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No Debate

• no one has argued with the argument that no one is required to argue
• There is no debating that talk pages are not for debating

Very droll; I am impressed. BilledMammal (talk) 05:18, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, BilledMammal. Others were less impressed  :-) Levivich 23:13, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Alas, how disappointing - and personally, I find that humour can be done in a manner that is not unprofessional, including this example. BilledMammal (talk) 05:57, 20 October 2021 (UTC)r

In passing I like the idea of fire-and-brimstone warnings (logged or unlogged) and will attempt to produce these going forward. :) -- Euryalus (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

• I like to think of Levivich as EEng 2.0. EEng 02:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

  So that's an upgrade, correct? —valereee (talk) 02:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

  Nah, the sequel is never as good. (Except Terminator 2.) Levivich 04:28, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the close

That discussion was going nowhere.VR _talk 20:45, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Applying the principle of broad overview of sources

Hey Levivich,

I want to get your opinion on something. What is the best way of determining how much weight an article should give to certain (usually controversial aspects) of the subject. Not too long ago I made this proposal at arb, where you participated. I proposed we determine this weight based on the weight given to this subtopic in reliable sources that give a broad overview of the topic (as opposed to sources that focus on the topic very narrowly, eg only on its controversial aspects).

So here is a simple question that someone else asked: how much space should we give to terrorism at Islam in Finland? I tried to answer that question in a systematic fashion, applying principles that admin SomeGuy mentioned: . Do I have the right idea? Is there something I should do differently? How would you go about answering this question?

Thanks and your ideas are appreciated! VR _talk 00:50, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: Short answer: yes, I think your approach at Talk:Islam in Finland#Sources that cover "Islam in Finland" broadly is basically the right one. I see two different approaches in the links you provided:

1. Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard/Archive 87#Clarification please mentions a possible approach where, "if 10 sources support POV-A and 5 sources use POV-B, then the article should have a 10:5 ratio between POV-A and POV-B". I think this approach is incorrect, because it assumes that one source is just as good as another, and so we "count the sources" and do the math. But of course, if the 5 POV-B sources are all like, top academic journals like Science and Nature, and the 10 POV-A sources are local newspapers... well, then a 10:5 ratio would probably be the wrong ratio. Not all sources are equivalent.
2. The approach you're suggesting at Islam in Finland--which is looking at the main sources for "Islam in Finland" (those that give a broad overview of the topic "Islam in Finland" and are the most reliable, e.g. academic sources), and then look at how much space those sources spend on topic X, and that's (proportionally) how much space we should spend on it. This, I think, is the correct approach.

One wrinkle I would point out, though, is that "how much space", meaning how many words do we write, isn't necessarily the only metric of "POV". There's also the question of what do we say about X, not just how much do we say about X. But for figuring out just depth of coverage, I like your approach.

A couple other examples that might help:

• Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 36#TOC Analysis - to look at the table of contents of the article The Holocaust, and whether the section headings, and the division of the article into sections, matches the NPOV of RS, we took the main broad overview sources that are used in the article The Holocaust, looked at their Table of Contents, and used color-coding highlighting to identify similar topics and how they were organized, and then compare that to our Table of Contents in the Misplaced Pages article. So it wasn't about "how many sources talk about Auschwitz?" or "how many sources use 1944 as a dividing line?", it was "how do the main sources for this article organize their information?" Not so much about counting sources as just identifying the best ones and then more or less imitating them. This is because our article is supposed to be a summary of those sources: the summary should have the same structure, content, and proportions, as the material being summarized.
• The Bible#Development and The Bible#Textual history are two sections I rewrote that were probably the most difficult NPOV thing I've written on Misplaced Pages so far. There is so much material written about The Bible that it was hard to know what is DUE to include in a very high-level summary. So, I chose recent (21st century) broad overview books published by academic publishers, and then included in the Misplaced Pages article only those things that were mentioned in multiple of these "top" broad overview sources. For example, there are a zillion versions of The Bible, but all the broad overview sources mentioned the main ones: e.g., The Torah, the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, the Vulgate, the King James Version, so that's why I mentioned those specific versions in the Misplaced Pages section and not others.

One other note: for a recent topic, like Islamic terrorism in Finland, it's also important to pay attention to the date of the sources. A broad overview from an academic publisher from 50 years ago is unlikely to have the same amount of coverage as a broad overview from an academic publisher last year. In my view, the more recent, the better. I'd look at the most-recent 3-5 academic broad overview sources, and use that as a guideline for proportionality and NPOV, which is what you appear to already be doing.

Hope this helps! Levivich 16:22, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, what you did at Talk:The Holocaust/Archive 36#TOC Analysis was, in the words of SarahSV, "absolutely brilliant". I had never seen someone do such a thorough analysis to answer the tricky question of DUE weight. I agree that recent scholarship is better than older.

What bothers me is how this approach of using broad sources isn't yet enshrine in policy. Should we start a discussion to include it in Misplaced Pages:Recentism or WP:DUE? Also gonna politely ping admin Vanamonde93 who participated in the discussion regarding this at Arbcom.VR _talk 17:31, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm curious to see what Van thinks about it. It seems to me that WP:DUE and WP:RS already more or less say this, but perhaps not very clearly, and definitely not succinctly. I've long thought those pages could use a total rewrite, and should be half as long. Levivich 19:42, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

For example, one person disagreed with this analysis, which is why I think this should be made more explicit in policy.VR _talk 08:52, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

AN close

Levivich, thanks for trying to help, but there's literally a link to the challenge rationale in the very first post in that thread.—S Marshall T/C 14:50, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The link in the OP goes to the post-close discussion at RSN, and I wouldn't characterize that thread as a "challenge rationale". Here's my view of close challenges: the community that is reviewing the close deserves the benefit of a succinct statement explaining what the problem is (a "challenge rationale"). By the same token, the editor(s) making the challenge should have the opportunity to craft a challenge rationale that best makes their case. Close review threads that simply refer to prior discussions elsewhere force reviewing editors to read more than they really have to, and robs the challenging editors of the opportunity to make their best case. (It's the same reason why allowing a close challenge to be made is better than just a self-requested close review, IMO.) In some cases, and I think this is one of them, post-close but pre-review discussion can help hone a challenge rationale and thereby make for a more productive close review. So I think the best thing for anyone who wants to challenge your close following these earlier discussions, is to make a new thread at AN laying out their closing rationale. All of that said, if this explanation doesn't convince you, you (or anyone else) should feel free to undo my close. Cheers, Levivich 15:03, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Enough wi

Can you please just leave wi out of this? It's busy, it doesn't want any! El_C 13:49, 3 November 2021 (UTC)