Hi,
Is it possible to create a French Bistro as we have on wp:fr a fr:Wikipédia:Bistro des non-francophones ? Thanks in advance, Mike Coppolano (talk) 16:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Coppolano Are you referring to something like WP:Teahouse, but only for editors of the English Wikipedia who speak French and not English? We had Wikipedia:Local Embassy linked from the front page until sometime last year, when the link was removed due to disuse (see here). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:31, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure what the point would even be. I would think that if you can't read and write in English the standard advice would be to contribute to a project in your native language? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:33, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Mike Coppolano, BNF is called Wikipedia:Local Embassy here. See Wikipedia:Local Embassy/Français. It is not very active. We should probably remove the names of inactive editors from the list of ambassadors.

The purpose of the page is to make it easier for people to ask questions in their own language. Sometimes, if you see a problem in an English-language article (e.g., about your country or language), it's for you to explain the problem in your own language, even though the necessary editing needs to be done in English. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Local Embassy/Français is not very active. I prefer the idea of a French Bistro. If you call it Chez Lafayette ? Mike Coppolano (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

It's not clear to me how a differently-named page would alter the level of activity. The local embassy is cross linked from the French Wikipedia page you referred to, so French editors looking for an equivalent on English Wikipedia can find it that way. isaacl (talk) 03:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Why not ? After all, there is this ! Mike Coppolano (talk) 19:51, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I just don't think there just aren't enough people who fall into the category of "wants to edit in English but chat in French" to make such a forum sustainable, most people who want to talk in French will just use the French Wikipedia. We have a "discussion in languages other than English" forum (WP:Local Embassy) but it's essentially abandoned. There are a few places where you can chat in French about editing here, WT:WikiProject France is probably a good place to start, but by doing so you're massively limiting the number of editors that can participate since the only language we can count on everyone here speaking is English. Other language projects are probably in a slightly different position by virtue of the WMF being American and it's de-facto internal working language being English, so they will have to interact with messages in other languages on a semi-regular basis. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 21:15, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand how the existence of a bookstore illustrates that renaming the local embassy will increase its level of activity. As with most initiatives in English Wikipedia, the first problem is finding interested people. The name of the page where they'll interact is secondary. isaacl (talk) 23:12, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I want there to be an option which makes it so that you can hide images that are on the bad image list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jibreel23 (talk • contribs) 18:12, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Jibreel23: There's instructions on how to do this at Help:Options to hide an image#Disable all images of the "bad image list" 192.76.8.77 (talk) 18:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Background

This proposal concerns two instructional pop-ups that appear when a new user opens VisualEditor and clicks on blue pulsing dots in the toolbar. You can test it out for yourself by opening this link in a private/incognito browser window.

Previous discussion has been held at MediaWiki, and in two discussions at the talk pages of the MediaWiki pages that host the text, MediaWiki talk:Visualeditor-linkinspector-educationpopup-text and MediaWiki talk:Cite-ve-dialogbutton-citation-educationpopup-text. phab:T298837 was recently resolved thanks to Matma Rex, so we can now add wikilinks if we so desire.

As a matter of web usability best practice, it's important we keep these messages as simple and short as possible. If we try to embed the entire MOS in them,^[hyperbole] users just won't read them. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Links pop-up

This one appears on clicking the insert link icon. It currently reads:

Link important words to other wiki articles. It will help readers understand the context.

I propose that we link the newcomer tutorial page on linking style over the text important words. This will guide newcomers who want to learn more about what should be linked to a short, friendly page that teaches this. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support as proposer. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Good call. An alternative target could be this one, but I feel it's too visually messy to send new users to. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Citations pop-up

This one appears on clicking the cite button. It currently reads:

Improves your content by adding sources of information. You can cite from books, newspapers and websites.

This is borderline misleading, since WP:Reliable sources is a core guideline, so we don't just accept citations from any website. I propose we change the statement to:

Improves your content by adding reliable sources of information. You can cite from reputable books, newspapers, and websites.

This adds only two words, keeping the message concise, but emphasizes the importance of good sources. Similar to above, it also adds a wikilink to a newcomer-friendly help page with more information for anyone curious to learn more. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)^{Edited 22:58, 8 February 2022 (UTC)}

• Support as proposer. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

As @Xaosflux said last month, the goal is verifiable information, not "reliable information".

Also, I'd remove the word "reputable", because (a) not all reliable sources are actually reputable (see: every citation to the Twitter accounts of prominent but disreputable politicians), and (b) if you're getting your information from a poor source, we want you to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT so that it will be quicker for RecentChanges patrollers to notice how bad it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot about the tweak that came about from the discussion here; I'll adjust the proposal to fix that. (I do think the original is correct, since the goal is information that is verifiable through a citation to a reliable source, i.e. a source that publishes reliable information. But that's a rather fine distinction, so better to just change to by adding reliable sources of information.)

On your second point, if someone realizes they shouldn't be adding information from an unreliable source, they have three options: not add it at all, add it unsourced, or find a better source for it. 1 and 3 are good, and 2 is easy for patrollers to spot. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 22:57, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

My second point isn't about someone realizing they shouldn't be adding information from an unreliable source. I'm concerned about someone incorrectly thinking that they can't add a reliable source because the reliable source isn't a reputable source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:02, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Think a few things may be getting overlapped? If the call out is solely about adding "a source" then yes, we want a 'reliable source'. If there is a call out about adding "information", we want 'verifiable information'. The prior discussion mentioned a conflation, "adding sources of reliable information." — xaosflux ^Talk 23:17, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Would it not make more grammatical sense if the first word here was "Improve" rather than "Improves"? Also I think that a slightly more extensive rewrite would be better here, the current text seems to suggest that citations are an optional improvement, rather than something you 100% need to provide if you don't want your work to be reverted. I would suggest something like "Content in articles must be supported by sources. You can cite from books, newspapers and websites.". (The wording could use a lot of work). 192.76.8.77 (talk) 17:07, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Those are both good points. We could borrow from the language we adopted for the universal editnotice for the source editor and go with Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources. You can cite from reputable books, newspapers and websites. How does that sound? ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:24, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Honestly? It sounds a bit too wordy and a bit too "Wiki-speak" like to be in an introductory popup. There's a few words I would trim, I don't think it's necessary to clarify that content is encyclopaedic and describing sources as both "reliable" and "reputable" is unnessasary duplication IMO. How about going for something mid-way, like Content must be supported by citations to reliable sources. You can cite from books, newspapers and websites. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

That sounds good to me! ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 21:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, too. (Though, TBH, I'd have preferred the active tense, rather than a passive one, which would have occurred had 'Improves' been changed to 'Improve'. But on the other hand, this is a clear instruction to do something - so maybe not bad to have. But as I'll just throw this out there for consideration:

Improve content by supporting it with citations to reliable sources. You can cite from books, newspapers or websites.) Nick Moyes (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: The reason I didn't like the original wording is because I think it suggests that citations are an optional improvement, rather than a requirement. I think it would be a better user experience for newbies to be bluntly told "you must provide citations for content you add", as opposed to them being told they are an improvement, adding unsourced content then being reverted and warned over something that they didn't know. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 16:31, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Fair comment, though that's not totally correct - it's only a 100% requirement for content that's liable to be challenged or linked to a BLP. But I'm happy to go with your suggestions, if others other. Nick Moyes (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: You are of course 100% correct, but I don't think it would be possible to squeeze a description of what "likely to be challenged" means, the various places where citations are not needed at all (WP:LEADCITE) and the philosophical debate of WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue vs WP:You do need to cite that the sky is blue into a 20 word pop-up message. I think stating that you must provide citations is the more conservative approach here, I've seen plenty of newbies have their work reverted as uncited, I don't think I've ever seen someone have their first edit reverted purely for having too many citations. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

This aspect (applies to MOS:PLOTSOURCE as well) was a challenge we encountered at the universal editnotice discussion. There, the outcome was to use verifiable through rather than supported by (supportable by being another option). There's a tradeoff between straightforwardness and correctness, and I'm somewhat on the fence which is preferable. To lay them out, the options that'd ensure we're hewing precisely to PAG are Content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources. You can cite from books, newspapers and websites. and Content must be supportable by citations to reliable sources. You can cite from books, newspapers and websites. Cheers, ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 18:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes, I like your version. Clear, direct, and simple. There's not really any need to tell newcomers about what does and doesn't fall under WP:MINREF.

(I think that the original says "improves", rather than "improve", because the message is supposed to describe what the button does, rather than what the editor should do. It's a bit awkward, and I'm not sure that the style needs to be preserved.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:20, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

When an article is deleted, a record of the contents of the article at the time of its deletion is maintained and is accessible to administrators. Moreover, when an article is merged or redirected, the contents of the article previously at that title typically remain visible to all editors. However, when a category is deleted and links to that category are removed from pages categorized therein, the central set of data of what articles were contained in the category prior to its deletion is lost forever.

For example, the category tree of Category:People who died in office contained hundreds of articles at the time that it was deleted. Quite possibly, that list of articles could have been retained as a list, or some subset of particular interest could have been retained as a list (we have, for example, List of presidents of the United States who died in office, List of heads of state and government who died in office, and List of members of the New Zealand Parliament who died in office). I know of no way, at this point, to recover the contents of that category and its subcategories to determine whether additional such lists could be compiled from the data, which is a rather disappointing black hole of information.

I therefore propose that at the time that a category is deleted, a record should automatically be made of the list of articles contained in that category at the time of its deletion, unless some specific reason is articulated to avoid even the creation of such a record (e.g., the category was a BLP violation along the lines of a hypothetical Category:Politicians who probably secretly engage in insider trading and get away with it, or a straight-up hoax along the lines of a hypothetical falsely populated Category:University of Northeast Rhode Island alumni). BD2412 T 07:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• @BD2412: if implemented, I think meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Categories/Help to know if an article exists in a certain language from the categories. might solve your problem? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:31, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

There's also the question of when to preserve the snapshot of contents. Categories are typically emptied before being deleted when empty. Certes (talk) 12:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@Certes: I would say that the contents should be preserved before any emptying begins. BD2412 T 16:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Is this even possible? Is there a way to track what pages are listed in a category at any given time? Unlike other pages, additions and subtractions to categories are not made on the category page itself... so we can not simply hit the "view history" button to easily see the additions and subtractions (changes) made over time. Indeed, one of my pet peeves is that day to day changes to category pages don't show up on one's watchlist. Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  Category changes can be configured to show up on the watchlist. See Help:Watchlist#Limitations. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  If memory serves, that's not a particularly reliable technique and it can't be shared between numerous people. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Such a record is already retained in the contribution history of whoever emptied the category, which is usually JJMC89 bot III. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Frankly, that is not as useful, since different editors may take up parts of the task, and hunting through pages of a bot's edit history is quite a bit harder than having a single accessible list. BD2412 T 16:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• I remember reading discussions over a decade ago where editors were counseling fellow editors to not bother with categorization matters. CFD is one more venue for editors who are off in their own little world, unconcerned with the health of the project as a whole. What is the purpose of someone picking low-hanging fruit by proclaiming "Oh, this should be a list" and the end result is no list? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 07:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
  • One of the drivers for this request is that I see CfD discussions where at least some participants propose that the category would be better as a list, but then the category gets deleted with no such list being made, and no easily accessible record remains of what was in the category prior to deletion for the creation of such a list. Perhaps "judges who died in office" would have been better as a list article, but the category was deleted and its hundreds of entries decategorizes, so the rather painstaking process of identifying all the judges who died in office would need to be started from scratch. BD2412 T 07:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• @JJMC89: would you be interested in having your bot copy the contents of a category to a page before depopulation? Serprinss (talk) please ping on reply. 15:10, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Preserve at Wikidata?

I've been concerned about this for a while, as it seems that WP:CfD has tightened up their interpretation of WP:DEFINING, which is a valid approach for categories but one that risks deleting information we might like to use elsewhere. The solution I'd like to see is a task force at Wikidata that takes to-be-deleted categories and ensures that the information in them is imported to Wikidata before they are deleted. For instance, the Eagle Scout categories were deleted as non-defining a while back, and it would've been nice if we'd ensured that everyone in them had e.g. award received (P166) = Distinguished Eagle Scout Award (Q5282987) added to their Wikidata item first. This would both make it easy to resurrect categories if we decide we want them in the future, and would allow them to continue to evolve, with contributions from other languages. Cheers, ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 03:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

*upvote*, great idea. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:15, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know that Wikidata will preserve all the variables that might go into a Wikipedia category that ends up deleted. For example, does Wikidata have a parameter for "died in office", or for "organizations formed by merger", or for "diseases characterized by inflammation"? BD2412 T 06:09, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412, okay, so I'm by no means an expert in representing things on Wikidata, but I'll take up the challenge for those three:

1. I'd go to their last instance of position held (P39) and add the qualifier end cause (Q22087155) = death in office (Q5247364).
2. I'd go to both of the organizations that were merged and add merged into (P7888). For the resulting merger organization, if you look at examples like ExxonMobil (Q156238), you can see the merger expressed through follows (P155) and replaces (P1365).
3. I'd add symptoms and signs (P780) = inflammation (Q101991) (or a more specific item for a subclass of (P279) inflammation).

Hopefully most categories wouldn't be as complex as these. Many are already represented on Wikidata through the category combines topics (P971) property (for your first example, see Category:People who died in office (Q65757798)). Cheers, ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 06:33, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

That is indeed a surprising level of data refinement. I presume Wikidata has some functionality for generating lists of subjects with the specified characteristics? For example, if I want to find people who were judges, and who died in office? BD2412 T 06:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

The aforementioned property "Category:People who died in office" only collects category pages in other wikis equivalent to the deleted category on this wiki. The property "death in office" is different. You can go to "What links here" in the left menu and get a list. The only problem, it's the same hodge-podge of names cited as part of the CFD rationale. I'll leave it to Sdkb to explain how to refine that further, given the proficiency they've shown in navigating the site. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 07:34, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

For any information held in Wikidata, it is possible to form a database query that will retrieve it. As with all Wikimedia projects, Wikidata is a work in progress, so the data is constantly being populated, reviewed and refined. Depending on what you are wanting to find, we may have a lot of high quality data already available, or we may have a large amount of lower quality data that you will need to sift through. If you have additional parameters, you can narrow your search to make your sifting of the data easier. For example, you could look for entries with death in office (Q5247364) and date of death (P570) = 1836. I am not an expert on queries but there is a beginner query tool available at Wikidata Query builder. Users who are familiar with SPARQL will have a greater range of scope for their queries. From Hill To Shore (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I would take issue with "tightened up their interpretation of WP:DEFINING". There's still next to zero interest in owning up to the problem of countless biographies which categorize the subject only according to their birthplace, when their birthplace has nothing to do with their notability while another place has everything to do with their notability. This POV also often manifests itself through WikiProject tagging on the talk page. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 07:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Why soon-to-be-deleted? If WD people want to do this they can start anytime, no? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:40, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

  Eventually, I hope all information in categories will be imported to Wikidata, and that we'll use Wikidata to construct the category system as Rhododendrites has envisioned. But in the meantime, with limited editor resources, I think it makes sense for Wikidata to focus on the information with a deadline, i.e. categories about to be deleted. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 02:28, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Refocus

Whether this is something Wikidata can take up in some form, or that can be tracked down in the edit history of a bot, I think that it would be a minimal technical burden and great benefit to preserve this data in an accessible list in Wikipedia project space. I am wondering whether there is any specific objection to this proposal. BD2412 T 22:42, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support this seems like a very good idea that will improve the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 08:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, with alternative. If something has consensus to delete (rather than to reformat or rewrite in a different way), I object to keeping it not-deleted in perpetuity. I think it sounds like a Draft with no 6-month timer, but one that even nobody is actually stating they plan to work on (akin to user-space revival of deleted content). It sounds like the goal is to be able to revive or revisit it in the future, not specifically keep it visible to all readers and editors for all time. So how about making an edit that writes the list of the cat's contents into the cat page itself at the time of deletion? Then an admin can see it but others can't, and the empty+delete action can be undone in the future--all same as a deleted page from any other namespace. DMacks (talk) 08:19, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

  That precludes anyone other than admins working on such a list, which is not desirable. I'm unsure what harm comes from having these pages listed in perpetuity in general (specific exceptions would of course be eligible for MfD), but a normal draftspace page would seem to resolve any issues that exist - e.g. if Category:People with honorary degrees from the University of East London were deleted in favour of a list, then the categorised pages would be written to a list at Draft:List of people with honorary degrees from the University of East London, which would give everybody the chance to work on it. If nothing was done for 6 months then it would be deleted per G13 as any other draft. No need for special procedures or new rules. Thryduulf (talk) 11:30, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

  Those concerns are reasonable. It's true that there are different reasons categories might be deleted, but a common one and I think the one that's most salient here is just categories that are judged too trivial to be WP:DEFINING. I continue to think that porting information to Wikidata rather than to draftspace is the best option, since it can be preserved there in perpetuity and Wikidata doesn't generally care if more trivial information is added to an item. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:55, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support the data often still exists, publicly available, somewhere in the world (e.g. Category:People who died in office - 07 March 2021); as long as it doesn’t show up in the default search, is there really that much harm in making it easier to access?
  • Perhaps a ‘last version prior to deletion’ link (even only if off-wiki) on the ‘page does not exist' page?
  • What about a ‘Deleted’ namespace, for … okay, there are potential name (and thus history) collision issues there … unless deleted content in that namespace had a unique identifier, such as the date deleted, appended to the name.
    • That might be able to preserve the edit history as well, which would solve for the “everything was removed from the category before it was deleted” issue. (We already have procedures for redacting articles / history that shouldn’t be seen by anyone.) Jim Grisham (talk) 13:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
      • @Jim Grisham: I do appreciate the tip about the Internet Archive version, but it only saved the first page of results here (through G). Still, it's something to start with. BD2412 T 07:47, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Major problem is that often a category will be slowly deprecated - with things getting removed from it - or even more rapidly if they are in it via templates - the "moment of deletion" may not be the most relevant time. Strong oppose making a policy that places an administrative burden on admins to make such a export-paste list before any deletion can be carried out. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
    • I was actually thinking that a bot could do it, and could pick up the category as soon as the nomination was filed. BD2412 T 17:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

      I like that idea. Even better, such a bot could be written and operated today, without need for approval or consensus, if the category lists were published in the bot's userspace or as text files on toolforge. I'd do it but I'm not exactly drowning in free time right now. I'll tag in BOTREQ, though. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:45, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

      I also like that idea even better. BD2412 T 17:50, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I am proposing that Jarry1250's link count tool be removed from Special:WhatLinksHere, and the "External tools" text be edited to "External tool".

Text before the change:

The following pages link to Wikipedia:Sandbox

External tools:

• Link count
• Transclusion count

---

Text after the change:

The following pages link to Wikipedia:Sandbox

External tool:

• Link count

---

I believe that BrandonXLF's tool has many benefits.

• It conveys a broader array of information than Jarry1250's tool, including link and redirect counts rather than just transclusions, and indirect and direct transclusion counts (indirect as in transcluding a redirect of the page).
• It also uses an interface that is more similar to OOUI, which allows for less jarring differences between the external tool and the regular wiki interface, especially for newer users that might not know that it is an external tool.
• BrandonXLF's tool also allows viewing counts for non-Wikipedia pages, which is better integrated with the Wikimedia family of wikis and allows users to easily switch to viewing counts of pages from other wikis.
• The newer tool is also actively maintained, which can lead to implementation of feature requests, such as a better interfaced alternative to this tool. This has happened before with the tool; a suggestion for adding a grey background to the page was implemented after feedback.

This was proposed on MediaWiki talk:Linkshere before. The discussion eventually fizzled down to consensus to adding both links, and a reccomendation to Use both for maybe a month, and then revisit this discussion. It has been more than a month, and I believe that this is an appropriate time to seek feedback for this proposal. Thank you in advance for your comments and thoughts! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:15, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• I am opposed to this; first, there is zero harm in having both. Second, sometimes all I want is a quick-and-dirty "how many transclusions" - I don't care about links or redirects, and Jarry's does exactly that. There is no maintenance burden to leaving it on, and only if it actually breaks should we be concerning ourselves about removing Jarry's link.
  For the record, I'm not saying that Brandon's tool doesn't have uses, but I find it easier and faster to find the same information with Jarry's tool, so why not keep both? Primefac (talk) 12:44, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• I fail to see what problem this change would solve unfortunately. I completely agree with Primefac that often what one wants is a quick "okay, how high-use/high-risk is this template". Lastly, for what it's worth I really do not think that a tool not mimicking OOUI has any bearing on its utility or 'worthiness' to be included in the interface. firefly ( t · c ) 13:01, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• What happens when Brandon's tool stops working? Do we have to have a new discussion about bringing Jarry1250's tool back? Just leave them both. They work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  If it stopped working, yes, we'd try to fix it, or if that wasn't possible bring back the old one. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:33, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• I don't have a view on the relative merits of each tool, but I disagree with those above who see no cost to having both. Whenever we have redundant options in our interface, it increases complexity and makes it less user-friendly. And it does increase the maintenance burden vs. just retiring the old tool and focusing all our effort on the modern one. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:33, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

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

This proposal was meant to assist in moving the process forward. After the objection of many participants, such as the one by Levivich (with which I do not agree but do not intend to enter into debates either), I'm withdrawing the proposal. The issue could be taken up by other interested parties. -The Gnome (talk) 09:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

---

Should the Main Page continue to display the portals right next to the "Welcome to Wikipedia" sign as they currently stand? Or should that display be changed in any way? (They are the links pointing to the arts, Biography, Geography, History, Mathematics, Science, Society, Technology, All portals.)
A: We should leave the display as it currently stands.
B: The display should be changed.
Note that option "B" includes any of the following steps: removing the portals entirely from the Main Page; moving the portals somewhere else on the Main Page; any other change in the current display. If option "B" is chosen, then the specific change could be determined in a separate RfC. -The Gnome (talk) 10:16, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: Check out previous discussions here, here, and here. Disclosure: As it happens, I closed the previous RfC on this issue as "no consensus." Nothing should be implied by that closing and, naturally, I will not take part in this RfC, which I initiate to overcome, as the case might be, the stumble in the process. -The Gnome (talk) 10:16, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Survey (portal links)

• Option A. Other than some people disliking portals and/or their prominence nobody has yet managed to demonstrate that there is anything problematic about the status quo. Could improvements be possible? Maybe, but if so then propose that specific improvement with a mockup and a clear explanation of why it is an improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 11:52, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  The argument that there is no harm violates basic web usability best practices, which have understood since the 2000s that there is inherent harm to keeping essentially unused links on your home page. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:27, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Except these links are not unused. In the last rfc those supporting removal claimed this, but the data they presented in support of that argument actually showed the exact opposite - the portals and links to them are well used by readers of the encyclopaedia. Note I'm not saying what we have is perfect, I'm saying what we have is better than some hand-waving towards an unspecified alternative that may or may not feature links to portals. Thryduulf (talk) 20:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option B. In particular, per the prior discussion, I support replacing the portal links in the top banner with a line in the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section reading Content portals – A unique way to navigate the encyclopedia (pictured). Also, depending on how the Desktop Improvements Project resolves phab:T293470, where they're trying to figure out where to put the new language switcher on Main Pages, I may support using the newly freed space in the banner for the language dropdown menu, somewhat like the concept (pictured). My rationale is the same as last time: we shouldn't be devoting space on the Main Page to links that are barely ever used, that don't represent our best work, and that clutter its design. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A - Such a directory is necessary and that piece of prime real estate should not be left empty; altering it without a concrete plan for adequate replacement (and possibly even complete removal) is not something one should favor. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 18:39, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B per Sdkb. Ajpolino (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B - as per above, this space should instead be used for the language switcher. As shown by the above page view statistics and despite their place on the Main Page, portals simply aren't used much and a language switcher would likely be of much more use to readers. Remagoxer ^(talk) 19:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, with the suggestion to work on improving those portals (if only we had more portals like Portal:Cheshire, we would not have this kind of discussion) instead of removing the links. If the portal links end up removed from the Main Page, I would suggest to put a link to portalspace into the Navigation sidebar, above or below "Contents". —Kusma (talk) 19:19, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  The portal folks have been on notice for years that if the space wasn't improved, things like this would happen. If they were going to be improved, they would've been improved. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 19:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  It's tricky to spend time improving something when you have to spend most of your wikitime repeatedly rejustifying the things existence. The characterisation of people as "portal folks" shows that the completely inappropriate battleground attitude did not die with the arbcom case. Thryduulf (talk) 20:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Repeated RfCs have failed to find consensus for destroying the portal namespace or for unlinking it to prevent anyone from finding it. Despite that, two thirds of portals have been deleted. What remains is the best of the portals, and many of those have improved significantly. Certes (talk) 20:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option B. Simply spreading the information on the left across the page, in a thinner row, would be an improvement. I am a member of the History Project and have just clicked on its portal for the first time. Nice stuff, not least the sample featured article which is one of "mine" , but I fail to see why or how portals justify a place on the main page, even less one at its head. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• I guess I'll have to go for option A given the format of this RfC, which is flawed. There are fundamentally three choices here: keep them where they are, remove them entirely, or move them somewhere else. If you have three options then an RfC should be about those three options. Consolidating two of the options into one inherently biases the process against the remaining option. These links get substantial numbers of clicks and represent the only way that the main page allows people to navigate Wikipedia's content. I would be happy to support moving them somewhere else, but there is no option to support that. Hut 8.5 19:23, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• B - Note, I prefer that we be rid of portals entirely. But, that wasn't the way the community wanted it. GoodDay (talk) 19:54, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, not because I can't imagine an improvement but I can't bring myself to vote for an entirely unspecified change. For example, I oppose leaving a blank space to "slightly modernize the user interface" and I do not accept the weird notion that "A reader who would want to learn something new would just read an article at random". The links are useful and should only be displaced by something that is better. Thincat (talk) 20:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B, remove Portal links for reasons described in previous RFC, but also procedural objection. This is a self-inflicted wound of needlessly closing a well-attended RFC as "no consensus" so that it can be re-run in violation of WP:NOTBURO. Editor time is valuable, don't make people vote on the same issues constantly. I also disapprove of someone who is not an advocate of changing the status quo starting such a discussion while only mentioning the affirmative case for the change indirectly via links to previous discussions, and creating such a vague "do something" Option B. I already see people complaining that they don't wish to vote for an unspecified change - which I can hardly fault them for! I wouldn't want to either! An actual advocate would have offered a concrete proposal so that people knew what they were voting on, so this is going to be scuffed. This is not a good way to run an RFC. (Nothing personal against the editor who created this RFC, I'm sure they're acting in good faith, but this is the equivalent of somebody trying to help you sell your house by painting it purple overnight.) SnowFire (talk) 20:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A. Without any prejudice, I think this RFC is not well-formed. I have noted my reasons further in the discussion section, but, it currently is phrased as a "Remain as-is" vs "Change; but will not tell you what it will change to / do not know what the new one is going to look like". With the alternative remaining an unknown -- I would want to retain the current links as-is. Thanks. Ktin (talk) 21:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A per Ktin. If we change it, I need to know what we change it to before agreeing to the change. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:23, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A. Option B is to remove one sort of functionality from the main page and just leave the space... blank? If we're going to fart around in a main page redesign, let's do one. At the very least, we might have decided what the actual long-term outcome might be BEFORE creating this further (perhaps inadvertent) effort to expunge portals from the pedia. THE MAIN PAGE IS ITSELF A PORTAL. (sorry for shouting) Linking to other portals is one logical and coherent way to use the space. BusterD (talk) 21:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A. Should dump portals all over.....but option B leaves us with a blank space.Moxy- 21:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, regretfully, as the Language switcher does seem like a possibly good idea (plus French Wikipedia appears to be already doing it), but we need to know what the B-alternative actually is. Otherwise, 'B' seems too much like, "I just don't like 'A'." Mathglot (talk) 22:14, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A. It feels like deja vu here... another RFC proposing removing the portals but with no clue as to what will go in their place. Like Thryduulf, and like my previous !vote, I might be amenable to the right proposal - perhaps one that reduces the vertical footprint of the banner altogether, but I'm not going to give a carte blanche to any change whatsoever.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:16, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Close this RFC, it's so out of process as to be disruptive. The closer of the last discussion should not be starting the next one. Where's the RFCBEFORE? Where's the neutral statement? Where are the meaningful options? This appears to me to be an attempt to manufacture consensus for the status quo by making the other option "something else", which is so vague, almost no one will vote for it. This is a complete waste of editor time, and if I hadn't voted in the last discussion, I would close this myself. Levivich 22:54, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A because the other option is a pig in a poke and we've already established that there's no consensus for any particular change. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:12, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B - As I stated in the previous RFC, I favor keeping the links, but moving them to a less prominent location on the page. Blueboar (talk) 22:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B. Remove the nine portal links from the top frame, move them under the "Community portal" link under "Contribute" in the left frame. Possible replace "Community portal" with "Portals".

The nine portal links in the top frame consume far more prime real estate than they are worth. An old page view analysis showed that only 1 in 1000 main page views lead to a main page portal click, and for every main page portal click, only around 1 in 1000 go on to click a second tier portal link. This indicates that main page readers do not find the portal links useful or interesting. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option B, yet again, per all the cogent arguments made last time around. I've gone back and compared this RFC to the last one three times and I'm baffled as to how we ended up here, asking the same question again. The question we had last time was whether the portal links should remain as is or be removed from the top banner, with a note specifically including the possibility of them going elsewhere on the page if removed from the banner. At the close of that discussion we were told that this is an adulterated result and the decision seems clear: We have no consensus to move forward with altering the Main Page through this RfC because it did not offer clear-cut choices and thus did not manage to elicit clear-cut responses - and now the author of that closure gives us the same options yet again: leave the portal links alone or make an unspecified change. What am I missing here? Full support of the objections already raised by others, this particular dead horse has been beaten enough. Retswerb (talk) 09:12, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (portal links)

• Perhaps this should be added to WP:CENT?A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 10:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Added. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 18:03, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Procedural objection – this is precisely the debate format we agreed to avoid in December's RfC. Picking off options such as the status quo one by one for not having an absolute majority over all other options combined will probably result in a less popular option being selected. Certes (talk) 13:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  The previous discussion had 30 votes in favor of removing the portals and 17 in favor of keeping them, so I'm not particularly worried about some silent majority that wants to preserve them. This isn't how I would've framed this RfC, as I think we could've directly !voted on alternative options here, but I think we're likely to get to the same result, just with an extra step. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:31, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  No, the previous discussion had 47 votes for and against various different possibilities. Because of the nature of the RfC it is simply not possible to divide the comments into two clear groups - which is why we are here. And unfortuntely this RfC is again trying to divide people into two clear groups based on their support or opposition to three different options that are not mutually exclusive and so stands very little chance of achieving consensus for anything. Thryduulf (talk) 20:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that this stands little chance of achieving consensus as written, and that's because it didn't simply ask "Keep or Remove" and instead has this useless "do something!" vagueness in Option B. The original RFC was actually better on this offering two concrete proposals. I disagree though that there were too many various different possibilities actually supported in the previous RFC: a majority of editors favored the simple removal option. Now we'll probably require two full RFCs at best to figure out what this means, since if Option B wins, there'll have to be a pointless follow-up RFC. This is precisely how RFCs should not be run. SnowFire (talk) 20:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  a majority of editors favored the simple removal option except they didn't. The RFC was not a vote and there was a mixture of support for the options of "keep as is", "remove and replace with nothing", "remove and replace with something" (various somethings specified and not specified) and "move them elsewhere" (with various locations specified and unspecified). Thryduulf (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't mean to reopen the AN debate, but that isn't a rebuttal to what I wrote. All I said was that a majority of editors favored the simple removal option, which is true. That means throwing away any of the other options. (Maybe more obvious in a hypothetical case where 80 vote X, 15 vote Y, and 5 vote Z - the fact that there's a mixture doesn't matter.) SnowFire (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Pinging prior participants who haven't already commented here (batch 1): JBchrch, Gog the Mild, Anarchyte, Retswerb, EpicPupper, CaptainEek, Jackattack1597, Firefly, Pldx1, Schierbecker, Vexations, SmokeyJoe, Izno, Sandstein, Guilherme Burn, Gadfium, Remagoxer, Blueboar, UnitedStatesian, Ruslik0, Calliopejen1, AleatoryPonderings, Bilorv, Neil Shah-Quinn, Levivich, Aza24, Zero0000, SnowFire, Cavalryman, Moxy, NightWolf1223. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 19:11, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Batch 2: Kusma, BusterD, Wikmoz, @Ktin, Whatamidoing (WMF), Hut 8.5, Xaosflux, Guilherme Burn, Dege31, Amakuru, Thincat, Dream Focus, Calidum, Andrew Davidson, Chicdat, Alanscottwalker, Espresso Addict, GoodDay, Northamerica1000, 力, JackFromWisconsin, Isaacl, Pppery, The wub, and JuxtaposedJacob:. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 19:12, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Shouldn't this have an RFC tag on it? NW1223(^{Howl at me}/_{My hunts}) 19:45, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. This RFC (if it is that) is not well formed, imo. It is framed as a "Remain as-is" vs "Change; but will not tell you what it will change to". If there is a concrete option B, I would be willing to evaluate. Else, in the current phrasing -- I am not sure what we are signing up for. Ktin (talk) 21:10, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• I disagree with one option covering all possible changes to the main page: it could be "remove all links to portals", or "reinstate articles for improvement in that top space" for all anyone knows. It's not a good way to figure out how to change the main page: there are lots of people who want different changes, but that doesn't mean any one change must be found to have consensus support. isaacl (talk) 21:16, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• I advised two or three times over the last 12 or so months, to get rid of portals entirely. But does anybody agree with me? Nope. GoodDay (talk) 03:44, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

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

Take a look at Special:Permalink/1070790824, picked at random from today's nominations. Surely this is excessive? Unfortunately, it has become the norm at AFD. Is there some way that (a) this can be done in a single edit, rather than umpteen (Special:Diff/1070789018/1070790824); (b) that doesn't make it look as if there has actually been discussion, making it harder for AFD patrollers to find discussions that need some additional participation; and (c) isn't so inanely repetitive? Surely a single line with all of the lists in one sentence is better? How can the semi-automated scripts (User:Enterprisey's User:Enterprisey/delsort in this particular case but there are other tools) be improved to cut out the multiple edits and the repetition? Uncle G (talk) 14:06, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Well I don't think anyone would object to collapsing a long list of deletion sorting notices with a heading that clearly identified them as deletion sorting notices, but other than that I think the list length is not a significant issue. I have no opinion regarding the multiple edits. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

My preference would be to collapse them all down to a single notice that just lists off the topics, something like

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: News media, Finance, Websites, Israel, Companies, Cyprus, Ukraine and Business

Much less clutter, especially for mobile users (since the mobile apps and website ignore small tags and display the text full size. 192.76.8.77 (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

That would be a nice feature. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:21, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I am not 100% sure that's a good idea. I think we need at least four more editors to comment on whether they like the IP's suggestion or not. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 01:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I too like IP's suggestion. Hemantha (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

This would actually be pretty easy to fix in the script (see here), so if someone wanted to update ((delsort)) to take multiple lists, I could sort it on my end pretty quickly. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:48, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Enterprisey I mocked up a version that takes multiple lists in ((Deletion sorting/sandbox)). Note that the signature paramter has been changed from |2= to |sig=.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 05:04, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Ahecht, cool! Could we make it shorter, like what the IP proposed - each list just adds the name of the list? Enterprisey (talk!) 05:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Enterprisey  Done --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:50, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Nice. I would suggest we put the new template at a different page title because there are probably old workflows that use |2= for the signature. I think this is a fine opportunity for a little BOLDness, so I'll update the delsort script after your next response. Enterprisey (talk!) 21:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

and forgot the ping... @Ahecht Enterprisey (talk!) 23:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Enterprisey I put it at ((Deletion sorting/multi)). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 02:38, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Neat! Seems to work. Enterprisey (talk!) 07:05, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

To clarify, I only made it collapse multiple lists when my delsort script is used to add multiple lists in one edit. If multiple edits are made, then it won't work. Collapsing the list when multiple edits are made is possible, but it would be some more work, which I don't have the time for at the moment. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:14, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

On point (a), multiple edits occurred due to the way script was used. If multiple topics are selected before clicking save, the script indeed does a single edit to the AfD page. See this diff from this sequence for example. hemantha (brief) 07:01, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Adding .delsort-notice { display:none;} to custom css will remove the notices altogether. For compaction, use this javascript snippet in whichever custom script location. Hemantha (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure why @CAPTAIN RAJU: didn't use the existing "add multiple DELSORT topics in a single edit" feature. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 01:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the mentioned me.I couldn't find any rules for multiple edit delsort tags.And Multiple delsort editing can't be my mistake, there are no restrictions. I feel compatible to delsort tag a multiple edit. I also tag delsort with mobile browser or app.Thanks.CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with the point made in the OP, and would endorse some modification to the delsort message templates that allows them to be collapsible. I would like to take the opportunity to shill the Oracle for Deletion, which lets you sort recent AfDs by page size and !vote count (meaning it doesn't get quite as bamboozled by delsort notices). jp×g 23:44, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Is it the norm? I'm used to seeing around 2-3 notices per discussion, though admittedly I haven't closed any AfDs for a while. Looking at last week's log it does seem like there are more than usual, but that is basically all down to one person. So rather than talk about changing a template that has worked fine for years, we could just politely ask @CAPTAIN RAJU: can you please try to be more restrained in your tagging? – Joe (talk) 10:47, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Of course, I am restrained in my tagging and will try to be more restrained.Thank you.CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 11:13, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I believe CAPTAIN RAJU is doing an excellent job in making sure AfDs promptly hit the relevant delsort lists, and we should be grateful for it. Unless there is a consistent pattern of inappropriate listings, which I take is not the case here, I don't see a need for more restrained tagging. However, if CAPTAIN RAJU is able to combine the delsorts in a single edit, that would be helpful. – Uanfala (talk) 20:39, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Tagging is useful; having the tags take up so much space is not. And while this particular instance isn't that bad, I've seen AfDs with 20+ tags on them, which takes up an unreasonable amount of space. That new template posted above is excellent for remedying this, I would support making it the default way to tag deletion discussions. Mlb96 (talk) 07:42, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Enterprisey's update to the tool appears to have been just in time to make the one hundred delsort notices on this mass nomination appear no bigger than an average paragraph. – Uanfala (talk) 22:16, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No, because that would be the wrong focus. This isn't about the specific editor who happened to be the one who edited the randomly chosen AFD discussion, or even about the categorizations, but about improving the tools and making their end results better. Uncle G (talk) 21:38, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
• Happy it was useful, then (@Uanfala). More broadly, AfD nominations created by Twinkle still seem to stack the tags; which Twinkle developer should be contacted to change this? I don't think the change would be too complicated - just switch from subst:delsort to subst:deletion sorting/multi. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
  • See https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/twinkle/issues/1519 and https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/twinkle/blob/20c0d0235262fa6ee6659a905a2141b37944aca3/modules/twinklexfd.js#L810 Uncle G (talk) 21:38, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial sources has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 20:07, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Previous related discussion: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_174#Make_links_to_disambiguation_pages_orange_by_default

Result of previous discussion: Not consensus to make the pages orange.

New, modified proposal: Make disambiguation links highlighted with yellow background for all users when previewing the page (not just reading it). It can be done by adding:

body.action-submit a.mw-disambig { background: yellow }

1. Unregistered users will benefit from this
2. Readers will not see it
3. Yellow backgrounds are easier to spot than orange font in a big and complex article
4. All such highlighting disappears when the changes are published
5. The highlighting may be limited to article space by adding body.ns-0

Note: A great part of the opposition to the previous proposal was concerns about the readers' experience. These drawbacks are eliminated in this new proposal. Utfor (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Is this needed now that the editor informs you when typing that you've linked to a disambiguation page? If you're using VE to choose the link then it already tells you it's a disambiguation page, so it definitely isn't needed in that environment. Thryduulf (talk) 19:11, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Could it instead be useful for correcting other editors' disambiguation links? Utfor (talk) 19:27, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Potentially, but wouldn't just making dabsolver better known be more efficient? Thryduulf (talk) 20:15, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I withdraw the proposal. Utfor (talk) 20:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Just use User:Anomie/linkclassifier. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:14, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I do. Most editors, especially newcomers who don't know what a dab is, don't. Certes (talk) 21:06, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Block reFill tool until fixed. -- GreenC 21:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:REFILL is a popular citation maintenance tool with great power, and likewise power to cause great harm. It has been largely abandoned for years, in terms of fixing bugs. The number of errors it creates is increasing with time. Its usage is increasing with time. The talk page is full of bug requests. The home page is full of warnings. The GitHub page is full of bug reports.

These are countless examples of bugs, here are two:

• edit and fix required.
• edit and fix required (note the user in this case has only ever edited Wikipedia in one article)

Many editors like reFill, when it works. However, many editors are also not fixing the problems it creates. The errors are increasingly complicated and difficult to determine. By letting the tool run rouge we are causing significant damage to the project. Blocking does not need to be permanent, restoration only requires someone to actively maintain and respond to bugs.

Alternatives to blocking are only for approved users, similar to AWB due to it's powerful ability to cause harm, only proven responsible editors should be allowed. How these things might be technically implemented (block, approved users) is unclear but I believe both are technically feasible with some investigation depending what the community wants to do if anything.

• Option A - Do nothing.
• Option B - Approved users only.
• Option C - Block until most known bugs are fixed.
• Option D - Something else.

Poll (block reFill)

• Option C. Per nom. This is more a vote for more robust software than anything else really. Old enough to remember a time when no software with known bugs would ever be put, or continue to be, in production. It is true, such software policies did use to apply. 50.74.109.2 (talk) 01:27, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• A or B ReFill or Reflinks are helpful tools in getting at least some of the info filled in and reducing the repetitiveness of manually filling in references. I do go over the results because they often need fixing and none of these errors seem so major to me that we necessarily have to restrict access. If we do choose to, I think those of us who have proven conscientious enough in how we use the tools should still have access. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option C first or B second as nom. -- GreenC 20:33, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option C to start, but Option B is the better alternative once a process for approval is in place. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
• A or D. ReFill is not perfect, and never will be. It has always come with a health warning. Its value outweighs its problems. To withdraw it, in any shape or form, will damage the project more than continuing to use it as-is. The 'D' would be to advertise for experienced developers, with the right technical knowledge and spare time to onwardly develop the tool. While there might be some quick fixes, the learning curve given little-to-no documentation and zero handover from the tool's author mean that making even the slightest change comes with too much responsibility for someone not already used to toolforge, and the whole developer stack. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 23:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or D -- it's hard to get behind blocking the use of ReFill, since I often use it to write articles. While I've written software to generate full-featured proper citations from Newspapers.com, for everything else I use ReFill. It's an unimaginable pain in the ass to fill out citations manually, and I check all of my ReFill cites by hand -- I'd estimate about one out of every ten will have a couple fields that are erroneously filled in, but even then it saves me several minutes. For example, oftentimes the article's title, publisher and author are fine, but the date is messed up -- this only takes a couple seconds to fix, versus typing in all of this information or copying it from the webpage by hand, which takes forever. At the same time, I understand the importance of fixing the tool, and the possibility that doing something drastic could force some action to be taken; I certainly haven't been devoting any effort to it, despite the fact that I could probably make a couple fixes, because it works well enough for my purposes. Perhaps it would be a useful compromise to block ReFill from being used in articlespace, which wouldn't affect drafts or userspace pages (and if you really wanted to use it in a mainspace page you could copy the source into a userspace sandbox to use it there). jp×g 07:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Options B and D. I use ReFill almost daily. Being aware of the bugs, I adjust results accordingly. I think this is rather like a chainsaw—very effective for the job it does, but dangerous for the person using it without knowing how. Those who know how should not be restricted while work is undertaken to remove the bugs. BD2412 T 17:54, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
• A or B. I use ReFill enough that I would miss it. Checking for errors is not a burden, although it would be nice if the bugs are fixed. - Donald Albury 21:06, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
• A or B/D, it's a tool for humans, not magic. Yes, it would be good if someone tried to fix it. Nonetheless, its results generally range from marginally improved, to improved, imo, and with care, better than that. As for process, it should not be removed from anyone, unless there is a showing of continued problems after discussion with the person. I suppose any "new" access could be restricted like a perm, were B adopted. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (block reFill)

•  Administrator note we could use the abusefilter to block or warn on these edits as they seem to have a consistent edit summary we could latch on to; we could also exempt certain usergroups (e.g. extendedconfirmed) or users with an editcount above something from such a filter. While possible, I expect there will be significant pushback about making a new local mediawiki usergroup just for this. If set to "warn" every use would require a reconfirmation after getting the "warning" which can say whatever we want. (Please note one of the sample "bad" edits is by a user with 3000000+ edits that is also a member of restricted groups including autopatrolled). We can not easily make an on-wiki discretionary access control list, as we do not control this software - it is hosted off-site. Traditional administrative options are also available - such as placing editing blocks on users that are making disruptive edits. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

The examples seem to disrespect ((cbignore)), though one of them has the |bot=medic parameter, which presumably limits cbignore's scope to a different bot. Should a filter warn (or prevent) edits with reFill in the edit summary which remove cbignore (or cbignore without parameters)? Or is the problem more widespread, involving errors other than a failure to respect cbignore? Certes (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@Certes: that template says it applies to "participating bots". This edit was not made by a bot it was made by a human editor. Is there a reason you think that this utility is otherwise a "participating bot"? It may be possible to code an abuse filter for that though. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

No, my mistake, though authors of tools which suggest edits might want to consider complying as if they were bots. Certes (talk) 00:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

On reflection, I may have expressed a good idea badly. Observations: Certain citations confuse bots. Editors kindly mark these with cbignore. The two examples above are also marked with cbignore. Hypothesis: the sorts of citation that get marked with cbignore also confuse ReFill (though as a non-bot it has no duty to observe cbignore). Suggestion: detect edits where ReFill amends lines containing cbignore, and tag/warn/prevent as appropriate. Certes (talk) 14:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Is it possible to restrict usage of the tool by protection?--John Cline (talk) 00:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  @John Cline: no, the protection tool can not distinguish the content or metadata of an edit. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:03, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment I would love for some new developers to take over this tool (and Reflinks too), to fix the numerous issues it creates for author/first/last parameters and other parameters. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:28, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  +1 – Muboshgu (talk) 17:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  The problem is getting a modified version live, I submitted a change to fix one of the errors caused by the tool a couple of years ago. If someone could solve this problem, then pogress could be made. Keith D (talk) 19:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• See meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Citations/New reference-filling tool. DMacks (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  And Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 194#Proposed Google Summer of Code project: expanding citations. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:05, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Also see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/BareRefBot. On hold due to ANI thread. It just fills in the bare refs for now, but the script can be upgraded to match the capabiltities of reFill or refLinks. I think a new tool rewritten from scratch is the future (I've looked at the source code of both tools, I didn't like working with it, but that just is me) Rlink2 (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes agree, best redone from scratch. Hope your bot works out and can convert all those refs before editors feel the need to run reFill. A number of people have tried to adopt reFill with little success fixing the dozens of bugs; it was written by a college student and abandoned. -- GreenC 20:07, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  To anyone writing a new tool: please plan ahead and get a few more people involved in its development and maintenance. It would be greatly appreciated! isaacl (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Here is another bug (i think?) on the Chris Lattner article. The first and last names are obviously not "Apple" and "Inc.", doesn't make sense. But could be wrong Rlink2 (talk) 19:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
  • This is not ideal but is it really worth blocking the tool over something so innocuous as this? – Muboshgu (talk) 19:50, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

It is only one of perhaps 100s of reported bugs ignored for years. Is this bug even reported, and if it was, would it matter? -- GreenC 20:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2 and GreenC: looking at the markup of https://www.swift.org/ the head element contains the following:

<meta name="author" content="Apple Inc." />

Practically, how would you envisage that reFill, or any tool, should automatically determine that this is not the actual name of the author? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 10:09, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Monitor for unusual strings by sorting by count and seeing which have high counts and manually skim off into a file the bot can reference. -- GreenC 17:02, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

• Note that CurbSafeCharmer is the maintainer of reFill2 on GitHub [1] . I see very little change in the code for 3 years. In the past 24hrs a few issues were closed as invalid, not due to code fixes.[2] It still leaves many open issues.[3] Plus the many talk page reports (including archived pages). There isn't much happening in the code itself. This is not blaming CSC, as they say, it is a steep learning curve and a difficult project which explains why even the "slightest change" is so difficult and never gets done. -- GreenC 17:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

  @GreenC: There were eight issues in the GitHub repo, most dating back to 2015-2017 that the author and previous maintainer of reFill should have closed - I have done so today as it makes it easier to 'see the wood for the trees'. Of the 27 open issues, almost all are enhancements requests, rather than bugs. It is a small but significant distinction. I do not see the issue raised by Rlink2 above as a bug, for instance, as it is a request for reFill to do something new that it was not designed to do - there's no existing code for that which needs fixing. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for taking a few minutes to close some years old open tickets that are no longer valid. See the talk page and example diffs for lots more (and Phab). The main thing is no one is actively coding, for years, and so this garbage data continues to get added into Wikipedia at scale. Trouble reports for tools like this should be constant, see Citation bot talk page, it's a process of continually fixing issues. The tool has been effectively abandoned by developers. -- GreenC 18:22, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

• I would be willing to try to work on some fixes for the most egregious misbehavior of the tool and submit pull requests -- is there a list of the biggest issues? The GitHub issues don't seem to be prioritized very well. I would also need some instructions for setting up and testing on a local instance. If I had these things, though, I could commit to at least taking a look (although a few have said the codebase is daunting, so it may not result in any progress, but it's at least worth a try). jp×g 07:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

  @JPxG: Great, thanks for your offer of help. I will contact you on your talk page. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 09:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

  @JPxG: Thanks for the offer to move this forward. Keith D (talk) 22:15, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah we've heard this in the past, people say they will adopt it then nothing much happens. Similar to Citation bot, tools like this require constant attention to adapt to changing conditions with CS1|2, MOS, best practices, etc... it's a lifestyle not a 1-time fix. The original programmer was a college student, whose code is apparently not easy to work with, who quit and moved on in life. New programmers frequently paint themselves into corners and realize they need to rewrite and find it easier to quit. Others have looked it said it would be best to start over. -- GreenC 02:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  Well, I think JPxG is a skilled coder and programmer, and is also a very nice Wikipedia editor who is trusted and easy to get along with. I trust he is more than capable to handle whatever might come in his way. And besides, he never said he would take over maintence of the tool (at least that's not the message I got - I could be wrong though). He said he would fix the most pressing issues as of right now,which is important and could be helpful. Rlink2 (talk) 04:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  Oh sure JPxG is great agree. It's been frustrating to see one person after the next promise to help out keeping the tool alive in the process but no real progress is made. It has nothing to do with good intentions. Sometimes it's a lack of skill, sometimes it's a lack of time, or lack of interest. Going on for years. If it was harmless who cares but not harmless. If we do keep the tool alive, there needs to be a stop button of sorts so users can at least shut it down until certain bugs are fixed. Currently there isn't even that basic functionality which every bot or tool should have. -- GreenC 05:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

A more tenable solution

Over the last few days, I've had the opportunity to download the repository for ReFill and take a look at it. It doesn't seem to be badly written by any definition (in fact it seems quite well-written), although it does seem like it'll be very hard to work with. However, the point made above by GreenC is good -- I foresee a particular problem occurring here, and I think we should come up with some way to preempt it.

So, okay, let's say me and CSC sit down and hash it out and... learn how Vue works, I guess -- we figure out how to implement a couple of the most urgent bugfixes, maybe even modify or extend a feature (like, something that fixes cites for some the websites on BHG's lists). This is great, right? Except now I know how Vue works, which means I get a job where they pay me $99999999999, and stop having time to fix bugs in ReFill. This is presumably what happened to Zhaofeng, the original writer -- you can see on his GitHub that he is still making commits on a daily basis, and presumably his life rules because some of this stuff is really cool. But he is not fixing stuff in ReFill. Now, if I spend a million years learning how the hell ReFill works, presumably some day I will go to NASA to be a front-end rocket scientist, or I will get hit in the head with a meteorite, or whatever, and then this knowledge will be of little benefit to anyone (except possibly my web developer colleagues at NASA).

Anyway, the idea I had is that we could build up a decently useful page somewhere - like Wikipedia:Refill/technical and Wikipedia talk:Refill/technical, and everyone who wants to try and dick around with the code can convene there, to a) figure out what the heck is going on and b) share notes on what the heck they think is going on. We manage to do this perfectly well for everything else -- people get into an argument about politics and we end up with an ArbCom casepage filled with thousands of diffs and tens of thousands of words. I think that if we set this up, and still ended up with no progress being made, I'd support blocking ReFill until it was resolved (if only to get people motivated to help out). Alternately, we could leave it unblocked and make it fill in publication titles with auto-generated controversial statements about American politics ("Apollo 11 was an inside job", "the 9/11 landings were fake", "Donald Trump was actually born in Svalbard", etc) because that seems to effectively get people's attention. But I think if some people can be gotten to that page, if they later become busy, or get hit in the head by a meteorite, at least there will be something useful there for others to go off. jp×g 21:19, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

(in fact it seems quite well-written) Good to hear.

FWIW I do have a fix for the broken sites for ReFill specifically. I used it at the very very beginning of my journey of fixing bare refs until I decided to move on to my own stuff. But it might be helpful to you. Let me know if you want it.

Yes, a page like that would be great. Keep everything documented for future maintainers. But, I think the biggest issue is finding someone to work on it. You could have all the documentation in the world, but someone still needs to fix the bugs at the end of the day.

Thanks for taking this up JPxG. You're one of the most qualified people to take this on. Rlink2 (talk) 22:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2: I'm intrigued by your fixes - what do you have? It would be great if you could start a thread at the newly created Wikipedia talk:Refill/technical. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:52, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, JPxG. It is good to hear someone confirm that there's nothing inherently wrong with the reFill code. I would say there's nothing inherently wrong with the software architecture either. And I will stick my neck out and say that GreenC should evidence their claims that it is 'full' of bugs and warnings, or that 'one person after the next promise[s] to help out keeping the tool alive in the process' - who were they? "Others have looked [at] it said it would be best to start over" - who? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 22:52, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

User:JPxG: I think that if we set this up, and still ended up with no progress being made, I'd support blocking ReFill until it was resolved . Good, agreed, let's do that. I won't be involved as I don't have the time. However, seeing as how hostile this tool has been to my own bot, literally undoing its edits for no reason, I have no choice but to continue monitoring the situation. I don't like being a squeaky wheel, but it's less work than monitoring reFill via Stream and having bot wars, or writing code to fix certain reFill errors which I already do (though not at scale). -- GreenC 04:00, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I remember when you're at the user contributions page it would have "User contributions" as the only text, with "for (user)" and then a bunch of links. Why was the change to "User contributions for (user)" to the top text done when we still have the "for (user)" and links below it? The only way it could be useful is if the "for (user)" (smaller text) is removed. Nearly but not perfect (talk) 03:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

This was not recently changed locally, and my gerrit-foo is failing right now (perhaps someone can point to the code page?), this comes from MediaWiki:Contributions-title so if we really wanted to suppress it we could. I do think it is a bit redundant with MediaWiki:Contributions-subtitle. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:55, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks like it was changed in 2020 in gerrit:650614. Before that MediaWiki:Contributions-title was only used for the <title> while (I think) MediaWiki:Contributions was the heading on the page. Anomie⚔ 13:07, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

In either case, since we are VPR - are you proposing we make a local override, or are you just trying to figure out what developer did that? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:56, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe if we changed MediaWiki:Contributions-subtitle from For USERNAME .... to Logs for USERNAME .... it would look better? I think it is only far away from the title in some of the lesser used skins. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:35, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

In which case, that may be a better upstream fix too? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:36, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

(non-admin closure) It is clear this is heading towards a WP:SNOW. There is strong consensus against the proposal. The community believes changing the logo would be a form of political advocacy at odds with the neutral principles, goals, and operations of Wikipedia. However, the community is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the victims of the conflict and may support other, non-political initiatives on English Wikipedia. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 12:36, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

---

Georgian Wikipedia has adopted a logo in support of Ukraine. We on English Wikipedia should do the same, not only to show support for Ukrainian Wikipedians but in opposition to what is currently taking place. Not sure if this has been proposed already...

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:13, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Support

1. Support as proposal. The Russian state is likely to try to limit access to Wikipedia no matter what we do and I do not think worrying about that should effect our decision. The truth, obviously does not align with Putin's position. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:17, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
2. Support. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 23:24, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
3. Support. Schazjmd (talk) 23:44, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
4. Probably won't pass but I think the current situation is more fundamental than a 'political issue', and the proposal is not 'political activism' or a NPOV violation IMO. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Absolutely not. Political activism that does not directly relate to our goals is extremely inappropriate. --Yair rand (talk) 23:31, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
2. I feel like its pretty hard to claim neutrality while openly supporting one side in a geopolitical conflict, no matter how despicable the other side may have acted. People will probably say that the articles have to be neutral but wikipedia does not in a meta sense - still an appearence of a conflict of interest is often just as bad as a real one, and changing the logo does nothing if not give the appearence of which side we support. Bawolff (talk) 23:41, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
3. Why give fodder to the trolls who constantly attack our coverage as having a 'western' and 'anti-Russian' bias? We claim to have a mission to chronicle events in a neutral fashion, based on reliable sources. It is quite hard to square that mission with outright support for one side in an ongoing war. As an aside, I find it quite amusing to see such a proposal now. Back when this conflict broke out, in 2014, we barely had any tools to control the swarm of Russian trolls that began inserting disinformation of all sorts into our articles. And most people, frankly, didn't care. Administrators, by and large, ignored Wikipedia articles on the conflict then, and it was left to individual editors, like myself, to ensure Wikipedia's mission and policies were implemented. We fought tooth and nail to preserve Wikipedia's neutral point of view in the face of that onslaught, and to make clear that we didn't accept propaganda from either side. Take an open side in the conflict now, and all that hard work goes out the window. All you'll do is validate their long-held feeling that we, the Wikipedia community, are part of some kind of western conspiracy against them. Why should we give these people that satisfaction? RGloucester — ☎ 23:50, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
4. Oppose, seems to go smack in the face of NPOV. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:00, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
5. Oppose - we are not to take sides in political issues that do not impact on our direct mission. Ealdgyth (talk) 00:05, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
6. The proposal is made in good faith, but in general, I don't support any changes to the Wikipedia logo (even temporary ones) unless the reason for the change has something to do directly with Wikipedia (e.g. Wikipedia's 20th anniversary). It's a slippery slope if we start allowing non-Wikipedia related changes to the logo. Some1 (talk) 00:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
7. Oppose as Wikipedia should always be NPOV. Whilst of course it is right to want to show support for Ukraine, Wikipedia is not the correct place for doing this. Joseph2302 (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
8. Oppose - Wikipedia should not engage in political activism… no matter HOW righteous the cause. Blueboar (talk) 00:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
9. Oppose: Wikipedia shouldn't be supporting any specific political cause. Zoozaz1 (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
10. Hell NO. 4nn1l2 (talk) 01:28, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
11. Definitely not. Our work here is to document notable information and make it freely available, not to take political stands. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
12. Oppose, though I acknowledge (and deeply sympathize with) the good intentions. It is not our place to be taking sides in a conflict, only to report what RSes say. GeneralNotability (talk) 01:46, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
13. Strongly Oppose. I started the articles on 2022 boycott of Russia and Belarus, 2022 Russian financial crisis, and Protests against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. I believe that creation and curation and spreading of free articles will have the appropriate effect - to INFORM the public as best we possibly can as to consensus of what is real. I strongly recommend everyone reading this to consider that neutrality and the perception of it is the most important tool we have to gain respect as a source of knowledge, and that respect is what will beat propaganda. Victor Grigas (talk) 02:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
14. Oppose. I come at this from two angles. 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopædia, it is not a platform. It aims to be and is widely regarded as a serious and relatively neutral source of knowledge. The SOPA situation was entirely different as it directly impacted upon Wikipedia itself and the community and the foundation was right to take a stand. 2. I am very sympathetic to the Ukrainians, and especially the ones I was fortunate to meet at various Wikimedia events. I hope they win against the bullies attacking them, and I don't think there's any problem with saying that. But I am also sympathetic to many other people and causes be they humanitarian, social, political, technological or musical, and I would not expect Wikipedia to reflect my point of view or sincerely held beliefs on those issues. The Wikimedia movement, separate to Wikipedia, can take a stand and especially in support of our WMUA and WMRU brethren (for it is governments, not people, that start wars and there's plenty of evidence this one doesn't have much home support), but its main product is at its best when it can remain dispassionate about things which can divide or polarise people. Orderinchaos 02:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
15. Oppose, while Russia's invasion is a hot garbage pile of evil, Wikipedia is not under threat. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:53, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
16. There are already banners warning those in Russia about a potential block: [4] I think that will suffice. --Rschen7754 02:53, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
17. WP:NPOV * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:55, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
18. Per Yair's comment below. - Dank (push to talk) 03:00, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
19. No. As with the last time some users called for the site to make a political statement: Wikipedia should not take political stances, unless they pose an existential threat to the encyclopedia's survival. The best course of action here is to improve and maintain Wikipedia's articles about the war. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:26, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
20. If it was a prerogative of community consensus to do this thing (to be clear: it is not) I am glad to see consensus emerging to oppose. And while I've no standing to formally speak: I, too, oppose this notion and say so for the record.--John Cline (talk) 06:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
21. Definitely not. What were you thinking? Wikipedia is not a platform to show support or take sides of any conflict. Neocorelight (Talk) 06:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
22. Oppose due to violation of WP:NPOV. In this case, even though my sympathies are with Ukraine, I would not want to set a precedent that the Wikipedia logo should be changed for political causes. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
23. Would undermine our reputation for neutrality. Political activism which actually relates to or threatens Wikipedia is sometimes acceptable, but Ukraine isn't that. Hut 8.5 08:32, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
24. I do think there could be times when it would be appropriate for Wikipedia to take sides. In this case, the facts speak for themselves so loudly and clearly that it's not necessary ---- and if we did use a Ukraine flag, then we would be giving credence to the Russian authorities' line that everything written by a Westerner is a lie.—S Marshall T/C 11:13, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
25. Putin, and his invasion, are both scum and on a personal level I encourage people to help Ukraine as best they can. However, in terms of human rights issues, this invasion is not different from others that have occurred and we've not acted. The tough bit about being neutral is, well, having to be neutral. We should only publicly state positions on direct threats to the movement. So I'm 100% in favour of showing banners to those who might be having access cut-off and being freer than normal with IPBE, and the Foundation can offer additional Tor support, and so forth. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
26. Oppose as above. Individuals can take political positions; the wider WMF should not. Although saying that wasn't there a black out a few years ago in protest of something? However, solidarity with Ukraine, always. GiantSnowman 11:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
27. Oppose While my personal self may be horrified at what Putin is doing in his invasion of Ukraine, I don't believe that, at the organization level, English Wikipedia should be taking positions. This is not what we do here. Write good articles on the subject and let the truth be our political statement. But there's no need to take a symbolic gesture. --Jayron32 11:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
28. Oppose I think that that is not necessary. Wikipedians are best in what they are doing right now: providing information to the world. This is also best serving to those we care for. Compare it to media outlets that don't have a blue-yellow ribbon on their sites either. Ziko (talk) 12:29, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Discuss

Shouldn’t the WMF be involved with this? – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 23:20, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

As a former board member, I can say that if we have a clear consensus from the community, they will support us in our decision from a technical perspective. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:24, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we absolutely should have involved the WMF and further believe that they will decline our request if or when we do. The Wikipedia logo is not subject to our consensus and it is not licensed for any modification or reuse. Per Wikipedia:Copyrights § Reusers' rights and obligations "The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission". Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 02:02, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea, however i can see a few issues with it, mainly making it seem like Wikipedia is picking sides. Wikipedia tries to remain neutral, however if it seems like we're supporting Ukraine and not remaining neutral, then that neutrality can seem questionable. So really, I'm on the fence about this. I think there's some policy or essay somewhere relating to this (besides WP:NPOV) but I can't find it at the moment. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:32, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

This is certainly intresting, but I'd like to know if anything of this order has been attempted before on the English Wikipedia (as in changing logo/main page for a cause). What was the outcome? I think there was some proposal back when Floyd died, but I am not sure. Rlink2 (talk) 23:34, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

We have done similar things a few times. In fact we took a much stronger position per Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA#Wikimedia_community. It was effective in this case. With respect to this one every little thing helps. We also got involved here Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market#Non-governmental_organisations Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:40, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm tempted to notify Jimbo about this since not only does this seem like something he should be involved in, but he also appeared to have something to do with that as well. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:42, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

The reason WP was active in the SOPA one was due to the direct threat to WP's livelihood. We have tried others where WP's fate was far from being in danger and more political (I recall something proposed around the Hong Kong protests), but the community has balked at such direct political messaging.--Masem (t) 23:45, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Masem our Ukrainian community is at risk. And thus our movement is at risk. Putin is also working to suppress access to knowledge internally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:47, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

I've notified Jimbo about this. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 00:55, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• Probably the most frequent ArbCom principle cited in its history: "The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for other purposes, such as advocacy or propaganda, furtherance of outside conflicts, and promotion of political or ideological struggle, is prohibited." Straight-up taking sides in a literal war is about as problematic as it gets, on par with propagandising in an election or religious dispute. --Yair rand (talk) 23:53, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Would support, but I am concerned whether it would make wikipedia a target for partisan hackers. Rightly or wrongly, Wikipedia is a source hundreds of millions rely on each day and we should do what we can to protect the flow of information. Also of concern is dozens of less public tragedies occur every day affecting similar and larger population sizes without being given the benefit of the public awareness 300 million page views a day will bring.Slywriter (talk) 00:11, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• The Wikimedia Foundation, the political lobbying organization, should of course weigh in with their support for the Ukrainians. I don't know about the current executive director, the the former ED was all about tweeting her politics all the time. The encyclopedias themselves should stay out of politics and remain neutral. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

• Hello everyone,

I want to briefly explain to you all why the Georgian Wikipedia modified the logo (in the color of the Ukrainian flag) and state the position of the Georgian community.

• • We are in full solidarity with our Ukrainian colleagues and the Ukrainian people in the struggle for freedom and independence, and we hope that the invasion and bloodshed will end as soon as possible. We pray for them. Due to solidarity with the Ukrainian people and our colleagues, who are now under fire and bombardment from the Russian army, we have temporarily changed the Wikipedia logo.
  • I myselfs, as well as all editors from Georgia and the absolute majority of editors in Georgian language ourselves 14 years ago (2008) became the target of Russian aggression, when Russia attacked Georgia and occupied our regions, so we know what our Ukrainian colleagues are feeling and experiencing now. This triggered our respective response.
  • The decision to change the logo was taken unanimously by the Georgian community, in full compliance with the principle of transparency. You can check this here.
  • The Georgian community remains completely neutral in its coverage of events in Ukraine. Unlike some larger Wikipedias, Georgian Wikipedia praises academic freedom and is adherent to the principle of neutrality in academic materials. Our policies, as well as checks, are well in place and all of our articles are almost identical in neutrality as in English Wikipedia. Accusations of non-neutrality are unfair, unbased and demonstrate the preexisting bias from the accuser. We recommend everyone to double-check and then blame. All accusations of lack of objectivity are unfounded.
  • Finally, every Wiki community is independent and decides on specific actions themselves, in adherence with the principles and values of our Movement. There is a huge difference between bias in articles and demonstration of solidarity - we are adherent to the principles of neutrality as I have already stated above, as much as the English Wikipedia, but nobody can deny us of our right to express solidarity in the way we deem it appropriate, in support of people who are part of our Movement, who are dear to us, and are currently suffering.

Kindly, --Mehman 97 10:17, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Mehman - I would definitely concur that Georgian Wikipedia is within their bounds to demonstrate their support publicly - it's not like it's a wild, outre, judgement that couldn't reasonably be arrived at. Here, we have a "if we do this, logically we should be doing it for b-z issues, too, and thus the safe route is not to start" Nosebagbear (talk) 11:39, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nosebagbear. My this message is just information about the position of the Georgian Wikipedia community, I wanted to explain our position to everyone and at the same time I don't call someone to something. Sure, each community has its own right to decide issues within its community. Thank you, --Mehman 97 11:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Mehman97: thank you to the users of Georgian Wikipedia for their support of the Ukrainian people! We in Russian Wikipedia, unfortunately, failed to place a banner in support of the peace: about 60% of users supported it, probably about 20% opposed it as political activism, and probably about 20% shamefully supported this gruesome invasion (see ru:Википедия:Голосования/Украина), while 66.7% of support for the banner were necessary. Wikisaurus (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

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

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

There is a clear consensus to go forward with the proposal of giving the growth team features to 100% of new accounts and a smaller portion of them receiving the mentorship feature. As this consensus is clear I am closing this now as per Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Duration. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

---

Should the Growth features be given to 100% of new accounts, making them the default onboarding experience for English Wikipedia newcomers? -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Introduction (Growth features)

Hi everyone – I'm Marshall Miller, the product manager for the Growth team at WMF. I last posted here in September 2021 with an RfC about giving the Growth features to 25% of new accounts, which was an increase from trialling the features with 2% of new accounts in June 2021. That RfC passed, and the resulting data indicated that the features continue to help newcomers make valuable edits with low revert rates, as well as help them connect with experienced users to get questions answered. After discussing this trial period, community members who have been following closely have agreed that the next step would be this RfC to give the Growth features to all newcomers, making it the default onboarding experience on English Wikipedia. Thank you to the many community members who have participated in discussions about the features and helped put together this proposal!

Specifically, the proposal is to give the Growth features to 100% of new accounts going forward, with a smaller portion of them receiving the mentorship feature.

The reason that the mentorship portion of the features goes to a smaller portion is because of mentorship capacity. About 60 mentors are signed up now. Going forward, as we improve the mentorship tools and more mentors sign up, we'll continue to work with community members on whether to increase or decrease how many new accounts receive mentorship.

I tried to keep this RfC brief -- please see the sections below for additional details!

Background (Growth features)

Over the past four years, the Growth team has been developing a set of features meant to improve the experience for new editors. The goal of our work is to help newcomers make successful first edits, instead of them leaving from frustration or confusion. The Growth features are now on all Wikipedias, without substantial concerns from communities, and have been shown in multiple experiments to increase the engagement of newcomers.

The Growth features include the following:

• Newcomer homepage: a special page with useful actions that newcomers are encouraged to visit immediately after account creation, which they can access by clicking their username at the top of the browser window.
• Suggested edits: a feed of articles that have maintenance templates such as ((Advert)) and ((Underlinked)). Newcomers can choose topics of interest to filter the feed, like "Fashion", "History", or "Physics".

  

• Mentorship: newcomers are assigned a mentor from a list of experienced volunteers. A pop-up form helps them submit a question to their mentor's talk page using a simple interface. Whereas Adopt-a-user is meant to be an enduring connection for a newcomer, "mentorship" in the Growth features is meant for quick questions.
• Help panel: when the newcomer is editing an article, the help panel is like a collapsible mini-homepage, providing relevant help links and the ability to ask mentor questions.

Results (Growth features)

Since September 2021, 25% of new accounts on English Wikipedia have received the Growth features by default, with 5% of them receiving the "mentorship" portion of the feature (because we did not want to overwhelm the limited numbers of mentors who signed up on this page.) In looking at the data from these past months, we see similar patterns as with the original 2% test (see a data analysis focused on January 2022 here):

• Over 15,000 suggested edits have been completed by about 3,500 newcomers, with a revert rate of 13%. That's substantially lower than the 28% revert rate of newcomer edits in general. You can see these diffs by filtering to the "newcomer task" edit tag in Recent Changes.
• About 1,300 mentor questions have been asked by about 1,000 newcomers. While many of these questions are insubstantial, mentors report receiving a good amount of good faith and valuable questions that they can answer. You can see these diffs by filtering to the "mentorship module question" and "mentorship panel question" edit tags in Recent Changes.

Broader implications (Growth features)

If the Growth features become the default onboarding experience for all new accounts, it might be important for the community to think about updating the various other welcome templates, documentation, tutorials, and help content to incorporate the Growth features. For instance, a tutorial that currently says, "Find some simple edits to get started!" might be updated to, "To get started, visit your homepage by clicking on your username, where you will find some simple edits to do." I don't think that updates like these should block deployment, but could be something to discuss and adapt in an ongoing way.

There are many more details and background to this work, which can be discovered in the project page and talk page. Thank you all for weighing in. I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's opinions and answering any questions.

Discussion (Growth features)

• Weak Support with the tiniest possible reservation that I'd prefer "100% of newly autoconfirmed accounts, upon autoconfirmation" (if so stipulated, my support would be unreserved). Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 00:03, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Would that not rather defeat the whole point if, for four days, a new account user could neither seek the help they might need, nor be guided to make simple suggestions of edits to make via this feature? The RfC already states the evidence has shows that 50% fewer new user edits get reverted from those who have the Homepage enabled than who do not have it, so waiting to be autoconfirmed would be a lost opportunity for newcomers to engage constructively from day one. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• Strong support This is a well-thought out tested and proven feature, so anything that guides and helps a new user from the first moment they create their account is to be welcomed. (The Homepage can always be ignored or disabled in Special:Preferences if it's not wanted, too.) Nick Moyes (talk) 01:06, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support the continued rollout of these useful features. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 01:10, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support New editors who are not looking to vandalize or cause trouble have a daunting learning path. This can help address that. Schazjmd (talk) 01:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Looks like your team has been doing terrific work, MMiller (WMF), please pass it on. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:22, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support we need to help keep new editors since the implementation of Help:Introduction all over that has cause us to lose thousands of new editors. The more the help intro is linked the worst it gets...... hope this works and retains more editors.Moxy-
• Support MMiller and team have been doing a good job here. I would be against limiting it to AC. Nosebagbear (talk) 01:58, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Yes, I support it. Thingofme (talk) 09:42, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support, however I think some things should be improved, for example I got a suggested edit for Luxor Evolved that said it was an easy edit that just required copy-editing. However when going to the actual article the issue is much larger than simply just a copy edit, so improvements need to be made to the rating of suggested edits that factor in the amount of tags on the article to determine the difficulty. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 17:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hello @Blaze Wolf -- thanks for thinking critically about the features. Yes, I agree that the way we're suggesting edits right now is rather blunt. Like you discovered, a given maintenance template may not really convey the full extent of the article's needs. In the guidance we give during the edit, we try to tell the newcomer that they don't need to fix the whole article, and even just one small change is valuable. But I agree that a newcomer could easily be intimidated by a weak article.

  Another issue exists in the other direction: sometimes an article will have a maintenance template on it, but the problem has already been fixed without the template being removed. In those cases, the newcomer is confused because they don't see anything to change. We've thought a little about whether to encourage the newcomer to remove the template, or to encourage other more experienced users to review the edit and remove the template.

  As an effort to address both these issues, the Growth team has been working on our newest initiative: structured tasks. The idea is that we could use algorithms to identify articles that have clear issues and then point those specific issues out to the newcomer so they know just what to do for their first edits. We've built two of these suggested edits so far: "add a link" (being tested on 10 Wikipedias) and "add an image" (being tested on 4 Wikipedias). These are going well so far, and I plan to discuss them more on this wiki once they're a little farther along. I would appreciate your thoughts on the talk pages for those projects! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  @MMiller (WMF): Hello Miller! Glad to see that these issues are indeed being addressed. I will certainly check out those projects and provide any feedback I may have on them. I remember one time I was just looking at the newcomers tasks for an edit to make and saw a copy-edit task that was easy, but when I looked at the article, the issue extended far beyond just copy-editing. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:29, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• Strong Support. These new features really make things much more friendlier and has proved to have benefits. While mentorship features need some additional kinks to be worked out, they will still work perfectly fine at a small fraction. Panini!^🥪 18:00, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Firstly, nice work on this one so far. What are the other implications of enabling for 100pc? There are a few templates that you mention that need to be updated. Are there any other pre-works that need to be thought through prior to enabling for 100pc? I see the mentor assignment feature as well. What is our mentor to mentee ratio? Would we be able to keep up with the 4x demand? Also, what are our measures of success? It seems like the revert rate is one measure. Are we adding any metrics around editor sustainability. i.e. how many of these new editors stay on versus dropping-off. Ktin (talk) 18:06, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hello @Ktin -- thank you for looking over the proposal. Regarding the other implications of enabling for 100%, I think we need the eyes of many community members on it so that we can think of everything. As an example, the left navigation menu on desktop has a "Learn to edit" link, which leads to Help:Introduction (I know @Sdkb has been heavily involved in that content), and we would want to think about whether that link should continue to be there, to say what it says, and to lead where it leads. Another aspect is for in-person/virtual events. Edit-a-thons frequently start with, "Okay, everyone create an account!" After this change, all those new account holders will be prompted to go to their homepage to edit, and event organizers will need to be aware of that prompt and decide how they want to address it.

  Good questions regarding mentorship! We've talked about the scalability of mentorship this a lot on this page, but I did not include a lot of detail on it in the RfC so that it remained more focused. Right now, mentorship is only being given to 5% of new accounts because of the limited number of mentors. During the month of January, there were about 50 mentors and they each got about 5 questions per month, which is the load that people seem to feel comfortable with. To scale that up to 100% of newcomers, there would need to be 1,000 mentors, which might require more complex management systems from the community. So we decided that in taking the Growth features to 100% of newcomers, we would increase the share getting mentorship to 10%, and continue to increase (or decrease) as needed while more mentors are recruited and the features improve. Does that make sense?

  Regarding measures of success, there are several things our team looks at. First is the edit count and revert rate, which helps us see whether newcomers are using the features and whether they seem to be making a positive or negative impact on the wikis. But more importantly, we look at "activation" and "retention". "Activation" refers to whether the features cause newcomers to make a first edit when they otherwise would not have. In multiple contexts, the Growth features have been shown to increase this number -- in our most recent experiment on several other Wikipedias, using the experimental "add a link" feature, it increased the chance that a newcomer would make an unreverted first article edit by 17%. And these experiments indicate that "retention" (which you referred to as "editor sustainability") is increased by a similar amount. We're continuing to analyze experiments like these to understand the impact of the features. And finally, a really important measure of success is community reception: do these features fit in with how communities work or are they disruptive? So far, this has gone very well: the features are on all other Wikipedias and none have requested that they be removed. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  We're on standby to update the tutorial series however is needed when this rolls out. The useful links page will need an added line, and we may want to suggest that users try out the suggested edits feature at the start rather than just toiling in a sandbox. Overall, I see separate roles for the tutorial series and Growth features: the Growth features help out newcomers as they're trying to do something, and hopefully do so well enough that there's no need for them to consult a manual. The tutorial, meanwhile, serves as a newcomer-friendly manual for the times when our interface still fails at making a task easy enough to do without aid, plus as a way for particularly eager newcomers willing to devote half an hour or so to learning the ropes to jumpstart their journey. Different people like to learn in different ways—some through experimenting, some through asking questions, and some through reading—and it's good we cater to each. Over time, I hope the amount of things we'll have to cover in the tutorial will shrink as the interface improves. For instance, the upcoming rollout of the Reply Tool will allow us to simplify the talk pages modules. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 19:46, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support. And some questions for you MMiller (WMF) ;) It is very interesting to see the type of edits. Do you have any generalization or write up on the types of edits, and are there any enhancements based on the observations? Looking at the first couple dozen (not a useful sample) I noticed some changes of UK to non-UK spelling, adding an Oxford comma... exactly the kinds of things someone might revert (I didn't check if the page was UK spelling indicated or not) in a way that would turn off a new user... other thoughts on how to guide to a great start? And thanks for the work... Chris vLS (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hi @Chrisvls -- thanks for checking out some of the suggested edits! I just want to make sure -- hopefully you did some constructive and valuable edits in the sample you looked at, right? What did you notice about those?

  One of the biggest challenges we've faced in the Growth team's work is this tension: On the one hand, it's important for newcomers to quickly make a valuable edit so that their "wow, I just edited Wikipedia" lightbulb lights up. If they can't make an edit quickly, many of them leave in confusion or frustration. But on the other hand, editing Wikipedia can be so subtle and tricky that they need to learn guidelines and rules before they can do it -- and requiring them to learn before doing turns a lot of people away. The approach we've taken in the past has been to make help materials available from the editing experience via the help panel, but we don't require newcomers to consume it before editing.

  But the approach we're trying now is bolder, which is to guide newcomers step by step through doing a very specific edit. This is the "structured tasks" idea that I mentioned to Blaze in a comment above. We think that if we hold newcomers' hands through their first edits, they'll develop an understanding and respect of our rules and policies. We don't know yet if that hypothesis is being borne out -- we do now that people are doing a lot of these edits and that they're helping people edit who would not have otherwise. We're still trying to figure out if those edits lead to other edits and to learning. Definitely interested in your thoughts on this approach! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

•  Support ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:46, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Strong support continued rollout of these wonderful features. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:50, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support: A suggestion: Maybe add some other tasks? For example, some maintenance tasks, like anti vandalism. Additionally, I think a link to the task center could be added to the "get help with editing" menu. Finally, could an easy way to turn off the homepage be added? – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 04:56, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  And perhaps a link to the teahouse. – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 09:19, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  One can turn on and off Growth features at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal. And as mentioned above, new tasks are being added to the selection. Sungodtemple (talk) 13:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks, @Sungodtemple, that's right. @AssumeGoodWraith -- I agree, though, that there is not a clear way to turn off the homepage from the homepage. Which is the part that might cause one to want it turned off? I am thinking it's the part where clicking your username takes you to your homepage instead of to your userpage -- is that right? Because without that aspect, it's just a tab that appears (and is easily ignored) when you are on your userpage or user talk page.

  Regarding the idea of adding different inks to the "get help with editing" menu, this is actually something that we've enabled communities to configure for themselves! Administrators can alter those links from Special:EditGrowthConfig in the "Help Panel Links" section at the bottom. The idea is that communities would discuss which links should go in there, and then make the change, which would affect all users. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support: well-tested, provably effective and few to no drawbacks. We have a much-too-steep learning curve for newcomers and desperately need more volunteers. — Bilorv (talk) 12:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Helpful feature, results look pretty good so far. DanCherek (talk) 12:15, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support increase, certainly an effective feature to help newcomers. As a mentor I would not mind getting more questions from mentees. Pahunkat (talk) 12:30, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support As an event coordinator, I find it confusing when new editors' interfaces behave differently, depending on their experience, preferences and other choices. So, it would be best to get everyone on the same page. As for mentors, it might be better to have these assigned when requested so that the limited pool is not confused and burdened by accounts that are not really serious. The home page might have a button to request a mentor. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:14, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hi @Andrew Davidson -- it's valuable to hear the perspective of an event coordinator. Regarding mentors, you're mentioning an idea that we discussed in this section about how to lower the burden: we're already building a way for users to opt-out of mentorship in case they don't want to have a mentor, or don't like their mentor. What if we defaulted all newcomers to being "opted-out" of mentorship, and required them to click a button to opt-in and "get a mentor"? Here's a mockup of what that might look like. You can see in the conversation that people were divided on whether it would be harmful or helpful to increase the barrier to entry for mentorship. What do you think? MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  The events I support typically have lots of new women editors.  They are usually quite cautious and may scare easily.  It therefore seems best to give them visible control over the mentor feature so that they don't feel that they are being rushed into a subordinate relationship with a stranger against their wishes.  The opt-in button therefore seems appropriate to give a feeling of control and security.   Andrew🐉(talk) 18:40, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

  Seconding this - I think randomly being assigned a mentor can easily be confusing/alarming ("who is this person talking to me?! did I do something wrong?") or feel like an imposition ("I just wanted to make an account idly and now I feel pressured to edit because this mentor is watching me"). But you don't want new people to miss out on this, either, so an extremely obvious DO YOU WANT A MENTOR? CLICK HERE! DO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MENTORSHIP? CLICK HERE! button on the homepage would be a good idea. -- asilvering (talk) 06:41, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

  This is a good idea, however I feel that it might also cause some harm if the newcomer doesn't actually know what it might do or some other things. That said, this will definitely fix the issue of users signing up for accounts, and then never making a single edit with them. This clogs up the mentor dashboard with a lot of users who won't make a single edit. I feel a better solution might be if a user registers for an account, they're assigned a mentor. IF they don't make any edits after a certain amount of time they might get a notification that says something like, "Having trouble editing? Ask your mentor and they might be able to help you!" and then if they continue to not make any edits whatsoever or ask any questions, then they will automatically be unassigned a mentor and have to click the button again to assign themself a mentor (could possibly be the same one they had previously if that info could be stored somewhere or a new random one). ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

• Strong support I've seen firsthand that this really is a great asset to the encyclopedia, and it's probably the click we've needed after a bit of stagnation recently with regard to integrating new users (especially with a huge burst in new users due to the pandemic). I wish this was a feature when I was starting out! Curbon7 (talk) 09:03, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support: I was a guinea pig for the dashboard, and while I don't think it's perfect, it's certainly far better than nothing. It would have been cool to get a mentor too; from the perspective of a newbie editor, this looks like a great feature. Thanks to the growth team for your work on these features! (And for being friendly when I showed up with questions and comments.) -- asilvering (talk) 06:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering: your mentor is Elli; see in Special:Homepage (you may need to enable newcomer homepage in Special:Preferences). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @xaosflux Er, are you sure? There is nothing about that on my newcomer homepage, I never asked for a mentor (indeed, I learned that mentors were even a thing at all by having googled to find the growth team talk page to leave the comments I mentioned in my vote), and I have no idea how you came to this conclusion. -- asilvering (talk) 02:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering that's the the database reports, if you go to Special:Homepage, does it say anything in the top right? Noone "asks" for a mentor, they get auto-assigned. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:11, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @xaosflux No, it does not. The modules on that page are "suggested edits", "your impact", and "get help with editing". Where are you finding this database report? -- asilvering (talk) 17:45, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering Hmmm, maybe one of the growth team people can share more. You can query mentors with ((#mentor:Asilvering)), which is "Elli" for you. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:16, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  If you go down to the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal is "display newcomer homepage" enabled for you? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:18, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @xaosflux Can you please answer my question about where you are finding this database report? I've described what my newcomer homepage looks like, obviously I have it enabled. -- asilvering (talk) 18:31, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering literally by invoking that #mentor parser function I quoted above, the "Elli" test up there is not text, it is the live output of that parser function. I believe you, but didn't know if you could go to homepage if following the link, while also not having it enabled in preferences. There are several "opt out" tasks open, but I didn't think any of them were live. So, I don't know why you can't see your mentor there. Think there was a typo above, I was trying to say "that's what the database reports", not that there was a 'database report' to read. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:37, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @xaosflux Hm, testing this on you out of curiosity: Xaosflux -- asilvering (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @xaosflux Ok so it's not just randomly picking a mentor for funsies... weird. Well... it would have been neat to know I had one, I guess! But as I've said above I would definitely prefer for it to be an opt-in thing with a very obvious opt-in option. -- asilvering (talk) 18:45, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  I'm a horrible example, as I claimed myself. I did claim Fluxbot (((#mentor:Fluxbot)):Xaosflux) as an example though. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:46, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  (And I think ITSTHURSDAY broke sameuser:sameuser mentor relationships from working in other ways) — xaosflux ^Talk 18:46, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering @Xaosflux, regarding mentor/mentees relations, you can check who are someone's mentees by using the API: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=growthmentormentee&gemmmentor=Xaosflux&format=xml. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Trizek (WMF) That's not terribly helpful for new users who have been mysteriously assigned a mentor but not told anything about it... -- asilvering (talk) 17:42, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Trizek (WMF) please see Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Missing mentor? for some follow up on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:45, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Asilvering @Xaosflux, I was multi-tabbing and I apparently posted half of my reply. Sorry. :/ Here is the missing (and most interesting) part: "as only 5% of newcomers get the mentorship module, it may have impacted some people who turn it on manually (even if it is unlilely to happen). I will ask the team about it." I'll keep you posted at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Missing mentor?. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

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

Can We add Template:Hidden image in WP:Bad image list contained article's respective images? This template is frequently used in Arabic wikipedia and subsequently Hebrew wikipedia. 103.230.104.27 (talk) 14:39, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so since it's not an image and the template is being considered for deletion. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:16, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment: This IP range (bn:Special:Contributions/103.230.104.0/22) is blocked in Bengali Wikipedia due to long term abuse (personal attack + sock of User:Lazy-restless). —Yahya (talk • contribs.) 21:42, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

  @Yahya: Ah interesting. Not sure if there's much we can do here on enWiki since they haven't made any edits since this one and to my knowledge we can't use CU to connect IPs to accounts. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 23:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Propose to limit or cluster citations from the same author, university department or research center.

Pages having different papers on the same research topic from the same author should be clustered or limited. RS consisting of the same conclusion or narrow variences of it from the same author should be treated as a single reference.

Why? Inflating the RS count prevent good faith discussion on changing an article. A conclusion repeated in three papers from three years is one conclusion that should not block changing a page based on one new RS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:9998:5F2A:1AD7:F946 (talk) 01:16, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

It is not a good idea to artificially limit citations that support wikitext claims just because they are from the same author or work. Assuming this is not about single-source (or almost-single-source) articles, but such can be tagged now. It is incumbent on editors to provide additional supporting sources if they exist, but this is not an obligation. It is also incumbent on editors to add contrary wikitext claims and the citations to support them.

The second paragraph is better. Authors may have an area of expertise and associated conclusions they reinforce in work after work. The final real-world source in all citations is the author, so one may see multiple such citations as coming from a single source. But this again is not a citation issue. Citations exist to support wikitext claims. That's all. What you propose falls under NPOV and balance which are wikitext, not citation issues. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:54, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi everyone, as you may remember there were two discussions in the past [5][6] about portal links on the main page which were inconclusive, mainly because of deficiencies in the proposals. To move this discussion forward, I thought that a workshop about how an adequate proposal should be drafted and formatted could be useful. I have created User:JBchrch/Portal links on the Main Page: RfC Workshop for this purpose. Anyone with an interest in this topic is more than welcome to contribute and comment. JBchrch talk 23:29, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Numerous pages about individual books have quotes from the book’s dust jacket. These are biased and unreliable due to cross promotion of the commentator being a fellow author usually for the same publisher.

These promotional commentary should be removed from wikipedia.

Music pages, Devo Satisfaction song, should have these promotional comments removed also. Mick Jagger states thst Devo cover of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction is the best cover of that song. He would of course promote the cover since half of the sales of the cover go to the original artist, Mick Jagger.

Films such as Kirk Douglas quote praising his-son’s Falling Down film should be removed for the same reason.

Lastly, removing quotes from book introductions should be done since the introduction writer is paid to praise the book’s content. For anthologies, the introductory paragraph for a story is also promotional.

Suggest a Wikipedia tag for this self or cross promotional to be WP:CrossPromotional as distinct from outright advertising. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:9998:5F2A:1AD7:F946 (talk) 00:44, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Although such quotes should not be used to support notability, not everything quoted from a book etc. jacket is promotional. Sometimes people involved in the book production are only credited on the cover. Music works credit personnel, and include tracklists. Even the promotional info (publisher annotations, liner notes etc.) may contain citable information if they are the explicit subject of wikitext. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:12, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with 71.247.146.98 on this one, I think it's really up to user discretion to decide whether a quote from a dust jacket is worth quoting or not. Maybe this could get some sort of tag or be added to something like WP:CrossPromotional like you said, but it shouldn't be outright banned in my opinion. Tolozen (talk) 06:19, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

There needs a way to can mark a reference as stale needing an updated one.

Pages frequently have twenty year or older references in the first few paragraphs outdated omitting recent definitions of the page topic.

In the sciences and history pages this excludes recent research defining the topic by blocking new research from inclusion in the page top section.

It advantages the second generation of scholarly research to balance the first generation researchers work. For example, the first biography of a living president, one from just after death and onrpe from twenty years later when policy has run its course. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:9998:5F2A:1AD7:F946 (talk) 01:01, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

You may have it backwards. If there is new material information about an article, the article can be edited and new citations should be added to support the edits. If this information necessitates the removal of older text, and that may depend on the way the article is structured, then the citations supporting the no-longer valid text should be removed. Sources are not "stale". The wikitext depending on them may be. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:02, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

If things have radically changed such that the old information is now incorrect then in many (probably most) cases there should be a history section that documents this and those old sources can be used to support that. If the old sources are not incorrect then why do you want to remove them? Thryduulf (talk) 16:41, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

• There is a template that says "This article needs to be updated" that heads the article Diabetic diet. If you think the references in an article are out-dated, you could make a request to have this template heading the article. YTKJ (talk) 22:31, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Note: This might not technically be a proposal, but I hope you'll excuse me posting here; I'm doing so in an attempt to make sure lots of people are aware of this upcoming change.

---

Hi y'all – the Editing Team is planning to offer the Reply Tool as an opt out feature to all people – logged in and out – at en.wiki this upcoming *Monday, 7 February 2022*.

The "Deployment Rationale" below is what's leading us to think now is a good time to move forward with this deployment. If this idea brings any concerns/questions to mind, we would value you sharing those thoughts so we can talk about them.

And for people curious about the work the Editing Team will continue doing to improve the Reply Tool, please see this update.

Note the 7 February deployment only pertains to the Reply Tool, NOT the New Discussion Tool (setting name: enable quick topic adding) or Topic Subscriptions (setting name: Enable topic subscription).

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

EDIT: to clarify, this deployment only impacts people (logged in and out) using talk pages on the desktop site. Said another way: this deployment would have NO IMPACT on people (logged in and out) using talk pages on the mobile site. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:30, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Deployment Rationale

The Editing Team has the impression that now is a good time to offer the Reply Tool as a default at en.wiki based on the following:

• People do not seem to have any significant concerns about the Reply Tool being offered more broadly.^[1]
• The Reply Tool is reliable. Over the past 30 days, 99.9% of the 14,000+ comments 800+ people posted with the tool at en.wiki did not impact any other parts of the talk pages it was used on.^[2]
• Many people have confidence in the Reply Tool. At en.wiki, 2,800+ people have used the Reply Tool to post at least one comment since the tool was offered as a beta feature on 16 March 2021.^[3] And of these 2,800+ people, 25% have used the Reply Tool to post 10 or more comments.
• While there is additional functionality that could A) increase the range of comments people can use the Reply Tool to publish (e.g. votes^[4] and unindented comments within existing discussions^[5]) and B) expand how expressive the tool enables people to be (e.g. stronger template support^[6] and signature customization^[7]), we do not currently understand the implementation of these additional capabilities as needing to prevent people who are new from benefiting from being able to post comments more intuitively and for the comments they post being signed and indented in ways experienced volunteers expect and value.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

• @PPelberg (WMF): just to be clear, this going to be only the "Reply tool", not the entire suite of "Discussion tools" from beta preferences? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:07, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  I'm glad you asked to clarify, @Xaosflux.

  Yes, the deployment planned for Monday, 7 February 2022 only pertains to the Reply Tool, NOT the New Discussion Tool (setting name: enable quick topic adding) or Topic Subscriptions (setting name: Enable topic subscription).

  I've updated the original post to make the above explicit. Please let me know if you notice any other ambiguities. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not seeing the discussion from the first citation; could you link to a specific section there?

  Overall, deployment sounds good to me. This will help make a lot of editors' lives easier! ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 08:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  Oops. Good spot, @Sdkb. Here is a link to the discussion I meant to reference in the "Deployment Rationale": Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 68#Radical changes. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

• Generally, I think this is the right direction to head—ever since Enterprisey developed his version of a "reply link" tool way back when, I have long been excited at the prospect of deploying this in a widespread format to help new editor engagement. With that being said, I would be mindful that this would be a relatively significant new feature in the editing interface, and some past rollouts of similarly significant new features have led to tension between the WMF and the English Wikipedia community (see e.g. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media Viewer RfC). I don't think the Reply tool is quite as invasive as VisualEditor and Media Viewer were, but because of those dark memories, I would be inclined to more broadly advertise to experienced editors that this change is going to occur—specifically, I'm thinking in MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages. Maybe this is overkill, but the English Wikipedia community can sometimes be really passionate against these software changes, particularly when they have the appearance of being performed without their consultation or consent. I've been using the Reply tool for a while now, and it is quite good—I just hope others see it the same way. Mz7 (talk) 09:43, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for the shoutout! I agree with everything you said. I guess it may seem like a silly step (and I think it sort of is). But we should definitely hold an RfC of some sort if we've learned from the history of this sort of thing. It doesn't even have to be that long (a week?) or laborious.

  PPelberg (WMF) and the team, thank you so much for all your hard work on this! I've been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Would it be possible to get links to some of those "suspicious" edits (I'm assuming that's what "sus" means in that table)? I really appreciate the inclusion of the table in the first place. Enterprisey (talk!) 10:34, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Enterprisey, click the date for the column you want. Every suspicious edit is on the day's page. The most recent was this removal of a stray HTML tag, two days ago. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks @Enterprisey, it was helpful to pick your brain in the early stages of the project! ESanders (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  +1 to what @ESanders (WMF) shared above: thank you @Enterprisey for inspiring the Editing Team and passing on knowledge that's helped make the Reply Tool something many people use and value. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• @PPelberg (WMF): we may at least post a note somewhere like our watchlist header when it goes live to help head off any "what's this" confusion posts. That being said, probably should have 2 targets ready: (a) the location any issues should be reported; (b) a description/help page of the new feature (which should include the opt-out directions). mw:Talk pages project/Replying isn't really a good landing page for either of those - it is more of a project tracking page. Are there better targets ready somewhere? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:14, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux, there's mw:Help:DiscussionTools, which could be copied here. (Everything in Help: namespace at mw.org is public domain/CC-0, so you don't even have to worry about licensing attribution.) It might make more sense to put the section about the Reply tool in Help:Talk pages than to create another extension-specific page.

  The exact link for opting out is Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion, and you could run that in the watchlist notice itself. In practice, I expect editors here to report problems to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) no matter what we tell them, but mw:Talk:Talk pages project/Replying (i.e., its talk page) is a good "official" option.

  That said... it's already default-on for about half the editors in the movement. Across hundreds of wikis, I've seen about five requests for information on how to disable it and almost no bug reports. There have been some feature requests (e.g., support for voting-style discussions) and questions (e.g., why doesn't it recognize this editor's non-standard signature, or work on this page with a colored background?). Someone even wrote a quick user script (check the VPM archives; I copied it here) to change "[reply]" into the emoji or word of your choice. This experience suggests that we probably won't get that many questions, especially after the first day or two. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Whatamidoing (WMF): thanks for the note, I don't think we need to advertise the opt-out controls in any banners, just wanted to have somewhere to point editors, and have that page include the opt-out directions (not to the page mw:Talk pages project/Replying itself). — xaosflux ^Talk 18:12, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

  You could put it in the local Wikipedia:Talk pages project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): -- just so I know (because I hate change) how do I opt out? -- Rockstone^{Send me a message!} 08:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Rockstone35, you'll just go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turn it off. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• I'm thinking a watchlist notice would be good on launch day, something like:

((Display/watchlist
 |until= 10 DaysFromNowMonth 2022
 |cookie=n
 |text=The [[Wikipedia:Talk_pages_project#Reply_tool|'''Reply tool''']] from the talk pages project has been enabled for all editors.  Should you have any issues or feedback, please [[Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project|let us know]].
))

• Any feedback on this wording is welcome! — xaosflux ^Talk 01:12, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  Making the reply tool opt-out is a big step for beginner friendliness. Wording should be this imo (with relevant links):
  "The talk page reply tool has been enabled for all editors. If you spot any issues or have any feedback for the Talk Pages project team, let us know at our talk page" ✨ Ed talk! ✨ 03:43, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• @PPelberg (WMF): Does "all people" include mobile editors (logged-in and logged out)? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 04:08, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Suffusion of Yellow good question. The deployment currently planned for this upcoming Monday will only impact people – logged in and out – who are accessing the desktop site.

  I'm going to update the original post I made to clarify this. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  Out of interest — why not mobile? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:49, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  @PPelberg (WMF): Any idea how long it will take to bring this to mobile? The current mobile talk interface is fundamentally broken and no one seems interested in fixing it. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:31, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  hi @Suffusion of Yellow – the mw:Editing Team is planning to offer both the Reply and New Discussion Tools on mobile at an initial set of wikis within the next month or so (you can track progress on this work by following along with phab:T282638).

  I appreciate the level of expertise you've developed around mobile talk pages. If at any point you become motivated, I'd value hearing what – if any – questions/ideas you have about the broader set of mobile talk page challenges we are planning to address. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:35, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  @GhostInTheMachine good question. This deployment does not include the Reply Tool being made available on mobile because we are still refining the user experience for it. We will have a prototype ready to share soon, would you be interested in trying it out and sharing what you think about it?

  Also, in case you're interested in the broader set of changes we have planned to improve mobile talk pages, I recommend reading mw:Talk pages project/Mobile. If/when any other questions emerge about mobile, please do ping me! PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

• A tad short-notice for general awareness of rollout, but I've been using it on meta to get used to it, and it's significantly improved from even 3 months ago - especially in its tolerance to the most common thing I did to break it, which was adding ping templates as the first thing in the message. I think the first week will be a bit of a mess, but the general gain will be significant. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:50, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Nosebagbear, I believe this is at least the fourth announcement so far; see Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 68#Radical changes andWikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192#Tech News: 2021-38. I think the first conversation was last February (before Ops said no, which forced a multi-month delay), and there have been minor mentions off and on, such as at the end of this massive thread about topic subscriptions. As you can tell, though, even multiple discussions don't reach everyone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• As someone who is not at all tech savvy… please explain what this is and what it is attempting to accomplish - using non-tech language. Don’t assume people know what you are talking about. Blueboar (talk) 00:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  It adds a little reply link after talk page talk page posts that you can click on to reply to that particular message. It opens a small editing window below the message you're replying to, so you can reply without loading a new page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Blueboar below is a screenshot of the Reply Tool in case a visual is helpful

  

  . You can also find more details about the tool by visiting this help page. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:18, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright y'all: it's been a couple of days since this discussion started and we thought it would be helpful to articulate the information that has surfaced in the discussion thus far. This way, we can collectively decide what happens next with this deployment with a shared set of ideas in our minds.

New Information

1. People are supportive: Everyone who has commented in the discussion thus far is supportive of the Reply Tool being offered as an opt-out feature, for all users (logged in + out), on desktop
2. Awareness is important: A significant number of volunteers who have commented in the discussion agree (and so do we!) that it would be wise to make as many people aware of this change as possible, ideally ahead of time. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}
3. Announcement needs some more thought: There does not yet seem to be an agreement about what the most effective way(s) are of making people aware about the Reply Tool being made available as an opt-out feature on desktop.

*Please comment if you do NOT think aspects of the above are accurate. It's very possible I missed and/or misunderstood something someone said!

Next steps

With the "New Information" above in mind, I'm going to ping a few other folks who have been involved in testing and providing feedback about the Reply Tool^[6][7] to hear what they have to say...

@DannyS712, @Doug Weller, @JohnFromPinckney, @Klein Muçi, @Levivich, @Nick Moyes, @Pelagic, @ProcrastinatingReader, @Thryduulf, @Qwerfjkl: in this discussion we are talking about making the Reply Tool available as an opt-out feature for logged in and logged out users on desktop next week.

As people who are experienced using the Reply Tool at en.wiki^[7], we wonder: what do you think might be effective ways for making the wider en.wiki community aware of this Reply Tool deployment? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

A question and a couple of comments before as head into the weekend...

Question

@Ed6767, @Enterprisey, @GhostInTheMachine, @Mz7, @Xaosflux: as people who have said this deployment would benefit from many people being made aware of it ahead of time, how do you think this announcement or announcements ought to be made? Would an RfC be valuable? Would a MediaWiki:Watchlist message be effective? Might making more posts on pages experienced volunteers are likely to visit (e.g. a couple relevant noticeboards, Village pump (technical) as @Whatamidoing (WMF) has done) be the best approach? Some combination of these options?

Comments

A couple of thoughts about what the mw:Editing Team is thinking...

• We agree with you in thinking that it's worthwhile to make as many people aware of the change before it happens as possible.
• We think the deployment date ought to depend on people having enough awareness that it's happening. Said another way: we are committed to revising the deployment date to leave more time for making people aware, if that ends up being necessary.

Next step

At around 16:00 UTC this Monday, 7 February, I'll check back in with you all so we can decide whether we move forward with the deployment on Monday or push it back a few days to execute the plan y'all might've come up with over the weekend.

Please ping me if anything urgent comes up; I plan to check back in on this discussion at least once over the weekend. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

My only advice is “think in terms of next month rather than next week”. We here at enWP do not like surprises, and we tend to knee jerk reject things when surprised. So go very slowly with the role out. Announce the crap out of it - in as many different forums and formats as you can think of. Give people time to get used to the idea before you go live with it. Blueboar (talk) 02:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

It has been published in the administrator newsletter which means that a large proportion of active admins, and a number of non-admin editors have seen the announcement through that newsletter. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 23:56, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Blueboar, @Dreamy Jazz, and @Pelagic: we appreciate you thinking through the question I posed about how best to make people aware of the planned deployment of the Reply Tool.

Considering it is still not clear to me, and other members of the Editing Team, whether y'all (all of the volunteers who have participated in this discussion to date) think an RfC for this kind of change is necessary, in the immediate-term, we are delaying today's (7 February) planned deployment of the Reply Tool.

Next step(s)

You can expect to see another comment from me before 5:00 AM UTC (8 Feb) with a proposed next step or steps.

Of course, if any new thoughts/questions emerge between now and then, we would value you sharing them.

cc @Ed6767, @Enterprisey, @GhostInTheMachine, @Johnuniq, @Dreamy Jazz, @Blaze Wolf. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright y'all, people in this discussion seem to agree:

1) Some volunteers are bound to be surprised by this change, no matter how many announcements are made

2) "1)" notwithstanding, it's preferable the Reply Tool deployment be delayed until more announcements are posted

Next steps

With the above in mind, what do you think of doing the following?

• @Enterprisey: are you able to take the lead on making sure this discussion is added to CENT?
• @Xaosflux: are you able to finish the work required to ensure the Reply Tool opt-out deployment is included in the watchlist banner?

And then we can all come back together to talk about the deployment timing once we see what people say in response to the announcements Enterprisey and Xaosflux will have posted. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): the WL notice is ready to go whenever this is ready to launch, just change the answered=yes to "no" at MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#Reply_tool_coming to enqueue it for processing. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:00, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux ah, I see – thank you for sharing the link to the draft message. Although, what do you think about running the Watchlist message before the actual deployment?

...I ask the above thinking that people in this thread seemed to have agreed that making people aware of the deployment ahead of time is likely to be more impactful than waiting until after it's already happened. This way, people have an opportunity to raise any concerns. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): we certainly could do either or both, we generally only put something with a ready to go "call to action" in the watchlist, in that example it would be a "here is what this new thing is, tell us here of any issues". As far as a "before" goes, what is the call to action - if this is going to be a "proposal" that requires community consensus - then it seems big enough to advertise on WLN, a RFC section should be opened below that people can go to to participate in such a discussion. Has this evolved from a "the server owners are doing this thing" to a "should we do this thing" discussion? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:17, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

...we certainly could do either or both...

@Xaosflux: making announcements before and after the deployment sounds like a great idea to me.

Has this evolved from a "the server owners are doing this thing" to a "should we do this thing" discussion?

This discussion has made three points clear to me [i]:

• All of the volunteers who have commented in this discussion thus far agree deploying the Reply Tool as an opt-out feature is a good idea
• Many of the volunteers who have commented in this discussion agree there is value in announcing this deployment widely ahead of time
• There does not seem to be a clear consensus among the volunteers who have commented in this discussion whether a formal RFC is necessary

Combining the three points above with the fact that we are not yet aware of any objections to the Reply Tool deployment plan, I see the objectives of the "pre-deployment" Watchlist announcement as being to ensure experienced volunteers are aware of: A) An upcoming change to the experience they have using talk pages on desktop and B) Where they can go to voice any question/concerns about said planned change.

So maybe the messages end up looking like this...

Before: "The talk page reply tool will soon be enabled for all desktop editors. Should you have any questions or concerns about this deployment, please join the discussion at Village pump (proposals)."

After: "The talk page reply tool has been enabled for all desktop editors. Should you have any issues or feedback for the Talk Pages project team, please join the discussion at the project talk page." [ii]

...what do you think?

---

i. Please comment if you see anything missing from, and/or inaccurate within, the three points I articulated above!

ii. This is the same message you've already written. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

This is a good message, and I would be happy to have this added to the watchlist. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): seems fine, once a launch date is determined maybe we activate the WLNotice a week ahead of time, let it run for a week after - and include the launch date in the message. Is there a new target launch date? Banner blindness is a thing, so don't want to summon editors to a discussion where no decisions are going to be made. If this is going to be a traditional process, then sure we do one early. Traditionally we'd open a RFC, for about a month, get comments, determine the results, then proceed if there is established support; in general the "default" for changes is status-quo. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I am going to say that I've only noticed one issue with the reply tool and i Have no clue what causes it or if it can still happen. For whatever reason, in the past some sections people created couldn't be found by the reply tool with no real reason as to why. I don't remember where this was happening or who the users were that were causing this to happen, however it appears to be very rare. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 03:10, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, the issue you are describing @Blaze Wolf sounds curious and elusive. I wonder if any of the cases described on this page could help explain what you experienced... PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Could you explain what "a bug in Parsoid causing it to render the page differently from the PHP parser" means in layman's terms? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 03:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

That's not relevant and is a distraction. You are being asked whether the explanation given at that link might match your experience. The explanation is saying that certain listed factors might cause "Could not find the comment..." and if those do not apply, the software might have a bug. If the latter, they would like a report including a permanent link to the page involved along with a description of exactly what you did and what you saw. The "file a task" is an overly optimistic request that you can ignore. Instead, post your findings here or at any noticeboard such as WP:VPT and someone will notify the appropriate people. Johnuniq (talk) 04:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Geez dude. I was merely asking so I could try and understand what it means. If I can't ask questions here then I can go. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 13:51, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf, would you please post that question either at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) or at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project? The next question will be whether you get this error message when you click the [reply] button, or when you've typed your comment and are ready to post it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Blaze, the core MediaWiki software that renders wikitext to HTML is written in the PHP programming language, but it's a one-way conversion. There is another component called Parsoid that can do two-way, and Reply Tool uses it because ... reasons. Visual Editor also uses the Parsoid service. (Apologies to all the technical peeps reading my mangled explanation.) ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 12:21, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

This is a visible change. The reply links positioned after every post aren't exactly an obscure UI element tucked away in a toolbar. Will this flip the setting for everyone who hasn't already turned it on then off again? People will notice and say "why weren't we asked?"

Any RFC or banner should run before changeover, not after. Even if it means we have to wait another fortnight or month. Putting it up after the fact would be a very bad look.

On the plus side, a lot of people are already familiar with Discussion Tools thanks to years of fantastic consultation and outreach from Peter and WAID. But enwiki is a big place and we might be surprised to discover how many people still didn't know.

. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 11:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

No problem, @Pelagic. The exact date is not important to the Editing team, so if you all think we need to delay, then that's okay. Just please come to some agreement about what should be considered "enough".

To give some context, back in 2013, I personally posted announcements about the visual editor to more than 100 pages at the English Wikipedia, it had been discussed in the village pumps for months, the team ran CentralNotice banners in multiple languages for two straight weeks ...and many editors were still surprised. I remember one person saying that she had been on vacation for the exact 14 days that the banners ran. Most of us in this discussion have probably also seen CENT-listed RFCs that are claimed later to have not been well-advertised enough, because 99% of editors don't follow RFCs or CENT, and they sometimes regret that they missed important discussions. I have also seen an editor participate at length in a discussion about a proposed change, and later ask why there had never been any discussion about that change. All of which is to say: no amount of effort can completely prevent surprises. The English Wikipedia is too big for everyone to know about everything, and we have too much to keep track of to remember even the things we do talk about. I expect that most editors will consider the Reply tool to be a pleasant surprise, but I do expect its appearance to surprise a substantial number of editors no matter what we do or when we do it.

Offhand, in the past few months, I know that this tool and its deployment has been mentioned in at least three village pumps, Wikipedia:Talk pages project (but only ~20 active editors watching that page), the Wikipedia:Administrators' newsletter, and at least two issues of m:Tech/News. What else do you want to add to that list? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I feel your frustration, Whatamidoing. In my imaginary ideal world there would be a formal RFC that, for once, could come down clearly in favour of change, because of all the great community work you have already invested, and because this is a feature that I believe most people deem beneficial. There's a danger it could get bogged down in "no consensus", which would be a saddening demonstration that participatory decision-making doesn't scale, and that enwiki is something like Conway's Game of Life where interactions are localised to small scale but cause surprising ripples.

As to choice of channel, I almost wrote earlier something like "hey, why not go all out and run a mw:CentralNotice banner, rather than just a watchlist banner or a WP:Centralized discussion listing?" Not knowing that you had been through that before.

Personally, I'd be wouldn't mind if you turned it on tonight. Maybe there's nothing more you can do to influence the amount of pushback. As you say, how much is enough? ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 14:17, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm sure that the product manager would be willing to wait for an RFC, but the number of times volunteer-me has had conversations along the lines of "There should've been an RFC! – There was an RFC last month; here's a link to it – But there should've been an RFC!" leaves me doubtful that even that would work.

For clarity, I really do want as little surprise as possible. I am just not certain that we can materially shift the needle on that with any non-disruptive means. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that makes a lot of sense. I agree that having a up-or-down vote on the matter is probably not productive. Maybe we should give it a week with a T:CENT banner plus a watchlist notice? Enterprisey (talk!) 22:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I understand there are those who are suspicious of change, and can find it hard to adapt. Nonetheless, the visual change being proposed is a brief string of text added to the end of comments. Editors remain free to add comments the same way they always have and ignore the new link. I think it's overkill for there to be a large-scale RfC on the matter, absent any indication that there is in fact a significant proportion of editors who object. As an example: once upon a time, the section edit link was right justified. A number of editors raised complaints when it was changed. I could be wrong, but I don't get the sense that it continues to be a simmering irritant to this day. isaacl (talk) 22:40, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Locations notified

I'm adding in this sub-section so we can bullet-list all those places notified of the Reply tool rollout. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• The change to default-on has been announced at the Teahouse: Special:Permalink/1070670917#Another Announcement: Reply Tool roll-out imminent, Special:Permalink/1070697461#Reply tool might get here soon by Nick and GGS. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 20:17, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Help:Talk pages has had a new section on the Reply tool inserted (see here) (Please don't alter the section heading until rollout has finished, as other pages are now being linked to it).
• Help talk:Talk pages has been notified of the addition (see here). Nick Moyes (talk) 22:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:Help desk informed (see here). Post also made to WP:Help Desk on 8th February. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:Teahouse informed of delayed rollout. (see here). Nick Moyes (talk) 23:39, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Help talk:Introduction to talk pages/1 informed of future rollout (see here) Page is too basic to talk about something that isn't yet visible to users. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard informed (see here). Nick Moyes (talk) 00:09, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm adding in this sub-section so we can bullet-list all those places notified of the Reply tool rollout.

@Nick Moyes what a great idea! PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

• User talk:Jimbo Wales notified a few days ago. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:16, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Reply tool next steps

Hi everyone, I really don't want to see a foundation (or developers) vs community fight here on what seems to be a small feature.

This discussion has kind of gone sideways - let's get back on track. The way I see it there are only two good options:

1. (HARD BLOCK) This new software deployment should be blocked on community consensus; we hold a normal RFC to get there. (Let's not pretend only the "deployment date" is under discussion - as "never" could be the result). Noting that such an RFC could spin in to debates about opt-out vs opt-in, new editors vs existing editors, default option, ip editor option; carefully setting up the RFC may help guide it.
2. (Gamma Test period) This is an advisory announcement only. A target date with some lead time is advertised. Anyone with concerns is invited (by way of notices) to test the feature (which AFAIK is not 'easy' to test in isolation?) - however deployment will be delayed if there are open bugs (not feature requests) in phab (link to what parent task should be used).

If the external-to-the-communty groups are willing to push forward (as almost all other software improvements are processed), then I suggest #2 is the way to go. My only concern with #2 is that it seems "tricky" to get people to test this, because the directions are to use a beta option which enables an entire suite of tools, not just this one.(Let me know if I'm missing something?) Directions for how to see the results of the change can be provided.

Thoughts? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:55, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Discuss (Reply tool next steps)

Testing options? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:53, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: You can enable each beta feature individually. Yes you will still be enabling all discussion tools, however I don't see that as being a big of an issue. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, you can enable the beta feature at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, and then disable the individual tools at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. If you disable everything there except for "Enable quick replying", you'll see exactly what is proposed to be deployed as opt-out. Matma Rex talk 16:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf and Matma Rex: thanks for the note! So yes, for #2 the "tester" directions would just be "Enable the Beta feature", "Only enable Enable quick replying". — xaosflux ^Talk 16:50, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Just so you know, I myself would prefer #2. #1 makes it seems like this entire process of notifying people ahead of time was a complete waste if the software deployment were to be blocked by the community with the option for it to never be deployed. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 18:36, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I think #2 is OK in this use case, but having been around to see mediaviewer, visualeditor, and flow deployment problems respect that the community could be wary. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:03, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

• So for #1 or #2 above, @PPelberg (WMF), Whatamidoing (WMF), and ESanders (WMF): is staff going to push for #2? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:56, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux, the mw:Editing Team supports moving forward with the "Gamma Test period" you described here and @Enterprisey and @Nick Moyes both expressed support for.^{[1] [2]} Also, planning the deployment for Monday, 7 March 2022, is fine with us.

  I've updated the deployment ticket (T296645) with this new deployment date.

  If/when you notice people reporting a significant issue with the Reply Tool, please ping me and I can add the issue as a sub-task of T296645. You're also welcome to boldly add any issues you believe would warrant the deployment being blocked. Although, I think it's important that the Editing Team review any issues of this kind.

  Does the above leave any part of the question you posed above unanswered?

  And before I sign off for the night, I wanted to express gratitude to:

  • @Gråbergs Gråa Sång, @Pelagic, and @Qwerfjkl for posting announcements throughout the wiki and updating relevant documentation
  • @Nick Moyes for seeing the value in, and taking the initiative to create a list of where the deployment has been announced
  • @Xaosflux for guiding this discussion toward clarity

  PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 03:29, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks for starting this. I'm for #2; as I said, I can't really imagine what could be controversial about this (that's jinxing it, heh) besides the possibility of interference elsewhere on the page, but since we have hard numbers for that I'm sure it'll be fine. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) I'm for #2 as well. I think it's all about not surprising too many people, rather than seeking their permission for a rollout of an effective new tool. Either way, I'm still unclear if a Centralised Notice or Watchlist Notice is a) in the pipeline b) impossible to do c) deemed inappropriate/unnecessary. Personally, I'd prefer to read a banner that affects me, rather than all that fund-raising stuff. Even a non-editing IP visitor seeing such a banner notice would come away with a positive impression that they could participate in discussions should they ever wish to. What's not to like?
  ...and a final thought, how about preparing a Reply Tool Rollout Information page? Aim it directly at en-wiki editors, and summarise all information together in one place. Here's a mock-up of its bare bones if folk think it's worth running with the idea. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:50, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Nick Moyes: we have Wikipedia:Talk_pages_project#Reply_tool, which can be expanded on for sure (and what we were planning on linking people to) - not sure we need a standalone page. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:02, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  xaosflux I wasn't sure either. I only thought that if people were concerned about minimising community concerns or kickback, then it could be a sensible 'political' move to directly cater for them with a dedicated page or sub-page just for the rollout issue. I'm not trying to make work; it all depends on what level of concern you and others think there could be. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  Such a big/important change really does deserve a dedicated page. I think it would make sense to start by simply splitting the Reply tool section out of the Talk pages project page and then possibly extend it to cover any further issues related to the deployment. That would also help to segregate any future talk page feedback from the talk page feedback for the other parts of the overall project — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 12:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  Based on the experience of other wikis, I'm not sure this will feel like a big change, especially after the first two weeks.

  That said, if you want to create Help: content, then mw:Help:DiscussionTools has some screenshots and basic text. You can extract the plain wikitext from the translation system at this convoluted link. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  I think it's an important change, for those who want to use it, but I think it's also a minor change for those uninterested in it, as it can easily be ignored. I think from a help documentation perspective, having the two ways of replying consolidated under Help:Talk pages § Replying to an existing thread is reasonable. isaacl (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

  Enough community support here should be fine to plow forward with #2 as well. Maybe we pick a date, like March 7th and go with it. @Enterprisey: seems like phab:T296645 is the main ticket, so any possibly discovered bugs can reference it and block it. I'm going to block it with a community-consensus requirement right now, but that doesn't mean we need a "support RFC" - just that this section needs to get a direction. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

  Basically, option 2 is a final Gamma Test period - with the pass criteria being "no unresolved blocking bugs" (so the assumption is that this is ready to go and is bug free - for example if no one actually tests or reports new issues). — xaosflux ^Talk 23:43, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

• Number 2 seems like the best option out of the two. This change, although not minor, can be opted out of. Plus I see this change as only benefiting those who want to use the tool. I've been using this tool for a while, and it has saved me a fair amount of time. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:53, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
• Go for #2. Mz7 (talk) 20:52, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• I'm for #2. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 01:17, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hey PPelberg (WMF), hope all is well. Looks like we have at least a local consensus in favor of #2. Is there anything further you need from us? Does the Gamma Test option work for your team? Let us know if there's anything we can do to help you with the rollout or logistics. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

  hi @L235! Thank you for thing ping...

  Looks like we have at least a local consensus in favor of #2... Does the Gamma Test option work for your team?

  Wonderful. And yes, the "Gamma Test" option works well for the Editing Team. We are planning for the desktop Reply Tool opt-out deployment to happen on 7 March 2022, provided no issues we collectively see as "blocking" remain unresolved at that point in time. See phab:T296645#7699690.

  Is there anything further you need from us?

  The work y'all are doing to file tasks for issues people are raising (e.g. T302257, T268558, T302296)^[i] and post announcements to ensure people are aware of and expecting this change (e.g. Watchlist message) is a big help and we are grateful for y'all leading this. I think continuing to do those two things will go long a way.

  On our end, the Editing Team will be gathering later this week to review the issues volunteers at en.wiki have filed about the Reply Tool. We will use this meeting to identify which, if any, issues we see as needing to be addressed before the planned 7 March deployment. I will post the outcomes of this meeting before this week is over so that y'all can review it and if necessary, we can talk about it.

  Please let me know if anything above prompts new thoughts/question.

  ---

  i. Special shoutout to @Xaosflux) for taking the initiative to file these tasks...this is a big help. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  @PPelberg (WMF) I have not seen any show-stopper bugs get raised, please be sure to also check Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project — xaosflux ^Talk 22:45, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  I have not seen any show-stopper bugs get raised...

  Noted. If/when you encounter a bug that rises to this level, please do not hesitate to ping me or @Whatamidoing (WMF).

  please be sure to also check Wikipedia_talk:Talk_pages_project

  On it! PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  hi y'all. Yesterday, the Editing Team reviewed (what we understand to be) the main issues volunteers at en.wiki have experienced with the Reply Tool.

  Of the issues we reviewed, we did *not* identify any issues thus far that we thought ought to block the mw:Reply Tool deployment scheduled for 7 March 2022.

  We would value any and all people here reading over the review we conducted and commenting here if you:

  1. Think there are issues we did not consider and/or
  2. Think there are issues that ought to be considered blockers that we determined not to be

  You can read over the results the review we conducted in Phabricator here: Determine what – if any – issues ought to block the deployment of the Reply Tool as opt-out at en.wiki. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 01:11, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't see phab:T301845 on the list, which was mentioned at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project § Discussion tools hiding error messages?. Is it on track to complete QA testing prior to March 7? isaacl (talk) 04:07, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Isaacl I wouldn't call that blocking - since it is a garbage in garbage out problem, correct? High level summary: If someone creates a malformed page with unmatched tags, some of the page will not display right in this situation? — xaosflux ^Talk 12:16, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  As per request, I raised an issue that I think should have been considered and didn't appear on the list. I'm not convinced it should be a blocker, and perhaps its resolution timeframe makes it moot, which is why I asked about it. But it does introduce a change to existing behaviour, and hides the cause of an error which can make (to the outside viewer, a seemingly random amount of) text on the page disappear. I think it should be discussed. isaacl (talk) 16:36, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  @isaacl The fix for T301845 is actually already deployed to Wikipedia, since last Thursday! (For future reference, you can deduce this by looking for the orange tags with the version number like "1.38.0-wmf.23" on Phabricator, and comparing that to the version shown on Special:Version.) Matma Rex talk 23:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks for the update! isaacl (talk) 23:14, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  A non-blocking issue I reported elsewhere, but never got a response to is the annoyance of the Preview shortcut (Alt-Shift-P) being used out of habit (as one does all the time in Source Editor.) I don’t need it to actually work, but I am constantly frustrated by it taking me out of the reply window and opening the print window at the top of the page. So, finding one’s way back down on a long talk page to some point in the middle where the reply window is located is a frequent annoyance for me. Just deactivating this key combination would be welcome. Nick Moyes (talk) 10:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

  This is phab:T302742. It's possible that something useful could be done with it (scroll down a little, so the preview can be seen more easily?). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

• Down for whatever gets this deployed to everyone the fastest. WMF has done excellent work on this tool, and I'm excited to see how it improves talk page dynamics. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Bugs

It is already implemented on the Dutch wiki for a while: nl:Overleg:Bijlmerramp (without asking me and without having it enabled in the preferences).
One bug I found in the editor was:
If I edit something and after that I copy something by a middle mouse click (on linux), it is pasted top left at the start of the edit. It does not happen with CTR-V. A more disturbing bug is that when I reply to an earlier post in a thread, the reply is inserted after the last edit in the thread. --Wickey (talk) 11:54, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

• @Wickey: regarding the later, that sounds serious, but I haven't been able to replicate it yet. Could you set up a simple sandbox page (e.g. at User:Wickey/replytool) and document that steps that you are doing, what results you got, and what results you expected? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:56, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Don't know how to do this and if there is a difference between en- en nl-wiki, but I replied to a comment early in a series of comments here and here. My reply appeared as a reply to the last one (or at least one lower in the thread) instead where I replied. I may be mistaken, may be it happens in the preview, but it happened already before. --Wickey (talk) 10:57, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Reply tool editor

Is there a page somewhere that talks about the editor used within the reply tool and the plans to update it? I did start looking via mw:Editor but got lost in a maze of twisty little articles — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:28, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Given that mw:Extension:DiscussionTools requires mw:Extension:VisualEditor, I'd assume it's based on Visual Editor and its 2017 wikitext editor. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

In terms of engineering, the "backend" is mw:Extension:VisualEditor. This means that nearly all of Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Keyboard shortcuts will work, even in the wikitext source mode (if you have the toolbar enabled; it can be toggled off in prefs). The toolbar is custom. If you have suggestions for what ought to be in the toolbar, then you might want to skim through phab:T282153. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

7 March Deployment

Hi y'all - the Editing Team will be making the Reply Tool available as an opt-out feature at en.wiki (T296645) this upcoming Monday, 7 March 2022.

If there is information that you think could impact Monday's planned deployment, *please comment here ASAP*.

In the meantime, here is a summary of what has happened in the seven days since we published a summary of the outstanding Reply Tool issues:

• @Isaacl, @Nick Moyes, @ProcrastinatingReader, @Gerald Waldo Luis, and @ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ raised the following issues: T301845, T291073, T269310, T230683, and T249293
• @Xaosflux helpfully reviewed and troubleshot many of these issues
• The Editing Team also reviewed the issues mentioned above and did not come to understand any of them "blocking"
• In light of not learning of any blocking issues, the Editing Team is taking this to mean we ought to move forward with deploying the Reply Tool as an opt-out feature this upcoming Monday, 7 March.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

I will add that the two tasks labeled as "Not blocking, but ideal" (making the tool smarter about adding signatures, and an edit conflict warning) have been implemented, and these features will be deployed to Wikipedia this Thursday, per the usual schedule. Matma Rex talk 15:57, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The reply tool is now enabled for everyone, with an option to disable it in preferences. Matma Rex talk 14:28, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Is there a way for me to shut the new tool off? GoodDay (talk) 20:50, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

There is, according to the note at the top of my watchlist, a way to turn it off in our preferences tool. Not at all helpful help. Where in preferences is a better way to help? Anybody? My preferences are cobwebby obfuscatory dungeons designed to confuse a pensioner, and the "TURNITOFF" tool is hidden. Thanks. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 20:55, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I suggested an improvement to the watchlist notice: MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages#Improve link to reply tool preferences. Matma Rex talk 21:06, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Now done. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:19, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@GoodDay Hi, I explained it in the comment just above yours; click the link to the "option to disable it in preferences" I provided. Matma Rex talk 20:58, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I did & it worked. I'm guessing, a lot of editors will be disabling it. GoodDay (talk) 21:00, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I clicked the supplied link, and it took me to my preferences, but didn't help. I need to know where "disable reply link" is????? -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 21:06, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@GoodDay and Roxy the dog: Preferences -> Editing -> Discussion pages -> uncheck the box that says "Enable quick replying". ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 21:09, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

For anyone for whom the link doesn't work ( @Roxy the dog @GoodDay), it's at the bottom of the Editing section. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:10, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Is traffic that heavy on this page? I've tried 12 times, to correct my previous comment to say that I did it & it worked. Wowsers, 12 Edit conflicts in a row. GoodDay (talk) 21:13, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Ah alright. Glad it worked for you. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 21:18, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

GoodDay: I'm told there's a new reply tool that minimizes the likelihood of edit conflicts. Maybe you should try it out. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 21:21, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Now, that would be something I could use. GoodDay (talk) 21:24, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Actually, you'd probably need CD to edit your comment... ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:28, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

That's correct: The Reply tool automagically and silently resolves nearly all edit conflicts, but it doesn't currently allow you to edit existing comments. (That idea is in phab:T245225, and I don't know whether it will get implemented any time soon.) If you want to edit your existing comments, then the similar volunteer-created user script Convenient Discussions has that ability. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

The announcement at the top of the watchlist says the reply tool is now deployed for those editors who have not opted out. But I don't see any difference when I reply. How can I tell if the reply tool is in effect for me? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:13, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I see that the reply button is at the end of the post that one could reply to. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:16, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

You know an old Jewish joke: "If you feel uneasy at your home, just buy a goat, and then get rid of it". It surely applies to me, with my Opera Presto 12.18 (that I cannot update because of the hardware). I feel happy because I am at last allowed to get to the Preferences and change them! For a year or more, I haven't been able to do even this. So thank you, thank you, thank you that I can get rid of yet another useless deploy, instead of slowly crawling to a cemetery. (Slowly, because nobody wants my panic). — Mike Novikoff 00:05, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Currently date format for single digit dates is 5 March 2022 in the revision history. This format means it doesnt align well with previous or the next revisions in above and below lines, like with 22 March or 28th February. More alignment mismatch happens in case of months change too, like between February to March, and this date adds up. Visually the revision history doesn't look friendly.

I propose to change it to two digits date, as in 05 March 2022. This will fix alignments to some extent, not to full extent as the month name length are different. And user name lengths dont match, so it cant be aligned anyway. This new date format will improve alignment, and makes the revision history page more pleasing visually. This would look good in user contribution pages too. Crashed greek (talk) 04:42, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

@Crashed greek, User:Enterprisey/2-digit-day-of-month.js. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:30, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

But proposal is to change it for all. Crashed greek (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Go to your preferences and pick the appearance tab. There are five options at date format:

• No preference
• 05:23, March 5, 2022
• 05:23, 5 March 2022
• 05:23, 2022 March 5
• 2022-03-05T05:23:03

Pick the last one and Bob's your uncle. It all lines up and you don't have to bother about May or September. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 05:27, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

But the proposal is to change it for all. Crashed greek (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

You already said that. But forcing something on everyone that only one person wants isn't the best of proposals. Personally, I like March 6, 2022 or 3/6/2022. Amaury • 11:29, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Don't see the benefit, and we shouldn't be forcing the least friendly date time format on everyone. Joseph2302 (talk) 11:36, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Date format is very much a personal preference, imposing one format on everyone is definitely not going to happen. Thryduulf (talk) 13:27, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

We are already imposing a date format on everyone, except some 1% people who create account and change preferences. Better alignment will help esp non logged in users. So the question is which is the best default settings for the imposed format. I am suggesting a very minor change to the existing imposition. Changing the order of month and date would be a much bigger change, also changing month text to number would be a much bigger change on top of that leading to confusion depending on location of the user. My proposal is a very minor change, that affects dates from 1 to 9 out of 30 days a month. Crashed greek (talk) 06:26, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't think many of us want this change as the default. Perhaps you could ask for another option to be added to the preference screen. Alternatively, it should be easy to achieve in JavaScript. Certes (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

That is understandable, but I wanted to make clear that my proposal is not to change the default date format in a big way like other users suggested. Crashed greek (talk) 06:11, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Now that we have a reverted tag, would it be desirable and feasible to discount reverted edits when granting autoconfirmed status? A new editor has been making unhelpful subtle changes, such as removing random letters, and replied to a warning with I just wanted to get to ten edits really fast. Others may be less candid. Edits can be reverted wrongly, but if a new editor is consistently reverted then we may not want them creating pages yet. Certes (talk) 12:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

The following scenario would be an issue:

1. A user does 10 edits and has 4 days since account creation.
2. The user does an action restricted to autoconfirmed users
3. Some of the edits mentioned in #1 get reverted.

93.172.238.76 (talk) 18:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

The editor would remain autoconfirmed in that case: withdrawing the privilege retrospectively would overcomplicate things. It won't cover all cases, but would catch anyone who makes ten bad edits soon enough to be reverted within four days of registering. Certes (talk) 19:01, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that autoconfirmed isn't a "group" that's stored in the database like other user groups. Each time you click "edit" on a semi-protected page, the software checks your total edit count and tenure, and if it's enough, you're allowed to edit. (Note that extendedconfirmed and confirmed work differently.) So in the 93.172.238.76's scenario, the user would lose the ability to edit semi-protected pages, unless they've made a total of 10 non-reverted edits. But a here's a more concerning scenario:

1. Alice makes 9 edits
2. Bob reverts all 9 edits for the lulz
3. Carol quickly notices, and reverts all of Bob's edits.

Now those "reverted" tags are sticking around on Alice's edits. So does she have to make 10 more edits? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:19, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@Certes from a technical perspective, this isn't feasible. "Autoconfirmed" is primarily supposed to be a check against vandalism bots, forcing editors without it to have to answer CAPTCHA's when adding links and preventing less accountable editing of minorly protected pages. We can't really change "what" is counted, however we can adjust the number of edits and/or days required. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:27, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I realise that this would require a software change, but perhaps doing an actual filtered count rather than just checking a running total is a step too far. We've debated the numbers of edits and days here before, and I agree with the consensus that 10/4 is reasonable. Certes (talk) 19:30, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I think the edit count of 10 to become autoconfirmed is (rightly) so low as to be worth ignoring. The people we should be more concerned with are those serious POV pushers who game the system to become extended confirmed. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:49, 12 March 2022 (UTC)