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{{redirect|WP:PROPOSE|proposing article deletion|Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion|and|Misplaced Pages:Deletion requests}}
{{short description|Discussion page for new proposals}}
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New proposals are discussed here. ''Before submitting'': The '''proposals''' section of the ] is used to offer specific changes for discussion. ''Before submitting'':
* Check to see whether your proposal is already described at ''']'''. You may also wish to search the ]. * Check to see whether your proposal is already described at ''']'''. You may also wish to search the ].
* Consider developing your proposal at ]. * This page is for '''concrete, actionable''' proposals. Consider developing earlier-stage proposals at ].
* Proposed '''software''' changes should be filed at ] (configuration changes should have ]).
* Proposed '''policy''' changes belong at ]. * Proposed '''policy''' changes belong at ].
* Proposed '''speedy deletion criteria''' belong at ].
* Proposed '''WikiProjects''' or '''task forces''' may be submitted at ]. * Proposed '''WikiProjects''' or '''task forces''' may be submitted at ].
* Proposed '''new wikis''' belong at ]. * Proposed '''new wikis''' belong at ].
* Proposed '''new articles''' belong at ]. * Proposed '''new articles''' belong at ].
* Discussions or proposals which warrant the '''attention or involvement of the Wikimedia Foundation''' belong at ].
<!-- Villagepumppages intro end -->|WP:VPR|WP:VP/PR|WP:VPPRO|WP:PROPS}}__NEWSECTIONLINK__
* '''Software''' changes which have consensus should be filed at ].
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== RfC: Log the use of the ] at both the merge target and merge source ==
== Bot to add ] and ] to pages (single run) ==
<div class="boilerplate mw-archivedtalk" style="background-color: var(--background-color-progressive-subtle, #f1f4fd); color: inherit; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;">
{{atop
:''The following discussion is an archived record of a ]. <span style="color:var(--color-destructive, red)">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> No further edits should be made to this discussion.'' ''A summary of the conclusions reached follows.''
| status =
<div style="margin: 0 2.5em;">
| result = This proposal seeks to assess the ] regarding a bot mass-tagging pages with {{tl|Unreferenced}} and {{tl|No footnotes}}. These are two separate issues, and the consensus (or lack thereof; see below) regarding them is different, so I will address each in turn.
Numerically, option 1a has 6 !votes in its favor (4 if we don't count second-choice !votes (Graham87 and Abzeronow), 0 if we only count exclusive !votes), 1b has 10 (7 exclusive), and option 2 has 4. Most of the !votes in support of option 1a were cast early into the RfC before experienced history mergers expressed concerns about how the creation of dummy edits might disturb page histories. No proponent of option 1a replied to these objections, and many later proponents of 1b cited them as justification for not supporting 1a. Thus, option 1a is rejected. Next, we will consider option 2. Proponents of this option primarily cited the purported need for history merging to be seamless, and a dummy edit would disrupt that fact; the aforementioned objection to 1a. However, only one of the proponents of this option attempted to object to 1b specifically (that is, the need for a log entry at the target page), saying that page moves similarly only log at the source page. Proponents of option 1b convincingly replied to this objection by noting that that is less problematic because of the fact that page moves produce a dummy edit, unlike history merges. One additional proponent of option 2 asserted that no MediaWiki developers would be interested in this project. However, this is not a sufficiently strong argument to outweigh those made by proponents of option 1b. The primary argument by its proponents was that the current system wherein history merges are logged only at the source page was confusing, since it requires having access to the source page's title, which is not always the case. Some proponents of opt. 2 objected that you can look at abnormalities such as "Created page with..." edit summaries in the middle of a page history or unusual byte differences to determine that a history merge occurred at the target page. However, this undermines the most common argument for option 2; namely, that history merging ought to be seamless, since only the "seams" left behind by the process can show that a history merge occurred while looking only at the destination page. Thus, I see '''consensus to <u>request that the developers</u> adopt option 1b'''. The Phabricator tickets will be updated accordingly. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 16:38, 29 December 2024 (UTC) <small>I added four words to this closure per ]. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 03:10, 2 January 2025 (UTC)</small>
</div>
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Note: If you are seeing this page as a result of an attempt to register a new request for comment, you must manually edit the nomination links in order to create a new discussion page using the name format of ]. When you create the new discussion page, please provide a link to this old discussion.
;Unreferenced
There is '''consensus in favor''' of a bot run to tag pages with {{tl|Unreferenced}}. That being said, there were a number of concerns expressed during this discussion that should be taken into account, and are incorporated into this close:
# If it is technically feasible to implement at {{tl|Unreferenced}}, the bot should leave an annotation in the template along the lines of <code><nowiki>|source=GreenC bot</nowiki></code> (as suggested by ]), which should cause the template to ''instead'' categorize the page in a separate category (as suggested by ]), addressing the concerns raised by ] and others about bloating the current maintenance category as well as making it easier to review the pages the bot tags
# This was implied by the proposal, but for the record, the bot should skip pages with ''any'' form of citation, not just pages with <nowiki><ref>s</nowiki>
# Given the concerns about the potential for false positives, ] is expected notify the community once they have finished the bot's trial (assuming it goes to trial; as usual, BAG can deny this bot on other grounds) and allow time for any community input regarding the bot's propensity towards false positives.


-->
;No footnotes
----
There is '''no consensus''' for a bot run to tag pages with {{tl|No footnotes}}. Per ], operators ] to show that their bot {{tq|performs only tasks for which there is consensus}}. Thus, '''no consensus''' defaults to '''the community does not approve''' of a bot run to tag pages with {{tl|No footnotes}}.
<!-- ] 16:01, 25 December 2024 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1735142470}}
Currently, there are open proposing that the use of the HistMerge tool be logged at the target article in addition to the source article. Several proposals have been made:
*'''Option 1a''': When using ], a null edit should be placed in both the merge target and merge source's page's histories stating that a history merge took place.
*: (]: '''Special:MergeHistory should place a null edit in the page's history describing the merge''', authored Jul 13 2023)
*'''Option 1b''': When using ], add a log entry recorded for the articles at the both HistMerge target and source that records the existence of a history merge.
*: (]: '''Merging pages should add a log entry to the destination page''', authored Nov 8 2015)
*'''Option 2''': Do not log the use of the ] tool at the merge target, maintaining the current status quo.
Should the use of the HistMerge tool be explicitly logged? If so, should the use be logged via an entry in the page history or should it instead be held in a dedicated log? — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
===Survey: Log the use of the ]===
*'''Option 1a/b'''. I am in principle in support of adding this logging functionality, since people don't typically have access to the source article title (where the histmerge is currently logged) when viewing an article in the wild. There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful. As for whether this is logged directly in the page history (as is done currently with page protection) or if this is merely in a separate log file, I don't have particularly strong feelings, but I do think that adding functionality to log histmerges at the target article would improve clarity in page histories. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Option 1a/b'''. No strong feelings on which way is best (I'll let the experienced histmergers comment on this), but logging a history merge definitely seems like a useful feature. ] (] · ]) 16:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Option 1a/b'''. Choatic Enby has said exactly what I would have said (but more concisely) had they not said it first. ] (]) 16:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''1b''' would be most important to me but but '''1a''' would be nice too. But this is really not the place for this sort of discussion, as noted below. ] (]) 16:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
* '''Option 2''' History merging done right should be seamless, leaving the page indistinguishable from if the copy-paste move being repaired had never happened. Adding extra annotations everywhere runs counter to that goal. Prefer 1b to 1a if we have to do one of them, as the extra null edits could easily interfere with the history merge being done in more complicated situations. ] ] 16:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:Could you expound on why they should be indistinguishable? I don't see how this could harm any utility. A log action at the target page would not show up in the history anyways, and a null edit would have no effect on comparing revisions. ] (]) 17:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:: Why shouldn't it be indistinguishable? Why it it necessary to go out of our way to say even louder that someone did something wrong and it had to be cleaned up? ] ] 17:45, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::All cleanup actions are logged to all the pages they affect. ] (]) 18:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
* '''2''' History merges ], so this survey name is somewhat off the mark. As someone who does this work: I do not think these should be displayed at either location. It would cause a lot of noise in history pages that people probably would not fundamentally understand (2 revisions for "please process this" and "remove tag" and a 3rd revision for the suggested log), and it would be "out of order" in that you will have merged a bunch of revisions but none of those revisions would be nearby the entry in the history page itself. I also find protections noisy in this way as well, and when moves end up causing a need for history merging, you end up with doubled move entries in the merged history, which also is confusing. Adding history merges to that case? No thanks. History merges are more like deletions and undeletions, which already do not add displayed content to the history view. ] (]) 16:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:They presently are logged, but only at the source article. Take for example . When I search for the merge target, I get . It's only when I search the that I'm able to get a result, but there isn't a way to ''know'' the merge source.
*:If I don't know when or if the histmerge took place, and I don't know what article the history was merged from, I'd have to look through the entirety of the merge log manually to figure that out—and that's suboptimal. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 17:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*::... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)
*::But ignoring that, why is it valuable to know this information? What do you gain? And is what you gain actually valuable to your end objective? For example, let's take your {{tq|There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful.}} Is not the revisions left behind in the page history by both the person requesting and the person performing the histmerge not enough (see {{tl|histmerge}})? There are history merges done that don't have that request format such as the WikiProject history merge format, but those are almost always ancient revisions, so what are you gaining there? And where they are not ancient revisions, they are trivial kinds of the form "draft x -> page y, I hate that I even had to interact with this history merge it was so trivial (but also these are great because I don't have to spend significant time on them)". ] (]) 17:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::{{tqb|... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)}}I don't think everyone would necessarily agree (see Toadspike's comment below). ] (] · ]) 17:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::Page moves ''do'' leave a null edit on the page that describes where the page was moved from and was moved to. And it's easy to work backwards from there to figure out the page move history. The same cannot be said of the ] tool, which doesn't make it easy to re-construct what the heck went on unless we start diving naïvely through the logs. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 17:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*::It can be *possible* to find the original history merge source page without looking through the merge log, but the method for doing so is very brittle and extremeley hacky. Basically, look for redirects to the page using "What links here", and find the redirect whose first edit has an unusual byte difference. This relies on the redirect being stable and not deleted or retargetted. There is also ] that relies on byte difference bugs as described in the above-linked discussion by ]. Both of those are ... particularly awful. ] (]) 03:48, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::In the given example, the history-merge occurred ]. Your "log" is the edit summaries. "Created page with '..." is the edit summary left by a normal page creation. But wait, there is page history before the edit that created the page. How did it get there? Hmm, the previous edit summary "Declining submission: v - Submission is improperly sourced (AFCH)" tips you off to look for the same title in draft: namespace. Anyone looking for help with understanding a particular merge may ask me and I'll probably be able to figure it out for you. – ] (]) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::Here's another example, of a merge within mainspace. The ] (created by the MediaWiki software) of this ] "Removed redirect to {{no redirect|Jordan B. Acker}}" points you to the page that was merged at that point. . . . – ] (]) 13:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*::::There are times where those traces aren't left. ] (]) 13:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::::Here's another scenario, this one from ]. The shows an edit adding '''+5,800''' bytes, leaving the page with 5,800 bytes. But the previous edit did not leave a blank page. Some say this is a bug, but it's also a feature. That "bug" is actually your "log" reporting that a hist-merge occurred at that edit. , the log for that page shows a temp delete & undelete setting the page up for a merge. The first item on the log:
*::::::@ 20:14, 16 January 2021 Tbhotch moved page ] to {{no redirect|Flag of the Republic of Yucatán}} (Correct name)
*:::::clues you in to where to look for the source of the merge. , that single edit which removed '''−5,633''' bytes tells you that previous history was merged off of that page. The provides the details. – ] (]) 16:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::::(]: '''Special:MergeHistory causes incorrect byte change values in history''', authored Dec 2 2014) <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 18:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)</small>
*::::::Again, there are times where the clues are much harder to find, and even in those cases, it'd be much better to have a unified and assured way of finding the source. ] (]) 16:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:::::::Indeed. This is a prime example of an unintended ]. ] (]) 08:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
*::::::::Yeah. I don't think that we can permanently rely on that, given that future versions of MediaWiki are not bound in any real way to support that workaround. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 04:24, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support 1b''' (log only), oppose 1a (null edit). I defer to the experienced histmergers on this, and if they say that adding null edits everywhere would be inconvenient, I believe them. However, I haven't seen any arguments against logging the histmerge at both articles, so I'll support it as a sensible idea. (On a similar note, it bothers me that page moves are only logged at one title, not both.) ] </span>]] 17:10, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
* '''Option 2'''. The merges are ], so there’s no reason to add it to page histories. While it may be useful for habitual editors, it will just confuse readers who are looking for an old revision and occasional editors. ] &amp; ]<sub>(])</sub> 18:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:But only the source page is logged as the "target". IIRC it currently can be a bit hard to find out when and who merged history into a page if you don't know the source page and the mergeperson didn't leave any editing indication that they merged something. ] (]) 18:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''1B'''. The present situation of the action being only logged at one page is confusing and unhelpful. But so would be injecting null-edits all over the place. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 01:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
* '''Option 2'''. This exercise is dependent on finding a volunteer MediaWiki developer willing to work on this. Good luck with that. Maybe you'll find one a decade from now. – ] (]) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*: And, more importantly, someone in the to review it. I suspect there are many people, possibly including myself, who would code this if they didn't think they were wasting their time shuffling things from one queue to another. ] ] 06:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*::That link requires a Gerrit login/developer account to view. It was a struggle to get in to mine (I only have one because of an old Toolforge account and I'd basically forgotten about it), but for those who don't want to go through all that, that group has only 82 members (several of whose usernames I recognise) and I imagine they have a lot on their collective plate. There's more information about these groups at ]. ] (]) 15:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*::: Sorry, I totally forgot Gerrit behaved in that counterintuitive way and hid public information from logged out users for no reason. The things you miss if Gerrit interactions become something you do pretty much every day. If you want to count the members of the group you also have to follow the chain of included groups - it also includes https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/wmf, https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/ops and (another login-only link), as well as a few other permission edge cases (almost all of which are redundant because the user is already in the MediaWiki group) ] ] 18:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support 1a/b''', and I would encourage the closer to disregard any opposition based solely on the chances of someone ever actually implementing it. <span style="white-space: nowrap;">—]&nbsp;<sup>(]·])</sup></span> 12:52, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*:Fine. This stupid RfC isn't even asking the right questions. Why did I need to delete (an expensive operation) and then restore a page in order to Should we fix the software so that it doesn't require me to do that? Why did the page-mover resort to cut-paste because there was page history blocking their move, rather than ask a administrator for help? Why doesn't the software just let them move over that junk page history themselves, which would negate the need for a later hist-merge? (Actually in this case the offending user only has made 46 edits, so they don't have page-mover privileges. But they were able to move a page. They just couldn't move it back a day later after they changed their mind.) ] (]) 13:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*::Yeah, ] would be amazing, for a start. ] (]) 15:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Option 1b'''{{snd}}changes to a page's history should be listed in that page's log. There's no need to make a null edit; pagemove null edits are useful because they meaningfully fit into the page's revision history, which isn't the case here. ] (]) 00:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Option 1b''' sounds best since that's what those in the know seem to agree on, but 1a would probably be OK. ] (]) 03:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
*'''Option 1b''' seems like the one with the best transparency to me. Thanks. <span style="text-shadow:3px 3px 3px lightblue">]<sup>'''537'''<sub>]</sub> (]|])</sup></span> 06:59, 25 November 2024 (UTC)


===Discussion: Log the use of the ]===
If you have any questions about this close, please ]. Thanks, --] (]) 03:14, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*I'm noticing some commentary in the above RfC (on widening importer rights) as to whether or not this might be useful going forward. I do think that having the community weigh in one way or another here would be helpful in terms of deciding whether or not this functionality is worth building. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:<small>] . — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 16:01, 20 November 2024 (UTC)</small>
*This is a missing feature, not a config change. ] (]) 15:58, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:Indeed; it's about a feature proposal. — ]&nbsp;<sub>]</sub> 16:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*As many of the above, this is a ] and not something that should be special for the English Misplaced Pages. — ] <sup>]</sup> 16:03, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:See ]. I'm not seeing any sort of reason this would need per-project opt-ins requiring a local discussion. — ] <sup>]</sup> 16:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
*:True, but I agree with Red-tailed hawk that it's good to have the English Misplaced Pages community weigh on whether we want that feature implemented here to begin with. ] (] · ]) 16:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
* Here is the , and the project's . – ] (]) 18:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
* I agree that this is an odd thing to RFC. This is about a feature in MediaWiki core, and there are a lot more users of MediaWiki core than just English Misplaced Pages. However, please do post the results of this RFC to both of the phab tickets. It will be a useful data point with regards to what editors would find useful. –] <small>(])</small> 23:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
<div style="padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em">The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: var(--color-error, red);">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.</div><!-- from ] -->
</div><div style="clear:both;" class=></div>

== Revise ] ==
{{atop
| result = There is consensus against this proposal. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 17:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
}} }}
There's a ] to make a single run through all pages, adding {{tlx|Unreferenced}} or {{tlx|No footnotes}} to pages as appropriate. {{U|GreenC}} kindly did the leg work making the bot. As currently written the bot will '''not''' tag stubs, redirects, "List of...", "Index of...", "<year> in...", and some other cases. You can see test results ] for where the bot would or would not apply different tags. There is concern at the BRFA that this run may appear disruptive if consensus is not gained at a wider forum first. Hence, this post: would folks support a bot run to tag unreferenced or no footnotes pages? ] (]) 17:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
* As it's easy to do, I'd like to see this new tag ''annotated'' such as {{para|source|{{var|GreenC bot}}}}, with a link to some relevant explanation. We gain little benefit from tags and a lot of friction, especially where they're seen as "drive-by" tagging with no explanation.
: Also, what happens afterwards? Will those articles then be speedied for deletion as "unsourced"? I can see all those itchy trigger fingers just ''waiting'' to do such a thing. And of course, a bulk deletion run of massive volume would have so much greater 'success'. ] (]) 17:06, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
:: Also, will this recognise BLPs and treat them differently? ] (]) 18:23, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
:: Do "unsourced" tags need an explanation? ] (]) 18:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
::: Yes, because there's so much pushback against them (and many wind up mis-applied - an article without ''inline citations'' might still have references). If we're going to tag things, make the reasons and their provenance ''clear'' – saves argument later. ] (]) 23:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - Now that ] is fairly organized, most new unreferenced pages are likely getting tagged. So a single run of the bot should be sufficient. ] already has 184,000 articles in it. But a group of editors are making steady progress, and have chopped that number down from 202,000 a year ago. Knowing the scale of the task would be nice. Also, I usually search through the category by keywords so I can deal with e.g. all Kyrgyzstanian villages in one go with one good source. Having all the unreffed articles tagged would greatly facilitate that. Lastly, I see no down side to having unreffed articles tagged as such. Who knows, the tag might even cause someone to fix a few of them? Happy editing! ] (]) 17:09, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - Easier to find articles with issues if they are tagged. Easier to fix them if you can find them. ~ '']''<sup>(]&#124;])</sup><small>]</small> 17:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - This would let us target unsourced articles. I stumble across one every once in a while, and try to find some source, but we should be more systematic. And if we can't find any source to support one of those articles, then we should delete it. - ] 20:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - Would be super helpful for this to be implemented. --] ] - ] 20:09, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. --] (]) 20:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ]<sup>(])</sup> 22:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. This is a straightforward task that would save a lot of editor effort. —&nbsp;''''']'''&nbsp;<small>]</small>'' 23:01, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. These tags sit very prominently at the top of an article and so ought to be used judiciously. {{tl|Unreferenced}} should ideally be placed on articles only if the absence of sources isn't otherwise immediately obvious to the reader ''and'' there is reason to believe some of the article's content might not be completely reliable: for example, there's no point tagging short articles whose content is easily verifiable in a quick web search. This is a task that requires judgement and so it can't be performed by a bot. I understand that many editors might disagree with this view on the use of the "unreferenced" tags, but the case against adding {{tl|No footnotes}} – which is also the major task of the bot as it's expected to affect over 110,000 articles – is much clearer. In-line citations, though useful in many circumstances, aren't a universal requirement (see for example ]). It's perfectly acceptable to have a reasonably developed article with a list of general references at the end but not a single footnote. If it doesn't contain potentially contentious statements (or other material that needs to be supported by in-line citations), then there's really no issue to point to and so the placement of a "No footnotes" tag can be seen as disruptive. Again, the decision on whether to place the tag or not requires evaluation of the content of the article, and that's not something that a bot can do. And of course, if editors find it useful to have a bot flag up articles in such a way, then this can be handled in any of the less obstrusive ways that many similar maintenance task are handled: for example by the creation of a list in projectspace, or by the addtion of invisible categories. – ] 00:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC)


Point 1 of Procedural removal for inactive administrators which currently reads "Has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period" should be replaced with "Has made no administrative actions for at least a 12-month period". The current wording of 1. means that an Admin who takes no admin actions keeps the tools provided they make at least a few edits every year, which really isn't the point. The whole purpose of adminship is to protect and advance the project. If an admin isn't using the tools then they don't need to have them. ] (]) 07:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' very helpful. :) <small>] ]</small> 06:19, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' very useful, saving hours of editors' time. Carefully thought out and ready for a trial. ] (]) 20:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Strong Support''' On several levels. We owe it to the reader to tell them that we haven't checked the veracity of the article. To be able to counter the slur "Misplaced Pages is unreliable, people can write any nonsense" with "Not true- all articles require references- and if they don't have them we tag them prominently with "No footnotes- please help to provide them". Then, in talking to newbies at editathons- my line of "''each wikipedia edit has three parts 'an interesting fact- a reference saying where you found it, and a note telling other editor what you have done''" now has teeth. And, for the nervous new editor. ¨''Don't try to start a new article- just go to one with the No footnotes tag and start there- it is unloved and you can only improve it''.] (]) 14:07, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
::I disagree with pretty much everything but your last two sentences. Firstly ] because people ''can'' write any nonsense. Go look at ] and see the 50+ hoaxes that existed on this website for over 8 years. One of 12 years was just deleted not two weeks ago. Second, ] by the the author of the article and if you doubt that you should challenge it specifically, not have a bot tag things that don't have a little blue number after them. Third, unless an article contains direct quotations, claims that have been challenged, claims likely to be challenged, or contentious material about living persons, ]: {{tq|...the policies require only that it be possible for a motivated, educated person to find published, reliable sources that support the material, e.g., by searching for sources online or at a library}}. Lastly, if we "owe it to the reader to tell them that we haven't checked the veracity of the article" then we should pending changes protect this whole place and turn it into ]. Not having a template at the top doesn't mean the information is true, reliable, or even verifiable. ] ]] ]] 05:24, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - I agree with Clem. As for the tag's prominence, they ought be. Most of the time these conditions are easy enough to correct, how long they remain so situated is mostly an editorial choice (even for new users as referencing is usually a task learned early, even by casual contributors).--] (]) 14:28, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Uanfala and ]. Articles don't need to have footnotes, see ], and I doubt throwing a {{tl|No footnotes}} tag at the top of the FA ] will be helpful to anyone. {{tl|No footnotes}} which would be added to ] says "its sources remain unclear" except that the source is very clear given it's three paragraphs on a Tolkien character cited to two of Tolkien's books. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the information about this Tolkien character comes from one of Tolkien's books (perhaps even the ones in the references). While {{tl|unreferenced}} definitely applies to '']'', should it really be added considering the information is clearly available if you just looked at the album cover (a fair use image of which is included in the article, but a bot wouldn't know that). Inline citations are only required if material is challenged, so adding a tag to an article that is already verifiable isn't useful and bloats a maintenance category for pages that actually ''do'' have issues with ]. ] ]] ]] 04:58, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*: To say: "Inline citations are only required if material is challenged" is to rest verification on diligence to only a fourth part of expected standards. There are four instances that necessitate inline verification. If you focus on the larger picture, where the other 75% may dwell, I think both you, and Uanfala would find it much more intuitive to support this reasonable measure; for the larger good that it will do.--] (]) 07:14, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*::I'm well aware, I mention all four in a comment I made above, but none of the other three apply in the articles I mention (no direct quotes, not BLPs, nothing seems likely to be challenged) so I didn't mention the other three. Determining whether the state of sourcing and verifiability is in line with policy is a task for humans and it should be done by humans. This is not a bot proposing to add {{tl|BLP unsourced}} to unsourced BLPs, it's not a bot that would add {{tl|Quote without source}} to direct quotations without an inline citation, it's not a bot that would add {{tl|Disputed}} to articles which seem to be hoaxes, it is not a bot that would add banners which show ''actual problems stemming from policy'' but rather is asserting that a whole article has problems because it doesn't have little blue numbers. If the bot were to add any of those three banners (appropriately) I'd be more inclined to support, but right now this just seems like what will happen is a ton of articles that comply with policy and with ] will get swept up in. ] contains 3% of all articles. ] contains over 1%. It will take 9 years to get through {{tl|unsourced}} at our current rate of 20,000 articles per year. I fail to see a "larger good" in bloating already massive categories with an unknown number that may not even be a valuable use of our time because no human actually triaged it.
*::And this isn't even me hypothesizing. I went through all the type 2 {{tl|no footnotes}} articles in the dataset listed at BRFA and ''many'' of them I would not tag at NPP. There are even articles like ], ] which would have been tagged but ''do'' use inline citations (with page numbers!) via parantheticals; the second article, ], even uses citation template {{tl|harv}}. If you want to bloat those categories, I'd be fine with the bot adding the category alone, but if we're going to be prominently displaying a message to our readers that there is a problem with an article I want a human to have judged that it is in fact not in line with policy, not a bot failing to find its prefered citation style. ] ]] ]] 08:17, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*:::Your rebuttal is cogent and well reasoned; <em>I respect your entire platform</em>. I think it will not achieve more than its due recognition (as great philosophy) until nirvana hath come. Meanwhile, this reasonable thing (that we can do) <em>should be done</em>; and continuously improved (until nirvana hath come).--] (]) 08:45, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*:::'''Addendum''' - I'd like to add that my support of this proposal is in no way meant as a dismissal of your valid concerns. They deserve mitigation,as they did (even before this proposal) and reasonably. perhaps, even more so amid the emerging consensus. I share your disdain for arriving at a page only to see a prominently displayed maintenance tags that inappropriately ascribe the wrong maintenance needs and very often show they have been mistagged this way for years. A bot that can add a tag ought always multitask to remove tags that are misapplied as well (that might do a lot, in itself, to reduce some backlogs. And to alleviate the potential of bloated categorization, it would be technically easy and editorially prudent to modify the categorization for each of the tags the bot will handle so as tags placed by the bot can be categorized as such, and diverted to a sub-cat of the main-cat eliminating any potential effect from bloat while allowing the segregation of bot placements where an editor may want to deal with pages tagged by the bot in particular, and thereby could. I hope they will do such things just because it is an improvement compared with not doing it. Anyway, I did not mean to seem dismissive, and I saw in my comment where it could easily seem like that is what I was attempting when I really was not meaning to. Cheers.--] (]) 12:22, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
*: '''Comment''' The name {{tl|No footnotes}} is a bit misleading as the template says that both footnotes and parenthetical citations can count as inline citations. I think the bot should skip over articles with parenthetical citations, such as ]. ] (]) 15:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. Every mainspace article should be flagged for such sourcing problems; doing so is de rigueur for patrollers, but because of the decentralized way patolling is done, many article have been missed. Let's find and fix that.--] (]) 16:12, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support ''unsourced'' only''' some of the concerns about "no footnotes" seem legitimate; on a spot check, while many of those articles have problems, often the lack of footnotes is not the main problem with the article. Stubs like ] or ] don't have enough content to need footnotes, and ] is all clearly sourced to the one reference given. I don't see any reason to not support the {{tl|unsourced}} run; the only false positive I found was a crypto-list at ]. I'm assured through the earlier discussion that templates that generate references are all included, it's not just checking for ref tags). ] (], ]) 22:54, 21 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support With Conditions.''' I am not too excited by the ] part of this proposal. It would really be a hassle if anything. However, adding ''unsourced'' is a great idea and has my full support. That would seem awfully useful for readers and editors alike. &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>]</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 16:58, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
**I very much agree with the comments made by {{u|Andy Dingley}} and {{u|power~enwiki}} on this matter. &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>]</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 17:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support (and tweak?)'''. I don't think this is a bad idea, but I'm cautious about "will not tag stubs". A lot of stub-tagged articles are very long, not really stubs any more by any reasonable definition, and often these are some of the least well-maintained pages - the fact that they still have a stub tag suggests an experienced/confident editor hasn't worked with them enough to notice and remove it.
:Would it be worth tweaking this so it's a little more sophisticated and eg/ only skips anything that's a stub and is also under, say, 5000 characters (a very generous upper limit)? If that's not practical, fair enough, but it would be good to include these large "not really stubs" as well if possible. ] (]) 22:39, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
* '''Oppose''' all. {{tl|No footnotes}} should not be bot-applied ever, because it will tag pages that actually contain ] (but don't happen to use ref tags – this includes several FAs, by the way). That tag requires human judgment. Bot attempts to apply {{tl|Unref}} result in a number of errors, although usually a fairly small (couple of percentage points) number. But the problem is that this tag is basically pointless. Except with quite new articles, we have no evidence that anyone sees that tag and addresses the problem. Also, when it's a stub, I like to think that our readers are smart enough to see that there aren't any blue clicky numbers on the page. {{pb}}As an alternative, I'd like to see a bot '''remove''' the unref tag when refs are added (NB: not "substitute {{tl|refimprove}}", which is something that a bot can't form a judgment about; just take it out). ] (]) 00:04, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
::Which FA do you mean? Let's test it, see what happens (dry run mode). I've gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid spurious tagging. It's not a simple bot. Also, when it makes mistakes, I improve the bot further so that type of problem doesn't happen again. -- ]] 21:57, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support unsourced only'''. As others have mentioned, articles don't ''require'' footnotes. While I agree that in the vast majority of cases adding footnotes will be helpful, I don't think a bot going around tagging all articles without footnotes would be helpful. ]<sup>(])</sup> <span style="font-size: 70%;">Ping when replying</span> 11:49, 7 February 2019 (UTC)


===Endorsement/Opposition (Admin inactivity removal) ===
&nbsp;<br/>
*'''Support''' as proposer. ] (]) 07:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
<table class="plainlinks ambox ambox-content">
*'''Oppose''' - this would create an unnecessary barrier to admins who, for real life reasons, have limited engagement for a bit. Asking the tools back at BN can feel like a faff. Plus, logged admin activity is a poor guide to actual admin activity. In some areas, maybe half of actions aren't logged? ] (]) 19:17, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
<tr>
*'''Oppose'''. First, not all admin actions are logged as such. One example which immediately comes to mind is declining an unblock request. In the logs, that's just a normal edit, but it's one only admins are permitted to make. That aside, if someone has remained at least somewhat engaged with the project, they're showing they're still interested in returning to more activity one day, even if real-life commitments prevent them from it right now. We all have things come up that take away our available time for Misplaced Pages from time to time, and that's just part of life. Say, for example, someone is currently engaged in a PhD program, which is a tremendously time-consuming activity, but they still make an edit here or there when they can snatch a spare moment. Do we really want to discourage that person from coming back around once they've completed it? ] <small><sup>]</sup></small> 21:21, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
<td>
*:We could declare specific types of edits which count as admin actions despite being mere edits. It should be fairly simple to write a bot which checks if an admin has added or removed specific texts in any edit, or made any of specific modifications to pages. Checking for protected edits can be a little harder (we need to check for protection at the time of edit, not for the time of the check), but even this can be managed. Edits to pages which match specific regular expression patterns should be trivial to detect. ] ] 11:33, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
<div style="width: 52px;">]</div>
*'''Oppose''' There's no indication that this is a problem needs fixing. ]] <small><sup>Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!</sup></small> 00:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
</td>
* '''Support''' Admins who don't use the tools should not have the tools. ] ] 03:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
<td class="mbox-text" style="">This article <b>contains no references</b>. Any idiot can see that; but we are assuming that you, dear reader, are not just ''any'' ordinary idiot, but <b>an especially incredibly amazingly stupid idiot</b> who suffers from <b>paranoid delusions</b>, and we fear that you may see plenty of references where in fact there is not even a hint of them. That is why we felt necessary to put this warning here at the top of the article, rather than in the talk page. But, don't feel bad; any idiot, <b>including yourself</b>, can help Misplaced Pages by <b>adding plenty of references to obscure, cranky, irrelevant, or unobtainable sources</b> to this page, so that other idiots may mistake it for a peer-reviewed authoritative journal article. <small> Chances are that it will be years before any editor will bother to check those sources.</small> <small><i>(November 2009)</i></small>
*'''Oppose''' While I have never accepted "not all admin actions are logged" as a realistic reason for no logged actions in an entre year, I just don't see what problematic group of admins this is in response to. Previous tweaks to the rules were in response to admins that seemed to be gaming the system, that were basically inactive and when they did use the tools they did it badly, etc. We don't need a rule that ins't pointed a provable, ongoing problem. ] ] 19:19, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
</td>
*'''Oppose''' If an admin is still editing, it's not unreasonable to assume that they are still up to date with policies, community norms etc. I see no particular risk in allowing them to keep their tools. ] (]) 19:46, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
</tr>
*'''Oppose''': It feels like some people are trying to accelerate admin attrition and I don't know why. This is a solution in search of a problem. ] (]) 07:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
</table>
*'''Oppose''' Sure there is a problem, but the real problem I think is that it is puzzling why they are still admins. Perhaps we could get them all to make a periodic 'declaration of intent' or some such every five years that explains why they want to remain an admin. ] (]) 19:01, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
&nbsp;<br/>
*'''Oppose''' largely per scribolt. We want to take away mops from inactive accounts where there is a risk of them being compromised, or having got out of touch with community norms, this proposal rather targets the admins who are active members of the community. Also declining incorrect deletion tags and AIV reports doesn't require the use of the tools, doesn't get logged but is also an important thing for admins to do. '']]<span style="color:#CC5500">Chequers</span>'' 07:43, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Note''' Above template was added by {{U|Uanfala}}. <sup>&#91;] ]&#93;</sup> 09:45, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. What is the motivation for this frenzy to make more hoops for admins to jump through and use not jumping through hoops as an excuse to de-admin them? What problem does it solve? It seems counterproductive and de-inspiring when the bigger issue is that we don't have enough new admins. —] (]) 07:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' Some admin actions aren't logged, and I also don't see why this is necessary. Worst case scenario, we have ]. ] (]) 15:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' I quite agree with David Eppstein's sentiment. What's with the rush to add more hoops? Is there some problem with the admin corps that we're not adequately dealing with? Our issue is that we have too few admins, not that we have too many. ] <sup>]</sup>] 23:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose:''' I'm not seeing this as a real issue which needs to be fixed, or what problem is actually being solved. ] (]) 21:17, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per all the good points from others showing that this is a solution in search of a problem. ] </span>]] 21:57, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' The current wording sufficiently removes tools from users who have ceased to edit the English Misplaced Pages. ] (]) 22:28, 3 January 2025 (UTC)


===Discussion (Admin inactivity removal)===
*'''Oppose''' "Unreferenced" per Uanfala and others, and '''Strong oppose''' "No footnotes". The vast majority of non-stub articles have ''some'' references; and seriously - articles '''don't''' need footnotes! And based on (an admittedly unscientfic) clicking of the 'Random article' link ten times, 90% of our articles don't have them. So we'd be adding "Unreferenced" to a tiny percentage of articles, and adding "No footnotes" to the vast majority. What practical purpose would that serve - especially the latter case? Nobody visiting ] is going to care - or try to find suitable ones for inclusion - if there are no footnotes there. An alternative useful proposal would be a bot that would add ] to unreferenced articles - then all such articles can be easily accessed from one place, rather than plastering templates everywhere. ]<sup>]</sup> 10:12, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
* Making administrative actions can be helpful to show that the admin is still up-to-date with community norms. We could argue that if someone is active but doesn't use the tools, it isn't a big issue whether they have them or not. Still, the tools can be requested back following an inactivity desysop, if the formerly inactive admin changes their mind and wants to make admin actions again. For now, I don't see any immediate issues with this proposal. ] (] · ]) 08:13, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
::The test data gives a statistical estimate how many would be tagged with 'No footnotes', it's either 0.02 (less than the number of already tagged with unreferenced) or 0.005 depending on which threshold is chosen. It's targeting the absolute worse cases using a conservative approach. If the article has a top hat of any kind, one of over 7000 templates (including infoboxes) etc.. it gets skipped. There are many many ways articles are skipped. -- ]] 01:55, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
* Looking back at previous RFCs, in ] the reasoning was to reduce the attack surface for inactive account takeover, and in ] it was about admins who haven't been around enough to keep up with changing community norms. What's the justification for this besides "use it or lose it"? Further, we already have a mechanism (from the 2022 RFC) to account for admins who make a few edits every year. ]] 12:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support both'''. Would be helpful for all of them, and while articles (as stated above) don't ''need'' footnotes, it is however by far the most common form of referencing, and consistency is good for a reader passing by who may not know about the other forms of referencing. As for {{t|unsourced}}, I am supporting so that the article gets added to the maintenance category, so that editors can find about it and do something. <sup>&#91;] ]&#93;</sup> 10:21, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
* I also note that not all admin actions are logged. Logging editing through full protection requires ]. Reviewing of deleted content isn't logged at all. Who will decide whether an admin's XFD "keep" closures are really ]s or not? Do adminbot actions count for the operator? There are probably more examples. Currently we ignore these edge cases since the edits will probably also be there, but now if we can desysop someone who made 100,000 edits in the year we may need to consider them. ]] 12:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support both'''. As a matter of principle, its inconceivable that any article beyond stub length would contain zero ] material. In particular, practice has shown that just about any statement is ''likely'' to be challenged. Misplaced Pages is going to be here for a long time, and our standards on sourcing are getting more – not less – demanding all the time. Even for content that doesn't strictly meet MINREF criteria, inline citations are clearly expected by ] and ]. <span style="font-family: serif; letter-spacing: 0.1em">–&nbsp;]</span> (] ⋅ ]) 02:01, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
*:I had completely forgotten that many admin actions weren't logged (and thus didn't "count" for activity levels), that's actually a good point (and stops the "community norms" arguments as healthy levels of community interaction can definitely be good evidence of that). And, since admins desysopped for inactivity can request the tools back, an admin needing the bit but not making any logged actions can just ask for it back. At this point, I'm not sure if there's a reason to go through the automated process of desysopping/asking for resysop at all, rather than just politely ask the admin if they still need the tools.{{pb}}I'm still very neutral on this by virtue of it being a pretty pointless and harmless process either way (as, again, there's nothing preventing an active admin desysopped for "inactivity" from requesting the tools back), but I might lean oppose just so we don't add a pointless process for the sake of it. ] (] · ]) 15:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per ]. How in the world is this bot supposed to identify ''all'' appropriately formatted footnotes? Imagine that your article has zero &lt;ref>&lt;/ref> tags, because you've used a "Bibliograpyh" header with full citations, and you're using parenthetical citations for necessary details (e.g. page numbers). Maybe you can train the bot to notice if there's a section entitled "References", "Bibliography", "Notes", etc. with content, but how is the bot supposed to know that an article's properly cited if it doesn't use cite.php, and a typo causes there to be no header with a standard works-cited title? ] says we don't convert an article from one style to another without consensus, and by implication it's wrong to tag an article for "no footnotes" if you just don't recognise the footnotes style. Obviously we need to forgive a human who's never seen parenthetical citations and tags articles inappropriately, but humans can easily be educated, while educating bots to be 100% error-free on the edge cases is impossible. ] (]) 23:53, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
* To me this comes down to whether the community considers it problematic for an admin to have tools they aren't using. Since it's been noted that not all admin actions are logged, and an admin who isn't using their tools also isn't causing any problems, I'm not sure I see a need to actively remove the tools from an inactive admin; in a worst-case scenario, isn't this encouraging an admin to (potentially mis-)use the tools solely in the interest of keeping their bit? There also seems to be somewhat of a bad-faith assumption to the argument that an admin who isn't using their tools may also be falling behind on community norms. I'd certainly like to hope that if I was an admin who had been inactive that I would review P&G relevant to any admin action I intended to undertake before I executed. ] (]) 15:14, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
::Well it's unavoidable the bot will make even a single error ("100% error-free"), but there is the other half of the equation, the vast majority of tagged pages that humans have failed to do anything about for years and decades. Do we leave those thousands untagged for fear of a few arguably mis-tagged pages? The bot is aware of common section titles, over 7000 templates and much else besides. Forget the &lt;ref>&lt;/ref> tags, the bot has many ways to look at it. The scenario you give sounds GIGOish. If no-GIGO and 100% error free is the threshold I withdrawn this bot and all bots. -- ]] 01:55, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
* As I have understood it, the original rationale for desysopping after no activity for a year was the perception that an inactive account was at higher danger of being hijacked. It had nothing to do with how often the tools were being used, and presumably, if the admin was still editing, even if not using the tools, the account was less likely to be hijacked. - ] 22:26, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
:::I get the feeling that many of the opposes above are based on the mistaken notion that the bot either requires the article to have <code><nowiki><ref></ref></nowiki></code> tags (thus negatively sanctioning other allowed ]s) or that {{tl|No footnotes}} would be inappropriate if the intended CITEVAR was something else (the template – though named so – says no such thing; it says "sources remain unclear because it lacks {{em|]}}"). <span style="font-family: serif; letter-spacing: 0.1em">–&nbsp;]</span> (] ⋅ ]) 15:26, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
*:And also, if the account of an active admin ''was'' hijacked, both the account owner and those they interact with regularly would be more likely to notice the hijacking. The sooner a hijacked account is identified as hijacked, the sooner it is blocked/locked which obviously minimises the damage that can be done. ] (]) 00:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
::::I can't speak for the others, but my opoposition is partly based on the assumptions that the bot requires the presence of either ref tags or some sort of citation template (which would mistakenly flag up articles that have text-only inline citations: Wugapodes has given examples above), and more germanely on the fact that a bot can't discriminate between articles that ''do'' need to have in-line citations and ones that don't. – ] 15:42, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
*I was not aware that not all admin actions are logged, obviously they should all be correctly logged as admin actions. If you're an Admin you should be doing Admin stuff, if not then you obviously don't need the tools. If an Admin is busy IRL then they can either give up the tools voluntarily or get desysopped for inactivity. The "Asking the tools back at BN can feel like a faff." isn't a valid argument, if an Admin has been desysopped for inactivity then getting the tools back '''should''' be "a faff". Regarding the comment that "There's no indication that this is a problem needs fixing." the problem is Admins who don't undertake admin activity, don't stay up to date with policies and norms, but don't voluntarily give up the tools. The ] change was about total edits over 5 years, not specifically admin actions and so didn't adequately address the issue. ] (]) 03:23, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::The test data shows the bot is really very accurate. -- ]] 16:16, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
*:{{tpq|obviously they should all be correctly logged as admin actions}} - how ''would'' you log actions that are administrative actions due to context/requiring passive use of tools (viewing deleted content, etc.) rather than active use (deleting/undeleting, blocking, and so on)/declining requests where accepting them would require tool use? (e.g. closing various discussions that really shouldn't be NAC'd, reviewing deleted content, declining page restoration) Maybe there are good ways of doing that, but I haven't seen any proposed the various times this subject came up. Unless and until "soft" admin actions are actually logged somehow, "editor has admin tools and continues to engage with the project by editing" is the closest, if very imperfect, approximation to it we have, with criterion 2 sort-of functioning to catch cases of "but these specific folks edit so little over a prolonged time that it's unlikely they're up-to-date and actively engaging in soft admin actions". (I definitely do feel '''criterion 2''' could be significantly stricter, fwiw) ]] 05:30, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' I agree with {{U|Andrew Gray}}, the matter of stubs should be handled. Take, for example, Pakistani railway stations of which 1,254 exist in real life. In Enwiki, we have 1,172 stubs, almost all prepared by expert editors from one or no sources. One argument in opposition is that a tag at the top is distracting to the reader. A ''stub,'' however, is invisible. It allows large groups of articles to be ignored for years. There is no reason that 2,100 Indian railway station stubs should not be processed by this bot. ] (]) 14:11, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
*::Not being an Admin I have no idea how their actions are or aren't logged, but is it a big ask that Admins perform at least a few logged Admin actions in a year? The "imperfect, approximation" that "editor has admin tools and continues to engage with the project by editing" is completely inadequate to capture Admin inactivity. ] (]) 07:06, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose no footnotes''' as footnotes are not considered essential or tag worthy for non BLPs, and this would be overtagging and unnecessary ] (]) 19:32, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
*:::Why is it "completely inadequate"? ] (]) 10:32, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose both'''' as for footnotes: Footnotes are'' never '' required for any article . Even for BLP, any way of associating a statement with the reference for it is acceptable.WP:INCITE says "Inline citations allow the reader to associate a given bit of material in an article with the specific reliable source(s) that support it. Inline citations are added using either footnotes (long or short) or parenthetical references. " Footnotes is the usual and recommended method, but not the only one. It's bas enough that the manual tag reads inaccurately, but we certainly should not be adding inaccurate tags by bot.
*::::I've been a "hawk" regarding admin activity standards for a very long time, but this proposal comes off as half-baked. The rules we have now are the result of careful consideration and incremental changes aimed at specific, ''provable'' issues with previous standards. While I am not a proponent of "not all actions are logged" as a blanket excuse for no logged actions in several years, it is feasible that an admin could be otherwise fully engaged with the community while not having any logged actions. We haven't been having trouble with admins who would be removed by this, so where's the problem? ] ] 19:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
::and as for "unreferenced" Looking at some at random, and remembering from a long experience, about one-third of them have external links or other ways of giving sources that could be trivially used as references. They just need moving to the usual place, not adding. Again, it's bad enough that a sometimes incorrect tag is often added manually, without doing wrong by bot. Even for quotations that people marked as needing sources, the sources are often there, but in a nonstandard way. ''']''' (]) 05:21, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' Useless clutter per ] and ]. ] (]) 22:02, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose both'''. If you want Misplaced Pages to have a uniform referencing style then start an RFC proposing that Misplaced Pages adopts a uniform referencing style, but in the absence of such a consensus using a bot to expressly force other people to follow your personal preferences as to how you think articles should be formatted is pretty much the textbook example of tendentious editing. Misplaced Pages doesn't have, and never has had, any kind of rule that footnotes are required; there are ].&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 22:13, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' As the bot author, I don't like tags much either. A bot like this has a number of advantages for anti-tagging. '''1-''' it will free up tagging editors (WP:NPP etc) to do something else with the knowledge a bot is on the job, resulting in overall reduction in tagging. '''2-''' the bot has an accuracy rate of 98% or better, far less than manual tagging error rates (see ]'s 33% comment above) meaning fewer overall tags. For those who think a bot is not qualified or capable of these decisions, manual editors are ''worse''. '''3-''' the bot can just as equally ''remove'' tags. If it sees a page that would not qualify for a tag (that it would skip) but it contains a tag, it can be removed. This might result in a overall net-reduction in tags. The bot is tag-agnostic focusing on quality of tagging to reduce the amount of error-prone manual tagging and de-tagging. '''4-''' there is a single point to make adjustments ie. tagging algos can be controlled and improved, unlike manual tagging. -- ]] 23:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support with caveat''' The bot should not tag pages that have higher priority sourcing issues, see ]. ] (]) 15:46, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
::Correct, it does not do that. Indeed it does not tag any page with a preexisting top hat of any type. This is one feature of the extreme conservatism I keep mentioning. It will skip pages at the drop of a hat (sorry). -- ]] 16:49, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
* ''Support'' Makes sense. It will be very helpful. <br/>Sincerely,<br/>]<sup>]</sup> 16:51, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
{{abot}} {{abot}}


== User-generated conflict maps ==
== Protecting large categories ==


In a number of articles we have (or had) user-generated conflict maps. I think the mains ones at the moment are ] and ]. The war in Afghanistan had one until it was removed as poorly-sourced in early 2021. As you can see from a brief review of ] the map has become quite controversial there too.
We currently give pre-emptive protection to templates that have a large number of transclusions, because a single vandalism edit can damage a large number of pages. Why not categories with lots of articles included? If you place {{tl|Category redirect}} on Cat:A, a bot will move its articles to destination Cat:B. If someone redirected an exceptionally large category, we might have thousands of pages bot-moved to the wrong place, and unlike reverting template vandalism (which requires only a single reversion per vandal edit and a wait for the job queue), someone would have to revert each of the bot category-move edits. (Catalot would simplify this, but since a category generally contains articles that belong in it, you couldn't move everything from Cat:B to Cat:A without moving pages that belonged in B.) This isn't a matter of ] either, as Grawp's been doing such a thing for years if I remember rightly. ] (]) 00:28, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
:I had no idea the articles were moved - should they be? I hope someone keeps an eye on ] (currently empty). Perhaps the bot should need an admin to activate it. ] (]) 05:36, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
::I think the reason we don't do this is a) categories are at the bottom of the page, so not very visible and not a promising vandal target, b) if adding a template to a category is enough to make a bot move it around, you can do the same trick to reverse the move and c) I don't think that such category vandalism happens frequently. ] (], ]) 06:28, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Nyttend already explained why your suggestion in b) would not work. I'll try to explain it again. If we start with 100 articles in Cat:A and 100 in Cat:B, and Cat:A is redirected to Cat:B, then we will have no articles in Cat:A and 200 in Cat:B. Reversing the process will then give us 200 articles in Cat:A and none in Cat:B, which is not the same as the starting point. ] (]) 08:19, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
::::Exactly. Yes, it's not a common problem, but even with a 200-article situation, ''this procedure may only be undone by spending quite silly amounts of time'' (to quote ] out of context). Lots of categories have far more than this; consider redirecting ] to ], and you'd have 585 articles to sort through. (It would be even worse if there are amputee Freemasons, since the old category would simply be removed from the article and you'd have no indication that the article was previously in both.) And that assumes you've only redirected one category; take several massive categories and redirect them all to the same place, and you might end up with ten thousand articles in the same category. With a couple of minutes' search, I just identified ten completely unprotected categories containing over 150,000 articles total, and I know that these categories are added directly in the article (as opposed to being template-transcluded) and that there's very low risk of duplication. The chance that this specific incident will occur is small, for sure, but should it occur, the risk is great enough that we need to do something about it — either protect these categories or amend the bot's workings, e.g. it only runs if the person who redirected the category is autoconfirmed. ] (]) 00:08, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
::::: FYI, the bot has a seven-day waiting period after a category redirect is created before it will start moving anything out of the redirected category. That does allow an opportunity for interested users to monitor newly-created redirects and revert any vandalism before a problem occurs. But, like much else on Misplaced Pages, it does require vigilance. --] (] Russ) 00:44, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::I asked R'n'B to come here because he runs the bot (or one of the bots) in question, ]. ] (]) 01:17, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::{{ping|Nyttend}} Would it be easier to just create an edit filter for redirecting categories? --] (]) 01:28, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::Maybe, or you could have the existing new-redirect filter look at category edits too. But I'm still concerned that this and the current 7-day delay wouldn't be enough, since not many people pay attention to specific categories or filters of this sort. I'd rather see the bot pay attention to an editor's standing, or semiprotect pages, or something else. Building on Johnbod's idea: what if the bot would run only when a fully-protected page was marked as "yes"? Either it could run on all the non-empty redirects at once, or we could have a way to tell it to run only on some of them. ] (]) 01:48, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
{{unindent}}I think the correct solution is to create a filter to watch for redirecting existing categories, and for users to create pages with links to {{cl|Misplaced Pages non-empty soft redirected categories}} and keep an eye on the "related changes" link on that page (e.g ). These measures, along with a 1 week delay, should be enough to prevent the cateories from being merged in this way. ] ] 12:54, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


My personal position is that sourcing conflict maps entirely from reports of occupation by one side or another of individual towns at various times, typically from Twitter accounts of dubious reliability, to produce a map of the current situation in an entire country (which is the process described ]), is a ]/]. I also don't see liveuamap.com as necessarily being a highly reliable source either since it basically is an ]/Wiki-style user-generated source, and ]. I can understand it if a reliable source produces a map that we can use, but that isn't what's happening here.
== Datebot proposal - closed ==
Per request at ], I have closed the recent RfC proposing a "Datebot". Since the RfC was archived before closure, I'm posting the result below.


Part of the reason this flies under the radar on Misplaced Pages is it ultimately isn't information hosted on EN WP but instead on Commons, where reliable sourcing etc. is not a requirement. However, it is being used on Misplaced Pages to present information to users and therefore should fall within our PAGs.
This is a proposal to increase date consistency in citations, per ]. Specifically, a bot would look for templates like
* {{tl|Use dmy dates}}
* {{tl|Use mdy dates}}
and bring present dates in line with desired usage on that specific article.


I think these maps should be deprecated unless they can be shown to be sourced entirely to a reliable source, and not assembled out of individual reports including unreliable ] sources. ] (]) 16:57, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
:There was '''no consensus''' for a bot to automatically attempt to increase the consistency of date formats within articles.
<!--Question copied from the intro to the proposal- see this page's history for attribution-->


:A lot of the maps seem like they run into SYNTH issues because if they're based on single sources they're likely running into copyright issue as derivative works. I would agree though that if an image does not have clear sourcing it shouldn't be used as running into primary/synth issues. ] <sup><small>]</small></sup> 17:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
The proposal, discussion, and full close can be found at ]
::Though simple information isn't copyrightable, if it's sufficiently visually similar I suppose that might constitute a copyvio. ''']]''' 02:32, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
:I agree these violate OR and at least the spirit of NOTNEWS and should be deprecated. I remember during the Wagner rebellion we had to fix one that incorrectly depicted Wagner as controlling a swath of Russia. ] (]) 05:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
]
* The ] ''(right)'' seems quite respectable being based on the work of the ] and having lots of thoughtful process and rules for updates. It is used on many pages and in many Wikipedias. There is therefore a considerable consensus for its use. ]🐉(]) 11:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
:'''Oppose''': First off, I'd like to state my bias as a bit of a map geek. I've followed the conflict maps closely for years.
:I think the premise of this question is flawed. ''Some'' maps may be poorly sourced, but that doesn't mean all of them are. The updates to the Syrian, Ukraine, and Burma conflicts maps are sourced to third parties. So that resolves the OR issue.
:The sources largely agree with each other, which makes SYNTH irrelevant. Occasionally one source may be ahead of another by a few hours (e.g., LiveUaMap vs. ISW), but they're almost entirely in lock step.
:I think this proposal throws out the baby with the bathwater. One bad map doesn't mean we stop using maps; it means we stop using ''bad'' maps.
:You may not like the fact that these sources sometimes use OSI (open-source intelligence). Unfortunately, that is the nature of conflict in a zone where the press isn't allowed. Any information you get from the AP or the US government is likely to rely on the same sources.
:Do they make mistakes? Probably; but so do ''all'' historical sources. And these maps have the advantage that the Commons community continuously reviews changes made by other users. Much in the same way that Misplaced Pages is often more accurate than historical encyclopedias, I believe crowdsourcing may make these maps more accurate than historical ones.
:I think deprecating these maps would leave the reader at a loss (pictures speak a 1,000 words and all that). Does it get a border crossing wrong here or there? Yes, but the knowledge is largely correct.
:It would be an absolute shame to lose access to this knowledge. ] (]<small> • </small>]) 22:59, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
::@] ] is frowned upon as an argument for good reason. Beyond that: 1) the fact that these are based on fragmentary data is strangely not mentioned at all (] says 'Military situation as of December 18, 2024 at 2:00pm ET' which suggests that it's quite authoritative and should be trusted; the fact that it's based off the ISW is not disclosed.) 2) I'm not seeing where all the information is coming from the ISW. The ISW's map only covers territory, stuff like bridges, dams, "strategic hills" and the like are not present on the ISW map. Where is that info coming from? ] <sup><small>]</small></sup> 23:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
:::The Commons Syria map uses both the ISW and Liveuamap. The two are largely in agreement, with Liveuamap being more precise but using less reliable sources. If you have an issue with using Liveuamap as a source, fine, bring it up on the talk pages where it's used, or on the Commons talk page itself. But banning any ''any'' map of a conflict is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The Ukraine map is largely based on ISW-verifiable information.
:::With regards to actual locations like bridges, I'm against banning Commons users from augmenting maps with easily verifiable landmarks. That definition of SYN is broad to the point of meaningless, as it would apply to any user-generated content that uses more than one source. ] (]<small> • </small>]) 23:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
:::] is a perfectly valid argument in some circumstances, like this one. Wikimedia Commons exists to hold images that are useful for the encyclopedia. The ''only'' reason to keep an image is if it's useful for articles. (I feel like the whole "Arguments to avoid" essay needs to be rewritten, because almost every argument on that list is valid in some contexts but not others.) ] (]) 18:45, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
:'''Weak Oppose''' I've been updating the Ukraine map since May 2022, so I hope my input is helpful. While I agree that some of the sources currently being used to update these maps may be dubious in nature, that has not always been the case. In the past, particularly for the Syria map, these maps have been considered among the most accurate online due to their quality sourcing. It used to be that a source was required for each town if it was to be displayed on these maps, but more recently, people have just accepted taking sources like LivaUAMap and the ISW and copying them exactly. Personally, I think we should keep the maps but change how they are sourced. I think that going back to the old system of requiring a reliable source for each town would clear up most of the issues that you are referring to, though it would probably mean that the maps would be less detailed than they currently are now. <span style="font-family:Copperplate Gothic, Ebrima;background-color:OrangeRed;border-radius:7px;text-shadow:2px 2px 4px#000000;padding:3px 3px;">]</span><sup>]</sup> 07:23, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' The campaign maps are one of our absolute best features. The Syrian campaign map in particular was very accurate for much of the war. Having a high quality SVG of an entire country like that is awesome, and there really isn't anything else like it out there, which is why it provides such value to our readers. I think we have to recognize of our course that they're not 100% accurate, due to the fog of war. I wouldn't mind if we created subpages about the maps? Like, with a list of sources and their dates, designed to be reader facing, so that our readers could verify the control of specific towns for themselves. But getting rid of the maps altogether is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. ] <sup>]</sup>] 23:33, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''', but I do think we need to tighten up the verifiability standards, as @] suggests in their spot-on comment :) Maps need to have citations, just like articles do, so readers can verify how reliable the information is. ] (]) 18:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
*We usually expect articles to use more than one source to help with NPOV. Relaxing that standard for maps does not sound like a particularly good idea. —] (]) 19:15, 27 December 2024 (UTC)


== Allowing page movers to enable two-factor authentication ==
Thanks, --] (]) 00:16, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
{{discussion top|reason={{tracked|T382879}} '''Consensus to assign''' <code>oathauth-enable</code> to the <code>(extendedmover)</code> group, giving page movers the option to enable two-factor authentication. ]&nbsp;] 11:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)}}
I would like to propose that members of the ] user group be granted the <code>oathauth-enable</code> permission. This would allow them to use ] to enable ] on their accounts.


=== Rationale (2FA for page movers) ===
== Encyclopedias for Deletion banner campaign for EU Copyright/Article 13 ==
The page mover guideline already obligates people in that group to ], and failing to follow proper account security processes is grounds for ] of the right. This is because the group allows its members to (a) move pages along with up to 100 subpages, (b) override the title blacklist, and (c) have an increased rate limit for moving pages. In the hands of a vandal, these permissions could allow significant damage to be done very quickly, which is likely to be difficult to reverse.


Additionally, there is precedent for granting 2FA access to users with rights that could be extremely dangerous in the event of account compromise, for instance, ], ], and ] have the ability to enable this access, as do most administrator-level permissions (sysop, checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward, interface admin).
{{ambox|type=delete|text='''Encyclopedias for Deletion:''' the European Union has proposed legislation which would interfere with the ability of Misplaced Pages to continue on the internet. Please act today: https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/ Thank you. }}


=== Discussion (2FA for page movers) ===
{{rfc|prop|rfcid=0EBFBD2}}
* '''Support''' as proposer. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 20:29, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
* '''Support''' (but if you really want 2FA you can just request permission to enable it on Meta) ] ] 20:41, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
*:For the record, I do have 2FA enabled. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 21:47, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
*::Oops, that says you are member of "Two-factor authentication testers" (testers = good luck with that). ] (]) 23:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
*::: A group name which is IMO seriously misleading - 2FA is not being tested, it's being actively used to protect accounts. ] ] 23:53, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
*::::] still says "currently in production testing with administrators (and users with admin-like permissions like interface editors), bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, stewards, edit filter managers and the OATH-testers global group." ] ] 09:42, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' as a pagemover myself, given the potential risks and need for increased security. I haven't requested it yet as I wasn't sure I qualified and didn't want to bother the stewards, but having <code><nowiki>oathauth-enable</nowiki></code> by default would make the process a lot more practical. ] (] · ]) 22:30, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
*: Anyone is qualified - the filter for stewards granting 2FA is just "do you know what you're doing". ] ] 22:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Question''' When's the last time a page mover has had their account compromised and used for pagemove vandalisn? Edit 14:35 UTC: I'm not doubting the nom, rather I'm curious and can't think of a better way to phrase things. ''']]''' 02:30, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
*Why isn't everybody allowed to enable 2FA? I've never heard of any other website where users have to go request someone's (pro forma, rubber-stamp) permission if they want to use 2FA. And is it accurate that 2FA, after eight years, is still ]? I guess my overall first impression didn't inspire me with confidence in the reliability and maintenance. ] (]) 06:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
** Because the recovery process if you lose access to your device and recovery codes is still "contact WMF Trust and Safety", which doesn't scale. See also ]. ]] 15:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
**:We should probably consult with WMF T&S before we create more work for them on what they might view as very low-risk accounts. Courtesy ping @]. –] <small>(])</small> 16:55, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
**:No update comment since 2020 doesn't fill me with hope. I like 2FA, but it needs to be developed into a usable solution for all. '''] <sup>(] • ])</sup>''' 00:09, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
**::I ain't a technical person, but could a less secure version of 2fa be introduced, where an email is sent for any login on new devices? ''']]''' 01:13, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
**:::Definitely. However email addresses also get detached from people, so that would require that people regularly reconfirm their contact information. —] (] • ]) 11:01, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
*:For TOTP (the 6-digit codes), it's not quite as bad as when it was written, as the implementation has been fixed over time. I haven't heard nearly as many instances of backup scratch codes not working these days compared to when it was new. The WebAuthn (physical security keys, Windows Hello, Apple Face ID, etc) implementation works fine on private wikis but I wouldn't recommend using it for CentralAuth, especially with the upcoming SUL3 migration. There's some hope it'll work better afterward, but will still require some development effort. As far as I'm aware, WMF is not currently planning to work on the 2FA implmentation.{{pb}} As far as risk for page mover accounts goes, they're at a moderate risk. Page move vandalism, while annoying to revert, is reversible and is usually pretty loud (actions of compromised accounts can be detected and stopped easily). The increased ratelimit is the largest concern, but compared to something like account creator (which has noratelimit) it's not too bad. I'm more concerned about new page reviewer. There probably isn't a ton of harm to enabling 2FA for these groups, but there isn't a particularly compelling need either. ] (]) 12:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' per nom. PMV is a high-trust role (suppressredirect is&nbsp;the ability to make a blue link turn red), and thus this makes sense. As a side note, I have changed this to bulleted discussion; # is used when we have separate sections for support and oppose. <b>]]</b>&nbsp;(]&nbsp;•&nbsp;he/they) 07:19, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' As a pagemover myself, I find pagemover is an ''extremely'' useful and do not wish to lose it. It is nowhere near the same class as template editor. You can already ask the stewards for 2FA although I would recommend creating a separate account for the purpose. After all these years, 2FA remains experimental, buggy and cumbersome. Incompatible with the Microsoft Authenticator app on my iphone. ] ] 23:59, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
*:The proposal (as I read it) isn't "you must have 2FA", rather "you have the option to add it". '''] <sup>(] • ])</sup>''' 00:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*::@], ] is correct. This would merely provide page movers with the option to enable it. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 00:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::Understood, but I do not want it associated with an administrator-level permission, which would mean I am not permitted to use it, as I am not an admin. ] ] 09:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*::::It's not really that. It would be an opt-in to allow users (in the group) to put 2FA on their account - at their own digression.
*::::The main reasons why 2FA is currently out to admins and the like is because they are more likely to be targeted for compromising and are also more experienced. The 2FA flag doesn't require any admin skills/tools and is only incedentally linked. '''] <sup>(] • ])</sup>''' 12:58, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::::Wait, so why is 2FA not an option for everyone already? ] (]) 01:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
*::::::@] the MediaWiki's 2FA implementation is complex, and the WMF's processes to support people who get locked out of their account aren't able to handle a large volume of requests (developers can let those who can prove they are the owner of the account back in). My understanding is that the current processes cannot be efficiently scaled up either, as it requires 1:1 attention from a developer, so unless and until new processes have been designed, tested and implemented 2FA is intended to be restricted to those who understand how to use it correctly and understand the risks of getting locked out. ] (]) 09:36, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
*It probably won't make a huge difference because those who really desire 2FA can already ], and because no page mover will be required to do so. However, there will be page movers who wouldn't request a global permission for 2FA yet would enable it in their preferences if it was a simple option. And these page movers might benefit from 2FA even more than those who already care very strongly about the security of their account. ] (]) 03:18, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' and I can't think of any argument against something not only opt-in but already able to be opted into. ] (]) 08:09, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' this is a low value permission, not needed. If an individual PMV really wants to opt-in, they can already do so over at meta - no need to build custom configuration for this locally. — ] <sup>]</sup> 15:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support'''; IMO all users should have the option to add 2FA. ] (]) 10:26, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' All users should be able to opt in to 2FA. Lack of a scalable workflow for users locked out of their accounts is going to be addressed by WMF only if enough people are using 2FA (and getting locked out?) to warrant its inclusion in the product roadmap. – ] (]) 14:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
*:That (and to @] above) sounds like an argument to do just that - get support put in place and enable this globally, not to piecemeal it in tiny batches for discretionary groups on a single project (this custom configuration would support about 3/10ths of one percent of our active editors). To the point of this RFC, why do you think adding this for this '''specific''' tiny group is a good idea? — ] <sup>]</sup> 15:40, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
*::FWIW, I tried to turn this on for anyone on meta-wiki, and the RFC failed (]). — ] <sup>]</sup> 21:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::Exactly. Rolling it out in small batches helps build the case for a bigger rollout in the future. – ] (]) 05:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
*:I'm pretty sure that 2FA is already available to anyone. You just have to want it enough to either request it "for testing purposes" or to go to testwiki and request that you made an admin there, which will automatically give you access. See ]. ] (]) 23:41, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
*::We shouldn't have to jump through borderline manipulative and social-engineering hoops to get basic security functionality. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 04:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. It sounds like account recovery when 2FA is enabled involves Trust and Safety. I don't think page movers' account security is important enough to justify increasing the burden on them. <span style="white-space: nowrap;">—]&nbsp;<sup>(]·])</sup></span> 14:10, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Losing access to the account is less common nowadays since most 2FA apps, including Google Authenticator, have implemented cloud syncing so that even if you lose your phone, you can still access the codes from another device. – ] (]) 14:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
*::But this isn't about Google Authenticator. ] (]) 02:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::Google Authenticator is a 2FA app, which at least till some point used to be the most popular one. – ] (]) 07:07, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*::::But (I believe), it is not available for use at Misplaced Pages. ] (]) 07:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::::That's not true. You can use any ] authenticator app for MediaWiki 2FA. I currently use Ente Auth, having moved on from Authy recently, and from Google Authenticator a few years back. {{pb}}In case you're thinking of SMS-based 2FA, it has become a thing of the past and is not supported by MediaWiki either because it's insecure (attackers have ways to trick your network provider to send them your texts). – ] (]) 09:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. Even aside from the fact that, in 2024+, everyone should be able to turn on 2FA&nbsp;.... Well, {{em|absolutely certainly}} should everyone who has an advanced bit, with potential for havoc in the wrong hands, be able to use 2FA here. That also includes template-editor, edit-filter-manager, file-mover, account-creator (and supersets like event-coordinator), checkuser (which is not strictly tied to adminship), and probably also mass-message-sender, perhaps a couple of the others, too. Some of us old hands have several of these bits and are almost as much risk as an admin when it comes to loss of account control. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 04:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Take a look at ] - much of what you mentioned is already in place, because these are groups that could use it '''and''' are widespread groups used on most WMF projects. (Unlike extendedmover). — ] <sup>]</sup> 17:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Re {{tq|That also includes , file-mover, account-creator (and supersets like event-coordinator), and probably mass-message-sender}}. How can in any way would file mover, account creator, event coordinator and mass message sender user groups be considered privileged, and therefore have the <code>oathauth-enable</code> userright? ] (]) 17:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
*Comment: It is really not usual for 2FA to be available to a user group that is not defined as privileged in the WMF files. By default, all user groups defined at CommonSettings.php (iirc) that are considered to be privileged have the <code>oathauth-enable</code> right. Also, the account security practices mentioned in ] are also mentioned at ], despite not being discussed at all. Shouldn't it be fair to have the <code>extendedmover</code> userright be defined as privileged. ] (]) 08:33, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Regardless, I will '''support''' per the above comments. Page mover rights are sensitive and can disrupt the encyclopedia (though not as large as template editor/administrator would). I do see people supporting the idea of 2FA for all, but I think this needs to be reconsider in another discussion because it was discussed a lot previously and never gain implementation. ] (]) 18:12, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. Like SMcCandlish, I'd prefer that anyone, and particularly any editor with advanced perms, be allowed to turn on 2FA if they want (this is already an option on some social media platforms). But this is a good start, too.{{pb}}Since this is a proposal to allow page movers to ''opt in'' to 2FA, rather than a proposal to ''mandate'' 2FA for page movers, I see no downside in doing this. &ndash; ] (]) 17:02, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Support''' this opt-in for PMs and the broader idea of '''everyone having it by default'''. Forgive me if this sounds blunt, but is the responsibility and accountability of protecting ''your'' account lie on ''you'' and not WMF. Yes, they can assist in recovery, but the burden should not lie on them. <span style="font-family:monospace;font-weight:bold">]:&lt;]&gt;</span> 17:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
*:What about users who are unable to enable 2FA, which requires either multiple devices or fancy gizmos? '']'' 🎄 ] — ] 🎄 17:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
*::@] I have mentioned to ''give the choice to turn 2FA on'' for everyone. No comments to ''mandate'' it for PMs.
*::Also, 2FA is easy to enable on every mobile phone (which is not a fancy gizmo, I believe everyone here has access to one?). <span style="font-family:monospace;font-weight:bold">]:&lt;]&gt;</span> 07:16, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::Then what do you mean by "everyone having it by default"? '']'' 🎄 ] — ] 🎄 16:20, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*::::Everyone has the ability to turn it on <span style="font-family:monospace;font-weight:bold">]:&lt;]&gt;</span> 10:46, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::::Okay, sorry. I misread your comment as everyone having it by default, not everyone having it by default.
*:::::Happy new year, '']'' 🎄 ] — ] 🎄 19:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Allow 2FA for en-wiki users with verified emails'''. I can't think of any other website that gates 2FA behind special permissions - it's a bizarre security practice. I hear the concerns about T&S needing to get involved for account recovery, but if the user has a verified email address that shouldn't be necessary. – ] 15:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' security is good, but pagemoving isn't an area where increased security will lead to any sort of improvement. I'm a pagemover and I certainly don't want to go through that hassle everytime I log in, which can be several times a day because I edit from different (at home) devices. &#32;<span style="font-variant:small-caps; whitespace:nowrap;">] {] · ] · ] · ]}</span> 19:43, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
*:The proposal is for ''allowing'' page movers to enable 2FA, not ''forcing'' them to do so. – ] (]) 21:37, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
* '''Support''' as an option, sure, seems beneficial. Those who are against it can simply opt out. – '''<span style="font-family:Lucida;">]]</span>''' 22:02, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
{{discussion bottom}}


== I wished Misplaced Pages supported wallpapers in pages... ==
This Encyclopedias for Deletion banner campaign for EU Copyright/Article 13 was originally Requested at ] ("Regarding please display https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/ prominently as a noticebox warning as above for readers in Europe. Thank you.") Please conduct the RFC discussion here. ] (]) 05:21, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


It would be even more awesome if we could change the wallpaper of pages in Misplaced Pages. But the fonts' colors could change to adapt to the wallpaper. The button for that might look like this: ] ] ] (]) 11:02, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
*This request is specifically about using the main page. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 17:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::Only in the European locales. ] (]) 21:22, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


:I think we already tried this. It was called ] ;) —] (] • ]) 11:51, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
'''Background information:''' {{cite web |last1=Dimitrov |first1=Dimitar |last2=Davenport |first2=Allison |title=Problems remain with the EU’s copyright reform |url=https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/02/07/problems-remain-with-the-eus-copyright-reform/ |website=wikimediafoundation.org |publisher=Wikimedia Foundation |accessdate=7 February 2019}} ] (]) 22:08, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:See ] for information on creating your own stylesheet. ] (]) 18:03, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
:@]: You have successfully ]d me, so I’m gonna work on a ] for this. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 22:54, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
::Heh heh, great idea! ] (]) 10:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)


== Why does the account go out? ==
*Further background information, this time from an independent source because I don't like the pointiness above - . - ] (]) 08:54, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
{{Moved discussion to|Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#Why does the account go out?| ] (]) 00:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)}}


== RfC: Enable override-antispoof for importers ==
===Survey: EfD banner===
*'''Oppose''' any use of the encyclopedia for political advocacy, even if a majority of a tiny subset of editors agree on a position. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 10:14, 18 February 2019 (UTC) {{atop|result=QoH has withdrawn the RfC as Graham87 has been ] the ]. Involved closure; if someone objects, reopen this discussion. <b>]]</b>&nbsp;(]&nbsp;&nbsp;he/they) 04:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)}}
Should the <code>override-antispoof</code> permission be enabled for the <code>importer</code> group? ] ] 18:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per my thoughts at ]. Taking a side in a political debate necessarily jeopardizes Misplaced Pages's ability to maintain a perception of neutrality with respect to that issue. Neutrality is one of ] as a project, and it's not really something that's supposed to be negotiable. Additionally, as editors point out below, the proposed legislation makes an explicit exception for online encyclopedias, so I fear that a big banner that says that Misplaced Pages is proposed for deletion is sensationalizing it quite a bit. ] (]) 10:37, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' for the reasons I stated earlier today in what is now the Discussion section of this RfC (it was not an RfC at the time). - ] (]) 10:42, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Strong support'''. Neutrality is not a suicide pact, and Article 13 would destroy Misplaced Pages as we know it. It may be exempt from Article 13 as an encyclopedia, but the sister projects such as Commons and Wikidata '''are not''' and Misplaced Pages heavily relies upon them for content. However, we should not allow our interpretation of the law dictate whether a banner is worth putting out. Here's an article from the Wikimedia blog: . If we don't want to promote a third-party website because we don't trust it, we can link to the fastest-growing petition on change.org, and change.org is appropriate. Inaction is a slippery slope; when they start going after Misplaced Pages, it will be too late. <span style="background-color:#cee">]</span> ] 11:06, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*<s>'''Support''', You are allowed to have political opinions and biases, you just aren't allowed to taint the content with them or canvas. Try you and stop someone declaring they are republican or democrat either on their own talk pages or on other talk pages. '''You want people to declare their biases'''. You try and stop people declaring they are nationalists or anti-nationalists. It's just an enlarged version of a userbox. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 12:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)</s>
*:{{tq|It's just an enlarged version of a userbox.}} Um, no. This is not about individual expression. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 12:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::::<s>It is '''precisely''' a request for the individual to express themselves. What was your statement trying to explain? <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 16:49, 18 February 2019 (UTC)</s>
*'''Oppose using the main page''', sorry <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 17:38, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' no advocacy for political reasons.] (]) 12:26, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*Misplaced Pages should make a political statement in this way if and only if there's an existential threat to the encyclopedia that has a serious chance of being enacted. No informed opinion on whether this meets that standard. ] (]) 13:01, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose this banner, SUPPORT Misplaced Pages taking action.''' This proposal seems designed to fail -- it can be called inaccurate (since Misplaced Pages, last I heard, would have a narrow exemption), it uses an in-joke meme that sounds flippant to insiders and incomprehensible to outsiders. We need a banner but it must link to high quality information about the scope of the legislation and updated analysis of how it DOES affect our activities. ] (]) 14:06, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' because this is technically a form of ]. ] (]) 15:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' as proposer. ] (]) 15:37, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Mz7. We don’t get involved with politics. ] (]) 16:52, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per what Mz7 said. We should also get something about this written on ] since it comes up fairly often now. ] (]) 17:28, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Mz7. Whatever other suggestions for banners are made below would be the same thing as well. ] (]) 17:35, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' The Wikimedia Movement takes political advocacy positions and seeks to influence law, government, and legislation on matters which affect the right of the Wikimedia platform and routine Wikimedia engagement to exist and be legal. For example, we advocate that accessing and editing Wikimedia projects is legal everywhere. I agree that we need more policy in place - such as to determine which government policies affect Wikimedia platforms, and how we prioritize our attention - but in the absence of community developed policy, I think that that by default our standard for taking positions in the name of the community should be rather low. Wikimedia public policy is a perennial issue and eventually we have to address it. Some documentation of the last big related controversy on which the WMF board took a position is at ], and see the related talk page. I dismiss all oppose votes that imagine that Wikimedia projects should accept local law and government without seeking to assert Wikimedia community interests. Editing wiki is not a crime, and anyone who tries to legislate the criminality of wiki is in error! ]] 19:03, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:*Nothing to stop the WMF advocating, and I'm sure they have been in discussions about it, per notes elsewhere. That doesn't mean they can splash a political banner on every project. IIRC, even with the SOPA blackout thing they sought consensus of the community. - ] (]) 19:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Right, the Wikimedia Foundation is free to organize advocacy that aligns with the movement, and individual Misplaced Pages editors are free to express their support of such advocacy. The relevant distinction is between this and making a statement as the ''collective editorial community of Misplaced Pages''. We are not the editorial board of a newspaper; unlike other publications, Misplaced Pages specifically has a mission to create a neutral encyclopedia. Political banners like these take the somewhat hypocritical step of disregarding our mission in order to protect it. I'm fine with the WMF lobbying governments on our behalf, but I'm opposed in principle to holding any kind of discussion to determine whether we as a community endorse any kind of political issue. ] (]) 03:30, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Strongly oppose''' dropping an external link on the main page with a banner whose wording I find tacky at best - that the external link says nothing about Misplaced Pages at all doesn't help our readers either. — ] <sup>]</sup> 19:08, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*:To summarize some of my other comments - I'm only opposed to us editorially adding this - if the WMF thinks this is a serious threat they should just do another Central Notice (and likely targeting readers that are constituents of the lawmakers involved) like last time. — ] <sup>]</sup> 19:42, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
* '''Oppose''' -The alleged effects on Misplaced Pages appear to be vastly exaggerated. This is not a threat to the encyclopedia or supporting projects at all. The requirement to provide "effective and proportionate measures" to prevent access to unlicenced material is what we claim to do anyway.] (]) 19:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per exactly what ] said. Misplaced Pages shouldn't be engaging in political activism at any time, and certainly shouldn't be adopting an fringe position based on the wild exaggerations of a handful of ultra-libertarian activists.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 19:29, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::{{Ping|Iridescent}} I am let alone ultra. ] (]) 22:55, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::{{Ping|Iridescent}} I'm a social democrat. Do you believe me? ] (]) 06:43, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' - Misplaced Pages should not engage in political advocacy on any topic... nothing more to be said. ] (]) 19:55, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' using the main page for political advocacy in general, though I'd support some exceptions, this isn't one, because online encyclopedias are exempt. "Free to use" is a promise worth keeping, "free to reuse" enriches for-profit publishers. '''Strong oppose''' to using this particular banner (or linking to that particular website) because we shouldn't link to propaganda. ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 22:48, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose this proposal but support another neutrally-worded one like what we did in July'''. I’m all for inside jokes, but this is too important when you think about what effect this would have on Wikimedia. We should put up a banner that gets the message across but isn’t too heavy-handed about it. —] (]&nbsp;&#124;&nbsp;]) 23:21, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' as I always do when it comes to getting involved in political matters here. <small>—&nbsp;]<sup>&nbsp;(]</sup><sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">])</sub></small> 03:32, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' this banner, but '''support the intent'''. A central notice/banner like last July would be fine. Misplaced Pages should be apolitical in matters that are unrelated to Misplaced Pages. This isn't one. This jeopardizes our core mission, and we cannot be silent on the issue thinking this is similar to taking position on whether or not the 2019 ] should be endorsed or rejected. <span style="font-variant:small-caps; whitespace:nowrap;">] {] · ] · ] · ]}</span> 10:14, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*''''Support''' using Misplaced Pages for freedom of the internet-related political causes. '''Oppose''' the suggested banner per Wnt. —''']''' (]·]) 11:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' for the votes that oppose this on political grounds, what was the PIPA/SOPA blackout about again? <span style="font-variant:small-caps;font-family:sans-serif;">]&nbsp;]</span> 13:36, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*:'''Comment''' Once I have made a mistake, I am not forced to make the same mistake forever. I am allowed to avoid that mistake again, am I not? I am allowed to improve and become a better human, am I not? --]] 16:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*::{{Ping|Jayron32}} are you saying the choice to continue to exist is a mistake? ] (]) 06:00, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*:::I'm actually saying that ] is not a life coach. --]] 13:16, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*::::Put differently, if Misplaced Pages can be killed that easily, it's valued far less by the world than we think. If that's the case it needs to be killed. I strongly doubt that's the case; rather, any legislation that proved to threaten Misplaced Pages's existence would be amended in short order to prevent that from happening. The global public would see to it. Advocacy like this isn't just inappropriate; it's entirely unnecessary. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 13:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Mandruss. --]] 16:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' Not wikipedias job to do political activism. ] (]) 16:20, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Strongly oppose''': While I am against the EU copyright directive, slapping a banner on the main page is a violation of Misplaced Pages's ] on the subject. However, another blackout (as some people have mentioned in some other places) over it is the Wikimedia Foundation's choice, not ours. ] (]) 16:49, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. Sure. Sounds good to me. ]&nbsp;(]) 03:39, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. So I can look ] square in the monocle and say, "Nein!" ''']''' <sup>]</sup> 08:03, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' - Personally I would maybe support a banner or something related but I cannot support the proposed banner (which IMHO is awful). –]<sup>]</sup> 12:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' - this banner is misleading because saying Misplaced Pages could not continue on the internet if Article 13 is approved is exaggeration. While I might support a banner similar to the that received consensus, I am strongly opposed to the ones that have so far been proposed because they all read as sensationalistic propaganda to me. ] (]) 17:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' the core sentiment, but '''oppose''' this specific message. This would affect the ability to access Misplaced Pages from the EU (but access from everywhere else would remain untouched, I guess). However, I do agree the banner should be toned down a bit. This should definitely be a neutral/informational advisory, not a deletion-style warning to "Vote Against Article 13 Or Else Misplaced Pages Will Die". Because as I said, access to Misplaced Pages from everywhere else, like the US, wouldn't be affected by Article 13. ] (]) 18:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Mandruss. I don't care which governments pass laws limiting Misplaced Pages. I did not give anyone permission to perform political advocacy here, especially in Misplaced Pages's name. <span class="nowrap" style="font-family:copperplate gothic light;">] (])</span> 23:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''', just like with other advocacy-on-the-Main-Page proposals, like the SOPA situation some years ago. Individuals may express opinions privately, e.g. in messages to each other or with userboxes, but placing political advocacy of any sort on the Main Page, or on normal articles, is throwing one's toys out of one's pram. ] (]) 00:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' While I generally agree that Misplaced Pages shouldn't engage in political advocacy, I think an important exception needs to be made for issues that threaten the very function of the project itself. ] (]) 23:04, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''', per {{U|Mz7}}, {{U|Sitush}}, and {{U|xaosflux}}. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for political or social advocacy or activism, and this proposal is simply a sensationalist reaction. If they must, as owners of the encyclopedia projects, the WMF can go ahead ad do what they like - on . ] (]) 09:14, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''': Misplaced Pages is an exemption from Article 13. I am happy with us having banners which take a stance on political events that could affect the existence of or a fundamental principle of Misplaced Pages, but this is not such an event. <span class="nowrap">— ''']'''<sub>]]</sub></span> 03:19, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' I do not feel that Misplaced Pages is a place to take ''any'' type of political stance. -- ] (]) 18:45, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
* '''Support in theory, without the hyperbole'''. WP has a long history of opposing "our brains are falling out on the floor" legislation that would harm freedom of online expression. However, "Encyclopedias for Deletion" is a silly name, and in-joke only some people will get, and claims like "interfere with the ability of Misplaced Pages to continue on the internet" are nonsensical. Lay out the facts dispassionately and without hyperbolic activism antics. (I say all this as a former professional activist, so I know it when I see it.) <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 05:29, 27 February 2019 (UTC)


=== Support (override-antispoof for importers) ===
===Discussion: EfD banner===
# Similar to the ] from last month, importers sometimes have to create accounts when importing old edits, and those are occasionally too similar to existing users or trigger filter {{efl|890}} (which I coded a workaround into). Currently, the only rights that have <code>override-antispoof</code> are account creator and sysop; the one non-admin importer, {{noping|Graham87}}, had account creator revoked because he was not a member of the account creation team, and <code>override-antispoof</code> would prevent him from having to ask an admin each time. ] ] 18:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
:We do not spread ]. ] (]) 04:40, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
#'''Support''' in principle as the affected user, but I'm also open to less drastic solutions. See below. ] (]) 07:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)


=== Oppose (override-antispoof for importers) ===
:A in the last week said that online encyclopaedias were specifically exempted from Article 13. Is that not correct? - ] (]) 04:51, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
# This is too far off from the ] for my taste, especially given that a solution already exists. ] ] 19:21, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
# per Pppery ] (]) 19:52, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
# Nah, non-admins that need to create odd accounts could just become account creators, ] isn't a hard policy, it is descriptive. If there is community support for someone not working on the ACC project to have this access, they should be able to hold it. — ] <sup>]</sup> 16:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
#While I trust Graham to use this power, edit filter 890 already doesn't run on importers, and for the only other scenario—where it's too close to an existing account name—I don't want to risk giving <em>all</em> importers the power to impersonate. As xaosflux said, prospective importers should be able to apply for account creator separately. ] (]) 16:52, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
#'''Oppose''' Unlike importing and history merging, the link between importing and creating accounts with usernames similar to existing ones is tenuous at best. There is already a solution for importers who genuinely need to do that—the account creator group—and we should not turn the importer group into nothing more than a "Graham87 group." ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 14:31, 31 December 2024 (UTC)


=== Discussion (override-antispoof for importers) ===
::It is true, but that provision does not allow us to keep our licenses' promise of reusable content, for both commercial and noncommercial entities. ] (]) 04:54, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*Got some examples of why an account '''has''' to be created here? — ] <sup>]</sup> 20:51, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Here is an example of when such an account was just made: ]. But just because it was made, doesn't seem to justify that it must be made. And it certainly doesn't justify that the credentials for such accounts should now be getting managed by another volunteer. — ] <sup>]</sup> 03:16, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*::See my comment below. ] (]) 07:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*Are there common-ish scenarios other than edit filter 890 where an importer has to bypass antispoof? ] (]) 00:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*As the user who would be affected by this, let me try to explain the situation a bit more. So when a page is imported with an edit by a named user, the edit will usually be attributed with an importation prefix as "wiki name>oldusername" (e.g. ), unless a check box is checked saying "Assign edits to local users where the named user exists locally", in which case the software will attempt to assign the imported edit to an existing user's contributions. When doing imports from old English Misplaced Pages databases, I always check this box (or at least ]), because, well, it's an edit originally made to this exact encyclopedia and I want the imported edit to be included in a user's contributions here as if it had always been part of the database, which it would have been, under ideal circumstances. Edits with an importation prefix cannot be collected under a user's contributions page (for an example see basically the entirety of the Nostalgia Misplaced Pages, a copy of the Misplaced Pages database from 20 December 2001, like ). The Nostalgia Misplaced Pages has been like this since ] as part of the database ].<p>So when importing edits from the August 2001 database dump, I sometimes create accounts to match the original usernames/domain names, to make contribution history match as closely as possible with the modern database. I create them with randomly invented passwords that I forget three seconds later and have been doing this sort of thing for . It's better that I create these accounts than them being created by people like Grawp, as had previously . When I lost my adminship, I started having problems with account creations; see ] and ]. I support the premise obviously, but as I said in the latter link, I'm also open to having account-creator permissions for, say, a month, and during that time intensively working on matching the August 2001 database usernames with modern ones. ] (]) 07:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)</p>
*:Right, so can't we just '''not''' Assign edits to local users - when there isn't a "user" on these? Because whatever user you are making, isn't the original user anyway. — ] <sup>]</sup> 13:09, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*::I think Graham is saying that we should prevent people from creating old usernames. ] (]) 13:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*:::Yes, exactly. Or at least make sure they're in good hands. And we should be able to get to their contributions to see what else they've edited, just like almost any other user (]). Thanks to my creation of their account (based on their ]) and my imports of their edits, it can readily be determined that ] created the articles ] and ] ... which happen to be the only edits by this user under that domain name in the August 2001 database dump. If I hadn't created the account in this case, we wouldn't be able to do that. Re not being the original user: well as I said above that ship sailed a while ago. The incident that inspired me to do all this activity is a perfect example of why these re-created accounts can be useful. Inspired by ] to what is now ], I discovered that the first woman to get a biography here was ] and ], to that page. The user who created it, ], was only active under that name in January 2001 and none of their edits were in the English Misplaced Pages database until I imported them (this can be verified by checking their revision ID numbers in the URL's and noting that they're not in the 200000's, as edits from the ] are). The are interesting, and show that it was deleted in April 2008 because there was ], restored by me in July 2009 when I finally created the account after discovering the user page when checking deleted contributions of ] , and had an edit imported in March 2010 (this user's only visible contribution until just over a week ago). And now we know that they created Misplaced Pages's first biography about a woman, which certainly wasn't apparent when I restored their user page back in 2009, before the ]! ] (]) 16:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*More ramblings that might be useful to someone, slightly adapted from my talk page: Before I lost my admin userrights, I ] on the remote chance I'd need antispoof permissions, but I hadn't read the ] page at that point and didn't realise that there's now such a division between account creators and ]. when ], I wasn't particularly phased because I didn't think I would use antispoof permissions very often (but after the Rosa Parks discovery, I found many more very early edits to import and ran in to antispoof problems twice, as noted above. At first I was a bit surprised by the level of opposition here compared to the support for the ], but I've just realised: it's possible to unmerge edits, but it's impossible to unimpersonate a user (or undo the potential social damage impersonation can potentially cause). I'd be OK with closing this RFC early to allow me to ask for account creator permissions (or should I just ask for them ... or would some admin be willing to grant them to me for, say, a month)? I think I'd be able to do all the account creations I'd need in that time. ] (]) 17:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*:Pinging ] as the initiator of this RFC, for which I'm very grateful. I'm glad things are being hammered out here. ] (]) 17:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
*{{re|JJMC89}} You removed Graham's accountcreator permissions as "not a member of the ] team". As Xaos notes above, there isn't a strict rule that accountcreators must be ACC members, and here there's a demonstrated benefit to the project in Graham being an accountcreator (at least, if you buy the argument about potential re-registration of imported accounts, which I do buy, given that it happened with e.g. ]). Would you object to me regranting accountcreator? <span style="font-family:courier"> -- ]</span><sup class="nowrap">&#91;]]</sup> <small>(])</small> 17:39, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
**{{replyto|Tamzin}} Thanks very much; I'd be happy to relinquish it when I've finished analysing the August 2001 database dump for possible mismatched usernames. pedantic point though: ] wasn't an account; it was just a script that happened to use an ID number of 0, which was OK then; the same was true for ] and ]. It's way past my bedtime ... I should really sign off now. ] (]) 17:52, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
**'''Support''' this <ins>(i.e. granting ACCR)</ins> as the easiest solution. <b>]]</b>&nbsp;(]&nbsp;•&nbsp;he/they) 02:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC); clarified 15:28, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
** Also fine with Graham87 being granted account creator. ] ] 16:29, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
**:Per JJMC's silence (while editing elsewhere), I've regranted ACC. Fine with this being closed as moot if Graham is. ] ] 21:23, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
**::I would have granted it myself without all this RfC business - except that I'm on a downer. VPT watchers may understand. --] &#x1F98C; (]) 02:04, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
**::Yep, we can close this now. ] (]) 04:32, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
{{abot}}


== Collaboration with PubPeer ==
:::That is the reuser's problem, not ours. - ] (]) 04:58, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


Dear all, Over the past few months, I have been in contact with the team managing ] - a website that allows users to discuss and review scientific research after publication, i.e. post-publication peer review - to explore a potential collaboration with Misplaced Pages. After reviewing some data regarding citations (e.g., the , , , and Misplaced Pages), they agreed, in principle, to share data about papers with PubPeer comments that are also used as sources in Misplaced Pages.
::::Do we place any faith in our own promises? Our terms and conditions of service? Those promises are woven deep into the fabric of the encyclopedia's policies. If you deny this is an existential threat, then it is your burden to propose changes to those policies. Are we as good as our word? ] (]) 05:01, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
From our calculations on a , we estimate that there are around 5,000 unique DOIs cited in Misplaced Pages that may have PubPeer comments.
:::::No, we are not as good as our word. I get fed up of reporting copyvio here and at Commons. - ] (]) 05:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
This message is intended to brainstorm some possible ways to use this data in the project. Here are some of my initial ideas:
::::::That is not a solution. It's an end. It's just a pouring out. You shouldn't make a decision without checking that attitude is present. Maximum copyright will not make it more difficult to pretend there was no copyright. It will make it harder ''only for those who are honest''. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 16:46, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
# ''Create a bot'' that periodically (weekly? monthly?) fetches data about papers cited in Misplaced Pages with PubPeer comments and leaves a note on the Talk page of articles using these sources. The note could say something like, "There are PubPeer comments related to articles X, Y, Z used as sources in this article."
:::Why? If someone uploads a copyrighted photo to Commons it could take many years till the violation gets discovered, so assuming that the photos from Commons are free is a legally unsafe assumption anyway. Same applies to plagiarized text. ] (]) 04:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
# ''Develop a gadget'' that replicates the functionality of the .
::::I appreciate that we are plagued by plagiarists, but that doesn't mean we should break the promises made by non-plagiarist editors, or that the Foundation can break those promises without permission from the volunteer community in the form of replacing our licenses with a claw-back of permission from those to whom we have promised free commercial and noncommercial use. ] (]) 05:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::I, for one, would be quite happy if we scrapped that promise. It is unworkable anyway. But it is a different discussion. - ] (]) 05:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC) Let me know your thoughts on these ideas and how we could move forward. --] (]) 00:02, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::We still tell reusers to review all media provided on WP for reuse within their country, even media from Commons. There are some obscure copyright rules that even our commons media cannot be reused there but are fine in the bulk of the rest of the world. Our disclaims have this warning. --] (]) 05:39, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::Just because we equivocate such that we ''can'' does not mean that we ''should'' break the promises woven so deeply into our policy. ] (]) 05:44, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:Regardless of what other users here have said so far, I still think it is a nice thought. &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>]</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 07:10, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::?? Chocolate cake is nice but no-one suggests we put up a banner advocating it. - ] (]) 08:11, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::If your chocolate cake is under threat, put a banner up. Interested? ]. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 15:47, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


:How would this be valuable to Misplaced Pages? ] (]) 00:45, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
{{ping|wumbolo}} regarding your support !vote, if Article 13 really is such a big deal for Commons then merge it into a WP project so it becomes part of the encyclopaedia or, hey, abandon it because it is half-broken already. As for WikiData, well, that's had five years or so to get going from a relatively high start base in terms of experience in policy formulation etc and it is a pretty much a disaster. Certainly won't be any loss to WP. - ] (]) 11:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::PubPeer is a post-publication peer review forum. Most of the discussions over there report issues with papers. Knowing that a paper that is used as a source has comments on PubPeer is very valuable, IMHO, as It would be useful for editors to evaluate the quality of the source and decide if it makes sense to keep using it. Paper retractions are also reported on PubPeer (see ), and the PubPeer extension marks retracted papers in red. Basically the idea is to replicate the functionality of the PubPeer extension for editors that don't have it. Furthermore, ] are registered in Wikidata. --] (]) 18:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
:'''BOO!''' ]. ]. Search results for "commons is a failure"... 7 hits. How many of the seven are about Misplaced Pages? They are all listed here with this post. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 12:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::But we cite information from reliable sources. I don't see why we'd want a list of people saying they don't think a publication is good, we'd want those sources addressed, surely? '''] <sup>(] • ])</sup>''' 18:28, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
::Where did I use the word "failure"? Talk about ignorance! AS for the notion in your !vote that it is just a "large version of a userbox", well, it isn't: main page does not have userboxes and it represents ''all'' of us, not one person. - ] (]) 12:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::::I think the point is that an article with a lot of PubPeer commentary is quite likely not to be a reliable source. &ndash;&#8239;]&nbsp;<small>(])</small> 20:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
:::If broken is not failure... Extreme copyright prevents the emergence of living artists on the grounds of uniqueness. Today is a renaissance of art. Ultra-extreme copyright makes that a narrow path through a desert. Talk about ignorance rather than simply using the word as a form of attack/defense. I didn't talk about ignorance, I linked an article about reason and debate. If you haven't read it yet or understood it, by the definition of ignorance... I am sorry, but this request is not for use on the main page, is it? It's a request for you to use it '''your self''' in user space. ]. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 15:44, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::::@], PubPeer is exactly a forum where issues with papers are raised, and the authors also have the opportunity to address the concerns. While a source such as a well-established scientific journal is generally reliable, we do not know anything about the quality of a specific paper. To me, knowing that there are comments on PubPeer about a paper is valuable because, in general, those comments are not just about "I like/dislike this paper;" instead, they usually raise good points about the paper that I think would provide valuable context to a Misplaced Pages editor who is trying to determine whether a given paper is a good source or not. PubPeer is regularly used by the community of "scientific sleuths" looking for manipulated or fabricated image and data as you can read in this press article: (there are many other examples) --] (]) 21:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
::::As far as I can work out, the request was for it to be used on the main page. That's what other people thought also., and it was certainly the original request. If people were arguing whether the thing should exist or not then that would be a matter for ]. Nothing to do with my ability to reason, I think, but rather your ability to understand the purpose of this RfC. And, no, "broken" is not a synonym for "failure", nor did I say it was "broken". You think you're dealing with an idiot here but, I assure you, you are not. - ] (]) 16:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:This does seem like it could be very useful for users interested in the quality of research. I think a gadget highlighting DOIs would be most useful, but using a bot to tag affected pages with a template that adds them to a ] (like ]) would also be a great idea. ] </span>]] 22:35, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::I didn't mention your ''ability'' to reason, but I said quite clearly that you haven't bothered. You are responding that my disagreement in terms is a claim to your idiocy. You say that a thing which is broken has not failed. Sheesh. What sort of reasoning is that? It's fighting talk. How do you know, if you reasoned with me, and your reasoning was true, that I wouldn't accept it even though I still hold my personal wishes? Well, you don't. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 16:30, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:I think this is a great idea. A bot-maintained notification and maintenance category would be a great starting point. As for a gadget, there are already several tools aimed at highlighting potential reliability issues in citations (e.g. ], ]) so I think it would be better to try and get PubPeer functionality incorporated into them than start a new one. &ndash;&#8239;]&nbsp;<small>(])</small> 10:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::::::You are now trolling and deliberately missing the point. End of. - ] (]) 16:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:Respectfully, I don't really think that collaborating with a website and using its number of user-generated comments to decide of the reliability of our sources is the best idea. While being informed of comments that have been made on the articles could be helpful, placing every article whose source have PubPeer comments in a maintenance category amounts to saying these sources are automatically a problem to be fixed, and that shouldn't be a call left to commenters of another website. ] (] · ]) 11:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::::You don't have to use personal attack to avoid admitting you have no debate. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 16:43, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::Why not? I don't think there's any realistic prospect of doing it internally. &ndash;&#8239;]&nbsp;<small>(])</small> 12:32, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::::::::No. You said a lot more than how you feel about the main page. Sorry. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 17:38, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Putting an article in a maintenance category because a user-generated review website made comments on a source is clearly not the level of source assessment quality we're striving for. Plus, there's the risk of things like canvassing or paid reviews happening on that other website, as they don't have the same policies that we do, but impact the (perceived) article quality here by tagging these sources as problems to be fixed. ] (] · ]) 12:39, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::::I believe the proposal is to add the ''talk page'' to a category (because it's attached to a talk page message), and not to do any tagging, so this would be pretty much invisible to readers. It would just be a prompt for editors to assess the reliability of the source, not a replacement for source assessments. PubPeer is also not really a "review" website but a place where people (in practice mostly other scientists) can comment on potential errors and misconduct in scientific papers, so the risk of abuse, while present, seems very slight. Who would benefit from it? &ndash;&#8239;]&nbsp;<small>(])</small> 14:06, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::That does make sense, thanks. I thought there could be cases where competing research teams might try to use it to discredit their opponents' papers, especially if it leads to visible Misplaced Pages messages, but if it is only a category on the talk page that is invisible for the readers, that sounds like a quite sensible idea. ] (] · ]) 17:45, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::::Hi @], the idea is to have the information readily available in the talk page, and that would make our editors' life easier. In the end, it is just a matter of having some links in the talk page that an editor can check, if they want. Furthermore, I second the comment above from @], PubPeer is very much used to report serious flaws with studies: a study from 2021 analyzed around 40,000 posts about 25,000 publications and found that . Take a tour on PubPeer and see for yourself. --] (]) 15:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::::I often cite scientific studies when I'm writing Froggy of the Day. It sounds like it would be remotely possible to make a bot or tool that could flag sources that have > howevermany comments on Pub Peer.
:::::I often think about Misplaced Pages's mission to curate rather than create knowledge in terms of the sugar vs fat debate in nutrition. At the time Misplaced Pages was founded, the prevailing idea was that fat was more fattening in sugar with respect to human beings gaining or losing weight. In the years since, much of that was found to have been a promotional campaign by the sugar industry. It is not Misplaced Pages's place to contradict established scientific information even when individual Wikipedians know better but rather to wait until newer and better reliable sources are published. Such a tool could help us do that more quickly. ] (]) 22:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
:I think some sort of collaboration might be useful, but I don't want talk page notices clogging up my watchlist. Perhaps something that can complement existing userscripts that highlight source reliability would be good. ] (]/]) 00:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)


== discussion page for reverted articles not talking page on article ==
{{ping|User:Mandruss}} Political advocacy is actually an express mission of the WMF, like it or not. ] (]) 23:03, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:{{ping|Benjaminikuta}} WMF owns the place and they are free to do what they want. They either care what editors think about the matter, and I'm strongly opposed, or they don't, and this entire discussion is an irrelevant waste of everybody's time. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 23:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:: So you fundamentally oppose the mission of the WMF? But anyway, votes are judged on the merits of the argument, and you didn't really make an argument. ] (]) 08:26, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Using the encyclopedia as a delivery vehicle for political advocacy, using a single voice to represent all Misplaced Pages editors, when there is absolutely no reason to believe that even a ''simple majority'' of the editing population support the message, is not the only means available to WMF to pursue that mission. Misplaced Pages is fundamentally a group of volunteer editors and their work product, not the face of the WMF. I'm sorry you don't think I've made an argument. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 12:41, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
::::Quite. The Foundation is perfectly entitled to get into bed with the likes of ], ] and the ] in defending the right of corporations like Google and Facebook to dominate the Internet by riding roughshod over less powerful people's intellectual property rights, but it should not use a volunteer-written encyclopedia as a vehicle to do so. ] (]) 13:18, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::Noting that my position has nothing to do with the specific political issue at hand, which is why I haven't addressed it any of my comments. To my mind it's beside the point. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 15:40, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::I didn't mean to imply that anyone who takes the same position as I do on the issue of a banner necessarily shares my opinion on the EU proposal, and apologise if I seemed to make that implication. One of the reasons why we shouldn't have a banner is that Misplaced Pages editors do not have a uniform opinion on this or any other matter. ] (]) 16:06, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::You claim getting rid of Google and Microsoft will be like some sort of big step, for humankind. But you have no expectation of what will come afterwards though do you. Where have all the homeless come from? ''"And the bull ran little races, and capered sportively around the child; so that she quite forgot how big and strong he was, and, from the gentleness and playfulness of his actions, soon came to consider him as innocent a creature as a pet lamb."'' Your government doesn't care what the name of the corporation is. This is not a divorce from the corporation or a step against them. Scatter Youtube today and piracy will come ''back to life'' before the weekend is out. Freedom is based on restriction. ''Copyright should be '''suitably''' restricted to culture a '''healthy''' society'', just like everything else is. Once they raise corporate bars they never go back, no matter how tricked you feel later, they allocate the money. When someone comes along and says, we want to change back this corporate decision, they say, can you replace the revenue? ]. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 18:09, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::This just underlines my comment elsewhere in this discussion that this seems more like a 1970s student union meeting than a mature discussion on an encyclopedia. I remember one person (the sole representative at my university of some Trotskyist splinter group) who would, whatever the issue, make a completely incoherent speech against it and finish with, "this issue is totally irrelevant to the one important task: let's all go away and prepare for the revolution!", and then he would walk out expecting everyone to follow him. You remind me of him. ] (]) 18:26, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::I said, this isn't aimed at what you are hollering it is. This is not part of the revolution against the corporation. I said, the reality is quite the opposite. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 18:54, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:{{Ping|Benjaminikuta}} That is false. The ] remains "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally", and that's it, regardless of what certain individuals within the WMF would like it to be. Wikimedia is not about advocacy, and does not accept advocacy except in very limited circumstances, if that. The WMF maintains strict ] for when advocacy may be acceptable. --] (]) 21:21, 25 February 2019 (UTC)


If you are making edits with sources an individual disagrees but just reverts with can not be bothered to read sources it would be nice to have somewhere to have a further discussion on the article that isn't the talk page. If you ask for information on the individuals talk page and it's not reply to. You add the information on the articles talk page and ask for a consensus but it's not replied to as it's not looked at a lot. It would be nice for there to be somewhere to discuss the article. I have been asking where to go if articles are being stonewalled. There doesn't seem to be somewhere to bring up the behaviour ] (]) 07:15, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::The Wikimedia Foundation will not associate with or endorse policy, political actions, or political associations, '''''unless''''' the community, Meta, or the Foundation staff recommends they do so. They are very strict about that, and only eager towards politics that challenges the WP missions.


:* '''Notice:''' this user is ] after being admonished and threatened with block for failing to drop the stick over at {{section link|Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents|3R / Edit Warring Sharnadd}} ]&thinsp;] 07:48, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::There is no guaranteed public domain release, and copyright has exhibited an endless upward crawl of ] since almost 40 years.
:*:And the question has already been answered there. ] (]) 08:22, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:*::Yes I was simply trying to get a reply to if there is anything I could do next if people did not enter into discussions. Also to try and have something implemented if there was not anything in place after reverts are made without information and discussions can not be held. Liz kindly answered me after I posted this here so it is no longer needed ] (]) 10:47, 30 December 2024 (UTC)


== Appearance setting to hide all inline notes from articles ==
::About the ] behind copyright today. If you are an artist from an early age, and you lose your life before you are a teenager, ''there's 70 years off your copyright'' and '''that can only''' prop up ''super-uber-mega-conglomo-corporat... It's not for the artists'', even if they think they might get something, ''get that!''


While disabled by default, enabling it would hide all those , and even inline notes from all articles, which makes reading Misplaced Pages more clearer, especially when reading about controversial topics. Those citation notes can be a distraction for some, so that's why i am proposing such a feature like this. ] (]) 12:37, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::Creators and performers do not need ''absolute'' copyright. They just need some. What they '''need''' is buyers. They need you ''to want the art and performances''. Like philosophy, art is behind everything civilised that humans do in todays world. There is art in all human creation and activity. Yet desire to be an artist, in this "western world", is supposed to be a joke. The same people calling artists a joke are saying that life+70 on reimagining old work is going, to make things easy, for creativeness.
:Adding <code><nowiki>sup { display: none !important; }</nowiki></code> to your ] should do the job! (see also ]) ] (] · ]) 12:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
::Yep. I'd oppose making it a default setting, though. I don't want to dictate to the IP how they should use Misplaced Pages or discount their experience, but those notes are vital for information literacy. If the IP is reading about controversial topics without them, they're risking exposing themselves to misinformation. <span style="border:3px outset;border-radius:8pt 0;padding:1px 5px;background:linear-gradient(6rad,#86c,#2b9)">]</span> <sup>]</sup> 17:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:::Agreed! If anything, it is far more vital to have those inline references/citations when reading controversial information. This is even more critical for tags like citation needed/OR/etc because without them the reader is likely to take the statement as generally accepted fact instead of with the grain of salt that should be applied when such a tag has been added. ]&thinsp;] 17:31, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:This reminds me of proposals made long ago to move all maintenance templates to the talk pages so that readers wouldn't be exposed to how messy and unreliable article content actually is. ] 19:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
:I'd personally advise against enabling this, IP. Things tagged with may be just flat-out wrong. '']'' 🎄 ] — ] 🎄 19:57, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
::What about a third option to keep citation needed tags while hiding actual citations?
::*Show all inline notes
::*Show only inline maintenance notices
::*Hide all inline notes
::] (]) 21:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
:::To build on what Donald Albury is saying, I think the readers ''should'' be reminded of how messy Misplaced Pages is. I just added a citation this afternoon, not only because I want the article's regulars to find an additional source but also because I want the readers to see the tag and know that the content is not sufficiently sourced at this time. (I believe in general that people should be more vigilant about assessing the reliability of what they read, and not only here on the Wiki.) If anyone does donate their time and trouble to make a way for readers to opt out of seeing ref tags and maintenance tags, I would oppose making it the default. ] (]) 22:31, 3 January 2025 (UTC)


== Political bio succession boxes, need streamlining ==
::The word '']'' is become '']'' in the "western world". On one hand you make a joke of them, while on the other you believe in the strictest laws upon them. ''What did artists and performers ever do to you, except set you '''free'''''? Like so many problems in todays world, it's not just the law, but the buyers who have no interest in the product, leaving a swinging door to profiteering. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 23:02, 25 February 2019 (UTC)


My goodness, I went through some American politician bios (didn't check other countries) & there's a lot of trivial info added to succession boxes. So called "Honorary titles" - like "Longest living U.S. Senator", "Earliest living American governor", etc. PS - I think these should be deleted. What would be added next? "Tallest Speaker of the House"? ] (]) 00:50, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
:: {{Ping|Yair rand}} ]: "Another main objective of the Wikimedia Foundation is political advocacy." ] (]) 00:18, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::{{Ping|Benjaminikuta}} The WMF's objectives are not, in fact, set by an incorrect Misplaced Pages article or a mistaken statement by the Guardian. --] (]) 00:44, 26 February 2019 (UTC) :I delete those on sight and you should too. --] (]) 19:06, 31 December 2024 (UTC)


== Transclusion of peer reviews to article talk pages ==
:::: {{Ping|Yair rand}} Are you sure that they're incorrect? https://wikimediafoundation.org/advocacy/ https://policy.wikimedia.org/ ] (]) 00:49, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::{{Ping|Benjaminikuta}} Yes. The ] remains the actual WMF mission. The WMF takes certain limited stances in order to avoid interference against the Wikimedia projects, so that we can continue our work here, but it is not an advocacy organization. To quote a rather ] from the Executive Director to the Board:
{{Quote frame|
quote =


Hello,
'''What is not the core work of the Wikimedia Foundation?'''


First time posting here.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not a think tank or a research institute. We're not an advocacy organization or a lobbyist, and our core mission isn't to keep the internet free and open. We are not a general educational non-profit. (We are a website, or set of sites, and everything we do needs to be understood through that lens.) We don't just reactively "support the community"—responding to requests from editors and doing what they ask us to do. Our purpose isn't to provide MediaWiki support for third parties (but it's in our interest to ensure that a healthy third party ecosystem develops around MediaWiki). We're not, ourselves, content creators. Our purpose is not to ensure the chapters grow and develop, nor is it to support the chapters in their growth and development: rather, chapters are our partners in supporting editors and other content creators.


I would like to propose that ] be automatically transcluded to talk pages in the same way as GAN reviews. This would make them more visible to more editors and better preserve their contents in the article/talk history. They often take a considerable amount of time and effort to complete, and the little note near the top of the talk page is very easy to overlook.
The Wikimedia Foundation is not the only fish in the sea of free knowledge; not everything that needs to be done must be done by the Wikimedia Foundation, and it's not our job to do work that other individuals or entities are better positioned or mandated to do, however important that work may be. When we try to do work that more properly belongs to other individuals or groups, we imperil our ability to get our own core work done, and we arguably make it less possible for other entities to do what they're supposed to be doing.


This also might (but only might!) raise awareness of the project and lead to more editors making use of this volunteer resource.
|author = then-Executive Director Sue Gardner
}}
:::::--] (]) 03:28, 26 February 2019 (UTC)


I posted this suggestion on the project talk page yesterday, but I have since realized it has less than 30 followers and gets an average of 0 views per day.
===Alternative 1: Please don't let Europe take your freedom===
In response to ]'s valid concerns, I will in one week ask for expedited closure considering this alternative:


Thanks for your consideration, ] (]) 23:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)
{{ambox|type=content|text='''Please don't let Europe take your freedom.''' The European Union has proposed legislation which would interfere with the ability of Misplaced Pages to continue to provide freely licensed content on the internet. Please act today: https://SaveYourInternet.EU/act Thank you. }}
:I don't see any downsides here. ] (]/]) 01:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC)


== Remove Armenia-Azerbaijan general community sanctions ==
If there is anyone in support of the original who is not in support of this alternative, please say so. ] (]) 16:47, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
{{archive top|result=Opening this discussion is itself a violation of GS/AA, as SimpleSubCubicGraph is not extended-confirmed. Initial response from community members with standing to discuss these topics has been unanimously opposed so I see no reason to leave this open. <sub>signed, </sub>] <sup>]</sup> 01:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)}}

I believe Armenia and Azerbaijan sanction is now outdated and useless. I propose that the sanction on the two nations be removed permanently unless another diplomatic crisis happens between the two countries. My reasons are: A recent statement was made by Armenia offering condolences to Azerbaijan which has almost never happened, I believe that Armenia and Azerbaijan related pages blanket protection of Extended Confirmed should be lowered to Autoconfirmed protection, with the exception of the wars between the two sovereign nations. Additionally, relations are getting better between the two countries. For nearly 30 years, relations were rock bottom, diplomats were not found in Azerbaijan nor Armenia and tensions were at an all time high. However ever since the 2020 war the two nations have started to make amends. This first started with the peace deal ending the war between the two nations. Turkey whom is a staunch ally of Azerbaijan has started to resume direct flights from ], the capital of Armenia and ], the largest city in the Republic of Turkiye. In 2023, Armenia and Azerbaijan entered into extensive bilateral negotiations as well as a prisoner exchange between the two countries, and Armenia supported Azerbaijan for being the host of the UN climate change forum. Finally, last year the two countries solved many border issues and created a transport route between the two countries which is a symbol of peace. The two nations are much better off now than they were just 4 years ago and can be seen as having a cooperative/reconciling attitude. That is why I propose an amendment that will immediately downgrade all protections (from ] to ]) for all Armenia-Azerbaijan related pages. ] (]) 00:31, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:{{u|EllenCT}} will you please clarify matters because I and several other people think you are asking for a banner to be displayed on the main page but RTG, and seemingly RTG alone, thinks you are just promoting the fact that the banner exists. Obviously, if someone objected to the banner existing then the correct venue for discussion would be ]. And promoting it in the hope that more contributors will put it on their own pages does not require an RfC. - ] (]) 17:02, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*{{block indent|em=1.6|1=<small>Notified: ]. ] (]/]) 00:53, 4 January 2025 (UTC)</small>}}<!-- Template:Notified -->

* '''Oppose'''. This statement does not provide an adequate or relevant reason for vacating ]'s ECR remedy. Community sanctions are related to the conduct of editors on Misplaced Pages, not the conduct of international affairs. Since page and editor sanctions are regularly issued pursuant to GS/AA and ], there is still a clear need for ECR. ] (]/]) 00:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
::I am asking for a non-template banner such as either proposed alternative to be displayed on the Main Page, and have announced my intentions to ask for expedited closure due to the existential threat to the freedoms we have been promising re-users since the start of the project. If there are serious plans to try to accommodate the proposed EU legislation, then it is incumbent upon those opposing advocacy to prepare a series of RFCs on changes to all of the wikipedias' content licenses and associated policies and guidelines. ] (]) 17:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*:@] '''Response''' Well I believe that the editors that cause edit conflicts and wars are mostly Armenian, Azerbaijani, or Turkish. They feel patriotic of their country and their side and have vilified the other side in their head, but with calming geopolitical tensions I believe that these editors will no longer feel the need to edit war on wikipedia. Its the same reason why you do not see British people edit warring on the page for the United States of America over the loss in the Independence War. Geopolitical relations between Great Britain and the United States of America are good. ] (]) 00:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

*::But you do see Armenian/Azerbaijani people edit warring on pages about Armenia/Azerbaijan still. ]<sub>]<sub>]</sub></sub> (]/]) 00:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Thank you. Hopefully RTG sees your reply because they're spouting nonsense all over this thread due to getting the wrong end of the stick. - ] (]) 17:21, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*::To add further context, you're correct that we don't have any sanctions regarding the US War of Independence. However, we do have sanctions regarding other historical topics, including anti-Semitism in Poland around World War II (]) and The Troubles (]). As such, just because country leadership may communicate a lack of conflict doesn't mean editors on Misplaced Pages immediately edit within policy and treat each other with civility. ] (]) 01:24, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

* Per Voorts, GS/AA is enacted in response to the actions of editors. Real world diplomatic activity is not directly relevant. ] (]) 01:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
*Oppose for almost the same reason as in the above section, if the WMF considers this to be an existential threat they should put up a CentralNotice as the server owners. Targeting only the English Misplaced Pages, and targeting it to readers that are not constituents of nations that have no vote in this proposal is wasteful as well. — ] <sup>]</sup> 19:11, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
{{abot}}
*'''Comment''' I'm fine with a Main Page banner; I'm not sold on the specific phrasing and link target used here. In these regrettable times, Misplaced Pages ''is'' political, just because it tries to be factual. We shouldn't pretend that we are "above" politics just because our mission has, in principle, no partisan alignment. We might dodge Article 13 based on the particular exemptions they decide to carve out, but Article 11 is enough to leave a massive amount of our reference work in legal limbo. If , a banner on the Main Page is the least we can do. I suggest (with the date updated appropriately). ] (]) 19:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*:{{re|XOR&#39;easter}} if the WMF thinks this is a grave issue, they can just put up a CentralNotice - it doesn't need to be an editorial decision from the enwiki community. — ] <sup>]</sup> 19:37, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::*A '''CentralNotice''' would be even better. The Foundation is unlikely to be able to obtain the necessary community agreement to relicense existing already-contributed content, to comply with the law as currently proposed in Europe. That is certainly an existential threat to a vast portion of Foundation pageviews. ] (]) 21:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per my previous comment; Misplaced Pages shouldn't be engaging in political activism, and certainly shouldn't be engaging in political activism based on the lies and exaggerations of the unholy alliance of the ultra-libertarian lunatic fringe and the anti-European nationalist hardliners.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 19:32, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*There is no point in proposing “alternatives”... Misplaced Pages does not and should not engage in political advocacy... even on (or even especially on) issues that might affect Misplaced Pages itself. ] (]) 20:00, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. Apart from concerns about whether Misplaced Pages should engage in activism, the link in this banner does not explain in any way ''how'' this proposal would damage Misplaced Pages, but simply invites people to sign a petition. I do not agree that we should do anything at all, but, if we were to do anything, it should link to something that actually explains what is going on rather than invite people to oppose it blindly. ] (]) 20:43, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment.''' {{u|EllenCT}}, that would be me. I preferred the original and would not support this banner. Thank you for all you do! :D &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>]</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 20:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::Aww, thank you! I'm waiting to see what ] proposes before I commit to specifics. ] (]) 21:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Please don't do that. Jimmy Wales's opinion should count for no more that anyone else's. ] (]) 21:36, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::: to the Foundation, sitting as he does on both the Board of Trustees and the Advocacy Working Group, and having dealt with existential threats in the past. ] (]) 21:38, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::There have been no existential threats in the past, and I don't believe that this one is either. Nobody in this discussion has linked to any neutral explanation of what the proposals actually say, but only to sensationalised interpretations of what they imagine they might lead to. ] (]) 22:00, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::Good point; here is some '''background information:''' {{cite web |last1=Dimitrov |first1=Dimitar |last2=Davenport |first2=Allison |title=Problems remain with the EU’s copyright reform |url=https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/02/07/problems-remain-with-the-eus-copyright-reform/ |website=wikimediafoundation.org |publisher=Wikimedia Foundation |accessdate=7 February 2019}} ] (]) 22:08, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::Yet again, that not ''neutral'' background information, but something produced by the Wikimedia Foundation to justify why so much money should be spent on peripheral issues such as employing people to write drivel rather than what should be their central purpose of providing infrastructure. Surely it's not beyond the human wit to actually ''say what the proposals are'' rather than offer links that tell us what's wrong with them without actually saying what they are? ] (]) 22:22, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::{{Ping|Phil Bridger}} are you looking for and ? I like this part: ''Online services are means of providing wider access to cultural and creative works and offer great opportunities for cultural and creative industries to develop new business models. However, although they allow for diversity and ease of access to content, they also generate challenges when copyright protected content is uploaded without prior authorisation from rightholders. Legal uncertainty exists as to whether such services engage in copyright relevant acts and need to obtain authorisations from rightholders for the content uploaded by their users who do not hold the relevant rights in the uploaded content, without prejudice to the application of exceptions and limitations provided for in Union Law. This uncertainty affects rightholders' possibilities to determine whether, and under which conditions, their works and other subject-matter are used as well as their possibilities to get an appropriate remuneration for it.'' ] (]) 06:56, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::::Without wanting to sound too sarcastic, if you seriously think that the Pirate Party are a neutral source on matters of copyright you should probably withdraw not just from this discussion but from any discussion regarding copyrights.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 08:48, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::I posted here earlier today. Is that any use? And, fwiw, I too am not happy with the appeal to Jimmy, nor the excitable tone being used in the templates. - ] (]) 22:28, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::Thanks, Sitush, and sorry for missing that before. That link confirms that there's nothing for Misplaced Pages to worry about, as we don't rely on users uploading copyright-violating content, which is the target of that proposal, in the way that YouTube and similar services do. I'm sure that Google can afford to do its own lobbying without unpaid help from us volunteers. ] (]) 08:16, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per Iri and my comment above. ] (]) 21:10, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Note''' I replaced "free content" with "freely licensed content" in this proposal after the above comments. ] (]) 22:46, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' I could support this initiative if it were highlighting a Misplaced Pages article on the topic, but I can't support it with the external link. Thanks. ] (]) 22:49, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' per my !vote above; oppose anything linking to that website. ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 22:50, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' mostly per above. —] (]&nbsp;&#124;&nbsp;]) 23:22, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' as I always do when it comes to political advocacy here. <small>—&nbsp;]<sup>&nbsp;(]</sup><sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">])</sub></small> 03:33, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' any use of the encyclopedia for political advocacy, even if a majority of a tiny subset of editors agree on a position. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 11:03, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' Mainly per Iri above. Political activism when its directly affecting ENWP is one thing, at least that might be justifiable (although I would still object). Political activism based on disinformation and in some cases, what I would consider active misrepresentation by people (including wikipedians) who certainly know better? No thanks. ] (]) 16:18, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' - Not that much better than the one above. –]<sup>]</sup> 12:24, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' this is worse than the previous suggestion because it's even more misleading than the first one. While I might support a banner similar to the that received consensus, I am strongly opposed to the ones that have so far been proposed because they all read as sensationalistic propaganda to me. ] (]) 17:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''', again for the same reasons: per {{U|Mz7}}, {{U|Sitush}}, and {{U|xaosflux}}. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for political or social advocacy or activism, and this proposal is simply a sensationalist reaction. If they must, as owners of the encyclopedia projects, the WMF can go ahead ad do what they like - on .] (]) 09:20, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

===Notice of possible intent to withdraw proposals===
I am these proposals, and replacing them with a request that the Foundation, "institute a copyright royalty distribution program designed to compensate editors in proportion to their needs times their likely future contributions." ] (]) 05:17, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

:There is no contradiction between gratis and copyrighted. I may release my text under copyleft because I own the copyright. See? No contradiction. I am an adult and decide for myself to volunteer. ] (]) 05:30, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

::I am also an adult and find your use of the "fake news" epithet along with the claim on your profile page that you report computer hacking to Moscow charming. You'll fit in great around here. ] (]) 06:38, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

:::For details see https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/kaspersky-in-the-shitstorm/19794/ ] (]) 00:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

:This sounds like someone throwing a tantrum, EllenCT. Was that your intent? Are you seriously suggesting some peculiar form of paid editing? Your repeated links to Jimbo and his talk page add nothing and read like an argument to authority ... but Jimbo has no substantive authority and, in the eyes of a fair number of people, isn't even a half-decent editor. - ] (]) 07:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay. Attacks opened and ignored, makes further ones, difficult to intercept, and perceive. Get up off Ellen and Jimbo. Ellen is just trying to make an interpretation of something which may affect the site. ''This topic doesn't even affect you and you are spitting attack.'' You give no reason, '''''just opinion laced with personalised attacks'''''. It's bitter. She '''is''' making an argument to authority. We are only free on equal terms. No personal attacks. I don't care how important you think you are. '''NO PERSONALISED ATTACKS IN ANY FORM.''' <small>''"Would you like to know more?"''</small> <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 13:23, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

===Alternative 2: Wnt's text linking to EFF===
Regarding I am copying ] suggestion here:
<div style="border:2px solid black; padding:10px; background:#eeeeee;">Proposed EU legislation would damage the ability of Wikipedians to research and generate content that is freely reusable. Current and historical news coverage would be severely impacted. See for further information.</div>

My current thinking is to ask Foundation officials to use some combination of Wnt's and my proposals in a Europe-geolocated CentralNotice, and study the institution of a double-blind editorial bonus award system based on need times contribution. ] (]) 15:29, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
:You should check out ] where these are handled. — ] <sup>]</sup> 16:06, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
::Thank you kindly. ] (]) 06:02, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' any use of the encyclopedia for political advocacy, even if a majority of a tiny subset of editors agree on a position. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 16:14, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*Good grief, you're not going to stop flogging this dead horse are you? '''Oppose''' for the third time.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 17:15, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
*Still '''Opposed''' - tweak this any which way you want... it still isn’t appropriate. Misplaced Pages is not the right venue for it. Take the political advocacy off wiki. It is verging on being disruptive. ] (]) 00:39, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*Sigh. I did ''not'' propose this for a vote here because as I said in the text this was taken from I think WMF can arrange with the ALA for a better landing link, and doubtless better text, if it desires. But to call freedom of expression "political advocacy" is wrong, because ''what is the alternative''? The position of banning freedom of expression leaves no room for advocacy! You people are complaining about ''bias'' when the position being advanced is one where in the EU, in China, in Russia, in Australia, wherever, the story is always the same, that people are only allowed to hear what robots allow them to hear, programmed by private unaccountable billionaire companies to comply with idiotic public officials' written and unwritten demands! Who will fight "bias" then? You will be whitewashing every last detail that might support some position you once actually agreed with, pretending that by doing so you will gain some concession from implacable machines bent only on your enslavement, and still it will not be enough! ] (]) 00:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::Take it elsewhere... see ]. ] (]) 00:51, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' This one is better than the other three because it is more factual and less sensationalistic. However, it does not actually ask anyone to do anything (so there's no clear point to the banner) and I oppose links to external organizations. ] (]) 17:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Needs action, otherwise good''' - in a similar vein to Ca2james, it's a much better phrasing, but could use more of a suggestion of what to do if you agreed with the point. ] (]) 19:02, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' because the first sentence is accurate, the second sentence is not accurate, and the third sentence contains a better link than the last ones, but still a link to one particular organization, and we shouldn't endorse organizations in banners or engage in political advocacy (per the second pillar). ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 19:26, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::{{re|Levivich}} Would the UN be acceptable to you? ]: . ] (]) 01:47, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::{{re|Wnt}} Yes, changing the link to a link to that UN report would satisfy my concern about the link; that's a neutral reputable source. It wouldn't change my !vote, however, or my general feeling about a banner on this subject, because, as noted in the UN report: {{tq|The following entities are excluded from this definition: Non-profit “online encyclopaedias,”...}}. As I understand it, the proposed law would not restrict WP, but would only restrict people's ability to re-use WP content, and that, in my opinion, isn't something WP should be advocating for/against. ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 02:07, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::: I'm actually more concerned about interference with our ability to ''obtain'' information. Use of ]s is a routine part of making articles about relatively recent events. Having a comprehensive listing of sources and long headlines to scan through is essential for spotting the articles that aren't carbon copies from large syndicates, allowing us to broaden the number of independent reliable sources, hence document notability and reduce POV bias. ] (]) 09:54, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' again for the same reasons: per {{U|Mz7}}, {{U|Sitush}}, and {{U|xaosflux}}. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for political or social advocacy or activism, and this proposal is simply a sensationalist reaction. If they must, as owners of the encyclopedia projects, the WMF can go ahead ad do what they like - on . ] (]) 09:22, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

===I think consensus is clear===
Should this be Snow closed? ] (]) 18:42, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

:I am strongly reminded of ], in which a "landslide" of votes for deleting the Refdesk was marshalled in a short time, yet that was not the consensus in the long term. The specific wordings advanced (even my own, which I did ''not'' put for vote here) were not ready for prime time, because this is a developing news story, but I want to be clear that any rapid voting on this issue is at most a rejection of those ''specific'' proposals and '''not''' in any way evidence of meaningful consensus against having a banner or taking other action in general. If you want to claim ''that'' kind of consensus you at least have to propose such a general statement and line up convincing ''support'' for it. ] (]) 00:59, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:The mere fact of a large majority in opposition, after less than 48 hours, does not warrant a SNOW close in my opinion. I was about to respond that it's too early to close because the proposals are not clearly and objectively inconsistent with some Misplaced Pages policy or principle. In the process of checking myself, I ran across this at ]: '''We avoid advocacy...'''. On that basis I think a SNOW close is in order. If editors wish to propose that Pillar 2 be modified to say, "We avoid advocacy except in cases that some editors believe are existential", they are free to do so separately, but for now we are in violation of a "fundamental principle of Misplaced Pages" and the discussion lacks legitimacy. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 01:11, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::That is talking about articles, not notices to editors. Does Misplaced Pages commit "advocacy" by collecting images from museums, or in trying not to be ''banned'' from collecting images from museums? ] (]) 01:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::I'm not familiar with the image issue you refer to, so I can't respond to that. Did it involve a banner that encouraged editors to support one side of a political issue with the aim of influencing pending legislation? &#8213;]&nbsp;] 01:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::::Misplaced Pages has ] that works to put people in with museums all over the world and get permissions to improve public access to materials in their collections. Why should we not urge viewers to retain our access to things like news aggregators, scholarly reviews, and public forums where free-licensed photos of events may be posted -- if fear of unlimited liability and the excesses of corporate censorbots do not stop them from ever being made available to us? ] (]) 02:03, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::Museums and other institutions and collectors have already donated millions of digital copies of public domain images for the sake of Misplaced Pages. If one museum were to be given a powerful copyright effect, and hold ransom, that could destroy the other museums for joining in the change of the world, as instigated by Misplaced Pages. If a government were to decide they wanted to enact copyright across the board on ''images of'' museums artifacts, because they couldn't or didn't want to work on getting the public into the museums to experience the effect of a fine gallery, or were just greedy for the maximum (eating cake and dropping crumbs), wouldn't they be asking to close Misplaced Pages down? '''I have here''' about a suffragette who killed herself upon the kings horse. The servant children are running after the royalties because they ''might'' throw some pennies. Why did Emily kill herself on the kings horse? Was she hurt? Abused? Or was she just oppressed and bored, her enjoyment of life, even in wealth, having ended long ago, after the age of running after pennies? You cannot have (piped)], and Misplaced Pages depends on people appreciating that, or else it will be somewhere far off in the future and take perhaps even more than twenty years to rebuild, we will all be dead before it comes back if it is tried again shut down by an international convention such as copyright. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 02:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::False equivalence. Editors and readers don't see that unless they specifically seek it. But I'll admit my pillar/SNOW argument isn't as airtight as I first thought, and I'm prepared to let these proposals fail for lack of consensus.<br />There will forever be strong opposition to allowing a relative handful of editors to speak for all Misplaced Pages editors, in a space visible to all editors and readers in the normal course of editing and reading, on any political issue. I don't think anybody would support including a disclosure like "62% of 0.13% of active Misplaced Pages editors support this statement.", but such a notice would be highly misleading and highly inappropriate without that. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 02:24, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::I must apologise, my statement there ''does'' beg for the point. When they make these harshly restrictive decisions they hark back the attitudes of Emily Davidsons day, when a harsh life was promoted as a good thing. When beating and breaking people was said to give them character. Fear is what it gave them, and suicide was the response because in those days if you ''simply protested'' in a group of men you were likely to feel this--> ] or worse, (deadly when used the knock out protesters). These harshly restrictive decisions hark back to a time of attitude that we don't understand any more and should fear. Pretending the world is perfect to accept harsh restrictions because the world is modern, and you are superficially safe, ''also calls back those days''. You can't have freedom without restriction, but ''you must have some freedom'' or what have you. I hate talking aganst copyright because copyright is a good thing, but life+70 so that you can pave the immortalisation of corporations? That doesn't "encourage" anything! That's more of a sentence than a decree. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 05:32, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
: No, there's not a chance this should be ] as there is both clear support and clear opposition here, and a ] upon you for suggesting it.
: Personally, I'm disappointed in the extremely vocal minority here who blindly oppose any sort of banner on the basis of "the rest of the free content world might burn, but they wrote in an exception for Misplaced Pages so we'll certainly be entirely unaffected () and must not do anything", or "this only directly affects the EU and not the rest of the world", or "our policy of NPOV in articles must be blindly applied to all communication". Or worse, those who seem to be opposing ''even if'' it would destroy Misplaced Pages.
: Yes, the specific proposals here are not very well done and EllenCT is doing themself no favors by flooding the discussion with slightly modified alternatives that seem to be fatiguing everyone except the blind opposers, but these people are taking it to the opposite extreme. ]] 13:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::{{u|Anomie}}, exactly what i was thinking and exactly why i simple didnt bother participating here. Btw ] just confirmed, that its either. Seems lik a nice courtcase waiting to happen for us to waste our doner money on, and possibly will require excluding the EU from distribution. —] (] • ]) 17:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Oh, please, do we really take a twitter post from an MEP from a fringe, childish, party as gospel here? Is this an encyclopedia or a 1970s student union meeting (of which I unfortunately have experience)? ] (]) 21:03, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Twaddle to SNOW''' - I <s>suspect</s> know from the former discussions, plus Jimbo's page (where he isn't participating for now due to a WMF request), there is a deluge of individuals who would support some variant. At this point, I suspect a firmer point/some method of gathering attention could probably manage it. I've said that in a bit more detail in option 3, but I wanted to specifically note my unhappiness to consider SNOW closing this topic so soon. ] (]) 19:14, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*:{{re|Nosebagbear|Mandruss}} A week later, do you feel SNOW closure is inappropriate? (I note it's near-unanimous opposition to every proposal here.) ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 03:53, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*::I think SNOW is misapplied when it's used for cases of !voting greatly leaning one direction; see ]. This is not in the category of "bureaucratic discussions over things that are foregone conclusions from the start."{{emdash}}if this had been foregone from the start, it would have SNOW closed in the first day or two.<br />But that's semantics. We can close any discussion when we judge that it has received enough discussion, when all stated arguments and viewpoints have been sufficiently discussed and the likelihood of any significant new arguments or viewpoints is deemed to approach zero. That includes RfCs. I have no opinion on whether it's time to close; only that I think we're well past the window for SNOW. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 04:14, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

===Alternative 3: Proposer's draft CentralNotice request===

Here is the ] I am presently planning to ask of the Foundation upon closure of this RFC:

{{ambox|type=content|text='''Current and historical news coverage is at risk.''' The European Union has proposed legislation which will inhibit the ability of volunteer encyclopedia editors to develop and disseminate educational content under a free license. Please act today: https://SaveYourInternet.EU/act Thank you. }}

As above, I also intend to ask the Foundation to study a more equitable double-blind bonus system for the best editors scaled by their need. ] (]) 06:25, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' any use of the encyclopedia for political advocacy, even if a majority of a tiny subset of editors agree on a position. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 11:52, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Still opposed''' - per all the arguments (repeatedly) made above. ] (]) 12:17, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Modest support'''. I don't see much obviously wrong with this, though the second link is not strictly necessary. It would be better to have WMF guidance, coordinated action with the ALA, etc., and I'm not sure I like the visual format, but at least it's a tenable starting point. ] (]) 15:23, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose'''. The first sentence is about Article 11, which does not affect Misplaced Pages in the same way as Article 13, and the second is about Article 13; putting them together the way they have been conflates the two and is misleading. Also note that links outside of Wikimedia do not meet the ]. While I might support a banner similar to the that received consensus, I am strongly opposed to the ones that have so far been proposed because they all read as sensationalistic propaganda to me. ] (]) 17:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose as Article 11''' - Article 11 is pretty irrelevant to us. I once again agree with {{ping|Ca2james}} on each point. The prior ones (esp opt 1) were better. I actually am in favour of vastly more attention - I'd actually support another SOPA-style blacking out, but once we've caught people's attention, we need text that doesn't make us look like we're frothing at the mouth. Jimbo did say 5 days ago he was chatting over what actions to take with the WMF (they've asked him not to communicate publically atm) - we'll see what comes from that aspect, but until then we can at least work on the message that works better. ] (]) 19:11, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Still strongly oppose''' – this is less accurate than Alternative #2, and doesn't address any of the problems with Alternative #1 or the original proposed banner. '''Also oppose more proposals''' until consensus is gauged as to whether we should have ''any banner at all''. ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 19:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''': have you spoken with the owners of the website to which you are linked to find out if they're capable of managing the potentially massive hit (and accompanying hosting service cost) of people clicking that link? Aside from that, this is not appropriate and is highly biased. ] (]) 05:13, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
*Still '''Oppose''', per {{U|Mz7}}, {{U|Sitush}}, and {{U|xaosflux}}. Misplaced Pages is not a platform for political or social advocacy or activism, and this proposal is simply a sensationalist reaction. If they must, as owners of the encyclopedia projects, the WMF can go ahead and do what they like - on . ] (]) 09:23, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Still oppose'''. Posting the same lie a dozen times is not going to make it the truth.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 21:16, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

===Alternative 4: The crux of the issue===
{{ambox|type=delete|text='''Remember Aaron Swartz and Fight Knowledge Restrictions:''' the European Union has proposed legislation which will inhibit the ability of volunteer encyclopedia editors to develop and disseminate educational content under a free license. Please act today: https://saveyourinternet.eu/act/ Thank you. }}
Restrictions placed upon access to knowledge is evil. ] (]) 05:14, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

===I despair===
I checked this page again today, and, amazingly, find that people are still pushing versions of this proposal. The whole basis is flawed, because neutral sources, rather than opinion pieces written by fringe groups such as the Pirate Party and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, confirm that there is no threat to Misplaced Pages or its reusers from these proposals.

If people want to defend the right of those cuddly little underdogs from Google and Facebook to make billions of euros/pounds/dollars on Youtube and Instagram on the back of practically unenforceable copyright violations of the work of those grasping capitalist producers of music, videos, ''etc.'', against the evil Illuminati lizards who control the European Union and the rest of the New World Order, then they have a right to do so. Just please don't try to drag Misplaced Pages and its editors into it.

I always thought that Lenin had a good name for such people, who consider themselves to be good right-on liberals, but from reading ] it seems that he never used it himself. ] (]) 19:32, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

:Yep. I, too, suspect that at least some people haven't got to grips with what is being proposed and its actual effect on Misplaced Pages. Outrage from US-based institutions who can appeal to the First Amendment and similar "freedoms" doesn't really wash and, for the umpteenth time, I will remind people that the proposals specifically exempt non-profit online encyclopaedias.

:I also think that even approaching meta for a central notification that applies just to Europe has problems that some may not have considered. Our projects are language-based, not country-based and, obviously, the English WP has a much wider audience than just English-speaking areas of Europe. I would imagine that the same applies to the French WP and perhaps also Spanish. Certainly, linking to online petitions in such circumstances is likely to turn off politicians etc, who will recognise that potentially a big chunk of those signing up are not even within the European constituency (let alone the EU constituency, which is even smaller). There is also a massive political problem in Europe regarding the general role of Facebook, Google and the like, whom the politicians are quite happy to kick for all sorts of reasons, notably privacy and tax avoidance. (I agree with them on that issue, fwiw, but most politicians are opportunists anyway and if they see a chance to give a kicking to a bogeyman, they'll do it.) - ] (]) 22:07, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::CentralNotice messages can be configured to only display in certain countries. I'm not endorsing such a message in this case (I don't really have a strong opinion either way) but just want to clarify that it would be ''possible'' to show one only to visitors within the EU. ] ] 00:00, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
:::OK, that's good. Thanks for letting me know. - ] (]) 19:52, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

:Oh, and a point specifically relating to the UK: the UK chapter is a registered charity for the purposes of education. Political campaigning by charities is a very dodgy area in law and they could be tainted by association. As I understand it, WMUK struggled to even get registered in the first place, so although I am not involved with them I should think they would like to avoid the possibility of their status being challenged. - ] (]) 22:22, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::WMUK is absolutely NOT a registered charity for the purposes of education; applications on this basis were refused because we do not test or award certificates etc as . A reapplication under a different heading was successful. Yes, charities need to be careful about anything that approaches political campaigning, but lobbying and activism to enable the the charity to fulfill its non-political charitable purposes is not uncommon. They know where to get specialist advice, and don't need it from those who clearly know very little about their situation. ] (]) 22:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Ok, sorry. I stand corrected on that point. It is a while since I looked into it. I believe the ] are being investigated, and would have thought they knew what they were doing. - ] (]) 23:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
::::Many would argue their entire purpose is political, and that is always going to be tricky. Our article begins: "The '''Institute of Economic Affairs''' ('''IEA''') describes itself as a "] ]" dedicated to "analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://iea.org.uk/about-us |title=About Us|website=Institute of Economic Affairs |date= |author= |accessdate= 20 February 2019}}</ref> It has been described by others as a "] think tank".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-iea-think-tank-investigation-institute-for-economic-affairs-brexit-a8469471.html |title=Labour demands investigation into right-wing think tank over accusations it ‘offered access to ministers' |newspaper=The Independent |date=10 July 2018 |author=Ashley Cowburn |accessdate= 20 February 2019}}</ref>"
{{Reflist}}
] (]) 01:21, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

:I see references for some side-track here, and links to "useful idiots", but '''where''' is this neutral commentary that reassures us that a wave of massive censorship isn't really going to cause us any trouble?

:The apparently unsourced argument that Misplaced Pages has a narrow exemption doesn't really hold water. The problem is that somebody has to '''write''' articles. How do people write articles if not just Google News but any other kind of news aggregation is banned? Do you suppose there are still microfiche readers in the library to read through all the hardcopy? And how long do you suppose Misplaced Pages's little exemption is going to last if we are really the one place that people can go to get a broad, comprehensive look at all the developments leading to an event of political relevance, when all the others are banned? and when non-serious editors are coming here to try to upload and share things that censor-robots find seconds faster on any other site? And ''most'' fundamentally, if the EU and China and a lot of countries in between have decided that the way to deal with "expression" is to force companies to run automated censorware on everything ... how long can the concept of an encyclopedia anyone can access, or of making information of ''any'' kind free to anyone, continue to exist at all? ] (]) 02:57, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
::Once again you are believing the far-right conpiracy theorists rather than looking at what this proposal actually does. Part of the problem here is that only those who believe that the European Union is an evil empire controlled by New World Order Illuminati are particularly vocal about this subject, because more level-headed mainstream opinion is that there is no great problem with these proposals, apart from for the companies that make billions out of advertising on copyright-violating content. The statements that "not just Google News but any other kind of news aggregation banned" and that this will "force companies to run automated censorware on everything" are totally ridiculous hyperbole. Maybe you should ] about the subject rather than believe what you are told by the lunatic fringe on the Internet. ] (]) 19:40, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::{{re|Phil Bridger}} Yeah, lunatic fringe on the Internet. Like the ], . Obvious nutcases, probable terrorists, ought to be held in a camp sucking off an electric cattle prod ''and really will be once the EU makes their ''next'' big set of reforms, no doubt''. Not good people, clearly. ] (]) 22:59, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

===Deference to the text, not links, of the prior proposals achieving consensus===
] recently came to my attention on ]. The ''wording'' of all of the proposals there which achieved consensus are, in the opinion of this RFC proposer, better than the wording all four of the proposals here. However, I will refrain from asking for expedited close until next week (as I said I would above) to allow for further discussion and link mix-and-match updating, as I feel the SaveYourInternet.EU/act and EFF links are both superior to the links in the CentralNotice proposals in the archive. And I do think this is important enough to deserve some kind of an exclamation mark on the Main Page, for Europe only. ] (]) 20:02, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
:How are links to fringe advocacy web sites better than a link to a neutral explanation of what these proposals ''actually are'', which is not what you think they are? Once again, you are believing the conspiracy theories about evil scaly Illuminati running the European Union and the rest of the New World Order rather than the facts, which are that the EU proposal attempts to rein in the ability of Google and Facebook to make billions of whatever currency you use out of copyright violations of work produced by musicians, filmmakers, ''etc''. And, if you want to be taken seriously here, please stop referring to Jimmy Wales and his talk page. ] (]) 20:19, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Reptiles, idiots, ''and'' children? Your attacks are mostly based on insult. You seem almost, to have something to say, but it is really about stopping others saying things. If you want to talk about it, read and . If you simply want to express the severity of your emotions, then we ''can'' discuss the expression of the severity of your emotions, while this is neither the time nor the place for that, {{re|Phil Bridger}}. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 13:53, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
::::There's no need to remove attacking speech as it comes up. It stifles debate but, well you know, reptiles and stuff. And anything that reminds you of children well, sheesh, right Phil? <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 13:56, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::Billions. ''Billions, I tell you!'' But not Jimmy Wales though. Where does he think he gets off, giving advice on train stations!? <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 16:00, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::I'm perfectly happy with Jimmy Wales expressing his support for having a station at Aylesbury, or wherever it was, on HS2. At least while he's doing that he's not supporting ] on Misplaced Pages. ] (]) 17:14, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::There is nothing far-right about suspicion of maximised law. Copyright law is directly significant to Misplaced Pages. Jimbo didn't support conspiracy theories, but Misplaced Pages theories. I don't get it. This is about copyright law in Europe. Copyright law directly affects Misplaced Pages. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 23:05, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

=== Good Faith Question. ===
How do the users in this discussion who oppose any perceived form of political advocacy feel about ]? Was doing the ] a mistake? &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>]</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 05:28, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:A similar question was asked previously, and was good enough for me. I would have opposed that blackout had I not been otherwise occupied at the time. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 05:43, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:My feelings have shifted over time on this. It's been a long time, and I think I may have actually supported SOPA back in the day, but if the same vote came up today, I would be against it. This is for a couple of reasons 1) I tend to think that the "existential threats" that this sort of legislation people say will occur is probably overblown, it's a ] sort of problem: the sky is not falling. It may be raining a little bit, but these things tend to shake out on their own, if it causes some changes to the way Misplaced Pages operates, we'll adapt. Though I don't really think it will, much. Still, that's what the WMF has lawyers for. 2) People, as individuals, if they have feelings about this, SHOULD be advocating outside of Misplaced Pages. Contact their MEPs, or encourage their European friends to contact their MEPs and let them know why they don't like the legislation. 3) I'm generally opposed to organizational influence on legislation, and especially a diverse organization such as Misplaced Pages which brings together a wide range of political and cultural perspectives and for which we may not be speaking with one voice. 4) Also, there's the issue of an American organization trying to influence European legislation. Yes, it is a connected world, but if we have ''any'' respect for sovereignty, we really need to be wary of the optics of that. Outside influence over the political process is a big story in several countries now, and even if we think we have the best intentions, it really isn't the place of an American organization to try to influence European legislation. 5) I am uncomfortable with an organization which has a cornerstone value of neutrality taking a political position on anything. So, in summation, yes, Europeans should be involved in their own political process as individuals, whatever their feelings are on either side of this issue. No, Misplaced Pages or the WMF, ''as an organization'' should not. --]] 13:27, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:: You point out that the WMF has lawyers, but you seem quick to ignore them when they .<p>You also seem quick to conflate the encyclopedia itself, the community that creates the encyclopedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation. The encyclopedia is the thing that has neutral point of view as one of its cornerstones. The community has many points of view, and while it's unlikely that we'll ever be entirely unanimous I suspect that we're generally opposed to government censorship and supportive of the public domain and open and free content. Neither the encyclopedia nor the community are by any stretch just an American thing. As for the WMF, that could be considered an American organization, but you seem to deny that an organization located in one country can have a global mission, and I see nothing about point of view in the WMF's ], ], ], or ].<p>I also note that the EU has in several cases taken the position that anything on the Internet accessible from the EU is under their jurisdiction, which would seem to invite anyone and any organization on the Internet to have a position on those EU laws. ]] 01:59, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::I didn't conflate anything. I told the individual people with individual concerns to contact their individual MEPs and express those concerns. That's how the community can leverage its influence on the legislation. If the WMF specifically has a position, they are free to argue that position in whatever forum they deem necessary. --]] 16:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
:::{{u|Anomie}}, I thought {{u|Jayron32}}'s answer was rather comprehensive. It certainly addressed my specific concerns. &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>-]-</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 19:26, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

== Mass-removing ] from non-orphans ==

Hi, I just discovered that ] currently transcludes {{tl|Orphan image}} because it doesn't have any file links. This particular image isn't really orphaned: it's linked in the documentation for ] as an example of why the template behaves as it does, but it wouldn't be good to display the full image because it's so huge and would overwhelm the rest of the documentation. I expect it's not particularly difficult to find other {{tl|orphan image}} files that are similarly linked from various places. With this in mind, a proposal:
#Someone writes a bot to go through each file transcluding this template (if this proposal succeeds, I'll go to WP:BOTR with this discussion as my reason for the request)
#Bot removes the template from any file that's currently displayed anywhere (although maybe another bot's already doing this)
#Bot <s>removes the template from</s> hides the template on any file with a normal link, except those linked only from Project: and User talk:
#Bot <s>removes the template from</s> hides the template on any file with a normal link from certain Project: pages. I'm envisioning WP:HD, the various WP:VPs, the various WP:RDs, and the various WP:GLs, and there may be other such pages.
#Bot <s>removes the template from</s> hides the template on any file with a normal link from user-talk-space if it's not associated with a deletion notice (e.g. "I've nominated this file for deletion").
#Bot leaves the template on all other files
Obviously item #5 would be the hardest to determine; if there's no easy way to determine whether a link is associated with a deletion notice, the bot could ignore all normal links from user-talk-space. ] (]) 00:54, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
: You'd also have to ensure that ] doesn't edit war with your new bot. That bot already does #2, BTW. ]] 01:20, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
::Ah, good point. We don't want to have to expand ]. (On #2, that's why I said ''although maybe another bot's already doing this''.) I've amended #3, #4, and #5. ], would you mind offering an opinion on this proposal? I wonder if your bot could be instructed to look at the code and see whether <nowiki>{{orphan image}}</nowiki> is present (and if so, refrain from adding the template), rather than seeing whether it's currently transcluded. ] (]) 01:48, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::I doubt there are many instances of the situation you've described. If you want the bot to go away, use {{Tlx|Bots|deny{{=}}FastilyBot}}. As for your proposal:
:::*3: probably doable - this is already being done for links from the article namespace
:::*4: impractical - would require a rewrite of the bot (not to mention a substantial increase in the number of queries the bot makes to the API and the maintenance overhead of a blacklist), all for very few pages affected and no obvious benefit
:::*5: impractical - same as above. Would require a rewrite, and large increase in number of queries, all for few pages affected with no obvious benefit
:::-] 04:50, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::: #4 shouldn't substantially increase the number of queries if you're already doing #3. But it would still need the maintenance of a list. ]] 12:12, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::If I was querying for each file via the API, then yes. However, I'm generating the list of files using the toolforge replica so as to reduce the total number of queries to Misplaced Pages. -] 01:04, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

: {{tl|Orphan image}} is for when a file doesn't have any ''file'' links, that is when the file is not being displayed anywhere. A file that is only linked to, not used, correctly transcludes the template. —&thinsp;]&thinsp;<small>(]'''·'''])</small> 05:35, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:: While you're right that that's the stated purpose of the template, if someone actually did nominate the image in the situation discussed here for deletion as the template recommends that would be a poor decision. So perhaps the template should be updated to change its purpose, which is what's being proposed here. ]] 12:12, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::JJMC89, the ''text'' of the template agrees with you, but the point is to mark images that really aren't used, and files with useful inbound links shouldn't be considered orphaned or unused. I respect the technical difficulties and can't continue to advocate something that's impractical, but if there weren't any technical difficulties, there wouldn't be a solid reason to oppose this idea, in my mind. ], would you mind tweaking it to go with #3, or do you have to go through a BOTRFA first? And since it's already doing #2, if you tweaked it so it didn't tag for #3, would it be able to remove tags currently placed on #3? ] (]) 23:08, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:::: Then we disagree. IMO, if an images isn't displayed, then it isn't being used. Images like the one in the OP, should be deleted as unused, especially since the text explanation (or a recreation of the output using wikitext) is sufficient. —&thinsp;]&thinsp;<small>(]'''·'''])</small> 00:21, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::I invite you to dump such text (complete with file information templates) into the documentation page, and wait until several people have agreed with retaining that information there. Then, once you've wasted a pile of time belonging to other people, I suppose I'll move it to Commons, where it's pointless because it only pertains to en:wp, but at least it will automatically be in scope as something that's used on another project, and further nonsense of this sort will be rejected with prejudice. Meanwhile, you also need to get FastilyBot blocked for removing this template from pages of this sort that are used in mainspace (including pictorial images that can't be replaced with words), because already Fastily observes that inbound links from mainspace are not really orphaned. ] (]) 02:15, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

== Advanced futures and parameters of the search engine exported to the Misplaced Pages mobile version ==

At February 2019, the advanced search features are available only for the Desktop version of Misplaced Pages. They automatically disappear, while switching to the mobile view, which is linked at the end of each page.

Why don't you extend and make them available for the mobile view, that probably is more used than the Desktop one?? <!-- Template:Unsigned IP --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 18:39, 22 February 2019 (UTC)</small>

== New life for ] ==

Hello everybody !

If possible, answer in french.

For the ], you can take the presentation of the French edition (] is the real name), and create editions with other frequency.

Sincerely, ] (]), the 11:27, 23 February 2019 (UTC).

== Talk pages consultation 2019 ==

The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Misplaced Pages, to participate in ] on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects. As such, a request for comment has been created at ''']'''. All users are invited to express their views and to add new topics for discussion. (To keep discussion in one place, please don't reply to this comment.) ] (]) 14:57, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

== Indexing the Wikimedia Blog and commenting on it ==

While I wasn't paying attention, WMF that "We have moved!", by which they meant ''we have gotten rid of our comments section'' and "The new blog is integrated with the new Wikimedia Foundation website" by which they meant ''the new blog is integrated with Facebook and Twitter, who alone hold sole ownership of the power of human communication anywhere in the world''. For example, I see no comments at even enabling scripts. Presumably, I could log in to Facebook or Twitter and see them getting glowing or hateful feedback from whichever PR firm owns the most bots to upvote the posts they like and downvote the others, but I don't see the point. That said, the WMF did overlook one site, namely Misplaced Pages. And, fortunately, the new site still at least has a CC license.

Many -- though I'm not sure how many -- of the WM Blog posts are already mirrored on Misplaced Pages as a section of the Signpost; they can be found by looking at . I am thinking that much of what is needed is simply an index at a page like ] so people have a tidier list to go through, with some summaries. Additionally, however, we need the power to fill in deficiencies, and I am not sure if treading on Signpost turf even to just add new or missing mirror blog pages would be kindly received. Also, it's possible I already missed some such effort by someone who didn't miss what happened last summer. And the Signpost might have a bot set up already. Etc. So I thought I should see what is going on. ] (]) 16:24, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
:{{Ping|Wnt}} I recommend going ahead and creating it. --] (]) 21:08, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

== Wrapping signatures in markup ==

I propose we introduce some sort of markup to distinguish signatures in wikitext: that is, the parser would start expanding <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki> to your signature wrapped in some tag, like &lt;sig>. Prior discussion (there may be more): {{phab|T27141}} ]&nbsp;(]) 07:29, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

* '''Support''', as proposer, for the main reason of improving life for developers of tools and user scripts that interact with discussions. Parsing signatures is a big pain and every tool seems to handle it in a different way, leading to endless bugs. This change would make, say, ] ''much'' more reliable. (There would also be the minor benefit of being able to style signatures without having to use user scripts.) ]&nbsp;(]) 07:29, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
* '''Support''', makes sense. You might want to post ] as well. -- ] ] ] ] &spades; 07:32, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:<small>{{done}} ]&nbsp;(]) 07:35, 24 February 2019 (UTC)</small>
*'''Support''' for simplifying how scripts interact with page content; don't see any downsides --] (]) 07:48, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*This would have been wonderful if it had happened in, say, 2002. But since it didn't, every tool is ''still'' going to have to parse tagless signatures (unless you can come up with some plan to somehow make fixing it on every page someone's ever signed feasible, in which case, you're a better person than me) in addition to the new-and-improved tagged signatures. We had endless bugs; now we'd have endless+1. The css is a benefit, but not worth it on its own. —] 08:42, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:{{ping|Cryptic}} even if we can't apply this retroactively, better late than never --] (]) 08:45, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:Yes, you're right. Although there are some tools/scripts that only interact with current discussions (e.g. reply-link), which wouldn't have to parse tagless signatures after all of them vanish into the archives. Tags would be a large benefit in that case. ]&nbsp;(]) 09:29, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - This makes sense, and I trust Enterprisey on all things technical - if he thinks it's helpful, it probably is. ] (]) 09:27, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*Isn't this a bit late? ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup> 09:40, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:The proposal is for the future: there will be plenty of talk page posts in the coming years. ] (]) 09:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' The overhead is much less than that of many decorated signatures and would be very desirable for the stated main purpose, namely to make the reply-link script more reliable. That script would be extremely helpful for new users and might be a default-on gadget for them. Then the attempt to ] would be redundant. ] (]) 09:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. That way, people can also use their skin.css to disable annoying signature code like text-shadow for signatures only. Regards ]] 11:23, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*Would be hugely helpful, per above. Given the variability in signatures — I'm no picnic — and the importance of communication, giving readers control over how to distinguish message and messenger would be a welcome improvement. reply-link going to gadget status (or built-in‽) would be helpful, but even simply styling css would be great. Lack of applicability backwards would be a problem, but probably much less worse than the parser/linting changes, which hardly matter much (although admittedly, those were/are fixable). ~ <span style="color:#DF00A0">Amory</span><small style="color:#555"> ''(] • ] • ])''</small> 11:31, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*Notifying the respective operators of Lowercase sigmabot and Cluebot, {{ping|Σ|Cobi}} as I believe the archiving scripts would need modifications to support these changes. Other affected bot operators may need pinging.<br />&nbsp;—&nbsp;] ] 13:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:ClueBot III does not even attempt to parse signatures, and instead works on revision history to find out what was added when, but thanks for thinking of it :) -- ]<sup>(]&#124;]&#124;])</sup> 00:07, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
*{{ping|Enterprisey}} besides just putting a blob of text in the wikidata, do you envision this adding other semantic meaning to the actual web content? (How will you render this in html - such as just drop the tags, convert to span - possibly including a data element?) — ] <sup>]</sup> 15:31, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:I don't want to clutter up the wikitext too much, but if we put a unique (to the page) identifier on each, it would immensely simplify a reply-link function or two. Of course, I don't know how helpful this would be to other tools, and it might not be worth it if just one script were to use it. Other information, like timestamp or user, can be parsed out of the signature relatively easily, so I don't think adding them is worth it. If we go for <sig> or another custom tag, it would be just converted to a span with a class, leaving attributes intact, and if we did just a <nowiki><span></nowiki>, it would be preserved. ]&nbsp;(]) 22:13, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Question''' Is the timestamp to be inside the markup, or outside? --] &#x1f339; (]) 16:36, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:Probably inside. Also, {{tl|unsigned}}, {{tl|unsignedIP}}, etc. would likely be entirely within the markup, including the "preceding...", because its part of the signature, not part of the comment. --] (]) 16:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*::Perhaps improve both (e.g. <nowiki><signature>,<signature text>,<signature datetime></nowiki> etc) but this could easily get out of control and we end up with big XML blobs for each entry :D — ] <sup>]</sup> 16:45, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:::&lt;time> is a standard element in HTML 5. --] (]) 20:03, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:::One problem with putting the timestamp inside the markup is that some bots recognise the "(UTC)" time zone indicator as the end of the signature. One example is {{user|Legobot}}: when it builds the RfC listings (pages like ]), it copies all text from the {{tlx|rfc}} template (exclusive) to the next valid timestamp (inclusive). I have noticed in the past that if the original timestamp is inside {{tag|small}} tags, such as might be emitted by {{tlxs|unsigned}}, the terminating {{tag|small|c}} is not copied to the RfC listings; hence, I doubt that Legobot would copy any closing tag that is proposed in this thread, should that tag be after the timestamp. The bot is unlikely to be modified to cope: check its talk page to see how many bugs have been fixed in the last three years, also how many proposed enhancements have been adopted. --] &#x1f339; (]) 20:07, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:{{replyto|Enterprisey}} What is this {{tag|sig}} element? I cannot find it in . --] &#x1f339; (]) 20:07, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*::I just made it up. It would be a new "tag" recognized by the parsers. I prefer <sig> over <span> because it's fewer characters (especially considering the class name we'd need to put on the span), and would clutter wikitext less. ({{u|Izno}} also commented about this.) ]&nbsp;(]) 22:17, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' Don't use <sig> as it will not strongly<sig>distinguish from the other text. Use <<<and>>> as it is the<<<most>>>prominent without###obscuring###adjacent text. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 18:54, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:Please, no new wikitext constructs. Simple HTML style tags won't cause compatibility issues with existing markup, are far easier to implement, and much easier for bots/scripts to make use of. ] ] 23:23, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
**'''Comment''' A relative matter is section previews. If previewing a section when editing, caused the references to be fetched from the reflist template, it would be magic for main topics where references are getting as high as 500+ per article. Programmers are probably the most underappreciated part of the encyclopaedia, it might remain to be said. <span style="color: green; font-size: small; font-family: Impact">~ ].].]</span> 23:24, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
* I do not support the introduction of a custom tag. I would be fine with auto-injection of e.g. &lt;span class="signature">&lt;/span>. --] (]) 20:03, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
*:This does seem tidier. –]] 13:02, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' whatever makes reply link better ]&thinsp;<span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(45deg);position:relative;bottom:-.57em;">]</span> 06:09, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Brevity please''' - I'll trust those qualified on helpfulness etc, but given discussion over what exactly the wrap should be, I'd like to stress brevity (and thus, I suppose, <SIG> as my preference) - signatures already fill up an absurd amount of wikitexxt, and this will presumably enlarge that. ] (]) 14:36, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''{{Snd}} and, per the above, it would be nice if the syntax coloring in the standard editor were made to know about (and color) it. <span style="color:red">—](])<span style="color:red">]—</span> 15:06, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' I'm on the fence on this one. On the one side, I see value in Brion's  . Yet many signatures aren't readably any longer for humans anyways. Ideally I'd at least want to see HTML markers at the html level, but that is difficult without dedicated wikicode syntax. However, having the user table available during parsing should make detection a whole lot simpler and reliable than when we have to do it with Javascript? Maybe it's possible ?
:Ideally... Structured Discussions.... This info shouldn't be stored solely in wikitext I think. Representing it as wikitext is one thing, but in order to properly format posts in multiple media and screensizes, make it searchable etc, requires storing/indexing it in separate database fields somehow. I can imagine adding wikitext reply, parsing it, storing it in a JSON blob with the relevant information and rendering those blobs back as wikicode... —] (] • ]) 15:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
:*And after five years of development (during which other work would be under-resourced), Frankenwiki might emerge to allow a browser's Ctrl-F to search everything on a talk page or its archives, with copy/paste of wikitext between the article and talk. When all that's needed is a way for newbies to reply to a message, which would be achieved with reply-link as above. ] (]) 22:42, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
:*:{{u|Johnuniq}}, just because it's much work is no reason to outright dismiss ideas, and I did say: Ideally. Almost everything to do with MediaWiki is a lot of work, if there were no people being bold, nothing would ever get done. It's also about choosing intermediate solutions that do not block future solutions, about not cluttering wikitext more than is necessary etc. You are just being selfish about the target you care about, which is your right, but bad software design. —] (] • ]) 09:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Procedural Note.''' {{u|Enterprisey}}, This might be worth posting in ]. &#8213;<span style="font-family:CG Times">] <b>-]-</b><sup style="font-size:75%">]</sup></span> 19:35, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
*: I just saw this proposed there ... I think it ''came'' from there. ] (]) 05:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*::I was just getting slightly irritated as I was working on some code for reply-link, but some of the discussion over there looks like it's along vaguely similar lines. ]&nbsp;(]) 03:52, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''', I prefer <code><sig></code> for brevity but a span would be fine too. ] ] 23:23, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

== Hiatus on mass creation of Portals ==

'''Proposed''' That mass creation of Portals using semi-automated tools be paused until clearer community consensus is established.
:'''Discussion''' After seeing the discussion at ], I was surprised to see a single good faith user had created over 500 new portals in the last 2 months, and there may be other mass creators beyond that one user; it seems like the unstated objective is to create a Portal corresponding to every navbox template on Misplaced Pages. This seemed to me to be contrary to two sentences from ]: "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create" and "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject" (parenthetical comment: for clarity, that should read "...with an active WikiProject"). Accordingly, I make the above proposal. ] (]) 14:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:: {{ping|UnitedStatesian}} Please clarify what you mean by "mass creation"; the figure provided above is less than 10 new pages per day per editor, which has never been considered mass creation by any WP standard. Also, please clarify what you mean by "semi-automated", since all software programs, including Misplaced Pages's internal text editor, may be considered semi-automated. Thank you. <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 19:25, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::: {{ping|Transhumanist}} You are trying my good faith assumption, as I think you know what you have done, and how you have done it: instead, why don't you explain both IN DETAIL to all of us: how you choose what new portals to create, what automated .js or other code you run, etc.? Creation of 500 Portals in two months, which is a ~10% expansion of the portal space in that period, is what I would count as mass creation, regardless of how the term has been used in the past to apply to the article space (where the equivalent would be half a million new articles in that time). ] (]) 19:38, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::: {{ping|UnitedStatesian}} No, I'm not testing you, so please bear with me... I would like to know how many portals and by what methods we will be allowed to create portals per this proposal if it does pass. Because, if it does pass, I wouldn't want to violate it, and for that it needs to be clear (otherwise, it would be subject to pure discretion after-the-fact, which is a recipe for a block). For example, what would you consider non-mass creation using semi-automated tools? And what would you consider mass creation using non-semi-automated tools? Both of those are not covered in your proposal above, but it isn't clear what would qualify. Thus, discussing this is the civil way to clarify things, which is what we are doing. All in good faith. Based on your answer, you provided 500 in 2 months as an example, but not as a definite limit: you also provided a percentage, which would be a bigger number as the number of total portals increased. I look forward to your reply. Sincerely, <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 20:26, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::: Like Potter Stewart w/r/t obscenity, ], as will presumably any administrators in the unlikely (and against everyone's intention) event it gets to ]. That's all I am going to say. Apparently every other supporting and opposing editor is also able to draw their conclusion without having any specific limits in the proposal. ] (]) 20:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::: {{ping|UnitedStatesian}} In that case, I'll ask you a specific question: if I created 8 portals per day, would that be considered mass creation under this proposal? I'd like to know, before I actually do it. It is the editors who need to know what they can and cannot do. If only the opposers/admins know, and it's their personal preference, and that's the rule being proposed, then it's surreptitious. Editors need to know in advance of creating portals how many are against your no creation rule. <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 21:23, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::: What part of "That's all I am going to say" is not clear? ] (]) 21:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::: Your proposal is not clear. You haven't defined what rate of portal creation is acceptable or unacceptable. How will an editor know how many portals he or she can create or not create in a given amount of time? <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 08:12, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::{{U|UnitedStatesian}}. The Transhumanist asked a fair question. Your ability to know it when you see it does not translate well into a universally comprehensible guideline. You and others are objecting to an undefined rate of "too much". It is necessary to define what is too much and why it is too much, for it to be consistently applicable. It is a bit like saying Mozart's music has too many notes. It is also possibly unenforceable.&middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:22, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::On the other hand, it does not really matter who makes the first suggestion for a limit, as long as they are willing to give a reasonable explanation based on policy and logic of why they think that limit should be applied.&middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:22, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::: {{ping|The Transhumanist}} related to the bot policy semi-automated tasks are generally a series of edits executed in a batch, the operator needs to provide an input and request a batch start, but does not monitor each related edit in the batch, once the batch ends it will not start again without human intervention. — ] <sup>]</sup> 19:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::If I understand correctly, and it is possible I have this wrong, each portal is personally visually checked in preview for obvious errors by the creator before publishing. I think this may disqualify it as semi-automated, but I have not done this myself, and am reporting what was explained to me when I asked some time ago. I have created a small number of portals using the same method but individually instead of in batches. The procedure gets faster with practice, but some errors do not manifest immediately as they depend on details which differ between articles. There are several that have been picked up, reported and debugged. I have no doubt that there will be others as that is normal for new software, and the new model portals are largely new software. The actual portal page is mainly calls to a number of templates and modules to display existing content. There is almost no new content in them, they are a systen to display existing content in a different way. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 14:00, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' as proposer. ] (]) 14:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' Absolutely - long overdue. ] (]) 14:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''', very much overdue. These mechanically-created pseudo-portals are a plague and the person who keeps creating them needs to be banned. We should treat portals created by ] like redirects created by Neelix, unless there's clear evidence there's both a substantial editor community interested in actively maintaining them, ''and'' a measurable external reader base. ] ] 14:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
**I like the idea of handling these portals via CSD, but I doubt The Transhumanist is the only editor creating useless portals. Perhaps ] could be expanded to cover these portals? As of now, it's not a useful enough criterion if not even ] qualifies. --] <sup>(])</sup> 15:23, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
**If I remember correctly, there is a current request for data on this from WMF. The results are not available yet. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 16:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' per Fut.Per: this is a form of spam. Internal spam, but still spam, creating a mass of pages which clog a watchlist one minute, only never to be touched again. ]]] 14:55, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' There appears to be more activity, like creating portals, that implies work for other editors than basic work on articles themselves. ] (]) 15:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''': I created some of the software behind new portals but I am surprised to see it being used so widely. is a list of the 4200+ portals created in the past year. (The "Page properties" tab accepts other date ranges.) Whilst I'm reluctant to support a formal ban, we do need community consensus on what topics merit portals. Previous discussions include ] and ]. ] (]) 15:42, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose as stated'''. The newly created portals do not require manual maintenance, therefore the reason stated is invalid. I agree with Certes that a wider consensus is desirable, but based on facts, policy, and widely accepted guidelines. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 16:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
** That is not correct. For instance, ] calls the template {{t|E (mathematical constant)}}. What if that template is deleted as a result of ]? Guess what, now the Portal needs manual maintenance. ] (]) 16:27, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
**:{{u|UnitedStatesian}}, the portal is then deleted. Portals without articles are easily detected and deleted. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 16:35, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
***(ec) The new portals do not need active maintenance. The ''e'' portal does not use the ''e'' template directly. Instead, it transcludes an excerpt from the article ], which in turn happens to use the template. If the template is withdrawn, the article will need to be edited suitably whether it has a portal or not; this will automatically update the portal without anyone having to edit the portal. ] (]) 16:38, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
****You need to look at the code again: the portal calls the template (in a more= statement) that will return a Lua error if it is deleted. See of ] for one where ''this has actually happened!'' ] (]) 17:27, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
***It may be possible to automatically delete portals which rely on navboxes if the navbox is deleted, though this may not be worth the trouble, as it seems that substantial navboxes do not get deleted often. Most of the ones used for portal frameworks seem to have been around for some time. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 16:46, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
***You're missing the point, for which I gave only one example: your "do not require manual maintenance" statement is patently false. Article moves necessitate manual edits ; changes to the portal category structure necessitate recategorization, or the many, many other examples that you obviously have not thought of. ] (]) 17:00, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
****You're right that, when renaming a category, the portal namespace may add a few pages to the bot's list of systematic updates. ] (]) 17:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
***I do seem to be missing something. The edit you linked to appears to be a bot edit. <br />It is quite possible that I have not thought of several things, could you list a few of the obvious ones that you have thought of so we can all be enlightened? When we know what the problems are we can try to address them.&middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:17, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
****Sorry, one earlier, it was the Portal move edit, . And again, missing the point: the way to address them is to stop creating these portals. ] (]) 17:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*****That one makes more sense. Stopping creating portals would eliminate that problem, but so would tasking a bot, or to take it to the extreme, closing down Misplaced Pages. There may be a whole lot of other ways too. I have not thought of them all. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' we have been misled. Many editors wanted to close the Portal space. When some of us tried to delete the worst ones we were told by TheTransHuminist that they would be trimming the number of Portals as they worked through them and to wait. Now they created hundreds more useless portals that get spam linked onto articles. I support mass removal and a ban on the creation of any new Portals until the community can revisit the rules of what needs a portal. ] (]) 16:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
**If you inspect that RfC you will find that many more editors did not want to close the Portal space.<br /> Could you link to where The Transhumanist made the allegedly misleading statement you claim above? &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:10, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
**Would you agree that a portal that is not linked from any articles is pointless? &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:10, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
***Don't worry, the portal team has built an automated process (executed by ]: ) that adds EVERY portal to a see also section of its corresponding article. There are no unlinked portals. ] (]) 17:13, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::We don't need spam links to Portal Land on every article. Was this Bot approved to do this at BAG? Can we stop it somehow? ] (]) 17:50, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::It's not every article, just every article with a corresponding portal (about 5,500). ] (]) 17:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::: UnitedStatesian, is that bot configured to avoid adding the same portal to the same page repeatedly, if the link has been removed by human editors in the meantime? If I should ever find that bot edit-warring against human editors, I'll block it without further warning. ] ] 19:48, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::: Don't know, pinging {{yo|Dreamy Jazz}} to see if they can answer. ] (]) 20:25, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::{{u|Future Perfect at Sunrise}}, the bot does not edit war. It only checks to see if the page links to the portal when it checks a portal. The bot was approved to run on all portals every month, so if the link is removed the bot will add the link again and it is unreasonable to assume that it has to know if it is edit warring per ] (The link could have been removed by a vandal or by mistake). Also these links that the bot added were only to directly related pages (root articles, categories shown on the portal as categorytrees or as <nowiki>] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 15:06, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::: If the bot reverts human editors, then it ''is'' edit-warring, no matter if you want to call it that or not, and it ''will'' be blocked for it. It's not up to the bot to decide whether any preceding removal was "by a vandal or by mistake"; the bot needs to assume that any such removal was a deliberate editorial choice. Bots must never be used to enforce their bot owner's personal preferences against conceivable editorial disagreement. In the present case, it should not be difficult for the bot to keep a list of portals/pages it has already processed, and make sure it touches each of them only once. I highly recommend doing that. ] ] 15:19, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::::::::{{u|Future Perfect at Sunrise}}, the bot will only process new portals now. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 17:55, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::::::so edit wars will not be possible. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 18:01, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::::::::::::: Thanks, that's good to know. ] ] 18:03, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
:::::I am trying to work out what "spam linked" is intended to mean, besides the somewhat obvious point that the user does not like it. &middot; &middot; &middot; ] ]: 17:41, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' and likely support mass deletion of those recent portals too, with the occasional exception. <span style="font-variant:small-caps; whitespace:nowrap;">] {] · ] · ] · ]}</span> 17:05, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
* For example it looks like a goal is to create a Portal for every District in every state of India. ] being a random one I picked from a long list of Indian District created in rapid succession. There are a LOT of Districts in India. Then ] which does nothing the article ] does not do. ] (]) 17:13, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Oppose in part''' whilst I do support a discussion and perhaps a stop on ''mass'' creation, I think for this to go anywhere real discussions need to happen about creation criteria. The problems which editors who support this are citing are too many too narrow scoped portals. However, I oppose because I can see this going towards "delete all mass created portals", which I oppose. Before '''any''' deletions occur, discussions need to be held about criteria for creation/deletion so that all editors understand what is acceptable. The Transhumainst has created these portals because they think they are useful. The community needs to decide whether they are useful and then once that is decided then the lines have been set in the sand. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 17:25, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
* '''Respectfully oppose''' &ndash; First, I would like to thank ] for acknowledging my good faith efforts to improve the encyclopedia. Thank you. I in turn acknowledge UnitedStatesian's good faith efforts and concern for quality control. Thank you, again. Now, I will address UnitedStatesian's arguments: I have no expectation of others maintaining the portals, as the portals are self-maintaining, or automatically maintained. The clause in the portals guideline was referring to manually maintained portals, and was written when the vast majority of portals were manually maintained. The new portals are not of the manually maintained variety. Each excerpt displayed in the new portals are transclusions of article leads, or portions of article leads, and therefore always match them and never go stale or fork. In addition to this, the selection of excerpts displayed is dynamic, and automatically updates, because they are pulled off of a corresponding resource page, usually a navigation footer template. So, as the coverage in the nav templates expand, so does the coverage of the corresponding portal. Each portal has conditional sections as well, that appear only when there is content to display. For example, if there is ever news on a portal's subject, a news section automatically appears. Once the news is 45 days old, and there is no other news to report, the news section disappears. Another conditional section is ''Did you know''. (Continued...
: (...continued) Concerning, WikiProject association, all subjects fall under one WikiProject or another. Meanwhile, all portals are also associated with the ], that has a very talented and active team involved in the improvement of all portals and further development of portal design itself. As time goes on, portals will continue to improve. (Continued...)
: (...continued) Some editors above do not like portals (comparing them to a plague), but they do not state ''why'' portals should not exist, in terms of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. One mentioned traffic (readership), and that has never been a criteria for deletion or creation of a page. If it were, half the encyclopedia would be subject to deletion. The strongest feature of Misplaced Pages is its breadth of knowledge, covering pretty much everything under the sun and beyond, waiting for you when you need it. This makes Misplaced Pages one of the first stops for information. With so much information, a means of navigating it is needed. While search provides most navigation needs, Misplaced Pages also provides link-based or click-based means of navigation as well, to assist in situations where search is inadequate, like when a user doesn't know what he or she is looking for exactly, or when they just want to see what articles Misplaced Pages has on a particular subject. For those times, Misplaced Pages provides its navigation subsystems: outlines, indexes, categories, navigation templates, and portals. Portals have some features that the other navigation subsystems do not, including slideshows to provide excerpts to browse, and a compilation of link resources from around Misplaced Pages, including from other navigation systems, bringing these resources together on a single convenient page. (Continued...)
: (...continued) Since Misplaced Pages's navigation subsystems are ''internal'' navigation systems, they do not receive much external traffic from google, duck duck go, etc., like articles do. And so none of the navigation pages (except those posted on the Main Page, and a few other very high-traffic subjects) will ever get a high volume of visits. But, that is not their purpose. Their purpose is to be there when needed to help users find their way around the encyclopedia. And the navigation pages, including portals, do that quite well. <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 18:01, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::"Before any deletions occur, discussions need to be held about criteria for creation/deletion so that all editors understand what is acceptable." This is the same story again and the core problem. Mass creation without any guidelines on what is useful. Stop creation. Draft your guidelines. Run it past Villiage Pump with an RFC. Delete anything that does not meet the approved guidelines. Then you can think about creating new Portals. ] (]) 18:14, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::{{u|Legacypac}}, hello. I have started a conversation about this over at ]. Input is welcome. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 18:44, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - per Serial and Legacypac. ] - ] 19:01, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' - What we need is a policy that says: don’t mass-anything. Don’t mass create, don’t mass delete, don’t mass move, don’t mass edit... etc. ] (]) 19:18, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*: ... without prior consensus, of course. And unfortunately, one editor's "mass" is another editors "hard work." ] (]) 19:21, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*:Agree in principle, but you'd have to define "mass". Devil's in the details, as always. Speaking generally about mass changes of all types, I think the policy should be: Upon the first challenge, stop, self-revert everything, seek community consensus. If you wish to avoid the possibility of all that self-reverting, seek community consensus first. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 19:24, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::{{ping|UnitedStatesian|Blueboar}} Currently, ] says regarding ] that {{tq|The community has decided that any large-scale automated or semi-automated article creation task must be approved at Misplaced Pages:Bots/Requests for approval}} - maybe this should be extended to namespaces other than articles? It also applies to non-hidden categories, but not to portals --] (]) 19:25, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
:::Probably poor wording choice on my part, as these are not bot-created portals, so are not covered by ]. It was not my intention to use a WP-specific term of art. ] (]) 19:38, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
::: That still would allow for the number of portals the proposal above would disallow, as the bot department's policy pertains to a specific threshold per editing session. Ten articles at a time, or even twenty, isn't considered mass-creation, for example. The proposal above is (unintentionally) using the proposal page to set policy. (What if this proposal passes, and no consensus is ever reached on the topic, as intended in the proposal? Then it becomes the default policy. That is an inappropriate use of this page.) <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 19:42, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
{{yo|The Transhumanist}}, I believe it should be a no-brainer that now that you know there is substantial opposition to your mass-creations, you should, as a matter of course, deist from further creations until a community consensus in their favour has formed – rather than insisting on your "right" to continue creating those pages until any such community discussion has concluded against them. Please answer me this with a clear yes or no: Are you willing to make such a commitment here and now? No more new portals until a clear guideline for what is and isn't acceptable has been agreed on? ] ] 19:53, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
: UnitedStatesian was concerned with the rate. Being an opponent of portals in general, you are obviously trying to conflate that to mean any new portals at all. I'm not buying into that. I'll patiently await US's response. Thank you. <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 21:14, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''', but I think that this may not be the right forum, that perhaps we need to be at ] because we may need to impose a topic-ban. It should have been clear from the discussion three months ago that there was substantial opposition to the large-scale creation of new portals, but it appears that we now have hundreds of them. Yuck. ] (]) 22:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' ''Bold'' is making a few changes to a few pages. Mass creation of pages without clear prior consensus is disruption. A topic ban is probably the best long-term solution. ] (]) 22:48, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' Just so people are aware, in the month preceding 23:00, 26 February 2019 (UTC), the Transhumanist personally (not including redirects). XTools that, in total, they created '''3,774''' still-live portals. --] (]) 23:00, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
*:Since July 1st (after ] was over), over 4500 portals, excluding redirects, have been created (]); the Transhumanist created more than 3500 (]); of those, at least 561 were created with a summary along the lines of {{tq|Started portal, in tab batch save, after batch was inspected: image slideshow minimum 2 pics, no empty sections. No visible formatting or Lua errors upon save, but there may be intermittent errors; report such bugs at WT:WPPORTD so that they can be fixed. Thank you.}} (]). Just a note --] (]) 04:42, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' - We do not need a portal for everything and anything that has ever existed. - ] (]) 00:36, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' My watchlist is full of Portal spam. &#8213;]&nbsp;] 03:46, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support'''. Portals like ] show that human-created portals are actually better, and we don't need portals for things that don't have an editor base behind them. Would not oppose deletion of all portals that only have edits by TTH/bots. —''']''' (]·]) 09:54, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
{{A note}} the community may be interested in taking a look at ] and ] --] (]) 10:01, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' – This unilateral creation of hundreds of useless portals must stop. ] — ] 14:16, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' especially in mathematics, and in areas where there is an active wiki project. In mathematics, no portal should be created without a ] of project members. The lack of discussion in the wiki project has several damageable consequences: 1/ In the selected articles, formulas are awfully rendered (colons displayed before displayed formulas, html formulas not displayed if they contain {{tl|1==}}, ... 2/ the selected articles and selected figures are often unrelated with the subject of the template, or so weakly related that a professional mathematician must think a while for imagining the relationship. There are probably other flaws, but this would need some time to find them, time that would better spent for improving math articles. Moreover, although, I do not like inboxes in mathematics, they are generally much more useful and much less confusing that automatically creates portals. ] (]) 15:32, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''': Portals should be created only after careful consideration and deliberation. ] (]) 15:35, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' Experience shows that after the first flush of enthusiasm, portals are maintained if, and only if, there's an active and knowledgeable set of editors supporting them. Generally, this means that they need consensus within an active Wikiproject. ] (]) 16:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::<s>Peter coxhead, portals are automatically kept upto date with selected articles, news, DYKs and images, and changes to content shown will be shown immediately. Portals, as long as they rely on the single page automatically updating design, will requires nominal maintenance compared to what they used to need. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 17:25, 27 February 2019 (UTC)</s>
:::{{ping|Dreamy Jazz}} consider ], which was never agreed by ]. Yes, some of it will be kept up-to-date automatically (e.g. the categories), but who agreed the subtopics? If a major new topic is added, who will update this section? It uses {{tl|Spider nav}}. Since 2010, only two editors I recognize as active in editing spider articles have edited this template (one of them being me). So how will this be {{tq|automatically kept up to date}}? Sorry, but this claim is nonsense. ] (]) 18:46, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''support''' not too long we've debated the potential mass deletion of largely inactive umaintained portals and now we moved on to bot supported mass creation of those? Portals usually should only be created individually with couple of editors interested in maintaining them (and supported or at least not objected by associated projects).--] (]) 17:00, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*:<s>{{u|Kmhkmh}}, portals are automatically updated. The effort needed to keep them fully working is nominal compared to what it used to be. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 17:22, 27 February 2019 (UTC)</s> striked by dreamy jazz. ] 🎷 <sup>'']'' &#124; '']''</sup> 18:48, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*::Every page should have some watchers at a minimum to guard against vandalism. It's unreasonable to expect one editor to watch over hundreds of portal pages; the only scaleable approach is to ensure the work is spread out to those who are interested in the topic area. Having portal creation go through active WikiProjects is one way to do this. ] (]) 17:34, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
:::(ec) Being automatically updated does not mean that they do not need maintenance. See my above comment about math formulas rendering. Also, what when the automatic process insert errors or misleading information? Should the experts of the subject be also expert of the automatic process for being able fixing such issues? Are you sufficiently competent in the subjects of the portals you have created for being sure that the automatic process works correctly? You will certainly argue that if categories, inboxes, ... are correct, the process works correctly. The problem is that Misplaced Pages is never finished, and you cannot hope that all articles are correctly categorized. ] (]) 17:44, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
::: Being automatically updated would make for a decent argument if it wasn't for the fact that automatically created portals are automatically of bad quality. An automated process simply ''cannot'' select articles that are actually interesting, news that are actually pertinent, or images and image captions that are actually informative when viewed outside the context of the articles where human editors originally placed them. Automatically created portals are no better than automatically written articles; they simply don't work. (See ] for a particularly ugly example.) Portals that only consist of re-jumbled snippets of their nominal "main article", as many of the manually created ones have been, are already a bad idea in themselves; portals that take that same useless design principle to its automated extreme are almost invariably even worse than that. ] ] 18:00, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*::{{u|Dreamy Jazz}} Imho there is no such thing as an automated portal maintenance. Yes you can have automation to reduce simple manual labour aspects of maintenance. But portals require more than that, they need to designed and supervised by editors knowledgeable in the portal's subject, hence automatic portal maintenance or creation is no-go (short of major AI breakthroughs).--] (]) 18:13, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' topic bans preventing all those involved from creating new portals, and a mass deletion of all the ] and ] dross. I'd concur with using the same "unless anyone other than the spammers can give a legitimate reason for keeping, it's deleted" CSD process we used for Neelix.&nbsp;&#8209;&nbsp;] 21:11, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
*'''Support''' a hiatus. I like the idea of Portals, and have been an enthusiastic editor of them in the past. However we don't need them for every single topic. ] ] 23:26, 27 February 2019 (UTC)


== ITN Nominators ==
===Question About Portals as Experiments===
In other discussions of portals, TTH is arguing that portals are needed for experimentation in innovation and navigation. I would like to know what sorts of innovations will be tested by the use of portals, and who will be doing the testing. If the purpose of the portals is testing, then we should have a coordinated group of test volunteers with some plan for what features are to be tested and how the testing will be done. Creating hundreds or thousands of portals will scatter any test effort to the point where there will not be useful test results. Can ] please explain what functionality will be tested using portals? Can they also explain what their methodology is for deciding what portals should be created?
] (]) 07:31, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
: Portal scope (creation eligibility) is covered in ]. Innovations on portals are discussed at ] and can be read about there and in its archives. The innovations (portal components) are "tested" as any template or module on Misplaced Pages is, by using it and fixing bugs as they are found; first, by the developer, then released per ] and ]. See also ]. For more details on template and module development, {{u|Evad37}}/{{u|Certes}}/{{u|FR30799386}} would be able to give more definitive answers. &nbsp; <span class="nowrap">&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash; '']''&nbsp;&nbsp; </span> 11:44, 27 February 2019 (UTC)


I believe we should add a small section which includes all of the nominators who have made it onto In The News. I think this would be just a polite way of saying thank you for your proposal. ] (]) 05:15, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
== Proposal to make TfD more RM-like, as a clearinghouse of template discussions ==


:I will just note that we do not do that for nominators for any other elements on the main page. We don't use bylines in Misplaced Pages. Anyone who cares enough about who did what for an article can examine the page history. ] 15:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
{{FYI|pointer=y}}
:Disagree, that would just incentivize many people to try to get their name on the Main Page for millions of readers to see, leading to more competition and less constructive contributions. ] (] · ]) 15:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Please see ]. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 05:17, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
: A small section where? Obviously not on the main page, as the previous replies have been assuming. But if someone wanted to maintain some sort of list at ] and link it from ], 🤷. We have ] that is something similar for DYK. ]] 16:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
::That would be a much better idea indeed! ] (] · ]) 16:20, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I agree! ] (]) 18:18, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
::::] I created a page if anyone wants to edit it. ] (]) 18:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

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RfC: Log the use of the HistMerge tool at both the merge target and merge source

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Numerically, option 1a has 6 !votes in its favor (4 if we don't count second-choice !votes (Graham87 and Abzeronow), 0 if we only count exclusive !votes), 1b has 10 (7 exclusive), and option 2 has 4. Most of the !votes in support of option 1a were cast early into the RfC before experienced history mergers expressed concerns about how the creation of dummy edits might disturb page histories. No proponent of option 1a replied to these objections, and many later proponents of 1b cited them as justification for not supporting 1a. Thus, option 1a is rejected. Next, we will consider option 2. Proponents of this option primarily cited the purported need for history merging to be seamless, and a dummy edit would disrupt that fact; the aforementioned objection to 1a. However, only one of the proponents of this option attempted to object to 1b specifically (that is, the need for a log entry at the target page), saying that page moves similarly only log at the source page. Proponents of option 1b convincingly replied to this objection by noting that that is less problematic because of the fact that page moves produce a dummy edit, unlike history merges. One additional proponent of option 2 asserted that no MediaWiki developers would be interested in this project. However, this is not a sufficiently strong argument to outweigh those made by proponents of option 1b. The primary argument by its proponents was that the current system wherein history merges are logged only at the source page was confusing, since it requires having access to the source page's title, which is not always the case. Some proponents of opt. 2 objected that you can look at abnormalities such as "Created page with..." edit summaries in the middle of a page history or unusual byte differences to determine that a history merge occurred at the target page. However, this undermines the most common argument for option 2; namely, that history merging ought to be seamless, since only the "seams" left behind by the process can show that a history merge occurred while looking only at the destination page. Thus, I see consensus to request that the developers adopt option 1b. The Phabricator tickets will be updated accordingly. JJPMaster (she/they) 16:38, 29 December 2024 (UTC) I added four words to this closure per phab:T118132#10424866. JJPMaster (she/they) 03:10, 2 January 2025 (UTC)


Currently, there are open phab tickets proposing that the use of the HistMerge tool be logged at the target article in addition to the source article. Several proposals have been made:

  • Option 1a: When using Special:MergeHistory, a null edit should be placed in both the merge target and merge source's page's histories stating that a history merge took place.
    (phab:T341760: Special:MergeHistory should place a null edit in the page's history describing the merge, authored Jul 13 2023)
  • Option 1b: When using Special:MergeHistory, add a log entry recorded for the articles at the both HistMerge target and source that records the existence of a history merge.
    (phab:T118132: Merging pages should add a log entry to the destination page, authored Nov 8 2015)
  • Option 2: Do not log the use of the Special:MergeHistory tool at the merge target, maintaining the current status quo.

Should the use of the HistMerge tool be explicitly logged? If so, should the use be logged via an entry in the page history or should it instead be held in a dedicated log? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Survey: Log the use of the HistMerge tool

  • Option 1a/b. I am in principle in support of adding this logging functionality, since people don't typically have access to the source article title (where the histmerge is currently logged) when viewing an article in the wild. There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful. As for whether this is logged directly in the page history (as is done currently with page protection) or if this is merely in a separate log file, I don't have particularly strong feelings, but I do think that adding functionality to log histmerges at the target article would improve clarity in page histories. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 1a/b. No strong feelings on which way is best (I'll let the experienced histmergers comment on this), but logging a history merge definitely seems like a useful feature. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 1a/b. Choatic Enby has said exactly what I would have said (but more concisely) had they not said it first. Thryduulf (talk) 16:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • 1b would be most important to me but but 1a would be nice too. But this is really not the place for this sort of discussion, as noted below. Graham87 (talk) 16:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 2 History merging done right should be seamless, leaving the page indistinguishable from if the copy-paste move being repaired had never happened. Adding extra annotations everywhere runs counter to that goal. Prefer 1b to 1a if we have to do one of them, as the extra null edits could easily interfere with the history merge being done in more complicated situations. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    Could you expound on why they should be indistinguishable? I don't see how this could harm any utility. A log action at the target page would not show up in the history anyways, and a null edit would have no effect on comparing revisions. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    Why shouldn't it be indistinguishable? Why it it necessary to go out of our way to say even louder that someone did something wrong and it had to be cleaned up? * Pppery * it has begun... 17:45, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    All cleanup actions are logged to all the pages they affect. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • 2 History merges are already logged, so this survey name is somewhat off the mark. As someone who does this work: I do not think these should be displayed at either location. It would cause a lot of noise in history pages that people probably would not fundamentally understand (2 revisions for "please process this" and "remove tag" and a 3rd revision for the suggested log), and it would be "out of order" in that you will have merged a bunch of revisions but none of those revisions would be nearby the entry in the history page itself. I also find protections noisy in this way as well, and when moves end up causing a need for history merging, you end up with doubled move entries in the merged history, which also is confusing. Adding history merges to that case? No thanks. History merges are more like deletions and undeletions, which already do not add displayed content to the history view. Izno (talk) 16:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    They presently are logged, but only at the source article. Take for example this entry. When I search for the merge target, I get nothing. It's only when I search the merge source that I'm able to get a result, but there isn't a way to know the merge source.
    If I don't know when or if the histmerge took place, and I don't know what article the history was merged from, I'd have to look through the entirety of the merge log manually to figure that out—and that's suboptimal. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    ... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)
    But ignoring that, why is it valuable to know this information? What do you gain? And is what you gain actually valuable to your end objective? For example, let's take your There have been several times I can think of when I've been going diff hunting or browsing page history and where some explicit note of a histmerge having occurred would have been useful. Is not the revisions left behind in the page history by both the person requesting and the person performing the histmerge not enough (see {{histmerge}})? There are history merges done that don't have that request format such as the WikiProject history merge format, but those are almost always ancient revisions, so what are you gaining there? And where they are not ancient revisions, they are trivial kinds of the form "draft x -> page y, I hate that I even had to interact with this history merge it was so trivial (but also these are great because I don't have to spend significant time on them)". Izno (talk) 17:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

    ... Page moves do the same thing, only log the move source. Yet this is not seen as an issue? :)

    I don't think everyone would necessarily agree (see Toadspike's comment below). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    Page moves do leave a null edit on the page that describes where the page was moved from and was moved to. And it's easy to work backwards from there to figure out the page move history. The same cannot be said of the Special:MergeHistory tool, which doesn't make it easy to re-construct what the heck went on unless we start diving naïvely through the logs. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    It can be *possible* to find the original history merge source page without looking through the merge log, but the method for doing so is very brittle and extremeley hacky. Basically, look for redirects to the page using "What links here", and find the redirect whose first edit has an unusual byte difference. This relies on the redirect being stable and not deleted or retargetted. There is also another way that relies on byte difference bugs as described in the above-linked discussion by wbm1058. Both of those are ... particularly awful. Graham87 (talk) 03:48, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    In the given example, the history-merge occurred here. Your "log" is the edit summaries. "Created page with '..." is the edit summary left by a normal page creation. But wait, there is page history before the edit that created the page. How did it get there? Hmm, the previous edit summary "Declining submission: v - Submission is improperly sourced (AFCH)" tips you off to look for the same title in draft: namespace. Voila! Anyone looking for help with understanding a particular merge may ask me and I'll probably be able to figure it out for you. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Here's another example, of a merge within mainspace. The automatic edit summary (created by the MediaWiki software) of this (No difference) diff "Removed redirect to Jordan B. Acker" points you to the page that was merged at that point. Voila. Voila. Voila. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    There are times where those traces aren't left. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Here's another scenario, this one from WP:WikiProject History Merge. The page history shows an edit adding +5,800 bytes, leaving the page with 5,800 bytes. But the previous edit did not leave a blank page. Some say this is a bug, but it's also a feature. That "bug" is actually your "log" reporting that a hist-merge occurred at that edit. Voila, the log for that page shows a temp delete & undelete setting the page up for a merge. The first item on the log:
    @ 20:14, 16 January 2021 Tbhotch moved page Flag of Yucatán to Flag of the Republic of Yucatán (Correct name)
    clues you in to where to look for the source of the merge. Voila, that single edit which removed −5,633 bytes tells you that previous history was merged off of that page. The log provides the details. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    (phab:T76557: Special:MergeHistory causes incorrect byte change values in history, authored Dec 2 2014) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wbm1058 (talkcontribs) 18:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Again, there are times where the clues are much harder to find, and even in those cases, it'd be much better to have a unified and assured way of finding the source. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Indeed. This is a prime example of an unintended undocumented feature. Graham87 (talk) 08:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah. I don't think that we can permanently rely on that, given that future versions of MediaWiki are not bound in any real way to support that workaround. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 04:24, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support 1b (log only), oppose 1a (null edit). I defer to the experienced histmergers on this, and if they say that adding null edits everywhere would be inconvenient, I believe them. However, I haven't seen any arguments against logging the histmerge at both articles, so I'll support it as a sensible idea. (On a similar note, it bothers me that page moves are only logged at one title, not both.) Toadspike 17:10, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 2. The merges are already logged, so there’s no reason to add it to page histories. While it may be useful for habitual editors, it will just confuse readers who are looking for an old revision and occasional editors. Ships & Space(Edits) 18:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
    But only the source page is logged as the "target". IIRC it currently can be a bit hard to find out when and who merged history into a page if you don't know the source page and the mergeperson didn't leave any editing indication that they merged something. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
  • 1B. The present situation of the action being only logged at one page is confusing and unhelpful. But so would be injecting null-edits all over the place.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  01:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 2. This exercise is dependent on finding a volunteer MediaWiki developer willing to work on this. Good luck with that. Maybe you'll find one a decade from now. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    And, more importantly, someone in the MediaWiki group to review it. I suspect there are many people, possibly including myself, who would code this if they didn't think they were wasting their time shuffling things from one queue to another. * Pppery * it has begun... 06:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    That link requires a Gerrit login/developer account to view. It was a struggle to get in to mine (I only have one because of an old Toolforge account and I'd basically forgotten about it), but for those who don't want to go through all that, that group has only 82 members (several of whose usernames I recognise) and I imagine they have a lot on their collective plate. There's more information about these groups at Gerrit/Privilege policy on MediaWiki. Graham87 (talk) 15:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Sorry, I totally forgot Gerrit behaved in that counterintuitive way and hid public information from logged out users for no reason. The things you miss if Gerrit interactions become something you do pretty much every day. If you want to count the members of the group you also have to follow the chain of included groups - it also includes https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/wmf, https://ldap.toolforge.org/group/ops and the WMDE-MediaWiki group (another login-only link), as well as a few other permission edge cases (almost all of which are redundant because the user is already in the MediaWiki group) * Pppery * it has begun... 18:07, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Support 1a/b, and I would encourage the closer to disregard any opposition based solely on the chances of someone ever actually implementing it. —Compassionate727  12:52, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Fine. This stupid RfC isn't even asking the right questions. Why did I need to delete (an expensive operation) and then restore a page in order to "set up for a history merge" Should we fix the software so that it doesn't require me to do that? Why did the page-mover resort to cut-paste because there was page history blocking their move, rather than ask a administrator for help? Why doesn't the software just let them move over that junk page history themselves, which would negate the need for a later hist-merge? (Actually in this case the offending user only has made 46 edits, so they don't have page-mover privileges. But they were able to move a page. They just couldn't move it back a day later after they changed their mind.) wbm1058 (talk) 13:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah, revision move would be amazing, for a start. Graham87 (talk) 15:38, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 1b – changes to a page's history should be listed in that page's log. There's no need to make a null edit; pagemove null edits are useful because they meaningfully fit into the page's revision history, which isn't the case here. jlwoodwa (talk) 00:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 1b sounds best since that's what those in the know seem to agree on, but 1a would probably be OK. Abzeronow (talk) 03:44, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
  • Option 1b seems like the one with the best transparency to me. Thanks. Huggums 06:59, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Discussion: Log the use of the HistMerge tool

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Revise Misplaced Pages:INACTIVITY

There is consensus against this proposal. JJPMaster (she/they) 17:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Point 1 of Procedural removal for inactive administrators which currently reads "Has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period" should be replaced with "Has made no administrative actions for at least a 12-month period". The current wording of 1. means that an Admin who takes no admin actions keeps the tools provided they make at least a few edits every year, which really isn't the point. The whole purpose of adminship is to protect and advance the project. If an admin isn't using the tools then they don't need to have them. Mztourist (talk) 07:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Endorsement/Opposition (Admin inactivity removal)

  • Support as proposer. Mztourist (talk) 07:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose - this would create an unnecessary barrier to admins who, for real life reasons, have limited engagement for a bit. Asking the tools back at BN can feel like a faff. Plus, logged admin activity is a poor guide to actual admin activity. In some areas, maybe half of actions aren't logged? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:17, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose. First, not all admin actions are logged as such. One example which immediately comes to mind is declining an unblock request. In the logs, that's just a normal edit, but it's one only admins are permitted to make. That aside, if someone has remained at least somewhat engaged with the project, they're showing they're still interested in returning to more activity one day, even if real-life commitments prevent them from it right now. We all have things come up that take away our available time for Misplaced Pages from time to time, and that's just part of life. Say, for example, someone is currently engaged in a PhD program, which is a tremendously time-consuming activity, but they still make an edit here or there when they can snatch a spare moment. Do we really want to discourage that person from coming back around once they've completed it? Seraphimblade 21:21, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
    We could declare specific types of edits which count as admin actions despite being mere edits. It should be fairly simple to write a bot which checks if an admin has added or removed specific texts in any edit, or made any of specific modifications to pages. Checking for protected edits can be a little harder (we need to check for protection at the time of edit, not for the time of the check), but even this can be managed. Edits to pages which match specific regular expression patterns should be trivial to detect. Animal lover |666| 11:33, 9 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose There's no indication that this is a problem needs fixing. SWATJester 00:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support Admins who don't use the tools should not have the tools. * Pppery * it has begun... 03:55, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose While I have never accepted "not all admin actions are logged" as a realistic reason for no logged actions in an entre year, I just don't see what problematic group of admins this is in response to. Previous tweaks to the rules were in response to admins that seemed to be gaming the system, that were basically inactive and when they did use the tools they did it badly, etc. We don't need a rule that ins't pointed a provable, ongoing problem. Just Step Sideways 19:19, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose If an admin is still editing, it's not unreasonable to assume that they are still up to date with policies, community norms etc. I see no particular risk in allowing them to keep their tools. Scribolt (talk) 19:46, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose: It feels like some people are trying to accelerate admin attrition and I don't know why. This is a solution in search of a problem. Gnomingstuff (talk) 07:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose Sure there is a problem, but the real problem I think is that it is puzzling why they are still admins. Perhaps we could get them all to make a periodic 'declaration of intent' or some such every five years that explains why they want to remain an admin. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:01, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose largely per scribolt. We want to take away mops from inactive accounts where there is a risk of them being compromised, or having got out of touch with community norms, this proposal rather targets the admins who are active members of the community. Also declining incorrect deletion tags and AIV reports doesn't require the use of the tools, doesn't get logged but is also an important thing for admins to do. ϢereSpielChequers 07:43, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose. What is the motivation for this frenzy to make more hoops for admins to jump through and use not jumping through hoops as an excuse to de-admin them? What problem does it solve? It seems counterproductive and de-inspiring when the bigger issue is that we don't have enough new admins. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose Some admin actions aren't logged, and I also don't see why this is necessary. Worst case scenario, we have WP:RECALL. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose I quite agree with David Eppstein's sentiment. What's with the rush to add more hoops? Is there some problem with the admin corps that we're not adequately dealing with? Our issue is that we have too few admins, not that we have too many. CaptainEek 23:20, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I'm not seeing this as a real issue which needs to be fixed, or what problem is actually being solved. Let'srun (talk) 21:17, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose per all the good points from others showing that this is a solution in search of a problem. Toadspike 21:57, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose The current wording sufficiently removes tools from users who have ceased to edit the English Misplaced Pages. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:28, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Discussion (Admin inactivity removal)

  • Making administrative actions can be helpful to show that the admin is still up-to-date with community norms. We could argue that if someone is active but doesn't use the tools, it isn't a big issue whether they have them or not. Still, the tools can be requested back following an inactivity desysop, if the formerly inactive admin changes their mind and wants to make admin actions again. For now, I don't see any immediate issues with this proposal. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 08:13, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Looking back at previous RFCs, in 2011 the reasoning was to reduce the attack surface for inactive account takeover, and in 2022 it was about admins who haven't been around enough to keep up with changing community norms. What's the justification for this besides "use it or lose it"? Further, we already have a mechanism (from the 2022 RFC) to account for admins who make a few edits every year. Anomie 12:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • I also note that not all admin actions are logged. Logging editing through full protection requires abusing the Edit Filter extension. Reviewing of deleted content isn't logged at all. Who will decide whether an admin's XFD "keep" closures are really WP:NACs or not? Do adminbot actions count for the operator? There are probably more examples. Currently we ignore these edge cases since the edits will probably also be there, but now if we can desysop someone who made 100,000 edits in the year we may need to consider them. Anomie 12:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
    I had completely forgotten that many admin actions weren't logged (and thus didn't "count" for activity levels), that's actually a good point (and stops the "community norms" arguments as healthy levels of community interaction can definitely be good evidence of that). And, since admins desysopped for inactivity can request the tools back, an admin needing the bit but not making any logged actions can just ask for it back. At this point, I'm not sure if there's a reason to go through the automated process of desysopping/asking for resysop at all, rather than just politely ask the admin if they still need the tools.I'm still very neutral on this by virtue of it being a pretty pointless and harmless process either way (as, again, there's nothing preventing an active admin desysopped for "inactivity" from requesting the tools back), but I might lean oppose just so we don't add a pointless process for the sake of it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • To me this comes down to whether the community considers it problematic for an admin to have tools they aren't using. Since it's been noted that not all admin actions are logged, and an admin who isn't using their tools also isn't causing any problems, I'm not sure I see a need to actively remove the tools from an inactive admin; in a worst-case scenario, isn't this encouraging an admin to (potentially mis-)use the tools solely in the interest of keeping their bit? There also seems to be somewhat of a bad-faith assumption to the argument that an admin who isn't using their tools may also be falling behind on community norms. I'd certainly like to hope that if I was an admin who had been inactive that I would review P&G relevant to any admin action I intended to undertake before I executed. DonIago (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • As I have understood it, the original rationale for desysopping after no activity for a year was the perception that an inactive account was at higher danger of being hijacked. It had nothing to do with how often the tools were being used, and presumably, if the admin was still editing, even if not using the tools, the account was less likely to be hijacked. - Donald Albury 22:26, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
    And also, if the account of an active admin was hijacked, both the account owner and those they interact with regularly would be more likely to notice the hijacking. The sooner a hijacked account is identified as hijacked, the sooner it is blocked/locked which obviously minimises the damage that can be done. Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
  • I was not aware that not all admin actions are logged, obviously they should all be correctly logged as admin actions. If you're an Admin you should be doing Admin stuff, if not then you obviously don't need the tools. If an Admin is busy IRL then they can either give up the tools voluntarily or get desysopped for inactivity. The "Asking the tools back at BN can feel like a faff." isn't a valid argument, if an Admin has been desysopped for inactivity then getting the tools back should be "a faff". Regarding the comment that "There's no indication that this is a problem needs fixing." the problem is Admins who don't undertake admin activity, don't stay up to date with policies and norms, but don't voluntarily give up the tools. The 2022 change was about total edits over 5 years, not specifically admin actions and so didn't adequately address the issue. Mztourist (talk) 03:23, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
    obviously they should all be correctly logged as admin actions - how would you log actions that are administrative actions due to context/requiring passive use of tools (viewing deleted content, etc.) rather than active use (deleting/undeleting, blocking, and so on)/declining requests where accepting them would require tool use? (e.g. closing various discussions that really shouldn't be NAC'd, reviewing deleted content, declining page restoration) Maybe there are good ways of doing that, but I haven't seen any proposed the various times this subject came up. Unless and until "soft" admin actions are actually logged somehow, "editor has admin tools and continues to engage with the project by editing" is the closest, if very imperfect, approximation to it we have, with criterion 2 sort-of functioning to catch cases of "but these specific folks edit so little over a prolonged time that it's unlikely they're up-to-date and actively engaging in soft admin actions". (I definitely do feel criterion 2 could be significantly stricter, fwiw) AddWittyNameHere 05:30, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
    Not being an Admin I have no idea how their actions are or aren't logged, but is it a big ask that Admins perform at least a few logged Admin actions in a year? The "imperfect, approximation" that "editor has admin tools and continues to engage with the project by editing" is completely inadequate to capture Admin inactivity. Mztourist (talk) 07:06, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
    Why is it "completely inadequate"? Thryduulf (talk) 10:32, 6 December 2024 (UTC)
    I've been a "hawk" regarding admin activity standards for a very long time, but this proposal comes off as half-baked. The rules we have now are the result of careful consideration and incremental changes aimed at specific, provable issues with previous standards. While I am not a proponent of "not all actions are logged" as a blanket excuse for no logged actions in several years, it is feasible that an admin could be otherwise fully engaged with the community while not having any logged actions. We haven't been having trouble with admins who would be removed by this, so where's the problem? Just Step Sideways 19:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User-generated conflict maps

In a number of articles we have (or had) user-generated conflict maps. I think the mains ones at the moment are Syrian civil war and Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war in Afghanistan had one until it was removed as poorly-sourced in early 2021. As you can see from a brief review of Talk:Syrian civil war the map has become quite controversial there too.

My personal position is that sourcing conflict maps entirely from reports of occupation by one side or another of individual towns at various times, typically from Twitter accounts of dubious reliability, to produce a map of the current situation in an entire country (which is the process described here), is a WP:SYNTH/WP:OR. I also don't see liveuamap.com as necessarily being a highly reliable source either since it basically is an WP:SPS/Wiki-style user-generated source, and when it was discussed at RSN editors there generally agreed with that. I can understand it if a reliable source produces a map that we can use, but that isn't what's happening here.

Part of the reason this flies under the radar on Misplaced Pages is it ultimately isn't information hosted on EN WP but instead on Commons, where reliable sourcing etc. is not a requirement. However, it is being used on Misplaced Pages to present information to users and therefore should fall within our PAGs.

I think these maps should be deprecated unless they can be shown to be sourced entirely to a reliable source, and not assembled out of individual reports including unreliable WP:SPS sources. FOARP (talk) 16:57, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

A lot of the maps seem like they run into SYNTH issues because if they're based on single sources they're likely running into copyright issue as derivative works. I would agree though that if an image does not have clear sourcing it shouldn't be used as running into primary/synth issues. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 17:09, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
Though simple information isn't copyrightable, if it's sufficiently visually similar I suppose that might constitute a copyvio. JayCubby 02:32, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
I agree these violate OR and at least the spirit of NOTNEWS and should be deprecated. I remember during the Wagner rebellion we had to fix one that incorrectly depicted Wagner as controlling a swath of Russia. Levivich (talk) 05:47, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
Oppose: First off, I'd like to state my bias as a bit of a map geek. I've followed the conflict maps closely for years.
I think the premise of this question is flawed. Some maps may be poorly sourced, but that doesn't mean all of them are. The updates to the Syrian, Ukraine, and Burma conflicts maps are sourced to third parties. So that resolves the OR issue.
The sources largely agree with each other, which makes SYNTH irrelevant. Occasionally one source may be ahead of another by a few hours (e.g., LiveUaMap vs. ISW), but they're almost entirely in lock step.
I think this proposal throws out the baby with the bathwater. One bad map doesn't mean we stop using maps; it means we stop using bad maps.
You may not like the fact that these sources sometimes use OSI (open-source intelligence). Unfortunately, that is the nature of conflict in a zone where the press isn't allowed. Any information you get from the AP or the US government is likely to rely on the same sources.
Do they make mistakes? Probably; but so do all historical sources. And these maps have the advantage that the Commons community continuously reviews changes made by other users. Much in the same way that Misplaced Pages is often more accurate than historical encyclopedias, I believe crowdsourcing may make these maps more accurate than historical ones.
I think deprecating these maps would leave the reader at a loss (pictures speak a 1,000 words and all that). Does it get a border crossing wrong here or there? Yes, but the knowledge is largely correct.
It would be an absolute shame to lose access to this knowledge. Magog the Ogre (tc) 22:59, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
@Magog the Ogre WP:ITSUSEFUL is frowned upon as an argument for good reason. Beyond that: 1) the fact that these are based on fragmentary data is strangely not mentioned at all (Syrian civil war says 'Military situation as of December 18, 2024 at 2:00pm ET' which suggests that it's quite authoritative and should be trusted; the fact that it's based off the ISW is not disclosed.) 2) I'm not seeing where all the information is coming from the ISW. The ISW's map only covers territory, stuff like bridges, dams, "strategic hills" and the like are not present on the ISW map. Where is that info coming from? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 23:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
The Commons Syria map uses both the ISW and Liveuamap. The two are largely in agreement, with Liveuamap being more precise but using less reliable sources. If you have an issue with using Liveuamap as a source, fine, bring it up on the talk pages where it's used, or on the Commons talk page itself. But banning any any map of a conflict is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The Ukraine map is largely based on ISW-verifiable information.
With regards to actual locations like bridges, I'm against banning Commons users from augmenting maps with easily verifiable landmarks. That definition of SYN is broad to the point of meaningless, as it would apply to any user-generated content that uses more than one source. Magog the Ogre (tc) 23:50, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
WP:ITSUSEFUL is a perfectly valid argument in some circumstances, like this one. Wikimedia Commons exists to hold images that are useful for the encyclopedia. The only reason to keep an image is if it's useful for articles. (I feel like the whole "Arguments to avoid" essay needs to be rewritten, because almost every argument on that list is valid in some contexts but not others.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:45, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Weak Oppose I've been updating the Ukraine map since May 2022, so I hope my input is helpful. While I agree that some of the sources currently being used to update these maps may be dubious in nature, that has not always been the case. In the past, particularly for the Syria map, these maps have been considered among the most accurate online due to their quality sourcing. It used to be that a source was required for each town if it was to be displayed on these maps, but more recently, people have just accepted taking sources like LivaUAMap and the ISW and copying them exactly. Personally, I think we should keep the maps but change how they are sourced. I think that going back to the old system of requiring a reliable source for each town would clear up most of the issues that you are referring to, though it would probably mean that the maps would be less detailed than they currently are now. Physeters 07:23, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose The campaign maps are one of our absolute best features. The Syrian campaign map in particular was very accurate for much of the war. Having a high quality SVG of an entire country like that is awesome, and there really isn't anything else like it out there, which is why it provides such value to our readers. I think we have to recognize of our course that they're not 100% accurate, due to the fog of war. I wouldn't mind if we created subpages about the maps? Like, with a list of sources and their dates, designed to be reader facing, so that our readers could verify the control of specific towns for themselves. But getting rid of the maps altogether is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. CaptainEek 23:33, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose, but I do think we need to tighten up the verifiability standards, as @CaptainEek suggests in their spot-on comment :) Maps need to have citations, just like articles do, so readers can verify how reliable the information is. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:40, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
  • We usually expect articles to use more than one source to help with NPOV. Relaxing that standard for maps does not sound like a particularly good idea. —Kusma (talk) 19:15, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Allowing page movers to enable two-factor authentication

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T382879
Consensus to assign oathauth-enable to the (extendedmover) group, giving page movers the option to enable two-factor authentication. SilverLocust 💬 11:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I would like to propose that members of the page mover user group be granted the oathauth-enable permission. This would allow them to use Special:OATH to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts.

Rationale (2FA for page movers)

The page mover guideline already obligates people in that group to have a strong password, and failing to follow proper account security processes is grounds for revocation of the right. This is because the group allows its members to (a) move pages along with up to 100 subpages, (b) override the title blacklist, and (c) have an increased rate limit for moving pages. In the hands of a vandal, these permissions could allow significant damage to be done very quickly, which is likely to be difficult to reverse.

Additionally, there is precedent for granting 2FA access to users with rights that could be extremely dangerous in the event of account compromise, for instance, template editors, importers, and transwiki importers have the ability to enable this access, as do most administrator-level permissions (sysop, checkuser, oversight, bureaucrat, steward, interface admin).

Discussion (2FA for page movers)

  • Support as proposer. JJPMaster (she/they) 20:29, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support (but if you really want 2FA you can just request permission to enable it on Meta) * Pppery * it has begun... 20:41, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
    For the record, I do have 2FA enabled. JJPMaster (she/they) 21:47, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
    Oops, that says you are member of "Two-factor authentication testers" (testers = good luck with that). Johnuniq (talk) 23:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
    A group name which is IMO seriously misleading - 2FA is not being tested, it's being actively used to protect accounts. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:53, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
    meta:Help:Two-factor authentication still says "currently in production testing with administrators (and users with admin-like permissions like interface editors), bureaucrats, checkusers, oversighters, stewards, edit filter managers and the OATH-testers global group." Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:42, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support as a pagemover myself, given the potential risks and need for increased security. I haven't requested it yet as I wasn't sure I qualified and didn't want to bother the stewards, but having oathauth-enable by default would make the process a lot more practical. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:30, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
    Anyone is qualified - the filter for stewards granting 2FA is just "do you know what you're doing". * Pppery * it has begun... 22:46, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Question When's the last time a page mover has had their account compromised and used for pagemove vandalisn? Edit 14:35 UTC: I'm not doubting the nom, rather I'm curious and can't think of a better way to phrase things. JayCubby 02:30, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Why isn't everybody allowed to enable 2FA? I've never heard of any other website where users have to go request someone's (pro forma, rubber-stamp) permission if they want to use 2FA. And is it accurate that 2FA, after eight years, is still "experimental" and "in production testing"? I guess my overall first impression didn't inspire me with confidence in the reliability and maintenance. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:34, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
    For TOTP (the 6-digit codes), it's not quite as bad as when it was written, as the implementation has been fixed over time. I haven't heard nearly as many instances of backup scratch codes not working these days compared to when it was new. The WebAuthn (physical security keys, Windows Hello, Apple Face ID, etc) implementation works fine on private wikis but I wouldn't recommend using it for CentralAuth, especially with the upcoming SUL3 migration. There's some hope it'll work better afterward, but will still require some development effort. As far as I'm aware, WMF is not currently planning to work on the 2FA implmentation. As far as risk for page mover accounts goes, they're at a moderate risk. Page move vandalism, while annoying to revert, is reversible and is usually pretty loud (actions of compromised accounts can be detected and stopped easily). The increased ratelimit is the largest concern, but compared to something like account creator (which has noratelimit) it's not too bad. I'm more concerned about new page reviewer. There probably isn't a ton of harm to enabling 2FA for these groups, but there isn't a particularly compelling need either. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 12:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support per nom. PMV is a high-trust role (suppressredirect is the ability to make a blue link turn red), and thus this makes sense. As a side note, I have changed this to bulleted discussion; # is used when we have separate sections for support and oppose. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 07:19, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose As a pagemover myself, I find pagemover is an extremely useful and do not wish to lose it. It is nowhere near the same class as template editor. You can already ask the stewards for 2FA although I would recommend creating a separate account for the purpose. After all these years, 2FA remains experimental, buggy and cumbersome. Incompatible with the Microsoft Authenticator app on my iphone. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:59, 14 December 2024 (UTC)
    The proposal (as I read it) isn't "you must have 2FA", rather "you have the option to add it". Lee Vilenski 00:06, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
    @Hawkeye7, Lee Vilenski is correct. This would merely provide page movers with the option to enable it. JJPMaster (she/they) 00:28, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
    Understood, but I do not want it associated with an administrator-level permission, which would mean I am not permitted to use it, as I am not an admin. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
    It's not really that. It would be an opt-in to allow users (in the group) to put 2FA on their account - at their own digression.
    The main reasons why 2FA is currently out to admins and the like is because they are more likely to be targeted for compromising and are also more experienced. The 2FA flag doesn't require any admin skills/tools and is only incedentally linked. Lee Vilenski 12:58, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
    Wait, so why is 2FA not an option for everyone already? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 01:15, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
    @Closed Limelike Curves the MediaWiki's 2FA implementation is complex, and the WMF's processes to support people who get locked out of their account aren't able to handle a large volume of requests (developers can let those who can prove they are the owner of the account back in). My understanding is that the current processes cannot be efficiently scaled up either, as it requires 1:1 attention from a developer, so unless and until new processes have been designed, tested and implemented 2FA is intended to be restricted to those who understand how to use it correctly and understand the risks of getting locked out. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
  • It probably won't make a huge difference because those who really desire 2FA can already request the permission to enable it for their account, and because no page mover will be required to do so. However, there will be page movers who wouldn't request a global permission for 2FA yet would enable it in their preferences if it was a simple option. And these page movers might benefit from 2FA even more than those who already care very strongly about the security of their account. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:18, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support and I can't think of any argument against something not only opt-in but already able to be opted into. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:09, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose this is a low value permission, not needed. If an individual PMV really wants to opt-in, they can already do so over at meta - no need to build custom configuration for this locally. — xaosflux 15:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support; IMO all users should have the option to add 2FA. Stifle (talk) 10:26, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support All users should be able to opt in to 2FA. Lack of a scalable workflow for users locked out of their accounts is going to be addressed by WMF only if enough people are using 2FA (and getting locked out?) to warrant its inclusion in the product roadmap. – SD0001 (talk) 14:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
    That (and to @Stifle above) sounds like an argument to do just that - get support put in place and enable this globally, not to piecemeal it in tiny batches for discretionary groups on a single project (this custom configuration would support about 3/10ths of one percent of our active editors). To the point of this RFC, why do you think adding this for this specific tiny group is a good idea? — xaosflux 15:40, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
    FWIW, I tried to turn this on for anyone on meta-wiki, and the RFC failed (meta:Meta:Requests for comment/Enable 2FA on meta for all users). — xaosflux 21:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
    Exactly. Rolling it out in small batches helps build the case for a bigger rollout in the future. – SD0001 (talk) 05:24, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
    I'm pretty sure that 2FA is already available to anyone. You just have to want it enough to either request it "for testing purposes" or to go to testwiki and request that you made an admin there, which will automatically give you access. See H:ACCESS2FA. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
    We shouldn't have to jump through borderline manipulative and social-engineering hoops to get basic security functionality.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  04:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It sounds like account recovery when 2FA is enabled involves Trust and Safety. I don't think page movers' account security is important enough to justify increasing the burden on them. —Compassionate727  14:10, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
    Losing access to the account is less common nowadays since most 2FA apps, including Google Authenticator, have implemented cloud syncing so that even if you lose your phone, you can still access the codes from another device. – SD0001 (talk) 14:40, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
    But this isn't about Google Authenticator. Johnuniq (talk) 02:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
    Google Authenticator is a 2FA app, which at least till some point used to be the most popular one. – SD0001 (talk) 07:07, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
    But (I believe), it is not available for use at Misplaced Pages. Johnuniq (talk) 07:27, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
    That's not true. You can use any TOTP authenticator app for MediaWiki 2FA. I currently use Ente Auth, having moved on from Authy recently, and from Google Authenticator a few years back. In case you're thinking of SMS-based 2FA, it has become a thing of the past and is not supported by MediaWiki either because it's insecure (attackers have ways to trick your network provider to send them your texts). – SD0001 (talk) 09:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support. Even aside from the fact that, in 2024+, everyone should be able to turn on 2FA .... Well, absolutely certainly should everyone who has an advanced bit, with potential for havoc in the wrong hands, be able to use 2FA here. That also includes template-editor, edit-filter-manager, file-mover, account-creator (and supersets like event-coordinator), checkuser (which is not strictly tied to adminship), and probably also mass-message-sender, perhaps a couple of the others, too. Some of us old hands have several of these bits and are almost as much risk as an admin when it comes to loss of account control.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  04:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
    Take a look at Special:ListGroupRights - much of what you mentioned is already in place, because these are groups that could use it and are widespread groups used on most WMF projects. (Unlike extendedmover). — xaosflux 17:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
    Re That also includes , file-mover, account-creator (and supersets like event-coordinator), and probably mass-message-sender. How can in any way would file mover, account creator, event coordinator and mass message sender user groups be considered privileged, and therefore have the oathauth-enable userright? ToadetteEdit (talk) 17:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: It is really not usual for 2FA to be available to a user group that is not defined as privileged in the WMF files. By default, all user groups defined at CommonSettings.php (iirc) that are considered to be privileged have the oathauth-enable right. Also, the account security practices mentioned in wp:PGM are also mentioned at wp:New pages patrol/Reviewers, despite not being discussed at all. Shouldn't it be fair to have the extendedmover userright be defined as privileged. ToadetteEdit (talk) 08:33, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
    Regardless, I will support per the above comments. Page mover rights are sensitive and can disrupt the encyclopedia (though not as large as template editor/administrator would). I do see people supporting the idea of 2FA for all, but I think this needs to be reconsider in another discussion because it was discussed a lot previously and never gain implementation. ToadetteEdit (talk) 18:12, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support. Like SMcCandlish, I'd prefer that anyone, and particularly any editor with advanced perms, be allowed to turn on 2FA if they want (this is already an option on some social media platforms). But this is a good start, too.Since this is a proposal to allow page movers to opt in to 2FA, rather than a proposal to mandate 2FA for page movers, I see no downside in doing this. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:02, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support this opt-in for PMs and the broader idea of everyone having it by default. Forgive me if this sounds blunt, but is the responsibility and accountability of protecting your account lie on you and not WMF. Yes, they can assist in recovery, but the burden should not lie on them. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 17:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
    What about users who are unable to enable 2FA, which requires either multiple devices or fancy gizmos? Cremastra 🎄 uc 🎄 17:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
    @Cremastra I have mentioned to give the choice to turn 2FA on for everyone. No comments to mandate it for PMs.
    Also, 2FA is easy to enable on every mobile phone (which is not a fancy gizmo, I believe everyone here has access to one?). ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 07:16, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
    Then what do you mean by "everyone having it by default"? Cremastra 🎄 uc 🎄 16:20, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
    Everyone has the ability to turn it on ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 10:46, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
    Okay, sorry. I misread your comment as everyone having it by default, not everyone having it by default.
    Happy new year, Cremastra 🎄 uc 🎄 19:53, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Allow 2FA for en-wiki users with verified emails. I can't think of any other website that gates 2FA behind special permissions - it's a bizarre security practice. I hear the concerns about T&S needing to get involved for account recovery, but if the user has a verified email address that shouldn't be necessary. – Anne drew 15:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose security is good, but pagemoving isn't an area where increased security will lead to any sort of improvement. I'm a pagemover and I certainly don't want to go through that hassle everytime I log in, which can be several times a day because I edit from different (at home) devices. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:43, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
    The proposal is for allowing page movers to enable 2FA, not forcing them to do so. – SD0001 (talk) 21:37, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Support as an option, sure, seems beneficial. Those who are against it can simply opt out. – Aza24 (talk) 22:02, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I wished Misplaced Pages supported wallpapers in pages...

It would be even more awesome if we could change the wallpaper of pages in Misplaced Pages. But the fonts' colors could change to adapt to the wallpaper. The button for that might look like this: Change wallpaper Gnu779 (talk) 11:02, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I think we already tried this. It was called Myspace ;) —TheDJ (talkcontribs) 11:51, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
See Help:User style for information on creating your own stylesheet. isaacl (talk) 18:03, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
@Gnu779: You have successfully nerd-sniped me, so I’m gonna work on a user script for this. JJPMaster (she/they) 22:54, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
Heh heh, great idea! Gnu779 (talk) 10:33, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Why does the account go out?

Moved to Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical) § Why does the account go out? – Aaron Liu (talk) 00:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Enable override-antispoof for importers

QoH has withdrawn the RfC as Graham87 has been granted the account creator permission. Involved closure; if someone objects, reopen this discussion. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 04:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Should the override-antispoof permission be enabled for the importer group? charlotte 18:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Support (override-antispoof for importers)

  1. Similar to the RfC on mergehistory for importers from last month, importers sometimes have to create accounts when importing old edits, and those are occasionally too similar to existing users or trigger filter 890 (hist · log) (which I coded a workaround into). Currently, the only rights that have override-antispoof are account creator and sysop; the one non-admin importer, Graham87, had account creator revoked because he was not a member of the account creation team, and override-antispoof would prevent him from having to ask an admin each time. charlotte 18:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  2. Support in principle as the affected user, but I'm also open to less drastic solutions. See below. Graham87 (talk) 07:19, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose (override-antispoof for importers)

  1. This is too far off from the single-responsibility principle for my taste, especially given that a solution already exists. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:21, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  2. per Pppery Feeglgeef (talk) 19:52, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  3. Nah, non-admins that need to create odd accounts could just become account creators, Misplaced Pages:Account creator isn't a hard policy, it is descriptive. If there is community support for someone not working on the ACC project to have this access, they should be able to hold it. — xaosflux 16:41, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
  4. While I trust Graham to use this power, edit filter 890 already doesn't run on importers, and for the only other scenario—where it's too close to an existing account name—I don't want to risk giving all importers the power to impersonate. As xaosflux said, prospective importers should be able to apply for account creator separately. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:52, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
  5. Oppose Unlike importing and history merging, the link between importing and creating accounts with usernames similar to existing ones is tenuous at best. There is already a solution for importers who genuinely need to do that—the account creator group—and we should not turn the importer group into nothing more than a "Graham87 group." JJPMaster (she/they) 14:31, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (override-antispoof for importers)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Collaboration with PubPeer

Dear all, Over the past few months, I have been in contact with the team managing PubPeer - a website that allows users to discuss and review scientific research after publication, i.e. post-publication peer review - to explore a potential collaboration with Misplaced Pages. After reviewing some data regarding citations (e.g., the DOIs cited in English (20%), Spanish, French, and Italian Misplaced Pages), they agreed, in principle, to share data about papers with PubPeer comments that are also used as sources in Misplaced Pages. From our calculations on a sample of 20% of the citations in enwiki, we estimate that there are around 5,000 unique DOIs cited in Misplaced Pages that may have PubPeer comments. This message is intended to brainstorm some possible ways to use this data in the project. Here are some of my initial ideas:

  1. Create a bot that periodically (weekly? monthly?) fetches data about papers cited in Misplaced Pages with PubPeer comments and leaves a note on the Talk page of articles using these sources. The note could say something like, "There are PubPeer comments related to articles X, Y, Z used as sources in this article."
  2. Develop a gadget that replicates the functionality of the PubPeer browser extensions.

Let me know your thoughts on these ideas and how we could move forward. --CristianCantoro (talk) 00:02, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

How would this be valuable to Misplaced Pages? Izno (talk) 00:45, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
PubPeer is a post-publication peer review forum. Most of the discussions over there report issues with papers. Knowing that a paper that is used as a source has comments on PubPeer is very valuable, IMHO, as It would be useful for editors to evaluate the quality of the source and decide if it makes sense to keep using it. Paper retractions are also reported on PubPeer (see an example), and the PubPeer extension marks retracted papers in red. Basically the idea is to replicate the functionality of the PubPeer extension for editors that don't have it. Furthermore, PubPeer IDs are registered in Wikidata. --CristianCantoro (talk) 18:14, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
But we cite information from reliable sources. I don't see why we'd want a list of people saying they don't think a publication is good, we'd want those sources addressed, surely? Lee Vilenski 18:28, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
I think the point is that an article with a lot of PubPeer commentary is quite likely not to be a reliable source. – Joe (talk) 20:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
@Lee Vilenski, PubPeer is exactly a forum where issues with papers are raised, and the authors also have the opportunity to address the concerns. While a source such as a well-established scientific journal is generally reliable, we do not know anything about the quality of a specific paper. To me, knowing that there are comments on PubPeer about a paper is valuable because, in general, those comments are not just about "I like/dislike this paper;" instead, they usually raise good points about the paper that I think would provide valuable context to a Misplaced Pages editor who is trying to determine whether a given paper is a good source or not. PubPeer is regularly used by the community of "scientific sleuths" looking for manipulated or fabricated image and data as you can read in this press article: "A once-ignored community of science sleuths now has the research community on its heels" (there are many other examples) --CristianCantoro (talk) 21:26, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
This does seem like it could be very useful for users interested in the quality of research. I think a gadget highlighting DOIs would be most useful, but using a bot to tag affected pages with a template that adds them to a maintenance category (like this one) would also be a great idea. Toadspike 22:35, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. A bot-maintained notification and maintenance category would be a great starting point. As for a gadget, there are already several tools aimed at highlighting potential reliability issues in citations (e.g. User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen, User:Headbomb/unreliable) so I think it would be better to try and get PubPeer functionality incorporated into them than start a new one. – Joe (talk) 10:13, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Respectfully, I don't really think that collaborating with a website and using its number of user-generated comments to decide of the reliability of our sources is the best idea. While being informed of comments that have been made on the articles could be helpful, placing every article whose source have PubPeer comments in a maintenance category amounts to saying these sources are automatically a problem to be fixed, and that shouldn't be a call left to commenters of another website. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Why not? I don't think there's any realistic prospect of doing it internally. – Joe (talk) 12:32, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Putting an article in a maintenance category because a user-generated review website made comments on a source is clearly not the level of source assessment quality we're striving for. Plus, there's the risk of things like canvassing or paid reviews happening on that other website, as they don't have the same policies that we do, but impact the (perceived) article quality here by tagging these sources as problems to be fixed. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:39, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I believe the proposal is to add the talk page to a category (because it's attached to a talk page message), and not to do any tagging, so this would be pretty much invisible to readers. It would just be a prompt for editors to assess the reliability of the source, not a replacement for source assessments. PubPeer is also not really a "review" website but a place where people (in practice mostly other scientists) can comment on potential errors and misconduct in scientific papers, so the risk of abuse, while present, seems very slight. Who would benefit from it? – Joe (talk) 14:06, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
That does make sense, thanks. I thought there could be cases where competing research teams might try to use it to discredit their opponents' papers, especially if it leads to visible Misplaced Pages messages, but if it is only a category on the talk page that is invisible for the readers, that sounds like a quite sensible idea. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:45, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Hi @Chaotic Enby, the idea is to have the information readily available in the talk page, and that would make our editors' life easier. In the end, it is just a matter of having some links in the talk page that an editor can check, if they want. Furthermore, I second the comment above from @Joe, PubPeer is very much used to report serious flaws with studies: a study from 2021 analyzed around 40,000 posts about 25,000 publications and found that "more than two-thirds of comments are posted to report some type of misconduct, mainly about image manipulation.". Take a tour on PubPeer and see for yourself. --CristianCantoro (talk) 15:40, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I often cite scientific studies when I'm writing Froggy of the Day. It sounds like it would be remotely possible to make a bot or tool that could flag sources that have > howevermany comments on Pub Peer.
I often think about Misplaced Pages's mission to curate rather than create knowledge in terms of the sugar vs fat debate in nutrition. At the time Misplaced Pages was founded, the prevailing idea was that fat was more fattening in sugar with respect to human beings gaining or losing weight. In the years since, much of that was found to have been a promotional campaign by the sugar industry. It is not Misplaced Pages's place to contradict established scientific information even when individual Wikipedians know better but rather to wait until newer and better reliable sources are published. Such a tool could help us do that more quickly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I think some sort of collaboration might be useful, but I don't want talk page notices clogging up my watchlist. Perhaps something that can complement existing userscripts that highlight source reliability would be good. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

discussion page for reverted articles not talking page on article

If you are making edits with sources an individual disagrees but just reverts with can not be bothered to read sources it would be nice to have somewhere to have a further discussion on the article that isn't the talk page. If you ask for information on the individuals talk page and it's not reply to. You add the information on the articles talk page and ask for a consensus but it's not replied to as it's not looked at a lot. It would be nice for there to be somewhere to discuss the article. I have been asking where to go if articles are being stonewalled. There doesn't seem to be somewhere to bring up the behaviour Sharnadd (talk) 07:15, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Appearance setting to hide all inline notes from articles

While disabled by default, enabling it would hide all those , and even inline notes from all articles, which makes reading Misplaced Pages more clearer, especially when reading about controversial topics. Those citation notes can be a distraction for some, so that's why i am proposing such a feature like this. 176.223.184.242 (talk) 12:37, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

Adding sup { display: none !important; } to your user CSS should do the job! (see also WP:CSSHIDE) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Yep. I'd oppose making it a default setting, though. I don't want to dictate to the IP how they should use Misplaced Pages or discount their experience, but those notes are vital for information literacy. If the IP is reading about controversial topics without them, they're risking exposing themselves to misinformation. Sdkb17:18, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
Agreed! If anything, it is far more vital to have those inline references/citations when reading controversial information. This is even more critical for tags like citation needed/OR/etc because without them the reader is likely to take the statement as generally accepted fact instead of with the grain of salt that should be applied when such a tag has been added. TiggerJay(talk) 17:31, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
This reminds me of proposals made long ago to move all maintenance templates to the talk pages so that readers wouldn't be exposed to how messy and unreliable article content actually is. Donald Albury 19:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd personally advise against enabling this, IP. Things tagged with may be just flat-out wrong. Cremastra 🎄 uc 🎄 19:57, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
What about a third option to keep citation needed tags while hiding actual citations?
  • Show all inline notes
  • Show only inline maintenance notices
  • Hide all inline notes
176.223.186.27 (talk) 21:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
To build on what Donald Albury is saying, I think the readers should be reminded of how messy Misplaced Pages is. I just added a citation this afternoon, not only because I want the article's regulars to find an additional source but also because I want the readers to see the tag and know that the content is not sufficiently sourced at this time. (I believe in general that people should be more vigilant about assessing the reliability of what they read, and not only here on the Wiki.) If anyone does donate their time and trouble to make a way for readers to opt out of seeing ref tags and maintenance tags, I would oppose making it the default. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:31, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Political bio succession boxes, need streamlining

My goodness, I went through some American politician bios (didn't check other countries) & there's a lot of trivial info added to succession boxes. So called "Honorary titles" - like "Longest living U.S. Senator", "Earliest living American governor", etc. PS - I think these should be deleted. What would be added next? "Tallest Speaker of the House"? GoodDay (talk) 00:50, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

I delete those on sight and you should too. --Surtsicna (talk) 19:06, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Transclusion of peer reviews to article talk pages

Hello,

First time posting here.

I would like to propose that peer reviews be automatically transcluded to talk pages in the same way as GAN reviews. This would make them more visible to more editors and better preserve their contents in the article/talk history. They often take a considerable amount of time and effort to complete, and the little note near the top of the talk page is very easy to overlook.

This also might (but only might!) raise awareness of the project and lead to more editors making use of this volunteer resource.

I posted this suggestion on the project talk page yesterday, but I have since realized it has less than 30 followers and gets an average of 0 views per day.

Thanks for your consideration, Patrick (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any downsides here. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:55, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Remove Armenia-Azerbaijan general community sanctions

Opening this discussion is itself a violation of GS/AA, as SimpleSubCubicGraph is not extended-confirmed. Initial response from community members with standing to discuss these topics has been unanimously opposed so I see no reason to leave this open. signed, Rosguill 01:25, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


I believe Armenia and Azerbaijan sanction is now outdated and useless. I propose that the sanction on the two nations be removed permanently unless another diplomatic crisis happens between the two countries. My reasons are: A recent statement was made by Armenia offering condolences to Azerbaijan which has almost never happened, I believe that Armenia and Azerbaijan related pages blanket protection of Extended Confirmed should be lowered to Autoconfirmed protection, with the exception of the wars between the two sovereign nations. Additionally, relations are getting better between the two countries. For nearly 30 years, relations were rock bottom, diplomats were not found in Azerbaijan nor Armenia and tensions were at an all time high. However ever since the 2020 war the two nations have started to make amends. This first started with the peace deal ending the war between the two nations. Turkey whom is a staunch ally of Azerbaijan has started to resume direct flights from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia and Istanbul, the largest city in the Republic of Turkiye. In 2023, Armenia and Azerbaijan entered into extensive bilateral negotiations as well as a prisoner exchange between the two countries, and Armenia supported Azerbaijan for being the host of the UN climate change forum. Finally, last year the two countries solved many border issues and created a transport route between the two countries which is a symbol of peace. The two nations are much better off now than they were just 4 years ago and can be seen as having a cooperative/reconciling attitude. That is why I propose an amendment that will immediately downgrade all protections (from ECP to ACP) for all Armenia-Azerbaijan related pages. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 00:31, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

  • Notified: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:53, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This statement does not provide an adequate or relevant reason for vacating WP:GS/AA's ECR remedy. Community sanctions are related to the conduct of editors on Misplaced Pages, not the conduct of international affairs. Since page and editor sanctions are regularly issued pursuant to GS/AA and CT/A-A, there is still a clear need for ECR. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:46, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
    @Voorts Response Well I believe that the editors that cause edit conflicts and wars are mostly Armenian, Azerbaijani, or Turkish. They feel patriotic of their country and their side and have vilified the other side in their head, but with calming geopolitical tensions I believe that these editors will no longer feel the need to edit war on wikipedia. Its the same reason why you do not see British people edit warring on the page for the United States of America over the loss in the Independence War. Geopolitical relations between Great Britain and the United States of America are good. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 00:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
    But you do see Armenian/Azerbaijani people edit warring on pages about Armenia/Azerbaijan still. JJPMaster (she/they) 00:56, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
    To add further context, you're correct that we don't have any sanctions regarding the US War of Independence. However, we do have sanctions regarding other historical topics, including anti-Semitism in Poland around World War II (WP:APL) and The Troubles (WP:CT/TT). As such, just because country leadership may communicate a lack of conflict doesn't mean editors on Misplaced Pages immediately edit within policy and treat each other with civility. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
  • Per Voorts, GS/AA is enacted in response to the actions of editors. Real world diplomatic activity is not directly relevant. CMD (talk) 01:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ITN Nominators

I believe we should add a small section which includes all of the nominators who have made it onto In The News. I think this would be just a polite way of saying thank you for your proposal. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 05:15, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I will just note that we do not do that for nominators for any other elements on the main page. We don't use bylines in Misplaced Pages. Anyone who cares enough about who did what for an article can examine the page history. Donald Albury 15:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Disagree, that would just incentivize many people to try to get their name on the Main Page for millions of readers to see, leading to more competition and less constructive contributions. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
A small section where? Obviously not on the main page, as the previous replies have been assuming. But if someone wanted to maintain some sort of list at Misplaced Pages:In the news/Contributors and link it from WP:ITN, 🤷. We have Misplaced Pages:List of Wikipedians by number of DYKs that is something similar for DYK. Anomie 16:01, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
That would be a much better idea indeed! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:20, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree! SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 18:18, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Draft:In the news/Contributors I created a page if anyone wants to edit it. SimpleSubCubicGraph (talk) 18:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
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