Recently I proposed a change at WT:NOT which related to WP:NOT#NEWS (Wikipedia is not a newspaper) which was taken through an RFC that closed recently here (permalink to that) It closed as no consensus, but I would recommended reading the !votes and discussion of that, as it highlights a currently growing issue on en.wiki, how are we supposed to handle current events/news.

A key factor is the current fate of Wikinews. It is, as mentioned several times in the discussion above, effectively a dead project, stuck in a catch-22 problem to get people to use it. There is clearly both editor desire and readership interest to see current news provided in a wiki-style, and en.wiki has generally done well before in covering current events. But events over the last few years (particularly over the last 2 years) have created a lot of editor tension and behavioral problems related to current event coverage (given what passes by AN/ANI/ARBCOM and various policy noticeboards), and highlights the differences between what an encyclopedia is and what a newspaper is. Their goals aren't fully mutually exclusive but there are several conflicting goals. WP:RECENTISM highlights many of these issues.

So I figure that to try to resolve this is to at least start with a straw poll, not designed to establish any immediate change in policy or guideline, but only to see where the current perception is of how en.wiki should be handling NOT#NEWS. Testing the wind, to speak. To that, there's principle three options to consider to get an idea where an editor/reader's interest in this may be as to determine the preferred method to go forward, if needed.

1. The current situation for NOT#NEWS is fine or only needs some small adjustments. This might include defining a guideline to help with writing current events articles (akin to WP:Writing about fiction), but likely no change to policy.
2. NOT#NEWS should be more strongly enforced, and limiting our current event coverage. This might include stronger enforcement of WP:NEVENTS, additional policies relating to NOT#NEWS, encouraging/putting more current news articles to draft space, pushing more content/editors to Wikinews, and the like.
3. NOT#NEWS should be less strong enforced, and expanding our current event coverage. This might include outright removal of NOT#NEWS, adjusting how NOT#NEWS and NEVENTS are written and handled to allow more news, effectively merge Wikinews in en.wiki, and the like.

As this is not an attempt to find a solution right now; I would fully expect that any proposed idea that comes out of that would be under a full Wiki RFC to consider before implementation. So a straw poll is best here. I would request you simply !vote in the appropriate section below, keeping threaded discussion to the provided discussion section. --MASEM (t) 16:23, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Option 1: WP:NOT#NEWS is working as is

Or: The coverage of current events on en.wiki is about right or only needs fine adjustment

1. What should happen is the creation of a taskforce who routinely checks on news items that don't have longterm impacts. We should be posting items our readers are interested in, without our readers, this is all pointless, but I agree that some things which are instantly recorded as "news" may not have such a long-term impact as to be considered encyclopedic for a long-term view. This is a natural conflict between (say) an "in the news" section and a paper encyclopedia which records genuinely uber-notable events. We should not divest our readers of the things they want to see just because of some snobbish and contrived criterion. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:24, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2. First choice. Each time I've tried to get articles deleted for violating NOTNEWS (such as Richard Matt) the AfD has gone nowhere - and on each occasion, in hindsight, the judgment of the community has proven correct. There are a good number of editors who like to write about current events and overall I think they do a good job and provide useful articles that bring readers to the project and enhance Wikipedia's reputation. In the discussion at the NOTNEWS talk page there was a great deal of "it's terrible" comments but little in the way of specific examples of a need for change. Coretheapple (talk) 21:25, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
3. I'm not seeing the need for stricter enforcement, and I doubt the practicality of trying to stamp out current events articles. Wikipedia will be what Wikipedians want it to be, and this is what they want it to be. If that doesn't jibe with NOTNEWS, then jettison NOTNEWS. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
4. stricter enforcement will not be useful/effective. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:35, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
5. First choice. --Jayron32 14:04, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6. The folks who are busy AfDing current events article are generally not busy AfDing old-current-events articles from 10+ years ago. Why is that? Because human nature enjoys working with current events, be it inclusionist or deletionist. It's just a manifestation of what people want to work on and how. For those AfDing the old articles, they will need more justification than citing the NOTNEWS alone, like if there has been longer term impacts, consequences of the event. -- GreenC 14:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
7. First choice. -- E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:03, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
8. First choice. NOTNEWS, properly applied, strikes a fair balance between keeping encyclopedic material and avoiding the truly mundane topics that also get news coverage. The problem is that there is not much guidance, and too many people think that NOTNEWS is carte-blanche to delete any articles about current events. Wikinews is dead and its writing style is anathema to Wikipedia's. Whether we like it or not, Wikipedia's article on a breaking news event is often the most complete, up-to-date, and unbiased coverage available, which is why so many readers come to us. We should be helping those readers, not hindering them. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 20:49, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
9. First choice. petrarchan47คุก 18:08, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
10. It is working as it is. The "news articles" are relevant for Wikipedia. So the question here is: should we wait a year or two or longer with writing an article on the topic (since that would be the amount of time needed until the entire investigation and law system is done) or should we write an article on the event and update it. And as we clearly can see: there is a) an interest from Wikipedia users and editors at keeping it the way it is and b) there are enough editors editing it, so the information is from reliable sources and updated very quickly. The "current event" at the head of the article is pointing out, that information can quickly change. The product is actually quite good. Of course we could wait - but that would make Wikipedia less useful (who cares about the event in 5 years from now!?) and the articles would get worse, because less users would edit them.--Albin Schmitt (talk) 14:58, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
11. First choice, lets work on the fine things first before going into major changes. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
12. First choice. We're never going to get this perfect, when an event is fresh knowing whether it will get persistent coverage over time, etc., is a matter of judgment. On the whole, I think we do okay, I see as many things that appear errors of inclusion as errors of exclusion. --joe decker^talk 15:08, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
13. You're clearly forum shopping, looking for a result that will justify your predetermined solution. No evidence that the policy is a problem other than a few disgruntled editors who won't WP:DROPTHESTICK. Wikinews is dead, editors and readers come here for encyclopedic looks at current topics. They have already spoken loud and clear and have been doing so for years. Gamaliel (talk) 15:17, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
14. I've been working around current events on Wikipedia for 10+ years. During that entire time there have always been people who think we spend too much time covering the news, and there have also been people who think we should do more to cover the news. Personally, I think we get the balance about right most of the time. If I had to choose in the moment, I would probably err on the side of more news articles rather than less. We can always go back and clean-up / delete the less significant news stories later. However, in general, producing a lasting encyclopedic summary out of major breaking news is one of the things we are actually quite good at. This should be encouraged, and for the most part I think it has been. Dragons flight (talk) 15:19, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
15. Disagree with the way this poll has been presented and hope it will not be used as any form of consensus. I don't think a problem has been properly framed – to base it on Wikinews being a "key factor" seems completely out of step with what most Wikipedians do with current events. Wikinews is irrelevant, hasn't been a factor and shouldn't be a factor. As User:Gamaliel alluded to, I cannot avoid thinking that this being the third massive discussion about this (one, two, and this) in as many months is counterproductive and asking the same question over and over again in hopes of getting a different answer. Instead, I'll assume good faith. But I must say this is quite taxing while not really moving the conversation forward. -- Fuzheado | Talk 18:45, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
16. I agree that this appears to be forum-shopping, with essentially the same issues raised with slightly altered language. Even before this is over an effort is being made to generate "observations" i.e., consensus on specific points. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:54, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
17. Seems fine; what should happen is not the creation of new rules, but rather than enforcement of our current ones. And I agree with other editors who say that this "straw poll" was not properly presented. Neutrality^talk 12:28, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
18. I don't see any problem with the current balance; some people are quick to create articles, other people are quick to nominate them for deletion, and there is senseless and futile knee-jerk reaction on both sides, which tends to settle over time into more reasonable results. We'd also need a demonstrated consensus to change anything anyway; we can't just legislate from on high to target the articles we want deleted at AFD. postdlf (talk) 15:10, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
19. First choice Gandydancer (talk) 15:25, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
20. Seems to be working about right the way it is. Some people abuse the guideline to try to get rid of stuff they don't like, but regardless of what happens everything sorts itself out in the end through discussion and becomes obvious with (or without) WP:SUSTAINED coverage. Truly notable subjects will continue to get coverage, and those that are only covered for a short time will get deleted eventually. People on both sides need to realize that there is WP:NORUSH. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 13:14, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
21. Sure, support aswell. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
22. Theb alance seems to be working well--as judged by the trend decisions at AfD, there is general agreement on the boundaries, tho sometimes sharp disagreement in specific cases. No change in rules will eliminate that sort of disagreement. DGG ( talk ) 16:49, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
23. Our status quo agreement per RS is the way to go. No need to restrict any further. --QEDK (愛 • 海) 19:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
24. Second choice. --Shrike (talk) 10:29, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
25. First Choice The current consensus is adequate with borderline cases being decided at AFD, there is no need for instruction creep Atlantic306 (talk) 20:24, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
26. First Choice - Looks good to me, borderline cases are taken to AfD. The process works, imperfectly, but it works as it is today. XavierItzm (talk) 11:25, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
27. Working fine as is, except in the case of those who interpret it strictly and act like we have no news on Wikipedia or should have no news on Wikipedia. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:51, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Option 2: WP:NOT#NEWS should be more strongly enforced

Or: En.wiki should have significantly less coverage of current events

1. We definitely need to be stricter. Blueboar (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2. Per the fact that WP:TRUMPSCANDALAFD is pretty much standard these days and it can go any way you want. A lot of the keep or no consensus AfDs eventually end up deleted the second go round or merged. Creating clearer standards than the GNG for current events is important, and NOTNEWS is the obvious first place to start with clarifying what is and isn't acceptable to include in Wikipedia immediately. Also, per my comments below, the biggest issue with not enforcing NOTNEWS is that we spend an inordinate amount of time having to deal with enforcing BLP policy amidst shouting and screaming that because something is so notable it must not be covered by BLP policy. This could be avoided both for the good of the encyclopedia and for the subjects of the articles if we encforced NOTNEWS more strongly. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:17, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
3. and this should include daily and weekly updates of sports tallies, film takings and so on. Here we are just acting as a mirror site riding on the websites that specialize in those types of information. Concurrently the main page "in the news" section should be scrapped, it's like a pile of last week's newspapers: Noyster (talk), 23:00, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
4. I think we could strengthen and clarify these guidelines a bit. Kaldari (talk) 00:09, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
5. NOTNEWS needs to be stricter. I don't like inclusionists claiming that a piece of Trumpcruft deserves to be included because it has a couple reliable sources. KMF (talk) 00:50, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6. I would support allowing for an inter-wiki redirect for these topics, to aid in enforcement. Hurricane Harvey was obviously notable as it was happening, but even there it would be better to have people do live updates of that page on Wikinews. With SUL there's no editor burden to editing on a different Wiki domain. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:07, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

   Wikinews is largely a failed project that doesn't really report on any of the major news events that we are discussing here. Just pointing that out as an example of why the interwiki links wouldn't likely work. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:51, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

   I'm not familiar with the details of why it failed, but I'm aware that it's mostly dead. Pointing editors from en.wikipedia to it (for certain topics) would need to be part of a plan to revive it. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:46, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

From my experiences on WikiNews, there were not enough reviewers and a very short deadline (3 day) to have a review. With no review or updated/additional info, the potential article is deleted. This would even occur when the article would indicate a future event when additional information or action would be taken and was noted by said editor (me). This would frustrate writers as most of their work would be deleted. Spshu (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1. Above points taken on Wikinews and the inanity of repeated "current event" AfDs. I don't know what good additional "rules" will do here, but I do think it would be smart to funnel/interwiki our less encyclopedic topics into Wikinews articles, or at least reach out to the English Wikinews editors to see how the content may be transferred fruitfully. (Has anyone reached out?) On the other end of the predicament, I think better enforcement of summary style for new topics makes for better encyclopedic coverage. Standalone topics tend to collect all kinds of overly specific detail and tone unfit for a general audience. czar 03:05, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2. As per Tony. While I agree with the Option 1 comments that stronger enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS as a whole in the moment isn't realistic and at times can be counterproductive, there are certain aspects of it (for example WP:BLP as Tony says) which are IMO incredibly important. And although more bureaucracy is really not the best way to deal with anything, I think that it could be useful to have some sort of review of current events articles a certain amount of time after creation to determine if it meets the notability criteria that can't be determined while it's still in the normal news cycle (WP:SUSTAINED, for example). The ideal solution would be for people to wait before creating articles instead of having them nominated for deletion immediately and then having those discussions closed with a "wait and see" type result, but that really isn't going to happen. ansh666 08:57, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
3. For reasons of notability and BLP. Fram (talk) 12:06, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
4. And this can be enforced as soon as admins discount the "wait and see" tactics inclusionists employ at AfD. This has become the most popular rationale to keep an article when it fails the actual substance of WP:EVENTCRIT. Or discredit the "easily passes GNG" votes which is not the case on a news event. Another thing we need consensus for is converting WP:RAPID to an essay; it contradicts itself and has no basis on notability yet inclusionists use it as a safeguard for deletion.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 16:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
5. My idea for stronger enforcement would perhaps involve changes to policy for a, presumed, "immediate" forced merger to existing articles of breaking news, say to last for at least a week or two - perhaps with a breaking news merger noticeboard and project, and a simultaneous allowing of a "draft" article that is indexed. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:50, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6. Wikipedia has stupidly encouraged the hoi polloi to reflexively come here to post their own truth, aided and abetted by the overenthusiastic among us who seek to write about every current event. Not only do many of these creations fail notability criteria, we give their subjects short shrift by parroting the contemporaneous screed from mere journalists. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:58, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
7. News coverage of current events is and should be treated as primary sources. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. While we err on the side of more coverage by allowing some articles to rely mostly on primary sources, events that are entirely and solely sourceable to news media should not be covered by Wikipedia. This is why we made Wikinews. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 02:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
8. Per Mendaliv and other above. Whether Wikinews is functioning or not, it doesn't change the fact that we're an encyclopedia, not a news outlet. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:12, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
9. Too many people think if it was in the papers it must be notable. Many things are in the papers becasue they are interesting and satify people's thirst for something to engage their interest - which sells papers - but they are not notable in the scheme of things. The internet has made all this information so much more readily available but run-of-the-mill events have been happening for millenia. One only needs compare the ratio of recent events recorded here to the similar events that happened 30, 50 or 100 years ago. This encyclopedia is fast becoming the Readers Digest version of online newspapers. ClubOranje^T 19:40, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
10. I am not sure we can actually enforce NOTNEWS anymore, as people have become used to Wikipedia being pretty good (and a lot better than Wikinews) at covering current events. However, I think we should at least try. As a first step, maybe we can replace the "In the news" section of the Main Page by a link to Wikinews? —Kusma (t·c) 21:26, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    @Kusma: For what it's worth, that has been proposed before and shot down because of inactivity at en.wn. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:22, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    @Koavf: I think our ITN section is one of the things that cause inactivity at Wikinews. —Kusma (t·c) 08:56, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

11. We should be stricter with this, especially given the recent influx of political articles being created preemptively. Jdcomix (talk) 17:16, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
12. I think the basic problem here is that Wikipedia operates on an idiosyncratic definition of secondary sources that includes news reports. Everybody outside Wikipedia regards news reports as primary sources, so we should do the same, and follow our basic principle of basing articles on genuine secondary sources, which can include some content published in newspapers, such as profiles and background articles that look at events over a long term, but not contemporaneous news reports. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    1. I agree with 86.17 on the "secondary source problem": WP:Secondary does not mean independent. However, I think it's a bit more complicated than that. WP:PRIMARYNEWS covers some of the differences between a primary news source (e.g., eyewitness news reports) and a secondary source that is published in a newspaper (e.g., news analysis). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
13. Per User:Noyster (great reasoning)....but trying to enforce that would be daunting....endless editwars and RfC's. --Moxy (talk) 19:58, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
14. I agree with several of the points in the comments above, ultimately boiling down to "I support the existence of WP:NOTNEWS for the reasons we have it in the first place." In the interest of thinking about enforcement strategies, I'll say again that this seems like a perfect use of the draftspace. See, although Wikinews hasn't done so well, Wikipedia does sometimes cover news well (that doesn't mean we should be doing so, of course -- I'll bet we could do lots of the things from WP:NOT well). Because many of the subjects do turn out to be notable, I see no reason why we shouldn't use the draft space to capitalize on short-term interest for the benefit of the long-term article. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:02, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    That's an interesting observation about draft space. My experience of it has been that it is used as an excuse to delete articles about topics that don't qualify for deletion under policy and that should be developed in main space where they are visible to potential editors, as has always been a central part of the wiki process, but this seems like a valid use of that space. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 09:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

15. To abandon or weaken NOTNEWS is a counsel of despair IMO. I hope to have time to leave a longer post over the next few days, but believe we should clarify (to ourselves at least), that we are notnews for good reasons. These include that we undertake a longer-term responsibility to the subject, to give the more complete and rounded picture than that revealed in yesterday's headlines. I agree that it would be nearly impossible to put a 'full embarge' on news articles, and many of the 'big event' ones are well-written and accurate surprisingly quickly. However, IMO, it is a simple mathematical inevitability that the more we become simply a 'news archive', the less we will have any encyc. character or purpose. Pincrete (talk) 11:22, 1 October 2017 (UTC) … … ps I endorse the "is fast becoming the Readers Digest version of online newspapers" comment above, I wish I'd thought of the analogy! Pincrete (talk) 11:28, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
16. Stricter. I agree with Pincrete. BLP is a major issue, as are the seismic changes (hm, is that hyperbole) in not just American but other countries' resulting in a large number of new articles, as mentioned above, and new editors with no knowledge of our guidelines and often SPAs. Doug Weller talk 14:02, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
17. Same fix I've proposed before, which is a policy WP:Criteria for Speedy Incubation which is like WP:CSD.  A new criteria allows a breaking news article to be moved to draftspace, with the mainspace title being salted for 7 to 14 days.  An AfD in progress gets procedurally closed WP:NPASR.  The problem I'm seeing is that AfDs are spinning their wheels analyzing notability with a moving target.  As I posted yesterday at DRV, the problem pushes forward to other forums when decisions are made based on moving-target notability.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:24, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
18. Stricter. I'm glad to see this straw poll because I've often wondered about WP:NOTNEWS myself. While Wikpedia is fast becoming a gutter press, some of the more serious news items also belong on Wikinews. I don't know how we can achieve this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:32, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
19. Stricter. There is far too much insertion of trivial news events, commentary about our subjects and lengthy quotations. It gets in the way of knowledge. I am developing a solution. Join me. - Shiftchange (talk) 00:55, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
20. Stricter. Too many articles are being created which have a splash in the news with no lasting notability. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
21. Agreed. Creating lasting enyclopedic articles with proven information backed by references in solid reliable sources is something the wiki system does (perhaps suprisingly) very well. Mimicking the National Inquirer and TMZ, not so much. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:13, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • And the WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, NPR aren't solid reliable sources? Using them to cover fairly recent events would be an issue because we'd be like TMZ? I'm not quite getting your point here. Hobit (talk) 11:24, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
22. Definitely. And in particular the insistence on lasting interest in a subject is widely disregarded. Mangoe (talk) 22:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
23. There is definitely a problem of people with WP:RECENTISM forgetting that we want encyclopedic knowledge, not blow-by-blows of unfolding events simply because they are sourced. That can range in the short term of a few hours or events happening over a day or two. Sometimes, an event is going to take a longer time to determine whether it's truly a significant event or not. Lawsuits are a good example of the latter where they came take time, sometimes years, but you get people pushing to things like ambulance chasing suits to articles because a newspaper reported that someone got sued (as opposed to the court decision that establishes the encyclopedic value). I'm not sure how we can stress that Wikipedia takes the long view even more though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
24. I am mostly in sympathy with this view. Many articles about recent events are simply summarized news reports, often contemporaneous to the event, with little or no long-term view. It's basically a news feed. On the other hand, at the beginning stages, a summary of the various news reports is the only thing known about the topic, and many people come to Wikipedia to get a decent overview. It's something Wikipedia does passably well, though there are many distortions involved. My instinct is that Wikipedia should not be summarizing news; that's not its job, and BLP issues also frequently arise. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 02:12, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
25. Example: Every time someone who works for Big Company A tweets a stupid thing and gets fired, people run screaming to Big Company A's article to tack it on or to create a "Controversies" section. Wp:NotNews needs to be beefed up to be a bulwark against the headline-of-the-moment news cycle. TheValeyard (talk) 04:08, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
26. Stricter. As I often try to parse bias, as opposed to going into edit wars, the "value" of perceived editors over recent events ends up in clear bias and conflated news items, with loooooong talk pages of arguing what is notable or noteworthy, when in reality, if they waited an hour, they'd get confirmation or an RS. I just supported an AfD for "reactions" for the Vegas shooting, because it was full of "my prayers and sympathies"... from Mariah Carey, for example. Just as I support removing conjecture on weapons used, etc., if Wiki is to read like an Encyclopedia, then something that has hard fact that will be released in the coming days or even hours, including wild speculation from people not on the scene is actually the currently supported way to do it on the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting. In fact, the name of the page itself is a bit wonky, because it wasn't on the strip and didn't target the strip. (And actually was performed within confines known as the South Strip, which makes a bit of a difference geographically.) As an encyclopedic entry, it would be named something like Jason Aldean Concert Shooting or Route 91 Harvest Music Festival Shooting. Alas, someone had to rush it to Wiki and rush to slam in a bunch of conjecture and unrelated facts. Trying to bring sanity to edit wars when that happens is nigh impossible. Avoiding the mess in the first place would be ideal. Seola (talk) 05:36, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I should also add, like others mention, when an event may or may not be notable waxes and wanes. There are a great many stub pages of events that no one can remember and no one looks for. I come across them and try to clean them or if I can't, I nom for AfD. And invariably, some random editor comes by and insists that nothing on Wiki should ever be removed because it was justified "at the time". There is just too many of these junk articles as it is. Putting up stricter guidelines would avoid errant words, phrases or sentences that also often happen when edit wars are going on, especially when vandalism is missed, because so many edits are happening at once.Seola (talk) 05:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

27. Wikipedia's structure makes it far too easy for any user to create an article about the latest minor controversy, meme, or viral incident without meeting criteria or consensus that the page should exist, while far too hard to remove an article that shouldn't be here. The proliferation of news sites that piggyback on each other's work without independently providing notability undermines the GNG and in turn the project as ephemeral topics all have their own low-quality articles. We should also encourage more summarizing into main or related articles, rather than permitting subarticles to be made for so many little things. (See also: also the awful "International reaction to..." quotefarm articles). Reywas92^Talk 06:22, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
28. Realised I hadn't actually !voted. Per my comments elsewhere and below regarding current news coverage. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:12, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
29. It should be more strongly enforced, but in an even-handed manner that treats similar situations similarly, rather than in an ad hoc or partisan manner. I’d suggest that we more strongly discourage material about recent news that relies on primary sources, including newspaper opinion pieces and blog posts that have not been deemed worthy of mention in reliable secondary sources. We could also discourage material about recent news that names people who are expected to remain non-public figures. If we carve out particular areas like this for special treatment, then we can make good progress toward enforcing NotNews in a way that isn’t apt to change e.g. when the political shoe is on the other foot. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
30. An encyclopedia does not need any of the transiently popular "stories". Rentier (talk) 23:58, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
31. As as been said, we want to report the controversy, not to be art of it. One of the main issues are probably a nees to clarify notability (say a election result is immediatelly notable, some fact about the latest shooting may be or not - and we should play on the safe side). That WikiNews is not active (or not) is not a reason to have news(ish) articles here. If we have no "news" here, probably WikiNews would work better - better connection / linking to and from may benefit all: editors and readers of both tendencies. "Sell" it as "the wikipedia of recent events", link to it for day-to-day timelines, and so on. - Nabla (talk) 18:27, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
32. Only choice. This also works to counter systemic bias in favour of northern hemisphere, western news. Stifle (talk) 15:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
33. Absolutely. Recent news articles are too often irreparable messes created with the presumption that an AP/Reuters report parroted by half a dozen news portals constitutes eternal notability, and hijacked by editors with a chip on their shoulder who edit war until the subject (doomed to "no consensus" on AfD) falls into oblivion a few months later. I think Wikipedia would do better without the product of such labour. Daß Wölf 18:25, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
34. Both as to inclusion of "passing stuff" and misuse of WP as a "live feed", e.g. of questionable and basically OR sports scores, casualty tolls, etc. which we don't know are confirmed until some time has passed. As just one example, a snooker ranking tournament article was recently updated over 300 times in the space of a day or two, to provide live coverage of game results. This is not what WP is for, and there are snooker news sites that are for this. We need not have any results tables at all until the event is over and RS confirm the results. "I was there" isn't a source, and "I saw the win on a televised match" isn't a reliable one. I'm not picking on snooker coverage in particular, I just saw it yesterday. The problem is likely much worse for things like football/soccer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:13, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    The problem isn't usually so bad with sports, because the running commentary is usually factual. but, more seriously, we get similar running news added to Wikipedia about news events that may or may not be terrorism based on primary news reports. We had an article created recently that was edited by loads of people about a road traffic accident in Exhibition Road, London, because the initial reports speculated that it might be terrorist-related, although it turned out pretty quickly that it was not. Why can't we just do our job as an encyclopedia and wait for secondary sources to appear before rushing to create an article based on editors' own interpretation of primary sources? 86.17.222.157 (talk) 16:32, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Um, that's exactly what I'm suggesting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  15:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

35. The problem with such intensive coverage of the news of the day is that you end up with lots of abandoned articles about stories that are forgotten fifteen minutes after they occur. What Wikinews is or is not doing isn't really relevant to a discussion about what is happening here on Wikipedia though. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 00:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]
36. For several reasons. (1) Articles in news sources are typically primary sources, because they are part of the context in which an event occurs, and just as we follow medicine's definition of primary sourcing when writing about medical topics (WP:MEDRS), we need to follow history's definition of primary sourcing when writing about history, which includes events. Exceptions occur, as a news story may mix primary and secondary coverage of different events, e.g. it talks about an ongoing event and discusses the context in which the event started 100 years ago, or a news source may provide purely secondary coverage, e.g. it only discusses the context in which that event started. Let's ensure that only secondary sources are used, except in the less common situations in which WP:PRIMARY permits primary-source usage. (2) How often is a news editor or a reporter a topic specialist? He's a specialist in good writing or so we wish..., in selecting what subscribers and newsstand-purchasers will want to buy, and in condensing the story down to what will fit on the page, but in nearly all cases, your news editor and your reporter have average knowledge about the topics in which they're writing. See WP:RSBREAKING, which ((Recent news)) links — we're admitting that news coverage is often wrong, so why do we permit it? (3) Finally, an encyclopedia reports what's covered in secondary sources. In most cases, you can't predict that something showing up in a newspaper will be covered in secondary sources that won't be published until months or years in the future. Yes, there are exceptions, e.g. a news report saying that this candidate won 1,234,567 votes, while his competitor won 1,000,481 votes, but unless you can show that exactly this kind of thing has been covered in the past, you're making a statement that secondary sources will cover a topic, and no reliable, published sources exist to support this allegation, to paraphrase the intro to WP:OR. This is particularly a problem with political stuff — how can you be certain that future political historians will care about the latest mini-scandal? Nyttend backup (talk) 21:09, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
37. Trying to keep current events and news is a waste of valuable time, there is always something to do on en.wiki. Kanarya08 (talk) 08:50, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
38. Absolutely - much of today's published news combines publisher/journalist POV, propaganda, and a splattering of facts buried under allegations in order to create the level of sensationalism needed in the highly competitive bait/click news environment. While printed news has pretty much become obsolete, publishers still need to "sell papers". Look at it from the POV of a hungry journalist and publishing execs who need to generate revenue in a highly competitive market. On the other hand, WP's growth has been the result of adherence to our 5 pillars not the bait/click sensationalism used by news sources to attract readers. The importance of maintaining NPOV and factual accuracy cannot be overemphasized. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:26, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
39. Yes, I think there is way too much rushing to see who can be first to sloppily report something that could be covered better with the passage of time. On the other hand, I don't see a way that we could really enforce this, because so much will depend upon local consensus for each case. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
40. Trying to police news-like articles will be impossible should wikipedia embrace news-like articles. A trip to WP:AFC shows that POV-Pushing is a massive problem as-is. If Wikinews is dead, revive it. RfCs have previously operated on a principle of "Wikinews is dead", so why not change that? If there's truly interest of news in a Wiki-like environment, then go to wikinews, for god's sake, instead of opening the door for POV-pushers. ProgrammingGeek ^talktome 15:43, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
41. Of the options here, I suppose this comes closest to my own view — but what I mean, in part, is that we should have clearer guidelines and not merely tighter ones. It's undeniably true that some breaking news events do turn into good articles about important events of enduring notability through the collaborative editing process — but it's also undeniably true that some people seem to think every individual bit of flotsam or covfefe that turns up in any media at all always merits its own standalone article. For instance, there is currently 2017 Ottawa Storm, a wholly unremarkable thunderstorm with entirely run of the mill effects whose coverage didn't even extend into the next day, let alone the next year — thankfully it's up for deletion, and I see no prospect of it surviving that, but I'd still prefer that nobody had ever thought it would warrant an article in the first place. There are obviously certain news stories that are almost always going to be valid and enduring article topics that pass the ten-year test (remember, 9/11 was once a "breaking news" story), and certain news stories that are virtually never going to be valid or enduring article topics that pass the ten-year test (we do not need an article about every house fire or every murder or every thunderstorm that happens anywhere at all). But perhaps we could stand to be a little clearer about how to apply some actual discernment to which side of that line any given news story falls on, because it's particularly easy to make the wrong call on a news story in the initial rush of "this just happened" coverage. Bearcat (talk) 19:38, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
42. I support stricter, especially in cases where scholarly sources and news sources conflict, and the scholarly sources are considerably more detailed in their analysis. There are also numerous criticisms of news sources relying on unnamed, anonymous sources. Further, there is a tendency to selectively cherry pick quotes from articles, and when used this way they are basically WP:PRIMARY in support of WP:OR. These issues are all already implicitly addressed by our policies, but stating it more explicitly may help. Seraphim System ^(talk) 20:00, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
43. Second choice, given that each is met:
    • Generally, WP:NOTNEWS-violating articles should always be taken to AFD instead of CSD; as a controversial issue this should be beyond debate.
    • GNG should be assumed until the fact that the article indeed consists of primary sources is proven.
    • Lastly, the quorum is expanded dramatically to allow further opinions.

    ToThAc (talk) 18:29, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

44. As, I once indicate on Meta as to deal with link rot/citation issues by using [1]. With WikiNews articles could be used as sources (as they have to be reviewed/verified) and enforcing NOTNEWS here with a way to move articles to WikiNews should cause an upsurge in writers (and hopefully reviewers) at WikiNews and as WP's rotlink solution. Spshu (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
45. Wikipedia is not breaking news. Especially on political topics. PackMecEng (talk) 16:05, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Option 3: WP:NOT#NEWS should be less strongly enforced

Or: En.wiki should have more expanded coverage of current events

1. Weak support here - I dislike the current push against current events, but I don't think that we should fully become like a newspaper (i.e. we should take into account the lower reliability of reporting on current events and require more sources than usual to pass notability for current events). RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 18:24, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
2. It'll be what it's going to be, and if that doesn't align with NOTNEWS, get rid of it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:34, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
3. Support. The problem with "NOT#News" is that a) it is a badly written policy, like all of WP:NOT, because it is all written as part of a list of negative things rather than as a direct statement of policy, and b) none of its "enforcement" (i.e. taking out articles about things because you dislike them politically, which is what that means in practice) has anything to do with what it says. Conversely, when you see a blindingly obvious violation of the text as written -- like the list of current watches and warnings in Hurricane Maria, temporary content that is being taken out the moment it expires, complete with a special disclaimer at the top of the article -- nobody seems to give a damn. I say if you have a dog that can't hunt and can't point and can't fetch but it can sink its teeth into every car tire, neighbor and postman that goes past, it's time to think about getting rid of the dog. Wnt (talk) 11:54, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
4. Second choice. The problem with WP:NOTNEWS is that it is over-used by people who think it means "If it is reported by newspapers somewhere, it is AUTOMATICALLY not appropriate for Wikipedia." which is fantastic over-reach. News coverage does not disqualify or invalidate Wikipedia content, and yet I would (unscientifically estimate) that WP:NOTNEWS is envoked more than half of the time as a deletion rationale rather than as style guidance. --Jayron32 14:06, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
5. I guess this is my second choice too, thank you Jayron32 for reminding me of that option. I agree with Jayron32 that NOTNEWS is overused, and if any changes are necessary they should be in that direction. Coretheapple (talk) 14:35, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
6. Second choice per Jayron32 and Coretheapple. NOTNEWS should work as it is, but it often doesn't. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 20:58, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
7. Second choice. The problem with WP:NOTNEWS is that it is over-used by people who think it means "If it is reported by newspapers somewhere, it is AUTOMATICALLY not appropriate for Wikipedia." To this I want to add that our readers expect certain kinds of news stories to appear on Wikipedia, and that is no bad thing, not least because it has long seemed to me that the urge to add a bit of information to a breaking news story - or even to start an article on a news event, seems ot sometimes be an entry point for new editors. Of course, more editors would be the best solution to this and many problems and the nasty aggression on exhibit seems to drive editors away. I think one solution is for editors to hold off bringing articles to AfD on NOTNEWS rationals for about 3 months, a waiting period would reduce the Sturm und Drang factor.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:02, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
8. Support—Current events are a way to capture editing energy and to rapidly compare developing information. It's one of Wikipedia's unique contributions to global knowledge, based on the fact that it's the only near-real-time encyclopedia. There should be strong enforcement of standards (BLP, V) on current events stories, but patient evaluation of notability for borderline cases. The quick but byzantine disputes over notability during a highly charged time pose emotionally charged questions that new editors are not ready for: are these atrocity victims significant? will that protest affect the course of the state? We're better served having editors focus on sourcing and information gathering than on debating these questions. And we're better off having started articles of borderline permanent notability (e.g., this article on Egyptian protests by midnight of 25 January 2011) Then, after a short-term time window (7 or 14 days, perhaps), evaluate notability and keep, delete (if of poor quality), or export to Wikinews (if not notable).--Carwil (talk) 18:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
9. Weak support. The problem with WP:NOTNEWS enforcement right now is that it often causes highly-trafficked articles to be nominated at AfD, with editors spending their efforts arguing for or against deletion instead of trying to improve content viewed by many people. This reflects badly on Wikipedia, and visitors may also perceive Wikipedia to be heartless when they see a large rectangle on top of an article about a significant news event that may or may not be notable. It can be argued that this may be a good opportunity to introduce casual visitors to the world of Wikipedia, but emotionally charged discussions about whether a news topic is WP:N notable or not, often before there is enough time for long-term coverage to be developed, is not an image we want to present to prospective editors. Whether that means NOTNEWS needs to be changed is debatable, but it is best to benefit the most readers efficiently, and ugly AfD discussions right in the face of readers aren't going to accomplish that. feminist 14:51, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
10. Support, with Option 1 as a close second choice. (I notice that the introduction includes "This might include outright removal of NOT#NEWS" as part of option 3 – I would strongly oppose that; what I'm agreeing with is "expanding our current event coverage".) Anything which receives significant coverage should be included in Wikipedia. Readers are not everything, but I think the deletion of reliably sourced content receiving high traffic is a shame when it occurs. Obviously volunteers are allowed to direct their energy anywhere they want, but I think it is suboptimal when we waste time on long AfD discussions instead of improving the article, or large efforts deleting things rather than creating them (in the specific case of well-sourced articles on recent news stories). Per the eloquent arguments of RileyBugz, Carwil, Coretheapple and feminist. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 20:14, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
11. Support per Bilorv; similarly, Option 1 is fine as well, but there's no need to outright remove NOT#NEWS. I think a good metric for news stories - as hinted at by The Rambling Man - is "will this be interesting in 10 years time, or even 100 years time." But... actually quite a bit of seemingly transient news IS relevant, and will still matter 100 years later. There've been plenty of AfDs on content that, if it had happened in 1927, would still be a fascinating slice of life of the times - maybe even just that this was considered relevant, even if it blew over eventually. (Like... if 1927 KLM Fokker F.VIII crash was as well-built up and sourced as 2006 New York City plane crash (which was AfD'd on NOTNEWS grounds), that'd be great! SnowFire (talk) 09:26, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
12. Support WP:NOTNEWS should be removed per WP:CREEP and WP:NOTLAW. It is obviously our policy and practice to cover items in the news, including breaking news. The way in which we do this is best covered by other, existing guidelines such as WP:UNDUE, WP:N, WP:OR, WP:SUMMARY which address the issues more clearly. Andrew D. (talk) 12:56, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
13. Support per Andrew Davidson. Current events is a significant aspect of Wikipedia's mission, as recognized by the "in the news" section of the main page. Those who wish to turn this into the Britannica are blind to the realities of the way the project works. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:19, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
14. Full Support.--Albin Schmitt (talk) 14:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
15. Support IMO Wikipedia provides an enormous public service by covering news, even (or especially) hot breaking news like Las Vegas Strip shooting. We have not historically had a problem with people putting unconfirmed or incorrect information in such articles; they are usually carefully monitored and vetted by experienced editors. My own experience is that a Wikipedia article about a current event is usually more accurate than any single news report. I'm not saying to abolish NOTNEWS - we don't and shouldn't cover everything as soon as it hits the press - but we should recognize that sometimes it is our duty to our readers to cover this kind of information in a timely fashion. --MelanieN (talk) 23:02, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
16. Support WP:NOTNEWS is generally employed to give teeth to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The best time to find reliable sources is before link rot sets in. I have found that many articles nominated for deletion under WP:NOTNEWS still have appreciable traffic ten years later. Leaning towards supporting Andrew D.'s suggestion of abolishing WP:NOTNEWS entirely; but it certainly should be added to WP:AADP Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:17, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
17. Support Agree with MelanieN that breaking news articles are closely monitored and poor-quality content is quickly removed. Our community does a remarkable job of sorting out verifiable facts as they become available and quickly building a high-quality article. We're not running out of space, so I don't see a reason to delete articles simply because they are old news. –dlthewave ☎ 23:00, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
18. Support If it is reliably sourced, there is no reason why we should not have an article. Verifiability concerns I can respect, some news stories are covered in a way that are guaranteed to give a distorted picture of the subject and thus leave an article that can never be accurate (e.g. BLP1E type), but for many events this is not the case. As to 'will this be important in 10 years?', who cares? If you don't want to write articles on things of no lasting importance, you don't have to --but if I want to, let me. Antrocent (♫♬) 04:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
19. Support as first choice – Verifiability is the reason we have notability standards. It is very easy to verify information on news items, as there is heaps of news articles about them. I do agree though, that articles made extremely quickly after a news break, articles every time Trump says something, and news reports should still be permitted as part of WP:NOTNEWS. J947^{( c ) (m)} 21:59, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
20. Support NOTNEWS is redundant with WP:N. Smooth alligator (talk) 19:57, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
21. Support Used as an excuse not to cover current events. People expect us to cover current events and we do a generally okay job at that. Of course we do not break stories but that does not mean we should not summarize notable stories. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:26, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
22. Support NOTNEWS as currently implemented is detrimental to Wikipedia's mission. It is fine as written, but people act like it should overrule GNG when it comes to covering events. The best use of NOTNEWS is to balance against article notability for routine coverage of local events and against the recentism of giving undue coverage to minor events in news cycles as well as regulating Wikipedia's tone. I largely agree with Hawkeye7, and would like to add that its invocation is often about proving a point rather than supporting free knowledge. Winner 42 Talk to me! 15:29, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
23. Kind of I think we mostly hit the right place, but there are too many people making arguments that newspapers are primary sources or NOTNEWS means we shouldn't cover much of anything recent. I've seen more and more of that recently. So mostly "we are in a good place" but also "I'm worried we are pushing towards too strong of a NOTNEWS world". Hobit (talk) 04:26, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Can you identify any source outside Wikipedia that does not regard news reports as primary sources? Any introductory book about history aimed at high school or undergraduate students explains that they are pretty much the definition of primary sources. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 16:38, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Secondary sources describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that discuss or evaluate someone else's original research. An interview is a great example of a primary source. An article that summarizes a number of interviews and court documents is a clear secondary source. Hobit (talk) 22:26, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

24. First choice In my opinion events that discussed widely in world media is worthy to include in Encyclopedia. --Shrike (talk) 08:12, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
25. Second choice provided there is coverage in multiple secondary sources such as newspaper analysis rather tnan basic primary reporting Atlantic306 (talk) 20:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
26. First choice as there are already remedies in place for dealing with these kinds of articles, and bringing up issues about POV-pushing likely comes in violation of WP:SUSCEPTIBLE. Also, I never thought Wikinews was a good concept after briefly looking at it, and never will. ToThAc (talk) 19:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
27. Should be less strictly enforced or rewritten to be even clearer since we have so many editors who misuse the policy. Makes no sense to try to act like Wikipedia shouldn't cover news. Wikipedia is not a traditional encyclopedia and never will be. I mean, good luck trying to keep articles like 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting and Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations off Wikipedia. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
28. Weak support. I think we should allow for creation of more current events, but clean them up a few months after the event has lapsed and we can assess lasting notability better.Icewhiz (talk) 00:10, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
29. The current approach to "newsworthiness" is broken. We get into too many pointless arguments over at WP:ITN/C for example, over what should be included, and it ends up based on editor's personal preferences, with a cite to WP:NOT#NEWS, rather than a reasoned argument based on reliable sources. Whereas in fact readers should come first. If Donald Trump is being inaugurated on a particular day, and all the newspapers worldwide are covering that with full page splashes, then it should be in our ITN section. That shouldn't even be a debate. We're not a news ticker, but we're also not the judges of the world's values.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:26, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
30. If a current event is clearly notable, getting a "first draft" done while people are actually interested is important. OF COURSE, articles should pass WP:N. But in many cases, they clearly do and NOTNEWS is used to shut down articles that people don't like, not as a as an actual concern. We should WANT Wikipedia to be up to date and current.Casprings (talk) 21:15, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion on NOT#NEWS

On NOTNEWS, I think that the main issue that people have with it is the notability of recent events. I think that we all agree that Wikipedia should not be written in a news style. But, we don't agree whether recent events should ever have a chance of being notable (until a week or so after) or whether we should just increase the number of sources needed for notability. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 18:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, notability is not the main issue. The main issue is that current events are magnets for BLP violations: even if they are notable they are also normally UNDUE and all sorts of other BLP issues, plus a massive suck on the community's time in making sure that BLP is enforced on a highly visible page and figuring out what to do with the content. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't necessarily eliminate notability from this. Inappropriate assessment of notability based on volume of news sources can lead to a too-narrowly defined article on a news topic that does happen to be the subject of much recent news, but where the potential for BLP violations (among other issues) may and has arisen in the past. (eg Dismissal of James Comey to me is indicative of what's been happening here). --MASEM (t) 20:28, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I agree notability is one factor here. It is not the primary danger in my mind, though. The encyclopedia is not harmed by keeping a non-notable event around for a few months before it gets sent to AfD again and merged or deleted. The encyclopedia and real people are harmed when we can't make up our mind on BLP issues and problematic statements under BLP policy keep getting inserted or we have articles created like the first Pissgate article (which was deleted. I'm also not sure if we should even have that redirect, but thats another matter). I think we need to acknowledge that there are several factors in play here, notability being one of them, but it is not the factor that has the potential to do the most damage. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:33, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed on all points. --MASEM (t) 20:40, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see two problems: first, we act as if we were in competition with other sources, so there is something of a "scoop" mentality about getting the story in quickly even if it is wrong. That isn't historically how encyclopedias functioned, and I would almost suggest that we should specifically forbid writing about things so soon after the event. But second, too many people simply do not understand why news stories are published. We have to spend way too much time prying out slow-news-day and click-bait fluff, even when the article in question is years old any there's abundant evidence that nobody ever cared after that. Mangoe (talk) 22:10, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• EEng, I know you had a list of people who had asked to be notified if there was going to be a discussion about enforcing NOTNEWS. I'm notifying you since you probably know where the conversation is. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The ping-me list is at User_talk:EEng#Shaping_a_proposal. I'm not sure I can commit to this discussion at this time. I will say I liked someone's suggestion that if there's going to be an embargo of some kind on breaking news, the right form for it might be that a breaking-news topic shouldn't get its own standalone article for X days or weeks i.e. breaking-news content should, at first, be new content in some appropriate existing article, and only after X days/weeks should it be considered for its own article. The beauty of this is that there will typically be many eyes on the existing article, who will help keep UNDUE, BLP, and similar problems under control.Any after the X waiting period, notability for a standalone article will be much clearer. EEng 23:33, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I've not listed the discussion in Template:CENT yet; I wonder how the discussion would normally proceed without listing it in CENT or notifying others about this discussion. BTW, before voting, let's look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Events/archive and Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Sports/archive. Shall we? Most listed articles are deleted for plainly violating either notability guidelines and/or the "Wikipedia is not a newspaper" policy. Ooh... the Trump orb article is deleted... um, re-created as a redirect, actually. So are other articles. --George Ho (talk) 20:27, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Question - Didn't we just go through this shit? Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:29, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes we did. Coretheapple (talk) 21:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No we didn't. It is a very different question, about exactly how should NOT#NEWS be taken, not a new principle for NOT#NEWS. As the closure of the discussion put it, there is a question of exactly what NOT#NEWS means nowadays. --MASEM (t) 22:00, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• OK, let's see how different this one becomes. Coretheapple (talk) 22:06, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Sort of. This conversation about our encyclopaedic treatment of breaking events was simmering below and at the surface of the RfC and surrounding discussions. Masem identified the issue three weeks ago, during the proposal of this straw poll: Whether [the RfC] closes as failed or no consensus… the disconnect related to the core NOT#NEWS policy is still evident and should be addressed…. I would characterise Masem as passionate about NOTNEWS, and in implementing performing the RfC closure I felt certain this proposed poll would go forward; perhaps that expectation affected my framing of the close. Apologies to community members sick of this topic. It's... historically contentious. Snuge purveyor (talk) 08:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• One commonality with the recently concluded discussion is that the wording is problematic. Option 2 is that NOTNEWS "should be more strongly enforced" or that "En.wiki should have significantly less coverage of current events." To do that would seem to require not enforcement of the existing rules but change in the policy. So that option would appear to incorporate two separate outcomes. One could argue that NOTNEWS is already strictly enforced. Coretheapple (talk) 12:55, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Which is the whole point of this straw poll. the RFC even before it was closed (though the close re-affirmed what I saw) gave no clear indicator how the majority of editors felt about NOT#NEWS, with both directions having been presented. This is meant to simply determine if and by how much of a change in policy is needed, but makes no attempt to say what that could be because its impossible to know what has a likely chance of gaining consensus. --MASEM (t) 13:29, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• But that's precisely my point. Sure some folks are going to be explicit. But when people stop by and says "yeah I'm for option 2" without saying what they want to happen, how is that to be interpreted? Option 2 provides two dramatically different outcomes - enforcement of the existing rules or changing them. If people are silent on these alternate outcomes, how do you read their minds? Coretheapple (talk) 14:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• You can't, but the whole point of a straw poll is to get a quick idea of an opinion, and determine how strong the various opinions to see what type of action might be appropriate to suggest. If one option "wins" by a landfall, then there's clearly a means to consider new policy or the like towards that. If instead it just "wins" by a few percentage, I would say a massive policy change is out of the question. I do point out in the intro that results could range from adjusting existing P&G to creating new policy to eliminating some policies. --MASEM (t) 14:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Power~enwiki: The problem with Wikinews is a catch-22. It requires editors to use to fill it with news stories, and then there needs to be awareness that it exists so that people coming to WMF projects for news coverage use that instead. If no one knows about it, it's hard to draw editors to use it. If editors don't use it, it gets no visibility and people don't know about it. It's not dead-dead, articles are still created for it, but its very clear that editors and readers presently believe en.wiki is the place to find news articles, and Wikinews is basically a ghost town. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oftentimes I see an AfD on a recently created article on a recent event (say, a terrorist attack) with people saying things to the effect "keep, meets GNG" and "delete, NOTNEWS". Typically these end up as "keep", I am not sure if there is a general feeling on how such cases should be treated. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:41, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jo-Jo Eumerus, Masem - is there a way to know how much time a reader spends at an article or do our stats provide only clicks? There's also no way to know why page views increase or what information our readers are hoping to find. I'm of the mind that a news story breaks, and readers come to WP for validation based on NPOV. If all we're doing is reporting allegations cited to the NYTimes, WaPo, etc. then we're turning our project into another bait/click news source. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:43, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Atsme: One rough way to count how interesting people find an article is to compare the amount of hits other pages linked from said article get. That works only if the article is getting a lot of attention - if it's uninteresting people won't click on its links and then the other pages don't see many more clicks, if it is interesting the other pages will receive a lot more. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:06, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse my lack of knowledge in this area but other than manually pulling up page stats for each article in What links here (via the tool in the sidebar menu), is there an auto-calculation somewhere? I looked at Page information, then Page view statistics - does Wikilink checker contribute anything? ^{Atsme📞📧} 19:21, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting and List of terrorist incidents in October 2017(and its kindred) are examples of the problems we have with editors seeing something in the media and adding it immediately. Every rumour gets added as soon as it hits the web, no matter how dodgy the source. Doug Weller talk 15:45, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are RS and BLP insufficient to deal with this problem? If they are not being sufficiently enforced, the problem won't be solved by adding another policy that won't be enforced. Gamaliel (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Technically between the existing NOT#NEWS, RS, and BLP, these should be kept in check (that's the whole point of WP:RECENTISM, but as sometimes breaking news articles get swayed on being "popularity contests" in the number of voices supporting something outweigh those arguing for established policy, to which part of that is something I'd attributed to a lax treatment of NOT#NEWS by long-time editors, and admins. There are a lot of other factors though that contribute to this too, it's not just a NOT#NEWS issue, but better adherence to NOT#NEWS would help alot. --MASEM (t) 17:44, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's also the speed at which these articles are edited. I haven't looked but I know that the right wing media had a different, innocent (but liberal) subject named as the shooter and his name was the main name on Google for a few hours. I hope it didn't get into any of our articles. These articles also attract a lot of new editors who don't have a clue and are quite happy to argue. Doug Weller talk 17:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MelanieN: for a while yesterday Facebook and Google were presenting a conspiracy theory naming someone uninvolved as the shooter. I haven't checked to see if this poor guy's name ever go into our article (but I will), but such instant responses to breaking stories, particularly when often done by new editors who don't know about reliable sources or care at times, can be damaging. Doug Weller talk 08:00, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller: Please do check; I'd like to know. I will be very surprised if our systems failed that badly. In the time I have been involved with the article, we have been concerned with whether and how to report that false news incident as false news; it seems finally to have found a home under "Social media". My hunch is that if anyone had inserted that story at the time, it would have been removed almost instantly as poorly sourced. --MelanieN (talk) 14:29, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MelanieN: I used Wikiblame and went back through 1500 edits, but it looks as though it wasn't added. If it had been added, I wouldn't be surprised if a copy of that version showed up somewhere else. Doug Weller talk 14:34, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking. I have actually been very impressed with what a good job we do on breaking news stories like this. To me it proves again the saying, "the trouble with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work." --MelanieN (talk) 14:45, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I looked all through the talk page archives and can't find that anyone ever even proposed adding that false report. There were a few other wild conspiracy theories proposed at the talk page, but they were quickly shut down and never got into the article. The only false thing that went into the article is that some people, before the article was protected, inserted "Muslim" or something similar to describe the shooter. Removed almost instantly. We have strong systems. --MelanieN (talk) 14:54, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:Doug Weller, the first item in the list you cite is the Marseille stabbing. In fact Fr police are at present very equivocal as to whether this incident is terrorist or not French interior minister Gérard Collomb said: “It might be a terrorist act, but at this point we can’t say so with certainty”. Of course no such uncertainty is mentioned in 'our' list, and the likelihood of it being even reported widely if the story has an anti-climatic end (if, for example it was simply a conventional murder), so any update probably won't be incorporated in our article or list unless it is 'dramatic'. I believe this identifies the real danger of 'news' articles, which are the 'peripheral stories' and list entries with too few watchers, rather than the big events like 'Las Vegas'. A particularly silly example is recorded here, where WP on two seperate lists recorded a terrorist plot that simply never existed. Failing to 'update' is the norm, rather than the exception in this topic area, with dozens of articles that I know of ending "police arrested X suspects", (but how many were ever convicted of anything?) . I don't know what we do about it however. Pincrete (talk) 13:06, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hell, that was User:Gianluigi02 that I recently blocked for 72 hours for similar edits. Doug Weller talk 13:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another editor put it into another list, where it stayed even longer (20-ish months) and many other editors cheerfully reinstated (and sometimes embellished) it on the first list, claiming it to be "well-sourced". The list article was so full of SYNTH and over-statement that even I did not notice it for a long time. It was a NOTNEWS argument that finally killed it. Pincrete (talk) 14:43, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some points to reply to in regards to @Gamaliel and @Fuzheado in their !votes about forum shopping and Wikinews. First, as forum shopping, this is not the question that was asked at WT:NOT about NOT#NEWS. That was a very specific proposal about how much commentary should be in news articles, which during the course of it, it became clear the bigger "issue" is how NOT#NEWS is to be treated, period. That was a point made in the closure of that previous discussion , so it is not forum shopping because this is asking a very different, and much larger question about our relationship to breaking news, in the first place. Second, the Wikinews issue, I fully agree that Wikinews is dead, the problem is, there was nothing in place that designed en.wiki as the defacto place that news would go with Wikinews being dead. There's nothing that says WMF needs a sister site that handles news. Maybe it might seem to be practice to have news on WP, but that's a change from NOT#NEWS that never appeared to have been processed through by consensus. The point here is thus to establish if that practice does have any type of consensus, and update policies and guidelines as needed. If the practice is fine, then that needs to be written into policies and guidelines; if not, then we need to fix how it is being practiced. --MASEM (t) 19:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem and Gamaliel: - Regarding this: "there was nothing in place that designed en.wiki as the defacto place that news would go with Wikinews being dead." Er, you don't need a formal pact, agreement or interface on where one starts and one begins. In fact, Wikipedia existed for years before Wikinews ever came to the scene, and there was never anything formal about Wikinews does X to the exclusion of Y on Wikipedia, nor should there be. Regarding what you said, "that's a change from NOT#NEWS that never appeared to have been processed through by consensus." The practice is the consensus! It has been this way for years and years, and only now are you surfacing this as some sort of illegitimate mode of operation that needs an overhaul when there is no real desire to do so. Frankly, it's puzzling and borderline patronizing when we as a community have done very well with creating articles as news breaks and serve the public interest. Forget the old notions of "this bin is news" and "this bin in history" and never the two shall be comingled. The great thing about Wikipedia is that it blends these two seamlessly in a way we've never done before, so why make that harsh and artificial distinction? Nobody puts Wikipedia in a corner! -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:52, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just because it's practice doesn't make it a community consensus, particularly if the change is slow and not immediately obvious. I agree that we probably have been running current event articles for several years that would seem to go against the rub of NOT#NEWS, but this wasn't an issue until events of the last couple of years, principally driven by the US election, which has created a unique political and ideological battleground in the world as a whole that never had been present prior to this, and eventually filters down into en.wiki. The "practice" of rapidly pushing current news, while seemingly okay before, has created an endless stream of behavioral problems, much less issues with how news intersects with key content policies, because of what current news typically ends up being. That's not sustainable, unless we either establish the practice as having consensus, or adjusting our policies and guideline to reflect which way the community would want to see this. There is no question that some news today can eventually become an encyclopedic topic tomorrow, and thus it makes no sense to wholly chase off news coverage on WP. But to what level we cover breaking news and migrate that into an encyclopedic topic is a question that really needs to be answered in this current political and ideological environment. --MASEM (t) 21:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I think the most useful thing would be a straw poll or survey trying to identify what -- if any - kinds of content should be excluded under NOTNEWS. I think a lot of people will say "nothing -- if there is an RS it comes into WP". I am curious if we can get consensus around anything. If we can, then NOTNEWS should be narrowed to that. If we cannot find anything then NOTNEWS should be removed from NOT. But the first step is to try to get people to identify what they think NOTNEWS does exclude. Nobody replied at my query at NOT; how do you feel about trying that here Masem? Jytdog (talk) 05:28, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  @Jytdog: We can get specific consensus for certain limitations; this particular change simply hasn't been made to WP:NOTNEWS. --Izno (talk) 12:39, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You have more confidence than I do that we will find anything left of this policy in what editors actually do. There is a very strong strain of "it is in a source so we include it" out there. Jytdog (talk) 12:42, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree with that statement, and now wondering if the changes need to occur in Notability first. POV or possibly even agendas/advocacy gets in the way of independent critical thinking that is compliant with NPOV. Encyclopedic value (EV) is easily measured by WP:FP but how do we determine an article's EV for inclusion? The simple answer is the number of times RS write about it. Therein a big part of the problem lies. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:50, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neither Wikipedia nor Wikinews are set up to work well with current events and breaking news stories. Here's why:

1. Immediacy. I used to contribute at WikiNews but found it immensely frustrating, because the whole thing is so very slow. You can write a couple of unreferenced sentences on Wikipedia, tag it as a stub, and publish it immediately. Straight away it's visible to readers, and you can continue working on it - making it longer, adding sources and images etc, as can other editors. This is the way other news outlets work - they publish a "breaking news" article that's usually just a sentence or two, then add content as more information becomes available. But not Wikinews. On Wikinews there's no concept of breaking news, of the importance of publishing first and editing later. Every single Wikinews article has to be reviewed by somebody else before it's published. With so few users on that project, it can be several days before your "breaking" news article is even looked at. News by definition has to be "new". It's crazy that we can publish something to Wikipedia with immediate effect but not to our newspaper sister project.
2. Original research is allowed and very much encouraged on Wikinews, but obviously not on Wikipedia (and rightly so). To work as a news source, original research is important. The eyewitness report, the first-hand account, the reporter on the ground, the direct interview - these often make for the best news articles but they have no place in an encyclopaedia. This is something Wikinews gets right and that Wikipedia would fail at if the decision was made to replace Wikinews with Wikipedia's current events section.
3. Editorials and opinion pieces don't stand a chance with the NPOV policies that exist on both sites. NPOV is vital for every encyclopaedia article and is rightly one of the central pillars of Wikipedia policy. We want Wikimedia sites to be neutral and welcoming to all, so we don't want our newspaper project to have a strong overall political leaning as many regular newspapers do. But opinion pieces and reporter blogs are now an important feature of just about every news source out there, and the key is to allow points of view to be represented in them provided they are balanced (i.e. one piece "for", another "against", resulting in overall balance) and clearly marked as an opinion piece and not a news article.
4. Edit conflicts. The Wikimedia platform is great for collaboration over a long time, but bearing in mind the importance of immediacy mentioned above, big breaking news stories really need to allow multiple editors to work on the article in real time, in the same way as a shared Google Drive document/spreadsheet. That's a massive technical hurdle to overcome, and currently some way off. (See mw:Parser_2011/Real-time_collaboration and mw:Extension:TogetherJS)

For me, the biggest barrier by far is that first one. WikiNews needs to change the way it works dramatically and fundamentally if it is to succeed. But if Wikinews does the job it's meant to do, we can then look at strengthening the NOT:NEWS policy here on Wikipedia. Meanwhile we have a mess on our hands and I don't think any of the proposals in this RfC will remedy that. WaggersTALK 14:13, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• My 2¢ Based on my admittedly anecdotal experiences at AfD and elsewhere I'd say that NOTNEWS is so widely ignored that it is about a half step away from being WP:HISTORICAL. I don't like it. Point in fact I am appalled by it. But it is what it is. Maybe it's time to just admit that it's on life support and talk about pulling the plug. -Ad Orientem (talk) 21:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's part of why I opted for this straw poll to see if that was a viable option. The current stances suggest otherwise (edging to make NOT#NEWS enforcement stronger presently), meaning we should be looking to find ways to fix issues with how AFD handles new news articles without being bitey to newcomers, among other things. A lot of AFDs I see on news events comes down to editors thinking "lots of immediate coverage" == "notable topic", despite both NOT#NEWS and WP:N saying otherwise, and AFDs are unfortunately easy to swing by sheer numbers of !votes. --MASEM (t) 22:20, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The !votes so far are as close to a lack of consensus as I have ever seen. The far more lopsided sentiments in the NOT discussion were termed "no consensus" long before the close, so I find your "edging" characterization interesting in light of that. Coretheapple (talk) 23:06, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Might have missed some, but taking out duplicates and second choices it appears to be a dead heat, 38 in favor of strengthening, 38 keeping same or weakening, at the present time. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 17:41, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Idea

• Comment. Its pretty obvious that the issue is not with NOTNEWS, but with the total failure of the Wikinews project to attract a sustainable editor base. Rather than whatever you hope to achieve here in this RfC, you should consider the bigger picture. For example a simple change to the Wikimedia software to add a namespace called News: could deal with the problem and revitalise Wikinews at once, some news items worthy of long term inclusion in the enclyopedia would be simply moved to mainspace via a method similar to AfC, news items would exist on wikipedia as a kind of draft, but still be indexable and accessible. Simultaneously dealing with the NOTNEWS and Wikinews issues in one action. To avoid issues with removing Wikinews, all news articles would be editable via Wikinews (which would still exist as a portal) and on Wikipedia, where we would no longer have to fret over which news stories will be relevant later on. This whole system is more in line with Wikipedias 'lagging behind' verifiability policy, and avoids splitting editors into unsustainable over-localised communities. Α Guy into Books™ § (Message) -  21:30, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Aguyintobooks, the article creation has become a total mess as is. Right now, we have 1500+ articles pending review via AfC. A bunch of articles, including some articles about current events, get deleted from Wikipedia because they fail to meet encyclopedic standards. Currently, we have WP:ACTRIAL running for six months. Merging Wikinews into Wikipedia would make matters worse. We would expect more articles created and then deleted for failing to meet the standards. Also, what about 20+ other Wikinews language sites? This year, Dutch Wikinews is reopened. --George Ho (talk) 00:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. Replicating the AfC model is not the way forward. The future of how we handle new content in in limbo pending ACTRIAL/the followup RfC, and the current policy fights over the draft space are popping up all over my watchlist, and I never seek out doing anything with the draft space. Making current events AfC/Drafts 2.0 is a battleground waiting to happen. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I also thought of this as a possible solution, but yeah there are too many problems with similar processes currently for it to be feasible. Maybe if we ever get AfC and drafts and all that stuff figured out, this could be a good idea. ansh666 09:00, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Aguyintobooks: The problem here and at Wikinews is the same problem: there seem to be a lot of people who want to wave around policies to try to interfere with free-licensed work about news. If you do work on Wikinews, it is very likely to be thrown away - that's why no one does. Even if successful, it will be a locked snapshot, not a comprehensive review of a phenomenon. Now I don't know the motivation of any specific person, but I think on average we should look at the myriad legal embattlements and legislative setbacks of news aggregators to see that the ever-shrinking media industry might be exerting some push-back against its competitors. I mean, if the encyclopedias had done the same back in 2001, Britannica would be making as much money as Microsoft! But on Wikipedia there is a never-ending stream of editors from other topics who just wade in and start editing without regard that we're not supposed to be able to put current events in context. This raw ignorance is our foremost strength. Wnt (talk) 18:47, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The statement "the total failure of the Wikinews project to attract a sustainable editor base..." is entirely true. The reason for that is that the entrenched editor base is mostly lazy and opposed to helping new users integrate their contributions in a useful manner; rather they see it as their duty to eradicate all new user contribitions that don't meet the extremely strict standards that have taken years of experience to develop. It's the expectation that all brand new Wikipedia users are born fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus, and that any new contribution which is not already FA-quality is to be deleted within seconds of its creation with little to no explanation of the problem, and absolutely no attempt to improve such substandard contributions. What kills new user retention is primarily a culture that treats them all as enemies until they have proven themselves not to be. --Jayron32 14:11, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Mea culpa. Misunderstood the OP's original point. My response makes no sense. Carry on. --Jayron32 15:09, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your point is perfectly valid though, having ~2250 pages of policy is one thing, expecting new users to understand it all is another.  --- Α Guy Into Books™ § (Message) -  21:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Truer words were never spoken. I have been here for 3 years, and I feel as though I have just begun to get a grip on the morass of policy in the handful of areas where I most commonly edit. To me, editing feels like a deadly video game were partisan gangs try to kill you as you wander through an uncharted swamp without a compass trying to avoid the arcane booby-traps that editors set to get you banned.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:38, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  Large systems always grow in procedure as the numbers grow. At some point communication breaks down and a policy is made to hold the signal. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:58, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I think E.M.Gregory's point in his !vote about current events articles being an entry point for new editors is a good one. People have an interest in current events, readers like them, and they add value. A win-win all around. Coretheapple (talk) 22:30, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • We definitely do not want to be too restrictive on new editors, and we want to encourage them to participate, but at the same time, current event articles can be touchy, and already a large subset of them fall under the post-1923 US politics Arbcom DS, where it's not the best for a novice to be making unsure edits compared to other pages. There's definitely a balance needed. --MASEM (t) 23:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • You mean, post-1932, right? George Ho (talk) 23:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Realistically all events were current at some point, and there are going to be more people interested in an event at the time it happens than some years afterwards, but a balance has to be struck somewhere, especially for events where the available information changes rapidly.  --- Α Guy Into Books™ § (Message) -  23:17, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everything was current at one point or another but the online media quickly shares stories saying essentially the same thing; you never had that in 1932. Editors need to understand that journalists report one thing, and we, who are not journalists (some like to believe they are, however), have a different criteria for our content. If we were more patient, most current events would reveal their importance in a few weeks and speculation would be replaced by verified facts. Perhaps we can move current events to a draft space for a week or two and then access if it established a historic or societal importance after that time has passed.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 00:32, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"most current events would reveal their importance in a few weeks" A few weeks? I think you mean a few years. Secondary source analysis (see WP:ANALYSIS) has to take place well-removed from the event. We shouldn't be writing about any presidential administration until they're a dozen years out of office. I could argue we shouldn't have any entries about living people, at all. It's still too early to write about the Gulf War, let alone the Invasion of Iraq in 2003. But of course, Wikipedia exists as a playground for wannabe writers to shout out their narrative. Wikipedia's crass inclusive approach to keep the donations coming in results in shoddy entries written by fanboys and cranks. Had we emphasized article quality over article quantity we might have built our gamification around writing responsible entries rather than the vomiting of words into multiple overlapping pages. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:09, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chris troutman I actually agree with you more than you probably realize. In fact, I really need your perspective for some of the articles I nominate for deletion! I was trying to bring about some sort of middle ground: no consensus will exist, instructing us to wait years for notability. Many editors like putting their "I'm a journalist" caps on and writing an often inaccurate load of drivel we are forced to call an "encyclopedic article". Unless more editors like you participate at AfD, I doubt we can initiate a serious movement to rid Wikipedia of news.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 02:15, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@TheGracefulSlick: I'm your huckleberry, but I've hurt my AfD record by tilting at these windmills to prevent Wikipedia from being a free-for-all. I recognize Wikipedia isn't a serious endeavor, despite my desire for it to be that. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:26, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Whether or not our articles are "inaccurate loads of drivel" (I think not), at least we still have copy editors and can spell, which is more than can be said for most of the professional media outlets that people have to resort to for far less comprehensive, partisan, and hard-to-find reviews of news events if they can't find them on Wikipedia. Wnt (talk) 10:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Realistically whether our news articles are relevant depends greatly on the quality of our editor base, there is the inherent problem that news is closer to original research and harder to verify than an encyclopedic topic, and the issues presented by the accepted facts changing is always an issue. and the obvious issue that wikinews is always behind everyone else (as it is based on other news, which for news is really a disadvantage. Not a disadvantage faced by wikipedia. The strongest core concept of wikinews is that is a neutral aggregate of content, A wikinews article should always be more complete than any other single piece of coverage. A den jentyl ettien avel dysklyver 11:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I want to emphasize the points made above by User:Carwil and User:Feminist. Feminist is correct to flag the negative impact on the project viscous attacks on new editors get socked with at AfDs on big news stories. And Carwil is surely correct that energy is better put into improving articles at the moment when they are drawing attention, to which I want to add that I, personally, go to WP as an efficient way to get up to speed on a breaking political or culture wars firestorm. I expect the article to exist. And it often leads me to go take a moment to expand one of our many old, sad, neglected articles on a neighborhood, institution, think tank, publication, or individual involved in the breaking news event.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:24, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Excellent points. postdlf (talk) 22:39, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Some observations

I'm going to note a few common themes that I'm seeing in the !votes here as they come - I'm not suggesting they are immediately actionable, that they have consensus, or the like, but they open up some reason and points of discussion why we're at this impasse on NOT#NEWS and how to proceed on that. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

1. Handling of current events articles at AFD is an issue - both from those there !voting "Keep per GNG" (asking larger questions about news reports, bursts of news, and notability per NEVENT/GNG) and those !voting "Delete per NOT#NEWS" (more reflecting of how strong NOT#NEWS should be enforced). There should be a middle ground recognizing that DEADLINE is also a factor in addition to NOT#NEWS. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see no such common theme at present. Coretheapple (talk) 18:46, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with Coretheapple; no consensus has appeared. Moreover, the problem with WP:DEADLINE is the reality that creating articles when a significant event is breaking news is among the few proven techniques to overcome our endemic shortage of editors, because when an EVENT is notable enough to support an article, many editors show up and usually create pretty solid articles before the news cycle ends. There is all the time in the world to delete, but the existence of fingers willing to build the article evaporates rapidly.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:40, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I question whether 'breaking news' articles actually recruit new editors. Certainly they attract IP's and a few 'newbies' (some of both are quick learners and great to have around, and some are huge liabilities) to edit on that particular article, but is there any reason to believe that news articles actually recruit long term editors? This has not been my experience. Pincrete (talk) 11:01, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but just to elaborate a little, the comments here should speak for themselves and editors should not be providing an ongoing play-by-play that purports to summarize the positions of multiple editors at any given point in time. Even if so far there was an actual consensus or overwhelming view on a particular subject,, that would have to be viewed in conjunction with whatever else is said. Let's not fragment and tilt the discussion, please. Coretheapple (talk) 20:24, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My only point here is that regardless of the straw poll, there is a valid concern of problems of how NOT#NEWS is handled (for or against) at AFD on recent news articles. I can't tell you how that has to be fixed, yet, but the AFD angle (whether we are talking retention of an article or deletion) is an issue of concern. --MASEM (t) 18:01, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

News articles on current events are primary sources, and primary sources have little weight in a notability (AFD) discussion. If the only reason to keep the article is 'its been in the news recently' then it lacks notability and so should be deleted. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:06, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think that there is a certain consensus for a stricter application of NOTNEWS as it applies to BLP violations. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 19:07, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Seems more logical to apply BLP to BLP violations. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are frequently times where good RSes do publish things that we would normally consider BLP violations, like the rush to name suspects. What happens far too often is editors will see that name in good RSes, and believe it is appropriate to add right away to the articles, as they don't see it as a BLP violation (because RSes back the naming). But for us, that generally is the case until some time has passed to know how much importance the suspect's name is to the situation, as per BLP. BLP is not 100% consistent which is where situations like this come up. --MASEM (t) 18:01, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's terrible how the media refers to [name redacted] as the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 23:39, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's not where the problem arises. I distinctly remember during Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that in the first few hours, the name of the brother of the actual shooter was named as the shooter in several RSes, only because his ID was on the shooter's body. Obviously it all got sorted out in the end, but if we had included his name at the time, that would have been a major BLP problem. That's an example of a situation with BLP is at odds with massive coverage by RS. Even with the LV shooting, I know several of the early articles this morning named a possible accomplice to the shootings, but that was quickly ruled out by police. Properly, our article does not mention this person at all despite that RSes still mentioning the name. Furthermore, and this is more a sign of the times, but there were tons of false stories that floated around on major RSes, some intentionally false. (I could also point out the situation with Tom Petty today as yet another example of this). BLP is supposed to prevent issues with that, and in the long-term it does, but in the short term there has to be more awareness of why we have NOT#NEWS towards this end to help protect BLP from misinformation. --MASEM (t) 23:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't see the need for yet another layer of rules, based upon the supposition that RSs may not "get it right" now but may "get it right" down the road. That would put articles in a straitjacket, and would be subject to all kinds of abuse and conflict. Our BLP rules are already strict and more than sufficient. What you describe as a "problem" is simply a fact of life, not just for current events articles but all articles, even articles on ancient subjects, as the RS sources shift and change in their perspective. All we do is reflect the RS sources. That does not create a BLP issue a all, but rather is a mirror to the reality of the sourcing. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 00:32, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a "fact of life" that we needed (or for that matter still need) 240 posts so far in the Tom Petty article. It's only a fact of WP, apparently, that people cannot be trusted to get caught up in the what will prove to be a passing and unimportant episode of misinformation. Mangoe (talk) 02:01, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another datapoint showing that BLP is not sufficient to deal with NOT#NEWS violations: Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct allegations - an article based only on that allegations were made and some of those aftereffects on Weinstein, but going into far too much detail for what is yet to be even a legal charge against him. --MASEM (t) 13:43, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another datapoint is how swiftly your AfD of the article was closed as a speedy keep, without a single supporting !vote. You seem to have a narrow view of NOTNEWS that is extreme and out of step with the community. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:22, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I feel the need for written clarification of BLP as it applies to current events. Many unproductive discussions and edit wars could be avoided if we had something that explicitly stated "we do not refer to something as a murder/homicide/assault/attack until there is a conviction." This may already be covered by the existing policy, but it should be written in a way that can't easily be misinterpreted or misrepresented. –dlthewave ☎ 22:53, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Unfortunately, none of this is new. for a non-recent example of an article where NOTNEWS was totally ignored... see University of Florida Taser incident (of "Don't tase me, bro" fame.) Worth reading the discussions that took place about why that article should be kept. 17:54, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

• There is a lot of inappropriate assumption that media are necessarily reliable as a class, when the reality is that in the extreme short-term, they really aren't that reliable. It is typical of breaking news stories that initial reports aren't reliable: they're usually somewhat right, but they are often revised more or less drastically in light of later reports. I see no reason why something calling itself an encyclopedia should be chasing this. Reliability of accounts is something that is achieved over the long term, when the matter has been sifted through. Quick response media really cannot be taken to be that reliable until others judge them so, and that takes retrospection and therefore time. Mangoe (talk) 20:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd suggest that a more important need, one that no one has addressed, is to update "news" articles after the initial hubub has died down and the pageviews and editor interest has ebbed. That is an issue not just for articles on recent events but for all kinds of articles. "Orphaned" and neglected articles, sometimes bearing maintenance tags for years, are a serious problem in the project. Coretheapple (talk) 14:05, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is a serious issue, which is why a possible solution is to create a space that is on en.wiki and comes up in search results so that current news is there, and excepted to follow all content policies, but serves as a means to incubate news content such that if it doesn't turn out notable once the initial coverage has died down, it can be deleted, merged, or otherwise placed in context of something else. (Obviously notable stories can be brought into mainspace without question). It's like a Draft: space, but it needs to be more integrated with mainspace, and should have more formal processes to remove content that hasn't yet been transitioned to mainspace so they don't linger. Whether this has to be an explicit "News:" space, or management of article tags, I don't know, but it would meet both sides of the matter. (And there's a lot of cavaets, this by no means a formal proposal for this). --MASEM (t) 14:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, that would be like trying to light a campfire with napalm. A simple problem requiring a simple solution: greater energy expended after an article has lost its high visibility status. Not just news articles but, for instance, articles on corporations that have undergone scandal. BP comes to mind. Coretheapple (talk) 16:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • No. Better to head off the crap to begin with - and it is crap always filled with the personal predilictions of the Wikipedia editors because there are no sources who have reflected and weighed - just the personal prejudices of Wikipedians - and it is absolutely no public service to be a news aggregator. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:36, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm not seeing crap, I'm seeing articles in need of updating. BP isn't crap. 2014 East Harlem gas explosion isn't crap, and neither is filled with personal predilictions. Coretheapple (talk) 21:50, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Not really. Once an article has lost its high visibility status in the news, we should be reviewing it per NEVENT/GNG for notability and appropriateness. Some will clearly stay, some should be merged, and few should be deleted. That achieves the same thing of then being able to tag those that are key to gain more eyes to improve, resummarize, and work in later sources after the initial burst of news, rather than let them stagnate. New developments on existing articles are less a problem, save for far far too much proseline in many cases, since we're not questioning the basic notability of the original topic. --MASEM (t) 22:28, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Masem: Can you cite any examples of current event articles which were deleted after they were no longer current events? Coretheapple (talk) 13:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2009 Fox News – White House controversy Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2014 Romania helicopter crash Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2014 Norfolk helicopter crash Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011 India–Pakistan border incident Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kosovo–Serbia January 2017 train incident (merged but effectively same for the question at hand) - This is just scanning the first few pages of hits in the AFD archives. Obviously there's also some keeps and some retained by no consensus, but there are definitely deletions. --MASEM (t) 13:43, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
            • @Masem: I'm referring to articles on current events that were deleted when they were no longer current. All except the India-Pakistan one were deleted shortly after they were created, and the India-Pakistan one appears to have reappeared as 2011 India–Pakistan border skirmish. Coretheapple (talk) 14:58, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
              • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Power Shortage in Japan 2012, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017 collapse of Route 4 bridge in Israel, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2014 SOCATA TBM crash (2nd nomination), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicolas Estemar stabbing spree. And that's just a portion of a list I'm scanning through.
              • I will say that it is reasonable to allow articles on current events to be created and given some time to demonstrate notability per both NEVENT and GNG (with obvious hoaxes or BLP violations speedily removed), but we should still have some checkpoint a few weeks after creation of such that these articles are either approved with presumed notability (if not sooner if it is obvious) or sent to AFD to be deleted. --MASEM (t) 15:20, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
                • I'd say overall we have a pretty good record at creating articles that last and deleting ones that don't seem very significant in retrospect. And when dubious articles are created that aren't deleted... so what? I wanted Richard Matt deleted. The community emphatically disagreed. The article remains, and I fail to see excessive harm from that, except to my ego. And no, I'm not going to nom it for deletion again, for the simple reason that in fact he has gotten so much notoriety since his demise he probably does warrant an article. Coretheapple (talk) 17:02, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
                  • The problem is that when you start reviewing some of the other AFDs on events, (and I don't have any in front of me, this is from recollection earlier today) is that there is a strong pattern of numerous !votes going "Keep, lots of international coverage" and the closer clearly following that majority despite opposing !votes that point out that bot NOT#NEWS, WP:N, and WP:NEVENT point out that a burst of coverage is not sufficient to keep a news event. In other words, its a compound problem of editors not understanding existing policy/guidelines and admins not properly evaluating !votes under NOT#NEWS concerns. And then further, when this articles are kept, and the AFD is a mere memory, no one spends the time to convert these from newspaper, on-the-spot reporting to something that is more appropriate for permanence. (The whole problem with reaction sections is one part of this). Compare Watergate scandal or Lewinsky scandal (pre-WP days) to United States diplomatic cables leak (written as the events went along). Even something like Boston Marathon bombing is still showing the training wheels it needed to build out when the event was happening, and that's an article with a lot of editing activity still. And these are the high profile news articles; it's the smaller ones that have less of an impact that are typically even worse and are frequently overlooked. There is definitely a place for allowing editors to start current events articles, but we need to have a better process to make sure that these are going to end up being quality articles at some point. There's no one solution to this, but based only on the poll, there probably needs to be something changed, though not drastically. --MASEM (t) 00:42, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
                    • "Based only on the poll." We're back to that again? It is indeed funny how the lopsided !vote in the NOTNEWS page you interpreted as "no consensus" whereas this even-steven one you claim to be a mandate for something . There is no consensus here to do anything, with half the !voters wanting less or the same enforcement of Notnews and half wanting stronger. As for all those articles that need improvement, sofixem. Coretheapple (talk) 12:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not News and Reliable Sources conflict. The strictest definition of "not news" will mean that even if there are reliable sources, inclusion should be banned because Wikipedia is not news.

I believe the solution that reliable sources is a higher priority than not news. This is because if there is something truly historic but it doesn't have reliable sources, it cannot be put into Wikipedia. However, something that has reliable sources, even if we think it is news, is more worthy.

The biggest problem is that there is no editorial board and professionally trained editor in chief to make decisions. That is the wikipedia way. AGrandeFan (talk) 20:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it important to have articles on breaking news?

This is, to me, the undiscussed question. From my perspective, I can see three reasons not to have such articles:

1. They create notability issues because of the implication that anything that has been published about at all is notable, which our principles have said isn't true. Getting rid of them is laborious.
2. They present accuracy issues because the real sources are unstable (and often enough unreliable) and because the tendency is for the article to freeze at the point where someone lost interest. One has to hope that someone comes back after things quiet down and potential sources have had a chance to take a longer view and sort out all the various reports (which, BTW, could on some level be taken as primary sources, when it comes to that), but often enough it doesn't happen. It's pretty common that, in the long run, The World decides the event was unimportant and doesn't get around to sorting it out beyond ignoring it.
3. They present readers with a choice: who should your read for breaking news: the news, or us? Shouldn't the answer be, "well, not us, for now"?

I see some sentiment of "well, it gets sorted out in the end." I don't think that's true, but even to the degree that it does, aren't we performing a disservice until it does? Mangoe (talk) 16:46, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A few reasons I'd offer:

• We are instinctively drawn to "citizen journalism", which is enabled by the MediaWiki platform, the WMF, and the general polices we have. It also fits well within WP due to inter-linking and a cadre of templates and tools to help build these articles. The "citizen journalism" is more in effect in the last several years due to several factors (read: Trump) that has drawn more eyes and more potential breaking news topics.
• We have had several successful breaking news articles developed on WP without much fuss and with high quality from the start, and WMF has praised that approach in the past, validating it. However, these examples all tend to be examples of major disasters (earthquakes, international terrorist attacks, etc.) where most of the reporting is objective so editors aren't fighting or pushing specific content. However, applying this same model to other stories (eg anything dealing with the Russia interference in the US elections) tends to cause more problems. There is a place for certain types of breaking news stories, but not every breaking news story needs to be in WP the moment. Most breaking should wait until we know we're into the long-tail of the story, and thus can have a more holistic view of the event to write for WP to know if it is appropriately notable, and how to structure the article and views and opinions associated with it, as to avoid OR and POV with trying to cover from the instant start.
• Where citizen journalism was to be established by the WMF, Wikinews, has failed, but the drive to write and read breaking news articles persists. It has migrated to en.wiki based on the previous models where breaking news has worked well, but when all breaking news is reported on en.wiki, it seems to cause no end to problems. We could admit we are now WikiNews and adopt policies to reflect that, but from the current state of this straw poll, that's not a likely solution. --MASEM (t) 17:06, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding #1: I think that the objection here is poorly framed, in that the implication that is not merely that anything published is notable, it is that anything which is published in sufficient depth in the proper sources is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in some manner. Requirements of sourcing are universal, and don't "go away" merely because sufficient time has not passed since the event. The fact that something happened yesterday or last year or 1,000 years ago does not change the existence or non-existence of sufficient source text. If the source text is sufficient, what more is needed?
• Regarding #2: This is an issue which is true for all sources, and for all text across Wikipedia. It isn't unique to new news. Accuracy at Wikipedia is only as good as interest, and we have thousands of articles on old subjects which are based on outdated, inaccurate, or outright false information right now. That is not restricted to new stories. It's not a good thing, mind you, but it's also not a problem unique to recent events, which means setting some artificial time limit on when a topic becomes "eligible" for Wikipedia wouldn't fix the problem.

--Jayron32 17:00, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Then there's Stonehenge, old and forgotten, but continually in the news since the dawn of the Internet. Authorities now believe the perpetrators "ate food from Scotland". Wikipedia neither confirms nor denies these latest allegations. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:49, October 23, 2017 (UTC)

When we do it well, we do it really well. Sources of breaking news are not merely cited, they are in-line attributed "The town sheriff was reported on CNN as saying it was almost certainly the work of werewolves." Meanwhile we often find news outlets are quoting each other and rumour as fact.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:36, 16 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Food for thought

It seems to me the point of NOTNEWS is to weed out overly detailed summaries of events. Some events can only be described by such, and the litmus test appears to be that if that's what it takes to elevate an event to Wikipedia-style coverage, it's not worthy of inclusion here. To be frank, the policy seems fine to me, but then, what do I know? I won't add it above because I feel like there's something missing here, something I don't quite have the time to wade through the discussion to see. I think NOTNEWS also transcends merely creating new articles for things, as it also dictates what we add to articles we already have. Such articles' subjects have already been vetted to be describable on a more notable, more general level where it's more about impact than merely, "This happened." What we must think of when we add something to Wikipedia, especially concerning the tense sociopolitical climate of the last few years, is whether anyone outside of our sphere would care. Would someone in Uganda care about Trump's latest gaffe? After awhile, are a certain person's gaffes even worthy of tracking, or are they simply the noise that person makes as they walk by? Especially with the rise of social media and, sigh, Twitter, meme-ifying things has reached critical mass to the point that we must ask what even makes a meme anymore. Things that trend don't always deserve to trend, and wouldn't trend again once the event in question was over. If the world has largely moved on, if the world doesn't care about the specifics, then we should move on too, and we shouldn't care either. And if we choose to cover newsworthy-but-questionably-Wikipedia-worthy things, we have to tie it into a greater whole. Understandably, anytime a President goofs, it reflects on his character, so one could make the argument that whatever seemingly boneheaded thing Trump just did deserves to be covered, even mocked, by Wikipedia. But we must also ask whether such a mistake, if it were even one to start with, reflects on his Presidential qualities. Would he be any better at his job if he were never prone to such a thing? That's difficult to answer, but now I'm rambling, so my point there is that smaller, less-notable things have to truly, and of course verifiably, be tied into a greater whole that adds to the depth of our coverage of a subject. Article length or the cumulative data of coverage by a particular WikiProject are not enough to assert such depth. Therefore, my understanding is that this policy is intended to help us trim the fat off topics, or fight harder to prove why we should care and how the fat is actually a valuable part of the cut of meat, so to speak. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 03:51, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The litmus test is "are there independent and actually secondary sources that indicate this is notable and accurate?" The sourcing is key. The assumption "newspapers/news site are secondary" is false when it comes to breaking-news reportage, which is just regurgitation of speculation, hearsay, and unverified witness claims – it is primary sourcing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:10, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's disagreeable on some accords, as news sources are usually written in a second-person perspective, even if the news is breaking. One if the problems with WP:NOTNEWS is that users often forget that articles about events covered mainly by news sources are usually required to be written encyclopedically anyways; there are too many remedies in place at this moment to fix most, if not all, of the problems presented with articles about current events. ToThAc (talk) 19:40, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Narrowing down the poll

It seems that there might be a consensus to increase how BLP applies to recent events. Therefore, I propose a poll to see whether people would be ok with having BLP modified so that the suspects in incidents in which people were killed would not be put in to article until 3 or 4 days after the incident. If you would support this, but with some other time limit, please say so and please say what time limit. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 20:19, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Moratoriums like this are arbitrary and impossible to enforce, and of little to no relation to the confidence we have in the validity of what reliable sources report. With some events, the facts are immediately clear and never in dispute, with others years may go by without official consensus on who did what. We should follow the sources in either case and discuss our concerns in relation to each topic. postdlf (talk) 20:31, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Huh? There is no consensus to do anything at this point except continue this pointless exercise. Coretheapple (talk) 21:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)*[reply]
• Oppose. I agree that BLP should be modified but it would be best to tie it to an event such as an arrest or criminal conviction. I've seen countless discussions over whether or not we can identify a suspect who has been charged but not yet convicted. We should answer that question and apply it consistently everywhere instead of discussing it repeatedly on Talk pages. –dlthewave ☎ 22:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Huh? I second User:Coretheapple in seeing no consensus here.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Yeah, there is no consensus here. Hobit (talk) 23:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Nope. Agreed with all of the above comments, including dlthewave's clarification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:12, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Summary of NOT#NEWS straw poll

With the current state of this poll at the time of this writing, there's clearly no mandate to alter policy or guidelines for the handling of recent event articles. NOT#NEWS does remain a valid policy, but it has to be metered appropriately - we shouldn't be using NOT#NEWS to bite newbies or those attempting to write on breaking news stories, but at the same time, it has strength that should be used to review such articles after time has past to frame the event and content better to be more encyclopedic, and in some cases, deleting those events that turned out to be non-events.

That said, combined with the previous RFC at WT:NOT that led to this, I think the next most immediate and appropriate step is to develop a guideline that is the equivalent of Writing about Fiction, but tailored towards writing news stories. Some of the facets of this guiieline would be:

• How to interpret the nature of sources (primary, secondary; enduring coverage versus a burst of coverage, etc.) in relationship to the GNG and NEVENT, as to determine if an event article should be created or how to handle that in deletion discussions.
• That articles on breaking events may be more proseline-ish and documenting details as the event starts, but are expected to transition to more holistic/overarching coverage of the event once the event has settled down. We do want to encourage editors to create articles on current events but also encourage those same editors to shape the article over time rather than just move on to the next current event.
• That editors should keep in mind WP:RECENTISM when determining what facts and views to include in a breaking-event article to avoid the short-term bias that can arise in the current news cycle, and that sometimes it is better to wait for dust to settle to try to figure out the opinions of the event per UNDUE/WEIGHT.

There's likely other factors that can be included in this too. None of these points would introduce new ideas or conflict with the existing P&G as written, only to provide more clarity and a type of MOS for news articles, so that newer editors that are drawn to writing about current events have some type of guide to work from. It at least addresses many points raised by those !voting options #2 and #1 above without ignoring the concerns many of the option #3 !voters raised.

There could be other steps - again, revival of Wikinews still seems to be an option on the table, but that's going to take a lot more discussion and thought. It would be best to see if providing more comprehensive guidance on writing about current events would help address concerns raised before moving onto other steps. --MASEM (t) 17:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"...we shouldn't be using NOT#NEWS to bite newbies or those attempting to write on breaking news stories, but at the same time, it has strength that should be used to review such articles after time has past to frame the event and content better to be more encyclopedic, and in some cases, deleting those events that turned out to be non-events." Well said. postdlf (talk) 18:09, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Sorry but there is absolutely no consensus for any kind of guideline, and to be frank an effort by one of the activists in this area to write a guideline is going to be still more useless drama and time suck. Why not just drop it? Coretheapple (talk) 03:14, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, WP:NOTMEMORIAL states that "Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet [the requirements at WP:BLP]". Many, including myself, have interpreted this as prohibiting lists of victims in the articles of tragedies. However, many others disagreed, and in June 2016 there was a discussion as to whether to add such a list to 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. In the closing statement, it was suggested that while there is a precedent to include such lists, such precedent may conflict with NOTMEMORIAL, and a separate RfC should be held about the general interpretation of the NOTMEMORIAL and to determine whether or not a list of victims violates the policy. Indeed, local consensus for 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting was "to allow the list untill it is either removed to a separate article or a higher level consensus abolishes the use of such lists acrosss wikipedia" [sic]. The full closing statement by Maunus is below for reference:

I count 22 !votes to include vs. 16 to exclude. However, several arguments for excluding are temporary opening the possibility of having separate page listing the victims. The argument against is WP:NOTMEMORIAL, which suggests that wikipedia should not memorialize people who are not themselves notable biographic subjects. Arguments for allowing, suggest that WP:MEMORIAL does not apply to embedded lists in articles, and point out the precedentfor having such lists in other articles about mass shootings. I think that there is a conflict between WP:MEMORIAL and the existing precendent, but this should be addressed in a separate RfC about the general interpretation of the WP:MEMORIAL. In such an RfC i would vote to exclude lists of victims in articles on mass deaths (especially given the inequal possibilities afforded different kinds of victims in different pats of the world), but in this case the local consensus regarding this article in specific is to allow the list untill it is either removed to a separate article or a higher level consensus abolishes the use of such lists acrosss wikipedia.

That brings us here. I propose that we add a line to WP:NOTMEMORIAL that would prohibit listing individual victims of tragedies if they do not meet our notability guidelines and/or WP:BLP. This would apply to not just lists, but general naming of non-notable victims as well, either in the article or as a separate article. This proposal, if approved, would also override any local consensus and precedents. SkyWarrior 04:53, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support

• Support as nominator. SkyWarrior 04:53, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:BIO1E and just generally out of respect. If all we can write about a person's entire life is that they died, we should not write about them. I've done a lot in my life, none of it notable, but if I die in a terrorism incident and that's the only thing you ever write about me, I will haunt your ass. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:24, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Naming non-notable victims is a horrible and blatant invasion of privacy (and WP:BLP), as well as a bizarre misuse of Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 03:07, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support More specifically, I agree there are times they are appropriate as to understanding whatever the tragedy was, but we should be considering those exception, with the rule to avoid inclusion of victim lists in general. Hence I support the general idea, just that we need the "with exception" cavaet. --MASEM (t) 14:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Conditional support, "I support the general idea, just that we need the "with exception" caveat" per Masem. Therefore wording should indicate ' ordinarily avoid', rather than 'ban' such lists. Per others, these lists fulfil no real purpose, except sentimental memorialising. Pincrete (talk) 15:01, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Not a fan of victim lists in general. SparklingPessimist ^{Scream at me!} 02:54, 10 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not a fan of Pessimists so does that mean we get rid of you ? .... No ofcourse it doesn't, You either need to provide a better rationale other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT or strike the entire thing. –Davey2010^Talk 21:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Not only is this a pretty blatant violation of WP:NOTMEMORIAL, there are WP:BLP concerns here. Unless these people are independently WP:notable, it's a dubious call to be archiving their names in our articles in this fashion; I don't think the value a list of names adds to understanding the substance and context of a tragedy (as an encyclopedic topic) is significant enough to justify dragging the identities of these people (and by consequence, their families) into an article. Needless to say, the equation changes with enough WP:WEIGHT in the sources--with the important caveat that weight in this instance means more than just a handful of sources repeating the names: there would need to be a certain baseline depth of coverage as well. And even then, we would have prose detail for anyone who is genuinely WP:DUE for inclusion, not a mere listing. Snow ^{let's rap} 06:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, as general rule, allowing for exceptions, as others have already explained. - Nabla (talk) 20:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per Snow Rise. The case-by-case discussion should be limited to whether the victims are independently notable, and that is already a provision of this proposal. There is little need for case-by-case discussion about anything else. Those discussions invariably have more to do with interpretation of NOTMEMORIAL than about the specifics of the article, and article talk is not the place to have such discussions. Further, the notion that name-listing in RS is all we need to list these names is in direct conflict with WP:BLPNAME. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. If information isn't encyclopedic, it shouldn't be in the encyclopedia. There are opposes arguing for a "case by case" treatment, but no evidence of a "case" where such a list would be encyclopedic. —swpb^{T go beyond} 17:48, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Lists of victims do not add to encyclopedic understanding of the topic at hand. We can link to sites that keep lists of the victims. This is the job of a newspaper, not an encyclopedia. Also, I know it may seem anomalous in today's world of social networking sites and reality TV, but some people may wish to keep their grieving private, without involving the entirety of the internet. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:19, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I've read the support and oppose views and I find the support views much more persuasive. It doesn't seem like the actual names of the victims provides much encyclopedic information to me. What do the names, by themselves, add? It seems like, at least with respect to non-notable people, that a summary of the number of victims and their ages and genders or religions or whatever else is relevant provides all of the encyclopedic information that anyone would need. We also have no idea whether the victims or their families want to be publicized in this way; I am guessing some of them don't; and Wikipedia isn't organized in a way that would allow those families to make an effective plea for privacy (I don't think there's a warning template "don't mention this particular victim" and even if there was its use would defeat the purpose of not publicizing the name). I think this privacy problem is the best reason to have the suggested rule. I am still quasi-traumatized about the ISIS victims whose families pleaded to Wikipedia for privacy and were mostly ignored. (I'm not actually traumatized, but it wasn't a good moment for us.) The objection "we don't need a blanket rule because we couldn't imagine every circumstance" is weak because the reason we have WP:IAR is to allow people to ignore rules when their justifications don't make sense. Also, to me, that particular objection seems more like "I don't like the WP:NOTMEMORIAL policy in the first place" (a bad reason to oppose this proposal without some stated actual objection to the policy) not "we might want to make exceptions to WP:NOTMEMORIAL." We can make exceptions to any blanket prohibition established here using WP:IAR as necessary where circumstances warrant it. There are other silly justifications made by opposers, like "you could use a list of victims to see that everyone killed in the École Polytechnique massacre was a woman." It would be much easier for a reader to find that out by reading a sentence that said just that than would be to try to discern from a list of French names that everyone killed was a woman. Another oddity is how just posting the list of victims ignores the people who were injured, sometimes severely, but not killed. Wouldn't any justification for listing the names of victims also apply equally to people that are injured? One example of the problems of only listing the dead and not the injured is that you would have no idea that men were also targeted in the École Polytechnique massacre unless you read the article, which mentions the gender of everyone that was hurt, not consult the list of names of victims – which ignores people only maimed. Overall, I see no encyclopedic benefit to the list of names. AgnosticAphid talk 23:10, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

• Oppose. This should be handled case by case, not by a blanket global prohibition. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:03, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Totally agree that this is something that is handled case by case. A full on ban would be ignoring situations that we simply can't anticipate today. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:01, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Case-by-case consideration is the best way to go. The phrase "victims of tragedies" covers far too broad and far too diverse a population for the proposed rule. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 11:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This should be handled case by case. At a minimum BLP1E (or similar) cases should be mentioned. If victims of a notable event are mentioned/listed as part of reliable coverage of said event, it makes sense that we mention them as well. A prohibition would go against the intention of WP:MEMORIAL. Agathoclea (talk) 12:11, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above. postdlf (talk) 13:47, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above. HastyBriar321 (talk) 02:27, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Seraphimblade. I'll also add that this is especially true if reliable sources have produced such lists. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose as per above - Should be done case-by-case, As noted by Agathoclea if they're mentioned in reliable sources = Include them, if not = don't. –Davey2010^Talk 02:59, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per "case by case" arguments. Similarly oppose "name them if RS names them", and I certainly hope that doesn't make it into the close statement. RS almost always names them because their mission is very different from ours. As for the language at WP:MEMORIAL, name lists in a handful of news articles do not make the individuals notable; if they did, we would have bio articles on those individuals; there is only one notability threshold. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose weakly. (Summoned by bot) It has to be a case by case, anything else will just cause trouble, not guidance. L3X1 (distænt write) 16:13, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose . (Summoned by bot) Depends on the tragedy. Should not be a blanket rule, should be case-by-case. Coretheapple (talk) 15:34, 10 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose If the names are verifiable / covered in reliable sources, then it could be part of the article. Each article should be considered on the merit of including such a list. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I see no reason not to list where the subjects are verifiable with reliable source. Consider 1940 Canberra air disaster. Four of those killed are very notable indeed; the four aircrew are not. But I think the article is best served by their inclusion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:28, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - Case by case basis is needed. If they are mentioned in a reliable source I fail to see any argument against their inclusion. Nihlus 18:45, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This issue came into sharp relief after the 11 Sept 2001 attacks (we eventually created an entire wiki which is now mothballed). I am in general cautiously against including lists of victims, particularly long lists, it adds very little. There are cases, though, where even non-notable names are relevant, for example where the names themselves indicate something of value. Even then this is best sourced and stated explicitly. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:24, 16 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]
  
• Oppose. No need for a hard and fast rule. Sometimes it's appropriate to name victims; sometimes (especially when there are many victims) it isn't. Depends entirely on the individual case. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:24, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - It would cause chaos to implement such a hard and fast rule across the board. Each article must be looked at individually. No hard and fast rule should be implemented across the board. Each article must looked at individually. If the list of victim names is included in numerous top-tier reliable sources, particularly for major tragedies such as mass shootings, then exluding the names would be non-sensical and a great disservice to readers. The names would obviously be noteworthy content. Including only basic, identifying information - such as name, age, and residence city - would in no way be memorializing victims. Memorializing would include things such as personal background details, tributes, anecdotes, quotes, and photos. For articles about mass shootings, consider this: the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history are, in order, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Luby's shooting, the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, the University of Texas tower shooting, the Edmond post office shooting, the 2015 San Bernardino attack, and the Binghamton shootings. All of them, except Las Vegas (which is currently in the midst of a discussion about this), include a list of the victims' names and, at the very least, their ages. This evidence makes clear that Wikipedia editors have repeatedly debated this issue and clearly established a consensus that a list of victim names should and will be listed in major mass shooting articles, and that its inclusion overrides any objections based on WP:NOTMEMORIAL, WP:BLP, and WP:OTHERSTUFF. 2605:A000:FFC0:D8:E8B0:35F4:5401:1C0D (talk) 15:16, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose—Most individuals who are killed tragically are not "independently notable." If they were, they could have their own article. The proposed policy misses what lists do. Among other things, lists can illustrate the discriminatory intent of a massacre perpetrator (École Polytechnique massacre); provide an illustration of the indiscriminate nature of violence, for example that a shooter attacked children; help describe the chronology and place where violence was applied (Haditha massacre); illustrate familial relationships among those victimized (Haditha massacre, again); and indicate the affiliations of those killed. It's possible that a truly random, or non-purposeful attack needs none of these things, but let's leave it to page editors to work that out. Moreover, lists provide a mechanism for a user searching for a given victim to find the tragedy in which they were killed. These objective grounds are in addition to concerns that encyclopedic text should offer at least the same human dignity to victims of tragic violence as their perpetrators.--Carwil (talk) 19:34, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – WP:NOTMEMORIAL says "Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements." This is about articles and notability, and says nothing about whether lists of victims are encyclopedic or not. I suggest we continue to look at this more case-by-case. When reliable sources publish lists of victims, it would seem OK for us to do the same. Dicklyon (talk) 04:52, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, list of victims is part of encyclopedic knowledge of an attack. If reliable sources publish such lists, do not see why they cannot be included on Wikipedia. A violation of not memorial would be if we started including obituaries ("they are survived by five kids, three dogs, and a hamster"). In some cases, the lists might not be appropriate, but they should be handled on case-by-case basis. Renata (talk) 23:16, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, If the incident itself in which they died is notable, then the people who died taken as a whole are notable. In some cases obviously the number would be too big (e.g., 9/11, or the sinking of the Titanic). Should be decided case-by-case. FOARP (talk) 12:37, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - As others have said this should be handled on a case by case basis. No need for WP:CREEP here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:36, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - Each article is different. If the victims are named in multiple reliable sources and if it is due weight they should be included Atlantic306 (talk) 20:09, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - Information about and names of victims should be included provided they can be sourced to multiple WP:RSes.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• oppose - Lists of victims should be included if they have sufficent sourcing. Large lists should be determined case by case. If the list is too long it could be moved to separate page.Patapsco913 (talk) 13:05, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. I think there should be both no prohibition on including victim names and no encouragement to list all victims. Victims who have been the subject of substantial reporting, even if they do not meet WP:BLP (specifically WP:BLP1E), should be included. Victims don't have to be individually notable to be mentioned in such an article, but we also shouldn't list every victim at a page like 9/11. This is very much a case-by-case thing. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:15, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose lists of victims are relevant to a crime hence can and should be included, provided there is sufficient sourcing. gidonb (talk) 11:46, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose under WP:CREEP. The premise of this proposal seems to be that the WP:LOCALCON of a single article should be overridden by making general changes to a policy. Sławomir Biały (talk) 00:34, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose due to the fact that the proposal is directly contradictory to the specific freedoms afforded by the notability guidelines, which state that, "The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article", "The notability guidelines do not apply to contents of articles or lists", "Notability of lists (whether titled as "List of Xs" or "Xs") is based on the group.", "Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable". I'm opposed to anything that might not let me be free on the project somewhere down the line just because others can't contain being offended. Wikipedia is also not censored. Huggums537 (talk) 15:51, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Should be handled on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes a list of names should be included. Too many of our editors strictly police things. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:04, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose primarily on the principle of wp:NOTCENSORED. And, as cogently stated in this section, the Notability guideline does not apply to contents of an article, only to the topic of an article. Wikipedia does, in fact, include articles naming hundreds of victims: Titanic passengers, and 9-11 emergency responder fatalities. DonFB (talk) 05:12, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. "Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others..." I think pretty much means "Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or people like that. Otherwise it would not list three specific classes of people, all of whom are personally known to you, and then add "and others..." to mean a class of person (people who named in important news stories) very much different from the three examples given. That would make little sense. What is intended is "Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, business colleagues, roommates, ex-spouses, ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, neighbors, or persons known to any of these (i.e. "friend of a friend" or "child of a acquaintances", etc.) whom your intend to memorialize for that reason". This is overly long and even then you'd surely miss some group which you wanted to include. This is why we generally say "and so forth" in many of our rules.

So I mean what's intended is "Nobody wants an article about your neighbor's kid who tragically died of leukemia" This has little to do with victims of notable events named in major news stories. So this would be a new thing. Do we need this new thing? It says here we don't. Herostratus (talk) 06:19, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatives

• Mixed guidance - Alternative guidance might be "avoid listing names in mass deaths unless the individual names are commonly listed in accounts, or are otherwise notable" This seems an area where the precedent seems to sometimes list victims of shootings but not always, with no clear guide that I can see. Guidance might mention that larger events should not list names because it's infeasible and large enough that the individual names were not covered so do not meet WP:V or WP:WEIGHT. Examples University of Texas tower shooting, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and Columbine High School massacre, UpStairs Lounge arson attack. Versus Cleveland Elementary School shooting (Stockton), Oklahoma City bombing, 1975 LaGuardia Airport bombing, or September 11 attacks. Markbassett (talk) 04:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Mixed guidance, per Markbassett. We do have an issue to resolve, but should not over-reach.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:57, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Mixed guidance - I agree that it is improper to list the victims in cases of random mass shootings... but I do think the names of the victims are important to mention in cases where the victims were the intentional targets (i.e. where the killer was intentionally trying to kill specific individuals). Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Mixed guidance - I would probably have agreed to support this proposal, but then there are cases where a simple list is notable and should be included. Perhaps the guideline is set dependant on the overall number of people, most higher-body-count incidents would also have a proportionally higher number of unnotable individuals. It could be that low-individual lists are allowed, medium-individual lists are collapsed (possibly in a template at the end of the page called "List of people killed in *x*"), and high-individual lists are excluded altogether? IJReid ^{((T - C - D - R))} 05:32, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Mixed guidance: Where inclusion of victims is necessary to understand a crime (motivation, sequencing, interaction with perp, etc), then they should be included. Where inclusion is not required to understand a crime, they should not be included. This means that in some cases all victims would be included, while in other cases some might be referred to obliquely or grouped, and in other cases few or none would be included. For the Las Vegas shooting, Campos appears to be the only victim critical to understanding the event.^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 11:48, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Mixed guidance: I would prefer External Links to lists of victims. Failing that, I would like the names to be treated the way secondary sources handle them. That is, if multiple reliable secondary sources mention a victim's name, then Wikipedia can do so. As an example, University of Texas tower shooting is drawing from a variety of documentaries. Abductive (reasoning) 06:50, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral

General discussion

Please arrange for the RfC format to be fixed. There are at least two problems with the layout:

1. There is neither a signature nor even an unattributed timestamp for the opening statement. When building the RfC listings, Legobot (talk · contribs) copies from the ((rfc)) template (exclusive) to the next timestamp (inclusive). The next timestamp is in the "Support" section, so Legobot will copy that heading and the first !vote. If this appears in the RfC listing, it would be against WP:RFC#Statement should be neutral and brief, and could skew the responses.
2. The text copied by Legobot includes a table; this is forbidden by WP:RFC#Statement should be neutral and brief as it breaks the listing entry.

Have a look at how the RfC appears at WP:RFC/BIO (Permalink). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:09, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that, I think I fixed it. SkyWarrior 23:35, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please also note that the opening statement should be "neutral and brief [...] A long statement will make the list harder to read [...] If you have lots to say on the issue, give and sign a brief statement in the initial description and save the page, then edit the page again and place additional comments below your first statement and signature", per Wikipedia:Requests for comment. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 17:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I sympathise with whoever has to close this! I note that almost no one supports a blanket ban, some supporting identifying 'target groups' others some other guidance. However it would be good if we could get some clarification of when such lists are appropriate. The problem with a completely open approach is that a lot of editor time is expended, typically at a time when the main article is itself occupying a lot of time and discussions are often very OTHERSTUFF, "those other victims got a list why don't these, what's wrong with them?". This is an old-fashioned sentiment I know, but are we entitled to think that victims and their families would necessarily WANT to be listed permanently on WP? Pincrete (talk) 23:09, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm doing this as a pre-emptive measure because there seem to have been quite a lot of user categories and userboxes that are being brought to the attention of both WP:CFD and WP:MFD. The earliest discussion I can find is Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 February 14#Category:Politically leftist Wikipedians, which saw both that category and an equivalent for right-wing Wikipedians get deleted. It seems that for awhile things were quiet, until we had this discussion, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 September 4#Category:Wikipedians who are against Donald Trump, which also saw that category get deleted. I've nominated a category recently myself, but only one, and I didn't realize how widespread these materials are, or how much momentum this trend of nominating these things is gaining. There is also Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 October 6#Political support categories, which seems to be gaining a steady delete consensus (it's about user categories that specifically and unambiguously endorse candidates on both sides of the spectrum). Elsewhere, however, the solution is not so clear-cut, with many categories, in the view of users such as myself, expressing support for one sociopolitical viewpoint or another without using it to imply interest in collaboration with other Wikipedians in editing those same topic areas regardless of whether they personally agree with each other. Personally, my view is that these userboxes stand in clear violation of WP:UBCR, while the categories violate WP:User categories#Inappropriate types of user categories, namely "Categories which group users by advocacy of a position". This is not merely a fringe view either, as there's enough of us who think this way that it's clouding consensus on the issue, warranting broader discussion.

I believe the best way to go about this is to list examples of what might end up being discussed at either MFD or CFD. I encourage others to add to it, but within reason - this is not a substitute for discussion at either venue. Whether we decide to keep them or get rid of them, we'll likely still have to take it over there. It is not my goal to try to circumvent either venue; it is not merely about these specific examples or others like them, but the idea of them as a whole. I just want to nip this in the bud and give us some peace of mind. If you add something to this list, please leave a ping for the user who originally made it unless that user has already been pinged here.

Keep in mind that userboxes can also be categorized in a confrontational way, so on the face of it they may seem to express a message everyone can agree with, but in adding them to your own page you'll add a category you may not necessarily feel you belong in. Userboxes may be kept, but should be recategorized as the community sees fit. Feel free to point out problematic categorization wherever you see it.

((Template:User alt-right foe))

Paging Buaidh (talk · contribs). Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 14:02, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, political userboxes should not add a user to a "Left/Right wing" or "Anti-Trump/Clinton" category, but to a category such as "Users that support Trump/Clinton". - ZLEA ^{(Talk,Contribs)} 17:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We shouldn't even have those, since they don't support encyclopedic collaboration (likely the opposite), and the Trump vs. Clinton matter is already over anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:56, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Given that we are supposed to maintain a Neutral Point of View as editors, I don't think it appropriate to have any politically oriented user categories. Whether a user supports (or opposes) candidate X, Y or Z is irrelevant to writing and maintaining an encyclopedia.

And if we do decide to keep these categories, we should institute a topic ban to go with them... anyone who declares for or against a politician should be topic banned from editing articles that relate to that politician. Blueboar (talk)|

I hereby declare my strong opposition to Donald Trump and defy any editor to show that that has negatively affected my fairly active participation at Donald Trump since before the election. Just try a TBAN against me and see how far you get. Sorry but that's a non-starter. Besides, such a rule would do absolutely nothing for article quality, it would simply make POV editors keep quiet about their POVs. I agree that Wikipedia should be as apolitical as possible and editors should generally keep their political leanings to themselves (exception made in this comment for a good reason). ―Mandruss ☎ 18:02, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You may have good intentions, but that's not a good idea. It presumes that any editor with any position strong enough that he/she mentions it on his/her userpage is automatically going to make NPOV-violating edits. This simply is not true, though. Master of Time (talk) 18:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, I'd never heard that viewpoint before. That's certainly not what I'm concerned about, and it's not been the concern raised so far. What we're worried about is this causing schisms among editors, perhaps people refusing to collaborate with each other or getting to any degree antagonistic over issues as sensitive as political ones. Biased editing on related articles was definitely not something that crossed my mind. As far as the point you two are making, there's a difference between "Wikipedians interested in Donald Trump" and "Wikipedians against Donald Trump"; the earlier implies some sort of vested interest in actually bringing more information about him to the encyclopedia, aside from the more positive connotations "interested" tends to have, whereas the latter does not actually carry any implication of interest in editing in that topic area at all, making it a questionable use of userspace and category space. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 21:08, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree with that. My previous comment was only about the TBAN-if-you-declare idea. WP:UBCR (emphasis theirs): "Userboxes must not be inflammatory or divisive." Inflammatory? Probably. Divisive? Definitely. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:19, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see. I don't know how I missed that part of Blueboar's post. My apologies. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 21:34, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A topic ban is definitely taking things too far. Concern over biased editing was not the spirit in which this RFC was started, and until now was not something I'd seen mentioned in discussion over this topic. As I said before, the concerns that folks like myself share is that it could foment discord among the userbase, making users reluctant to collaborate on certain topics or engage in certain discussions to avoid risking being antagonized for holding to one belief or another. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 21:32, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Break out the thought police. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:19, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• One, I hope we break out the rational arguments instead. Two, we can keep the petty mudslinging off the page. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 20:55, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, don't try to control how people express their opinions and you wont be accused of thought police. If I have a userbox saying 'I think the US president is a racist homophobic imbecile' vs 'I support the Democrats'. You could make a credible argument the first would be disallowed under BLP but any restrictions on the latter would just lead to the knock on effect of people complaining about every political position. Users advocating for gender legislation reform? That's a political position, cant have it on the userpage. Users in favour of gun control? Political position. Users with anti-racism statements? Political position. Unless you are going to blanket ban per Blueboar above *all* userboxes, this will never fly - as there will always be someone who disagrees politically with something or other. On a basic level a userbox that professes support for the LGBT movement is both offensive and inflammatory to a huge number of people. I will enjoy watching you attempt to get rid of them. Just let me know so I can get the popcorn ready. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• You are making valid arguments but using needlessly uncivil language. No one here is trying to be the "thought police". This RFC was not to enforce some kind of deletionist solution to the problem. I'll accept the outcome whichever way it goes. I simply believe this needs to be discussed as while we have reached consensus in some of the discussions I've linked, there appear to be many more that could end up at MFD or CFD sooner or later, and rather than bombard people with notices of discussions in progress, it would just be easier to find examples and reach some kind of consensus here to prevent needless discussions. Whatever outcome we achieve here will be replicated on the individual discussions, thus invalidating the need for them and saving us a lot of time & work. I have only made my own thoughts on the matter clear, I have made no attempt to control the discussion or enforce any kind of outcome - you made a blatant personal attack with that accusation. Try helping us achieve a consensus rather than getting confrontational. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 19:48, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• You could have just made your arguments in your original post and not gotten confrontational at any point. It would have been a very welcome contribution to this discussion. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 20:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• It's somewhat pointless to call something a personal attack if it wouldn't stand a chance of a sanction following a traumatic 10-day train wreck at WP:ANI. "Thought police" would not. But it's unhelpful hyperbole; if this is a proposal to "control how people express their opinions", WP:UBCR is another one that already has community consensus. We do put reasonable limits on editor self-expression here, or try to do so with incomplete success. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:45, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• That it wouldn't stand a chance at ANI is not the point, and in fact is evidence that WP:CIVIL is increasingly irrelevant because people ignore it knowing that most transgressions against it won't be punished since it would take too long relative to the degree of slight that occurred. It is a personal attack, it's a false accusation. How people react to it does not at all define what it actually is.

You do have a point that Wikipedia already does try to control what users say on it, though, and to see that, look no further than WP:FORUM, which mandates that we relegate discussion on talk pages strictly to being about improving the articles to which they are attached. To pretend we have "free speech" here is laughable because Wikipedia is a private organization that can enforce whatever rules it damn well pleases on those who use it, not an attempt at any form of government that would have such obligations towards its citizens. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 02:31, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Zeke - I think other kinds for MFD would be (1) Coverage of something trivial and transient -- just momentarily viral on the internet and now no longer covered. In particular lately far too many articles about Trump (is it over 1,000 now?) where far far to many were some embarassingly trivial topic. (e.g. covfefe or high heels or hair or handshakes). Also MFD might be (2) Content present in more than 3 articles. I tend to think some of this was pasted into multiple spots and so winds up not a good fit to most places it was put. Markbassett (talk) 05:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Having thought about this some more, I realize that another important concern is the treatment of our userspaces as social media profiles, which are so often used merely as a platform for expressing and promoting points of view while refusing to be challenged. Ideally, I would think interests and tastes are not described unless they either 1) are used to imply where you're most likely to see a particular editor working or 2) could influence that editor's contributions in any way. Me personally, I've left a lot unsaid about me on my own userpage only because I did not see its potential to contribute to my profile as an editor. I have my own political opinions, but I don't see the need to express them here, largely because I don't intend to contribute to political topic areas if I can help it. But enabling these sorts of things might leave the door open for mere soapboxing of the kind that we see so often on Facebook - things people say only to be heard, not to actually make the encyclopedia any better for having said it or getting any kind of dialogue going. More often than not, they're intended for people to accept and start believing in without any response whatsoever. After all, our userspaces are not really part of the encyclopedia, and people have to take our actual article content with a grain of salt as it is. Why would a userspace rant be any more reliable? And would they necessarily be posted with an eye toward making the encyclopedia around which userspace orbits any better? Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 00:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree basically that we should not have categories that classify editors directly into any political or ideological mindset, particularly if they are just adding a userbox to their page (the userboxes are fine in this regards). Far too much potential for abuse internally and externally there. Fully agree that there is a problem if a user-box automatically includes an editor into a category, since that is ripe for problems if the user box is edited to include other categories by presumption. I don't see a problem on a user-page or user-boxes as long as all necessary content and behavior policies are followed (eg no BLP violations, political messages should remain civil, etc.),since the user is controlling that themselves. I would probably make a case that editors should not use user-page content to cast aspirations against an editor, under WP:NPA, so that people should be free to express their views to understand their editing patterns. --MASEM (t) 15:40, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That last point is important.... adding political user tags can give the appearance of non-neutral editing, even when the actual editing may be neutral (or at least attempting to be neutral). I am concerned that these tags will lead other editors to dismiss a valid concern ("oh, we can dismiss this editor's concern... he/she is not neutral... see, he/she even proclaims their non-neutrality on their user page!"). In disputes, these tags will encourage others to focus on the editor, and not the actual edit. Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That type of concern should be handled by behavior around those making a deal of a user-tag, and should be called out as completely inappropriate, approaching an NPA warning, as otherwise we'd be questioning the differential between what is a political position versus other sentiments expressed by user-boxes. If an editor has a user box that says "I support the far right", we shouldn't care as long as their behavior in editing is not solely informed by that stance, and they follow all expected behavior patterns for editors. That's a whole problem of identity politics that is dominating the real world but shouldn't be a factor in editing on WP, and should actually be called out when people use that against editors when editor behavior otherwise does not warrant. Obviously, if we find a case of an editor that consistently edits uncollaborative with the POV represented by a user-box, that's a different situation that should be handled in a different manner. --MASEM (t) 17:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. POV-editing should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and I really don't think userboxes should ever come into play in that situation - in fact, my experience would tell me the editors with the greatest problems concerning their biases would be ones whose usernames are redlinks because they didn't come to build a userpage, let alone an encyclopedia, so they wouldn't know or care about userboxes. The editors who take the time to actually use them are, in my book, far less likely to cause that kind of problem. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 03:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We really have no community consensus as to the role of p&g, a consensus that should form the bedrock for everything else. Some will say that p&g guide behavior, so we can speak of violations of it. Others say that p&g reflect behavior, and a p or g should be updated if there are enough editors ignoring it or unaware of it (in that case it follows that speaking of violations impedes the community's ability to form consensus). Ample support for both concepts can be found in policy and common practice. I have never understood how both can be true, but that's what we appear to have and it makes this kind of discussion problematic. This is "meta" and probably out-of-venue, so feel free to disregard or respond on my talk page (I would dearly love to understand this apparent paradox), but it also seems at the core of the frequent issues like this one. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Categories are meant to allow easy access to topics that are connected. User categories are thus meant to allow to find users who share common characteristics which might be useful in improving the encyclopedia, broadly construed. So categories that group users by country, language, school etc. are good uses for categories, because you might need to find someone from country X, school Y, speaking language Z etc. Is there any need to find editors who support or oppose a certain politician? I can't think of one...
  Userboxes on the other hand serve a different purpose, they allow users to (positively) declare interests and (negatively) declare biases and thus are useful even when there is no reason to categorize such users. So a "Pro-Trump"/"Anti-Trump"/etc. userbox is definitely useful because it allows others to understand that some contributions might be tinged by a certain bias. Like Masem, I don't see a problem with that since contributions by people who take the time to declare their biases are usually made with more thought than by those who don't. Regards SoWhy 09:35, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

definitely useful because it allows others to understand that some contributions might be tinged by a certain bias. If I understand what you're saying, you have demonstrated the potential problem that Blueboar referred to above. I think we have more than enough false suspicions of POV editing held by people who fail to recognize/acknowledge their own bias, without feeding those people with ammunition for their ABF. Far from being "useful", it's both useless and destructive. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:30, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I could certainly support userboxes ahead of user categories. Having too many on a certain subject might be something we look into solving, but that's probably another RFC. Userboxes are personal, and if this ends up changing the rules as to their content, that's fine too. If anything, we should look at it this way: Our policies on userboxes say one thing, but by and large, our userboxes, the things it supposedly governs, say a very different one, and the divide has only been allowed to grow over the years, especially these tense last few. It's obvious something needs to change there, whether any of us like the outcome or not. But categories definitely serve a different purpose on user pages compared to articles, which even serve a different purpose to those on talk pages, and so on. Being able to find someone based on potential political bias, if it is indeed helpful at all, has a far less obvious benefit than being able to find someone willing to make difficult blocks, provide copies of deleted pages, can provide some feedback on a much-needed topic area, or can potentially supply some good photography for a given subject. To put it simply, the categories define what a user can bring to the table of editing Wikipedia, and bias, one way or another, doesn't exactly have potential in that area. At best, it would merely show what might influence an editor for better or for worse. It wouldn't show some skillset this user has. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 02:31, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a convenient way to find the editors who currently transclude ((User anti-Trump)), just one of the many pro- or anti-Trump userboxes currently extant. I don't see much difference between the categories and the userboxes for the purposes of this discussion. Both have the same very real potential to impede the project's mission (building an encyclopedia), and both have little upside besides self-expression. In the end, Wikipedia is not a social networking site. This applies also to other divisive political userboxes such as ((User Black Lives)), but I'm willing to limit scope for now. ―Mandruss ☎ 13:54, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Remembering the Great Userbox Wars of 2006, I would suggest leaving them alone. They are not helpful, but the harm isn't as great as some people claim it is, and people really like to declare who they are and what they believe. Jimbo failed when he tried to make userbox policy by fiat. See WP:CSD#T1 and the links there. —Kusma (t·c) 14:06, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Hmmm, I'm honestly intrigued. Out of interest, @Kusma:, was this "userbox war" also about political content, whether completely or as just one type of content under review? A bit of history would be helpful to this discussion - I think you've opened an interesting thought line here. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 07:02, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Zeke, the Mad Horrorist: The most contentious userboxes were the political and religious ones like "This user is opposed to abortion", "This user supports the Labour Party", "This user is a Catholic". People noticed that it was possible to find like-minded users by their userboxes or categories (but it did not happen very often). Some people decided to stop this and tried to make user space (or at least template space) neutral. Kelly Martin then deleted hundreds of userboxes out-of-process in January 2006. I think she believed that Jimbo was backing this. The result was hundreds of unhappy users whose pages had ugly red links and a RfC that went off the rails and was restarted. In February 2006, Jimbo Wales and some others added the speedy deletion criterion "templates that are divisive and inflammatory", which was supposed to be used against userboxes. Most of these deletions were controversial, and so we had an extra subsection of DRV to deal with them: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Userbox debates. For months, the topic of userboxes was hotly debated. For example, some people suggested they should be subst-only (see WP:MACK, which also has lots of links to other parts of the debate). Eventually it became more or less accepted practice (see WP:GUS) that userboxes about a user's opinion were not OK in template space, but were OK to have in userspace (and transclusion was legal). This kind of keeps template space NPOV, while allowing people to disclose whatever they like in annoying little boxes. In any case, if you want to start any proposals in this area, I strongly suggest you read all of the discussions I linked you to, and keep in mind that some people really are strongly attached to their user pages and to how they look. I do not expect that getting rid of userboxes is either feasible or worth the effort and disruption, but you are welcome to prove me wrong. —Kusma (t·c) 09:58, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who watched that fracas from the sidelines, I'll confirm that as a fair summary of what happened. IMHO, the Userbox Wars is one of the least analyzed events in Wikipedia history -- none of the books I have read about Wikipedia mention it -- while having the most far-reaching influence on the community culture. Which means we are all doomed to repeat its mistakes. -- llywrch (talk) 18:36, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:User categories already specifically cites a political example ("Wikipedians who dislike George W Bush") as inappropriate under "Categories that are divisive, provocative, or otherwise disruptive", and this also includes "support for or opposition to a controversial person, group, project, idea, policy, or activity", and all this on top of "Categories which group users by advocacy of a position" being inappropriate under the guideline. Meanwhile Wikipedia:Userboxes#Potentially divisive words sanctions userboxes about being for a political position but not ones for being against a political position, so along those lines political userboxes about being for something can be allowed (as long as they remain CIVIL). Alcherin (talk) 18:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• We already have guidelines that call for statements of support rather than of opposition in userboxes. Beyond that, we do not need the User Page Police^TM. If you don't like somebody's userpage, don't look at it. But making them remove something about what they believe won't change the fact that they believe it, so WP:NPOV in article space is what really matters. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:55, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete categories, keep userboxes - If a user makes an edit which appears to have a POV, I would much prefer that this be a bias declared openly on the userpage with a userbox than one which it's impossible for us to know. Userboxes are elements a user uses to show various facts about himself, and with the ability of any user to create his/her own, it's nearly impossible to find users by their bias. Categories, on the other hand, are primarily a tool to make such searching easier; users should only be categorized by those categories which a decent user who knows what (s)he's doing may be looking for in order to get help on Wikipedia or sister projects. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:37, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Od Mishehu: it's nearly impossible to find users by their bias. Not so. It's a little more time-consuming because you can only find them for one userbox at a time (using "What links here"), but that hardly qualifies as "nearly impossible". The userbox galleries conveniently list enough userboxes in one place to get you started, and you can have a good list of a few dozen like-minded editors within a matter of perhaps 20 minutes. It's easily worth that much effort to be able to stack a discussion using email, no? And you only have to do it once, the same list can be re-used for any future discussions in the same topic area. A userbox can be advertised in a gallery whether it resides in user space or Template space, so there is no real difference for purposes of this discussion.
  But, according to Kusma's assessment above, self-governance means these efforts can be defeated by a sufficient number of I like my userboxes non-arguments, so Resistance Is Futile and I shall cease resisting. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:35, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that we don't need to find users by their bias. Finding users by their bias would be more useful for POV pushers than for NPOV enforcers. Indicating a user's bias is useful for judging his/her edits; finding users by their bias is unnecessary. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:22, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Over the past decade the guidelines on what constitutes an orphan article have been shifting - at least in some places. It used to be that an orphaned article had less than three incoming links from other articles (note, an orphan is a person who has lost one, or both parents). Initially disambiguations (set index articles did not exist then?) and lists did not count.

The following changes at least have since taken place:

• September 2009 This change recommends adding orphan tags, only if there are no incoming links. The removal of phrase "less than three" was again by User:OlEnglish here, at 06:20, 11 October 2011. This seems to have been a BOLD move, but based on the idea that by redefining the problem we could make it go away (dealing with backlogs by ignoring them is not a solution in my opinion).
• Now also disambiguations, set index articles and lists are considered sufficient incoming links.
  • As far as I am aware as per this current criteria disambiguation pages do not count. Eno Lirpa (talk) 12:20, 18 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Other places have gradually been edited to conform with these changes, but there are still places that do not - for example New Page Patrol.
• WP:AWB has been changed to conform with the prevailing wisdom, which has changed over the years.
• We also do not deal with (and never have, really) "walled gardens".
• ((Orphan)) has become a "mostly invisible" tag.

Personally I think a more sophisticated method of monitoring incoming links might be appropriate these days, and as I said in 2010 " there is no intrinsic reason that some page should not be validly an orphan, and indeed many pages are only linked to from one or more lists." [Even so it was in 2017 trivial to create two new incoming links for Methuen Water Works, in that era claimed as non-de-orphanable.]

Given that the idea of de-orphaning was to "build the web", not to make sure that each page was reachable from every other, be it by means ever so circuitous, what do the panel think we should do in the future?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:13, 16 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]

• If I had my way the ((orphan)) tag and everything associated with it would be deprecated completely. The people who take it upon themselves to tag articles as orphans appear unable to grasp the concept that because something is a niche topic and doesn't have many incoming links, doesn't mean either that it's not notable nor that the lack of incoming links is some kind of problem that needs to be fixed; "build the web" doesn't mean it has to be possible to navigate from every page to every other page, even if they're on completely unrelated topics, purely by clicking wikilinks. (Something with no incoming or outgoing links, on the other hand, is a problem.) Wikipedia does have many issues, but "it's difficult to get from 626 Notburga to Selina Rushbrook purely by following links" shouldn't be considered one of them. ‑ Iridescent 22:29, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with Iridescent. The mindless tagging and untagging takes more effort than just going in and adding links where they are appropriate, and it takes away from the pages that might truly be orphaned yet fixable. And as Iridescent said, not everything is going to be linked to a ton of pages and not everything needs to be either. Nihlus 22:54, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• As one of the people working at the Feb 09 orphan category, I disagree that the orphan tag is useless or unhelpful. Building the web isn't just for the sake of being able to get to every page from every other page - the intent behind building the web is to increase the amount of information available to the reader. I have found plenty of instances where investigating why something is tagged as orphaned has helped me improve Wikipedia. I apologize for not having diffs at the ready, as these are observations made over several months of de-orphaning work and it would be quite an effort to go back through thousands of contribs looking for specific examples.

Off the top of my head: I have found plenty of orphans that have actually turned out to be duplicates of better-linked articles; merge and redirection improves the main article and reduces confusion for readers. Many orphans are drill-down topics that would be appropriate to mention in parent articles but have not been for whatever reason, adding that information to the parent article (and linking the child) enriches it. I have expanded plenty of list articles with orphans, increasing the accuracy and utility of those lists. Many species and/or genus articles are orphans, which has prompted me to research and create taxonomy articles to fill the gaps. And finally, many are just plain useful articles that someone tried to link to but some error (typo or formatting difference causing redlink, newbie failure to wikilink, etc etc) caused the link not to work. (There are also plenty of articles in the backlog that need deleting because of promotional issues, lack of notability, and even ancient copyvios, so if tagging something as an orphan gets extra eyes on articles when they're far out of the NPP queue, I'm in favor of that).

All that being said, I think that one incoming link suffices to make something not an orphan. There's no sense demanding that everything be linked from a bunch of places; some things are really only related to one parent topic and that's okay. An orphan should be any page which has no incoming links from mainspace. Any single link from mainspace, be it lists, indexes, navboxes, "see also" sections, etc (with the exception of disambiguation pages) should be enough for us to accept that a page is not an orphan. I would support the deprecation of the "low-linked" articles categories if we confirm the one-article de-orphan criteria, since that would be redundant. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:07, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• My only thoughts here are that if it is at all humanly possible, I would love it if AWB did not put articles in the "tag as orphan" workflow until 8 days after creation. Quite literally the practice I hate most on all of Wikipedia is when people who just got AWB practice how to use it by tagbombing articles with speedy deletion tags on them as orphans that need more categories. Putting an 8 day hold on the AWB part of this would help prevent tagbombing of new articles and stop watchlists from being clutted by useless edits that are going to be deleted within a few hours to a week. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:17, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I feel the orphan tag serves an important purpose, yes there are some cases where there isn't going to be much to link too, but more often than not, I think that there is. Even more important than that. it gets people of thinking of ways that page could be incorporated into other articles, and investigating if there are options available. The tag should not be looked up as a badge of shame, but as a way by which many by many editors can help make the jigsaw puzzle of Wikipedia work. --Deathawk (talk) 05:51, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• support single link de-orphan criteria, (excluding redirects); not every topic has a lot that can link to it. Also support TonyBallioni's suggestion of a stand down period for new creations. What we need is other criteria to de-tag the >130k articles tagged orphan; perhaps after a certain period at least 1 (2, 3?) outgoing links is enough to auto de-tag it. ClubOranje^T 12:07, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I take great pleasure in having never touched AWB, but I'm assuming this is something we can build into its default recommendations? I'd support a 8 day moratorium on AWB tagging any article because I don't think I've ever seen de facto NPP done well using AWB, but I'd settle for a delay on the orphan template as it is the one that is most frequently spammed by new AWB users. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:40, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think that a delay for both orphan and nocat would be appropriate. Whether or not the ideal delay is eight days is something that people would have to consider, but I am convinced that a delay would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not sure about nocat, as our catters use that find pages to cat, which they usually do very quickly. For Orphan there is a significant backlog, so a default delay might be a good idea - but I am not wholly convinced, especially given that the tag becomes invisible very quickly. I doubt (despite my comments above) that there are a significant number of pages where at least one incoming link cannot be created. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]
        
      • WhatamIdoing my reasoning for 8 days is because by that time most of the articles that are CSDable or the obvious AfD candidates are gone. Adding orphan tags to these articles serves absolutely no purpose other than to clutter watchlists IMO. The nocat I'd suggest a 24 hour delay: even some very experienced editors create articles without cats then add them after creation. Getting an AWB tag on it while you are going through hotcat yourself can be very annoying for many people. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:39, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think NPP is done with AWB? Calling tags "spam" and conflating speedy with orphan is - well I would just say "wrong". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:28, 19 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]
      
      • You are correct that NPP should not be done with AWB, but unfortunately tagbombing of new pages is often done with it. I never claimed that all orphans were CSD candidates. I was saying that as one of the more active people at NPP it is very common to see pointless orphan tags being placed on pages tagged for speedy deletion cluttering watchlists and this is most frequently done by new users that are just getting used to AWB. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:39, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't see how speedy deletion pages are going to be on many people's watchlists - if you are saying this is a difficulty for you as a NPP who has watchlisted the articles when CSDing them, perhaps we should be getting the orphan tag applied before the CSD tag - 8 days later is not going to cut it in these cases. I also think that finding incoming links for CSDs would tend to mitigate against speedy deletion in cases where it isn't justified.
        • All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:50, 19 October 2017 (UTC).[reply]
          

Comment You may read User:Magioladitis/AWB and orphans for a full report of which pages are excluded by AWB. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:16, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Magioladitis, that is very helpful. Would there be a way to get AWB to delay the tagging until a certain amount of time after article creation? TonyBallioni (talk) 13:20, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

TonyBallioni I have a similar open Phabricator task: T127173 which can be modified to much that demand. Till now we had no problems with that because we had a bot for both tagging and untagging and it was running also daily. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:27, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Deprecate visible templates (or move to talk pages and use code to enforce their placement there – throw an error if used in mainspace); retain invisible maintenance categories, since these are useful for finding under-linked articles and working them into our "web".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:29, 21 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Retain one link discounts an orphan tag, there are already 140,000 orphans (many wrongly tagged ). Increasing orphans to 3 links would at least double the list and disillusion those who are deorphaning, considerably slowing down the clean up rate. Atlantic306 (talk) 19:58, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Retain one link discounts an orphan tag. I agree with User:PMC that these tags often prompt me to take useful action, not only linking, but proposing merges. And agree with User:ToniBalloni that new article should be given a breather, although I wonder if a kinder, gentler tag, suggesting that adding links can strengthen a new article, with a collegial explanation about how to create links, might be a really nice approach with new editors and new articles. It's easy to forget how arcane editing is and how easily we dishearten new editors.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:42, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Orphan articles have proven very difficult to monitor for violations of Wikipedia policy. IIRC, the article that triggered the notorious Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident was an orphan article, which escaped notice because it had no incoming links. Hence we need to somehow identify articles lacking any reasonable links to it. -- llywrch (talk) 19:01, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: there's no harm in an article being an orphan ... except in the (far-too-common) case where the article title is "Foo (xyz)" or "Foo, Placename" and there isn't a link, hatnote or redirect from "Foo". And similarly for the article "Name A. Surname" which doesn't have any link from "Name Surname". Those are important and need to be flagged up and fixed. Other orphans... by all means have categories of orphan articles for those who want to de-orphan, in general it's not a problem. PamD 22:19, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: Should the Reference Desks be closed

 – Hi everybody. Because this discussion has become so lengthy (300,000+ bytes), I have moved it to a subpage of the village pump so that the village pump is more accessible. I apologize if any confusion has been caused by this. Mz7 (talk) 00:39, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Context: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Qatar–San Marino relations and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Canada-Cambodia Relations

I don't believe there's a clear guideline as for when articles on bi-lateral relations between countries should exist. I do feel that one is necessary.

The exchanging of ambassadors is a good starting point, as its presence or absence should not be controversial. While it clearly isn't a requirement for relations to be notable (Iran–Israel relations, for example), it generally is correlated with significant relations between countries.

This leads to several possible outcomes, at a minimum:

1. All country-pairs should have a bi-lateral relations page. Having an ambassador isn't at all relevant.
2. All country-pairs that partially exchange ambassadors (for example, one country has a resident ambassador and the other does not) should have a bi-lateral relations page.
3. All country-pairs that exchange ambassadors should have a bi-lateral relations page.
4. Some country-pairs that exchange ambassadors should have a bi-lateral relations page.
5. Some country-pairs should have a bi-lateral relations page, but the presence or absence of ambassadors isn't a useful test; other factors (such as a long-standing history or significant bi-lateral trade) are more relevant.

Thoughts? power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:58, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, Several years ago I took a stab at a guideline here. Yilloslime ^T_C 18:25, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Option 6: Any country-pair that can be reliably sourced as the subject of significant reliable source coverage about the relationship. Diplomatic relationships don't necessarily require an exchange of ambassadors to be notable (as you note, Israel-Iran is a clearly notable topic regardless of their lack of an ambassadorial relationship), but the exchange of ambassadors also can't be an automatic inclusion freebie that exempts the topic from actually having to be sourced to much more than just a primary source press release from the diplomatic corps itself.

Far too many of these pages get created as boilerplate placeholders which say little more than "Canada-Cambodia relations are a diplomatic relationship that exists, the end", which isn't a useful article at all. And even if something more substantial can be written and sourced about Canada-Cambodia relations, it's not necessary to keep the boilerplate page as the base from which to start it — there's so little substance to the existing version that starting over from scratch does not represent any significant increase in the workload involved in redoing it right.

There's no value in comprehensively boilerplating tens of thousands of placeholder articles about every possible combination of two countries, if all the editor can be arsed to actually do is write a stub which just says that the diplomatic relationship exists — if a person really cares about the topic enough to want to start the article, then by definition they should care enough about the topic to put enough work into the article to make it worth existing. Bearcat (talk) 18:30, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• • There's something like 200 sovereign nations on Earth, so if we're going to have an article for every possible permutation, that would be almost 20,000 articles. Most of which will not be notable. I think we can all agree that this is excessive stamp collecting. The metric is as it's always been: showing enough independent, significant coverage to demonstrate notability. Reyk _YO! 19:00, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I think the standard has to remain GNG. Either journalists and academics are writing about these relationships enough to pass GNG or the bilateral relationship isn't going to have enough material upon which for us to write. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:58, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Stick with the GNG, plus the tendency of editors to be slow to create boring articles (especially if they actually have to look up some sources for them). If we get 20,000 articles -- great! But we won't, at least not until we're at tens of millions overall. Wnt (talk) 21:17, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with "just use GNG" is that, in practice, it's not at all clear when coverage counts. Do WP:MILL coverage in newspapers of attending multi-national events count? power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:10, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Power~enwiki: I'll admit, when I look at the picture of the cookie-cutter homes in WP:MILL and read the legend, my gut reaction is "but wouldn't it be cool if we did?" However, in this case, I don't think that principle applies at all. I hope no one would argue that there is such a thing as a "run-of-the-mill war" -- every war deserves a separate article. They are all different. But the exact same thing is true of peace. Countries don't just stay at peace because nothing happens; they have to work at it, figure out ways to settle their differences over fugitives, border surveys, maritime collisions, radio spectrum, a hundred thousand different little things. And so you have to ask, what is the framework they do this in? To say that peaceful relations aren't notable is to impose an unhealthy and all too common bias for conflict over peace. Wnt (talk) 20:25, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

•  #2 is the most practical, because if there is even one embassy, there is always something to say in an article.  Requiring GNG is setting us up for voluminous meaningless AfDs, and potentially a resulting crosspatch of country pairs that do and don't have articles.  This is also a special case because the normal concepts for redirecting non-notable topics to a larger topic don't work well.  There is another subtle issue here that complicates AfD, that in terms of our concepts of secondary and independent, a press release or article from a government is not the same as a press release from a private company.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely agree with Bearcat's comments above. There is no need to define relations solely by the exchange of ambassadors, although it is likely a representative factor. What is important is to include information that supports the fact that there is a relationship between these two countries/states/entities. Examples issues to include would be:

• Treaties, pacts and international agreements (eg. information sharing agreements, tax treaties, resource extraction, defence sharing)
• Unresolved issues and negotiations to resolve conflicts/disagreements
• Significant economic relationships (major foreign investments, high degrees of financial dependence or remittance funds)
• Significant movements of people for labor exchanges, tourism, medical treatments, markets, refugees, etc
• Any shared infrastructure, resources, language, culture or activities that are discussed at an official level
• Recent military conflicts, support for internal unrest, or sponsored terrorism
• Exchanges of official representation
• Coverage of significant popular opinion on the relationship

There may be many more factors, but what is important is to demonstrate that there is a relationship and that it is not just an insignificant one. Loopy30 (talk) 17:33, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is an excellent summary of the kinds of issues that would represent useful and relevant content for the purposes of establishing a bilateral diplomatic relationship as notable enough to warrant a standalone article. I have little more to add but to endorse Loopy's comment. Oh, except to point out that one example of unresolved issues and negotiations would be a direct boundary dispute. Bearcat (talk) 17:41, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bearcat, I agree with you. This is a good list not just of whether an article should exist, but also what you should consider including in one. Also, this isn't the first time we've had a conversation on this precise question. Would you and Loopy30 please consider writing this down somewhere, before bilateral relations articles end up on the list of WP:Perennial proposals? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse Option # 5.) "Some country-pairs should have a bi-lateral relations page, but the presence or absence of ambassadors isn't a useful test; other factors (such as a long-standing history or significant bi-lateral trade) are more relevant." Basically, a WP:SIGCOV standard. Although I haven't been active in this area lately, a year or two ago I waded into a number of these pages, attempted to source some unsourced ones, and can clearly see the absurdity of having articles on bilateral diplomatic relations between Ruritania and Spensonia.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:07, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I never did figure out what is wrong with having the 20,000 articles mentioned above; I still believe in the value of the policy, NOT PAPER. These are articles all of which have the opportunity to grow, and to which beginners can make useful contributions. Most often the apparent difficulty in finding sources is just cultural bias, and to the extent that we succeed in our basic goal of increasing the range of editors at Wikipedia, more and more they will be more adequately sourceable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)
  • Based on this discussion, I think a proposal to create all these pages (via bot) would likely pass. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:10, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • What's wrong with it is that you get a bunch of articles saying routine, boilerplate things that nobody is going to bother keeping track of, and therefore nobody should trust. And that level, WP is paper: it still has to be kept track of. We don't need 19,000 articles saying that countries A and B do or do not exchange ambassadors and have basic extradition and trade treaties. Mangoe (talk) 01:43, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• And such nonsense articles are also totally misleading because enthusiasts stuff them with Google hits so anyone viewing the article would think the two countries must be very close partners. If secondary sources have written about the significance (WP:N) of the bilateral relations, an article could be produced with some confidence that the so-called relations aren't merely routine. Johnuniq (talk) 02:11, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with that is that Wikipedia's primary goal is quality, not quantity. 20,000 good articles about bilateral diplomatic relations between countries, that are well-referenced and substantive and informative? Sure, absolutely, bring 'em on. But 20,000 boilerplate articles about bilateral diplomatic relations between countries, which just state that such relations exist, the end? What could possibly be the point of, or the value in, that? Bearcat (talk) 18:40, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• comment I don't think the problem here is that we need a new or different standard for notability for these articles--if you put it to a !vote I'm pretty confident that consensus would favor using WP:GNG. The problem is interpretting GNG. What is the topic of these articles, really? What is significant coverage of this topic? How many sources are required? Some folks seem to think that any newspaper article mentioning two countries in the same sentence constitutes significant coverage of their relations. Other would say no. This is where direction needed, and a guideline or policy could help. Yilloslime ^T_C 04:02, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• @Reyk: 39,800, but who's counting. I already got dibs on Kyrgyzstan–Paraguay, so don't anybody touch that one; there's 39,799 other ones for y'all. Mathglot (talk) 04:50, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's twice as many because presumably Kyrgyzstan-Paraguay would be the same article as Paraguay-Kyrgysztan. Reyk _YO! 04:55, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reyk, You're right, doh... Who knew that bilateral relations were commutative? Back to 7th grade with me! (Then again, one wonders if the Paraguayan embassy in Bishkek and the Krygyz embassy in Asunción really see things the same way...) Mathglot (talk) 21:12, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Does anyone have a list of, say, the 1,000 most important bilateral relationships? It might be possible to extract from UN data, or their might be a international scholarship study somewhere. Those could then be prioritized, even if they're not necessarily the only ones that are notable. Also, for some of the smaller states, we might consider more merges of articles, like "county-region" relations articles.--Pharos (talk) 18:29, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• The problem with relying on significant coverage is that few Western media provide adequate coverage of places such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Do this simple experiment: pick a country in that part of the world, & try to remember the last news report about its foreign policy. I can attest from experience writing articles on Ethiopia that many provably notable bilateral relationships would fail that test if applied too rigorously. An approach similar to what Loopy30 proposed above would accommodate the issue of significant coverage. -- llywrch (talk) 21:42, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We're not limited to sourcing such stuff solely to news reports, or to Western media. There are also specialist journals on international diplomacy; there are actual media in Sub-Saharan Africa; there's Al-Jazeera; there are academic books on African politics and diplomacy; there are biographies of African diplomats and politicians; and on and so forth. It is in fact very likely possible to properly source a good article about every diplomatic relationship that exists on earth — the issue isn't really whether some countries might get left out, because there are always sources we can draw on to write a good one if somebody actually puts in the effort to look beyond just the big Western media behemoths. Whether there's any value in boilerplating a bad article just so that there's something in place, despite the lack of any discernible effort into making that something any good, is a different question. Bearcat (talk) 19:07, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Power, there was a lot of discussion (

and AfDs) about this in 2009. See Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Bilateral international relations and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force, also see the suggested guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations#Bilateral relations. Fences&Windows 10:57, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed that is quite the history! I guess those of us that never learned this, are doomed to repeat it... Thanks for providing these links to the WP:BILATERAL project. Loopy30 (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the advice given above by Jayron32, I am refining my proposal for WP:NOTNEWS. My proposal again reflects on this sentence: For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia. Too many editors seem to believe this brief listing is exhaustive when, in reality, it is not. Of course, if it was it would read like "This applies only to...". I recommend adding the sentence This list is not exhaustive so there is no confusion, at least over that issue with the policy. I do not see why this call for clarification would be opposed but I've seen more surprising things from parts of the community.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 00:30, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Unnecessary. "For example" does the job. I respectfully disagree with the assertion that there are scads of editors out there trying to write about routine news events like christenings and Sewer Board meetings because they don't understand what "for example" means and it has to be explained to them. What I do see are significant news events minimized by editors who take an extreme view of NOTNEWS. Coretheapple (talk) 13:15, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• It would be helpful to point to examples where events were kept that would have fallen under this, where editors arguing to keep said 'This event is not the type listed in NOTNEWS therefore NOTNEWS does not apply" to know if this is a severe problem. --MASEM (t) 13:18, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I could suggest that we tweak the rule to address abuse of NOTNEWS, but I won't, That's because there is no consensus to change this rule. We had an RfC above and a straw vote at Village Pump, both of which reached that same conclusion. Time to let this rest a while rather than keep trying to nibble at it. Coretheapple (talk) 13:33, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Clearly more clarity is needed, since people believe the list to be both exhaustive and final. If it isn't, we need to explicitly tell them that. --Jayron32 15:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

i've seen that asserted. Where is the evidence that editors view that as an exhaustive list? If this is not a real problem then we have a WP:CREEP issue. Coretheapple (talk) 16:46, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Coretheapple clarifying a policy isn't WP:CREEP. I can find many more instances but here is a recent example of an editor of 11 years asserting NOTNEWS doesn't apply to crimes because it isn't one of the examples provided.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 17:13, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but I'm not seeing Shrike making that assertion. (Pinging, so they can correct me if I'm wrong.) They said " WP:NOTNEWS doesn't apply "its not routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities" . They're saying it's not routine, not that it's not one of the examples listed. And yes, CREEP does apply to so-called clarifications of policy. Coretheapple (talk) 17:20, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously Coretheapple? He quoted (incorrectly, I might add) that part of NOTNEWS to say crime wasn't one of the items listed. What possible harm can you reasonably find from adding this small sentence for "so-called" clarity? You are just fighting a small change for absolutely no rationale reason.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 17:34, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A segment from CREEP: "WP:CREEP" is not a substitute for actual arguments. Instruction can be helpful, even if long – when clearly and accurately representing community consensus. Hmm, so how does it apply again?TheGracefulSlick (talk) 17:41, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're totally misinterpreting Shrike's comment in a very unfair way---but hey, if they think you're being fair and correct it's a different story. As for CREEP, it seems to me that assuming that people don't know what "for example" means, on the basis of such slim evidence, is the epitome of instruction creep. Coretheapple (talk) 18:02, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I have read User:Shrike's comment and I do think that GrecefulSlick is misrepresenting it.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose To me, "its not routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities" seems like a perfectly clear statement; attempting to list all types of "routine" news would be futile and might, as editors have argued above, lead to more problems than it solves; and, I see no evidence that NOTNEWS is being misunderstood. What I do see is is a sort of WP:FORUMSHOP by TheGracefulSlick. Abut 6 months ago, GracefulSlick began a campaign to delete pages that she regards as non-notable terrorist attacks. Some were deleted, others were kept, still others closed as "no consensus." She rapidly brought some kept and "no consensus" pages to AfD for a second go, started discussions on the talk pages of pages that closed as no consensus to merge to lists, and filed ANI complaints on editors who opposed her deletions of terrorist attacks (including me). I suggest that we give it a rest, on the grounds that there is no community consensus on what is, in essence, a difference of opinion about the notability of low casualty terrorist attacks.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:45, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Where to start with this comment? First off, "its not routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities" isn't even how the sentence is read in NOTNEWS. As I mentioned quite clearly in my opening statement, this proposal is not trying to list anything but rather take the advice that was given to me by a neutral admin from the previous thread; I revised my proposal thanks to a community discussion. Yes, I nominated articles for deletion but with thorough nom statements reflecting entirely on notability guidelines. Most of the 2nd nominations were months or even years after the originals so editors could reflect on any long-term impact. One, I admitted already was a bad nomination and I think it would be unfair to still hold it against me. Also true, I did start an ANI thread on you and you were warned about your behavior at AFDs. I sincerely apologize, but I do not think your !vote here was done in good-faith, considering you could not even be bothered with quoting the sentence correctly; then you felt compelled to bring a misrepresented take of my editing history into the conversation which could taint the discussion on a simple clarity statement for NOTNEWS.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 01:57, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per Jayron and nominator. I can easily see how some might complain based on an improperly exclusive reading of the list. CREEP is not a concern for me here. The proposal entails just a few words, and not everyone has English as a mother tongue. And CREEP is not a substituted for a grounded argument for opposing, as per WP:CREEP. (P.S. if E.M. Gregory is even a tiny bit right about TheGracefulSlick's motives, I would TROUT them for that, but still support this minor addition of extra clarification. It's nice when guidelines are clear and admit less bickering. ). SemanticMantis (talk) 21:51, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support My suggestion would be to add this new note as a note/reference rather than in the main text. Shouldn't be such an issue. Lourdes 02:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose for the same general reasons as before. This is especially true if the proposal is somehow related to an attempt to delete "minor" terrorist attacks. A terrorist attack by nature is notable -- it can scarcely induce terror without being known to sufficient reliable sources to be worth having an article about. Wnt (talk) 23:08, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, with strong caveats Notwithstanding the fact that GracefulSlick's comments end with non-neutral analysis and an unnecesary pre-emptory broadside at anybody who is about to disagree with them, neither of which is appropriate to an RfC opening, the actual substantive suggestion is a reasonable one, it seems to me. That said, I'd propose that if we are going to go out of our way to point out that the list is not-exhuastive, we should also take pains to note that the class is also not an open one. The backstory here about GracefulSlick's perspective on this (whether true or not) underscores the uncountable number of issues that can arise from people wanting to keep significant events off the project just because they are recent. Most all terrorist attacks (to take the present example, though there are countless other areas that apply) are going to qualify under our notability guidelines and WP:NOTNEWS should never work at cross purposes to WP:N, but rather inform upon it in a way that is not conclusive in itself. The list "announcements, sports, and celebrity" may not be the only areas we are concerned about, but they do have a common character which is the meaning we need to preserve here: they are all routine, and thus can be expected to be the focus of media designed to promulgate them, whether they are particularly noteworthy or not--and this needs to be taken into account when considering the weight we give to sources in judging notability. This will not be the case in the majority of instances where WP:NOTNEWS is invoked, I suspect. Snow ^{let's rap} 08:42, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This may be the way to go, as a change to the wording that clarified what we consider "routine" without expanding it may be acceptable to all sides.

Adding "This list is not exhaustive" as suggested above won't help much; what we need are some more-or-less objective inclusion criteria for what is likely "routine" and what is "suitable for inclusion", encoded in the guideline as guidance. I'd point here to the relevant essays WP:MILL ("do not rely on news which are reported merely to fill a placeholder") and WP:SNOWFLAKE ("do report on what is unique to each routine news coverage, if the sources highlight something as remarkable about that item or event"). These opposing essays illustrate the tension inherent in the choice, and can provide some ideas on how to tweak WP:NOTNEWS to make it easier to follow, without changing its scope. Diego (talk) 09:44, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Note that a parallel discussion is underway at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Terrorism and WP:NOTNEWS.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:23, 29 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support because it is demonstrably true that "for example" is not doing the job.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  17:15, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - for extra clarity. I should add, although, that I don't think that there is much of a problem with stuff like this as is, because most problems like this are covered by WP:SIGCOV. RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 22:07, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Recently we had an OTRS "volunteer" lose their access to the tool here. User:KDS4444 is a well known long term paid editor.

This raises the question:

• Should OTRS volunteers be allowed to request money from people sending in question to OTRS?
• Should editors at AfC be able to request money for passing / accepting an article at AfC?
• Should admins be allowed to bill for undeleting an article / use of admin tools?
• Etc

Or should we have policies clearly disallowing this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:18, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems like WP:INVOLVED and WP:COI capture most of the spirit of this, and would be the places to amend if clarification is needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:40, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • That we have had OTRS agents using the system to make money proves that when it comes to paid editing "spirit" is often not enough. We need it to be black and white. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:46, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Obviously not, that's corruption. If our existing policies do not effectively forbid it then we should have news ones that do - perhaps amendments to WP:INVOLVED and WP:COI, as xaosflux says. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:58, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I think that an explicit prohibition of such would be a good idea. In government and business that is considered to be bribery or a kickback scheme. And since Wikipedia conflates tools with related powers/positions, we should note that it's not just mis-use of tools, it's mis-use of powers/position. North8000 (talk) 17:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• The admin aspect was already discussed and rejected as a standalone item. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:11, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • One difference is that the proposal there was "No administrator may accept payment to edit articles or to perform any administrative function on Wikipedia" (my emphasis). This suggestion is only about prohibiting paid use of tools. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:17, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • And after reading a bit through it, the discussion is essentially about whether admins should be prohibited from paid editing. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:32, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Making rules that are impossible to enforce is...problematic. Honest people lose, liars win. As someone who has never gotten a dime for editing Wikipedia, I can only suggest (mostly facetiously) that all editors be required to give WMF regular copies of all bank statements. Or quarantine all editors on a desert island with internet access. What a nightmare this all is. If I had to guess, I’d say that at least 10% of political edits at Wikipedia are financed by somebody. Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Locking your door does not prevent 100% of break-in, that does not make it useless. Wikipedia improves when good faith editors overall have a greater ability to contribute that bad faith ones. Rules help achieve a positive balance. Google Knol failed as it filled full of advertising. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:06, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Obviously the answer is 'No!' It's odd that the questions even have to be raised, but the goal therein is to make it absolutely clear, because paid editors - some of whom are notorious for their Wikilawyering - will use any 'omission' in the policies to practice their art. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:01, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Okay so with respect to wording, what do people thing about adding at WP:COI:

"No one may use admin tools or accepting articles at WP:AfC in exchange for a financial reward. Additionally the WP:OTRS system may no be used for recruiting clients or payment."

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:55, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• In order to shine a light on this, if we read current policies as prohibiting administrators, editors or OTRS volunteers, from taking actions while at risk of being thought to be paid for those actions, then no funded academic, employee, Wikimedian in residence, should ever take any action using their editing/sysop/access rights which could in any way benefit their employer or funder, even the scenario often used in the past by certain employees that though they are employed, they were editing in their volunteer time... It might actually be better to highlight case studies where administrators that were in a paid contract or had a grant, did legitimately use the tools as they were the best person at that time to do so, while correctly handling their declaration of interest in a transparent way. There may be cases where conflicts of loyalty have nothing to do with money, and those may also make for useful case studies. --Fæ (talk) 17:55, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you were a WiR at say the NIH and you protected all NIH related article without explicit consensus to do so, that would still be a problem. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:08, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Some good points there, which were raised in that other discussion (I've just finished reading it). While we should certainly want to prohibit 'corrupt' use of tools, it's hard to word policy so it does not adversely affect honest use as in examples like those. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I fully support this. Nick (talk) 18:08, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Anything other than "regular" editing (as can be done by an auto-confirmed user; a name-space restriction has too many edge cases to be reasonable) in exchange for payment should be strictly prohibited. The corner cases (what if a professor who is an admin does admin work on university time) can be figured out by lawyers, the spirit should be clear. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I also support making policy clear against potential corruption. I don't have a problem with Doc James formulation; it's of course always possible to improve it in the future for precision, i.e. WMF legal suggestions welcome... —PaleoNeonate – 19:36, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• My view: No editor should be allowed to use permissions given through community input or tools that allow editors to work in an "official" capacity (OTRS, etc.) to edit for pay. As long as a draft meets all normal AfC requirements, I'm ok with editors being paid for their work. Admins can be paid for their work as long as they don't use their admin toolbox in the process. Of course, all paid contributions should be declared. — Gestrid (talk) 08:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• OTRS is outside of our domain, and it seems the question has already been answered. However, I'm not aware of any instance of an admin using tools for pay - I'd be hard pressed to think of a situation where that would occur. Do we need to prohibit a practice that doesn't happen? As to AfC, that is a common job request, so it does represent something that happens. My knowledge of AfC is limited, though - do you need special tools in order to approve an article from AfC? I didn't think that was the case, but maybe I'm mistaken. - Bilby (talk) 08:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bilby, Of course you're not aware of any instance of an admin using tools for pay. I'm not. Nobody is. They are not exactly going to yell it from the rooftops if they are. It's a very plausible concern and I can think of several situations where it might occur. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:23, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hard pressed to think of a situation where an admin using tools for pay would occur? How about undeleting an article that had been deleted, unblocking a blocked paid editor, protecting an article at a favoured revision? It took me about 30 seconds to think of those three. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:37, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where an admin is accepting money to undelete an article. The advantages are clear, but I haven't seen an admin use the tools for pay, and I'm hard pressed to picture that situation arising. - Bilby (talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Several years ago, a Russian Wikipedia admin was desysopped for using admin tools to promote paid editing.--Ymblanter (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One instance, several years ago, on a different language Wikipedia. Ok. But has this ever happened here? I agree with the principal - no admin should use the tools in return for pay - and if the community wants that to be clearly stated I'm a bit concerned re WP:BUREAU, but it doesn't bother me overly much. I do worry about "the sky is falling" policy changes, though, and pushing through changes without evidence of there being a need for them. - Bilby (talk)

Did you ever hear, (until now), that somebody was actively using OTRS to recruit clients and solicit payments?Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:21, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can testify for my own part, that this case was particularly egregious and lost me a bit of sleep thinking about it. I realize it may not look that way from our end, but from the perspective of our readers, OTRS is in few ways a higher position of trust than being an admin on wiki. From the perspective of readers, they're getting an email from Wikipedia, and not a message from some anonymous user on Wikipedia. I think per discussion below, I'm personally leaning toward favoring something along the lines of No one may misuse a position of community trust... and perhaps specify that this can include user rights, various coordinator positions, and off wiki access like OTRS and ACC. GMG^talk 10:29, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with OTRS was a serious one, but that should be handled through OTRS. As I said, I'm not opposed to this on principal. My concern is that I'm seeing a lot of rhetoric and exaggerated claims about paid editing which are leading us to take more extreme steps, but not a lot of data to back up the specific claims. Given that I can't imagine any current admin accepting money to use the admin tools, the change in policy is moot, and I'll support a well worded proposal. It doesn't prevent anyone from doing anything that they were going to do. But I do want to be cautious of inventing problems that don't exist. - Bilby (talk) 11:10, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least to my mind, the admin bit isn't really special here. It's just one of many rights or positions, of which there are many requiring both more and less community trust, and more or less oversight. And this isn't an expectation of admins; it's an expectation of everyone, and admins are an everyone. The key common factor there is the trust, not the number of buttons. For example, autopatrolled users are trusted by the community to make acceptable quality articles that don't require community review.

Also pretty much just to my own mind, there are really two distinct types of policy formation. There's policy that attempts to create new process to deal with outstanding problems, and there's policy that simply documents widespread community practice that's already in place, but hasn't been explicitly written down anywhere. I believe this is the latter. It's already a de facto policy. When we have, and if we do find someone abusing positions of trust, we will remove them from that position. That's a fact. But we currently don't appear to have explicit, unequivocal wording that says You knew this was going to happen when you made the decision to abuse your position or access. GMG^talk 11:26, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I understand where you are coming from - I am fully in agreement that admins should not use tools for pay, with the various normal exceptions for WiR and whatever. My caution comes from seeing what can only be described as a war between paid editors and anti-paid editors, and in that war we're giving up progressively more. Thus I need to ask, every time a new policy change is put forward, the basic three questions - is it needed, will it work, what will it cost? This one costs nothing, in that it is such a specific case that it won't have a wider impact. But it isn't needed, because we have no evidence of this ever happening on en.Wiki. Will it work? I can't see how anything can "stop" something that doesn't occur, but I think we'll find that this is going to be very hard to prove to the level where we can desysop someone if it ever does arise, and that from a practical sense we'll end up using a different justification.

In regard to other tools, though, the approach doesn't seem to be the best solution. With AFC, I think we need a clear statement that says "you cannot approve any draft in return for financial remuneration" - it isn't about the use of tools, but the act of approving a draft. Focusing on the tools is the wrong part of the equation - someone just needs to take the longer process of approving it without any special permissions to meet the policy. Similarly, if we remain worried about auto-patrolled users, we need to say that all paid articles must be created through AfC is we want a real fix. It isn't the auto-patrolled status that is the core problem, but paid articles being created in mainspace and not being independently verified - although there will be more of a cost if we make that change. - Bilby (talk) 11:49, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not to beat the horse into a pulp, but to focus narrowly on existing community practice and reasonable expectation of future practice:

• When we have found users abusing AfC for paid editing, we have removed their access;
• When we have found users abusing OTRS for solicitation, we have removed their access;
• If we did find someone abusing autopatrolled to avoid scrutiny of paid articles, we would remove it;
• If we did find an FA coordinator, a member of the ArbCom electoral commission, etc. abusing their position, we would remove them from it;
• If we did find a sysop doing this (as other projects have), they'd have their mop snatched so fast it would cause whiplash;

So that raises the question to me, of why we haven't taken the time to write this down, when we seem to all agree to some extent that it is the way things work, and the way they can be expected to work for the foreseeable future. GMG^talk 12:05, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand enough about OTRS - my assumption is that it was a meta issue, not a en.WP issue, but if I'm wrong it is something to address here.

In the case of ArbCom, FA coordinators and admins, you are correct - we'd act if we found them. In general I don't really care if we wish to formalize those issues, except to note that we're formalizing something that we've never done, never had to do, and which would happen irrespective of any decision here. I'm wary of the principal of creating unnecessary changes. (I'd also note that, if policy reflects practice, in these cases we're reflecting what we believe would be practice, not what actually is, simply because it has never arisen).

With autopatrolled, yes, we would (and have) removed it. Let's put that in Wikipedia:Autopatrolled as the relevant place to discuss this and make the change. This one is far more important to me, and reflects something that we do, should do, and should formally note.

AfC is the other big issue to me - I would like to see that hole filled, as there are a lot of jobs hiring people to pass articles at AfC. But it isn't the tools that are the issue, so much as the approval. I'd like to see a more important change stating that articles cannot be approved from AfC in return for pay, as that would address the actual problem. Focusing on the tools rather than the approval is an error.

Just to be clear, my disagreement isn't with the spirit of the proposal, but with the two basic issues - I don't like creating policy changes that are not needed, and I don't care for skirting around the real issues (permissions) when we should be addressing the actual problems (approving articles for pay; creating paid articles in mainspace). - Bilby (talk) 13:03, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well... it seems the main difference in approaches is that you would like to wait until each individual right or position is abused, and then add a specific policy on that specific topic. (Also, BTW, OTRS is stand alone project and AFAIK the only one running media wiki that doesn't accept SULs.) To my mind, it just seems simpler to put a blanket statement on a central place, like PAID. GMG^talk 13:11, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite. I have two main differences. a) I'd like to address the real problem at AfC of approving articles for pay, rather than tackling the secondary (and mostly irrelevant) issue of use of permissions. b) I don't think we would need to change in policy even in the unlikely chance that the problems with FAC coordinators, admins or ArbCom members arose, because we would solve it without a change in policy. In that situation, I don't like creating policy changes to address remote issues that have never arisen and wouldn't need a policy change if they ever did arise.

I'm sure we'll end up with a blanket statement at paid. And WP won't end as a result. But I wish this energy went into changes that would have an impact or would address the real problems. - Bilby (talk) 13:22, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's part of my concern though, that if we have a blanket statement, we have one arguably time wasting discussion. If we do it piece meal, we end up with separate recurring discussions for each individual piece. GMG^talk 13:49, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I think I've been explaining things badly. If we have this discussion and agree to make this change to WP:PAID - which it is likely we will if we can get the wording right - it won't make any difference to how we respond to the main cases you raise: admins, FaC coordinators and ArbCom members. It may not do any harm, but it won't change the response, make it more or less likely that the problem will arise, or make things any easier if the situation ever appears.

In regard to this change and AfC, based on what I was told below, all the paid editor needs to do is not use any advanced permissions to pass something through. They can either argue that use of the helper script is not an advanced user right, or they simply don't use the script and do it the long way. That's because the AfC problem is not about permissions, but about actions. So if we make this change, we will still need to have another discussion to address the real problem.

In the situation of auto-patrolled users, the change I'd most like to see isn't a ruling that paid editors can't create pages in mainspace if auto-patrolled, but a rule that says that paid editors cannot create pages in mainspace. That second one seems more valuable to me, and will also involve a separate discussion.

Anyway, this is not of much value, because we're having the discussion however I may feel about it. :) Which is fine. But I've been arguing against paid editors for many years now, and what I'd most like to see is discussion around actions which will address the core issues without harming the project. This discussion has the advantage of not harming WP, but it retains the disadvantage of not addressing the problems that matter. - Bilby (talk) 14:19, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, part of my concern is once the issue of the paid OTRS agent was raised, it took several days for access to be removed. Even after the evidence was damning, it didn't seem like anyone wanted to unilaterally pull the trigger. Yes, it's technically a separate jurisdiction, but for English agents, it's pretty much the same cops on the beat. (I don't know of specific instances where autopatrolled has been removed for paid editing, but I'd be interested to.) This is the kind of thing that is to be expected where sysops, ideally cautious by nature, are in fairly uncharted territory as far as the letter of the law.

As to AfC, that and the issue of non-user right positions (coordinators, etc), are the reasons for my focus on emphasizing "positions of trust" and not just user rights. From a lower level implementation standpoint, if there is a project wide policy in place to that effect, project or right specific policies can probably for the most part be boldly added, and simply point to the main. Something along the lines of:

No user may use positions of community trust in order to solicit or accept payment for activities which have a direct and foreseeable impact on Wikipedia. This includes advanced user rights for which individual vetting and permission granting is required, positions of authority elected or appointed by the community, and system access on or off wiki not normally available to all users.

I think something like that would fairly well cover everything, including OTRS and AfC. GMG^talk 15:57, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

GreenMeansGo: to your question, the same OTRS agent Doc James mentioned above voluntarily relinquished their autopatrolled flag after I suggested it to them when the issue was first raised. We have no policy as to when to revoke user permissions in cases like this, and as a recent ArbCom case pointed out, the removal of user permissions is one of the most controversial things an admin can do.

Re: your proposed wording, I think I like it. I might also add something such as ...impact on Wikipedia; or use such a position to take actions on behalf of a client. for clarity. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:05, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My issue with raising OTRS here is not that it hasn't proven to be an issue, but that my understanding is that OTRS policy is managed at meta, so I assumed that a change in that policy in regard to paid editors has to be presented and discussed there. If this is not the case I have no problems with agreeing to the policy change here, but I had always assumed that OTRS policy is outside of our immediate control.

I still need to return to my issue with the AfC problem. I do not see permissions or "positions of trust" as the primary concern, based on what I've been told. What I think we need is not the change being discussed here, but a clear and unambiguous change to Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation that states that you are not permitted to approve an article where you have a COI, and in particular you are not permitted to approve an article in return for remuneration. It isn't about positions of trust or advanced permissions, but simply who can and cannot approve an article. - Bilby (talk) 16:28, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my thought was that AfC would be covered under system access on or off wiki not normally available to all users. It's true that en.wiki can't actually enforce anything at OTRS. But I think we can probably still say that someone abusing OTRS to make changes to en.wiki is exactly half in en.wiki jurisdiction, and we can still say that we don't approve of it.

Also, I'm fine with Tony's suggested addition. And I think the absence of policy on when to remove these rights is part of the problem, and part of why sysops are rightfully hesitant to do so. GMG^talk 17:00, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• • Yeah, AFC Reviewers need access to a helper-script, designed for the purpose, that heavily eases the process/workflow.It may be noted though, that all auto-confirmed editors have the right to move articles from draft space into mainspace or that any body could choose to follow a tedious manual reviewing process, that existed before the development of the script.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 09:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • In that case, there are no special permissions needed for AfC? Just optional access to a helper script that is open to any autoconfirmed editor? - Bilby (talk) 10:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Manually reviewing articles is sufficiently tedious so as to be prohibitive for most users. It is a de facto user right. GMG^talk 10:27, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Echo Timothy.In a very strict sense, AFC is not a right.But, in my wiki-life, I have neither seen someone evading the script-access-barrier by manually reviewing the submissions nor someone who is moving other author's AfC draft(s) to mainspace without using the script.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I guess what I'm wondering is if you need special community-granted permission to use the tool. Is this the case? Or an anyone use the tool? - Bilby (talk) 11:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • AfC works similarly to rights granted at PERM, but at a different venue. All you need is to convince one sysop that you're competent. The major differences are 1) it doesn't automatically come with the admin kit, although theoretically any admin could grant it to themselves, similar maybe to the way some things work with stewards (unless I'm mistaken), 2) it's not technically required for reviewing, but it's a bit like saying you don't technically need access to the elevator to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. GMG^talk 11:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• There was "consensus for some language on this issue" last time and it is still a good idea, so support. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:57, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Regarding Doc J's wording, if it is to be used, it may be simpler and more effective to say No one may use advanced user rights.... I have a hard time imagining a scenario where any right couldn't potentially be abused, which is why they're restricted. In fact, with ACTRIAL in effect, it could be easily argued that creating a paid article outright, instead of going through AfC is itself a type of abuse of auto-confirmed.

For rights with a greater potential for damage (e.g., sysop, AfC, page mover, AWB), and especially for those which have a comparatively limited amount of public oversight (e.g., OTRS, CU, OS)... Well... until very recently I should have thought that this actually didn't need to be spelled out at all, and that anyone with enough sense to use them would have had enough sense to assume this as a matter of course. But since the laundry list of rights and the myriad ways they could be abused is so lengthy, probably best to spell out the principle, and let the community decide the specifics, For example, is it an abuse of auto-patrolled if an editor doesn't unreview their own paid article creation? I don't know that we've ever needed to answer that question, but we might at some point. GMG^talk 10:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, after thinking my way through a hot shower:

1. It may be better to say No one may use abuse advanced user rights...
2. I realize most autopatrolled users probably can't unreview their own article in the first place, because they probably don't have NPP. Which adds another layer of hypothetical problems.
3. It's not entirely clear that pieces of the admin kit that non-admins may also have should be on the one hand, specially covered for sysops, or on the other, specially exempted for non-sysops. GMG^talk 11:10, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No to allow use of "community granted tools in exchange for money" - for all the obvious reasons. Yes to policies that disallow it.^{Atsme📞📧} 11:56, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• An even more perverse variant of this problem crops up periodically at AFC. An author/submitter of a declined (or deleted) draft is contacted off-wiki by someone who claims they will approve (or undelete) the page for payment. This practice of holding a page (draft or mainspace article) to ransom has been condemned as a form of extortion. There is a standing request that all such incidents be reported to WMF Legal. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• NO - No one should be paid this way. This smacks of bribery. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:15, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• No- this is a horrible idea. Reyk _YO! 12:21, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I'd like to be clear that the question here is quite different from "Can an editor simultaneously be a paid editor and have access to certain user rights, so long as they do not overlap those roles?" ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:12, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd planned on commenting on this today and it was closed before I could. Rob makes a good point, and I think it is worth clarifying if there are circumstances when being paid is incompatible with a role: the only thing I feel somewhat strongly about in this regard as an absolute no is the autopatrolled flag since it's impossible to turn off for only paid articles. Other areas I do think need clearer guidelines as well, and I think this is a first step in the direction of setting up those guidelines. Obviously this is a nuanced topic where there are strong opinions on both sides by the community, and I think further discussion (if not on this question then on other questions) is needed. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • (+1) to Rob's queries.But, primarily this discussion has in itself stemmed from an overlap.I have requested CPower678 to vacate their close.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 14:40, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The close is fine, mostly because the question as posed was wrong. The question is "should volunteers in roles of trust be allowed to use their tools for money?" The answer is a snow no, which is obvious. There is quite a separate question of whether volunteers can both hold roles of trust and separately be paid. For instance, should Wikipedians-in-residence be able to be admins? That is a very nuanced issue that would need a very different discussion. We can't have that discussion when it starts with such a flawed question. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

At least to my mind, one of the more intuitive ways to go with this is that if you have an account with basically any userrights other than extended confirmed or autopatrolled, and you want to do disclosed paid editing, then you need to register a separate account for the sake of propriety. GMG^talk 15:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As to off wiki access like OTRS, that's a blanket no from me. It can't be separated technically, since access is granted to a person, and not to an account, and it has comparatively little oversight. Probably similarly with CU since they have access to private information, possibly also ACC, and being part of ArbCom is right out. (Jesus this list gets long fast.) GMG^talk 15:14, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The WiR issue in particular is complex because while generally a wonderful program it has caused issues in the past (I think I'm thinking of one WiR who copied compatibly licensed advocacy pieces into en.wiki about 6 months back). That being said, having worked with Doc James on PAID issues several times, he typically is not referring to individuals employed by orgs that share the WMF's mission and values (the WiR program or similar), but to those who are paid to edit commercially.

This could be spelled out better, I agree, but I don't think the question is fundamentally flawed: establishing a principle that people agree on has value, even if it is only a very basic one. That gives a starting point for agreement for any future conversations on the issue, which as Rob rightly point out will be nuanced out of necessity. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:17, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The UNESCO fellow? GMG^talk 15:20, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's the one I was thinking of. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:25, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rob, the question, flawed or not, concluded with "or should we have policies clearly disallowing this.". The close failed to address that adequately, or explain why it was overlooking it. I agree with your other sentiments, and a close thus explained would have been fine. -- Begoon 15:28, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No since this is open again, the answer to the question asked is clearly no. I also disagree with Rob that this is a flawed question, and think we can set out some general best practices here for the less complex cases that will make the more complex cases easier to deal with when the time comes to have conversations on those issues (call it the baby-steps approach if you want). These are the policy things I think are fairly easy to deal with:

1. No one should use a position of community trust to solicit payment for services rendered on Wikipedia.
2. No one should use any user rights or positions of trust to advocate for their clients or to make technical changes that would not otherwise be possible if they did not have the rights (i.e. an admin undeleting a page or a page mover skipping the RM process for a controversial move over a redirect, etc.)
3. Technical permissions, use of tools requiring a checklist, and positions of trust that involve new content cannot be used to evade our normal scrutiny system for new content and COI content.

I think these three principles are things most people can get behind, and can help be the policy basis for any guidelines on how to apply the principles that Doc James is asking about. There are obviously others that might be able to be agreed upon as well and questions that can be raised regarding these points, but I think they would provide a basis for future discussions on the more nuanced and complex cases. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I've seen questions raised about whether buying access to admin capabilities is really a big deal. Yes, it is. Look at the number of admins whose talk pages are filled with begging from conflicted editors whose articles were deleted. Won't spell this out due to BEANS but the possibility for a rent-seeking admin with access to deleted revisions are obvious. Also, very few people know about this, but I've communicated privately my evidence-based concern about at least one other CU confirmed socking account that was trying to gain access in 2015 to OTRS. There are good reasons to believe the socking was undisclosed paid/advocacy editing-related as is often the case. This is a big deal since OTRS handles all kinds of private, confidential information that could lead to WP:OUTING at the very least.

If you can't tell I'm leaning very hard towards "no" on the question, but want to see some refinement of the terms before making a commitment. Behavior that even smells of rent-seeking and bureaucratic malfeasance, aka bribery, could be another piece in the puzzle that results in the end of this worthwhile project. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:35, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes? I think Anythingyouwant sort of addresses my viewpoint. There's an unmet need in the economy for moving drafts through AfC and getting images approved at OTRS. I would never want to turn either of those processes into pay-for-play and perhaps that's what the opposition is scared of. The fact is, volunteers do a poor job of meeting our various backlogs. Wikipedians edit where they find satisfaction and avoid the drudgery that's needed to keep our maintenance effort going. So long as editors divulge their payments per ToU, I don't see the problem. I don't think money is universally corrupting. I'd like to see our hard-working Wikipedians get paid for their work, and I'd love if some of our most-talented Wikipedians could make a living off of editing just as we're happy to see our favorite YouTubers be able to focus full time on their content work. Disclosure is the sunshine treatment that prevents corrupt activity. If the WMF would stop spending money on un-asked for coding projects and started on-going investigations for business promotion (among other problems) I think introducing a pay mechanism would help us refine product. I know I've enjoyed getting paid to edit; sadly there aren't many reasonable opportunities anymore. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:42, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Hell no and props to Doc James for raising this issue. Support a common-sense prohibition. Coretheapple (talk) 17:14, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• NO in the strongest possible terms - This does not conform to the spirit of the encyclopedia. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We just need acceptable wording and a place to put it

I agreed with the now retracted close. This is a "snow no" to allowing people to use positions of trust and tools for personal enrichment. There are many cases covered here, mainly at AfC, OTRS, and admins, so we need to refine the wording and place it in the right policies. I say policies in the plural because paid editors routinely ignore guidelines and because OTRS is regulated on enWiki by Wikipedia:Global rights policy, admins are regulated at WP:Admins (specifically at WP:Involved}, whereas AfC reviewing is not regulated by any policy that I know of, only by Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation.

I suggest similar wording for all the above, based on User:TonyBallioni's wording just above. Once we get the wording to almost everybody's liking, then place it for an RfC at WP:GRP and WP:Admin. I'll be bold and start the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation soon myself.

Basic wording:

No editor may use a position of trust or any user rights to:

• solicit payment for services to be rendered on Wikipedia, or
• accept payment for the use of such a position or rights
  • for the benefit a client
  • for advocating for a client, or
  • to evade our normal scrutiny system for new content and COI content.

Payments and grants made by the Wikimedia Foundation or its affiliates (e.g. chapters) are excepted.

• Support as proposer. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:00, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please see AfC and the related talk page. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:38, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support since it is based on my wording above, see my reasoning there. I would also extend this to NPP/the NPR flag as well as AfC because that is what gives a user the ability to mark a page for indexing by Google. This wording should cover that, but I did want to mention it explicitly in my support. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:40, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as initial wording, without prejudice to editing or improving as with any policy. This seems concise, reasonable, and easy to understand. Everything a policy needs to be. --Jayron32 19:04, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment How would this apply to Wikipedians in residence (i.e. people who edit on behalf of universities, libraries, and museums). I personally know someone who was paid by a museum to help write articles on 100 notable New Zealand craft artists as part of a GLAM project. It seems like the wording used here could be made to apply to that project as well. "any user rights" seems ambiguous. I am extendedconfirmed, does that count as a 'user right' in this context? Does that mean that autoconfirmed users are not allowed to use the perks of that 'user right' (i.e. creating articles) to create articles for pay? Or is this meant to only apply to user rights that are community granted (i.e. page mover, rollback). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 19:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • It'd be pretty simple to deal with WiR's would create distinct accounts, which they do anyway normally, and in most cases, I would expect the accounts wouldn't have additional flags. Autoconfirmed isn't a flag but an implicit group that is determined every time a user action is attempted. Extended confirmed is a flag, but it is automatically granted, so I'd assume we'd use common sense and treat it the same as autoconfirmed. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:23, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I agree with ICPH any paid editor (disclosed or otherwise), any wikipedian in residence that uses an autoconfirmed user right to create a page or even just to edit is in breech of this text; Wikipedia:User right is redirected to WP:User access levels and ALL user groups have right attached to them. Domdeparis (talk) 20:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Those creating articles for pay are to go through AfC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:18, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• As I mentioned above, autoconfirmed is not a user right. It is a test that the software does automatically when any action is attempted. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:23, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You might be right about autoconfirmed. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 21:36, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Insertcleverphrasehere: yes, this is made clearer in Special:UserRights. See yours here. It lists autoconfirmed as an implicit membership rather than a membership. Its just a software check. From the admin side of it, we can't revoke autoconfirmed status once it has been achieved (there is no tick box for it, and removing the confirmed tick box on the rare occasions that flag is granted does nothing once someone meets the software requirements). TonyBallioni (talk) 21:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:18, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I definitely support a prohibition such as this. I would suggest that the way to distinguish someone like a Wikipedian in residence etc. from what we want to prohibit, is that the prohibited conduct occurs when there is a quid pro quo in exchange for something that would not be approved if it were out in the open. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:21, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tryptofish, WiRs who have distinct accounts for their work as a WiR would be in compliance with the user permissions part of this since that role account would not have additional permissions. We do want to prohibit a WiR who is also an OTRS agent (or hell, hypothetical future arbcom member) from using that position to somehow advance the cause of the org they are being paid by just as much as we'd want to prevent those paid for commercial purposes. The WiR program is good but we also need to recognize that some of them do have a COI on advocacy issues, and that the same principles apply to them as well. I think the overwhelming majority would not abuse it, but I don't want to exempt them completely. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:29, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with what you say. I didn't mean to make it sound like I was saying that there should be anything special about WiR, but I see now that it sounded that way. What I meant was distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable conduct. And I think that what defines unacceptable is (i) a quid pro quo and (ii) a result that would have been opposed by the community if it had happened out in the open. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I don't know if this is exactly the right wording, someone can probably improve upon it, but I would suggest going with something more like No editor may use advanced user rights requiring community trust.... Auto confirmed and Extended confirmed are both user rights, but they're not really an expression of community trust, and they're not really a user right in any meaningful sense that we are talking about now. As for the rest of it, if we did have a user with advanced rights go out for WiR, I think it would be totally appropriate for them to either request their rights be temporarily removed, or register a disclosed second account, especially as it concerns auto-patrolled and sysop. I don't really see a reason why a WiR would need to be active at places like NPP or AfC anyway. GMG^talk 20:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support this proposed change in the wording (which I believe was the original and understood intent of the version proposed above). I propose that we amend the proposal to this new wording, and then continue the voting. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 22:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If we are going to change it lets just come out and add normal editing by autoconfirmed or extended confirmed users is not considered use of permissions for these purposes or something like so we don't get into quibbling as to what an advanced permission is or which ones require community trust. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:19, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Umm... I think I actually disagree on one point. I think the purpose is kindof to be intentionally vague to some extent, and let the community decide the specifics in an actual situation. GMG^talk 22:30, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not all forms of advanced editing privileges requiring community trust are backed by user rights. I wouldn't want FAC coordinators accepting money to get commissioned articles on the Main Page, for instance. MER-C 12:57, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ha! Now this is actually a very good point indeed! There are actually quite a bit of coordinator type positions that have nothing to do with a user right in the software but could be just a easily used improperly and in many cases with greater effect. This should probably be covered here somehow. GMG^talk 14:12, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose for now. I'm 100% in support of the sentiment here, but I still think the wording is a little vague. For instance, last year I spent some time in a paid WIR position. I registered a separate account, and made it clear that I would not be using any of my admin/functionary access for anything related to my work as a WIR. I kept the separation going to the point of CSD tagging old userspace drafts rather than deleting them myself. I did not make a secret of the fact that I was an administrator before taking the job, and I suppose that an overzealous individual could say that by making this clear I was trading my 'authority' as an admin and trusted user in exchange for a job? I am also not sure what problem this instruction creep is going to solve, as in the KDS4444 situation the user was quickly evicted from OTRS once their conduct was discovered without the need for a policy change. This does have the smell of security theatre about it. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 02:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC).[reply]
  • Wikipedians are not the only audience for this policy. This creates a policy we can point to when reporting spammers to freelance job sites and/or in OTRS tickets regarding commissioned articles. MER-C 12:52, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• No editor may use a position of trust... may be overly broad. If you were going to legitimately hire someone to make non-promotional edits, you'd want to engage someone who was trusted by the community. Conversely, if an editor is going to provide copy-writing services, the community should prefer someone who is trusted to follow policies, guidelines, and best practices, versus someone who has failed to be proven trustworthy. isaacl (talk) 03:05, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support in principle. Wording wise, I suggest something like "Editors with advanced editing privileges requiring community trust must not solicit or accept payments for using said privileges to advocate for or on behalf of a client or circumvent normal editorial processes regarding new and COI content". As for placement, why not put it in WP:PAID as well? MER-C 12:52, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Personally I would go even further and require that any advanced user right cannot be *held or granted* if you are engaged in or offering any commercial or otherwise paid service related to Wikipedia. The inherent conflict of interest that receiving money for services engages means that its too much of a risk. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, with wording to be refined, particularly regarding acceptable exceptions. And yes, per Only in death, no advanced right or permission should be granted or allowed to paid editors. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:24, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't see that working generically for practical reasons. The GLAMwikitoolset right has been given to GLAM and Wikimedia Chapter employees for their "official" user accounts in order to manage donations of image archives to Wikimedia Commons and in some cases to run bot-generated reports (with granted bot flag) to support reuse on Wikipedias. They were being paid to do the work, and there is no reason to waste valuable unpaid volunteer time when projects like these are run transparently. --Fæ (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  @Fæ: minor questions. a) Is this being run to make edits on enWiki? b) is this right covered at WP:GRP? c) does my proposed wording below make your objection mute? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:30, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fæ, what I said in my first short sentence above ("wording to be refined, particularly regarding acceptable exceptions") should be taken as applying also to what I said in the second sentence. Also, what happens on Commons happens on Commons; my opinion expressed here on Wikipedia relates specifically to this project. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:43, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I'm ok with the principal, but what is meant by "any user rights"? That seems overly broad. The wording makes it sound as if anything you can do as a user - create new articles, edit, revert, etc - would fall under this. The wording needs to better reflect what rights are at issue. - Bilby (talk) 08:14, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The suggestion is that "payment for service" is automatically harming the encyclopedia, that is just suspicion, it's possible to be paid for doing good work, it's also possible for an admin to put their responsibilities to the community last or first, paid is not proof of a problem, it's only proof that we don't trust them. The heart of the issue isn't WHY the editor, or admin might be acting against the community, only that there is a problem with what they actually did. So lets be focused on behavior not mistrust. Dougmcdonell (talk) 19:17, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Prohibition statements etc. in policies/guidelines oalmost always reflect upon the behaviour of common folks, not that of the outliers.Though, if you had choosen to oppose, because you think, that there's no problem in any editor soliciting payment(s) from potential customers through OTRS channels (as long as the worth the article he/she later churns out is satisfactory) or somebody self-patrolling his own paid creations, despite the elements of obvious cognitive bias or some sysop restoring articles, declining CSDs, closing AfDs in lieu of payments, it's another case.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 14:05, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose I think Wikipedians should always be able to solicit "payment for services to be rendered on Wikipedia". Chris Troutman (talk) 21:46, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support long overdue. Coretheapple (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support in principle and most specifics; I prefer the slight modification in the next subsection. It's concise, non-bureaucratic, and consistent with the general community take on these matters. We know there'll be some paid/COI editing, and consensus implemented policy about it. This just closes a loophole.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:23, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

With very few exceptions there are no opposes here based on principle. We're just arguing about wording (and where to put that wording). Within the limits of my available time, I'll keep coming back to this. There are several places to put this, and I think several are needed since advanced rights are covered in several places. Progress so far:

• I've placed a simple one line prohibition at WP:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#How_to_get_involved and opened a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation#No_payments_for_reviews. So far - no opposes, 1 support.
• A few days ago User:Godric on Leave added ""you should not accept any such affected article(s) at articles for creation process." to WP:COI and then reverted it as premature. I've put it back and reopened the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Conflict_of_interest#Using_tools_in_exchange_for_pay. I expect that will stick (based upon further discussion here, and is likely to be made stronger.

Other discussions, with possible wording changes, will have to be held at WP:GRP (for ORTS) and WP:Admin. I don't expect any opposition at WP:GRP, and will start that discussion on Monday. My suggestion for wording follow. I'm just adding a line on Wikipedians in residence, but please note that the "who" in the 1st line will change based on where the policy is proposed. Once everything is done, we can then summarize the changes at WP:Paid.

• I don't get it. As far as I can tell, using any bit in exchange for money is already disallowed so outlining rules for it just makes it easier to game. Anyone misusing any bit is subject to having that bit removed. Doing it for pay is clearly misusing it. There really is no question about it. Any admin unblocking for cash would be dragged to Arb and bit stripped, for instance. No one would oppose that. A new rule is superfluous. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:14, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Dennis Brown, the TOU—even in the brave new world of the WMF crackdown—aren't as clear-cut as you think, and there are still quite a few loopholes. Show me where in policy it's forbidden for an admin to profit from their access to deleted revisions, for instance—and that's something that does have commercial potential, there are ad-funded websites that literally do nothing but host deleted Wikipedia articles (Deletionpedia is the best-known). ‑ Iridescent 20:23, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• As long as policy is based on consensus and consensus is overwhelmingly against selling use of the bits, then it seems obvious to me. If I find any admin using any bit for gain, I won't hesitate to block them, for example. I don't need a specific policy statement, WP:COMMONSENSE covers it well, as bits are based on trust that they will be used only to benefit Wikipedia. Any use of the bit to gain advantage, be it financial, in an edit war, or otherwise, is grounds to lose the bit. Any bit. The community has already said this by providing a vetting system for all the bits, and policies on use of each of the bits. Anyone that doesn't understand that shouldn't have advanced bits, as the reason we have them is to benefit the encyclopedia, not ourselves. I'm afraid once you start setting specific rules, you start creating loopholes. As it is now, ANY misuse of any kind, even those we can't think of ahead of time, is grounds to lose the bit. I truly feel we codify too much that is already covered by common sense, and that is part of the problem with the contradictory maze of policies we have. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 01:35, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Without a policy to back it up, the odds of a desysop from arbcom are negligible. Sure we could go the community ban route that we went with within the last few days for an OTRS agent, but that would also lead to the inevitable arbcom case. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I have a bit of a counter-proposal to this, which is that rather than setting out prohibitions for paid editing activities, we should merely set out a very tightly limited list of what paid editors can do, and specify that any action not on that list is prohibited. The list would be something like, following disclosure of having been paid, adding reliably sourced information to a draft, or proposing on an article talk page that content be added or changed. If that is the complete list, then obviously things like unearthing deleted edit histories would be outside the scope. bd2412 T 20:28, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • As the United States discovered when it tried to ban alcohol, it is very difficult to regulate that which you prohibit, and I think your proposal comes so close to prohibition that the same principle will apply. If you make the rules too onerous, then at some point paid editors will just not disclose their paid status. I'm sure this already happens, and probably quite a bit, but it will get worse. WP:OUTING is written so strongly (too strongly IMO, but that's a separate discussion) that enforcement will be very difficult. --Trovatore (talk) 21:14, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

break

New basic wording:

No editor may use a position of trust or advanced user rights to:

• solicit payment for services to be rendered on Wikipedia, or
• accept payment for the use of such a position or rights
  • for the benefit a client
  • for advocating for a client, or
  • to evade our normal scrutiny system for new content and COI content.

Payments and grants made by the Wikimedia Foundation or its affiliates (e.g. chapters) are excepted. Wikipedians-in-Residence should declare their paid status and their paid use of advanced rights, but are otherwise exempt.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:30, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is an improvement, but I'm still a little uncomfortable with the word "solicit", which I think could potentially cover a wider range of scenarios than what is intended. Am I correct in assuming the intended effect of that clause is to stop people using OTRS and other WMF-sponsored tools for finding work? Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 02:30, 5 November 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Examples where "solicit" may come into play: Orangemoody-type advertising via email, i.e. Pay me to write your article and I'll make sure it sticks because I'm an admin, b) ads on Fiverr "You can pay me to write your article, and I'm an admin". One place that it wouldn't come into play is with Wikipedians-in-Residence because they "are otherwise exempt." I have no problem with a potential WiR saying to a respectable GLAM "BTW I also volunteer at OTRS" because GLAMs are aligned with our aims, and because I think GLAM folks (on- and off-Wiki) would police the activity themselves. I trust librarians!. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:20, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can the scope of "position of trust" be narrowed? What roles that do not require advanced user rights are being targeted? For example, is a co-ordinator of WikiProject Military history, an elected position, considered a position of trust for the purpose of this proposed guidance? How about the Today's featured article co-ordinators? Teahouse hosts? isaacl (talk) 18:26, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for my absence here, real-world obligations catch up sometimes. The answer to @Isaacl:'s question is most that there are many places where the rules for different positions and user rights are set out. I believe that each place needs input from the folks that hang out there and that the exact wording for each position can be worked out, In short, it'll be narrowed by doing one position at a time, and by the people involved. That's not to say that folks here can't be involved at those pages as well. So far:

• small change already made at WP:AFC, with no opposition
• small change at WP:COI reflecting the AfC change
• an interesting discussion at WT:Good articles
• I'll start a discussion very soon at WT:GRP (which covers OTRS and other rights)

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:47, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Can you list some examples of roles that would be covered which do not have associated advanced user rights? This would help me consider what type of wording may be appropriate. Personally, I do not think just being trusted by the community should be in itself a disqualifying factor, even though trusted editors inherently have a greater influence on discussions than those who aren't trusted. isaacl (talk) 17:00, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My main concern is with holders of advanced rights who use their status, rather than the rights per se for paid editing, e.g. OTRS "volunteers" who might come on to enWiki (their rights, if we call them that are used elsewhere) and post something on a talk page, e.g. "From an OTRS ticket, I'm removing .... until a better source can be found." Or say an admin !voting at ANI. That's not exactly using their tools - it's a use of their position or status.

As far as "trusted positions" without tools - the only ones that concern me at all are AfC reviewer (this seems to have been taken care of) and Good Article reviewer (which is still being discussed). Others may be concerned about different positions - but let them make the proposals. As far as the elected director of WP:Military history - I just don't know enough about it - but I doubt that he'd win an election if he declared that he was willing to sell his services as the director. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FA coordinator and the ArbCom election commission have been mentioned above. GMG^talk 17:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it would be better to cast the restriction (for editors without advanced user rights) in terms of the type of services offered: the commonality seems to be decisions that are entrusted to one or a small number of persons, or the evaluation of the community's consensus view. So maybe something like this:

• No editor with advanced user rights may solicit or accept payment for any service related to Wikipedia. Examples of services include advocating for a client, or evading scrutiny for any edits benefiting a client.
• No editor may solicit or accept payment for any service related to evaluating the Wikipedia community's consensus view, or to deciding on an outcome either as an individual or within a committee, as opposed to part of a community discussion. Examples of outcomes include decisions made by the feature article co-ordinators, and rulings made by the Arbitration Committee election commission.

Further examples of course can be listed. isaacl (talk) 18:35, 8 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Prefer this version to the one in the above section, since it deals with the "coordinators" matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:24, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(radical?) counterproposal

Instead of running away and pretending we can stop editing (hint - I've only seen reports and instances of paid editing increase since the change in the ToS from my OTRS work), why don't we almost create a "trusted editor" system - editors that are trusted by the community are added to a page, can be contacted by external editors, and if the subject is indeed notable, the page can be created by them for either a charge or a donation to the WMF? (something a bit like WP:JOB but better publicised) Paid editing is clearly not going to go away - as I see it, we can have a choice where both us (with better paid-for articles, so less NPP needed), and the subjects (article less likely to get deleted, less likely to be scammed). I'm aware this does present a potential COI flag over the foundation, but as it is independent editors carrying out the editing, I don't see this as an issue.

Note: I'm not involved in paid editing, I just regularly dealt with the fall out from it. The current approach clearly isn't working IMO - maybe a shift in our approach may well get better results. Mdann52 (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Those hiring paid editors are often looking for promotional rather than neutral content. The problem is growing as we become more well known and respected and the businesses that do this work increase in number. The rise of sites like Elance and Fivver also contribute. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James: True - however, I think if we are going to keep our head into the sands that this issue can be solved with our current approach, promotional content is going to become more widely available. I think that trialing different approaches to see what impact they make would be at least vaguely worthwhile. Mdann52 (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Our current approach appears to be 1) some pretending the problem does not exist or if it does it does not matter 2) a small group trying very hard to keep our rules against paid editing from being applied and try to do everything possible to prevent any new rules from being created to regulate the practice or enforce our TOU.

So it is not surprising we are here. We do need to try things, but I would like to suggest we try enforcing our current rules or ban paid promotional editing directly in article space completely. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:41, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]