Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) (WP:VPR)

Yesterday I helped someone to start editing in Wikipedia. Creating an account is a breeze, but when he started editing he is presented with the text editor, instead of the Visual Editor. Text Editor is good and have its uses, but for newer editor it is better to present them with Visual Editor, as it is created to be user friendly and really show changes that you intended. Editing through Text Editor for newer editor may be off putting, as many may just want to do minor changes (maybe add a single line in a table, change the number of things, etc.) and "learning" the wiki markup may be too much for them. I understand that changing it in Preferences is trivial for many of us, but for many new editors this can be quite hard. This can be changed easily by making "Always give me the visual editor if possible" default. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)  Strong support, as in "this could be one of the most important changes Wikipedia makes" support. To a new user, the wikitext editor is terrifying and bloated. To an experienced user, it can still be bloated. I'm fairly competent with wikitext, but I still use the visual editor for most purposes simply because the wikitext editor is too much to wade through unless you're making a really technical edit. I genuinely think Wikipedia would have a much larger user base contributing if the visual editor was the default. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC) According to Wikipedia:VisualEditor this is already the case. CMD (talk) 03:57, 31 January 2023 (UTC) For an IP editor, the default is the wikitext editor, but it gives a pop up asking if you want to switch to the visual editor, which I imagine is meaningless to most users. I suppose it's not quite the same thing as a new account (and SunDawn might want to look into it to see where the discrepancy is), but visual editor definitely needs to be more accessible. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:20, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose. The WMF has been persistently and attempting to force this, despite the fact that they have data showing that defaulting into VisualEditor is harmful. There of course are some people who prefer VE, but the objective data shows the overal impact is negative. The WMF has been resistant to collecting good data on this, but I can report what we do have. If you examine the graph at the right, you'll find that the Desktop Wikitext Editor has approximately DOUBLE the retention rate as Desktop Visual Editor, and that Mobile Wikitext also has about DOUBLE the retention rate as Mobile Visual Editor. That is a pretty staggering difference. From the published graph we cannot tell whether Visual Editor is causing half of editors to quit editing entirely, or whether users given VE-by-default merely abandon VE to use the Wikitext editor instead, or more likely some mix of both. Regardless, the data is extremely damning.Nearly 4 years ago they started work on a mobile-default test. They still have not released any results, however if you dig through the comments of various related tasks it is clear that the results were a disaster for VE. A VE-default on mobile was clearly driving away a significant percentage of edits, and possibly driving away editors. They have been working off-and-on repeatedly shifting the goalposts on that project, trying to get better results. Nearly 4 years, and they still haven't released actual data.Important final note: Never believe any claimed "Edit Completion Rate" data. The raw data for VE is so bad that the WMF concocted this specific term and defined it in such a way as to inflate the apparent success of VE. The "Edit Completion Rate" is defined such that every Wikitext-activation that does not result in a saved edit counts as a "failed edit", but a substantial portion of equivalent VE "failed edits" are simply discarded from the dataset and ignored. That artificially inflates the claimed "VE-success" percentage.When the VE project was first conceived the WMF internally hyped it as so insanely-awesome that pur biggest problem would be handling the overwhelming flood of new users. The WMF diverted an absolutely excessive percentage of all development time&dollars on this agenda (VE itself, Flow, replacing the translation-editor, attempting to eliminate our wikitext editor in favor of a wikitext mode inside VE, ongoing work to replace our wikitext engine, and various other work). People's paycheck was literally dependent on producing positive results. It resulted in an almost cult-like level of confirmation bias, internally cheerleading and wildly hyping anything that could remotely be interpreted as positive for VE while all unfavorable information and data vanishes down the Memory hole. Nearly 4 years researching VE-on-mobile and we still don't have any published results. I have asked the WMF to preform equivalent research getting solid data on the effect of a VE-default on desktop, but no-go. The retention graph I posted is the best we've got, and that's ambiguous whether VE actively drives new users away or whether it "merely" drives users to flee to Wikitext instead. Alsee (talk) 12:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC) (Some vote timestamps are out of order due to auto-resolved edit conflict.) I don't agree with your assessment of the data shown in the graph. The caption reads, emphasis added: This includes all logged-in users who made an edit at any time, on any wiki, between October 2017 and March 2018, regardless of the number of edits made before the study started.  This graph does not show overall retention rates for new accounts. Edits in four editing environments were measured:  the 2010 WikiEditor, VisualEditor's visual mode, the MobileFrontEnd wikitext editor, and the MobileFrontEnd visual editor.  It excludes all edits using VisualEditor's 2017 wikitext mode, [...] All manual "Undo" actions are counted as "using" the 2010 WikiEditor. Users who used multiple editing environments are counted separately for each editing environment.  Therefore, each user can appear up to four times in this graph. If a primary user of VisualEditor uses the undo button frequently, then they are counted as a "retained" user of the 2010 WikiEditor. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 12:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC) I agree that the available data isn't exactly the data we need. I said it's the best available data, and that it's pretty damning. The result was disastrous when they tried collecting data for VE-on-mobile. How about we agree that we shouldn't be making such a critical change like this unless-and-until we actually do collect data on what effect changing the desktop default has? I have requested the WMF collect this data, and they declined. I'm all for a formal community request that the WMF do a proper test on this. Alsee (talk) 12:55, 31 January 2023 (UTC) "How about we agree that we shouldn't be making such a critical change like this unless-and-until we actually do collect data" If the situation we're complaining about wasn't justified with data, why should a change to it require that justification? Is the current situation (that in effect, new editors get locked into VE or wikitext almost at random) even the result of a consensus? MartinPoulter (talk) 13:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC) I just realized - this isn't even a proposal to change the default editor. This is vastly worse. This is actually a proposal to move away from the "remember my last editor". People who actively choose to use the Wikitext editor would get screwed waiting for VE-to-load and then switch to wikitext on EVERY edit, unless/until the locate preference item to fix this. I likely would have quit editing before I discovered there was a way to fix it. Alsee (talk) 13:07, 31 January 2023 (UTC) The problem is not for prominent editors like you or me - but for newer editors. Experienced editors have the knowledge and the time to go to their own Preferences (which took less than a minute) but newer editor, in my opinion, will immediately be confused by the text editor and stopped contributing. They don't know that Wikipedia have a very user-friendly UI at VisualEditor. They will think that the only way to edit is through this confusing text editor. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:45, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Support. I'm not sure why, but during a recent edit-a-thon at least one new logged-in editor was unable to use VisualEditor, and it us 5 minutes in Preferences to show both editing tabs. VE is easier for beginners. Femke (alt) (talk) 12:18, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong support. This is a solid way to make Wikipedia user-friendly and increase the pool of willing contributors. DFlhb (talk) 12:23, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong support. Visual editor is the more friendly option for new editors, so we should enable it by default. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 12:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Support Despite some long-term attempts to continue forcing wikitext on new editors, it is extremely clear that VE is the more welcoming and easy to understand editing environment. I use it more often than wikitext when editing articles, and have not once in recent years considered wikitext an improvement when trying to explain how to edit to a new editor. Sam Walton (talk) 12:47, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong Support I also have been recently running training events for new editors and am having the same problem that it is very easy for them to get locked into the wikitext editor without realising that the visual editor is an option. Fixing that involves taking them to their preferences and is a speed-bump on the whole training process. That's with in-person training; it's exponentially harder to fix this when training remotely. It shouldn't be so hard for new users to access something which has been created to make the experience easier for them. MartinPoulter (talk) 13:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Whoa. Why not give them VA as the editor on their first edit, but "Remember my last editor" as the default? Why force them back to VE even after they have switched to edit with wikitext? If they found the switch once, they will find it in the opposite direction as well if and when they want it. Fram (talk) 13:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC) I do agree with this. It didn't break "last editor used" but it provided a good interface for new editors. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:55, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose: Alsee has articulated this much better than I could've, so there's that, but I'll add extra. Ever wondered why we teach young kids do addition/subtraction when we all have calculators today (smartphone ones included)? The problem with Visual editor is that it is not univerally compatible to all pages, try editing the tables at United States congressional delegations from New York, for example. To edit them, you need advanced knowledge of wikitext. And to gain that advanced knowledge, you need to gain basic knowledge first, which is gained by editing normal prose. And that isn't hard. My first Wikipedia edit was made when I was in 1st grade (≈6 year old) as an IP. I could understand the wikitext logic and implement it to write prose and construct wikilinks. Is the next generation going to be dumber? No one is taught wikitext syntax in schools or colleges, people learnt it as they edited Wikipedia and that has kept the site running smoothly for about two decades. When we default to VE, and people may start using it for basic editing, they fail to acquaint themselves with the wikitext logic, which will hurt them make complicated edits where visual editor fails. Even today, most complicated templates/modules are maintained by a few old guards who familiarised themselves with wikitext/lua, a level of familiarisation which the newer generation of editors has probably not achieved. No one here will be here forever, and newer editors should be encouraged to use wikitext, rather than be served with VE on a silver platter. I know this is a controversial opinion of mine and will probable lose at the end, but I genuinely consider it to be detrimental to the future of the project. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 13:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC) The way I see it, if editors didn't understand wikitext, that is still fine by me - as long as they are able to edit constructively. In my case, my friend just want to add a single information. Forcing him to "learn" wikitext took time, as he will have to read about how to cite properly in wikitext, find the "location" he wanted to edit in the middle of the jumbled things he didn't understand, and so on. While if he got VE, he could just see it, use the cite button, let Wikipedia handle the citing, and he is finished. There are many other scenario. Someone stumbling into a typo on an article can fix it easily if he use VE, while if he see the complexity of text editor, he may be afraid that he broke something then he did nothing. In short, for most editors, I didn't think the knowledge of text editor is necessary. If they are interesting in doing more for Wikipedia, they will learn that text editor offered more, and learn. But if they just want to fix small mistakes and add small bits of information, that should be fine as well. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC) This sounds like an argument to import the cite button into the wikitext editor. CMD (talk) 17:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Conditional Oppose if this is going to end up breaking the "remember my last editor" option - users should get a consistent experience. — xaosflux Talk 14:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Let's say we use Fram's input - keep the "remember last editor" while change the default editor for newer editor to VE, would you reconsider your position? My objective is not break the current "remember last editor", but to make VE default for newer editor. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:59, 31 January 2023 (UTC) @SunDawn: I marked that as conditional. I haven't created a brand-new account just to test this, but if I recall correctly the the current default is "Ask me what I want to use" with a big pop up box, isn't it? — xaosflux Talk 16:55, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Good question.  Does anyone know the current default?  I assumed it was wikitext.  If it's a pop-up box then I'll change to oppose because a choice is better for editors who can handle wikitext and raises awareness of the "real" editor for newbies. Certes (talk) 17:24, 31 January 2023 (UTC) The current default for IPs appears to be the wikitext editor covered by a large "Welcome to Wikipedia" banner which has a "Switch to the visual editor" button and a "Start editing" button. If this is also the case for new editors, then Wikipedia:VisualEditor is wrong and this list is misleading or bugged. CMD (talk) 17:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC) That's what I recall seeing when making my first logged-in edit on other wikis.  If it's also true for enwp, perhaps all we need do is reword the buttons to something more equal like "Edit using Visual Editor" and "Edit as wikitext".  One of the buttons is highlighted by default; we may want that to be VE rather than Wikitext.  Certes (talk) 18:35, 31 January 2023 (UTC) The way I recall it (when assisting someone new editing) is that they are immediately represented by text editor. The "edit" beside the heading is "edit source", and he is immediately taken to to the text editor. I didn't recall him given the option between VE and text editor. Of course, the sure way to know is to create another account to test it by ourselves. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:49, 1 February 2023 (UTC) Whether you see one tab or two, and if you see one, which one you see, depends on your prefs settings. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC) Conditional support, only if editors are prominently offered a simple and persistent way to opt out of VE. Certes (talk) 16:19, 31 January 2023 (UTC)  It's complicated: see my comment above. Certes (talk) 18:38, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Comment  By adding an obscuring layer which is obscure itself, I suspect that visual editor does more harm than good for about 90% of editors.   But it might be a good default for the 10% which is those who are just starting.North8000 (talk) 17:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose. Even on fast machines, the visual editor has a very perceptible lag. If you want to encourage people to continue editing, that is going to be a negative. --Trovatore (talk) 18:01, 31 January 2023 (UTC) @Trovatore I've not seen any "very perceptible lag" with VE recently on my machines - when do you experience it? Sam Walton (talk) 18:18, 31 January 2023 (UTC) To be fair, I'm probably thinking of "realtime preview".  But it would be surprising if VE were less laggy than that.  Is it? --Trovatore (talk) 18:23, 31 January 2023 (UTC) @Trovatore Realtime preview is a niche feature that new editors probably won't use, and it has to be laggy by design, as I understand it. Rendering wikitext into a preview takes time so it can't happen instantly. There needs to be some delay between the preview updates. VE itself, in terms of actually editing articles, is almost completely lag-free for me. Sam Walton (talk) 18:32, 31 January 2023 (UTC) OK, withdrawn.  It looks like I misunderstood the proposal anyway. --Trovatore (talk) 19:57, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Generally support - But this thread is already a bit confusing. It would help to revise the top part to state clearly what the current situation is and what specifically would change. VE is already the default for new users AFAIK, as it should be. As I understand it, this would address a specific issue: people switching to the wikicode editor and not understanding how to get back. If my understanding is correct, I definitely support it. Alternatively, we could replace the unclear toggle button that nobody ever thinks to click with a bright line that says "GET ME BACK TO VISUAL EDITING MODE" unless you disable that in prefs. My engagement with new users has largely been through edit-a-thons and university classes. When I started with those activities, wikicode was still the standard. VE existed, but wasn't very good yet, and I had everyone working in wikicode. It was fine, and I still use wikicode most of the time. At some point some years back, though, VE got good. Using VE during events/classes was -- and I don't like using this term -- a game-changer. It presented a learning curve that took time to get over, and people used to just run away from editing and/or never really got comfortable. Using VE means newbies can get right into editing and spent their learning time focused on things like wikipolicy, citations, style, etc. rather than syntax. Sure, we still talk about wikicode for talk pages, but with the reply tool, even that's less needed. In short, moving newbies away from wikicode has been an incredible boon for new user engagement in my experience, and now one of the most frequent questions I get is "I think I did something wrong; how do I get back to what we used before" when people accidentally find themselves in the wikicode editor. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:02, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Last I checked, when an IP makes their first edit, they are taken to the source editor and then get a dialog box asking if they want to switch to the visual editor. Has this changed? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:00, 1 February 2023 (UTC). Comment I would support a far clearer way of switching between the two. When I first started I found VE couldn't do what I was try to do, switch to wikicode and never looked back. However a couple of times I mistakenly switched back to VE, and had to spend 10 minutes trying to work out how to switch back. Hiding the option behind a very unclear toggle is bad UI design. Having a large "back to VE" would be a bad idea, as any IP editor using wikicode wouldn't be able to get rid of it using preferences. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:36, 31 January 2023 (UTC) I'm slightly unsure about what's being discussed here. As far as I'm aware VE is the default, yet editors are supporting making it the default. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)Support making VisualEditor default. Now that it works well and reliably I tend to use it over source editing unless I'm adding an infobox template or something like that, an activity that new editors are unlikely to be doing. VisualEditor is much more accessible and is capable of performing most edits nowadays. There's quite a few tables across wikipedia that should be altered to make them easier to edit with VisualEditor.Garuda3 (talk) 22:27, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Oppose When you start users on the VE as the default, they will basically never learn to edit the source in proper wikitext.  I'd rather have users who come in and get familiar with wikimarkup from the get-go, and then once they get some experience, they can later decide to activate the VE.  I'd rather not create a breed of new editors who don't know how to manually add a template or an infobox or troubleshoot a badly formatted table, or whatever.  There's value in learning to work in the markup, and if we start people on the VE, we basically create an artificial barrier to advancement in Wikipedia to true competence, which is likely to be as, if not more, frustrating than learning to write in wikimarkup from the start.  --Jayron32 16:31, 2 February 2023 (UTC) Oppose until VE is significantly improved. You almost need to have a better understanding of wikitext for using VE than for SE if you want to avoid breaking links and removing semantic templates. Syntax highlighting should definitely be made default though, as without it reference and template bloat can get in the way of the content of the article. – small jars tc 10:47, 5 February 2023 (UTC) Support. I don't believe that markup is inherently off-putting to 'ordinary users'. It wasn't ten years ago when BBCode was everywhere and it isn't now when Markdown is everywhere. But wikitext was never the cleanest markup language to begin with and now that the average article starts with a wall of templates and long embedded references, it clearly is off-putting. This isn't 2013: VisualEditor works fine, offers a kind of distraction-free writing interface that lets you focus on prose, makes it easier to add and format references, and if they find its limits new users can easily switch to source editing. It would be nice to have some hard (and up to date) data on how the switch might impact editor retention before making a permanent change, though. – Joe (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2023 (UTC) I sorta see your point, and I remember ten years ago BBCode was used on forums etc, but even those have some technical barrier. On sites used by 'very ordinary users' like Facebook, I think there were still WYSIWYG editors. I use Markdown on sites like GitHub but on 'normal sites' not geared at technically proficient people I don't recall using Markdown or any other language, it's usually either plaintext editors with no syntax support, or WYSIWYG editors. (with the caveat that my memory might be selectively omitting normal sites using BBCode/markdown!) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC) on 'normal sites' not geared at technically proficient people I don't recall using Markdown or any other language – I don't share this experience. I thought the asterisks and underscores used in youtube comments where pretty well known. Discord also has rich text markup and escape codes. They even have little codes for creating emojis in comments on Scratch, a website used mainly by children. [1]. None of this is quite as complex as wikitext, but I don’t think that very ordinary users are yet so dependent on WYSIWYG that the difference is going to be deterring. small jars tc 18:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC) I suppose asterisks and underscores are well known, yes. I guess they're in WhatsApp also. Though IME most people do not use them, I think because they aren't aware how they work. I think Discord does target itself at a relatively technical audience, certainly more-so than Wikipedia. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:57, 8 February 2023 (UTC) Strong support - I didn't even realise VE isn't the default for unregistered users. It should be IMO; in 2023 the average user does not want to write wikitext/raw syntax, is not used to doing so (think the avg site a normal person uses), and even techy users who don't use WYSISYG editors tend to use markup languages that are much simpler than wikitext (e.g. Markdown). As for preferences, it'd be ideal if the choice persisted, and maybe that will happen (n.b. the persisting of fixed/full width opening the door on that), but even without that I think it's better to have VE as the default. Even I use VE to write articles, and not the wikitext editors, and I'd consider myself more technically proficient and used to wikitext than the average person. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC) Can we make showing both editing tabs the default for new editors instead? I don't see any reason that this would harm people, and it would give a nice easy button to choose which editing mode you want to use. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 00:08, 9 February 2023 (UTC) Going back to two edit tabs, one for each editor, is a very reasonable solution. Note that the WMF imposed the change to a single edit tab without consensus or consulting the community. Here's the MWF's announcement. They unilaterally declared that they are going to drop from two edit links to just one. Alsee (talk) 12:05, 10 February 2023 (UTC) Well... that's extremely silly of them, especially given that on many other Wikimedia wikis there are two tabs. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC) Strange. I am editing id.wikipedia today and they have two edit tabs - one for VE and one for wikitext. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC) @Red-tailed hawk @SunDawn I can explain the mess of wikis with random edit tab configurations. I'll try to keep this shortish. The WMF manager who came up with the single edit tab idea has been pushing an agenda to force everyone into VE. I spotted the single-tab project when he first started work on it. He assured me he wouldn't try to impose a VE-default without asking the community first. He then deployed an effectively stealth VE default - not visible to the existing community. He failed to respond to messages and Notifications in multiple places - for weeks. I had to escalate the issue to the Executive Director, she had to summoned him to answer to me. He claimed it was a "bug" and, to the Executive-director's-face, he assured us he'd fix it. He again disappeared, silently didn't fix it, when pressed later he admitted the "bug" was his plan all along, and declared he would not fix it. ANI ruled it's not uncivil to say a manager "lies" when the charge is supported by evidence. Three wikis rebelled with EnWiki and another Wiki writing hacks to the sitewide javascript to override his code. We came one step short of a second superprotect incident. Instead he relented and those three wikis were changed. He then abandoned the project part way through his attempted global-deployment, leaving the global wikis with randomly differing configurations. Alsee (talk) 05:36, 16 February 2023 (UTC) So, if there was never consensus to implement it here, and the code exists for other wikis why not just open an RfC to ask the WMF to add the second tab here? This seems like a relatively simple configuration to enable, and I don't see the phab task getting rejected if an RfC were to close in favor of this—especially at this point in time. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 05:40, 16 February 2023 (UTC) Even better idea that what is suggested here. Why not have the cake and eat it?? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 15:29, 17 February 2023 (UTC) Strong support - VisualEditor is much much easier to use for casual editing than doing it via wikitext (atleast on Wikipedia, on other projects it is a different discourse). Learning an arcane markup language should not be one of the side-quests to writing an encylopedia. -- Sohom Datta (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2023 (UTC) Strong support with a but. Look, I run educational programs and each year I introduce dozens of newbies (students) to en wiki. And of course they ignore the choice prompt and half of them gets old code and they are unhappy/confused, and I have to manually help them with adjusting their preferences. This should've been the default years ago. However, I think that an even better choice is to give them "both edit tabs", so they can experiment with two modes. That's actually is what I try to get my students to have, interface wise. B/c let's face it, VE is good but editing anything template related is still a mess. (Tables suck in either version). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:15, 16 February 2023 (UTC) Support There's a lot of bad history with the visual editor, but it has made a lot of strides and is definitely a lot friendlier for a non-technical editor. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:00, 16 February 2023 (UTC) Support I recently joined Wikipedia (late June) and tbh the visual editor is much better than the text editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Roads4117 (talk • contribs) 12:13, 26 February 2023 (UTC) Support but still with the change option, oppose pure change - currently we appear to have wikitext as the default, with a big overlay asking which option people would like. I'd change that to Visual with the overlay. Options beat pure Visual, but this covers people who click out, not knowing which to go for. I don't see any reason this would involve it forgetting last selection, which obviously is more key, but the current system doesn't have any issues with it. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:10, 1 March 2023 (UTC) Give both edit tabs as described in my comments above. This will allow users to decide which editing style that they would like to use, while harming nobody. It's the best of both worlds, and it seems more sensible than trying to address this issue by tweaking the default option. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 19:43, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strong support joined Wikipedia in 2014 but immediately stopped because it was just frustrating to learn how to edit. Since visual editor was included I have found it easier to edit and then learn from while actually adding useful content and not to be bothered by formatting refs, tables, etc. It is just easier. I am sure if other new users new about this discussion you will have an avalanche of support. To  be honest, it took me a while to understand if this was actually a matter of opinion and not a fact that Virtual editor is just excellent! FuzzyMagma (talk) 13:52, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Oppose. While I agree that VE can be more easy to use for new editors, it still isn't ready to be dafault option for them. For example, when adding refs, VE automatically give them names, like ":0", ":1" and so on. And, unknown to new editors, this auto-generated names cause duplicate ref errors, harming verifiability of articles and forcing more experienced editors to clean them up. So, until this and other defiences of VE is fixed, much better option is to make default syntax highlightning, live preview and editing toolbar. a!rado🦈 (C✙T) 13:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC) @Arado Ar 196: What is the context in which the references are duplicated? Do you mean when a reference is already in use with a name that VE doesn't recognize, so it generates a new one? Is the assumption that a new user, if they overcame the learning curve to using the source editor to begin with, would know how to search for and find named references rather than add a new one anyway? Or am I misunderstanding your point? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:02, 7 March 2023 (UTC) @Rhododendrites: I mean when two different refs have same name (like that:, same refs with unique names:). My assumption is that a new user, learning to add refs with source editor, will also learn to either give them unique names or leave them unnamed. a!rado🦈 (C✙T) 05:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Source names would presumably help editors who want to edit the same page more than once. A basic source code functionality that sadly never made it to VE. Raised on Phab in 2013, 2015, and 2020, raised on the community wishlist in 2017, 2019, and now 2023. Hope springs eternal. CMD (talk) 05:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC) @Arado Ar 196, can you give me some diffs with this happening?  The visual editor should never give an new ref the same name as an existing ref. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 15 March 2023 (UTC) @Whatamidoing (WMF): Yes, in simple conditions (two refs are added in one article), VE will give them different names. Problems start when added named refs are copypasted/transcluded to somewhere else. Look here: [2]Visual edit, adding new source (1 use, so no name)+re-using source from table (VE adds ref name ":0") - All clear, no errors [3]Useful table is copypasted to new template - ref still has name ":0" [4]Visual edit, ref added with content, most likely copied from somewhere, 'cause 1 use but has name - Error occurs, because ref from templated table has same ":0" name [5] a certain editor removes ref name from template - No more error (even in old revisions, 'cause transcluded template is fixed). Pretty easy to fix when you knew where problematic ref name is, but can easily get complicated with multiple transcluded sections, like here:[6][7][8]. And all this would be prevented if VE allowed giving refs unique name when re-using them. Because unique names (like "Merck" or "RadExpMerck" in example above) are much less likely to conflict with ref names in somewhere else. a!rado🦈 (C✙T) 06:57, 16 March 2023 (UTC) Thanks, @Arado Ar 196.  Diff #3 is almost certainly a copy/paste problem, because the same editor added and re-used that ref three minutes earlier in a different article.  If the <ref name=":0"> is directly in the article, the visual editor will renumber it (diff – this was ":0" when I pasted it, but ":3" when it saved).  However, if the ref is transcluded from elsewhere (including in an infobox), it can't 'see' the existence of the ref, so the visual editor doesn't know that it needs to re-number it.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)SupportI have hardly used the text editor and still find it difficult to use "proper" wiki markup which someone seems to argue has to be the one of the text editor. I edit in the visual editor and if anyone disagrees with my wiki markups or sourcing in the visual editor I am sorry and grateful for advice. I believe we could just accept that the vast majority of wikipedia users (editors and readers) aren't programmers and would likely more easily be retained as editors if the visual editor is the default.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:25, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Support – the defects of VE are not pressing or bad enough to overrule the absolute intimidation and foreignity that the source editor will doubtlessly present to brand new editors. – Aza24 (talk) 04:42, 22 March 2023 (UTC)   === VE default discussion === Ping Femke (alt) DFlhb 0xDeadbeef to consider the WMF's research on this question, that I posted above. You posted while I was writing and digging up the cited info. Alsee (talk) 12:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)  The WMF research shows correlation, not causation. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:47, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Preface: I want to address administrators, bureaucrats, and other contributors to Wikipedia. I am not advertising anything in this message, it is just important for me to try to improve the project, to attract participants, to improve conditions for editors. "Hello everyone. I would like to address all members of Wikipedia. It's good to see everyone in this project. I believe that each of you love Wikipedia and like to spend as much time in it as you want, because doing what you love can be endless. However, you would hardly refuse financial support, a kind of "tip" for working in your favorite project. I joined the project about 5 years ago myself, and over the years I have noticed several things: once successful and energetic participants leave Wikipedia: sometimes because of burnout and other reasons, but in most cases it is due to the need to plan their lives, and not everyone has the strength, resources, time, or desire to stay. Sometimes the desire is there, but the opportunity is simply not there. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I love people who are willing to help pro bono, but I want those people to get feedback. I think editors also want "tips." I appeal to the Wikimedia Foundation and its staff: add the ability to donate financially to Wikipedia editors. Henry Ford used to pay employees for their vacations - and they worked much more efficiently. There's just one important point - donations need to be added in all language sections. Why can YouTube, Ticktock bloggers get donations from fans of their work and creativity, but not less talented Wikipedia contributors can't? All you need to do is add another button next to the "Thank you" button (the participant for the edit) - "Donate" to the participant for the edit. If you want to support me, speak up below, I've also created a Change.org petition that you can sign and help distribute (https://chng.it/CKYRQK4G). Love you all. Have a nice day.  P.S. - used the translator, sorry for any inconvenience. Алексей Старовойтов (talk) 21:43, 17 February 2023 (UTC)  As a Wikipedia editor, I don't want readers to swell my personal bank account.  What I would love is for them to have a way to donate to Wikipedia – to have their money used to fund projects editors vote for, such as addressing the huge backlog of MediaWiki bugs and enhancement requests, rather than disappear into a general WMF fund which sponsors a Ruritanian equality workshop or creates another post for an ethical diversity advisor. Certes (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2023 (UTC) I'm afraid I may have been misunderstood, so I'll correct myself a bit. I was not referring to replacing donations to the Foundation with donations to participants. It is necessary to have both. If any participant doesn't need the funds, they can redirect them to the Wikimedia Foundation. Алексей Старовойтов (talk) 22:14, 17 February 2023 (UTC) What you are saying is that you want the Foundation to employ editors, paid for by donations. Even if that's a good idea, it would be a logistical nightmare to set up(which would also be costly) and likely there would be privacy issues. 331dot (talk) 22:30, 17 February 2023 (UTC) Whatever the merits of the proposal or lack thereof, providing a micropayment system for users to contribute to individual editors would not necessarily constitute employing paid editors, but would simply create an incentive for editors to make more and higher quality edits. It’s not a bad idea. Not everyone can afford to donate their time pro bono, and even a slight deferment to offset the loss of time and effort may make enough of a difference to increase the number and diversity of editors, which I do see as a significant problem impacting the quality of the wiki and its perception in the broader community. Nathan McKnight -- Aelffin (talk) 09:09, 17 March 2023 (UTC) I'd support having a system that provided some relevant material reward to highly productive editors (counting myself in that cohort). I would guess that many of us who provide value to the project could benefit from upgrades to the equipment we use to edit, and access to sources beyond those available through the Wikipedia Library. I personally have in the past purchased reference works useful to the improvement of specific sets of articles, and have worn out several computer mouses fixing large tranches of disambiguation links (I think New York alone took about 70,000 mouse clicks). BD2412 T 23:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC) How would you define 'highly productive'? Judging by the number of high-edit-count contributors who have found themselves sanctioned or blocked/banned by the project in recent years, I'd have to suggest that a raw edit count would be a highly inappropriate metric, and I can't think of any alternative off the top of my head that wouldn't be inherently subjective. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:28, 17 February 2023 (UTC) Raw edit count isn't irrelevant though. I would also look at contribution to GAs/FAs (an area in which I am admittedly somewhat lacking), DYKs, creation and expansion of non-stub new articles. Certainly I would put the burden on anyone seeking support to show their work beyond merely "I have a high edit count", but we can set up smart enough measures of evidence. BD2412 T 04:55, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Blocking results from bad edits, and someone with a million edits has probably made more bad choices than someone with a hundred.  However, despite the occasional error, they've also added vastly more net value to Wikipedia.  That's the important metric and, although it can be hard to measure, it seems strongly correlated with edit count. Certes (talk) 11:53, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Given the number of editors blocked, banned, or sanctioned in the top end of WP:EDITS, I think you could reasonably argue that edit count is a piss-poor metric of quality or value-added to Wikipedia. It's easy to generate thousands of edits doing basically nothing if you want. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 20:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC) I'd like to echo a few things raised by other editors: 1) for obvious reasons, it might be wise if WMF was attempting to help LT contributors maintain appropriate equipment, connection, and data security, 2) purely to assist with our costs of volunteering, it would be useful for a wider array of library-like local sources like current newspapers be made available by Foundation allies, 3) the WMF might consider a wider program of grants and scholarships towards improving and encouraging the volunteer pool. My highest priority is the sustainability and survival of the program, and substantial foundation liquidity is essential to protect the mission. We also need to see Internet Archive well managed and liquid. I've raised my concerns below, but I believe opening this floodgate could be a pandora's box for Wikipedia. BusterD (talk) 17:04, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Oppose. Money, even small amounts of money, attracts bad actors and system-gamers. No issue with individual editors putting donation links on their user pages though. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:26, 21 February 2023 (UTC)We have a stop-gap half-measure, which are grants. Some of them are small. Pl wiki offers mini grants/reimbursements for stuff like buying a book or even a camera (for folks who upload photos). See meta:Grants for a start. Note that I personally think micro grants are good but I have serious concerns about abuse in large grants (TL;DR, I fear some larger grantees are inflating costs to profit while producing next to no benefit for us). But, to reiterate, I think small grants, refunding books, library access, etc. are a good thing to pursue. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:04, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Having carefully studied all the arguments, I propose possible solutions to these issues: I mean to add the ability to donate to regular editors, but not to remove the ability to donate to the Foundation. In my opinion, donations to participants will not interfere with donations to the Foundation itself. That is, readers will have a choice: to send money to the Fund or any editor, whose contribution they like. An important point: I propose that it is not the Foundation that gives donations to participants, but the readers of the project (although I do not exclude the help of the Foundation, if necessary). If some of the participants do not want to receive donations - we need to add a function that allows to refuse donations. If anyone doesn't want donations and thinks the Foundation needs the money more, we need to add a feature that allows the editor to redirect the donations to the Foundation. If some participants have money, they will have the opportunity to spend it on technical means (equipment, literature, media subscriptions, etc.) and therefore the Foundation will no longer have to spend money on grants to participants, but concentrate its attention and finances on more global and important issues. If anyone is intimidated by large amounts of donations or by turning Wikipedia into a place where many people will want to make money or will want to use donations as a payment system, it is reasonable to put a limit on the maximum amount of donations that can be sent to the editor per payment, for example about $1-$10. If by confidentiality problem you mean payment data of participants, this problem is solvable too, for example on YouTube, when you sponsor authors, you don't see their payment data, a good example. How do I know which authors should be allowed to accept donations and which should not? After all, there are authors who are detrimental and not very competent. For example, you could make it so that authors can only receive donations if they have been on the project long enough (although this measure would not solve the problem). Or it would be a special page where editors could apply for permission to accept donations. Or the ability to accept donations would be assigned at the same time as flags (e.g. "Patroller", "Administrator", "Bureaucrat"). Since these flags are not just assigned, nor are they assigned to everyone they meet, this could solve the problem. As for grants, I've already made my point, if readers can donate to participants, then participants can cover equipment costs themselves, and the Foundation would not have to spend its own money on such programs, or at least it would at least reduce the Foundation's costs for these items. And besides, my proposed donations should, in my idea, increase the number of editors who can receive financial support, since the Foundation cannot satisfy absolutely all participants with grants. Алексей Старовойтов (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2023 (UTC) The suggestions above are a roadmap to Wikipedia's social irrelevance, but I'm glad somebody said it. BusterD (talk) 07:33, 18 February 2023 (UTC)This is scary material for discussion. I'd be interested in links to previous discussions on this inevitable subject. In the hypothetical, a request for "donations" reminds me of the run of '89 (without insult all to disenfranchised First Nations people, of course, but with all of the unintended consequences). I can't be the only wikipedian who has a view of how the pedia might one day die. I'm going to take a liberty to describe my thoughts. The WMF seems to be applying pressure on editors to subscribe to a UCC as volunteers, not paid employees. As a sysop, I feel strongly I'm here by and for the community, not the foundation. From another view, many longtime regular contributors perform important work without which an online encyclopedia truly still in infancy might not survive, and many of those editors are senior human beings who could utilize the stipend. What is true is that none of us will last forever, some of us may be corrupted or co-opted (by money or pressure), and as Larry Lessig once said in a Wikimania keynote, text is becoming the new Latin. My grandchild is no longer taught to read my handwriting. It is an amazing time, and how the world's largest online experiment for getting along reacts to these forces will make for a social experiment worthy of Hari Seldon. The foundation wants to give admins, functionaries and twenty-year contributors a stipend, that's one thing. Creating a way to donate to individual editors may turn us all into paid editors, and transform Wikipedia into Twitter or Facebook, neither fully functional nor socially relevant. BusterD (talk) 07:31, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Adding a paypal me link for editors down the side of talk pages wouldn't be technically difficult if people were willing to give their email addresses and source for payment, but very few of our readers check the history of an article, and given the collaborative nature of the project singling out one editor for writing something can be difficult, particularly on core topics. I think you'd find next to nobody would send editors money individually and it would be a waste of time. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Considering the proliferation of UPE the last few years, I'm sure there are dozens of reputation protection and pr firms who'd love to legally pay editors for popular contributions. Am I the only person to see this? The "how" isn't relevant before the "if" or "why." BusterD (talk) 18:18, 18 February 2023 (UTC) No. you're not the only person to see that this is an incredibly bad idea. I can just imagine an editor saying in a discussion about what to include, "but five people paid me for this edit". No, just no. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:41, 18 February 2023 (UTC) Yes, I just wanted to add the rebuttal of - this would encourage both functional paid editing "do editing in this area, where your odds of working on content that aids my business is higher" as well as irrevocably breaking our reputation for such. If the WMF wants to directly handle acquisition of sources and such, perhaps through the Wikimedia Library, that's always good. But tips? No thanks. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:48, 20 February 2023 (UTC) I found a quarter once at a Wikipedia conference. My new pay grade. But I do wish the Foundation greatly funded full conferences, offered room and board to editors traveling to cover a topic (when one editor, okay, I'll name him, Another Believer, goes into a city he photographs and writes articles for most of the statues in that city - a wonderful use of travel time. I say fund a few trips for editors who have shown their proficiency on things like this). And, yes, full funding of events and participants in a gala VivaWikiVegas for a North American Conference, well-earned party and meet-up occasion using Foundation money saved during the covid years. The Foundation really should be funding more Wikipedia editors and projects, to the tune of 10-20 million a year for a few years. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:36, 20 February 2023 (UTC) If editors could be paid for edits then some of them would abuse it. For example, delete a large part of an article with an alternative account and restore it while claiming credit. Or make an unattributed copy to another article. Or make edits you think are popular with somebody willing and able to pay, e.g. removing negative well-sourced material about a company. Imagine articles where it becomes known or just rumored that certain types of edits are likely to get paid. I think there would be too few donors who are both willing to pay and properly judge who actually deserves pay for improving Wikipedia. "What is the chance somebody will pay for this?" should not be a thought when you make an edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose as it's open to abuse. We already have Wikimedia editathons with prizes that just encourage users to make tons of poor quality edits rather than helping the encyclopedia (e.g. an annual spam as many poor quality pictures into article challenge). Don't see how paying people to do more edits would have an actual benefit to the encyclopedia, as it would change motivation of some editors from being useful to doing as much small junk things as they can to make money. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2023 (UTC) I would support the WMF hiring people or otherwise subsidizing them to edit and/or mediate neutrally on contentious topics, subject to extensive oversight by the community itself. But I think that the model proposed here of donating directly to editors in a decentralized fashion is unlikely to work for the various reasons identified by other editors above. signed, Rosguill talk 17:54, 20 February 2023 (UTC) +1 Levivich (talk) 01:29, 21 February 2023 (UTC) NO!  This is an amazingly and stupendously bad idea.  Just say no.  Regards, GenQuest "scribble" 00:52, 22 February 2023 (UTC) If so many people can come together and contribute to a shared goal, then is paid editing ever needed? I think not. As others have said, I believe it will lead to people joining for the money, rather than joining for what we are truly here for: to create a free encyclopedia. Anything that could detract from that ultimate goal is a bad idea. Schminnte (talk • contribs) 02:53, 22 February 2023 (UTC) If people want to donate in support of the project, but don't want to donate to the Foundation, then donate to the Internet Archive or any other project that provides free access to reliable sources. I just "checked out" a book for an hour from the Internet Archive yesterday to use as a source in an article I'm working on. I also use the Wayback Machine a lot, and periodically contribute to the Internet Archive. - Donald Albury 13:34, 22 February 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose Just no. Too easy to abuse. -Kj cheetham (talk) 23:34, 22 February 2023 (UTC) Confession I've actually been soliciting donations to further my own editing. After all, obtaining sources costs money, an increasing amount of money since I started editing, & I figure I could get money in a way that did not influence the POV of what I wrote. (Examples: I've found that some of the books I need for Ethiopian & Classical History have set me back over $100, while most of the rest are at least $50 a volume. I've encountered more & more a charge for ILL materials, such as Duke University charging me $15 for me to borrow one of their books.) So far, opening accounts at Go Fund Me, & Buy Me a Coffee have netted me exactly $1 in total. To be good at raising money in these ways, one has to be good at self-promotion, & if I were good at self-promotion I'd probably have been writing & publishing books & making a living that way. Instead I write articles on Wikipedia.One proposal I have been promoting is for the Foundation to set up a process for awarding research moneys. (Yes, the Foundation offers grants, but nowhere is it explained if, when or how it will provide grants for research. At least no where that I've looked. Maybe that's changing.) Providing grants of $50 to $100, maybe $500, is not going to ruin the seriousness of any established editor, but it might be an incentive to keep an experienced editor from drifting away. In my case, receiving a modest grant -- say $100 to $250, which is not enough money for me to live on, unless I live in a developing country where the minimum wage is $2 a day -- would have provide an incentive to improve some of the articles I've worked on to GA or FA class. -- llywrch (talk) 07:10, 24 February 2023 (UTC) I think you are optimistic that that wouldn't have any impact on the individuals writing (including the risk that editors who might indeed have taken something to FA without it, decide to take it to a good level and then ask for the research grant - and not progressing if they don't receive it). Perhaps more significantly, it would give the WMF a means to push content they wanted to see more of - indirect Editor status, and the WMF has public, established, social and political positions that (for example) en-wiki has !voted and confirmed a neutrality on. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:06, 1 March 2023 (UTC) How about a home for wayward senior wikipedians? This is an avocation I will take with me to my last days (a thought lately inspired watching the impressive Doug Weller log in every day). We'd merely need to qualify the word "wayward". BusterD (talk) 18:18, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I agree with the concerns above that this is open to abuse, but along the lines of User:BD2412's suggestion: instead of giving editors cash, why not use donations to fund access to sources for editors to use, along the lines of the Wikipedia Library? I can see from comments above that I'm not the only one who has spent my own money on sources to use for Wikipedia editing. If the Wikipedia Library could be expanded with paywalled news sources, more extensive access to academic journals, and ebooks (especially scholarly books), that would help me improve the quality of my contributions. Physical books might also be a possibility. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:42, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose, As other users have stated, it shouldn't be included with Wikipedia itself, it should more be a private thing on something like GoFundMe. ~With regards, I followed The Username Policy (Message Me) (What I have done on Wikipedia) 03:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC) How about a pool of funds for books/source access that anyone could chip into, or something like an Amazon wishlist. Some chapters offer small grants for that sort of thing (I know Wikimedia UK does; I don't know how receptive they would be scaling it up though). But the cost of source material can be one of the biggest barriers to writing quality content (my Amazon wishlist totals about £3,000 and it's almost all books for potential Wikipedia articles), so any subsidy could make a big difference. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:41, 27 March 2023 (UTC) Good idea, I have suggested something similar for content improvement in the past. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:13, 27 March 2023 (UTC)A rough back-of-the-envelope guess  is that the English Wikipedia is built from about $5 Billion in volunteer time.  A payment for some tiny fraction of that would probably make a mess out of things and has the danger of being an insult. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC) Opposefor now. It's not well thought through. I do not believe in self promotion and I am more in favor of a wikipedia solution. There are several competitions that actually already award small amounts of money on wikipedia. I believe the photographic one from commons is one. And one can also apply for grants from wikipedia.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC) Should the following biographical microstubs, which were mass-created by Lugnuts and cover non-medalling Olympians who competed between 1896 and 1912, be moved out of article space? 08:15, 2 March 2023 (UTC)   === Details === Selection criteria: Generated using a Quarry query, these 960 articles meet the following criteria and are a subset of the articles created by Lugnuts:  Athletes who competed in the 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, or 1912 Olympics Never won an Olympic medal Articles are smaller than 2,500 bytes Referenced only to Olympedia or Sports Reference No significant contributions from editors other than LugnutsIf this proposal is successful: All articles on the list will be draftified, subject to the provisions below:  Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months) Any editor may userfy any draft (which will prevent autodeletion) Any WikiProject may move a draft to their WikiProject space (which will also prevent autodeletion) Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia   === Background === In the 2022 Deletion ArbCom case, ArbCom found (Finding #6) that User:Lugnuts had created over 93,000 articles, "the most articles of any editor ... Most of these were stubs, and relatively few have been expanded to longer articles", which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom. Arbcom also mandated an RfC on mass deletion. A mass creation RfC took place but the mass deletion RfC did not, and the RFC mandate was rescinded, leaving the question of how to handle mass-created microstubs such as these unresolved. This proposal suggests a method for resolving this question, with a group of articles that can be used to test the proposed resolution.   === Survey (Olympian draftification) === Support. The alternative to this proposal is bringing hundreds or thousands of articles through AfD each month and that alternative is not practical. These are articles that took minutes, sometimes seconds, to create; each AfD consumes hours of community time and it would be a waste to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation. Further, editors who support keeping these articles object on the grounds that the workload is too high; that it is impossible to search for sources with the diligence required in the time available and as a consequence articles on notable topics are deleted.This proposal resolves both of those issues; editors will have time to search for sources, and considerable amounts of our most limited resource, editor time, will be saved. We also cannot leave the articles as are; we have a responsibility to curate the encyclopedia, to remove articles that do not belong on it due to failing to meet our notability criteria or due to violating our policies on what Wikipedia is not. Failing to do so is also harmful to the project; it reinforces the perception among the public that Wikipedia is mostly empty around the edges and that anything is notable, and it reinforces the perception among editors that creating large numbers of microstubs that do not inform the reader is as good or better than creating smaller numbers of informative articles. These are articles that all violate the fifth basic sports notability criteria, on topics that usually lack notability, that no one edits, that almost no one looks at, and that are so bereft of information that they are of no benefit to the reader. Removing the group will improve the quality of the encyclopedia, and by doing it in this manner we provide the best hope of the articles on notable topics being identified, improved, and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 08:15, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Disagreed on pretty much all points. These articles improve the scope and quality of the encyclopedia, they are often useful for every day users, and have little to no impact on how others view Wikipedia in my opinion. Ortizesp (talk) 05:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC) These articles receive less than one page view per day, so they are not often useful; even the web crawlers don't use them every day. Levivich (talk) 05:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC) And? It's useful to that person per day that's looking at it, not sure there's a number for usefulness. Ortizesp (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Less than one per day means nobody is looking at them except web crawlers. The lowest one on the list has 20 views in a year. Some of these have been like this for over ten years. These articles are dust in the attic. Levivich (talk) 00:32, 5 March 2023 (UTC) I don't agree that the views an article gets dictates whether it should be kept or not. Ortizesp (talk) 03:01, 8 March 2023 (UTC)Support assuming the query issues are fixed. Not worth the time to individually delete. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support I'm generally suspicious of mass action, but this feels like a reasonable first step to solving a difficult situation. For one, it's clear that some kind of cleanup is required, and increasing AfD workload by something like half for literal years simply cannot be the only solution. The proposed extremely extended draftification seems like a suitably conservative approach (to the point that I'm not sure five years is truly required), giving editors plenty of time rescue any articles that warrant rescuing while ensuring that (most of) those which do not warrant retaining are eventually (even if after an extensive wait) removed. The set of articles identified here (or rather, the criteria used to identify it) seems like a very "safe" subset with high accuracy to the point of sacrificing recall.I'm sure that this type of mass action will not be sufficient to solve this situation completely: there will inevitably be literally thousands of articles that will need to be checked by hand and discussed individually. But filtering out some of the "worst" ones out for a start should conserve everyone's energy for the less clear-cut cases.I'd also support an alternative where these would be redirected to "Country at year season Olympics" as suggested by Curbon7 in § Discussion, below. -Ljleppan (talk) 12:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC) I just rescued Addin Tyldesley now. Just wasn't aware of it previously, but I saved an article in probably even less time than it took to suggest it be deleted.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:16, 4 March 2023 (UTC) No independent RS were added demonstrating he meets GNG, so the article wasn't "rescued". JoelleJay (talk) 01:25, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Articles can't be judged on new standards, as those can always change. Just as someone had 5 years to edit this, people here had years to mark this as a draft or to delete it.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:59, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Your response is farcical. You added literally nothing to that article that would get it to pass this project's notability threshold. That is not debatable. Zaathras (talk) 02:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I prefer draftification as I believe it makes the articles easier to work on but I would support redirection as a second choice, with the requirements to restore the article being the same in regards to sourcing. As it appears there is some support for this alternative I've created a list of proposed targets to allow it to be properly discussed. Note that some articles have multiple targets; a way to resolve that issue would be required. I assume the editors in support of this proposal would support this alternative, at least as a second choice, as this proposal already includes that possibility; Rhododendrites, Black Kite, Pawnkingthree, would you support this alternative as your first choice rather than opposing entirely? BilledMammal (talk) 17:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC) That would be my first choice, yes., Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support These have not been shown to meet the basic notability requirements of NSPORTS including "A person is presumed to be notable if they have been the subject of significant coverage" and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." Draftification is the best solution to prevent these mass-created stubs from being any more of a time sink, while giving folks the opportunity to work on any that can be proven notable. I think this RfC format will be the best way forward to deal with these mass creations. –dlthewave ☎ 13:52, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support For the reasons given. IMO the ideal final result would be to have each of these end up as one line in a table in a broader article.  This proposal is a good framework handle that possibility if the 5 year thing is doable. If not, then we have 6 months for somebody to take that on.  North8000 (talk) 14:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support - Per above as a necessary step in clearing out the issues caused by the mass creation. — Ixtal ( T / C )  ⁂  Non nobis solum.  14:19, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose - Draftification when the author of the page is blocked is just delayed deletion. Contrary to what BilledMammal says, creating a glut of AfDs is not actually the only alternative. There are three other options: (1) redirect them all to the relevant team/event articles. Articlespace pages for people mentioned in other articles should redirect to those articles anyway, even if the articles are draftified. If redirects are reverted, choose another from this list or send to AfD at that time. Further, for those whose efforts at redirecting have been thwarted, I'd even support a proposal to redirect them all, putting the burden on anyone recreating the article to demonstrate notability. (2) Rather than assume all 960 people are exactly the same, with exactly the same available sourcing, help figure out which are actually notable and improve those. (3) Anything else. There's zero exigency here. I certainly wouldn't say these stubs do anyone any good (and am opposed to the creation of stubs based on databases), but these stubs weren't created illicitly, and they don't harm the project in any way except for the drama that has grown around them. There's no obligation to deal with them. Personally, I prefer #1, but including the others because the threat of "otherwise we'll have to tank AfD" is silliness. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:31, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support Non-notable stubs are of no benefit to the reader in their current form, and AfD can't handle this amount. Avilich (talk) 14:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose, deleting a thousand pages (which is what this amounts to) for drama-based reasons doesn't build the encyclopedia but seeks to tear out a major part of its Olympic collection. Voices of reason needed please, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirection, Oppose draftification Even as something of a deletionist, I am somewhat perplexed as to why these need to be draftified.  If they're not good enough, why not simply redirect them to the relevant event, event group or Games article?  At least that might help someone searching for them. Black Kite (talk) 15:18, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support as Lugnuts created so many thousands of Olympian biographies that comprehensively fail WP:SPORTCRIT that it is not realistic to expect that editors can address them all within the next several years using our standard processes (i.e., finding and adding WP:SIGCOV, which if it exists most of it is stored in difficult-to-access, non-English-language archives, identifying appropriate redirects, proposing and nominating for deletion) without completing overwhelming AfD. This moves these biographies out of mainspace for 5 years, so there is sufficient time for interested editors to address them. As the query shows, on a given day, Lugnuts was often creating 50+ of these biographies. I think that Lugnuts' highly unusual article creation justifies the movement of so many of those articles out of mainspace at once. Jogurney (talk) 15:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Articles should not be judged under rules that didn't exist when they were created. And we know this is happening, because if those rules existed, those articles wouldn't have existed. If someone tomorrow makes a rule that all articles have to mention "jello" or be deleted, we would lose almost all of the site overnight.KatoKungLee (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Even if that nonsensical approach was used, the rule that all athletes must meet GNG was in place at the time Lugnuts created these articles. JoelleJay (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC) No, we considered all Olympic athletes at the time automatically notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:28, 4 March 2023 (UTC) That is not true, GNG coverage was always presumed to exist for Olympians but it was never an automatic notability pass. Editors were just more reluctant to challenge Olympians because that presumption was considered strong. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support - When someone copies a database and pastes it into Wikipedia by the thousands, creating tiny stubs on subjects that don't meet WP:GNG or any WP:SNG, and then never touches the articles again, and no one else reads or edits the articles, for years, even over a decade... the articles are not worth keeping in mainspace (WP:NOT). We will never be able to get through these at AFD, there are too many. Some say redirect them all, some say expand them, some say delete... this procedure is flexible and allows editors plenty of time (five more years) to deal with these titles as they see fit (redirect, merge, draft, expand, userfy, WikiProject). It's better than an WP:XCSD, and it's better than leaving them in mainspace, unedited and unviewed, forever. Levivich (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose (now support redirection) I don't see any reason why every single one of them cannot just be redirected to the relevant Olympic article.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC) If this proposal passes, they can still all be redirected, by any editor at any time. If this proposal fails, they won't be redirected. So why oppose? Levivich (talk) 15:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Draftification of a stub is only useful if there's someone immediately available and interested in working on it. Instead of having them sit for five years in draftspace, the title  should be in mainspace redirecting to a useful article if a reader searches for it.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC) I understand your point -- in fact, I agree with it. But right now, we can't turn them into redirects (when editors try, it gets reverted). We can't have 1,000+ discussions about "should this be a redirect". If this proposal passes, then we can redirect these titles. If this proposal doesn't pass, then we're back to the status quo: can't redirect, would need a second RFC just about redirect, which we can't have for a while after this RFC ends (for the usual reasons). So if you believe these should be redirected, I urge you to support this proposal, so that anyone who wants to turn these into redirects can do so for whatever articles on this list they think should be redirected (and of course the articles could still get expanded into real articles by anyone who wants to do so). Proposal Provision #5, about redirects, was written specifically for editors who believe these should be redirects. #5 (redirect) is an option on the menu of this proposal; I don't think it would help improve the encyclopedia to oppose this proposal because #5 isn't the only option on the menu: that would be letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. I'd ask you to consider "support #5 only" rather than opposing. Levivich (talk) 16:46, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Yes, you can turn them into redirects. In fact, many redirects have g45one unopposed. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:43, 2 March 2023 (UTC) So if you believe these should be redirected, I urge you to support this proposal - (Here and elsewhere) your argument that redirect is compatible with this proposal is bizarre. By the same logic, it would also be compatible with absolutely any other mass action that's not redirecting, because you can always redirect them afterwards. For anyone who thinks they should be redirected, draftification is just an unnecessary additional step that adds a countdown clock to the redirection process. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC) No because if you go and redirect the articles now, someone will revert you, and then you have to WP:BRD that stuff, meaning 1,000 discussions. If this proposal passes, then someone can redirect these articles, and no one could revert that unless they added a GNG source per #4 and #5 of this proposal. This proposal fundamentally is about getting consensus that these microstubs should not remain as they are, and then allowing a wide variety of options for how to deal with them. IMO no one should be opposing unless they think the stubs are fine to be left alone the way they are (which some people do, reasonable minds can disagree). Levivich (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support: When articles ammount to little more than a name, birth date, death date, nationality and a sport they have competed in, they should not be kept as articles. And with 960 of these articles it is unrealistic to keep them in the article space and add more references and information for each in a timley manner, so draftifying these articles is the appropriate action. Terasail[✉️] 15:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support: and, I'd argue that this IS the way to address Rhododendrites' second point casualdejekyll 16:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose, per a few above. Mass draftifiying Olympians is not a good idea for several reasons: Many of these are notable and can be expanded: As I said at the original discussion on this at the proposer's userpage, many of these are notable. I chose for example two random participants – Albert Bechestobill and Lou Scholes. For Bechestobill, quickly located was full-page coverage in major newspapers; for Scholes, easily found were articles describing him as "the best oarsman the world ever produced." The majority I would say could be expanded if the right sources were used, it just takes time to write things (unlike deleting them) – just yesterday I wrote a decent article on Emil Schwegler (formerly on this list) and today I plan on getting to Jay Nash McCrea – its just it takes time to do it; I can't go around and write 900 articles a day. This will result in the mass deletion of boatloads of notable articles: As said above, many of these are notable. That being said, what this is basically is just the delayed removal of the majority of them under the nice-sounding tone "you can just move it back if its notable – and everything works out" – if this is approved here's what will happen: all these articles get moved to draftspace, only a couple get worked on (I doubt that there's going to be a ton of eager editors who want to help out in writing articles on 1900/10s Olympians), and then eventually just about all of them get deleted. Additionally the proposer has made it clear he plans on going after the rest if this passes, which will result in not just the initial 1,000, but then the rest of the 90,000 also being put there. We do not have the time, energy or resources to expand 90,000 articles in a short period of time with deletion the consequence if we do not. And I'll bet that BM and his deletionist buddies will go after other sports if they get rid of the Olympians, and then the rest of stubs until this place becomes a perfect deletionist paradise. But back to the consequences of just this being passed: many many notable articles will get deleted in the end, and a few improved. Does that help the encyclopedia? NO. There is no harm in keeping these. The only harm that could possibly be done would be if this is passed, which will (as said above) result in many notable articles being deleted, and a few improved. That is not an improvement to Wikipedia at all And it would especially not be an improvement if this passes because then it would possibly lead to absolute loads more being proposed to be removed and likely removed. 1,000 short articles provides much more overall value than a few nicer-looking ones in my opinion. There are other ways in dealing with them. As Rhododendrites said above, there are several different ways that these could be dealt with than mass draftification. The proposers are stressing that "oh its way too hard to have these at AFD" – AFD is not the only option. Of the numerous different ways these could be dealt with, my personal favorite – expand them. So in conclusion, mass draftifying nearly a thousand Olympians would have a terrible effect on the encyclopedia, and is completely unnecessary. Signed, BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:38, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose So, there are several problems with this discussion.  First, and only tangentially related to my vote, but still bears mentioning, is the statement "which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom.  The initial ban was for "Canvassing, incivility, bludgeoning, spamming" (quote taken from the initial ban proposal); it was not the creation of stubs per se that led to the ban.  Furthermore, the Arbcom ban does not explicitly state that it was merely for creating the stub articles in the first place.  Indeed, the ban was enacted under a variety of problem, including "making personal attacks, engaging in battleground behavior in deletion discussions, and other disruptive deletion behavior." and notes things like "been blocked for conduct at AfD" (both quotes from the ArbCom page).  The OP makes the disingenuous post hoc ergo propter hoc assertion that they were banned because they created the above article stubs.  They were banned for things like being disruptive to the AFD process and battleground behavior, making personal attacks.  All of that is sanctionable offenses.  Creating stub articles is not.  I can go create a stub article right now and no one would be proposing to ban me.  So the very premise that the ban was enacted merely because some stubs were created is a non-starter for me.  That being said, what do we do with all of these stubs?  Nothing at all.  If the article meets the standards to be an allowable stub article if it hadn't been created by Lugnuts, like if it was just a stub created by someone else, then there's no reason to do anything special to it because it was created by Lugnuts.  They're perfectly fine in the mainspace.  If you find one of the stubs you want to expand, do so.  If you find one of the stubs should be deleted, WP:AFD is thataway.  If you don't want to do either of those things, doing nothing is perfectly fine too.  Even if the OP's initial statement wasn't fraught with the errors I already noted, I would still oppose treating these stubs any differently than any other random stub someone might happen to trip over.  --Jayron32 16:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Preliminary question. I am open to a proposal to delete many of the early Olympic participants, but this appears a proposal to delete hundreds of articles without even providing a list of the articles to be deleted. Maybe I'm wrong. Is there a list of the proposed deletions? Before casting a vote, I would like to see a list and have an opportunity to peruse it. Cbl62 (talk) 16:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC) @Cbl62: The list is in a collapsed green box at the top of the proposal, right below the question and above the "details" section. Levivich (talk) 17:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Thank you. Cbl62 (talk) 17:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support. There are not any perfect options here, but I think this is the best. If someone wants to shepherd some draft stubs back, there's ample time to do so. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:00, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support either this or mass redirecting. Pre-WW1 Olympians are usually not notable, and so most of these can never become full articles. —Kusma (talk) 17:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Also, I propose removing from the list those who competed in the Olympics after 1912 – this is supposed to be from 1896 to 1912, not after as well. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2023 (UTC) We also should not have ones that were kept at AFD (post sports RFC) on this list. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)This discussion has been added to Wikipedia's list of centralized discussions. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 17:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support, and I would add that we need to review more than 960 articles at a time; at such a low rate, cleaning up after Lugnuts will take about 8 years.—S Marshall T/C 18:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. Per Wikipedia's deletion policy, draftification must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion". Because abandoned drafts are deleted after six months, moving articles to draft space should generally be done only for newly created articles... or as the result of a deletion discussion. Older articles should not be draftified without an AfD consensus, with 90 days a rule of thumb. This proposal is an extremely clear attempt to mass draftify articles as a backdoor to deletion. The nominator writes that the alternative is not practical but there is another alternative not considered in the OP's arguments—using the articles for deletion process to make decisions with respect to a single mass AfD of these sorts of things. Also, WP:DRAFTOBJECT is pretty clear that literally anyone can object to the draftification of a particular article and revert it to the mainspace, so I'm not sure that this would actually achieve the resolution that the proposer of this RfC desires (all it would take is a few editors to restore one article to mainspace per day over the next six months for this mass draftification to end up back where we started, and that seems to just be delaying sending these to AfD). — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 18:10, 2 March 2023 (UTC) By extending the autodeletion period to five years the specifics of this proposal are intended to prevent this being a backdoor to deletion, and the various options around article adoption and article redirection are also intended to prevent that. It will also prevent improper restorations; if there is a consensus for this proposal editors will only be permitted to restore these articles to mainspace after adding sources containing significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 18:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Will this apply to all draftified articles, or just to the 960? My understanding is that we have an adminbot delete old drafts if they are more than 6 months untouched. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 19:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Only to the 960. The specifics of this need to be determined, but there are plenty of options and the required bot modifications will be minor. BilledMammal (talk) 00:41, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support. The proposal is unprecedented, and I am generally opposed to mass actions of this type. Despite my reservations, I do support this proposal limited to early Olympians. My rationale is as follows: No reasonable expectation of notability. The past year of dozens and dozens AfD discussions has clearly demonstrated that mere participation in the Olympics in the early years of the games is in no way a basis to presume or expect that the individual is notable under our WP:GNG standard. Mass creation. The articles at issue were the product of a well-documented mass process in which thousands of articles were created at the rate of approximately a minute per article. Lack of substance. The articles are microstubs that contain limited narrative text simply reciting that the person was an athlete in a particular sport who competed in the Olympics X year. If the articles are ultimately deleted, nothing of real substance is lost. If SIGCOV is later uncovered and brought forth, and given the fact that only a minute or so was devoted to the original effort, the articles can be re-created without any meaningful loss of prior effort. Violation of SPORTBASIC. The articles violate prong 5 of WP:SPORTBASIC which provides: "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." The articles here are sourced only to database sources and do not include SIGCOV. Cleanup of "deliberate errors".  A departure from normal processes is also warranted by the unique case involving Lugnuts and his admission in August 2022 (here) that he added "countless deliberate errors on pages that have very few pages views." Draftification of these low-page view articles permits screening for such errors.In sum, I support draftification in this narrow situation. In normal and less egregious circumstances, I would expect normal AfD or redirect procedures to be followed and would likely oppose such a proposal. Cbl62 (talk) 18:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. I originally supported but now BilledMammal is objecting to the removal from the list of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) even though they have been expanded, now include SIGCOV, and are not based solely on database entry. IMO the extreme remedy of mass removal of articles should not be considered for articles that fall into a gray area. Such articles, if challenged, should be dealt with under regular order, by normal AfD processes. Cbl62 (talk) 06:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Restoring support based on representation that Spitzer and Greene will not be draftified. Cbl62 (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Support - seems the best thing to do. GoodDay (talk) 19:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose This is a backdoor attempt at deletion of articles via the Village Pump, and as such is an obvious violation of deletion policy. Take them to AFD if you want them deleted or demoted to drafts. Steven Walling • talk 19:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Lugnuts is Wikipedia's most prolific article starter, ever.  He started rather more than 90,000 articles, most of which were biographies, and he's told us he put deliberate inaccuracies in them.  If we nominated 10 of them at AfD every day, it would take nearly thirty years to process them all.  I'm afraid that it's simply unfeasible and unrealistic to use AfD to clean up after Lugnuts.  It would also be profoundly unfair on other editors to swamp our normal deletion processes with the quantities of articles involved.—S Marshall T/C 23:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Nominating a group of articles like hoaxes is explicitly called out as allowed in our deletion policy, per WP:BUNDLE. In addition to this being the wrong venue, the stated intent of the proposal is to test the waters for establishing a precedent for mass deletion, which is bad faith and not clearly about removing demonstrably bad articles that violate notability or verifiability policy. Steven Walling • talk 04:59, 3 March 2023 (UTC) "he's told us he put deliberate inaccuracies in them" - is it proven? Not much room for inaccuracies in a stub. Pelmeen10 (talk) 10:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Of course it's proven.  Lugnuts claims he introduced deliberate inaccuracies into his stubs in this edit.  Some don't believe him on that point, because he was ragequitting Wikipedia when he wrote that.  Others might suspect that someone who often started upwards of 20 articles a day wasn't checking his facts carefully in the first place.  Whichever side you take, it's my view that we have reasonable grounds to doubt the accuracy of this content.—S Marshall T/C 11:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Deleting 960 articles on the chance that there might be inaccuracies is a bit of a stretch. There might be inaccuracies in basically everything that isn't a GA or FA article, but there is no deadline for fixing work in progress, and perfection isn't required. These aren't BLPs, either. Steven Walling • talk 23:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC) When the article author admits they've put deliberate inaccuracies and obfuscated copyvios in biographical articles, I'd normally expect a more active response than this from a sysop. I do hope you'll reconsider your position here.—S Marshall T/C 23:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Like you said, he was ragequitting. I wouldn't be surprised if he said that in order to make people delete all his articles as a "f*ck you" to the project. Steven Walling • talk 01:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC) If that was what he wanted, he could have achieved it for almost all his articles with G7. I don't think that is what he wanted. BilledMammal (talk) 03:13, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Either way, the argument that we should mass delete a series of articles via a straw poll at the Village Pump is utter nonsense. These articles met notability requirements when they were created and many, if not most, of them probably still do. There's no way of knowing, when you nominate 960 at once based on a hunch, rather than an actual review of the articles and research into all the possible source material. Steven Walling • talk 05:37, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Have we gotten any proof aside from Lugnuts statements, that he has introduced deliberate inaccuracies? It's better to have no articles rather than a faulty article. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 03:42, 4 March 2023 (UTC) @SunDawn: Plenty of inaccuracies have been found; whether or not they are deliberate is impossible to say for certain. One example has already been given in this thread by CMD. I just checked another random article myself; literally the first one I clicked on, Fyodor Zabelin, has the wrong birth date in the infobox. Since Lugnuts specifically mentioned birth dates in his claim that he had introduced deliberate errors, one might wonder whether this gives some ground for believing him. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC) @Sojourner in the earth: Thank you for the information. This is a really strong case for total draftification. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 12:51, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Neither of them can be described as deliberate errors. Wrong date on infobox for Fyodor Zabelin must've been an error, as Lugnuts created Yrjö Vuolio (with that birth date) just 4 minutes earlier. Pelmeen10 (talk) 21:10, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Pelmeen10, thanks for looking that up. I didn't read as far as your contribution but thought "Lugnuts introducing deliberate errors? No way!" I've worked a lot with Lugnuts on rowing articles and have always found him conscientious. So I did the exact same as you did: looked up what else did Lugnuts create on 16 July 2019 in that batch, found that he created 10 articles during 29 minutes, Zabelin was the second article in that batch and the birth date belonged to the first article. A simple database / copy-paste error. I think we should dismiss the idea of Lugnuts having introduced errors deliberately; that is simply not the editor who I had the pleasure working with. Schwede66 05:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Schwede66 - Just to be clear on this, this kind of totally careless article-creation (systematically reproducing errors), spread over many thousands of articles, is the kind of thing that would get you a warning first and eventually banned if you persisted in doing it nowadays. Accidental or not, competence is required. FOARP (talk) 09:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose as Village Pump is not the place to mass delete articles, as is effectively beimg proposed here. No need for a mass decision on all of these articles, they should be checked according to relevant AFD policies individually as some will definitely be notable. Speedy redirecting should be used when there is clearly no notability. This range of dates is also completely arbitrary, with no justification for why the specific dates were chosen and why these people's notability should be assessed differently to Olympians of different years. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:12, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose unless there is a guarantee that the sources already in each article have been examined and any even marginally close calls removed. For example, I would have concerns about the inclusion of Alf Davies (swimmer) on this link - the sources suggest that there's a decent chance that there's more there in newspapers and so on. This isn't the first time lists like this have been put forward - I think we found a knight of the realm on one list... At that point I would still oppose in favour of redirecting where even remotely possible per WP:ATD (which is a policy not a guidelines) - draftifying like this is an utter waste of resources for everyone concerned, whereas a redirect preserves the page history and attribution and enables an article to be returned to if sources emerge and someone has the time and motivation to do so. Finding those initial sources, especially when some are archived, isn't as simple as some of the views here might suggest. We have alternatives to deletion; these are flat out more efficient and we should use them. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:16, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support. I made a similar proposal at one of the many RfCs this past year, so of course I support this. I don't understand the "backdoor to deletion" hand-wringing or complaints about the possibility of inclusion of maybe notable athletes in this list. If there are people in there who you think might meet GNG, guess what!! You can personally take them out of draft space and work on them in your user space, thereby avoiding the extremely overly-lenient 5-year deadline. Or you could redirect them. Or put them in project space. These are all better for people who want to keep articles than leaving them in mainspace where they will likely be athlete #22 taken to AfD on any given day and you'll only have a week to find all those difficult-to-access sources that surely exist. JoelleJay (talk) 22:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support, the proposal is for a very targeted list, and the way these articles have been generated seems problematic. The first one I clicked on was Alexander Martin (Canadian sport shooter). That article, in its entirety: "Alexander Martin (28 December 1864 – 26 October 1951) was a Canadian sports shooter. He competed in the 1000 yard free rifle event at the 1908 Summer Olympics." I checked the Olympedia source and was immediately struck by "Born: Glasgow, Died: Woking". These are clearly not Canadian locations. Olympedia also lists two family member Olympians, both of whom apparently competed for the GBR NOC. So while Alexander Martin may have competed for the Canada NOC, there seems a lot of evidence that describing them as primarily Canadian is a mistake. If somehow the first article I clicked on was the only problematic one, then I suppose I'd have to revise, but that seems unlikely. I would strongly support mass redirection to the relevant Olympic page (if available), and of course would also support people expanding these where possible to be useful and accurate. Both these actions are possible with or without the passing of this proposal though, so I don't understand how they are coming up as oppose rationales. CMD (talk) 00:05, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Looking at the article, I noticed that the source used for his Olympic participation refers to a certain Arthur, not Alexander, Martin from Canada born in a completely different year! Tvx1 16:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC) @Tvx1: Look at the Olympedia source, which states "Name previously given as Arthur Martin, but this is not supported by contemporary Calgary newspapers." BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC) But that is a wiki just lile this one and thus unreliable. And what about the twelve years discrepancy in the birth year? Tvx1 16:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Olympedia isn't an unreliable wiki. As for the birth year, it seems that the people who run SR/Olympedia originally believed the shooter to be Arthur, but then later realized it was actaully a Martin named Alexander, born twelve years prior. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC) I do not see anything that makes it reliable. Moreover, the official site says it was Arthur, not Alexander, Martin as well. The Calgary statement doesn’t even make sense. What do local Calgary newspapers matter to an athlete who was allegedly born in Glasgow and died in Woking?? Tvx1 17:33, 7 March 2023 (UTC) "Olympedia isn't an unreliable wiki" - I see absolutely no reason at all to believe that Olympedia is particularly reliable. Whilst the sports statistics on Olympedia come from official bodies (though the chain of ownership is unclear) and might be said to be reliable for that reason, there is a strong wiki-like aspect to the prose content, birth/death dates, and also potentially to the names used on the database. For example when an AFD was raised against our article about a non-notable rower called Francis English it turned out that the death-date was wrong and Francis English went under the name "Frank", Olympedia was updated to include the nickname and the corrected death-date soon after the AFD meaning they were relying on Wikipedia to do their fact-checking. Prose content on Olympedia also appears to come from e.g., families of the Olympians concerned and thus is not independently sourced. I get that the head of Olympedia is supposed to be an expert but the database is run by volunteers and there is no clear editorial system or rigorous fact-checking. T's concerns are thus well-founded and cannot be dismissed simply by saying "I haven't seen many errors" or that the IOC has used it. FOARP (talk) 11:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Agree. That’s the exact same sentiment I have. The Alexander/Arthur Martin case is another example of the issues they have. Tvx1 16:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support competing in the Olympics is not an indication of athletic greatness. Participation is often decided by politics, or there may not be any gatekeeping at all. See also the 1904 Summer Olympics, 1904 men's marathon; apparently a free-for-all. Schierbecker (talk) 00:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose It is against policy to use draftifying as a backdoor for deletion. Red-tailed hawk sums it up perfectly. --Rschen7754 01:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose I find no reason to delete them. There could be a reader looking for information on the topic; we are an encyclopedia; why do we feel the need to delete information? I this context, I think the stub-quality of the articles is irrelevant. Perhaps the content would be better served as part of a larger article, but I wouldn't know where to begin. Further, it would be a fallacy to assume that an "oppose" vote would necessarily lead to mass AfDs — it is a false assumption that the articles involved need to be deleted at all. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) 01:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC) WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:N; just because there is verifiable information on a topic doesn't mean it belongs in Wikipedia. These are also why failing to deal with these articles through a process other than AfD will lead to mass AfD's; leaving non-notable topics in mainspace makes Wikipedia worse, and it is against policy to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 02:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support If someone spends a few seconds doing something mildly disruptive, we should have no qualms about undoing that thing. If anyone wants to create a well-sourced article on one of these individuals, these stubs will be of no help at all. The community has found Lugnuts' mass creations to be disruptive, why immortalize his inappropriate creations? In fact, I'd support deleting all of them that haven't attracted major content contributions from others. No prejudice towards decent articles on the same topics being re-created in the future. Ajpolino (talk) 04:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support Although they should really be deleted after the normal 6-month period. Also rather disappointing to see the same cheerleaders from the non-notable NFL player debate weighting this discussion down. Zaathras (talk) 04:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support draftification as first choice. Aside from the problem of notability, many of Lugnuts' articles have been shown to have serious verifiability issues (almost inevitable with articles created at speed). If it's true that Lugnuts has admitted to introducing deliberate inaccuracies (@S Marshall: do you have a diff for that?), that's all the more reason to remove these articles from the mainspace as soon as possible. I came into this expecting to support redirection over draftification, but I've explained below why I don't think this is practical. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Sojourner in the earth - See here. I guess I should say that many think he was lying about this. FOARP (talk) 09:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Support - And yes this should be rolled out to Lugnut's 19th-century cricketer articles, his 19th/early 20th century footballer articles, and to sub-sets of the mass-created articles of other historical mass creators (e.g., Carlossuarez46, Dr. Blofeld). WP:PROVEIT is pretty clear on what happens to content the notability of which isn't supported - either the people who want it kept find support for it, or it gets deleted. Any other position is allowing editors to establish a fait accompli of mass-created articles that will never be improved to meet notability standards, and most of which cannot be improved. WP:FAIT is clear that we should not allow that.This cannot be handled one-by-one by the normal AFD process as it would jam it permanently. Mass deletion through AFD is possible but this discussion is frankly just as valid as any AFD discussion and probably will engage with more editors which, frankly, is needed, as AFD discussions are often dominated by people heavily invested in the deletion/keeping of article-sets such as this one.Some argue that the fact that some of these articles may be notable is a reason to keep all of them. It simply isn't. What that is is a reason for people who want them kept to go and establish the notability of those articles and bring them back to mainspace. Anything else is accepting a WP:FAIT situation.Finally, this is not personal. I would also support the same measure be used against other articles sets that were created in violation of WP:MASSCREATE, even by editors I generally like. ETA - my favoured position is actually just straight deletion of these articles. Draftification is something I'm OK with as an alternative to that because in reality everyone knows that only a handful will be saved even with years of time to work on them because so few of them even can be saved. Redirection is basically a non-flyer for the reasons I discussed below in relation to "Harry" Oppenheim - there is no reason, no reason at all, to redirect people to a list in which specific non-notable Olympian is possibly mentioned (many of the redirects will have the wrong name, because of the poor methodology used to create these articles), rather than serving the full search-results to them and allowing them to see all of the other places that person and other people with the same name listed on EN Wikipedia. FOARP (talk) 09:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)Support per nom, 5 years is ample time for any interested editor to expand on any of the articles. Redirect to the relevant pages would also be fine in my opinion. BogLogs (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I just saved an article now - Addin Tyldesley. Just wasn't aware of it previously, but I saved an article in probably even less time than it took to suggest it be deleted.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose as the solution to the problem is needlessly complicated. Seems to me that the simple(st) solution is to delete all relevant stubs created in this way immediately. WP editors who are interested in writing about any Olympian who is truly notable could presumably get the same starting information from the same sources that the current stubs used, so there's nothing to be gained by draftifying. JMWt (talk) 10:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC) @JMWt: Would you support the alternative of redirecting? BilledMammal (talk) 13:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC) @BilledMammal: well I don't know. Firstly I don't know how automated the process would be or whether it would need considerable manual editing time. Second it seems to me that there is quite a high risk of good-faith errors creeping in when trying to do this with so many pages (for example an Olympian being accidentally attached to the wrong team). This in turn could lead to even more circular referencing and the errors being repeated in off-wiki sources. For me the most accurate solution is delete. The databases still exist, there's no presumption that any of the Olympians in these stubs are not notable - so recreation if RS become available for particular people shouldn't be an issue. I accept that it looks like a sledgehammer solution, but for me the main overwhelming issue is the integrity of WP as a usable encyclopedia. If we routinely do anything which adds to the risks of spreading errors, that's bad. I'd rather keep the stubs that simply reflect the content of off-wiki databases than do anything else that introduces errors. JMWt (talk) 13:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC) @JMWt: It would be easy to automate, and no new errors would be introduced; it might continue to include existing errors, but in that case we are no worse off than we currently are. BilledMammal (talk) 14:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. per BeanieFan, my comments at the previous discussion about olympian stubs and most of the other opposers here. The way to deal with a mass creation of notable topics is not mass deletion or mass draftification - there is no deadline, and it is much better to get the right answer slowly than the wrong answer quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC) This assumes we have a good interim position right now, which given the lack of attention that seems to have been paid to these articles I am not convinced of. There's no deadline by which redlinks have to be turned into tenuous blue links either. CMD (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC) The past is prologue... There's not anything we can do about the fact that they have already been created, but as Thryduulf notes, now that they exist, we might as well deal with each thoughtfully.  You are correct as the best action was probably not to have created these so rapidly, but we can't go back in time and make that unhappen.  --Jayron32 19:20, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Yes, we can make that unhappen, that's kind of what's being proposed here. Levivich (talk) 19:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC) We can make that unhappen and per WP:MASSCREATE and WP:MEATBOT they shouldn't have been able to be created in the first place. Since 2009 it is policy to request permission for mass creation of articles here. And I'd argue that creating several articles within minutes or a few hours are likely to be considered bot like editing as mentioned at WP:MEATBOT. Per MEATBOT is also required to request permission at the same place. WP:MEATBOT is within a policy, for admins it would technically be possible to enforce it. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC) Comment in addition to my note above and discussion below in the redirect section, there seem to be quite a few of these which have a reasonable claim to notability. We really need to read the sources and not rely on a machine query. Philip Plater, for example, seems well worth looking in to and if we delete this via drafting it'd be a massive mistake. A number of the British ones seem to have details that would be worth looking in to. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:39, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Why would it be a headache? Nothing is being salted and the Olympedia pages will still exist. The sources currently in Philip Plater doesn't suggest GNG, although the story should certainly be added to Shooting at the 1908 Summer Olympics. CMD (talk) 14:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Ah never mind, it has been included at Shooting at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's stationary target small-bore rifle since 2006. CMD (talk) 14:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC) The Olympedia source, when you look at it, does in a way suggest that GNG coverage exists – I've found that when they give decent bios, the Olympians usually have a much higher GNG rate than when they don't. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I would agree! Maybe someday someone will be able to look into such cases and write some articles with more than a database pull, that could do basic things like not make slightly misleading nationality claims and include links to the events the athletes participated in. As noted above, there is no deadline for this. CMD (talk) 15:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC) But we already have the articles! Why would we need to delete articles on a topic to be able to write something on that topic? BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Perhaps this was missed, but we should have articles "that could do basic things like not make slightly misleading nationality claims and include links to the events the athletes participated in". CMD (talk) 15:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC) The articles do link the events that the athletes participated in – and I haven't seen very many with the wrong nationality – just about all of them seem fine to me. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) No they don't, Philip Plater which you linked just before didn't until I made the relevant edit. As for "very many", maybe not very many, but how many? We don't know, because these are procedurally generated sentence pairs. CMD (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Lets see, I'm going to pick ten random people on this list and see if they have the link or not: Francesco Pietrasanta, no; Arthur Maranda, yes; Arthur Seward, yes; James Cowan (sport shooter), no; John McKenzie (wrestler), yes; Orazio Santelli, no; Yrjö Vuolio, yes; Jules Roffe, yes; Pierre Saintongey, yes; and Ödön Toldi, yes. That's 7/10 have it. And even if they were missing it, that's still no reason to mass get rid of them by the thousands. As for the nationality, to check, you can just click on the Olympedia link and it will tell you – I have only seen a handful with any issue, and in most of those cases it was half-right, i.e. they were born in e.g. Switzerland, and then became U.S. citizens and competed for the U.S., and the article referred to them as American. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I checked the first yes of yours, "Arthur Maranda, yes", and it doesn't link to his events at all. He participated in the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's long jump, the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's triple jump, and the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's standing long jump. If even a second layer of checking isn't correctly assessing these articles, a new process is needed. CMD (talk) 16:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC) It says he "competed at three events at the 1912 Olympics" and links "Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics" in the words "three events." BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Correct, it does not link to the events he was in. CMD (talk) 01:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I agree, Blue Squared Thing, many of these are likely notable. I've checked a bunch and for some I've seen Olympedia bios describing them as having been the best of the era, among the most famous, etc. For example, when I chose a random one in Lou Scholes and did a quick search, I found articles describing him as "the best oarsman the world has ever produced" (not surprising, though, considering this is the Olympics). And then for Albert Bechestobill, I was able to locate full-page long articles in major newspapers. When I looked for Arthur Burn, he was given headlines for his life and death. And another one I think would probably have good potential: Carlo Bonfanti – Olympedia mentions how the way Italy viewed diving was changed all because of him – there has got to be coverage on figures like that. And many Olympedia references have enough coverage that I'd consider them a SIGCOV source all by itself. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Checked out another one, Donnell Young, and he had in-depth feature stories published on him and was one of the only Olympic centenarians. This is really, really, really a bad idea to mass get rid of articles without any effort made to see whether they're notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC) It was a really, really, really bad idea to mass create these articles without any effort made to see whether they are notable. This proposal is what is required to correct that error. BilledMammal (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC) When these articles were created, they were considered notable. Later modifications to the notability guidelines removed their automatic notability (but many are still notable). BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC) They were presumed notable (under some interpretations of WP:NSPORT), and it was a really, really, really bad idea to mass create these articles without any effort to see whether they are are notable and thus ensure that this presumption was correct. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2023 (UTC) "Presumed notable" back then equaled "notable." BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC) It actually never did, but many AFD closers just mistakingly assumed it did. It doesn’t do so anymore at all and actually most of these are not notable.Tvx1 17:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC) The proposal is not get mass rid of them. It’s to move them to an appropriate place to dustinguish the non-notable ones from the one which are and actually make the keepable ones encyclopedic. No one is requesting blind deletion here. Tvx1 17:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Garnett Wikoff: Another clearly notable article from this list that I was able to substantially expand. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Another one who has potential for notability: William Valentine (archer) – per Olympedia, he was an owner of a pharmacy for a while and trained Charles Walgreen – the founder of Walgreen's! It was partly because of him the business was founded! BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC) More with potential (going off of Olympedia): James O'Connell (athlete) - national AAU triple jump champion; James Murphy (athlete) - English national champion cross country runner; António Pereira (wrestler) - thrice competed at the Olympics (we really should not be listing those who competed after 1912!); Archibald Murray (fencer) - given the Order of the British Empire; Harold Bartlett - important military person and awarded the Navy Cross, also aide to president Woodrow Wilson; Gaston de Trannoy - two-time Olympian, later important official, and president of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports; Georg Andersen (wrestler) - European champion in wrestling; James Reilly (swimmer) - coached swimming at Rutgers for 40 years - inducted into their Hall of Fame; etc. just from looking at Olympedia for a few random ones! BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Another interesting one: George Retzer. He lived to be 96 and was still regularly working out into his mid-90s (50 situps, 50 pushups every day, wow), and received UPI and LA Times feature stories for it, in addition to having more coverage for being the Pacific Coast wrestling champ. Clearly notable. Just like many others here. Mass throwing them out without any attempt to see if they're notable is an absolutely horrendous idea. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Yet another that seems highly likely to be notable: Iraklis Sakellaropoulos - the Greek wiki has a much more detailed article on him, he competed at three olympics, was a champion runner in Greek in the 1910s and 20s, and there seems to be a bunch of mentions of him online and in books using his name in Greek (unfortunately I do not speak Greek, so can't tell if its sigcov - but even if those aren't, I'm 99.999% sure the newspapers of the day would have covered him). BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:47, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Every each of the defended Olympians by @BeanieFan11 I checked are only sourced with databases. WP:NOTDATABASE,WP:NOTWHOSWHO. Both shortcuts are to policies. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC) @Paradise Chronicle: No they're not, I've improved many of them (for example, Fred Narganes, Herbert Gidney, Garnett Wikoff, Thomas LeBoutillier, J. Nash McCrea, and others) – there's just so many that we're trying to get rid of here, I haven't been able to get to them all. As for NOTDATABASE, that does not apply. It only applies to: Summary-only descriptions of works – nope; Lyrics databases – nope; Exhaustive logs of software updates – nope; Excessive listings of unexplained statistics – nope (the statistics and events are explained; I don't see how it would fall under that). As for WHOSWHO, that one says "Even when an event is notable, individuals involved in it may not be. Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event..." – for many of these coverage exists that goes beyond their Olympic appearances. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC) That's great, you found some. You can expand them from draftspace. No-one will oppose you. The sources used of the unexpanded stubs are still databases, check Antonio Pereira for example. And an OBE gives a phrase more, that's it. And they were still created ignoring the policies on WP:MEATBOT and WP:MASSCREATE as Lugnuts actually did create more than 50 articles on several days and more than 25 often and then any semiautomated or high speed editing can be considered bot like editing.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 02:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC) I'd also support that the one who save such articles are able to voluntarily receive the same notifications the article creator does, as the expanders are likely more interested in getting aware of (potential) wls to and from the article. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose - This has nothing to do with articles and is just a continued harassment campaign against Lugnuts. How can you possibly judge Article A based on Article B and Article C? These articles and the people who they are written about have nothing to do with each other. Why would they ever be judged together? And this idea of an article not only having to pass current rules but also needing to pass future rules that didn't even exist is horrifying. This is not in good faith and this goes against everything this website should be. I'm absolutely disgusted by this.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strongest possible oppose tremendous waste of time and resources, and as I've reiterated times, there's nothing wrong with stubs. Many of these could be fleshed out and pass GNG, and many of these are useful to users. If you want to merge them to a list one by one, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed.--Ortizesp (talk) 05:28, 4 March 2023 (UTC) The good news on the merge front is they all appear to have been included in relevant lists since 2006 to 2007. CMD (talk) 08:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support either draftification or redirection per BilledMammal. These articles can always be recreated if anyone can find sources showing their notability. (t · c) buidhe 05:43, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. The only thing the subjects of these articles have in common are 1) they competed in the Olympics during a certain time frame 2) they were created by a certain editor. If you believe that mere documentation that someone competed in the Olympics is not sufficient to confer notability, then neither of the things these articles have in common have any bearing on the article subject's notability. That means the responsible thing to do would be to go through and determine notability for each article on an individual basis. Dealing with them in bulk is inappropriate, and would make it inevitable that some babies will be disposed of with the bathwater. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:21, 4 March 2023 (UTC) @Scott5114: The contents of the bathwater aren't being thrown out here; they will still be available, whether in the form of a draft or a redirect. In addition, one of the issues with dealing with them individually is that it will overload AfD. Do you, and other editors opposing this proposal on that basis, have no objection to 25, 50, or 100 of Lugnut's articles being taken through AfD each day (a process that will take between 5, 2.5, or 1.25 years, respectively, if we conservatively assume that only half of Lugnuts articles have notability issues)? BilledMammal (talk) 06:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Putting them in draft space makes it less likely that anyone will ever actually improve them. I haven't the foggiest idea what's in draft space right now. And when I am using the site as a user, if I come across a redlink and think "gee, I expected Wikipedia to have an article on this," my first inclination isn't to check draft space to see if there's something that just needs to spruced up a bit. I would be very surprised if that is actually part of anyone's workflow. If it is a long and painful process to put them through AFD then so be it; that is the pain that the nominators choose to endure themselves, and inflict on others in the process. Presumably should they choose to do so, it's because they've examined an individual article and found that it is in fact not notable, and can prove that at AFD. Circumventing the process simply because it will take more effort than some people care to do is simply cheaping out. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Most of the proponents of dealing with these articles individually also oppose sending them en masse to AfD, since the seven-day deadline gives too little time to find sources. This is a proposal to extend that deadline by 4 years and 358 days. Those who wish to examine these articles one-by-one will have plenty of time to do so. I'd also note that all the articles covered by the proposal are extremely scanty; even if they were deleted, any one of them could be recreated with better sources in a matter of minutes. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 11:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Presumably should they choose to do so, it's because they've examined an individual article and found that it is in fact not notable, and can prove that at AFD. They would be able to prove that the individual article doesn't demonstrate notability; there is no consensus that they are required to do more than this when nominating mass created articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:05, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. Draftspace is an invisible graveyard. It wouldn't matter if the auto-delete period was set to 50 years; approximately nobody beyond the original author ever stumbles upon a draft. Articles get improved by attracting editors, and editors get attracted as a consequence of visibility, which drafts simply do not enjoy. Therefore the practical eventual outcome of draftification would be deletion.However, I also do not support deletion. Several editors have proposed redirection instead, and I agree that this would be better. Regardless of the possibility of (potentially deliberate) errors within the articles, I don't think anyone is doubting that these people existed and had a verifiable association with a particular event - therefore it should be possible to identify an appropriate redirection target. Finally, I'll also mention that this whole set of articles feels like it skirts WP:COPYVIO as a potential infringement of Database rights, and for that reason I do not support doing nothing. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)Support as deliberate errors had been introduced, per the evidence by Chipmunkdavis. There is no time to check it all, and it is better to have no articles than hundreds of faulty articles. I would agree that draftification would be a better option, but there is no way we should have thousands of articles that have deliberate errors on them. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 12:55, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I highly doubt that he made "thousands of articles with deliberate errors in them." I've checked many articles written by Lugnuts and only very rarely have I found errors. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support, with a preference for redirection over draftification. Either way, the article histories will be preserved, and can be used if someone can find reliable sources that establish notability. (IMO, notability is a necessary, but not a sufficient,  condition for an article, i.e., just because a subject is notable does not mean that Wikipedia has to have an article about the subject.) - Donald Albury 15:10, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support, many of these articles could be improved to pass notability, but they should not be in mainspace until this has been done. However, to increase the chances of editors improving them I suggest adding a note about drafts to the tasks/to-do lists of the relevant wikiprojects (olympics/fencing/swimming…) with a link to the "other" section in their article assessment page. EdwardUK (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support per above. Therapyisgood (talk) 16:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support There are to many articles that are only notable because of topic specific notability rules. Such rules only serve to formalize the systemic bias of Wikipedia. My general preference is that WP:GNG replace all topic specific notability guidelines. I recognize that is unlikely to reach a consensus, but I fell this is a step on the right direction.  — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC) These aren't notable per topic specific notability guidlines. But many are notable through GNG. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:06, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Strong oppose mass deletions without a detailed look are never a good thing, especially when a lot of the articles likely are in fact notable. Draftifying them is a poor choice, because that makes them hard to find (and therefore, interested editors won’t find and work on them), and just results in a shortcut to deletion. There’s nothing wrong with stubs - in fact, for the same reason, I’d argue having a stub encourages people to expand it more than not having an article at all does. Anything that is truly not notable can be deleted via the standard AfD process, which the village pump is not an appropriate substitute for. Deletion of notable material is not an acceptable side effect. Claims of “it can always be recreated later” are not useful: any recreated articles will likely be rapidly sent to AfD and deleted before someone interested happens to see it and dig up some appropriate sources. Frankly, I’m a little bothered at the very high notability standard that seems to be set these days, as it encourages a perception that the encyclopedia is complete and new contributions aren’t welcome. A lot of us treat Wikipedia as the one-stop shop to learn something, an image that’s taken 20 years to cultivate. It’s going to lose that if it keeps going this direction. Obviously there has to be some kind of notability standard, or else everyone and their dog would have their own article, but accurate content should be a far greater priority. Highway 89 (talk) 21:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC) If accurate content should be the priority, then mass-creating articles without spending time to ensure accuracy seems a detriment. CMD (talk) 02:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Support That way, they can stop cluttering mainspace while people prepare them in draftspace. QuicoleJR (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I don't see how they are cluttering mainspace, it's not like people fall on these pages accidentally. Ortizesp (talk) 00:27, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Just to clear up a common misperception, there is no way to clutter up Wikipedia mainspace because, given the right computer tech, Wikipedia can fit on the head of a pin. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose - per others who note that draftification as a backdoor deletion is inappropriate, and a better solution (as offered above) is to redirect these to the appropriate Olympic games. Rlendog (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Support per Levivich. starship.paint (exalt) 15:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Support-ish. After reading Lugnut's final goodbye post where he admitted to leaving false statements in article for years, I can't see how we can leave these stubs in article space. I also don't think we need to spend countless hours to check each one. I would prefer deletion, and if not, then a normal 6 months draft. Regardless, redirects from the person to a relevant article is always helpful and I would support mass redirect (but not with the same content deleted, that invites reverting the redirect and leaving the bad content there). --Gonnym (talk) 22:10, 5 March 2023 (UTC) I highly doubt that was true (about the false statements). Having known Lugnuts when he was still here and having checked many of his creations, I very highly doubt that his final statement was true; it was likely just made to piss off all of those who did not like him. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Another reason why this proposal is a terrible idea: John Hession. Hession received TONS of coverage (so much that I was originally going to expand it, but was so overwhelmed by the amount of coverage that I thought it'd be better to save others and then afterwards expand him) and was described by some as the greatest shooter of all time. We should not be blindly getting rid of these, especially since many of them received sigcov and some of them received coverage calling them the greatest in their sport ever! BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC) You will have 5 years to work on them from Draftspace, they aren't disappearing. If anything, your comment reinforces why draftification is the optimal choice here. As for your claims about Hassion and the "greatest shooter", that is a wee bit of hyperbole. You're basing that on a title of an obituary which itself uses the vague verbiage of "some claim". Zaathras (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC) But when a high percentage are notable, it makes no sense to send them to draftspace! I would much prefer not to spend the next five years of my life expanding articles on Olympians or they all get deleted! (and additionally, if this passes, BilledMammal is going to do the same with the other 90,000) As for Hession, he won many world titles, set many world records, won national championships and won records in them, etc., so I think while he might not be the best, he's still one of the best. We should not be blindly getting rid of all these! BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:16, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Support -- seems like a well-thought-out solution to a complex problem. Renata•3 02:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Huge Oppose this is exactly the thing Wikipedia shouldn't be doing. This should be handled case-by-case and we should never just wily-nily dratify them en-masse. They certainly aren't hurting anyone by being there and as we come across them we can re-check gng to see which are worthy and which are not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose I agree that something ought to be done about this subset of articles. Draftification is the wrong way to tidy this up. If we agree that these stubs should not retained, then let us redirect them to the appropriate article. There is nothing to be gained from moving the articles to draft space; it would be a disservice to our readers. Why should a reader looking for an early Olympian not find a result? Draftification would create holes. Redirects would lead the reader to an article where they can find out about the person. Draftification leaves behind red links elsewhere. Creating redirects does not have that problem. Draftification is fraught with problems and should not be pursued. Schwede66 05:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Support If any of these people pass the GNG, editors can expand them and provide proper sourcing. If they can't they will be deleted in 6 months. --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 07:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Note that BilledMammal has been reverting when I've removed articles from this list containing SIGCOV, saying that he controls this proposal and anyone who wants to remove an entry must discuss with him. And I went and started a discussion 30 minutes ago, but he's refused to respond while actively editing other areas. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC) It appears he started a discussion on it with you on 3 March. CMD (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2023 (UTC) I think it is a little unreasonable for you to expect me to drop everything and respond to you immediately; when you commented I was in the middle of opening two large move requests (Talk:Aaron Callaghan (footballer, born 1966)#Requested move 6 March 2023 and Talk:Alakol, Azerbaijan#Requested move 6 March 2023). I also don't expect people to discuss every removal with me. I have no objection to people removing articles when they provide sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG or to editors removing articles after providing just one source if that source is extensive. My objection is to you repeatedly reinstating removals that don't meet these criteria. BilledMammal (talk) 16:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose As someone already said it takes time to write things, while deleting them is easy. Wikipedia is not finished and there is no deadline. Those articles have basically nothing in common except they were written by the same editor (which is irrelevant), so binding them all together without any BEFORE and without any actual demonstration that these articles are not notable is not appropriate and this is also not the place for such discussions. They should be taken to Afd individually, if you have some concerns. Someone commented that deleting them this way would take min. 8 (or even 30) years, but then you expect people to rewrite them in 5????? I believe it is more than obvious to everyone that this proposal of draftifying is actually a backdoor proposal to deletion, which is basically gaming the system. I am strongly against massive deletion of so many sports articles and the eradicating of so much olympic knowledge, that is very useful to us readers (those who are not interested only in most commercialised superstar champions of the present days) and that is not doing any harm whatsoever. Furthermore (and what actually made me write this comment after a long time of just reading) it was clearly stated that if this proposal succeeds, this anti-sports modern book-burning crusade will continue with massive deletions of other athletes (post 1912), which I again find very worrying and utterly un-encyclopedic. I know I will achieve nothing but I simply had to write this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.76.250.241 (talk) 18:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Nothing in common? Takes time to write? Have you looked at the articles? They're carbon copies with some variables that differ per page. Assuming they weren't automated, they took probably a minute or two each at most. CMD (talk) 04:31, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Support per Levivich and pragmatism. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose as articles that meet SIGCOV are being kept in the proposal. If the SIGCOV articles are removed, I would be Neutral on the proposal - clearly we can't have a ton of permanent stub articles with little to no notability, but I'm not sure userficiation is the right idea. Redirects seem far more helpful. Toa Nidhiki05 14:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Agree with Mistral. For this reason,  I originally supported but BilledMammal is refusing to allow amendment of the list to remove articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) even though they have been expanded, now include SIGCOV, and are not based solely on database entry. IMO the extreme remedy of mass removal of articles should not be considered for articles that fall into a gray area. Such articles, if challenged, should be dealt with under regular order, by normal AfD processes. BilledMammal's refusal to allow amendment of the list renders this proposal objectionable IMO. Cbl62 (talk) 14:20, 7 March 2023 (UTC) It is standard practice to not edit RfC statement content after RfCs are opened, especially after there have already been comments. It is best practice to not edit content currently under an RfC. Fine to oppose, but it seems unfair to blame BilledMammal for following WP:RFC. CMD (talk) 14:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Disagree. BilledMammal initially said he would agree to allow amendments to the list, but then threatened me at my talk page saying it was a violation of WP:TPA for me to remove two that had been amended. He said he would only allow amendments if he approved in advance. He has refused to give his OK to removal of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) which are now clearly out of scope. I initially supported the proposal but such extraordinary mass removal should be limited to the most extreme cases with zero SIGCOV and only database sources. Cases like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) should be challenged, if at all, only under regular order.  Cbl62 (talk) 15:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC) I'm not following on what exactly you disagree on. The standard practice? Obtaining consensus seems to be a good way to work within the RfC guidance. CMD (talk) 15:50, 7 March 2023 (UTC) I disagree with not striking entries from the list that no longer fit the scope of the proposal. The proposal was to remove from Main space Lugnuts' early Olympic articles that lacked SIGCOV and were based solely on databases. That scope seemed reasonable, and I supported it. Consistent with that scope, BilledMammal initially invited users to strike individual entries that no longer met that scope. He then reversed course when BeanieFan (an editor with whom BilledMammal has a history of disputes) improved a couple articles and struck them. By reversing course, BilledMammal has changed the initial nature of the proposal and is now insisting on including articles that are out of scope. That's what I disagree with. Cbl62 (talk) 16:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Thanks, although I don't think I said the point you are disagreeing with in my comment. At any rate, the risk of contention that you describe is exactly why the WP:RFC page suggests not doing exactly what BeanieFan is doing. CMD (talk) 17:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Conditional support - The proposal is a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff. No direct deletion and a fair opportunity to turn the stubs that are keepable into encyclopedic articles. However, five years is way too long not to autodelete. That really should be just one year or two years at the very most.Tvx1 21:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Support, no preference for redirects or draftification. If the article is draftified or deleted and it actually has sources that meet GNG, it can be improved or recreated as a proper article and not a 1 or 2 sentence stub sourced to a database. Sennecaster (Chat) 04:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support.  If anything, the proposal should be even broader.  As the RFC notes, Lugnuts does not deserve "Assume good faith" and even to the extent that the articles are not inaccurate, they are largely woefully undersourced - if someone attempted to get such a shoddily sourced article past AFC, it would never pass.  I have no objection to saving articles which is why a 5-year moratorium on deleting drafts is good, but I don't see that as relevant to this RFC - if there are articles in the list that genuine SIGCOV has been found since (note that some of the examples above are still rather shaky), whatever, it just either won't be draftified or can be moved back to the mainspace immediately, and it can go through normal AFD if desired.  SnowFire (talk) 06:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support. I see this proposal and the "just redirect instead" as equivalent in all but name, so putting my support here. I am in favour of either/both of just draftifying or dradftify-and-redirect, with a mild preference towards the latter. I actually prefer draftifying for a much shorter period of time than 5 years, potentially the standard 6 months (?) of Draftspace simply because I do not think 5 years is a reasonable amount of time, and the articles that ought to be deleted would instead just linger in draftspace for years until they're eventually deleted long after being forgotten. I'd rather have a concerted effort and save whatever articles can be saved, failing which they should ideally be put under the same scrutiny and procedures as the rest of Wikipedia. Being created by a prolific admin should not grant 5 years of "free Draftspace stay" compared to other articles. Soni (talk)  08:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose the only problem that's been identified with these articles is that the subjects may not pass the sports notability guidelines. I don't think that's nearly a big enough deal to warrant something like this. Mass deletion/draftification is reasonable if there are more serious problems with the content, such as copyright violations, hoaxes and the like, but notability guidelines are not that big a deal. Hut 8.5 08:50, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Other problems have been identified, they are mentioned in a couple of places in this discusison. CMD (talk) 10:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Like what? I shouldn't have to read an entire 13,000 word discussion to see the rationale for this. The proposer only mentions the notability guidelines or logistical problems related to enforcing them, as do the vast majority of the comments in support. Hut 8.5 12:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Hut 8.5 - Except for lack of notability? Accuracy is the main one. Lugnuts admitted to purposefully putting inaccuracies into his articles, and whilst there's those who think he was lying about that, it's also inarguable that he made a lot of mistakes when filing in those article-templates at one-a-minute - more than a few of his articles have turned out not to even have the correct name. WP:MASSCREATE violation is another additional reason. However, the lack of notability issue is enough by itself for these articles to be dealt with as that's a DELREASON. FOARP (talk) 13:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC) If you don't think that articles by this person can be trusted then we should be considering deleting all of them, not just Olympic athletes from a certain period. (FWIW that comment sounds like trolling from someone who's just been indef blocked and I wouldn't read too much into it.) The only distinguishing feature about these ones is the sports notability guidelines, which seems to be the main rationale for this. While lack of notability is a valid reason to delete something under the deletion policy, you are proposing to ignore the deletion policy with respect to these articles. I don't think mere failure to follow the notability guidelines is enough for such a drastic step. I would expect to see a bigger problem, preferably one which is grounded in a policy rather than a guideline. Hut 8.5 17:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Just as a data point: as far as I can tell, the contributor copyright investigation didn't find evidence of deliberate errors being introduced. isaacl (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Of course it didn’t. That searched for copyright violations, not inaccuracies. Tvx1 20:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Some of the comments in that investigation explicitly referred to looking for inaccuracies, though not all of them. As I said, it's just a data point. isaacl (talk) 16:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC) Support in the cases of those that are just regurgitation of database entries. Oppose for the few that have been expanded to be more encyclopedic. WP:NOT a database or an indiscriminate collection of information.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:46, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support I've got to say, I've always hated the low bar set for including sports figures here.  (Do we still have the article about the ball player with no name? Moving on). That said, I cannot favor mass deletion at this point. The 5 yr limited draftification seems to be the solution to an extraordinary problem.  Extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions. A clear case of the need to Ignore All Rules on a massive scale. I would hope that this process could somehow be automated and perhaps a database/index of these article drafts could be made accessible for those who would want to avail themselves of it. Also, another thought: Is it technically possible to symbolize (mark unobtrusively) red links that have articles in DraftSpace?  Regards, GenQuest "scribble" 01:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support per Snowfire. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Qualified Support I'd much rather see these articles redirected and even thought of opposing this, but ultimately I feel that something needs to be done. So if the alternative to redirect doesn't happen this has my weak support. The reason this has less support from me is that draft imposes time limits and requires moves. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Ambivalent, leaning oppose. This proposal really seems like draftifying as a backdoor to deletion, which is against policy, and I think it's fairly harmless to have a bunch of borderline-notable stubs lying around. People can always PROD them as needed. I am concerned about the inaccuracies reported above, but I spot-checked a few articles and they seemed to match the sources. I'm also concerned about the WP:TRAINWRECK concerns mentioned by some participants who say that some of the articles listed pass WP:GNG. It's an unfortunate situation, but dealing with the articles on a case-by-case basis (PROD, redirect, or expand as appropriate) may be best. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC) @Mx. Granger: People can always PROD them as needed ... dealing with the articles on a case-by-case basis (PROD, redirect, or expand as appropriate) may be best. In your view, how many can I PROD or redirect in one day without being disruptive? Levivich (talk) 19:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC) That's a good question. It's not realistic to expect people to deal with hundreds of PRODs in the same topic area all at the same time. Given the special circumstances, I think it would be reasonable to PROD 5 or 10 a day or maybe more (though under normal circumstances that would be a lot for one topic area). Redirecting is easier to undo than deletion, so that could probably be done at a higher rate without being disruptive. But I realize the list might take weeks or months to get through at that rate. Hence my ambivalence – I don't really see a good solution, so I'm not sure what the best approach is. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Not weeks or months, years. 93,000 Lugnuts stubs, the ones listed here are less than 1% of the total. At 10 a day, we're talking 90 days for 900 articles, plus AFDing the removed PRODs (or some of them), so it'll extend beyond 90 days. Now, I know people will say, well not all 93,000 Lugnuts stubs need to be dealt with at all, some are good. That's true. We don't know how many. But even if a mere 10% are bad -- 9,000 articles -- PRODing 10 a day would take 3 years. And if it's higher than 10%, if it's 50% bad, then we're talking over a decade to PROD them all. To go through them case-by-case is totally impossible, in my view. It must be done by batch processing, because of the number. They were created by batch processing, so I don't feel bad about not going through them one by one, but I feel a lot better about it when I realize that it's functionally impossible to get through 10,000 articles or more, one by one. Levivich (talk) 19:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Support Depicting my opposition to mass article creation, microstubs are not a value-add to the encyclopedia. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:21, 11 March 2023 (UTC) Support: Wikipedia is not a sports database and many of these people will not be notable. The efforts of those who have expanded articles under this scope is appreciated, but it is not clear why this is made easier by having an existing sub-stub article rather than directly using the two website sources to write something from scratch. You could even keep an outline of the wikitext in userspace or start by copying a similar article. If it took minutes for Lugnuts to create then it takes minutes to re-create, not much overhead.  I am persuaded against redirection by FOARP and I believe that it would fall afoul of WP:R#DELETE#1 and #2, by indiscriminately redirecting many common names with more notable targets to very brief mentions (if any) of very obscure sportspeople that no-one would be using the search function to discover anyway. — Bilorv (talk) 22:26, 11 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per Rhododendrites.  I suggest AfD-ing the worst 5%, and then review. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 11 March 2023 (UTC) I guess that merging possibilities are poorly considered. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC) What would we merge? And plenty of these microstubs have been AfD'd and deleted or redirected...in the past 11 months we've had 214 bios of Olympians and 75% of them have been deleted (71), redirected (88), or merged (2), and that's including a lot that don't meet the criteria for this list (and so would be expected to have a greater chance of being kept). Why should the community have to spend 2.5 more months reviewing 50 AfDs (using the archive average of 19/month, which a lot of people complained was too high) just to arrive at the same conclusion: we have way too many non-notable Olympian stubs? JoelleJay (talk) 00:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC) What would we merge?  Any proposal to delete, even 5-year slow delete, should require the proponent to explain what merging is not possible.  For William Horschke, for example, why not merge all USA participants to USA at the 1904 Summer Olympics?  I agree that the article creator should have asked this question. Plenty have been AfD-ed?  I didn’t know that.  Was it stated upfront?  It would be helpful, it is what I was asking for.  This data would change my mind, if the were all deleted.  But they mostly weren’t. Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Olympics/archive, a minority were deleted, and almost none were draftified which makes draftification and odd proposal here.  “Redirect” looks to be a prominent outcome.  Assuming that a redirect implies that the subject is mentioned at the target for having done something, I consider that similar to a merge of a stub.  Redirection, with optional merge, is something that could be done without special authorisation by RfC. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:49, 12 March 2023 (UTC) So far as I can tell, all of these individuals are already mentioned in the relevant Event at the X Olympic lists. If that is the merge needed, then it is already done. CMD (talk) 08:28, 12 March 2023 (UTC) A far smaller minority were kept and the merge rate is negligible, which supports the reality that these subjects are not notable. The proposal to draftify for five years is simply to address claims that 7 days at AfD or 6 months in draftspace is "too short" to find refs, and mass redirection poses its own issues as described below. JoelleJay (talk) 13:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC) I accept that “keep” or “do nothing” not good solutions.  I would prefer mass redirection to deletion or draftification, the first per policy WP:ATD-R, and the second because draftspace should not be used as purgatory, because draftification should only be used for pages that are envisioned to be returned to mainspace, and this clearly will not be the case. Redirection allow easy bold editing should new sourced material be found.  Unjustified reversions of redirects should be responded to promptly by AfD, with consideration of sanctions due to disruptive editing if the reverts were done en mass. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2023 (UTC) The issues people have brought up with redirection are 1) not all subjects have a suitable redirect (e.g multiple Olympics) and 2) redirecting wholesale brings up issues with names shared with other mentioned-but-pageless people. JoelleJay (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2023 (UTC) (1) Any person who has participated in multiple Olympics is quite a step above the typical example, and their article should be Kept, of AfD-ed.  If it is in anyway complicated, there is need for discussion, and with deletion or pseudodeletion on the cards, AfD should be used for that discussion. (2) So, why not WP:Move to an unambiguous title before redirecting?  The current excessively minimalist titling practice doesn’t apply to redirects. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:43, 14 March 2023 (UTC) Several articles[9][10] on multi-Olympians have been deleted due to failing the requirement for SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 02:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC) Support mass automated deletion or userification, both in this case and as a general solution where anyone mass-creates articles and and any discussions (before or afterwards) that occur fail to produce an affirmative consensus supporting their creation or retention. The ArbCom case showed that Lugnuts' judgement when creating articles is not good; and the listed sources look like raw databases, which likely do not pass WP:RS in all the places where Lugnuts used them, failing the GNG. Redirection, as some people have suggested above, is not reasonable because we can't verify that these articles are actually appropriate for the target they would be redirected to (or that they reflect any sort of reality at all, given the terrible sourcing); nor is it reasonable that people spend several times the amount of time and effort Lugnuts spent spamming out these to "review" them. Anyone who believes there are individual articles worth salvaging has had ample time to do so. If people believe the database entries that were indiscriminately dumped into Wikipedia here can be turned into valid articles, the WP:BURDEN is on them to produce proper sources for them, and the WP:ONUS is on them to demonstrate a consensus supporting it - arguing that article-shaped-objects that were mass-produced in mere weeks or days must consume months or even years of the community's time to clean up is unworkable. A mass-edit that was done with one press of a button, with no discussion or effort to seek consensus, should not be so drastically more difficult to review and reverse. --Aquillion (talk) 04:53, 12 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose I prefer the redirect option if there the community determines a problem exists. I am not convinced that a problem actually exists as Rhododendrites says in point 3 above ("There's zero exigency here"). This proposal appears to be a way to avoid a formal community discussion on how to resolve the question about how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion. There are some things to like about the proposal, such as long term draft space, but in my mind, any mass nomination process should involve a group of uninvolved editors to review the nominated articles prior to beginning the AfD process. --Enos733 (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC) This proposal appears to be a way to avoid a formal community discussion on how to resolve the question about how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion. Please explain this theory. Levivich (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC) This is mentioned in the background section of this proposal. I believe the proposer wants to suggest "a method for resolving this question, with a group of articles that can be used to test the proposed resolution." To me the way forward would be to continue the discussion and evaluate the proposals articulated at WP:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/AfD at scale before launching a test. - Enos733 (talk) 19:03, 12 March 2023 (UTC) Yeah, I wrote that sentence :-) This RFC is a formal discussion  on how to resolve the question (or, at least, a question) about how to handle mass nominations at AFD, and it proposes a method for avoiding mass nominations at AFD for articles that meet a certain criteria. I understand preferring redirects, or believing that these can just be left in mainspace as is, but I don't understand how an RFC avoids an RFC. Levivich (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2023 (UTC) To me this is a little bit of forum shopping, as a discussion was happening elsewhere (and yes I understood it stalled). I would rather see a more complete proposal, rather than an ad hoc test. - Enos733 (talk) 20:04, 12 March 2023 (UTC) That's a lot easier to say than do. Levivich (talk) 20:09, 12 March 2023 (UTC) The discussion wasn’t just stalled, it was cancelled by ArbCom. BilledMammal (talk) 02:26, 13 March 2023 (UTC) Support Junk the lot. Virtually useless to man and beast. Complete anathama to everything Wikipedia is trying to achieve.  scope_creepTalk 16:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC) Comment Seems kind of silly when we change the notability criteria then have to do mass deletions. Now we only consider GNG or SPORTS rather than anyone who's competed in the Olympics. Oaktree b (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC) Support Draftifying this many articles is pointless; just delete them. They can be re-created when sources show up. Cleaning the cobwebs out of wikipedia is important. Still seems silly to have changed the notability criteria, but here we are. Oaktree b (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC) Support draftification or redirection. Either one works. If the only references given are a database source, then they aren't even giving a presumption of notability, particularly since they aren't even medalists. Any that have been expanded or otherwise had proper sources added can just be moved back to mainspace after draftification by the editors who made the improvements. Considering this could have instead been a proposal to delete them all, which would have been valid due to the requirement for all sports biographies to meet the WP:GNG, I think draftification is getting off light, particularly with the special extended time period consideration given here. SilverserenC 00:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per NOTPAPER and, more importantly, NTEMP: if we remove what cannot be easily added to today, we skew the balance inexorably towards recentism. Kevin McE (talk) 08:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Strongest support ever Let's consider the options. Doing nothing - It should be clear by the discussion reasons that the articles can't stay the way they are. We have to do something. Drafts - The extended autodeletion means it's not a deletion backdoor, and draftifying them is our best bet. While some people say no one will improve them, I think the people discussing have the village pump watched, and will most likely go to the draft space to improve the articles if the proposal passes. Redirect - To what? And also, no one will search them, so it won't help the encyclopedia at all. AfD - That will increase the workload, and there will only be 7 days to find notability, as oppose to 5 years if the proposal passes. Such AfDs will most likely be delete, so why discuss it instead of discussing something actually meaningful to discuss? That is why I support. Nononsense101 (talk) 17:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Support based on evidence of low page views dictating that drafting articles will have minimal impact. Cherry-picked examples of articles that have proven their notability with improved references would be returned to mainspace as users search for such athletes, recovering the minimal bycatch BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 03:16, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Support There are several existing wikipedia rules that would have prevented their creation if they had been enforced. (detailed reasoning comes later).Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Reconfirm support and also to discourage future mass creation of stubs. The Lugnuts stubs were created ignoring the policies of WP:MASSCREATION, WP:MEATBOT or WP:BOTUSE. Those are policies and should have been enforced. Most of the articles were not edited considerably by other editors except for Lugnuts and draftifying them would still provide potential expanders with 5 years time to expand the articles. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:16, 18 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose This has been shown to be a test case in deleting most of the 90,000 stubs created by an editor.  I would be open to a separate proposal to redirect some of these to the nation's teams.  A delayed deletion is not the only way to handle this issue.  A dedicated group of 20 to 100 could fix these articles in a reasonable amount of time.  Abzeronow (talk) 19:20, 20 March 2023 (UTC) So your proposed “fix” for this is that a substantial percentage of the actually-active editors of EN Wikipedia (a 2017 study showed nearly all articles were written by about ~1,300 editors) dedicate months/years of time to fix the problems entirely created by a single editor? Yeah, no. But even if this is the way to fix it this proposal doesn’t prevent this from happening? The articles can still be fixed in draftspace if people wish to do that? FOARP (talk) 08:23, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Support for the love of god please. I've come across so many of these stubs of sportspeople created by Lugnuts that have zero claims of notability besides the criteria of being an olympian. Sportspeople is an area where we ought to be more strict practicing the notability guideline. Database entries do not count to notability. SWinxy (talk) 04:14, 26 March 2023 (UTC) I would also prefer deleting them outright FWIW. SWinxy (talk) 01:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC) Support, per FOARP. This is a reasonably pragmatic compromise that addresses the fact that many of these "articles" are potentially not even accurate, let alone notable. Even if the Lugnuts sabotage admission is untrue, other editors in this RfC have detected errors that – in my mind at least – call into question the reliability of the datasets used to create these stubs. I further agree with FOARP that an approach similar to this should be taken with regards to many other mass-created stubs that have little hope of satisfying the GNG or becoming reasonably-substantial articles, and that leaving said articles alone – or trying to mud-wrestle over a few of them at a time at AfD – legitimises using fait accompli as a work-around for the burden of establishing notability and reliable sourcing. Protestations such as those from BeanieFan11 are not at all compelling: they argue at one moment that [the] majority [of the stubs concerned] I would say could be expanded if the right sources were used, it just takes time to write things, then at the next admit that nobody actually wants to do that work of expanding them (I doubt that there's going to be a ton of eager editors who want to help out in writing articles on 1900/10s Olympians), thus undermining their own suggestion that an Olympic stub cleanup project be created as an alternative to the headline proposal. Similarly from Abzeronow just above me here; [a] dedicated group of 20 to 100 could fix these articles in a reasonable amount of time. I wish them, or any and all other editors, the best if they do genuinely wish to start a Lugnuts Stubs WikiProject and set to the task of making decent articles out of these database entries – but I see zero reason as to why that work cannot be carried out over the next five years in the peace and quiet of draftspace. XAM2175 (T) 12:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC) I would further add, for the avoidance of doubt, 1) that I support the principle of the proposal and the methodology used to prepare the query, and that my support endures on those terms even if the list of articles produced by said query changes in the course of the RfC; and 2) that I oppose systematic redirection as an alternate proposal on the grounds that there is no clear methodology for selecting appropriate targets for redirection. XAM2175 (T) 12:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC) Support I find the "articles shouldn't have to satisfy Wikipedia standarads" argument extremely amusing. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)   === Discussion (Olympian draftification) === Comment I think the better WP:ATD is to simply redirect them to "Country at year season Olympics", as mass-draftification has been routinely rejected as being against the purpose of WP:DRAFTIFY, which clearly states that the process is not intended as a backdoor route to deletion. Curbon7 (talk) 08:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Such redirects are often reverted. This specifics of this proposal are also intended to ensure that it is not being used as a backdoor route to deletion, by extending the auto-deletion period to five years, and by allowing the articles to be returned to mainspace without improvement for the purpose of redirecting them. BilledMammal (talk) 08:39, 2 March 2023 (UTC) That discussion seems to relate to American football players, which is a topic-area with very fervent advocates. As far as I'm aware, no one is disputing the illegitimacy of Lugnuts Olympian sub-stubs. Thank you for the correction of the 5 years, I had missed that point. Curbon7 (talk) 08:45, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Query @BilledMammal: I checked the most-expanded entry on the list, Alfred Bellerby. Why is this +651 byte edit not a significant contribution? -Ljleppan (talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC) It should be, there must be a bug with the query. I'll resolve it and remove any articles that don't meet the criteria from the list; thank you for bringing it to my attention. BilledMammal (talk) 09:09, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Thought as much :) If you need another test case, Special:Diff/856423499 appears to be +415. Ljleppan (talk) 09:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC) There were two issues; the query was excluding articles with contributions <-200 bytes, and including those with >200 bytes, and the query was not considering edits made immediately before an edit by Lugnuts. I've fixed both; for the first, I've decided to continuing excluding contributions <-200 bytes rather than adding articles to the list after the RfC has been opened. This has reduced the number of articles listed from 1,027 to 971.BilledMammal (talk) 10:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Thanks for being so fast with the fix. Could you also check this +233 at Edward Carr (athlete)? Ljleppan (talk) 10:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Thanks, I think I found that one at the same time, on Adolf Davids. I've fixed it now; the issue there was that it wasn't properly including edits with a change tag other than reverts or undo; that diff was tagged with 616, or wikieditor. This has reduced the number of articles listed to 960. BilledMammal (talk) 11:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC) The delete after 5 years seems like it might be annoying to do (since the drafts would have to excluded from any bots and automation that assumes drafts are G13 after 6 months), and I don't know if it's necessary unless some editors argue that there's something to be saved. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC) The other issue with the 5 year rule as currently written is what should an admin do if a human updates one of these pages 4 years 9 months after draftification but hasn't moved it in to mainspace yet? We can solve this problem by clarifying that this 5 year timer is a one time extension of WP:G13's 6 month timer and human edits after 4 years 6 months extend the timer in the normal manner. This also lets admins simply delete using WP:G13 (instead of having to cite this RFC) once the 5 year clock runs out. Iffy★Chat -- 14:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC) My thought is that doing this subversion of G13 might be trying to square peg the round hole. Would it be worth creating a psuedo-namespace for this, similar to UBXspace? casualdejekyll 16:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Objections to a separate proposal to go along with it, asking if we should mass redirect these articles? Does anyone actually object to redirecting them all (i.e. would only be satisfied if the articles were deleted)? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC) I object to any proposal that has the concept of "them all".  If you find that one of them is best dealt with by redirecting it, do that.  Some may be best handled by expanding them (or leaving them for someone else with more interest in doing so to expand).  Some of them may be best handled by deleting the article outright.  Let PROD or AFD handle that.  Some of them may be best handled via a redirect.  Wikipedia has millions of stub articles.  The handwringing over these is primarily about the personality that created them, not about the quality or potential of each one assessed on its own.  Yes, these thousands of stubs are a lot, but far less than 1% of all stubs we have at Wikipedia, and proportionally are not that big of a deal.  We don't have to do anything with the full set of them, other than approach each one as though it were any other stub we came across.  --Jayron32 17:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Reframing my meaning: is there anyone who supports draftification who would object to them being mass redirected? There are clearly at least a few who oppose draftification but would support redirecting. I don't doubt there are still some who would oppose either one, but redirecting seems obviously preferable to draftification. All of the arguments about redirection above assume "someone will revert". Well, if the proposal is to redirect, that becomes moot. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:17, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Well, I for one wouldn't object, but I think it saves a whole lot more time to say, in this RFC, "Support #5 only", and see if that carries the day. Levivich (talk) 17:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC) So, while I certainly don't fit in the camp you're targeting, I am going to push back on a couple of things.  Each proposed alternative to deletion has its own unique problems, and none of them really satisfy all possible issues.  Some people may support draftification because it preserves, in the currently viewable state, the article itself in a way that allows for people to more easily expand it.  Redirection makes the initial text harder to recover.  I mean, only a little if one is an experienced Wikipedia editor, but undoing a redirect and turning it back into an article does involve some rather arcane moves (available to any editor, but tricky nonetheless) that draftification does not.  For many purposes, redirecting is tantamount to deletion and salting.  Indeed, even deleting and leaving redlinks behind is a better solution, as a redlink at least says "here's an article that you might want to create if you can get the sources together" whereas a redirect basically says "Don't even bother".  --Jayron32 17:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC) undoing a redirect and turning it back into an article does involve some rather arcane moves (and BilledMammal's I believe it makes the articles easier to work on) - When was the last time either of you saw a newbie find a draft and improve it? Apart from the drafts that get outside attention (high-profile controversial article, canvassing, etc.), I'm not so sure I've ever seen it happen. Not in browsing on-wiki; not the new users I've worked with off-wiki. It's part of the failure of draftspace (or rather, why it failed as a collaborative space and turned into a trap for bad content): on the chance that someone goes to create a new article at the exact page name of the draft, nobody sees the notice that there's a draft, and the processes to discover drafts apart from seeing that notice are far more arcane. Way back in the early days of draftspace, I loved the idea and created a few thinking it would spark collaboration, but nobody ever edited them; to the contrary, people (experienced users, not newbies) just went ahead and started the article anew. With extremely rare exceptions, people don't discover and improve drafts. I agree it's also unlikely that someone will look in the history of an article to see the material, but it's not less likely. And really, if we're being honest, what is the value of what's there in the first place? There are two reasons I'm opposing the proposal above, and neither is because Lugnuts created a treasure trove of quality material for the ages: one is it's frustrating to see deletion-via-draftification, even with a 5-year countdown. It just doesn't do anything other than delete with a veneer of preservation. The other is the article titles should redirect, so why not keep the piddly bit of content that's there per WP:PRESERVE yada yada. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC) When was the last time either of you saw a newbie find a draft and improve it?  MY POINT EXACTLY.  We shouldn't do anything with these stubs outside of the normal things we would do with a stub when we come across it during our own random wanderings through Wikipedia.  Sometimes, when I find a stub, I don't do anything with it, and leave it for someone else to handle.  Sometimes, I'll be like "I know enough about this, and I think this is a worthwhile project to handle" and I'll expand it.  Sometimes, I'll be like "I'm not entirely sure there's enough source material to justify an article about this" and I'll search, and find out there isn't, and I'll nominate it for AFD.  My entire point here is that every person in this discussion should be handling these stubs in this manner, and not fretting about what to do with them all.  They'll get handled.  Or maybe they won't.  But we don't need to do anything special.  Stubs exist.  They existed before Lugnuts created this relatively small set of them here.  The will continue to exist and new ones created tomorrow as well.  There's no need to do anything special.  Ignore them.  Expand them.  Delete them.  Whatever you would do if you found a stub that had nothing to do with Lugnuts, you should do with each one of these.  --Jayron32 18:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Do any of these articles have nontrivial incoming links? —Kusma (talk) 17:50, 2 March 2023 (UTC) This comment, and the discussion in general, seems to be full of people who believe that draftification = deletion. This proposal is explicitly NOT that and I'm not sure why people are so convinced that it is. casualdejekyll 15:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Because it will result in having been a backdoor route for deletion for the majority of them. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC) why people are so convinced that it is - For the reasons I wrote above (and below, and elsewhere). The usefulness of draftspace, to the extent there ever was any, was eroded through a series of RfCs maybe 5-6 years ago which turned it into a bad content trap. Even before then, it was very rarely used for collaboration or article discovery, at least in part because it was never adequately integrated into our technical systems and editing norms. It had potential, but now it's limited to trapping spam/cruft/attack pages/nonsense. It may be useful for that, but I wouldn't support any proposal based on the idea of people somehow finding drafts and improving them, because that just doesn't really happen outside of token cases. This is unhelpful busywork with a veneer of "preserving content" when the goal is really just to delete them (which I wouldn't support, but have more sympathy for than draftification).It's even stranger because there's not really anything to collaborate on or salvage. What we're talking about here is the preservation of 960 instances of Lugnuts creating a placeholder, yelling "first!", adding it to a running tally, and moving on to the next one, leaving the hard part for someone else. Some people say stub creation inspires passersby to develop articles, but in my experience those who want to write a decent article are more likely to do so if they also get to create it (and/or don't have to work within someone else's structure), for better or worse. Not that I think stub creation should be disallowed; let's just not pretend like there's a lot of value here. I digress...Extending 6 months to 5 years doesn't transform draftspace into a useful collaborative space and doesn't create something valuable out of these stubs. It's a way for those who think the stubs shouldn't exist to functionally delete them where a mass deletion proposal wouldn't succeed. I get that some folks are opposing because they see some value in these drafts, but I'm opposing because (a) moving to draftspace is pointless because of the nature of draftspace and because they're not particularly valuable, (b) I don't support their mass deletion, and (c) redirection is just obviously preferable. With that, I'll take some time away from this thread, as I'm writing a disproportionate amount. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Is there a reason that we cannot enact this proposal, but then, instead of R2ing the redirects, retarget them to the associated "Country at the year Olympics" article? We would then be able to slap on a {{R with possibilities}}, which would automatically include a handy note that says "This is a redirect from a title that is in draft namespace at Draft:(name of page), so please do not create an article from this redirect (unless moving a ready draft here). You are welcome to improve the draft article while it is being considered for inclusion in article namespace. If the draft link is also a redirect, then you may boldly turn that redirect into a draft article." HouseBlastertalk 18:20, 2 March 2023 (UTC) One hurdle appears to be that Someone™ needs to figure out what to do about the cases where the subject participated in multiple Olympics. See bolded entries in the collapsed list in § Alternative: Redirection targets below. Ljleppan (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2023 (UTC) How is #1 ("Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months)") going to be enforced? A lot of G13 deletions are done by bots, the ones that aren't done by bots may be done by people unfamiliar with this unending saga, and I don't envy the person who would have to babysit hundreds of drafts every six months for five years. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:35, 2 March 2023 (UTC) With something like a template or a category. In theory a faux-namespace could be used, but that has some disadvantages, although those disadvantages could be overcome with a redirect from draftspace to the faux-namespace, but that also has some disadvantages. I think the details of implementation should be left until after we see if there is consensus for the idea. If there is consensus for the idea, figuring out the implementation would be a next step, and then we would probably try nominating other batches of articles for the same process (with the implementation figured out). Levivich (talk) 18:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC) I wish people wouldn't use terms such as "microstub" or "sub-stub", especially in supposedly neutral places such as RFC statements. Our shortest articles are simply stubs, and the use of other terms serves to frame a debate against such articles before it has even begun. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC) There are different types of stubs, however; we needed to make it clear what sort of stubs we were discussing. BilledMammal (talk) 00:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Request if the motion passes, could a page be created with the articles listed so that people can try to expand them within the 5 years.  I know I might try to expand some of them but will have no time until at least July and without a page/list/something like that, I know I'll forget.  Red Fiona (talk) 00:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I intend to; this list will still exist, but I plan to create another one with all current categories listed. If you have any recommendations for where the list should be placed, please let me know. BilledMammal (talk) 00:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Thank you :) Red Fiona (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I went through and added sources for a few so that they no longer met the criteria listed (no sources other than Olympedia/Sports-Reference), and BilledMammal has reverted me SIX times (clear violation of WP:3RR) – yet he's accusing me of being disruptive (I have only reverted three times)! BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I support editors removing items from this list if they meet the criteria defined for the restoration of articles if this proposal passes. This was not done for the articles I restored the list; for most of them only a single source was added, which is not enough to plausibly demonstrate WP:GNG, and for one no sources were added, only text. BilledMammal (talk) 02:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) By making those edits you're making your entire proposal false, as its no longer just a list of articles containing only Olympedia/Sports-Reference with no significant edits. And any explanation for why doubling the revert rule is acceptable? BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC) The criteria for how these articles could be restored is clear; it doesn't make sense to apply different criteria during the RfC than after it. Regarding the reverts, I believe editors are allowed, with some exceptions, to prevent alterations to proposals they make. I also note that you have done more reverts than I, but we already have a discussion about that on your talk page so I won't comment further on it here. BilledMammal (talk) 02:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC) No, I have not made more reverts than you (unless three is greater than six somehow) – I do not see anything allowing what you did at WP:3RR – and again, by reverting, all you're doing is making your proposal a bunch of lies. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC) This is troubling. I supported this extraordinary proposal only on specific conditions, including the absence of any SIGCOV. If SIGCOV have even arguably been added to some small portion of the articles, those articles should be stricken from the list. Otherwise, the grounds underlying the "support" votes (including mine) have changed. Cbl62 (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I note the WP:SIGCOV was added after the RfC was opened; I don't believe it makes sense to have different criteria to remove list items during the proposal (one WP:SIGCOV) than after the proposal (WP:GNG). However, if you or other !support editors disagree, I won't object to their removal. BilledMammal (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I checked one and it was removed due to the presence of a plaintext reference to the 1911 UK Census and a later death registry, so no sigcov issues there (assuming the references were accurate, they were plain text and even then hard to tell if it's the same person). CMD (talk) 02:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Would you say, CMD, that this is SIGCOV (from one of them that was re-added)? BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Be nice to have some diffs for context, but that is indeed not a plaintext reference to a census. CMD (talk) 03:07, 3 March 2023 (UTC) (edit conflict) BeanieFan11 has removed articles under four different categories: Articles that included plaintext references like the 1911 UK Census and so were missed when establishing the list; for example, Wilfred Bleaden Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added no sources but made an edit of greater than 200 bytes; for example, Carlo Bonfanti Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added one sources that could plausibly be WP:SIGCOV; for example, Arthur Burn Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added sources that could plausibly demonstrate WP:GNG; for example, Richard Genserowski I consider removals under the fourth category to be appropriate, as that matches the criteria for restoring the articles defined in this proposal, but I reinstated the articles that were removed under the first three categories as those would be insufficient to restore the article if the proposal passes. If !support editors disagree with any of reinstations, then please remove the articles, or let me know and I will remove them. BilledMammal (talk) 03:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Adding full-page long articles (such as Bechestobill's case) would not pass your criteria for bringing it back? That is ridiculous. BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC) WP:GNG requires multiple sources. Most of your additions were also considerably shorter; for example, at Arthur Burn, you added a source containing three sentences. BilledMammal (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC) ...with the comment "I could make an enormous expansion of the article with the sources that exist, but don't have the time currently so I'll add a ref so it doesn't get draftified." BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I removed Behestobil. That article now has a full page article from a major newspaper, a clear example of SIGCOV. This extraordinary proposal to bypass normal AfD processe was to be limited to microstubs lacking any SIGCOV and received my Support vote on that basis. Cbl62 (talk) 03:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Thank you. Do you consider sources like the one added to Arthur Burns to also warrant removal? BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC) If you have already found multiple sources then it would be easy to add a second reference. Why don't you just do that, demonstrate that WP:GNG is plausibly met, and uncontroversially remove the article from the list? BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Ok, no, this proposal is about stubs with zero sigcov references. Not stubs with one reference. Zero. Considering you're the most vocal advocate of the proposal, I was hoping you would already know that, @BilledMammal. casualdejekyll 15:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) @Casualdejekyll: All of these stubs had zero sigcov references when this RfC started. I'm of the opinion that items should only be removed when the criteria for restoration is met (Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG) as I don't think we should set lower requirements while the discussion is ongoing than we will set if there is a consensus for this proposal. BilledMammal (talk) 15:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Your proposal is just going to be a lie then, as its not a list containing only "Sports Reference or Olympedia" with "no significant edits other than Lugnuts." BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Then there is a grey area that needs to be somehow addressed. I think that generally your position on this is plausible, but the other hand of it is that the proposal hasn't actually been enacted yet - i.e. nothing's been moved into draftspace, so requiring the articles to meet requirements to move out of draftspace when they haven't even entered draftspace yet seems a little silly. I'd say that once the move is done, that's when we restrict it to only your "fourth category removals". casualdejekyll 16:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC) My concern is that will be gamed, and as the criteria for inclusion is the list is so conservative gaming it will be easy to do. I don't believe there will be any harm caused by requiring that the restoration criteria is met to remove articles from the list, but I think there will be disruption if we allow the selection criteria to be used to remove articles from the list. BilledMammal (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC) BilledMammal is repeatedly reverting when I remove entries with SIGCOV – see here, here and here. Pinging those who have talked about these matters (besides me and BilledMammal) prior for their opinions: @Cbl62, Casualdejekyll, Rlendog,  and Chipmunkdavis:. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC) I disagree with those reversions.  If SIGCOV is found, then the affected article is in a different class from where the main problem under discussion is. It shouldn't matter whether the SIGCOV was added before or after this discussion started. Rlendog (talk) 18:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC) I also disagree. Rlendog is correct. The whole point of this proposal is to deal with sub-stubs lacking any substance or SIGCOV and based only on databases. I support the proposal, despite its drastic nature, but only on the basis that it is narrowly limited. If articles are improved to the point that they no longer fall within that scope, they should be removed and that should not be controversial. Will strike my support is this continues. Cbl62 (talk) 18:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC) (edit conflict) Either find two GNG-compliant sources, or, in deference to Cbl's position while the discussion is ongoing, one GNG-compliant source that contains extensive coverage. However, I don't understand why you insist on working on this list while the RfC is ongoing; it does cause some disruption and clogs up watchlists, and there are many other articles on Olympians that need to be worked on - if it would help, I can provide you a list containing such Olympians. BilledMammal (talk) 18:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)Why not just leave the list as-is and revisit whatever changes should be made to it after the RfC is over? JoelleJay (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC) @JoelleJay: Because the proposal is for drastic mass-removal of 1,000 articles that is an exception to normal processes. Given the concerns I raised in my support vote, I am willing to support the proposal in this unique case. However, it should only apply to articles that plainly fit the scope, i.e., zero SIGCOV and based only on databases. If there is SIGCOV and sourcing beyond such databases, the articles should be dealt with using normal AfD processes. Cbl62 (talk) 19:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC) I absolutely do not support mass draftification of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter). Such close cases should be dealt with at AfD if someone wishes to challenge them. Cbl62 (talk) 19:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC) This proposal allows five years for anyone to do what Beanie is doing (BEFORE searches of 1,000 articles). No one claimed to have done BEFORE searches of all 1,000 prior to starting this RFC. The articles on the list met the criteria when the RFC was launched. There is no point in somebody going through the list during the RFC to pull articles out of it. To do that damn near 100 times is disruptive. And even if 100 articles are pulled out, there would still be like 800 or 900 left. It's not even a significant portion of the total. Removing articles one by one is purely disruptive, it accomplishes no constructive goal. At the very least, Beanie could just give BM a list of articles that were expanded during the RFC in the event this proposal passes, and BM can take those off the final list. Levivich (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Yeah, that's what I had in mind. The list can be amended before implementation, but constantly editing it entry by entry during the RfC is disruptive. It would be clear GAMING if someone was to invalidate inclusion of items on the list by making 200+-byte fluff edits or by adding trivial non-database sources; I don't see how other edits that fail to meet list removal criteria are any different. Even if the list was draftified without amendment, if Beanie shows some individuals do meet GNG they can be moved back to mainspace immediately; if for some of them he can only find one SIGCOV source then he can userfy or work with a wikiproject to incubate the drafts in projectspace. If some NEXIST-notable subjects whose pages no one visits continue to not be visited in draftspace, and no one is interested enough to write a new article on them from scratch in five years, then so be it. JoelleJay (talk) 20:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Improving articles is the antithesis of "gaming" the system nor is it "disruptive". I support the proposal but articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are no longer in scope and should be removed from the list. Mass draftification is an extreme measure and should be limited to those that are clearly' within scope. If 25 of the 1,000 articles get improved while the proposal is pending, that's a good thing!  Cbl62 (talk) 20:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC) He can improve them all he wants, I'm just saying we can revisit whether they meet list inclusion criteria after the RfC but before implementation. JoelleJay (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC) If someone wants to challenge the notability of Spitzer and Greene, they are free to do so but such challenge should folow regular AfD procedures. Articles that include SIGCOV should absolutely not be part of this extraordinary mass removal. 21:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbl62 (talk • contribs)  Nobody is opposed to the articles being expanded/improved, and of course nobody thinks articles that include SIGCOV should be part of the mass draftification (or redirection). The point is, we don't need to remove them from the list during the RFC. It's not like just because they're on the list means they're automatically going to be draftified if the proposal passes. We can remove the expanded ones from the list after the RFC (if it passes), and people can still go along expanding them during the RFC, just don't need to be making 25 edits removing them one by one from the list day after day. It has nothing to do with the articles, it's about not spamming this page. Levivich (talk) 21:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC) So long as there is agreement that improved articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are not going to be draftified as part of this proposal. @Levivich: @BeanieFan11: Is that agreed? Cbl62 (talk) 04:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Even if they are drafted, individual articles that have been edited to show sigcov can always be easilymoved back to the mainspace or recreated. This proposal is specifically designed to make that painless. CMD (talk) 04:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC) If a second independent/secondary/significant source is provided, yes. BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC) @BilledMammal: You're avoiding the question. Do you agree, as Levivich suggests, that Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) should not and would not be draftified under your proposal? Cbl62 (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Any that plausibly meet GNG would be removed; it would be helpful if editors provide a list of articles they improve, but I will also do my own checks. BilledMammal (talk) 06:52, 7 March 2023 (UTC) Still avoiding the question which is about Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter). Cbl62 (talk) 07:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC) @Cbl62, BeanieFan11,  and Toa Nidhiki05: I had a discussion with JoelleJay and Levivich; articles that meet WP:SPORTSBASIC #5 (one significant/independent/secondary source) will be removed from the list. However, it would be preferable if they are removed as a group at the end, to avoid clogging watchlists. This would include the two you mention. BeanieFan11, rather than removing items immediately after improving them, can you create a list of articles you have improved, perhaps on the drafting talk page? BilledMammal (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Don’t think these two meet that though. Tvx1 01:35, 8 March 2023 (UTC) If and when Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are removed from  the proposal, I will restore  my  support  vote. Cbl62 (talk) 02:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC) What's wrong with the assurance they'll be removed after the RfC is over? JoelleJay (talk) 02:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC) What's wrong with removing them now?  Others have been removed.  Why not these two? Cbl62 (talk) 02:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC) FWIW, I am not saying that Spitzer and Greene meet GNG. They may or may not survive an AfD, but they clearly do not fit the scope  of this extraordinary mass-removal proposal and should be dealt with under regular procedures.  Cbl62 (talk) 02:13, 8 March 2023 (UTC) I don't want to keep getting notified every time the list is amended, and allowing any user to unanimously remove entries at any time based on their personal interpretation of SIGCOV is obviously untenable. I guess if @BilledMammal wants  he could ok the removal of those two specifically now, but future proposed changes would have to be held in a separate list in another subsection/userspace for editors to discuss if the proposal passes. JoelleJay (talk) 02:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Nor should it be based on your personal interpretation of SIGCOV. It should be based on whether the articles are within scope of the proposal.  Also, who appointed you to issue a ruling that "future proposed changes would have to be held in a separate list in another subsection/userspace"? The RfC opened with the premise that it could/would be amended to eliminate articles that are not within scope, and the rules of the RfC should not be changed midstream. Many who supported the RfC may have done so on the premise that this would continue to be respected. Cbl62 (talk) 02:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC) I don't read the RfC as opening with that premise. It reads to me as here is the quarry, here is the list of articles that quarry generated. Changes to the question mid-RfC are extremely unusual and generally discouraged, while changes to content under WP:RfC is explicitly discouraged, so I doubt commentators made their comments under the expectation that these usual practices would not be followed. CMD (talk) 03:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC) It shouldn't be based on anyone's singular personal interpretation of SIGCOV! I am saying entry removals should be assessed by more than one person, and that won't happen if everyone is editing the list themselves. The proposal criteria were based on the history/status of the articles up to this point, before there was the incentive to make edits to the entries just to invalidate their inclusion. If editors claim they added SIGCOV sources, we should verify entries actually do now meet at least SBASIC #5 before removing them, otherwise the RfC will get bogged down by edit-warring on the list and it will become harder to track which entry removals had some agreement and which ones derived from one person's GAMING or erroneous interpretations of NSPORT. We clearly agree that the object of these criteria is to identify the stubs that are most likely to be on non-notable people; the quarry heuristic BM is using is merely a proxy for this, not definitional. Therefore removals that actually reflect the article now containing ≥#5 sourcing are acceptable, but forcing an entry out by making it fail a technical quarry parameter is GAMING that goes against the spirit of the proposal. The only way we can distinguish good-faith additions of plausible GNG sources from users inserting 200 bytes of contentless text is through multiple people evaluating the edits, and how would we do that when someone changes the list without comment? JoelleJay (talk) 03:39, 8 March 2023 (UTC)UTC)  If you want, go ahead and remove those two. However, please add future removals to a list instead. BilledMammal (talk) 23:24, 8 March 2023 (UTC) And if I do wait until the end and show you a list, how do I know you won't just be like "screw you, I don't feel like removing them"? I'm not sure I trust you, considering you have absurd interpretations of notability and do not like me. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Would a pinky swear be sufficient? Levivich (talk) 03:36, 8 March 2023 (UTC) How about this: rather than remove them one-by-one, I remove them at three-to-five at a time. I will not wait until the end and show you a list. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:31, 8 March 2023 (UTC) OK how about this: if you agree to stop messing with the list, you can remove 20 articles from the final list for any reason, no questions asked. Levivich (talk) 23:29, 8 March 2023 (UTC) If I don't accept that, I feel I could find more than that amount of notable ones with sigcov to be removed. How about this, I only remove entries from the list at most once per day (starting the day after acceptance if accepted), and only if the amount of notable ones that I've found is at 5 or more, and can only revert a re-addition at most one time, with me being allowed to remove 18 articles from the final list, no questions asked. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC) How about you just leave the list alone until the end of the RFC and we evaluate then if any need te removed, should the proposal to draftify be successful? Tvx1 07:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC) WP:AGF, and I don’t dislike you; I dislike some of your actions, but not you. Even Lugnuts I didn’t dislike and unsuccessfully argued against ArbCom banning him. However, I think it is reasonable to allow other editors to review the articles you restore, so I would ask that you create a list rather than removing them yourself; for example, the coverage of Walter Bowler is lacking. BilledMammal (talk) 23:21, 8 March 2023 (UTC)   === Alternative: Redirection targets === This list is to allow discussion of the proposed alternative of redirecting articles to the relevant country and year article rather than draftifying them; the requirements to convert the redirect to an article would be the same as the proposed requirements to move an article out of draft space. Note that some of these articles have multiple possible targets; those are marked in bold.   ==== Survey (Alternative: Redirection targets) ==== Support redirects. For reasons outlined in my comments above, I support both creation of redirects and draftification. The two proposals are not mutually exclusive. Cbl62 (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirects on general principle, everyone agrees that in normal circumstances BLAR-ing articles with no discussion is allowed, whereas draftifying or deleting them is not. There's no need for unprecendented procedure breaks when the problem can be dealt with while still following procedure. I also see some errors in the table: you listed the same article twice for Frank Ihrcke and George Stapf, and George Patching and George Pinchard are bolded despite not conflicting. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:48, 2 March 2023 (UTC) Thank you, fixed- duplicates were handled manually and I appear to have made a couple of mistakes. BilledMammal (talk) 00:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirects per Cbl and Pppery. I agree this and the draftification are not mutually exclusive. Levivich (talk) 00:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose with a similar rationale for opposing the other proposal. These should be discussed on their own merit. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC) These really should be discussed individually – some are very clearly notable, some may not be. We should not be getting rid of them all at once when its been shown that many are notable, especially considering that no harm at all is done by leaving them as they are. I think its more harmful to mass get rid of articles, some of which may not be notable, but at the expense of many very clearly notable ones than leaving them as they are and discussing them by their own merits – as they should be. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirects per my comments in the previous section. I agree something must be done but have reservations about draftifying. Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:24, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Since this appears to have turned into a !vote, Support as second choice per my comments in the previous section. BilledMammal (talk) 00:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Also support, as long as it's clear the same requirements for returning to mainspace are enforced. JoelleJay (talk) 00:37, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose WP:TRAINWRECK. --Rschen7754 01:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support As noted, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. North8000 (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strong support, send the readers somewhere with information that has hopefully been looked at with some due diligence and might have wider context. No objection to drafting still happening, although I don't think it has much purpose at that point. CMD (talk) 03:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strong support per my comments in the above section. BLARing is much more reasonable as it maintains page history, while also being semi-useful. Curbon7 (talk) 03:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Weak support [only choice], per what I wrote in a couple places above. Opposed to draftification; very weakly preferred to just leaving them alone. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 04:13, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support I am not sure exactly what problem the OP is trying to solve. Stubs, per se, are not a problem. I do not think we are dealing with the additional considerations of living people with this list. So, while many of these articles may not meet WP:GNG in their current state, I struggle to see the harm to the project if these articles are left alone and nominated for deletion through normal channels. --Enos733 (talk) 05:52, 3 March 2023 (UTC)@Enos733: Are you supporting or opposing this proposal to redirect all the Olympians? You said "support" but your comments (stubs ... are not a problem ... I do not think we are dealing with the additional considerations of living people ... while many of these articles may not meet WP:GNG, I struggle to see the harm to the project if these articles are left alone) seem to say the opposite. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:29, 3 March 2023 (UTC) My thoughts are similar to what Rhododendrites says above. I prefer redirects to draftification/deletion. - Enos733 (talk) 21:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)Support Per my comment in the main survey. -Ljleppan (talk) 06:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Support.—S Marshall T/C 08:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose - Per Harry Oppenheim, which is shining example of where the urge to redirect everything in all cases rather than delete "to preserve the edit history" is misguided. These redirects simply serve to cast in stone the erroneous methodology and bad sourcing used to mass-create these articles in the first place. Harry Oppenheim was someone who literally didn't exist under that name, the  real name of the non-notable Austrian footballer was Heinrich Oppenheim, but we already have an article about a different Heinrich Oppenheim who is actually notable. There are also multiple other real Harry Oppenheims which a searcher is just as likely to be looking for (a news paper owner, and art-collector, a South African magnate etc.) because they are equally as (non) notable as the Austrian footballer, but for bizarre reasons we redirect searchers to a list of Austrian footballers who played a tiny number of games for the Austrian national team, with no real explanation as to why they land there, rather than just giving them the search results they would get for all the other Harry Oppenheims mentioned on Wikipedia which would obviously be of more interest to them. FOARP (talk) 09:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per FOARP. The solution to disruptive mass creation is to simply delete the whole batch without looking twice (or if that's not possible, draftify it). The redirects can be recreated from scratch when appropriate, and the ones that are not should certainly not be kept around for sake of preserving trivial edit histories full of low-effort useless information and cosmetic edits. Avilich (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per my comment in the previous section; these should be dealt with on an individual basis. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Weak support as second choice. I have many reservations about this, as explained elsewhere, but it's still better than doing nothing. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 12:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirecting. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 12:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC) It's complicated, but redirection is so obviously a better option than creating a tonne of drafts - and is way more efficient technically. I would want, as per my comments below, to be sure that the sources already in the article have been checked for significant detail by a human being - this takes 20 seconds each article and in a 30 minute sample period threw up around 38% of articles as having prose sources already present and which suggest (strongly in around 20% of cases) other sources exist. We need a balance between throwing out everything and reducing the number of stand alone articles. That can be done. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Strongly Oppose - I don't support the idea or support lumping them all together.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Comment while my personal preference would be to keep the stubs as they are, I admit it's a personal preference and I can't back it up with Wiki policy.  Of the two other options, I think redirecting is the better option, although I would like to make a suggestion that we hold off on redirecting the articles which could go to two possible Olympics, because I suspect those people are likely to be easier to find additional sources for (but I could be wrong).  Red Fiona (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose on principle, since we shouldn't be making bulk editing on so many articles (either to delete, redirect or draftify). If there is a consensus to bulk change these, redirecting is better than the other options, but checking them all properly is the vastly superior option to applying handwaving principles to batches of articles like this. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC) @Joseph2302: These articles were created through bulk editing. If you oppose bulk editing on principle would it not make sense to make an exception to allow the undoing of problematic examples of bulk editing? BilledMammal (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Qualified support - I would support redirecting those that do not meet SIGCOV.  If SIGCOV is met, those should be excluded from the mass redirect and evaluated on their own merits. Rlendog (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Support I wish this was a more acceptable answer to both sides of the argument. Redirecting articles can be undone without the lose of any article history as and when SIGCOV sourcing is found, and it doesn't have the time constraints that making drafts does. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirectsif draftification does not find a majority.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:41, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Support redirects since draftification is essentially a delayed deletion.  We should only redirect those in which other sources cannot be found to improve these stubs.  Abzeronow (talk) 19:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose, per FOARP. I'm not at all confident that systematic determination of the redirect target can be trusted. If redirection is the best outcome for any number of these stubs, it can be determined by manual assessment of the draft. XAM2175 (T) 12:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)   ==== Discussion (Alternative: Redirection targets) ==== One issue with this alternative that needs to be resolved is what to do with the articles like Alfred Keene, which could be redirected to either Great Britain at the 1908 Summer Olympics or Great Britain at the 1912 Summer Olympics. Are there any suggestions on how to do so? BilledMammal (talk) 03:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)  In my view, this is a major problem that must be resolved before the proposal can be seriously considered. The sheer number of articles we have on the Olympics would make it a major chore to figure out what should be redirected where. As an example of the scope of the problem, there are actually six plausible targets for Alfred Keene: Great Britain at the 1908 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1908 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's sabre, Great Britain at the 1912 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1912 Summer Olympics, and Fencing at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's sabre.The same problem exists even for the articles not bolded in BilledMammal's list. Carl Wiegand only competed in one Olympics, but should his article be redirected to Germany at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Gymnastics at the 1900 Summer Olympics, or List of Olympians killed in World War I? A third example: plausible targets for August Ehrich include not only the national article and the event article, but also List of Olympic male artistic gymnasts for Germany. Reasonable people can (and probably will) disagree over which of these targets is more suitable, so unless we want to end up discussing every article case-by-case, I think anyone arguing for redirection should also indicate how they think we ought to go about it. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC) One solution would be to redirect to the first (or last, or even random) Olympics they participated in, and then let normal editing processes handle it from there. Another would be to say "there is no obvious redirect target, so let's draftify for now" and let normal editing procedures figure it out from here. Both are far from perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. Ljleppan (talk) 09:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Draftify first. Unintentionally, I'm sure, this issue of having to redirect has simply acted as a barrier on anything being done at all. FOARP (talk) 11:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Someone above made the explicit suggestion of COUNTRY at the YEAR SEASON Olympics as the most logical option. I'd be happy with that and it's clear and easy to use - see my point below for which one we use where someone has been to more than one games. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:33, 3 March 2023 (UTC)Agree with Sojourner in the earth above - And yes, this is a problem generally for nearly all these redirects of non-notable sportspeople: there is a multitude of possible redirects, each as bad as the other. Returning to the "Harry" Oppenheim case discussed in my !vote above, Heinrich Oppenheim played two games for the Austrian national team but he also played at club level in Austria so why are we highlighting their very brief career on the Austrian national squad. Indeed, why are we highlighting them with a redirect at all when other Harry/Heinrich Oppenheims existed? FOARP (talk) 11:36, 3 March 2023 (UTC) That's a good point about other people with the same name. If we didn't have an article on the Olympian Alfred Keene, then the painter Alfred John Keene would be the primary topic, and should therefore be the target of the redirect. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 18:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC) Firstly I'm not even sure I'd be trying to do anything with Alfred Keene before doing a quite intensive search of The Times and the London Gazette - the notes on his Olympedia page suggest strongly to me that there's very likely to be something to allow us to develop a decent article about him.In terms of where to redirect - in some cases it'll be obvious because someone will have had one relatively successful games, in which case the redirect should probably go there (Sidney Domville for example, although again the notes in Olympedia suggest he's worth a look as a keeper). In other cases it won't be so clear - I'd probably suggest their first games in that situation, but I could live with the last. It's just slightly easier for modern people to use the first (and bear in mind that stuff like shooting means people can have really quite long Olympics careers. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC) My plan, if there is a consensus to create redirects, to redirect to the country article for the first Olympics they played in. I'll also provide a list of the articles covering sportspeople who played in multiple years to WikiProject Olympics, so that interested editors may easily alter the target if desired. BilledMammal (talk) 16:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC) BilledMammal - but then why redirect at all? With the redirect the user is taken to a single page. Without it, the user sees all mentions of that name on Wikipedia in their search results, including all the events and teams on which that name is listed, but also all the other people of that name who are equally as likely to be of interest - isn’t that better? FOARP (talk) 06:02, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I agree, and have argued extensively for that position in the past, but I believe a few inconvenient redirects are an improvement over leaving these articles in mainspace, and if there is a consensus for the proposal only on the basis of redirection I don't believe it would be appropriate to omit a few. However, I would be happy to provide you with a list of articles with multiple appropriate targets, and can probably generate a partial list of clashes with other articles - you can then bring them as a group to RfD? BilledMammal (talk) 06:12, 4 March 2023 (UTC) That seems very arbitrary and potentially unhelpful, eg. if someone is reading about the 1912 Olympics, searches an athlete's name and is taken to an article on the 1908 Olympics, with no indication of where they can find the information they're looking for. It might do as a stop-gap measure, but if consensus is to make these articles into redirects, my preferred solution would be to merge them all into List of Olympic athletes (1896–1912). That would be a lot more work, obviously. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 12:00, 4 March 2023 (UTC) That would be a lot more work, obviously. Depending on what information you believe should be included in that list, it might not be. What information do you believe should be included in it? My concern would be that the list would be very long (WP:LSC), and that it wouldn't fully resolve the issue as some athletes who competed between 1896 and 1912 also competed after 1912; I think that can be corrected by creating "List of Olympic athletes: A", "List of Olympic athletes: B", etc. BilledMammal (talk) 12:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC) It also doesn't deal very well with people who appeared in 1912 and then in the 1920s, for example. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC) What information do you believe should be included in it? For the list to be useful, I think at a minimum it would have to contain birth and death dates, Olympic years and events participated in. This information would have to be checked against the sources, though, to make sure we're not propagating errors. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 14:48, 4 March 2023 (UTC) We can check against the sports-reference source automatically; would that be sufficient? If we are going to do this I think it will need further and separate discussion; both to determine what information to include, and to determine whether such a creation would be appropriate. BilledMammal (talk) 15:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Perhaps it would be easier than I thought, then. I'm completely ignorant about what kind of things can be accomplished with technology. I agree that more discussion would be needed. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2023 (UTC)   ==== Discussion (other article-sets which need addressing) ==== If this motion passes some serious thought should be given to sub-sets of other extreme-low-quality articles mass-created on Wikipedia. Off the top of my head:  The 19th-century and early-20th-century cricketer/footballer articles made by Lugnuts. Dr. Blofeld's mass-created Bangladesh/Burmese "village" articles created using only GEOnet Names Server (GNS), a deprecated source for this purpose. Dr. Blofeld has indicated that they are OK with these articles being dealt with in some way in the past. The Antarctic geological feature articles created based only on GNIS, a deprecated source for this purpose. Carlossuarez46's Iranian/Azeri "village" articles, created based on GNS/the Iranian census (both deprecated for this purpose - the Iranian Census because it includes wells/pumps/farms/houses etc. as "villages").Of course the process would be the same as here, and the search used to highlight it having similarly very low criteria for escaping draftification. FOARP (talk) 10:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)Yes, the problem for me is permastubs which can't be expanded or ever become a useful start class article. I think you'll find most stubs created by me can be expanded, but the "xx is a village" approach using a database, even with a population figure in many of them was a poor way to approach it. I'd be happy to delete all database type stubs from the site which can't be significantly expanded, or merge them into lists were appropriate. Carlos's Iranian stubs for instance, I think we'd be better off merging a lot of the smaller settlements into lists by district. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC) I think this discussion will need to be split off, but I've created two lists of articles created by Carlossuarez46 on locations in Iran and Azerbaijan. These lists attempt to include every article they have created, so they will include articles that would not be considered for draftification like Hadrut; filtering can be done later, if there is a consensus for this proposal and when we decide how we want to filter the articles. They also may not be complete; I am not certain yet what article or talk page categories are best suited to generating a complete list, and suggestions are welcome. I am wondering, though, if these creations were fully automated; I'm seeing several articles with identical names disambiguated only by coordinates, and I don't believe that even an inattentive human using a semi-automated process would not realize that those are probably the same location. BilledMammal (talk) 17:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC   === Alternative proposal to draftification and redirection: create an Olympic stub cleanup project === I have what I believe would be something much more beneficial, at least a hundred times more helpful to the encyclopedia, than the two above proposals (redirection and draftification): start a project dedicated towards expanding and cleaning up Olympians. I have found many people from this list above that are notable, some very highly notable (examples which I have expanded: Fred Narganes, Thomas LeBoutillier, Herbert Gidney, J. Nash McCrea, and Garnett Wikoff, to name a few – and for some others, which I haven't had the time to, I've just added sources to show notability, some of which had full-page long articles (Albert Bechestobill) and some of which had articles describing them as the greatest ever in their sport (Lou Scholes, John Hession)) – it is insane to suggest blindly removing (redirection=removing;draftification=backdoor route to deletion) nearly one thousand articles when many of which are very notable (unless there is a major issue otherwise with all of them, except that's not the case here). So I propose that we create a project to cleanup, improve and expand Olympian articles, with rewards for those who do so. As for what the rewards are, I've thought of this: improve two Olympian articles to the point that it would pass the WP:DYK criteria – one barnstar; improve three further – one more barnstar; then one additional barnstar for every time someone does five more (I've thought of different types of barnstars and awards that could be designed for this). I feel this would be much more benefifical to the project than just mass throwing out huge amounts of Olympians, when many are notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)  Support as nom. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC) An Olympic stub cleanup project sounds like a great idea, but I don't see why this is an alternative to draftification. The stubs can easily be worked on in draftspace. Contrary to the claim that keeps cropping up that draftification is being used as a backdoor to deletion, I very much hope that the majority of these articles can be rescued and restored to mainspace. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Also, BeanieFan, I'm afraid I have to add my voice to those who feel that your behaviour at this RfC is (unintentionally) disruptive. Removing Otto Feyder from the list in order to nominate it for AfD, where you propose to turn it into a redirect – a proposal already under consideration in this discussion – is only wasting the time of volunteers. You're doing some good work on these articles but it would really be so much easier for everyone if you would wait until the RfC is over. Regardless of the outcome, none of these articles are going anywhere for at least another five years. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Apologies about Feyder, I see now that that action didn't make sense. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support - I would be interested in contributing to this. No rewards needed for me.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Comment I support this, but this can also be done from draft space. On the rewards I believe some more general award for the article expanders could be thought of. Organize "backlog" drives etc. Then also, the Lugnuts olympic stubs are just a start. There are likely tens of thousands similar ones that could need an expansion if sources exist.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose - at least as an alternative. Experience has shown that these articles just won't be dealt with. Wikipedia just doesn't have that many truly-active editors that it can waste the time of ~100 or so of them for months sorting through Lugnuts' articles. There is a clear DELREASON for these articles as they currently stand. No opposition, of course, to anyone doing this ON TOP OFF the remedy of draftification. FOARP (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose as alternative. Concur entirely with FOARP. XAM2175 (T) 12:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)   === Discussion (general) === Perfection is the enemy of progress.  We're talking about an immense amount of stubs that the creator spent perhaps 1 minute each creating. Any plan which requires a special discussion and decision-making process for each one (perhaps 1 hour of volunteer time for each) will not  actually get implemented and would be an insult to volunteer time. Some way of efficiently moving forward on this is needed, even if imperfect.  The potential downside of an efficient system potentially having non-optimal handling of some exceptions is easily fixed and not big. North8000 (talk) 16:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)  Frankly my preference is for straight-deletion of failing articles that were created en masse, and the recreation of that part of them which may be notable as actual articles. The proposed process does at least eventually achieve that result so I am in favour of it. Opponents are essentially admitting that even given years of lead-time, they are not going to fix these articles, in large part because many/most of them cannot be fixed. FOARP (talk) 05:54, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Well, I"m not sure that that's necessarily true. I just took a strict 30 minutes - timed - and clicked through the first 163 articles on the list of 960 above (17%) - working in the order they were presented, i.e. alphabetically by forename. For each one I checked the Olympedia article to see if it had anything substantial to say about the person. If there was anything relatively in depth that made me think there might well be further sources available I recorded it as "Definitely worth a look"; if there were a few personal details or details about their career I recorded "Possibly worth looking at"; if there were only passing details, such as the club they represented or their performance just in the Olympics I didn't record anything. On average it took less than 20 seconds per article, including recording. Of those 163 articles, I recorded "Definitely worth a look" 31 times and "Possibly worth looking at" 32 times - so, 63 of the 163 had something on the Olympedia article which gave me significant pause for thought (38.7% - with 19% clearly, in my view, worth a proper look). That's a much higher proportion than I was expecting. This might be because the majority of those with detail on were British or American - more likely British fwiw. The 1908 London and 1904 St Louis games almost certainly mean that there are more of those articles - if the set had been 1912 to 1928 then I imagine the proportions would have been lower. Obviously this is partially subjective. I tried to be as clear as possible and only record when there was clearly something that caught my eye, but at the same time was working quickly and there may be some blurring. I was focussing on the likelihood, in my experience of using newspaper reports from this sort of era, of other sources existing - after all, that's almost certainly where the Olympedia writers got their information from. In some cases there wasn't much in the way of information but hints that there must surely be more (Daniel McMahon (sport shooter), for example), whilst another cases there is already a significant amount of information (Daniel Flynn (cyclist), for example). The set I looked at is here along with my notes. I took out most of BilledMammal's columns for simplicity. Why is this "important"? It's reasonable to make the assertion that stubs can act as seeds for articles. I think it's also reasonable to assert that stubs in mainspace are more likely to be developed than redirects or drafts. I have absolutely no quantifiable evidence to back up that assertion, but I'm sure I've seen other people make it in the past and I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say. So what? The query is good at identifying possible articles that might be dealt with. And by my book, 60-odd percent of these could probably be dealt with somehow. But my only request is that we look at the sources actually present first. For the list of 960 that's, what, less than four-person hours (20 seconds per article is easily doable over 30 minute bursts). Think how much time has been wasted on this process of discussing alone over the last couple of years. At least part of that - and a substantial amount of the opposition to the proposals - is people pointing out that some of the articles on lists which have been presented as clearly notable (Bill Huddleston was on one list for example, yet already contains a substantial prose source because the methodology assumes, as with these lists, that the sources included in the article are only databases). The discussions above have already thrown up plenty of other examples beyond the first 163. Yes, let's do something. But let's not delete everything without even having the courtesy to spend 20 seconds on each article. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I think it's also reasonable to assert that stubs in mainspace are more likely to be developed than redirects or drafts. I have absolutely no quantifiable evidence to back up that assertion, but I'm sure I've seen other people make it in the past and I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say. I have quantifiable evidence to say the opposite; see my essay Wikipedia:Abandoned stubs. Articles are much more likely to be expanded by their creator than by anyone else. BilledMammal (talk) 11:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I don't think that's quite the same thing though, is it? And, interestingly, your 35% figure having been developed is quite close to my 39% figure for items on that list where there's a fairly significant flag that I can raise that says, hang on a minute, we need to look at this properly. Which is my main request here. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:03, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Not quite, but it is the best evidence we have or can get without an experiment that would violate WP:NOTLAB. BilledMammal (talk) 13:47, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I don't think there'd be anything disruptive involved would there? Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC) the methodology assumes, as with these lists, that the sources included in the article are only databases This isn't accurate. The method assumes the source has been used as a database, which is not the same thing. (And apparently used in a way that generates the wrong birth dates in some instances, somehow.) CMD (talk) 13:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I take the specifics of your point, but my point is that the way that the list that Huddleston was on was created using a query to produce a set of articles that are presumed to be inadequately sourced, which is often taken to mean sourced only to databases (see any number of discussion around the sourcing of articles about sports people). The assumption behind that is that the sources, in that case CricketArchive, are assumed to be purely a database source. In the case of Huddleston that source contained a decent sized prose article about him as well as the standard data tables and so on. The same is sometimes true of articles sourced only to CricInfo - a point I've made a number of times elsewhere. In the case of the list of 960 articles presented here, the assumption seems to be that articles sourced to Olympedia will simply have data tables rather than any reasonable prose that could act as a seed for article development. In around 40% of the 163 cases I've looked at so far I don't think that assumption is reasonable to make. Of course, identifying the 60% that don't have that and doing something with them would make the task of figuring out exactly what to do with the 40% much easier, and, with caveats, I support that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I don't see where that assumption is being made; I don't even think anyone has suggested Olympedia is a poor source. Whatever it (and Cricinfo) could be used for, it has instead been used to procedurally generate two sentences on each subject. Whatever is done to those sentences, Olympedia and its seed information would remain for those interested in the 40%. CMD (talk) 15:44, 4 March 2023 (UTC) Given the history of this subject area and discussions such as those at WP:ACAS and ones like this at the cricket project or those surrounding the changes made over the last 2-3 years related to WP:SPORTCRIT, I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to make given the point in the selection criteria section which says Referenced only to Olympedia or Sports Reference. As I say, I take your specific point about the way that they have been used in these articles at present, but my point here is that Olympedia clearly contains some detailed prose on some of these articles - as do CricInfo and CricketArchive. Not on all of them, but on enough to make it necessary to manually inspect the sources before we chuck stuff out that we should be eventually improving. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2023 (UTC) I don't know whether I was involved in those various discussions you point to, but this proposal is specifically designed to provide time for people to manually inspect the sources and develop the articles. CMD (talk) 02:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Leaving aside that no one will do that if they're difficult to find drafts, rather than much easier to find main space articles, they can then move it back to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG. Which getting on to 40% of my survey ones already do... Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:55, 5 March 2023 (UTC) GNG requires multiple sources. In some cases, Olympedia might count as one (although many of the blurbs are too short to plausibly be WP:SIGCOV), but sports-reference never does. BilledMammal (talk) 11:05, 5 March 2023 (UTC) Blue Square Thing - The prose sections on Olympedia are not clearly reliably sourced. If you believe they are reliably sourced, you need to go beyond "I haven't seen any instances of them being wrong". I have, actually - Francis English was listed on Olympedia as having died in 1984 but clearly lived beyond that, Olympedia was corrected after the Wikipedia article was redirected but this just goes to show that they are relying on Wikipedia to do their fact-checking. You have to explain who actually wrote them and whether there is any actual rigorous editorial process, because as far as I can see the answer to that question appears to be that they are Wiki-like content written by the volunteers who maintain those databases, and include material e.g., sent in by the families of those listed. I also agree with BilledMammal that most/all of this prose content does not rise to the level of SIGCOV. FOARP (talk) 09:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC) The point isn't to draftify them in the hopes that someone outside of NSPORT editors will find them organically, it's to draftify them specifically so that the editors who insist there must be sources can work on them outside of mainspace and we don't have to go through hundreds of AfDs. Given their lack of attention over the last decade, no one outside of the usual sports editors/blanket inclusionists care about these stubs (and even that's just wanting them to exist for completion's sake), much less would notice they were gone, so I highly doubt draftifying would make any difference to their expansion prospects. JoelleJay (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC) Blue Square Thing, your study was responding to / responsive to a particular post but IMHO not to the main reasons for the main question here. IMO the main premise of the proposals is "if someone makes a real article out of it fine.  If not, then it goes.  In a way commensurate with how they were created....en masse rather than requiring an hour of volunteer time to delete each article that took one minute to create.   North8000 (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC) How are these not "real articles"? Many articles in paper encyclopedias (that some of us remember, and Wikipedia is supposed to emulate) only consisted of one short sentence. "Joe Bloggs competed in the quadrathlon at the 1971 summer Olympics" tells the reader more than nothing. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC) When a paper encyclopedia says just one sentence about something, that's called an "entry", not an "article." No one is arguing against "Joe Bloggs competed in the quadrathlon at the 1972 summer Olympics" being an entry in the article about the 1972 Summer Olympics, but we shouldn't have one-sentence articles because those aren't what articles are. Semantics aside, if we have one sentence to say about something, it makes almost no sense to put that one sentence on its own web page, alone. It makes a lot more sense to move that one sentence to some other web page that already has other sentences on it. Levivich (talk) 20:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)In draftspace no one can hear you scream - they could be there for 5 years without anyone improving them, yet many of these articles have been in mainspace for longer and have only drawn any interest once they have been threatened with draftification. The subjects may be notable, there may be sources available, and there is the argument that they should be kept because if left long enough someone else may do something to improve them. These stubs do not establish notability, they have few sources and yet they are still here when better quality drafts would be rejected by AFC. It seems that editors agree that something should be done, but not what? An option could be to run an Olympian WP:De-stub-athon that would cover the listed articles but as part of a larger improvement drive, rather than specifically honouring or condemning any individual creator. There are 133,000 articles classed as stubs by the Olympics wikiproject (including those listed here and many others created by Lugnuts). Afterwards the option will still be there to discuss what to do with anything on the list that editors have not been able to improve, but maybe the situation would be clearer. EdwardUK (talk) 16:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC) From a couple of things raised here and what I came across with the Arthur/Alexander Martin case, I've grown seriously concerned that Olympedia is not the reliable source some think it to be. I also don't understand why all those articles seem to rely nearly solely on that for information and don't even cite the Olympics own official site's profiles on the people in question. In any case, a serious vetting of the sourcing is required.Tvx1 20:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Operating under the assumption that users self-sort into WikiProjects of personal interest, it seems unlikely that these stubs could be handled by a dedicated project. WikiProject Olympics reports 190K articles under their purview and only 5.5K are assessed as C quality or above. Thus, if only 2.9% of its articles have reacted a threshold of substantial content over 20yrs after the project's founding, it seems unlikely that a further fork of their labor will attract the necessary support to resolve the stubs BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 03:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Comment As of now and as to my count it was 63 support to 27 opposes to the draftification. Off course I can err but the supporters are very likely in the majority.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:25, 23 March 2023 (UTC)  And because consensus is determined by someone uninvolved evaluating the strength of the arguments, not by counting noses, that is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 17:09, 23 March 2023 (UTC) I hope this would be always like this. Mostly Often it's just counting votes. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:08, 23 March 2023 (UTC)Ludicrous talking shops like this are among the main reasons for this site's headlong plunge into a permanent downwards spiral. Why delete only the Olympians? The best solution for such a farcical mess of a site is to delete everything. 2.99.210.156 (talk) 13:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC) Comment Some other solution for the micro biostubs would be migrating the stubs to something like a directory of people. This would also be quite a boost for the closure of the gender gap I believe.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 18:05, 24 March 2023 (UTC)  For what it's worth, virtually all initiatives to improve the gender gap (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red) focus on increasing Wikipedia's coverage of women, not on decreasing the coverage of men. This would narrow the gender gap on a numbers level but would do nothing for the broader aim of fixing the under-coverage of women, which is the entire point. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2023 (UTC)   === Notes ===  In Wikipedia talk:Did you know/Archive 188#Move protection, there was agreement that DYK articles should be move-protected while they're on the front page (and in the queue leading up to that).  I put forth a BRFA, at which it was suggested that I open a discussion here to get wider consensus on the need for such protection. There were also some technical questions which came up at the BRFA, but for this discussion, let's just look at whether the basic concept of move-protection has consensus or not. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:11, 8 March 2023 (UTC)  I was opposed at WT:DYK, and I haven't really seen any good arguments for protection. Moves of DYK items are rare, and incorrect moves more so. Where is the problem that is being solved here? —Kusma (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose, pages are not protected pre-emptively, and no substantial argument to deviate from this principle has been presented. —Kusma (talk) 19:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support We have WP:MPNOREDIRECT and any move ends up at WP:ERRORS. That alone is reason enough to do this as there’s too much traffic at Errors. Most main page moves occur through WP:ITN, though. If we get this working smoothly for DYK, we can later discuss whether we want to broaden the scope to ITN. There’s hardly ever anything urgent about a move but if it is urgent, it can be done by an admin who can also resolve the redirect on the main page. Schwede66 19:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC) "An edit will need to be made to a protected page after the move" is an incredibly weak argument for default protection. Do you also want to protect all pages linked from the TFA blurb? —Kusma (talk) 19:25, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Support as per the previous discussion: it interferes with history compilation in any number of fields and allows non-admins to screw with what's linked from the main page. I think that should require consensus. It would also be weird and arbitrary to move-protect TFAs and not DYKs, even though the bolded links of DYK on any given day roughly match the TFA views bump. I'll also point out that any kind of maintenance tag or merge or AfD nomination can't be added while an article is on the Main Page; if consensus isn't gained to pull the article off of DYK, the tag is removed and any nomination closed. We already have fairly extensive rules preventing good faith tagging of articles while they're on the Main Page; RMs and moves shouldn't be an exception. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 20:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Leeky, do you have a link to the rules about tag bombing articles on the main page? I got into a tussle in January with someone who tag bombed the TFA. (Over a template calling for revdel of an alleged copyvio in the history ie something not only not urgent, but did not need to be done at all.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC) @Hawkeye7: There are very few Main-Page-wide guideline; DYK keeps its own at Wikipedia:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines, but interpretations get a little murky. SG?AfD hold, combined with WP:SK#6, means that an article can't be AfDed while on the Main Page – but SG?dispute tags, a separate guideline, makes an article ineligible for DYK once tagged, and thus grounds for a pull. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 22:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC) WP:Did you know/Supplementary guidelines#F7 says F7 (article title): Make sure your article title conforms with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). But I don't regard this as sufficient reason for a pull, especially given that the WP:RM process may not approve renaming. I don't regard tag bombing as a reason either. I 've had articles tag bombed. In one case, an editor felt entitled to tag bomb for notability even after an article was kept at AfD. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support We shouldn't allow vandals to attack the front page. No other reason why someone would want to move an article while it is on the front page. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:17, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Do you have any evidence that most page moves of DYK pages are vandalism? I honestly can't recall the last time it happened. —Kusma (talk) 20:54, 8 March 2023 (UTC) I can't recall the last time a page move anywhere was urgently required except to revert vandalism. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Can you think of another reason why we ever would want to WP:IAR and bypass the WP:Requested moves process? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC) If a page needs to be disambiguated or similar, you just move it without going through WP:RM. See WP:NOTRM. As there are many cases where WP:BOLD moves are encouraged, it is usually unnecessary to invoke WP:IAR. —Kusma (talk) 23:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC) I compared the number of entries in Special:Log/move vs the number of discussions in Wikipedia:Requested moves/Current discussions last week, and I think it's fair to say that >90% of page moves don't involve the RM process.  DYK involves mostly new articles, which probably have a higher rate of appropriate/non-vandal page moves than average.  But even then, it just doesn't seem to happen much.  DYKs are only on the Main Page for a few hours.  Can anyone name even three DYKs that were moved during the few hours the article was on the Main Page?  I can't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Support It is sensible to protect. A move can be requested at WP:ERRORS. Agree with Schwede66 that There’s hardly ever anything urgent about a move but if it is urgent, it can be done by an admin who can also resolve the redirect on the main page  Bruxton (talk) 21:21, 8 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per WP:NO-PREEMPT. No evidence has been presented that there's a plague of inappropriate moves. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC) @Legoktm: What's a little confusing here is that as far as I can tell, this type of question has already been decided for TFA (see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TFA Protector Bot 3.  There's no particular difference between DYK and TFA (or, for that matter, ITN, etc).  We should have a uniform policy for all main page content.  The details might change for each section to accommodate the differences in process, but the basic policy should be the same.  -- RoySmith (talk) 01:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC) @RoySmith: you mean TFA Prot Bot 1, which was for move protection? My recollection when I took on that task is that people had been manually move-protecting the TFA for years (and even automatically with some unapproved adminbots) and the bot was just automating what was the custom, not introducing a new practice. Legoktm (talk) 04:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Cmnt: Has there been a huge problem with what this is trying to prevent? It seems to me, at this point, to just be policy-creep.  GenQuest "scribble" 02:17, 9 March 2023 (UTC) oppose not even one case has been supplied of a problem move. Since the DYK articles are usually new, there is a much bigger chance that a rename to something better is in order. For a TFA, that has gone through a long careful process by several people, so we can be sure it is at the best name already. As long as a redirect is working, reporting at WP:ERRORS is unnecessary. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Strong Oppose-Most DYKs do not get enough page views to justify this. Schierbecker (talk) 02:58, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Most DYKs get hundreds of views per hour, many get over a thousand per hour. Valereee (talk) 17:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC) @Schierbecker: speaking as someone who's helped maintain DYK's stats pages for over a year, you're right that barely any single DYK matches a TFA view-for-view. But that's only because DYK runs eight or even sixteen hooks a day, splitting attention; a much fairer comparison would be looking at how many views all DYKs get in a day, compared to TFA. They're in the same order of magnitude – DYK gets some 40-50k views a day, last I checked, which is comparable with lots of TFAs. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 18:13, 9 March 2023 (UTC) That's nothing. Do we pre-emptively move protect other pages that are temporarily popular? Schierbecker (talk) 21:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)s @Schierbecker: yes... pages on TFA. I mean, you pointed out that DYKs don't get enough views to justify protection, compared to TFA – I'm just pointing out that in the aggregate, the two are actually quite comparable in that respect. If it's not about page views, that fine, but saying that would directly contravene your initial !vote. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 21:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC) I don't think it makes sense to think about this in the aggregate. There are some 8 hooks refreshed every 12 hours. An inappropriate page move to a DYK entry will be caught before too many readers see it. Your comparison to the practice of protecting TFAs is not quite on the mark. There will almost never be a reason to unilaterally move a TFA. Schierbecker (talk) 21:42, 9 March 2023 (UTC) How often do we fix redirects from the main page, and how often is that caused by a DYK? I've had a look through the history of Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors and searched for the term "redirect", going back to Jan 2022. Obviously, that method won't find all instances, but it gives an idea. Also note that it's not necessarily the target article that causes the redirect. There are unders and overs, I suppose. Schwede66 05:10, 9 March 2023 (UTC)Oppose. This is a solution in search of a problem. Policy is against pre-emptive protection and there's no evidence that page-move vandalism is a problem on DYK. Yes, we move-protect TFAs; I'm not entirely sure that's necessary (and note that the bot for that doesn't interfere with existing protection) but TFA is much higher profile than DYK and featured articles (and their titles) have been subject to much more scrutiny than DYKs which, by definition, are often new articles. I don't see anything to suggest that move-protecting DYKs by default is necessary or helpful. We haven't needed it thus far in all the years that DYK has existed and all the thousands of articles that have been through it, nor have we thought it necessary for ITN or OTD, so I don't see it being necessary now. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support It's only for a few days for heaven's sake, and the correct thing to do is almost always to launch a WP:RM discussion, not just move the page on a whim. This has happened to a nom of mine (of course I immediately reverted, & the editor never came back) and happens not infrequently. I don't really understand the opposes. Johnbod (talk) 15:09, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose'. We do not preemptively protect. I think that bold moves can be a benefit to the project, particularly when titles are grossly out-of-line with relevant naming conventions, and merely being nominated for DYK does not warrant move protection as such. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 16:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Bold moves can be a benefit (I do some myself), but usually they aren't - they are just new editors, those with a cranky set idea, or more experienced editors too lazy to follow procedure & start an RM (I revert far more than I do myself). Being on the main page naturally attracts far more of them. The DYK reviewing process results in most really bad misnaming issues being resolved before this would apply. Johnbod (talk) 16:54, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose. We should have less rules protecting DYK, not more (e.g. the "no tags on articles on the Main Page" rule, even though we have things like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Basilico's where an article is DYK'ed and AfD'ed on the same day, and ends up deleted). As said above, a solution in search of a problem. Fram (talk) 16:39, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support and would also support extending this to all articles on the main page. Highly visible content, and there will almost never be a significant benefit to moving it unilaterally during the 12/24 hours an article is on AFD, but there can be a detrimental effect. Given that only admins can add content to the main page, we shouldn't being allowing anyone to defacto edit the content once it's on the main page. Pre-emptive protection for something highly visible seems fine to me, as it is used elsewhere e.g. protecting images on the main page and all highly used templates are both done pre-emptively, so I don't agree with the argument that pre-emptive protection shouldn't also be done for DYK (and other main page content). Joseph2302 (talk) 17:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Protection of Main Page images and of highly used templates is a response to frequent vandalism before we had these protections. (It was popular for a while to insert shock images via template vandalism). Moves of DYK items or other Main Page linked items are not a frequent type of vandalism, and so we do not move protect these pages. Note also that all pages are already protected from moves by non-autoconfirmed editors. —Kusma (talk) 23:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Support for bold links. The Main Page is highly visible, and WP:MPNOREDIRECT does not allow redirects on the Main Page. Protecting bold-linked pages would prevent page-move vandalism; even though we don't typically preemptively protect articles, we already do so for TFAs. I don't agree that we should be allowing people to move bold-linked pages boldly, if you will, while they're on the Main Page. If a bold-linked page needs to be moved so urgently that someone can't wait 24 hours (until the article is off the Main Page), a user could always file a request at WP:RMTR#Administrator needed. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC) Just because a page is linked from the Main Page shouldn't stop usual wiki rules form applying. On the contrary, pages linked from the Main Page should be as open to editing (including editing the page title) as reasonably possible. The approach of not protecting seems to be working so far, so I don't see why we should change it. As to WP:MPNOREDIRECT: this is not some law, it is just a rule we have to make certain types of vandalism less effective if the redirect is less watched than the target. Page moves don't change the number of watchers, so this isn't a particular strong argument when applied to redirects created by page moves. I guess one of the reasons we don't see a lot of vandalism of DYK items via page moves is that it is not really more effective than just vandalising the pages directly, and additionally requires an autoconfirmed account. —Kusma (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC) @Kusma, I understand your point. However, I should specify that the reason I'm in favor of temporarily protecting these pages is not only because of page-move vandalism, but also because the resulting redirects can be hijacked. I realize that community consensus is trending against this proposal, anyway, but I think WP:MOVP can be interpreted as allowing current DYKs to be protected. The policy says that Highly visible pages that have no reason to be moved can be protected, and I think this may apply to DYKs currently on the main page, which typically receive thousands of views during their DYK appearances. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:36, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per WP:NO-PREEMPT. No evidence given for a need for preemptive protection. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Weak Oppose we should avoid having sysop-flagged bots unless there's a clear need to address. In the last discussion the only move identified was a positive one, and occurrence is so rare that the no MP redirects issue could easily be fixed manually through the errors process, and isn't that significant a concern to begin with. I don't feel too strongly on this as move-protection does not merit the same degree of concern that editing protection does, and the fact that moves aren't happening at all to any significant degree cuts both ways. I wish this had been brought here first prior to any work being put in, but there's nothing that can be done about that now. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 17:55, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose - the protection policy very clearly instructs not to protect pages except in response to disruptive editing. While we do sometimes make blanket exceptions (such as WP:HRT) it is (with good reason) a very high bar to demonstrate being a net positive over the potential for harm. Despite having been asked several times and having had ample time to respond, the supporters of this preemptive protection have not provided any evidence demonstrating that that is the case here. There's no pattern of disruptive page moves of articles listed at DYK, and even if there were there's little risk of widespread harm owing to how little time these links are visible on the main page, how many eyes are on them already, and how easily they can be corrected. It has also been pointed out at BRFA that automatically protecting these pages would replace any existing move protection set by an admin for good reason, and then it would expire back to no protection. That's a pretty significant risk of harm, particularly for GAs and BLPs. So in summary there are no good reasons to do this, and several good reasons not to. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:28, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose: nobody seems to have provided any evidence that there is a problem that this will solve.  We shouldn't depart from the general policy of not protecting pre-emptively if we can't even demonstrate there's an issue to be solved. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose Not convinced this is actually a problem in need of solving. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:16, 10 March 2023 (UTC) Support - so what if there isn't "a plague" of unjustified page moves? We don't apply suncream after we've been burnt. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 21:29, 15 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose per WP:NO-PREEMPT. The very first thing the main page says is "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.", and I take that last part seriously. We shouldn't pre-empt contributions for merely speculative reasons. Colin M (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose Not a problem. GenQuest "scribble" 20:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC) Oppose Let redirects (and editors) do their work. InfiniteNexus (talk) 15:45, 28 March 2023 (UTC) Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022 was moved from this page due to its large volume of comments.  It has now closed with no consensus to rollback the default skin on the English Wikipedia to Vector 2010, but noting a numerical majority in support of rolling back.  Where do we go from here?  For challenged edits, we don't allow bold changes to stand simply because there is no consensus to roll back – we restore the status quo ante unless there is consensus to change – but this change is not an edit.  Is this a case of WP:CONEXCEPT where we must simply accept a fait accompli?  Is there any appetite for taking further action to emphasise the majority opinion and, if so, what form should that take? Certes (talk) 11:14, 16 March 2023 (UTC)  Please don't do this.  This battle has waged for long enough.  There's nothing new to be said that hasn't already been said in the 2 month long RFC, which was expertly summarized by a pair of uninvolved editors in their excellent closing statement.  The suggestion there was to spend the next 6 months working with the WMF to improve the product and reevaluate how things look at the end of the 6 months.  I strongly agree with that recommendation. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:52, 16 March 2023 (UTC) Biggest +1 ever. User:ScottishFinnishRadish put it nicely here. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2023 (UTC) Yup. What a humongous time-sink. DFlhb (talk) 16:55, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Yes, let's get back to what's really important. Is it corn or maize? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:02, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Option 3: it's inedible garbage. DFlhb (talk) 17:14, 17 March 2023 (UTC) You need to cook it first. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:03, 25 March 2023 (UTC) The closers clearly explained that in this case, no consensus means no rollback. If anyone wishes to challenge the close, they can follow the procedure at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE; but that means giving policy-based reasons why the close was not a reasonable interpretation of consensus. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:06, 16 March 2023 (UTC) In the spirit of moving on productively… It’s clear there are many editors who have specific grievances with the new skin. Since there is no consensus for a wholesale rollback of the skin, I suggest that progress will involve more focused attention on the fix-forward of those specific grievances individually. It would be helpful to create a summary of the main issues raised, each with links to relevant bugs that have been filed on Phabricator, so that (a) there is visibility of progress towards fixes, (b) concerned editors can focus their efforts on getting their specific issue resolved, and (c) to document that the issues are already well known and don’t need to be raised again. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:51, 16 March 2023 (UTC) Quite a large number are grouped on Phab. Personally, I'm currently watching making TOC code work again, which appears to have good traction, and the putting user talkpage links back in the header, which appears to be abandoned. CMD (talk) 06:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC) I think that close had significant flaws; it placed too much weight on the closers assessment of whether current and future changes addressed the concerns of the community and on the closers assessment of whether the conditions of the previous close had been met. Both of these assessments are required to be made by the community, not by the closers, and by making those assessments I believe this close was a supervote. The way forward from here is to overturn that close, whether voluntarily by Isabelle Belato and Ingenuity or by appeal at WP:AN. BilledMammal (talk) 20:13, 16 March 2023 (UTC) We should iniate a formal WP:CLOSECHALLENGE without hesitation. This closure is about as far away from the truth as possible. This is unacceptable. Tvx1 18:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC) I am glad there was not a consensus to roll back.  I think that those who dislike the new skin are more vocal than those who like the new skin better.  And it felt like there was a lot of "piling on" happening in the discussions.  I agree with @RoySmith above. David10244 (talk) 02:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)There's probably no use even trying. The result was pre-ordained from the start - the numbers could have been 2:1 or 3:1 - it wouldn't have mattered. And if by some chance the closers had followed what was clearly a fairly obvious consensus, there's no guarantee it would have been respected. Honestly at this point the best way to respond is for editors to vote with their wallets and stop giving the WMF money. In the meantime, I wholeheartedly support repeatedly starting new discussions until the WMF gets it in their head that maybe railroading the community isn't a great idea. They don't get brownie points for being marginally more responsive after forcing something the community clearly doesn't want. The suggestion of a new RfC in six months is equally laughable - as if that will actually happen or have any outcome other than the one pre-ordained to happen. This entire charade is exemplary of everything wrong with how Wikipedia is run. Toa Nidhiki05 23:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)  @Toa Nidhiki05: are you implying that the closers are secretly working with the WMF or something like that? Snowmanonahoe (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2023 (UTC) There was no scenario where the implementation would be overturned and the new skin would be anything other than default. Whether that was in a "no consensus" RfC closure with hundreds of votes that skewed 61-39 in favor of rollback, an RfC review that finds the initial close invalid, or the WMF simply refusing to comply. Change was never going to happen. Toa Nidhiki05 00:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)If you don't like Vector 2022, switch it off and don't use it. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)  Many of us have.  I'm alright, Jack; I need never see Vector 2022 again.  Unfortunately, most of our readers do not have that option. Certes (talk) 16:19, 17 March 2023 (UTC)Maybe give it a few months to see if it made the ivory tower gets more responsive and make fixes and if not reopen it then ?  North8000 (talk) 14:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)  I'm sure the third RfC will have a different result than the first two. Toa Nidhiki05 14:40, 17 March 2023 (UTC) In my view, the community expressed itself in favour of keeping V10 in both the RfCs, and in the second one the consensus was even stronger than in the first one. The WMF should simply withdraw V22 and rework it to address all concerns expressed by users, and then and only then resubmit it for community evaluation. Æo (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2023 (UTC)It was always going to be a controversial close, but the fact is the RFC was whether we should rollback Vector 2022, and there isn't a clear consensus to do so. And so the closure seems correct, even if lumbering people by default with something with large issues is a bad idea. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:15, 17 March 2023 (UTC)  Agreed. The close could have gone either way; this seems like one reasonable interpretation. With any close close like this, extra effort should be made to address the concerns of those who wanted the other outcome. (In this case: accelerating responses to relevant phab tickets, like the ones CMD notes above.) – SJ + 17:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)I'd like to see it rolled back. I've seen a lot of complaints about it on other sites, you cannot see the links to other wikipedia pages section easily and it's a major pain in the butt as I have to be signed into all kinds of nations wikipedia websites.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)  @KatoKungLee: do you mean the interlanguage links? – SJ + 17:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC) @Sj: - I'm really not familiar with some of the lingo, but if you go to a page, you can click on another language's version of the page. With the new look, if you can do that, it's hidden or not easy to find.KatoKungLee (talk) 22:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)Well for me I solved all of the many problems by reverting to the previous one.  But for the sake of others including those that don't know they can do that it would be good to make the old one the default. Whether the close was right or wrong, maybe it will make WMF into better listeners and they'll fix the new one. North8000 (talk) 19:07, 17 March 2023 (UTC) Unfortunately, there's a loophole in our consensus system where the WMF has an unlimited and unrestricted veto power over every discussion on the project, for any reason or for no reason. So this could have been unanimous, and the WMF still could have just ignored the close, regardless of how disruptive its actions are. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)  That doesn’t mean the blatantly incorrect close should be allowed to stand. Tvx1 17:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC) So go ahead and challenge it? Unless someone actually goes through the WP:CLOSECHALLENGE process nothing is going to happen. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)I'm just disappointed the change which consensus was found for (full width by default) hasn't been implemented after two days. It should be very little work if I understand correctly, and the devs had literal months to prepare for this very probably result. Instead all they've done is "begun to discuss and evaluate" and promised "proposals" within a week, as if there hasn't been enough talk already. small jars tc 22:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)  Isabelle has said the WMF is not bound to do this and her close will not be impacted by whether or not they follow through on this. In other words: the only actual binding part of this RfC is keeping it as default. You should expect the WMF to ignore the second bit of the RFC, as not even Isabelle is willing to hold them to it. Toa Nidhiki05 00:04, 20 March 2023 (UTC) You should stop spreading misinformation and attacking Isabelle for somehow not holding them to it(?) as if that's something they—or anyone!—could do. I'll be the umpteenth person pointing you to WP:CONEXCEPT. WMF can ignore any or all of the close. None of it is binding. None of it CAN be binding. 2600:1700:87D3:3460:55F2:D3B6:7A49:FADD (talk) 22:02, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Also, please note that Isabelle uses they/them, not she/her. 2600:1700:87D3:3460:55F2:D3B6:7A49:FADD (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC) @SmallJarsWithGreenLabels Very little in software development at the scale Wikimedia projects operate in can happen within two days. There are always edge cases, considerations, and options to evaluate, even when something seems clear-cut. Just be patient. Sam Walton (talk) 09:59, 20 March 2023 (UTC) It's a matter of changing the default mode of a toggle button. If that takes more than 2 hours to complete, they must have some very baroque software architecture. small jars tc 16:18, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Changing the button is the easy part. It's finding which file of the 10 trillion to edit, waiting 10 minutes for the code to compile and for the unit tests to run, having the code reviewed, blah blah blah... Snowmanonahoe (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC)Is this close really not going to be challenged?? Surely such a gross misrepresentation of a discussion cannot be allowed to stand.Tvx1 07:07, 19 March 2023 (UTC)  You've been commenting the same thing multiple times across multiple threads. If you're unhappy with the close, then challenge it yourself. Simply repeating yourself over and over again isn't helpful. Aoi (青い) (talk) 07:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC) It's a difficult choice.  On the one hand, the closer had a very difficult and time-consuming job, and acted competently and in good faith.  On the other, there is a significant majority opposed to the recent change, so it should be reversed.  Of course, whether the organisation which we trusted with our funds, trademarks and domains will deign to listen is a different question. Certes (talk) 13:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Challenging the closure does not necessarily imply disavowing Isabelle Belato's and Ingenuity's good faith. Æo (talk) 17:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Just leave it, most opposes have no merit, just a grudge for change. I was highly skeptical as well at the start and I quickly switched back to vector 2010. But then after the main concern I had was addressed, and also saw that the WMF actually does address the concerns raised, I eventually moved to vector 2022 for good and now I also prefer it on other projects.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:43, 19 March 2023 (UTC) I was one of those who supported the rollback and I assure you that my vote was not driven simply by a "grudge for change". Æo (talk) 21:58, 19 March 2023 (UTC) (ec) It's more than reasonable to leave this be for the six months until this will be revisited. Criticism of the change happened with the last skin and will happen with the next one. Our input has been and will be solicited. I'm pretty much used to it now- try it, you might like it. If not, use the old one. 331dot (talk) 22:01, 19 March 2023 (UTC) I and most of those who voted for a rollback to V10 are not driven by individualistic thinking; it is not a simple "personally, I don't like V22 and therefore I stick to V10". Most of us think that V22 is inferior to V10 in many respects and is detrimental to the encyclopedia and to the users' experience, and that V10 should remain the default skin for the general welfare of the encyclopedia and for all the other users. Æo (talk) 22:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC) There was people who thought that for V10, and there will be people who think that for V30 or whatever its called. That's a recipe for changing nothing for all time. 331dot (talk) 22:57, 19 March 2023 (UTC) I disagree, I would have supported the change if V22 had actually been better. But it is not. Æo (talk) 00:05, 20 March 2023 (UTC) I expect almost all registered editors who supported the rollback have visited Special:Preferences and will soon almost forget that Vector 2022 ever existed.  We're !voting on behalf of the silent majority of unregistered editors, who don't have that privilege. Certes (talk) 12:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC) If most opposes had no merit, than why are they given so much weight in the close to the point of claiming a "no consensus". Tvx1 18:30, 20 March 2023 (UTC) A related discussion can be found at VPI, discussing possible modifications to the default settings of Vector 2022. BilledMammal (talk) 02:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)The close result is funny though in the retrospect of the whole active canvassing of non-Wikipedians by the WMF specifically to support the change. The real consensus against the re-design is much more than 2-1 considering that. SilverserenC 03:01, 20 March 2023 (UTC)  Good luck getting the closers to reconsider even a fragment of their defective close. It’s not going to happen. Toa Nidhiki05 02:37, 21 March 2023 (UTC)The close has been formally challenged.Tvx1 19:04, 20 March 2023 (UTC)  I've boldly closed that review. Let the discussions on the closer's page finish, and then interested editors can collaborate to open a review if it is still deemed necessary. BilledMammal (talk) 20:59, 20 March 2023 (UTC) What needs to be finished then?? They have made it abundantly clear they will change their stance and insisted themselves a formal review was the way. How much more time needs to be wasted??? Please undo your unilateral close and let the procedure run its course. Tvx1 23:56, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Take a look at the discussion here. BilledMammal (talk) 00:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC) You could open a close review of the close of the close review. (don't actually do this, please) ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:07, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Meanwhile, life goes on... --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:07, 22 March 2023 (UTC)A second Close Review was opened today. Soni (talk)  14:57, 28 March 2023 (UTC)  I propose that {by use of magic I don't personally understand} the disambiguation icon be set as a default thumbnail image for all disambiguation pages to improve navigation clarity for users.   jengod (talk) 19:49, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Good idea, if possible.  Traditionally we use red and blue  but the colour isn't important. Certes (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2023 (UTC) I believe that's a question for the Web team, so pinging @SGrabarczuk (WMF).  The next step is probably filing a Phab: ticket for it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:36, 20 March 2023 (UTC) Would this apply to search results and the search preview in v22 and menerva, as well as to releated articles? small jars tc 22:17, 20 March 2023 (UTC) I don't know what v22 and merneva are but it would be great if this also registered in search results. jengod (talk) 01:41, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Hey @Jengod. I'd like to ask what you mean by a "thumbnail" here. Are you suggesting that the disambig icon should be shown in search preview and search results? Could you repeat your proposal using a description/a list instead of the word thumbnail? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 21 March 2023 (UTC) I think this concerns the page image (mw:Extension:PageImages). Such icons are usually excluded from becoming page images, that could indeed be changed for disambiguation pages. XanonymusX (talk) 14:36, 21 March 2023 (UTC) If this is possible, I would definitely support this. Looks better than the default grey page and I don't see any reason why it should be opposed. Adds a pop of colour to the previews and looks almost Underground-ish. Assuming that, of course, it can be done. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Would support as well if technically possible. A good, solid idea. Aza24 (talk) 00:05, 22 March 2023 (UTC) I've created a Phabricator ticket, but I'd like to encourage you to add comments focusing on the following: describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution what exactly you would like to be able to do and where exactly why should this be implemented This will help to prioritize the task, understand the scope, and check whether it's really done. Thanks! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC) Sorry I'm late replying to this: 1. I'm a mobile-only user (and editor) and one of my wiki hobbies is keeping an eye on what's surfaced by those three "related articles" boxes that appear at the bottom of pages. When you're roaming the site that way, it becomes really obvious that every article is improved by a default image (must placed above the TOC on article page to appear) and a <40 characters short description. Very important guideposts. Anyway, disambiguation pages often show up as a visual dead zone with an off-putting minimum of information. 2  I would like the default page image for disambiguation pages (some of which are quite dense and informative in their own right cf Point (disambiguation)) to appear less like voids and more like wayfinding tools. My proposal is that the red-blue sideways disambiguation trident symbol Commons:File:Disambig.svg be the default image for all disambiguation pages that don't have an existing image (which they mostly shouldn't have but I bet there are exceptions). 3. This should be implemented to improve the user experience. Cheers  jengod (talk) 01:39, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Thanks, I've copied your comments on Phabricator. This seems to have a fair amount of support! EpicPupper (talk) 03:34, 29 March 2023 (UTC)  mw:Extension:Disambiguator makes the magic word __DISAMBIG__ to mark disambiguation pages so MediaWiki can identify them. We add __DISAMBIG__ in {{Dmbox}} which is used by disambiguation templates. The page image displayed in searches and elsewhere is selected by mw:Extension:PageImages. We have both extensions so the suggestion can be implemented if PageImages automatically selects a certain image for marked disambiguation pages. I like it and suggest the image can be set by a wiki in a new MediaWiki message like MediaWiki:Disambig page image. I don't know how various other wikis handle disambiguation pages but I think the message should be blank by default, probably also in Wikimedia wikis. Here we could choose Disambig.svg for File:Disambig.svg. mw:Extension:PageImages can currently only select an image which is in the lead and at least 120px. We could implement it locally without a change in the extension if we display a 120px icon on disambiguation pages but I don't like that. We could probably trick the extension by using code which technically places the image in the lead but hides it from viewers in practice. We would need an additional template on disambiguation pages because they often have sections, and existing disambiguation templates are placed at the end. It's also an ugly hack I dislike. The "hidden" image might be displayed in some circumstances or cause confusion when some features claim it's there but users cannot see it. A change in the extension would be much cleaner. I suggest we wait to see if the developers will implement it before we consider a local hack. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:34, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Some disambiguation pages do currently have a page image taken from the lead, e.g. Macedonia and William and Mary. It usually only represents some of the entries. I'm fine with always replacing it with a disambiguation icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2023 (UTC) I'd suggest only replacing it with a disambiguation icon when there is no existing image available. EpicPupper (talk) 23:50, 23 March 2023 (UTC) This feature already exists in VisualEditor. If you click the chain icon to add a link and write example then the option Example shows a disambiguation icon  as page image. mw:Extension:Disambiguator#Features says: "If VisualEditor is enabled, shows whether a page is a disambiguation page or not in the link dialog". PrimeHunter (talk) 04:07, 23 March 2023 (UTC) For those interested,  there's currently a RFC asking should the biography of Rod Steiger include an infobox? Thanks! Nemov (talk) 03:45, 21 March 2023 (UTC)  I'm puzzled why this is even a contentious issue. It's like choosing to not use a template or an table. Zaathras (talk) 04:17, 21 March 2023 (UTC) A quick glance of the revision history reveals evidence of disruptive edit warring by the usual suspects.  It seems I'm no longer allowed to name names around here without someone trying to twist it into a personal attack, so I'll leave it at that.  Once more progressing to a time-wasting RFC as a knee-jerk reaction further shows the lack of respect people have for WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  06:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC) I'm genuinely curious what should be the next step should be if not a RfC? Those who believe that the infobox would be an improvement have been bold in adding it find that edit reverted immediately by an editor(s) steadfastly opposed to finding consensus in the matter. Like Zaathras I am baffled at the nature of the debate. I would love a better path forward, but this is the way. Nemov (talk) 12:46, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Not sure why this needs additional attention beyond what the RfC brings. It's contentious because we have no clear rules about when/whether to use infoboxes, so all of the debates come down to personal opinions. "An infobox would be self-evidently good here because they help readers" vs. "infoboxes might be useful sometimes, but not here". It's all just personal preference, stated with various degrees of matter-of-factness. It's basically the same as WP:CITEVAR, except there aren't a bunch of people going around to articles they've never edited saying "list-defined references are just obviously better, so let's use them here" against the wishes of the people who actually worked on the article. I get both sides of the infobox argument, except for that desire to impose it... It does seem like we're approaching the point where there might be consensus to just use them everywhere, though. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:03, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Given the community's growing acceptance of infoboxes as a normal part of the Wikipedia UI shouldn't some of the contentiousness be dropped on this topic? If most of the community believes that infoboxes are an improvement to the article why should it be a surprise that new editors are attempting to add infoboxes? Most of the recent RfC are from editors who didn't know anything about the ancient infobox wars. I was certainly blissfully unaware until I saw this popping up in RfCs. The idea that new editors are trying to "impose it" is a little unfair. What I don't understand is the continued opposition to infoboxes despite the fact it appears the community finds them helpful. Nemov (talk) 17:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Given the community's growing acceptance of infoboxes. Anecdotally, it seems that it may be headed that way, but you'll need to actually establish consensus for a change to the rules to act on it. If a dozen people go to many articles to impose an infobox against the wishes of the people who wrote the article, it can certainly look like growing acceptance, or it could just be a smallish number of people on a mission, a smaller number of people objecting to said mission, and a vast majority who just don't care enough to comment. Some of that vast majority would come out for a broader RfC on infoboxes generally, and who knows where they'll land. The idea that new editors are trying to "impose it" is a little unfair. It looks like you yourself have gone to a whole bunch of articles to try to add an infobox where the primary contributors did not want them. Why is "impose it" unfair? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:54, 21 March 2023 (UTC) If you look at my edit history I have only created one RfC on adding an infobox. That would be this one since I found the article after watching On the Waterfront. I have been involved in several RfC discussions about infoboxes the past 5 months. That's mostly because I'm involved in most RfC discussions that past 5 months. I find the idea that I'm part of some nefarious mission to impose infoboxes an unfair characterization. My general observation that in most of the infobox discussions the same group of editors almost are always involved in opposing them (which is their right). I can't really say the same about those attempting to add them. It's been a variety of different editors, some new, some old, some having nothing to do with old discussions. I'm reluctant to frame this as us vs. them because many of the editors who have supported the infobox haven't been involved in every discussion. Plus, the group that have opposed are full of great, well meaning, and productive editors. It's simply not in good faith to complain about editor's motivations. So my question again falls back to a path forward and not trying to dredge up the past. If no path is outlined then we'll see the same pattern. Editors will stonewall the infobox, someone will create an RfC, the community will be alerted, and the infobox will be added. This seems to be like a waste of time for RfC watchers like myself. Nemov (talk) 18:08, 21 March 2023 (UTC) nefarious mission - I don't think it's nefarious, to be clear. But apart from that I don't really have anything else to add. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:44, 21 March 2023 (UTC) Seconding Rhododendrites point here. Any sort of easily modifiable and replicable idea gets spammed throughout Wikipedia pages. That doesn't indicate a broad community consensus, it indicates that easily made edits are made more often, because they are easy. The more visible the template, the more it happens. I suspect infoboxes would be one of those items that the community does support, but the broader argument doesn't hold. CMD (talk) 01:31, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Rhododendrites' claims that there's a group of infobox warriors that "go to many articles to impose an infobox against the wishes of the people who wrote the article." That's not been my observation the past five months even if there are a few familiar faces. Also, the claim that I "have gone to a whole bunch of articles to try to add an infobox where the primary contributors did not want them is false.  Rhododendrites has commented against inclusion on several infobox discussions but I wouldn't characterize their position as an anti-infobox warrior. There doesn't seem to be much interest in finding a path forward which is fine. The system appears to be working. WP:RFC says that RfCs can be brought here so more editors can comment. Inviting more editors to comment is a reasonable way to find consensus. Nemov (talk) 02:51, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Yes, keeping in mind the article has had millions of views since 2015 and only a couple of people ever had a problem with no infobox. There have been a number of different names turn up at IB discussions aside from the regulars, I don't know how many are sockpuppets of past ones or are actually genuine. Nemov may be innocent, but overall as with Kubrick it does suspiciously look like a coordinated effort to enforce boxes on promoted articles, taking advantage of the fact that several of the people who once defended against them no longer edit. The example given below is a perfect example of how they are not essential. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:52, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Personal reflection: Someone added an infobox to an article I started, Rupert Frazer. I couldn't be arsed to oppose it, but it just seems unnecessary. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:59, 23 March 2023 (UTC) That article is a good example of an article that doesn't need an infobox. Nemov (talk) 13:07, 23 March 2023 (UTC) I  disagree. It's a great example of an unnecessary infobox. It takes four lines to show on the right-hand side what we say in one line on the left. It adds only the current age, which I consider a "nice-to-have", but not worth the addition of the ugly little box on the right. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:47, 23 March 2023 (UTC) I'm generally for infoboxes and believe their a benefit to the reader, but an infobox that has nothing more than the details of the first sentence is pointless. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:42, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Removing it here make sense, though I think sometimes new editors find it challenging to figure out how to add an Infobox, and so base structure can make it easier for them to then add an image etc.. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:05, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Example diff Special:Diff/1145970784/1145978283 Why not have the alt text in the image page, it can then be copied by bot into citations. If editors want to change the alt text they can on a per-cite basis as normal. This at least creates a base alt text. -- GreenC 02:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)  @GreenC, I understand that the immediate problem is that there is no place to store it.  c:Help:Alternative text has links to the relevant prior discussions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:57, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Moreover, if the image is on Commons, as most images used in the English Wikipedia are, then it would be presumptuous to store the alt text there. Images on Commons can be used in any Wikipedia, and there is no reason why one language should be privileged as the alt text for such an image. Donald Albury 01:33, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Commons is multilingual. It's supposed to have all text content in each language. Alt-text would be no exception. – SD0001 (talk) 16:57, 25 March 2023 (UTC) Well, there are currently 321 active language Wikipedias. That would be an awful lot of data to add, even if you had enough speakers of each language who were willing to add descriptions to the more than 91,000,000 media files on Commons. You are offered the chance to enter descriptions in more than one language when you upload a file, but even for the (admittedlt few) images I checked that are used on half-a-dozen or more different language WPs, I didn't see anything other than English descriptions. Donald Albury 18:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC) It'd be less data than's already stored for the pictures (60 bytes in 321 languages is about 20 KB; a typical modern digital photo could be 100–1000 times that size).  Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance (though if you're planning to add millions yourself, then let's maybe give Ops a heads-up first). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Oh, I'm not worried about the data storage space. I was thinking of the volunteer-hours involved in adding individualized alt-texts to millions of images. Donald Albury 00:40, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Every image *needs* alt text. See MOS:ACCIM. EpicPupper (talk) 03:36, 29 March 2023 (UTC) As far as I know, WAID is right on the technical issue, and I agree with DA on the Commons presumptuousness issue. Even if we could bypass both those issues, an images alt text should be determined based on its use in the article. For example, there's an image of Elizabeth II in the infobox at Purple, and the same image is used at multiple articles about the monarchies of various countries. The alt text at Purple should mention that she is wearing a purple hat, while the others do not need that detail. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:41, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Commons holds descriptions for each language, I do not think it would be difficult to hold a default alt-text for each language too. CMD (talk) 02:40, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Exactly. If editors want to modify the default text, simply add |alt= to the citation as would be done anyway (when there is no default text). At least there is a default text starting point, which in many if not most cases would be sufficient, and save a lot of duplication of effort. It would also benefit increasing the number of citations with alt text. -- GreenC 00:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC) Inside VisualEditor (visual editing or its wikitext mode), if basic alt text were stored on Commons, then it could be imported into the dialog and stored locally. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC) I agree with Firefangledfeathers, particularly about the context issue - alt text is there to give provide the context and encyclopedic relevance of the image that readers who can see it get from the image itself. That context and relevance depends on the reason why it is being used in the given article. At Purple, the image of Elizabeth II needs only to say that it is a picture of an (elderly) woman wearing a purple hat and coat, at Windsor, Berkshire, Governor General of Papua New Guinea and most other articles it need only say who it is a picture of, although at List of state leaders by age her age in the photograph would probably also be relevant information. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Xeno's proposal notes that context can be an issue; he suggests that default alt text would be able to be overridden for specific uses in pages. EpicPupper (talk) 23:41, 23 March 2023 (UTC)  I don't think we should presume that Commons doesn't want this for itself.  Simple descriptions of Commons' images could be helpful for Commons.  Otherwise, the alt text is the filename, which can be incomplete (how about "cancelled purple Canadian stamp showing Queen Elizabeth"?), misleading ("4C" isn't the same as "4¢"), or incomprehensible (automatically assigned numbers that say little or nothing about the contents, such as File:004 2022 04 15 Ei.jpg). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC) It's probably possible to implement this via structured data. EpicPupper (talk) 23:38, 23 March 2023 (UTC) Most images I've seen are only used in one (or just a handful of) articles. Is the added burden of needing to go on Commons to change alt-texts worth the benefit, for that presumably small number of images that are used in many articles? DFlhb (talk) 00:39, 24 March 2023 (UTC) I challenge the notion that most images are only used once or twice - this is very clearly not the case. EpicPupper (talk) 00:54, 24 March 2023 (UTC) There are (as of a few minutes ago) 6,468,023 different images used in mainspace. 5,076,097 are used on just one article. 826,773 are used on two articles. 565,153 are used on three or more. This count includes flags, icons, and other decorative or navigational images included by wikitext, but not images used only via CSS. The most-used image is File:OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg at 1,473,481 uses. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 24 March 2023 (UTC) My initial claim was incorrect, however, 826,773 images on two articles and 565,153 on 3+ is not insignificant. Even for images only used on two articles, a centralized default alt text stored on Commons  would auto-update with changes, removing the burden for editors of alt text to also edit the text on more than one page. As well, quoting Chidgk1 who posted this on Phabricator (dual-licensed CC-BY-SA and GPL): I sometimes add pics on a Wikipedia for which I am not a native speaker so it would be very hard for me to write alt text there. Conversely as a native English speaker if I write the alt text once then those with poor English can easily benefit later when they add the same pic to another article. EpicPupper (talk) 01:29, 25 March 2023 (UTC) What is very clearly the case is that most of the images on Commons (today "91,601,939 freely usable media files", ok not all images) are not used at all, and never will be. Johnbod (talk) 19:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC) An ideal implementation is that writing alt= here would overwrite the commons alt-text with no need to exit your edit window. CMD (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2023 (UTC) So.. I've always thought this was an interesting idea, but that any sort of implementation has too many restrictions to be of true use. Like stated before by ppl in this discussion: alt are language specific so cannot be reused across languages. sister projects are unlikely to provide them (they are busy enough trying to stay alive) Commons has more images not in use, than in use Neither Wikidata nor Commons are trusted by Wikipedians It doesn't help writing initial alt descriptions, so only helps with multiple usages of of the same image. Alt is context specific so even for images that are used multiple times, it's likely not always going to suffice So the majority of alt descriptions are likely to be written by each of the wikipedias.... Which means that like 95+ % of the the alt text is basically coming from the same place and the same people, Wikipedians, they would just have to move where they store/get them from. Taking in all of these limitations and edge cases, made me think. What if someone were to make a bot that takes the alt of an image usage, which then copies it to the alt tag of other local uses of the thumbnail where no alt is provided ? Wouldn't that solve almost the exact same problem, without all the increased complexity of which the return on investment is very dubious ? If the results of such bot edits are uncontroversial, then it gives much more credence to this proposal. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:52, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Issue: Many new editors fail to cite reliable sources when adding encyclopedic content. Only guidance they have on this subject is a small text above the editing window when editing in source mode. Visual editor is slightly better with this, but it is burrowed within a button. This proposal will focus on the source editor. Proposal: Currently, the text reads "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources." My proposal is to reword the "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources" into "Any information added must be supported by reliable sources". Rationale: The current text is cryptic to new editors and uses words that has its meaning in a unconventional way. For example, the word "verifiable" may be confusing to new editors and is not approachable. My reworded text will improve the accessibility of the text to new editors. Carpimaps (talk) 10:24, 28 March 2023 (UTC)   Administrator note this is about message MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn. — xaosflux Talk 10:47, 28 March 2023 (UTC)@Carpimaps: are you wanting to limit this to only "articles"? Encyclopedic content may be present in other places, such as templates and drafts. — xaosflux Talk 10:50, 28 March 2023 (UTC) I will rephrase it to be inclusive of other namespaces. Carpimaps (talk) 12:06, 28 March 2023 (UTC) "Any information" is overly broad for other namespaces. That being said, it's probably simpler for the target audience of new editors to avoid getting into the details. isaacl (talk) 16:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Linking reliable sources would be helpful, along with verifiable and perhaps citations if those words remains, although they are linked from the currently linked page (Help:Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup/1.) Certes (talk) 13:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Cmnt: How about: "Any content added must be supported by, and include, reliable source(s)". GenQuest "scribble" 17:53, 28 March 2023 (UTC)  "and include reliable sources" makes it sound like the actual source should be included, rather than a citation to the source.  That could inadvertently lead to copyvios as people attempt to "include" the source. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:12, 28 March 2023 (UTC) Wording aside, there is no consensus at the moment that every edit must correspond to an appropriate citation within the text, whether it is a new one or an existing one covers the change. It should be possible to cite a source, but the community has so far given higher priority to someone adding relevant information over insisting that the author include a citation for that information. isaacl (talk) 21:27, 28 March 2023 (UTC)Comment. Maybe I’ve just been here too long, but is the word verifiable really that confusing? I don’t think it has any special meaning here beyond its everyday meaning. I agree though that Encyclopedic content isn’t helpful to outsiders. The lay perception is probably that this website is an encyclopedia and that means everything found on it is encyclopedic.  I suggest wikilinks be added to both terms, pointing to pages that explain them.  Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:58, 28 March 2023 (UTC) Maybe the problem is that long-time editors have a different understanding of what it means for something to be verifiable. @Carpimaps, Wikipedia:Glossary#verifiable gives this definition: Something that people are "able" to "verify".  Specifically within the meaning of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy, it is information that someone (although not necessarily you) could, with enough effort and expense, determine has been published in a reliable source, even if no source is provided in the article.  Contrast uncited. This proposal is to change the sentence Encyclopedic content must be verifiable through citations to reliable sources to Any information added must be supported by reliable sources".  I wonder whether you are aware that of the significant difference between the two?  The existing sentence says that all content must be something other people are "able" to verify but does not (technically) require sources to be cited; the second says that every sentence must be cited.  The first is a long-standing policy; the second is an idea that some editors support, but that has not been accepted in previous discussions. Also, anyone who is interested in encouraging newcomers to add citations will probably want to watch Wikipedia:Edit check and mw:Edit check.  There's a software project underway to encourage (but not require) citations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC) Personally, I think you're reading more into the text than is there. I don't feel that saying added information must be supported by reliable sources is asking for every sentence to be cited. It doesn't put any requirement on having a citation per sentence, or even that each specific edit must include a citation. It doesn't even require a citation; it's only asking that the information has support from reliable sources. I think the current sentence is more prone to being interpreted by new editors as requiring a citation than the original proposal (though I agree it does not actually require this). isaacl (talk) 02:14, 29 March 2023 (UTC) I would say the definition of verifiable that you have cited is entirely the same as the common non-Wikipedia meaning of the word. Verifiable. Something that is able to be verified. Not necessarily something that has been verified. It’s not jargon. For this reason I don’t think there’s a strong case for changing the existing wording (but I do support adding wikilinks to provide an abundance of clarity). Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 06:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC) A Close Review for the recent RFC on Rollbacking Vector 2022 is currently underway at AN. Soni (talk)  14:57, 28 March 2023 (UTC)