspect, which is something that we have to be very careful under the Foundation's guidance. For the above counter examples, the Lady Gaga Twitter article has little to do with her as much as that Twitter account; in Obama's Twitter case, its more on his use professionally for the account, there's no diary aspects or BLP aspects that seep into them.

Thus, to start some type of division, we have to look at how the sources discuss the Twitter account, praising or criticizing the accounts as a whole, and not at what is necessarily actually said on the account. In otherwords, there is a GNG aspect here in that we're looking for secondary sources specifically on the account and not on the person themselves. Just having a Twitter account isn't sufficient, and having many sources use the account often to iterate information out from it isn't sufficient.

There is also the Summary Style issue. I think for both Gaga and Obama, their personal articles are already quite long and merging those above Twitter articles back in wouldn't help. This was definitely not the case for Bieber's or Kutcher's, once the NOTDIARY aspects were removed, in that the parent articles are reasonably sized to have a section to talk about their use of Twitter. Thus, the "... On Twitter" articles should only be created when there's a SIZE issue with the personality's main article. Otherwise, a summary of the personality's use of social media is certainly not unwarranted within their respective articles.

A final consideration is that focusing on "...on Twitter" might be a problem. I'm sure, 2-3 years ago, we could probably have some "...on Facebook" pages, and years before that "...on MySpace". I'd rather see encouraging those personalities that use social media to have sections and/or articles towards all social media aspects and not just Twitter; eg "Social media use by Justin Bieber" may be more acceptable (if it was needed) than just "Justin Bieber on Twitter". Social media is here to stay (I would think) and while the means of social media will change with time, the general class of applications and interactions holds true. I think the same can apply to both Gaga's and Obama's articles too, renaming them and including more (IIRC, for example, the President doing YouTube Q&A. --MASEM (t) 16:38, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think the Gaga article is at the bottom of the accounts being mentioned as her Twitter activity appears to mostly get coverage for being popular, without any clear significance beyond that. However, even there I would say it is a case for merging the article, not deleting it. Obama on Twitter would be at the top I think, with the Kutcher article next. I am seeing way too many arguments being thrown around in these AfD's that amount to "I don't like the way the article currently looks based on my selective reading of it and therefore I presume it must not be a worthy subject for an article." Those sorts of arguments should be getting tossed out as invalid, not heeded by an admin as though it were gospel.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Wow, Masem, I agree with all your points. 1)These articles should be massively trimmed to have only the significant and widely reported stuff. 2)Twitter may be too specific, and generally articles should be some form of "Celebrity + social media" 3) Such articles are only necessary when a section on social media wouldn't fit into the main article. Also, merge not delete is probably a much better choice.  The Steve  02:48, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

So, just to be specific, we have had a variety of arguments that there must be some additional thing to justify inclusion for these articles. Supposing for a moment that you see these articles as potentially having that thing, could you sort of...describe it in a few words, or potentially give an example of a good thing in comparison to a not-so-good thing? Darryl from Mars (talk) 08:37, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, no problem. For me, its all about sourcing. If Time magazine or Businessweek mentions what you twat in a serious article, there it is. If you only get one sentence every now and then, in the nature of "Oh yeah, and the twit is @celebX", that's not it. Quality sources vs. occasional mention. YMMV, naturally.  The Steve  04:33, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, the mileage varies. While the three of us may manage to agree on that, I worry about how effective touting 'the quality of the sources' would be against WP:NOTDIARY and IINFO in an actual AfD, since sources seem to fall under notability and verifiability requirements, which those policies explicitly disregard. Darryl from Mars (talk) 11:25, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure those policies were NOT intended to do an end run around good sourcing. Typical AFD misuse really. It doesn't make much difference to me, since back when I started editing here, I like it/don't votes were pretty much the only thing we used. It all comes back to editorial discretion really. If a majority of the editors are convinced that all twitter articles are beneath wp's notice, that's good enough for me.  The Steve  02:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Typical misuse indeed...Well, that is a discussion that would interest me, if it comes up; I can't say I'm as comfortable with that extent of democracy on these issues. Darryl from Mars (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

How can someone write a reliably article about "... on twitter" when twitter is supposed not to be a reliable source? Besides of that, most stuff is fancruft. To me, "... on twitter"-pages are not acceptable. Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:39, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

If you look into whichever articles are remaining/userified, you'll see that most of the sources are news reports from more or less reliable sources that do some degree of analysis of the account or tweets, and not primary sources (that is, directly from twitter/tweets). For example, . You probably wanted to make this comment in a section further up though, I think? Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

It is a quite chaotic discussion by now. You have my permission to move this to the appropriate section. Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

1. http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/science_tech/twitter-plays-outsize-role-in-2012-campaign-wcpo1336415661507

Summarizing to date, possible route forward

So considering what we have said:

• There's general consensus that "X on Twitter" articles aren't encyclopedic and have problems considering we're careful with BLPs as well.
• A celebrity's use of a social media service may be notable but its got to be more than just reiterating what the celeb says on the service.
• Even if in such cases, spinning these off prematurely from a celebrity's bio article is not wise.

Given that, I would suggest that the following courses of action be taken:

• We should never focus on one particular social media outlet; instead, the use of all manners of social media by a celeb to interact with fans or the like should be the thought process here, calling out specific services as examples if needed.
• Splitting this off should be avoided at all costs, simply to avoid the spinoff becoming bio-like and encouraging poor sourcing/additions. Most celebs will have other material (film/discographies) that can be pulled off first that are more neutral and less BLP than how social media is used.
• If the social media aspect is pulled out , such articles should be "X's use of social media"; these need to focus on the account itself and how its used, and not so much what actually is said by the account.

The current articles that are inplace shouldn't be touched, though editors involved are free to discuss issues, but we should strongly discourage other articles of the type "X on Twitter" if they are created in the future without considering other ways of discussing the topic. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I just was BOLD and moved Barack Obama on twitter to Communications of Barack Obama, some celebreities have extensive contact with the traditional media and social media and have noteworthy public relations teams often with spokes or lawyers that are of note even on here so this way we can avoid an unlimited amount of BO on facebook, youtube etc. and it can be more encyclopedic and comprehensive, however I highly suggest we add that since these articles suitability may be marginal we should set the bar very highLuciferWildCat (talk) 20:48, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

X on Misplaced Pages articles

Slightly off-topic but relevant: I recall an article Elephant (Misplaced Pages article) which was quickly deleted. If we can have 'X on twitter' articles, why not to have 'X (Misplaced Pages article)', too? Imagine having Barack Obama (Misplaced Pages article) which will go through the article development, related disputes, blocks, sanctions, arbitration cases, etc. ;-). EngineerFromVega 10:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Aside from areas where legal or ethical concerns constrain us, if there are truly enough reliable sources about the topic then it's a viable candidate for an article regardless of our own distaste or personal amusement. ElKevbo (talk) 10:35, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

How to fix Misplaced Pages

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

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

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

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

4. Recognize that admins are part of the problem, and take steps to restore the honor of being an admin -- My idea is to create a discussion board called something along the lines of Misplaced Pages:Administrator grievances where users could post grievances about admins. If an uninvolved crat decided that the grievance was real, he or she would then place the admin on probation (i.e., take away their admin tools temporarily) so the community could discuss the grievance (the crat would open the discussion). After 2 weeks, the following action would be taken:

• If the result was Retain: The crat would close the discussion as such, and the matter would be over, with admin tools given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found not guilty).
• If the result was Caution or No consensus: The crat would close the discussion as such and give the admin tools back, but the admin would be warned not to do whatever it is they did again, and the discussion and items from it would be able to be used as evidence in future discussions regarding the administrator's conduct.
• If the result was Desysop: Again, the crat would close the discussion as such, and admin tools would not be given back (kind of like if it were a trial and the admin was found guilty).

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

I know this is a big proposal, but when they left, Fastily and other users gave us a clear message: "This is what's wrong with Misplaced Pages. Fix it." That is why I am here today, writing this proposal. Please, take the time to think about this before !voting "oppose". ChromaNebula (talk) 21:35, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

1: 3RR is not a hard-fast rule, users can and are blocked for "edit-warring", regardless of numbers or time-span, but at the same time 3RR is a good way of saying "ok you've reverted this twice now, one more and you'll be eligible for a block".

2: Do you actually understand what the MOS style is? It's just about trying to keep articles uniform and general project wide consistency, it's what stops people changing english variations every ten minutes, randomly bolding for emphasis and capitalising Hims when referring to the big guy.

3:It's not biting to delete an article which doesn't belong here. Yes people should be nice to new users and yes people should be called out on it if they go yell at the new kid cos they wrote an article about their awesome band they just started in their garage, but trying to make a rule that says be super-nice and make sure you don't offend them otherwise you're blocked is just silly and unworkable.

4:Admins are part of the problem, sure they are. How exactly? If admins are part of the problem then all the non-admins must be the rest of problem, you can't just say "admins are causing all the trouble so they need to be kept in place" just like you can't say "the french are stealing all our women they must be kept in place" after one french bloke marries the girl next door. Yes we all know that there needs to be a better way of dealing with editors who have the bit and who misuse it and yes there should probably be a better way to create admins, but creating a big board for anyone to go have a bitch about the admin who just deleted their article or made a decision they don't agree with is just going to make things worse.

5:Not to be rude but is this your big Miss World ending? The whole point of wikipedia is to encourage people to work together, with so many people of course there will be fights, there is no way of preventing arguments--Jac16888 21:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I did not recommend not deleting any articles. If a newbie creates an article in good faith that doesn't meet our standards, the article should be deleted, but the creator should be gently reminded of our standards rather than having policies shoved in their face. Likewise, terms like "trash" and "worthless junk" should only be applied to articles created in bad faith. Creators of deleted articles should be informed of our standards, but civilly, politely and without insult. As for the MoS thing, people know what proper English is, and any genuine mistakes can be easily corrected without an MoS. And I never said administrators were all of the problem, only some of it. Incivility from regular editors is dealt with via blocks and bans, but there's currently no way to discipline an admin (they can easily unblock themselves) apart from ArbCom, and ArbCom only handles the most serious cases. (By the way, I hope the noticeboard would rarely be used). As for 3RR, the edit warring/3RR noticeboard is mostly focused on 3RR, and as I said before, exceptions and the "you-don't-have-to-break-this-rule-to-get-blocked" clause make the rule pretty darn complicated and, in my opinion, more trouble than it's worth. I know there will be fights, but there have to be things we can do to discourage fighting and encourage collaboration and peace. We can't stop all fights, but surely we can reduce the number and severity of fights. How? Maybe a clause that says that the more aggressive warrior automatically loses the argument? ChromaNebula (talk) 01:16, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The deletion notices that are generally provided are informative and polite, are there specific cases you know of where new users are being repeatedly insulted because I'm not aware of any major problem except for some robotism. Mos wise, the whole point is that people don't know what proper English is, or rather everybody has their own version, hence MOS, if everybody had perfect grammar and those yanks got over their z fetish then maybe we wouldn't need one. Well you've got one fact wrong right there, yes an admin can unblock themself, except that to do so is cause for an immediate desyop, as has been demonstrated on more than one occasion, and I suggest you start reading ANI if you think such a noticeboard would be rarely used, why not see how many cases of "Admin abuse" you can spot, and how many are actually "admin abused". If you think it's complicated now, how bad would it being if there were no rules at all, 3RR does in fact stop more experienced users from going crazy with the reverting, and can be a way to quickly stop an edit war if, just like a warning to both users in an edit war regardless of 3RR that if they carry on they'll be blocked can stop it too. Ff the noticeboard is that difficult to work with then its the noticeboard that is the issue, why not try to create change there? The simple truth is that so many people with such different backgrounds spread out so thinly that arguments are inevitable and finding them is hard enough, let alone preventing them. With most arguments the only way to fix things is look for common ground and reach out to other parties to form a consensus, having "because x did this, y wins the argument and z goes in the article" is just unpractical--Jac16888 09:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Jac16888. But if we're doing some blue sky thinking, how about giving two extra reverts to the person who starts talkpage discussion about a dispute? If you do that, then the person to start discussion effectively wins. Knowing that would dramatically change the dynamics of edit wars. Hard to say exactly how it might work out in practice (definitional issues about "starting" and "discussion" might be a problem, possibly solvable by application of common sense), but it might be interesting to try. Maybe we can figure out a way to apply it on a limited basis to certain edit-warry articles, as a way to test it. Rd232 22:11, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Vast thousands are still here, but not talking about WP:MOS: After months of examining the editor-count statistics, I have tried to explain that the "editors-leaving" view is something of an illusion, because many editors are also joining, but the edit-stats show only limited use of talk-pages. In fact, I am fairly certain it can be said: the majority of Misplaced Pages editors do not edit talk-pages much, but rather focus on article-edits. Meanwhile, the WP:MOS rules are only "suggestions", so the admins should be reminded to allow some slack there. However, we really need all those MOS rules, when people want to force a choice; otherwise, someone will claim there is no rule to prevent 1 million ("1,000,000") from being changed to a "better" format as "1.00.00.00" or "1\000\000". Ifever people want to add too much wild text, then WP:MOS provides a clear foundation to explain the typical format for articles.

Part of the illusion of "fewer editors" (by comparing editor-counts) is because experienced editors, who formerly made over 100 small article-edits per month, now have learned to branch out into other namespaces. The count of active editors with "100+ edits" is for the main article namespace, where talk-page edits, templates, files (images), categories, and "Help:" or "WP:" edits do not add into that "100+ level". Hence, as editors learn to edit categories, or make minor changes to "WP:" guideline pages, those edits are not counted in the main editor-counts, but rather, as talk-page counts, or "other" counts. We even have some admins who make "147 edits" in a month, many crucial edits, daily, fixing 50 grammar errors in an article as 1-edit-per-page, but at the end of June, have a total of only "78 edits" or such (in article namespace), appearing to fall from the core "100+ edit" group into the occasional "5+ edits" group. Instead, looking closely at the editor counts, at the monthly editor-statistics data, reveals there are over 10,000 editors who edit Misplaced Pages on a daily basis, just not all article-edits every day. That count of 10 thousand editors helps explain why so much happens every day in Misplaced Pages, but remember most of those people are not posting messages in talk-pages. They truly are the "silent majority" who are rapidly changing articles but not talking about it for several days at a time. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:52, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

They are not "only suggestions." If they were, it would not be possible to punish anyone for violating them. I got brought up on AN/I for going against WP:LQ. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

I'd argue that some of this is a training issue, and teaching people about Misplaced Pages, how to use Misplaced Pages, and in particular training those who are on the front lines of the project meeting these new users so they don't make an ass out of themselves or drive away those who might be beneficial to the project. None of that is happening right now, where the training consists of reading a bunch of dry policy pages, "on the job" training where you are forced to sink or swim (more sink than swim), and if you are very lucky you might be able to attend a Wikimania conference where one of the talks/discussions might be about how to be a more effective admin. The process of developing a competent editor on Misplaced Pages is a very Darwinian attitude right now, and Misplaced Pages is weaker because of that too. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

You aren't arguing that differently to me. I acknowledged that deletion errors are a problem, and you've given some excellent reasons why they are a problem. You also raised the issue of newbies and how poorly we handle them, I'd agree with you there as well. But neither of these are about people leaving the project, which is what started the thread, they are really more about people not being able to properly join the project. Yes we have huge problems in the way we treat good faith newbies, and its an important topic, but there are big differences between our problems in retaining experienced editors and our problems in recruiting new ones. There are some developments in the pipeline, WYSIWYG editing will make a big difference to newbies, though as with any change it may not be welcome to the regulars. There are some relatively easy fixes, template bombing would be reduced if we replaced maintenance templates such as deadend, uncategorised and orphan with automatically generated hidden cats. One of the most bitey aspects of deletions could be ended if we put an obligation on deletion taggers to inform authors. Other problems are more difficult, not least because the community doesn't agree on the problems. BTW don't assume that it is the admins who are most jaded when it comes to IPs and Newbies. most admins don't do ether newpage patrol or recent changes, and our most active hugglers and many of our most active patrollers are not admins. ϢereSpielChequers 07:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

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

We desperately need new editors because we desperately need to improve the quality of our content. Our content needs to be GA quality or better, in my opinion. Of our core editors, I'd say maybe 10% are able to improve the quality of our articles in one way or another. Here's the numbers I think we need.

• We need 10,000 people that can properly reference an article with high quality references from reliable sources
• We need another 10,000 that can write high-quality prose
• We need another 10,000 that can organize content in a meaningful way for a proper encyclopedia article
• We need another 10,000 that can properly copyedit an article
• We need another 10,000 that are able to research and expand our stubs

That's 50,000 editors just to fix our existing quality problems. If only 10% of new users fit into one of the above groups, that means we need to go through 500,000 new editors just to get the fifty thousand we need to become a decent quality encyclopedia. I say we desperately need new editors because our quality depends upon it. 64.40.54.44 (talk) 07:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The way to encourage good new editors, and to retain good experienced editors, would be to more rigorously enforce existing procedures with much less tolerance of "but I'm only new and I can't take the time to read all those links on my talk page because I have to tell the world about my wonderful news". Johnuniq (talk) 07:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, there is nothing wrong with the existing procedures and policies, there is something wrong with US as a community. Adding more red tape will not fix the problem, calling each other on grounds of civility and creating better tools to manage the information is the trick. WikiHow and the FB Places Editor have proven that last point to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I would also add a couple more topics to this debate. W

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

See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Editor Retention (WP:WER). (See also Help:Talk pages#Indentation. How can I follow it here now?)
—Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Well we shouldn't scrap the MoS, but maybe there should be a way to keep people's whims out of it. For example, there's a rule called WP:LQ that requires British punctuation throughout Misplaced Pages, even on articles that are otherwise written in other varieties of English. An article on the American Civil War shouldn't use British punctuation. As a trained writer and editor, I find it insulting that I am required to use punctuation that is flat-out wrong within the context of American English.

I don't think that the length of the MoS is as big of an issue as it might seem. Most manuals of style are meant to be spot-used rather than read cover to cover. The table of contents (and CTRL-F) help users find the passages they need pretty quickly.

The MoS should be held to a standard at least as high as regular articles: every rule in it must be backed up by reliable sources, not people's pet peeves. Darkfrog24 (talk) 05:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Some elements of the MoS can be sourced of course, but others are a choice - quotation marks, serial comma etc vary between publications in the same country depending on a choice of house style, not reliable sources. pablo 08:19, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

That is true of the serial comma and title-style vs. sentence-style capitalization but not of American vs. British punctuation. In U.S. English the overwhelming majority of sources say, "putting periods and commas inside the quotation marks is right and leaving them outside is wrong." The overwhelming majority of British sources say "place periods and commas inside or outside depending on whether they apply to the quoted portion or the entire sentence." It's not optional. This is an ENGVAR issue and should be treated like one. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few counterpoints:

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

elektrikSHOOS (talk) 19:07, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Kudos to you for bringing up an important strategic subject. Above I see the most common "shut-down" response which goes something like this: "Claims of the worse case scenario ("sky is falling") are false, therefore, no significant changes are called-for." I tend to think that the biggest symptoms of problems are that Misplaced Pages has "plateaued out" in two major areas:

• Articles involving contentious areas (or more specifically, areas where there is a real world conflict or contest going on) are almost all permanently disasters. These are almost all of low quality, biased and misleading. People who value their sanity have mostly left them as being hopeless situations, and the talk pages of those articles are usually vicious nasty places.
• There is a lack of expert editors participating at many articles that need them, and so many many the articles have "plateaued out" at a mediocre level.

I tend to think that some changes in main policies are the most important part of the fix. And in general, we need to start recognizing that the persistent problems involve MISUSE of the rules, NOT violation of the rules, and work on policies should start to be guided by that understanding. Of course the total number of editors is has either an effect on or is affected by this, but is not the direct measure. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:01, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Canvassing

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

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

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

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

If it is agreed that this is canvasing then Misplaced Pages:Canvassing needs update to include advice on AFDS. I feel advice here ] in section Notifying substantial contributors to the article allows standard notification.Edinburgh Wanderer 14:55, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Even if hundreds of editors have contributed to articles later nominated for deletion, maybe that should "skew" the discussion. I certainly don't see any real concern over notifying six. That's what you get when you nominate over a hundred articles for deletion. (Incidentally, I learned of this AFD through deletion sorting lists, and don't recall ever editing these myself). postdlf (talk) 15:53, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Neithier did i never edited them, only came across them because of an edit war report on the nominator let me to look why he was still tagging over 24 hours later never tagged them all, or notified even one editor.

As the admin in question, I don't have a great problem with two. The discussion was whether to notify all article creators on a large AFD: that would have resulted in six people being notified, all of whom were likely to vote to keep, based on the fact that they had created one or more of the articles. It goes against the vote-stacking issue, even if the notifications were in good faith, because the voters were all more likely to vote one way than the other. Six votes is enough to distort any AFD result.—Kww(talk) 15:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

You cannot prove six is excessive and ] seems very clearly to allow use of a standard notification template. That is shown in this section Notifying substantial contributors to the article Edinburgh Wanderer 16:20, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

What do you want for proof that six is excessive? A statistical analysis of how many articles attract six voters? Omitting a courtesy notification is harmless, and notifying a biased group of editors is not. Erring on the side of caution would argue for not notifying in a case like this.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

There is something wrong with your sig causing and error to appear every time you reply until i reply. Other commentators disagreed with you in the AFD, also the link i provided shows you should notify as a common courtesy. Your accusation and threat against me is unfounded based on the current wording at canvasing and by the link at the AFD page. That AFD was well over one hundred nominations some weren't even tagged six creators is not canvassing. Unless you can prove that six notifications when people viewing over one hundred noms would only lead to six replys you don't have a valid point. there were more than six replies in just over 24 hours with six days left to run most of them in a few hour period none of them were who i advised. Since you cant back up that claim the why don't we let other people reply. Did you read the comments made at the AFD that it was not canvassing.Edinburgh Wanderer 16:31, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Well the real question here is not the number of people but specifically whether you can count these article authors as a "Partisan" audience, per the Canvassing guideline. Obviously, we are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and those who have actually taken an interest in an article actually have a stake in the outcome, since they've invested time in the article. Does this necessarily mean they will vote 'Keep' as a rule? Are they partisan? Our general principle at Misplaced Pages is that anyone is welcome to edit any article, and that we want to encourage more of that. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, a poorly attended AfD is just as partisan-biased if people aren't able to pay attention during the short window it may be active. The Misplaced Pages Deletion policy has a strong bias in favor of finding alternatives to deletion, and the AfD guideline even says "While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion". AfD debates should be decided on the merits and strength of arguments not the number of people who show up and !vote Keep or Delete. If admins or editors are not closing debates on that basis, then we need to remind AfD closers what the actual policy is and enforce that. But keeping people out of a debate who have an obvious stake in it, especially if it is a neutrally worded notice seems to fly in the face of our Deletion policy, our AfD process, and our Civility pillar. -- Avanu (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

This does not "fly in the face" of anything. The purpose of an AFD is to have an objective evaluation of whether the article merits inclusion, and that means that one should not invite any group of people that are predisposed to either delete or to keep. I don't know how you can argue that people don't have a predisposition to keep their own work.—Kww(talk) 06:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

By that metric, having the nominator put their reasoning at the top of the AfD for all to see is another largely predisposing thing. For objective evaluation, the article should simply be anonymously listed, and then anyone who wishes to participate in the discussion must investigate the article for themselves to see if it merits inclusion. Objectively, of course. Anyways, so long as AfD isn't just a vote, but an evaluation of arguments, six people that are voting keep just because it's their article shouldn't be hard to discount, since we're assuming the case where their reasons don't actually justify their votes. Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:38, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

This is the exact wording on the notification page

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

Edinburgh Wanderer 16:46, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

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

I take great issue with the notion that participation from the content creators or contributors at an AFD causes "distortion," as if the policy-wonks likely to wander through an average AFD (myself included) are somehow a more important community than the editors who have actually worked on the content. If there are so many creators of the content you have nominated in a single AFD that their participation will outweigh others, then that says something about the scale of the nomination; and compare a situation in which one editor has unilaterally created a mass of articles no one else supports with what we had here. I simply see no merit to excluding notification of creators because there were a lot of creators, instead quite the opposite. One might as well argue against putting AFD notices on articles at all, on the claim that the greater number of visiting readers interested and editors who have it watchlisted will "distort" the results. Kww was wrong here. postdlf (talk) 16:59, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

• If a policy or guideline requires or even suggests that you notify certain individuals, making a neutral template notification should never be considered impermissible canvasing. Maybe the wisdom of the AfD notification should be evaluated, but as long as it tells you to notify people the notifications are permissible. Monty₈₄₅ 17:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
  • That's a very good point; when done with the AFD of a single article, that's not going to be a problem, but a nominator should be aware that nominating 100+ articles at the same time and expected to get a delete needs to realize how the potential number of article creators should be notified and what their disposition will be to the mass AFD. If they know they're knocking on a wasp's net, maybe the solution is not a mass AFD but an open discussion on the matter at an appropriate talk page. --MASEM (t) 15:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
    • I entirely agree with postdlf, Monty845 and Masem: who is more likely to give (or not give) appropriate reasoning to keep an article than those who created it? AFD is not a vote: a poorly reasoned keep by an article's author will likely work against an effort to keep it. Not notifying content creators is frankly offensive to their work and only re-enforces the impression that AFD is frequented by people who are not involved in content creation. SFB 15:55, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
• I believe that notifying the authors would be fine, but if you didn't want to do that for some reason, it would probably be just as good to notify the relevant WikiProject, which is another thing that the AFD advice suggests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Kww, if people follow the rules of closure, then even 1000 people showing up shouldn't be a problem. AfDs are supposed to be based on consensus, which is supposed to be grounded in good arguments, based in policy and guidelines. If people don't base their arguments on that, the argument should be tossed. Consensus is not supposed to just be what is popular, unless you feel that WP:Ignore All Rules is the best way to close AfDs. -- Avanu (talk) 06:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I wish I shared your faith that other admins would stop counting votes. I've found that any effort to evaluate consensus that results in an evaluation different than simple counting would achieve causes controversy.—Kww(talk) 12:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I have no faith that they are doing it correctly, simply that I know what the rules are supposed to be on AfDs. If these are being run like votes, then we need to either change the rules, which I think would be a bad idea, or enforce the rules, which is what we should be doing regardless. -- Avanu (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Concur with Avanu, if anyone has a reasonable argument that an AfD was closed as a simple vote count, over consensus grounded in good arguments, they should bring it up for discussion. If there are 100 "Keep because I like it" votes and 3 "Delete per BLP" it should close delete. There will always be border line cases, but where it is clear, bring it up, first with the closing editor (tactfully). Then elevate as needed. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with everyone above concerning contacting those who may have edited a page (indeed, it's part of why we place a notice on the page - the idea that those who may read or edit the page may have it on their watchlist. However, Kww makes a very good point. All too many closers count "votes". Part of the problem of course is that when a closer doesn't, there's often a firestorm. If we find a way to deal with these issues, then the canvassing issue becomes less of a concern. - jc37 15:55, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I looked at this and Misplaced Pages:Village pump (idea lab)#Thoughts on AfD.2FCSD Reform () and wonder - would some sort of informal optional checklist for closer of AfD discussion (recommending, among other things, let's say, to list the arguments and judge what support each of them has) help..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:52, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

File:Paint 7.png

Um... it should use the {{Microsoft screenshot}} template? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 16:58, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

It probably could. I also suspect the drawing needs a separate notice. Anomie⚔ 20:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

On closer look, maybe not. One of the requirements for {{Non-free Microsoft screenshot}} is that the screenshot not contain third-party content, which might include the drawing. That might be a question for WP:MCQ. Anomie⚔ 20:56, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Images of fictional characters and/or shows in Getty Images

File:Jaleel White Steve Urkel.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was deleted because it is licensed to Getty Images and is used commercially, and prior publication does not erase later commercial intent. File:Cheers cast photo.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was deleted for the same reasons. I tried deleting File:Frasier Crane.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) because it is licensed to Getty, even if the original author is NBC or Paramount. Nevertheless, someone challenged it, and I am almost ready to nominate it for deletion. I wonder if any image of a fictional character or show fits the bill of WP:NFC#UUI, as these images themselves are not notable enough as stand-alone articles. If not, shall they be excluded from fitting the criteria of photo agencies? --George Ho (talk) 18:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Working on the assumption that a character is notable, either a photo of the character (from a press agency kit, most likely) or a screenshot of the character is generally accepted, but as you note, if that photo is coming from an agency like Getty that are publishing the photos commercially, we can't use them, and need to find another source. That is, the respect for commercial opportunities and the issue with photo publication entities trump the UUI aspects. Same if we're talking a cast photo to be used within the description of a show. --MASEM (t) 18:11, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a question to be asked too: where did the original photo come from? Is it the case that a press agency pack get to Getty, who put those photos up for commercial redistribution? (In this case, if we can demonstrate the photo actually came from the press agency pack and thus Getty doesn't own the rights to it, we can use the press agency photo) Or is it that the photo is exclusively from Getty's archives, meaning that we can't use it at all. This is a tough question to answer and so if Getty images or other agencies are involved, and we can't positively determine the original photo source, we need to play it safe and delete such images. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

But what about original and subsequent intentions of original authors? Have photos been originally distributed as publicity photos or commercial photos? Either way, would subsequent intentions triumph original intentions, or the other way around? Does commerciality triumph publicity? --George Ho (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, is the short answer. Given the *broadness* of Getty's catalog, and the fact that you can click a button on Flickr to publish an image via Getty, probably means that there are copyrighted photos belonging to party A, uploaded elsewhere without copyright licensing (read, possibly fair use) by party B, and picked up by Getty based on party B's intentions, ignoring what A had intended. I have no idea of how Getty works to assure uploaded photos are owned by the person that says they are (just as with Flickr, there's lots of images "licensed" as CC-BY but are clearly copyrighted elements without validation the copyright owner said it was ok). Unfortunately, because it's Getty, we have to play bad cop here. --MASEM (t) 18:31, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

George, your question goes to the source information, which is as good a proxy for "intention" that we can have. If the original source of an image hosted by Getty was a press kit, then it shouldn't matter that it is now part of Getty's archive. And a screenshot has none of these concerns, and should be readily obtainable for any TV or film character. Your initial post made it sound like you were (incorrectly) thinking it was the subject matter of fictional characters that was at issue. postdlf (talk) 18:37, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Then why was the "Steve Urkel" image deleted? Should deletion be reviewed? One of my mentors MGA73 says no review. However, ask Nyttend; s/he challenged speedy deletion proposal. Masem is uncertain, but you said it doesn't matter. Now I'm confused. --George Ho (talk) 18:47, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

What do you mean, why was the Urkel image deleted? Your question implies we just contradicted something when I thought it was explained very clearly and consistently. The Urkel image was deleted because it was from a commercial source (Getty), there was no evidence it previously originated from a non-commercial source (such as a press kit), and a screenshot was already in use to depict the character that had none of those problems. This is what we just explained, and it was quite clear from the FFD itself, so your confusion confuses me. Maybe you should take some time to re-read and think through these comments, and then come back later when you've had a chance to digest it all if you still have questions. postdlf (talk) 22:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Very suspicious image. Getty credits the image to "Bill Reitzel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank". The image was made by NBC and NBCU Photo Bank appears to be another commercial image host belonging to NBC. The site contains information about image licensing and pricing, so I would assume that any image on that site would count as a WP:NFCC#2 violation. I tried locating this specific image by searching for the term "Frasier Crane", but the NBCU Photo Bank returned 40 pages with 25 images per page, so it takes too much time to search through them all, but I assume that the image is there somewhere. I would say that it should be deleted per WP:NFCC#2 since it seems that individual copies of the image are sold not only by Getty Images but also directly by NBC through the NBCU Photo Bank. I am aware that anyone can make photos available through Getty using Flickr, but wouldn't Flickr images normally be credited to the Flickr account holder? I would expect Getty to treat Flickr images as own works by default, even if the images are copyright violations on Flickr. This image is not credited to some obscure Flickr user but to NBC directly. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

You simply missed this, which I saved in image description: GettyImages.com. --George Ho (talk) 20:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Stefan2 (talk) 21:18, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Unsorted Error: Invalid RfC category specified: |Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

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

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

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

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

• If the block was otherwise good, and the only issue is they made the block while involved, the admin should be summarily {{trout}}ed and then everyone should move on. If the block was bad, and they were involved, and it can't be resolved to satisfaction at WP:AN/I it should be sent to WP:RFC/U and eventually Arbcom if the recalcitrant admin doesn't respond to the problem appropriately. Monty₈₄₅ 20:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A block can be good or bad by nature, to me the problem then is the wording. I think we have to be clear on something as important as the blocking policy, if the policy states Must Not then they are not allowed to do so for any reason. If we feel there may be circumstances where they can block then the wording should be made less harsh. An admin will know whether they are involved or not before they block, or be aware they could be considered involved.Edinburgh Wanderer 21:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, no. I've seen plenty of instances where "But you were involved!" was followed by a rejection of that assertion either by consensus, WP:IAR, or WP:COMMONSENSE. Determining involvement is sometimes a matter of judgement and if an admin, who has a good record, errs, they shouldn't be raked over the coals. --NeilN 22:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Right, the rule against acting while involved serves two purposes. First and most importantly, it is designed to stop an admin from letting the heat of the moment get the better of them and using their tools to give themselves an advantage in an editing dispute. The second purpose is avoid the appearance that an admin may have used there tools to give themselves such an advantage. If the block was otherwise good, the second purpose is still at issue, but its not as big a deal. If the first purpose is at issue, it raises a question about their fundamental suitability to remain an admin. Monty₈₄₅ 22:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

Sounds like WP:CREEP to me. --NeilN 00:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The Atlantic article on declining ranks of Misplaced Pages admins

I wanted to steer people's attention to today's article in The Atlantic online: 3 Charts That Show How Misplaced Pages Is Running Out of Admins. The author, Robinson Meyer, discusses several charts shown at Wikimania and discusses the drop-off in admin counts at en-wiki:

In June 2010, six people became admins. March of that year saw only two promotions...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zachlipton (talk) 21:15, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

RFA is to a veteran user, what Misplaced Pages is to a new user. It is a symptom of the community being overly critical. It will only change when the community decides to change itself. Nothing else will fix it. It's that simple. 64.40.54.3 (talk) 23:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

How to fix Misplaced Pages? Tags

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

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

Pretty sure this is a perennial proposal by now... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 04:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

Part of the problem is that we undeniably have over-tagging, because people are sometimes reticient about removing tags from articles ("I haven't cleaned it all up", "I don't know if I'm allowed to") or simply forget to (especially with section editing). Even if the proportion of problem articles is constant, the number tagged will thus seem to balloon.

One approach that would help a lot is to get readers to interact the tags - I've wondered before about the practicality of a one-click system, a la HotCat, which allows readers to easily remove no-longer-appropriate tagging... Andrew Gray (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags. It is simply false that there is presently an "over-tagging problem". What's more, it is undeniably better to have an article with superfluous tags (which any competent editor can remove at will) than an article which is missing tags that apply (which means that it isn't categorised for appropriate cleanup and bears no simple indication of how to improve it). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 14:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

What constitutes "tiny proportion" in your mind? Last I looked, about 6% of articles were tagged with {{unref}}—and that's just one template alone. About a quarter of WPMED's articles are tagged with some sort of clean-up template. I suspect that's reasonably typical, and I don't think that counts as "tiny proportion". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm at a loss as to what your answer is to 6% of pages being tagged as unreferenced. Should they not be tagged? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother tagging unreferenced stubs, since a glance at the page shows they are unreferenced, but you said, "Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags." I do not agree with your assertion that "Only a tiny proportion of our articles have any tags." I believe that up to a quarter of our articles have some type of tag, which is an entire an order of magnitude above what I'd call "a tiny proportion". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

My use of "over-tagging" here is on a per-article basis, not an overall one - I do think that many more articles have problems than have problem tags, but at the same time there are a substantial number of articles which have too many tags because the problems are since resolved (or were never really present, in a few cases). I don't think these two issues are antagonistic, or that improving one is at the cost of the other - in fact, some of the root causes may be the same. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:07, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Whether you agree with the fact we have an "over-tagging" problem or not, I think the real concern should be focused on actually trying to fix the problem instead of simply drive-by tagging it in the hopes that somebody else will come by to fix it. The chances that somebody else will fix it is decreasing every time Misplaced Pages loses more editors. Plus, for articles that have multiple tags, I suspect that it may be scaring some people out of editing it, because there may be a perception that the article may have too many issues to fix and it's just an insurmountable task. Or others may steer clear of them because they might think there's some sort of edit war going on and they want to avoid controversy. WTF? (talk) 17:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes but it's often not so easy and/or very time consuming to fix problems that are easy to see are problems. Never forget we're all volunteers here. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Marking the problems is also a good thing, much better than doing nothing, which that "actually trying to fix the problem instead of simply drive-by tagging it" too often becomes. Not everyone who can notice a problem can fix it.

Anyway, there was one thing you said that is really worth notice: "Perhaps the tags could be redesigned to be a little less intrusive or less annoying as well?". So, to start, what makes you think that the tags are "intrusive" and "annoying"? Is it the shape, the size, the colours, the icons, the wording..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think what bugs me the most is that they're generally placed at the top of articles, and for articles with multiple tags, you sometimes have to scroll down at least half a page just to see the content! That seems a bit excessive. Maybe for articles with multiple issues (or, let's just say, they totally suck), a single "THIS ARTICLE COMPLETELY SUCKS" tag would be appropriate and be done with it. Then, you don't have five or six tags going down the page -- leave the details about why the article sucks to be discussed in the talk page. WTF? (talk) 21:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"or articles with multiple tags, you sometimes have to scroll down at least half a page just to see the content!"? In such case, what is the size of your browser window (or screen resolution)? Having enough tags to cover the whole screen and half of another seems to be a lot (far more than "five or six" - unless you have a small browser window or meant something different) and I don't remember ever seeing so many tags... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 21:22, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I end up fixing a majority of pages I tag by myself, I'd wager. The tagging helps with my workflow. What is nice is that I can provide hard data for that in the form of ~100,000 listed contributions. Personally, I'm more prone to believing hard evidence than in some personal hypothesis that an unknown number of editors are recoiling from Misplaced Pages like a vampire from sunlight because a page has a tag on it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: On the unconference day at Wikimania this year, some of my colleagues and I rounded up a table full of Wikipedians and banged out an experiment idea designed to test the hypothesis that cleanup and maintenance tags are actually negatively affecting editor engagement. We literally came up with the hypothesis, assumptions, and metrics in under an hour, so it's still pretty rough – but I think this will be a great thing to test for a short period of time on a sample of articles, to figure out if this is really an issue that needs more attention. Stay tuned... :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

• Maryana (WMF)'s proposed experiment sounds like an excellent idea. My personal opinion is that it's mostly the appearance and placement of the tags that's the problem. Consider the stub templates, for example. These are tags which invite readers to expand the article. They are quite attractive and polite and are usually placed at the foot of an article, where they seem quite restrained and pleasant. Does anyone ever complain about stub templates? If not, then they may serve as a model of how to tag an article without upsetting people. Warden (talk) 18:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Notability (geography)

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

The draft and discussion have moved to Misplaced Pages:Notability (geographical features). G. C. Hood (talk) 00:47, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Special case of CSD G7

Is one allowed to nominate mainspace titles for CSD G7 where (s)he:

1. Has overridden an existing redirect with an article (because RFD takes at least a week and is too slow)
2. Has been the only substantial contributor to that article ever since
3. After the nomination, the prior article content will be immediately used to recreate.

This is for the sole purpose of upping article creation count. GotR 05:19, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The answer is 'no'. Ruslik_Zero 15:01, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

Hi All,

I think there is a policy that says, "Just because there is a mistake on one page does not mean the mistake should be proliferated or tolerated on another page." Am I right, or is there something at least similar? If so, please post a link. Many thanks! Ebikeguy (talk) 15:49, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I think you're looking for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. rdfox 76 (talk) 16:02, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Otherstuff is a good argument, but note the message that "it is not a Misplaced Pages policy or guideline". The actual relevant policy for your case is WP:Consensus. Misplaced Pages:Civility and Misplaced Pages:Ignore all rules may also apply. Diego (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Are there any concrete Misplaced Pages policies to oppose bribery?

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

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

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

The link is blue because the COI page exists; the software doesn't evaluate section headings. Misplaced Pages:Conflict of Interest#Random garbage from mashing the keyboard is also blue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

What is with the aggressive, cynical attitude of some users here? I mean is this a place for users to address issues or not? Because I think that my contributions are neither being respected nor welcomed here at all. So much for the Misplaced Pages guideline "Be welcoming"! If you are a user who is too worn out, too tired out, or too cynical to even address issues here presented by concerned users, then just say so, because being aggressive to two users (me and the User:Dmcq who agrees that the problem I addressed is real), is not helpful.--R-41 (talk) 18:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

How is it cynical to expect that editors refrain from bad behavior even when there is no rule prohibiting each and every type of possible bad behavior? Or that people not simply do whatever they think they can get away with according to what the rules say? Rather the opposite, I'd think. I was commenting on the assertion by the blocked user that he did nothing wrong only because "there is no such thing as a Misplaced Pages policy opposing bribery." postdlf (talk) 18:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking about it, WP:NPOV already covers this. Horse-traded 'support' is self-evidently not 'neutral'. I see no need for further policy. If someone is 'trading' their credibility for support (or is offering to 'trade' support), they will soon cease to have any credibility at all - and can be shown the door per WP:NOTHERE as displaying "editorial dishonesty". AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

That is the response I was looking for, evidence of policy that bars vote trading. It is settled then.--R-41 (talk) 18:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Just make sure to distinguish from situations where editors compromise as part of positive dispute resolution, such as agreeing to stay out of each others' areas of interest. Agreeing that A will not edit Article One if B will not edit Article Two is still horse trading, but if it ends a stream of endless disputes it would be a good thing. Monty₈₄₅ 19:54, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Making an offer to stay out of an area of interest of another editor if they stay out of yours is very wrong behaviour I think. It is coercion with threats. Soliciting votes by swapping yours is bad enough without descending to that level. Dmcq (talk) 20:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

It should also probably be distinguished from compromises on content concerning matters like due weight; e.g. I think it would be ethical for an editor to support calling the UK a "parliamentary democracy" in one place on the condition that the term "constitutional monarchy" is used in another place. Editors should be able to "haggle" over which aspect should be given prominence, i.e. what constitutes due weight and how to express it. --Boson (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

Policies: number and size

Firstly, sorry for the large table, I just know that if I put it somewhere else maybe half of people only would not bother. As you can see, it lists the 55 Misplaced Pages policies currently identified at Category:Misplaced Pages policies and their respective sizes – the total is over a million bytes, at least 100,000 words and possibly more (although I think bytes are relevant, because other things like images and tables are relevant to understanding the policy). Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines, and particularly their proliferation, has been noted as a principal reason among those preventing new editors from joining the community. We haven't ever really got a grip on the extent of policies and guidelines (let alone short summaries of them) and policies look like the natural place to start. Before I have a look at potential things to merge, demote, or copyedit with a view to shortening, how widely agreed is it that Misplaced Pages's policies should be fewer in number and more concise?

You see, if you propose a change in isolation the big picture is missed; the argument becomes one of whether we really care about the topic of the potential policy (which we always do) and therefore often the status quo appears to be policy rather than guideline. I would also note that there are two symptoms I see of two much policy: firstly, policy pages often summarise each other; secondly, we often deal with subsets such as "Procedural" or "Behavioural" policy. Both might be necessary but surely they aren't where we would like to be. So, first, that central question. Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:21, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Comments

It's actually surprising how few of those affect a typical new user. What new editor is going to worry about Misplaced Pages:Bot policy? Policies related to the Arbitration Committee? Policies about checkuser, child protection, global rights, or global blocking? There's maybe a dozen of those policies listed that may have real impact on newbies: edit warring, image use, NPOV, NOR, and the like.—Kww(talk) 19:48, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'll add that most of the policies that are important to new users are actually "common sense written down". For example, is it likely that the good new users will have to read Misplaced Pages:No personal attacks to know that insulting strangers at random is not a good idea? Lithuanian Misplaced Pages actually manages to discourage insults (perhaps better than the English Misplaced Pages) without even having such policies written down...

And one more point: I don't think that the users who come to write encyclopedia are going to be discouraged by reading...

Of course, all that doesn't mean that the policies can't possibly be improved, but each case has to be considered separately. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• If we required editors to pass some sort of test on these prior to editing, it'd be a problem. But we don't. As Kww says, editors need only concern themselves with policy (or even know about the existence of policy) as and when they want to. A lot of this is back-end detail that the vast majority of our contributors (who don't have accounts, don't use talk pages, don't know what an admin is, have never heard of any namespace except for mainspace, or all of the above) never need concern themselves with. And furthermore, this is the most highly active collaborative project in the history of the Internet, and in a great many ways in the history of mankind: we are not going to get by with a 16-page pamphlet and WP:IAR alone for the simple reason that if we have to reinvent what we presently codify in policy from first principles in every dispute we'd be even more bogged down in politics than we already are. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 21:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
• KWW hits the nail on the head there. In practice, the vast majority of those policies are there for the edge cases, and will never apply to 99% of editors. They may be arcane, and most could stand a bit of freshening up of both their substance and prose, but they are mostly irrelevant to new editors and couldn't possibly be an obstacle to them. — Coren  00:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

In the spirit of George Carlin's Ten Commandments, I don't think we need all those policies when only one will suffice. I suggest nominating all those pages in that list for WP:AFD except for Misplaced Pages:Ignore all rules. Remember, There can be only one. WTF? (talk) 21:15, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• If we are opening up this discussion, we should probably also mention the fact that we use shortcuts EVERYWHERE, and shortcuts are written in CAPITALS and capitals are related to as shouting in many online communities. I'v experienced more an more people who are heavily offended by the SHORTCUTS we 'call' them. I realize they are handy, but perhaps we should add some 'auto expansion' or something on those things, using templates or the like. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:49, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

"how widely agreed is it that Misplaced Pages's policies should be fewer in number and more concise?" I agree there should be fewer and they should be more concise. Something like combining WP:5P with the related {{nutshell}}s comes to mind. 64.40.54.83 (talk) 10:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think that listing the number of bytes is very helpful. WP:IAR is listed at over 3KB, but the policy consists of one sentence. Most of the content is interwiki links and standard templates linking to other policies. Hut 8.5 16:54, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
• I agree there should be fewer and they should be more concise. Coincidentally, I was pulling together a list of policies and their size for this purpose, and another purpose. I wanted to track the size over time, because I think that is relevant to RfA requirements. (In round numbers, the size has doubled since approximately 2006). At Wikimania, I ran into someone who has already assembled the data, so I have an email in to get it. My incomplete analysis also included Guidelines. While secondary to Policies, I think any effort to work on streamlining needs to include a review of Guidelines. And, unfortunately, because I think it makes the task almost impossible, rather than simply very difficult, I don't think a proper view would be complete without looking at Essays. For example BRD is an essay, but I bet it is cited more often than some policies.
  
  Sue Gardner, in a speech in London, talked about the difficulty of paring back policies. I think she is right that our processes aren't well suited for the task, but we should take it on.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm all for some kind of modest target. Say, reducing the number of policies by 20%, and reducing the cumulative length of those policies by 20%. That might not seem like a big reduction, but I suspect it will be challenging enough as is. Shooterwalker (talk) 03:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I can't identify 11 of these pages that I'm willing to live without. A couple could be merged, but not eleven. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

• 55 policies!? Note that the US Constitution only has 7 articles and 27 amendments. There's obviously a lot of a redundancy here. We have at least five different deletion policies (deletion, oversight, revisions, proposed and speedy) and three different sub-methods of proposed deletion including a special one just for books (of which I was totally unaware). We have separate policies for civility, harassment and personal attacks and they all seem equally useless. And we can be fairly sure that all these policies are mostly original research, unsupported by external evidence and based mostly upon personal POV. That's why editors love them so much - they are personal creations and so tended lovingly. That's why we have an absurd RfC to agonise over the wording of one sentence in WP:V. Now, we even have a policy which states that all these rules are largely pointless, "...rules are not the purpose of the community. Written rules do not themselves set accepted practice.". You can therefore delete all of these pages and Misplaced Pages would carry on just fine. Where do I sign ...? Warden (talk) 22:09, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
  • US Code of Laws : Misplaced Pages's total Policy/Guidelines :: US Constitution : Misplaced Pages's Five Pillars. --MASEM (t) 22:18, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:WAF conflict with WP:NOR?

We're having a discussion about tweaking WP:PSTS on the WP:NOR talk page here and I thought some of you might want to join in. The issue is that some editors of fictional subjects (and others, I presume) want to allow a broader understanding of "interpreting primary sources" (which, of course, include the fictional work itself, see here) than what some other editors might allow. All comments are welcome. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 11:39, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't really see much about tweaking in there. I do see a large chunk of confusion over whether "primary" sources are acceptable as sources because WP:PSTS happens to live inside WP:OR and makes such a huge deal over this irrelevant distinction, and some confusion over "original synthesis" versus "encyclopedic summary" because WP:SYN itself does not do a good job of making this distinction.

The bottom line is that we may not include any analysis, interpretation, or synthesis that is not already present in whatever source we're using, be it "primary", "secondary", or "tertiary". While it's true that a "secondary" source is more likely to contain useful analysis or interpretation than a "primary" source, we may not add any additional analysis or interpretation in any case so the distinction is not relevant beyond a broad, vague suggestion as to what sort of source to look for. Making this irrelevant distinction in policy just leads to what I call "primary source paranoia".

Even in the case of WP:N, the "primary"/"secondary" distinction is irrelevant. What we really are aiming for there is an evaluation of the degree to which the source is independent of the subject and to which the coverage indicates that the author of the source considers the subject worthy of note versus just mentions the subject in passing or covers the subject as part of an exhaustive overview of a larger topic.

As for WP:SYN, it too needs cleanup. And IMO the example about Smith and Jones needs to be killed—the issue there isn't "original synthesis", it's POV-pushing and "what the Harvard Writing with Sources manual says is entirely irrelevant to the topic".

TL;DR summary: IMO, WP:PSTS should be moved out into an essay, and WP:OR, WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, and other policies/guidelines should be cleaned up to remove any reference to the irrelevant "primary"/"secondary" distinction. But I doubt that will ever happen, too many are too invested in the status quo. Anomie⚔ 15:13, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Just a point: Even in the case of WP:N, the "primary"/"secondary" distinction is irrelevant. is wrong. WP:N requires secondary sources that put the topic into some type of encyclopedic context that cannot be determined from primary sources. There is a significant distinction between primary and secondary sources for notability evaluation. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I used to think that too. But what WP:N really wants are reliable sources that are independent of the subject and that are not "trivial" mentions of the subject. While it is true that such a source will almost always be "secondary", the converse (any "secondary" source is independent of the subject) is not true. IMO we should discuss the actual requirements for Misplaced Pages:Notability rather than a fallible heuristic. Anomie⚔ 15:52, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:Secondary does not mean independent. Many independent sources, including most news stories are primary sources.

I agree though that WP:N ought to care more about independence than about the analytical, comparative, etc. commentary that turns a source into a secondary one. But it's definitely best to have both, because without a secondary source it's difficult to provide encyclopedic context for your subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback

A recent BBC News article, lead me to blog entry about this Misplaced Pages:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5 which I understand is an attempt to have readers make suggestions about improving (without actually editing Misplaced Pages) and an editor will come along and make the changes. Seems to me we already do this with any number of tags, I know that Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Unreferenced articles alone has a back log that grows faster then is addressed. So where do the editors who are going to make this edits come from? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 16:07, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The tags don't seem to be doing much of anything other than contributing to increasing the backlogs. There seem to be too many "editors" who do nothing but tag articles (the "citation needed" tag is a particular favorite of these people), and not enough true editors that actually work on improving articles. See the discussion earlier on this page on tags. WTF? (talk) 17:44, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe editors are already discussing some of these concerns up above. In any event, resolving a "Citation Needed" tag would seem easy enough to me - either provide a citation or remove the unsourced material. Problem solved. I'm not sure what the problem is with anyone using a "Citation Needed" tag if in fact a citation should be provided. Doniago (talk) 18:52, 18 July 2012 (UTC)rea

If it is so easy to resolve, then why don't all the people just resolve it themselves? User:Wiki.Tango.Foxtrot is right on this one, many users put tags because it is easier than actually doing the work required to fix an article. While we do need a small segment of editors to put tags, that a huge proportion of our editing community does so with only a small amount actually improving the article directly is definitely harmful to Misplaced Pages. Wer900 • 19:45, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I would argue that it's more harmful that editors are adding unsourced information without taking the effort to source it to begin with. If tagging the information at all increases the probability of a source being provided, then I consider that beneficial. Editors are not under any obligation to find sourcing for material they are not contributing to the project; would you prefer that the CN tag be delisted and policy be modified to more strongly endorse simply removing unsourced material as a form of resolution? Doniago (talk) 20:19, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Conversely, we might consider asking ourselves if all these citations are absolutely necessary. I've seen some articles where almost every single sentence has a citation at the end of it, some sentences with multiple citations. I've also seen some editors who apparently only read the WP:LEAD section without reading anything else, find that there's nothing cited there, and sprinkle a couple of unnecessary citation needed tags into the lead when the information is merely summarizing other information -- that's properly sourced -- in the article itself. Perhaps we need to re-examine what content needs a citation and what content really doesn't. WTF? (talk) 20:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I concur that material in the lead doesn't require a citation if it's cited in the body of the article; CN tags placed in the lead under such circumstances should be removed with explanation; maybe contacting the editor who placed them would be worthwhile as well. Presumably editors generally insert CN tags because they feel the information should have an available reference, but I suppose if an editor disagrees with the placement of a CN tag they could always ask the inserting editor why it's there, or start a discussion on the Talk page. If they're really being placed as thoroughly as you say, I would suggest that the section itself (or the article) should have been tagged, rather than specific statements. In any event, these don't sound to me like unfixable situations if we're just talking about article aesthetics and editors not being familiar with available templates. Doniago (talk) 20:35, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the discussion about tags as such seems to be "offtopic" - there is another discussion just about them... Still, to use what you said, do you think that the "Article Feedback Tool" is going to be "definitely harmful to Misplaced Pages" too..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Per Misplaced Pages:Article feedback "We are developing a new way for readers and editors to work together" (bold is mine) and apparently this is a a proposed guideline. I thought we were the "Misplaced Pages that anyone can edit". Before helping two classes of people interact, maybe we should ask if there are two classes of people. So are there two classes? Is there a single editor, who never read and an article? is there a single reader who does not have the option and ability to edit an article? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

It takes a lot for someone to dive into the world of policies and talk pages and become what we'd consider an editor. As I understand it, providing the opportunity to evaluate pages is meant as a kind of gateway drug to becoming more directly involved in the project. Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

If you change "we'd consider an editor" to "we'd consider an experienced editor", I think most everyone would agree. But is it a good thing to encourage yet another division of Wikipedians? Many of the issues discussed here are about this group or that group... IMHO everyone is in the same group, Wikipedian. We all started in the same place, we all stumbled across our first Misplaced Pages entry somehow, we all decided to make our first edit or not, we all learned from the same school, then we diverged into different directions, but we remain members of the same family. The first listing on Misplaced Pages:Administrators used to be "No big deal" do we really want to make the division between reader and editor be a "Big deal"? JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think it's already a big deal :(. Lets be honest and blunt, editor-to-editor: most of us don't encounter readers. We know of them as an abstract Other, and that distinction between us and them already exists - we contribute, they don't. Actually, I see this as an opportunity to weaken the distinction, in two ways.

The first is that, for the first time, the distinction isn't based on contributions. Readers have the opportunity to make (admittedly small) contributions to articles just as editors do. It's narrowing the gap, not widening it, because for the first time both groups have a tangible stake and a sense of ownership. The second is that we can no longer think of readers as this abstract group with undefined views and opinions and needs - we know what they need, because we've provided a mechanism for them to tell us. They need a reference added, or updating, or additional images (or occasionally "poop lolol" ;p). I'm actually really optimistic about what this'll do to our relationship with readers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Judicial de-adminship

Currently there is no way of removing administrators from their posts short of an Arbitration Committee case. This ensures that numerous grievances regarding administrator misconduct may take a long time to be resolved, assuming that the ArbCom even decides to hear the cases against these administrators. Various proposals have been made for community de-adminship, but the results of community de-adminship proceedings is based not necessarily on reasoned discussion but ultimately on a vote count. When dealing with an issue as contentious as whether an administrator should lose their privileges or not, a better system is required.

I propose that a new subcommittee of the ArbCom - the Administrator Conduct Subcommittee (ACSC) - be created in order to facilitate proceedings against administrators and reduce the caseload of the Arbitration Committee. An Arbitration Clerk shall review each request to open a case against an administrator posted on a designated page of the ACSC, and shall decide whether the case may be tried before the ACSC, or whether it is serious enough to go before the Arbitration Committee itself. The Arbitration Clerk shall then inform the rest of the Arbitration Committee and its subcommittees of the decision, whether or not these subcommittees are trying the case. The Arbitration Committee may at any time take up a case itself or reassign it to another committee by a majority vote of its members. The ACSC may, by a two-fifths vote of its members, reassign the case to the Arbitration Committee, which may delegate it to another subcommittee or try the case itself as per the procedures of the previous sentence. Whichever body is selected to try the case shall have the permission to accept or deny trying it, in which case nothing shall be done against either party

The ACSC shall be permitted to issue temporary injunctions with penalties up to de-adminship for the duration of the case, and may enact remedies with the maximum penalty of one year's loss of administrative tools, with the ability to regain it only upon a successful RfA after the period has elapsed. In procedure the ACSC shall follow the model of the Arbitration Committee, but with only five members. The members of the ACSC shall not be Arbitrators themselves, but rather individuals selected by the Arbitration Committee as being suitable to handle the task of membership. The ACSC shall be composed of five members, a number which ArbCom may increase at its own discretion, but may not reduce below five. Any case involving private information should be declared as such when a user makes a petition for a case, and should a case involve private information either declared in advance or brought up later in the case, the case must for legal reasons be moved to the Arbitration Committee.

Any case may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee, which shall take up the case at its own discretion.

This, in essence, is my idea to allow de-adminship to take place more rapidly when it is required, but allow it to maintain a high standard of evidence and review. Wer900 • 19:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it is unfair of me, but my only authentic response to this long proposal is to wonder who you'd like to see de-sysopped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

There is nobody I want to see desysopped specifically, but I do feel that the current state of the Misplaced Pages community is one of harsh conservatism, with it being difficult to remove administrators in case of misconduct. Administrators have mistreated me in the past. Wer900 • 19:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

While certainly not attempting to discourage this idea, I should point out it's on the list of perennial proposals. There's also an ongoing push to reform RfA/desysopping at WP:RFA2012 which you should look at. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 23:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

The fact that it is a perennial proposal shows that administrator misconduct is an ongoing issue on Misplaced Pages. I will look at your recommended pages. Wer900 • 19:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

How many desysoppings are seriously considered by the ArbCom in any given year? Is there any evidence to suggest that their process is being overwhelmed by such requests?

• The ArbCom already has (and has made use of) procedures for rapidly withdrawing administrator privileges in the event of serious concerns about an admin's conduct: Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#Removal of permissions. In the most urgent cases, a temporary desysop can be carried out by the unanimous request of just three Arbs in only a few minutes.
• The ArbCom has demonstrated a willingness to desysop admins by open motion (without the rigmarole of a full case) in situations where a broader examination of other editors' conduct isn't required, and where the circumstances and community's expectations are clear. See, for example, here. (In that case, statements were made between 20 January and 23 January; an Arb presented the motion to desysop on 28 January; voting was completed and the admin desysopped on 30 January.)

Before you tell us how to fix the problem, you need to be a little bit more specific about what's broken, and how it isn't being handled properly by existing processes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:54, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

How many desysopping requests can ArbCom seriously consider in a year? The limited time of ArbCom means that for every request seriously considered, ten will be ignored. Wer900 • 19:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a lack of accountability of administrators to the community once their RfA passes, with only ArbCom being able to assign remedies. This speeds up the work of desysopping when required and reduces the workload of ArbCom. Wer900 • 19:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Consider my questions suitably modified, then. How many credible requests to desysop has the ArbCom ignored in, say, the last year—whether due to excess workload or sheer fecklessness? What fraction of admins do you believe need to be axed? I've provided an example of the ArbCom quickly and efficiently handling a clearly-stated desysop request by motion in less than ten days; how much more does the process need to be accelerated? Repeatedly asserting that cases are falling through the cracks without offering any evidence to support your statements doesn't advance your argument. Bluntly, your proposal doesn't demonstrate that you've done your homework. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:17, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

The current ArbCom is fairly quick to desysop (a bit too quick, I think, and there is no appeals court). —Kusma (t·c) 19:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

This will make ArbCom the appeals court and ensure that the desysoppings which should be conducted quickly are conducted quickly, while the more contentious ones have a longer process. Wer900 • 20:50, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback v5 RfC

You are invited to comment on an RfC on developing a guideline for responding to AFTv5 feedback. David1217 20:39, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Discourage alphabetical order

Could we discourage the use of alphabetical order, especially within articles, where a more natural order exists? For instance: chronological order, order of size, or (in sport) order of merit? These other orders all have the advantage of being informative, unlike alphabetical. The only advantage of alphabetical is that it is easy to find a given name: but most browsers have a "find" facility that reduces the value of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pete Ridges (talk • contribs) 15:06, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you are talking about? Order of what? What is "order of merit" in sport(s)? Order of size of what? I completely fail to understand your query/suggestion. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I assume that by "order of merit" he means that the best athlete should be listed first, e.g., the winner of the race, and so forth, until you come to the worst athlete, who is at the end of the list. For "order of size", I assume that it would be a class of objects whose size varied, e.g., the planets in this solar system, which could be listed from smallest to largest or the other way around. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:09, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Are there any particular articles where this is a problem? Most tables should be sortable by the items mentioned. Chris857 (talk) 23:15, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec) In some cases, the issue can be resolved (or at least ameliorated to an extent) by replacing a plain bulleted list with a formatted, sortable table. For example, List of longest suspension bridge spans offers a table that permits the reader to (re)order the rows by bridge length, date of completion, name, or location by clicking on the 'sort' double arrow at the head of each column. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

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

ArbCom's silent coup d'état

Fæ is likely going to be banned see here for being in contempt of ArbCom. Note that the "numerous violations of Misplaced Pages's norms and policies", is nothing more than this; just read the FoFs that are passing.

I think it is high time we replace ArbCom with another system that doesn't make itself part of the problem. If an editor doesn't cooperate well with dispute resolution processes, that can obviously affect the outcome, but kicking someone out of Misplaced Pages should only be done if the evidence referring to actual editing of Misplaced Pages proves that the editor is incapable of doing that without problems.

The present outcome fais the WP:IAR test. If Fæ were to violate his ban and edit anyway, his edits would have to be judged to be a priori ok., given everything that ArbCom has found. If someone is topic banned then this is not the case (assuming the correctness of the ArbCom's ruling), as the editing of that editor in the topic would have been judged to be problematic. Then any violations of the topic ban would have to be judged to be a priori problematic.

This then shows that the ban is not about maintaining Misplaced Pages at all, it has to do with ArbCom's authority. But ArbCom was never put in such a position of authority by the community, that's something they did themselves. Doing so is a violation of WP:IAR, as violating their authority while still editing correctly should never be a problem.

I suggest that we correct this problem here. Count Iblis (talk) 18:27, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

At the moment, I happen to be the only arbitrator voting against the proposed siteban that you are criticizing, so I'm not here to defend it. However, I don't think that this is the right place to argue about the merits of a proposed arbitration decision. And the strident phrasing ("silent coup d'état") is, at best, unhelpful. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:06, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

• I think alot of the griping about Arbcom that goes on is uncalled for, they deal with the most problematic editors, and need to make tough calls. While I don't always agree with the decisions, they are usually within the realm of reasonable judgement and discretion calls. This is not one of those cases. As best I can tell, Arbcom is planning to ban someone whom they acknowledge has not edited in a way that would justify a ban, but instead will be banned for failing to cooperate with the investigation and failing to respect Arbcom's independence. Those are clearly not appropriate grounds for a ban, it comes off as Arbcom lashing out over its own insecurity, and I hope Arbcom reconsiders before making an embarrassing mistake that will undermine the legitimacy of the banning process. Monty₈₄₅ 01:22, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• I've not followed this case but, from scanning the decision page I can't see any indication of what is being alleged (i.e. ArbCom banning someone whose general conduct they acknowledge does not merit a ban). Could you draw my attention to what I should be looking at? Formerip (talk) 01:40, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

  See the support rationales associated with votes 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 in support of remedy 6. Monty₈₄₅ 01:59, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, I've looked at that and I have to say I find it hard not to see your point. Maybe this ties in with an existing discussion here. At present, the appeal route is Jimbo, but Jimbo is not neutral with regard to this particular user. Formerip (talk) 02:28, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

• It's going to be hard to have a silent coup since you've let everyone here know about it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 02:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• I don't know much about this case but from what I have read both sides have merit. What does seem to be the continuing trend is that if someone goes before Arbcom they can expect to be site banned or at least limited to the point where they may as well be. I also notice with this case, as with several over the last few months that the terms are written in such vague fashion that they can be interpretted in a variety of ways to ensure that it will be difficult if not impossible for the defendant to be in compliance for long. If Arbcom wants the negative comments to end then they need to start drafting the cases more clearly and definitively. They don't need to be so loose that they are open to unending interpretation and debate. Well among other things, but that would go a long way. Kumioko (talk) 02:51, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• I don't believe Arbcom is part of the problem or that they are attempting to grab power. I think Arbcom has realized the toxic environment created by many sanctioned users and that remedies short of site banning tend to permit them to simply continue that disruption, even if they are in compliance with the sanctions. I think Arbcom has realized its role is to prevent disruption, not ensure fair and equitable treatment of persons before it. I think Arbcom has also realized that many prior sanctions were so specifically tailored that they merely encouraged gaming by the parties and that by keeping sanctioned users within a very tight limit; making it clear that if they cause even the slightest bit of disruption they will be removed from the community, they will reduce disruption within the project. MBisanz 03:12, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• With respect I don't agree. I don't want to turn this into an Arbcom bashing debate but the truth is I think that many of the members of Arbcom are out of touch with the realities of editing. Its impossible to please every editor and the more edits you perform the more likely you are to irritate someone for something stupid like violating their perception of a minor edit, "filling their watchlist" or something else equally trivial. I also don't think they need to cater to every mob that comes along with a complaint and ban them for the troubles. But that seems to be the trend and IMO that perception is not helpful for their mandate nor for the long term health of the pedia. Kumioko (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• Without reviewing the specifics of the case... to me if ArbCom (a) found a good reason to open the case and that it wasn't frivolous, and (b) requested some kind of comment or explanation from the editor in question, then some bare minimum level of cooperation should be expected from that editor. If everyone who didn't like ArbCom scrutiny could just say "enh, screw you guys, I'm going to keep doing my thing, catch me if you can", that would set a pretty bad precedent for future cases. It would render ArbCom completely ineffective, and fundamentally undermine our dispute resolution process. I think the editor in question should always owe the community some level of explanation, unless the case is completely dismissed for being groundless. Shooterwalker (talk) 05:02, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
• Too many forums on this at one time for anyone to follow. There is a famous sign in a Western saloon ... "Please don't shoot the piano player He's doing the best he can." It applies here. I had commented early in the process that the committee should cut to the chase early, and not allow all the sideshow to develop. As it did. Collect (talk) 12:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

A major problem I see with the ongoing Arbcom pattern of banning every editor submitted to them, because they have preconceived notions of guilt if the case makes it to them, is this. It takes a lot of time and effort to participate in an Arbcom case. It requires research, writing, following the story as it unfolds, etc. If Arbcom develops a pattern that your gonna get blocked then why would anyone outside Arbcom and their cabal bother to spend the time to plead the case? If the evidence doesn't matter and the end result is always the same within a couple degrees of variation then why bother? Its just a Drumhead trial anyway right? Going back to the original point of this discussion, ArbCom's silent coup d'état, hardly a day goes by lately that I don't see something where Arbcom is trying to build and expand their empire and establish themselves as the supreme rulers of the Wiki. On point with what you are saying I agree that we need something like Arbcom but I am growing more and more convinced that it needs to be different than the committee as it exists today. I admit I don't know exactly what that is, but I know this ain't it. Kumioko (talk) 14:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

They've done this for a while. They tried to interfere in the PR response to the National Portrait Gallery on the grounds that the images were on Commons therefore showed up on en:wp. (I have the emails from functionaries-en, if any of them dare try to dispute this.) It's part of the admin problem too - why take any admin action if you might be sitebanned for it years later? - David Gerard (talk) 15:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Kumioko, I certainly agree that they need to start drafting the cases more clearly and definitively, and do more to prevent the side-tracking and Strawmänner. However, WADR, I don't believe that Arbcom is planning a putsch any more than British High Court judges are considering a coup over the UK government. One thing for sure, and which I was most relived to see after meeting some of them in person recently, is that at least Arbcom is staffed by mature, educated individuals and not by the many who see such office as simply another hat to collect on the way up some personal greasy pole, such as we find lurking around lower levels of 'power'. I generally agree with most Arbcom findings - although I sometimes find their sentencing a little too mild and cautious. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:22, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not so much a coup as people pushing them into the job: wikis make people uncomfortable, so they want there to be a government, so the arbcom gets shoved into the role. The failure is that of the arbitrators and the committe collectively to realise this is not necessarily a good idea. It also doesn't help that an elected position of power selects for politicians, even if the actual stakes are minimal - David Gerard (talk) 15:25, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I should clarify that in general I have tended to agree with most of the Arbcom decisions relating to things other than editor behavior but I think they all too often favor a complete block for relatively minor infractions just to make the problem go away. I also think that more often than not they seem to succumb to peer pressure from those submitting the requests. Those who it seems are rarely the ones doing the editng, but those that are doing the nitpicking of those doing the actual editing. Kumioko (talk) 15:39, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Trying not to interject too often in this thread, but I can't help noticing that Kudpung opines the remedies imposed by the Committee are sometimes too mild, while Kumioko opines they are often too severe.... (Of course, in different cases they could both be right.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:52, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Personally I'm not quite sure how Kudpung can justify that they are too mild since it nearly always equates to an indefinate block. That to me is just about as severe a punishment as can be levied unless society grants Misplaced Pages actuall penal powers. Kumioko (talk) 17:21, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I think that's the problem. Many times there is only "an indefinite block" from a case for the worst actor, while several other parties get editing restrictions or have articles placed under general sanctions. I think an increase in the number of indefinite blocks resulting from arbitration cases and a corresponding decrease in the use of topic bans would help the problem. If someone is filing a case or is the subject of an accepted case, it's no longer about "relatively minor infractions" and both sides should expect that by bringing in Arbcom because they couldn't resolve the matter, they are opening the door to being blocked. MBisanz 15:30, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

MBisanz your suggested solution to the problem would only compound another, far more serious set of problems that currently plagues the project. An increasing amount of control of influence of the project (and even pushing for more power outside the project by Arbcom), a decreasing number of active contributors and edits in general, a decreasing number of admins willing to perform actions for fear of prosecution and a general feeling within the community that Arbcom has their own agenda and that agenda isn't always in the best interest of Misplaced Pages. Yes it may be preferred by a small subset of contributors who don't like too many edits in their watchlists, don't like bots, don't think we should allow one thing or another or whatever. As Arbcom's continued determinations and blocks increase and spread the number of editors willing to perform certain admin actions, to use bots and to be active contributors will decrease in contrast to those actions. Its already happening as can be plainly seen by the reduction of certain types of admin actions, the reduction in bot operators and bot tasks, the reduction of contributors, etc.

There is even (or was recently) an RFC about Arbcom's impacts on these and a lot of sidebar discussions on the impact of Arbcom on various areas. Some users like yourself may feel that Arbcom serves WP well as the Judge, Jury and executioner but there are a lot of us that feel otherwise.

Indefinate block by Arbcom should only be done in certain circumstances such as obvious sockpuppetry, Copyright violations, Vandalism, etc. Not for filling watchlists, performing too many edits to quickly, performing too many minor edits, upholding the rules such as Misplaced Pages's Copyright policy and not catering to ever petty complaints about every action performed by the user, many of which are personal feelings and counter to actual policy. These are the types of things that Arbcom is banning editors for over the last few months and it is having a detrimental impact to long-term health and operations of the project. Kumioko (talk) 16:07, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Kumioko, not to play dumb, but, which policies, articles, or processes has Arbcom attempted to control or influence as a means to increase its own power in 2012? I see ten cases and twenty-two motions in 2012 (Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Cases/2012, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Motions#2012). I'm familiar with a good number of them, and they seem to basically be reinforcement of the WP:INVOLVED, WP:CIV, WP:CONSENSUS, and WP:DISRUPTION/WP:EDITWAR. I know some people think Rich's case was wrongly decided (I'm one of them), but it was still within the realm of reason since someone filed a case and evidence showing a continued conflict. Also, I have not seen Arbcom mucking around in WP:BRFA, telling BAG how to approve bots, or otherwise trying to interfere to implement their own opinion of automated editing as a supervote over the community. The motions dealt with similarly mundane topics that have lengthy histories of arb involvement. I don't see Arbs randomly creating new policies through their decisions, telling non-parties how to edit in new ways, or appointing themselves in control of other elements of the project.

As to the decreasing contributors and admins, I think Arbcom's actions serve to help that. Many of their cases have reinforced the view that admins are not exempt from policy and that admins cannot use their powers when involved. Admins doing so drive productive editors away by squeezing them out of articles and RFA becomes stricter when people are afraid an admin can abuse their power and get away with it.

More specifically to the "too many edits" blocks, I think if Risker had phrased it in the way I would have (I wanted to block him, but was a party to the case); namely as a block based on WP:MEAT, WP:TEND, and WP:DUCK, it would have sailed through without a problem. Poor phrasing of a block reason doesn't make it a bad block.

Also, as to the point of Arbcom as judge, jury and executioner; I agree with you. I think Arbcom has done a good job of letting the non-arb crats handle most desysops and letting non-arb admins handle most of the enforcement of discretionary sanctions and editing restrictions. Further, in a recent block I made, I was criticized for not letting the Arbs make it since it involved their page. That an Arb can be criticized for blocking someone in a case and a non-Arb can be criticized for blocking someone in a case tells me we have a healthy balance.

Indefinite blocks serve to protect the project when we are certain a person cannot be a net positive contributor to the project. Copyvios, vandalism, sockpuppetry are the clearest indications of this, but other things such as SPA-editing, tendentiousness, POV-pushing, and failure to discuss are also valid negatives that count against a person. MBisanz 17:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

First of all, MBisanz is right, given the level of their activity, ArbCom is hardly a parawikitary organization bent on domination of the encyclopedia. But we all understand that sometimes we are given to hyperbole. However, on the statement of "Poor phrasing of a block reason doesn't make it a bad block", I would have to emphatically disagree. By definition almost it is a bad block if you don't give a good reason for it. Blocks are intended to be a powerful measure to protect the encyclopedia, subject to review by the community. If the community is looking at the block rationale and can't discern a legitimate basis for the block, it is a bad block. Now, that does not stop the admin from explaining their block better in a description on the blocked user's page, or on AN/I, but that's all textually part of the "block reason" IMO, so it directly relates to the block summary. But there is absolutely no place for a block in Misplaced Pages that hasn't been backed up by a clear, coherent and reasonable rationale for why it was enacted. And when you consider that the admin can update the block summary any time, and can further explain the block on Talk pages or elsewhere, leaving a poor block summary, no block summary, or unclear explanations simply means that it is a bad block on its face. We aren't mind readers. -- Avanu (talk) 17:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Not to make this discussion too long but there were several proposals or discussions (some formal and some more informal) in the last few weeks I had some heartburn about regarding Arbcom's ever increasing power. There was some discussion about Arbcom stretching outside the En to others such as commons, there was some discussion in the last few days about removing some of Jimbo's power and giving it to Arbcom or at least removing Jimbo's authority to override it. I have also seen discussions on several Users talk pages regarding their feelings on Arbcom's power. Many of them are afraid to comment on the Arbcom discussions because they are afraid Arbcom will block them for supporting. That to me is a huge, huge problem. Whether true or untrue the perception is a real morale killer. As for specific user cases. I had a huge problem with the Rich decision also as you know and I frankly haven't thought much higher about most of the decisions about users. Most of the nonuser related decisions are sound IMO but their judgement on the User cases has me less impressed. Of all the user cases I really only agreed with a couple (the Beta case had me on the fence).

In regards to the Admin actions point I disagree. I have seen and heard several admins mention in discussions (particularly after the Will Beback incident) they were hesitant or reluctant to act in certain circumstances because they were afraid if someone disagreed it would go to Arbcom and they would be banned. Not that they would be blocked, punished, desysopped or yelled at. Banned. That they automatically think its going straight to a ban is a big problem for me.

Arbcom is no longer an Arbitration committee working to find the best solution to a problem. They are a committee working to stop the problem and in most cases the fastest way to stop it, admittedly and especially regarding users, is to ban them and close the case. Its not a fair or unbiased ruling its an expedient one.

I also know that I have been an fervent critic and many just look at what I am saying and ignore it or think I'm just being overly critical so I'm not going to continue to dwell on it. I have said my opinion and whatever happens happens. All I can do is say what my feelings and beliefs are and deal with the fallout. Kumioko (talk) 17:30, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

• Newyorkbrad, this is not to argue about thia specific case, rather that the outcome suggest that there is a systemic problem. In this case, the ArbCom did what they are not supposed to do, i.e. ban someone based on issues that are irrelevant as far as actually editing Misplaced Pages is concerned. Remedies are supposed to be focussed on purely the editing and maintaining of Misplaced Pages. Evidence of bad conduct, harassment, personal attacks etc. etc. should always be evaluated in this narrow context. At the end of the day Misplaced Pages is just another website, it's not some company with the ArbCom members being the senior managers who can decide in some meeting that some employee (an editor) should be fired for not interacting well with them. By doing that, one actually makes Misplaced Pages a lot more vulnerable to the social dynamics that is causing all these problems involving harassment that played a role in this and other cases. Count Iblis (talk) 00:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. When, whatever the intentions are, the observable end result is the Arbitration Committee functioning as water carriers for Gregory Kohs and associates ... then we may have a problem - David Gerard (talk) 10:47, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

For those only just reading this thread, it is worth noting that the proposed decision as it currently stands (about to be closed) is different to what it looked like when Count Iblis started the thread. It really is best to limit discussions outside the case pages about currently open cases until after the case has closed. Valid criticisms should be raised at the case pages (not at user talk pages, and certainly no-one should be afraid of commenting at case pages, please don't make ArbCom out to be some sort of monster, I know several of the people on the current committee, and they are human just like everyone else). The other point to make is that the workload of ArbCom is such that it really helps if criticism is not of the variety that is heavy on words and rhetoric, but concentrates (or is backed up by) detailed links and diffs. Broad brush-stroke conclusions have their place, but they need to be backed up by analysis of what actually happened, not just opinion. It would be great if some of the most fervant ArbCom critics did more than just commenting at threads like this (and on case pages), and put in the heavy lifting and hard work needed to produce detailed pages on the major problems as they see it. It won't be easy to produce such a document, but it will actually be of more use than hand-waving and rabble-raising. Follow each and every case and motion. Make notes. Carry out analysis. Be fair and objective and try to avoid bias. Then you might be on to something. You will at least show arbitrators how they should be conducting their business if you can show that they should have reached different conclusions. Carcharoth (talk) 21:32, 21 July 2012 (UTC) PS. David, I vaguely remember the functionaries thread you refer to, my recall of it is not quite the same as yours, but I could look it up if you remind me of the details.

The exact wording of the justification was "en-Misplaced Pages uses many of the pictures involved and many of the pictures are viewed by readers of en-Misplaced Pages articles", and it was written in message-ID 206791b10907190639s4fb55136v11bce10a017c0e9e@mail.gmail.com, datestamp Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:39:36 +0100, by ... you! This was after me asking several times what the hell the justification actually was, and that was the only one anyone actually came up with. Except the arb who claimed that a BBC article (that named DCoetzee as "David Coetzee") saying the images were on "Misplaced Pages" meant the images must be arbcom's problem - David Gerard (talk) 13:53, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Heh. If you want to rehash that argument, we will be here a long time. I will concede that that was one of the less edifying threads that took place on that list at that time. It started with me expressing outrage at something you did, and with hindsight I should have raised it with you privately first. I have no idea what things are like now on the functionaries and arbitration mailing lists, but I expect things are in some ways much the same, and in other ways maybe saner given the relative differences in personalities between then and now. I do think it is unfair to use an example from 2009; looking at the datestamp you provide, that was just over three years ago. Carcharoth (talk) 15:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

For what its worth I too have met several members of the Arbcom and my feelings of the process aside I hold no ill will towards any of them. That still doesn't change the fact that I think the existing process is flawed and broken. After looking back at the case as you referenced above, yes there are some changes but the result is still leading to a ban, just with shorter a period at which the user can request a review of their block. You are also correct that links help. They do however take a lot of time to research and add and since the adding of these links is unlikely to change the outcome I don't feel that is a very good use of my time. I do admit that I am likely a strong reason that Rich F wasn't completely banned from the pedia but it took a huge investment of time and effort that could have been better spent on the pedia and not in arguing a case based on petty grievances that never should have made it to Arbcom in the first place. I also don't have time to act like an Arb. I'm not on the committee nor do I wish to be. The main problem is that the majority of the people involved in these cases are either members of the committee or those that mean to see the user banned. Very few ever comment in support. Partially because they are afraid to get involved, partially because they know that Arbcom will ban them anyway so commenting is just a waste of time, some because they don't know about Arbcom or the process and still others because they just think that their time is better spent in actual edits and not in Wikipolitics. Kumioko (talk) 23:38, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Article Incubation... how should it be done or even if it should be done?

There is an internal interest group on Misplaced Pages which developed the article incubator and tried to get into the nether world of articles that could be perhaps saved from deletion but really weren't anywhere near ready for prime time and usually were deleted anyway. This ranged from simply poorly written articles and articles that suffered from notability problems yet still seemed like something that should exist on Misplaced Pages in some form (such as emerging technologies or some person doing something very interesting but still hasn't received widespread press coverage yet). Some are simply articles that are just in a horrible state that simply need a whole lot of TLC in order to even be readable, thus are commonly deleted by otherwise lazy editors.

More to the point, this is something which I think could be an alternative to deletion in AfD discussions or even a place to "park" articles with notability concerns for awhile as a way to be a little bit friendly to new users. I've seen it in action where it can be positive.

The problem with the project, and why I'm bringing it up here on the Village Pump, is that the project seems to be dead with a group of editors zombifying a nearly year old RfC discussion to simply shut down the project altogether. That the discussion itself was not really dealt with in over a year should say something about the activity of the project that even the opponents lost steam to shut it down. At the moment it is sitting in a limbo state neither really alive or dead, with unfortunately a whole lot of content sitting in the wings that needs to be dealt with in some fashion as well.

I love the concept personally, and I'm willing to put in some effort to restart the project if necessary, but I would need some extra help doing that as well. It also needs wider support from the greater Misplaced Pages community and even a solid discussion about what role it should even have in terms of how it relates to other parts of Misplaced Pages, in particular the AfD process, New Page Patrol, or even the general article creation process as a whole. There is a danger to the concept as a way to make an already bureaucratic process of creating an article even more convoluted, so I can even see some merit to shutting down this project and marking it as historical. My main question posed to the general Misplaced Pages community is this: Should there even be an article incubator? --Robert Horning (talk) 15:44, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

People have long done this in their userspace, and the article creation page even slightly encourages you to do so. I see the incubator was intended to somehow include some of those. Your problem is thus, I suspect, not mechanism, but just having editors interested in doing the work. So the answer to your question is "it'd be nice, but the first step is to find people interested by the work." Next step would be inventorying the pages in people's userspaces that could do with attention, AFC listings, etc. For AFD candidates, offers to keep a copy in one's userspace if deleted are fine for otherwise uncontroversial articles - David Gerard (talk) 16:17, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

This isn't just talk, as there have most certainly been some success stories with the incubator where some articles have improved substantially and moved back from the incubator into the main article space. There was once upon a time even a fairly large community of interested people who were working in that project with active work to maintain lists, move stuff around, and in general performing the administration tasks necessary for the project as well. I'm not even sure what cause the lack of interest and what killed off that community of people who were working on it, but it seems at the moment the project most certainly is dead at the moment. It doesn't need to be that way though.

My hope in bringing this up is that perhaps a core group can be brought back to restart the process. This is an alternative to Userfication, where an active community of people who really do care about Misplaced Pages could be involved in helping out with the borderline cases that are driving people off of the project as well. It would be nice if instead of a PROD there could be a suggestion to incubate the article instead, including a "speedy incubate" option.

In terms of what to do next, if a core group of people would be interested in restarting this project, that they could also be active in the AfD pages and offering to incubate articles instead of seeing them disappear into the nether. When off-wiki canvassing to keep an article from being deleted happens, that would certainly be one way to keep people from getting totally pissed off and may even bring in some people willing to join us in developing Misplaced Pages by working on something they care about. --Robert Horning (talk) 03:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I support the concept of an article incubator. In general, the binary keep/delete is better served by the trinary keep/delete/Not quite ready but has potential. Userfication is an option for the third category, and used often. I accept that a userfied draft is unlikely to get much attention from others (sometimes a positive, sometimes a negative), which is inconsistent with our model of crowd-sourced creation. If there is a robust community of editors interested in working on drafts in the incubator, then the project can deliver decent content, but if the number of interested editors is too small, it is literally worse than nothing at all, as it produces some level of expectation that cannot be met. If it works, great, but the empirical evidence seems to suggest it is not. I'm not convinced that scarce resources should be encouraged to go there, as there are many tasks undone which are higher priority. (I'll emphasize that on any volunteer project, volunteers ought to have a lot of leeway to decide where they want to work, so if someone wants to work there, go for it, but if a new editor wants to help and asks where help is needed, it is not near the top of my list.)

I support the notion of marking it as historical. If a new group of editors wants to revive it, not hard to dust it off and start again.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:55, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

• "Should there even be an article incubator?" Yes, there should be an incubator or something with a similar function. 64.40.54.10 (talk) 09:48, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi there, I have now a running script to archive non-notables to archive.org working and another to upload them to a wikia, have been working on contacting people mentioned in the articles and cleaning them up. That is some form of incubation, some of them might be candidates to be put back into wikipedia some day. Many people have thanked me and I think they will be less likly to recreate the deleted articles. James Michael DuPont (talk) 13:41, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorting in tables with letters with diacritics

There is a discussion over at Misplaced Pages:Featured list candidates/List of Malmö FF players/archive1 on how letters with diacritics, Å, Ä and Ö in this case should be sorted in a table and if there is any policy on this. The letters are sorted after Z in the Swedish alphabet but how should they be sorted on the English Misplaced Pages, under A and O or after Z? Thanks! --Reckless182 (talk) 21:37, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Since such lists could potentially contain names from different languages, including, for instance, German with Ä, Ö, Ü, which in a German locale (and possibly a Swedish locale?) are sorted in the neighbourhood of the letters A, O, U), I would suggest that any style guidance should be based on the untailored European ordering rules (or similar), which are probably appropriate for cross-country lists of names written in Latin-based alphabets. I believe that would mean sorting (the whole name) according to the notional base letters and then sorting the whole name by diacritics (so that Müller immediately follows Muller). I believe the European ordering rules include a specification for the order of diacritics, but the problem of names that differ only in the different diacritics is probably largely academic within a Misplaced Pages article. I expect librarians' organizations have discussed the problems in detail with regard to international access to library catalogues (starting with Z39.50?). I don't think the best approach would be to use ISO/IEC/Unicode ordering rules that have been tailored to a very specific locale (ordering rules may potentially differ between languages and/or countries).--Boson (talk) 22:42, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

That seems like a good solution. Thank you! --Reckless182 (talk) 10:38, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Blocking IPs from posting on your talk page

If someone is an admin, which often means dealing with IPs, is it appropriate for the admin to make their page for autoconfirmed only, thereby blocking IPs? I assume there are some who wish to only be IPs or newbies who dont know what signing up for Misplaced Pages accomplishes who may come across an admin and need to respond on their page regarding some action towards the IP by the admin. I think perhaps it's time we set some limits on admins to require they are responsive to the needs of those they serve, which includes allowing IPs to contact them.Camelbinky (talk) 00:32, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

No—an admin who actively opposes disruptive editors or trolls can attract a team of haters, and the community needs such admins to be relatively free from abuse so they will continue their work. If there is an individual case where someone believes a page is inappropriately semiprotected, that should be discussed with the admin concerned. If not satisfied, and if it was felt that it would help the encyclopedia, I suppose the next step would be WP:ANI. Johnuniq (talk) 01:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

So an admin does... whatever admins spend their time on... to an IP and the IP has questions, concerns, explanation, whatever, and therefore can not contact said admin. And we think that's ok...? Wow. Keep bleeding editors. Good job Misplaced Pages keeping up your reputation for ignoring newbies and being hypocritical regarding "dont bite the newbies". "Admins attract haters"... yes, just a large group think admins as a group are useless power hungry power seeking buffoons. Protecting one's talk page should not be justified by that. Nor should admins, who are here to SERVE US, be removed from being contacted by those they SERVE.97.85.211.124 (talk) 03:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Admins do not serve individual users. They serve the project.

Nearly all admins whose talk pages have been semi'd for very long set up a separate page for such communication. Alternatively, an unregistered user may contact others with the problem or question.

I'm not sure that you understand the level of problems. It's not just simple complaints about a page being deleted over copyvios. We've had admins who get threats to their families and friends, whose pages are filled with libel, who are harassed by postings about their race, gender, sexual orientation, who get dozens of messages from someone IP hopping just to be irritating, etc. Admins should not have to put up with abuse from unregistered users. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:39, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Precisely. Anyone wanting to contact an admin but unable to do so can ask for assistance, for example at WP:HELPDESK. Johnuniq (talk) 10:55, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps an appropriate message could go on the Admin blocked page(s) to point IP's to a more appropriate page. Just blocking without an alternative is WP:BITEy. Regards, SunCreator 15:43, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Do the rules apply only to less connected wikipedians, while connected wikipedians get a free pass?

• I am not going to edit war, but this IP needs to get blocked as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not edit warring when WP:DENY is involved. Obvious sock was obvious sock. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Blocked. It isn't warring since vandalism (close enough) is a clear exemption to 3RR. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © (WER) 18:32, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Sock or no, the question posed in the thread heading is a legitimate concern and one whose answer is "yes". Now you can ignore ME, but you cant call me a sock or meat puppet of anyone.Camelbinky (talk) 20:49, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I suppose if you want a real answer, it starts with defining what a "Connected Wikipedian" is. Natural human socialization gives us connections, of course, and the more socialable someone is, the more people they end up knowing. We treat those we know with more trust and forgiveness than those we don't, in general. Another type of connection might be people who share a common interest or have a common attribute. This might be people who volunteer together at a certain Wiki project, like Copyediting, or who like the same kind of pasta, *or* might relate to people sharing a status, like Administrator or Bureaucrat or Arbitrator. Strangely, I've seen very odd and mixed reactions in this. If someone is an admin at the English Misplaced Pages, it might get them respect here from other admins, but an admin from another language iteration of Misplaced Pages might not get as much good will. I think generally it boils down ultimately to how congenial you are versus how patient or altruistic others are. If you're nice, and pick your battles carefully and you happen to be an admin on top of that, you're going to be loved by all. If you're not so nice, come out swinging too much, and you're an IP editor, you can expect to get a kick in the face pretty fast. All this despite whether you follow our rules here or not. It is human nature. So the question is... where do you feel like fitting in on this continuum, and are people being patient and altruistic *enough* generally that it isn't so bad? -- Avanu (talk) 20:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

We can debate whether altuism actually exists, and while the facts from my anthropology courses I helped teach as a TA might be out of date, I'm still going to go with the standard answer from back then "no altruism isnt real". But the point is in Misplaced Pages- it does NOT matter who or how many friends you have, the !rules do apply to all EQUALLY. This crap of- if you have more friends there must be a reason for that, and therefore you must be more careful and more respected and less likely to do something wrong on purpose.... smacks of Chamberlain-esque appeasement to bullies. Bullies have plenty of friends. Hitler had plenty of friends, the NAZI party was democratically elected. We dont allow those with lots of friends to get a free pass. Anyone who justifies it should not be allowed to comment on AN/I or anywhere else where penalties may apply to someone who does something wrong. This results in people who bring an admin or other long-term editor to AN/I getting themselves censored instead of a remedy.Camelbinky (talk) 21:06, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Of course, becoming an admin (or even being a prolific editor over a long period of time) does require some degree of reasonableness and responsibility, so the favor is not entirely unreasonable. If any editor (even Jimbo Wales, hypothetically) is totally uncooperative, incivil, or trollish to other users, in spite of well meaning advice from other users, that editor shouldn't be here. If they evade their blocks only to continue their inappropriate behavior, the other account should be blocked and existing blocks should be extended. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

And once again, Misplaced Pages boards show Godwin's law perfectly. Keilana| 21:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

The question here, Camelbinky, is whether we are following common law, civil law, or some other process entirely here at Misplaced Pages. Honestly it is hard to tell sometimes. Creative interpretation of the rules is discouraged by the average editor, and seemingly encouraged via the IAR pillar when an Admin feels they have a *need* to do something. So it is a bit like the "Do as I say, not as I do" method of parenting, and unforunately people get caught in the middle of this mess because of inconsistent enforcement and an unintentional Blue Code with a small degree of Lese-majesty that comes I think from a tendency to regard those who challenge the status quo as 'upstarts', rather than as 'fixers'. I would strongly discourage labeling everyone in a class as a bad actor. In fact, most of this is not anyone's 'fault' as much as it is just human nature. I think Misplaced Pages lacks a few controls and checks to balance out this disposition (those need to be addressed), but overall the spirit of Misplaced Pages is pretty darn awesome. So, what should be done? -- Avanu (talk) 21:30, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, seeing as how NOTHING in Misplaced Pages is analogous to a constitution or set of laws and we specifically spell out that our policies and guidelines are NOT "rules" I would say probably common law is the closest analogy we have. But the point is that common law is decided upon by courts, our policies and guidelines are decided upon by consensus of the best practices of what we already do. Our actions determine what the policies and guidelines should say, policies and guidelines are written after the fact of the Community already disregarding them and changing our Standard Operating Procedures. We are the biggest form of pure democratic anarchy and the problem with that is there is a subset of the Community, especially among Admins that see Misplaced Pages as a strict-constructionist interpreted Constitutional republican form of governance with policies and guidelines as "laws". That has been struck down MANY times most notably at wp:5pillars everytime someone wishes to change the wording to make it a POLICY or some how where "policies flow from" which it is not and never has been classified as such.Camelbinky (talk) 22:09, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

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