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Comment The prompt of this RfC fails to display in the bot-generated summary at WP:RFCA. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 08:50, 16 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@LaundryPizza03: Yes. That's because Invasive Spices (talk·contribs) has a non-standard signature, where the datestamp lacks the time, thus making it invalid. Legobot can only recognise a datestamp if it is in the exact format that would be produced by signing with four or five tildes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:36, 16 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's very odd. Thank you for noticing and correcting this. I see the instructions do say so but I failed to notice it. Invasive Spices (talk) 16 April 2022 (UTC)
rfc for u
this page should be fully protected or semi protected so only admins or establised users can edit it Quident (talk) 18:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Last year's discussion concerned having lots of RfCs open at once. In this discussion we're considering holding lots of RfCs in sequence, which is different and arguably less problematic. Nevertheless I think there is still an issue of depleting lots of community resources on a single, very specific matter.—S MarshallT/C 16:29, 5 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WSJ RfC
This RfC has been unused for months but hasn't been closed, is there anywhere I can request a resolution? Bill Williams 04:15, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was just looking at this and I think he means the one at Talk:The Wall Street Journal. ("WSJ" is standard Americish, and it's a linguistically interesting abbreviation because you'd only ever type it out -- in spoken language it's fewer syllables just to say "Wall Street Journal".) Bill, you can post requests for closure on WP:CR.—S MarshallT/C 11:25, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah okay, thanks for the help. Bill Williams 23:48, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
In the attempt to create an RFC for the ultratouchy subject which is "Zionism as settler colonialism", several of the active editors attempted to vote to kill the RFC before it could go active or be noticed on (currently) mistaken procedural grounds. WP:RFC currently recommends using short clear questions and avoiding open ended requests but there's nothing about either being mandatory and the ending policies assume that conversation be allowed to procede until there's consensus that the issues raised have been adequately addressed. The posters above on the other hand truly believed that it was fine to shut off requests for discussion that weren't narrowly tailored to individual questions. (This would seem to require multiple RFCs for a single page when the issues to be addressed, as here, are wide ranging.)
Does WP:RFC need to be rewritten to end all RFCs that are not phrased as short questions?
Does it need to be rewritten to ban all open-ended requests for comment? or
Does it need to be rewritten to more clearly explain that RFCs can't be "voted closed" by the group happy with the current page?
To my mind, it's clear that more involvement is always helpful, especially on ultrasensitive subjects. I know more recent wikipedians are more generally in favor of tighter gatekeeping, but do the admins really want cliques of local editors shutting out open requests for outside voices? If some specific person is being unhelpful or disruptive, that can be pointed out separately. On the otherhand, WP:OWNERSHIP used to be viewed as a bad thing, which RFC was a tool to help address without brigading or building up teams of allies (which just repeats the same problem at a higher level). — LlywelynII 16:09, 11 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The advice in favor of short questions and against open-ended requests is just intended to say the RfC is more likely to get useful results that way. If someone really believes her RfC is special and works better with a complex open-ended question, I'm fine with that, so don't think (1) and (2) are called for.
I think the existing explanation of how RfCs should end makes it clear you can't just end it because "I know I'm right, so no one else's input is required". This is the first time I've heard of someone thinking that the page allows for that, so unless I see more evidence of this mindset, I don't think (3) is called for -- it would just overcomplicate the text. Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 02:47, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Part of it is technical. If the RfC statement (defined as everything after the ((rfc)) tag up to and including the first valid timestamp after that) is too long, then Legobot won't list it correctly, as with these four. In such cases, Legobot also won't be able to identify the start time, and so will therefore be unable to determine the thirty-day limit either, and won't remove the ((rfc)) tag - this rfcshould get delisted in less than three hours from now, but I'll warrant that it won't be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Bad RFC. As one of the people who !voted that it was a bad RFC, I object to your interpretation that people were trying to "kill" the RFC before it can be noticed or go active. The guidelines for RFCs are what makes them useful; like most of our policies, they are not and should not be hard-and-fast rules, but an RFC that has a non-neutral opening statement, and which asks a vague and sweeping question, and which is more intended to vaguely "attract attention" to an article, is not a good RFC; and "Bad RFC" expresses to the opinion that the flaws are serious enough that no action should be taken based on the RFC's results, without prejudice against replacing it with a better one. Because it's difficult to change or fix an RFC once people have started to respond, when someone makes a deeply-flawed RFC there will often be calls to halt it immediately so it can be reworked, but that is not the same as preventing someone from ever opening any RFC. I particularly object to your interpretation that the people who told you of your mistakes in structuring that RFC were only doing so because they were "happy with the current page", which is an unwarranted assumption of bad faith. On an ultra-touchy subject, it is especially important to be cautious with your language, to respect the need for neutral language in an RFC, to stick to the assumption of good faith and to avoid pouring oil on troubled fires, so to speak - words like gatekeeping and cliques of local editors are not the sort of language you should bring to someplace where you're trying to amicably resolve a long-standing dispute. Finally, as I pointed out to you there, there are numerous other methods available to call attention to an article if your goal is just to attract general attention to it (eg. WP:NPOVN is always open). Anyway, with all that said, this is a bad RFC because it replicates many of the problems of the one that sparked it (especially the extremely non-neutral opening statement) and because it's based on an inaccurate premise in terms of how you interpreted what people were saying to you. --Aquillion (talk) 06:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
