Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 211

WP:SNOW closing this proposal as a clear consensus to keep topicons for good and featured articles. I find it very unlikely that consensus will change from here given the overwhelming !vote to keep. (non-admin closure) JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 07:51, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

We recently rejected a proposal that would put the vital article topicon on the page. Discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Archive_25#Proposal_for_a_VA_"top_icon". Some editors in that discussion said that they would support removing the good and featured article topicons as well. If either readers or editors are interested in whether they are good or featured articles, they can be found on the talk page. Interstellarity (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

1. As proposer. Interstellarity (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
2. Strongly support removing GA topicons. GA reviews are essentially random. It's just one editor reviewing it and there is literally no training or qualifications that the reviewing editor needs to have. To suggest a GA article has gone through any kind of meaningful review process is misleading the reader. All it means is someone else has read it. Exhibit A is the editor from a year and a half ago who had hundreds of GAs that turned out to be full of misinformation (and copyvio and other stuff, the editor ended up indef'd).

   I'm neutral about removing FA topicons. At least that process can be said to involve multiple editors reviewing it, and the FA folks take their FA reviews pretty seriously AFAIK (unlike GAs, which some take seriously but others don't). I don't think it matters much if the FA topicon is there or not -- I don't think readers know or care about that -- but GA should definitely go IMO. Levivich (talk) 04:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Actually, I support removing FA top icons too. I'd forgotten that most FAs no longer meet the criteria. Levivich (talk) 17:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

3. I support removing both. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 14:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
4. - due to the fact readers have no clue what these mean and the fact the majority no longer meet their FA and GA criteria and 60%+ are mobile viewers don't even see them anyways. I can see how they are an incentive to get editors to improve articles though. That said I would slow down on rfcs that will go nowhere..... Time wasters.Moxy- 16:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
5. Our loyalty is to the WP:READER, to whom these icons—where they're even noticed, that is (on mobile view they don't exist!)—are merely inside baseball. Their real purpose to allow editors a chance to gussify their user, talk pages etc. Stick em a table on a subpage if you have to  :) ——Serial 16:58, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
6. As others have ably noted, these icons provide no discernible benefit to the reader. We would therefore better serve the reader by eliminating this visual noise. Frankly, we would probably do well to reconsider the centering of FA and GA work in general. The hundreds of hours it takes to nurse a single article through FAC would surely be better spent improving some of the millions of articles that have been substantially untouched for a decade or more. But in any event this would be a good step. -- Visviva (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
7. I don't think I've ever met a reader who knew we had FA topicons, let alone what they meant. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:24, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
8. The icons are not for readers. The 2004 article ranking system devised in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team and still in use today needs revision to be practical. GA ranks are varying quality; FA ranks are easier to attain for less popular topics than highly read ones where they are most needed. Removing icons could be the start of recognizing that our quality reporting system is insufficient for meeting its objective. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:28, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
9. The top-icons lack context. I'm in favor of removing them or improving the top-icons to something that make more sense to readers. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:31, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

1. The topicons are useful for readers as indicators that an article has gone through some kind of review process. This is in contrast to vital articles which is editor facing information. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:40, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
2. I think all quality ratings should be shown, not just GA/FA. Analogous to maintenance tags, it's useful for readers to know how much they should trust what they're reading on Wikipedia. Moreover, topicons are unobtrusive and might have the benefit of converting a few readers to editors. As an aside, I think the distinction that's been drawn between quality ratings and vital article status is strained. Both are done through the work of a relatively small group of editors and both indicate something important to the reader about how the community has assessed an article. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Why should a reader care about how vital wiki editors think an article is? The reader has their own ideas about how vital that article is to them in that moment and in general. The idea of showing all rating indicators is an interesting one in terms of helping readers clue into what they are. I'd love to see that discussed more. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:49, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   By that logic, I think one could say: Why should a reader care about that one editor came to the conclusion that an article is GA quality and 5-10ish editors—none of whom are necessarily subject matter experts—came to the conclusion that an article is FA quality? I'll make a note to return to the topic of showing all ratings after this discussion closes. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:55, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   I've had a similar thought before myself, but I've come to believe that in practice, the distinction between Start/C/B-class is often too poorly defined to be useful information to the reader. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:34, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   This is how I think about the distinctions: start is longer than a stub, but either not very well-cited or written, C is a start class article that's starting to meet some core PAGs, and for B we have clear criteria. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:41, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

   Plus from my experience it is often not kept up to date as the article content changes. ― novov (t c) 01:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

3. Oppose. The topicons are useful, and have been this way for a long time. What exactly is the advantage of removing them? –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
4. Per Barkeep. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
5. Per Barkeep. I'm not sure how valuable fronting the lower ratings would be (they're often out of step with the quality of the article) but I'm not immediately opposed to adding them. Thryduulf (talk) 01:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
6. Oppose: It's good to show readers in an unobtrusive way that the article they're reading has been reviewed and is of quality. There is no benefit to removing them. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
7. Oppose: per Barkeep, however, the GA topicon was a bit confusing to me when I was only a reader and I wouldn't mind a reform. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 02:36, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
8. Why? I think it's a convenient way to show that articles are of a decent quality to our readers. It's not causing any problems. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:51, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
9. Oppose per Barkeep49. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
10. Oppose per Barkeep49. We should be making the icons more prominent, not less. Sdkb ^talk 07:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
11. Oppose: GA and FA symbols are no guarantee of any kind of quality, but it is one piece of information that media literate readers should be using to help them assess the reliability of what they read. These topicons may also be motivating to editors who put articles they have improved through GA/FA processes. — Bilorv (talk) 09:41, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

    +1 Sdkb ^talk 16:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

12. Oppose per all the opposers, but I'm mainly here to comment: I consider it a win that no one has even mentioned featured lists in this discussion or the previous one. The process basically works, and judging from the silence, it doesn't seem to be contentious these days. Congratulations all around. - Dank (push to talk) 15:32, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

    Featured lists should undoubtedly follow featured articles in this regard. If any decision is ever made to change or remove the FA icon, featured lists should get the same result. Animal lover |666| 16:38, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

13. Per Barkeep. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
14. The topicons are what first informed me of the GA and FA processes back when I was an unregistered lurker. I can imagine other unregistered users falling down a rabbit hole and potentially getting involved with curating content after seeing one of them. Also Barkeep49 presents another good rationale for keeping them. The Night Watch (talk) 17:22, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
15. Oppose We need to make them more prominent, not less. Sohom (talk) 17:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
16. Oppose per Barkeep and Bilorv. Moreover, just because mobile readers are unable to see them it does not mean we should remove them from PC readers (if anything it means that we should add them to mobile view).  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 17:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
17. Oppose per Spy-cicle. – SD0001 (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
18. Oppose, per Barkeep and Bilorv. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
19. Oppose Like voorts, I would not object to all ratings being shown. In fact, I use a plugin that does just that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:51, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    I use the same plugin, which is where the idea came from. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    Link? Queen of Hearts talk
    she/they
    stalk 23:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

    May be referring to the Wikipedia:Metadata gadget mentioned below. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

20. Oppose - I agree with Levivich that the quality of the GA process can be inconsistent, but in practice I still find that they are almost always better than your average non-good article. Yes there can be stuff like what Doug Coldwell did, but the same goes for every other part and process of Wikipedia. Most readers aren't likely to grasp what the means anyway, in my mind it serves as more of a motivational little trinket for editors, and I'm concerned that removing the most prominent area where it's featured could decrease the impetus to improve content. ― novov (t c) 01:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
21. Not clear what the harm is, and if the only benefit is making people feel good about getting an article to GA/FA (by having a shiny icon on the article) that seems enough. Galobtter (talk) 01:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
22. Oppose. The provided rationale is extremely unconvincing - "some people mentioned it?" Lay out the case yourself if you believe it. Marking quality is fine (which is what FA / GA icons do), the problem with VA marking was - too many to list, see previous discussions. This proposal comes across as an extremely weak "well this one proposal was voted down, let's do the same thing in a separate vaguely similar area out of some misguided fairness." SnowFire (talk) 02:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    RfC statements are required to be brief and neutral, and the fact that earlier discussions occurred at that RfC satisfies WP:RFCBEFORE. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

    • • @Voorts: The statement is expected to be neutral, yes. However, somewhere (whether in a separate section after the description, or in the nominator's initial !vote) there's expected to be some reasoning for why the heck we're voting on this at all and some sort of case to modify the status quo. The RFC creator gave no such explanation other than what I already cited that "other people mentioned it" and "readers can find out on the talk page" which is not conversant at all with the issues involved. People could propose random changes all day; why is this change being proposed? You shouldn't start an RFC as just a thought experiment, that's what a normal discussion is for. SnowFire (talk) 05:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
23. Oppose: Not causing any harm, and is a nice bit of encouragement for editors. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 02:46, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
24. Oppose If my GA/FA articles didn't get the topicon, I rather doubt I'd have even known they existed, or felt compelled to get my articles to that status. The badge is useful to readers, and a great inducement for editors. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
25. Oppose, mostly per voorts. We should show more of this, not less; readers deserve to know if an article has passed some quality gate. On the topic of substandard GA/FAs, yes they exist, no we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. ~ A412 ^talk! 04:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
26. Oppose. This does not really seem like a good idea to me; if there's a bunch of crappy GAs we do not need to address topicons to deal with them. jp×g🗯️ 06:07, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
27. Oppose. I would prefer we go in the opposite direction and make the icons more visible and more intuitive. Readers will not know which one is more "trusted". —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:48, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
28. Oppose - Nothing wrong in letting readers know which articles are trusted and have underwent community review. The Herald (Benison) (talk) 09:14, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
29. also noting that I will support introducing FA and GA topicons to mobile and apps, but not supporting the entire removal of the badges. Toadette ^{(Let's discuss together!)} 16:58, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
30. Oppose. Do not see any positive from this action. On the contrary, will be some amount of value subtraction (if that is even a term). Ktin (talk) 17:49, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
31. Oppose The great majority of Wikipedia's readers are unaware that there is a quality scale. Indicators of article quality need to be more visible, not less. MartinPoulter (talk) 18:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
32. Oppose I'm piling on to say that FA and GA are very important tools for developing quality articles and qualifying articles should be highlighted. The icons are also a learning experience for anyone wanting to click them. Johnuniq (talk) 02:54, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
33. Strong oppose Might actually reduce the amount of FAs and GAs that will start coming out because there will be less motivation to do so. ‍ Relativity 05:31, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
34. Oppose The FA topicon linked to the first projectspace page I read. It probably contributed to me becoming an editor. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 13:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
35. The proposal might be an argument for a double-check system for GAN's, but it isn't a reason to remove the topicons. They at least show articles that have been through some vetting. Courcelles (talk) 14:21, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
36. Oppose The icons are an extremely powerful motivator to get involved and improve Wikipedia. It only works because they are shown by default. I'm sure it would be trivial to squelch display with a script for an opt-out option. GreenC 16:41, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
37. Oppose - articles exist for the benefit of the readers, no tenth editors. A reader has no idea how good an article is without reading a significant part of it; how vital it is requires little more than a definition. There is no need to tell a reader how vital an article is; there is much more to tell the reader about the quality. Animal lover |666| 16:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
38. Oppose - FA/GA topicons highlight Wikipedia's best content in-place. Readers shouldn't have to go to a talk page or a list somewhere else to see that the content they're reading has been reviewed and is considered Wikipedia's finest, and there is benefit to distinguishing it from content that hasn't been through or has failed such a review. Ratings below that level are part of a content rating system that's been dead in the water for 20 years (though projects still use it) and there's no point in highlighting it for readers since there are practically no standards to the ratings, but if you want to see these ratings when reading articles anyway you can enable Wikipedia:Metadata gadget (Preferences > Gadgets > Appearance). Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
39. Oppose These are meaningful, particularly FA. North8000 (talk) 17:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
40. Oppose These are important. SportingFlyer T·C 18:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
41. Oppose. The indication that an article has had internal quality-control is very useful to a reader. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

    Adding: I fully acknowledge that both review processes have serious issues, but the average quality of a GA/FA far outstrips that of other articles. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

42. Oppose. The topicons are an easy-to-find, yet also unobtrusive, way to indicate that an article has received (and passed) some level of vetting. The fact that they're visible in mainspace also means that they're relatively easy for readers to find and interpret as well, a benefit that would be lost (or at least reduced) if the indicators were kept confined to talk pages. (I also second the comments made by Barkeep, Bilorv, and The Night Watch.) ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
43. Oppose per Voorts. Acknowledging the lack of professionalism at WikiProject Good Articles, the icons at top mean something. I'd suggest Wikipedia:Metadata gadget should be "on" by default because the readers are not savvy enough. Chris Troutman (talk) 21:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
44. Strong oppose per the commenters above. These are not mere decorations; the icons signify that the GAs and FAs have undergone their respective quality control processes, and are thus helpful to the WP:READER. If GAs and FAs don't meet criteria, then WP:GAR and WP:FAR are that way. The reader may not know what they mean initially, but they'll certainly know if they click on them - the solution is to make it more obvious that the article has undergone a quality control process, not less so. There are some valid issues with the GAN and FAC processes, but they are in no way relevant to the use of topicons. Epicgenius (talk) 15:34, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

    To add: I agree with Aaron Liu's rebuttal, below, as to the "randomness" of GA reviews. Any bad GAN review can be deleted, and any bad FAC/FLC review can be stricken through. My point is that the existence of bad reviews is not a good argument, in my view, for removing the topicons. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

45. Oppose. These icons bring more visibility to the assessment project, motivate editors, draw in readers, and are informative. Zanahary (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
46. FA/FL/GA is about quality while VA is about being on a list drawn up by a wikiproject --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 21:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

    FA/FL/GA are also a lkist drawn up by a project. The point is that they are about article quality whereas VA is a bout article importance. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:53, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

47. Oppose: The usefulness of these icons is different than the possible usefulness of a vital articles topicon. Also not seeing an actual reason listed for why we would want to remove these. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:37, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

48. the majority no longer meet their FA and GA criteria

    Then nominate them for delisting.

    GA reviews are essentially random. It's just one editor reviewing it and there is literally no training or qualifications that the reviewing editor needs to have.

    There are great guidelines for reviewing, and bad GA reviews can be overturned.

    readers have no clue what these mean

    I don't see any evidence of that, and having a tooltip and link seems obvious enough.

    I don't think I've ever met a reader who knew we had FA topicons, let alone what they meant.

    I don't think a reader knows what "topicons" are either. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:45, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
49. Oppose Useful indicators of top quality. Curbon7 (talk) 23:05, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
50. Piling on. Same reasons as Barkeep. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
51. Oppose per Curbon7. - Master of Hedgehogs ^{(converse) (hate that hedgehog!)} 14:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
52. Oppose per Barkeep, Bilorv, Epicgenius, Aaron Liu, and others. I don't see any point in removing topicons; I find them useful and evidently a lot of others do too. Even if readers don't care about them (which I haven't seen any good evidence of, just assumptions), they're helpful from an editor's point of view. If I see a blatantly terrible article with a little green icon on the top right, that catches my attention and makes me want to either send it to GAR or fix it up. sawyer * he/they * talk 02:16, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
53. As primarily a reader of Wikipedia, I find the GA/FA top icons to be useful information. Removing them would do some readers a disservice, and there is no advantage to removing them. Senior Captain Thrawn (talk) 03:41, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
54. Oppose per above and because of throwing the baby with the bathwater. Brandmeister^talk 01:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
55. Strongly oppose Opponents of the GA and FA topicons claim they are visual noise, yet they criticize the choice to not include them in mobile viewing as proof the review process is wasteful. While Levivich is correct that the peer review process can be hijacked by sockpuppeting, they present no evidence that this is widespread to convincingly argue the review process' collaborative editing is a net waste. While the GA and FA criteria are no different from the normal aims of article editing, the pursuit of specific quality metrics encourages greater compliance. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 04:59, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
56. Oppose removal and Support addition of sitewide ratings for all mainspace articles and for all devices. The purpose of such a system is to indicate an article's quality to readers in advance, so they could anticipate whether an article is worth reading or not - or at least have a glimpse of what to expect. It's no different than rating systems for various things, like for movie, book, video game and music reviews. PantheonRadiance (talk) 06:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• I suspect that the vast majority of our readers pay absolutely no attention to article ratings and their associated topicons. However, because I don’t think they harm the project in any way… I am neutral on the question. Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

  If it helps 1% of the readers, that should be a good enough reason to retain them, unless they actually harm the site or reduce it's quality, at least for some readers. If it's 100% neutral for 99% of the readers, this should not weaken the fact that it helps the other 1%. Animal lover |666| 16:41, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• I don't feel strong enough to sit on either side of this discussion. There are genuine grounds for concern about quality control and the ad hoc nature of the review process. It does seem that the topicons are very much inside baseball, so to speak. Nevertheless, despite the extreme example highlighted above (for which I have direct experience) I still think indicating some kind of independent review has taken place is worthwhile, no matter how limited in nature...I might have an easier time supporting this proposal if an alternative was being proposed. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 01:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Barkeep49, as far as I know, we have no evidence that ordinary readers have any idea that those topicons exist or what they mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

That's probably true. But that's a reason to improve them, not remove them. Sdkb ^talk 07:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

This 2022 study might interest you, unless you're already familiar with it :) Shells-shells (talk) 07:32, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

We having no evidence for something doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true. Readers curious to find out the meaning of the icon would hover over it - it says "This is a featured article. Click here for more information". The click leads to WP:FA which begins with "Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer". – SD0001 (talk) 07:54, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

The vast majority of readers don't see these anyways because they are not displayed in mobile view. Moxy- 17:18, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

We can actually figure out how many people click these. I've created Wikipedia:Good articles* and Wikipedia:Featured articles* and changed the links in the template accordingly, so after a month or so we should have good data on how many clicks these get. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:36, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Great work....thank you! Moxy- 20:13, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Related to this: I wonder what a reasonable comparison would be. (If it's 1,000 clicks, is that a lot or a little?) I wonder whether it could be compared against the Portal: links that used to be at the top of the Main Page. We could scale it for page views (which I think could be obtained through https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/ for the FAs and GAs). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Skdb. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 08:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I've nothing against the topicons; I'd be happy to keep them just because they're useful to experienced editors, a nice reward for hard work, and traditional for the site. However, I don't think we should be making this decision on the grounds that we speculate that they're useful to non-editing readers, when

• we don't know that they're useful,
• we have a limited amount of evidence suggesting that they're not (or that the utility is very limited), and
• we know that most readers don't see them because 66% of page views are on the mobile site.

A month from now we will know whether those topicons get clicked on at any significant rate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I have occasionally told people who have questions about whether/when Wikipedia articles are reliable to look for the topicons. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:38, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Question: how often are ratings/topicons reevaluated and lowered due to subsequent crappy edits? Blueboar (talk) 01:53, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

There's WP:FAR and WP:GAR. Galobtter (talk) 01:57, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that a modified version of Wikipedia:Metadata gadget without the colored title text would make the most sense here. It shows the article assessment in an intuitive way and clearly indicate links for curious readers to read more about our assessment criteria. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping to WhatamIdoing. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I use and value that gadget. Also, I think it's Inside baseball (metaphor). Nobody except the tiny minority of high-volume Wikipedia editors cares about how we rate articles. Like: there are 8,000,000,000 people in the world, and maybe 8,000 of us care about the ratings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

On one hand, it's definitely an improvement over nothing, and should minimize confusion. On the other hand, topicons look better, and nobody might care enough anyways so that these who care would click on the icons to learn more... Aaron Liu (talk) 23:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Many editors have stated that finding out about the GA/FA process has made them motivated to contribute to Wikipedia. I think the article ratings should be made more explicit to the reader, but if we can't bother to improve the top-icons, then we should get rid of it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:07, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• If we are going to remove an icon, I would hide the protection icons from logged out users (I don't see the benefit - they are anyways shown a "view source" button instead of "edit source" if they can't edit the article). That truly is inside baseball unless you actively try to edit an article. Galobtter (talk) 02:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

• Any argument about reader understanding of topicons applies equally to page protection topicons. Anecdotally, some years ago, in a former life, I was observing a high school social studies class in the American Midwest and the teacher, as part of a lesson on research methods, told the class that the lock icon in the upper corner meant that it was vetted. We should be discussing how better to present this information for readers, not its removal. The 2023 GA proposal drive agreed to start an RFC for options on making GA status more prominent in mainspace. I've also been a big proponent of requesting Foundation staff to run user testing on some of our community design norms, i.e., banner blindness or in this case topicon literacy. I can track down those requests if useful. czar 13:57, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I wish to seek to change the wikipedia policy WP:SOURCE. Currently this states "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." in the section Responsibility for providing citations. I propose amending this with the additional sentence "Sources may be contained in a linked article."

 RATIONAL FOR THE PROPOSED CHANGE

I believe that requiring sources on every page brings a number of problems: 1) it is onerous and inefficient and discourages linking relevant articles to pages, especially for new editors: 2) the relevant article may include more sources, mentions of the article might only include one, so anyone looking for useful information might not see it; 3) in a rapidly moving field sources may be updated in an article but that might be missed on linked pages. In any case it is easy for anyone to click on the link to see the article with all relevant sources. Hewer7 (talk) 13:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not too familiar with how things work here at the village pump but I believe policy changes should be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).

CanonNi (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. But I thought I saw that proposals should be discussed here first? Hewer7 (talk) 13:39, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

You are trying to change a existing policy, not create a new one, so WP:VPP is the correct place. CanonNi (talk) 13:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I see. Thanks. Hewer7 (talk) 13:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal 1: Create AI for Wikipedia by taking existing model and feeding it the guidelines and policies. This will make it easier to find relevant policy. Example: I ask AI for any policy regarding 'using notably' or 'words to watch' in articles, and it comes back with WP:EDITORIAL. There are already AI's like pdf readers, which you can feed on with pdf and ask questions on it. Make AI optimized search, for reasons that are struck(still valid) before.(Added on 18/3/24 by ExclusiveEditor)
Proposal 2: Proposal 1 + Giving AI more AI feel, by letting it become more than better search engine, by becoming suggestion judge for small situations. Example: You editors are creative, you may add one.

Note: AIs like SIDE seem to help, so will this which may be easier to build. But couldn't find discussion for one like this. The proposed proposals may be amended for better use. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:08, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
(Note: AI is supposed to complement search) ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 13:59, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Re proposal 1, ChatGPT can already answer this question decently. Presumably its training data includes pages in the Wikipedia namespace. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:17, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Barnards.tar.gz: ChatGPT requires email for registration. But it also has that 2021 bias, and couldn't list any policy/ guideline's specific article. ChatGPT is more like proposal 2, but that makes it erroneous. It's also third party, so it may not be fed with new ones and also combine non-wikipedia related data it is fed on with its response, which will make it even more erroneous. Proposal is to simply feed an AI on Wikipedian data only and program it to link specific policy it found the info on. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, new data like various discussions going on ANI, Village pump, IANB etc. could be fed to AI so as to decrease discussions on already discussed topic, a user is not aware/ couldn't find about. Currently only search method is using Wikipedia search within specific category which could produce innumerable irrelevant matches, and there are numerous categories too. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@ExclusiveEditor You seem to assume that we want these things and that they are good. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@Cremastra: I assumed that this shall help, or else I wouldn't have proposed it. We may not need it, but it's worth considering the potential advantages such an AI could bring, taking into account factors such as efficiency, accuracy, accessibility, and standardization all throughout Wikipedia it could bring with community's grace. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 09:41, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem. You only get familiar with current expectations by doing more editing. Awesome Aasim 01:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim: WP:CHOICE. While practicing editing is important, AI tools can greatly enhance the editing process on Wikipedia by providing valuable assistance, improving accuracy, and streamlining search. They are designed to complement human editors, not replace them. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 10:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• No for several reasons. 1) We already have a search capability, as well as numerous other features like lists, disambiguation pages and redirect shortcuts to help guide users to find what they're looking for. 2) The risks of AI misinterpreting, hallucinating, or otherwise giving users inaccurate information about policy is non-trivial. 3) Because our policies are wiki articles themselves, they too are constantly evolving; without constantly updated training, the AI would forever be operating from an outdated understanding of what our policies actually are. 4) This is not really within the purview of a single project to pursue nor is it likely to gain broad consensus across a wide variety of projects and languages necessary to make it worth the effort and cost. The scenario you're describing is better suited as part of the MediaWiki interface. 5) I suspect there are also non-trivial concerns about license compatibility as well as ensuring an open-source software/tools stack for this. 6) Where is this model going to be hosted? Who is paying for the compute time? The foundation? Some foundation-adjacent entity? Donations? A private research institution? There are too many unanswered questions and this proposal addresses none of them in a way that shows sufficient time and thought was put into making this a realistic suggestion. AI is not a "magic bullet" solution to problems that you haven't validated actually exist; nor that it is a product fit for what this community actually wants. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 04:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  The risks of AI misinterpreting, hallucinating, or otherwise giving users inaccurate information about policy is non-trivial. Is this referring to an AI generating freeform text, or referring a user to a certain page? I think that this program should probably be restricted to answering in links. I don't see a reason to believe the AI would consistently get that much wrong, or get it wrong more than a user. AI is not a "magic bullet" solution to problems that you haven't validated actually exist; Beyond a shadow of a doubt, people have trouble searching for policies and boards. Half the time I use Google Search. Overall, there seems to be unharnessed potential, which could make newbies stick around or make learning and navigating between policies, past and present, easier. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Swatjester: 1) The stance is like 'We have candles, why need bulb?" The very reason I proposed this is that it is really difficult for a non-experienced user (even a mid-experienced user like me having 3000+ edits) to find relevant policy, and sometimes not sure if there exists any for it even with the legacy tools. To be clear, there are numerous similar policy pages, and it is difficult to find out where the exact guideline is located and it takes lot of time if not hours finding one. Also even, forums avoid/ aren't sure of such questions as they themselves find it hard to locate sometime (not sure).
  

  2) As of now, i go with what Mebigrouxboy says.
  

  3) That's the other primary reason I am proposing this. Assuming that a constantly evolving policy may make the "AI" old, seems like saying editors have super power of going though entire policy updates within less time AI is updated. AI may help editors know what updates are in guidelines.
  

  4) This is just a tool. I may be wrong, but it is not even a major update like enforcing new vector design on IP editors/ readers. Just a sidebar for easy searching, and policy updates will do it.
  

  5) Wikipedia itself would not have got the success, if it was not launched due to such considerations. Solving the problems is necessary to establish anything.
  

  6) I am not considering myself eligible to answer questions related to financial side, as it dependent on what the community and foundation decides and how this proposal evolves. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 10:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  If we're going to use that analogy, your suggestion is like switching from candles to incandescent bulbs, without having addressed why the lighting difference matters, what type of lamp we're going to use, whether the power grid can support it, and who's going to pay for the electric bill. I stand by all of my points -- your idea is incomplete, premature, and lacking sufficient detail or information to be executed on even if there was consensus that it was desirable. You can't simply handwave away critical considerations like "who's going to pay for this" and "is this compatible with our open-licenses and our mission" as trivialities that we'll figure out later. That kind of techbro fastspeak won't fly here. We are the 7th most popular website in the world; even small changes here can have drastic impacts on millions of people. The burden is on you to show that you've actually given the serious consideration and planning due for a change that would affect people in that magnitude. Until then, you don't have a proposal; you have a fantasy. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 15:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Swatjester: I presented my ideas here (on proposal) as conjectures, indicating that they are open to improvement and further development. This allows for collaboration and the exchange of ideas among editors. The proposed proposals may be amended for better use. Also I believe that just because I did not elaborate every problem we may face with this, doesn't make it useless, and it could further be developed. However, I assume your point to make sense, and would like to further detail my proposals. And yes, we are one of the most visited website, so we should not be stagnant with the influx of improvement we are capable of. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:28, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• An AI that can instantly forward you to the correct venue for a dispute, find help pages for any question, or search the archives of boards, and other capabilities mentioned above would be a massive benefit to editor QoL. A proof of concept might be possible by creating a custom GPT on the ChatGPT store. - Mebigrouxboy (talk) 04:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  I agree, this would be nice. Since training / fine-tuning AIs on volatile user-provided data is a hot area of research and product development at the moment, I don't think it would be a wise use of Wikipedia funds to get involved just yet. It feels like we would just be duplicating work that is being done elsewhere. At the current pace of development, I would expect that production-ready open source systems that do this are not far off. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• The Wikimedia Foundation's Machine Learning Team already seem quite busy. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. It could really help finding policies when you forget the name or just don't know it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nononsense101 (talk • contribs) 16:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
• This proposal is in essence about creating a better search tool. It could be a good project for a university computer science department. If you know anyone with appropriate connections, or any developers with available resources who might be interested, perhaps you can suggest it to them. isaacl (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, AI optimized search tool is the first and foremost thing I proposed. Other things can be discussed within the community. ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think you need to first find people with appropriate experience and resources who can work on this type of project. This will allow them to engage in any discussions and thus guide them down more productive paths. isaacl (talk) 17:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Isaacl: Okay. Can you tell where could I search for such people who may have related experience? Thanks, ExclusiveEditor (talk) 17:46, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  Sean.hoyland gave one pointer above to a Wikimedia Foundation team that might be able to give some pointers or advice. You can also look at the foundation's pages to find other potential contacts. Think of everyone you know and if they have any related experience or connections to those who do, and if they might be receptive. isaacl (talk) 18:59, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Support proposal 1. Happy to be invited to join this discussion. By way of introduction, I am a new editor who has done some deep diving into AI as well as algorithmic and data biases. As a newcomer, I can say that navigating Wikipedia's trove of policies and guidelines can feel very daunting. I’ve read posts in the Teahouse from new editors who say they feel paralyzed due to their fear of being criticized for doing the wrong thing or making mistakes. As such, being able to get easy access to policies would help to reduce policy breaches, support retention of new editors, and help create a “psychologically safer” environment for all editors. In my experience with AI and LLMs such as ChatGPT, they are very efficient when they are dealing with well-defined inputs for a request. A set of Wikipedia policies and guidelines would be an example of well-defined inputs. Generally, when LLMs stumble into "hallucinations", it tends to be when they are tasked with open-ended topics such as “blank sheet of paper” requests where they need to create something new with no prior input other than their own information. HerBauhaus (talk) 13:37, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Feel like this is an unnecessary way to teach policy (and it's just asking for issues). We should avoid AI in general, and instead we should be improving new user onboarding so that we don't need this solution. Support AI in a very limited form

vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 03:34, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

@Vghfr: Proposal 1 is AI- optimized search. Proposal 2 may better suit your oppose. Also the proposal 1 is not asking for issues as it is already evident from my and others(response above yours) experience that new wikipedians do face lot of issues when it comes to make even the slightest edits, and WP:CHOICE finally. We are not a company, but encyclopedia's community which should be not conservative in approach of helping Wikipedia's editor base growth in fears which make no sense.ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 14:27, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, got trigger-happy when I saw 'AI.' I could see it working if it was used as an addition to the search. Something similar to how Bing uses Copilot to summarize search results. We would just have to be careful. vghfr (✉ Talk) (✏ Contribs) 21:52, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Strong Support - I'd find it so useful to find policies and guidelines, as long as the AI is only used for that and is not involved in anything else around Wikipedia. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Absolutely not - The state of the art of AI does not have sufficient quality assurance to be able to operate in such an open-ended domain as Wikipedia policy and guidelines. This proposal is begging for trouble, and there is currently no time frame for when AI will reach this level of sophistication beyond a useless guess of "maybe in a few years at best". _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:09, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Rosguill:No, I never deemed the proposal to be the way you are thinking, I myself may have opposed such proposal. I proposed for an AI optimized search for Wikipedia's policy and guidelines. There are lot of chatbots out there (including ones made on small budget) which could answer question based on web results in real time by 'searching' on internet, but the Wikipedia(AI-opt-search) work would be simpler even in term that it is just based on internal pages of just Wikipedia. In other words, right now Wikipedia's traditional search is 'Google', and I propose something like 'perplexity.ai' but much less sophisticated and easy to build. Also this would complement the search and may not be major change, it is proposal 2 which may suit your oppose. Regards, ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 14:20, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I still think that this is a solution in search of a problem, and that it will in fact find several new problems if implemented. The same concerns of lack of reliability apply: how do we know that the chatbot will direct people to the correct p&g page given a query at runtime? What dataset of queries and responses could we possibly train it on? How will the AI know how to balance essays, guidelines, and policies, or how to recognize an essay that nevertheless has broad buy-in from the community and is a guideline in all but name? How would the AI know how to adapt to IAR, to contradictory essays and guidelines, or to the fact more broadly that our documentation is descriptive rather than prescriptive of Wikipedia practices? There is no publicly-available dataset that we could train an AI off of that would even begin to address these use cases. I am raising these concerns as someone with several years of professional experience in AI research. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:14, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Rosguill: Your have very valid points of concern. I think that this could be implemented step by step, whenever the community and foundation feel ready. There are lot of proposals in this discussion itself: First two are the proposals I presented, then a new one is too just let the already existing search engine get AI optimized, other is to make 'policychecker' (spellchecker but for WP policy... which(idea) is at least worth exploring), then we have something like Wikipedia Library type, difference that it provides access to some third party model like ChatGPT fed with p&g which could be used in a while, etc. I have even posted an example of basic AI which we could think of in first step. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• I have put some thought into this and I do think there could be merit for a tool to help new editors see their revision draft is violating a WP policy prior to submission. That isn't necessarily a "WP Policy chatbot" but probably something more akin to a spellchecker but for WP policy. If it could cause a new editor to fix their bad edit before another editor had to deal with it, it could make things better. That said, the model is only a small part of what would be needed to make this work, a bigger aspect would that the UI/UX that makes it seemless for a newer user while not annoying experienced editors (maybe make it opt in?). CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @CAlbon (WMF): Maybe we could add that in 'beta features'. Proposal 2 or related would surely be more complex idea than 1, but it will increase the overall efficiency and quality of articles produced/ or edits. However 'AI' is the "popular" term so I used it, but the real solution would be to somehow reduce the pressure of getting 'edit wrong due to policy/ guideline' fear from new editors, because those who have such worries are the ones who are most dedicated. And it may surely ease the navigation process like gps did. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:10, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I do think helping new editors overcome the hurdle of their (and everyone's) first edits often being pretty rough. Structured Tasks can help with this, but the "policychecker" idea has merit, at least as an exploration. CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @CAlbon (WMF): In editing energy and telecommunications articles, I've noticed that several key editors who made significant contributions have left Wikipedia, likely due to criticisms or disputes. These criticisms, not always expressed in a civil tone, have highlighted issues in their newly created articles or edits such as subjective language, the inclusion of original ideas, and potential plagiarism. Implementing a "policy checker" for articles before they "go live" could greatly reduce such friction, helping to retain passionate contributors. HerBauhaus (talk) 14:24, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is a really good insight. Thanks for sharing the example. CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Unnecessary – It'd be a big hassle for Wikipedia to implement such a proposal and, at least to me, seems like a pretty unnecessary thing to do, since there already are such third-party tools. If anyone wants to use them, they should feel free to do so (and accept responsibility for any error), like with any tool. I don't oppose the idea though, I just see it as another solution to a problem that already has (or is close to having) a solution. Gedditor (talk) 16:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Gedditor:Specifically proposed for new editors (and in extension can be used by others). Some newbies don't even know Wikimedia projects other than Wikipedia exist, being aware of third party tools seems improbable. I don't think hassle can be the reason to deny working on (discussion), which may result in at least a minor change which may make it a process easier (and yet efficient) to edit for Wikipedians. Also I don't think any 'third party tool' or any 'tool' is currently better than Wikipedia's own "search engine" which is not very effective, I very first proposed, and even if any exists, they mostly are highly unreliable. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think that things shouldn't be done because they are hard to do. I just personally think that it's not worth it. I'd say I'm neutral on this issue. If such a feature is implemented, good. If not, that's fine too. Just wanted to add my opinion here :) Gedditor (talk) 16:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose – Don't think this should be an official tool. I support any unofficial ones that people want to build. I've personally built a GPT with access to all Wikipedia namespace articles concatenated into a single file. Go ahead and ask it about Wikipedia rules and guidelines and maybe it will actually give an accurate answer. – Kjerish (talk) 04:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Kjerish: Okay, great! But it requires ChatGPT plus. Maybe somewhat like Wikipedia library, WM could give us any one such model's access. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 13:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - First and foremost, I understand and respect your vision to expand Wikipedia but I fear that AI (such as ChatGPT) is not to the level that it should be. I understand that AI has been around for quite a long time, but only recently has it been ignited to the public and is used through numerous high-end companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, you name it). I oppose this because Wikipedia is about humans checking the article. And yes, it would make it go faster, but it will make mistakes and those mistakes could time consuming for an individual (or a community) to resolve them. I think we should pilot it to a few selective articles rather than making it public to the entire Wikipedia articles. I think it's a great idea, no doubt, but we should be cautious when it comes to making it public for all without really piloting it. I have a couple more opinions on it, feel free to reach out if you want to. Jack Reynolds (talk to me | email me) 15:05, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  First of all I appreciate your civil tone. I understand the lack of confidence on currently available AI platforms, and that implementing it site wide may bring issues, increasing the overall time to solve. But for that you said Wikipedia is about humans checking the article, I would also point that we have bots, which do not directly edit and cross check the articles (as a dystopian editor-less Wikipedia may have, and I oppose this), the bots have proven to be very effective in side tasks other than automating repetitive tasks. Bots like ClueBot NG are active examples. AI has wide applications, and I think that there are lot of applications to it on WP too, to some I oppose just like you, but others, like AI optimized simple search, or beta tested policy chatbots are some I have eyes on, as they rather than replacing existing resources, would only complement them. And as they say it, something is better than nothing (being added), especially when it is promising to look at. I would also like to know 'more opinions' you mentioned to have. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 15:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: For those who oppose major change related to AI, the ai need not take a very inclusive part in Wikipedia's working for now, but a simple AI search like this would really ease the problem:

User: I am editing person's article, but she has lot of names, I want to write all of them, what I do?[1]
 WP AI: I found the following results:
 1.MOS:NAME: The guidelines talks about various cases in which the subject has Anachronistic names, Changed names, Multiple changed names, Pseudonyms and stage names, Hypocorisms, Nicknames etc. .....

or something I have seen many editors not knowing about:
Editor: I added name of subject in Hindi in information box at right side, but somebody removed it and warned me. Why?[2]
WP AI: I found the following guideline regarding the usage of Indic script (which the Hindi language is predominantly written in) in infobox:
 WP:INDICSCRIPT: The guidelines says that per a consensus at 2017 request for comment, the use of Indic sript in India related articles is to be avoided for multiples reasons listed below:
1).....
2)......
3)......
This could be the possible reason that your edit was removed. For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response.

-- ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 16:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: I anticipate little benefit to the Wikipedia project. Clarinetguy097 (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Clarinetguy097: And how do you? ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wrong page? This seems like a request for software rather than something that needs consensus. Any volunteer may create a user script or Toolforge tool that uses AI. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae: User scripts are add-ons that are commonly used by experienced users, while new editors are often unaware of them. Even mid-level editors may naturally find them uncomfortable to use. While volunteer-created scripts or tools are valuable, official integration ensures widespread accessibility and consistency across the platform. So I propose a direct integration of this feature in Wikipedia's interface, and so I started the discussion here. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 12:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Conditional Support. Using ChatGPT to augment the wikipedia search engine isn't a good idea. It hasn't been tested enough, isn't built for searching, and doesn't like certain queries (medical, legal, political, and anything containing the phrase "root access"). If Wikimedia wants to build its own AI to help with searching, however, then I do support this. DarklitShadow (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: The Financial Times is just doing something similar with their internal content. We may do the same with Wikipedia's internal pages and (maybe conversations/ discussions also) for editors (especially new) as I already proposed. AI already serves Wikipedia's content for readers, with this editors may benefit from something similar for sure. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 07:29, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Using ai to help users find policy pages seems fine, but asking it for advice when it comes to editing conflicts seems like a poor idea. We already have the teahouse and help desk, and the likeliness of ai giving an incorrect answer is high. Industrial Insect (talk) 16:20, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

@Industrial Insect: AI (if build in chatbot form) would not be asked doubts/ queries regarding existing policy known to editor. At max, AI will be given a problem faced by editor and AI will suggest pages which may be related to editor's problem. Reading the policy/ guideline page and deciding next move is solely editor's responsibility and choice. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:30, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose An AI interpreting the policies and guidelines is simply asking for trouble. Nor is there a need, as pointed out above, to force anything official right now given that user scripts exist and the WMF may be carrying out its own research. CMD (talk) 16:48, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis: No, no!! Never in my any statement have I ever mentioned that AI will come and interpret policy and suggest editors the next move. Sorry if I am being too expressive as lot of editors here are having same misunderstanding. Ok, so simply as it goes, AI is for new editors, so user script better be kept out of frame, also WMF does not look to have been actively sorting out in something specific before this proposal as seen in CAlbon (WMF)'s reply above. And to the troubles which we may face in this, first we have to start somewhere, second that implementation could be step by step. This cycle is just like an unemployed being denied a job because of lack of experience which he will never get without a job which he is being denied. The ending was not reply to you specifically but rather to the discussion as whole. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:38, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  Also, at max, AI will be given a problem faced by editor and AI will suggest pages which may be related to editor's problem. Reading the policy/ guideline page and deciding next move is solely editor's responsibility and choice. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 17:40, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  You gave a very specific example of an AI hearing a generic problem and deciding what guideline it thought applied. That is interpreting policy. Your example also specifically includes a suggestion of the editor's next move: "For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response." CMD (talk) 17:43, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Chipmunkdavis: How can any AI/ algorithm work without interpreting its query and relate it to the search results. What you mean by 'interpretation' is the vary backbone of any AI that I could propose. Otherwise what is difference between current search bar which just cares to match the words you enter? The 'interpretation' I consider wrong is that WP AI is given specific cases by user, say related to NPV, and the AI presents a 'solution' rather than simple 'AI optimized search' that too based on its own 'interpretation' of WP:NPV just like there are different interpretations of Bible/ Quran. The last line For more information, you may ask the editor who reverted your edit for a response. is just a simple advice which may be made compulsory for AI as a disclaimer for issues related to 'warnings for unknown reason'. If you still oppose the idea, please list the reason and I will try to be more objective in answering those. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:33, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  As I suggested earlier, I feel continuing to try to discuss your proposal without the involvement of those who are experienced and ready to start planning development isn't the best way forward. At present, this is discussion is about a hypothetical project where there are reasonable doubts about its viability, which means there isn't any impetus to work towards refining the scope and objectives. I think the proposal needs to have more concrete resources and expertise behind it in order to get better feedback. isaacl (talk) 20:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Isaacl: I have indeed invited dozens of editors shown to have expertise/ special interest in AI or its branches since you last suggested. We even have the attention of director of machine learning at WMF. I will try to expand this over now, streamlining its focus as you said. Thank you. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  I apologize for being unclear: personally, I do not recommend that you expand this discussion further. Instead, I think you should let those who are interested in planning development to drive the conversation, so that they can use their expertise and constraints to help direct further discussions. That will make it very concrete from both their perspective and the community's. Thanks for getting more people involved. isaacl (talk) 21:46, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Side note, it's unclear what is meant by "AI" in the proposal. Wikipedia has long had AI (it's search bar). I'm assuming the proposal meant generative AI. Strongly against that. Such is a black box with a mind of it's own. We don't need it to be presenting its creations as policies/guidelines or as interpretations of them. North8000 (talk) 18:15, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  @North8000: Firstly, AI here does not directly indicate to generative AI, rather it may be complementary. Secondly, the first and foremost thing I propose(d) is AI in search bar, not just as significant as it looks on paper, but practically useful. It is the present 'tune' I say, that as anyone says AI, first thing in mind is ChatGPT and its fuzzy mistakes and/or the wrong hands that image making 'AI' hallucinates. Artificial Intelligence is much more that this, and I am sure many of you are clear to this. Now what if I assure you that the AI will make equal or lesser percent mistakes than ClueBot NG in terms of overall damage to Wikipedia? My point is that I am sure if I had proposed inculsion of bots to Wikipedia (assuming they weren't involved yet) I must have met a fierce resistance than I am getting now. By AI, I don't mean hallucinating ChatGPT or an AI which will make Wikipedia human editor-less but a algorithm that will better serve the knowledge gap regarding 'policies' and 'guidelines' to new editors, so they can edit without fear of getting 4 warnings quickly and blocked, all because they never knew what they were doing wrong. If you still oppose the idea, please list the reason and I will try to be more objective in answering those. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 21:26, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  "Now what if I assure you that the AI will make equal or lesser percent mistakes than ClueBot NG in terms of overall damage to Wikipedia?" That's a big if you've got there.

  On a side note, if somebody's getting four warnings, they're obviously not somebody who's going to go to the effort to search for policies at all. Clarinetguy097 (talk) 16:59, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose solution in search of a problem in my view. JavaHurricane 10:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia run a period of banners (one or multiple weeks) encouraging readers to use and edit sister projects? (previous discussion)

• See examples here.

Please note that this is a discussion regarding whether Wikipedia should do this in the broad sense; detailed arguments like "I don't like the suggested banners" or "but we shouldn't promote [this project I don't like]" should be saved for later discussion. Please respond to the idea in the RfC statement. Thank-you, 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Notifying participants in previous discussion: @Aaron Liu, Harvici, Commander Keane, WhatamIdoing, Theklan, The Wordsmith, and Vghfr:

Notified: meta:Wikimedia Forum. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:50, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes as proposer. As I wrote previously:

Sister Wikimedia projects have a lot to offer readers, and as one of the most viewed sites on the internet (globally!) we should help introduce readers to these resources. As you know, other Wikimedia projects include a dictionary/thesaurus which includes translations; a travel guide; a library of digitized public domain texts that anyone can download or distribute; a travel guide; a media repository; and many others. The sister project links are currently buried far down on the Main Page, and are especially distant for mobile viewers who make up an increasing share of our readership. Why would we not want to help readers discover some of the useful resources our sister projects have to offer?

🌺 Cremastra (talk) 18:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes. In particular the Wikiquote sister project has quite a few relatively uncontroversial articles (e.g. Karl Marx) that receive almost no views at all if compared to their typically much less substantive WP page. If not for public figures, for intellectuals, especially politically controversial ones, promoting some of their own - such as, of course, their best critics' - quintessential paragraphs should really be the standard approach!

For one thing then, yes, introducing a specialized, somewhat larger banner for this precise purposes that e.g. hovers under an infobox closer to the top of the corresponding WP article rather than at the very bottom, would really do WQ some justice. (*cf. a recent discussion, where a special "featured articles" modality was, however, discerned as a likely prerequisite for all of this though...) Biohistorian15 (talk) 15:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. Several of the 'sister projects' are worse than useless. At least one is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia. We should not be encouraging them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  @AndyTheGrump: They're Wikimedia, not Wikipedia. This is the exact Wikipedia-is-the-best-and-most-important-project conceit I've been talking about. And I wonder which project you object to— Wikidata doesn't follow our notability guidelines, Wiktionary clearly violates WP:NOTDIC, Wikisource has no citations at all (!) Wikifunctions is just a bunch of code or something, Wikivoyage goes against WP:V and, to a degree, WP:NPOV… I could go on. Judging other projects by Wikipedian standards in nothing less than absurd. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words into my mouth. I am under no illusion that Wikipedia is 'the best' anything. It is however, the only online encyclopaedia that has any significant readership (thanks in no small part to Google), and is thus worthy of critical scrutiny. And I'm not judging the other projects by 'Wikipedian' standards, I'm judging them by the standards of someone who considers Wikipedia structurally flawed, even if its objectives are worthy in the abstract. The projects I refer to are in my opinion worse, in several ways, but mostly of little significance. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  AndyTheGrump, could you please expand on how the projects are worse and the project that is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia? — Frostly (talk) 21:14, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  At least one is run in a manner entirely contrary to the stated objectives of Wikipedia. Which project is it?

  You first say that we should not encourage our sister Wikimedia projects because they go against Wikipedia objectives, and then you say that you aren't judging them by Wikipedian standards. I don't understand. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

  Is it your intention to get into long-winded discussions with everyone who participates here, or just the ones you disagree with? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes, provided it is limited to a few projects. Some of our projects are of limited interest to the average reader (Wikidata, Wikispecies and Wikifunctions) and others aren't in a state where it's worthwhile directing users to them (Wikinews). I think that such a campaign would be best served by a focused group of 3 or 4 of them that is more able to effectively direct attention their way. ― novov (t c) 02:32, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Banners steal our readers' attention. By distracting them and taking them off task, we slow down them learning what they're here to learn. Ads make people stupider. We should display as few as humanly possible for as little time as possible.—S Marshall T/C 02:37, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No for the same reason I don't like banner ads for donations or dishwashing soap. You diminish the encyclopedia by pasting ads for things that are completely unrelated to the topic they are searching. First and foremost, the READERS matter, and this diminishes the encyclopedia by putting information in the way of what they came for: verifiable facts about a topic. We aren't here to promote anything, including ourselves. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 07:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No as per above. Banner ads do not benefit the encyclopedia, which is our primary concern. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 14:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is the kind of self-centredness that is detrimental to the Wikimedia project as a whole. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 17:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

  I could just as easily say that proposals like this one are detrimental to the English Wikipedia because they consume editor time that might otherwise have been spent improving articles. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  By that logic, every proposal here is detrimental because they take time away from editing articles. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, a proposal that seeks to improve the encyclopedia is not a detriment. This, however, is a proposal that diminishes the encyclopedia, which is why I opposed it. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yeah, obviously: it's common knowledge that enwiki's love for sister projects is... lackluster at best. Thank god we're not in charge of creating new projects, because otherwise there wouldn't be any. But raising awareness for sister projects raises the probability that we'll be able to help someone find what they're looking for (like, say, a quote or a definition) next time they need something. Maybe they're looking for that information right now, and don't know where to find it! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• I don't think this is a good idea, beyond directing users to all Wikimedia sites in general. If English Wikipedia starts choosing individual sites to promote, and thus selecting ones not to promote, failure to promote a site will be seen as a negative endorsement. This may have an unduly discouraging effect on the expansion of the related communities. I am wary of putting English Wikipedia in a position where it can determine the success or failure of other Wikimedia sites. isaacl (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• No There are far fewer reasons to do this than not to do this; some of the reasons that I can think of off the top of my head include NPOV & not wanting to have to look into the editorial practices of other projects. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) 00:45, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  NPOV only applies to articles. If we start interpreting it that strictly, then we're going to need to delete a lot of essays... 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. I have seen no convincing argument why and how this would benefit the encyclopedia. Also per Isaacl · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 11:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. The purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopaedia, not to recruit users for other projects. If the Wikimedia foundation thinks they need more users elsewhere, they can do their own advertising. Modest Genius ^talk 12:03, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Modest Genius: Ah, so we don't want to actually help readers, we just want them to read the encyclopedia? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  How would showing readers advertising possibly help them? Modest Genius ^talk 12:02, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  See Queen of Hearts' comment below. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:19, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. leeky puts it perfectly. Most readers don't know what on Earth a Wikivoyage is, when in reality, it could be exactly what they're looking for. Queen of Hearts ^she/_they^talk/_stalk 20:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• No largely per Isaac. If we do every project, we're making a lot of noise for very little benefit. If we select only some, we functionally decide which projects we endorse (and which we don't by omission). Neither is a particularly good outcome. I also think banner campaigns are over-used in general and not a good way to support sibling projects if that's the goal. It's indiscriminate and for the majority of readers completely useless given what they're here to learn about. Why show a reader a banner about wikispecies if they're here reading about the Andromeda Galaxy? I don't see the benefits outweighing the costs. — Wug·a·po·des 20:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes per leeky. General support for the idea, without committing to doing all of them (after all, we can't say too much about the Incubator, Meta, etc.). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No - Advertising (especially in banner form) is annoying and intrusive, distracting and wasting of screen space. It doesn't matter how noble or sororal the entity being advertised. We already link to the sister projects in the main page (left panel and bottom) and we routinely mention relevant sister projects explicitly from articles where applicable (many articles include templates linking to specific pages on Commons, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary) and link inline where appropriate, most often via images. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:40, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No, good points above on the value of ads and on being cautious with the power of en.wiki within the WMF ecosystem. On a pragmatic note, a general link to go look at WikiSource or WikiData or even WikiCommons is of any use. How to contribute to those is opaque at best. If these resources are promoted, it should be through specific useful ways, such as our practice of including relevant WikiSource pages in See also sections (occasionally they pop up in infoboxes too). CMD (talk) 07:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, as leeky put it. Other sister projects are very well what readers may be looking for, like WikiVoyage or Commons. There should be an option to opt-out though. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 12:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No to all forms of distracting and inappropriate advertising. There will always be sound and moral reasons behind any banner campaign - I'd like us to allow various charitable banners which fund-raise to help starving children, or prevent climate change, etc. But Wikipedia was set up not to be such a platform, and so it seem highly inappropriate and immoral and incestuous that we don't allow banners which may improve or even save people's lives, but will allow banners purely to inflate the traffic flow of various WikiMedia projects. If there is an appropriate need to link to another project, that is already done within articles, such as via External links. SilkTork (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No per SilkTork. Besides, a lot of people, both editors and readers, are already frustrated by the endless, huge banner ads that get foisted on articles every December, grubbing for money for the WMF. We don't need to add to that. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:37, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  These are going to be normal-sized. It seems more useful than displaying edithon notices to readers. Aaron Liu (talk) 17:14, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

• No due to banner blindness, and due to the fact that just because a project is a sister project doesn't mean it's a good project. I just don't see the value in telling readers about other projects. BTW, I also would oppose a banner that encouraged people to edit this project. I'm generally opposed to taking up screen real estate to try and recruit readers, let the readers read in peace without distraction. BTW, the way to let readers know about sister projects they may find useful is "inline," the way we do it now, with those boxes/links/hatnotes/whatever-you-call-them that say, e.g. "full text is available at WikiSource," or "there is an entry at WikiData," or "there is media on Commons," etc. It's better to put those more-targeted notices in the place where they'll matter. Levivich (talk) 17:18, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• No as conceptually wrong. Very, very, VERY few people, even linguaphiles, are hardcore "let me sit down and read the dictionary some" types. Similarly, even people who love reading books aren't going to be enticed by "oh hey, let me go to the local library and pick some books at random" from Wikisource or Wikibooks. And yet that's precisely what these suggested banners provide: essentially a link to the front door of the library, or to a full dictionary. What is far more effective is a relevant link for a word or topic that the reader has already shown themselves interested in, hence them being at an article in the first place. So something like The_Red-Headed_League#External_links having its first EL being to Wikisource? Great. The reader is interested in the topic, here's a link to where you can read the story on Wikisource. Or disambig pages including a prominent Wiktionary link, especially for less-used words or foreign terms like Anabasis. There's an argument we should link sister projects when relevant more aggressively, sure. That might be a good way to spend time. But these banners don't have any relevance, and therefore aren't useful. SnowFire (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. Unnecessarily distracting and annoying. Stifle (talk) 12:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, but with opt-in, because banners can be annoying.--OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 01:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Possibly opt-out? Of course users should have the right to opt-out of showing the banners. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

  Rather than asking readers to take an action to see banners about other Wikimedia sites, we may as well just ask them to visit another page to learn about other Wikimedia sties. isaacl (talk) 01:28, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. The current central banner system is somewhat sufficient for this purpose. Even if we want to work on the sister projects, one has to be cognizant that every project has different levels of maturity and sets of social norms. We shouldn't be the ones pushing ourselves and sensibilities over to the other projects. If so, can the targeted project take on an influx of editors who are bringing a foreign set of norms and sensibilities over to their projects? As one who occasionally straddles between English and Chinese Wikipedias, as well as commons, I can say that it takes awhile to pick up the norms of the individual projects, an effort that would likely be significantly longer than the run on the banner. If the other projects would like to have us and other projects to contribute, have them to come up with their own campaigns, banners through the central banner system, and processes. If anything, I think improvements in other parts of the interface may be more feasible, for example a better call-out to translate the article if it is known that the viewer is good in a certain language, or call outs somewhere to contribute to wikivoyage if somehow we know if the viewer is actively editing in geographic based articles, Wikisource if one is editing articles related to manuscripts or other types or texts and printed materials. – robertsky (talk) 12:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
• No Banner blindness is bad and getting worse. Also, I cannot say that I endorse all of our sister projects; forcing the community to vote on who we endorse only ends in disaster. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:31, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• No. First of all, banners are bad, and encyclopedia shouldn't advertise anything. Second, because there are fewer readers and fewer editors, some projects are not really useful, and it's not en wiki aim to improve other projects. Artem.G (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• No to banners for non-Wikipedia good causes. Raise awareness for sister projects where relevant, do not use banner ads. —Kusma (talk) 10:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No ~ considering how blind banners make people, how useless (and even antagonising) much online advertising is, there is no way to consider this a good idea. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 12:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No Banners don’t actually do much besides annoy people, speaking from personal experience. I want people to help sister projects grow but banners will likely have the opposite effect. Dronebogus (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
• No per Dennis Brown and CaptainEek. - Dank (push to talk) 04:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• No I agree that more should be done within wikipedia to "help readers discover some of the useful resources our sister projects have to offer", but I don't think that banners is a good way to do it. Some user research is needed to figure out productive ways to embed links to other projects in wikipedia content so that they are useful to the reader without being intrusive. spintheer (talk) 04:33, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  ways to embed links to other projects in wikipedia content — We already have many templates (see Wikipedia:Template index/Sister projects) for this purpose. Of these, Commons is probably the most frequently used. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• No per Wugapodes and because banners are an inconvenience to readers. I can't get on board with advertising all the sister projects, and picking which ones to advertise seems wrong (and will probably get bogged down in a huge no-consensus RfC anyways). Toadspike (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• No we should be trying to reduce the number of banners not increasing them. That said I add {{commonscat}} to a lot of relevant articles where we have more images on commons than in the article. I'm not against adding relevant links to our sister projects at the end of articles, but at the top? I think the only time we should do that is where the Wikipedia article is a disambiguation page for a word that has a wiktionary definition. ϢereSpielChequers 10:03, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

The main page already has a large section, Wikipedia's sister projects. Why is something else needed? Schazjmd (talk) 19:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Those links are hard to find and do little. Especially for mobile readers, they are unlikely to be actually seen. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Adding 'sister project' banners is inevitably going to make other content less likely to be seen, given finite screen sizes. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think there inevitably will be tradeoffs with inclusion of any type of content. — Frostly (talk) 21:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And how much space will the banners take up on mobile screens? Donald Albury 20:08, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It depends what the final design is. Presumably the design used for mobile will be much smaller than that for desktop. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:09, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If banners were approved and shown, how would you determine whether they were worth the effort? Schazjmd (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

One could look at siteviews of projects, number of edits made, number of active users... and see if there was noticeable change. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Related discussion: Those here concerned about excessive banner use (or, conversely, wishing we'd use banners more) may be interested in discussion about the appropriateness of displaying the banner for Ukraine's Cultural Diplomacy Month globally without any geographic targeting. Sdkb ^talk 21:16, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

During the brainstorming session for the 2021 RfA review, I suggested having regularly scheduled volunteer weeks, where editors representing different initiatives could host "open house" activities to engage potential volunteers. I didn't pursue the idea, though, since there was almost no interest expressed. However if it were to occur, it would be an opportunity for editors from other projects to set up open houses to publicize their work. isaacl (talk) 21:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe rather than banners for individual projects, there could be a banner about sister projects in general linking to a page that transcluded {{Wikipedia's sister projects}}, had a paragraph overview of each project, links to any welcome portals on that project, and links to any coordination or other related groups on en.wp. Thryduulf (talk) 22:17, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Whilst I'm not necessarily opposed to focusing on other Wikimedia projects, personally I prefer a venue that is open for any initiative looking for more participation. There are a lot of areas on English Wikipedia that could either be helpful to more readers, if they knew about them, or could use more participants, if they were drawn to help out. isaacl (talk) 22:24, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Some years ago Search was changed so as to show matches in some other projects, my edits in those other projects have greatly increased since then. I don't know if search also does this on mobile as I never go to Wikipedia on my smartphone. But it would be interesting if we could see stats as to how this has helped WikiBooks, WikiVoyage et al. ϢereSpielChequers 10:14, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

It probably does on the website since mobilefrontend is mostly a different skin that uses the same engines. It definitely doesn't do that on the app, though. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:33, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

After the events at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles and Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/February 2024, I think there is broad community consensus to not take any policy action against old unsourced articles. However, there should be a process in order to take action against new unsourced articles, because currently there are still new articles that does not have sources attached to it (see the 2023/2024 category at Category:Articles without sources).

I propose that articles that are created after 1st April 2024 and does not have any inline sources to be eligible for WP:PROD. Such a PROD can only be revoked after an addition of one inline, reliable, third-party source. That source does not need to completely establish the topic's notability (because that will be decided in AfD); its only job is to verify that this topic is not a hoax. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

If this proposal is accepted by the community, it would greatly streamline our efforts to cleanup uncited articles and prevent the growth of the cancerous Category:Articles without sources backlog. In the future, this "imaginary" deadline could be gradually push backwards to tackle older and older articles, until the backlog is fully cleared. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:53, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

And if we think further in the future, such a process can also be used to tackle Category:Articles with unsourced statements as well. This would be a glorious sight to behold. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Support As I have already said, independent reliable sources are needed to established notability, so such sources should be made explicit by citing them in any new article. As Levivich says, an article with no sources is a blog. Hell, when I was blogging a few years ago, I always included a list of sources at the bottom of a post, so that readers could read more about the subject, if they wanted to. Not providing sources when an article is created is just being rude to other editors who are somehow expected to do the work sourcing the article that the creator could not be bothered with. Donald Albury 20:26, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I envision that there will be three things that needs to be done before this proposal can be enforced:

1. Make a new template similar to {{Proposed deletion}} for this proposal
2. Communicate to new editors that articles on Wikipedia must have reliable sources cited, and it is strongly encouraged that they find reliable sources before writing the article
3. A way to tackle editor disputes about what constitutes "third-party" and "reliable".

- CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:07, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Number two is extremely difficult. Anyone who knows English could be a new editor. There are many hundreds of millions of them. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Number 3 is pretty easy, though. Wikipedia:Third-party sources has been around for years, and we're pretty good at identifying them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

We should also find ways to retain new editors if this proposal is enforced, because that would set an even higher barrier for entry for new editors to Wikipedia. This is the reason I why invited WP:Wikiproject Editor Retention to this topic. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:12, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean depreciate or deprecate? Johnuniq (talk) 07:16, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

As in discouraging. It would be bad if we start to vandalize new articles in order to depreciate them though :) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:19, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

New editors are already forced to go through WP:AfC, which is not going to approve an unsourced article. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:39, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

If you think the new editor article-writing experience is so demoralizing, maybe we should just not let new editors create articles in the first place? 2603:8001:4542:28FB:E9B3:2893:5C25:E68F (talk) 07:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC) (Send talk messages here)

No. We already have the WP:Article wizard to aid completely new editors to create a new article. I think that the wizard should be shown more prominently in "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name" notification box, as well as making {{AfC submission/draft}} and {{AfC submission/declined}} easier to understand for new editors. But we need new editors and we MUST NOT make Wikipedia harder for newcomers to contribute. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 07:33, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The fundamental problem for newcomers is that editing Wikipedia is not convenient. It takes a substantial effort to do so. So, one way to make this easier is to improve on the article wizard and ask people to find a few sources before citing them. I imagine that the new article wizard would ask you for URLs/book titles (and pages), and once you create a draft it would show you how to expand these fragments of info into fully-fledged "wikipedia-compliant" citations. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:04, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the horrendous MS Paint drawing, but this is what I envision it to be like this:

CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:13, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

All of the objections raised to the two similar proposals in the last few months still apply. I really can't be bothered to repeat them again. We're supposed to be building an encyclopedia here. Clearing a backlog is only incidental to this. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I like this idea in theory, but will only support it once tools and wording changes for newcomers are instated. The risk of this detracting newcomers is high enough that I think the community should have a consensus that the new wording/templates etc. alleviate harm, and they should be ready to go before any changes are made. ― novov (t c) 09:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:27, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support per all the arguments I've made before. WP:BURDEN, basically. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 12:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Rather than a PROD, we should really just move new unsourced articles to draft. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

This again? While consensus can change, it seems unlikely that consensus will have changed in the month since Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles was rejected. Let's not make this another topic area where people keep pushing essentially the same proposal with slightly different wording until, through tendentiousness and exhaustion, they manage to get something in (and then ratchet and repeat). Anomie⚔ 13:38, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support Moving to Draft with a x day prod-like notice. I'm impressed by the relentless work done by a small number of overwhelmed volunteers trying to address this problem, and I support their efforts. I disagreed with the former proposal, but this one is acceptable, grandfather the existing article and raise the quality bar for new articles by a very small degree. We already do this with AfC, where quality standards are much higher, it is nothing we don't already do. -- GreenC 14:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Query: Can someone speak to how the newer entries in Category:Articles lacking sources are ending up there? Don't all new articles these days have to go through WP:NPP, which ought not to let them pass if they are unsourced? Sdkb ^talk 14:44, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Did you find many such new articles? New page reviewers can mark unsourced articles reviewed if the topic is notable but I doubt that happens very often. Someone would have to sort those articles by creation/expansion-from-redirect date to find out. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    First one I checked from March 2024 was created by an autopatrolled editor, so even NPP wouldn't see it necessarily. Schazjmd (talk) 15:23, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    Schazjmd, created March 24 or in the category March 24? — Usedtobecool ☎️ 15:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    @Usedtobecool, from Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2024. (The article has since had one of its external URLs changed to a ref to remove it from the category.) Schazjmd (talk) 15:59, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    The categories track the tagging date. And iirc some automated tools update tag dates when making unrelated edits. So, it's likely the new categories are just populating with old articles. Autopatrolled editors wouldn't remain autopatrolled if they created unsourced articles nowadays. I actually think autopatrolled has a higher bar than necessary but admins are very risk-averse. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:12, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    @Usedtobecool, you're right, it wasn't created in March 2024, I should have looked more closely. Schazjmd (talk) 16:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

    In general, I expect almost all the articles in those categories are old articles. Notability would have to be completely obvious and there would need to be no BLP element in the article for a reviewer to pass an unsourced article in 2024, if someone were to start Ancient history of Botswana that more or less concurs with relevant content in existing articles, for example. — Usedtobecool ☎️ 16:31, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  I draftify all new unsourced articles I see, but sometimes the creator tendentiously undraftifies it, and per WP:DRAFTIFY, I'm not allowed to redraftify it, so I just tag it. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 19:03, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  What are they supposed to do about them? We don't delete articles just because they lack references and NPPers don't have a special 'article go away' button otherwise. Unless an unreferenced has other, more immediate problems I think most experienced reviewers would tag it with {{unreferenced}} and move on. Others might choose to bat it back and forth to draftspace a few times first, but the end result is the same. – Joe (talk) 08:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per the most recent discussion and disallow any new discussions on this for a few months. I've already seen several notable topics without sources or with only one source being moved to draftspace and then deleted after six months. A PROD would make this even worse. SportingFlyer T·C 15:27, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is for recent articles, not old articles. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:28, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Unsourced articles are bad but etching explicit grandfather clauses into Wikipedia's rules is worse. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:39, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, I don't like the idea of grandfathering, especially given the potential to reinforce systemic bias, given that Wikipedia's content is becoming more diverse over time. Sdkb ^talk 16:34, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  That's why there is a moving deadline to the left to clear out the backlog. Stage one of this proposal is to prevent further growth of the backlog, stage two of this proposal is to start tackling the remaining articles from newest to oldest. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:30, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, draftifying does the trick already. There do not seem to be many (any?) totally unsourced articles that make it through NPP, so I am not sure there are any articles that this proposal applies to (the category mentioned by the nominator contains mostly old articles that have been recently tagged as unsourced). —Kusma (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  The NPP process does not allow unsourced articles to be draftified. It maybe happens often, but it's not part of the policy. An NPP reviewer is required to look for sources, and if they find sufficient ones to support notability, they are supposed to tag the page as {{unreferenced}} and mark it as reviewed, not to draftify it. I would support allowing NPP reviewers to directly draftify unsourced pages, but this is not the case at the moment. Broc (talk) 12:45, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. From above, it appears that newly created unsourced articles are already sufficiently handled by our existing rules and processes. Sdkb ^talk 16:35, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Mild oppose. Three concerns: First, the proposal and discussion seem to be conflating unsourced articles with articles lacking inline citations. Requiring all articles to have inline citations regardless of whether any content has been or is likely to be challenged is out of step with WP:V and quite a jump from settled practice. Second, is is not clear what it means for the affected articles to be "eligible" for PROD. WP:PROD#Deletion provides the following criteria for PROD eligibility: the page is not a redirect, never previously proposed for deletion, never undeleted, and never subject to a deletion discussion. So as long as the proposer reasonably believes that the deletion will be uncontroversial there doesn't appear to be any particular procedural barrier to prodding these articles now. Third, it would be helpful to see evidence that there is a problem that needs solving. A PetScan query for articles created since January 1, 2024 in Category:All articles lacking sources gives 8 results, including one article with listed references (so tagged incorrectly but still subject to this proposal) and one that is currently up for speedy deletion. The remaining six definitely have some issues, but I'm not sure we need this level of policy change to fix what seems to be a couple-of-articles-per-month problem. (OTOH, the counterargument could well be made that this just shows that the proposal is the best kind of wiki-rule: one that simply codifies existing practice to prevent future confusion. But if that's the argument it would likewise be helpful to have some quantitative details showing how this proposal maps onto existing practice.) -- Visviva (talk) 17:03, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  For what it’s worth, on March 1 and 2 I attempted to patrol the category in question and see if it was possible for one person to keep it down to zero. It sort of is but you run into articles that are unlikely to get deleted but next to impossible to source, and then things get out of hand if you miss a day. It’s a tough project. I just want to note that this is a burden on editors to fix, and a lot of times adding a inline source to a plainly bad article doesn’t do a lot. ForksForks (talk) 02:08, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is exactly what I meant. This PROD would essentially be a formal enactment of our "unspoken rule", which is that new articles on Wikipedia must have sources. A lot of people here don't get it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:52, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  Have you considered that it might be "unspoken" because it's not actually a rule? – Joe (talk) 08:01, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Comment – Let's suggest something new. Before PRODDING, one should check for sources. If it turns out that the unsourced article has no reliable sources to verify, then just PROD it; otherwise, it should be draftified as an easy and less bitey than prodding. Toadette ^{(Let's discuss together!)} 21:57, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD. The topic of an unsourced article is often notable. The content of unsourced articles is often accurate and verifiable. An article is not "unsourced" merely because lacks of inline citations. Deletion of an article for lack of inline citations would result in the deletion of articles on topics whose existence and notability is not only verifiable, but is actually verified with sources actually cited in the article. The proposal is a solution in search of a problem, as there is no problem with unreferenced new articles that could possibly make it expedient to create a new sticky PROD similar to the BLP PROD. We are not being swamped with unreferenced new articles, and it is very easy, and takes very little time, to do a WP:BEFORE search. I propose that there should no further proposals for the creation of an "unreferenced PROD" for the next five years. I do not believe that there is any chance of consensus for the creation of a new PROD in the near future, and the community does not have time to !vote on what is essentially the same proposal again and again and again in quick succession. It is not particularly easy to check the large number of noticeboards for perennial proposals, either. James500 (talk) 23:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yet we often say in WP:BURDEN that "the burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material." I do agree that retroactively apply this proposal to very old articles is a very dumb idea, but I do think that we need to explicitly communicate with new editors that new articles require at least 1 cited source. We can help them to find the sources, but ultimately the burden is on them to find it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  This conflates notability with content; we can establish notability in the absence of sourcing in an aricle, verification of content requires sourcing. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 10:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  Establishment of notability (in the Wikipedia sense) requires the existance of reliable, independent sources, so if we know what those sources are, why not cite them in the article? In other words, if no reliable, independent sources are cited in the article, where is the proof that the subject is notable? Donald Albury 13:36, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  This. The cognitive dissonance in these kind of arguments are deafening. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:37, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  The cognitive dissonance is the instance that WP:V says "verified with an inline reliable source from the first revision of the article" not "verifiable". If you want to change that, you need to explicitly propose amending WP:V. If you want to change "credible claim of significance" to "credible claim of significance supported by an inline citation to a reliable source" then you need to explicitly propose amending that page. Thryduulf (talk) 13:56, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  That should be obvious and needs amending now. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:59, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  Based on the number of comments in opposition here, I don't think it's obvious at all. However, if it is obvious then you will have no problem gaining consensus for the amendments. Just don't claim the consensus exists until you can provide a citation proving it does actually exist. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with DonaldAlbury above: the point of having one source, no matter if it's not reliable, or trivial, is to ensure that the WP:CCS is true. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 13:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Strong oppose I agree completely with James500. What matters is whether articles can be sourced, not whether any sources are currently listed in the article. We should be making it easier for editors (new and old) to contribute notable articles to the encyclopaedia, not putting even more barriers in their way. Thryduulf (talk) 12:11, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support We need to build this idea that finding and including sources is step #1 of creating an article. And the burden shouldn't fall on overloaded volunteers to "prove a negative" when people don't bother with sources. But are there enough of these to be setting this up? I've done thousands of NPP's and don't think that I've ever seen one with zero sources and just a few with zero in-line sources. The widespread / pervasive volunteer-crushing problem is zero GNG sources. North8000 (talk) 17:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  I mean, nobody's forcing you to look for sources. – Joe (talk) 08:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  The greater fool theory, that someone else will do it, is not accurate: see the backlog. See the stats that show how few experienced regular editors. If we can't support our maintainers who are in the trenches doing this work, then you are right, they should not do it. -- GreenC 15:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support I think the is an extension of WP:CIR. Beside it is very frustrating to see in AfDs the comments "there are sources available" and "normal editing can solve this" after which absolutely nothing happens. Not even by the editors that state that there are sources available (when you know that, why do you not add them???). The Banner talk 17:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Strong support. I opposed the previous proposal to remove all unsourced articles, but this encyclopedia has existed for 23 years, and the standards have dramatically increased since then. Back then, this might've been acceptable, but it is no longer, hasn't been for quite a while, and this just codifies that. This is also in line with WP:BURDEN; we shouldn't have to prove a lack of notability to throw these articles out. Queen of Hearts ^she/_they^talk/_stalk 20:25, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Strong support. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, let's not forget that, and its purpose is to benefit readers by presenting information on all branches of knowledge. As others have said, having at least one source will at least verify the topic is not a hoax, and will ensure that the mentioned knowledge is not fake. These unsourced articles should at the very least be moved to a draft, in my opinion. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 20:38, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I don't love grandfather clauses either, but I think this is the least bad of the available solutions (the most bad being "Do nothing; just keep accumulating unsourced material indefinitely".) At some point, we have to turn the water off to the gushing pipe, and then we can focus on cleaning up the remaining mess. We really need to get across the idea of a "reverse BEFORE": Before you create or substantially add to an article, have in hand the reference material that verifies what you will write, and cite it. "Write first, hope someone sources it later, in practice let it sit unreferenced or CN tagged for the next ten years" should be an approach that is deprecated and ultimately not permitted (at least not in mainspace; if people want to do things backward in a draft or userspace, that's up to them.) An alternative might be to draftify unsourced new articles, and forbid returning them to mainspace until at least one source is added, but when you're already dealing with a flood, first turn the tap off. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:04, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose mostly because a grandfather clause is generally a bad idea at best: why does this only become a problem on April 1, 2024? As other have pointed out, unsourced articles rarely make it through NPP and AfC, and even if we let PROD be used for this, it can still be contested and forced to go through AFD where WP:NEXIST makes it likely to be kept regardless of the number of citations in the article. The main practical effect I see is the grandfather clause, and it only makes sense if the goal of slowly removing the protection is bought into. The problem is that consensus from about a month ago doesn't show an appetite to apply this rule to articles that already exist, and without a mechanism to move the grandfather date automatically we'll have to keep having discussions to move it around which wastes time and risks running around consensus by tiring people out with constant discussions. I don't see this going well in practice. — Wug·a·po·des 21:05, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is why I suggested that "In the future, this "imaginary" deadline could be gradually push backwards to tackle older and older articles, until the backlog is fully cleared." CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:43, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  There have been multiple recent consensuses that explicitly opposed to using prod or speedy deletion to clear the backlog, so this is clearly something the community does not want and continuing to propose it is getting tendentious. Thryduulf (talk) 02:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Is there something preventing us moving such articles to draft space that necessitates creating a new hammer? Also, requiring inline citations is a step too far and seems contrary to policy. I hope this isn't really what was intended and the proposal is just badly worded. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 22:24, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

  Inline citations are essential for verifying information in an article. As stated in Wikipedia:Verifiability: "All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material." CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:45, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  So, contrary to policy, you are actually seeking to bypass the challenge part (for the contentious material) and jump straight to deletion (of the entire article)? _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 08:18, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  The crucial part of that is has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, and nowhere does it say that deletion of the article is the appropriate course of action for verifiable but not verified material. Thryduulf (talk) 02:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  In practice, this is needed because it is very difficult to verify which statements belong to which source (with an exception of very short stubs). I would say that all sentences in such an article are likely to be challenged because they establish that "this topic exists in real life" and "this topic has X, Y, Z attributes that is true". CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:57, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  That's not what the policy says though, and there has been consensus against treating all unsourced statements as likely to be challenged because the person doing the challenging must assess whether the claim is a "sky is blue" type claim (and thus doesn't need a source), plausibly true (in which case they should attempt to find a source, and add it if found or tag it if not) or completely implausible (in which case they should remove it from the article). Thryduulf (talk) 03:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Also, many new articles are "very short stubs". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. It is necessary that articles be based on sources, but not that the sources be cited in-line. Other, less WP:BITEy methods are better ways to address this issue than quickly deleting new articles. Such as a more leisurely deletion process or drafification. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment. My reading of the previous discussions was that there is a consensus against (or at least a marked lack of consensus for) automatic deletion of unreferenced articles, old or new. Those previous proposals were weakened by a lack of clarity in scope and terminology, and it seems that this proposal is too:
  • What do you consider an unsourced article? An unreferenced article? An article consisting of one or more uncited claims? Or one that is not based on sources, cited or not? Those are not synonyms, and anyone who has got stuck into trying to write or salvage articles will know that there is a big difference between an article that lacks citations and an article that lacks sources.
  • What is an inline source? Do you expect people to copy the whole text into the article, or do you mean inline citation? In which case, how do you square this new requirement with WP:MINREF, WP:GENREF, WP:LISTVERIFY, and WP:LEADCITE?
  • What is a "third-party source"? Elsewhere, that phrase can mean either independent (WP:GNG) or tertiary (WP:PSTS). In both cases, this would contradict current policy: independent sources are only required to demonstrate notability, and need not be present in the article; tertiary sources are described by WP:NOR as less desirable than secondary ones.
  • What does it mean to be eligible for PROD? All articles are eligible for PROD, if the deletion is expected to be uncontroversial. Does this remove the 'uncontroversial' requirement? Does that mean that this new type of PROD can be used multiple times? Or after an AfD?
  • If the only purpose of the required source is to verify that this topic is not a hoax, what information actually needs to be in it? Or should it verify some of the article content? If so, how much? If not, where are you supposed to put the citation, if it doesn't actually relate to any actual article text? What about articles that are obviously not hoaxes (i.e. most of them)?

This would be a massive change to our inclusion standards. It needs to be properly thought through. – Joe (talk) 07:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Joe Roe, I think all of these concerns are very valid and thus this proposal is not complete. Should I move this to the idea lab? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe not this specific discussion, which is already quite long. If you want to develop this idea further, I'd suggest going back to basics and asking what encyclopaedic purpose a mandatory citation for each new article would serve (i.e. beyond just removing it from Category:Articles lacking sources). – Joe (talk) 11:29, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I wish that the opposers would detail more about what this proposal is missing rather than just regurgitating talking points. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Joe, a third-party source is defined in Wikipedia:Third-party sources, and is not about tertiary sources. WP:TERTIARY does not use "third-party" to describe tertiary sources. See also Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean secondhand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm saying that the potential for confusion is there, not that I'm personally confused. – Joe (talk) 10:05, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose There is already a process that works (draftification through NPP), there is no need to complicate that. Curbon7 (talk) 09:27, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose - here are, at time of writing, the latest uncited articles created today which under this proposal would be prodded: Lake Rabon (South Carolina), Last Train To Fortune, Khereshwar Temple, Teluk Bahang River, 2024 Salzburg local elections, Henry VI's Conquest of Sicily. I'm not seeing those articles as any more problematic than other similar unsourced articles. I think it is better that we make a judgement about which articles we delete rather than simply sweep away everything that meets a broad criteria. SilkTork (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  SilkTork, all of them are either PRODDed or have one citation. Problem solved. Lake Rabon (South Carolina) is the only article here that currently does not have one inline citation and that should change now. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:17, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  So our current system works, no? None of the articles have been prodded, but those which were problematic have been moved to Draft space as appropriate. Some of those may be moved back into main space after they have been worked on. Better to go to Draft than to be deleted. SilkTork (talk) 17:42, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. First of all, as one of the patrollers, the flowchart of NPP clearly state that unsourced articles have to be draftified, not PROD-ed. PROD only applies to BLP articles that are unsourced, not other articles. If this is implemented, the procedure of NPP will have to be changed as well which requires further discussion before it can be implemented. We have to also consider WP:ATD where alternatives before deletion have to be considered before moving on to the deletion. This proposal also didn't consider WP:NEXIST - where the notability is based on the availability of sources, not the current state of the article where it may or may not be sourced. Finally, I think there is no need for this. Sending them to draft is enough for them to fix the article, or if they didn't want to fix it, it will be deleted anyway. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 16:57, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  That's a good point. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:21, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support. The first edit to any new page should contain at least one source. One source is the minimum we should require for any page in mainspace. One source is the minimum we should require from anyone creating a new page in mainspace. One source is the minimum required to show that an edit or an article meets WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR, our core content policies. One source is not too much to ask. And for this reason, there is little reason to save an unsourced draft. Without a source, a Wikipedia article is meaningless. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Isn't the reason to draftify an article exactly so that it can be brought up to mainspace standards before living in mainspace? Zero^talk 05:12, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  A draft with no sources is useless, it doesn't help anyone start an article, because you need at least one source in order to summarize sources. Also, while a petty concern, the editor who started an unsourced draft shouldn't get article creation credit. The first step of writing an article is to gather sources; people who write stuff off the top of their head are just blogging, not writing a Wikipedia article. Levivich (talk) 15:37, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  Just because sources are not explicitly listed does not mean they weren't used when writing the page. Thryduulf (talk) 15:43, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  It doesn't matter if they were used or not, if the sources are not listed in the draft, the draft is not helpful to anyone else. Levivich (talk) 15:57, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  Firstly that is irrelevant, secondly it's not true. If someone has written an article about a topic but not included sources then another editor can find sources to verify the claims in the article without needing to know the claims (or even the topic) exist. There is no guarantee of course that such claims will present a comprehensive and neutral view of the topic, but that's true regardless of whether all, none or some of the claims are sourced. Thryduulf (talk) 16:01, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  Irrelevant? You're the one who brought it up. I agree, it doesn't matter if sources were used or not used in the creation of an article, what's relevant is whether sources are listed in the article or not. If the sources aren't listed in the article, when second editor comes along in order to improve the unsourced article, the second editor has to start by looking at sources and coming up with a summary of those sources. Then the second editor can look at the unsourced draft and yeah, maybe the unsourced draft will magically be a perfect summary of the sources. This is, obviously, highly unlikely. At the very most, in this highly unlikely scenario, the unsourced article would have saved the second editor a bit of typing. But that time saved typing is cancelled out by the time spent reading the unsourced draft and comparing it to the source material to see if it matches. That's a waste of time. I would never read an unsourced draft -- it doesn't matter what the heck is written there if there is no source listed. I would just gather the sources and write my own summary, completely ignoring the unsourced draft. It's useless to an actual article writer.

  And why do some editors spend so much energy defending unsourced articles? FFS, this is Wikipedia, it's coming up on almost 25 years now. The first step in writing an article is to gather not one source, or two, but three high-quality, GNG-compliant sources. If you don't have that, you don't have a notable topic, you aren't verifying what you're writing, you're just blogging, not writing a summary of secondary sources. Writing off the top of one's head about a topic is not the same thing as summarizing sources. And if somebody's off-the-top-of-their-head blog happens to line up with an NPOV summary of high-quality RS, that's just like a freak coincidence, man. That is not what we should be striving for, or even tolerating, on Wikipedia. "But what if the bloggers happens to be right?" is an lol argument.

  If an editor happened to use sources in drafting the unsourced article and just forgot to put them in there, that's easily fixed. When the article is prodded, tagged for CSD, or AFD'd, the editor can add the sources. Heck, even after it's deleted, the editor can get it REFUNDed and add the sources.

  Much more likely, the unsourced article is unsourced because the author didn't summarize sources, they wrote off the top of their head. This is not worth saving, nor is it worth defending.

  Wikipedia articles are summaries of secondary sources. That's what they are, and if they don't summarize secondary sources, then they're not Wikipedia articles, even if they're hosted at wikipedia.org. The starting point for every article and every editor is sources. Anyone who starts anywhere else is doing it wrong.

  Someday, more Wikipedia editors will come to realize this, and eventually Wikipedia will actually as a matter of policy require sources for all statements in mainspace. It's rather an indictment of Wikipedia that this was not the first policy, and that it's still not policy almost 25 years later. Levivich (talk) 16:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  I wasn't the one to bring this up, you brought it up in response to Zero. I'm not saying that it's not better to have sources in a draft (obviously it is), so most of your arguments are refuting something I'm not claiming. My only point here was that an unsourced draft can be helpful.

  You are entitled to your opinion about how other people's workflows for writing articles is "wrong", but unless and until there is a consensus to modify WP:V, WP:N, WP:AGF and other core policies you don't get to impose your opinion on the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 17:40, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  What in the world am I doing that would be considered "imposing my opinion on the encyclopedia"? Comments like this is why I get frustrated discussing things with you. Nobody here is imposing anything on anyone, and this IS an RFC about modifying policy. This IS the right place to express the views I've expressed. Levivich (talk) 17:46, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  BTW IMO it doesn't have to be an inline source; a general reference would be fine. Levivich (talk) 00:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, because this creates a new type of deletion, which makes new page patrol and deletion workflows more complex. I believe that all new deletion proposals should work within our existing types of deletion. I think it would make more sense to expand the scope of BLPPROD, than to add a brand new NOSOURCESPROD that is in addition to the almost obsolete PROD (since folks always just unprod these and they end up at AFD) and BLPPROD. I will also note that many new page patrollers automatically draftify or BLPPROD articles without sources. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  almost obsolete PROD (since folks always just unprod these and they end up at AFD). Try looking at the evidence rather than repeating silly tropes. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:30, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Hi @Phil Bridger. I don't think we've interacted before. It's nice to meet you. User:DumbBOT/ProdSummary appears to be a list of current prods. Got any reports that list the outcomes of prods, such as deprod vs delete? My point is that many prods are de-prodded, which then requires the patroller to follow up with an AFD. This is my anecdotal experience with using prod during NPP. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  Nice to meet you too. That link points to many articles where the PROD tag has been there for nearly a week and nobody has removed it, making your claim that that always happens false. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose if a new article is sent for deletion solely because there are currently no sources, that's a bad rationale for deletion and a failure of WP:BEFORE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  That is a good argument to get rid of WP:BEFORE too. The Banner talk 17:09, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Headbomb (or anyone else who's interested), do you feel the same way about the Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people policy? I think this proposal overreaches in requiring an Wikipedia:Inline citation to a reliable, third-party source, but I don't see why, in principle, a completely uncited new article about a BLP should be subject to deletion after a week's notice but an equally uncited new article about, say, a sports team or a business shouldn't be allowed to follow the same process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Articles on notable topics which would be worth having but don't yet meet mainspace standards (lack of sourcing is only one possible reason) should be draftified. That is a step towards eventually having a good article, while deletion is a step away; I think it is obvious which is better for the encyclopedia. Zero^talk 05:16, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

  PROD would force that article to be improved or to be moved to draftspace. And frankly, why is it so difficult to cite one source in an article about a notable topic? I don't get the opposers' reasoning here. If there is no source in an article, how could we know that this article is not a total fabrication? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:08, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  I am especially opposed to requiring "inline" sources. If there are sources but they aren't inline, that's a case for cleanup, not deletion. Deleting (rather than draftifying) an article only for that reason would be highly counterproductive. New editors often do not know our standards for how to present sources in articles and we should help them learn rather than telling them to fuck off. Zero^talk 02:31, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose as above, contradicts WP:NEXIST; unclear that this necessarily resolves a problem - as the February unreferenced backlog drive showed, even experienced Wikipedians were making mistakes and incorrectly sourcing articles. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:00, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per other guidelines and many other opposers, that sources existing and existing notability is enough to not use an enhanced PROD process. I am not a very big fan of draft space (I think working in articles space where there's many eyes is often better if it seems notable. And user space or off wiki is better at the stage where notability is unclear or if someone wants to draft an article solo.). However, I could see supporting a properly crafted proposal that articles less than 90 days old and entirely unsourced when draftified with care (so maybe a very weak form of WP:BEFORE is done) cannot be moved back to article space without adding at least one source that has a credible claim of at minimum verifying the article. Skynxnex (talk) 15:08, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
• MILD SUPPORT I think that any articles without citations should either provide a source or be deleted.
  But there should be a ~month long period to provide sources before deletion occurs. Redacted II (talk) 17:51, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support I know this is not going to succeed, but ultimately only this approach is consistent with the widespread (and beneficial) practice of improving verifiability by removing unsourced content from articles—which can only be restored if there is a reliable source. (t · c) buidhe 05:00, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think it's premature to predict the outcome. A straight vote count is running a bit under 40:60 against the proposal, but a number of objections (including my own) are to specific details (e.g., specifically requiring an inline citation instead of a general citation) rather than to the overall principle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose; not sure there is much more to be said about why this would not be a great idea. I think this would go against the spirit of the project, and that it would be a very costly move in return for not much improvement. jp×g🗯️ 05:01, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  This is not a "very costly move" as you have said, as multiple editors has pointed out that this is not that much different to how modern Wikipedia processes new unsourced articles. We just don't allow them to come to the mainspace. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  Draftification is done at the discretion of editors and new page patrollers, who like most Wikipedia editors are generally expected to have coherent reason for things that they do. Making it a binding policy would remove this discretion. Either way, it is not good: if it's meant to substantively change the way that article creation works on Wikipedia, it is for the worse, and if it isn't meant to substantively change anything, that is a great reason to avoid making giant disruptions in the public-facing process of a thing that has worked fine for the last 23 years. jp×g🗯️ 07:37, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support. I also see this as unlikely to succeed, but I'd prefer to see the project move into this direction. I think it would be an improvement to require that article creators include at least one source, and I do not see current procedure as sufficient to deal with the unsourced article problem. I can understand the objections based on grandfathering, but I would prefer the harms of temporary inequity over the harms of doing nothing. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:43, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I don't think the citation needs to be inline, but geez y'all, it's 2024, citations are expected in everyday culture now, anyone dumping an unsourced article into mainspace (without followup edits) nowadays is willfully ignoring our requirements and clearly has no plans to join the community. We don't need to protect these precious new editors, and we don't need to retain unsupported information that would be deleted if it was in any other format than a standalone page. JoelleJay (talk) 16:15, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support per Levivich. Ajpolino (talk) 19:36, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. To be sure, a new, truly unsourced article is very likely to be hit by NPP for draftification, prod, or AFD (perhaps even when it really shouldn't). It's good practice to include at least some references. However, some editors take a narrow view of sourcing and consider implicit sources as "unsourced" when it really isn't (i.e. a newbie editor simply writing out "According to Joe Bloggs, blah blah blah..."). Secondly, the main case where valid "unsourced" articles exist are generally the frontiers that are good to create articles on for WP:CSB grounds. These are often translations of other language's wikipedia articles where there very well may be sources, but not ones easily consulted in English. Now, yes, other language Wikipedia editions have weaker notability requirements than enwiki, and yes, some of these are just authentically unsourced in the other language too. But this case is large enough that there will still be cases of plainly notable people who don't have articles yet, and deleting the articles out of misguided "consistency" doesn't make sense. Better to keep the article simple and non-controversial and wait on someone familiar with the foreign language sources, instead. Keeping this situation a valid option for creating an article means opposing the proposal. SnowFire (talk) 20:58, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

  Do I feel comfortable to say that we tolerate unsourced articles because someday, somebody will magically put a citation into it? No. Without work from the WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles, Category:Articles lacking sources backlog would now have >150k articles and will keep growing from here. Plus, by de facto standard, we already strongly recommended that new articles should have an inline citation. Why is it so difficult to codify that into policy? If you translate an article from a foreign language to English, then it is very trivial for them to copy the citations to the English version of the article or find one source that verify that this topic/subject actually exist. It's not that difficult. If you want new editors to understand the new PROD criteria, why not being more clear in the Article Wizard that Wikipedia articles need to have sources? And if my proposal sounds BITEy, then that's because the whole PROD/AfD process itself is BITEy. Please, if that's the reason why you opposed my proposal, please suggest changes to PROD and AfD instead. This is not my fault.

  You might ask, why do I demand an inline citation in my proposal? This is because an inline citation helps me to verify a specific statement in the article. If that reference is placed below, a reader would have no idea what is the specific statement that we are referring to. Just to mention this, most new editors nowadays don't start out editing in wikicode, they start out with VisualEditor. When they fire up VisualEditor for the first time there is an explicit instruction dialog hovering below the citation button that instructs you how to make an inline citation. It's really not that hard to do for a beginner. Even if VisualEditor somehow cannot process your URL, you can always type that citation in plain text.

  And why do I ask that citation must come from reliable source? Because we don't want people to write an article about a notable topic with absolutely shitty sources, like Twitter posts, gossip websites, forums, etc. If the whole article is talking about the Ancient history of Botswana and every citation in that article refers to a self-published Blogger page, then that article is just as useless as it is uncited, because we cannot verify whether that article is spewing out myths or not. Many editors here objected my proposal due to WP:NEXIST, but why is it so hard to ask people just cite one of those excellent sources to the first sentence, to verify that this topic actually exists in real life?

  I'm just gonna sum up my proposal as follows. Missing content on Wikipedia is terrible. Having incorrect content masquerading as facts on Wikipedia is much, much worse. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:00, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I would think that if one was going to go through the expense of yet another RFC on the same theme (the third within six months?), it would have at least been better thought out. As Joe Roe and others have highlighted, clearly it is not. Anyway, we should not introduce this new process, subtly different from existing ones yet also similar and overlapping in purpose. I hesitate to expand our assortment of procedural mechanisms for deletion or quasi-deletion, which is already confusing to editors. Adumbrativus (talk) 04:21, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP, and neither is PROD. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  It is cleanup, in that a PROD indicates that "this article that does not have inline citations does not belong to Wikipedia". And it is not wrong to do so, because it corresponds to our current best practices. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 11:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support There is no excuse for creating an unsourced article in 2024. Unsourced articles cannot be repaired by adding sources; they must be rewritten because without the sources we cannot tell if they are COPYVIO. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:20, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support. The bar needs to be raised. Stifle (talk) 11:42, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, this particular bar should not be raised. The proposal is about new unsourced articles and suggests to delete them instead of draftifying as we currently do. This would make our problem of WP:BITEing newbies worse and give less feedback on how to write an acceptable article, without any change to the amount of unsourced content in mainspace. The backlog of unsourced articles is completely unconnected to the new articles that this proposal is about. —Kusma (talk) 14:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

How/when would that happen? Due to the backlog due to a handful of active NPP'ers being asked to do too much of the million editors' work and otherwise being too difficult and painful, it won't even get looked at at NPP until after the draftifying time limit runs out. Not that I think that there are very many completely unsourced new articles. The pervasive problem is lack of GNG sources for articles that need those. North8000 (talk) 14:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - the suggestion has already been turned down, apparently twice - no justification for bringing it up again so soon. For the rest, as per James500 and Joe. Ingratis (talk) 16:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  The last proposal said that we should PROD all articles right now that does not have a source. That's absolute lunacy. What I'm suggesting here is what the community has effectively done to new articles since 2020. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

  My bad - I should have implied "substantially similar", not "identical". On which, I'll just quote a brief comment from up above:

  "All of the objections raised to the two similar proposals in the last few months still apply. I really can't be bothered to repeat them again. We're supposed to be building an encyclopedia here. Clearing a backlog is only incidental to this. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:52, 17 March 2024 (UTC)"

  I could add to that but it would be pretty much what James500 and Joe have already said better. Ingratis (talk) 06:37, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm confused about what @CactiStaccingCrane: is proposing here. The header claims the proposal is (1) "deprecating new unsourced articles". But then he says (2) I propose that articles that [...] [do] not have any inline sources can be PRODed. Unsourced articles aren't the same as articles lacking inline citations. He then specifies (3) "Such a PROD can only be revoked after an addition of one inline, reliable, third-party source" – apparently raising the bar even higher, since articles lacking inline, reliable, third-party citations aren't the same as articles merely lacking inline citations. There must be clarity on what exactly is proposed to be changed. – Teratix ₵ 16:24, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Seems to be covered well by existing (albeit broken) processes. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 01:01, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose There are ways other than deletion that can be employed to clear the backlog. I would support a draftification process for unsourced articles to get potentially problematic content out of mainspace, but simply deleting discourages new editors from learning how to write articles and ultimately staying on the site. funplussmart (talk) 02:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment- MediaWiki Edit Check project - (has anyone else mentioned this? sorry if so) this looks as though it is about to deal with most of the issues raised here, to the liking of some if not of others. Ingratis (talk) 12:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 01:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Why? Thryduulf (talk) 01:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

    For the proposer's reason. (Sorry about where I put the comment, I was clicking the wrong reply button.) OrdinaryGiraffe (talk) 01:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose (quite strongly), because it this would prevent all translation of articles from wikipedias that accept general referencing (which, incidentally, still technically includes our own). (1) Yes, the translator ideally will get the original source, track down the information, and convert general referencing into inline referencing. But often it's impossible to track down all the sources, and we have to assume at least some good faith that the original author did use the sources they provide. A translation is still a starting-point for later editors to convert the general references to inline, and to find new references. Wikipedia articles aren't expected to be complete at first appearance. (2) We promise our readers that everything in Wikipedia can be traced back to a source. We don't promise how much leg-work it will require. Even an inline reference can require work, if it's just a book with no page number. Or a book that's really hard to track down. Sometimes an article here is quite short, and has a couple of general references that themselves are either quite short, or have a clear section obviously on the subject (e.g. references to Grove in biographies of musicians), and general referencing is straightforward and reasonably helpful to the reader. We are also not obliged to pander to hypothetically incredibly lazy readers who want to be told that the information is in the third word on the fourteenth line on page 37. There are circumstances when general referencing isn't evil, and we should trust AfC and the new page patrol to use their discretion to accept such articles even if not inline-referenced. Elemimele (talk) 21:16, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  (1): Is it that difficult to ask for one source? Our built-in translation tool also translate the references for you, so I don't see why this is so hard to do.

  (2) and (3): That's true. I think I have to reconsider this proposal for this reason. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:17, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

  @CactiStaccingCrane, while you're thinking about translation, take a look at the German-language Wikipedia. Check out articles like w:de:Sandstein (=sandstone). There are general references, but I didn't see a single inline citation.

  Even among their TFAs, which AFAICT do have inline citations, they may be sparse. Several this month (including Herrenhof (Mußbach) and Schwachhauser Heerstraße, which we don't have articles about) had less than 10 inline citations.

  I wouldn't personally want to emulate this approach, but it is something to think about as a potential source of complications. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:42, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, that's precisely what I meant. I don't condone the German Wikipedia's approach; it would be better if they used more inline citations, but unfortunately they often don't, and yet nevertheless they have useful, well-written articles on subjects we don't cover, and the articles are sourced, just not the way we do it. Elemimele (talk) 06:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose from a new page patroller, using PROD for this is WP:BITEy and the wrong process, the current remedy of WP:DRAFTIFY gives the often new editors more time to rectify sourcing issues and gives them more venues to get help. ~ A412 ^talk! 02:52, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

  @A412, PROD is the prescribed process for completely unsourced BLPs (which seems to be the majority of articles that NPP deals with). Do you feel that BLPPROD is also BITEy? Do you use draftification to get around the BLPPROD rules? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, because WP:BLP, as policy, is more applicable than the WP:BITE guideline. This doesn't mean we should expand the pattern we use to deal with unsourced BLPs (which exists for a specific reason) to the more general case. ~ A412 ^talk! 04:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. An issue for someone who's new to Wikipedia, still learning wikitext etc. is that adding a citation in the correct format isn't entirely straightforward. Even using the provided templates, you have to know which detail belongs in which field. It's another technical thing to be learnt. It's quite possible that the reason someone hasn't added any citations yet is that they don't feel confident adding them. "How do I make the references appear in the right place?", "What does name mean on the form?", "How do I know if I'm choosing the right template?", "What is a template anyway?" People don't automatically know this stuff, and they're already having to read up on how everything else works. I think a friendly offer of help with inserting them would be more useful. "Find a reference you need to add, and I'll show you what to put in the popup form." Musiconeologist (talk) 02:07, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose As seen by the recent backlog drive, many unsourced articles have sourcing available and it just takes an editor to spend 10 mins to find them. The problem is that this rule would be deleting potentially encyclopedic subjects written by editors that lack the expertise to add sources. Also, not all pages require sources. For example, most lists lacking sources do little harm to Wikipedia. What about disambiguation pages, obviously those shouldn't have sources. At what point does a list page become a disambiguation page, and vice versa? And pages with valid general references should never be deleted. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 16:51, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

  As also seen by the recent backlog drive, it's really easy to add a poor source to a shoddily started article and call it a day. It's much easier and better in the long haul if we expect the editor writing the article to establish it based on sources, rather than pretending it's equally worthwhile to write articles backwards. Remsense诉 17:06, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

• Strong support – per above, there's no reason to allow additional articles written entirely backwards—the majority of outcomes are either unsourced articles, or backfilled articles that will likely need to be largely rewritten anyway because the original author wasn't actually working from any sources. Better to do the rewriting first before the article actually goes live. Remsense诉 17:09, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• Draftifying is the solution This is basically de facto practice anyway. An article without sources is going to get draftified pronto. Then, either the author will clean it up, or it gets deleted in six months. I don't know that we need a dedicated kind of PROD, I think regular PROD could work if it isn't suitable for draftifying. But I do agree with the sentiment that we are no longer in the wild west days of Wikipedia. Sourcing exists, can be found, and should be found before a totally unsourced article gets thrown out there. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support in theory, Oppose as written. I agree that new articles with no sources should not exist. However, there must be safeguards. 1. Draftifying is better than PROD. It preserves good text, even if unsourced. 2. The PRODing editor and the deleting/draftifying editor must look for sources. We cannot have editors mass–PROD and mass–delete articles without WP:BEFORE simply because of this rule. This rule, or any like it, must explicitly require WP:BEFORE. If those conditions are met, I will support the change. Toadspike (talk) 11:04, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
• Support the encyclopedia should be built from V up. Draken Bowser (talk) 21:03, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
• Support draftification rule new articles that are completely unsourced or are built on unreliable sources should be draftified as part of the NPP process, even if the NPP reviewer finds that sources exist. The article can then be improved and published to mainspace once sources are added to it (same bar we put on AfC articles). I do not support deletion of content simply because it's unsourced. Broc (talk) 12:52, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment I wanted to correct one erroneous item which is that draftifying articles is typically an available option. Due to the backlog at NPP they are all generally past the time limit for doing that. North8000 (talk) 15:16, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

  Do we need to increase the time limit that articles can sit in draftspace … so NPP can work through their perennial backlogs? Blueboar (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

  The time limit North8000 is talking about is that articles already than 90 days shouldn't be moved to draft. That was agreed here, but I noted at the time that the specific figure of 90 days was just a starting point that can and should be revisited. – Joe (talk) 11:05, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support moving to Draft with a PROD-like tag. Honestly, if the article author can't be bothered to source the article, it can't be that important. We are no longer barn-building here. Virtually every subject of any objkective imortance, and a good many of no objective importance whatsoever, are already here. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:16, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment @CactiStaccingCrane why is there a need for an inline source? It's not a strict requirement for articles in general, nor is necessary to establish notability, and it only creates an additional burden on the editor. I see many "oppose" here because of this requirement, and I was hoping you could explain the rationale behind it. Broc (talk) 10:30, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  Because this is de facto required for all new articles on Wikipedia. Inline source helps the person who actually use the reference section have an easier time verifying facts in the article. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 12:18, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  My understanding is that they are only required for GA/FA, as well as for contentious material and direct quotes (per WP:IC and WP:MINREF). Broc (talk) 14:28, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I wasn't aware of the RfC on unsourced articles, but the consensus at that RfC is incredibly disappointing. Simply put, we should not have unsourced articles. We are supposed to be an encyclopaedia, and having unsourced articles makes us little more than a social media site or a free webhost. Just recently, two long term unsourced articles were discovered to be hoaxes: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Berks and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miami-Petersburg Department of Water and Sewers. How many long term unsourced articles are hoaxes? How much misinformation is there sitting around on the project, potentially fooling readers? I think the draftify process works relatively well for new articles, the problem is long-term unsourced articles and unfortunately the community has shown an unwillingness to take it seriously. AusLondonder (talk) 22:28, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  @AusLondonder: I am quite sure that nobody things we should have unsourced articles. Opposition centres around how to balance our goal of creating a verifiable encyclopaedia against our equally-important goals of being an encyclopaedia that anyone can edit that fixes problems instead of removing them. I don't think it's fair to conclude that, if others see that balance differently from you, they're not "taking it seriously". – Joe (talk) 10:01, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  We currently have many thousands of unsourced articles, the backlog is enormous. Having unsourced articles is a credibility problem for a start. With no sources, how can we verify we're not spreading hoaxes to our readers? AusLondonder (talk) 12:18, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  The issue is that when you speedily delete an article rather than sourcing it, tagging it, prodding it, moving it to draftspace, etc. you don't give any opportunity for the editor to improve it by adding sources, you reduce the opportunity to educate them about the desired standards for Wikipedia articles and you make it far more likely they won't develop into a productive editor who improves the encyclopaedia. Short term, arguable improvements should never come at the expense of long term definite improvements. Especially as this proposal would speedy delete articles that have sources which just happen not to be inline. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose creating PROD PLUS. If someone makes a new stub and drops in a ==References== section, I'm not too worried that the references aren't "inline" and require some syntax formatting to not have it summarily deleted. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux what about completely unsourced pages instead? Broc (talk) 06:11, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Broc "pages" no (e.g. I don't think Bear (disambiguation) should qualify). Traditional articles, maybe. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: If this is going to be a new policy, then it must apply to all articles. Old articles cannot be grandfathered in.--2601:345:0:52A0:E165:4C72:14FB:3B9A (talk) 23:53, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per Pppery and Sdkb's criticisms of a grandfather clause. These articles with the unreferenced tag are avoiding draftification in the NPP process by satisfying the relevant notability criteria, so it stands to reason that reliable sources can be found for other editors to create inline citations, even if it will be a herculean task for all 95K articles that currently have the tag. BluePenguin18 🐧 ( 💬 ) 08:14, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose: This proposal risks discouraging new contributors by setting overly stringent barriers to entry. Instead of penalising new, unsourced articles, we should guide and educate new editors on the importance of sourcing. Let's not make participation in Wikipedia more daunting than it already is. FailedMusician (talk) 12:50, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
• Comment This proposal also fails to take into account pages that don't require sources, such as lists of lists - see for example Lists of members of the National Assembly (South Korea) converted from a redirect today. Thryduulf (talk) 23:35, 14 April 2024 (UTC)