RFC: New PDF icon[edit]

Should we replace the current PDF icon? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 05:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Background

Our current PDF icon is File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif . To put it simply, it isn't particularly good. It's a .gif made over 16 years ago. Berrely mentioned this in WP:Discord, so I set about coming up with a modern SVG version of the file. The result was File:Icons-mini-file pdf old.svg  File:Icons-mini-file pdf.svg .

Options

There are three options that should be considered here:

• Option 1 to support using File:Icons-mini-file pdf old.svg  File:Icons-mini-file pdf.svg 
• Option 2 where you agree that we should change File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif  but don't like File:Icons-mini-file pdf.svg 
• Option 3 to oppose any changes to File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif 
• Option 4 for removing the icon entirely.

Consensus for Option 2 should be followed up in a separate discussion. [Updated 15:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)]

Further discussion (PDF icon)[edit]

Since opinions are split and some people noted that further discussion would be needed, leaving this section open. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:41, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• There are 15 icons in Commons:Category:PDF icons under Public Domain that are not based around the Adobe Acrobat logo (which was rejected above), listed below in alphabetical order of file name; the ones in italics were mentioned in the above discusison
  • Option 1: File:.pdf OneDrive icon.svg -
  • Option 2: File:Document-303123.svg -
  • Option 3: File:Icon pdf file.png -
  • Option 4: File:Icon pdf.svg -
  • Option 5: File:Icon-354355.svg -
  • Option 6: File:Ilovepdf.svg -
  • Option 7: File:PDF icon black.svg -
  • Option 8: File:PDF icon blue.svg -
  • Option 9: File:PDF icon bold.svg -
  • Option 10: File:PDF icon.svg -
  • Option 11: File:Pdf link icon.png -
  • Option 12: File:Pdf-155498.svg -
  • Option 13: File:Pdf-2127829.png -
  • Option 14: File:Pdf-47199.svg -
  • Option 15: File:Pdfreaders-f.png -

  I think that is too many options for a single RfC so we should try and narrow it down first. Unless anyone has better suggestions I propose a round of approval voting first to find the top 4/5 that people could support, with those being the options in a full RfC? Thryduulf (talk) 18:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Seems like a good plan, as I agree that 15 choices is too many. (As an editorial aside, the list could get quickly pruned somewhat by eliminating those which are unusable; some of these are indecipherable to me.) Do we need to first clarify .svg/.png formats? Or do we know that both are equally good (although that seems in some conflict with the note in the RfC close above)? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 04:52, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  At their current sizes, I find all but 3, 9 & 10 nearly impossible to read. 7, 8 and 11 are a stretch, but I can make out the letters. I would have no idea what 6 means to indicate without context. Aza24 (talk) 05:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  On my device, with my eyes, I can read option 9, and with difficulty 3, 4, and 10. Since I know I'm looking for "PDF", 5, 11, and 12 are on the boundary of recognizability. I could plausibly make out some of the others by removing my glasses and bringing my phone nearer my face, but I'm unconvinced that is the solution we're seeking. Folly Mox (talk) 05:50, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  3, 9, 10 are the clearest in terms of legibility and actually conveying meaning. Since I'm aware that I'm on team-letters, one other option should be included which is option 14 that is both legible and would probably be understood over time. The issue is that it makes me think it's powerpoint, but that argument could be had in the 2nd RfC. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  To clarify for any reviewer, 3 is the best of these Nosebagbear (talk)

• Yes, let's put one contender forward against the incumbent. Legibility is key here; I find 9, 3, 10 easiest to read in that order. Is it worth considering another alternative with the letters in red on white rather than white on red? That could save a couple of pixels at the sides, enabling the letters to grow slightly. I've tried playing around and can't make anything worth uploading but someone with a clue about graphic design probably could. Certes (talk) 14:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  I think any colored text makes it harder to read the letters at such small size. I prefer something like 11, perhaps 9 with plain black text. MB 14:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Black lettering on 9 would work too, though readers may associate the red-white-black palette with PDF. Certes (talk) 14:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Maybe 9 with black text and a red outline of the document symbol is a way to get some red in there. MB 15:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• 3, distant second:9. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:11, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• For me 3 is the most clear, with 9, 10 and 11 readable but noticeably less so. Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

  Looking on a smaller (and dirtier) laptop screen 3 is by far the clearest, 9 is readable but not as easily. 10 and especially 11 I'm not convinced I could read if I didn't know what they said. Thryduulf (talk) 22:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't have clear preferences on what should be the one we should adopt, but I have some arguments against 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15.
  • The word "PDF" in 7 & 8 are simply not legible at all, and have an overall bad contrast.
  • 11 & 12 look good on zooming in but on my screen, they can be easily overlooked if one isn't searching for a logo on there.
  • 14 & 15 are not quite associatable with PDFs in general. The huge "P" in 14 makes it appear more like MS PowerPoint logo than PDF. In option 15, the average person will associate the green very closely with spreadsheets rather than PDFs (thanks to Excel & GSheets), plus the word "PDF" on it is too small to be legible.
  • 2 appears more like a basic Windows notepad app, again the word "PDF" is not legible either.
  • 6 is the logo of ilovepdf.com and shouldn't be used due to the very reasons some editors already raised regarding the Adobe relation in current one. Also, what does a reader coming across a random heart symbol in a certain external link understand of it? ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 19:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
    • To make it easier for whoever compiles the results, are you saying you have no objections to: 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 13? Thryduulf (talk) 21:55, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

      Yes, as of yet, I approve of 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 & 13. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 22:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• On my laptop, I find 3 the easiest to read, then 10, then 9, then 11. 7 and 8 possess bad color combinations, options 4 and 12 are too small, and the others just don't look right, especially option 6. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 00:01, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• 3 if we're going to use an image, but I think of a Google-like text tag is still better. If we are using an image, there's no advantage to using an SVG if mediawiki is going to convert it to a raster image anyway. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 18:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 is by far the clearest for me. ― Qwerfjkltalk 18:07, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 Most recognizable for me, alternatively 10 as a second choice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IAmChaos (talk • contribs) 23:17, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• I'd suggest we just vote on 3, 9, and 10. They're by far the best options of the bunch. Mlb96 (talk) 04:34, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

This has been open a few hours short of 10 days and we have three clear favourites so is seems an appropriate time to close this round. Allocating 1 point for a first or equal first choice and 0.5 for a second or equal second choice the scores are:

Option	Votes
1	1
2	0
3	10
4	1
5	1
6	0
7	0.5
8	0.5
9	7
10	5.5
11	2
12	0
13	1
14	1
15	0

As 3, 9 and 10 are clearly the most supported, they should be the options for the formal RfC. I did initially say "4 or 5" options, but while there is a clear 4th choice (option 11) it is a long way behind and it doesn't seem sensible to make the RfC more complicated just to include it. I don't have time now to set that up, I might later today but after that it will likely not be until about Thursday so someone else taking point would be good. Thryduulf (talk) 10:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Might want to count how many people opined in general. When folks are not treating a RfC as an either-or choice and supporting more than one option, the ratio of "support for a given option"/"total amount of participants" can be an useful metric to gauge consensus. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:05, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

3, 9, and 10 are all equally acceptable to me at this stage. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 11:14, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus by a quick count, 13 people expressed an opinion about 1 or more of the options before the summary. The discussion was explicitly set up as approval voting to find the options for an RfC, it was not intended to determine consensus for a final option. Thryduulf (talk) 11:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Since you don't need consensus to start an RfC, Thryduulf, and this discussion seems more than sufficient, I think you should feel free to start it. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

@L235 as noted, I'm not going to have time to start it for a few more days. Thryduulf (talk) 01:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Changing the icon for PDF files[edit]

Which icon should replace the currently used ones for PDF files? At #RFC: New PDF icon there was consensus to replace the current PDF icon (File:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif ) with one that is not based on the Adobe Acrobat logo, but not on a specific replacement. At #Further discussion (PDF icon) all the public domain icons currently available at Wikimedia Commons that are not based on the Acrobat logo were considered and three identified as clearly better than the others, this RFC seeks to determine which of those options should be used. Thryduulf (talk) 09:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Which icon should be used for PDF files?

• Option A: File:Icon pdf file.png
• Option B: File:PDF icon bold.svg
• Option C: File:PDF icon.svg
• Option D: Something else (to be followed up in a new discussion)

Discussion (Changing the icon for PDF files)[edit]

The following people commented in the first discussion: @MJL, Xaosflux, Yeeno, Joe Roe, Ahecht, Plutonical, JPxG, 1234qwer1234qwer4, CaptainEek, Robert McClenon, WOSlinker, Vulphere, Certes, Izno, JohnFromPinckney, Amakuru, Firefly, Anomie, Malcomxl5, Pppery, Isabelle Belato, Trialpears, Alexis Jazz, Wugapodes, PEIsquirrel, Isaacl, DiamondIIIXX, Blaze The Wolf, DGG, Tol, Vexations, Seddon, Qwerfjkl, Levivich, Szmenderowiecki, Herostratus, GhostInTheMachine, DGerman, Sdkb, Retswerb, Stifle, Nihiltres, Huggums537, Hog Farm, Aza24, Bilorv, Modest Genius, John M Wolfson, and Nosebagbear: Thryduulf (talk) 09:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

And the following people commented in the follow-up but not the first discussion: @JohnFromPinckney, Folly Mox, MB, CX Zoom, ResPM, IAmChaos, Mlb96, L235, and Jo-Jo Eumerus:. 09:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Fixing pings: @Malcolmxl5 and Blaze Wolf:. Thryduulf (talk) 09:45, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A: This is the clearest on all the devices I have available to look at it on (desktop, laptop and Android mobile). Thryduulf (talk) 09:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I oppose no icon, because highlighting that a link is not an HTML page is useful information for accessibility - not every device can (easily) read PDF files. Thryduulf (talk) 18:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A looks the best to me. ― Qwerfjkltalk 10:02, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Note: I'm on a tablet. ― Qwerfjkltalk 14:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A. The other two look dreadful on my browser, only A is crisp and clean.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Update following Thryduulf's note below: Still sticking with A. C is marginally better than B, but A definitely looks by far the clearest.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Further comment: I've checked on my phone too, and actually C is indeed very slightly better than A there, which might be what others are seeing, but A still looks fine on mobile, so A remains the clear victor overall given the much better rendering on my Windows 10 / Chrome setup.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Also oppose the suggestion of using text. That would be confusing and cluttered, whereas the current icon is fairly clear.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A. Seddon ^talk 10:11, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option C - Clearer than option A. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 11:10, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Option A - Nicest looking. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 10:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A - clearest Nosebagbear (talk) 10:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• @Nosebagbear, A. C. Santacruz, Seddon, Amakuru, and Qwerfjkl: I've just noticed that the image at Option C was actually displaying the option B icon. I've now fixed this, but you may wish to look again. Thryduulf (talk) 11:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option C.--Vulp❯❯❯here! 11:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, C is second, B is nope. In general C seems to be a better file, but when scaled down to 16px for this use case, A seems clearer while C gets a bit of a blur effect. At larger resolutions, I'm seeing the reverse. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A: This looks the best at the small size. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:30, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or C: A hard decision for me. On my PC, A is clearly the best, whereas on both my phone & tablet (using mobile version), C appears to be the best. B is last on all platforms though. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 11:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  I believe that's because A is a .PNG and C is a .SVG. Levivich 16:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  For whatever reason, mediawiki renders the SVG as a 16x18 png on desktop browsers (which looks like crap) and a 32x37 png on mobile browsers (which looks fine). --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 14:53, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option B looks best on a small screen — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 12:24, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option D: get rid of it. Links to files can be indicated with the text "(PDF)", no need for any icon. The option to get rid of it was introduced too late in the first discussion so it couldn't gain enough traction. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or B: A looks slightly better on my laptop. Surprisingly, B is clearer on my mobile. C is a close third on both. I suspect this is very device- (and perhaps eyesight-) dependent; any of the three would be an improvement. Certes (talk) 12:45, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option D (no icon) all of those icons look like they're from the 90s/early 2000s, tbh. And text "(PDF)" is adequate per above. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 15:37, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• D (no icon) - My preference remains to use a non-icon, text marker, like (PDF), or even stylized text, like this: PDF. Icons are more taxing, client and server side, than text, and while PDF icons won't make a big difference on the client side, and we can handle it on the server side, this website is only going to get bigger, and I see no reason to burden it with image icons when text will do. Option A looks better on my desktop; it's a PNG. C looks better on my iPhone; it's an SVG. But on my iPhone, I can't see any of the icons clearly enough to make out "PDF" because of the small screen, unless I zoom in. Also, text is word-searchable, where as icons are not. I just don't see any benefit to using any icon over text. Levivich 16:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option D (no icon). But, in case we do stick with one, Option A looks better to me. Isabelle ^🔔 16:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or D (no icon): Option A if icons are preferred, but they aren't that necessary. "(PDF)" is five characters, direct and concise. ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 16:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or D (stylized text: PDF as suggested by Levivich) I think "A" is the best icon if we have to use an icon, but I believe the idea of stylized text is even better, and it should be presented as one of the options in these discussions. Huggums537 (talk) 17:07, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
  • @Huggums537: removing the icon completely was an option in the first RFC, it did not gain consensus then (using a different icon was). Thryduulf (talk) 18:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
    • What I mean is the stylized text should be presented as an option if there are future discussions as you indicated might happen per your original post by option D. So, we still have yet to see if that discussion will take place or if consensus will call for that option to be presented. Huggums537 (talk) 14:29, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• My preference would be an icon, as they stand out - lots of the text is just noise. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment - As per a comment above, I will !vote after viewing on another computer and on smartphone. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:48, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• "No icon with '(PDF)'" is not technically feasible for generic old links to PDF, so it would need to be policy mandated somewhere or another. "No icon and nothing else" of course is quite feasible. :) My preferences are "no icon at all" (and I don't care about whether it becomes policy or not, but good luck getting that into MOS where it would likely live) followed by A or C (slight preference to A). Preferences exclude B totally. --Izno (talk) 17:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Izno Can you do me a favor and, whenever asserting that something is not technically feasible, explain why? :-) Thanks, Levivich 18:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Levivich What makes you think it would be technically feasible, given that some PDFs do not live in a CS1/2 template or any other template, of which someone or another might have been thinking when they made that proposition? :) Consider WP:CONTEXTBOT in context of any response you might have. Izno (talk) 18:26, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Izno: We have a robot helicopter flying on Mars, is one thing that makes me think it is technically feasible to add "(PDF)" after a link to a PDF on a website. Are you using the words not technically feasible to convey the meaning that a bot that changes PDF icons to text would violate WP:CONTEXTBOT? Because that is not what I think of when I think of the words technically feasible in the context of changing how a website works. Levivich 18:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  That is precisely what I mean when I use the word technically feasible, as in technologically feasible, if that makes it easier for you to parse the words. If you think a change to MediaWiki for this would be accepted upstream, I am here to tell you that you are simply wrong, for the same reasons as CONTEXTBOT says. A bot would run into contextbot of course. That leaves a gadget to add it at any given edit time, or editor willpower to do so. Either way, it is not technically feasible to add the words after a link of interest automatically in such a fashion. Izno (talk) 18:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  That is not what I understand "technically feasible" or "technologically feasible" to mean: both those phrases mean there's a technical problem, as in, a software or hardware limitation. A policy prohibition is not a technical problem. I'm glad you've explained it, because heretofore, I understood you to be saying the software can't do it.

  What would we need a bot for? This would be a CSS change, no? Levivich 18:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  No. There is no CSS that will do this for you accessibly, which I presume is the reason you want the parenthetical PDF in the first place. Izno (talk) 18:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Again, can you explain, rather than assert, why this cannot be done accessibly? What's inaccessible about :after and content: ? Levivich 19:00, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  It cannot be read by screen readers, which have the same issues as they would with the icon. Izno (talk) 19:29, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Ah, thanks for that explanation. Isn't the way it's done currently, with a CSS background image showing a PDF icon, also not web accessible? (It's Failure Technique 3.) So whether we change the icon, or we use text, it makes no difference to accessibility? Levivich 19:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  Correct, no external URL icon is accessible. There is an argument that can be made that this is a case of progressive enhancement of course, since the CSS icon/text can be argued are extraneous to a well-titled URL. Izno (talk) 22:13, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm no expert, but looking at MediaWiki:Common.css and Help:External link icons, it appears the only options supported by MediaWiki are an icon or nothing. You could make an image of the plain text I suppose, but I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why that would be beneficial. Thryduulf (talk) 18:39, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf: I was able to accomplish it (replacing the icon with the text "(PDF)") with this local CSS hack just now. Levivich 18:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A Both B and C look blurry to me. I am opposed to no image, since I am personally quite glad to see the pdf icon at a glance, it is useful information. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A or D, with "D" being a text-based equivalent such as the PDF used by Google. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 19:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A... glad to see change is actually taking place here! Aza24 (talk) 20:04, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A seems better. _{دَستخَط،} اِفلاق ^{(کَتھ باتھ)} 12:44, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A. Clearest of the A-B-c choices. The argument for no icon is reasonable, I just think an icon stands out more and works better. Herostratus (talk) 14:05, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• I prefer SVGs as a concept so option C. The image is not blurred at all, but may have been rendered as such on some browsers. Stifle (talk) 10:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  @Stifle: AIUI, the icon has to be a raster image and so if an SVG is chosen it will be a PNG rendering of the SVG that is displayed. I don't know if that makes a difference to your view. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  If that's so I would choose A (which appears to be winning a landslide anyway). Stifle (talk) 15:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option A or D, as what there have been good arguments for both sides. Low-res text and Plaintext are both good ideas for cross-platform readability, and I am having a hard time choosing between them. ☢️Plutonical☢️ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵘⁿᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿˢ 12:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Still-unanswered question regarding.svg/.png formats: do we know that both are equally good (although that seems in some conflict with the note in the RfC close above)? I get different results depending on my device. The SVGs are better on my phone; the PNG is better on my desktop. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 12:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

  @JohnFromPinckney: All the SVG images are converted to PNG by mediawiki before being displayed (see meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Multimedia and Commons/Improve SVG rendering). For whatever reason, mediawiki renders the SVG as a 16x18 png on desktop browsers (which looks like crap) and a 32x37 png on mobile browsers (which looks fine). --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 14:56, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option A. These appear slightly differently on different browsers, desktop vs mobile etc. probably due to the SVG scaling. I've tested a few and A looks acceptably clear on all of them. C is maybe slightly better when using Safari on mobile, but looks blurry on Firefox desktop. B has the same problem and the bold text is a bit overwhelming. Option A looks good everywhere I tried. It's also the smallest file size of the three, by an order of magnitude. Modest Genius ^talk 14:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, with weak support for Option D, looks less blurry than Option C, however I have weak support for D since, if implemented correctly, it just saying (PDF) is fine, however as just plain text it looks weird. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option D per the Ahecht example. A-C are all blurry to me with my normal browser and screen size and I can't really read the letters. I can recognized it means PDF by the red band. I would prefer not to go through that mental conversion and just have something clearer. A icon should be as discernible as the rest of the page. MB 15:42, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option C/A (don't care which) but also I am still bitter that Option 1() didn't pass from the first RFC (so sorta Option D). It's a lost battle though. Whatever gets us done with the dang gif file faster is basically what I support (except Option B which just looks too silly in my opinion). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 00:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A - Definitely looks better on desktop, slightly fuzzier than C for me on mobile but not bad. B doesn't look great on either. Not a fan of "(PDF)" in text but the stylized text suggested by Levivich seems like an ok secondary option. Retswerb (talk) 04:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: Building on Levivich's text-based proposal and combining the pictures' visual elements into it, I made one that looks like this: PDF The text on it is sharper than it is in pictures, while also retaining the visual elements typically used to denote pdfs. Any suggestion from the community? ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 13:44, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

  My initial reaction on a desktop (not looked on other devices yet) is that it's significantly larger than any of the icons, more dominant of its surrounds (not a good thing in this context) and no clearer than option A. Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

  I see the same as Thryduulf. I think this idea could be better than A, B or C and is worth pursuing, but that particular implementation isn't a winner. Certes (talk) 18:05, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

• Option B – Nice bold text, perfectly visible. Especially on higher density screen like mine with scale set to 125% it looks okay and is perfectly readable. — Polda18 (talk) 19:05, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A best on my device. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option D ~no icon + text, per Levivich and others; if we have to have an icon, Option B is the only one readable on my screen. Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 09:15, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A looks best to me; the text in the other options looks blurry at small size. kcowolf (talk) 03:48, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A, being the most legible on my device (a 27" 1080p desktop monitor), for what it's worth in sample size. Regards, User:TheDragonFire300. (Contact me | Contributions). 04:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option A as the one that's sharpest, and thus most visible to me without reading glasses. (Sadly, I have become old!) The softer definition on B makes it liable to bleed. Guettarda (talk) 15:50, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• Option B; second best Option C (1080p desktop monitor) --Wickey (talk) 13:07, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Automatically generate a record of the contents of deleted categories at the time of deletion[edit]

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?[edit]

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[edit]

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)

RfC: Block reFill tool until fixed[edit]

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)[edit]

• 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)[edit]

• 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 [5] . 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.[6] It still leaves many open issues.[7] 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[edit]

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)

Restricting user page creation of new users[edit]

Decrease edit requirement for being extended confirmed[edit]

500 edits is a lot, especially if you compare it to the other requirement for being extended confirmed (30 days). For example, I've been on Wikipedia 2 months and only have 89 edits. Sure, I've been inactive a bit, but if you were on, say, every 2 days, and made 3 edits per day, it would take a whole year to reach extended confirmed status. Plus, it's not about edit count, it's about quality of edits. I propose to decrease the edit requirement to 150-200. That way, it would only take 3-4 months rather than a whole year. Another requirement could be that you should not have more than 5-10 reverted edits (excluding self reverts), to encourage people to make quality edits rather than bad edits. InterstateFive (talk) - just another roadgeek 21:33, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Any admin may grant any new user extended confirmed without them having to wait 30/500. So, if you're really doing good work and need to edit a WP:ECP page, all you need do is ask on WP:AN for somebody to grant you the right. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:49, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

There's no minimum requirement for extended confirmed. Extended autoconfirmed has a minimum of 30/500, which is probably about right. Perhaps we should make WP:PERM more visible, so editors who need and can be trusted with extended confirmed don't need to wait for it to appear automatically. Certes (talk) 23:19, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I think InterstateFive's idea is short-sighted, but well-intentioned. The problem is that we have so many dedicated sockmasters on this website, and lowering the standards for full editing privileges just makes their jobs easier, and ours harder. --Hunan201p (talk) 14:22, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• EC protection is rare, by design. There are about 3600 pages that require EC to edit, of over 55 million. The vast majority of these pages are so due to arbitration remedies, which is where the threshold came from. While the committee somewhat recently weakened the restriction to "ecp" instead of literally "500/30" (Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Procedures#Extended_confirmed_restriction) I think in general we should not be easily weakening this - mostly because I don't want arbcom to get "creative" an invent a new massive protection scheme again that we have to scramble to build technical controls for. Yes there are reasons to early promote someone, but so they can edit remedied pages is a weak one at best. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:11, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Offering the Reply Tool as an opt-out feature[edit]

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[edit]

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

  

  Screenshot of the Reply Tool

  . 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[edit]

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[edit]

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)[edit]

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)

Bugs[edit]

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[edit]

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)

Method of surname clarification[edit]

Which format should we prefer to clarify the surname of biographical subjects with non-English names: hatnotes, explanatory notes, or something else? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Background and rationale (surnames)[edit]

For many years, Wikipedia used hatnotes at the top of biographical articles for subjects with names that used Eastern name order or other naming conventions likely to be unfamiliar to English speakers. Since 2020, these have been consolidated in {{Family name hatnote}} (examples: 1, 2). Also since 2020, a set of templates has been available that clarifies surnames using an explanatory footnote (examples: 1, 2), although so far their use has been relatively limited.

As far back as 2011, concerns have been raised repeatedly about the hatnote approach (discussions: WP:VPP 2011, WT:MOSCHINA Feb. 2020, WT:HATNOTE Sept. 2020, and others). There are two main issues:

1. Emphasis: A hatnote is arguably the single most prominent place in an article after the title, since it appears above even the first paragraph and is emphasized through italics and indentation. However, the information in surname hatnotes is not all that vital compared to the essential biographical information in the first paragraph. Eastern name order, while an interesting factoid, does not relate specifically to an individual person. Further, because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article, most readers would likely pick it up even if it were not spelled out for them. We normally try to avoid putting trivial pieces of information in the lead, as such information would be undue weight. The same principle applies to layout, where trying to include too much leads to banner blindness (as we see on many talk pages). Overall, the information in a surname hatnote is not as essential as the information elsewhere in the lead and does not seem to warrant a prominent placement if avoidable.
2. Fittingness: Per the WP:Hatnote guideline, hatnotes have a discrete and clearly defined purpose, which is to help readers locate a different article if the one they are at is not the one they're looking for. Under this core definition, using them instead for surname clarification is a misuse which muddles their purpose. It seems that (as with emphasis), the choice to use surname hatnotes way back in the early 2000s was likely not a deliberate preference, but rather an awkward shoehorn of information that did not easily fit elsewhere at the time.

Surname footnotes address both these issues: they reduce the visual emphasis of the clarification, while still preserving it for any interested readers and converting it to a form that fits its purpose. I therefore propose that we adopt a preference for surname clarification via explanatory footnotes. If passed, this would permit interested editors to transition articles to the footnote format, but it would not override local consensus at any article where editors decide to keep the hatnote format (which could be noted in a hidden comment). Relevant guidelines would be updated to state that footnote clarification is preferred but hatnote clarification may be kept if desired. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Survey (surnames)[edit]

Please !vote Hatnote, Footnote, or something else.

• Footnote preference, as proposer. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Footnote exactly per nom. Levivich 05:24, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Footnote a.k.a. Support proposal per nom. I'll also go farther and ask to deprecate surname hatnotes community-wide (if this extra bit doesn't pass, then the proposer's version is still very good). In this case, they would be phased out gradually as editors get around to updating articles.
  These hatnotes I find to be quite bizarre, giving WP:UNDUE weight to trivia, and violating WP:HATNOTE's well-reasoned direction that such prominent placement is only for navigation. The WP:TRHAT section of HATNOTE especially applies here. Explaining naming conventions, regardless of what it is, is not so important a matter that it deserves to have the most prominent place in an article. A footnote (or failing that, anything else) serves the same purpose much better.
  The existence of these has also occasionally been used to justify arguments to add hatnotes for other personal information, such as gender pronouns. However, current practice is that any time such in-article clarification is done, a footnote is used, and it works well for these cases. (Example: ND Stevenson.) If that can work for gender pronouns, it can definitely work for surnames. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC) updated Crossroads ^-talk- 05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• Not hatnote per OP. No great opinion on the alternative, though I think I would recommend footnote if deemed necessary locally as advisement and not as general expectation. It probably just isn't necessary at all to point out which is the family name, also per the OP. --Izno (talk) 06:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Currently not voicing a preference, however I oppose the "preference" wording used in the proposal. If a decision is made that hatnotes shouldn't be used based on the arguments provided, then a a local consensus shouldn't override it. So if consensus arises for footnotes, I support complete adoption of it. This would also make it possible to very easily convert {{Family name hatnote}} (which has 66719 transclusions) without needing to check with the local editors of each page. --Gonnym (talk) 06:25, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Not footnote I'm not particularly vibing with the idea of adding to 66000 biographical articles an entire level 2 Notes subheading consisting entirely of "a. ^ This is an East Asian name. The surname is {{{1}}}." Folly Mox (talk) 07:19, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Allow all depending on level of likely confusion. I like the historically widely used hatnote approach because it sets out the conventions used in an article without impacting on the body. A footnote is the minimum that is necessary, as it is non-obvious which name ordering is used. This is especially confusing with Chinese compound surnames like Sima or Ximen: the family name of Sima Qian is Sima. With names like Lee Kuan Yew, it is hopeless to guess what is the last name, so the article needs to tell you. A reader searching for Cixin Liu needs to be reassured that Liu Cixin is the same person (so there is some navigational use for the hatnote). —Kusma (talk) 10:48, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  For Cixin Liu, both orders are bolded per MOS:BOLDLEAD, which is how we normally handle topics with multiple names and I think is sufficient here. For a name where one order goes to one person and a different order goes to another, I'd support a hatnote. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:09, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  Any decision here applies only to hatnotes about surname clarification. So Lu Ping would keep the hatnote For the Taiwanese writer, see Ping Lu. but the hatnote In this Chinese name, the family name is Lu. might be relegated. Certes (talk) 19:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• Footnote or other non-hatnote. A hatnote is too prominent and usually applies to the entire article rather than to a detail such as surname clarification. Certes (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Allow either per Kusma. Stifle (talk) 12:00, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• More information, please Hatnote Both of the examples given, the family name comes first, so at first glance it looks like the hatnote is worthless, that people should just know that in a Chinese name the family name is first. But I don't think that is the case. In the discussions, editors have already mentioned that sometimes it is unclear which name is the family name. I think to be fair, you should list examples of articles with hatnotes where the family name does not come first. This, I think would give editors trying to weigh in here a better snapshot of the impact/value of these hatnotes. I reserve my vote until I understand this better. StarHOG (Talk) 14:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, the article on Raul Neto sealed the deal for me. Thank you Kusma for providing several examples. This along with Mathglot's comments about wanting to know up front how to read an article and have a person's name in your mind correctly. The Antonio Arias (referee) article is also a good example of why we do not want this information as a footnote. It is only the brevity of this article that the reader is given information about the naming almost immediately. In a longer article, that footnote would be lost or never referenced by your average reader. I am now strongly for using the Hatnote to explain to readers the naming convention a person uses. StarHOG (Talk) 03:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

• Raul Neto has a hatnote and Antonio Arias (referee) a footnote about naming conventions with given names appearing first. Certes (talk) 14:45, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  The last name doesn't always come first with Chinese name, especially with people who have lived elsewhere. There's Shiing-Shen Chern (family name is Chen) and the wonderfully weird Lowe Kong Meng. Category:Members of Academia Sinica is a bit of a mess with both naming orders widely used. —Kusma (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  For some non-Chinese examples, consider Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or Arantxa Sánchez Vicario. —Kusma (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

• Footnote (ie Support proposal per nom). Makes perfect sense. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:59, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote per Folly Mox, and the fact this is pretty important information you shouldn't have to dig for when you need it, and names don't often need other hatnotes so it's fine to use it for a non-disambiguating purpose for people. 107.242.121.51 (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• I think Folly Mox, Kusma, and StarHOG make good points. If the way that hatnotes are actually used on thousands upon thousands of articles is inconsistent with WP:HATNOTE, perhaps it is WP:HATNOTE (a guideline, not policy) that needs revising. Should we also eliminate {{correct title}}, since that doesn't direct readers to another article with a similar name? Hatnotes in general resolve possible confusions regarding article titles, and their use in this respect is entirely consistent with that broader purpose. XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  {{Correct title}} is the other notable exception to WP:HATNOTE, but it's much less common – <1k pages – and something that we will hopefully one day no longer need once future software improvements are made to MediaWiki. I'd rather reign in the purpose of hatnotes than let it broaden out to the point of meaninglessness, since allowing it to broaden has costs to readers: with a discrete purpose, it's safe for readers who know they've landed at the right page to ignore hatnotes, whereas if we allow them to become a catch-all place for important information, that no longer holds true and opens us to a bunch of sure-to-be-messy discussions about whether to have hatnotes for things like pronouns (see Crossroads' !vote above).

  With that said, I do acknowledge that fittingness is more of a secondary consideration than emphasis. The main reason I'm putting this forward is the emphasis concern, and the fact that clarifications would also fit better purpose-wise with footnotes is just an added bonus. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:01, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

  The article title would be the same regardless of which of the names is the surname, so I fail to see how this is consistent with the purpose of handling title confusions. The "correct title" template does 'alter' the title, so that placement makes sense - and is ideally temporary until MediaWiki is improved as noted by Sdkb. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  The possibility of title-related confusion exists because readers are not unlikely to come to those pages from somewhere that used a different order. A hatnote is a convenient place to ameliorate that confusion. WP:HATNOTE was made for editors, not editors for WP:HATNOTE. I guess I fall into the allow all, including possible-something-else camp on this one, with a preference against footnotes but a recognition that a one-size-fits-all, across-the-board rule is probably suboptimal. XOR'easter (talk) 00:00, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

• Allow either per Kusma. There are cases where it's genuinely confusing enough to merit a hatnote, and other cases where it isn't. (t · c) buidhe 21:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
• Not sure yet; leaning 'something-else' (Summoned by bot) – I take the point about the original purpose of hatnotes, and that's somewhat persuasive, but otoh, presenting information clearly to the reader trumps just about anything else in my book, and if a majority of surveyees say hatnote makes it clearer, then I'm fine with that choice, too. Otoh, not sure footnote helps as much as I would like. I think a major part of the calculus for me, is I *want* to know how to properly identify someone, and I don't want to have to hunt for whether the Singaporean politician is Mr. Lee, Mr. Kuan Yew, or something else, and a corollary of this is that I don't want to feel like a fool after getting halfway through the article, and realize with embarrassment that I've had it backwards in my mind up to that point. That would be the fault of the article, not my ability to understand, and I would resent it. So, I'm basically okay with any solution that avoids that, and I think at this point, I'd like either a clear statement in the first or second sentence ("Lee Kuan Yew (surname: Lee) was a Singaporean lawyer and politician...") or a usage such as "Mr. James", "Prime Minister Martin" that makes it clear by implication, without necessarily stating it outright: ("Lee Kuan Yew was a Singaporean lawyer and politican. Lee was Prime Minister from 1959 to 1960..."). So basically, just get me the information by sentence #2, don't make me hunt too hard to find it, and I'm good. I'm not categorically opposed to having the surname in a hatnote just because hatnotes were initially designed for disambiguation, because it satisfies the "clarity" issue; but if a just-as-good solution offers itself, I'd vote for the latter. Mathglot (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• something-else Perhaps a |surname= added to {{Infobox person}}. Tvquizphd (talk) 03:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• Allow all per Kusma, specifically including Mathglot's something-else. On the one hand I'm sensitive to the slippery slope argument made by Crossroads, the last thing we need is a list of hatnotes at the top of articles. However I also agree with those who want to make sure that it gets communicated right away, and I'm conscious that getting it right - and communicating it right - matters. To inadequately purvey this info is to continue biases already rampant here and elswhere. What to do, then? Let's allow a variety of practices to flourish here and if the benefits of a particular approach eventually become clear we can prescribe/prefer/deprecate as needed. Retswerb (talk) 07:27, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• Footnote, but use <ref group=note> to avoid it getting confused with normal references. Hatnotes are overkill for this - they should be used when there is potential for confusion with another article, not minor clarifications of surnames. Modest Genius ^talk 12:48, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• Allow all There is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution to this, and having options for how to handle it best per article is the best option. --Jayron32 14:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
• Against explicit preference for footnotes. The current practice doesn't fit well with the overall purpose of hatnotes, but I wouldn't like to see a shift from the misuse of hatnotes to the misuse of footnotes. Explanatory footnotes are used for tangential details, not for information that may be necessary to understand how to read the article.
  I would like to note that even though I disagree with the proposed solution, I don't question the existence of a problem, but that's part of a bigger issue that we need to tackle. The first sentence of a biography article will often contain a lot of details – nicknames, maiden name, spelling of name in native orthography, transliteration(s), pronunciation (in English or native language) – that create a difficult to parse thicket that stands in the way of readers getting to the bit that describes who the subject is. I think we need a dedicated space for that information: one that doesn't clutter the first sentence but is still prominent enough (the end of the first paragraph? the end of the lede? a new lede paragraph that's visually set off from the rest? a section of the infobox? a dedicated (info)box?....). Once that is done, and we have a space where readers will learn to expect all name-related information, then the content of those hatnotes will naturally fit in there. – Uanfala (talk) 15:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with that problem statement, though I have no brilliant solutions. Footnotes seem less bad than hatnotes but I hope there's a better way. Certes (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  Definitely a separate conversation to be had about this, I completely agree. Retswerb (talk) 09:31, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Hatnote ~ the footnote is a pain to have to scroll down to in order for important information ~ or, at most, allow all. Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 16:26, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote - the votes are leaning otherwise, and I assume that is because there are a ridiculous number of completely unnecessary hatnotes for names on biography articles that should be removed. Just because someone is from Asia doesn't mean they need a naming hatnote. However, when there is a reason that the name must be clarified, a hatnote is the correct way to do so. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote Understanding a person's name is quite important and so clarification should go at the top of their article, not the bottom. An infobox entry may be adequate and so we shouldn't be rigid about this. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote this information is too critical for a footnote, most of which don't get read. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote much too important to have to go looking for it, and much too hard to explain and re-explain Spanish surnames, and way too many hispanic names that are first, middle and last name the same, so need the fourth surname as per Spanish language customs spelled out right up front. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:54, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  @LindsayH@力@Andrew Davidson@Headbomb@SandyGeorgia, if you think that putting the information in a footnote would be insufficient emphasis, I'd urge you to consider @Mathglot's idea above to put it in the parenthetical after the name, where we already put name information like pronunciation and native language spellings, and to adjust your !votes if you'd consider it an acceptable outcome.

  I understand where you're coming from, in that names are an inherently important thing, but I think it's important to remember that in many cases (albeit not all), we can clarify a surname easily just by using it in the rest of an article, and we wouldn't want a strict outcome of "hatnote" here to prevent us from using other methods for the articles where they fit better. It's also worth remembering that anything is going to seem more important in a discussion where it's the explicit focus, but hatnotes don't just note the information alongside other things, they prioritize it by emphasizing a generalized note on naming conventions more than even an individual subject's nationality/occupation/birth date. No matter your preferred solution, I hope we can reach a consensus at least that that isn't ideal. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  In hispanic names, the parenthetical just wouldn't make sense as part of the text; one's full name is Joe Bloe FatherLastName MotherLastName, and the parenthetical would take up valuable real estate in the middle of the first line to explain how hispanic surnames work. So our text would be cluttered with Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (Halvorssen is his father's paternal family name, Mendoza is his mother's paternal family name, according to Spanish naming customs) ... it's just goofy to take up precious real estate for that. Hatnote does the job, is easier, and standard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:08, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  Sandy, I believe this is not the issue we are trying to solve. In fact, Nil Einne addressed this confusion directly below. What we care about in this discussion, if I'm not mistaken, is not *really* what the surname is, but *how we are going to refer to Mr. XYZ in the rest of the article. In that sense, we don't care if "Mr. Lee" means that "Lee" is his surname or first name, we just care that in this article, we refer to him as "Mr. Lee", because that's what the sources do. Same thing with a Hispanic surname, Russian patronymics, or Sitting Bull; it doesn't matter which one is the surname, or if the term "surname" even applies at all.
  In your example, therefore, there would be no long parenthetical at all; in your Halverson example, the second sentence already solves this, and says: "The New York Times described Halvorssen as a maverick 'who champions the underdog...'" so now we know that he is referred to as "Halverson" in the article, and that's all we need to know. Mathglot (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  Missing ping User:Nil Einne. Mathglot (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  @SandyGeorgia, sure it could work. Here's that article with efn footnotes and here it is with a hybrid parenthetical/footnote format. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:24, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  The first (footnote via efn) was so hard to see that I had to go look for it in the footnotes and then backtrack to see where you had placed the efn (meaning, a casual Wikipedia reader will probably miss it, or not go look for it). The second is just what I said in terms of convoluted and cluttering the first line.

  To Mathglot, consider a common issue (not in this case because they don't have a close relationship, but I digress); father and son do business or politics together and their article deals a lot with both of them and has to distinguish them. If is very common for mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons, to have the same name, and even the same middle initial. Then, per Spanish naming customs, we would refer to them in text as Halvorssen Mendoza and Halvorssen Vellum. The hatnotes are doing a good job educating readers about Spanish naming customs and how they are used in writing; I don't see a way around it, and I consider them a valuable aid to readers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  Hi Sandy, that's possibly a good use case for keeping the hatnote, it might help in that case. If this is a fairly common situation, can you link a few examples so we can see what they actually do now? I'm particularly interested in how they handle this in the body of the articles.
  But even here, I can see an argument for dropping the hatnote: partly due to banner blindness, and partly due to proximity: if I were reading one of those articles, I presume that the person named in the article title would be introduced in the lead sentence and paragraph, and I'm not sure how far down the same-named father would be introduced. I think *that* is where I would want to see the explanation; by the time I get there, I won't remember the hatnote (assuming I ever read it, which I might not if I saw a picture or a lead sentence with a bolded title in the first sentence letting me know I was on the right page). When they bring up the father, that is the point where I want to know who is who; if they use words like "Senior" in their culture, maybe that is sufficient; or pere, and so on.
  In the George W. Bush article for example, his similarly named father isn't mentioned by name in the five-paragraph lead at all; he first shows up in section #Early life and career as "He was the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce." and by that time, the hatnote is a distant memory, if it ever registered at all. Perhaps you are talking about father-son pairs with identical names, not even differing by a middle initial; here, I'd like to see those links and see how the articles treat them now. See also Alexandre Dumas. Mathglot (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  My memory won't cough up the example I am trying to recall of two Panamanians who got mixed up on Wikipedia; it will likely come to me when this discussion is over. But the George H. W. Bush example accomplishes same. Do a ctrl-f on the word son to notice how awkward the text is, particularly starting with the Appearances section. If those two had Spanish names, that awkwardness would go away, as we would have clear names for both: Bush Walker is the father and Bush Pierce is the son. Ah, but it gets better in this case, because Jeb is also Bush Pierce. So, this is probably as good of an example as it gets.

  Gow to move forward with this example: I believe the goal of this discussion is to reduce the number of banners at the top of the article per banner blindness. A different goal is to educate about Spanish naming customs at the very top of the article, without adding clutter to the text. My concern with removing the banner is that you remove something that editors creating articles in the Spanish-language realm will clearly have noticed and can see how to easily use, and serves to educate broadly about Spanish names. We would be replacing it with either a footnote or in-text clutter that offer the potential for inconsistent use. I am sympathetic to your goals and open to being convinced, but we're not there yet. Maybe there's a third alternative, that we could explore with the Bush Walkers and the Bush Pierces. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  I understand what you're arguing (purely in the sense of "discussing") for, but i'm not sure i agree; i have read Mathglot's suggestion and, i'm afraid, in mine opinion that would be far more disruptive to the flow of the lead sentence/paragraph. To take the example given there, i think it is essential that we are clear that Lee is the surname, and just using it in the next sentence is not clear, especially and specifically because the name order is different from that expected by what is probably the majority of our readers; in particular with this name it rather clashes with expectations because "Lee" is sometimes a forename in English, so it has the immediate appearance of being over-familiar, and did i (and therefore probably others) not know i might try and change to what appeared to be a more formal and appropriate usage. As for the first suggestion with this example, putting "(surname: Lee)" immediately after the name is very interuptive (surely there's a word for that?) to the flow of the sentence and i would strongly oppose that. I recognise the argument that it's not what hatnotes are for, but...so what? It works and (if it's essential we use them only as intended) we can say we are disambiguating any confusion over the name. Happy days ~ Lindsay^Hello 13:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• Footnote. There's lots of background information that is often absolutely crucial to understanding a biography. Why stop at naming conventions? Often there's far more significant background detail relegated to a wikilink - if you're reading an article on a Qin dynasty court official, a completely blank slate reader may well need to click multiple other history articles before they can really get it. A hatnote just isn't the right place for this; stick it in text (if the name is expected to cause unusual confusion / dispute) or in a footnote, same as all other relevant content. A hatnote simply isn't the right spot in the same way that a maintenance banner isn't the right tool for the job; hatnotes are for Wikipedia navigation, not explaining background detail. SnowFire (talk) 10:21, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote as it's an important detail which often explains inconsistencies in the article between people's full and common names e.g. why Spanish/Portuguese people have multiple surnames, and why we only use one of them to refer to them. Allowing any type seems sensible too, but footnotes will never be read. Joseph2302 (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
• Hatnote per basically all of the above. I don't need to repeat what everyone else already said. I don't object to footnote templates also existing for this purpose, e.g. to use at an article that already has a lot of hatnotes. And we don't need either for a lead like "A B (Chinese: B A) ...". But use hatnote by default.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (surnames)[edit]

A |surname= parameter could also be added to {{Infobox person}}. Or guidance should be given to note the surname under the template's "Notes" section. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 12:46, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree that this information belongs as structured data in the {{Infobox person}}. Tvquizphd (talk) 03:25, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Tvquizphd and IP, how would you want it to display in an infobox? Make a sandbox mockup if you'd like. I'm not sure how viable that could be as a main method, though, since infoboxes are already trying to cram in a lot of information, and not all articles have them.

If we're exploring alternatives, I think Mathglot's idea of putting it in the parenthetical is the most viable I've heard so far. The advantage is that it'd place the information in the body, in a space that's already communicating name info (typically pronunciation). The disadvantage is that we'd only be able to reasonably fit a very short e.g. (surname: Lee), which would cause problems for the more complicated examples like Raul Neto above or Vietnamese people like Phan Xích Long. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

• The idea of developing this as Infobox information is appealing. It would match the Wikidata P734 family name, which is present for cases such as Sima Qian, Gáspár Miklós Tamás and other interesting cases such as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (see also this on the latter's doubling), but seems to be omitted for patronyms that might be associated with Mongolian people,for example. Populating an optional line in Infoboxes from Wikidata could allow a gradual move away from the use of hatnotes and towards more structured information which might embed types of naming? AllyD (talk) 08:44, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it can display in parentheses after or below |name=. An example would be:

|name=Name (Surname: |surname=Surname)

To display

Name (Surname: Surname)

Note variable values are slanted as a coding convention.

Or a structured note under |Notes= can be used.

Also there is the issue of meta-templates & related templates based on the infobox. A look at Category:People and person infobox templates shows a bunch. 71.247.146.98 (talk) 13:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Retswerb: I appreciate you bringing up the topic of bias in your !vote. One angle to look at this from is that the hatnote convention includes some strong biases about what readers know and don't know. We would never (and should never) put a hatnote at John Smith saying "the surname is Smith", since we assume that readers are familiar with Western name order, but we also assume that they're unfamiliar with Eastern name order and need this explained to them prominently. Granted, on a practical level, this is English Wikipedia and our efforts to take a global perspective need to have some limit. But I think it's worth noting that one benefit of making the clarification less prominent is that it'd also make these names less marked, meaning that we wouldn't be assuming so strongly that readers have a Western perspective in which non-Western names are this exotic other. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:45, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

• Surnames in an unfamiliar position is probably the easiest name hatnote situation to solve. Other naming conventions, such as patronymics, or perhaps having no surname, seem more difficult to clearly imply through usage in prose alone. Is this proposal aimed at removing Surname Firstname hatnotes, but leaving other Family Name hatnotes in place? CMD (talk) 07:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis, any naming convention hatnote can be pretty easily converted to a footnote: just take the text in the hatnote and put it in a footnote. The same general considerations apply.

  I think that it's important that we're able to handle edge cases in whatever system we end up with, but I also think we should take care not to focus so much on the most complicated instances that we lose the forest for the trees, as I see happening a little above. It's also worth remembering that this information is going to seem a lot more important here where we're hyperfocused on it than it will in the context of an actual article where it's one of many things to arrange in balance. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:09, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  It does not make sense (and feels like a bit of the bias Retsweb mentions) to treat patronymics and single names as edge or particularly complex cases; they are established and regularly used naming systems. They might be unfamiliar to some or most English speakers, but they're whole forests in themselves. Framing a discussion as relating just to surname firstname order when it is intended to have a wider impact seems likely to lead to more confusion, not less. Footnotes may work for whatever the case is, but other suggestions above that were built in response to the framing of the question, like the "(Surname: Lee)" and the infobox surname parameter, will simply not work. CMD (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  @CMD It would be nice if the Template:Infobox person could accomodate many naming conventions with many options |surname=, |matronym=,|patronym=, |tekonym=, |laqab=, |nisba=, and even perhaps |mononym=. Some examples might look like |surname=Lee or |mononym=triyatno. If no infobox or too much infobox, I think a simple parenthetical "(Surname: Lee)" or “Triyatno (mononymous, born 20 December 1987)” would do. I’ll post on Project Anthroponymy to see if anyone there has ideas.Tvquizphd (talk) 17:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

  I would not object to that. If it is done, perhaps the relevant wikilink could serve as the communicating text to the reader in place of the hatnote. CMD (talk) 17:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Entirely a fair point! My personal take is that our general readership is probably unfamiliar enough with non-Western naming conventions that the value of pointing them out overcomes the detriment of marking them - but that's entirely an assumption on my part. Retswerb (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

The occasional Western surname also needs a note: Emile Smith Rowe (surname Smith Rowe) vs. Leo Stanton Rowe (surname Rowe). Certes (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd welcome an explanatory note at Marion Zimmer Bradley. Never sure what end of the bookshelf to use for her books. —Kusma (talk) 18:28, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

• I'm slightly confused here. The opening comment etc refers only to surnames. But the template also deals with patronyms although for some reason we still have stuff Template:Malay name. Is this proposal only to deal with surnames? Also the opening comment claims "because we refer to a person by their surname throughout an article" but again that is not the case. We use whatever is the norm to refer to the person so for people without surnames this is often (but not always) their given name. Also we should not forget that even for people with surnames, name order can be more complicated than simple family name given name, given name family name e.g. Carrie Lee Sze Kei, Michelle Yeoh Choo-kheng or Daniel Lee Chee Hun. Nil Einne (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Nil Einne: Yes, I can validate that confusion. In fact, I don't think this is really about surnames at all; I believe it's about how to refer to someone via a short name (if any) throughout the article, when we are not referring to them by their long, convoluted name, as in Sandy's example of Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza.
  Imho, we don't really care which is the father's name, mother's name or any of that; what we care about, is how they are referred to "for short". This is cleared up in sentence #2 of that article, and the answer is: Halvorssen. Who cares which ancestor bore that name? I don't. In such articles as importance would attach to knowing about their mother and father, because it's duly covered by reliable sources, than by all means, go into it in the body of the article, and even link our articles (not hatnotes!) about Hispanic surnames as appropriate. But I see no reason why the Thor Halvorssen (human rights activist) article needs a hatnote, and I don't care what his surname is. The #Background section explains in some detail his relationship to famous ancestors including a President Mendoza, and for anyone who's interested, they can read that, and follow the links. But all we really need to know about Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza's name, is that he is referred to as "Halvorssen" in the article, presumably because that's what the sources do. I don't see why a hatnote would be required at all, or even helpful. By the way, what is Sitting Bull's surname? Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

  One more thing that occurs is that in some cases, the current family name template actually servers another purpose although I'm doubtful many readers understand this who didn't already know. If we take Chinese names like Lee Hsien Loong and Chong Sin Woon, it mentions the generation name. This isn't of relevance to how we refer to the person in the article since we use the family name but it conveys an important point.

  If you are referring to these people by their given name, it should be Hsien Loong or Sin Woon, never Hsien or Sin. While this applies to most two character Chinese given names too (double characters is sort of exception I guess), it's a special problem with generation names because calling someone Hsien/Sin or Hsien Lee/Sin Chong (as may happen in the west, even if you put the first name as Hsien Loong/Sin Woon in the form) can be confusing when multiple siblings are involved as it's unclear precisely who you're referring to. (If you did want to use one character only Woon or Loong will me more appropriate.)

  This is mostly a problem with Malaysian and Singaporean given names as it's where the practice of rendering the two characters as two "words" with spaces predominates. Those from Mainland China generally follow pinyin and don't include a space; those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and while not Chinese names, those from (either) Korea where there's a similar issue, generally use hypens. Those in Western countries mostly use either don't include a space or use hypens since they're aware of the problem if they don't.

  That said, the generation name parameter seems to be hardly ever used (those were the only 2 examples I could find with a space in the given name) and I think it's hard to populate especially without OR since not all 2 character given names include a generation name. Also as said, this is an issue which technically applies to all 2 character Chinese give names even in cases where it's not a generation name; and I'm very doubtful anyone reading our hatnote is going to understand this point if they didn't already know from the name.

  And there are plenty of other naming issues which can cause confusion which we do not clarify in each article. For example Karpal Singh was not Muslim and while his name may sometimes be referred to as Karpal Singh al Ram Singh the al is from a/l and is unrelated to the al in Arabic names. (Having trouble finding links talking about this now, but in the past, there were reports of people coming under special scrutiny because their passport rendered the a/l as al since / cannot be used in the name part of machine readable passports and assumptions were made that the al meant they were Muslim. I suspect this is one reason why that is no longer done [8].)

  Nil Einne (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Nil Einne: (edit conflict) This is more of an aside, but the generation name param |suffix= is used in template {{Portuguese name}}, which was sufficiently different due to this very param, that that template did not get merged into the {{Family name}} template when the mega-merge took place. There are 90 occurrences of the template that use param |suffix=. Mathglot (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  Just pinging User:Primefac to this discussion and proposal, as they were responsible for the family name hatnote mega-merge, and may have something to say either about the somewhat narrower issue in this discussion, or the larger one at the top of this proposal. Mathglot (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  Taking into account Mathglot's comments, would a "commonly known as" property be more apt? Or is this making the issue even more convoluted? 68.173.76.118 (talk) 02:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

  As a reply to the ping - I genuinely don't care how this information is displayed (my prior involvement has largely been in standardising template usage and minimising maintenance burdens). If necessary, though, I'm happy to consult on the hows, whys, and "what ifs" so that others may make a better decision. Primefac (talk) 09:23, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

• Suggestion. Okay, this is going to sound absolutely buck-wild, so I am going to drop this radical idea and walk away: use {{Notice}}. I know; I know.. This is heresy. I'm talking something small like this. Not going to make any arguments for this suggestion since I know it's one of those things that will probably appease zero sides of this discussion. If I'm wrong, then let me know. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 19:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  Alas, I think you're correct that that wouldn't appease anyone. My whole goal here is to decrease the prominence of the information to something more commensurate with its importance, whereas that would increase its prominence. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Verifiability Meter[edit]

Frequency of Changes to Wikipedia Articles[edit]

I would like to suggest a metric for science and math articles on how likely a page is to change. Many fields in mathematics such as number theory and geometry are not likely to change over time even as the content and presentation and clarity and layout of the article is improved. For example, ellipses will mostly be the same geometrically and so some parts of the article will be less likely to change. I think its good that articles on developing events include disclaimers on the current status of the article but think it would be helpful to include an opposite notice that for example Maxwell's Equations is invariant. ScientistBuilder (talk) 02:23, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

This is interesting, but the way I understand it, you seem to mean that the source information upon which an article is based is not likely to change, not the article itself. I don't know if such a metric is entirely pertinent or relevant to Wikipedia. Current events have very fluid verifiability characteristics, and the warning is relevant. If such a metric is applicable and desirable it should apply to the article as a whole. If applied to parts of articles would probably be too cumbersome for editors and confusing for readers. And first, is it so? Something like "A's equation" obviously is set for posterity, and there is no need to proclaim the fact. One may add to it, but then it is no longer A's equation, it is "B's enhancement of A's equation". However the viability/applicability of any equation may change. Perhaps after the next hypothesis and its related experimentation. 65.88.88.71 (talk) 16:20, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a work in progress and most articles on number theory and geometry are incomplete, contain errors or misleading implications, are suboptimally comprehensible to laypeople, and could be re-organised or give a different balance of subtopic coverage to more properly represent the research area. A page is likely to change if an editor becomes interested in it, and unlikely to change if editors are not. There are trends that can create interest: for instance, news coverage, sudden social media interest or a major update to the topic. However, other trends are less predictable: if I bring 15 Black Mirror episodes to good article status then it becomes a lot more likely that the others will soon follow suit, but if I create a few Rick and Morty episode articles then I might stop with five still missing. I can think of one particular mathematician whose retirement from Wikipedia would dramatically decrease the likelihood of upcoming improvements to any particular mathematics article. — Bilorv (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

@ScientistBuilder: A few questions:

• You said,

  on how likely a page is to change

  did you mean:
  • How likely it ought to change, because we're not expecting a new Mersenne prime anytime soon, and there's not much else important to say about it; or,
  • How likely the article about it changes based on analysis of the revision history (five changes in January, five in December, seven in November)
• What would you do with this metric, if it were in place now?

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:03, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

When I use Wikipedia to learn math and science topics I would like to know which subjects will be less likely to change in 10 years. For example, I want to work through all the articles on electromagnetism and am interested in which articles are not culture specific and more broadly applicable. ScientistBuilder (talk) 02:12, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

That seems like something that would be hard to determine. I don't think anyone here on Wikipedia can see into the future and know what topics aren't going to change for a while. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 20:53, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

French Bistro[edit]

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)

Changes to VisualEditor instructional pop-ups[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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)

Trimming excessive notices at AFD[edit]

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)

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)

Hiding Images[edit]

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)

Switch to BrandonXLF's link count tool and remove Jarry1250's tool from Special:WhatLinksHere[edit]

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)

Bot proposal (AFC submission templates)[edit]

Should a bot that adds AFC templates to drafts be made? – AssumeGoodWraith (talk | contribs) 08:08, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I propose a bot that adds AFC submission templates ({{afc submission/draft}}) to new drafts that are missing them. (in draftspace)

Why?[edit]

• I've seen newcomers make drafts, without any submission template. Whatever the reason is, most of them probably don't know how to submit the draft.

• Even if the draft is hopeless, the newcomer can still learn from it.

• Experienced users can easily remove the template, if it is undesired.

• The template contains some useful links for those newcomers who are looking to actually create an article.

Some samples: [9], [10]

Please note: The template being added is the unsubmitted template, not the template you get from {{subst:submit}}

Discussion (AFC submission templates)[edit]

@AssumeGoodWraith: Why is this an RFC and why is it here? You should read WP:RFCBEFORE to see the steps you are expected to have taken before starting a formal request for comments. Requests/ideas for bots are much better placed at WP:Bot requests. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 14:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• I don’t have a problem with adding the AFC template to drafts that are in DRAFTSPACE. I would have an issue with doing so to “drafts” located in USERSPACE. The latter should be thought of as sandboxes - pages where a user is playing around with ideas. Those ideas might not be intended to be viable as potential articles (for example, I have created “drafts” in my userspace that are half formed ideas for a potential new section for an already existing article). Blueboar (talk) 16:23, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  @Blueboar: The OP specified in their proposal that this bot would only add templates to pages in draftspace. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I've seen the problem of a user not knowing their draft was not going to get any atttention, recently. But I don't think auto tagging it that way is a good solution. Better would be to leave the creator a talk-page message explaining what to do when they're ready to submit. It would probably be easy to get approval for such a bot. Dicklyon (talk) 17:27, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Invalid RFC there is a clear process that should be used for this: WP:Bot requests. As such, an RFC is not needed, as RFC is meant for when a process doesn't exist. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree. It's better to have a wider discussion on such a thing to establish consensus before doing a bot request, where the review will be much more narrow and technical, and will want to see an established consensus for the proposed changes. Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• As a BAG member any such request at WP:BOTREQ would be told to get consensus for the task at WP:VPR (those who actually read WP:BOTREQ would know this, see third sentence for those new to bots), so this is the right place to hold that RFC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:12, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  What part of this task is controversial enough to require an RFC? As far as I can see this is basic maintenance, - these templates are already added to pages in draftspace if you use the article wizard, any of the preload templates, any of the draftification scripts and there's a small army of volunteers running around adding these templates by hand to pages that don't have them. If we've already have had editors running around draftsapace with AWB for years doing the same thing I don't see why this would be controversial enough to require a central RFC, it's certainly going to be less controversial than the bot that was changing indents on every talk page on the project. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• If we are going to have a RFC on this then Yes, obvious support from me since these templates are added to basically every page in draftspace by hand anyway, they're basically required to use the AFC process, a frequently recurring source of confusion I've seen at the teahouse is people not knowing how to submit a draft without the template on it, the template performs a number of other maintenance tasks in draftspace (e.g. tagging G13 eligible pages) and editors who don't want them will almost certianly be experienced enough to use user space drafts, botsdeny or similar. Anything that makes it easier for people to write their first article is a good thing. 192.76.8.70 (talk) 18:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Strong Support Reduce headaches for new users & AFCers. Can't think of a negative aspect to it. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 00:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

RfC#2 : Removing links to portals from the Main Page's top banner[edit]

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[edit]

Discussion[edit]

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