Plot summaries, internet guides, non-notable persons
In my opinion, criteria 1 of INDISCRIMINATE, sometimes called NOTPLOT or PLOT, is wholly redundant to the notability guidelines, serves no useful purpose, is liable to produce clearly absurd results, and should be deleted. If the plot of a book is summarised in reasonable detail by a dedicated article in the NYT and a dedicated article in Britannica we should certainly have a Wikipedia article on that book. A summary of the plot of a notable book is a reasonable thing to include. I can see no reason whatsoever not to include it. I can only infer from its complete redundancy that NOTPLOT must pre-date the notability guidelines and is now simply obsolete and has been retained through inertia alone. Criteria 4 of "Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal" ("Internet guides") has the same problems and should also be deleted for the same reasons. And we could get rid NOTMEMORIAL as well, because that adds nothing to GNG or BIO. So, in summary, NOTPLOT and what might be called "NOTINTERNETGUIDE" are positively harmful and NOTMEMORIAL is useless. James500 (talk) 16:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
NOTPLOT doesn't say that articles with plot summaries are not allowed, but only that articles should not consist solely of plot summaries. We can certainly summarize the plot of a book in reasonable detail, but we should also include some of the reception or analysis provided by the NYT or Britannica articles in our own offering. Similarly for Internet guides, if the sources exist to make the thing notable, then the sources also exist to allow us to detail its impact or significance, and we should include same in our article. The only one of the three you mention that is truly redundant to the notability guidelines is NOTMEMORIAL, but I think it is useful to include here as an aspect of the problematic social networking to be avoided. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
That isn't what I meant. In my opinion, an article that consisted solely of a plot summary would be perfectly reasonable if the book in question is notable and a plot summary is all that can be said about it. This would presumably occur where the "independent reliable secondary sources" of GNG contained nothing but a plot summary for that work. It would presumably occur where the book satisfied criteria 5 of NBOOK and no further sources or no sources other than plot summaries could be found. James500 (talk) 17:34, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Well then we would need to disagree on that point, as in my view an article consisting only of plot summary is not encyclopedic. Indeed, NBOOK explicitly states that "Wikipedia should not have a standalone article about a book if it is not possible, without including original research or unverifiable content, to write an article on that book" that complies with NOTPLOT. Do you have any concrete examples of books for which criteria 5 would apply without non-plot sourcing being available? I expect that for criteria 5 books we would at least be able to contextualize it within the author's oeuvre, as by definition if that criteria applies there is significant academic study on that topic. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
A third-party source that consists only of a plot summary of the topic is not a secondary source. Secondary sources require analysis and transformation of information, of which summarizing a work is not. As such, these would fail notability guidelines, not NOT#PLOT (or in addition to that). --MASEM (t) 18:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
The points you are making are, as noted by Nikkimaria, are on articles that have passed notability guidelines, but where the balance of content is poorly handled. For example, a recent point that came from an ANI was that many of the pages for the original Star Trek series episodes are solely plot summaries, but because of the impact of that show, we presume them notable (but work does need to be done to add secondary sources). WP:N is met, but WP:NOT#PLOT is not. We also get articles like this Steve Frame which is about a notable character but 99% of the content in the article is plot summary. This is what NOT#PLOT is directed towards. --MASEM (t) 18:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Even if I accepted what Masem says about secondary sources, NBOOK says nothing about secondary sources, except for acknowledging that NOTPLOT exists. For the avoidance of doubt, I am proposing that the section headed "Articles that are plot summaries" be removed from NBOOK, since it doesn't say that books that fail NOTPLOT are non-notable (this is a feature of all notability guidelines, taken from the lead passage of N). That said, I'm not at all convinced by Masem's definition of a secondary source. According to my sources, a primary source is a contemporary description of an event by an eyewitness, whereas as secondary source is a description of that event by someone who wasn't there when it happened: (Careers for Students of History, p 22). I don't see why that should necessarily require "analysis" or "transformation of information" (whatever that means). I think it would include A's summary of B's summary of Book C ... which is still a plot summary. In any event, a summary probably is "interpretation" because the summary will normally inject some of the subjective opinions of the person making it. (I recall an example where a summary described a character as a "dandy" despite that word appearing nowhere in the dialogue of the film. If that isn't "analysis", what is it? But it is still a plot summary.) In any event, the only possible reason that could be advanced for rejecting an article on a book only because the independent reliable sources available give only a plot summary seems to be "I don't like it". I think that is a poor argument. James500 (talk) 19:22, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, secondary sources are defined as those that "contain an author's interpretation, analysis, or evaluation" of primary sources, "making analytic or evaluative claims about them". If those sources exist, as I mentioned, they should be used to create reception or analysis sections in a book article. If those sources don't exist, the book likely should not have an article. Do you have any concrete examples of books that you think would be permitted by NBOOK (excluding the section that refers to here) but would not be permitted by this section? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
I disagree. (1) Wikipedia policies and guidelines are supposed to be construed according to their spirit rather than their letter. Accordingly "secondary source" ought to be construed as including anything that could reasonably regarded as secondary. (2) Since the description of "secondary sources" in SECONDARY is not reproduced in within the body GNG, it may not necessarily be what GNG means when it speaks of secondary sources. SECONDARY could be altered without discussion on the talk page of WP:N, and without regard to the meaning of other policies and guidelines which it does not say it applies to. (It doesn't say something to the effect of "and this definition shall be used for the purposes of GNG"). (3) I don't believe that SECONDARY was ever intended to "trump" what reliable sources have to say about secondary sources. To begin with, we shouldn't have a POV definition of a "real world" concept anywhere on Wikipedia, including the project space. If that description is intended to be exhaustive, the thing ought to speak of "relevant secondary sources" or "this is the Wikipedia definition" or something like that. (4) What PSTS actually says is "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability" (my emphasis). It then says "Tertiary sources are publications that summarize primary ... sources" (my emphasis). That would seem to allow a plot summary. It also suggests that "secondary" is not being used in the same sense as in GNG, which does not refer to tertiary sources. James500 (talk) 02:41, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
It's long been the application of WP:PSTS as applied to WP:N and subsequent AFD discussions that secondary sources are those that have transformative information. This is provide some aspect of real-world importance to a topic through the transformation provided by secondary sources. Yes, there are other scholastic definitions of what primary and secondary is, but our house choice is the use of transformational works given that we ourselves are tertiary and want to build quality encyclopedia articles off secondary sources. This is also why we have independent/dependent sources to make the distinction of "closeness to the event". --MASEM (t) 02:47, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Claims about what normally happens at AfD are practically unverifiable. We lack reliable statistics. In any event, stare decisis doesn't apply at AfD. James500 (talk) 02:55, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
(1) Wikipedia policies and guidelines are by their nature inter-referential, thus (2) since GNG links directly to the definition of secondary that I did, I see no reason to assume that it intends a different definition. (3) We have many Wikipedia-only definitions of common English words; whether we should is another question, and not one we are able to resolve in this discussion, but that is the state of the wiki as it is. In this context, it is reasonable to assume that we could have (and in fact do have) a different definition of "secondary" than might be used elsewhere. (4) I don't follow your argument here, as you seem to be suggesting that plot summaries are both secondary and tertiary sources. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
(4) What I said is PSTS says that sources which summarize primary sources can establish a topic's notability. James500 (talk) 03:14, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The key word in the definition of tertiary sources is that is summarizing multiple sources, not just one. Simply summarizing a plot of a single work does not make a work tertiary for that topic. --MASEM (t) 03:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
If a tertiary source summarizes multiple plot summaries (eg by conflating them), that tertiary source is still a plot summary. James500 (talk) 04:46, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Multiple plot summaries for the same work (say, a TV series episode guide) would make it tertiary for the show but not for each episode. --MASEM (t) 12:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Leaving aside the question of what the notability guidelines do or do not include, since we are not likely to agree: I think that any book that needs to be excluded will be excluded by the notability guidelines, therefore we should delete NOTPLOT and the other two because they are unnecessary and they add an additional layer of complexity to an already bewildering system. If you think the notability guidelines independently exclude articles that can't be expanded beyond a plot summary, you should support this removal of redundant junk. I don't think they are needed to prevent the arbitrary exclusion of commentary and appraisal etc from articles either, because it should be obvious that we don't do that, and if we did need something, it should take the form of "don't exclude commentary and appraisal etc" and apply to all articles, not just books and websites. To put it another way, we should have something that is clearly a content policy and couldn't be mistaken for a topic policy. WP:NOT should not be an indiscriminate repository of large numbers of random and very narrow instructions of no real utility. James500 (talk) 04:46, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
WP:NOT#PLOT is a very clear (and very necessary) content policy. The only problem I've seen with it is that people are unwilling to enforce it by deleting each and every article that violates it, regardless of notability. As a result, we are developing an ever larger mountain of trash while depriving people of the tools necessary to clean it up. An unambiguous failure to meet a WP:NOT restriction should be grounds for speedy deletion, and it's unfortunate the people squabble over the unambiguous cases so loudly that they create the illusion of ambiguity.—Kww(talk) 04:59, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
The reason people are unwilling to delete articles on notable topics to enforce NOTPLOT is because doing so would be pointless and absurd (WP:IAR). It would achieve nothing but harm to the project because accurate plot summaries are useful reasonable encyclopedic content. Wikipedia does have a "mountain of trash", but it isn't comprised of plot summaries. It is in the project namespace, which needs a massive clear out ASAP. What we need is a speedy deletion criteria for "detrimental instruction creep". James500 (talk) 05:21, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
No, the reason that we don't mass delete them is a result of an arbcom case long ago, where fait accompli was established - it is disruptive to nominate a swath of articles where there is a possible chance for improvement (which can be the case of plot-only articles) in a short period. --MASEM (t) 12:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
And that decision was imbalanced, because it didn't recognise that devoting entire Wikiprojects to building articles that consist of a bloated plot summary, a fair-use violation in the form of a screenshot, and an unsourced cast list was a fait accompli in the other direction. "Oh, we'll fix it someday" is obviously a hollow promise because the mountain of such articles continues to grow.—Kww(talk) 14:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Even if that arbcom decision was overruled, I doubt you would find many Wikipedians who would be prepared !vote to delete an article on a notable topic to enforce NOTPLOT. Frankly, I infer from the large number of plot summary articles created that there is probably a large section of the community who do not support the use of this policy to exclude article topics, period. I doubt that it really reflects consensus. James500 (talk) 07:49, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
It's true that we have an unfortunately large community that doesn't understand the difference between an encyclopedia and an television guide. Myself, I would view understanding that distinction as an essential test for having sufficient competence to edit.—Kww(talk) 13:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
The large number of plot-only articles were created before notability guidelines were made. And consensus has definitely changed from that. We had a long long discussion about the notability of fictional elements WP:FICT which after a year or so never got anywhere beyond recognizing that fictional elements basically had to meet the GNG. And there are projects that are slowly working to cut down the number of fiction-only articles, but there's just a lot of them. We also can't deal with plot-only articles quickly as often these are prime candidates for redirects, and as such AFD per BEFORE is called out as the wrong venue for discussion of just redirecting articles (and yes, we've tried to get that changed at the AFD process to allow redirect/merge discussions but that never goes anywhere too). --MASEM (t) 14:06, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
I think you are fooling yourself. Monstrosities like this are created every day. A plot summary so enormous it required subsections, a cast list, and two token review lines added in an effort to justify it.—Kww(talk) 14:25, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
But it has reviews, at least. Yes, the plot is too large, and the reviews might feel like token reviews, but there's no reason to compare that to articles that have zero reviews which was the case much earlier in WP's lifetime. --MASEM (t) 21:42, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
The distinction between an encyclopedia and a television guide is, principally, that a television guide tells the reader when, and on what television channel, a particular program will be broadcast. [We are at this time probably correct to exclude that information from articles on works on grounds that it is too transient (it would only last for a few days before it had to be updated). That said, we do appear to include old television schedules for given channels.] NOTPLOT has nothing to do with that. Can you provide even one reliable source that says that encyclopaedias should never include plot summary only articles? Can you prove that that is the overwhelming consensus of reliable sources? Can you provide a substantive reason not to include such articles, one that goes beyond "I don't like plot summaries, I really hate them, I do"? (The utility of summaries is obvious: they allow a reader to ascertain the plot of a work without reading the whole thing, which saves time. In the case of a work that is not freely available online, they also save money. They are, therefore, "A Good Thing". And we don't seem to have a sister project for them, so that argument can't be invoked against them either.) I think that accusing the community of incompetence is rather dubious, since the community determines consensus. The section on internet guides was added to the policy on 8 May 2006 and NOTPLOT was added 9 July 2006, so they do pre-date the notability guidelines (N was tagged as a guideline on 23 September 2006 (and disputed and heavily edited for some time); NBOOK became a guideline on 6 February 2007). They look like an obsolete protean attempt to exclude non-notable topics by imposing an over broad restriction on content, that disregards certain types of coverage and possibly forms of inherited or inherent notability (which we do sometimes admit). Darkness on the Edge of Town (Once Upon a Time) doesn't violate NOTPLOT. A one word review, asserting that a work was "good" would satisfy NOTPLOT (which shows how utterly pointless NOTPLOT is as exclusion criteria, if it was used that way). James500 (talk) 20:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Many of the things listed on WP:NOT are useful to someone for one reason or another; we don't exclude them because they're useless, but because that's not what we as a project are here for, according to the consensus of the community as represented in this policy. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
The policy was added in 2006, before the creation of the notability guidelines. Consensus can change. This policy might have been left in by accident. Do the archives indicate that it has been reconsidered on its merits? Is there a recent discussion I can read? "Not what we are here for" is a paraphrasal of an argument to avoid. Frankly, it is not a reason. James500 (talk) 07:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
That was in 2009, more than five years ago. If that was the most recent discussion, and there hasn't been an RfC on automatically excluding any topic whose article cannot be expanded beyond a plot summary since then, I think we should have an RfC in the near future to see if consensus has changed. James500 (talk) 14:10, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
As a note, we do not allow standalone schedules of old stations, but we do allow comparative schedules (particularly in the US as the fate of a TV series is often what other shows it is up against, and thus these are notable tables).
As to NOTPLOT, the example Once Upon a Time episode does fail NOTPLOT as it is mostly plot. We would not delete it but would tag with {{plot}} to be dealt with in cleanup. --MASEM (t) 21:45, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
MOS:PLOT, however, does. And NOTPLOT explains that articles on works of fiction should be focused away from just plot iteration. Most WIkiprojects that deal with fiction have guidance on keeping plot summaries short (eg WP:FILM has a strict 400-700 word summary for plots). --MASEM (t) 16:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
"Summary-only descriptions of works. Wikipedia treats fiction in an encyclopedic manner, discussing the reception and significance of notable works in addition to a concise summary" is pretty clear, James500. In what way do you think that episode doesn't fail it? I see no discussion of "significance", two perfunctory reviews masquerading as a reception section, and that summary is far from concise.—Kww(talk) 16:59, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Having 6.66 million viewers is a form of significance. The fact that it was reviewed in high circulation publications is a form of significance. Recognised artistic merit, entertainment value, etc (8.5 out of 10, "gratifying scenes", "started on a strong foot", "exciting" etc) is arguably a form of significance. The details of any review covers "reception". All of which is mentioned in the article. Moreover, the word "and" is quite capable of including the word "or", and the policy doesn't say, in express words, that both reception and significance must be included in every article, just that they must be included in Wikipedia as a whole (notice in this respect that the policy refers to "works" (plural) and not each work (singular)). Need I go on? I am sure that I could interpret the policy in such a way that the article will satisfy it. James500 (talk) 18:02, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Further, "and" does not encompass "or", James500. "Or" requires that either element, or both, be true, while "and" is only true if both conditions are true. "Reception and significance" means just that: a discussion of both reception and significance. If you want to argue policy, perhaps a brief education in logic would help.—Kww(talk) 20:37, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
According to this highly regarded source, the word "and" can sometimes, by force of context, be read as "or". Wikipedia policies are (unfortunately) not written by logicians with the precision of a mathematical formula. James500 (talk) 13:53, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
"Force of context" does not apply here, as there is no reason to permit an article that omits one or the other to exist. Nothing about a straightforward reading forces an illogical state.—Kww(talk) 14:30, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Also (per KWW) keep in mind policies and guidelines are not to be read like rules of law, but are descriptive (not prescriptive) statements of how WP works. NOT#PLOT was added when it was determined that we in general were trimming away plot-only articles; at one point we had article for every Pokemon back when WP was new, but since have matured past that. Wikias and other sites are things we can acknowledge and point to for details of fan-level interest. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
I look forward to the day that it matures sufficiently to apply WP:ROUTINE properly to articles about television episodes. A cast listing, Nielsen rating, and a handful of reviews during the week after the broadcast is simply routine coverage to be expected of all episodes of all television shows, and does not justify an article.—Kww(talk) 15:18, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Force of context does apply because there is no reason whatsoever to exclude an article that omits one or the other. There clearly is a reason to include such articles in that they clearly increase Wikipedia's utility to its readers for the reasons already explained. I did not cite that work because I think that policies and guidelines should be strictly construed according to the rules of statutory interpretation that existed in England circa 1903. I cited it because I think it is saying that low quality (or perhaps imprecise) written instructions (or, indeed, descriptions) often use the word "and" when they really mean "or", that this is a feature of such writing generally, and I know from experience that this sort of confusing and/or atypical usage regularly occurs in non-legal written instructions (or descriptions). I am sure you could find a source that said the word "and" was capable of bearing that meaning outside a legal context if you looked, such as possibly this, this and this from translators and linguists, even if the source I originally offered isn't saying that, which I feel it probably is. Anyway, in my view, the standard of written prose of a significant proportion of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is low quality. And all I see in the policy is ambiguous language. And I don't think the meaning Kww suggests is obviously correct, looking at either the wording or the apparent intended purpose. Moreover, it isn't obvious that there is a relevant difference between "significance" and "reception", or what that difference might be. (Another two features of low quality writing are the appearance of redundant synonyms and the absence of definitions for vague or ambiguous words and expressions). Wikia is not a solution to anything because it is not a WMF website. This policy is not clearly confined to "fancruft". It appears, for example, to encompass serious non-fiction works. ROUTINE applies to events, not creative works. I can't see why it should be applied to television programs. Frankly, what Kww calls routine coverage may be evidence that all such episodes are notable. I don't view a trend towards increasing restrictions on permissible article topics as a feature of maturity. It is just a trend that might, like all trends, be completely reversed in the fullness of time. I don't think there is anything particularly inevitable about it. One would, frankly, expect an increasing backlash against that trend sooner or later on a website where anyone can edit and !vote. James500 (talk) 15:45, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
You can write large blocks of text denying plain meaning, but I don't see why one would. There is a substantial difference between "significance" and "reception". Let's take a classic example: Plato's Stepchildren, probably the only notable episode of Star Trek, which featured one of television's first interracial kisses. This is something that is remembered and commented on some fifty years later, and it is significant in the history of the portrayal of race on television. There is also the matter of how the episode itself was received, in terms of ratings and contemporary reviews. There are probably less than a thousand individual television episodes of sufficient significance to warrant individual articles in Wikipedia. Covering individual episodes of a television series is similar to creating individual articles about each chapter in a book.—Kww(talk) 05:40, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Note that I agree completely with you, James, that the specific article is fine in passing the GNG, but the point of the GNG is to show that there is significance in independent, third-party sources, through secondary sources. We need that as well as the conciseness of plot to stay as a tertiary work meant to summarize information, not detail it. The plot should be a supplement to the secondary coverage - providing just enough detail to make the secondary sources make sense without having to read or see the original work. --MASEM (t) 18:10, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
James: if you think this policy doesn't reflect consensus, you are welcome to start an RFC on the topic. That would perhaps be more productive as it would settle this one way or the other - though it may not have the result you would like, the above isn't accomplishing much and is getting off the immediate topic at hand. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:55, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
We do have a great many articles that contain mere plot summaries, but since almost all of the works are notable, they can be improved. There is no reason to delete an improvable article. The problem continues before naïve young students or fans frequently do write articles that contain nothing before, in the accustomed manner of school book reports. But if the book has been reviewed, and almost all popular books that would attract fans or students have been, there is almost always more to be said.
A bigger problem is that the majority of many plot summaries we do have violate NOT CENSORED--they censor the ending, in the general manner of "Jack and Jill went up the hill--and you'll never guess what comes after!". This affects not only books, but films and other works. the solution, as always, is to get more people interested. DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
A further problem to keep in mind regarding plot summaries - detailed summaries even with commentary can be considered copyright violations; there is case law for this. More reason why we want articles on fiction to avoid weighing too much on the plot and edging for conciseness. --MASEM (t) 06:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I have seen almost none such here (the only exceptions are articles about non-fiction polemical books, which sometimes give the arguemnt in very great detail, to the extent we have been known to delete them as promotional.) --it would be copyvio if it served as a substitute for the book. Some extensive reviews in 18th and early 19th century periodicals such as Gentleman's Magazine were explicitly designed so readers who hadn't read the book could pretend they had, with sometimes a dozen pages of quoted highlights and summaries of every turn of the plot. These would probably nowadays be considered copyvio. DGG ( talk ) 07:01, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
An editor recently replaced the lead sentence of the page Aneuploidy with an inaccurate statement, arguing that the original statement which was accurate "violates WP:NOTJOURNAL". I believe the specific sentence on this page that they are referring to must be "While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text."
Specifically, the sentences are:
"Aneuploidy is the presence in a cell of an atypical number of chromosomes." (followed by a citation where someone made that statement)
"Aneuploidy is a condition in which the number of chromosomes in the nucleus of a cell is not an exact multiple of the monoploid number of a particular species,[a citation is here] such as when there is an extra chromosome or one missing. It differs from polyploidy, which involves full multiples of the monoploid number."
The presence and lack of links are as in the originals.
My problem with this is that the first version is unhelpful to the reader, and is inaccurate
1) it implies that polyploidy is a type of aneuploidy, and that humans are aneuploid great apes (humans have a chromosome number that is not typical of the great apes).
2) the reader has no link available to understand what "chromosome" means.
Is the sentence "While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text." really necessary on this page? Could it be removed, please, I believe it is damaging wikipedia. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
On the specifics of this case: although the first version has the benefits of simplicity and readability, if it isn't fully accurate then ultimately that's perhaps not helpful to the reader. Remember that some readers will never get beyond the lead. Would adjusting the sentence to read "Aneuploidy is the presence in a cell of an atypical number of chromosomes for any given species" be an improvement accuracy-wise? On the generality of the instruction on this page, there doesn't appear to be anything inherent in the statement quoted above ("While wikilinks should be provided for advanced terms and concepts in that field, articles should be written on the assumption that the reader will not or cannot follow these links, instead attempting to infer their meaning from the text") that states that accuracy can be compromised as a result of applying it, in which case, if accuracy is compromised, then it seems the instruction is being applied a bit carelessly. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:21, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestion PaleCloudedWhite. It is an improvement since it eliminates the possible meaning that all humans are aneuploid (which they are not) but still doesn't exclude the polyploidy case, such as in the salivary glands of insects, which are polyploid but not aneuploid. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:04, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I am the editor at issue. The definition is accurate, at least according to WP:RS. I got it from Science magazine. (Samuel H. Vohr and Richard E. Green (10 April 2015). "Aneuploidy and mother's genes". Science 348 (6231): 180–181. doi:10.1126/science.aab0877.) I also considered the definition in the NEJM review article on Aneuploidy, and in the glossary to Campbell's Biology, but I went with Science. Reasonable people could disagree.
The issue is not accuracy, the issue is readability.
I'll write some more at the talk page of the content dispute, since there is clearly a serious problem that any content issue has to be readily understandable in all its aspects to the audience here before people will discuss the policy rather than the content itself. Perhaps technical components of the encyclopedia can never have any influence on policy. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:04, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
Propose restrictions on statistics be changed to restrictions on numbers
The section "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" previously has read as follows:
# Excessive listings of statistics. Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader. In cases where this may be necessary, (e.g. Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2012), consider using tables to enhance the readability of lengthy data lists. Where it is not necessary, as in the main article United States presidential election, 2012, omit excess statistics altogether and summarize any necessary data concisely.
# Excessive listings of numbers, data without context, or statistics. Long and sprawling lists of numbers may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of Wikipedia articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put numbers within the article in their proper context for a general reader. In cases where this may be necessary, such as in presenting polling information from an election or numbers of lost lives in a war, consider using tables to enhance the readability of lengthy data lists. Where it is not necessary, omit excess numbers altogether and summarize any necessary data concisely.
My intent is this to to emphasize that all kinds of lists of numbers need context, and not only statistics. I think that this is already the Wikipedia practice, and that this section has been interpreted in that way already. I would appreciate comments from anyone here who either supports or opposes this change. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk)14:27, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
I was thinking that there is not much difference in popular use between "statistics" and collections of "numbers" Merriam-Webster says
"Definition of STATISTICS
1 a branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of masses of numerical data
2 a collection of quantitative data"
1) is the "scholarly" definition IMHO, and your change helps distinguish between that and a mere collection of numbers,
2) is the "popular" definition, and your change doesn't really affect the meaning in this sense.
Oppose. "Excessive listings of ... data without context" is gibberish, or at least unclear. The "context" refers to the context of the data as a whole, not the amount of data. "Excessive listings of ... data" is wholly unacceptable, as the sort of people who want to delete everything would claim that "data" included all entries whatsoever in all lists whatsoever, not just lists of numbers. Removing the link to Statistic is unacceptable for the same reason, as we don't want people coming up with their own (erroneous and overly expansive) definitions. When this was discussed before, there was no consensus to use any definition of "statistic" other than the correct one, which is a real valued function of the observations in a random sample (DeGroot and Schervish, Probability and Statistics, Third Edition, Addison Wesley, 2002, p 371). I am not at all convinced this should be expanded to "numbers". List of numbers, for example, is potentially uncountably infinite, and rightly so. There would be no value in limiting it on grounds of length alone, as the number of notable numbers is likely to be very large, making a "long and sprawling" list absolutely necessary. I don't see a clear analogy between numbers, data and statistics. It occurs to me that you can do all manner of meaningless calculations on a sample and produce all manner of irrelevant statistics. I don't see a clear analogy for numbers or data. I am certain that what is proposed here is not existing practice and that the policy is not interpreted in that way already. This change is clearly substantial and, in view of the outcome of previous discussions, should not have been made without discussing it first. James500 (talk) 08:28, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
Under the crystal ball section, item number two, regarding systematic patterns of names, gives "Tropical Storm Ana (2015)" as an example of an unacceptable usage. While this may have been true earlier in the year, as I write this (early May 2015), Tropical Storm Ana (2015) is now technically a valid usage, as it is no longer a well-predicted future event, but a currently-occurring event. As such, the point needs to either be given a different example or have an "as of" statement inserted to validate the usage of the current example.
While being bold is a good thing, I'd like a little consensus before I make a change. Anybody? Shrillpicc100 (talk) 23:13, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
In the section of "WP is bot a dictionary.", I have a suggestion with a link to Wiktionary. I feel that it would be appropriate to move it under the "WP is not a dictionary." section instead of its "Definitions" subsection. I know that this page is not solely about a dictionary, but I just think that this would cover up most of everything in that section. Is there a reason to object my suggestion? If you should be found to object it, please, talk to me, and I will understand why. Thanks. Gamingforfun365 (talk) 00:19, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
Request edit
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
I'm complete new & reading up on your policy. This is a confusing error:
"(See WP:BEANS—it is in fact strongly discouraged to anticipate them.)"
You mean *encouraged* not discouraged.
But I'd delete this whole sentence, the reference to the beans doesn't add anything.
Proposal: Move or remove the first sentence of INDISCRIMINATE
The main point of WP:INDISCRIMINATE is, in my interpretation (and please do respond if you disagree), that we should give raw facts an appropriate encyclopedic context. Effective writing has the main point of a paragraph in its first sentence. The present opening sentence, while true, is unnecessary and in fact open to misinterpretation, especially when quoted out of context. So I propose we remove that sentence. If we can’t do that, I alternatively propose swapping it with the second, like so:
To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. As explained in § Encyclopedic content above, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia; Wikipedia articles should not be: …
Full disclosure: I have been involved in a debate at WT:FILM in which some editors quote this single sentence in support of removing sourced content, and others including myself claim they’re quoting it out of context. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 07:42, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I think that the main point of WP:INDISCRIMINATE is that 'raw facts' only belong in an encyclopaedia if they are relevant to encyclopaedic coverage. There are many verifiable things that don't merit inclusion in articles, and 'context' will do nothing to change this. And no, changing Wikipedia policy to win a content dispute is not considered appropriate... AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:52, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
You have stated that the existing policy has been cited by opponents in a debate you are currently involved in. You are proposing a change in the same policy. I don't think that 'bad faith' is necessary to see a connection between the two things. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
But you are accusing me of bad faith. Yes, I’m proposing a change to something which I believe I’ve seen misinterpreted; and no, I don’t believe for a second that it could win me the argument. Anyway, I don’t think your interpretation disagrees with mine; iff a fact is relevant to encyclopedic coverage of a subject, then it can be given in an appropriate encyclopedic context. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 08:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Since the sentence repeats what is stated earlier on the page, I don't believe swapping it with the second sentence or even removing it alters policy. Accordingly I have no issue with swapping the two sentences (I would keep "Wikipedia articles should be:" as a separate sentence). isaacl (talk) 11:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. As explained in § Encyclopedic content above, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. Wikipedia articles should not be:
It makes more sense to lead with what we should do, and it makes more sense to pair the sentence about unsuitability with the examples of same.
174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
I've removed the iTunes link, there is already a link to their "official website". While spam like this is obviously related to WP:NOTADVERT it's usually taken care of via WP:SPAM and the related project, who know where to draw fine distinctions and follow usual practice. I'll suggest taking it up there if there is any further discussion.
At the same time, I have to say that many folks around here seem to have very, very loose definitions of "advertising." An ad almost seems to have to be of Super Bowl proportions to qualify as being an ad to some. "Advertising" is just an old-fashioned word for "publicizing" and so almost anything that a firm or its employees could do on Wikipedia regarding the firm or its products should be considered advertising. Of course the more modern use of the term concerns commercial advertising, but it is the same basic principle.
Consider a handwritten sign posted on a fencepost "Hay for sale. Inquire at McDonald's farm". That is an ad. If it was placed in a newspaper, it would be a classified advertisement. If it was blown up and pasted on the side of a barn (or on a special board), it would be a billboard advertisement. If it was put in our article on Hay, it would be an advertisement.
While the concept of advertisement is quite simple, I'm wondering whether we need to put in a definition. My definition would be "any information placed in an article by a business or its employees that would tend to increase its sales or otherwise benefit the business." Smallbones(smalltalk)19:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
I don’t think it violates NOTADVERT per se, but it definitely seems inappropriate for a reference work to include external links to retailers, in general. That should probably be mentioned in that section (and then it would be a violation). —174.141.182.82 (talk) 22:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
To a lesser extent, we also shouldn’t (selectively) link to aggregators/directories, such as iTunes, Stitcher, Podbay, etc. pages for a podcast. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 23:14, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
What travel links are appropriate?
Is there somewhere, a help page or a forum, where I can go to clarify Wikipedia is not a guidebook? Or can this page be revised to clarify this? Place articles often have external links to the following:
Official (i.e. run by a government) tourist pages.
Private firms tourist pages (though sometimes misleadingly called "official".) Often these are guide pages offering free information but with many ads.
Personal photo blogs.
Links to other travel guide pages.
"Sister links" to Wikitravel.
And there are others.
Are there any generally accepted rules about what sort of travel links are acceptable? If so, where are they? Thanks for any enlightenment.
(Personally I think government tourist links would be acceptable, if they really are government ones, and no other travel/tourist external links should be given.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Littlewindow (talk • contribs) 15:51, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
WP:EL gives the basic guidelines. Travel links are promotional by nature, so rarely appropriate as links or references. --Ronz (talk) 17:12, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I'm going to assume all the links of the types I mentioned are inappropriate, except maybe links to official government tourist sites. I won't delete the latter myself, but I won't complain if anyone else does it.Littlewindow (talk) 00:26, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Thinking about this some more, I'd like to argue that there should be a stricter policy on this. After all, no mainstream print encyclopedia (that I recall seeing) ever gives tourist/travel information or references to such information, so why should Wikipedia? Allowing such links just opens the door to irrelevant links, personal travel or photo blogs, open spam, or disguised spam (many destination guides on the internet claiming to be "offficial" in fact are put up by private companies, not government agencies.) What would people think of a policy that travel information links simply don't belong in place articles? Littlewindow (talk) 17:09, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
When to censor some material...
I am familiar with this rule of not being allowed here to censor relevant-to-the-topic material, but what about material (such as that in quotes) which are irrelevant for the topic? Gamingforfun365 (talk) 20:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Editing, which normally includes the removal of some material, is not the same as censorship. A quick and dirty definition of censorship might be "the removal of material for idealogical reasons." Hope this helps. Smallbones(smalltalk)14:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Agreed, removal of info that is irrelevant is not crensosphip. A look at the crensosphip article will help get a better idea of what is considered censorship.--64.229.165.154 (talk) 00:32, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
If we incompletely quoted someone as saying “That’s pretty ****ed up,” that would be an example of censorship. Same if we chose to omit the quote entirely rather than include explicit language. But if the source’s opinion on fucked-upness is not germane, or if it’s more eloquently stated elsewhere—if there’s no reason to include it in the article—that’s not censorship. Hope that helps. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 11:30, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
Oh, and unless the cited source censored a word like in my example here, we shouldn’t censor it either. If we use a quote, we keep it intact. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
The use of quotations instead of descriptive text is a style problem anyway, regardless of the presence or not of dirty words. --Cambalachero (talk) 13:09, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
When are defunct products exempt from NOPRICES?
I understand why NOPRICES exists in relation to products that are still being sold, but what about products that are long defunct?
This question was inspired by this edit (ignore the unrelated WP:OVERLINK removal). The content in question was uncited, and so I agree with the removal, but what if sources had been provided? Generally, is leniency allowed in cases where many reliable sources note that a price is unusually high or low? (Perhaps I Am Rich is a relevant example on the high side.) --SoledadKabocha (talk) 04:03, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
To clarify: I am not claiming that NOPRICES necessarily applies only to products still being sold. I just want to ask whether any specific exceptions to it should be mentioned and whether active/defunct status is at all relevant. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 05:49, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
NOPRICES should apply to any product, present or past. Unless the price is of interest (for example a product going defunct due to a high price) the price shouldn't be mentioned. --MASEM (t) 05:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
To my mind, there is never any reason to give any actual prices. But if reliable sources remark that a price is unusually high or low, we can (and potentially should) say the same—not say what the price is, because that’s not the point and is potentially meaningless, but repeat the independent analysis of the price. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 07:53, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
NOPRICES is not a prohibition to list prices - and should not be considered as one, just a reminder to do so with due weight, and advice against using Wikipedia articles as price comparison lists that could be exploited as advertising by sellers. Usually it's best to just explain the price range of the product with respect to others in the makret (mid-range, high-end, entry-level...) - but when reliable sources note how the price is relevant to the product in a way other than routine mentions (the "justified reason for the mention" part of the policy), it's OK to include it in a section discussing it.
The price is specially interesting for compilations like the one in the example (provided it could be sourced) as the price per game is one of their selling points. Action 52 includes the price in such way, and Caltron 6 in 1 mentions its resale valuation; those uses are not against NOPRICES. Diego (talk) 14:27, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Ok, so admittedly I kind of answered my own question by giving I Am Rich as an example, and I agree with the ones given by Diego Moya. The implication is that no changes to the wording are needed because common sense/IAR are sufficient to handle any exceptions, and so the section title was a bit misleading.
However, shortly after writing the above, I noticed that the article section I Am Rich#Similar applicationsmight be problematic, as those apps are not as noteworthy (in the intuitive sense, not any formal Wikipedia definition) as I Am Rich itself. A strict reading of NOPRICES would suggest only stating that each app is priced the maximum allowed for its store, without stating what each maximum is. That might be a discussion for that article's talk page though; mind if I take it there? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 17:41, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
NOPRICES is only against listing WP:Run of the mill prices; that's not the case for the I Am Rich#Similar applications, where there's a reason to mention the price - namely, that each app is priced the maximum allowed for its store. Given that the article mentions such reason, there are no grounds not to also say what the exact price is. Again, there's nothing in NOPRICES against writing the number when it's somehow relevant to the article, only against doing it routinely for every product. The goal should not be to hide information from the reader as much as it's avoiding that vendors abuse Wikipedia as a sales resource. Diego (talk) 22:37, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Are wikipolicies eternal or not? As I've seen some pages where an essay has been turned into wiki-guidance, anyhow if it's possible I'd like to suggest NOTCHANGELOG to only cover non notable software, it's not important to have a changelog for the likes of minority software like Ubuntu while it is quite notable and often discussed when it concerns Android.
Consensus can change. It is reasonable to cover the most important software in more detail. "important" can reflect other things than numbers of udrtd, such as people concerned with the details from an encyclopedic POV, and especially with respect to substantial reliable sources. DGG ( talk ) 07:48, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
58.187.228.171: To get policy changed, an WP:RFC is normally necessary. This may be held either here or at WP:VPP, but whereever it is held, there should be a message posted to the other one informing people of the existence of the new RfC, and directing them to it. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Expanding NOTPLOT
There's currently a (mildly contentious and frequently debated) rule under "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" that prohibits "Summary-only descriptions of works." I think this should be clearer that it refers not only to plot summaries, but also to articles that solely describe or summarise the fictional universe of a novel (e.g. places, people, science-fiction concepts and inventions, and other fictional background information).
The rationale is that if these materials are not discussed in third-party sources, then they're not notable and therefore don't belong in Wikipedia; additionally such articles frequently contain elements of original research, to offer theories and interpretations, and to fill in gaps, which also doesn't belong here.
The basic wording is OK, but should add something like "This applies to articles which merely describe the novel's world, including plot, settings, characters, and concepts, based entirely or largely on primary or in-universe sources."
Apologies if this has been discussed and rejected before, but while I could see a lot of debate on other aspects of this rule, I didn't see anything making this suggestion. Colapeninsula (talk) 11:36, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Support Though we should be careful that things like lists of characters which may only be sourced to the work itself are generally acceptable as long as they are terse on each character/entry. Long rambling descriptions and fictional bios of a character without third-party sources definitely fall afoul of NOT#PLOT. --MASEM (t) 17:45, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Or when we have no other content about the work. If a reasonably sized article devoted to plot or characters is spun off from a huge article about the work itself, that’s fine. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 07:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
YEah, the lists I'm talking about are really only appropriate if the work is long, likely serialized (tv show or such), and already well sourced and lengthy that the character list cannot fit comfortably in the main article on the work. --MASEM (t) 14:17, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Comment: The "and therefore don't belong in Wikipedia" part is not entirely true. We discuss non-WP:Notable aspects in articles about fiction. In other words, not all of it is WP:Notable. And a WP:Reliable source noting or discussing something doesn't mean it's WP:Notable. The point is that the Wikipedia article should pass the WP:Notability guideline, and we shouldn't be giving WP:Undue weight to any aspect, including plot detail. That stated, I've seen editors create WP:Spinout articles just to split off character/plot detail when it doesn't seem that the character/plot detail needs its own Wikipedia article. Not every show needs a List of characters article, for example. Also, with this, this, this, this and this edit, I alerted WP:Film and WP:TV editors to this discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 08:54, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Support. It probably won't stem the tide of plot-only articles on science fiction topics, but who knows. I don't think that novels should be singled out. The problem exists for every form of media. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:51, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Masem on the need to be careful. A clarification of the section (not expansion, as it already covers discussing a work's content without context at any article) should not have the effect to remove valid list articles. Lists like List of female detective characters or List of DC Comics characters named Batman may not be perfect, but they can become the basis of articles like Bond girls if they're allowed to grow; there should not be a policy that mandates deleting them. Diego (talk) 15:39, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
Support, BUT I would remove "or largely" from the last sentence. Articles based "entirely on" primary sources is what WP:NOTPLOT forbids. The word "largely" is subject to interpretation and thus dilutes the effectiveness of the policy. -- Wikipedical (talk) 19:22, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
From WP:RS, primary sources are the best ones for the polot of a work; most secondary sources are much less reliable for this. DGG ( talk ) 18:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC)`
It seems to me that both the spirit and the letter of WP:NOTCHANGELOG are being selectively disregarded in some of the comments, to the point where "I find it useful" appears to be trumping "Use reliablethird-party (not self-published or official) sources in articles dealing with software updates to describe the versions listed or discussed in the article."
WP:NOTCHANGELOG no longer discourages tables, but it clearly still prohibits dumping a list of changes/releases whose primary (and often only) source is... the project's changelog.
My only problem with WP:NOTCHANGELOG is that everyone is abusing "the rule" to delete any well sourced well reported on and notable changelogs with plenty of neutral 3rd party coverage claiming that all changelogs are unencyclopedic. I haven't heard the "useful" argument as often as I have heard the anti-changelogs (in general) arguments.
I think WP:CHANGELOG would benefit from a clarification inspired in the best parts of WP:Source list and WP:Stand-alone lists, of which changelog articles are a subset. A sentence or two encouraging editors to define selection criteria for the entries and a reminder on how to maintain WP:DUE WEIGHT should focus any discussion regarding changelogs, over the currently found "they belong/they don't belong" division. Diego (talk) 09:23, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:PROSELINE is also a good essay to think about here, its the same problem as applied to an ongoing event. Listing major changes in software is completely reasonable, it's the fine details that may only be of significant interest to developers and power users that we should be drawing the line at. --MASEM (t) 14:19, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
If those fine details of interest to developers and power users are covered by multiple specialized third party sources, we should be fine with including them (possibly as a WP:SPLITted article, or a separate independent section if there's not enough material for a whole article). For example, every new release of Android, Windows Phone or iOS gets inordinary amounts of detailed coverage of every minor change to their user interfaces and available functions, so we could cover them with support from multiple sources.
Sometimes highly technical aspects may be of note, but at the same time, there are also other resources for that; we should not be compelled to include every listed changelog element just because it was mentioned in another source. As an example of a failure of NOT#CHANGELOG, IOS version history lists every little tiny detail that Apple probably published as the major changes in every single minor revision. We should not be documenting to that level. Listing the dates of the minor change releases make sense, but the changes that have occurred should be documented at a much higher level than what this list presently does. And because Apple is good in this fashion, if necessary, the table can include a link to Apple's own website with the details of the changelog. The level of detail for this list is inappropriate under WP:IINFO. --MASEM (t) 18:41, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
That's what I'm getting at. The strength of your argument does not lie in "IINFO says so" but on the "should be documented at a much higher level" - but merely because there are no third party sources covering that level; if they were, then the more detailed level would be adequate, not indiscriminate - same as with PLOT, LYRICS and STATISTICS, which get relevant when they get critical analysis at independent RSs. IINFO sets a general direction to follow, but doesn't provide any practical advice on how to define what is "indiscriminate"; that is left to the opinion of editors participating in each particular case. This implies that, when a different group of editors , they will get widely different results from the same guideline, turning every WP:NOT debate into a childish do not/do too. At least the criteria set up at WP:WEIGHT provide some objective standards (width and significance of the coverage in reliable sources) that may be used to bring editors into line under some external influence. Diego (talk) 20:47, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
However, in considering PLOT, LYRICS and STATISTICS, while secondary coverage does allow us to include more details than would be afforded if it was just primary sources, we also don't go overboard - for example, take any Shakespeare play which has been analyzed by literary critics in great detail. We don't get so far into the details of those analysis but cover broader themes of what these analysis typically hit, and then provide references for readers to learn more if they need that. Same here with changelogs. As another thing to consider with changelogs particularly of popular software, it does often end up the case that a third-party source will repeat the vendor's changelog verbatim, which does not make that a secondary source but a primary one. ("Here's version X.Y, and what you can expect! (copy + paste)"). We should be guided by the larger points that secondary sources hit, but be careful of going so far into the weeds on the tiny details of a changelog. We do not have nor should not be the last place that someone looking for detailed information will end at, otherwise we're no longer just summarizing source material. --MASEM (t) 22:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Even there, that's still capturing the volumes of analysis that have been done on the play at a high level. And when it comes to secondary sources with regards to changelogs, there's rarely this deep of an analysis. A feature may be highlighted (I remember when one iOS update broke the alarm app for many, and so its update and fix were certainly covered) but the tiny details, like "adding landscape view" for an app is well into the land of trivia and IINFO for an encyclopedia, and where we can link to detailed sources for those that need it. --MASEM (t) 14:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
To me, if multiple independent, reliable, verifiable (or: MIRV) sources crow about how some change in an update will change the world, or it has the potential to change how a device or feature is used forever, or they’re just personally excited about it, that’s perfectly suitable for inclusion even if they turn out to be wrong (in which case any followup about how wrong they were should also be included). But if MIRV sources just state that the change exists, there’s no reason for us to mention it. And if you think I just added “verifiable” so I could be cute with the acronym, you’re right. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
The importaance of including changes depends on the context. As an encycopedia , WP covers things of importance--though there is no formal guideline for content corresponding to WP:N, it is none the less appropriate to include more detail for the subjects of greater importance. Considering the cases of a major general-purpose program widely used by tens of millions to a specialized niche program used by a few thousand, i In the first case , much more detail is appropriate DGG ( talk ) 04:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
RfC: Should we add a footnote to WP:NOTHOWTO/WP:NOTFAQ stating that it does not apply to redirects?
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.
Over the past week, there have been around 100 nominations at Redirects for Discussion that apply WP:NOTHOWTO/WP:NOTFAQ very broadly to mean that redirects in the form of "How to ______" or in the form of a question are subject to deletion based primarily on the fact that the term used for the redirect represents a search for a "how to" or question. I propose that the NOTHOWTO and NOTFAQ sections be altered to contain a footnote that reads as follows:
"The how-to and FAQ restrictions apply only to the text in articles themselves. In particular, plausible search terms formatted as a how-to or FAQ may be appropriate redirects, provided that they meet all other policies and guidelines."
"Do you support the above clarification of the policy?" "Clarification" isn't really a good way to put it, "change" would be more fitting. As the policy stands, it applies generally to "Wikipedia" (as a whole), not just certain places within it. I suppose if you see the current state of those parts of the policy you mentioned as unclear or ambiguous, I can understand that wording. I don't view it that way.—Godsy(TALKCONT)05:58, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The text of NOTHOWTO/NOTFAQ is proceeded by "Wikipedia articles should not read like:", which I interpret to mean that the policy only applies to articles. This was the rationale for my wording. ~ RobTalk02:13, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
I guess it depends on how you view a redirect, and I've expressed my opinion on that below, no need for me to reiterate it here. Respectfully,—Godsy(TALKCONT)06:09, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Support
Support as proposer. I think it is clear that NOTHOWTO and NOTFAQ were intended to apply to article content, not plausible search terms. Removing plausible search terms due to these policies makes it harder to navigate the wiki and achieve our goal of connecting anyone to the information they're seeking. ~ RobTalk00:36, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Support in the general sense - in that hard-nose application of NOTHOWTO can be a problem outside of prose, but I do think that some of these where the redirects are trying to play the semantic web idea, are not necessary - otherwise the possibilities could be endless. Some might be appropriate, like "Who shot JR?" is a valid phrase from the Dallas TV show, not enough for its own article, but things like "How noise pollution affect our health" is not really a likely search term in the scope of WP's purpose. Let Google handle the semantic web algorithms. --MASEM (t) 01:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
We should probably avoid discussion of specific ongoing discussions due to concerns of WP:CANVASSing. In cases like you described, though, our other policies, guidelines, and general consensuses can be weighed to decide. Implausible redirects do not need this policy to support a deletion. ~ RobTalk03:52, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Qualified support. In general I support the concept that a redirect page need not conform to the WP:NOTHOWTO rules, but I have a nervousness that the concept of a how to might creep into the articles redirected to, or into sections of them. My qualified support is that we need, somehow, and ideally on that redirect, to make it clear that the page redirected to is not intended nor expected to be a hot to guide. I realise that Joe User never sees that, but Freda Editor does, and it is to Freda Editor that this is to be addressed. FiddleFaddle15:48, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
strong support. While not every FAQ-style or How-to style title will make a good redirect, many will and each must be evaluated on their own merits. There should not be any general statement that they are good or bad. Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose
Weak oppose Readers entering FAQ-like search terms in the search box may be looking for FAQ-like content in articles, and thus, they will not find that content and might spend a long time searching what they are looking for, by the way, I never search for something in the for of an FAQ on Google because it is a waste of time and no major difference than just entering major search terms. - TheChampionMan123404:29, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose the FAQ-like redirects also violate the spirit of WP:NOTFAQ, since if Wikipedia is not a FAQ repository, why does it answer FAQ questions? What purpose do FAQ-question-redirects serve if not to provide links to answers for FAQs? Having found that these exist can encourage the proliferation of FAQ-like question redirects for all the various forms that such questions may be phrased, and to the limits of vagueness, thus establishing WP:SYSTEMATICBIAS when answering FAQ questions, since "Who is the president" redirecting to Obama is obviously highly biased, as Xi Jinping is president (or Robert Mugabe, etc). And any that are temporally related (such as "who is president") would also need to be tracked and changed every time it changed, presenting an large workload to keep these things up to date for no perceptible advantage. -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 04:51, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:RECENTISM applies to all content, including redirects. Regardless of the result of this RfC, the redirects you described are not supported by existing policies and guidelines. ~ RobTalk05:12, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
That was an example. RECENTISM doesn't apply to what led to civil war, which is what you voted to keep, even though it pointed to the American Civil War, and not say, the English Civil War, or Chinese Civil War, the thing in Ukraine, the thing in Iraq, etc. As I said, these come in a myriad of forms, having no set way of phrasing such questions, and would lead to a build-up of systematic bias, such as favoring US topics like the American Civil War. -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 13:59, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. Any statement on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not applies to Wikipedia as a whole. The entire page can be interpreted any way any editor chooses to interpret it, and telling editors that certain parts only apply to certain parts or aspects of Wikipedia is a combination of unnecessary bureaucracy and instruction creep. If someone doesn't agree with a bold action another editor may take due to the other editor not agreeing with another editor's interpretation of any guideline on the Wikipedia namespace, they can revert and discuss. This applies here too. Steel1943 (talk) 05:03, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Strong Oppose The most basic definition of a redirect is an alternative title for an article (See WP:RPURPOSE for more). A lot of "how"s, "why"s, "where"s, etc., which now have a rationale for deletion with WP:WWIN, would not if this proposal were to pass. We don't need to phrase redirects in this manner: the search engine makes it unnecessary, and they are not proper for an encyclopedia. They do not help but hinder: drifting through countless redirects during a search only to end up at the same target is pointless. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not applies to the whole of Wikipedia, why should it be any different for redirects?—Godsy(TALKCONT)05:45, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose per the TheChampionMan, 67.70.32.190, Steel1943 and Godsy above. Instruction creep is rarely advisable, and making an exception to WP:NOT which could lead to a proliferation of redirects which give a misleading impression of how Wikipedia is structured seems a particularly bad idea. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:48, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. This isn't a policy issue; however, I would support clarification in appropriate guidelines, which would have to include those RfD nominations that are not actually questions nor phrased as "how-to". Many of what amount to good search terms that are not questions nor how-to phrased are being nominated as "QA" and "FAQ" that are neither, and yet editors keep blindly !voting "delete" without even questioning this. The babies are going out with the bathwater. – Paine10:05, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
OpposeStrong Oppose as What Wikipedia is Not applies to the encyclopedia as a whole. Redirects such as these give the misleading impression that Wikipedia is a FAQ where questions are typed in and answers are given, rather than an encyclopedia where a name is typed in for an article on the subject. --Rubbishcomputer10:59, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Opposecarving out exceptions to the policy, per comments above, ChampionMan in particular, and I agree that this RfC as written is not a policy issue. I am interested in whether or not project-wide consensus supports these redirects, and this is a fine place to have the discussion, but the most we should take out of this is maybe adding a section to WP:RFDOUTCOMES, not a matter of changing policies. Ivanvector🍁 (talk) 14:51, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. People asking FAQ questions will be looking for FAQ answers, and they won't find them on Wikipedia. This would cause substantial confusion, when the whole purpose having redirects is to minimize it. Compassionate727 (talk) 15:53, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. The way to search on an encylopaedia is to search for WP:NOUNs. If anything, all these "What is" redirects should go to the WP:REFDESK. The "What is" or "How to" and so on are redundant: if you want to know what is a cat, you search for cat, not what is a cat or what is a cat?. Those in support are putting extra work at the gnomes like me at WP:RFD to sort it out, with no fruition, were this proposal to be accepted. It makes it worse also for searching stuff, WP:RHARMFUL if people get a WP:SURPRISE if they end up at the "wrong" topic. (See the ongoing discussion at RfD for What is a Jew?, for example: where I've suggested a retarget either to Jew or Judaism, which are distinct topics.) Si Trew (talk) 07:20, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. It's "What Wikipedia is not" ... not "What Wikipedia articles are not". The policy applies to redirects just the same precisely because we're not any of those things. We don't create redirects that are dictionary definitions per WP:NOT#DIC, redirects that are lyrics per WP:NOTLYRICS, and I've seen redirects deleted per WP:NOTGUIDE, WP:NOTPRICE, WP:NOTPROMO, WP:NOTWIKIA, etc. It's best to discuss redirects individually at RFD, where people can discuss each individually, instead of instruction creep because WP:NOTFAQ specifically discusses articles (as it should, because that's more important to this policy). --Tavix(talk)17:33, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
Discussion
How have those nominations turned out? If they’ve passed consensus, I’d argue that NOTHOWTO and NOTFAQ should be altered to reflect that consensus rather than to deter it. That’s what our policy pages do. I could only support this proposal if they’ve been roundly rejected. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:45, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The problem with discussions at RfD is that they typically involve very few editors compared to the amount of people editing Wikipedia. That's more-or-less the purpose of this RfC: to determine what the general consensus of the project is on whether all redirects based as a question should be universally deleted or not. I'm trying to avoid a local consensus on how to interpret this policy from overriding what I perceive to be a larger community take on the issue, although it remains to be seen whether I'm right on what the community thinks about these. I should note that the current text of the policy already states that "Wikipedia articles should not read like:", implying that it was only ever intended to apply to articles. It does not say "all content". It's my position that the RfDs have been a misapplication of existing policy, and this footnote is to clarify existing policy, not make new policy. ~ RobTalk05:11, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
I take it you’ve advertised this discussion at someplace like WP:VPP then? If not, please consider it; that’s a very commonly suggested way to help determine project-wide consensus on a policy issue. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:36, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
@Esquivalience: After re-reading through this, it seems that at least 9/11 of the opposition not only oppose the suggested change, but hold the opinion that WP:NOT applies to Wikipedia as a whole. Though this wasn't directly the question being asked in the RfC: Do you think a slight alteration (changing "article" to "the encyclopedia" or "Wikipedia") of the text preceding the bullets of WP:NOTFAQ and WP:NOTDICT and maybe a couple others would reflect the consensus here?—Godsy(TALKCONT)21:40, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I was just wondering, for One Direction, can I change the years active to 2010-2016? Someone put a note saying it can't because it's Crystal, but it's been confirmed they will end? Elsewhere in the article says about their end, but it isn't counted at Crystal, which makes no sense. When Westlife announced in 2011 they would end the following year, their page was allowed to run as 1998-2012 so I don't see the issue here. CDRL102 (talk) 18:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
It is crystal in the fact that 2016 hasn't happened yet. The group could stop touring this year (despite the sources noting the plans to end in 2016); they could decide to continue after that point, there's a lot of things that could come up. As such its more premature to say that their years active are 2010-2016, but it is not premature to say that the group is expected to end in 2016 with sources. --MASEM (t) 18:17, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Text may inadvertently support unlawful use of copyright material
The following text (emphasis added) may inadvertently give the impression that copyrighted material is appropriate for Wikisource:
"Quotations from a song should be kept to a reasonable length relative to the rest of the article, and used to facilitate discussion, or to illustrate the style; the full text can be put on Wikisource and linked to from the article. Most song lyrics published after 1922 are protected by copyright, and any quotation of them must be kept to a minimum, and used for the purpose of direct commentary or to illustrate some aspect of the style."
would better read
"Quotations from a song should be kept to a reasonable length relative to the rest of the article, and used to facilitate discussion, or to illustrate the style; the full text of uncopyrighted or open-sourced songs can be put on Wikisource and linked to from the article. Most song lyrics published after 1922 are protected by copyright, and any quotation of them must be kept to a minimum, and used for the purpose of direct commentary or to illustrate some aspect of the style."
"Quotations from a song should be kept to a reasonable length relative to the rest of the article, and used to facilitate discussion, or to illustrate the style; the full text of public domain or certain free content songs can be put on Wikisource and linked to from the article; see Wikisource:WS:COPY. Most song lyrics published after 1922 are protected by copyright, and any quotation of them must be kept to a minimum, and used for the purpose of direct commentary or to illustrate some aspect of the style."
That’s… not how open-source works… but anyway, I support this addition, because you’re right: it seems to say we can throw any lyrics up on Wikisource, which of course we can’t. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:54, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
Why shouldn't it be an indiscriminate collection of information?
Setting aside technical issues like server space and similar, what other reasons would there be to not include all known verifiable info? 68.156.95.34 (talk) 07:02, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
For one thing, it would be a complete mess. An article could be about anything at all, going off on tangents not even remotely related to the supposed subject, or listing pages and pages of completely inconsequential data, as long as a source could be cited. How would that be helpful to a reader researching that subject?To put it simply: Encyclopedias are not indiscriminate. We are making an encyclopedia. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 04:39, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
Then maybe we shouldn't be making an encyclopedia. And as far as I'm concerned, no data is inconsequential. If it's cited, they can find the source themselves, just like now. 68.156.95.34 (talk) 00:35, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
If we didn’t want to make an encyclopedia, we wouldn’t be editing Wikipedia. You are absolutely free to create a wiki to serve as a repository of all possible information about everything, if you wish; you can load the MediaWiki software on your own server, or you can use a site like Wikia (not sure if that site imposes limitations), or you can join such a project that someone else may have started. I can’t imagine the space requirements for something like that, but good luck! —67.14.236.50 (talk) 03:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
It is clear that 68.156.95.34 has never actually had a dialogue with a diagnosed schizophrenic or attempted to read their writings. Anyone who has actually worked with the severely mentally ill would never entertain such a frivolous proposition. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:31, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
Emphasis for "not a forum" applies to talk pages of biographies
I'd like to emphasize that wikipedia blp talk pages are not a forum to discuss the subject of the article. Here's an example.wp:not a forum doesn't directly address this. I'd like to add something like "This is especially true in biographies." Comments?--Nowa (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
This looks to me like instruction creep, and possibly liable to misinterpretation. WP:BLP applies everywhere, not just in regard to biographical articles, and WP:NOTFORUM isn't 'especially' true for one form of subject matter - it is a general statement about the purpose of talk pages. This is in accord with the objective of WP:NOT - to set down the limits of Wikipedia. If there are issues with specific discussions on specific talk pages that can't be resolved according to existing policies and guidelines, we should probably be looking at amending Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, where one would expect such issues to be discussed. Scattering policy and guidelines regarding talk page use over multiple pages seems unwise, and unnecessary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
The current text of the not censored section may lead users to assume that the policy is primarily about a libertine attitude towards images in sexology articles. I am proposing the addition of language explaining why not being censored is the only intellectually coherent position that can preserve a large amount of Wikipedia's content given the global nature of the project. The moment that Wikipedia starts censoring sexology images, editors who believe that women should wear niqāb will start requesting that their sincerely held religious and moral beliefs should receive equal accommodation. Moreover, Wikipedia would have no principled basis for refusing them. If censorship of the project were to take root, Wikipedia would be subject to the burden of not offending any large portion of the world's population, forcing the removal of vast swaths of material. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 19:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
I've got to agree with much of this, though for somewhat different reasons. In the U.S., we have a population of religious folks who believe that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation which exists or deserves to exist, a large population also believes the best sex education is ignorance and abstinence. While it appears true that heterosexuals are a majority around the world and in the U.S., sex education must acknowledge the other sexual orientations, homosexuality as well as asexuality. Consider the sexual who marries an opposite gender asexual because neither of them were aware of the asexual orientation, this is a pairing full of frustration for both partners. Censorship is never a good way to educate. The use of static as well as moving images is important to the education process for vast numbers of folks. Gzuufy (talk) 15:51, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
The purpose of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is neither advocacy nor education. The section on censorship instead explains why material that some people may find objectionable may nevertheless be included - it doesn't need to include lecturing the readership on what is or isn't an 'intellectually coherent position'. That is editorialising. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:11, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
The final paragraph of the section brings things like Scientology to mind, rather than sexology. Members are forbidden to discuss e.g. Xenu with outsiders, if I recall, but that cannot and should not stop WP from discussing it given sufficient reliable sources. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 05:28, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Is it promotional in archaeological articles to mention the university leading an excavation?
At Durrington Walls an editor removed the name of the university leading an excavation[4] calling it "Braying academic booster ism". I don't get this. It seems encyclopedic to include the university or organisation leading an excavation. I note that Britannica includes the name of the organisation doing recent work at Stonehenge.[5]. We also frequently include the names of lead archaeologists. 11:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs)
Just mentioning the university and persons involved is not promotional, and actually is the norm for any type of ground breaking scientific research to name the discover(s) and organizations involved for proper credit. --MASEM (t) 13:53, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
In the lead? It's sickening academic boosterism. Wikipedia has the ref system for readers who are interested in such details. Otherwise it just disrupts the flow of the article, and often constitutes a primary source reporting itself. In other words; a result is published in the primary scientific literature by scholars at University X. Reporting the result in the Wikipedia article is sometimes okay, but it is WP:OR to mention University X. Abductive (reasoning)17:55, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
If it is 'boosterism' to state that the University of X was responsible for research Y, is it likewise 'boosterism' to state that the army of X defeated the army of Y at the battle of Z? If so, we are going to have to rewrite a lot of articles... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:09, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
It is necessary information, and not only acceptable to note both the university and the leader of an archeological dig. The University of Chicago for example is known for its Egyptology department and the digs carried on over many years.(Littleolive oil (talk) 19:15, 7 September 2015 (UTC))
In the lede of the article on the archaeological site is likely inappropriate, unless for some reason that the university or person is so directly connected to the work (For example, at DNA we do mention the seminal work of Watson and Crick in the lede since they are directly connected in sources as discovering the structure. I don't know a good example for archaeology). But if it is not mentioned in the lede, mentioning the work in the body of the article is completely acceptable as long as it just mentioning the group and not written in peacocky terms. --MASEM (t) 19:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
And to add, adding the university doing the archaeology study provides an indirect reference to an interested reader if they want to know more if our article doesn't fully cover everything they (the university) know or we don't include all the updated sources. On the other hand, if , say, 4 or more different groups have evaluated the site but we only highlight one's results, that might be a bit of a problem too, though that doesn't seem to be the case at the questioned article. --MASEM (t) 19:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) So far from being "boosterism", I think an article which omitted this information would be seriously deficient. An article about a book always mentions its author, and normally at least its initial publisher. An article about a film will mention the major actors, the director, the producer, and the studio, gennerally all in the lead section. Digs are generally sponsored and orgsnized by universities or other institutional entities, and these should be mentioned prominently in any article about such activity. This is partly a matter of credit, but also one of transparency. If any bias is involved, the identity of terh sponsor may be relevant. Putting such information in a ref only is akin to attributing a quote only in a ref, in my view -- not acceptable. DES(talk)19:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
No to the question posed in this section title but as a matter of WP:LEAD it should be in the body of the article, and only then should it be considered for the lead. (I don't understand the "sickening" claim, though, at all.) It may well be useful for the lead, if it's useful for the body. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Every single statement in Wikipedia is supposed to be backed up by a secondary source. Secondary sources are generally written by scholars, and those scholars are almost always employed by universities. Where does it end? Should Wikipedia become the repository for inline attribution of every single statement to some university? This is why I am asking for a secondary source to allow the names of universities to be in articles. Abductive (reasoning)02:45, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
For example, the fact that the Oriental Institute was prominent in Near Eastern archaeology (not so much Egypt, though) surely has some secondary sources. I am not saying that the article on Persepolis shouldn't mention it. What I am saying is that all such mentions are to be held to the same standards as anything else. Abductive (reasoning)02:53, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Primary reliable sources can be used too, as well as tertiary. We just put more weight on secondary due to avoiding OR that secondary sources do for us. But that said, if the research team doing the work is not mentioned at all by secondary sources, even though we can turn to primary sources to figure out who is doing that, that is probably more a matter of undue, not so much promotional. --MASEM (t) 03:09, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
If we are talking about in the lede, I fully agree that the university or whatever group doing the site needs to be something of significant note in secondary sources to be included as it would otherwise sound like name dropping; in the body, this should not be a problem. There is a difference where this is being applied that comes into play. --MASEM (t) 13:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Speculation and rumor
In WP:SPECULATION, the main paragraph says, "Wikipedia is not a collection of unverifiable speculation... It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced." Paragraph #5, about product announcements and rumors, says, "Speculation and rumor, even from reliable sources, are not appropriate encyclopedic content." This on its own appears to contradict the passage in the main paragraph. Should that be the case? Reading paragraph #5 in its entirety, it says that product announcements should not warrant their own articles and can be merged. Then it says rumors do not warrant articles or merging. It seems like the "Speculation and rumor" sentence should say something like "on their own" because the main paragraph supports having verifiable speculation about "the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur".
I ask because there is an issue with reporting discussion about a sequel film, for which the studio announced a release date, but due to the first film's box office performance, there have been commentators speculating about the sequel's fate. Should WP:SPECULATION be applied to include or exclude this kind of discussion? Erik II (talk | contrib) (ping me)12:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I think speculation and rumor should be when there has been no product announced that it would be inappropriate to include; but if there is some reasonable affirmation of a product announced (such as the release date for the sequel by the studio that would be making it), then the potential to include the speculation that it may never happen may be appropriate if it is not an undue consideration from the sources. If only one critic thinks this sequel may not come, that's not appropriate; if many many critics think that, that's reasonable. --MASEM (t) 13:57, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for commenting! Should we not clarify the sentence, then? Something like, "Speculation and rumor about unannounced products, even from reliable sources, are not appropriate encyclopedic content"? Erik II (talk | contrib) (ping me)13:39, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
We want to be careful to not exclude information that is coming directly from first-parties about unreleased products as long as we avoid promotional aspects (eg "Apple says its next iPhone will be even more powerful than the last" is promotional, while "Apple says they plan to include support for (new wifi tech) in their next iPhone" is fine, nor speculation). I think we need to make sure we're talking speculation and rumor from third-party sources that would not be in the know. --MASEM (t) 14:03, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
I think you had the right idea "Speculation and rumor about unannounced products or events from third-party sources, even if reliable, are generally not appropriate encyclopedic content." --MASEM (t) 14:23, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
Added that point, including the given feedback at WP:VPP. The point's main intent, to address unencyclopedic business-related lists as part of a topic's self-presentation, should hopefully be clear enough and uncontroversial - further tweaks are welcome of course. GermanJoe (talk) 10:04, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
I do think we need to have a bit more time to develop what would be a separate page on WP:Prices (what is appropriate advice and all that), and agree that right now WP:Prices should redirect to here. I'm not against a guideline or essay about more specific advise but we need to have consensus on that. --MASEM (t) 17:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
(EC) Please go ahead and develop but don't water it down!
BTW, the sentence "5. Sales catalogues. An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is a source and a justified reason for the mention." really does cover it all on prices (correct me if I'm wrong) but I would include "product lists or availability" to make it "5. Sales catalogues. An article should not include product pricing, product lists or availability information unless there is a source and a justified reason for the mention." It might seem like "product lists" is redundant, but there are tons of product lists in Wikipedia, see e.g. Camel (cigarettes) (but I'll go change that). It really comes down to WP:NOADS, giving a product or price list is just a form of advertisement. Smallbones(smalltalk)17:42, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
You missed an important point why prices have no place in wikipedia: they are subject to change with time; they depend on country. It is an unencyclopedic burden to maintain the correctness of this data, which zillions of non-particular numbers would be extremely vulnerable to vandalism. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
Also the weasel wording "justified reason" must be cast into clear wikipedia concepts. Otherwise this guideline will generate even more bickering and pressure, both from big-corp shills and hype-hungry startups. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
I am not sure what a "free media center" is supposed to mean when you say "Wikipedia is not ... a free-media center" in this page in a nutshell section. Does "free-media" refer to free content media, media available free of charge, media enjoying freedom of the press, or anything else? I would appreciate clarification.--Dwy (talk) 10:23, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
While we encourage free content as in freely licensed content, we are not a place to host large quantities of free content created by others. Instead, we have Commons for more free media, and Wikisource for free text works. --MASEM (t) 12:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I looked into the page and see that it is indeed confusing. The policy speaks of media repository, and this term must be used in the "Nutshell", for easy reference. Fixed. Now I hope user:Dwy will find a more detailed answer right in the policy. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:27, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
In the section Wikipedia is not a blog, Web hosting service, social networking service, or memorial site there is a sentence Humorous pages that refer to Wikipedia in some way may be created in an appropriate namespace, however.
This advice reflects an earlier time in Wikipedia's history when it wasn't unusual for an editor to create a humor page. But I can't recall the last time I came across one that was written in the past few years and I think that most editors consulting this policy will be unfamiliar with the reference to humorous pages. I believe this sentence can be removed without altering the guidance of the section and preventing new editors from being confused on what is or isn't allowable content. LizRead!Talk!15:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
If that's removed, someone will attempt to delete everything in Category:Wikipedia humor. The point is that people should not use Wikipedia to post their personal thoughts on stuff, except that personal thoughts on Wikipedia may be ok, and definitely are ok if good humor and/or insight are included. Johnuniq (talk) 23:50, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
In light of consensus at a recent AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victims of the November 2015 Paris attacks, should we perhaps add something to WP:NOTMEMORIAL to address this issue? It seems several articles about mass-casualty events have had lists of victims names added, people who though they had the misfortune to be injured or killed in a bombing or shooting, are otherwise not notable. While some people feel these people "deserve" to me mentioned (and remembered), the community has spoken, and an encyclopaedia is not the place for this. Thoughts? - theWOLFchild03:40, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
We would need more than just the result of the AFD to make a stronger statement, though I fully agree that in general, the death of a number of people at the same time, unless their individual deaths were notable, means that listing them all would violate the spirit of NOTMEMORIAL. For a counterpoint, for example, in the Sandy Hook shooting, thre were some individuals that were killed but that were known their actions were critical to the event, and of course this is not to suppress their names in describing how the event played out. --MASEM (t) 03:50, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
It was argued within a 'delete'-vote that otherwise non-notable people could certainly attain notability through their actions during the event, so that's not the issue. The issue is that a 'keep'-vote listed several other articles that currently have lists of victims names, and attempted to use this as a supporting fact to 'keep' as per WP:OSE. The fact that these other lists even exist indicates that wp:notmemorial may not be clear in in conveying it's message. One would think it better to address the issue here, once and for all, to both address the current articles as well as prevent further instances of this occurring. Better than to chase down every one with a separate AfD, no? - theWOLFchild08:37, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Agree it would be nice to be consistent, for a long time aircraft accidents dont list victims unless they are otherwise notable which is indicated by them having a stand-alone article before the event or would meet the reequirements for a stand-alone article. It would be nice if this or something similar was clearer for inclusion in incident articles. The current wording can give the impression it is talking about stand-alone articles. I also accept them Masem's point that some individuals may be of note due to what they did during an incident so they could be included in a narrative but not a list of victims. MilborneOne (talk) 16:05, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
I oppose this entire proposition. It is a very bad idea. If the victims are listed or mentioned in independent reliable sources, we should list or mention them as well (assuming BLP is not an issue). There is no other valid inclusion test. Information about victims can be used for a variety of purposes including 'sociological' research (eg are certain groups of people more likely to be victims?) that have nothing remotely to do with memorialising anything. I should also point out that the policy is directed at people creating articles about people they know personally, not people they have read about in a periodical or book. Accordingly it is this proposal that violates the spirit of the policy, taking it in entirely new directions. It also has the potential to interfere with LISTN. Frankly, as NOTMEMORIAL is completely redundant to BIO and COI, we should delete it altogether. James500 (talk) 03:50, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Support the OPs idea. Policy against Namechecking and Low Profile Individuals support not including lists of names. If one or a few people are the victims of a notable crime we naturally work thier names into the story, but lists of 10+ names are not appropriate here. Legacypac (talk) 22:24, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
What policies are you talking about? "Namechecking" is an essay that appears incompatible with our actual policies and guidelines, particularly NNC. The expression "low profile individual" does appear in BLP1E, but BLP does not (normally) apply to the dead. Moreover BLP1E mandates merger and redirection, not complete exclusion of the person's name. I don't see any support in that policy for this proposition. James500 (talk) 00:45, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Support for accidents, natural disasters, battles etc subject to the wording used being reasonable (it would be best to propose exact wording on this talk page). For an example of an article that would be affected see New_London_School_explosion#List_of_known_deaths. The wording is critical e.g. because it would not be reasonable to delete this list (although that article could be trimmed).
Oppose for victims of a crime - one difference being that articles about a crime discuss the perpetrator (and often mention their background, grievences etc) so it is more important to balance that with some information about the victims than it would be for an earthquake etc. Having a list (on the main article or on a separate page as appropriate) does little/no harm. DexDor(talk)15:59, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not encyclopedia
The most pointless rule introduced by the Wikipedia founders is: everyone possess some knowledge therefore everyone can contribute. Since there is no limits to this rule and no way to curb those who think they know what they, in fact, do not know, the contributed texts are suffering from ignorance and distortions, sometimes contributed intentionally.
Then we have so-called consensus. It allows groups of less or more organized attackers to derail serious efforts to commit true knowledge if such knowledge is what the attackers do not want to see.
It's impossible to defend serious and valuable commits to Wikipedia articles if the contributor has against himself the attackers mentioned above.--X2Faces (talk) 17:50, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, hello, newcomer.
I just want to clarify one thing: There is no such rule as the one you mentioned in your first sentence. As for the rest, you are super-pessimistic. Cheer up! I suggest you engage in some actual contribution and try WP:DR the first chance you get. You'll be surprised.
Actually, there is a serious problem with incompetent deletionists going around trying to delete articles whose significance they simply cannot understand due to a lack of intelligence or education on their part. James500 (talk) 03:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
True. But it does not invalidate our status as an encyclopedia. And besides, look at X2Faces's contribution log first. He might not be a troll but he should try to avoid projecting an image of one.
The answer to that is WP:AVOIDYOU and WP:AGF. I have no interest whatsoever in that editor's contributions elsewhere as they are not relevant to the subject matter of this talk page. I assume that the heading of this thread is an (inarticulate) attempt to express the idea that Wikipedia excludes topics that ought to be included in an encyclopedia, which is generally a basically accurate statement and is particularly applicable to WP:NOT when you consider the arbitrary nature of some of the exclusions in this policy, and the potential some of the others have to cause confusion. James500 (talk) 06:44, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Everyone except vandals is acting in good faith; no need to assume it when it is obvious.
And as for what encyclopedias include, Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia that actually includes topics that I need. I never found any other encyclopedia useful. Encarta was the worst.
Parts of WP:NOT do appear to at least potentially exclude topics that have articles in other encyclopedias, in that it rejects the sort of coverage that those articles contain. Those parts certainly exclude a lot of topics that could reasonably have an article in an encyclopedia. Other people's needs may be very different from your own. James500 (talk) 10:04, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
I don't have time to enter an in depth discussion of this at the moment, I am only interested in discussing general principles at the moment, I am not yet ready to do the RfC(s) that I am planning and won't be for some time, and the exclusionary elements of this policy should be very obvious, so I'll only give one example and decline to discuss it at great length, for now. A very obvious one is NOTPLOT. If you look at other encyclopedias, you will find that they contain articles that look like plot summaries, with no discussion of reception or significance (often the work is obviously significant without the source needing to say so; and I assume a cast list and details of the mere fact of publication etc don't count). See, for one example, "Encyclopedia of Television Shows" by Vincent Terrace, published by MacFarland. Whether those tv shows have other sources is irrelevant, as the point is that you can't say that plot-summary-type articles are unencyclopedic if other encyclopedias include them. That part of the policy predates all of our notability guidelines, and has been obsolete since they were created. James500 (talk) 23:36, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Other encyclopedias often don't include what yet other encyclopedias have. For example, Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking does not have plot-summary-type articles either! Yet, it is still an encyclopedia.
I could argue that Wikipedia has 99.99% of contents that other encyclopedias have. But none of these matter. I don't live in 90s to define encyclopedia the way they defined it back then. Today, an encyclopedia is what presents contents that resembles Wikipedia. Anything else is not an encyclopedia.
Since we include features of a general encyclopedia, it isn't valid to argue that we should exclude things only because they are not included in a specialised encyclopedia on networking. The five pillars say that we are supposed to include features of specialised encyclopedias, such as the one that I mentioned. I can't agree with the proposition that it is acceptable for Wikipedia to not include things included in other encyclopedias. The notion that deletionist non-expert amateur Wikipedians know better than expert professional encyclopedia writers is impossible to accept, particularly when those Wikipedians are saying things that are obviously unreasonable. I am fairly certain that Wikipedia does not have 99% of the contents of other encyclopedias, or anything approaching that. James500 (talk) 04:27, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
That's not what the 5 pillars say. We include elements of specialized encyclopedias, but not the contents wholesale. Given that anyone can publish a specialist encyclopedia on any topic, we must be selective to which of these we include, and what parts of these we include. --MASEM (t) 04:56, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
That logic can only properly apply where the specialised encyclopedia has been produced by a disreputable source, such as a vanity press. But I'm not talking about those. Parts of WP:NOT seek to exclude things that are included in perfectly reputable encyclopedias. So, those parts of WP:NOT must be wrong. Parts of WP:NOT are very old, obsolete rubbish, written by people who evidently did not know what they were doing. James500 (talk) 12:43, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
I skimmed through this, so forgive me if I'm wrong about something here, but what is with all the assumptions about this one user who started this discussion? I don't see them doing anything wrong here, they just expressed their personal opinion, even if it may be a harsh one. If this is one of the user's few contributions to Wikipedia, then they could have been someone who's read Wikipedia and Wikipedia discussions for a long time and starts their Wikipedia life by expressing an opinion for discussion. So if it were me, I wouldn't throw accusations about users until they actually do something wrong, such as vandalism or flaming (to the point where it's obviously and without-a-doubt trolling). Philmonte101 (talk) 06:51, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
In other words, I think users should be able to express their opinions at any time they please, as long as it's in the right place, and a talk page about their argument is one of the right places if I'm not mistaken. Philmonte101 (talk) 06:54, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello, Philmonte101. We are users too. We are expressing our opinion. Also, nobody attacked him for expressing his opinion. I just told him to "cheer up"! Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 11:08, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi. Do you see the word "not" before "troll"? Also I wrote "you are super-pessimistic". But none of these are attacking you for expressing your opinion. Yes. Cheer up. You are clearly not seeing the full half of the glass. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 18:10, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
I read this that you were implying that X2Faces is giving the appearance of being a troll. Technically, you could argue that you are merely being advisory, but it didn't come across to me that way. It is difficult to tell tone in text; "cheer up" could be genuinely encouraging or could be condescending. Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:36, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
But X2Faces was trolling. We know it only now that he is blocked. And we now he tried to take revenge for my comment by attempting to harass me in my SPI case. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 20:11, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
It's difficult to respond to a charge like the original post without a specific example or three. No need to explain it; it would probably be sufficient to link to the sample pages where anyone concerned could view the page's history. Thisisnotatest (talk) 08:41, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Should search links be allowed in articles?
Dab pages get there information primarily from a Search,
not categories, portals, or any lists.
Specifically they need title-related search parameters
intitle and prefix simply because titles are what is disambiguated.
In other words there are currently two allowed search links,
{{Lookfrom}} does prefix, and {{Intitle}} does intitle.
They are found mostly on dab pages as a bullet item.
If only it were that simple.
Intro
Most editors remain entirely unschooled on Search, yet get by just fine searching for words and phrases (internal enwiki CirrusSearch). Should editors who are skilled at Search ever be allowed to place any search link in any article?
Can experienced editors provide a button with an advanced search
in a see also section or a hatnote that does not show up in print or export,
similar to the way that a search for a discussion happens from a Talk page?
There are already ten thousand search links in templates {{In title}} and {{Look from}}.
They are sanctioned at the MoS for use in a disambiguation page, "See also" section, but have naturally found there way to pages like them — pages of the type shown in the top row in the top pane of the main page, or shown in the top row of any portal: Contents Overview Outlines Lists Portals Glossaries Categories Indices. The MoS sanctions them for dab pages only, but they are also found in similar-format pages like set index articles, outlines, and topical indexes.
This progression may be beneficial in that allowing these extra search links, now in 1–2% of such pages, it pairs Search with the other general tools to find things: Portal-like pages, and Categories, which are both lists of pages with the search link giving roughly the same; to be sure these seven year old templates provide top-notch searches that are usually the best guarantee of roughly what could be wanted.
{{Intitle}} is only slightly more tailored than a normal search,
because a normal search ranks titles highly.
Being less aggressive it is sometimes less adequate,
such as when redirect titles are wanted as well.
The normal search provides that, but not the template search.
(For more on the current behavioral attribute, see the recent talk page.)
{{Lookfrom}} is very direct and specialized because it is character-oriented, not word oriented,
returning a search result all titles with the leading-letters you give it.
Although Search has the parameters intitle and prefix,
{{intitle}} is just intitle and {{lookfrom}} is just prefix,
you don't have to know that when using these templates.
In place of help:searching, they require Help:Template, WP:DAB, and there own
template documentation. Their template documentation has gotten complex, as
new options grew for labels and queries and namespaces and quotation marks.
The idea is that such a search link is overall beneficial
as a scanning tool for maintainers looking for candidates,
not as a navigational tool for readers (obviously),
and still less as a distraction for readers.
The search results are more or less rough
depending on the degree of customization and sophistication of the query,
more or less needed depending on page maturity
and on the rate of new pages concerning the subject,
and more or less controlled by guidelines.
That's why the whole idea is more or less a bear.
The original intent of their use, I believe,
is a quick way to lay down a self-descriptive search link
for use on dab pages. The use case being
Land on a dab page, but find no intended target listed.
Click on the search link.
Find the target, and add it to the dab page.
The good thing about them is they are top-notch searches, probably one of the
the best guarantees of roughly what could be wanted in most cases.
And they engage visitors with Search,
which, like providing a Category link at the bottom of every page,
and portals along the top of the main page,
is a good thing in that these are the general tools for "finding" anything,
and they are nurtured into reader familiarity by a constant presence.
The highly specific counterpart: hatnote, navbox and infobox are not in the general goodness class,
and don't need such marketing.
The bad thing about them is that they proliferate,
and outside the current guideline at the MOS, they are profligate.
where they are not wanted or needed (see elsewhere for search links to these)
and have little use once they've worked themselves out of a
content-building job, except as a "scan for new candidates".
Finally, a new mainspace policy or guideline,
if it does not outright remove search links wholesale,
needs to
describe "noprint" and "selfreference" thoroughly, especially as reguards template use in general, because there are other "noprint" problems in this area.
go further than just dab pages.
address the situation where search links might outgrow there usefulness, creating an unnecessary potential for "user distraction" on dab-like pages.
Although it's just one more thing to do
for the "keep search links" path,
something must be done to
reduce the chance of furthing complications,
or else the (minor) problem grows without bound
as long as the two search links live.
I don't think there is a clear technical- or style-guideline or policy for search links in articles, or for "noprint" in templates.
But the general principle is, like the ubiquitous hatnote and maintenance tag, etc., etc.,
that our version (the online community's version) of a page looks and behaves very differently
than an offline community that we also serve by using several MediaWiki software provisions.
Now please take a look at the current reports and examples from the Wiki.
They must be random, or we'll digress arguing about one of them.
Please just go the end of the query and changing the argument "xx" in the search term "prefix:xx" to one or more letters that will be the
new start string of a title in article space.
Nascent dab pages and stub articles
especially list/index/outline type stub articles.
seems to want a search link as much as a dab page.
Fast forward many years.
A search link on a mature dab page
looks to some of us like a search link in article space
can be a cozy and harmless and wanted pet
that can can just sit there doing nothing much;
maybe an occasional scan for newly arisen candidates. Or not.
The manual of style sanctions search links (for dab page See also)
and is understandably silent on whether they get "out of style"
when they turn into just "scanners", such as at Clarence Hill.
"When to remove from publication" now seems like
a worthy idea that needs saying somewhere.
If the article and subject has stabilized its growth, remove it
to avoid distractions, and rely instead on
the talk page to provide the occasional "reminder search link"
not unlike how the talk page mentions related Wikiprojects,
or provides its own search for its own events on its own page.
One problem with the current search links and policy is that
anyone not schooled in either Wikipedia:dab or Help:search,
can just copy and paste {{intitle}} or {{lookfrom}},
and magically begin contributing... without an aging crisis.
Another is that WP:dab says not to include titles
that pose a "significant risk of confusion or reference",
precisely what search links tempt.
And now it is yet another guideline,
but this one can hardly bark out orders and call policy.
Surely quitting search links altogether is easier.
Just link to Help:searching and stop petting the pet bear?
Distraction of readers
Entertainment is diversion, a transport to "not here", usually novel and new.
Wikipedia could avoid distractions where reading an article is preferred.
It could respond on a dab page "What specifically did you mean?"
Should it rather not generalize to "Look at all this 'likeness' we have!"
For readers a dab page is already a tempting distraction.
And if they click the search link, the same link that is helpful for
maintainers, we are usually providing a distraction.
If a reader clicks that search link,
they are just asking for a distraction,
which could actually be providing a disservice,
unless Wikipedia is infotainment.
Rather than a specification question,
the dab page with a "See also" section
is a sometimes necessary, evil, generalization.
And search links are part of that equation, and sometimes all of it.
When search links are all of a See also section,
the entire section needs "noprint".
{{noprint}} doesn't even do blocks yet.
Dab pages link to dab pages.
Search results are, by default, "aggressive" in returning results.
(They rely instead on page-ranking software to provide a rough sort.)
Certainly (most of?) the intitle and lookfrom search links,
tend to over-generalize, and any dab page that has them
sanctions that distraction sanctioned by the MoS.
Should the MoS sanction search links on dab pages?
Printing a dab page
Should dab pages ever be printed?
exported as an electronic document?
part of an offline encyclopedia for any reason?
A set index article is meant for information as well as navigation.
A "set index article" is made for printing,
and the same can be said for a dab page.
So for the most part
the issue being raised assumes a "yes",
dab pages are meant to print.
And it therefore assumes that current search links (two of 'em)
must therefore begin to be fully "noprint" (and no footprint).[1]
Since they have a footprint, we have a minor crisis on our hands, sure to grow.
If search links {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}}
were to instantiate themselves as elements that were "noprint" (HTML),
currently they leave the printed page with hints of there existence.
They leave a bare bullet, or they a gap in the inline prose
where they are used inline.
Or are dab pages online-only, like a navbox?
Because navbox (and infobox)
are elements of a page that although full of valuable information,
are not printed in mainspace.
Dab pages get there information from a Search.
Not categories, portals, etc., etc.
It's the title-related search parameters intitle and prefix;
in other words the current two allowed search links.
{{Lookfrom}} does prefix, and {{Intitle}} does intitle.)
In fact entering certain page names into the search box
will give you one of
20 automated search results that are roughly what you need
a likely candidate, but with a hatnote link to other candidates
the dab page itself
None of this is printed unless its a dab page?
The alternative is to disregard the print-worthness of disambiguation pages,
which borders on disregarding the print-worthiness of set index articles,
which borders on list articles and outlines, etc.
Should there be any concern or guidance for how a dab page looks in print or electronic documents?
A disambiguation (dab) page is a navigation page,
and like a navigation element, it is designed primarily for
quickly looking up information.
But unlike them it is supposed to be printed?
Dab pages are craft-worthy, guide-worthy pages.
We don't have featured dab pages, but dab pages can be "entertaining", as well as purely navigational information,
and some editors specialize in dab pages.
A minor crisis. It concerns search links. They're messing up print.
A "stray bullet" problem can be repaired, by retrofitting many thousands of instances with their own, "noprint" bullet.
A "disappearing phrase" problem occurs where they are used inline, where they're not simply a bullet item.
Some complaints have arisen about the flexibility of {{intitle}} that can only be solved by using {{search link}}.
There needs to be a change concerning search links in article space.
The questions needing answers are
search links or not, printing or not, and dab pages with search links or printing.
Then we can proceed with an improved guideline and then bot-fixing the ten thousand instances on the wiki.
Currently there are zero {{search link}} templates.
That template disables itself from mainspace;
not so much as a preview is available from it.
Yet it could come to the aid of the already allowed search links,
and it could provide for the inevitable exceptions
to a (missing) more general guidline on search links in article space.
For this reason, and for the "noprint" mandate, we
have to either delete the ten thousand instances of {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}},
or officially begin to deem them the weaker cousins they really are to {{search link}},
by allow search links wherever other search links are allowed,
namely where they are currently found in dab-like list/index/outline pages.
The policy has been missing for 15 years,
while the assumption for {{search link}}
been "nix, no, nine, none, ever".
So the issue of deleting them now or accepting them now,
and in whole or in part, seems highly debatable.
Thousands of pages must, one way or another,
be repaired so that there is no longer any more
footprints of the search link in the offline version.
Even if dab pages never ever go offline,
hundreds of pages need to be repaired that do go offline.
But the total repair costs could easily require several passes
so as to not disrupt the page view. That's a lot of work
to keep the search-link templates and provide for their future
in such a way as their continued use no longer leaves any hint in print.
But
first there must be a consensus that there is a crisis.
Then there must be a policy, giving either blanket rights, or specifying which pages and which search-link-templates are allowed. The policy could be enforced in a cleanup if it were to determine precisely which category name of pages could have which type of search link.
With current technology the doable options are
remove search links wholesale from article space
removed from usage outside specific categories of pages
move to talk pages or other associated areas of their page
replace intitle or lookfrom by sl (search link).
replace with hatnote linking to search intitle documentation and prefix
re-parameterize/retrofit any search-link-template instances in any given category
We need to begin this work, but only after deciding on search links or not, and only after crafting a more restricted, stylized usage of these search links enforced by clear guidelines.
The WP:Bot policy is to grant bot status for such huge fixes only if
there's consensus. I'll mention the plan to run the bot because something like it must be done, and it must be the second step after this kind of policy business.
Please provide Yes/No input at the end. Thank you.
The two current search links found there way into articles.
They got upgrades that grant labeling, and so
it is easy to make them inline, instead of as a bullet item.
To gut all search links from mainspace
would probably be a mistake.
We can easily make the application of any search-link disappear
when it is placed at the bottom of a list of print-worthy elements.
However we cannot easily create a guideline for
using a search link inline because of the "disappearing phrase" problem.
Other templates, and other search links can and do handle a "noprint" parameter,
but according to village pump (technical), the whole thing could be rethought: all the related template naming and coding.
Clarence Hill has two pages, and an intitle shows them plus the dab page.
That intitle is only a check to see if a notable new "Clarence Hill" arises on
the Wiki.
Both contain the other term lower down in search results.
Have intitle and lookfrom become now irrational?
If the point is that the two current search links
were supposed to easily help dab pages be easier,
even for beginners, there may be a conflict in rationality.
Imagine a guideline saying to wrap an entire section plus the heading
into a {{nomirror}}, but only if it is all search links.
Or imagine documenting and policing the "disappearing phrase" problem.
Beginners need not apply? Yet aren't they for beginners?
Implementing a sane and practical "noprint" mandate complicates
all but the simplest, and restricted rendition
of {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}}:
no parameters (no labels, no changing the query, no namespace options)
no inline usage
no exceptions exceptions
Otherwise call in {{search link}}.
No user problems could arise except for
those involving most of the advanced stuff to begin with:
Wikipedia:SELF
Help:Template
Current label or namespaces {{search link}} options
New "noprint" or "selfreference" {{search link}} options
New block-level (div tag) options for {{noprint}} to use when the entire "See also" section is search links
When inline use is wanted, only the general search link {{search link}}, representing Search, can be used.
This set of environmental factors seems commensurate with the current problems, but at least we'd have less of this truth: "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
Specific examples would help clarify why we'd ever want to do so.
When it comes to content-building and maintenance, use the article talk pages, relevenat project pages, etc instead. --Ronz (talk) 22:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
@Ronz: I think Outline of Christmas Island is a good example of why we'd not want to remove search links in article space. I also think we should allow {{search link}} (currently not allowed in articles) to replace {{intitle}} or {{lookfrom}} where needed, or for when a dab page "See also" entry needs the full query-power of Search. For example, only a regexp can find a string (as opposed to a whole word). {{Lookfrom}} can search for a string at the beginning of a title only.
No. Editorial judgment about what material should be linked is required. However, we never say never and there may be occasional exceptions. It should be clarified that the question concerns searches within enwiki. Google searches and the like are definitely not wanted, despite frequently being used. As Ronz says, examples are needed. I think that requires a comprehensive list of templates and redirects to templates like {{in title}} so the "what links here" can list where they are used. Johnuniq (talk) 00:47, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
I sometimes add (usually as ELs) links to things like the 2 million strong British Museum collection database with a particular very specific search term. This can be highly useful, and most people wouldn't be aware of it or think of it. Johnbod (talk) 05:20, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes. But most usage of lookfrom and intitle are not good examples because of search results. It seems the worst ones are beginners placing them like ornaments of know-how and accomplishment, regardless of grammar, and syntax. Search links in article space require sophostication. several search-related concepts and template concepts should be levied in order to either carry out the noprint mandate (no search link in article space must be seen in print, but these "quick search" gimmicks are also in other namespaces, where they may need a print option. ), or to interpret the search results: it's either for beginners or it is not. Allowing only {{search link}} to be in article space would at least forces each user to understand templates and search; lookfrom has three parameters that are as sophisticated as {{search link}} (a prefix, a namespace, and a label). It might as well be Search, but it's not. There is a rational conflict with serving up the current functionality of templates intitle or lookfrom, so I want to begin to limit these, as beginner templates, to {{intitle}} and lookfrom to zero-parameters, item-only. I want {{search link}} to replace the instances where parameters are used. I want "noprint" across the board as default in article-space. Disallowing search altogether means removing tens of thousands of instances, and that seems wrong, although Wikipedia is not a democracy. — CpiralCpiral07:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
No. Wikipedia is not infotainment. Most of the intitle and lookfrom search results are not useful for content development. Intitle and lookfrom can work themselves out of a job, but who removes them then? Useful content discovery is rare on a random check from the above search links. The rest are a distraction from content building, metadata, not data. Like Ronz said, use the talk page. It's a guaranteed way, and that means clean pages forever. The metadata is wonderful, linguistic, jewelry. Infotainment would otherwise have to be gotten by learning a few Search techniques to generate them. Currently the templates presence tempts conflating the aesthetic with practicality. In large part they don't seem very practical. So get them completely out of pages that are not disambiguation pages, and let them grow back by demand; then take the dab page issue to wp:dab, and have them decide the fate of the rest. — CpiralCpiral07:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
No. Even respectable editors can easily conflated the power of the search engine with its weaker cousin intitle, and ask for intitle to gain features. Intitle is all about simplicity, not features. {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}} should stay simple. Their use is growing as many are seen and many are added each day by examples found elsewhere. It's a fixed search, and unless you gave it a label, its was just meant to be a sentence behind a dab bullet. — CpiralCpiral07:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
No. Not unless for {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}} we take away inline possibilities (to solve the problem of the necessity to wield the noprint concept) and mandate dab pages only, bullet-item only (to solve the grammar and syntax problem). But the current plan is to make two bot passes over ten thousand pages. Then we'd still have all these instances of intitle and lookfrom, and zero actual Search link instances. — CpiralCpiral07:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes. They pop up twenty results, as always. The query of {{intitle}} and {{lookfrom}} have the highest payoff of all possible search reports because they focus on the current page name. It's a good numbers game. You click once, and done. THen you click on a navigational link from there. It's much less craft-worthy than a navbox, but it's easier. You don't have to go to the bottom of the page forst; a navbox often requires clicking to open, study, and then clicking to navigate. Search results are partly for navigation, partly for fishing for recent information, or and partly for review purposes. Besides, banning all {{search templates}} templates is asking for trouble; ya'd hafta ban URL internal links with HTTP get requests to the search engine, and unlike template usage, those URLs can be made difficult to find. Just mandate noprint guidelines and fix the current ones. Because they're mandated to be noprint at the bottom of a See also list, they can then be made handy on the article page for article searches, just like a talk page search is made handy for past discussions. It's really up to the page to decide if a more advanced query is needed, or what kind of search results report is acceptable, and allowing {{search link}} is the only way to make that happen. — CpiralCpiral00:08, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
No. We're building an encyclopedia without search links in article space. It just happens to be online, but we're not intentionally guiding the building of an online anything else or offline something such as "enchantingly seductive word art" or wiki-technology "teachable moments" (for those who study the query on the search results page or revel in the magic of a template expansion), just it the encyclopedia. Categories are it. Subject outlines are it. Navigation templates and infoboxes are it because they are crafted from the ground up for their job. No usual search or trivial search link like intitle or lookfrom can begin to compare to and sit beside any of those. Search links in article space are what they are, a violation of wp:dab, MoS, print-worthiness, reasonableness (in most of the examples in the above search links provided), and they could be deleted in there entirety, (all twenty-thousand or so page instances), with no little effect on the encyclopedia or its content building. A sad riddance to be sure, but... As was {{Search link}}'s original authorial intent, there are zero instances in mainspace, and that's been similarly sad. Perhaps there could be exceptional cases that are appropriate, but for the serious, encyclopedic purist, they are for the most part as ugly as the maintenance tags they are described to be. At least maintenance tags are dated and tend to evaporate. Whoever needs a search link to build an article can just use the search box on every page. If they need a button to do that, then if there was an imaginable undertaking for the secure and stable provision for that button(a search link) in an area on the article page, then the sophistication in the wikitext required to implement it would defeat the skill-set of the target audience; for example, do we really expect a newbie to learn to insert an allowed search template as a parameter to a required "noprint" template wrapper and/or hatnote template before learning what the search parameter "intitle:term" could do for them? No. (Hardly even would we expect a newbie to insert a template as the argument to a wikilink.) There's a reason file uploading has a special crew and process and wide support, and we can't have that for search links like we would need: after the crew cleans them up, they would then have to scan for abuses, hear appeals for exceptions, etc. Put them on the talk page, where RTFM (read the manual) could just could point up to them. We should remove them from articles because they are just maintenance tags but they (irrationally) only target passers-by who're unlikely to use them to improve the page. Stop them being added, and then slowly start cleaning them out now. This 7 yr old mess would have been stopped long ago, but it's only been 13 mos. since we got the search technology to pinpoint them. </rant> </role> — CpiralCpiral01:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
For now we should probably just remove the two templates from articles, and from inline usage and from alternative labeling.
Its up to wp:dab whether or not a See also section full of search links really makes sense,
and up to the MoS if a See also section really makes sense in print.
— CpiralCpiral22:35, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
No. Dab pages are only ever online-navigation tools.
Any concern for dab pages being printed is mute, and any print-out anomalies they have can therefore grow without bound.
The intitle and lookfrom templates are therefore no problem on dab pages.
The original intent of these two templates was dab pages, and they should be deleted from article pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cpiral (talk • contribs) 1 January 2016
Yes. Dab pages are meant to be printed and are crucial offline tools for the encyclopedia. Fix the current inline and lookfrom templates "seen in print" problem, and then reduce their abuse-ability by removing their current inline and labeling choices. In other namespaces, replace them with the equivalent {{search link}} — CpiralCpiral00:19, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
Response
I've been asked to respond to this, but the walls of text are difficult to take in. I also have no familiarity with the questions relating to the printed version of the encyclopedia - but as Wikipedia is essentially an online encyclopedia I would hope that we never make decisions damaging to the online version purely for the sake of printed copies, and I don't know what is meant here by "infotainment".
My comments are:
{{in title}} and {{look from}} are both very useful entries in a disambiguation page, under "See also", to help the reader to find relevant material which hasn't been included in the dab page - either because it is a "partial title match" or other ineligible matter, or just because no-one has added the entry which should have been added for an article. Yes, it happens - many dab pages are incomplete, many articles are created at title "Foo (xyz)" without adding an entry to the dab page at "Foo".
In rare cases, links like these can also be useful in helping readers to locate relevant material in the encyclopedia from other articles or lists. The one with which I am familiar is List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, where it seems obvious and helpful to offer the reader a search to find articles in the encyclopedia on plants or animals whose names use the terms concerned. This page has recently become the target for an increasing number of redirect links, from the cleanup of inappropriate dab pages. I can see no benefit to the encyclopedia from excluding these links from this list page.
These links would be even more useful if {{in title}} searched redirect titles as well as article titles, either by default or by the use of a parameter to specify this. In this specific area, some plants and animals have articles at their common name with a redirect from the latin, others have articles at the latin name with redirect from the common. The reader would be better served if {{in title}} could search both. In many other situtations, redirects use alternative spellings, language variants, and other terms which offer the reader a useful access point to the article.
{{in title}} is vastly more useful in situations like this than a straight search which will pick up every article which contains the word in its text (eg when a plant species is mentioned as the food of a particular insect, or growing in a geographical area; or when many species are included in a navbox template). The title of an article, or a redirect, reflects the topic of the article.
I'm not sure that any of this is relevant to "What Wikipedia is not", but was asked to comment here so have done so! PamD18:51, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Search link should be allowed to play a stronger role in mainspace
on dab-like pages (list/index/outline), in order to take up the more sophisticated Search matters.
Proposal: Extend "Wikipedia is not a Directory" to cover unnecessary redirects
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.
In the last month, there have been four incidents on WP:AN/I involving the creation of large numbers of redirects. Some were misspellings of article titles, some were alternative phrases to describe something. Thousands of redirects were involved. AN/I cases: [6][7]
Policy in this area is not clear. We already have WP:NOTDIRECTORY. But the AN/I discussion for one of the incidents concluded that "we already established creating useless redirects is not a reason for a BLOCK." There was much discussion over how many redirects were too many, and whether this was vandalism. Some of the redirect efforts seemed to be typosquatting, or attempts to get more hits in major search engines.
The MediaWiki search engine used by Wikipedia has been improved recently. It can now handle spelling correction, just like the big search engines. Thus, there's less need for redirects which are very similar to the article name.
Proposal: If Wikipedia's own search engine can easily find an article from the name of a redirect, that redirect is unnecessary.
Support and that was my comment directed at the Neelix fiasco where he gave up his Adminship but was not blocked for something any regular editor would be blocked for, thus demonstrating the Super Mario Effect (Supper Mario does not die from stuff that would kill Regular Mario, he just goes back to being Regular Mario) Legacypac (talk) 21:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose per WP:RPURPOSE and/or WP:CHEAP. There are several reasons why redirects are employed; Wikipedia's search engine is just one of them. If you find any questionable redirects, take them to WP:RFD. Otherwise, just leave them alone as they are harmless. --Tavix(talk)21:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose - there are plenty of valid reasons to create these sorts of redirects beyond replicating the functionality of the search box. The fact that our search engine can now handle spelling correction (which is in beta and must be enabled by individual users, as I recall) is irrelevant to the many users who still cannot use the search box at all for technological reasons. For one thing, many of these redirects are kept for genuine English-language variations, where multiple spellings of a topic are equally likely to be correctly used in an article depending on an author's or subject's particular flavour of English. And finally, WP:NOTDIRECTORY specifically applies only to article content, not to redirects, and specifically directs that "Wikipedia functions as an index or directory of its own content". tl;dr: what about the redirects colour, flavour, honor, aluminum, oedema, encyclopaedia, and so on? Do we require every instance to be piped? How do we choose which is the correct spelling? (I dare you to suggest criteria for that) And for what benefit? Ivanvector🍁 (talk) 21:33, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Re: "The fact that our search engine can now handle spelling correction ... is irrelevant to the many users who still cannot use the search box at all for technological reasons." Explain further, please. Thanks. John Nagle (talk) 19:45, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Oppose per Tavix ... and I'm saying this essentially being one of the first editors to discover the "Neelix redirects" in small chunks before they became "today's hottest topic". Related words as search terms are helpful, and though I agree that the majority of the above-referenced redirect group are/were unhelpful, we should not let the actions of one editor dictate an entire new policy on redirects, especially since anything else of that magnitude has yet to be done or discovered. Steel1943 (talk) 21:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. Ivanvector spells out the reasons why this is a bad idea very well. I would argue that it could easily become a camel's nose effect that could, over time, lead to the logical conclusion that no redirects are necessary at all - not that that is at all at the intention of the proposer, of course, but that is how these things tend to go. Yes, the creation of utterly pointless redirects is currently a problem. But, it wasn't a problem for years, and once the current flow of effluvia is no longer striking the rotary air circulation device, there's good odds it won't be a problem again; we don't need to "Do Something!" just for the sake of Having Done Something. Enforcing the existing system works. - The BushrangerOne ping only01:07, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Indeed, and that is one editor. A total of four editors, based on the OP comment. Out of how many thousands over 15 years? It's still a kneejerk solution to say "there oughta be a lawpolicy". - The BushrangerOne ping only03:03, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose While we are not a directory, this does not mean we should not provide redirects for items that would otherwise be in a directory to an appropriate page to help readers find info they might need. The whole situation with Neelix is more about unreasonable search terms that would never be part of a directory. --MASEM (t) 03:32, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose. Nagle completely fails to observe that we don't all go places through the Search bar. Some of us go to pages by editing the URL, and it's a lot easier and much less annoying for a typo to work as a redirect than to show MediaWiki:Noarticletext. Imagine that you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiepdia — do you really want to be told that Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name? Or for a simple spelling error, do you want https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Milliband to tell you that there's no such article, making you run a search before finding Ed Miliband, just because you misremembered how to spell his name? Nyttend (talk) 14:36, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Supportespecially with the bullshit we went through with Nelix. We don't need 1 million redirects for one article. Zero redirects unless the subject or article is known (reliably sourced ) by more than one name, for Example, Bobby Ridell is also known under his given name. KoshVorlon16:48, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
The vast majority of readers visit Wikipedia pages through third-party search engines and so the redirects are not very relevant. Let search engines do what they're best at: finding appropriate results. isaacl (talk) 17:22, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Isn't this an argument against having redirects at all? If that's the position we take, why have a search engine on our own site in the first place? We shouldn't rely on other services like Google, especially when they are non-free, for-profit, etc... — Earwigtalk10:54, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Redirects exist primarily for the convenience of editors, not readers. Let search engines, whether they are provided internally or externally, do what they do best. They can handle fuzzy search terms by themselves. isaacl (talk) 06:20, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
Snowball Oppose. This proposal is ludicrous nonsense. Redirects are cheap and redirects from plausible typos and alternative spellings are absolutely necessary. They facilitate accidental linking and prevent redlinks and the accidental creation of duplicate articles. And, no, it doesn't matter if the redlinks are eventually corrected. If they exist for one second, that is far too long. What we really need is a policy forbidding the proposal of an overtly deletionist policy or guideline in response to an 'incident', because that is incompatible with the sort of rational, objective, calm, unemotional and systematic approach we should be following. James500 (talk) 03:23, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose in part per Nyttend and James500 (alternate ways of using page titles than the search bar). This is too hardline for me. @Nagle: For example, some users have JavaScript disabled, which prevents search suggestions from working. We shouldn't require these users to make another click through Special:Search, even if the title is eventually found. — Earwigtalk10:49, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose as per above. As James5000 says above, redirects from plausible typos and alternative spellings are absolutely necessary. -- The Anome (talk) 12:46, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Oppose many of these are valid alternative names, and it's also possible that the search could change making these difficult to find. Search isn't perfect, as entering the title of an article and adding punctuation between words (where no redirect exists for this) is not guaranteed to place that article on the first page of results (in at least one case the expected article was in 60th place - bottom of the third page - last week, and is now the 63rd result). Most of the redirects that were the subject of AN/I or subsequent discussion and were deleted were problematic because they were unlikely and offensive; rarely or never used; or were incomplete titles or lacked precision, not because of similarity to existing articles or redirects. Peter James (talk) 22:14, 24 December 2015 (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.
Should we mention this as well?
Should we also mention that the content of Wikipedia is not "politically correct," and that the content may not conform to everyone's political viewpoints and/or their own issues (i.e., disabilities, sexuality, race, etc.)? I feel this needs to be mentioned because there are some editors who like to edit articles to push political viewpoints (i.e., using LGBT categories to push their own sexuality on some articles) and push their own problems on articles that don't need such unnecessary edits.--Loyalmoonie (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2016 (UTC)Chris
