I’m on NPP and run into users who don’t know or understand the notability requirements. It would be nice to have a notice that in a couple of sentences discusses why notability required and what it is, then points to the notability page. This would save NPP lots of time spent introducing people to notability. Of course, it won’t help with further discussion, but at least it would provide a concise and clear start.

uw-wizard is the closest to this currently, but it doesn’t provide the right message and advice. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 07:11, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Rsjaffe: Do you think it would be better to just expand what uw-wizard says to include that information? - Aoidh (talk) 17:05, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, because, frankly, I can’t see the contributors I’m targeting using the wizard, unless forced to do so. They’ve already written an article or several, and are just puzzled as to why the article gets draftified or deleted. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:17, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If one were drafting a new template, where would it go? "Draft:Template:" space? Sorry, but I haven't been able to find this in the docs. HLHJ (talk) 23:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@HLHJ and Rsjaffe: I've created Template:Uw-notability and would appreciate input or collaboration on improvement so that it works for what it's needed for. I don't want to add it to any lists or anything for general use until we're happy with what we're working with. - Aoidh (talk) 03:09, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I’d like to add some explanation to this, as I think many find the resources daunting and don’t read them. The following is extracted from the resources and edited to the most common issues I’ve seen (e.g., interviews are used as “independent sources “).

“A brief explanation of these terms (see the linked resources above for full definitions and detailed advice):

“Significant: Addresses the subject directly and in detail.

”Reliable: Materials with a reliable publication process, or authors who are regarded as authoritative in the subject.

“Independent: For example, these are not independent: press releases, autobiographies, the subject’s website, and interviews.” — rsjaffe 🗣️ 08:29, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Rsjaffe: I added it and made some changes to try to address any counterpoints about notability that someone might try to bring up before they happen. For example clarifying what is meant by author to try to avoid them going through self-published sources which would be a wasted effort for them as that's not an improvement. - Aoidh (talk) 18:41, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I like it! It might need some tweaking after seeing how it’s received and interpreted in real life, but to me it’s ready for a limited trial roll-out. Thanks for your work. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:49, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Aoidh and Rsjaffe: (so there isn't a Template draftspace?) That looks pretty good, but I think the how-to-fix description is too high-level for the target recipients. "The article you created does not show how the article's subject is notable", for instance, is a statement of the problem, not the solution. Maybe something more like a step-by-step guide to what to do next:

"All articles need to list at least one source (book, article, webpage outside of Wikipedia, etc.) which shows that the topic is notable. A source shows that the article topic is notable if it:

• is independent of the topic. This means it was written by someone who chose to cover the topic, despite not having any personal involvement. Coverage is not independent if it is done by people with a conflict of interest (a second motive that might conflict with a desire to provide accurate information). Press releases by the subject, autobiographies of the subject, the subject’s website, interview statements made by the subject, and other media controlled by someone with a COI are not independent. If in doubt, Wikipedia has a very detailed guide to assessing independence.
• is reliable. Reliable publications can reasonably be expected to be accurate. We have a list of common sources, like big newspapers, with an assessment of their reliablity. If a source isn't on the list, Wikipedia has developed rules for deciding if a publication is likely to be reliable; they work pretty well. If you still aren't sure, ask other editors at Wikipedia's Reliable-sources Noticeboard.
• has significant coverage. An entire article, book, or chapter on a topic is significant coverage of that topic; a passing mention in one sentence on page 369 of a thousand-page book is not. If there isn't enough information on the topic to make a decent article, you can still add the information to another article. If in doubt, there is a a content checklist to tell whether coverage is significant or trivial.

You need at least one source which meets all three criteria. Two or three different sources that meet the criteria between them are not adequate. The sources do not have to be online, or recent; they must be cited in a way that lets another editor find them and look up what they say. You can get specific advice on Wikipedia's Teahouse.

That needs editing down, but I hope the basic idea is clear. Common-sense deciding if coverage in idependent, reliable, and trivial will usually suffice; the recipient won't need to read the fine print. We might also want to clarify if that the topic may well be notable, but the article doesn't yet demonstrate the fact. HLHJ (talk) 19:01, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I’d rather start brief as it is now, test it, and see if we need to expand. I’m a strong fan of brevity. We lose eyeballs with each line of text, so I’d want each word to be proven necessary. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:14, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your descriptions are nice, though, and I could see expanding in that direction if needed. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:17, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to say the same, I like it and it's great to include all of that, but at some point it does become a tl;dr situation where the more that's said the less is read by a lot of people. I also disagree about the one source thing; WP:GNG requires multiple sources, so saying an article needs one source is misleading. There have been plenty of articles deleted at AfD because they only had the one good source but nothing else, and one isn't enough. I did take out the sentence about not showing how the article shows notability, as that sentence seemed superfluous. - Aoidh (talk) 19:30, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Skdb: do you have any input before we roll this out? - Aoidh (talk) 19:31, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I somehow did not see Aoidh's or rsjaffee's comments from just prior before posting, but did not get an edit conflict; my comment was more suitable for an earlier point in the discussion, and I didn't mean to come off as ignoring you! I see GNG speaks of plural notability-establishing sources; I'd never considered that as specifying two or more sources, and I'd have accepted an article with one notability-establishing source and other supporting RSs; I'll look into that, thank you. I entirely agree that my suggestion is too long. I do think it should explicitly say that the user needs to add notability-establishing sources to show notability. Say, replace 'An article you created does not meet Wikipedia's standards for notability. According to Wikipedia's general notability guideline: "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.' with 'According to Wikipedia's general notability guideline: "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." An article you created does not (yet) cite such sources, so it doesn't show that the topic meets Wikipedia's standards for notability.' By WP:NEXIST, use of this template presumably means that the templating editor does not think that notability-establishing sources exist, but they might. There is some evidence suggesting that linking to talk forums like the Teahouse improves retention compared to just linking to docs (see WP:Encourage the newcomers, much of which I wrote). This is a minor phrasing issue, but it might be good to clarify that the source needs to be reliable and independent, and the coverage needs to be significant. Finally, some of the examples might be a bit confusing; for instance, I think an interview with a topic expert could be independent for the topic. Testing it on new users seems like a very good idea, we can ask them what they understood and did! HLHJ (talk) 03:18, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like that change in wording for the intro. Agree that adding tea house to the ending is good. I have an idea for longer explanations, but I’m on mobile and can’t easily mock it up myself. How about hatting the longer explanation for each of the three highlighted points immediately below the point it expands upon, and have something like “click here for more” on the hat. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 07:33, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, instead of hatting, this would work nicely: Help:Collapsing#"mw-collapsed". — rsjaffe 🗣️ 14:50, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'd mock it up for you but alas my mindreading seems pretty weak today . Per MOS:LINKCLARITY and MOS:SPECIFICLINK, I think the blue text of each link should describe its target as well as resonably possible. Explicit verbal statements that you can use a link "click here" or "see links above", were really common on the 1990s web, and became deprecated for a swath of good reasons. Another possiblitly is just assuming that "reliable", "independent", and "significant coverage" (once we add a link) are mostly self-explanatory and the reader will follow the links if not. This could produce something like this:

A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone Wikipedia article when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. An article you created does not (yet) cite such sources, so it doesn't show that the topic meets Wikipedia's standards for notability.

Resources include:

• Wikipedia's subject-specific notability guidelines
• a list of common sources, like big newspapers, with an assessment of their reliablity. If a source isn't on the list, there's rules for deciding if a publication is likely to be reliable, and if you still aren't sure, you can ask other editors at Wikipedia's Reliable-sources Noticeboard.
• Your First Article and the more general Wikipedia Editing Tutorial
• the space for draft articles, which can also be used with the Article Wizard
• Wikipedia's Teahouse, where you can get advice on your draft from other editors

That draft is a bit ugly, but succinct and fairly readable. The "Resources" section could be default-collapsed. I've added the WP:SIGCOV link, partly for those who don't follow every link, partly for balance, and partly for futureproofing. The "cite" link may be superfluous, if the reader already knows how to cite. I'm pretty sure there's more than one WP editing tutorial. I'm also unsure if the selection of resources is a good one, as it's been a long time since I made my first article and I didn't use any of them, mostly because they didn't exist! HLHJ (talk) 15:17, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In a couple of days I’ll have access to a real computer again, and can mock up my thoughts without forcing you to read minds remotely. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 15:23, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If it helps, I've made a copy of the template at User:Aoidh/Sandboxes/TemplateSandbox. Of course we can also just edit the template directly, but I figured I'd offer that sandbox version as a place where we can play around with it and spitball ideas that we may or may not want refined before we put in the actual template. Feel free to play around with the sandbox or edit the template directly, whichever you're more comfortable with. - Aoidh (talk) 03:09, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I made a couple of edits to the template (not the sandbox) that I think get to some of HLHJ's points: clairifying the first paragraph, and making sure the interview section relates to the subject.Please read the changes ([1] and [2], respectively) and see if they're ok.

I'm still at a loss as to how to add extra explanation without overburdening the notice. Wikipedia's accordion collapse controls all use show/hide links to open/close so there's no option to use more modern interface styles. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 23:53, 4 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Those two edits are good improvements, and I think it's good the way it is in terms of length. While more information certainly is better, there's still the tl;dr issue of what someone is willing to read, and in that aspect less is more. I think providing wikilinks to additional information satisfies the "Would you like to know more?" aspect so adding something like collapsing explanations is unnecessary, as that information is a click away and in much greater detail than a template could provide. - Aoidh (talk) 01:36, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for adding the Teahouse text. I was thinking of introducing this to the new page reviewers for testing, if you all think it’s good enough for wide testing. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:05, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's good to go, and getting feedback from the actual editors who will use it would go a long way too. - Aoidh (talk) 17:54, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol/Reviewers#New_Standard_Template_for_Informing_Contributors_of_Problem_with_Notability_Ready_for_Testing for the discussion. I'm going to try editing the template to respond to the comments. You might want to look at the changes and see if they're ok. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:37, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a bold copy-edit of the template for concision and clarity, without changing the structure of content except for minor redundancies of phrasing. I also added three wikilinks.[3] I hope these are non-controversial changes, but entirely understand if anyone want to revert them; I broke them out into small edits with a rationale for each.

One remaining issue: the template currently links "Wikipedia's standards for notability" and "Wikipedia's notability standards", both of which have the target WP:Notability. It also doesn't explicitly say that the person recieving the notice needs to add notability-establishing sources to their article. Here are three versions of the first para; the first is the current text, the other two are earlier suggestions of mine, the latter slightly shortened.

1. 'An article you created doesn't show that the topic meets Wikipedia's standards for notability. According to Wikipedia's general notability guideline, a topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject'.
2. 'According to Wikipedia's general notability guideline: "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" An article you created does not (yet) cite such sources, so it doesn't show that the topic meets Wikipedia's standards for notability.'
3. 'A topic is presumed suitable for a stand-alone Wikipedia article when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. An article you created does not (yet) cite such sources, so it doesn't show that the topic meets Wikipedia's standards for notability.'

I'll play in the sandbox and try to come up with something that incorporates this and eliminates the redundant wikilink. HLHJ (talk) 19:21, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just noticed that the list sentences don't join up grammatically unless you move "significant coverage" etc. to parends at the end of each bullet point. Apologies, will work on this in the sandbox. HLHJ (talk) 19:42, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested rewrite at User:Aoidh/Sandboxes/TemplateSandbox. Possibly the bit in parends should be omitted, and the first bit still has some redundancy around descriptios of notability-establishing sources. I've tried to cover the basics: what is wrong, what can you do and how, why should you do it, and also enough of the jargon to understand the discussions. HLHJ (talk) 03:54, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Aoidh and Rsjaffe:; Thank you both for your edits, the template is now shorter and clearer. I asked at Wikipedia talk:Notability#GNG plural about how many notability-establishing sources are needed and got a lively discussion, so I decided to say "sources... add them" rather than making explicit statements about number, though more than one is usually necessary. But if others prefer to include an explicit statement, that's fine. Might/may for future possibilities is also fine either way; I used "might" because it felt a bit kinder, but YMMV. Does it often occur that an editor creates multiple non-shown-to-be-notable articles? Or a mix of notable and maybe-notable? If so, I can add options for that as at Template:Uw-medrs. Should we mention that deleted articles can be draftified? HLHJ (talk) 00:16, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've just discovered the template {{sources exist}}, used for tagging non-notable articles. Should we mention it in the documentation for the template, Aoidh, rsjaffe? It seems usefully complementary. It encourages others to fix the problem, a more collaborative angle on responsibility. HLHJ (talk) 03:07, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted the change made to uw-ewsoft that removed the wording that warned the recipient about 3RR. While the purpose of the warning is to be softer worded and therefore a less WP:BITEY template, it does not need to be worded such that it doesn't even notify them about 3RR. If you can be given an edit-warring template and then brought to WP:AN3 for violating 3RR, you should at least be notified that it's a brightline rule first, otherwise a new editor is being potentially punished for something that they're not even aware of. The template needs to mention 3RR, there's no reason to remove that and we're not doing anyone any favors by notifying them about edit warring but failing to mention 3RR, given how important 3RR is at WP:AN3, which is where most of the edit-warring editors will end up if they continue to edit war. The purpose of these templates is (1) to encourage them to stop warring, and (2) to serve as notification for the purposes of reporting at WP:AN3. If they don't know about 3RR, it fails both points, because they (1) have no incentive to stop and (2) weren't properly notified about 3RR. - Aoidh (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have left out the part where you reverted a change which had been in place for more than half a year. You should have come here first before edit-warring; Sdkb was simply preserving the Status Quo pending discussion. Regardless, thank you for coming here now. Aza24 (talk) 00:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to address the merits of the content of the template, not a timeline of when content was inserted on a low-traffic template that I assume simply went unnoticed. - Aoidh (talk) 00:22, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Putting aside the rather unfortunate irony here and getting to the content question, {{uw-ew}} (the stronger version) itself doesn't mention the three-revert rule, instead stating that edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made. I suspect that the reason for that is that mentioning 3RR makes it difficult to use the template on the talk page of editors who haven't crossed that line yet without getting an immediate retort of "but I'm still under 3RR!"

As I mentioned in the summary, no matter how carefully worded, any mention of blocking will still be read by recipients as a threat. If such a threat is needed, Uw-ew should be used instead. I think there are opportunities to improve Uw-ew that we might want to discuss. Ew-soft should be kept differentiated enough that editors will feel comfortable using it even in mild cases. Best, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:30, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have an embarrassing confession, that I have not read (or I think even used) uw-ew specifically since 2015 when the 3RR wording was removed, I have always either used uw-3RR or uw-ewsoft. Therefore I assumed it still retained the 3RR wording, which it obviously does not. Since uw-ewsoft serves as a less WP:BITEY version of uw-ew (or at least that was my intention for it), I do think it needs to match uw-ew in terms of what it says (even if it says it in a nicer way). I don't necessarily agree with the current wording of uw-ew but I do think it serves a good purpose currently as a "3RR doesn't apply but it's still edit warring" type of template, and by extension uw-ewsoft would therefore be a softer wording of uw-ew; after all the template is called uw-ewsoft not uw-3rrsoft (which I considered for a moment but I don't really think is necessary as a template since we already have 3 dedicated "don't edit war" templates). I do think that uw-ew and uw-ewsoft should mention 3RR but as that has obviously not been the cast in about 7 years, I think what is more important is consistency and that the two match in terms of scope. - Aoidh (talk) 02:35, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

While this section is up, I did want to point out just for transparency that I did make one minor change to the template. - Aoidh (talk) 03:22, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the sentence Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. should be removed from {{uw-block}} or at least completley re-written. I've been thinking about this for a while: I think that sentence has completely the wrong tone and doesn't impart anything useful on the recipient.

I think this sentence is extremely patronising and belittling, especially when given to established users. "One the block has expired you can go back to editing, but don't repeat the stuff that got you blocked" is so obvious that it shouldn't need saying, it sounds like the kind of thing you'd say to a five year old. I think the link to the five pillars is largely useless - it's about the most generic "catch all" policy page you can link to and may or may not actually contain anything directly relevant to the block at hand, and basically every block message will include the specific issue with the accounts edits anyway.

This message also makes it sound like all the account's contributions were unhelpful, which is not true in a significant number of situations - I think it's mildly offensive to editors who have spent hours of time to make thousands/tens of thousands of edits to imply that their edits were not useful. 192.76.8.85 (talk) 12:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

{{uw-ewsoft}} uses the code [[Talk:{{{1}}}]] as a link to the article talk page. This works if {{{1}}} is a regular article, but breaks if warning a user for reverting a page in template or other spaces, with the link being given as [[Talk:Template:Example]]. Is there a template out there to convert a given page name to its correct talk page? Lord Belbury (talk) 07:59, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Belbury: There's a magic word for this. I've made an edit to {{uw-ewsoft}}, and you can see the result at User:John of Reading/X1. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:08, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I thought there must be something for it. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:11, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed some changes to {{uw-upeblock}} and {{uw-soablock}} at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Documenting UPE/spam blocks based on off-wiki evidence. Please see the discussion there. – Joe (talk) 15:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]