In Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Dane#Oppose, there was a debate whether pinging is canvassing. In the page , WP:CANVASS I couldn't find that pinging is canvassing, but in AFD or any other deletion discussion, one editor pinging other editors sharing the same POV is considered canvassing.

There should be a consensus whether pinging the Delete voters or Keep voters is considered canvassing. --Marvellous Spider-Man 15:00, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I think pinging is canvassing. I also think that it can be acceptable sometimes in discussions. DGG is frequently pinged or asked to comment on things to see his view whether they pass WP:PROF. Diannaa is pinged or left messages for thoughts on copyvio situations. So long as the ping is neutral and is asking for an analysis of the situation by a user that might have something of particular value to contribute, I don't think it wrong, but I also think one should explain why the other user was pinged. I think pinging someone from either RfA side should probably be avoided, because it looks bad even if it isn't intended that way. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• If you are being brought to a discussion because you are trying to bring people that you know will agree with your point of view, that is canvassing. It doesn't matter if that is done via talk page message, ping, email, or smoke signals. If you are simply notifying people that such a discussion exists that is not canvassing. Seeing as RfAs are so widely advertised nowadays I don't see how that ping was anything but canvassing. --Majora (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Conversely, a ping is often used as a courtesy to inform an editor that you have mentioned them in a discussion. If that is the rationale for the ping, then the fact that RfAs are so well advertised makes it more likely that the pinged editor already knew about the RfA, so making a nonsense of any suggestion of canvassing. --RexxS (talk) 21:31, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Without getting into criticism, as Coffee pointed out on the RfA talk, many users have the pings set up to email, and if it was a user who had not been active in a long time, pinging them when you reasonably suspect that they might feel a certain way does look a lot like canvassing. At things as contentious as RfA, the look isn't good, even if the intentions were. TonyBallioni (talk) 21:53, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with the idea that ping notifications can constitute inappropriate canvasing, just as any other form of notification can. However, if you are going to canvas, pinging is actually a good way to avoid the potential pitfalls of notifications. It is public, and doesn't provide a detailed message designed to influence the person being pinged. I think it is important to also remember that when deciding whether particular pings are inappropriate canvasing, we need to consider a bunch of factors case by case, how many people were pinged, how they were selected, and what their impact could be based on the size of the discussion. Monty₈₄₅ 03:10, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • ^ This. Any given link to a user's page may or may not be appropriate, but "canvassing" means so much more than that. If you actually read WP:Canvassing, a public, unbiased notification to a single user is quite low on the list of things that we worry about. In fact, it's lower than a {{Please see}} note on an editor's talk page, because (a) some editors have notifications turned off and (b) none of the editor's wiki-friends can see it. If (b) doesn't sound important, then you probably aren't remembering that some of us have talk pages that are watched by dozens or hundreds of people, and the watchers tend to be people with similar interests/POVs. As an example, a note at SandyGeorgia's talk page is probably still an efficient way to contact experienced FAC people; a ping to her account would, at most, result in contacting only her. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    @WhatamIdoing: But, I think that is the problem. There is a list of things to worry about, not a clear cut "this is ok, this is wrong", this places the burden of the value judgment solely on the closer and allows for large amounts of ambiguity. Additionally, how can one prove that other users haven't been notified in private without outing or even illegal hacking? This lack of evidence biases the policy to punish the "lesser" "crimes". Additionally, I think the harms this policy attempts to prevent are better covered by wp:meatpuppet, Wp:sockpuppet, and by the various closing policies. Endercase (talk) 18:01, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Sure, you're never going to have certainty. But you never did have certainty: You never could prove that nobody sent private e-mail messages, that nobody discussed it on WP:IRC, that nobody shared links on Facebook, that nobody telephoned another editor (quaint idea, I know, but I've got phone numbers for a few editors, so I assume that others do, too) – the list goes on. You will never have complete certainty that private communications haven't happened. We seem to have muddled through pretty well despite this.
    Fortunately, we don't need complete certainty about whether people are occasionally discussing things in private, much less certainty about whether those private discussions had any practical effect on the outcome. We are (mostly) adults here, and we can and should use our best judgment. If your best judgment happens to disagree with someone else's best judgment, then the usual dispute-resolution processes are open to you both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Canvass is the most misguided policy we have. It is often used to attack people for sending an email, leaving a message, etc. We all do it all the time, and so it can always be used against someone - just a little bad faith is needed, and that is always in plentiful supply. Anyway, with regards to this particular question, of course pinging is canvassing. Everything is canvassing. Did I say this policy was bad and the sooner it is retired, the better? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe that the rule that you mention is a little more complicated than that. In full, it runs something like this: "Everything that I do is fine, or at most an unimportant and easily forgiven honest mistake. Everything that you do is canvassing if, and only if, you disagree with me".
    If we share the same opinion, then I am quite certain that everything you do to promote our shared opinion is acceptable under any reasonable interpretation of any policy or guideline. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• I should preface my argument with that the notice that I have a little over 1000 edits so I am an extreme lightweight when it comes to these policy discussion. I think many issues arising out of wp:Canvass is that the policy refers to both acceptable and unacceptable behavior and there is not a clear example based differentiation between the two, IMO it is relatively ambiguous. I suggest that it needs to be split to something like Wp:inappropriate notification and wp:appropriate notification so that issues such as these can be hammered out and clearly represented (this suggestion only gets very weak support from me). And so that when the policy(ies) are cited it is clear what type of message the citing editor intends to convey. I often see claims of inappropriate canvassing, but I rarely see these claims supported by clear consensus. I can easily see how the current policy can be abused. Endercase (talk) 01:01, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Pinging someone to inform them that you are talking about them is not, in and of itself, canvassing. Doing so in a cherry-picked manner (mentioning a bunch of users but only pinging those on one "side") with the intention of vote-stacking is canvassing. Per AGF, calling a ping or two "canvassing" without specific evidence that vote-stacking was the likely intent is inappropriate. I have not read the whole discussion as it was moved to the RFA's talk page, but the comments that were left that mentioned "canvassing" did not present clear evidence of this kind, but that evidence not having been specifically requested either makes it a grey area. Vote-stacking is both counter-policy and bad, in general.

(The rest of this is general, and not specifically relevant to what Ritchie did in that RFA.) There is a caveat that, at RFA, the majority of !voters seem to assume good faith based on the answers provided to questions, without doing extensive research on the candidates' backgrounds. If one is aware that a candidate has a checkered past that hasn't been noted yet in the RFA, notifying users that are aware of it might in theory be acceptable, and I'm reluctant even to say that cherry-picking editors on "one side" is inherently bad. Per AGF, the majority of !voters (and bureaucrats!) are not looking do not need to be told "but some other users thought this behaviour was appropriate", and (also per AGF) the one doing the "canvassing" should be taking as sincerely believing that the candidate's behaviour was inappropriate, and those who supported it were wrong on the policy, especially if there was a formal close that said as much.

And of course, informing any party that is not already involved in any way but is likely to be symptathetic that "Hey, I'm in trouble -- could you help me out?" is always wrong.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:45, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Are all villages notable? I've been seeing a lot of random villages with <500 people that don't seem notable to me(ex Niemojew). Elliot321 (talk) 21:16, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Generally, yes. See WP:NPLACE. --Majora (talk) 21:25, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The matter is currently debated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#amazon.com. Please participate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:55, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on the context in which we link to Amazon. It is quite likely that some links could be considered spam, but I don't think all are spam. Blueboar (talk) 22:17, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One of Jimbo's recent article space edits was a link to Amazon as a reference [1]. It was eventually removed as unneeded in that article. My objections there were that it is a bit spammy, and generally if the subject is notable you can find an independent reliable source that will confirm it better than Amazon. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:22, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Links to Amazon are both spammy (like all links to sites where merchandise is being sold) and unnecessary. Commercial websites such as that exist to sell stuff, not to provide vetted, impartial third-party commentary. Jimbo was just being lazy. --Orange Mike | Talk 23:33, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: Amazon links are not spam, and that is not what is being asserted. Amazon links are being spammed/abused by people who write a book that is available on Amazon.com and that provide a link to that book here; the situation is akin notable (in Wikipedia terms) porn sites, the larger publishing houses, and examiner.com - none of them are 'spam' themselves, nor 'spammed' by the site-owners (well, generally), but abused by random editors, wrongly used by other users, and spammed by people who want to promote their own work. That is then being combined with the plain fact that most of the Amazon.com links are not needed but better replaced with neutral sources (especially the ISBN). Comparing again with porn sites, the larger publishing houses and examiner.com, only for the larger publishing houses there are no proper replacements (even for the really spammed items on those). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:23, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The RFC called for blacklisting Amazon as spam. That's what's being debated there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: the initial post by user:DuncanHill does not say that amazon is spam, none of the support !votes calls it spam. No-one asserts that amazon is spam. It is spammed sometimes, it is abused sometimes, it is often misused. Your question here was a wrong interpretation of what was asserted in any of the diiscussion at WT:SBL. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:01, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see much of a difference between calling for something to be blacklisted as spam, and calling it spam. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:03, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: But it was not called to "be blacklisted as spam", it was called to be blacklisted, full stop. There is not much on the blacklist that is spam, what is on the blacklist is what is abused/spammed to Wikipedia, and sometimes stuff that is so massively misused that the community decides to use technical means to stop it. The only person who asserts the suggestion to blacklist amazon as spam is you. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's on WikiProject Spam, which features a big red button to report spam, and is proposed for the spam blacklist. Keep splitting hair you want, I'm bowing out of this pointless discussion.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:51, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but again, most of what is discussed there is not spam, it is spammed/abused. Pointless for sure. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The handling of articles about current and future events is discussed at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy. Join in to comment. --George Ho (talk) 04:40, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which sister projects should appear in the search results on enwiki?

Background

User:CKoerner (WMF) announced in WP:VPT that Cross-wiki Search Results would be released soon: "The release date is expected to be near the end of April 2017 on all Wikipedias." [2] His post has further explanations and useful links to older discussions. The new tool can be easily tested by using this URL and replacing "rainbow" with the search term you want to test (remember to add the underscore for multi-word searches!).

When testing and discussing this further in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Sister projects search results, the possibility was raised to use this selectively on enwiki, by disabling or hiding the search results from some sister projects for all searches. Reasons for this might be that the content returned by some projects is too often irrelevant, problematic, outdated, spammy, or in some other way contradictory to the aims and purposes of enwiki and not really what we want to send our readers to.

Some examples of common search terms (taken from the 100 most popular articles) with potentially unwanted results:

• ox
• Rick and Morty
• Heath Ledger
• Charo
• Facebook

Other searches either gave no results (apart from enwiki) or at first glance no problematic results. Note that at the moment, this search has a serious layout bug when searching for a term which doesn't have an enwiki page, like this. Fram (talk) 10:19, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

RfC structure

As different arguments and end result may apply to each sister project, I have listed them separately, in alphabetical order. Please give a reasoned support or oppose or join the discussions!

General discussion

I think this is too early. Why not first make sure people experience and then discuss it like 4 weeks in ? That will give people a much better chance for an accurate assessment. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:25, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone can experience it with the links provided, everyone interested can search for whatever they like. This RfC will normally end weeks after the planned deployment of the tool anyway, so starting it now means that we can react relatively swiftly to the deployment, without having this RfC really prematurely. We have had too many instances of new tools being deployed where the problems were only found after months (the wikidata descriptions on mobile, or something like Gather). Here we can test it, we know it is coming very soon (before the normal end date of this RfC), and we have the ability to take action if necessary, so why wait? Fram (talk) 10:36, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: Any objection to adding a section above those below that is simply should we enable Cross-wiki Search Results or not? That way, if there are individuals against the implementation of this as a whole, they don't have to oppose each individually. Then the other sections would be contingent on if we choose to enable this. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 12:26, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. I notice you also added Wikispecies, I didn't include that one (nor Wikidata) because they never showed up in any of my tests, so I presume they are not included in the tool. We can disable some or all, but we can't add any technically... Fram (talk) 12:32, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't realize that, removed. @Fram: How's this? — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 12:46, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The mentioned layout bug in this depends on details like zoom level and window width. The bug is that Wikipedia results may be displayed to the right, and Sister projects below all the Wikipedia results and to the left. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have made User:PrimeHunter/Search sister projects.js. Install with this in your common JavaScript:

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Search_sister_projects.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Search sister projects.js]]

It adds a "Sister projects" sidebar link under "Tools" on search pages. If you have already made a normal search then click it to repeat the search with sister projects added. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:48, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Question. Will individual users be able to select which projects to search? (like now with namespaces) Ruslik_Zero 19:55, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:00, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not like namespaces, but users will be able to permanently exclude projects in their personal CSS. If MediaWiki:Search-interwiki-caption accepts links then it could have a "(customize)" link to a page with CSS for each project and for removing everything. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:04, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A few notes from the folks working on this

The Discovery team appreciates the feedback and discussion around the functionality of the sister project snippets on the search results page. A few clarifying points for folks discussing this feature.

There is quite a bit of research with new readers that has shown that many people around the globe do not know what Wikipedia is, or that the Wikimedia movement has other projects, or the overall mission of the movement. The idea behind displaying snippets from the sister projects in the search results page is to encourage discovery into the Wikimedia movement by showing interesting results that are gathered across the whole of the knowledge of Wikimedia. 

The Discovery team has been investigating, creating and testing the sister project results display since the summer of 2016. We’ve completed numerous tests—back end, front end, and with real people. Here’s a recent quote from a user testing the new display (in their own words):

“I know now that sistersearch will give me more ideas with my searches in the variety of articles that cover the same topic from so many and different angles. I feel encouraged to learn more and broaden my horizon, and I mean it.  Sisterseach has a less scholastic approach to searches and therefore pulls a multitude of articles related to my key words I myself have not dreamed of getting.  It's like a brainstorming for the writer that I am. I am sure students find this web site very useful and fun.”

The availability of the sister projects that can be displayed, per Wikipedia, is based on this matrix; Wikidata and Wikispecies are not included in the sister project snippets on purpose. Wikispecies actually uses a different indexing schema and it’s not an easy thing to bring those results in at this time, but we have a ticket for it (T156254).

As we've worked though the design of this feature, we recently moved the multimedia images to the bottom of the project list. We had made this design change because we found that sometimes the images loaded last which caused the page to move unexpectedly. This latest change puts the images ‘below the fold’ so if something is returned that might be of questionable nature, the image won’t be seen immediately. However, we’re also open to using just a link to the multimedia results, rather than displaying them on the search results page, as displayed in this feature draft sample image.

The current view of the sister project snippets (using the self-guided testing url) is a bit out of date, due to deployment schedules. You can view a more up-to-date version on wmflabs, please note this version is in a draft state and the project icons are not displaying properly, due to complexities with wmflabs.

Regarding the aforementioned layout bug: this is not significant—as in, it will not take much to be fixed. It's not well explained here, but the search results appear in an incorrect position when no local results are found when your browser window width is greater than about 1830px wide. I’ve added a ticket to address this issue (T163137) and linked to a short video showing the issue as it’s quite hard to reproduce.

If this RfC concludes with consensus to remove Wikiversity from the sister project snippets, we can do so for this Wikipedia. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should cross-wiki search results be enabled on enwiki?

Yes

• Yes, but with per-project approval: The Wiktionary results certainly are useful for me. The Commons results with Multimedia search on the other hand are questionable. I expect various projects to have different quality. So I approve, but some projects may need their quality improved. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:36, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support with conditions that I am opposed to including Wikiversity and Commons at present. Generally I think this is a good idea worth implementing now if those two projects are left out for the time being. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:42, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support as above. Wiktionary in particular would be very useful displayed in search results. I also object to commons being linked. There is a large amount of distasteful material and I think it would run counter to our mission to shock readers by displaying it in search results.--Tom (LT) (talk) 23:38, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. I think having Wiktionary and Wikiquote results displayed will be a big improvement. Wikivoyage could be good for title-only matches. Some of the other sites, like Wikinews and Wikiversity, are certainly more questionable inclusions. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:49, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, but only with separate per-project approval. The issue with surprise NSFW Commons images needs to be sorted out before we give approval for that, for instance. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:57, 19 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
• Support conditionally as above. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support when relevance of search results needs has been improved. The examples shown in this (premature) RfC show that the results are often terrible. —Kusma (t·c) 09:58, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• If the per-project concerns expressed in this RFC are addressed this is going to be a great feature. Max Semenik (talk) 21:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for selected projects only, as this feature could certainly provide additional useful information. BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for Wiktionary, and Wikiqoute results only. KGirlTrucker81 ^{huh? what I've been doing} 23:07, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No

• Not yet - [moved here from the discussion section] Oh dear. Woman and female; man and male. In case it changes in the future, here are the images displayed -- read descriptions before clicking anything: "Woman" returns images File:Flapper nude woman 1920.jpg, File:Woman with steatopygia.jpg, and File:India woman dress.jpg; female returns File:Female body.jpg, File:Posterior view of human female, retouched.jpg, and File:Bush petronia (Gymnoris dentata dentata) female.jpg; man returns File:Andean Man.jpg, File:Vitruvian Man Measurements.png, and File:Man douglas 01.JPG; male returns File:Modrásek - samice, Malé Přílepy.jpg, File:A male masturbating with lubricant.ogv, and File:Sylvia subalpina male and female 1838.jpg.

The problem isn't so much that it returns images that could be considered NSFW or returns results of questionable relevance (I cannot determine why the first Commons result for "homosexual" is a picture of a man not used in any article, with no mention of homosexuality, for example). The bigger problem is that it highlights the way in which search results communicate the most relevant material Wikimedia sites have to offer on a given topic. It's not dissimilar to the image used at the top of an article. Obviously not all of the images linked above are problematic (I just wanted to link the three I saw for each case), but the most relevant pictures of women are naked, with emphasis on body parts; men are typically not naked, but represented by a close-up of masturbation. Unless the search is sophisticated enough that it does not undermine our standards for content quality (for example, prioritizing content directly used/linked on Wikipedia for a search on Wikipedia, such as images taken from infoboxes), this should not be turned on. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:33, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I understand that these images appear under "multimedia" search today. Multimedia search is not "the" search when looking for a topic (in fact I don't know if I've ever used it outside of Commons). Search of images is still something that could use addressing, but the issue is more about displaying problematic search results beyond articles to everybody when they're looking for information rather than media. While I didn't mention it above, the same applies to e.g. WikiVoyage and other sites; not just Commons. If it degrades the quality of information you get from Wikipedia, it seems sub-ideal. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Opposed to mixing images/multimedia with normal searches as I explained below in the section regarding Commons, but I'm currently neutral if images/multimedia are kept separate. Alsee (talk) 22:55, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Not yet:

• Surprise NSFW images are an automatic no.
• Multimedia searches return fair use images, see here. This is another automatic no.
• After removing the two fair use images, only 1 of 10 of results in the previous search is relevant. This isn't an isolated case: 4/10 with 1 fair use, 3/10 with all three images being fair use...
• Context is important! If I search for a place, I may want to see Wikivoyage results. Wikivoyage shouldn't appear if I search for, say, "economist".

I agree with the concept behind this and would like to see a much improved version go live, but right now the execution is sorely lacking. MER-C 04:13, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

MER-C, The WMF has been overeager for software to blindly grab and include images everywhere, but a mediasearch is a legitimate exemption. That's how our normal old multimedia search works. If you're explicitly searching images then you pretty much need to see the results. But it should be separate from the normal default search. Alsee (talk) 06:38, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There may be an exemption, but I consider it against the spirit of our non-free content policy to return fair use images. MER-C 13:28, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose primarily due to a lack of consistency with respect to guidelines and policy as well as adherence or enforcement. When people come to us for information there is at least a good to very good chance that what they are going to get will be accurate with no violation of copyrights and the like. If we start doing cross wiki searches my confidence level is going to go way down. I'm not trying to knock some of our sister projects. But the reality is that some them have different standards, some of which may be much lower than ours. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:02, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Some of the other sisters have different standards. (Judge not lest ye be judged.) I see two distinct reasons for content on another sister to not match Wikipedia's standards: either the sister content has had fewer eyeballs, or the purpose of the sister is different. Imho the second might be a valid reason to consider omission from search results here, but the first is not. One ought not deprive eyeballs to content simply because it hasn't had enough eyeballs on it yet; that would be undermining the strategy Wikipedia itself uses for content improvement. Different purposes are another matter. The purpose of Wikiversity, for example, is profoundly different from that of Wikipedia, to the point where I could understand how some some Wikipedians might reasonably worry about Wikipedia readers being confused by intermingling of Wikiversity pages in Wikipedia search results (I've nothing against Wikiversity, but I acknowledge the potential for confusion). One could imagine arranging the presentation of search results to avoid that sort of confusion. --Pi zero (talk) 19:03, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

• Is the section above concerned with cross-wiki search in general or just one particular project? FTR, commons:Special:Search gives me a relevant page for "woman" as the first hit. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:26, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll add "on enwiki" to avoid misunderstanding. Whether other projects and/or WMF will use our findings to decide what to do elsewhere is not for us to discuss. Fram (talk) 14:35, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry, should have been clearer: Does the above section discuss one particular project being searched or the use of cross-wiki search on enwiki in general? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah, I see. The intention is "should we have it at all (in its current form)." The sections below this are for more nuanced answers (e.g. "yes" for commons, "no" for wiktionary, ...). I originally only had the per-element sections below, but it was felt that a more general question for the "no, not at all, not one bit of it" and "ys, bring it all on" opinions would be more useful. Suggestions to improve the RfC are welcome, it's not easy to keep it nuanced and practical at the same time. Fram (talk) 14:47, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've put in a somewhat nuanced "yes" !vote then, since I expect that I'll support most options. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If enabled, which sister projects should be included?

Commons

Support (Commons)

• Support in principle, but the current implementation is terrible. I see no problem with a search for "penis" resulting in images of a penis. However, many of the search terms presented here had unexpected results, and as long as that is true, the image search needs to be turned off by default. —Kusma (t·c) 10:01, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Commons)

• Any search on images/multimedia should be kept separate. We really don't need sexual / medical-gore / other offensive or shocking visual content prominently splashed up on generic searches. If someone is deliberately searching for images it is much more expected that "man" and "woman" turn up nudes, and that apparently innocent searches such as "Pearl necklace" turn up sexual imagery such as File:Sexuality_pearl_necklace_small.png. Alsee (talk) 22:45, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose – Really!? Basically per others. J947^(c) 04:11, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Not now, due to NSFW + fair use images. Revisit when we have structured data on Commons. MER-C 04:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose per Alsee. Once there's an ability to prevent objectionable material accidentally resulting from a search I would change my position. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:36, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose commons material is particularly egregious in the lack of oversight and shocking nature of its contents. I really hope we do not display this in search results, particularly if we want to maintain our somewhat respected status as an encyclopedia --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:39, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Alsee. Keep multimedia separate. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:42, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose per Tom. Swarm ♠ 20:20, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, not until the issues of NSFW images and irrelevant media are solved, either through structured data or some other mechanism. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:17, 19 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
• Oppose due to content concerns, although a Commons mainspace search might work if anyone actually maintains the galleries. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The infamous toothbrush situation has improved, but the pearl necklace example is another excellent example of why this is a bad idea. BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • BethNaught, you probably don't want to search Commons for "beads", "Fruit Loops", or highly likely kiddie search term "Clark Kent". ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I saw NSFW and fair use files when i was testing it. However i would support it if there was a way that NSFW files would not show up by default Flow 234 (Nina) talk 18:50, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, obviously ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Commons)

• I'm not opposed to Commons generally, I think it absolutely makes sense in theory, but it's just not working well from the tests I've done. Images are frequently unrelated (often by being Wiki-community related) or NSFW. Sam Walton (talk) 23:45, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  If the search were mined via Wikidata, then the resulting images would be chosen to be entirely representative. --Fæ (talk) 23:49, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikibooks

Support (Wikibooks)

Oppose (Wikibooks)

• Oppose, this seems like the weaker bastard child of enwiki and wikia, where people an post their original research (e.g. long, very disputable lists of suitable "character names" for "adolescent fiction", recipes (endless recipes, random book gave me 80% cookbook pages or so), information on how to diagnose paraphiliac behaviour, ... Very few pages seem to be in any way finished (books consists mostly of redlinked chapters), and sending our readers there seems like a disservice in most cases. Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikibooks)

Wikinews

Support (Wikinews)

• Support From the cursory results I think there's merit in this. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak support - if only because cross linking to wikinews might enable us to finally enforce NOTNEWS... Giving us a link to point to when an editor wants to add breaking news to WP.en Blueboar (talk) 23:59, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Wikinews)

• Oppose 90% of the Wikinews results are so outdated or on such minimal, trivial "news" items that it simply looks like a mockery of a "news" site. Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, basically a failed project at this point, not of sufficient quality to link to unless the project revives somehow. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:22, 19 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
• Oppose, averages fewer than two articles per day and was apparently already dying 10 years ago. Searching archives of Portal:Current events would be more helpful. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Let Wikinews die with dignity. Max Semenik (talk) 21:36, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Per above. BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikinews)

Isn't Wikinews dead? Unless there is a reasonable proposal to revive it (unlikely, as the main problem with Wikinews is that Wikipedia has always been a better news site that Wikinews, no matter what WP:NOTNEWS says), it is only going to be embarrassing to send people there. —Kusma (t·c) 10:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikiquote

Support (Wikiquote)

• Support Generally I think good results come from this search. For any person searched, this can be an item of interest outside of our encyclopedia. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:39, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. Copyright violations unfortunately are not uncommon here either (and I suspect they are more common now) Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:33, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support This is a useful link, but the snippet displayed is usually somewhat nonsensical, for example it displays a description of the author instead of the quote, or an unintelligible out-of-context fragment of a quote. This should be improved. BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Wikiquote)

• Oppose, Wikiquote too often has copyright violations, see e.g. the Rick and Morty search given above. Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  IMO, Wikiquote is essentially a giant copyright vio, but that's neither here nor there. --Izno (talk) 13:11, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikiquote)

Wikisource

Support (Wikisource)

• Support If we have open source literature, why not present the reader with it? Chris Troutman (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per above. Would be very useful to turn up the original document or related originals for some searches. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak support. Often has useful information, but also returns weird results, e.g. searching for Fax gives the "Traffic Signs Manual/Chapter 3", which is a copyright violation (it may only be reproduced for non-commercial research, which contradicts the wikisource copyright rules). So not only not a useful result for this search at all, but a problematic link to boot. Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. There are some weird results with contrived search terms, but on average this returns useful information. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:24, 19 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
• Weak support. Mildly useful for finding textual sources like Shakespeare plays and Gutenberg Project mirrors. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support once general search quality improves. MER-C 02:29, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support: again a useful site to link to, but currently with silly choices. "Winston Churchill" doesn't lead to the author page. BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Wikisource)

Discussion (Wikisource)

Wikiversity

Support (Wikiversity)

Oppose (Wikiversity)

• I would strongly oppose cross indexing Wikiversity. That project is designed to accommodate Original Research, which we don't allow. Blueboar (talk) 14:22, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• per Blueboar Chris Troutman (talk) 16:37, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose not seeing the use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Blueboar. Kaldari (talk) 06:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per above. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikiversity)

While I don't see "this project allows original research" as a problem per se, I have difficulties thinking of searches where Wikiversity will be what the reader wants. Are there any good examples where this works? —Kusma (t·c) 10:08, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kusma: I would guess that persons actually wanting to learn topics, such as calculus, science, engineering or some other such item, come first to Wikipedia, and then discover that an encyclopedia is not a very good way to learn how to apply such topics (and in fact, we of course have a policy saying that we should not teach at WP:NOTHOWTO). There may be less academic subjects of the same sort. --Izno (talk) 13:10, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that more in the scope of Wikibooks? BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Uhhh, yes! :D --Izno (talk) 12:32, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma, I believe that Wikiversity includes teaching materials and similar resources. The current featured project is about learning web design. The organized course description page at wikiversity:Web Design/About the web design learning project probably is the best place to get an idea of how it works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikivoyage

Support (Wikivoyage)

• Support for exact term only.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - I can imagine this being useful to a searcher. Kaldari (talk) 06:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for exact term only, otherwise basically free and irrelevant advertising. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Definitely needs more work, but nothing inherently unsuitable here. Can be salvaged by e.g. performing title search only or searching on WV only if WP hits indicate that search is place related. Max Semenik (talk) 21:40, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support but only if it appears for place-related articles only. This may help to offload some of the WP:NOTTRAVEL content that gets added to WP to a venue where it is useful. MER-C 02:31, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Wikivoyage)

• Oppose (perhaps support for exact term, i.e. the search term has to be (part of the) title of the Wikivoyage article). Wikivoyage is a promotional tool in many, many cases, not a useful source of travel information. Linking to a poor site only because it is a sister project is spamming a sister project for no good reason. See e.g. the ox search given above, it gives the Wikivoyage link for Bemidji, "Bemidji is a beautiful, medium sized city with interesting people." (text shown on the search here). The Facebook search gives the page for Baliuag, as it has the facebook link for a restaurant there, with phone number, email, address... That page has nothing but this information. They will be happy if everyone searching for "Facebook" gets their phone number as well :-) Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikivoyage)

Wiktionary

Support (Wiktionary)

• Support Generally I think good results come from this search and often definitions do well to answer questions where an encyclopedia might not. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:38, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Same for me. Also, if people who mistake enwiki for a dictionary can be sent to the right place, that seems OK for me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:39, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support displays useful results that may add to many search queries. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:53, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, useful, and often people search enwiki for dictionary terms. Fram (talk) 07:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - we already have a class of soft redirects for Wiktionary terms without articles (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Wiktionary redirect). Might as well make search support it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:45, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:23, 19 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
• Support, no brainer. Might help to have both the uppercase and the lowercase form displayed though. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
  to reply to me 06:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes please. I expect it will be easy to provide relevant content, and it will be used a lot. —Kusma (t·c) 10:10, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. MER-C 02:31, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Support BethNaught (talk) 11:44, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose (Wiktionary)

Discussion (Wiktionary)

Wikispecies (once it's available)

Support (Wikispecies)

Oppose (Wikispecies)

• Oppose - These days Wikispecies is basically a ghosttown of rotting data. It also competes directly with Wikipedia for editing resources since the type of information it contains overlaps with Wikipedia's scope. I would prefer that we not direct Wikipedia users too it. Kaldari (talk) 06:33, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikispecies has been made obsolete by Wikidata. Max Semenik (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (Wikispecies)

The WP:Proposed deletion policy now applies to "File:" namespace. The implementation of File PROD is still under development, but the template is already updated to apply to files. Feel free to tag any file with {{subst:prod}}. --George Ho (talk) 19:21, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Should the WP:ANDOR guideline be softened to begin with "Avoid unless" wording or similar?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:16, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why is a substub like Magdalena Zamolska encyclopedic? Because WP:NCYCLING. I don't agree that participating in some competitions, without winning, or generating any coverage but a mention in the list of participants should suffice. Who decided those and similar exceptions to WP:BIO? Current research shows that 30-40% of biographies in Wikiepdia are of sportspeople. Most of them are substubs like this, people who did nothing except participate in events. Participation should not be sufficient to be in an encyclopedia; we are turning into a sport stat site. I am hoping the discussion here would be more representative of our community's thoughts than one that could happen at the sports notability talk page (where I'll of course leave a ping). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You didn't notify the cycling project about this (which I have done for you). The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion, along with single appearances at the Olympics, in cricket matches, football matches, baseball games, etc, etc. There's a lot of areas on WP that you could say are "too inclusive". Such as all populated places. How is this stub any better? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:06, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leaving aside WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (you are welcome to start your own discussion about possible problem with WP:NCGN), the problem with claiming we have consensus is that it is difficult to prove (citation needed). And when traced, we often find it was a discussion of five users... Anyway, I see some merit in saying that a sportsperson who "represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport" is notable, but speaking as a someone who knows very little about sports - wouldn't that be Cycling at the Summer Olympics? Cycling, to stick to a single example (that is however representative of the problem with NSPORT) lists, in addition to Olympics, five more events: UCI World Championships, UCI World Cups, Grand Tour (cycling), UCI World Tour and Classic_cycle_races#The_.27Monuments.27, for most of those they are in fact several competitions, most of which occur each year. I repeat: it sands to logic to say that competitors at a single top level event are notable. When we get to a dozen of two top level events, we have a problem (of inclusionist creep). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:11, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The individual in question did compete in the 2008 women's road race, the very top level race for cyclists, organized by the UCI (the cycling governing body). The stub also addresses WP:BIAS, in this case a female athlete from Poland. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 11:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And to answer your first question - encyclopedic means comprehensive, which is a different question to the one you're really asking (I assume about notability). Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Lugnuts: Who decided that 2008 UCI Road World Championships – Women's road race is "the very top level race for cyclists"? Again, I don't understand the criteria here. Olympics, yes, but what else and why? You are ignoring most of my arguments - I asked why do we have the 20 or so top level races? Bias is irrelevant, we don't create article about women or other minorities because they are underrepresented, we create them if they are important. Oh, and the subject seems to have placed 89 out of 91 in said competition. I could understand the top 3 medal winners could be notable. Anyone else - I still don't see why. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:41, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The community decided. Just like everything else around here. UCI events are the top level for the sport of cycling. You've said yourself that you are "someone who knows very little about sports", but you can find out more here. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree, and not just for cycling. All of sports suffers from this junk. Many of these contentless microstubs are so meager that they'd barely fill out a few cells in an excel spreadsheet. The "sourcing" tends to come from websites that indiscriminately aggregate statistics, often with a dubious record of accuracy. Not a word of prose to be found anywhere. In fact, many of these so-called articles rest on sources so poor that it's hard to distinguish two similarly-named people from each other or to determine whether two stat entries with similar names are actually the same person. Of course, these terrible articles get inflated to large sizes with endless infoboxes and templates to mask the lack of content. Wikipedia readers would be better served if this extremely useless clutter was trimmed, or merged into list articles. But no, it's super duper mega important to erect a shiny little shrine to every farmer who once hit a cricket ball around a church backyard in 1834. Reyk _YO! 08:15, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Said the person who created this. And this. Chuckle. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:19, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I wrote a handful of articles that don't meet the standards I now consider important. So what? It dawned on me what gibberish I was writing back then, so I stopped. Same reason I don't participate at DYK anymore; it was encouraging me to write trash in exchange for baubles. This tactic of digging through ancient edits hunting for a "gotcha" is neither helpful nor particularly honest. And if in future you want to try that again in hopes of getting me to lose my temper, save your energy. I know what the game is now, and it won't work a second time. Reyk _YO! 09:09, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone made mistakes in their early wiki career, I also created a lot of entries on non-notable fictional topic that I am not often nominating for deletion, because geek fancruft is not notable. If anything, this only drives home the point that sport geeks need to raise the threshold; currently it is really hard to be a non-notable sportsperson on Wikipedia. We should not be a catalog of sport stats. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree. "The answer is that this individual represented her nation at an event that's the highest level for that sport. It's a long established consensus for sporting individuals that it'll pass the threshold for inclusion" simply isn't true. Many sports are so minor that even the world championships themselves don't get an article here (or much media attention), never mind every athlete appearing in them being notable enough for an enwiki article. For example, Inline speed skating. I have created articles on a few inline speed skaters, I'm not biased against the sport in any way, but most competitors at the world championships are not notable. And then we have sports where NSPORTS explicitly sets the bar lower than competing at world championships. This is in itself defensible, e.g. everyone who plays in the Premier League is notable, fine. But this has been taken to extremes in some cases, like cricket, or cycling (especially women's cycling, where the bar for inclusion is lower even though the sport gets less media attention now and used to get massively less media attention in the past), or soccer (playing for a few minutes in an official game with the national team of a micronation is sufficient to be notable according to WP:NFOOTY). Often the mistake has been made that because people in sport X here and now are notable, this should be included in the guideline for then and there as well. This ignores the massive changes in populatity / notability one can have per sport over periods, countries, and gender. Even for the Olympics, one can reasonably argue that competing in the first games (up to at least 1920) often was not important and has in some cases not even been registered. Fram (talk) 12:01, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fram: Wow. You know, I totally missed the FAQ. You are right, NSPORT clearly states that the subject still has to meet the GNG. But in my experience, the problem is that AfDs are often closed as keep solely based on NSPORT, with arguments that the subject doesn't meet GNG falling on deaf ears. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:15, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Closers of AfD discussions for sports figures need to be reminded that if they ignore the context of the sports-specific guidelines, which is clearly laid out in the lead section and the FAQ, they are ignoring the community consensus that formed the guidelines, and the multiple subsequent reaffirmations on the talk page of the guidelines. isaacl (talk) 05:59, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Part of the problem is that many of the sport-specific guidelines were created by editors from sport-specific wikiprojects; and while not everybody is inclusionist about their favorite sport, very few editors are deletionist about their favorite sport. So instead of a nice balance between inclusionists and deletionists, there's just inclusionists and moderates, which tends to lead to an inclusionist bias.
  That said, many of the sports stubs (and substubs) are about genuinely notable people (as in, people who meet GNG); given that the number of articles about sportspeople is so huge, it's hardly surprising that sports editors simply haven't found the time to flesh all of them out; and NSPORT guidelines, as they're intended to do, discourage AfDs in cases like that.
  Part of the problem, too, is that many editors at AfD apply NSPORT overenthusiastically; as in "keep - meets NSPORT" without any thought as to whether the athlete actually meets GNG. "Keep - meets NSPORT" can be a good and valid argument, but AfD !voters often forget that GNG must also be met; and if the case is made that an athlete meets NSPORT but fails GNG, "keep - meets NSPORT" is too simplistic to be of any value as a !vote or a reply. Sideways713 (talk) 12:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a further note: the OP asked "Who decided those and similar exceptions to WP:BIO?" NSPORT doesn't create any exceptions to WP:BIO or WP:GNG; on the contrary, it explicitly notes (in the FAQ) that all sports biographies must meet WP:GNG to be kept. Sportspeople do get a freebie compared to non-sportspeople in that WP:BIO1E is practically never applied to a sportsperson, but that's not codified in NSPORT. Sideways713 (talk) 14:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree. I think there is a problem with there being too many athlete articles as a proportion of all biographical articles on Wikipedia, for sure. But the problem is not that we're allowing too many articles on athletes, but rather we don't have enough articles on non-athletes. -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:26, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if we could include more articles on other professions (academics for example are ones perennially under-represented) but then the issue is a matter of WP:V; it is very difficult to support articles on these other professions, whereas even for minor sports, websites with statistics exist allowing individual players to at least meet WP:V. --MASEM (t) 13:39, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree The ONLY principle for deciding if an article should exist is "could I fill it with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile". Any criteria that encourages the creation of articles which will never have enough text is simply ill-advised. --Jayron32 13:41, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which is a much bigger project-wide issue that's not just related to sportspeople. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time... --Jayron32 17:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Let's not derail the discussion by saying "there are other problematic areas". This one is a very good place to start. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:13, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note that NSPORT is, in theory, supposed to simply be a quick way to judge if it's likely that an article can be filled with enough well-referenced text to make it worthwhile; it's not supposed to create any backdoors whereby athletes who fail that basic criterion can be declared "notable", though admittedly that does sometimes happen in practice. Sideways713 (talk) 14:02, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Intent means nothing, all that means anything is what actually happens. Every notability guideline beyond WP:42 is an invitation to create articles which will never be developed. --Jayron32 17:51, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And how do you decide what is "enough text"? You are proposing that we introduce subjectivity instead of objectivity. "Enough text" could be 95% waffle and duplication of info from other articles. NSPORT generally uses objective criteria such as "must have played at the highest level of domestic competition". Any stub can be enlarged but would the additional text be useful? Jack | ^{talk page} 16:18, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:42 is a good start. WP:GNG, the expanded version, is pretty solid as well. Not sure we need more than that. But yeah, if an article can never be developed, it should not exist in the first place. If all we have to say about a person is that they lived, why even have an article? If we can't write about their childhood, their careers in some sense of completeness, analysis of their lives by others, etc. then what are we putting in an article? In general, the text of a Wikipedia article should be less than the text which exists in the rest of the world outside of Wikipedia, because Wikipedia should be a summary. When Wikipedia articles are longer than reliable source material about a person, and consist solely of three lines of text and a table, that's a problem. --Jayron32 17:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've always thought a good rule of thumb is whether or not the article shows a reasonable potential of being developed into a Featured Article. Even a lot of perennial stubs show that potential. The article that sparked this thread might have that potential, if and only if someone is willing to do the research to show how that athlete fits into the larger context of the history of cycling in Poland. (And if the material to be researched doesn't exist, well, merging or deletion are the only viable alternatives. -- llywrch (talk) 19:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Potential article quality has little relation to suitability for inclusion in an encyclopedia. If we're covering someone as a sportsperson, the only essential is that we have sufficient sourced content about their significance as a sportsperson --Michig (talk) 19:51, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your answer shows you haven't thought much about the issue. I have, because it's not unique to sports biographies. There are many articles -- both biographical & non-biographical -- currently existing in Wikipedia that will never be expanded beyond a stub because there isn't any further information about the subject. Yet one can argue the subject is notable.

So what to do? Avoid creating it in the first place? Delete them because they will never be developed beyond a stub? Or merge them into a list, much as tv episodes or fictional characters are? (You could call that the "Pokemon solution", in memory of the first time this issue came up.) Or perhaps there is another solution that this old Wikipedian is blind to. But a solution needs to be found because the issue of permanent stubs in Wikipedia is one that will only become more apparent as time goes on. -- llywrch (talk) 15:56, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"sufficient sourced content about their significance as a sportsperson" is merely the standard we need to mention the person at Wikipedia as a whole. The issue is more about how to include text about their lives at Wikipedia: As part of a larger page or as a stand alone page. We aren't saying "Should this person be removed from Wikipedia entirely". What we are saying is "Is there enough text about this person's life to write to justify putting it on a separate page" If all we have to say is "Jane Smith competed in fencing at the 2012 Olympics" and we literally know nothing else about them, we can note that fact just fine in an article titled "Fencing at the 2012 Olympics". There's no need to ALSO create another page whose sole purpose is to contain that line of text. Jane Smith is at Wikipedia, all the information we have is already in the encyclopedia, and unless and until we can justify creating an entire page to house her biography (rather than just one or two facts about her participation in a sporting event) then the extra page isn't needed. No one is saying to remove the information from Wikipedia, just that creating an entire new page to house that information is not worthwhile. --Jayron32 16:09, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• "Your answer shows you haven't thought much about the issue" - could you possibly get any more arrogant? I don't get your obsession with articles having to go beyond stubs - have you ever looked at the size of many of the articles in other works such as Encyclopaedia Britannica? I have no objection to merging really short articles to wider topics, but that's an editorial decision on how we organize content and a separate issue to notability. --Michig (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I've never said such a thing, and I would thank you for not accusing me of doing so. --Jayron32 01:51, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree As a compromise, can we just have a guideline that makes such entries as the example in the OP presumed ok for a list but not for an article? Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:17, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Unfortunately for the majority here, you're writing for an encyclopedia where the fundamental underpinning of notability criteria isn't "We think your profession is important," but "The world has heard of you." Of course there will be many more athletes and entertainers than academics represented here, because our culture pays attention to athletes and entertainers, and a third-line forward for the Boston Bruins or a minor actress who gets her kit off for three scenes in Game of Thrones has vastly more name recognition than your average Nobel Prize winner. I'm just curious as to what some of you think should be done about that aside from jettisoning WP:V. Ravenswing 15:03, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Subject-specific notability guidelines can be more restrictive than the GNG (They can't be less restrictive though), if that helps to prevent excessive coverage in a topic area where imbalanced sourcing can exist. But the case argued here is different: it is that criteria in NSPORT have been selected that allow for the presumption of notability based on weak criteria that can be easily met with WP:V (like the OP substub) but show no strong indication of eventually meeting GNG. Just because an athlete can be documented doesn't mean they are necessarily notable. --MASEM (t) 15:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I agree with the rough sentiment, and I would not suggest any quotas on sportspeople, nor would I disagree that they are a highly visible type of a profession with high notability compared to many others, we have to draw a line a bit higher; consider the example I linked in the OP: that cyclist has very little world recognition, and I doubt her name is recognized by anyone except die-hard cyclist fans in Poland. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:20, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree that its too inclusive, not sure what you can do at this point. I think you would probably get a majority of people in a site wide RfC to agree on that, but I don't think you could get agreement on what the content specific guideline should be. On a practical level, any drastic change would probably be more messy than even the schools issue in terms of flooding AfD. I think for any changes you'd need to have a very carefully crafted RfC. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:24, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would definitely agree that an RFC regarding this must pre-emptively set up some type of grandfathering approach to existing articles, and a means to address fait accompli at AFD. We learned from the SCHOOLOUTCOMES RFC that if these aren't set in stone to start, a lot of editors will reject the change due to their fears that we'll flood AFD. Preemptive processes for this will help alleviate those matters. --MASEM (t) 15:50, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes. In my mind the proposed grandfather clause would need to be set as the date the RfC would be opened to prevent gaming the system, which would happen just as surely as a flood on AfD. Sports aren't my particular area of interest or expertise, but if someone decides to set up a draft RfC, feel free to ping me. I was involved with setting up the schools RfC, so I have thoughts on both the positives and negatives that came from that which might be helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree. On the whole, WP:NSPORT is fine, but fine tuning is always possible and sometimes desirable. Having read the arguments raised by User:Piotrus, his issue is not about NSPORT but specifically about WP:NCYCLING and he needs to raise it with the cycling project. While he's there, he might ask them to stop obstructing the traffic on public roads. Jack | ^{talk page} 15:49, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, you are wrong. My issue ws with NSPORT, I just used NCYCLING as an example. Half if not more of the NSPORT guidelines are super-inclusive. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Piotrus: Perhaps, but not WP:CRIN of which I am the main author (it is summarised by WP:NCRIC within NSPORT). CRIN is actually exclusive because we insist that all cricketers must have performed at the highest domestic level to comply with WP:Notability and the article must clearly demonstrate, with verification, that the player has done so. For the most part, it means he or she has played for a team that is ranked "first-class". At WP:CRIC, we take any article that does not comply with CRIN straight to AfD. I don't know about the other sports projects but CRIC has set a high standard for inclusion and we strictly apply it. We have even taken cricket articles to AfD because there was no indication of first-class standard, even though subsequent investigation revealed that the subject did comply with CRIN but the author had been incompetent by not stating and verifying the notability. Maybe what is needed is for other sports projects to follow our example. Jack | ^{talk page} 18:14, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I tend to agree that NSPORTS is far too inclusive. At the top of NSPORTS there is a FAQ. The first item in the FAQ refers to the GNG. The answer says:

The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline. They are intended only to stop an article from being quickly deleted when there is very strong reason to believe that significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources are available, given sufficient time to locate them.[1][2][3][4] Wikipedia's standard for including an article about a given person is not based on whether or not he/she has attained certain achievements, but on whether or not the person has received appropriate coverage in reliable sources, in accordance with the general notability guideline.

My opinion, which I've expressed at several AfD, is that this makes NSPORTS and all of it's sport specific criteria, secondary to the GNG. It helps clarify who might meet the GNG but I tend to think there are cases where a person who's done something specific in the sports related field is unlikely to meet the GNG in itself.

Perhaps that's a way forward? Yes, they've entered this race/played in this match/been part of this competition. So find sources to satisfy the GNG for them then. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's not just your opinion: this is the consensus that was agreed upon when the sports-related notability criteria were initially created, and reaffirmed multiple times since. isaacl (talk) 18:27, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And to confirm further, most editors that were involved in NSPORT recognize that it sets a presumption of notability in lieu of meeting the GNG that can be challenged if an editor does the necessary legwork to confirm that the GNG cannot otherwise be met (eg following the steps at WP:BEFORE, particularly scouring print sources for athletes prior to 2000). If you can reasonable show no sourcing exists beyond stats, then it is acceptable to seek AFD for that athlete. Most of the editors involved in NSPORT that I'm aware don't think it overrides the GNG. --MASEM (t) 18:34, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree. The guideline is, on the whole, a pragmatic approach that avoids spending time discussing every single article in depth to get consensus each time. So we have lots of stubs - so what? So we have a small proportion of sports articles on people who would likely be considered by most not significant enough to have an encyclopedia article - better than having a debate every time, and we have to consider the difficulty in finding coverage that undoubtedly exists on subjects who were competing more than 20 years ago. Our starting point should be to ask at what level in each sport do competitors become worthy of inclusion in a wide-reaching and comprehensive encyclopedia, not to ask how much content we can find about someone right now, which is all the GNG gives you. In that respect, while not perfect, WP:NSPORT is doing the right thing (although personally I would drop the nonsense about having to satisfy the GNG from it). --Michig (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  The problem is not the existence of stubs. Stubs are fine, so long as they could eventually be expanded with existing source material. The problem is the existence of stubs which can never grow beyond a stub because no source material exists. If we have a person for whom all we can say is "They competed in this one event." and have zero biographical material, well, we're creating an article for nothing. We already have documented their having competed in that one event. We don't have to do it twice. We really only need an article if we can write a biography about them. If we can't write a biography, why have an article? --Jayron32 17:54, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But who's to say that x stub can never be expanded? Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"You can't prove sources DON'T exist" is a bullshit rationale and you know it. Demanding that people prove the non-existence of sources before allowing an article to be deleted is so stupid, I won't even insult you by explaining why. --Jayron32 01:26, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Typical non-answer and a great way to dodge the question, clearly demonstrating you can't actually answer the question. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:45, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK: Here is your answer: You cannot justify anything by demanding that those that oppose you prove the non-existence of proof. That's called Argument from ignorance and is a core informal fallacy because it is ultimately impossible to do. If you demand that unicorns exist because no one has ever produced evidence of a "lack of unicorns" in the world, that's baldly silly: You can't demand that we accept the existence of the unobservable merely because no one has produced a lack of observation of the unobservable. You simply can't demand that the world accept the existence of unicorns on the basis that no one has produced a "lack of unicorns" as a proof. It stretches credibility. In the same way, you can't demand that all articles be allowed to exist forever once created merely because no one has produced proof that sources don't exist. If THAT was the standard for deletion at Wikipedia, we couldn't delete anything because no one can actually produce proof of non-existence. That's why in LIFE (that is, in the entirety of human experience, including outside of Wikipedia) concepts like null hypothesis and Philosophical burden of proof exist. You can't just go around making random assertions and then demand people assume your assertions are true without any positive evidence! Because (and this apparently includes you) some people are unaware of the way this reality of human existence works, Wikipedia has a policies in place like WP:BURDEN which establishes that the burden of proof that content should exist at Wikipedia lies solely with the person who wishes to keep the content at Wikipedia. I had assumed you understood how basic logic and proof of existence of things worked. I will not assume that level of intelligence in you any further. --Jayron32 01:43, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't "demand" anything. I stopped reading your pointless rant at that point. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:36, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You are seriously trying to pull the n00b arguments of WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES/WP:ATA#CRYSTAL on us? Really? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:30, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Stubs are absolutely fine if they are properly sourced and tell our readers the key facts about a subject. There is no need for them to be expanded beyond that level to become worthwhile articles. --Michig (talk) 17:52, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, it is awfully inclusive. But one big advantage is that it sets an objective guideline, and this helps reduce arguments, probably. Like WP:BASEBALL/N... if you had one at-bat in a major league, you are in, period; and if not, you're not (except if you meet WP:BIO on other grounds, which is a different question). There's no back-and-forth of "Well, but he didn't play much... define 'much', where's your cutoff?", with a random decision based on who happens happens to be populating the AfD discussion for that particular page. This is a net positive for the project IMO. And course these articles don't harm anyone. UNLESS... one editor above says "The 'sourcing' tends to come from websites that indiscriminately aggregate statistics, often with a dubious record of accuracy". Well if that's true it's very different. Is it? That's the only question that excites me (For baseball players, the sourcing is usually Baseball-Reference.com, which is comprehensive and reliable. But I don't know about other sports.) Herostratus (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The general consensus for discussions involving baseball and hockey players is that sites which are compendiums of stats are considered to be routine coverage, and thus not sources indicative of the player meeting the general notability guideline. (They can be fine sources for the actual stats, as is the case for the Baseball Reference site, but they aren't used to show that English Wikipedia's standards for having an article have been met.) isaacl (talk) 18:23, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Really? My understanding is that you have one at-bat in the National League in 1904, you get an article. Are you saying that the "general consensus for discussions involving baseball... players" is that at AfD many major league player articles are being deleted? Yeesh, that's a big change. Herostratus (talk) 19:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A player with an at bat meets the baseball-specific notability guidelines, but as described in the lead section of WP:NSPORTS, as well as the FAQ, the article can still get deleted for not meeting the general notability guideline. To determine if this guideline is met, a reference in a stats site is not considered to be sufficient. I do believe there are some corresponding examples of baseball player articles that were deleted, and there have been examples of professional European hockey player articles that were deleted where an entry on a stats site was insufficient to keep the article. isaacl (talk) 20:15, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• A fully inclusive approach via NCRIC and others is the only way to achieve a proper, complete, NPOV encyclopedia. Why is it that not a single person who says "this is wrong" is prepared to offer a viable alternative solution? Let's take NCRIC for an example. One first-class appearance. Want to make it two? Three? Fifty? Fine. Offer that suggestion as an alternative. State NPOV reasons why. But doing so is more POV than any existing guideline.

How easy is it to invent similar "guidelines" for other sports? A single professional appearance? Soccer Y, MLB Y, NFL Y, NHL Y, NBA Y... already done. No further need for discussion. Any other need will encourage violation of NPOV. This whole discussion is happening about ten years too late. Bobo. 18:36, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We could just as easily set it at "played one complete season" Y for team sports, and won an international championship Y for individuals. Both would give us a much more realistic expectation of actually establishing notability through sources. Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How do you define "playing in one complete season"? What if a player misses one game? Or two? Or ten? Obviously it depends on how many games a season includes (MLB teams play 162 games in their regular season, whereas NFL teams play only 16), but your criteria are still arbitrary. The idea that winning an international competition is the only thing that makes a player notable is laughable; some of the greatest soccer players of all time never won an international competition, and some sports (read American football) don't even have an international competition to speak of, or at least the highest level of their sport is contained within one nation. – PeeJay 19:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was considering that, Peejay. What is a "complete season"? The example I use is Robin van Persie. The season before he signed for Manchester United was the first season in which he played all domestic league games, and therefore the first in which he could be fully judged as a player in the English league. He then played another season before SAF retired, in which he once again played every single league fixture. After that, boom. Anyway, that's just the sports geek in me talking! For "amateur" players, who may have made only a single appearance, we probably don't know what they did for the rest of the season. Did they stay with the team or did they go back to working in their day job in the local pie shop? Bobo. 20:21, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree For the sports that I'm familiar with (football and rugby league) the guideline is probably about right in terms of identifying which players are definitely notable. If anything, WP:NFOOTY is used more to prevent articles being created rather than to allow them, as it's easy to create a well-sourced article on footballers playing well below the fully-professional leagues and we have a constant stream of articles on semi-pro players being deleted at AfD (there is also a small group of editors who have persistently attempted to relax the guideline further to allow semi-professional non-internationals). There may well be some individual guidelines that are too lax, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Number 57 20:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  This is true. I remember one of the first things I did when I started trying to be "inclusionist" with footballers was to add articles on footballers for Alloa Athletic, who at the time were playing in the third tier of the Scottish pyramid. I now know the reasons why this was a bit excessive - and I understand these reasons fully, though I didn't at the time and it seemed inconsistent.

That and no two sources appeared to agree on how to spell Michael Bolochoweckyj's name! Bobo. 20:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree For American sports, the ones I am most familiar with, the guidelines appear appropriate. Anyone playing in even one game in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League are bound to have sources from at least two areas. The first is their college/junior careers. These sports, in the U.S. are well covered and therefore generate a lot of coverage. The second is that the teams are very well covered. Minor roster moves are covered in detail, including the drafts. For non-team sports, the events in question gain a lot of coverage. Boxing title fights, golf majors, the Ironman triathlon, etc. are all significantly covered. Would be nice if other professions got that coverage, but they don't. There is a reason kids, at least in the U.S., collect baseball cards with baseball statistics and not scientist cards that list scientific discoveries. Its because of how well followed baseball is and not the sciences or other areas (see [3]). RonSigPi (talk) 21:33, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  But if the sources already exist, why do you need the guideline in the first place? Doesn't WP:GNG already allow us to create the article? If the only reason we have the secondary guideline is to repeat exactly what WP:GNG says, then it is redundant. If the secondary guideline allows us to include material which can't be sourced, it's a bad idea. Which is it? --Jayron32 01:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  The secondary guideline is there to help editors evaluate whether it's likely that an athlete will meet GNG when sources in the article (if any) fail to demonstrate that he does, but sources not in the article (including hard-to-access offline sources and non-English sources, but also English online sources no one's gone to the trouble of adding) might show otherwise. As the OP noted, Wikipedia has countless stubs about sportspeople; some of them can never be expanded and some can, and NSPORT helps editors make a quick educated guess about whether a particular stub can (given enough time and effort to locate the sources) be expanded and shown to meet GNG. If that guess is "yes" more often than it should in a particular sport, then the sport-specific guidelines for that sport are too lenient; which is almost certainly the case for many sports, but the existence of thousands of poorly sourced stubs doesn't in itself prove that, and is indeed almost inevitable considering the vast number of articles to be written and the limited number of dedicated sports editors.
  The guess is always just a guess, and can be challenged at AfD if you think the real answer is "no" - though you'll need to be strong of heart to try that with a cricket article... Sideways713 (talk) 10:27, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  People keep saying that as though if by mere repetition, they would make it true. You may WISH the secondary guidelines exist to "help editors evaluate whether it's likely", but in the decade or more history of Wikipedia using such guidelines, we have ample evidence of their real use to Wikipedians: To cite in deletion discussions to stiffle discussion of source text and retain otherwise unexpandable articles. That's the raison d'etre of all secondary notability criteria: to provide a loop-hole to allow articles to exist which could otherwise never contain any substantive, referenced prose. You can keep asserting that they only exist to "help editors evaluate" but the bulk of evidence from actual use of these guidelines is quite not that. --Jayron32 01:49, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  There's no need to take such an adversarial tone, as if I or other NSPORT editors were in disagreement about that. On the contrary, many of us are just as frustrated with NSPORT being misused that way as you are; and yes, sometimes it's not just misapplied by AfD editors, but used as a tool by inclusionist sports editors to justify keeping their pet perma-stub. But that's not the only reason NSPORT exists; it has a legitimate purpose, and not all articles it helps keep are unexpandable.
  And articles that meet NSPORT do sometimes get deleted in real life for failing to meet GNG; less often nowadays, unfortunately, but it does still happen. This AfD is a recent case. Sideways713 (talk) 09:43, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  If you're frustrated with the use of the guideline, the solution is to nuke the guideline. Leave people with the GNG to work with. That would solve the problem quite well. --Jayron32 15:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm frustrated with the current use of the guideline and with shallow "keep - meets NSPORT" !votes; but I'd be even more frustrated if AfDs for track and field athletes who do meet GNG suddenly spiked tenfold and I had to run around looking for sources to prove the keep separately every single time, which is what might happen if NSPORT was nuked. There are thousands of track stubs with minimal sourcing, not because the sources don't exist (true in some cases, but not most) or even because the sources are hard to locate (true in many cases, but not all) but because WikiProject Athletics doesn't have enough manpower. The people we do have have better things to do than run from AfD to AfD, or to be at loggerheads with each other about notability. I'm not entirely happy with NSPORT or the track-specific guideline (which is a mishmash of strict criteria, lenient criteria, strange criteria and some misplaced stuff no one's ever got around to removing); but they give us more time to concentrate on actually improving articles. Sideways713 (talk) 22:42, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree, and as to the above about what the standards should be, we already have that standard. "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." If an athlete meets that standard, they are notable. If not, they are not. But a brief blurb just mentioning that they happened to appear is not significant coverage. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree. Seraphimblade says it well, Alanscottwalker offers a possible compromise. When push comes to shove, I can't think of any topic notability guideline that works well and all of those I have seen acknowledge the pre-eminence of GNG. They are at best well-intentioned attempts by aficionados to carve out some sort of standard but they are used in effect to bludgeon through things that would never apparently meet GNG. - Sitush (talk) 23:28, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The GNG is one of the worst standards ever adopted by this project. Any other sensible encyclopedia (as WP originally did) would take objective criteria much along the lines of the SNGs as their starting point rather than judging which subjects to include based solely on how much coverage they can find elsewhere. --Michig (talk) 18:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So, where are you going to find source texts to add information to articles at Wikipedia, if the GNG wasn't there? The GNG only says that source text needs to exist before creating an article. Why is that so wrong? Are you really proposing we do away with that standard, and allow articles to be created on subjects even when no source text exists about that subject? --Jayron32 15:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What you have just stated makes no sense. We have the policy WP:V which would prevent articles existing even when no source text exists, whatever guidelines we might have. We can often glean sufficient sourced information for a properly sourced short article from several reliable sources, none of which would be considered to contain 'significant coverage', but GNG demands that the coverage in individual sources is significant. Plenty of unencyclopedic topics have 'significant coverage', and at the end of the day all it gives is the ability to create more detailed articles. --Michig (talk) 17:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Disagree Like RonSigPi, I haven't had any trouble finding material on Australian athletes. The abundance of articles reflects the abundance of material available. That in turn reflects the degree interest of our reader base. Per Seraphimblade, GNG is our standard, and that means athletes get bios. Our guidelines merely reflect our accumulated experience of GNG, which is wider and more encompassing. An teenage athlete once asked me why a teammate warranted a Wikipedia article. I told her that it was because her teammate was a Paralympic medalist, and hence was notable. She said she thought you had to be a national hero. I replied that a Paralympian is a national hero. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment It's objective standard? No, it is not, it's a made-up guideline, and it thus can be re-made-up. The arguments based on V and on NPOV, are just irrelevant, when what we are talking about is Notability - what we cover in a separate article, a separate biography, in fact - a biography covers birth to death - but what some appear to keep arguing is we need no reliable sources for their biography, just vital statistics and sport statistics, and the made-up guideline. And then there is the argument that there are a ton of reliable sources on these people because they are popular, well fine, but obviously they pass the GNG, then. Come now, and compromise over perpetual stubs (move them to Draft, put them in a list), now, what have you got to lose. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree. There is no reason to change a standard that is working fairly well. We have a bright line of notability that makes sense and is easy to follow. Anything else and you get bogged down in perpetual afd debates about what quantifies as enough coverage. These arguments come up every so often by people who don't think athletes deserve the coverage they get... but thats rubish... more people follow sports than many other professions and will want comprehensive coverage of the major sports. Spanneraol (talk) 00:09, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No one here is begrudging whatever coverage they get, but why is that apparently mountainous coverage not in these biographies. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:16, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And they can get that coverage from, in many cases, the single sports ref website that we cite. Simplistically, if we are aggregating information then we are sort of adding value to the reader experience but otherwise we are not. - Sitush (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So we are saying that people who are looking to research their favorite team should go somewhere else to find information about the players who arent covered here? We should offer complete coverage of major sports leagues as we do. And Yes many of the bios can be better with more information in them... but that isnt any reason to change the guidelines... diligent editors are constantly improving the stub articles to make them better and more informative...deleting the stubs doesnt help them do that. Spanneraol (talk) 00:32, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Like I say, if the article has been uninformative for perhaps 6 months, send it to Draft. And send new ones (after a date certain) to draft immediately.Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:38, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why? People are more likely to find and improve an article if it is in main space than if it is hidden on some draft page somewhere. Why the arbitrary timeline to improve an article? Spanneraol (talk) 00:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Because they are not getting improved, obviously. As for finding them anyone who wants to know and write about them will find them in Draft space. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:47, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We are not the article quality police.... and no it is much harder to find stuff in draft space. Spanneraol (talk) 00:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Police? What? We are not here to not write actual encyclopedic biographies. And I'll add, that those articles that basically just regurgitate that single sports stat site, does make Wikipedia terrible in the eyes of readers. The least one can do is put all those sources about their life you say exist in a further reading section, so the reader might actually learn something. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:55, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Did you run some survey that led you to understand that to be the case or is it your personal opinion? You are essentially saying articles should be deleted if they don't measure up to your personal standard of what a good article should be. Thats contrary to the mission of wikipedia. Spanneraol (talk) 16:04, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. Per Wikipedia policy as in WP:PAGEDECIDE, I am suggesting putting these non-articles in Lists and moving them to Draft pages. The only thing contrary to the mission of Wikipedia is the continued refusal, or inability to substantiate that these subjects have the sources. As for the rest, it takes no survey to know an article that rips off another website by just regurgitating its contents is bad. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Part of the problem is that many editors think that a "presumption" of notability means something actually is notable. Our SNGs could clarify this by using "likelihood" instead of "presumption". It is true that the more an athlete has done in his/her sport, the more likely it is that they will meet our GNG. Blueboar (talk) 00:31, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first sentence of the sports-specific notability guideline is the following: This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The third sentence uses "likely" again: If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. The third paragraph starts as follows: Please note that the failure to meet these criteria does not mean an article must be deleted; conversely, the meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept. I'm not sure how many more times this can be emphasized in the lead section of the guideline. isaacl (talk) 00:43, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Too often, the only part of a SNG that our fellow actually bother to read is the bullet pointed list of things that create a "presumption" of notability. They (mistakenly) think meeting one of these criteria makes the subject/topic notable... when all meeting the criteria indicates is that the subject/topic is likely to be notable (i.e. likely to pass GNG). Blueboar (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate that many editors don't bother reading the guidelines they quote, but closers of AfD discussions really must read the guidelines referenced within the discussions, otherwise, they are overriding the consensus that created the guidelines. Short of inserting the sentences I quoted above into every subsection, I don't know what more to do to publicize the underlying context of the sports-specific guidelines. I wrote the FAQ, with references to the original discussion that created WP:NSPORTS, to make its relationship to the general notability guideline crystal clear. isaacl (talk) 01:10, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A topic is generally considered to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. While the exisatence of such sources is possible, and frequently easy, to prove, the lack of them is impssible - especially given the fact that these sources need not be in English, on the internet, or freely accessable to the general public. In stead, we have specific guidelines which tend to indicate when topics are likely to be notable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The burden can't be on proving a negative. At some point, people who create the article, or argue to retain it, need to actually come up with references, not just handwave that they've got to be out there somewhere or another. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:43, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agree... But that begs the question: when do we reach "at some point"? A month? A year? Blueboar (talk) 10:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Blueboar: Well, to me, especially for an area where the vast majority of the articles will be BLPs, that standard is analogous to WP:BEFORE. Before you create the article, ensure that you have found sufficient source material to sustain a full article, not just a blurb or mention that would be sufficient to stave off BLPPROD. If you failed to, the article will be deleted, but if and when you turn up those sources, you can recreate it from them. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:29, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The majority of the articles that are actually stubs are not BLPs because they deal with athletes from the 19th century or early 20th century for which online sources are difficult if not impossible to find. Current living internet-era athletes in major sports are fairly easy to source and reference. The guidelines are meant to account for these people for whom sources are only available in newspaper microfiche at libraries. Spanneraol (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, then, same standard, really. Once you go to the library, read the microfiches, and determine that the source material really does exist, you can create the article, citing those sources. But just "Well I think it's at a library...on something...somewhere!" doesn't do. Create the article once you actually have the references in hand, not just with a wave of a hand that they must be out there somewhere. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree that our standards for athletes' notability are far too lax and allow far too much cruft into the project. Take, for example, this guy: an 18-year-old kid who kicks around a football for a living. Essentially no in-depth coverage exists, but he's "presumed notable" per WP:NFOOTY, which apparently trumps WP:BASIC. (Certainly it does so at every relevant AfD I've witnessed.) By contrast, none of the faculty at the local university have articles, because WP:PROF is quite stringent, and rightly so. Nevertheless, these are people who've put in time and effort in obtaining doctorates, writing publications and teaching students. Similarly, none of the physicians at the local hospital is considered notable, although these individuals have studied medicine and are caring for patients every day. Again, I don't object, but what I do find objectionable, indeed downright bizarre, is that out of the economist, the oncologist and the basically random adolescent, it's the last we presume notable.
• In terms of what should be done, I agree it's a more complicated problem now than it was ten years ago, but I think the focus should certainly be on having articles that comply with WP:BASIC: "people are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources". Presumption of notability should be granted for significant coverage, not simply participation and routine mention. - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:20, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• What's actually being proposed here? One note to keep in mind: how much coverage is out there that isn't online or in English. I've skimmed this thread and seen people challenge the notability of a Romanian and a Polish athlete. Has anyone checked the local papers where they come from? – Muboshgu (talk) 17:33, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think that's such a salient issue for contemporary athletes - in this day and age, newspapers if anything have more of an online than a print presence, and we have editors who know the major European languages. The heart of the problem lies with the too-permissive nature of WP:ATHLETE, which presumes notability for sub-stubs even in the absence of in-depth coverage. - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think the presumption is the problem as much as editor's application of it at AfD. In some cases, old articles that have shown no sign of being able to satisfy GNG are deleted despite meeting ATHLETE, but too often editors keep articles based on ATHLETE alone. Jogurney (talk) 19:11, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • While I agree the problem is the editor's application, I don't think the old article example is valid. The policy is good when a subject is relatively old. The older a subject is (or for an athlete the older their prime sporting years), the harder it is to actually find sources. While certainly this applies to pre-Internet players, I think that can go back as few as five years as many sources are not online anymore. Let's face it, most editors are sitting at their computer and doing online research. No one is going through hard newspapers finding sources. However, based on various factors, such as attendance and general understanding of newspaper, radio, etc. it can be viewed that era would have been covered - its just difficult and a lot to ask a volunteer website to go check those. Its a presumption the community that has knowledge on the topic has created and it should be respected. To be more honest, we have to make a judgement. Who can say that a 1900 Football League player was notable? None of us were alive then and no one is actually checking the sources. Its an unreasonable proposition to force the keep position people to find sources. If that is the case, then we might as well just say this is a project from 1997 on. Another time presumptions are good are foreign language. How many editors we have that know both English and Thai, are knowledgeable on the Thai League T1, and are in Thailand to access and evaluate sources (reminder - not everything is on the Internet even today). I assume very few if any. We have to make judgment calls and the sports projects (and other projects) are in the best position to make those calls. While I was a commenter, I think this whole idea was well reasoned by a number of editors in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andy Ainscow. I think the solution is to have admins decide debates using critical thinking. Its not a vote, so a bunch of "Keep - meets WP:NFOOTY" should be discounted. For articles that are likely to have sources found (e.g., a 2017 National Football League player), make editors find sources since they should be able to be found. For a 1930s era racer at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, let's keep since no one is going to go though 80 year old French newspapers, but we know generally how well covered the race and its competitors were. Admins should use sound judgment, I think that solves about 95% of the problems. RonSigPi (talk) 22:55, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that leave me cold in these discussions is that nobody is making the case "Having these articles degrades the reader's experience, and/or is a burden on our system not warranted by the article's small value, because _________". Well what goes in the blank? If you don't have something exciting to put in the blank, you can count me off the boat, and a lot of other editors too: you are not going to get anywhere.

I'll tell you what doesn't go in the blank: "It it too permissive" or "these are not notable people" or "it doesn't meet our notability rules which were handed down to Moses on Mount Ararat" or "our printing costs are too high" or "it annoys me to see these articles" or "too many of these come up if I use the Random Article function" or "it is overloading the servers with data" or "these articles have small value" (true, but what I want to know is net value), and stuff of that nature

You know what I haven't seen? I haven't seen anybody say "I don't come here anymore, instead I use Britannica or just Google, because there are too many articles here about cyclists, and this degrades my ability to use the Wikipedia".

Now, there are arguments against having articles on unnotable subjects, and they mostly have to do with our own internal dynamics, and the one good argument that's raised for all obscure articles (not just athletes) is that is that there some overhead cost to any article -- which basically means, it has to be watchlisted or checked in the Recent Changes feed.

I wouldn't worry about that too much myself. Obscure athletes are pretty popular, relative to all obscure subjects. People like sports! Just as some people like to watch over maintain articles on lichen species, Parliamentary elections of the 17th century, and towns in Ecuador, so there are people who like to watch over articles on Portuguese cyclists. This enthusiasm is evidenced, in part, by the very existence of the articles.

And if you take those articles away, those editors are not necessarily going to be like "OK, they've cleared out most of Category:Portuguese cyclists, guess I'll focus on Category:South Carolina State Senators instead". It doesn't necessarily work like that.

On that score, there're a lot of subjects before athletes where I'd worry that nobody is watching them. I just found vandalism from 2014 in a (non-athlete) article. Is that happening a lot with athlete articles in particular? Nobody in the discussion above has claimed that it is. Is it?

Another good argument could be "no one -- quite literally, virtually no person -- is interested in this class of articles, as shown by the page views which are consistently at or near zero in the my sample of these kinds of articles, so the value is not just small but is zero". Of course, that's only a good argument if it is true. Is it?

In all the above discussion, I have seen one, and really only one, good argument against these articles: that they are frequently inaccurate -- the statistics and other data in them are wrong, to an unacceptable level of frequency. However, this was presented as an offhand aside and I suspect it is just an uninformed opinion. It if was true, then we would have a problem. Is it?

Go get some data, or even anecdotes, showing some of these things to be true. Absent that, you haven't convinced me that it is a problem. Herostratus (talk) 10:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Any stub has a higher chance of being if not inaccurate then at least misleading, because a stub will likely be based on a single source or a very small number of sources. Sources, even good reliable sources, are wrong sometimes, omit important information or concentrate on only one aspect of the subject (potentially creating WP:UNDUE or WP:BALASP problems); which is a problem with only one cure, namely introducing more sources. This is of course true for any stub, not just athlete stubs; but it does make it understandable that some people aren't happy to see so many athlete stubs, particularly given that many of them are BLPs.
A very concrete case of athlete articles being inaccurate unacceptably often was the recent Sander.v.Ginkel debacle, which led to the mass deletion of thousands of athlete BLPs created by Sander.v.Ginkel. The problem there was caused by a bad editor, not by too lenient sport-specific notability guidelines, but the stubby nature of the articles was still a factor; articles that had been fleshed out by editors other than Sander were less likely to have serious problems, though they were still included in the cleanup effort. Sideways713 (talk) 11:21, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We've had that argument before: it's the fiction purges of the late 2000s. --Izno (talk) 12:39, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, but "argument made previously" is not the same as "wrong argument"; so that's not really a refutation. @User:Sideways713, OK, fair point. But a lot of the material in these articles, I think, is "She finished third in the 1999 such-and-such race with a time of 27:13" and so forth. Well, its either true or isn't; its a statement of objective measurable fact. So if we have a site that is regularly giving times of 27:13 when the actual time was 26:43, then we need to blacklist that site. Most sites giving statistics are probably getting them from the official source, or are the official source, I would suppose. Although granted typos occur, yes.

However, most statements in the encyclopedia have a single source (if any). And multiple refs don't necessarily help that much, because errors replicate. I get that with birthates sometimes: eight sources that have it wrong, because they're copying from the same flawed source or each other. So I dunno. Possibly the single-source angle is an argument against a lot of lower-level articles, from politicians to villages to lichen species. Whether articles on athletes in particular are a problem on this account I don't know. Herostratus (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"She finished third in the 1999 such-and-such race with a time of 27:13" is a sentence not an article, and for an Article the pedia needs multiple qualified RS. Moreover, NPOV would suggest that most statements in the Pedia have multiple reliable sources, and common sense would seem to back-up that the tons of innocuous statements like "Paris is the capital of France" have multiple reliable sources, and for statements 'of note' per NPOV/OR/BLP, multiple sources would exist, as we rely on noted received knowledge. Sure, only one source is cited but it has 'weight' because of the multiple other sources that reconfirm it, contextualize it, and qualify it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:45, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond what Alanscottwalker said, there's a difference between statements that have only one source and whole articles that have only one source. Bad sources, typos and the like can cause a single statement in any article to be wrong; but if that single statement is the entire article, the consequences are more dramatic. For example, the article may be named incorrectly; obviously if there's a typo/mistake in the source, but also if the source uses a name that isn't the WP:COMMONNAME. With multiple sources it's usually easy to tell what the COMMONNAME is, or at least discard very uncommon names as definitely not being the COMMONNAME.
An even worse problem would be a poorly supported controversial statement in a BLP.
Often, though, the problem with an article that only has one source isn't so much what is in the article as what is not in the article. Say:

• The source correctly notes she finished third in such-and-such race in 1999, but doesn't note that she won the same race in 2001, so that more noteworthy fact won't be mentioned in the article.
• The source, and consequently the article, concentrates on her running career and doesn't mention that she's equally or more notable as a coach, a triathlete, a local politician, etc.
• The source omits important controversies surrounding the athlete.

In these cases what's in the stub is perfectly true, yet still gives the reader a misleading overview of the topic. This kind of thing can happen very easily with athletes, maybe more easily than with non-athletes, because databases (commonly used as the single source in athlete stubs) sometimes give an incomplete view of a subject's athletic career and almost always give an incomplete view of their life as a whole. But the other reason why it may be a bigger issue with athletes is simply that there are so many of them. Sideways713 (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Just as a general comment for brainstorming: WP:N does not require a standalone article should the GNG be met; WP:N only requires that the presumption that the GNG can be met to support a stand-alone article. What this means in another way is that we are not required to include every athlete that possibly may meet the GNG. Wikiprojects are allowed to specify SNGs purposely more stricter than the GNG if they believe that will improve their project's coverage. (As an example, over at the video games project, we developed what is now WP:NOT#GAMEGUIDE to avoid extensive strategy guide material, most which can meet the GNG but fails NOT. I will point out that WP:NOT suggests we are not simply a "Who's Who" type work, so while having the ability to document every athlete that might have ever played doesn't mean that is a feature we want. That said, finding a bar here that is above the GNG and still reasonably inclusive rather than deletionist is not a simple task at all.
  With that in mind, one of the things I do find about the current NSPORT that I've pointed out in the past is that they make presumptions on importance that while can be documented, really beg the question of whether they meet the GNG. A common one is for any professional NFL player that at least steps onto the field once. The argument, fairly enough, is that for someone to be pro NFL, they had to have had a college football career, and that college career can be documented. However, to some extent, that type of coverage could be considered rote or routine for most college players; there's definitely a few that quickly bubble to the top but with so many teams, the only type of coverage that gets every single players starts to become more localized (to the school), and more on stats than actual "content". In other words, if we took a stub for an NFL player than had an average college career, and only one game appearance before retiring, and fill out the article with their college career, we're still looking at a very weak article, content-wise, even if it is meeting WP:V, one that will likely never reach a GA or FA (which should be an ultimate goal for every article). Making this NSPORT presumption far too inclusive. Not all of NSPORT is like that, but I really do think there needs to be a re-evaluation that is going to avoid unexpandable permastubs that even if fully sourced will go nowhere.
  I don't think ditching NSPORT is right as there's far too many issues with print-only sources that the presumption of notability is needed to allow articles to expand, but there does need tightening of the loosest inclusion metrics for players. --MASEM (t) 18:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps a better place to start is expanding on the meaning of "significant coverage" in English Wikipedia's basic criteria for the notability of persons: the independent, non-promotional, non-routine, reliable secondary coverage of the subject should be sufficiently detailed that a reasonably complete overview of the person's life can be written. A reasonably complete overview includes major life events, accomplishments, and other significant influences spanning most of the person's lifetime. isaacl (talk) 18:40, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's opening a huge can of worms - such a change could be used to drive massive deletions, not just of sportspersons, and not just of minimal content stubs - "major life events, accomplishments, and other significant influences spanning most of the person's lifetime" means that the majority of biographies, even of major figures and featured articles, could be deleted because we don't have references of where the person went to school, or what they did in retirement. For example - see Robert Millar - the article of this notoriously private person contains nothing of his life post 1998. Does that mean it should be deleted? Because by strict application of this rule, it would be liable for deletion.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:06, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • A better line, but this would require a lot of thought, is the idea of avoiding people that are doing their profession in a routine manner, while while may be very visible to the world via sources, is just not necessarily an encyclopedic topic. This for NSPORTS would require recognizing that every professional player is not necessarily unique. Furthermore, this at least sets an apples-to-apples comparison between players within the same sport, or if outside NSPORTS, within the same profession (for example, not all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are necessarily notable, some are just doing their job to keep their business running). This needs a lot more thought before even going that way, but it is a possibility. --MASEM (t) 19:11, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • There appears to be a presumption in this discussion that a large proportion of articles on sportspeople MUST be deleted and that Wikipedia should have much less coverage of sport. Some people here are proposing much stricter application of GNG than would be applied to say 10th century royalty or to Politicians. This risks increasing systemic bias - by removing coverage of older (pre-internet) sportspersons, participants in less fashionable sports, participants in non-English speaking nations or of sportswomen, all of whom may suffer from any attempt to artificially ratchet up standards for sportspersons.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'm not making any presumptions either way; I rather agree that sports figures and other persons should be treated in the same manner, as much as is feasible, which is why I think it is better to look at potential changes to Wikipedia's standards for inclusion for persons. I'm just exploring what I think the crux of the issue is: some editors want to use a standard for inclusion that requires sufficient source material to make a reasonable non-stub article. I apologize for not making it clear that my suggestion was just a starting point for discussion. I toyed with language to say that articles must cover the portion of the persons' lives during which they were engaging in the activities that make them notable, but I settled on what I wrote above as a compromise. The key problem of course is how to determine what makes a reasonable non-stub. (I know it will be hard to reach any agreement as Wikipedia's version of consensus has structural issues, including an inability to scale up, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.) isaacl (talk) 00:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree - Our notability criteria are here to make sure that everything on Wikipedia is able to be verifiable and neutral. With NSPORTS and such, we are setting the bar for what we can verify and write in a neutral manner. Without this criteria, we are excluding certain people without any noticeable benefit. Thus, getting rid of this criteria will be a detriment to the encyclopedia. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 20:09, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree - We should seek to establish a high quality of articles on all athletes, but not having a great abundance of material on an athlete should not preclude us from including that person. Every major competition, MLB team &c. should be able to blue-link to players involved, since even so-called "non-notable" athletes often "get around." Editosaurus (talk) 03:57, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree, I've long believed that NSPORTS allows us to keep articles on living persons that we would not otherwise have due to a paucity of reliable sources. This has led to a situation where there are a lot of low-quality directory style entries that are not adequately maintained and create an enormous risk of serious BLP violation. I'd be in favour of wholesale repealing it and moving back to the standard that substantial non-routine coverage in reliable sources is required for sportsperson biographies. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 04:56, 24 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]
  • As discussed in the Wikipedia:Notability (sports)/FAQ, that is the standard. The sports-specific guidelines provide rules of thumb when this standard is expected to be met, but they do not replace the general notability guideline. Any AfD closers ignoring this portion of the sports-specific guidelines are substituting their own opinion for the consensus agreement that established the guidelines. isaacl (talk) 05:08, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disagree - Someone who competed at the highest level of a major sport is notable. These events receive significant coverage, both for them and the participants, and, as others have pointed out, it's useful to bluelink the participants. Smartyllama (talk) 18:16, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The general standard for a subject having an article in English Wikipedia is not based on attaining achievements, but by receiving significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources. Accordingly there is no consensus that those who compete at the highest level of a sport are inherently notable. isaacl (talk) 19:23, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • And therein lies the problem - a perfectly sensible real world definition of notability dismissed based on a guideline (WP:GNG) that is (generally) reasonable when applied to argue that a subject is notable, but absymal when used to argue that they are not. --Michig (talk) 19:32, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • The issue is that consensus doesn't scale upwards. As long as the English Wikipedia editing community tries to follow its version of consensus (which is really a straw poll followed by people trying to convince each other to change their stated view), and doesn't / can't take into account expert opinion (*), it cannot agree upon what achievements should be used to determine if a subject should have an article. Instead, it tries to evaluate the question one step removed: are there adequate sources to indicate if a subject should have an article?
      • (*) There are pros and cons to this; a pro is that English Wikipedia can more easily expand into areas not covered by other encyclopedias. A con is that editor opinions end up weighted roughly evenly, regardless of their level of familiarity with the topic in question. This particular con plus the fact that (real-world) consensus only works when the interested parties are strongly aligned in their goals are huge barriers in trying to establish an achievement-based standard for having an article on a subject. isaacl (talk) 20:43, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What happened to Content Translation from the Contributions menu item? It's not there anymore.

Endo999 (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why are you asking here? See WP:VPT#Database problem affecting ContentTranslation, Flow, and Notifications. Max Semenik (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What does tenure mean on Wikipedia? I'm asking particularly about the 30 day tenure to become extended confirmed. Does this mean I must not make any edits for thirty days? Elliot321 (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Elliot321. It means your account must be at least thirty days old (starting from your registration date) before you can become extended confirmed. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Elliot321 we have over 5 million articles that are open for anyone to edit, including yourself. We have a few thousand articles where because of problems we limit editing to more experienced editors. One level of that is extended confirmed - you certainly aren't prevented from making any edits until you have been here 30 days, you actually need 500 edits and at least 30 days before you can edit any of the fairly small number of articles protected against editing by those who aren't extended confirmed. ϢereSpielChequers 07:59, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I returned from a block recently only to discover than a lengthy draft article in my userspace Sandbox had been copied and pasted in its entirely into a livespace article. This action was performed by an editor who was eventually blocked as a sock along with 25 other socks belonging to them.

I took this matter to a project seeking to have the stolen material reverted and removed from the article's edit history to prevent it being readded until I have completed the draft and had it reviewed and made suitable for publishing.

Whilst all editors recognise that copy/pasting drafts constitues a copy violation, there is insufficent policy to revert the action in favour of the draft owner. All that can be done at present is a history merge or attributing the material in retrospect.

I do not believe this is a fair or civil practice. It sets a bad precedent. The way it stands at present, any editor or IP, whatever their standing, can go into other people's drafts, copy the material into an article and so long as they have attributed their theft to the original draft it remains in the live article's history. Theoretically, I or any anonymous dope could go round Wikipedia copy/pasting drafts into livespace – and anyone reading that and considering the effect it would have should instantly be concerned by how disruptive such behaviour could be, yet there is no policy saying anyone can't actually do it freely.

As a victim of this type of abuse I consider it a violation of an editor's rights. We should all be able to prepare drafts and have them published in our own time, not be forced to accept that our work was stolen and have to tolerate a parallel copy being used live because policy is weak or non-existent and doesn't give admins the ability to revdel such edits that are not only morally wrong, but reckless and prejudices hard-working content creators. Creating an article can be a long-term affair; it's a marathon, not a relay race or for someone to push you aside and get to the finish line instead.

The insult is greater if the account that does this kind of thing is an IP or sock. The draft may have taken hours, weeks, even months to develop. The draft may have required the editor to purchase books or material to read and use to source their references, making drafing a financial affair as well as a time-consuming comittment to Wikipedia. The editor may take their draft very seriously, it may even be a Featured Article in the making. The genuine efforts of editors creating new material in their userspace for Wikipedia should take priority over everything. No editor should have to tolerate having their efforts intruded on and stolen by another person for any reason.

I note that even WP:STALE only allows unfinished drafts to be copied or moved from a userspace into draftspace, not directly into livespace. But I also stress that whilst a user is blocked or even banned their drafts cannot be considered willingly "unfinished" or "abandoned" compared with a user who has openly retired or ceased editing for a long period and shows no signs of wanting to continue their work. WP:ABANDON appears to be a project that seeks to move unfinished drafts into livespace for others to complete, but their guidelines are also very short and don't detail a proper procedure to follow to determine if a draft is actually dead and that the editor is willing to surrender it.

Policy needs to be introduced that allows editors to defend their right to control the movement drafts, regardless of attribution. I would like to see admins being able to revert and scrub such violations as explained. Since policy needs solid grounds, I propose the following:

Since all edits must accept the CC BY-SA Licence, even in drafts, it states "In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: ... the author's moral rights;". Moral rights are defined as: "The preserving of the integrity of the work allows the author to object to alteration, distortion, or mutilation of the work that is 'prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation.'"

I believe that when an editor's drafts are taken and published without their permission, and they choose to object to the move, that it is a direct violation of their moral rights, since the intention of drafting is to create material which is gradually perfected, referenced and posible reviewed to determine its quality for publication. An editor may genuinely feel that that their honor or reputation is being violated when incomplete drafts are put into live space and are accessible to all readers, editors, mirrors, etc. In my experience, having unfinished material stolen and no process available to undo it, even when the action was taken by a sock-puppet, is detrimental. It is disconcerting that an editor acting badly and with a bad account can trump anyone because policy doesn't cover this.

Wikipedia was and is created by volunteers. If policy doesn't protect those volunteers from being violated then we alienate them. There are many copyright laws, and Wikipedia reverts thousands of copyvios each day to protect itself from claims from outside sources. But those sources aren't building Wikipedia. Editors can be copy-violated too. Attributing a stolen draft is not enough... it's like saying "you're a victim, live with it".

• The undesirable behaviour is simple: Editor X copies editor Y's draft without permission, and if he doesn't attribute it someone else has to.
• The complaint is simple: Editor X objects to having their draft taken because it's a work-in-progress and they need time to finish it, perhaps have it reviewed and verified.
• The lack of admin action is simple: WP:CWW only allows an admin to attribute the published material to the draft or histmerge. Revdel doesn't cover it.
• The solution is is obvious: Extend revdel or some other admin tool to allow stolen draft material to be removed and revdel's to preven it being reverted.

It is not hard to see why policy needs to developed. The bevaviour I have described is a form of abuse that could be disruptive to content creators and the quality of ther work, and the lack of policy is a loophole that needs better coverage in favour of editors and their efforts. Editors who wilfully steal drafts should be sanctioned. Wikipedia should not let articles be developed based on theft, this sets a bad example... and in my experience, because admins are unable to stop it they're as good as complicit in it, since they're currently required to accept rather than reverse such violations.

— Marcus^(talk) 04:03, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a loophole in policy, but rather deliberate. WP:OWN is written pretty clearly to say that though you have wide latitude over your userspace, you don't even own that. No, what you're proposing here is a totally new police that runs contrary to how the licence agreement has always been interpreted. For what it's worth, I would support deleting the type of article creation that happened here if there is a decent argument its creation was part of a trolling or harassment effort. It wouldn't be the first time pages were deleted that passed muster under every content policy and guideline, and looked fine in isolation, but were created as part of some trolling/harassment/advertising campaign. As a general rule though to cover all userspace drafts, I'm not so sure. The only perfect way to safeguard your content is to not post it to Wikipedia at all, until you're ready. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:17, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The CC-BY-SA license specifically permits copying and remixing work so long as attribution is given. I suspect (and the Creative Commons FAQ seems to agree) that even if not having your work copied is generally protected by moral rights in your jurisdiction, the fact that you specifically waive that right by licensing it under the creative commons license means that this is no longer a right you have as the author of the work.

So long as attribution is correctly done, copying work done within wikipedia is a feature, not a bug. Wikipedia is "the Free Encyclopedia", after all. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Caeciliusinhorto: – See: Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. In the box describing CC-SA see where it says that certain "above conditions can be waived". The morals rights of an author are stated below that clause, under "Other rights". Ergo, they cannot be waived. Moral rights are not affected by the CC-SA 3.0 licence, the deed specifically states that. The FAQ you linked to deals with more recent CC-SA 4.0 licence which slightly differs from the CC-SA 3.0 licence used by Wikipedia. Only under CC-SA 4.0 are moral rights waived. Under CC-SA 3.0 they are asserted. This can be confirmed in the first sentence here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/License_Versions#Treatment_of_moral_rights. Nice try though. — Marcus^(talk) 09:42, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MarcusBritish: the actually text of our license (rather than the non-binding human-readable summary) says in part Licensor agrees that in those jurisdictions (e.g. Japan), in which any exercise of the right granted in Section 3(b) of this License (the right to make Adaptations) would be deemed to be a distortion, mutilation, modification or other derogatory action prejudicial to the Original Author's honor and reputation, the Licensor will waive or not assert, as appropriate, this Section, to the fullest extent permitted by the applicable national law, to enable You to reasonably exercise Your right under Section 3(b) of this License (right to make Adaptations) but not otherwise. IANAL, and TINLA, but that seems fairly clear to me. (Additionally, wikipedia is hosted in the US, and the document you link to explicitly says that the US has very limited protection for authors' moral rights. There may be other good reasons to revdel the diffs containing your work, but arguing a legal right based on the CC-BY-SA looks like a non-starter to me. If you want proper legal analysis of this, though, you will need to ask WMF Legal. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:58, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Caeciliusinhorto: – I can't make sense of that legal gibberish terminology. Regardless, WP:Copyrights#Governing copyright law states "The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law. Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States." As a British citizen I would expect to have my nation's copyright laws respected in terms of moral rights. To be honest, I don't give a shit what the law or policy says. The material I created will become part of Wikipedia one day anyway, this is a matter of choice. I may not WP:OWN the online page, but the time and effort IS mine, ant I feel just as violated as if someone had burgled my home. I just want to finish the fucking this first, in my own time, without an incomplete and partly-inaccurate parallel copy running live, even in the article's history. The fact that a mass-sock-puppet violated my draft is more annoying than anything. There is no justice when a moron of that level of abuse of socking that can get away with this and everyone still say "policy is normal". — Marcus^(talk) 12:11, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how your suggested policy is workable. Firstly, everything contributed to Wikipedia is licensed under the CC-BY-SA, and so it would be impossible to prevent people off-wiki from basing work off of your draft, even if Wikipedia were to implement your suggested policy. Secondly, this would set up a situation in which unlike anything else anywhere in Wikipedia, it would be possible to own articles in draftspace. Wikipedia is meant to be free (libre) as much as possible; I find it hard to believe that restricting that is going to get buy-in without a very compelling reason.

Another issue is that it's not at all clear where this policy should end. If this goes through, what is to stop me saying that an article I have contributed to in article-space is not yet ready, and I want an admin to revdel every revision which I have contributed to? A Wikipedia where my work can be deleted because a prior contributor to the article has decided that they don't like it any more is not a Wikipedia I would want to put my energy into working on, and I suspect I wouldn't be alone in that.

If you don't want your work to be distributed until you feel it is ready, the simplest and best solution is not to put it on Wikipedia until it is ready. No amount of Wikipedia policy-making is going to prevent others from using your work if you publish it on one of the most visited websites in the world under a free license. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Caeciliusinhorto: – Sorry, but your "what if" scenario doesn't make sense. It reads as a bit of a Strawman to me. How can an editor claim any article they contributed to is "not ready" and have it deleted? I'm talking about specific cases of an editor taking someone's draft in-progress and using it in or as an article. That would be evidenced in the diffs, an admin would be able to compare a draft and article and the edit dates and see that someone took someone elses work, then revdel it. It ends there. What you're talking about doesn't relate to my proposal a tall, it just obfuscates it by creating alternative scenarios that are off-tangent. And still you push the "ownership" argument which I did not make; I've already said this is not about granting anyone full ownership of content, but the right to choose when their draft is suitable for live publishing. It's a different concept altogether. There's a difference between atempting to own an article in live-space and awarding editors the right to have their efforts respected so that anonymous trolls or thieving socks don't go round undermining the hard work people do here. So whatever nonsense you're suggesting you "wouldn't be alone in here" wasn't the issue being discussed, please don't introduce alternative problems to cloud the issue and drive a circular argument. I'm not sure that you're grasping the human-side of Wikipedia and the efforts people go to to produce content, since you're more focused on the cold legal text which doesn't have the ability to recognise all situations or that Wikipedia can't work if legalities prevent editors from working on material without being "raped" and forced to deal with it rather than complain. I would even go so far as to say that your dismissal of any form of draft-protection creates a more obvious "ownership" agenda. When someone steals a draft and it cannot be revdel that's as good as Wikipedia saying "we own it now, your former efforts mean nothing to us". A very one-sided and ugly affair. You act like my proposal is a threat to people, when it would simply offer those working on drafts a stronger copyright, moral rights. Since those already exist in the CC-SA 3.0 text then it is simply Wiki putting it into policy instead of ignoring it all together in favour of something less productive. The policy doesn't exist yet because it turns a blind eye, and that's disgusting considering how many hours all of us at the bottom here put into creating articles for a free site. Moral rights are a fundamental concern, not a trivial irritation. When you don't give volunteers basic rights and respect their work you lose those volunteers, it's simple maths... — Marcus^(talk) 21:03, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I would suggest a compromise.... allow draft articles to be copied from a user's userspace... but only from userspace into draftspace (not into mainspace). This will ensure that drafts originating in userspace undergo the same review and approval process as drafts that originate in draftspace, and that proper attribution is given to the original author. It would also give the original author time to state objections and concerns. Blueboar (talk) 10:05, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, but some thought should be given to contacting an editor first to make sure there are no objections. They may be blocked, on a hiatus from Wikipedia, working on the draft offline, suffering a long-term illness, or simply pre-occupied with other things in life like their job, studies, health or family issues. They may even have lost internet access. To simply snatch a draft from anyone without consideration for the editor is unwarranted behaviour and might even discourage people from wanting to bother anymore, it is anti-social and anti-community which is what Wiki is based on since no one can create articles and attain GA/FA standards alone. Trust me, it is a very discouraging experience to have hard work swiped by some socking twat that you can't even contact and give some deserved abuse because they're long since blocked... I know there are editors who often work on several drafts at once. Imagine if some shit copied all of them to livespace without warning... how pissed would you be? — Marcus^(talk) 11:48, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

MarcusBritish if you're legitimately concerned that the article may contain numerous errors due to it being an unfinished draft, surely that alone should be grounds for any administrator with sense to delete it, especially if you're planning to complete a more accurate version. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 10:32, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Trust me, I've tried... no admin seems to have the balls to apply a revdel. They're too bureaucratic. All those admins who claim to have tools for the community and not themselves... don't believe it. When an admit prefers to wiki-lawyer and cite CC-licensing crap in favour of some cheeky bastard with 26 blocked socks who steals people's work it's s shit state of affairs and defies all logic. WP:REVERTBAN probably should have instantly applied here, without even worrying about the copyvio issues, but my complaint falls on conveniently deaf ears. The "politics" of Wikipedia has never been good to editors, which is why so few of the original breed remains, since policy has been so over-developed and is too often used a nuclear option over logic and fairness. I legitimately do not feel that anyone will give a shit about the situation until it happens to them or someone with a high profile. Hard work should be rewarded. Bad faith behaviour should be investigated and action taken. When hard work is prematurely stolen it's hard to focus since those who allowed the material to be stolen can only do one of two things when the work is complete: ignore it altogether or be patronising, knowing they should have acted earlier to make the end result more rewarding for the editor. It's hard to appreciate admins who can't think or act for themselves... policy isn't gospel. — Marcus^(talk) 11:48, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• This is a classic example of Hard cases make bad law. Make no mistake, what happened to Marcus and the text he wrote is wrong. It is also, as far as I can tell, a sui generis form of trolling, and as such, I'm not sure what policy we need to fix it. Creating general policy to deal with one-off or exceedingly rare behaviors is bad. So yeah, we can all agree that this shouldn't have happened. "Shouldn't have happened" is not a synonym for "We need a rule." --Jayron32 16:49, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I propose amending the biographies of living persons policy to avoid misrepresenting people. I think that there should be a rule prohibiting editors from labeling a person differently than they describe themselves. In other words, we shouldn't say that Caitlyn Jenner is a man even though she describes herself as a woman, we shouldn't say that Richard Spencer is a white supremacist even though he rejects that label, we shouldn't say that Donald Trump is a liberal even though he obviously is not. (Those are all just hypothetical scenarios). Even if sources describe a person differently, I think that their own self-description should outweigh everything else. That way, we can avoid controversy and accusations of defamation (NOT a legal threat). In a nutshell, I think that if someone rejects a certain label, we shouldn't call them by that label on Wikipedia, no matter what. My proposal is flexible and I'm all ears to anyone willing to comment. Let me know what you guys think. THE DIAZ 00:18, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

This is partly already the case; see MOS:IDENTITY, and particularly the subsection on gender, which covers the first example. But as for the second and third: If Richard Spencer is described as a white supremacist by reliable sources, that's what we have to go with, it would be original research to claim otherwise; same for Donald Trump. We can't just change Wikipedia articles because the subject doesn't like some terms we use. Sam Walton (talk) 00:25, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I concur here with Sam Walton above. Otherwise, we are pretty much promoting blatant lies. If I were to say that I have blue hair, for example, and I don't, then I should not be described as having blue hair. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 00:47, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While we should respect self-identification, and mention it where appropriate, we should also respect what reliable sources say about a person and mention that. Blueboar (talk) 01:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with all the above. Self-description is a factor to weigh, certainly. But naturally people tend to self-describe in a positive light that is not always accurate. Re Richard B. Spencer for instance, after some discussion and checking of sources, it was decided that it was accurate to describe him as a white supremacist ("promotion of the belief, that white people are superior...to people of other racial backgrounds"). As a practical remedy, if he doesn't like being described that way here or generally, IMO he should first think twice about doing stuff like tweeting "For the White race, it's never over" after the Patriots Super Bowl comeback. And so forth. Herostratus (talk) 02:15, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While we do need to concern ourselves with inflated self-assessment, we should also be fully aware that labels like "white supremacist" are very very subjective and show not be used as a "factual" identification no matter how many sources label the BLP as such, particularly in today's current political enviornment. It is one thing that years after a person has died, that the broad consensus of sources agree that a person is a white supremacist, at which point that would be reasonable (avoiding RECENTISM issues), but while they are alive, and particularly if they contest the label, that's a different matter. Addressing that sources call that person a "white supremacist" (eg in-line attribution) along with any counterclaims made by the person if they exist, that's fine, but BLP and LABEL is very clear about avoiding saying these as fact while they are alive. --MASEM (t) 03:14, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:LABEL actually says "and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject". Thus, you are correct in some cases, but in others, where consensus in reliable sources is clear, you are incorrect. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits|

I'm not saying that labels can't be used when there are a lot of sources using that label towards a BLP, but we should still avoid using that as a term of fact in WP's voice, and at least ascribe it as popular opinion of the person, particularly if the person or other RSes have denied/countered the claim. Labels are contentious (moreso if they are contested), and per WP:YESPOV, they should be presented as attributed claims. There is far less harm for WP to take this middle-ground approach than stating a label as fact if the person is still alive. --MASEM (t) 03:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Another issue I take with the Richard B. Spencer page is the fact that it says Richard B. Spencer is a white supremacist, but it later acknowledges that he rejects that label. Calling him that and then acknowledging that he doesn't like that term just doesn't seem very encyclopedia-like. THE DIAZ 05:11, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Sam Walton, maybe their statement of self-identification should be required to be backed up by a reliable source? It doesn't seem like it'd be original research if that were the case. THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 02:33, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. That is equally stupid. Just because a reliable source says that I say that my hair is blue does not mean that my hair is blue. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 03:09, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In general, using self-description in most cases is POV. We do not write anything, not even BLPs, in the subjects POV. Nor to we take for granted what they say about themselves. As an example, if they describe themselves as a famous writer in their website, it doesn't settle the matter. We could probably report that they say this about themselves, but whether it is an accurate description depends on the 3rd party evidence. There are exceptions, and this proposal would properly limit itself to those exceptions. For a living person, we do not describe the sexuality or religion or national identification differently from the way they do it. These are areas where courtesy does over-ride NPOV to a limited extent, for the period of their lives. I say "courtesy" but I mean much more than that: doing otherwise offends our fundamental sense of human integrity. For famous people where such matters are discussed by truly reliable objective sources we can discuss it carefully and sensitively in the article, but our basic description for such things as lede paragraphs while they are alive must be what they self-identify with. But that's already policy. It did take a longer to establish it as accepted policy than it should have, but is's been done--I think it was the discussions about the article on Manning which finally clarified it, and I think all responsible publications now do similarly. If there are cases where it hasn't been followed, the BLP noticeboard is the place to correct it. Policy is clear about this. DGG ( talk ) 04:44, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@ DGG Maybe we could add political views to those exceptions? THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 19:51, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. What if Hitler, say, were still alive and rejected the label Nazi, then should we not describe him as a Nazi? No, that would be incorrect. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:55, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well he was a member of the Nazi party. That really doesn't fall into his political views per se. Still I don't believe anyone knows their political views other than themselves. THE DIAZ ^{talk • contribs} 17:27, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We aren't contesting who knows who's beliefs better, we (or supporters of this) are contesting if labels, names applied to those who perform specific behaviours, should be used when the subject disagrees with them. And I mentioned Hitler just as a random example, even though it wasn't a very good one. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:40, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose whatever this is trying to do outside of MOS:IDENTITY. The header and first two sentences are a form of circular reasoning. "Labeling people correctly" does not mean "labeling a person differently than they describe themselves" is "misrepresenting people". Examples noted above and Doublespeak Award is worth a read. Bluntly, Wikipedia is not another social media platform subjects can use to burnish/soften/shape their public image. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:26, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re-reading Wikipedia:Notability (events), I wonder how effective the guideline is for current events and past events that were "current" events at the time. WP:RAPID mentions that AfD nominations are inevitable and recommends holding off AfD noms, but it's not very effective after seeing so many AfD noms lately. Also, Wikipedia talk:Notability (events) is last visited in 2015, excluding one discussion that I started. What to do with the guideline? --George Ho (talk) 06:00, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Leave it alone and go work on some articles.--Jayron32 06:10, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He's my first LinkedIn block. He's made it clear that nothing he says will make sense — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 06:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that Wikipedia:Expert retention/Burden of proof failed. So, when there's a debate about whether to include content in Wikipedia, on whom is the burden is proof? Let's suppose we're in the WP:BRD cycle. When it gets to the discussion part, and the bold user says, "I propose that we include x in this article," can the reverting user, by simply saying "I disagree; see WP:XYZ" effectively stall the process? Because if the bold user comes back and says, "I read it but don't see anything that backs up your point," the reverting user can always say, "Re-read it more carefully, then. You need to learn the rules thoroughly before interfering in potentially contentious matters."

As I was pointing out at Wikipedia:Don't just cite a page of rules; cite the relevant part of the rule and explain how it applies to the specific situation‎, we see a lot of non-arguments like "See WP:XYZ" these days. St. claires fire (talk) 14:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In reality it almost never comes down to a 1v1 situation. There are always options to get a third (4th or 5th) opinion. But in the event it comes down to editor A saying 'I think the article should include this' and editor B saying 'no it shouldnt', absent a tie-breaker of some sort, the status quo reigns. The changes to the article have not gained consensus amongst those editing the article. If you find yourself in a dispute with someone who wont explain their use of a particular policy/guideline/essay to you, then seek a third opinion. I *most* of the time explain when I cite a policy - depending on the experience of the user on the recieving end. Some editors however should know better, there is a minimum intelligence level to be expected of long-term editors who are *expected* to be familiar with the main policies and guidelines. They tend to get less of an explanation. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:21, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I concur fully with what Only says (and I also generally explain application of policy — though, ironically, I'm not going to do so this time), but would also point you to this section of the Consensus policy which sets the burden of proof you're asking about though, perhaps, not absolutely. It's also important to remember that under wiki practice "no consensus" is a perfectly acceptable result. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:43, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As far as including material, it is up to the person including it to cite it properly: uncited material can always be removed, so in practice, although it would be nice if people may some effort to find those citations, it's obviously detrimental to protect material from criticism by those who don't have the time or the means to do the work the inserter should already have done. As to whether the material is appropriate, or whether the authorities provided are accurate: that, as they say above, would tend to involve appeal to others for a larger discussion. Mangoe (talk) 16:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]