Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 57

This is just an idea I had just now that there should be little search bars in different writings such as articles, category pages, lists etc. I feel it would be more effective and easier to use Wikipedia and so you can search for exactly what you want instead of having to scroll for ages, (depending on length). Thoughts?

｡ 🎀 𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒾𝒹𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝟣𝟩 🎀 ｡ (talk) 01:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

It's already (kind of) a thing with Ctrl+F! Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 01:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

oh okay ｡ 🎀 𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒾𝒹𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝟣𝟩 🎀 ｡ (talk) 01:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I think we should just leave that to the browser. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is a bit old but I will note that the wikipedia app has a search function, if that's any help. ¿VØ!D? ✨ 19:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

As others have said, this can be done with the browser's inbuilt search function. However, very few users seem to know about that feature, which is a problem especially for longer web pages (as many of our articles are). A second, Wikipedia-specific problem is that (by default) it does not work on mobile web because the sections after the lead are collapsed. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@HaeB A belated reply, but on Chromium-based browsers searching actually does work in collapsed sections since the mobile site uses hidden=until-found. Unfortunately this isn't implemented in other browsers yet [1]. the wub "?!" 13:51, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh interesting, thanks. (I do in fact use Firefox for Android and had double-checked my pre-2022 recollections there before posting my above remark; but good to know that this is no longer an issue for a large share of mobile pageviews.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I find the general push to rapidly move talk page discussions out of sight into an archive sub-page as being one of the more unfortunate developments on Wikipedia. "Rapid" to me is anything less than about 10 years old. To clarify:

• Some small number of pages actually need rapid archiving due to sheer volume of posts combined with rate of posts.
• Most pages do not rapid archiving. It's fine to keep old discussions from 5 or 10 years ago so long as the page does not exceed a certain length. And even then, only the minimum number of the oldest posts should be archived to keep the page below a certain size.

This situation arose without design or intent. Some programmers made some archive tools and designed some algorithms. These algorithms have in turn significantly impacted the social discourse on Wikipedia. By effectively "blanking" talk pages, nobody will post follow-ups, add new information, etc.. it squelches conversation and ruins one of Wikipedia's most interesting features. Sure, it's possible to re-enable a discussion but hardly anyone ever bothers to do that. How often I have seen an archived thread I want to reply to, but don't bother copying it back to the main talk page, where it will just get sent back out of sight soon enough anyway.

I have no idea what the solution is, and I'm sure there are a million contrary opinions to mine. Most talk pages don't need these automated tools at all, or if so, a page-size based algorithm not date based. -- GreenC 14:55, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

"Rapid" to me is anything less than about 10 years old.

You obviously speak English. Are you using the word "rapid" correctly? Are we talking about geology here or what? Levivich (talk) 15:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I would say that "rapid" in [article]added for clarity talk page terms means anything less than the age of Wikipedia. Why archive if the talk page is not too long? Phil Bridger (talk) 17:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

"Why archive if the talk page is not too long", is an excellent way to put it. Or In a Nutshell: archive when the talk page is too long. -- GreenC 15:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I wonder whether WP:TALKCOND would be the more appropriate place to have this discussion. FWIW, based on that guideline, the age of a thread is less relevant than the size of the Talk page in question. I'm curious as to which Talk pages are of particular concern here. DonIago (talk) 15:53, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

TALKCOND is new to me, but appears to offer limited guidance. I don't see anything about size vs date? In terms of a particular page, I came across one (I no longer remember) that had maybe 50 threads from the earliest days of Wikipedia to the near present. The entire thing was archived, and now the talk page has a single recent post. Twenty some years of interesting and relevant discussion removed from general view. This is not anomalous. -- GreenC 15:50, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I made an addition to TALKCOND. -- GreenC 16:01, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

It's very dependent on the talk page, obviously editors can archive their talk pages however they wish. For other talk pages it should be down to size, some pages would quickly become difficult to load without archiving while others may never need it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:24, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I do agree that page size based archiving makes more sense than date based. Maybe the documentation and examples for the bots could be updated to discourage aggressively expiring talk page sections. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:46, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. -- GreenC 15:44, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Just to clarify your train of thought here, GreenC, are you thinking of article talk pages or user talk pages? Or do you think that this hesistation to archive should apply to both?

My attitude in regards to archiving my talk page has changed over the years – I used to be really proud of this ongoing 100,000 byte conversation I had on mine that went on for more than a year – but then I realized it caused some loading issues and distracted from the newcomer links I was trying to emphasize on my talk page (this became really apparent in person when I was literally sitting right next to a newbie IRL and I wanted to show them my talk page). Lately I've been trying to minimize the amount of old discussions I keep just for the sake of it for this reason. I can stroll down memory lane whenever I want so it's not a big deal. However, I've always done this manually. I'm curious in regards to the perspective of editors who use bots or blank their talk pages.

My attitude in regards to article talk pages is receptive to the slow the archiving idea. I think it depends on a lot of factors but I agree with the premise that the average talk page doesn't have to be archived constantly because sometimes issues identified years previously are still of current relevance to the article. Sheer size definitely plays a role. It might be worth considering whether our increased reliance on automation to make these sorts of calls might not be nuanced enough in all situations? I'm under the impression that bot-managed archiving is strongly preferred to manual archives but that factors such as the rate of archiving can be decided upon by editors to tell the bot what to do. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:34, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Mainspace pages. The bot archiving tools mostly operate based on date based on what I see, it's possible some operate based on page size I'm not sure. -- GreenC 15:44, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

My approach to talk page archiving and cleanup is topical. Some talk pages posts are ephemeral and time-gated such as notifications for votes or backlog drives. I usually clear these quite quickly. Other common posts are monthly projects newsletters and I usually just keep the latest one.

Another big class of posts are the egoboo -- barnstars and other accolades such as DYK awards. I like to keep these in specific archives but it's quite a chore to maintain these.

Actual talk is comparatively unusual and I curate this carefully and slowly as it's interesting to revisit such conversations and see how the issue is progressing.

It would be good if there were archive tools that helped in maintaining topical archives but I haven't found one yet.

Andrew🐉(talk) 19:45, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I get where you're coming from, but I also find it super annoying to scroll past 10+ old posts to get to something that actually might need a reply. Most article talk pages consist of a small core of regular editors responding to posts by a shifting cast of people who drop by to complain or suggest something. The former don't need to see the same stale discussions again and again, and they're the ones that set up archiving. The latter are slightly more likely to be interested in old posts, but mostly just want to say their piece. Probably the situation would have been much better if we'd gone for top-posting instead of bottom-posting, but here we are. – Joe (talk) 20:17, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

And then we have the editors who drop in on the talk page and respond to a 10 or 15 year old post. It is rare that such a response will help improve the article. Donald Albury 20:26, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I am opening this discussion to invite suggestions and proposals to reform WP:ITN in anticipation of an RfC. Such reforms are long overdue: ITN has effectively shut itself off from the rest of the site as a walled garden and have developed their own system of rules that conflict with sitewide expectations, creating multiple problems:

• The inclusion criteria are entirely subjective and based on the personal whims and opinions of participants. Editors at ITN routinely use original research to determine "significance", applying their own analysis of each situation. Weight in reliable sources is not a major factor in whether ITN considers something to be "significant".
• ITN flouts community norms around consensus. Discussions are typically closed as head counts, without weighing arguments in regard to the application of policy. "I like it" votes are given equal weight in discussions. The discussions are also closed before consensus has time to develop: no other part of the project would dream of letting a discussion without a clear consensus be closed in under a week, but ITN's nature requires that they be closed in a few days at most. Many discussions are closed after just a few !votes one way or the other.
• ITN requires a fast turnaround, sometimes as short as a few hours. In addition to contradicting WP:DEADLINE, this creates rushed work and prevents in depth review. Nominal quality checks are done to make sure citations are present, but the window is short and most participants only evaluate "significance". This results in articles that are not only not ready for the main page, but ones that are unstable as they are oftentimes recently created, subject to early reporting errors, and undergoing significant changes.
• Since arguments about personal beliefs and opinions are built into ITN's processes, it is inherently less civil than other parts of the project. Over the years, drama at ITN has rivaled most CTOPs, to the point that applying general sanctions to ITN itself has been discussed in the past.
• The arbitrary selection of news stories (with a major systemic bias toward elections, sports, and mass-casualty events) misrepresents the overall state of what's actually in the news. Pushing this bias onto our readers does them a disservice.

These problems are intractable with ITN in its current form. I am asking for suggestions on how it can be reformed, or if that fails and there is consensus to abolish it entirely, how it can be replaced.

Examples of reforms:

• Remove the significance requirement entirely and include any article that is the subject of a recent news event.
• Require that a story receive significant coverage in a certain number of countries or a certain number of newspapers of record
• Promote articles based on trending topics (with oversight to prevent gaming the system)

Examples of replacements:

• Use the space to display several short blurbs for good articles each day, like smaller versions of WP:Today's Featured Article
• Use the space to provide links on how to edit and to help users find where to start in order to recruit more editors
• Move the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section of the main page into the space for easier navigation

These are ideas that have been suggested in the past. This is not an exhaustive list of examples, nor do I personally consider all of them viable. I'm requesting input from the Village Pump so we can develop additional suggestions and get a general idea of what the community thinks about them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:48, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Two issues with points raised:

• On the fourth point related to arguments: the only time general sanctions have been applied is when the topic itself falls into areas where general sanctions have already been applied (like AP2, etc.) There have not been any sanctions applies for topics outside these areas. So that's just how general sanctions should be applied, and not an ITN issue.
• On the fifth point, WP is not a newspaper and we absolutely should not share topics to match what is big in the news. Not every news story that gets a short term burst of coverage deserves a WP article (per NOTNEWS, WP:N and NEVENT) and ITN reflects that.

Remember that the main page as a whole is meant to showcase articles that represent some of the best of WP. Replacing it with a list of top stories in newspapers or with popular topics won't work at all, because not all those topics meet the main page requirement. — Masem (t) 19:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I would also offer a suggestion that the ITN box include a permalink to the Wikinews sister project, which may be more attractive to those potential editors who get confused or put off in their first reverts that we are WP:NOTNEWS. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Back when Wikinews was a news site, we had such a link. Wikinews is far too slow to be useful these days, possibly because of too much focus on quality given the size of the userbase. Overall, Wikipedia is a much better news site than Wikinews ever was, whatever WP:NOTNEWS says. —Kusma (talk) 17:22, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if there's even a consensus that ITN needs to be changed, before we even start talking about the specifics of how to reform it. But I do not see any indication on the above thread that such a consensus exists. If there is, please feel free to share the diff, otherwise I feel like this will just go around in circles again as such discussions always do. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:13, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that (much like changing the MP) consensus could be obtained for the general idea of changing ITN but it would break down when specific proposals are offered. I now believe that it should function more like RD with a reduced or nonexistent "super notability" significance requirement- but I don't think that would gain a consensus.(I've discusses it here previously) 331dot (talk) 15:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Just a thought on "article quality" as a criteria: maybe it shouldn't be one. Perhaps a purpose of ITN should be to direct readers to articles that are currently hot topics in the hope that the extra attention results in improvements. There's no better opportunity to improve an article than when lots of people are interested in it. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:18, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Content on the Main Page is supposed to demonstrate high quality articles and some of WP's best work. We can't remove the quality aspect with changing that aspect of Main Page. — Masem (t) 18:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I get that ITN has its problems, but I don't get why it gets singled out so much when the other sections of the main page all have their quirky ways of working. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 17:19, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

ITN has actually been working quite fine recently, in my opinion. I am not sure this is needed anymore. Curbon7 (talk) 18:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm still in favor of just removing it (make TFA 2 columns wide on desktop), and then if people want to propose adding something to the main page where it used to be, discussing that separately. I've written enough about why in the previous rounds of this discussion so I won't repeat myself here (tldr: because it's bad at its job, irredeemably and structurally). Levivich (talk) 11:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

The OP is correct in pointing out that ITN violates numerous policies including WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTHERE, WP:NEWSSTYLE, &c. This might be excusable if it worked but it clearly doesn't. Right now, the lead blurb is about the 2024 Solomon Islands general election. Those happened over two weeks ago and so the topic is quite stale as news. And, as the Solomons is a minor nation with less than a million population, it wasn't really in the news in a big way to start with. Meanwhile, we have ongoing elections in major English-speaking countries like India, the UK and US but ITN is ignoring those.

The next blurb which will replace this non-event is likely to be a routine horse race while a trailblazing moonshot is also ignored.

These hiatuses and bizarre blurb choices are normal at ITN. Other main page sections are not nearly so dysfunctional as they manage to post fresh content every day with better quality and variety.

There are numerous ways that ITN could be improved, reformed or replaced but structural change is quite gridlocked too. Tsk.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:11, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how Wikipedia could provide better attribution for the contributors of its articles. After all, attribution is a key part of our license, but the authorship of an article is very much hidden away out of sight. In order to see the authorship of an article, one first needs to go to the "View history" tab, then click on the "Page statistics" external link, which redirects to an entirely different website, and even then you need to scroll down in the page before seeing authorship details. It also appears to only be visible in the web browser version, while it seems completely absent from the mobile app version. This presents a pretty unintuitive set of hoops for readers to jump through in order to discover (and attribute) the authorship of various articles. Even as a regular contributor, I didn't know this tool existed until a year or so ago.

This means that, to the lay reader or content re-user, all of our articles might as well be written by a monolithic "Wikipedia", or maybe a vague gesture at "Wikipedia contributors". Contrast this with other prominent encyclopedias like Britannica, which display the primary contributors to an article quite prominently beneath the article title and list secondary contributors in an easy-to-find section in the article history.

I was thinking that, either in the main page or at the top of the "View history" tab, it may be worth including such a list of contributors. It could be as simple as listing the primary author (with the most percentage/characters contributed), followed by any secondary contributors (with >10% contributed), followed by an "et al", which could itself link to further information about the article's authorship.

I think this would be a very important fulfilment of our own license's terms of attribution, both for in-wiki use and for anybody that might be reading or thinking about reusing the article's content. It would be a step away from the monolithic conception of "Wikipedia contributors". It could also provide a greater sense of impact for the articles' authors themselves, who would be able to easily see the fruits of their labour on screen. Of course, I understand this may come with its own drawbacks. I know some editors prefer the anonymity, while others may be worried that this could encourage low-effort edits in order to farm credit. But I personally think that the potential benefits of such a credit feature would outweigh the potential costs.

Having looked through the village pump archives, I'm confident this isn't a perennial proposal. I only managed to find one discussion of such a feature, which was opened by @Doc James almost a decade ago, but it didn't seem to gather a clear consensus and I'm not sure if anything ended up resulting from it. If anyone has any comments on this embryonic proposal, I would be happy to hear from you. --Grnrchst (talk) 14:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Grnrchst as an example, could you produce what you would expect the output of such to look like for this page? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

It's an odd example, because this is a discussion page, but it would currently be something like "Written by WhatamIdoing, Xaosflux, et al." --Grnrchst (talk) 14:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

So you'd be fine ignoring the thousands of other authors on such a byline? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:58, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's feasible nor particularly useful to include every single contributor in a byline, but I don't think they should be entirely ignored either, that's why I've included the "et al." (could also say "and others", or something). The reason I set the byline inclusion at >10% is because that's the rule of thumb used by the good articles project to determine major contributions. I think named inclusion in the byline should be limited to such major contributors, but linking to total authorship in the "et al." would also be useful for showing the full scope of contributions. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:05, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there is going to be any good way to programmatically determine those values. In your example above, what calculation did you use to determine that WhatamIdoing and I were >10% contributors for example? This is primarily why the cite this page tool example just says "Wikipedia contributors". (see more below) — xaosflux ^Talk 15:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I was using the "Top editors" section in the Xtools page I linked to in the "et al." As this is a discussion page, rather than a mainspace page, Xtools doesn't show an "Authorship" section in this case (hence why I didn't think it was a good example). Whereas in the one for Morgan Bulkely, there is an authorship section that shows Wehwalt at 79% of authorship, Real4jyy at 6.2% of authorship, etc. The authorship tool on Xtools is apparently powered by WikiWho, which we may be able to use for generating such a byline. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:25, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

As for the "Cite this page" tool, I think this is an example of how just vaguely citing "Wikipedia contributors" is unhelpful and even redundant. Of course it's authored by Wikipedia contributors, it's a Wikipedia article! --Grnrchst (talk) 15:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Another example, using today's featured article Morgan Bulkeley, would read: "Written by Wehwalt, et al." Grnrchst (talk) 14:47, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking this "Written by [...]" could go next to the bit where it says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". --Grnrchst (talk) 14:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

In the mobile view, we do advertise the "last" author (e.g. see the bottom of this page) - that could possible be ported to desktop. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the "latest contribution" is a good measure of recent activity, what I'm aiming at with this proposal is trying to demonstrate a broader scope of total activity. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• Note, a feature request that may address this idea is open at phab:T120738. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
• Note that we currently have https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/C418_discography and Who Wrote That which calculate the percentage, the latter using an API that does it Aaron Liu (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  I think you'd want to use the WhoColor API (which is what mw:Who Wrote That? uses). The other methods tend to overemphasize people who don't actually write any words. For example, if the article has 50 edits total at the time of calculation, and five of them are me blanking the whole article, or changing the whitespace on a template, then I've made 10% of the edits, but I haven't written a single word on the page.

  @Grnrchst, the last time I remember seeing a discussion about highlighting the names of contributors, a jerk who normally edited under his real name created an account with a vulgar username and made one edit, just for the purpose of asking whether we really wanted to have vulgarities displayed in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  And his alt was banned for WP:DISRUPTNAME, right? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, but DISRUPTNAME was declared to be an insufficient reason to revdel or oversight/suppress the change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  I was having the same thoughts. It should be based on who contributed to what the article as currently displayed. It would be wrong for instance to list the top contributor as someone who hasn't edited the article since it was completely rewritten.
  It might also encourage more competitive editors to try and find ways to boost there standings, without having to do any actually helpful work. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

  For the reasons mentioned above, I'm not a big fan of crediting whoever ran the link archiver most often as being the "author" of the page. Nor am I fan of being assigned as the author of a page, even if I am indeed the #1 author. The mw:Who Wrote That? extension is excellent and should be promoted, because it allows seeing authorship of words and sentences currently live, which is an excellent (though not infallible) way of tracking down who has added nonsense to an otherwise decent page (caveat lector: sometimes someone who copyedits nonsense will be shown rather than the original nonsense-adder). One thing that may not be widely known is that you can run Who Wrote That? on old versions of pages, making it an arguably more efficient tool than WikiBlame.-- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 18:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  Although XTools is influenced by use of link archiver tools, the underlying WikiWho service provides token-by-token attribution of who added what. This can be used to determine authorship without considering anything between ref tags, as well as other markup that's seen to unfairly influence authorship stats. I have implemented this in SDZeroBot 6 task which makes the bot somewhat smarter about whom to notify about AfDs. – SD0001 (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

• I am concerned that this would encourage WP:OWNERSHIP of articles. The entire point of the Wikipedia model is that articles are “authored” by the community, not by individuals. Blueboar (talk) 20:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  This is a completely fair and valid concern. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the need for this. I do get a certain pleasure from seeing how much of the content in an article I have contributed (which I can see at Page Statistics), but I am well aware that no one else really cares, and the future of such content is out of my hands. I am not editing Wikipedia to build my curriculim vitae. Donald Albury 21:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• As someone soliciting donations for your Wikipedia work, is this something you are considering using to attract donors? isaacl (talk) 21:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  No. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Personally I strongly dislike the idea of articles where I have primary authorship saying "written by Levivich, et al." or anything like that. That is very much not the kind of attention I want. Also, xtools authorship is not really reliable. For example, I am listed as the #2 author of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [2] but that's only because I once ran the archive bot on that page [3], I am not actually anywhere near a top author of the actual prose on that article. Levivich (talk) 17:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

If you have a divisive article and then add a note that User X was its most prolific contributor, readers will immediately assume User X holds those divisive views. And all the better if User X is an IP and offended readers can immediately find their location. (Which is already possible, of course, but why place it front and center?)

Speaking of which, how would this even work with dynamic IP addresses? 2603:8001:4542:28FB:25EE:12B6:DCFA:E43E (talk) 18:43, 3 April 2024 (UTC) (Send talk messages here)

I agree with the concerns voiced by Levivich and others. And even if the authorship statistics were 100% accurate I still don't like the idea of omitting certain users; as sappy as it sounds I think every contribution matters. Potentially, we could do something like Based on the contributions of 328 users but even then I think a more appropriate place for this kind of thing would be the footer alongside the last edited date. ― novov (t c) 08:21, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

• I can totally see the issues with this: we'll never have a 100% reliable measure of authorship, you can't include everyone, and we'll probably see a slight uptick in WP:OWNERSHIP and authorship gaming. But overall, I think it would be a nice way to acknowledge our volunteer editors and to communicate to readers "look, this was written by real people – you can join us". And twenty years into the project, with declining editor numbers, increasing restrictions and expectations of those editors that persevere, and donations to "Wikipedia" siphoned off by an organisation that has increasingly little to do with it, I think we really do need to start prioritising looking after our volunteer base over other concerns. Relying on the ideal of the selfless, perfectly-self motivated contributor, happy to work in complete anonymity, was fine in the early days of the project when the internet was the playground of affluent nerds with utopian ideals; those days are long gone. – Joe (talk) 08:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I can see how algorithmically a shortened authorship list would be generated automatically, fine-tuned for a relatively accurate representation. And while anything like that could be gamed by users, that's why we have lots of human eyes to review abuse. I can also see how such a list would be useful to researchers and those making citations. However, were such an authorship list to be implemented, I'd suggest it be hidden out of the way a bit, at least certainly from the front page of the article, and perhaps even completely hidden from UI except as metadata.

I'll give some contrasting examples: Scholarpedia places its curator-authors (respected subject-matter experts) prominently at the top of its articles: non-random example is BCM Theory (SP). By contrast, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has its authors' names and affiliation mentioned simply at the bottom, under "Author information" following the bibliography; while Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has its author even more nondescript, being in a footer at the bottom under a copyright notice, and not implied to be an actual "author" until you click on the "Author and citation info" link on the sidebar. (Again, respected subject-matter experts; random ex.: Gender in Chinese Philosophy (IEP), Plato on utopia (SEP).) Wolfram MathWorld also has authorship given relatively subtly at the bottom of the page -- if it's contributed by someone other than the editor, the contribution note precedes the bibliography; otherwise authorship is indicated only in citation information (ex. Chen-Gackstatter Surfaces (MW)).

Given all this, I don't know what example editors here would want to find themselves compared to, especially since an algorithm listing authors would not distinguish one editor writing 95% of an article immediately preceding GA, from one editor writing 55% of the prose in a B-class, for which others had to find new citations (unless we'd want it to do so, but this would epitomize wp:ownership). SamuelRiv (talk) 15:37, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s really hard to measure the significance of contributions to an article. It’s not just a count of who added the most words, or even of who added the most words that survive into the current version. How should we weigh a user who adds some high word count nonsense to an article, against a user who painstakingly sifts through the garbage, deletes most of it, and copyedits down any remaining kernel of valid content? Or the user who contributes great source analysis to a talk page discussion on a matter which results in a single word changing? Perhaps the article on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is finished not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

This is an excellent point. We don't have any accurate automated way to assess contribution levels, and xtools authorship isn't it (neither is bytes added or edit count). Levivich (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Just because an algorithm isn't currently implemented, does not mean an algorithm doesn't exist. As a rough starting point: authorship+curation can be measured by taking the diffs made by an editor to bring text in line with the current stable state, weighted by time. (For the simplest measure, you can just use edit longevity with hysteresis.) Now, absent some new API properties, this is an expensive calculation to maintain for every article, but it's perfectly technically doable. (Another, more sophisticated method is analogous to a co-authorship network.) Of course this has been done before: Arazy et al 2010; Lanio & Tasso 2011 (citing Biuk-Aghai 2006). SamuelRiv (talk) 19:28, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

No algorithm will be perfect though, and the exact value of things other than clear-cut addition/removal is to some extent subjective. ― novov (t c) 01:57, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

• Fundamentally, I think this is a nice idea and seems like it would be easy to implement since we already track editor contribution metrics, so it would just be a matter of making this visible on the page itself somewhere, maybe in the footer (though, yes, XTools is imperfect and an alternate system would probably be better). That said, I would hope there might be some opt-out system for those of us who don't want any sort of public credit, which includes me. (I never let anyone IRL know what WP articles I've worked on because the layperson assumes that the current status of any given WP article I "created" represents my writing. And, in many cases, I want nothing to do with how an article I "created" has evolved.) Chetsford (talk) 02:07, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
• Much as with the hall of fame suggestion (people really seem to be concerned with credit and recognition, lately), this could go so very badly. Any algorithm that we set up is going to be full of holes. It is simply impossible to represent, with any sort of non-LLM algorithm, the extent to which an edit impacts an article's development and structure for a multitude of reasons. The first reason is the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and edits are happening on a constant, minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis. An article could look one way today and then look totally different the following day, if it gets a massive rewrite. How would one recognize contributions in that scenario? If Editor X wrote the previous version of the article before its replacement, do they lose attribution now that it's been rewritten? Or do they receive attribution for something that no longer resembles their work?

The second reason, for Wikipedia articles, especially larger ones, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One can do a massive amount of copy-editing in a large edit, mainly to make stylistic or grammatical corrections, and as a result it would have very little impact on the article's growth but they would be considered an outsized contributor. On the other hand, the addition of a few vital facts or details could contribute heavily to the article's development, ensuring that it's meeting WP:GNG or perhaps even putting it on the road to becoming a WP:GA.

The third reason is that someone will always disagree with the algorithm that determines who is an author. Attitudes on Wikipedia among editors regarding WP:OWNERSHIP are already very fierce. This would exacerbate it to a fever pitch. Or it would simply not be taken seriously, if enough people take umbrage with it. This metric would be divisive at worst, and superfluous at best. If one wanted to track the metrics of the article, the "Statistics" are available for this very reason. They do not attempt to ask the question "who wrote this article?" They simply provide the data. In fact, it's a good rule of thumb - Anytime you ask any sort of question regarding creative or scholarly human impact, the question should always be answered by a human and not by a machine. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

100% agree with all your comments WaltClipper! Alexcalamaro (talk) 08:08, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

• I've got a slightly different idea that I think gets around Ownership issues and the algorithm not being able to make a perfect summary of "main editors". What if it just counted the contributors, that wouldn't be nearly as expensive a calculation and the text could read:

This article was created by 3,428 volunteer editors. (and you could be one of them).

The number of bot editors would need to subtracted of course. It would serve the purpose of directing anyone who wanted to know all the editors to the right page, and it would both more accurate and more precise than saying "This article was written by a monolithic 'Wikipedia'" And just for fun, there could be a text variant depending on whether the editors of that article includes the logged in user or not, saying:

This article was created by 3,428 volunteer editors. (including you)

I think one line like this could potentially be a lot more informative to a lay reader than the "about" pages that I don't know if anyone actually reads. -- D'n'B-t -- 18:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Like Levivich (talk) 19:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I also like it (but don't know how to make the nifty icon)! jengod (talk) 06:37, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is source wikitext, you can always view the source of a section to check it out! Aaron Liu (talk) 11:05, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Aaron Halfaker did excellent research on this issue of attribution and gave a good presentation about it at Wikimania: WikiCredit - Calculating & presenting value contributed to Wikipedia. But they have now left the WMF and it's a great shame that more has not been done with this idea. The main metric which we still use to measure work is edit count and that is awful. Edit count encourages low value editing -- busy work, chatter, churning and conflict -- rather than the creation of high quality content. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

So basically, sum up WikiWho? What about contributions that are later improved and overwritten/copyedited upon by others? Aaron Liu (talk) 16:11, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Halfaker cited the WikiWho paper in his presentation and so was building on that work.

Such superior measures of value-added exist and so we have the technology. And crediting authorship is something that is legally required by the CC licence but not enough is done to enforce this. More visible credit, as suggested by the OP is a good idea.

Andrew🐉(talk) 21:23, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Currently we have an embarrassingly large backlog named Category:Articles lacking sources with 94500 articles in it. The WikiProject Unreferenced articles, even with its fairly active membership, can only clear 500 articles every week, which amounts to around 3.5 years to clear the backlog. I'm curious, do you guys have any ideas to accelerate this progress? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:41, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I looked at a couple dozen articles in Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2024 and I found that more than half of them were incorrectly tagged. Specifically, they didn't have little blue clicky numbers, but they did contain external links that verified some of the content of the article, and one or two had a list of books.

I suspect that the fastest way to reduce the number would be to send a bot through all the articles to replace {{unref}} with {{No footnotes}} if there are any URLs anywhere on the page. It wouldn't catch everything, but it might clear thousands of articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:20, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

That would just push the problem to another backlog, which is bad practice. But you give me an idea... if a lot of these articles already have external links, why not use that to create an inline citation? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Triage is not bad practice. Levivich (talk) 14:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I think you're being hard on the Wikiproject if they're clearing 500 articles a week. That's admirable. CMD (talk) 08:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

One solution is the “one step back, two steps forward” approach: Delete the existing unsourced articles, and encourage people to create NEW articles on the same topics - this time with proper sourcing. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

This is literally Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Deprecating_new_unsourced_articles, but the community has rejected this proposal. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Yup… but… consensus can change. Not saying it has changed, just that it can. Blueboar (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

How about making a proposal to every WikiProjects so that they cite all articles belonging to the Wikiproject with at least one source? We already have the Bambot cleanup listings (click "by cat" then "Cites no sources"). We just need to put it to work. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

A WikiProject is a group of people who want to work together to improve Wikipedia. They don't own articles, and they aren't responsible for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Highly unlikely that it changed since 10 days ago. Even the month between that and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles was probably too little time for consensus to have changed. Anomie⚔ 16:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Essentially the reason that the proposal from a few days ago was rejected was because it created a "grandfather clause" where older unsourced articles would be allowed to fester while ones would be stopped at the gate. I would suggest then that any drastic action on unsourced articles should start at the other end of the backlog with articles that have been unsourced for over 15 years. -- D'n'B-t -- 17:52, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Fun fact: Non-BLP articles are not technically required to name a single source unless there is some specific material that falls into one of the categories listed by WP:MINREF. If you can write an article that avoids those categories (e.g., the content is something like "The capital of France is Paris"), then you are not required to cite any sources. Only the material that fits one of those sources is required to have an WP:Inline citation.

Consequently, if you want to be able to delete non-BLP unsourced articles the way that we currently delete BLP unsourced articles, that requires a change in policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Triaging

User:Levivich and User:WhatamIdoing, so how exactly can we sort these articles in the backlog? Is there a way to manually to sort articles with a reliable citation with AWB? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, that depends on what you mean.

I believe that you (i.e., people with regex skills) can use AWB to find articles that contain {{unref}}, do not contain any ref tags, but do contain a URL, and change {{unref}} into {{no footnotes}}. For extra points, if there is only one URL on the page, and it is either {{official website}} or inside an infobox, then AWB could add {{third-party}} as well.

A bot can be (and might already have been) sent around to remove the {{unref}} template from articles that contain any ref tags. In the past, that bot has substituted {{refimprove}}.

There are no good ways to make lists of articles with reliable vs unreliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

My thoughts:

1. Separate no sources of any kind ("unsourced", marked with {{unreferenced}} and thereby placed in Category:All articles lacking sources) from some kind of source of some kind but maybe not good enough ("undersourced", marked with {{more sources needed}} and thereby placed in Category:All articles needing additional references).
2. Separate BLP from non-BLP.
3. Backlog drive to source unsourced BLPs, then either unsourced non-BLPs or undersourced BLPs (not sure which I think are more urgent), and lastly, tackle undersourced non-BLPs.

One can separate BLPs from non-BLPs by searching for Category:Living people (assuming the category has been applied). There are other methods to catch uncategorized BLPs (e.g. look for {{infobox person}} or {{authority control}}), and I think there is already some automated process that does this for all new creations (plus I think NPP does this?).

Finding "unsourced" is a bit harder...

• You can search for articles that have an external link (any external link), and put them in the "undersourced" category (an external link being "some kind of source but maybe not good enough").
• However, even if an article has zero external links, they may still have a source, just one without a hyperlink. The most obvious example being a citation to a book or other offline source. So you can also search for all the various citation templates ({{citation}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite news}} etc. etc.), and move anything with a citation template to "undersourced".
• Still, plaintext citations to offline sources won't be caught by searching for external links or citation templates. So a third method is to search for a heading like "Works cited," "Sources," or even "External links." If an article has one of those sections (and it's not empty), then it can be moved to "undersourced."
• What you'll be left with in "unsourced" are articles that have no: (1) URLs, (2) citation templates, (3) obvious citation-style headings. You'll still find stubs that have no headings, URLs, or templates, but have sources. Those will be false positives in the "unsourced" pile, but that's probably OK, because presumably the "unsourced" pile will be much smaller now.

This has been done before (how I know these methods off the top of my head), see e.g. WP:Unreferenced BLP Rescue and the bottom of that talk page, which has links to some Quarry queries and other pages from when some folks were messing around with this last year. I think we found at that point, with various methods, that there were less than 1,000 unsourced BLPs (the highest-priority category). I'm not sure what the current state is. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of the 94,500 "articles lacking sources" probably do have some sources of some kind, just not in an easy-to-find format.

Final thought: in doing these sorts of searches, one cannot rely on the existing {{unsourced}} maintenance tag or Category:All articles lacking sources, because there may be false positives in that category, and there may be unsourced articles that aren't in that category. So just searching within that category won't find everything. Levivich (talk) 16:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich, thank you for your amazing write up. I have a question though, would it be much more helpful to generate a list of these articles rather than sorting the category outright? Like you said, there will be a lot of false negatives that will not be detected using this method. Also, my regex skill is very terrible but I can try to hack up one to plug into JWB as a test. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes. At least for initial exploration purposes, I think the best approach would be to generate lists and post them into subpages and then spot-check them manually to see what it all looks like (as in: do the lists pass the spot-check, and how many are in each list). Another option/layer is to create new maintenance categories or even templates (templates can be hidden, as can categories, so no one will even see it) just for this purpose. At some point, when there is sufficient confidence that the sorting is being done correctly, then change the "live" templates/categories on the affected articles. As a bonus, if you dump the list of articles into a subpage on Wikipedia, you can easily import all the (linked) articles on the subpage into AWB/JWB for further batch editing.

BTW I also am terrible at regex, but you know who's good at it? ChatGPT, the free version. You can ask it to "write a regex that will find [string] [string] or [string]" and it'll usually do a pretty good job. It still hallucinates sometimes or writes a regex that doesn't exactly get what you're looking for, so I'd still check any ChatGPT regex against a regext checker like https://regex101.com/ or https://rextester.com/tester or any of a million others you can find in a google search for "regex tester." But that's how I do regex now: with ChatGPT, then verify/tweak it.

You don't actually need regex (although it would probably make things easier and more accurate if it were used), you can use WP:PETSCAN or (with SQL knowledge) WP:QUARRY, or you can ask someone at WP:SQLREQ, where the folks who write SQL probably also are good at regex and various search tools.

Another alternative is to just use the regular Wikipedia search; you can limit to searching only for mainspace articles, and the advanced search options let you search by category, template, and text string. So for example, this search for articles in the unreferenced category with "Works cited" found List of Christian universalists, a false positive that actually cites sources and shouldn't be in that category.

But WP:PETSCAN will output a PagePile, which I found makes it very easy to generate lists of pages meeting certain criteria. If you're already doing AWB/JWB I'd encourage learning PetScan and PagePile, and then later if you're so inclined, SQL and Quarry to do more complicated things that PetScan won't do or won't do easily. Levivich (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

As well as the false negatives highlighted above - I think it's important to consider false positives, in that the presense of a URL doesn't necessarily imply a source. It could be the homepage of the website of the subject, for instance. Or a slightly off attempt at internal/interwiki linking. Could be spam links. Or, I have seen, linking to the homepages of various words mentioned in the body of the article for some reason. -- D'n'B-t -- 06:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

@DandelionAndBurdock, the homepage of the website of the subject would be a reliable source for information about that subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying it's not reliable - I didn't mention reliability. A homepage is often not a source full stop. For example nationaltheatre.org.uk doesn't really tell you anything about the National Theatre, so it's not a source for information. If you wanted an ABOUTSELF type source then you'd link to nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us/our-history/, not the homepage. So when you see an organisation's homepage in eg. an infobox or external links section, it'd be incorrect to think "oh, that's one source". -- D'n'B-t -- 20:38, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I could use nationaltheatre.org.uk to WP:Directly support these facts:

• It's called both National Theatre and Royal National Theatre.
• It's a registered charity.
• It's a company limited by guarantee.
• They get taxpayer money from Arts Council England.

Ergo, nationaltheatre.org.uk is an actual source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Another idea

I have long thought that the main page should include an “Articles highlighted for improvement” section… where once a week we choose (say) five needy articles and encourage the community to work on them (looking for sources, improving language and grammar, and generally raising their quality). This would compliment the “Featured Article” section (which showcases our best), by highlighting the fact that we still have lots of ways for newcomers to contribute. Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that your idea is a stroke of genius. Genuinely. Make this proposal a little bit more detail and boom, there you have it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

We can also use this as a way for new editors to join in Wikipedia, as a kind of mentorship of sorts. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:12, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Definitely. Other projects have similar things (enWS has "proofread of the month", for example) Cremastra (talk) 20:36, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for improvement used to have a section on the main page, but it was removed after its trial was considered unsuccessful, as there were few new editors making edits to the highlighted articles. The project still exists, with articles being nominated and accepted into a queue for listing on the project page. I suggest working with that WikiProject on the feasibility and potential cost/benefit ratio of having a corresponding section on the main page. isaacl (talk) 17:36, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Interesting to see that it was attempted and didn’t work. Oh well. Blueboar (talk) 20:00, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

It was over ten years ago, and I suspect the queue-filling process has been honed by now, so it might be worth a discussion at the WikiProject talk page. It could also be something to consider for user home pages, which has a specific intent of suggesting tasks for new users. isaacl (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

This is why ITN should feature the worst articles to the front page instead of the best! Ha ha, only serious. A subject being in the news is almost a guarantee that new sources are becoming available and people are interested in it - the perfect conditions for article improvements and recruiting new editors. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:20, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding Wikipedia:Template documentation, would it not make sense to automatically semi-protect all "/doc" template pages? I don't see any reason why IPs, etc., should edit these pages and since they are practically unwatched they are ripe for BEANS. A bot could do it. Thoughts? Rgrds. --BX (talk) 05:12, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

"I don't see any reason for them to edit" is not a valid argument for protection. IPs, just like everyone else, can constructively add things and fix errors in template documentations. Also, some templates aren't even semi-protected due to low use, IPs improving these templates should be able to update their templates. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 12:43, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

A related, alternative suggestion that would, I believe, require MediaWiki changes, would be to make it so in the Template space watching the template itself would also show the /doc subpage in your watchlist, in the same manner that watching either Page or Talk:Page (in all namespaces I know of) watches both. That would at least somewhat increase visibility of documentation pages. And I think many new(er) editors probably already assume the doc page is watched along with the template itself (I think I did earlier in my Wikipedia time). Skynxnex (talk) 16:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

As this is the idea lab, how about a related idea: introduce an option to watch a page and all of its subpages, with new pages automatically watched as they are created. Like, say, my user page and all of its subpages and talk archives. Or a portal including all its subpages. (Probably not a good idea for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion) though). —Kusma (talk) 20:18, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd love that - I've got a quick-and-dirty script that watches each daily subpage of P:CE and WP:DRV that I run every year, but usually only after I spend the first week or so trying to figure out why my watchlist is suddenly so quiet. —Cryptic 06:56, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Good generalization of my idea that would also be generally useful. I assume there's some performance issues like with AFD subpages, some users have dozen of subpages and many WP-space pages have hundreds, or thousands, of archived talk pages. But it'd be interesting to know if there's any fundamental reason to not do something like filing a phab to get the software side start at some point. Skynxnex (talk) 12:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a better solution, even if it is harder to achieve. We did get a watchlist change for temporary watching implemented, so enhancing this area of code is not impossible. Certes (talk) 12:53, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Some data (for the original request) is at quarry:query/82554. —Cryptic 06:56, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Add watchlist option to include subpages

Reformulating the idea based on the above: When choosing to watchlist a page, currently a drop-down menu appears with a time option to choose from (permanent, 1 week, 1 month, etc.). A new option would appear to watchlist all subpages. An advanced option would allow unwatching or watching of specific subpages (you would probably have to type in these pages manually I imagine). Rgrds. --BX (talk) 03:54, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Once in a while (most recently in 234 and 661), i edit a page with a 3-digit title to disambiguate an area code. How desirable is this, and how easily could someone set up a bot or template to add links to area codes on all pages whose titles are matching 3 digit numbers?

On a related subject (which might belong on a different help page), what does the {{Year dab}} template do? or what is it supposed to do? Pages 234 and 661 both have that template, but only one shows a hatnote (This article is about the year 234. For the number, see 234 (number).)

--173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

See Template:About year for information about that template. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:24, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, but that seems to be a different template than these pages use. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:37, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Although, in theory, using Template:About year instead of {{Year dab}} could automatically add 234 (area code), etc., if somebody/some bot/something made such redirects for all the area codes... --173.67.42.107 (talk) 19:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Template:Year dab redirects to Template:About year. When in doubt about a template, just check its page. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

The reason why only one of them shows the hatnote, as far as I know, is because 661 (number) does not have a standalone page. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 01:09, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thanks all for answering my technical question. Anyone have any thoughts about my disambiguation suggestion? --173.67.42.107 (talk) 16:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyone who plays any rhythm video games at all has probably heard of Camellia, a music artist who creates fast-paced EDM songs. I was quite surprised to find that we do not have an article on him, and 30 minutes later, I was even more surprised with my conclusion that he isn't notable.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to investigate writing an article on him, and I won't be the last either. The thing is, unless someone has tried before (creating a deletion log entry), a non-notable topic leaves no evidence that someone else has tried to write the article but deemed the topic to be non-notable.

I think that evidence should be somewhere. Perhaps an index of topic titles where each topic is a section on a page, that contains a list of sources if any are found, a couple of possible redirects for searchability, and a log of editors who have determined the topic to be non-notable and when they did so. This would make my search much faster—I would check this page, see that 2 editors have already looked into making the article less than 6 months ago, and be on my way. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 19:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I feel like, having sort of memorized the notability guideline, such a person didn't get significant press coverage or do something really big (which can be a summary of most notability guidelines), so they're not notable. I'm not very convinced that there are a lot of subjects that are nearly notable. WP:BFDI seems to be the only one I can think of. I'm sure there are more, but not by much.
Personally I like core-y songs like those from LeaF better Aaron Liu (talk) 19:48, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Sometimes a topic that is not notable becomes notable. Years ago I repeatedly reverted attempts to add an up-and-comming rapper named Flo rida to various lists of notable people. And then he made the grade. Donald Albury 23:43, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Before they were notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Camellia's one person? I guess that shows how much I know. jp×g🗯️ 21:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

You could add URLs about Camellia to his Wikidata item at Masaya Oya (Q40857248) using the Property P973 "described at URL".

As an example, you can see the reviews I added to the novel A Fire So Wild (Q124606008) in case someone were to eventually create a Wikipedia article about it. Besides helping editors, the URLs there help to establish Wikidata notability. Lovelano (talk) 01:04, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it’s a valid point, but I would be concerned that any centralised location for recording information about non-notable subjects could become a garbage magnet.

If you think there’s a chance that the subject is not notable yet but stands a chance of becoming notable eventually, you could maintain a stub in Draftspace, with your rationale on the talk page. But without continuous effort it would eventually get G13 speedy-deleted.

As a minimum you could maintain a “research log” on your user page detailing your efforts, which might possibly be found by a future editor. Maybe. Possibly. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:37, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

IMO it'd be better to create that Wikipedia:Too soon article in your userspace, so that it won't require constant vigilance against deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, what if the "note" left behind is a statement like "not notable as of <date>" in a G13 deletion log entry for a draft? That would solve the garbage magnet problem. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 15:39, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Probably the best idea I've seen at the pump – in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it already exists somewhere or at least has been proposed in the past. Would be huge for avoiding unnecessary doubling-up on research. To answer Barnards's concern about it becoming a garbage magnet, the easiest thing to do would be to establish some minimum standard for inclusion as a listing. To have a stab at it: "entries must list at least a passing mention or greater in an independent reliable source and make an A7-style credible claim of significance." (Just a thought off the top of my head). – Teratix ₵ 15:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

@Snowmanonahoe I've found Wikipedia:Source assessment, which is sort of what you've described. It really needs more promotion... any ideas for what I might include in some WP:WPADS? Aaron Liu (talk) 00:45, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Interesting thought, Snowmanonahoe! I think the most straightforward way to achieve it would be to modify our rules to allow talk pages for non-notable topics, so that one could leave a note along the lines of I did a search and found X and Y sources, which I don't think is enough for notability because Z.

However, then there's the problem of articles that might be located at multiple different locations, so then we need to have redirects as well. And given that part of why we impose a notability standard is to reduce the maintenance burden, some editors might feel that it's not worth it for maintaining the talk page/redirects.

The other problem is datedness. If I come across a note topic not notable as of [a year ago], that doesn't help me out all that much, since (a) there may be more recent sources, so I still have to do a search, and (b) I may not trust that the initial editor did a deep enough dive to find everything that existed at the time.

The other approach here is drafts, which is what I currently use. For instance, at one point I started writing an article on the video journalist Cleo Abram, but ultimately concluded she wasn't yet notable. However, I strongly suspect she will be at some point, so I've just kept it at Draft:Cleo Abram and set up a Google Alert so I'll be notified when a source comes around. The main maintenance burden there comes from the 6-month rule we impose on ourselves, which means I have to tweak it every so often or ask for it to be undeleted if I forget. However, I know for a fact that the draft's existence has saved others from duplicated effort (and the community from the effort of a probable AfD) due to this exchange.

The structural form related to the draft approach would be to adjust the 6-month rule somehow to make it so that waiting-for-notability drafts like the one on Abram don't quasi-automatically get deleted.

Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 18:03, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

What do you think about the approach at Wikipedia:Source assessment and its subpages, which are collections of SA tables along with some information on the subject? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:01, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

If there's no way to point users trying to create the article toward the corresponding source assessment page, then it's basically useless. Sdkb ^talk 23:33, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

There's a consensus against keeping WP:BFDI drafts for some reason, so I doubt that draftinng would prevail. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:15, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu: Good find. As for an advertisement... hm...

• "Want to create an article on something, but can't just yet?"

Not very proud of that, but it's something. Do people actually click those? Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 19:46, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I would promote this at WT:N WT:NPP, and WT:AFC. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:14, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

A few years ago I botched an RfC to change to flat icons. Of course I still feel strongly about that we need new icons, for many reasons from accessibility to load times to new features like dark mode (which oceans of white in the middle of some of today's icons are a bit too much).

I want to see if we could figure out ways to propose icon redesigns in a matter that is most likely to pass. I kind of want to discuss some of my principles when choosing icons (and combining User:Awesome_Aasim/Flat_design_idea, where I just added a section for viewing on a dark background; and User:Arsonxists/Flat_Icons).

In general I believe icons must be:

1. Clear: Easily understood by many, including new users who may be unfamiliar;
2. Accessible: Icons must use multiple properties to distinguish themselves from one another when used in the same context. Uw1 and uw2 fail at this, because they only alter the color of the icon but not the shape or the contents inside of it.
3. Fast: Icons must load within seconds even on the slowest of connections. I notice that some flat icons (particularly the OOUI/Codex icons) use a fraction of the space and bandwidth as equivalent skeuomorphic icons.
4. Contrast: Icons must be adaptable based on different themes, skins, etc. Icons must be visible on both light and dark themes, and if not then should be easily adaptable from light to dark and vice versa. MediaWiki's default skins do not override the @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) or @media (prefers-color-scheme: light) properties yet, but when they do there will certainly be icon clashes and colors.
5. Helpful: If text is able to more clearly communicate an idea than an icon, then we should reconsider whether it is actually necessary. Stop hands do a great job at communicating "stop what you are doing" or "you have been stopped", but the i's in some messages just seem purely decorative rather than actually helpful.

Is there anything else I am missing? I probably want to add more icons that should be switched for better accessibility, etc. Awesome Aasim 03:39, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The design principles for icons in the Wikimedia Design Style Guide may be of interest, as well as the guidance for icons in the Wikimedia Codex. Regarding effect on page loading: note images will be cached by the browser, so loading time will be amortized across many page loads. Additionally, for images the size of an icon, the number of requests being made is a more significant bottleneck than the byte size of an image. This is why sites will use the CSS sprite technique to bundle many icons together onto one image. However, this adds more steps for changing icons. isaacl (talk) 05:44, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@Isaacl If I recall there is a way to get Codex icons to work in wikitext. Can you maybe show? Awesome Aasim 15:56, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Not directly that I know of. If I understand correctly, they are available for use in a gadget/user script or extension. An extension could be written to provide a wikitext interface. (Maybe one exists already? Perhaps someone who knows more about the Codex can weigh in.) Regarding design guidance, here is a more direct link to the principles and guidance for designing icons in the Wikimedia Codex. isaacl (talk) 17:50, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I wish there was a parser function like that:

 {{#codex:name_of_icon|size=size|color=color|type=type|...}}

. Then it would allow codex icons to be used inline. Awesome Aasim 19:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

The WMF's previous, similar icon set OOUI is on Commons which made it easy to use with standard wikitext syntax. Curiously, Codex doesn't seem to be – but surely it has compatible license? – Joe (talk) 21:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I am also going to link my past two attempts attempting to gain input on using the OOUI icons on Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_37#Changing_to_flat_icons Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_168#Flat_Design (the latter is cringe because I was new to how RfCs worked at the time, so I did not really understand the best way to format RfCs at the time, now I do). Awesome Aasim 02:04, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't think RfCs are the way to go here. It touches too many buttons: Wikipedians are reflexively sceptical about new UI, and about anything the implies changes to many pages, and about anything that implies the WMF might be better at some things than volunteer editors are... What I'd do is write an essay that outlines what guidelines you think people should follow when selecting icons in templates etc., and then try to build consensus around those guidelines by arguing for its application in specific discussions. It's the longer road, but I think it's more likely to build a broad and stable consensus. – Joe (talk) 07:23, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the argument by many will be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and yes some of the icons ain't broke, but this does not mean there wouldn't be benefits to switching. Awesome Aasim 13:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

The key challenge is that interface design decisions are often difficult to make using English Wikipedia's consensus-based decision making traditions, because many users respond on a like it/don't like it level, and aren't fussed about compliance with guidelines. I agree with the idea underlying your original post (which matches Joe Roe's suggestion) of building up support for basic principles, and I think that offers the best path towards UI changes. But for better or worse, results from A-B testing is likely the only hard data that will get some users to overlook their own personal initial reaction, and that generally needs funding. isaacl (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Let me take a look at another icon redesign RfC: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_155#Proposal/RFC:_Redesigning_page-protection_padlock_icons_to_be_more_accessible. This one focused exclusively on accessibility. I think that might be the key. Showing that accessibility is poor especially in dark mode for some of the images, or if it is there the icons have terrible contrast if Wikipedia had a properly implemented dark mode (which it doesn't yet but one is in the works). Awesome Aasim 16:56, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

The in-development night mode is a good reason to revisit the use of colour (for instance, some sports team pages use team colours for the text and background in table and infobox headers, which already is a readability problem now). But rather than jumping ahead to discussing new icons, perhaps we can continue discussing the basic principles? isaacl (talk) 17:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

This might be good for a multistaged RfC. One might be asking about design principles, the next icons are found and submitted that meet those design principles, and then after the icons are voted on. This would be a good three phase discussion. Awesome Aasim 18:54, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

As I mentioned, I'm more interested in getting some discussion going on the original post and my original reply than discussing process matters...

Again, I think it's looking too far ahead to be planning a multi-stage RfC. As alluded to by Joe and evidenced by the page protection icon discussion, I think it will be more effective to look at a specific icon or set of related icons, gain consensus that there is a specific problem (or problems) with them, and then work on replacements. I think a generic "here's the next stage: let's discuss this bunch of icons as replacements based on design principles" discussion isn't going to build up consensus for a change. isaacl (talk) 22:46, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

On that note, as well as dark mode, I think the switch to Vector 2022 as the default skin is a good reason to revisit icons and broader template design choices that now look out of place with the rest of the site as most readers see it. – Joe (talk) 07:38, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

You think so? I actually think it's really important that the icons are as not-flat as they are, so that I don't feel the awful life-sucking I often do from other "flat" mobile-ready web design. Perhaps the C-class etc. icons could be given a refresh, but I would see a bottom-up redesign as searching for a clear problem. Remsense诉 07:46, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I actually think that the circle (aka Norro) icons are the ones that don't need to be replaced. They're accessible and consistent across their little bubble.

The unblock icons definitely need replacing. They're inaccessible, and there's no reason I can see for making them all clocks. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:30, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Tackling the icons group by group is another path that may be more productive than a whole-site icon RfC. I don't know the history of every icon in use, but I doubt they emerged all at once. CMD (talk) 12:07, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not you personally like the new default theme and its flat design, it's here and it's here to stay. With that in mind, I would say the use of two very different design systems (Vector 2022/Codex for Mediawiki UI; an eclectic mix of mid-2000s elements for templates) is a clear problem from both a usability and aesthetic point of view. – Joe (talk) 12:25, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I want to make clear that I quite love Vector 2022, and part of the reason is what I feel in its balance between flat and non-flat. Remsense诉 13:07, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I suspect many of the editors who like to weigh in on these matters focus separately on icons that are part of the surrounding general page framework versus the icons that are within the main content area. Thus I'm not sure that differences in the style between these is enough to generate a consensus for change. isaacl (talk) 15:42, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you might be right there. – Joe (talk) 15:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there a technical way to make icons depend on skin and on whether or not "dark mode" is on, so dinosaurs like me can use icons that work well in Monobook? That way, we could have icons that look good in each of the skins. —Kusma (talk) 13:00, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

There certainly is to some degree: SVGs are capable of being context-aware using pure CSS. Many will swap the foreground color from black to white based on what mode the browser tells it is being used. Remsense诉 13:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

More straightforwardly, template style sheets can be used to select different icon files based on theme, night mode, or the browser configuration specifying that a dark theme is preferred. I believe SVGs are rendered server-side into bitmap images, so right now they won't be able to adapt based on CSS differences. isaacl (talk) 15:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

We could still do CSS hackery to switch the BMP icons. It just is that the BMP icons themselves cannot adapt unless if we do some external CSS. Awesome Aasim 17:24, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I said. isaacl (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Bumping because I got a comment that idea lab might not be a good idea. I am seeing that icon by icon RfCs are going to be more productive. We can use principles in this idea lab to help develop icon sets. Awesome Aasim 16:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

That's a bit oversimplified... I was saying that since no one, including you, has responded to my comments on the design principles, and no one else has said anything about them, that it doesn't seem there is enough interest on the page to reach a consensus viewpoint on the design principles. isaacl (talk) 21:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we can then focus on the icons themselves? The last time I tried workshopping in VPIL, I came to the conclusion that finding multiple icon sets and then giving people options to choose would be better. Awesome Aasim 18:29, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the miscellaneous village pump would find more takers to discuss base principles. However it's true enough that usually more editors are attracted to comment on specific examples of icons, rather than discussing abstract concepts. I think it would be helpful for these proposals to have an explanation of how they are improvements with respect to the base design principles.

I was hoping there would be more discussion on load time considerations and use of colours. Personally I think client-side caching is likely good enough to make loading time a small factor. Colour is a tricky issue, as Wikipedia editors are accustomed to using any colours that strike their fancy, but best practice for supporting themes (which can have light and dark modes) is to have a defined palette that each variation can customize. In accordance with mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis, for HTML, CSS variables can be used, and for gadgets/extensions making use of Codex, design tokens can be used. But with pre-rendered icons, any alignment with customized colour palettes would have to be done manually. isaacl (talk) 23:03, 17 May 2024 (UTC)