Cannabis Ruderalis

"Ten languages" test

The "ten languages" test in nonsensical. A better test of what is sufficiently notable to reflect would be how many people read the English language article of the subject.

Because ... drumroll ... this is the English Wikipedia. I've read some god-awful zero-ref articles in other languages. So what?

If more readers are interested in reading the English Wikipedia article on person x, but he has fewer articles in foreign languages, he is of greater interest to our readers. I'm a bit amazed that that test was chosen (how many editors participated in that choice?). If a test had to be used, a test such as "at least 5 or 6 or 7 thousand readers accessed the article on the date of death would seem a far better test. Sure, we might lose Mike_Porcaro (who meets this crazy criterion on the basis of this zero-ref one-sentence article!) and Yoshihiro_Tatsumi (seriously, he slips in because of this - 3 sentences, 0 refs, 1 (RS?) EL in English, 1 EL to his own website!), but get Al Rosen.

Or the completely nothing special soccer player Wolfram_Wuttke; Rosen in contrast was an MVP at the highest level of his sport.

So a guy who plays in a league that has teams from countries that speak multiple languages ... say, the Euroleague in basketball ... will get included over one who plays in the NBA, whose article is three times as long, and who attracts twice as many viewers in English. Why would we go that route???

But our readers on the English Wikipedia -- where this test would apply -- are twice as interested in Al Rosen, as in any of the other three.

Alternatively, we could look at article size. Rosen's article is three times as long as each of the others.

Or article size combined with reader interest.

This test is lousy. And I think NZ's deletion of of Al Rosen just now, on the basis of this cuckoo test, is a disservice to the project. --Epeefleche (talk) 09:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is English-language Wikipedia, not English Wikipedia (and if it were English, Al Rosen might not even be mentioned because baseball is such local sport that it's practically unknown outside USA). Its scope and readership is international, as should be any such general article as RY. Furthermore, arguing that a test is lousy on the basis of one celebrity whom you personally happen to admire is not really convincing. For example, article on Mike Porcaro whom you find so unfitting for inclusion had 19.000 visits on the day he died and 30.000 the day after. Yes, that's more than four times more than Rosen. Still think that he is unworthy as compared to Rosen? Then, the "nothing special" football player was in a team that won a medal in the Olympics, which is generally regarded as the most prestigious sports event in the world. So, a bit of perspective might help to understand the inclusion criteria. — Yerpo Eh? 12:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When was this changed? Was there some discussion somewhere where this was decided? How many mentions someone gets in wikipedia should absolutely not be the basis for any guideline as it is completely arbitrary. Spanneraol (talk) 12:39, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The readership of this WP is those reading it in English. From wherever they may be located. They should be our focus. Our focus is not those reading it in 9 other languages (whether all located in country x, or wherever). That is irrelevant to notability for this WP.
A test based on reader views would be reasonable IMHO, though deprecated elsewhere on wp, as reflecting reader interest.
This test is non-sensical. Thousands more English WP readers view Rosen's page than, for example, that of Tatsumi -- but that is not important to this test. However ... 1 to 4 editors more than wrote Rosen articles, writing in languages other than English, create article pages on someone named Tatsumi -- and that is all-important to this test. The test asserts that the fact that those 1-4 editors wrote those articles stands for the proposition that Tatsumi is more famous internationally. How does that make any sense?
Errata. I should not have included Pocaro in the reader views comment, just the other two. They received thousands fewer views. Though his zero-reference, one-sentence, foreign-language article here is a great example of why the test does not make sense. Explain to me again why that article's existence should drive a notability decision.
These are just a few examples of why the test is lousy. Both in practice. And in the "logic" that we should base notability of a person on whether a few editors, perhaps as few as 1 editor, created an article (perhaps one sentence; perhaps without refs) in a language other than English. Epeefleche (talk) 12:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Biographies have often been excluded on the base that other-language articles are very short, check the archives of RY pages. You're welcome to start a discussion on removing Tatsumi as well, but arbitrarily switching the criterion to what suits your purpose in individual cases - once it's editors, the other time is pageviews, etc... It comes across as "any rule that excludes Al Rosen is, by definition, bad". Which is nonsense, and cannot form a basis of a better criterion. You might want to read WP:NPOV. — Yerpo Eh? 13:03, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I said that IMHO a page view criterion is sensible, as an alternative. It shows reader interest. On this wikipedia. One could also arguably add a criterion of size of article.
Rosen is just an example of why this test doesn't make sense. There are other even more dramatic examples.
Deleted this month based on the rule: Ernie Banks (58,000 views the day he died; another major league baseball MVP), Dean Smith (51,000 views; no doubt he would have been covered in more languages had he coached in Europe), R._K._Laxman (34,000), Florence Arthaud (32,000), Steve Montador (28,000), Jimmy Greenspoon (14,000), and Rosen (8,000).
While included were: Tatsumi (2,800), Wuttke (3,000), Wim Ruska (1,500), and Aleksei_Gubarev (468), and Walter_Burkert (429 views!). Epeefleche (talk) 13:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I still believe that popularity should not be the main criterion (there is an overabundance of sports and pop stars as it is), but international importance, which is better reflected by the coverage in various languages of the world. We're here to educate, not entertain. Including other metrics and calculating an abstract index may be a better solution, but that would be incredibly complicated. Perhaps if someone was willing to program a tool to do it... — Yerpo Eh? 14:50, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"Articles in 10 languages" was included from the first version of this page as a rough test of notability. In terms of compatibility with the rest of our notability criteria, it's not a very good one. For example, it's explicity ruled out in WP:OTHERLANGS. Page views is not very good either (WP:POPULARPAGE). I don't think it's going to be possible to come up with one or two numbers that indicate notability. Notability will have to be a kind of informal consensus on the basis of discussions like this one, and it should be based on both generally accepted criteria and substantial coverage in WP. For example, a baseball MVP seems notable. Can we generalize that for notable athletes? Say multiple grand slam winners in tennis or gold medalists at the Olympics. I would say that Yoshihiro Tatsumi is notable because he was significant in the history of manga, had a long and appreciative obituary in the NYT (that's a good criterion – obits in major newspapers), and has a substantial article on the Japanese WP. For authors, highly acclaimed. For politicians, well-known national politicians, heads of state, long-serving and influential Senators (Ted Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, etc.). It should be a higher standard than simply notable enough for an article in Wikipedia. It should be a substantial article. And add other criteria as needed when somebody complains that this person is obviously notable. It doesn't have to be an exhaustive list, just a list of examples and criteria to show that we have a high standard here. For births, it should be even higher. About the only people who are notable at birth are royal babies. – Margin1522 (talk) 16:10, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If we were going to have a view-based criterion, it would have be views in the week before death (or fatal injury). Views on the day of death merely indicate the death is (for the lack of a better word) "popular". We need some sort of objective criteria which will limit the deaths to no more than a thousand or so per year. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A view-based criteria would not be a realistic basis for international notability unless it was possible to determine where the view came from and the nationality of the user. If Al Rosen has 30,000 views with 29,000 of the being from users the US (IMO an underestimate rather than overestimate) then that would him notable in the US and worthy of inclusion in [[2015 in the United States] but not 2015. The language criterion is not perfect but has worked well since its inception (close to 7 years ago now) and as always can be overridden by consensus in individual cases, both for and against inclusion. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 19:35, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Derby-The king has no clothes. This test does not test "international" notability. It tests whether 1-9 editors created 9 non-English WP pages. At the very most, it turns on the acts of a mere 9 people. While ignoring the views of tens of thousands of readers.
Second, those 1-9 editors may all be in country x. They may not be in different countries at all. It could even be an English-speaking country!
Third, those articles needn't be based in turn on RS coverage in 10 different countries. In fact, that appears to generally not be the case. These articles can be devoid of refs whatsoever! Or be based entirely on English-language refs.
Fourth - why should "international" notability be the test in the first place? Even if you were able to gauge it? (Which this guide clearly does not do). That approach doesn't comport with core WP approaches. We don't say "Ernie Banks, Dean Smith, and R.K. Laxman are not notable for WP purposes, because though they have overwhelmingly robust RS coverage, 1-9 editors in other non-English wikipedias didn't get around to writing articles on them."
As examples, Ernie Banks and Dean Smith each had over 50,000 views the day they died. That is an objective test. We use views in other areas on WP as an objective test, such as in deciding which article to direct to when we have multiple people with the same name. And these 2 men had hundreds of views the day before they died (if you prefer Arthur's suggested test). Each article of their articles is robust; over 50kB in length. Yet this guideline treats Aleksei Gubarev as more worthy of being reflected in a wp article. And he had only 468 views the day he died (less than 1/100th of the others). And 6 the day before he died. And his article is under 4 kB in size. The above examples, including these, are just from this past month. This is not working well. Epeefleche (talk) 21:07, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So basically, Americans are important and the rest of the world isn't? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:36, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Derby -- no. Obviously. You can't possibly have read what I wrote, and responded with that. I'm happy to lay it out for you yet again. But you should be able to read what I wrote, and know that of course your statement is wrong-headed. Let me know if you need me to reiterate it in order for me to be clear to you as to why your statement is completely at odds with what I have written.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm always saying that the word "importance" is perhaps better for describing the criterion for inclusion here than "notability". Page views may reflect massive media coverage for a semi-famous person who died unexpectedly (as sometimes happens with celebrities if there is a slow news week in real life), but will be utterly forgotten a few months later - and this goes against the principle of WP:NOTNEWS. Ryan Dunn is an excellent example. As per my argument before, I believe that there is an overabundance of sports and pop stars as it is; there's more to life than that, and we should promote curiosity about less recognizable (but important for humankind's progress) people, not just feed the readers what they can read in every tabloid. — Yerpo Eh? 06:12, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If the 10 language rule represents a consensus, please link to the community discussion establishing that consensus. Rlendog (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To mitigate the problem of worthless non-English coverage, we could add a condition that links to spam Wikipedias (ceb:, war:, min:, vo:, io: etc.) don't count. Although the rule should be kept as simple as possible. — Yerpo Eh? 18:51, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:31, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Epeefleche that the 10 languages rule is ridiculous. We have a stronger rule that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and this is especially true of the Wikipedia editions in minor languages as they are sparsely edited and, where they are edited, this often done by bots or mechanical translation. We should not be determining fame or importance in such a self-referential way. What we require are independent sources. I suggest that we should be considering the extent to which such individuals got obituaries in major media such as the New York Times, The Times and The Economist as they tend to be quite selective. Viewing statistics are also worth considering as they are now easier to obtain and are a sensible way of measuring what our readership wants. Merle Haggard, for example, got over a million views when he died, making this one of the top 5 articles on that day. Bowie's numbers were similar and this level of traffic should be enough to ensure inclusion. The figure of a million is a nice round number and so would make a good bright-line rule. Andrew D. (talk) 23:17, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also agree that the 10 language rule is ridiculous. It prohibits the inclusion of truly notable people -- icons and in some cases pioneers in their respective fields -- all because users on other wikis had not yet found the time or desire to create a page for them. Some people don't become notable until many years after their death for various reasons, but we wouldn't be able to add them to this page because, whoops, sorry, people didn't bother to create your page on sites outside of this one. And why are guidelines for the English wiki being dictated by what's on lesser-read, lesser-edited foreign-language wikis? --ThylekShran (talk) 19:36, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So... who will decide who is "truly notable" and a "pioneer"? I'm sure you can find somebody stating that for every celebrity. Are you saying that we should list all these people for 2015? — Yerpo Eh? 04:06, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • According to WP:ARTN, article content does not determine notability and "notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article". And yes, article quantity applies under this rule also. Determining notability of something in a Wikipedia article by consulting other Wikipedia articles is a form of self-referencing, and as a result, is an inaccurate metric. If something is notable enough to have an article on one language's Wikipedia, it is notable enough to have an article on any language's Wikipedia. (except if there are slight differences in the notability policy from one Wikipedia to the next, but that's unrelated to this issue) As a result, this metric of notability on WP:RY should be changed, and in general parts should be rewritten/added to/updated to reduce ambiguity. Thanks. WClarke (talk) 04:24, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Repeating this argument without providing a better alternative is wasting everybody's time, you know? — Yerpo Eh? 08:06, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2001

Should 2001 be part of the recent years (Even though Wikipedia was founded in 2001)? Because I had that in my mind for a little bit. 206.45.9.182 (talk) 04:10, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, had it in my mind for a little bit that 2001 was included. While I think it would make sense to apply the RY guidelines to all years, the one thing that clearly prevents that is the ten articles at death requirement, which would similarly be pretty limiting for 2001 when Wikipedia was still quite small. -- Irn (talk) 13:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. I was thinking the same thing too, but the ten articles (nine Non-English and one English) at death is sometimes a bit of a challenge. Although, the recent years didn't became a thing until 2009. Or was it established earlier like 2008? 206.45.9.182 (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It was established in 2008. One reason for this being that editors were adding extremely minor events/deaths as soon as they happened. I don't think this applies to 2001 as there were not many editors at that time and only the latter part of the year could have been updated rapidly anyway. 2001 is probably better covered by WP:YEARS, although the criteria is too vague and, in my experience, too difficult to enforce. The 9 non-English articles is now probably too low given how often relatively minor deaths exceed this. I was editing some earlier years based on a lower number of articles and also their quality but it was an uphill battle against SPAs without any definitive criteria to use as backup. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. That's all I needed to know. 206.45.9.182 (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you check the history of WP:RY, it was originally established as 10 years previous to the date (2008); it was then adjusted to start in 2002. Apparently, it wasn't discussed much here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

US inaugurations

GoodDay has been (re)adding United States Presidential inaugurations to all recent years, even though there is agreement that the election should rarely be included. Comments? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:06, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've been adding them, because they were already in the Year articles, leading up to 2005. As a result, I took the WP:IAR route & inserted them in the 2009 & 2013 articles. If they're not to be re-added, shall I delete the entries on all the other Year articles? GoodDay (talk) 03:08, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WP:IAR should not be used to reinstate your own edits. And this is the wrong forum to discuss removing the inaugurations from year articles up to (and including) 2001. Please contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Years and Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've contacted those WikiProjects. GoodDay (talk) 03:26, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Presidents, Prime Ministers in deaths

I cannot find the discussion at the moment, but I believe there was a consensus that Presidents, Prime Ministers, First Citizens (my indended intended reference was to a work of fiction, rather than the Roman Emperor), and other country leaders should be listed even if they do not have sufficient articles. Recently, in 2008, the 1st President of Malta was added to deaths, even though there were only 7 foreign-language Wikipedia articles at death.

If my recollection is correct, could we we adjust WP:RYD accordingly? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I support that. But with some sort of caveat so that it doesn't apply to interim presidents with very short terms. -- Irn (talk) 21:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as Irn says, the consensus has been that and head of state be included regardless of any other criteria except where the term is so short as to have no international impact (e.g. caretaker Prime Ministers or interim Presidents). The project page should be amended accordingly. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 21:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Some issues regarding images which I think need some consensus and then to be added to the project page.

  1. We need to point out that images should not overflow the Deaths section.
  2. We need to clarify that the selection of images is based on relative importance and balance among the subjects of notability (i.e. no bias towards Americans/entertainers)
  3. Overcrowding of images, including use of multiple images. I think this makes the articles look messy and think it should be avoided.

Thoughts? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 23:49, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good ideas, but some of the multiple image templates nearly match the height and width of the images. Come to think of it, I'll try and see what I can do to match the width and height of the multiple image templates. It's really hard to find some of them that are non-Americans/Entertainers. 206.45.42.137 (talk) 23:52, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Years Eve Continual Update

For a number of years we have had editors adding a running commentary on New Years Eve as different villages/towns/cities/countries are no longer in the current (or next) year. Can be have some sort of consensus on RY how this should be dealt with, I would support the current year and next year changing at the same point perhaps based on wiki time. Wikipedia is not a running news service, any thoughts, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 22:57, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. And a request for full protection of the years concerned for 24 hours. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 22:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. And I think the 2017 page should be semi-protected until January 1, 2018, just like how the 2013 article was semi-protected until January 1, 2014. How does that sound? 206.45.42.137 (talk) 23:19, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Terrorist incidents

As these are increasing in frequency and scale there needs to be more definite criteria for their inclusion. As a first step I've started Template talk:C21 year in topic#Terrorist acts to establish where best to include these in the Template. This should make it easier to direct users to a more appropriate place for those incidents which are excluded. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:27, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Scope of this project

This project currently covers all the years from 2002 onward. Obviously this will keep growing and it is already difficult to maintain adequate coverage of the existing years (there being so few active project members). I think we should consider placing a time limit on the scope, either 10, 15 or 20 years before the current year. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DerbyCountyinNZ (talk • contribs)

In the absence of guidelines for inclusion in non-recent year articles, I don't think we should lose the existing guidelines for inclusion in (say) 2002. I can see reasons the project might be rescoped, but we should keep in place restrictions against everyone (with a Wikipedia article) born in 2002 ending up in 2002#Births. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Railway completions

I fail to see how the completion of even an international railway could have international significance. Look at, for example, 2021, with two recently added, but two others already present. There may be some exceptions (longest tunnel, deepest tunnel, longest bridge), but, in general, I don't see it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Removed the rail completions fron 2012 as clearly of no international significance. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Also airliner completions Boeing 777X, first commercial flight (or scheduled commercial service) between X and Y (again with exceptions; longest flight, or flights between the US and Cuba, the PRC and Taiwan, or even possibly Israel and Iraq.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:21, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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