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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for 10 days.

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Navboxes to assist with dispute resolution (particularly over content policy)

A few recurring problems I continue to have and observe (despite being an editor for years at this point) are:

1. I still don't know what all of the current WP:P&G policies and guidelines even are, much less all of the related WP:SUPPLEMENTAL pages associated with them;
2. Editors in talk page discussions not invoking policies or guidelines to resolve disputes (particularly over content) and where fewer editors participate in the discussions than would really be necessary to achieve consensus per WP:CON;
3. Editors invoking policies or guidelines without citing what the policy actually says or what the text of the policy suggests its larger principle is (or what a WP:SUPPLEMENTAL page says it is);
4. Policies, guidelines, and supplemental pages are not always clearly consistent with each other per WP:POLCON, and WP:IARMEANS claims that policy and guideline pages sometimes actually lag the establish practice despite the claim of WP: NOTBURO that written policies reflect already-existing community consensus.

I believe that having a group of well-designed navboxes with a policy or guideline (or a group of policies and guidelines) as their subject with all related information, how-to, and supplemental pages and any related administration, noticeboards, and request pages could address these concerns because it occurs to me that the reason editors ever become aware of articles or notice issues with them is when they are included in navigation templates. I have not seen any existing navigation templates that do what I am envisioning.

I previously proposed a Content Policy Committee to address some of these same concerns without being fully knowledgeable about existing community self-governance and administrative processes (and still remain unfamiliar with them). Editors in the previous discussion suggested coming up with a way to increase use of noticeboards instead of a broad committee. I propose this here first because policy, guidelines, and supplemental pages per WP:PGCHANGE. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 17:18, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

While not quite what you are proposing, you might be interested in the newly restarted effort at Wikipedia:WikiProject Policy and Guidelines to attempt to simplify and consolidate policies and guidelines. Donald Albury 17:47, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know how effective/active WikiProjects are in general or whether that one will end up being a worthwhile endeavor. I'm generally discouraged by the project's lack of coordination in trying to address issues editors recognize as problems and am doubtful that my participation will improve things. I make the proposal I suggested above precisely because it would not require an active coordinated effort. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:00, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

P&Gs don't define what we do anyway, so this project seems doomed to failure from the start. I have been editing Wikipedia for nearly 20 years now, and I very rarely consult P&G pages. I simply know a few basic principles and act on them. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:57, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

P&Gs don't define what we do anyway, so this project seems doomed to failure from the start. Per WP:P&G, "Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practices, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia." Per WP:CON, "Consensus is Wikipedia's fundamental method of decision-making", but WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS states that "When agreement cannot be reached through editing alone, the consensus-forming process becomes more explicit: editors open a section on the associated talk page and try to work out the dispute through discussion, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense" and WP:DETCON states "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy." While WP:NOTBURO establish that policies and guidelines are not the purpose of the community, WP:P&G do appear to define what the community does by documenting and clarifying its best practices, principles, and exist for dispute resolution and decision-making purposes. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:14, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

It's the other way around. The community's views and actions define the policies and guidelines; the policies and guidelines are merely imperfect attempts to describe the community's views and actions for the convenience of newbies, outsiders, editors in disputes, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:46, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

It's the other way around. The community's views and actions define the policies and guidelines; the policies and guidelines are merely imperfect attempts to describe the community's views and actions for the convenience of newbies, outsiders, editors in disputes, etc. Not sure if it uses a descriptive linguistics approach to usage, but the New Oxford American Dictionary defines the word define as "state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of" and lists describe as a synonym. If it does, then no, the policies and guidelines define the community's views and actions. What they don't do is prescribe them, which is defined as "state authoritatively or as a rule that (an action or procedure) should be carried out". -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:06, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

The relevant definition of define is "to determine or identify the essential qualities or meaning of". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, and this is why P&G are, in principle, supposed to define best practices and practices, as well as exist to resolve conflicts. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:28, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

No, this is why the community's actions are supposed to define the policy, and why the P&G pages are supposed to describe what the community's policy is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

If define means to "state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of", then the community's actions cannot define anything except when the community's action is writing something down. While the community may define its P&Gs as a description of its norms because the community's actions "make up or establish the character of" its norms and thus its P&Gs, P&G pages still define them P&Gs. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:39, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Note there are existing navboxes – see the bottom of Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, for example. The reality, though, is that no one's going to read all of the guidance before contributing, and that improved organization won't fix the inconsistencies that arise out of the community's piecemeal approach of documenting community best practice. For better or worse, the difficulties of making all decisions in large, unmoderated discussions make it really hard to complete tasks that need extended focus and prolonged discussion of details. I agree with Phil Bridger, though, that most editors will do fine with understanding a few basic principles, acting collaboratively as needed, and looking up guidance as required. isaacl (talk) 22:00, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I was aware of the key P&G template before I made this proposal, and that WP:P&G notes that editors don't need to read every policy before beginning editing and only need the five pillars to get started. What I'm proposing isn't for that. It's for providing a means for editors who are engaged in talk page discussions to be able to more easily find their way from policies and guidelines to supplemental pages, noticeboards, departments, and other centralized discussions since even most active editors don't participate in them. Editors often don't cite policies, guidelines, or supplemental pages in talk page discussions, and the supplemental pages, which aren't always linked to the P&G they are intended to supplement, are supposed to exist to aid interpretation of P&G. If the policies, guidelines, and supplemental pages are connected to the centralized discussion pages in this way, I would argue that it would encourage greater reconciliation of discrepancies because the policies, guidelines, and supplemental pages would be listed right at the top of the centralized discussion pages (like the Noticeboards template at the NPOV noticeboard). -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I read your initial post. For better or worse, experience to-date on English Wikipedia hasn't shown that the ample number of existing directories of information that are provided in many places, including welcoming messages on user talk pages, has been able to address the fundamental underlying issues that lead to inconsistencies in documented best practice. isaacl (talk) 15:50, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

experience to-date on English Wikipedia hasn't shown that the ample number of existing directories of information that are provided in many places, including welcoming messages on user talk pages, has been able to address the fundamental underlying issues that lead to inconsistencies in documented best practice This an assertion; what evidence do you have that documents this? My observation is that when pages are included in navigation templates, they tend to be more frequently edited in a such a way that they are improved and far more so than when pages are only included in categories (since newer and less active editors often don't realize that categories even exist). Instead, I would argue that the reason why navigation templates are less effective than they could be is due to the limited number of recommended best practices and explicit restrictions on their use (which leads to poor and unstructured construction and the creation of competing templates), as well as the lower prominence they are given than is needed for them to perform this function and the lack of inclusion on specific project pages (like noticeboards) where they would be more likely to attract greater attention. Given the limited number of editors on Wikipedia and level of engagement by editors, I'd argue that enhanced improved navigability of Wikipedia is a prerequisite to greater coordination and improvement of any issue within the project. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:12, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

The inconsistencies exist to a sufficient extent that you're seeking a way to reduce them. The many existing directories of information haven't stopped them from occurring. The problem isn't noticing inconsistencies, but that it's much easier to write new guidance than to try to gain consensus to modify existing guidance. The portion of the English Wikipedia community who like to discuss these matters is conservative about making changes to guidance, and it's really hard to get enough people to engage long enough to establish a consensus. isaacl (talk) 02:38, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

The problem isn't noticing inconsistencies, but that it's much easier to write new guidance than to try to gain consensus to modify existing guidance. I thought all guidance, whether in policies and guidelines or supplemental pages, required consensus to establish, and that policies and guidelines document practice rather than prescribe (which would be odd if we write guidance). More likely, the reason the WP:P&G imperfectly describing describe community practices and norms is because the community does not actually have any because it's decision-making and discussions have been so decentralized historically—which the navigation templates could be used to help correct.

The portion of the English Wikipedia community who like to discuss these matters is conservative about making changes to guidance "Conservative" is an overly charitable way of describing this behavior. I believe ownership is a more accurate word since no matter what changes are ever proposed such editors are always opposed and will always think up a reason to oppose any changes. And no, my experience has not been to confuse ownership with stewardship. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:08, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Participants in discussions on English Wikipedia are self-selected and vary a lot due to many factors, leading to inconsistencies. Plus consensus isn't required for anyone to write a page that initially isn't labelled. I don't agree that adding more directories of guidance will change English Wikipedia's decision-making traditions. The community has to want to change to an approach that is less prone to deadlocking. So far, those who like to discuss these matters place a higher priority on ensuring everyone gets to weigh in on their own schedule. isaacl (talk) 16:36, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Everything on a wiki requires a basic level of consensus, because without that, it'll get reverted. But much of that, on low-traffic pages, is at the level of benign neglect rather than enthusiastic support.

@CommonKnowledgeCreator, I wonder if you could link to a few proposals that you've been unsuccessful with. Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard, and sometimes there's a pattern to rejections that can be addressed (e.g., proposals in principle tend not to get as much support as proposals with a recent, solid example). Feel free to drop some links on my talk page, if you don't want to talk about it here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

A basic consensus that the page shouldn't be deleted, sure, but not a basic consensus of support. There are many essays providing guidance that don't have consensus support. When someone has a slightly different view of a current guidance page but can't garner consensus support for a change, some times they'll write their own variation to capture their opinion. Over time, it may gain support as an alternate approach to the primary guidance page, when the specific situation warrants it. Multiply that many times, and the current ecosystem of many overlapping guidance pages is the result. isaacl (talk) 22:26, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Regardless, considering the expressed support of at least one member of the reactivated P&G WikiProject, I still believe that it would be preferable to create the navigation templates. Per my reply to Moxy below, the templates would not be very large and not take up much space on the noticeboards and policy pages themselves. If they grow larger, they could always be collapsed. More importantly, if they grow in size, I would hope that instead would encourage the editors who more regularly participate in the noticeboard discussions to consider participating in the WikiProject to help consolidate the policy, guideline, and supplemental pages per WP:CREEP. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

@CommonKnowledgeCreator, are you the kind of person who likes to read the directions first, rather than plunging in and possibly making mistakes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

IRL, I like reading directions for appliances, other machines and gadgets, when assembling furniture, and figuring out how my car works, but that's never how I've ever approached editing Wikipedia. I usually just proceed without much concern for making mistakes because my intent is not to deceive or harm. If something isn't exactly done exactly according something like MOS and it sufficiently bothers someone else, I usually assume that they'll fix it. However, in my experience, many editors are often object to my contributions invoking one of a countless number of other policies, guidelines, and supplements, so I take the time to read them so as to create content and to participate in ways that conforms to the community's supposed norms. After I take the time to read them, I more often than not come to the conclusion that they have objected to my contribution following an overbroad interpretation of the policy or guideline (which are also often vague and contradictory) and that they are not following the community's procedural or behavioral norms, but nonetheless their interpretation is always the one that prevails since other editors that chime in typically just pile on. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:34, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

So just as a way of managing your expectations, I strongly suspect that most editors never read the directions for anything, and their understanding of policies and guidelines was acquired through a process very similar to the children's telephone game plus some guesses based on the WP:UPPERCASE shortcuts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

their understanding of policies and guidelines was acquired through a process very similar to the children's telephone game plus some guesses based on the WP:UPPERCASE shortcuts I have no doubt that this is correct, and it shows why the community's norm of unstructured talk page discussions is dysfunctional and also needs to be reformed. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 17:10, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

This does seem like a very helpful idea! We have right now a pretty big {{Wikipedia policies and guidelines}} template that is organized into broad categories, but it misses all the important supplemental materials, and having more specialized navigation templates putting them in context could be much more helpful. Although it is a pretty big project, do you have a topic in mind for a first prototype navbox to start with? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

I didn't, but like I've suggested, my first thought was to start with P&G that have noticeboards (e.g. WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:NOR) and then identify the other supplemental pages that are associated with those individual policies and try to build a navigation template that includes them all with a link to the noticeboard in an above line. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:27, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Everything is organized Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia..... This would be impossible to put all in it navigation template. Moxy🍁 20:49, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

No indefinite article or plural noun used. If the former was intended, your comment would be a mischaracterization of what has been proposed. If the latter was intended, I would argue that it would not be an issue given the number of project pages included in Category:Wikipedia policies (65), in the subcategories included in Category:Wikipedia guidelines (229), in Category:Wikipedia information pages (365), in Category:Wikipedia how-to (419), and in Category:Wikipedia supplemental pages (142). The ratio amounts to approximately 3.15 information, how-to, and supplemental pages for every 1 policy and guideline, and 17.77 guidelines, and information, how-to, and supplemental pages for every 1 policy. The result would not be particularly large navigation templates. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:51, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you're messing up what the community considers protocols. Put it simply essays are not part of the community norms. They are a side notes...yes a few essays are part of the Wikipedia gestalt but overall essays are just advice or opinions of a few editors. Essays should not be presented as the norm or on the same level as protocols Wikipedia:Don't cite essays or proposals as if they were policy Moxy🍁 17:46, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you're messing up what the community considers protocols. ... Essays should not be presented as the norm or on the same level as protocols WP:SUPPLEMENTAL (which is a project content guideline), explicitly says that the purpose of explanatory essays exist is to supplement or clarify P&G along with information pages and how-to pages, and that they have this designation due to having wide acceptance to have the supplemental banner and be linked from a policy or guideline page. WP:NOTPOLICY is itself an essay rather than a policy or guideline, and not a WP:SUPPLEMENTAL explanatory essay (so it must not have wide acceptance within the community per WP:ESSAYPAGES). So, as far as the proposed linking in navigation templates is concerned, it is unclear per P&G why this would be a problem because they are not being presented as being equivalent and only as supplements to the specific P&G that the community has established that they are supplements for (per a community guideline). -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:03, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Another question, CommonKnowledgeCreator. Are you Larry Sanger in disguise? Phil Bridger (talk) 20:29, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Even if I was, what makes you think I would acknowledge it? :) -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:50, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I am the one that wrote the supplemental template information and the essay information page....I'm wondering if it's not as clear as I thought it would be. What can we say to make it clear that it's simply still an essay. Moxy🍁 01:44, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

WP:SUPPLEMENTAL is explicit that project pages covered by its recommendations are not policies and guidelines, and that information pages, how-to pages, and supplemental pages have a "limited status" on Wikipedia. However, if there is a community consensus that certain advice pages are truly a supplement to P&Gs (in that they provide clarify the interpretation of P&Gs such that they are permitted to linked from the P&G pages) and that other advice pages are not, then I'd argue that such a consensus establishes that WP:SUPPLEMENTAL pages do have a different status than WP:ESSAYPAGES essays. This is not a matter of semantics but set theory, since WP:SUPPLEMENTAL establishes that such pages have a property that distinguishes them from the set of project pages covered by WP:ESSAYPAGES. If WP:SUPPLEMENTAL pages truly are no different than essays in general, then WP:PRJ should not make a distinction between them altogether because the very existence of the category itself with a distinguishing property for included pages effectively designates them differently. But clearly, there must be a consensus in favor of the distinction because otherwise the separate sections would not have been included on a P&G WP:GUIDELINES WP:GUIDES page in the first place per WP:NOTBURO and WP:CONLEVEL. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:37, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a pure logical construct. At best, it operates by a very fuzzy logic. P&Gs (and what is considered a P or G) are subject to constant small adjustments while tending to stay within certain channels, and as long as Wikipedia is a collaborative project, largely driven from the bottom up, there is, IMHO, no way to force a strict consistency on anything. Donald Albury 17:47, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

I disagree. If the community actually wanted greater consistency, I'm sure it could be imposed by technical changes to the site. The problem is that some of the community must prefer the disorganization, dysfunction, and normlessness and the rest is willing to tolerate it. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:23, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're right: The community actually does prefer leaving room for editors to use their best judgment instead of encouraging mindless rule-following. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

The community actually does prefer leaving room for editors to use their best judgment instead of encouraging mindless rule-following Yes, and stupidly. It's It leaves so much the room that that the project requires things like new page patrols and various other cleanup projects precisely because the community's supposed rules and norms are not rules or norms at all. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Did you just call your fellow Wikipedians "stupid"? I doubt that will help you convince us to make the changes you want. Donald Albury 18:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Did you just call your fellow Wikipedians "stupid"? Making decisions that have the effect of creating unnecessary work is stupid. It wastes time that could be devoted to improving other parts of the project. If there simply was a rule and the technical means to guarantee that it was enforced, then there would be actual norms. I doubt that will help you convince us to make the changes you want. I doubt anything I say will persuade anyone here to make changes that I would prefer because the supposed stewardship behavior longtime editors claim to engage in is actually ownership behavior. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:00, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

What change do you propose to make NPP no longer needed? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't have a specific change in mind because I'm not familiar with the statistics of new article creation and because I don't have the knowledge of computer programming to design the changes to the site (despite having taken an introductory college course in computer programming).

However, at a minimum, if an article does not cite any sources, why is it allowed to be added to Wikipedia at all? This is permissible under Wikipedia's current structure despite the requirements of WP:V and recommendations of WP:N, and I have seen more than one older article that does not cite sources. It shouldn't be that hard to design a bot or some feature of Wikipedia to prevent articles from being added to the site and to remove existing articles that cite no sources. Similarly, I've encountered older articles that cite only one source, that may not be more than 150 words (per WP:SIZERULE), and are not categorized as stubs.

As for the other requirements of WP:N, the subject-specific notability guidelines, and other P&G, I believe that evaluating whether an article's content satisfies the standards and best practices of the site still requires a some human determination and is not something that can be entirely turned over to a bots or AI programs. We could require that only editors with some level of experience or knowledge of P&G be allowed to create articles (like through WP:AFC), but I don't believe we do. Also, there is simply so much P&G-inconsistent content in existing articles that it probably leads to newer and less experienced editors to create similar content—which is why I've haven't bothered to go back to NPP despite being asked to help out and was willing to participate.

There's just too few of us, and Wikipedia as a project is larger than we can manage with such open-ended norms. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:23, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Even if implemented, none of what you mention would be able to eliminate NPP.

if an article does not cite anysources, why is it allowed to be added to Wikipedia at all?

1. It may be a (malformatted) disambiguation page.
2. Certain editors may wish to adopt an article and add sources they found to it. See also WP:HEYMANN.

Also, this is the exact subject of Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Delete unreferenced articles.

and are not categorized as stubs.

Well, go ahead and mark them.

We could require that only editors with some level of experience or knowledge of P&G be allowed to create articles

That is pretty much what we have with the autoconfirned restriction. Anything beyond would probably be a net negative, There's statistics à la Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Prohibit unregistered users from editing showing that most content creation is done by the 99%—editors who have not racked up hundreds of edits. I expect this to especially apply in the case of articles on recent events.

Wikipedia as a project is larger than we can manage with such open-ended norms

Aren't we managing right now? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:54, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Even if implemented, none of what you mention would be able to eliminate NPP. Perhaps you glided past the first sentence of my comment: "I don't have a specific change in mind because I'm not familiar with the statistics of new article creation and because I don't have the knowledge of computer programming to design the changes to the site". This discussion isn't about how to eliminate NPP; it's about whether the navigation templates as proposed should be created. I only cited it as an example of why Wikipedia’s lack of actual norms creates unnecessary cleanup, but your focus on this further illustrates my point about how Wikipedia does not actually have norms since it is tangential per WP:TALKOFFTOPIC (along with your referencing WP:HEYMANN – an essay rather than a policy or guideline per WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS and WP:DETCON).

Aren't we managing right now? No, we are not managing now and NPP is a great example of why. As the WP:NPP page says, there is a rapidly growing backlog of nearly 10,000 articles that need to be reviewed and it shows why the lack of actual norms creates and reinforces problems. Unless the site's technical aspects are changed to slow down article creation and the community's norms encourage greater conformity with the P&Gs that supposedly reflect norms and consensus, it's not worth participating in something like NPP because the problems will continue to pile up faster than they can be addressed. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:44, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

All I know is that the articles I have created (8 in the last 6 months) typically have been reviewed within a couple of days of moving them to main space. Are there multiple queues? Donald Albury 19:34, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

A navbox that includes links as you suggest to guidelines, howtos and essays pertaining to a particular policy or policy area doesn't sound like a bad idea. I am not convinced that such a series of navboxes will assist with dispute resolution though. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:49, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Why are you skeptical that it will help with dispute resolution? I think anything that fosters greater centralized discussion will do so. It’ll be easier for editors to navigate across the centralized discussion pages and the pages for their related policies, guidelines, and supplements. Part of the reason why I have difficulty doing this is because I don’t know what all of them are and how to find them. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 15:49, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Because I don't think that most disputes arise out of an absence of opportunity to read the pertinent policies and guidelines, etc. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. And I think that there are already a fair few quite clearly signposted paths to the well. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, I'm not saying that disputes arise because of the absence of familiarity with P&G, and I am not proposing the navigation templates to prevent disputes. I proposed the navigation templates to make it easier to find the relevant policies, guidelines, supplements, and centralized discussion pages for resolving disputes. You may be aware of these navigational aids that enable editors to seamlessly peruse all of the project pages, but I still remain lost in this website's bureaucracy after years of using site. Whatever signposted paths to which you refer, they're too scattered for me and I suspect I am not alone. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:44, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

CKC, I think that you should make an example of what you'd like to see. Do you know how to make a WP:NAVBOX yourself, or are you here because you need someone else to make it for you? Do you have a sample topic in mind? Do you know what pages should be linked in your sample?

For example, Template:Wikipedia referencing is a navbox that lists ref-related pages that might be useful for resolving disputes. What's in that navbox that you don't want, and what's missing from it that you do want? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:09, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Do you know how to make a WP:NAVBOX yourself, or are you here because you need someone else to make it for you? I know how to create navigation templates and have done so many times. Again, I made this proposal here first because, as WP:PGCHANGE says, "policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they reflect the community's view and do not accidentally introduce confusion."

CKC, I think that you should make an example of what you'd like to see. ... Do you have a sample topic in mind? Do you know what pages should be linked in your sample? I have created a sandbox for myself with two examples. The examples involve the WP:NPOV and WP:NOR policies. They are incomplete because many of the information pages, how-to pages, and explanatory essays don't always identify what P&Gs for which they are supplements.

For example, Template:Wikipedia referencing is a navbox that lists ref-related pages that might be useful for resolving disputes. What's in that navbox that you don't want, and what's missing from it that you do want? Per WP:NAVBOX, {{Wikipedia referencing}} appears to me to be overly busy, bloated, and to suffer from some of the disadvantages of navigation templates (arguably, WP:NAVBOX Disadvantages List Items #3, #4, and #6). It includes links to categories and templates and does not include links to centralized discussion pages. Personally, I don't find that to be particularly intuitive per WP:P&G and WP:NOTBURO. If all editors need are the five pillars to start editing and P&G exist primarily to provide descriptions of how the community understands and follows the five pillars in practice to clarify them, resolve disputes about them, and otherwise structure community decision-making necessary for building the encyclopedia, then navigation templates for browsing project namespace should be built around one specific policy, be limited in size and overlap as minimally as possible, and direct editors to centralized discussion pages. Perhaps policy-specific templates and project pages should be included, but the former need to be identified as templates and the other categories of project namespace they fall into by the navigation template. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:56, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Well... it seems to me that you're proposing making overly busy, bloated navboxes yourself. Also, by focusing on navboxes, you're proposing to create something two-thirds of our readers and some of our editors won't be able to see, since navboxes are invisible on the mobile site.

Looking at your NPOV navbox, I think you're missing at least the following:

• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not censored
• Guidelines that are meant to promote NPOV, such as Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, Wikipedia:No disclaimers, and Wikipedia:Autobiography
• Wikipedia:Tendentious editing#Righting great wrongs
• multiple ordinary essays in Category:Wikipedia essays about neutrality, particularly including Wikipedia:Criticism, Wikipedia:Fancruft, Wikipedia:Writing for the opponent, Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing, Wikipedia:Don't "teach the controversy", all of which are generally supported by the community.

There are others you might want, e.g., Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/2.

I suspect that you are putting too much trust in the label at the top of the page.

Part of the problem with make "a list" is that the policies and guidelines are a multi-dimensional network instead of a linear collection. Another problem is that Wikipedia:The rules are principles, so producing a complete and accurate list ("If you follow all these rules, you'll always be correct") is not actually possible by design. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Well... it seems to me that you're proposing making overly busy, bloated navboxes yourself. Not really. {{Wikipedia referencing}} that you cited has 54 project page links and 7 external links, and thus 61 links in total. Without having counted, the templates included in {{Wikipedia editor navigation}} appear to have as many and often more. In comparison, the NPOV and NOR templates included at my sandbox currently have 36 and 26 project page links respectively. However, if the SUPPLEMENTAL talk pages that are currently included were removed, the link counts would fall to 24 and 16 total links respectively, while if all the related-P&G page links that are currently included were removed along with the SUPPLEMENTAL talk pages, they would fall to 14 and 11 total links respectively.

Looking at your NPOV navbox, I think you're missing at least the following: [WP:NOTCENSORED]; Guidelines that are meant to promote NPOV… multiple ordinary essays… which are generally supported by the community. If the P&G pages you suggest are missing from my NPOV sandbox template were included (while the talk pages links were removed), the template would still have fewer than half the links included in {{Wikipedia referencing}}. However, WP:NOTCENSORED, WP:DISCLAIM, and WP:AUTOBIO are not linked on the NPOV page–which is why I didn't include them and was unclear to me that they should be included and still is per WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE per the WP:P&G Content section on linking and MOS:UNDERLINK.

The header for WP:TENDENTIOUS indicates that it is a supplement for WP:DE, not NPOV. As for the specific WP:GUIDES and WP:ESSAYPAGES essays that you claim are have the support of community consensus, the only links I see to them in the NPOV article are in the See also section. Considering that they do not have SUPPLEMENTAL headers, it is not clear to me that they have had the necessary "authority" deferred to them per the Content section of WP:P&G and MOS:SEEALSO since links included in See also sections are considered relevant but tangential per MOS:SEEALSO.

If links to those essays were included in the body of the article, especially following WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE, then I would have included them following WP:STRUCTURE, MOS:UNDERLINK and WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE. Alternatively, as User:Aaron Liu noted that the {{Supplement}} page suggests that a local consensus per WP:CONLEVEL at a WP:P&G talk page is needed for the tag to be applied, if you can point to a discussion at the NPOV talk page that established the essays should be included in the See also section per the Content section of WP:P&G, then that would be grounds for including them but otherwise not. Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/2 is not a WP:P&G or WP:SUPPLEMENTAL page.

Part of the problem with make "a list" is that the policies and guidelines are a multi-dimensional network instead of a linear collection. Another problem is that [WP:RAP], so producing a complete and accurate list ("If you follow all these rules, you'll always be correct") is not actually possible by design. I'm not saying this is a simple or straightforward exercise, but the navigation templates being proposed are not an attempt to create a linear collections of project pages. Rather, the navigation templates are being proposed to make it is easier for editors contributing to discussions to more easily identify project pages that have already been explicitly accepted by community consensus as supplements to specific policies. If including related WP:POLICIES policy P&G pages in the proposed templates would cause them to bloat due to multi-dimensionality (or as I would more simply suggest calling it, "scattering" arguably redundant content forking), then they can be excluded.

Also, by focusing on navboxes, you're proposing to create something two-thirds of our readers and some of our editors won't be able to see, since navboxes are invisible on the mobile site. What difference does this make? If most editors don't read P&Gs before contributing (as multiple editors in this thread have suggested), why would most non-editing readers read them either? Does the Pageview statistics tool show that project pages in general have higher page views than articles do? I doubt it, and the tool does not differentiate between editors and non-editing readers when selecting "User" in its "Agent" menu.

However, even if most non-editing readers read project pages to a greater degree than editors do, per WP:DETAIL, most readers do not need a level of detail about a topic that warrants SUMMARYHATNOTE sub-articles and many readers don't even read past lead sections, so it is not clear that non-editing readers need linking for browsing project pages. Even more importantly, only a minority of active editors even contribute to community discussions. Instead of designing the layout and features of P&G and supplements for non-editing readers and active editors who do not even use them, the navigation templates being proposed here are to help the high-volume editors who do contribute to discussions by providing easier navigation of related P&G and supplements.

WhatamIdoing, the arguments you are presenting to oppose this proposal are getting less and less persuasive. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 15:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

The first sentence, and the definition of, Wikipedia:Tendentious editing say that it's about NPOV. There's a section on Wikipedia:Tendentious editing#Assigning undue importance to a single aspect of a subject. How could that page not be about NPOV? I think you have put too much faith in the formal structures.

I doubt that anybody is going to stop you from making these navboxes. I also doubt that few people beyond yourself will find them to be improvements over the existing ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

How could that page not be about NPOV? I think you have put too much faith in the formal structures. ... I doubt that anybody is going to stop you from making these navboxes. Again, I'm not saying this is a simple or straightforward exercise, but if other editors (like yourself) really oppose their addition to the P&G pages, they will remove them. It's why I opted to proposed them at a centralized discussion page first. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you'd have better success if you took it one page at a time, and said something like "I notice the navbox here contains X, Y, and Z, which I'd like to remove. And I'd like to add A, B, and C, which I think are relevant." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think the problems are too systemic for that, and editors are not willing to make those changes across-the-board here, then why would they be willing to do it piecemeal? -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:05, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Because success breeds success. Because people are less fearful of a small change than of a large one. Because if you can have one experiment succeed, people will trust you to try something bigger in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I doubt it. I suspect that if editors oppose a change, they would oppose it whether it is proposed piecemeal or a systematic change. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:37, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I've had more success with stepwise changes than with sudden changes. Seeing a 'demo' helps a lot of people understand what's intended. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:05, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

As an aside, it occurs to me now that part of the reason for why the more than 1,200 P&G and SUPPLEMENTAL project pages may contradict each other must owe to them each having their own talk pages rather than centralized discussion pages for discrete groups of related P&G and SUPPLEMENTAL pages. This probably leads to proposed changes to any one not being discussed in the context of all related project pages. As such, if I can persuade the rest of the community of this proposal, I think I'd also propose replacing such talk pages with such centralized discussion pages. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:27, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Probably not. For one thing, the pages don't contradict themselves as much as might be supposed. Secondly, many of the guidelines are WP:Naming conventions, which don't tend to overlap (and therefore can't contradict), and making sensible choices about them requires subject-matter expertise rather than coordination across other pages. There's no point in redirecting Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Greek) to a central page, because you need people who can read Greek more than you need people who care about article titles as a general concept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Probably not. For one thing, the pages don't contradict themselves as much as might be supposed. Whether or not they do is irrelevant. The Content section of WP:P&G and WP:POLCON require that P&G and their supplements not contradict each other and also not be redundant. It would be easier to ensure this if all proposed changes were approved made through a centralized discussion. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:06, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

WP:PGCONFLICT says that when there's a conflict, we should fix it. And I mean "just" fix it, not "set up elaborate rules and spend enormous amounts of time trying to prevent it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I am not proposing that we "set up elaborate rules" to prevent inconsistencies, but rather consolidated centralized discussions about changes to P&Gs and their supplements to encourage a greater number of editors to participate in discussions over the changes. It would give the changes greater consensus–which is what WP:PGCHANGE requires when any changes to a P&G are made rather than "just" fix[ing] it. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 15:33, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

WP:NOTBURO. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

All NOTBURO, WP:5P5, WP:IAR, and WP:IARMEANS clearly establish is that Wikipedia dispute resolution is not conducted following an interpretation of P&Gs analogous to strict constructionism or textualism in favor of the spirit of the law, but that P&Gs should normally be followed and only explicitly ignored after careful consideration of not just their principles but also the practical consequences that the exceptions being made will have for the project (which is more analogous to legal pragmatism). This is especially true when an editor wishes to make changes to P&G pages themselves, because those changes could unintentionally introduce confusion about what Wikipedia's norms actually are, but since P&Gs may be edited by anyone, it is probably why Wikipedia became a rule-making exercise rather than an encyclopedia-making exercise. This is why I argue that centralized discussion for changes to P&Gs are preferable to having a large number of talk pages. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't see the connection between "careful consideration" in applying a guideline (e.g., the MOS says to do this, but because of this weird situation in this article, it'd be better to do this slightly different thing...) and merging together all 98 WT:MOS pages into a single busy page ("centralized discussion for changes to P&Gs"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't see the connection between "careful consideration" in applying a guideline... and merging together all 98 WT:MOS pages into a single busy page WP:PGBOLD permits editors to boldly edit P&G pages, but PGCHANGE and WP:TALKFIRST strongly recommend not doing so. Merging the talk pages into a single centralized discussion page would lead to greater discussion of changes to P&G pages collectively to reduce inconsistencies and consensus for changes. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:25, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Or not. Merging 98 talk pages together could result in confusion ("What are you talking about?!" "Oh, sorry, I thought I was on the talk page for MOS:ABCXYZ, not on a centralized page"), a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and people refusing to discuss changes because the talk page is too busy.

Also, your faith in discussion as a way to prevent inconsistencies is touching. I assume you're aware that WP:ONUS and one sentence in WP:NOCON contradict each other. That one sentence was discussed extensively, the contradiction was noted at the time on the talk page for both policies, and the change was still made ...and now, years later, I still haven't been able to resolve the contradiction. "More discussion" is not what's needed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:16, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Merging 98 talk pages together could result in confusion ("What are you talking about?!" "Oh, sorry, I thought I was on the talk page for MOS:ABCXYZ, not on a centralized page"), a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and people refusing to discuss changes because the talk page is too busy. These assertions seem to me to be speculative. Do you have evidence that editors use noticeboards less than talk pages because the pages appear to be too busy? It would occur to me instead that the reason don't use them is because even editors who have used the site for years (like myself) don't understand Wikipedia's self-governance structures and don't think to use them.

Also, your faith in discussion as a way to prevent inconsistencies is touching. I assume you're aware that WP:ONUS and one sentence in WP:NOCON contradict each other. Given how many dishonest and impolite comments that I've received over the years (along with other editors simply just talking past the comments I make), I actually don't have much faith in discussion but that's supposed to be the decision-making process in general for disputed content and P&G. I've reviewed WP:ONUS and WP:NOCON; it's unclear to me that there is a contradiction. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:11, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Noticeboards aren't a relevant comparison, because a noticeboard is a place you go to in the hope that someone else will solve your problem (e.g., to WP:ANI in the hope that an admin will block your opponent in a dispute). A MoS talk page, on the other hand, is a page that you go to because you want to change something in the MoS. It's less transactional.
• ONUS says that editors are allowed to remove long-standing content unless there is an active consensus to keep it in (consensus to keep=keep; consensus to remove=remove; no consensus=remove). NOCON says that long-standing content is kept unless there is an active consensus to remove it (consensus to keep=keep; consensus to remove=remove; no consensus=keep). When there is no consensus, and "I" want to keep it, then I can cite NOCON as a policy-based justification for insisting that it be kept; under identical circumstances except that "I" want to remove it, then I cite ONUS as a policy-based justification for insisting that it be removed.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Again, this is off-topic. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

Not really. You proposed a change. Part of your rationale for the change is your belief that "Wikipedia as a project is larger than we can manage with such open-ended norms". Editors are attempting to explore whether your rationale for the proposed change is valid.

BTW, DETCON (WP:Consensus#Determining consensus) says that disputes should be settled according to the quality of the argument. NB that "the quality of the argument" isn't measured by whether the WP:UPPERCASE leads to a page that has a {{policy}} tag at the top of it. Two practical and believable examples of how an article that is initially unref'd can be turned into a valid contribution to the encyclopedia are better than an unsupported assertion that waves at a policy page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:06, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of what the WP:DETCON says since I've taken the time to read it before citing it. I'm not asserting that the quality of an argument is measured by the simple citation of a policy, but that it is a requirement that a policy be cited in talk page discussions because that is what WP:DETCON and WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS actually say. This is because I believe it is not possible to understand the spirit of a rule without at least reviewing its letter because it is unclear how someone could even attempt to articulate the larger principle otherwise. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:04, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Citing a policy in talk page discussions is not a requirement, and that is not what the Consensus policy says. The policy says try to work out the dispute through discussion, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense. It is 100% acceptable for editors to work out a dispute using exclusively "common sense". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Fascinating. I didn't realize there were people in this world who believed that "and" and "or" meant the same thing. If the policy said "editors... try to work out the dispute through discussion, using reasons based in policy, sources, or common sense" then you would be correct, but because it says "policy, sources, and common sense", "policy" is a necessary rather than a sufficient condition for editors trying resolve a dispute. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

By your logic, sources and common sense are both also necessary conditions for resolving all disputes. But we all know that some disputes are unrelated to sources, and that common sense is often completely absent.

If you need a "policy" reference, then I suggest this one: WP:NOTLAW says "Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policies" – such as by declaring that "and" means no dispute whatsoever can be solved without explicit reference to policy – and that "Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures" – such as insisting that "policy" is necessary even if there is no policy disagreement in a given dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:07, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of what WP:NOTLAW says. I cited it before in this thread. However, P&G and their supplements appear to provide guidance for just about every aspect of the site, so I think what WP:NOCOMMON suggests that editors are better off citing P&G rather than just common sense to resolve a disagreement is a more accurate interpretation of what WP:NOTLAW and WP:IAR actually mean. I would argue that any fair resolution of a disagreement would be impossible without a rule or procedure being invoked, and I would argue that selectively invocation of P&G is part of how longtime editors effectively assert ownership over the project because it allows rules and procedures to only apply to newer editors and not themselves. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 14:31, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that we can have fair resolutions of a disagreement without anyone invoking a rule or procedure. The existence of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules suggests that we can (occasionally) have a fair resolution of a disagreement while directly contravening some rules or procedures. But I'm convinced that most ordinary disagreements could be resolved without invoking a rule or procedure, and instead talking to each other like ordinary humans. Imagine "I think this makes the article better because it's simpler language, and this subject is probably read by a lot of younger people" instead of "WP:I WP:THINK I WP:WIN WP:EVERYTHING!"

I agree with you about the problem of selective invocation of rules. I believe that WP:ONUS and WP:NOCON are a prime example of that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:51, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: But I'm convinced that most ordinary disagreements could be resolved without invoking a rule or procedure, and instead talking to each other like ordinary humans. I don't. I'm sure every human being believes that their point of view is reasonable and commonsensical, that people who disagree with them are not, and that the result is that disputes are not resolved by persuasion. I suspect that's why WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS, WP:DETCON, and WP:NOCOMMON require/recommend citing P&G rather than only invoking common sense. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:31, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

If it's not possible to resolve disputes without invoking a rule, how do we resolve disagreements for which no rule is applicable? For example, which of two very similar images shall we put in the lead? There is no "given a choice between two nearly identical photos, choose the one that is more ____" rule.

For that matter, how do we make the rules in the first place? Once upon a time, Wikipedia didn't have any rules or procedures. If you are correct, we could never have created our extensive rule set in the first place, because we didn't have a Rule on How to Resolve Rule-Making Disagreements that we could "invoke". WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

For that matter, how do we make the rules in the first place? Once upon a time, Wikipedia didn't have any rules or procedures. If you are correct, we could never have created our extensive rule set in the first place, because we didn't have a Rule on How to Resolve Rule-Making Disagreements that we could "invoke". Well, to now answer a question previously posed in this discussion, I am, in fact, not Larry Sanger (although he appears to have returned to the project). I wasn't around when the first P&G were created but evidently Sanger wrote the initial drafts for many of them (including NPOV, NOR, V, and IAR) and appears to have been the creator of the "Rules to consider" historical archive page that was the forerunner to WP:P&G. The "Rules to consider" page became active on February 4, 2001 less than a month after Wikipedia as a whole went active, and appears to be the only page in the policy archive that appears to have established consensus through editing and discussion as a norm in community decision-making and its rule-making process but also suggests "realistically, enforcement depends on whether enough supporters of a rule keep track of changing pages and newly created ones."

If it's not possible to resolve disputes without invoking a rule, how do we resolve disagreements for which no rule is applicable? If disputing editors seek input from a greater number of editors following WP:CONTENTDISPUTE and no consensus emerges per WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS, WP:DETCON, and WP:NOCON due to the absence of an explicit rule, the community formulates a new explicit rule following WP:PROPOSAL and WP:PGCHANGE after reviewing the most widely used practices per WP:NOTBURO. As such, rules as expressed in P&G are always being followed to resolve disputes. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 09:28, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

You didn't say that the rules need to be followed. You said the rules needed to be invoked. Invoked means mentioned explicitly, especially by name. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Then perhaps I should have said invoked. Nonetheless, a rule is being invoked when following WP:PROPOSAL and WP:PGCHANGE to create a new rule. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Actually, (to amend what I said per WP:TALK#REVISE), I would argue that selective invocation is not as much the problem as overbroad interpretation because in my experience that's what longtime editors do to revert content on a basis of what policies don't say and don't clearly mean. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:47, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

We have a problem with selective invocation. We also have a problem with overbroad interpretation. I suspect that the overbroad interpretation problem is related to our WP:UPPERCASE problem. WP:Nobody reads the directions (except you), but since an editor said the magic spell "WP:BBQ" when reverting me back when I was a newbie, then when I want to revert someone, I'll say the same magic spell words, and that's good, right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

No. Editors should read P&Gs being invoked by a disputing editor in a discussion and before they invoke P&Gs themselves since that's what leads to overbroad interpretations of the community's P&Gs in the first place. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:52, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Do you remember me asking you whether you read the directions before doing things like assembling furniture? It's because it was evident to me a couple of weeks ago that you belong to a small minority in this regard. Most people don't read the directions, and it's not pointful to say that they "should". They're not going to do that, no matter how much you (and I) wish they would.

We address incorrect interpretations by providing information (e.g., creating pages like WP:UPPERCASE), by contradicting errors when we see them (e.g., posting comments like "WP:QUO doesn't say that" or "WP:BRD is optional"), and by making it harder to misinterpret the written documents if someone actually read it (e.g., for a while, every time someone told me that Wikipedia:External links applied to ==References==, I added another note to that guideline saying that it doesn't). This is a slow way to go about things, but it's more effective than wishing people would read the directions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

How does one assemble furniture without reading the directions without being a carpenter? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:00, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Experience? A good eye for spatial things? Not actually caring if the end result is any good? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:14, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Not being able to follow the style of directions furniture uses? Hubris? Dunning-Kruger? Anomie⚔ 13:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

It's because it was evident to me a couple of weeks ago that you belong to a small minority in this regard. Most people don't read the directions, and it's not pointful to say that they "should". They're not going to do that, no matter how much you (and I) wish they would. Really? Considering that Wikipedians are supposed to be the types of individuals who bother to ensure that things that they say are referenced with a reliable source (which is to say "they bother to look things up"), it's a little strange that they're not willing to read the P&Gs of the project. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

It may be strange, but it's real. You can see this if you look about for people citing WP:STATUSQUO after a discussion has ended, even though it says, in bold-faced type, that it applies only during a discussion. See how often people say that others "have to" follow WP:BRD, even though BRD emphasizes that it's an optional process. If people read and remembered the rules, then they wouldn't say things like that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:17, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

If people read and remembered the rules, then they wouldn't say things like that. Pretty sure the human brains selectively remembers things, when it thinks its in its advantage. The idea of the human memory as a videocamera, which records an "objective" truth, has long been debunked (ask any cop). Extremely lossy compression, with a strong house advantage. "They misremember" sounds like a far more likely scenarion than "They've never even read it". And unfortunately there are many situations in which following P&G&Es does not lead to the ideal outcome. Polygnotus (talk) 07:33, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@CommonKnowledgeCreator, any page is permitted to be linked inside a policy or guideline. We link to articles, to essays, to help pages, to other wikis – anything. Our policy at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Content says Policies and guidelines may contain links to any type of page, including essays and articles. There isn't any special "supplements are permitted to be linked in policies and guidelines, but mere essays aren't" rule.

What makes a supplement different from an ordinary essay is that the supplement is trying to explain something specific. For example, 15 years ago, I wrote Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. I wrote it because the words "likely to be challenged" appear in Wikipedia:Verifiability, and we had a series of disputes about whether "likely" meant a tiny chance in the next century vs a very high chance right away. It's marked as a supplement because it provides a longer explanation of something in a policy, and we really didn't want to bloat the main policy page with this extra text.

See also Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays, which (as explained in the footenote) we deliberately created as a supplement, even though the content has just as much consensus as the Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines policy itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

You've removed the full context of the Content section of WP:P&G; it also says that "Such links should only appear when clarification or context is needed. Links to other advice pages may unintentionally or intentionally defer 'authority' to them. Make it clear when such links defer, and when they do not." In conjunction with WP:SUPPLEMENTAL, that still indicates that certain non-P&G project pages do have a different status from others. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 18:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, different pages are treated differently, but what's accepted doesn't correlate as well as you might like in terms of their tags. Wikipedia:Tag bombing is a mere essay, but it's popular and widely supported. Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read is the iron law of the internet, but it's "just an essay". Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose is only an essay, but it widely obeyed, especially when discussing subjects like spam prevention.

Other essays, though, are neglected or rejected even when they're correct. Many of our newer editors seem to struggle with the concept of Wikipedia:Fallacy of the revelation of policy. I think many editors should be aware of Wikipedia:Applicable law, but it averages one page view every three days. There are editors who believe that Wikipedia:Verifiable, not cited is an oxymoron, no matter what the actual WP:V policy says. There are editors who will tell you that Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED if you suggest that we should Wikipedia:Don't link to bomb-making instructions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:00, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, different pages are treated differently, but what's accepted doesn't correlate as well as you might like in terms of their tags. Yes, and this is yet another example of dysfunction within the Wikipedia project because it means that the community is unwilling or unable to make clear which essays do reflect community norms and which don't. It's part of why I proposed the navigation templates in the first place (to get back on-topic), to hopefully encourage the community to make more of an effort make clear what its actual norms are (if it even has any). But clearly the community must not actually have norms to apply to everyone given how much opposition I've received over this specific proposal (and like I do in general). -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 16:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:59, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Policy writing may be hard, but what is being proposed here is not changes to P&Gs. Only navigation templates that link specific P&G pages with their associated centralized discussion pages and supplemental pages in a manner similar to {{Noticeboard links}}. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:50, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Again: Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard#You might not be very good at this, and specifically the sentence that says "If you find that most of your proposals are rejected, then – even if your ideas and goals are great – you're probably just not very good at" writing policies. If your proposals actually do get "much opposition" "in general", then maybe you should start with smaller proposals and a partner who is better skilled at preparing and presenting proposals to the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Or because WP:PWIH is an essay rather than a P&G or SUPPLEMENTAL essay, it's advice must not be that widely accepted within the community, and so if a less experienced editor's proposals are rejected, it means that Wikipedia's community governance structures are run by an oligarchy of longtime editors that assert ownership over the project by preventing any change, large or small, to its norms and P&Gs instead and while everyone else lives with remaining anarchy. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 20:55, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

There are changes to Wikipedia's PaG all the time. Proposals see consensus against simply because they are not convincing, not because our PaG is some static frozen repository.

I do not think people oppose adding navboxes listing the supplements of PaG. People said "I like this idea for the reasons you mentioned and think it should be implemented, but I do not think it will help dispute resolution", and you've been arguing "This will help dispute resolution" ever since. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:44, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

The title of this thread is "Navboxes to assist with dispute resolution (particularly over content policy)", so actually I've been making that argument since opening the thread. By my count, of the eight editors (yourself, Donald Albury, Phil Bridger, Isaacl, WhatamIdoing, Moxy, Chaotic Enby, SunloungerFrog) who have left comments, only 3 expressed any degree of support and the majority appear to be mostly opposed. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 01:10, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Aaron, in practice, the proposal isn't "adding" navboxes. It's "replacing the existing navboxes" with new navboxes containing a different collection of links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:19, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I support adding navboxes. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:09, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

@Aaron Liu, I must not have been clear. Let me give you two examples:

• Wikipedia:Verifiability has a navbox specifically about referencing. Do you support having two navboxes about the same subject?
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not already has two navboxes. Do you support having three?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

WP:V: That navbox is even better because it organizes the existing supplementals and how-tos by topic. It's effectively already implemented this proposal.
WP:NOT: of course? Why not? How would a navbox on WP:NOT be able to replace any of the existing navboxes? Is having three navboxes a bad thing? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:42, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Only Moxy opposed. Saying your proposal would not succeed at the biggest goal you are pointing to is not opposition. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

This conversation was spawned from the question of why existing indexes for essays don't already suit the task. You argue that it's not enough because essays are very important to dispute resolution, which is what this entire conversation has been assessing.

How I see it, whenever someone cites an essay (note the difference from explanatory essays/supplements which might be helpful to have some kind of per-topic navigation for), they're effectively copy-pasting all of its arguments into their reply. People make essays to simply contain their personal arguments and invite others to comment and improve on them. It just so happens that some arguments like "solution in search of a problem" and "drop the stick" have such wide acceptance their essays are frequently used to avoid needing to explain an argument every time you use it. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:38, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

This conversation was spawned from the question of why existing indexes for essays don't already suit the task. You argue that it's not enough because essays are very important to dispute resolution, which is what this entire conversation has been assessing. Let me be clear: I am not arguing that WP:GUIDES and WP:ESSAYPAGES essay pages are important (or unimportant) for dispute resolution, but rather that WP:SUPPLEMENTAL information pages, how-to pages, and explanatory essay pages are important for dispute resolution and other decision-making even though they are of lower status than policy and guideline pages.

How I see it, whenever someone cites an essay,... they're effectively copy-pasting all of its arguments into their reply. ... It just so happens that some arguments like [WP:SLFP] and [WP:DROPTHESTICK] have such wide acceptance their essays are frequently used to avoid needing to explain an argument every time you use it. I'd argue that when editors cite any WP:P&G, WP:SUPPLEMENTAL, or WP:ESSAYPAGES page they effectively doing this and its one of the benefits of being able to link shortcuts in comments and edit summaries. However, if WP:SLFP and WP:DROPTHESTICK have such wide acceptance, then why aren't they categorized as WP:SUPPLEMENTAL pages? What specific community decision-making process establishes that certain project pages qualify for the {{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}}, and {{Supplement}} headers? WP:SUPPLEMENTAL does not articulate one, and WP:PROPOSAL only clearly applies to P&Gs. Among other things, I believe the navigation templates I'm proposing would foster greater centralized discussion by the community to decide when those headers should be added to project pages or removed. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:28, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

The vast majority of our P and G are related to building the encyclopedia. With a few overview type WP:BEHAVE protocols.... supplemented by a large amount of essays so editors don't have to type out the same argument over and over again....and to avoid excessive rules on behavior. To be blunt if editors are unable to apply common sense and show competency they will not last long. This is the type of thing that is obvious to the majority of editors here so there's just no need to make them into policies and guidelines. Something like Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle has no need to be a policy or guideline because it's already covered under Wikipedia:Edit warring and is simply a way of avoiding edit warring. Have you seen Template:Wikipedia editor navigation this breaks things down for navigation. Moxy🍁 04:00, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

To be blunt if editors are unable to apply common sense and show competency they will not last long. This is the type of thing that is obvious to the majority of editors here so there's just no need to make them into policies and guidelines. Well, then! This seems to me to go against the spirit of WP:DONTBITE, WP:TECHNICAL, WP:NOCLUE, and WP:NOCOMMON. :) I only referenced WP:PROPOSAL because WP:SUPPLEMENTAL does not explain what process is used by the community to make the consensus-based decision to add the {{Information page}}, {{Wikipedia how-to}}, and {{Supplement}} headers to specific project pages. I would assume the RfC process could be it but WP:SUPPLEMENTAL doesn't explicitly say this, and if WP:SUPPLEMENTAL pages are not thoroughly vetted, it may not be.

Have you seen Template:Wikipedia editor navigation this breaks things down for navigation. I hadn't. But like the I said in my reply to User:WhatamIdoing about {{Wikipedia referencing}}, {{Wikipedia editor navigation}} to me is unintuitive, bloated, template clutter. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:32, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I agree that it would be good to have a navbox listing the supplements a PaG has.

There is a clear definition for when something is a supplement, though:

Use this template carefully, only when there is a well-established consensus at the relevant policy or guideline page to use this template on an essay that links from the relevant policy or guideline.
— {{Supplement}}, emphasis original

With SLFP and DROPTHESTICK I was using an example to illustrate what essays actually are. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:10, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Edit request spam

We have this phenomenon that I call "edit request spam", though there might be a better name. Is it discussed anywhere? It seems to trip up experienced editors. Here are examples from Template talk:Source check:

• Special:Diff/1302369938/1302815150
• Special:Diff/1315839583/1316124486
• Special:Diff/1251775942/1287960886

It's a common phenomenon. You could say it's good faith editors making a mistake but I don't think so, it happens far too frequently, and almost always involves an IP or red account without history. Why do they do it? It's the perfect spam/troll. It demands attention from experienced editors, who must then take action and sign their name to what is a joke on you.

What are ways to deal with this? My immediate reaction is "revert", but some editors inexplicably continue to take them seriously. Even if you assume good faith, they should probably be deleted anyway because they are empty requests with no purpose. At the very least this should be documented somewhere so we can link to WP:EDITREQUESTSPAM or something when reverting. -- GreenC 17:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

it happens far too frequently - In a world of eight billion people? You're seeing the minuscule fraction who think Wikipedia talk pages are social media. Of course they should be removed, not archived. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 17:27, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

We have WP:NOTFORUM for this. These aren't the best examples, though; two of them seem like test edits, and the third is an actual request to change the article. Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:35, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

I think a bigger problem is that some edit requests that don't strictly comport with the format but are abundantly clear in their intent are resolved as malformed and not directly addressed. That's probably another idea for another day. Bremps... 00:59, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

To address the discussion itself, I don't think we need anything more than ordinary archiving or reversion. Bremps... 01:00, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I wish there were a way to prevent empty edit requests from being posted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:48, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

It's possible an edit filter could do that, although it couldn't catch everything that is semantically empty but not objectively empty most empty ones I see are either literally empty or just contain the example diff text. Thryduulf (talk) 09:11, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that most blank edit requests are coming from the editing window, in which case it'd make more sense to build it into the MediaWiki software. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think it is, although maybe a better solution would be to something informative. I'll take a look if no-one else gets there first. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 17:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC).

I think different editors having their own opinions and responses to this is a good status quo. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

It might be worth creating a standard reply template. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 17:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC).

Pilot project for GPT-5 powered article bias analysis WikiTool

I wanted to propose a pilot project to create a WikiTool that is powered by GPT-5, Perplexity Sonar Pro, or otherwise allow the user to choose their preferred AI model to run. Open-source models should also be available to choose from. Before being available to most users, the pilot project can be started on 50-200 articles that are controversial or had recent edit wars, and reports generated by the bot can be put in a project namespace. Edits proposed by the software will be advisory only and can be posted on the article's talk page in collapsible form, or in a project namespace. It will also be transparent and show usage logs, as well as copies of the exact prompts used. Any outputs from the AI will be verbatim for transparency. Source analysis can also be included as an additional feature. Furthermore, only public information (and possibly article revision history) will be used. User talk pages will not be used unless explicitly authorised. Article talk pages can be used by the bot optionally.

Use cases can be seen in my sandbox:

1. User talk:86.33.69.28/Sandbox/Test1
2. User talk:86.33.69.28/Sandbox/Test2

I am proposing a 3-6 month pilot project for this tool to be run by a specific team before it is available to be used by all Wikipedians. It can be linked with the API provided by the AI services.

I am looking forward to feedback from the community. I understand my proposal may need some refinement, but please review the example above and use this as a starting point. 86.33.69.28 (talk) 11:52, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I am very much opposed to the idea of having a bot post anything like this to an article talk page. If it is a seperate tool that a user can run on a page and get private feedback I would be more inclined to accept that. An LLM shouldn't be posting anywhere public facing it's own interpretation, when it's still very prone to errors, nonesense and gibberish. Posting on talk pages could also lead to people thinking the LLM's interpretation is 100% correct and lead to more arguements and disruption. Private anaylsis allows for a human to review the anaylsis, make corrections as needed and toss out any nonesense the LLM produces. This also still allows a human to make the final decision and being able to defend their decision, you can't effectively argue with an LLM. McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 13:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Anyone posting such bot-generated garbage on talk pages should be indef blocked on sight. The last thing we need is fucking bullshit-bots telling us how to write articles. They are incapable of creating policy-compliant content themselves, for multiple reasons. They routinely hallucinate (i.e make shit up). They fake citations. They synthesise crap, and then claim it came from somewhere else entirely. They have no concept of 'neutrality' or 'bias' (or of anything else, since they are simply next-word-guessing algorithms). And given how much of their training was done on Wikipedia, they'd merely generate circular-referenced crap. At least they would, if they didn't also hallucinate Wikipedia policy (complete with fictitious 'quotations' of said policy) on demand. A monumentally bad idea. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:48, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I am torn with agreeing with your comment because it's true and disagreeing because it's incorrect. jp×g🗯️ 21:00, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I'd suggest you self revert your addition of what seems to be User talk:86.33.69.28/Sandbox/Test1 to Talk:Glenn Diesen#Article bias analysis according to GPT-5 (for your information). I'd also support someone else removing it but I don't have the time to monitor potential further discussion. Skynxnex (talk) 14:12, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I've collapsed the bullshit-bot generated list of vacuous platitudes posted at Talk:Glenn Diesen, using the relevant template. Adding such crap without prior consensus (for which there is zero chance) is a misuse of the talk page. And I've got to ask why the IP chose this particular article? A sample of one is useless, and running the same thing through the bollocks-generator twice is stupid. If you want to actually test something, you'd need a statistically-significant number of randomly-selected articles to work with, not a single article selected because you don't like it or whatever. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:21, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

LLMs have shown they have a very poor understanding of Wikipedia's policies, so this wouldn't be very useful. Instead they tend to generate verbose but vague comments that are somewhat related to the title of policies rather than the actual details. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:56, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

The post the Glenn Diesen shows many of these issues, including not understanding false balance or that articles should be based on secondary sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:59, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Bias analysis is a hard problem. Have you seen any papers with evidence that foundational models like GPT-5 perform well at this task? Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:18, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Note also that we aren't supposed to look for 'bias' in the abstract (whatever that means), but bias per Wikipedia policy - which requires balance centred around significant views that have been published by reliable sources. Given that such an assessment requires analysing such sources, any algorithm compliant with Wikipedia policy would have to be demonstrated to actually perform such an analysis on the sources cited. And arguably, be capable of searching for further sources on the subject matter, to ensure that the article hasn't cherry-picked its sources to push a specific PoV. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:30, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Source analysis - especially as it comes to sources that have no online presence (i.e. scholarly books) - is something that chatbots famously cannot do. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{threads critiques} 16:36, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Good point. Though I'm sure that the chatbots will get around that little difficulty by looking at the title cited, and making shit up about its contents. After all, they can do it the other way - look at article content, and invent fictitious sources to cite for it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:46, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Just for fun, from the horse's mouth (current free version of ChatGPT):

Prompt: Give me a short summary of why ChatGPT is so bad at writing Wikipedia articles.

Reply: ChatGPT struggles to write Wikipedia articles mainly because Wikipedia requires verifiable, neutral, and well-sourced content, while ChatGPT generates text based on patterns in data, not real-time fact-checking or citations. It can sound authoritative but often hallucinates details, misrepresents sources, or fails to follow Wikipedia’s strict style and citation rules. In short, ChatGPT is good at fluent writing, but bad at accuracy, sourcing, and neutrality — all of which are essential for Wikipedia. [1]

I'd dispute the 'fluent writing' bit, unless pointless repetition and vacuous hyperbole have somehow become evidence of fluency, but whatever. Wouldn't have proved a thing if it had insisted it wrote perfect articles, but it doesn't. It essentially describes itself as an unreliable source, and it would be hard to disagree with such an assessment without tying oneself in philosophical knots. And self-evidently, if it can't create valid content, it can't distinguish valid content from invalid. Which we already knew, but now we have it self-confirmed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:38, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Fluent as in effluent. It flows. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

While the site does have a bias issue regarding certain things like current events, LLMs are too flawed (perhaps inherently) and resource intensive for it be worthwhile. --FelineHerder (talk) 21:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I would agree with the chorus already commenting here: LLMs seem completely unsuited for this kind of work, and I suspect would prompt editors toward false balance in a lot of circumstances. I don't pretend to know everything about how they work, but we know the LLM doesn't limit itself to relevant scholarly literature or WP:RS to judge bias, and it's not a fact-checker. It aims to sound plausible, which is too low a bar (and more likely to be misleading in a way that is hard for a non-expert to detect).--MattMauler (talk) 02:29, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I question the premise that an AI would be a suitable judge of bias (whatever that may entail) and would be superior to human beings. LLMs are just next-word predictors and only as good as their training data. Bremps... 04:14, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

To address the substance of User talk:86.33.69.28/Sandbox/Test1, GPT-5's analysis seems to be at odds with Wikipedia's sourcing policy. It repeatedly asks for a higher weight to be given to primary sources (e.g. present Diesen's responses or rebuttals alongside them, is the subject's own response included and sourced?), which goes against our use of primary vs secondary sources (and, honestly, might be a case of Wikipedia:Mandy Rice-Davies applies). The model also fundamentally misunderstands Wikipedia's WP:NPOV policy, as, instead of looking to give due weight to each side based on the number of existing sources, it asks for "counterbalancing" sources to be added (aiming for a false balance). Use of adversarial sources without equivalent counterbalancing sources: Critical claims (e.g., "promoting Russian propaganda") are supported by multiple media citations; the article gives comparatively less space to Diesen's responses, contextual explanations, or neutral academic evaluations. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:24, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

The only response this deserves is Trout. sapphaline (talk) 21:06, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

I think making a tool is overkill, the better idea would be, by policy, to establish appropriate usage of LLM by users in talk pages.

For example, a user may list the sources of an article to an LLM and ask if these sources represent all views or are biased in favor of one ideological camp, and then in the talk page say "I asked such-and-such engine (input) and it answered (output)" --Scharb (talk) Scharb (talk) 21:24, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Integrate quizzes in declines and warnings

Good-faith new users often interact with experienced editors mostly via templated warnings, declines, or draftication notices. Ideally, we would personalised these messages more, but there's insufficient capacity for that. I don't think these type of notices are that effective in teaching new editors how we do stuff.

What if we were to include an optional quiz as part of these notices. This could for instance test somebody's understanding of the text of the notice, and show where there understanding might not be there yet. For instance, for GNG, we might ask 3 questions where they assess if a source counts towards notability. For copyright violations, we can e.g. ask them a question about what to do if the source doesn't explicitly have a copyright notice.

I think this might have the potential to teach more newbies how Wikipedia works, and hopefully leads to fewer reverts or even blocks. Curious to hear what others think. Is there already a way to A/B test changes like this? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

It may work, but the problem is that if you ask those questions of two experienced Wikipedians you are likely to get seven different answers. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:51, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

A good quiz would likely directly get examples from the relevant policies or other simple examples where we do agree. It's about teaching the basics, not the complicated stuff. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:04, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

That assumes we even agree about what's directly in the policies. 😉 There are a decent number of things I think people have snuck into various policies to give them an easier time arguing against things than they'd have actually discussing whether the sources are reliable and so on. Anomie⚔ 17:49, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

That's certainly possible yes. But i imagine the very basics of our PAGs we would be teaching are pretty stable. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:04, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

It could also produce a bit of useful inspection of policies and their interpretation, and maybe even some useful clarification. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:47, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

The suggestion that we should quiz editors implies that we should take action against them if they answer the quiz incorrectly? But doesn't that presume that they would continue to make the same kinds of edits that led to them being warned, which may not be a valid assumption? DonIago (talk) 16:56, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be arranged a bit like the DYK section of the main page. A declined AfC on the basis of poor sourcing could be accompanied by a friendly "Did you know: in 1832 the Wikipedia community decided that the Daily Mail is as reliable as a chocolate teapot and anyone attempting to use it as a source would be ridiculed mercilessly?" (only replaced with accurate and less facetious text, of course). Or copyright template warnings could come with "Did you know: copyright extends not just to copy-pasting blocks of text, but also to close paraphrasing?" (probably accompanied by appropriate links to help-pages and policies). Elemimele (talk) 17:04, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I'd support this over issuing quizzes. DonIago (talk) 17:15, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Some of our notices are a big block of shouty text. Too much bolding, linking etc to convey the message. Designing them better with a highlighted example might make sense. Examples are always good didactically. If we try this too, can we already A/B test this? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:00, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

The idea is that this is to make it easier to learn stuff. In the first instance. If this works, we might consider putting is as part the unblock process, where it forms the first step for quizzable 'offenses' (copyvio etc). But that's a question for later. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I think you need to clarify your idea of how this process would work, because there's a big difference between giving a new editor a non-required quiz after they've received one warning, and giving a non-new editor a required quiz as a condition of their being unblocked. In your OP you specified "newbies", and I think it may fall afoul of WP:AGF to require new users to have to pass quizzes to resume editing; at worst you're effectively blocking them for a single offense. DonIago (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

The idea is that this is optional. They get a warning. As part of that warning is a shiny button saying 'test your knowledge'. When they make a mistake, they get a two-sentene explanation of how the policy works in that example. If they prefer to instead just click there link and read the relevant policy, that's fine too.

If this works, we might want to include something in the unblock process as well, where it might not be optional. But it needs to be thoroughly tested before any of that could happen in an optional system. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:56, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I somehow lost track of this. Also, sorry if I missed your original stipulation that this would be optional, as that makes this more of a fun learning tool rather than anything else, which obviously changes the scope of it. I'm open to the possibility of this, though it might be more complicated than we anticipate to come up with quizzes with unambiguously right answers. Still, I don't have any objection to pursuing it, though I agree with you that there's going to need to be some thorough testing involved. Even a question as ostensibly simple as, "Does statement X need to be accompanied by a citation?" is the kind of question that different readers may interpret in ways that could lead to conflicting responses. DonIago (talk) 03:03, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that's the intention. I see it as a way to identify areas for improvement in editors (particularly, those who are genuinely trying to help but don't know much about our policies), not a punishment. Rosaece ♡ talk ♡ contribs 12:28, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

This puts me in mind of Template:Coiq, which used to be in fairly widespread use on the unblock queue. —Cryptic 17:51, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, for copyright specifically, I often make a follow up comment to give the editor a link to the WMF student training module on plagiarism. Unclear success rate, given that people don't tell me if they've done it, but at least it makes me feel better if I have to AN/I them later. I certainly don't think it would be a bad idea to include links to the other modules in standard warning templates. They're not half bad, and they already exist. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:12, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea.

Quizzes can be optional and voluntary too. For example, a quiz about core content policies.

Completing quizzes can be rewarded with barnstars delivered by a bot. Bogazicili (talk) 18:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. Currently warnings describe what an editor has done wrong, but most of them don't really explain why it's wrong. Encouraging editors to learn from their mistakes is a good form of editor retention. Rosaece ♡ talk ♡ contribs 12:35, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

This reminds me of Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines/neutrality quiz, which could be a good start for this project! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:26, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

And User:Tony1/Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing. If we force editors to take quizzes, they would probably use AI, however. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 03:13, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

In principle I like it a lot. I think it is worth a try, and suggest go ahead and provide a few samples for us to consider. I also suggest a database/list of appropriate questions connected with specific editing errors as a way to workshop it. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 05:58, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Femke, if you start this project, please keep me posted. I'm really curious of how it would be implemented. Thanks! Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:43, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

An alternative is not to use templates. Or at least not shiny icon laden box surrounded templates. Newsers oftn assume these are automatically generated and pay not attention. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 13:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

Another thing that would be lovely to test if we can do A/B testing is making those notes seem like they are handwritten and less formal. Would that make people pay more attention? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

A/B testing to improve new editor retention is absolutely something I'd like to see more of on-wiki, so I can only second this! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 03:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Add a bot/policy that bans AI edits from non-extended confirmed users

I saw this thread yesterday and I wanted to chime in this idea I had, but I waited to long to act on it and now it's archived. So I guess I'll have to make a new thread.

It's clear that lots of new editors struggle making good content with AI assistance, and something has to be done. WP:G15 is already a good start, but I think restrictions can be extended further. Extended confirmation on Wikipedia is already somewhat of a benchmark to qualify editors to edit contentious articles, and I think the same criteria would do well to stop the worst AI slop from infecting mainspace. As for how this would be implemented, I'm not sure - a policy would allow human intervention, but a bot designed like ClueBot NG might automate the process if someone knows how to build one. Koopinator (talk) 10:50, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I do t see a practical way to enforce that. I also dont think that peoples skill level with AI can transfer to an assessment of their skill level in wikipedia. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:31, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding enforcement, I would suggest:

1. Looking at whatever process ClueBot uses to detect and evaluate new edits, and add a "extended confirmed/non-ec" clause.

1.1. I will admit I'm not entirely sure of how this would work on a technical level, which is why I posted this idea in the idea lab.

2. Look to word frequency as in User:Gnomingstuff/AI experiment to distinguish AI from non-AI edits. Koopinator (talk) 15:32, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

please don't use this in any kind of blocking enforcement capacity, it is not remotely ready for anything like that Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

A person's willingness to use AI on Wikipedia is an immediate and absolute WP:NOTHERE, in my opinion. TooManyFingers (talk) 05:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that extended confirmed users create any better edits with AI than users who are not extended confirmed? Phil Bridger (talk) 14:33, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

I would say it's a reasonable inference. Here's what I can say:

• We can expect that extended-confirmed users are more likely to be familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, by virtue of having been here longer.
  • This expectation is, in part, substantiated by that most vandalism comes from IP editors.
• Some anecdotal evidence:
  • [2] LLM edit with no sources, survived for almost 2 months. Was created by an editor who was neither confirmed nor extended confirmed.
  • [3] Personal project by yours truly, AI assistance was used, careful review of text-source integrity of every sentence as I constructed the page in my sandbox over the course of 59 days before airing it.
• I admit none of this is hard evidence.

I do feel LLM has its place on the site (otherwise I wouldn't have used ChatGPT assistance in constructing a page), but if it's allowed, the barrier for usage really should be heightened. Wikipedia's content translation tool is also restricted to extended-confirmed users.

Koopinator (talk) 15:25, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

The issue is raising the bar to prevent bots from editing Wikipedia using LLMs. LDW5432 (talk) 19:57, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

LLM detection for text is very hard and has far, far too many false positives, especially for non-native speakers and certain wavelengths of autism. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:41, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

^ This is my experience. Also, a lot of edits are too brief for the already-dodgy AI "detectors" to be reliable for.

@Koopinator, you've made around 2,000 mainspace edits in the last ~2 years. Here's a complete list of all your edits that the visual editor could detect as being more than a handful of words added.[4] It's 78 edits (4% of your edits) – less than once a week on average. And I'd guess that half of your content additions are too short to have any chance of using an anti-AI tool on, so the anti-AI tool would check your edits two or three times a month. Why build something, if it could only be useful so rarely? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:58, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, how would that tool's frequency scale across the entire Wikipedia community? I'd imagine it'd be used at least a little bit more often then. (or, I imagine, multiple orders of magnitude) Koopinator (talk) 05:55, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

For brand-new editors, it might capture something on the order of half of mainspace edits. High-volume editors are much more likely to edit without adding any content, so it'd be much less useful for that group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

It should be possible to detect low hanging fruit AI text, based on certain common features. Raw AI inference cut and pasted from a chat bot is going to be easier to detect. I agree that the type of user doing this probably has no reputation at stake, doesn't care very much, more likely to be newbie and/or a non-native speaker from another Wiki. I don't know about policy, but a bot that sends a talk page notice, or flags the edit summary with a "[possible ai]" tag. No one is already working on this? -- GreenC 17:10, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

mw:Edit check/Tone Check uses a Small language model to detect promotionalism. (See tagged edits.) I'd guess that it would be possible to add an AI detector to that, though the volume involved would mean the WMF would need to host their own or pay for a corporate license and address the privacy problems.

mw:Edit check/Paste Check is probably more efficient, though, as anyone copying from a chatbot is going to be pasting it into the article, and detecting a big paste is easier than checking the words that were pasted in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

I think AI edits should be mandatory for everyone to disclose, both in articles and talk pages. There could be a box where you check it if your content comes from AI or is mostly AI, similar to how you can check minor edits. Bogazicili (talk) 18:40, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Having a UI element like that would work towards legitimizing LLM use in creating text for Wikipedia. Merko (talk) 00:41, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree: Either it will allow the material to be posted and thus legitimize LLM use, or it won't allow the material to be posted and cause people to tell lies so they can get it posted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Do we currently have a policy on LLM usage? This one seems failed Wikipedia:Large language model policy

My position is that if it's not banned, it should be declared. Bogazicili (talk) 10:45, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I thought the failed policy proposal was supposed to require people to declare it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Almost 2 years ago. Merko (talk) 22:09, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

LLM-generated content is a cancer on Wikipedia, and it will only get worse. "AI detectors" have many false positives, as do checks made by editors themselves, but just because we can't reliably detect something today doesn't mean we shouldn't implement a policy against it. I support mandating the disclosure of LLM-generated contributions by all users. We don't treat WP:GNG differently on articles created by extended-confirmed users or others, we shouldn't do it here either. Merko (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

If you think original content generated by a program is a negative to that extent, then I don't think requiring disclosure is the appropriate approach, since that would only be a prelude to removal. We should skip straight to requiring editors not to use programs to generate original content. isaacl (talk) 04:38, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia should first address LLM content from anonymous IPs. LDW5432 (talk) 19:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

IP editing actually isn't that much of a problem here -- in my experience almost all AI text I find came from someone with a registered account. Off the top of my head I'd say less than 10% of it comes from IPs.

This may change with temporary accounts in a few days though, who knows. Gnomingstuff (talk) 20:56, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Full ISBN formatting.

Wikipedia has over 40,000 articles with {{ISBN|1234567123456}} where 1234567123456 is any string of 13 digits. All of these can be properly formatted with changing it to {{ISBN|{{Format ISBN|1234567123456}}}} and letting Anomiebot (Anomie, Anomiebot) at it. But using AWB and Anomiebot to do all of that seems a *very* heavy load. Note, there are some hyphenated formatting for the ISBN that still indicate it hasn't been properly formatted, but 13 numbers in a row is a way to start. What would be a good place to start, full bot?Naraht (talk) 15:09, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Doing {{ISBN|1234567123456}} → {{ISBN|{{Format ISBN|1234567123456}}}} just so AnomieBOT can subst the {{Format ISBN}} would be silly. If we really care about the formatting in the wikitext, better to have a bot directly correct it. If we only care about the output for readers, why not have {{ISBN}} do it internally instead of editing all the pages? Anomie⚔ 15:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with you. Having the output for readers regenerated each time seems very expensive. A full bot directly changing these seems to be superior. Glad to have you here for the discussion, you seem the one would would understand it best.Naraht (talk) 16:53, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

WP:Don't worry about performance. If it's too expensive, we'll find out because it runs into parser limits of some sort. But it seems unlikely that it will. Anomie⚔ 17:03, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

So it seems that the correct place to discuss this is Wikipedia talk:ISBN.Naraht (talk) 18:10, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

There was a related RFC in October 2023. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Falls under WP:BIKESHED in my view. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:31, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

I formatted all the ISBNs back when the 13 digit format was coming into being. I'd happily do it again if requested. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 13:48, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

Adding "transparent" or "transparency" to Wikipedia:Five pillars

Transparency is a core Wikipedia value and way of doing things. It's quite implicit, but it's not explicitly stated in Wikipedia:Five pillars. Pretty much everything is recorded and publicly available, such as page histories, talk pages, and archives.

Wikipedia is also transparent about criticism about itself, including articles such as Criticism of Wikipedia, or essays Wikipedia:Systemic bias, or projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias and Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red.

It's mentioned in this video [5] and I remember Jimbo Wales mentioning it in a recent NYT interview [6]

Should we add "transparent" or "transparency" to somewhere in WP:5P2? Bogazicili (talk) 19:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

It seems to me that it's a better fit for WP:5P3. mw:Principles says "fully transparent and observable, with all changes to pages tracked and all actions logged". That's not really about being neutral. I'd put it after the "no editor owns an article" sentence, if we decided to add it at all (which I'm leaning a bit neutral-to-exclude on). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

You know Wikipedia has recently been criticized for being biased and stuff in the news. That's why I thought it fit "Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view" as in everything is transparent. But I can see 5P3 too. Bogazicili (talk) 10:10, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia has been criticized for being "biased" approximately every day of the week for the last two decades. The definition of "biased" is often "does not agree with my personal viewpoint". We do have NPOV problems, but they're often mixed and complex (do we say that over-the-counter cough syrup is an effective medication? Lots of lay people believe it is, but research says mostly no. How much information about (e.g.,) evolutionary biology belongs in an article about, say, teenage pregnancy? Are we biased against the biologists?), rather than "too red" or "too blue". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

More emphasis towards the content of sources being the most important.

I want there to be a way for people to further understand why the content of sources arguably matters more than reliability, that is, it needs to pass the general notability guideline. I firmly believe that if a source does not count towards GNG, then it shouldn't be in the article, and I want new editors to understand the importance of the guideline. After the source is deemed to pass GNG, then focus on reliability and verifiability. For a further explanation of my opinion, please refer to my essay, WP:CONTENTFIRST. NotJamestack (talk) 02:18, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I've clarified one of your examples, and I encourage you to click the link to Wikipedia:No original research#cite note-Exists-1, read it, and think about how different it is from what you've (probably) been told. Our telephone game of teaching about OR tends to give a distorted or inaccurate view.

I think that as you gain more experience, you will see the value in using a small number of non-Wikipedia:Independent sources in some articles. Non-independent sources often help us comply with WP:BALASP (e.g., by giving us a birth year or birth place for a BLP) and sometimes with other rules (e.g., MOS:GENDERID). The rule is that you want all articles to be WP:Based upon (i.e., mostly use) independent secondary sources. There's no need and sometime some harm from banning all others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

On the general subject: There are two main views of SIGCOV (meaning media coverage in a significant amount, not coverage that an editor subjectively believes is "significant" in the sense of being "important" somehow). One view is that each individual source, considered in isolation, must have all the qualities or be ignored. The other view is that all independent reliable sources, taken together as a whole, must add up to a significant amount of coverage.

It's not really an objective, numeric evaluation, but let's simplify down to Wikipedia:One hundred words for the sake of an illustration. We'll stipulate for this illustration that 100 words is a significant amount of coverage. Imagine that we have five independent reliable sources. They have word counts of 90, 95, 99, 101, and 105. The separatist view would look at these sources and say that's nothing, nothing, nothing, and two sources with 100+ words that we can use to show notability. The comprehensive view would say that's five sources totaling 490 words.

If the sources contain different information, the comprehensive view might give you a more accurate view of whether you could write a policy-compliant articl. Figuring out whether we can write a policy-compliant article is why we have notability rules in the first place. But if they each say very similar things, then the separatist view gives more accurate insight into the likelihood that you will be able to write a policy-compliant article. IMO neither view is always right or always wrong, but I think that it's valuable for editors to know that both of these approaches exist within the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that the content of sources arguably matters more than reliability, that is [...] if a source does not count towards GNG, then it shouldn't be in the article is simply not true. Not every source does need to count towards the GNG - for example those being used to support uncontroversial facts. For example, in today's featured article Deer Lady, sources 20 and 21 are being used to support the statement that Yoda is "a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise who uses a backward speech pattern." Those sources do not contribute to the article passing the GNG in any way, but they are necessary to support the content.

In other cases, primary sources (which cannot contribute to notability) are the most reliable sources for the content they support - one example is ridership statistics for public transport - the facility/service operator is very often the only organisation that can obtain those figures, so any figures that appear in secondary sources are taken from the primary source but with the added possibility of errors being (inadvertently) introduced. Thryduulf (talk) 02:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

if a source does not count towards GNG, then it shouldn't be in the article This isn't necessarily true. Primary sources can never count towards GNG, but WP:PRIMARY explicitly permits their use. We can use databases for key facts despite the fact that they do not count as significant coverage. Non-independent sources do not count for GNG but can be used in some cases (e.g. WP:ABOUTSELF). Sometimes an article includes a contextual claim where it is useful to point to the best source for that claim even where that source is not about the main subject of the article. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:04, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto-public, here's a link to a database entry: https://omim.org/entry/616517 Read that and then try to tell me again that databases don't count as significant coverage. If you read English at an average speed, it'll take you four minutes to get to the end of just the prose.

I agree that some (maybe even most) databases don't represent a significant amount of coverage – but I'd say the same about some any content format. We should not go around making false and misleading statements like databases...do not count as significant coverage, especially in conversations with newer editors, who might take such statements as received wisdom. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

A problem with received wisdom is that it is often a load of bullshit anyway. Misremembered details distorted by personal bias is a thing, even when there is no intention to mislead. This can also apply to sources - primary, secondary, or tertiary. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:42, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Your firm belief does not overrule WP policy and guidance. If you want to persuade us, bring out the evidence. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 04:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

This seems to be more about WP:DUE. Not everything needs to be in an article just because it is in a published source. There is no space for everything in high level articles Bogazicili (talk) 10:11, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I think this is mostly about AFD. Imagine how much easier it would be if an article at AFD only cited sources that independently demonstrated that the GNG was met. Instead of having to look through a dozen sources, you could just say "Three little blue clicky numbers – it's notable" or "No refs – it's non-notable". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

It definitely would be easier. Maybe we should have a way of flagging the refs which are specifically intended for establishing notability. I have sometimes suggested a similar strategy to newbies for getting their first articles through AfC: Keep the article and refs focused on establishing notability until the article has been approved and moved into mainspace, then flesh it out with the less notable details. This of course is not attractive to the editor who wants to create a nice useful and informative article, all at once, or the one who does not understand the notability requirements, so it doesn't usually get much traction. Also, three clicky blue numbers actually gives no indication of notability until you check them, and no refs does not mean not notable, just that notability has not been established. Multiple is easy - count the heads. Independent can be claimed and in many cases easily verified. Non-trivial actually needs to be checked in most cases, but if flagged, can save time. Everything beyond that is gravy. It could also be useful if there was a way to flag that a source has been verified, and by whom. If I was checking refs and saw that you had already verified a source, I could concentrate my efforts at those not yet checked. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:23, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I think the idea of identifying which refs should be looked at is the motivation behind User:RoySmith/Three best sources. The only times we need to "establish notability" is if it goes through NPP/AFC, or if it ends up at AFD.

I think the strategy you recommend is sound. I don't know why so few editors adopt it. But if AFC has gradually and unintentionally adopted a minimum-length standard, then that might account for an unwillingness to submit a short article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

This seems to mix up several different areas. Notability isn't about article content but the subject of the article. Also GNG sources have to be reliable, three random website wouldn't show notability whether they have shown significant coverage or not. If any sources was accepted as adding to notability then there would be no point in having a policy about notability. Primary sources don't generally support notability, but when it comes to certain BLP details they are the most reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:41, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I firmly believe that if a source does not count towards GNG, then it shouldn't be in the article I'm not sure I understand. Surely the goal is to get information into the article? There are plenty of sources that won't provide SIGCOV that still have facts that are useful. Why exclude them? Cremastra (talk · contribs) 01:45, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Uninvolved administrator

Has there been an event where so many administrators get involved that there are no more uninvolved administrators? How will processes such as unblock requests or page deletions continue if there are no more uninvolved admins? Appeals to ANI or AN could spark a lot of involvement, too. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 15:18, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I doubt that we have ever had a situation where every admin has been involved. Lots of them perhaps, but not all. Blueboar (talk) 16:03, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Such an event has never happened, and functionally could never happen, because at any given time, some subset of administrators are simply not active and thus could not be WP:INVOLVED in this context.⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 16:24, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

We have enough admins that it's not a practical issue. Sometimes admins, especially arbcom members, decline to involve themselves early so that they are available to resolve it later in the process. If every admin somehow got involved, we'd use the rule of necessity, via IAR if necessary. There have been times when all of the active regular admins at a more niche process like categories for discussion involve themselves, and need to be unstuck by an admin at AN, but even that is uncommon. Tazerdadog (talk) 01:12, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Ah, great to know. I was originally thinking that the last resort would be to appeal to Jimbo, as he doesn't get involved in too many processes nowadays. However, as far as I can tell, Jimbo doesn't have administrative powers anymore. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 13:17, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Since his account is regularly targeted by black hat hackers, I would imagine that he wants as few privs as possible on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:22, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Converse is also true: Some discussions are so thoroughly unpleasant that sometimes people involve themselves so that they are unavailable to resolve it later. "Oops, I expressed an opinion on that, so I can't be dragooned into writing the closing summary. Sorry!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:24, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Can we consider changing the license of codepages (such as MediaWiki:Common.js) from GFDL to GPL (or another appropriate software license)?

As one who is in the more technical side of things on Wikipedia, GFDL does not appear to be a suitable language for programming code, nor does CC BY-SA.

According to this page, we may be able to relicense CC BY-SA code under GPL 3, since CC BY-SA content is compatible with GPL 3, but not the other way around. It also allows for the use of several alternatively licensed programs on wiki such as MIT and Apache. The only problem I see is use is limited to noncommercial use, but that might be solved with the Lesser GPL.

I think this would be helpful especially for user scripts, templates, modules, and other wikitext that describe programs rather than articles. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 16:04, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm honestly surprised that we haven't had a discussion like this yet.
Is this change needed? The only software license compatible with CC BY-SA is GPL, so I'd assume people would be incorporating our code under GPL.

use is limited to noncommercial use

No, that's CC BY-SA-NC, not CC BY-SA. And anyhow, you cannot use a CC BY-SA work under solely Lesser GPL terms, because the latter is not a compatible license. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:37, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I was talking about the GPL. All the way at the bottom it states that one cannot use GPL in proprietary code (oh wait I mixed up proprietary with commercial). Okay that seems consistent with CC BY-SA which requires that any modifications be also released under CC BY-SA. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 16:42, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

There's little benefit, and considerable drawbacks. Anyone wanting to reuse our javascript under the GPLv3 can already do so; anyone wanting to reuse post-migration changes to our javascript under CC-BY-SA-4.0 would be unable to. The latter includes, in particular, other-language Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects. —Cryptic 17:03, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I was wondering if it would require a Wikimedia-wide RfC, since we would not be able to unilaterally change the license on just one wiki (WMF could pull the WP:CONEXEMPT card and refuse to make these changes).

The reason I was discussing this goes back to this thread where Enby and L235 licensed the unblock wizard under MIT rather than CC BY-SA. I was under the impression that MIT might be inherently compatible with CC BY-SA, as all it requires is that the same copyright notice be published on all source copies of the work. A lot of code useful to Wikimedia projects is on GitHub, GitLab, etc. under variety of different licenses (WP:UV and earlier WP:RW are both Apache licensed, and they had to specifically license for use under CC BY-SA for use on Wikimedia). This licensing mess with code can be avoided if we either (a) allowed users to import code in a similar manner that we allow them to upload files under a compatible license (and display that license prominently on the code page), or (b) chose a license so that no matter which code was imported it could be relicensed under that license. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 18:47, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

The reason for requiring all uploads to have specific licenses is so that any reusers know they only have to deal with those licences. Your proposal B would break this goal. Proposal A is already possible. isaacl (talk) 18:53, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if it is possible with code pages and templates right now. Currently what it says is "Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply" which if displayed at the bottom of code pages would imply code pages are also licensed as such (which I presume they are). I have posted stuff with an MIT license header on Wikipedia for example (see User:Awesome Aasim/rcpatrol.js and User:Awesome Aasim/CatMan.js) following what I saw with RedWarn. The only way to use off wiki scripts that are licensed under a different free license other than CC BY-SA would be to post them on wiki and use them under the CC BY-SA.

IMHO the GFDL makes less sense for code pages than GPL though (we have deprecated GFDL for most media files already).

We could also change the footer in user, template, module, and MediaWiki space to say "Content licensed under CC BY-SA unless otherwise noted" (as on Fandom wikis). Aasim (話す（はなす）) 19:39, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

We don't prevent contributors from dual licensing their work under both MIT and CC BY-SA. If you mean upload someone else's code, then if the licence permits the work to be shared under CC BY-SA it can be done. As I said, the whole point is to allow easy reuse by knowing everything is licensed the same way. Adding more complexity in figuring out licensing makes it harder for reusers, not easier. isaacl (talk) 20:44, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

An RFC would not be sufficient. You'd have to get WMF Legal to agree to this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:26, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

If it's a single author, or just a few people who're still active, they could probably agree to multi-license the code under the GPL or other licenses in addition to the standard GFDL and CC BY-SA licenses applied to all text content. There's also the fact that CC BY-SA 4.0 is one-way compatible with GPL 3. If there are many contributors, though, as for something like MediaWiki:Common.js, getting that agreement may be difficult. Anomie⚔ 17:15, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

I feel like the one-way compatibility is effectively a multi-license. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:43, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

By its nature, Javascript/Lua/wikitext code on Wikipedia is inherently available, which makes one of the motivations for using a software-specific licence less compelling. In theory there could be a different licence for pages hosting code, but it might be unduly confusing to less technically oriented contributers. Specifically regarding GPL, the question is whether or not it's desirable to require any incorporated libraries also be GPL. Mandating that code must be GPL-licensed would open up the possibility of using GPL-licensed libraries, but remove the possibility of using code that is not GPL compatible. isaacl (talk) 17:39, 25 October 2025 (UTC)

Maybe there is a more easily understandable default software license that is appropriate for code pages and user scripts. Or a cheat sheet showing which software licenses are compatible with CC BY-SA (I have not found any such page yet).

On another note I noticed Wikifunctions' code implementations is by default licensed under Apache 2.0. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 16:46, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I feel like you're not trying to engage with the discussion about the purpose for licences. Concerns specific to compiled software aren't relevant to the interpreted code that is placed on Wikipedia pages. For reusers, fewer licences to deal with is better than more. I feel this follows a pattern for some of your proposals: they exhibit a partial understanding of the overall context, and your followup discussion fails to acknowledge explanations of this context. (Note Creative Commons maintains the list of licences it has evaluated to be compatible with specific versions of its licences. It's a short list.) isaacl (talk) 17:52, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Maybe I am doing a terrible job at explaining myself.

With interpreted code, one can copy the software by copying the source code. I don't really understand the whole Concerns specific to compiled software then, as software licenses are often applied to the source code as well. If one has a proprietary program, and they reverse engineer and redistribute the source code, that source code is still infringing. One can change all of the variable names and it would still be infringing.

Anyway it probably would not be worth wasting community time on something that would need a Wikimedia wide RfC. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 21:50, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Isaacl is saying that the building and distribution concerns mentioned over using CC-BY for code don't apply to our code exactly because of what you say about our interpreted code. (Unsure about the modifiability part. And then the patent thing is still there, but probably not a concern.) Aaron Liu (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

If you're going to propose a change with the reasoning that GFDL does not appear to be a suitable language for programming code, nor does CC BY-SA, then you need to understand why that's the case. That's why I said your proposal isn't taking into account the overall context. Licences written for compiled software not only cover the human-readable source code, but the resulting work products, and have corresponding conditions. It would be more effective if you would investigate the context more fully before persisting in arguing for your proposals. (As I recall, I'm not the first person to say something to the same effect about your proposals.) isaacl (talk) 23:57, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I mean, finding the context of things to bake ideas in is what the idea lab is for. This wasn't one of the VPR threads of yore. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Once context is revealed, then it would be more effective to investigate further to understand that context, rather than persisting in arguing without taking that context into account. Otherwise, it feels like responses are pointless, since the proposer isn't considering them fully. isaacl (talk) 00:12, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Okay this is the recommendation according to Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation and Tips on Using the GNU FDL - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation:

• We can use GPL on any kind of work as long as we are clear as to what constitutes "source code" for that work (i.e. for a wiki the source code could be defined as what appears inside of the wikitext editor when one clicks the "Edit source" button)
• GFDL (the current license in addition to the CC BY-SA) is suitable for reference works (like us); any scripts needed to render the document should also be licensed under GFDL (but can be dual licensed under GPL). But otherwise, it is recommended to use GPL.

This means that we probably have a default license that we can propose for user scripts (GPL) and gadgets (such as MediaWiki:Gadget-Twinkle.js), as well as some Lua functions that don't directly render text (such as Module:Yesno).

I see the primary benefit of adopting GPL as permitting users to import scripts from a variety of sources whose license is also compatible with GPL (such as MIT, Apache 2.0, etc.) without having to worry if the license is compatible with CC BY-SA. CC BY-SA only lists a few licenses compatible with CC BY-SA, and only derivative works. Perhaps CreativeCommons' website is not up to date with all known compatible licenses.

I also did find this table on a GitHub-managed website. It's a lot of information, but it may be relevant if we discuss this in the WMF Village Pump (or even in a Wikimedia-wide RfC). Aasim (話す（はなす）) 01:34, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

I asked you on your talk page to present a concrete example of a problem you are facing that would be helped by your proposal. Are you trying to reuse Javascript code, CSS, wikitext template markup, or Scribunto Lua code that is under GPL? Given that everyone who submits code to English Wikipedia pages has released it under CC BY-SA, there's no issue with reusing any of it in other English Wikipedia edits. The thread to which you linked regarding Chaotic Enby's script was not a problem precisely because all code submitted to Wikipedia has a known licence.

As Aaron Liu states, the Creative Commons list is the definitive list of licences that are compatible with their licences. It's written right in the licence itself; I recommend that you read it. If you aren't interested in discussing why Wikipedia, by design, requires all contributions have specific licences, nor understanding what compatibility means (editors cannot upload GPL code and re-licence it as CC BY-SA, as the GPL licence is more restrictive), then this discussion isn't going to progress. isaacl (talk) 03:26, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

I asked you on your talk page to present a concrete example of a problem you are facing that would be helped by your proposal. Okay, it is the use of MIT and Apache and similarly licensed content from external repositories on Wikipedia.

I do believe MIT license is compatible with CC BY-SA (and in fact have imported MIT content myself), as all it requires is that the copyright notice be posted crediting the authors (which probably can be done by linking to a copy of the license). However, if it is not, then:

• If we need to use code from the over 50% of GitHub repositories that use the MIT license, we cannot.
• If a script author wanted to expand and port their own version of an MIT licensed library that is bundled with MediaWiki (such as OOUI), they cannot.

On the other hand, there are other libraries licensed under a GPL compatible license (such as Material Symbols & Icons - Google Fonts) that, again, if Apache 2.0 is not compatible with CC BY-SA, cannot be put directly into any Wikipedia scripts.

Another example: p5.js (licensed under LGPLv2.1).

This problem can be solved with external loading, but loading external scripts can expose a user to cross site tracking, especially if the code is hosted off of Wikimedia. Also I believe if someone wants to host on Wikimedia, they need access to Wikimedia Cloud Services (WMCS).

All of these examples are known to be compatible with GPL (and thus could be used in Wikipedia scripts only if Wikipedia licensed code under a different license from the rest of the site). Aasim (話す（はなす）) 04:24, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

And if you want to know where I imported this MIT content from: Fandom (specifically Fandom Dev Wiki which has the note "Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted." at the bottom of nearly every page). Aasim (話す（はなす）) 04:27, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

There are different versions of the MIT licence; to which are you referring? Regarding the variants that require that the MIT notice be preserved: CC BY-SA doesn't ensure this will happen. So the CC BY-SA licence alone is insufficient to meet the conditions for re-distributing the code under the MIT licence; the MIT licence needs to be kept for the applicable code. Is it possible to discuss a specific code example? Is it something that can be recreated independently?

Lesser GPL is problematic, since it would require the entire derived work incorporating it to be lesser GPL. To maintain separation, it would be better to serve lesser GPL-licensed Javascript libraries from a MediaWiki server for use by MediaWiki projects. This would make the library unmodifiable by website users, so licensing for derived works wouldn't be an issue. However I don't know the Foundation's policy on acceptable licences for software it serves. isaacl (talk) 04:58, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

How are fewer licenses better than more? Someone reusing a dual-licensed work only has to follow one of the licenses, not both. jlwoodwa (talk) 23:35, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I apologize for being imprecise. Knowing that Wikipedia content is uniformly available for re-use under a specific set of licences is better than having some pages available under some licences, while other pages are available under another. isaacl (talk) 23:45, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

And if you mean an "or" dual license, we effectively already do that because of CC's compatibility with GPL. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:55, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses/ Aaron Liu (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I've already checked this page out and it seems very incomplete. It only discusses other CC licenses and two non-CC licenses, Free Art License and GPLv3. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 01:35, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Because these are the only ones known to be compatible. Anyone can submit a license to CC for compatibility review, and this process has existed for 11 years with no other license approved. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:21, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Now that I've seen your reply above: The list is the licenses that CC BY-SA is compatible with, not the licenses that are compatible with CC BY-SA. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:33, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Renaming indefinite blocks

This isn't the first time I've thought about how we could improve our blocking system (courtesy ping to Chaotic Enby who has been helping me with the unblock wizard). But I don't think the name of indefinite block really gets across to the average person that you aren't permanently banned. Obviously we don't want to never indef people à la Larry Sanger, but I do think it's probably better if we rename indefs to something like conditional block to make it clearer that you basically need to stop doing whatever it is that got you blocked to come back. I'm not sure if there'd need to be an additional "infinite" category when we already have arbcom blocks/community bans, but please let me know if I'm missing something obvious here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I think conditional block may be confused with Wikipedia:Partial blocks and/or a WP:TBAN. No comments on the proposal itself though. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 12:56, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, sockpuppetry is probably the big exception to why getting rid of infinite blocks entirely wouldn't work (even if the master gets unblocked the socks wouldn't). So keep indefinite as an option but encourage a new category of conditional in block templates etc? Because I really do think this phrasing change would be a gamechanger. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:56, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Regarding conditional blocks, we already have WP:CONDUNBLOCK as a process, so that could work for blocks where a conditional unblock has been suggested (or similar situations such as username softblocks), but might be confusing for cases where there isn't a straightforward unblock condition the user can agree to.

I agree with the general spirit of making it clearer that indefinite blocks can be appealed, but the issue is that these blocks often exist on a spectrum of how feasible they are to appeal, and not all of them are as simple as "agreeing to not do the same thing again". Since there isn't a clear-cut distinction between these, we need to find a word that invites blocked users to work on learning from their block and ultimately appeal instead of giving up, but doesn't give false hopes to users in tougher cases, where a successful appeal might be months or years down the line. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:09, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Any ideas for how to go about doing that? I don't see expanding conditional unblocks as nessecarily being in conflict with the current process but I do want whatever we're coming up with to be practical yet helpful. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:17, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with Thryduulf's suggestion of making "indefinite is not infinite" more prominent. It is true that these two words are quite similar-looking, which might lead to some confusion otherwise. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:39, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

It's stated clearly in every block template that someone can appeal. If people see the word indefinite and stop reading the unblock template after that word, that's their problem. There will always be someone who finds something confusing or unclear. I'm not sure a change in terminology would fix any problems here. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:04, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Might be too far in the other direction, but maybe "appealable block" or "fixable block" or "curable block" to distance from partial blocks/tbans, and differentiate from blocks like sockpuppetry/community bans/timeouts after appeals have become tendentious. Tazerdadog (talk) 13:21, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

All blocks are appealable, so that doesn't work. Partial blocks, tbans and at least some full blocks of finite length are also fixable/curable so I don't think that terminology is helpful either. Rather than changing the terminology, I think we need to make Indefinite does not mean "infinite" or "permanent" (from WP:INDEF) a lot more prominent. Thryduulf (talk) 13:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

The most practical way of doing that would be editing what's said in the Twinkle block templates. I think that would be a good idea and possibly easier to accomplish then renaming what the type of block is called. I wasn't expecting the idea to be controversial as it was. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 22:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Are we engaging in a euphemism treadmill here? I seem to recall that "indefinite" and "no expiry set" are already intended as an improvement over "infinite". Anomie⚔ 13:31, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's euphemism treadmilling to be clearer to people who are not experienced Wikipedians what their block actually means. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:33, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Well we could call brief blocks: “Time out”…

longer blocks: “Sent to your room” or “Grounded”…

and permanent blocks: “F*€k off and Die”

But that may come off as a bit childish. Blueboar (talk) 13:43, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

It may be treadmilling if we keep trying to come up with more "clear" language as newer people, only familiar with the latest language, become experienced and decide that the language they're used to isn't "clear" enough for even-newer people. Anomie⚔ 14:01, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

If you asked me 7 years ago what an indefinite block was, I would not have told you the Wikipedia definition of the term. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:10, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

In this case, "7 years ago" does put you in the "only familiar with the latest language" group, as "indefinite" replaced "infinite" well before that.

I do see how 7-years-ago-you might not interpret "indefinite block" as "block of indefinite duration", instead struggling to make sense of it as meaning something like "block that is vague or uncertain" or "block designating an unspecified or identified target". Until you encountered terminology like "temporary block" or "36-hour block" that should have pointed you in the right direction, or clicked a link like the one to Wikipedia:Blocking policy#Indefinite blocks in {{uw-block|indef=yes}} or the like that explains it directly. Anomie⚔ 14:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

My argument is that if you have to explain to someone that something does not mean what you think it does (indefinite is not a commonly used word and most people are going to assume they're blocked forever when hearing it), that's not ideal. I don't think we should give up trying to change things just because we've changed them before and have the survivorship bias of eventually learning what it means. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 14:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

🤷 "People are too dumb to know what 'indefinite' means, or to look it up, or to read the links explaining it" isn't a claim that's worth arguing over. Anomie⚔ 14:54, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, Wikipedians tend to be pretty great at givings words definitions that have little to nothing to do with their IRL definitions (see: WP:R3 "Recently created, implausible typos", our speedy deletion criteria for normal typos) - indefinite, however, means the same thing. I mean, there's no shame in not knowing a word, especially if you joined Wikipedia at a young age and perhaps had never come across it before, but this is one that I think most people should know how to look up in a dictionary. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:42, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Why would you look up something you are fairly sure what it means? I suspect the common understanding of indefinite for new people is infinite. Which is why we had to make that WP:INDEF. If most people are thrown by it, even if they are in the wrong, it is not ideal and creates unnecessary misunderstandings. 4.7.212.46 (talk) 19:00, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, no, you wouldn't - grew up in an immigrant house, and was literally just ranting this morning about how monocultural people seem so loathe to look past their own idiolect. But, well, at least for "indefinite", the word is used the same way IRL as it is on Wikipedia - it means that something will stay in a condition until some factor changes. Yes, people will still misunderstand it - but many people also believe that something becomes their "own work" when they copy it or screenshot it - which is why we have Wikipedia:OWN WORK. Is that because we've chosen words that create 'unnecessary misunderstandings'? There's a point where, no matter how simple or monosyllabic the words are, you can't stop misunderstandings.

In this case, I actually don't suspect that "indefinite"="infinite" is a common misunderstanding, and nor do I suspect that most people are "thrown" by it. What I suspect that people get freaked out by the actual act of being blocked. And I'm not opposed to making that message clearer, but I don't see how. Adding more words? well, panicked people won't read more words - speaking as somebody with anxiety, the longer you make the block message, the less accessible it would be to me. (YMMV). Similarly, the longer and more complex a sentence is, the harder it is to read in your second language - for a simple example, I can pick up any dictionary and go "標準時"? Oh, that just means "time zone" - but replace it with "ある国家または広い地域が共通で使う地方時をいう" in a sentence, and now you've got to learn multiple grammar points and other words, then successfully push them together.

Again, I don't think our block messages are that great - the second line "If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked" is the major sticking point for me, though. What on earth does that mean, "good reason"? An unfair block? Well, let's say the block was fair. So, there's no good reason - so okay, time to leave forever. Ditto "appeal", the word everybody is using in this conversation as if it's the least bit applicable, but, IRL, you only appeal a decision if it is flawed. But what if the choice to block wasn't flawed, I (as the blocked user) really did create a sock account, or add content cited to unsuitable sources? Then what's the point of appealing? There's none. In wiki speak, reversing a block often just means undoing it, I think, but not in the vast majority of contexts. Removing a word because it's long and could possibly be confused with "infinite", and replacing it with a shorter Wiki-word that makes no sense to outside word... I'm not on board with that. I will save you from an even longer message, but I've had this "this word makes no sense in this context" response to all the alternatives. I mean, I don't know how to make the block message more clear. "You have been blocked [for OO time/indefinitely]. If you understand why you were blocked and promise not to break the rules again, you may ask to be unblocked. If you believe the block was unfair, you may appeal and your case will be reviewed by an uninvolved administrator" works for me, but would that work for other people? I don't know. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 19:54, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Instead of trying to rename indef blocks, how about adding a big "Appeal" button in MediaWiki:Blockedtext that takes them to the unblock wizard? Many people have no idea how to add the unblock template and e.g. resort to legal threats instead. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 15:01, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

If many people are resorting to legal threats because they don't understand what an indef block is, then it sounds like they don't have the temperament to edit here in any case and blocking them was a good idea. DonIago (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think legal threats are at all the majority that will be benefitted. I'd reckon they just leave. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:01, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps split indefs into 2 categories based on the actions needed to lift the block? a "quick-fixes block" for username issues, newbies who missed a memo on their first dozen edits, or veterans who need a rolled up newspaper, versus "introspection needed block" for when the community is at the end of it's rope, bigger issues, or where a simple acknowledgement of what went wrong and promise not to repeat it no longer suffices. Tazerdadog (talk) 14:37, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

That could be a good start, and formalize what is already the case to some extent, although some blocks are on a continuum between the two. If a block for a minor issue (say, a username softblock, or a block to get a user to communicate on their talk page) leads to more serious issues being discovered, would the user be "reblocked"? Clarifying the situation (and new expectations) to the user would certainly be helpful either way, but the software block itself shouldn't have to be changed.

This does move the parameters of the block beyond the mere technical and towards the social (see Wikipedia:Blocks and bans, with community-consensus blocks being considered de facto CBANs due to their appeal requirements). However, this is already the case to some extent with the idea that blocks don't apply to an account but to a person, and this could serve to build a framework that could unify, alongside bans, the "social" aspect of blocking that a software block enforces, and sort them out in a more understandable way. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

• Is it really so common to think that "indefinite" means "infinite" or "permanent"? "Indefinite" simply means "not for a definite period". I would have thought that anyone thinking it means something else would not understand English well enough to be writing an English encyclopedia anyway. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:20, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  Maybe it's just because I follow Wikipedia-related hashtags online but yes, this perception is absurdly common. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  I too would agree it is common and even more so with editors for who English is not their first language. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:48, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'd say people use it often enough as a euphemism for "permanent", as in "postponed indefinitely". I shortcut the definition in my mind to "without end" from "without any current plans for an end, although an end may be possible in the future". I know what it actually means, but I also know how people use it. If someone says "You're banned for the foreseeable future", it's easy to take that to mean you'll never be allowed back again, even if that's not what it literally means. 207.11.240.38 (talk) 15:46, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  But the notices do also present options for appealing blocks, which to me undercuts the idea that they're for the foreseeable future, unless one considers the possibility of a successful appeal to be unforeseeable? Now I'm mildly curious as to how many blocks get overturned on their first (sincere) appeal. DonIago (talk) 16:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  Yes its exceedingly common. No, it is not a reason someone should not edit English Wikipedia? Seriously? 4.7.212.46 (talk) 19:16, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

• All of the suggested new names are less clear than the original name. The blocks for a dozen socks with abusive usernames are not particularly well described as "conditional", and making two categories of indefinite blocks is a massive complication with little demonstrated benefit (if any). —Kusma (talk) 17:32, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think people can disagree on whether we should try this but I do believe that more people understanding that blocks aren't nessecarily in place for eternity has huge benefits with little drawbacks. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

My initial thoughts on the different types of bans that are enforced with indefinite blocks:

• conditional bans have a very specific, easy to verify condition for unblocking. A username change is an example.
• behavioural bans are made due to behaviour that is counter to English Wikipedia policy. The blocked user needs to convince the enacting authority that they can behave appropriately if unblocked.
• site bans are made when the user is no longer welcome to participate in the community, due to a lack of trust that they will be able to behave appropriately

An advantage to focusing on the type of ban rather than the technical mechanism used to block a user is that it should lessen ambiguity. Today sometimes users propose a community indefinite block, not understanding that this has the same effect as proposing a site ban. Using categories based on the difficulty of appeal would make the consequences of enacting a ban more evident. isaacl (talk) 17:41, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

The blocked user needs to convince the enacting authority that they can behave appropriately if unblocked

Isn't that true for all blocks though? The main difference is which authority - cbans go to the community, arb bans go to arbcom, blocks by a single admin go to any random admin; the actual trust/welcomeness factor may not be all that relevant. For example, the blocks of editors like ClemRutter, while the actual editor is welcomed by many, are ultimately CIR blocks that aren't going to be undone again, likely ever. Creating a system that puts him in a lesser category than "idiot ten year old who made a bunch of socks, came back at age 13 and is trying to be a productive editor" just creates ambiguity, confusion, and false hope - putting him in a greater category is just going to cause needless offense and pain. (second is also real example, not linking because I had to forward that one to an OS, neither of us seemed to think a block was called for despite the ban evasion) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:25, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

When you are saying that some editors aren't ever going to get unblocked, I was under the impression you mean that there are some bans where the banned user isn't ever going to convince the enacting authority that they can behave appropriately. Thus, I don't think it is true for all bans. An indefinite block is the tool for enforcing a restriction, not the actual restriction itself. I think the best way to communicate the route to return to editing is to explain the restriction and the reason for it, rather than focusing on the tool enforcing the restriction, which can cover multiple situations. isaacl (talk) 00:52, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I was under the impression you mean that there are some bans where the banned user isn't ever going to convince the enacting authority that they can behave appropriately.: Aside from self-disclosed pedophiles, criminals, etc, I'm of the mind that most bans involving on-wiki conduct are reversible given time and reflection. For example, Wonderfool, who deleted the Main Page twice here and several times on Wiktionary, was recently unblocked (now editing as Vealhurl). If Willy on Wheels somehow comes back and requests a convincing unblock, I'm sure the community would agree. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 01:04, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I also think that focussing on the reason for block or ban & discussing it with the editor is far more important than deciding what we're going to call any given rose, if you want to get the editor back.

To clarify the first point, no I do mean that it's easier to appeal certain bans than certain blocks or quasi-bans. I was disagreeing with your categorization system, specifically where you only applied the idea of "convincing the authority" to one type of block. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 01:11, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Conditional bans with a very clear condition don't need convincing. Site bans are ones where there is no foreseeable path to return to editing. Thus with this categorization, convincing the enacting authority plays no role with these two categories. (To clarify, what is currently called a site ban would end up being split across the behavioural ban and "never coming back" site ban categories.)

I think it would better to tell people they are banned for specific reasons, with pointers to how they might be unbanned for cases where that is feasible. "Block" should only be used afterwards to describe how they are technically limited from editing. isaacl (talk) 01:27, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

What benefits do you see formalizing such as system as having? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 06:05, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

I apologize for being confused. In each statement I made I discussed how it would be better to focus on the restriction rather than the technical tool being used, and how this would clarify the route to being unbanned. You agreed that it would be better to focus on the reason for the ban. Perhaps you can let me know where additional clarification would help? isaacl (talk) 16:21, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, and I'm still mostly stuck back on the entire idea of dividing the blocks into categories like 'banned for behaviour' or 'banned for behaviour, but in a way that annoyed the community' or 'banned for technical reasons' - I think there's too many edge cases to actually formalize that (even username blocks can require some degree of convincing,), and the actual line between 'blocked for violating a particular policy' and 'annoying one too many people' is very subjective indeed. We already do tell blocked editors that they need to work on the issues for which they were blocked. We already do mostly focus on the actual reason for the ban far more than the technical side of things, at least from my perspective of watching the unblocks queue like a puma for the better part of a year & looking through historical blocks, so it's not a new idea. The issue is getting said user to actually understand what part of a very abstract set of rules they broke, why it's important, and how they can avoid doing so again - and I just don't see how creating a somewhat arbitrary classification of blocks system could help with that? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 16:46, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

You stated that we shouldn't give editors false hope about being unbanned. I think a lot of the arguing today over whether someone said "support indefinite block" means they supported a site ban is because people want an option where someone is banned from all editing but is given a path to return. But because we don't distinguish between different kinds of site bans, there is no option for this distinction. I think breaking down site bans into "bye for now" and "goodbye" bans would provide this distinction and help with the false hope problem. I appreciate this is more work to figure out, but the only way to avoid giving false hope is to do the work. In my view, it's not a question of the community being annoyed, but if it does not feel there a path to trust the editor again, whether due to repeated poor behaviour, or sufficiently egregious behaviour. I think conditional bans would just provide a simple descriptor for bans where admins say "any admin who verifies this condition has been met can unban". isaacl (talk) 17:11, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Alright, I think I see where you're coming from now - I can maybe see where you're getting at by saying that there could be benefits to creating two sites of site bans, the problem is that this would require the community taking such an option, and form an admin to be OK unilaterally lifting any form of block that had community consensus. After all, in cases with any degree of subjectivity (POV pushing, source-text integrity issues, promotional editing, close paraphrasing), who is to say that the condition has been met? In this hypothetical world, is the guy who promotes his video game, gets told off by an admin, takes to to AN/I only to find himself boomerang condition-banned OK to be unblocked when he agrees not to edit about his video game anymore? What if his example edit is making an edit to an article about a competitor? I'd argue that's still promotional, many other editors wouldn't. How about an edit to the article on a record label associated with the composer he hired? Nothing to do with the video game, of course - but there's a valid argument that this is promotional, and a valid argument that it isn't. An admin might, quite reasonably, think the condition to unban has been met - but oopsie, the community didn't agree. From their POV, is it worth jeopardizing their adminship on behalf of a new editor with NOTHERE/SPA tendencies? On the over end of the spectrum - let's just say that the community conditionally bans an experienced editor for making personal attacks or creepy comments to other editors. The editor has a lot of friends, so the closer did a little bartending and said that it was a conditional ban until the other editor agrees not to make any more personal attacks. Let's say they make an unblock appeal six hours later, agreeing not to make such attacks again- does that mean an individual admin friend , who didn't participate in the AN/I thread, can lift the ban, credibly claiming that they verified the unban conditions had been met? In my second example, there's a much greater incentive to risk adminship & hide behind the shield of "verification" (after all, you get your friend back) than there is the first example, which I'd argue is the type of incidental cban that occurs more often that neither you or I is entirely comfortable with. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 17:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

My thoughts on categorizing bans weren't about changing the appeal process (just as I don't believe the initial post was about changing process), just better documenting the intent of the community. There is no change to who has authority to lift an editing restriction: it remains within the authority of who enacted the restriction, or within the scope of the governing policy (such as restrictions imposed as arbitration enforcement). So a community-imposed editing restriction has to be appealed to the community. isaacl (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

But you can't change one without the other? Any change to how blocks are categorized will impact appeals, just because the type of block is what most people with little to no familiarity with the underlying situation are going to look at. Formalize a category of conditional bans that can be undone the moment some criteria is met? Well, okay, who decides that? The community? You can't legislate community response. Any individual admin? Same issue, most people (especially our admins) are reluctant to go against community consensus (high risk) to unblock somebody who was a poor enough editor to get blocked (low reward). Somebody else? No matter which way you cut it, you're creating (whether intentionally or not) a new appeal system - and one that's a lot more confusing to non-Wikipedians (the average people) than it is to top AN/I and project space posters.

Also ditto Thryduulf - my brand new non-OS example of a "this is technically one kind of block, but the actual edits made it much more complicated" is Misterjamesveitch - softblocked to prevent impersonation of James Veitch (comedian). The AGF explanation for his edits is that it was actually him, but if he hadn't verified his identity that would have had to have turned into a hardblock for serious misconduct. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:20, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

We can add categories to articles without changing the process for writing articles. Categorizing types of site bans is for our convenience. It doesn't dictate process. We already have restrictions where the admin says that any admin can lift it if a given condition is met. The categories aren't inventing new types of restrictions. isaacl (talk) 18:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

And I'm arguing that the actual act of introducing labels would impact the process - also, categories absolutely can impact the writing process. That's why we have categories for stuff like ENGVAR or dates. Yes, they are meant to be descriptors, but "I spent years switching all the spellings in this article to American because the categories told me I could" is a totally valid excuse to avoid being sanctioned, even if the only reason the article is in the category is because of subtle vandalism. Conversely, categories that have no impact are going to have no impact period - I don't see how trying to classify blocks is going to make solving the issue which lead to the block any different, which is what actually matters, and not hundreds of editor hours wasted over what exactly to categorize something as.

Also, the idea that we have "restrictions where the admin says that any admin can lift it if a given condition is met" is fictitious, ultimately. When an admin says that any other admin can lift a block once a condition is met, it means that they won't raise an objection or they themselves would unblock in such a case- they can't actually dictate that other admins not unblock. But we don't have a formal restriction system in place, and, given that admins are all fallible volunteers with minimal oversight, can never have one. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:45, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

We have the option to do either: we could change the process and have categories that reflect the changes, or we could not change the process, and define categories as we please to reflect current process. I'm looking at the latter, not the former. I was just laying out some initial thoughts on how, within the current process, bans could be categorized, rather than renaming a tool used to enforce many kinds of bans, with the goal of enabling the community to distinguish between site bans that aren't likely to get lifted versus those where there is a path to lifting the ban. So to me a discussion about how the process can be changed is a different discussion. It might be a fruitful one, but not one I'm trying to address with my thoughts. isaacl (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

And I suppose where I'm at is that I don't think it's possible to change the process of blocking and the process of appealing - they're simply too dependent on each other. Change what you call a ban, and the appeals process changes to match, even if you don't mean it to. The actual act of labeling impacts it. So, at least from my perspective, you can't talk about one but not the other. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:24, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

There are also blocks that are not clearly one or the other. For example editors who engage in promotional editing with a promotional username - especially when you need the context of the edits to see that the username is promotional.

More than one of my Oversight blocks have been of minors significantly oversharing while engaging in self promotion - sometimes they even spam their self-promotional material. While requests for unblock following oversight blocks are handled by arbcom rather than any random admin, the block log will typically just say "oversight block" and I'm sure the same applies to normal blocks too. Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

The examples you raise are, using current terminology, site bans which the enacting authority is willing to lift in favour of a topic ban. Unless otherwise stated, the enacting authority is the one who evaluates the response of the banned user. Within the categorization framework I raised, they are behavioural bans that the enacting authority is willing to lift in favour of a topic ban. isaacl (talk) 17:59, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

• I don't consider this a problem and am perfectly happy with the current situation; however, if we need to make it exceedingly clear to those who may think that indefinite means perpetual, I propose calling indefinite blocks "blocks without a fixed duration". Everything else that's been proposed so far is liable to introduce even more confusion, in my opinion. Salvio ^giuliano 18:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
• I agree with others stating that most of the ideas presented thus far seem like a step backwards with respect to the intended purpose. To be honest, I think "indefinite" is so well suited to this kind of situation that I've started using it in similar contexts outside of Wikipedia, to no confusion as far as I am aware. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:53, 26 October 2025 (UTC)
• I think what is getting at here, is that we have a single block "period" that encompasses two very different situations. What we call "indefinite" blocks are called "infinite blocks" in the database, so it is entirely reasonable for people who are blocked for a "curable" reason to believe that they have been banned forever. Realistically, there are a lot of indefinitely blocked accounts that we have zero reason to think will ever be unblocked. At the same time, we also have a lot of accounts that are indefinitely blocked because they need to assure the community that they understand the reason for their block and will not repeat the behaviour that resulted in the block. Quite honestly, I don't actually see any benefit in time-limited blocks. Our blocking policy says that we shouldn't be giving "cool-down" blocks, but that is exactly what a 24 or 36 hour block is. Arbcom stopped giving out time-limited blocks way back in 2009, and has since that time made unblocks conditional on behavioural change.
  I can't see any reason why "conditional block" would be confused with "partial block". Risker (talk) 23:05, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  Respectfully, I don't think the average person has the slightest clue what blocks are recorded as in the database; I don't see how that could be a source of confusion. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:11, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  The average person doesn't get blocked, either indefinitely or infinitely. I hold our administrators in high enough esteem that they can differentiate between making a block that can be cured by the account and one that cannot. Even if that opinion isn't a widely-held one, I think that all our dropdowns should not use the term "infinite" anywhere, or should be a separate alternative to indefinite/conditional. Risker (talk) 23:37, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  Changing the dropdowns seems fine. However, this conversation started out with a claim that editors who got blocked were confused by the term "indefinite" (see OP:But I don't think the name of indefinite block really gets across to the average person that you aren't permanently banned, emphasis own); I don't see how changing the admin interface has much, if anything, to do with that?GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

  It's an idea lab, that means that we should iterate on the idea. There is no such thing as an idea that is fully formed on its first legs. Let's work on looking at the idea and talk about how we can improve on the idea, not just have knee-jerk reactions that something won't work. Some of the ways we can do that might start with "why did we choose these terms in the first place? when did we do that?" We've come up with lots of good ideas over the years, and improved on old ideas. Back in the day, there was no such thing as community bans, or blocks longer than a certain specific time, or admins handing out blocks longer than a month or so. It is good that we have given the space for people to come up with these ideas and helped them to develop them, and to figure out how to shut down experiments that haven't really worked. Please be charitable. The Wikipedia of 2025 is massively different than the one of 2002, or 2010, or 2015, and a lot of those positive changes have started out as seeds like this. Risker (talk) 00:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not trying to shut you down? You said that you thought the database could cause people who were blocked to think they were blocked forever, the OP was also talking about confusion for average editors, but when I asked you about that, you started saying that the average person didn't get blocked? I'm trying to follow your train of thought and see where you're going with this by asking you for clarification? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 00:21, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  Technically, people are blocked forever (with a duration of infinite) until someone decides to lift their block. The MediaWiki source code does not have any expectations on whether someone would come along and unblock a user. The problem here is a social one; most normal people don't seem to understand that they are able to appeal their indefinite blocks instead of engaging in sockpuppetry and/or making legal threats. The first thing most users see is Template:Blocked text, and the next is a Template:Uw-block placed on their talk page. Non-admins can't see what the dropdowns say, nor would most users worry about what's in their block log, so all changes, if any, must be made to these two templates. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 00:34, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  ...and, a quick look at CAT:RFU reveals that most new editors have the impulse to use LLMs to generate their unblock requests, which get declined almost instantly, leaving the users frustrated and unsure of what to do next. Keep in mind that most people use AI-powered tools daily, especially in the Global South, where people may not be confident in their ability to write in English on their own (even though many are actually pretty good at it.) A good first step would be to add clear instructions in the Unblock Wizard (do people even use that?) or elsewhere to refrain from using LLMs. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 00:53, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  The unblock wizard is more of an idea than something that has actually been implemented at this time. Chaotic Enby created it after a discussion I started here expressing a desire for it because I've cared for a long time about how blocked users don't nessecarily understand the template/what they can do to get unblocked very well and I was inspired by the edit request wizard to see if we could maybe do something different. But an RfC needs to happen before it can be used in the way I envisioned. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 09:23, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  The only dropdown I see that has "infinite" as an option comes from MediaWiki:ipboptions, of which Special:Diff/880298592 indicates it's that way because we can't have two options with the same label and says it still shows up as "indefinite" in the logs. Are there others? Anomie⚔ 00:08, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  So...it appears that "infinite" was added with no discussion, as a result of some sort of OOUI change? Why not simply change the dropdown back to indefinite then? There is no discussion that indicates why the word "infinite" was selected. Risker (talk) 00:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  "indefinite" is already at the start of the list. To have an indef option at the end too, some other name was needed. As to why "infinite", I have no idea. Anomie⚔ 00:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

• We should be wary of introducing a second set of vocabulary. The names of blocks currently reflect their direct practical impact on the blocked user: partial, X-hour/day/month, indefinite. Naming blocks after the reason blocks were given, or the expected unblock path, or similar may make the jargon even more jargony. CMD (talk) 06:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
• My view: If an editor thinks "indefinite" means "forever", they need to improve their vocabulary. "Indefinite" is the clearest way to say it—it literally means "not definite". See dictionary entry for "indefinite". Sure, clarify the PAGs as necessary. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 06:46, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  Except a not definite block is forever unless you successfully appeal it and a lot of people have no idea that you can, whether it's because the word isn't used that often, they assume it's something like "inflammable", or they don't understand the concept of a block being "indefinite" because other websites just permanently ban people and there isn't a block expiration time like there is for the other blocks. I hate to bring Larry Sanger up because I don't think his "9 theses" are practical and they're out of touch at best but stuff like "get rid of indefs" is one of those ideas people have been talking about elsewhere online. I've seen so many people discuss how they basically did stupid teenage things and don't have the secret arcane knowledge of Tamzin's essay because they think it means "game over forever". Given that Sanger describes that the practice as Wikipedia’s draconian practice of indefinite blocking—typically, permanent bans—is unjust. This is no small problem. Nearly half of the blocks in a two-week period were indefinite. This drives away many good editors. Permanent blocks are too often used to enforce ideological conformity and protect petty fiefdoms rather than to serve any legitimate purpose, he seems to think that too. I press x to seriously doubt that admins hand out indefs for "ideological conformity", but the fact the average person's reaction to that statement is not the Wikipedia line of "but it's not technically an infinite block even though it is until you appeal successfully" is a problem worth remedying imo. I'm going to refrain from commenting further because I don't want to bludgeon, but it took me awhile to figure out "how do I express what I'm trying to say here?". Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 09:44, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  Haven't read this whole thread, but FWIW, I think the best way to bring policy in line with practice (the practice that's reflected in my mildly heretical essay) is to make it explicit that WP:CLEANSTART is allowed five years after an indefinite block, provided that the block was not to enforce a community or ArbCom sanction, and was not a block that no reasonable admin would lift without community consensus; and that post-block cleanstarts on shorter timeframes may be tolerated on a case-by-case basis if there is no continuation of the underlying disruptive behavior, but that this is not something anyone should rely on. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 09:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  ...and if we could trust the indef'd editor to correctly apply all of those provisional criteria to their own situation, they'd probably not be the kind of editor who got indef'd in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:44, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

  I repeat: Sure, clarify the PAGs as necessary. But don't mess with a widely-recognized, perfectly good word. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 10:55, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  I have to wonder whether any amount of renaming blocks would really make a difference to that sort of misconception, considering studies have also shown that many people also don't realize that it's possible for them to edit Wikipedia in the first place. Anomie⚔ 13:33, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

  I believe that editors should spend about as much time finding ways to simplify editing as we spend finding ways to complicate it. I'd estimate that this ratio is traditionally about 1-to-10. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 14:35, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

• I wonder about the truthiness of statements like 'blocks drive people away'. Accounts are blocked. Wikimedia doesn't have the tools to block people. People come back with new accounts or as unregistered IPs or both. There is currently no way to stop them. If they are 'good' editors determined to edit Wikipedia and stay out of trouble they are likely have a de facto cleanstart of their own making. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:51, 27 October 2025 (UTC)
• For the standard "indef, not appealable for 1 year" sorts of blocks I think the current terminology is perfectly fine. I do think we should probably split off "indef immediate appeal" blocks for username issues or newbies doing something dumb from "true" indefs though. Loki (talk) 18:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps instead of looking at the name used within discussions among editors, we should look at the templates posted to blocked users, and work on clarifying their messages. The name of the technical tool used to enforce the imposed editing restriction doesn't matter, as long as the message clearly explains the reason for the restriction, and the path to have the restriction removed. isaacl (talk) 17:18, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

+1. The same issues also apply for definite but long blocks (months to years). We'd prefer the editor to clean up their act instead of waiting out the block, no matter whether the block has definite or indefinite duration. —Kusma (talk) 17:59, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

+2 This is the best return on effort we are going to get. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:38, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

+3. A blocked editor who has sufficient competence with the English language to constructively edit the English Wikipedia should always be able to clearly understand why they were blocked. They can disagree that that should be something people are blocked for, and they can disagree that what they were saying/doing was an example of that reason for being blocked, but they should always understand what the reason given means. Thryduulf (talk) 19:11, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Unblock wizard, which I recently discovered as it was mentioned in the nomination statements of one of the current RfAs. It's a pretty cool idea, and while I think there is room for improvement in its current form, it could make the process of appealing indefinite blocks much less daunting than it might currently be. Maybe something like this (User:Mz7/sandbox/uw-blockindef-wizard):

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing to prevent further vandalism.

If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, please review Wikipedia's guide to appealing blocks, then use the "request an unblock" button below.

---

Request an unblock

Mz7 (talk) 04:27, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

How about something like "You have been blocked from editing for [reason]. This block does not have an expiry date set, but if you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked you may appeal. If you do wish to appeal, please review..."? Thryduulf (talk) 11:09, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Speaking as an American, I prefer "does not have a set expiration date. If you believe...". Otherwise, while I still think it's a little silly that people misconstrue "indefinite" as "infinite", this wording probably is more easily understood. DonIago (talk) 14:21, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:37, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm fine with DonIago's suggestion, which reads fine in British English. Thryduulf (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I see where you two are going, but those sentences both rate as much more difficult on a bunch of the online grade level/text difficulty checkers I measured them against when compared w/ "You have been blocked indefinitely". Also, the new versions may register as easier in difficulty than they are. Most people learn what expiration means in the context of foot products remaining good to eat, while indefinite pretty much just has the one meaning. Again, I do get why people might confuse it, but indefinite was ranked as a elementary school level word, so you should really know what it means by the time you're twelve, or you should know how to look it up in a dictionary. It's a lot easier than other words we expect people to know, like 'citation', 'plagiarism', and 'consensus', all of which got ranked as college-level. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 16:41, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm admittedly surprised to hear that those alternatives would be considered much more difficult to parse. Is there perhaps a middle ground? "Indefinite" may be ranked as an elementary school level word (and as I've expressed, I personally don't see how it's all that ambiguous), but it's clearly tripping up a number of people, so it seems worth considering options that may trip up fewer people. DonIago (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

learn what expiration means in the context of foot products remaining good to eat

That should be enough to understand what an expiration of a block means. And "indefinite" is probably way more obscure than any of "expire"'s meanings (in fact it seems more a middle-school word to me).

know how to look it up in a dictionary

The concern is that scanning eyes will mistake the word as "infinite" far more easily than "expiration". Aaron Liu (talk) 18:31, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm also surprised that these are regarded as more confusing, although I also don't regard "indefinite" as problematic it's clear that some people do. If "expiry date" or "expiration date" are problematic, would "end date" be better? Thryduulf (talk) 18:34, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Readability tools tend to over-focus on the number of syllables in a word or the number of words in a sentence without regard to whether the words are familiar or make sense in context. (Different systems have different metrics.)

If you just split the middle into two sentences:

You have been blocked from editing for [a reason]. This block does not have a set expiration date. If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, you may appeal. If you do wish to appeal, please review...

then that will make a big difference to some of the tools, though not so much to the reality. Expiration, with four syllables, will be rated as difficult by several tools, and you could change it to end, but unless you're expecting a younger child to be reading this, it probably won't make any actual difference.

Alternatively, just try a different reading tool. They're wildly inconsistent, with different tools producing a range of "correct" ratings that can differ by 10 years of education or more for the same text. If you don't like the answer you got with the first tool, then pick a different one until you get the answer you want. Wikipedia:Readability tools links to about 10, if you want to try them out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I find the split to make a pretty big difference. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'll throw in the idea I had, how about "Appeal only block" or "Appeal required block". It gets the info you want right out front, that they can appeal, and that its the only way to remove the block. HypnoticCringer (talk) 02:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

• Indefinite blocks are logical name for blocks of indefinite duration. We could call them permanent blocks, but indefinite works better than any other suggestion I've heard so far. If we want a change to the system I would rather look at the blocking of IP addresses when we hard block accounts. I think such IP blocks are permanent and it would probably make sense and greatly reduce collateral damage to make these "intelligent blocks" either a fixed duration or O/S dependent. ϢereSpielChequers 20:24, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

  I think such IP blocks are permanent: Nope, underlying IP addresses are autoblocked for a duration of 24 hours, regardless of the block duration you apply on the account. That's why sockpuppetry is so common. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 20:27, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

TL:DR. I got tagged...As a former user who deleted the main page (not sorry about that), I always thought "indef" wasn't quite right. "long-term block" would always make more sense Vealhurl (talk) 16:07, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

"Long-term" wouldn't make more sense; an indef can be quite brief, if the editor appeals successfully. Schazjmd (talk) 16:29, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

How about "Open-ended block"? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 13:54, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

One of the better options, though I'm a little concerned it might seem overly euphemistic. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:40, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Clearer might be "Blocked until successful appeal" but too wordy. Schazjmd (talk) 16:29, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I still like my original suggestion of conditional block. Simple yet concise. However, if nothing about the name of the block itself is changed, I agree that making the Twinkle templates as clear as possible is a good idea. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:06, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes but indefinite is clearer and also includes asking for clemency. Appeals are for mistaken blocks, after 6 months you can promise to obey the rules as per the standard offer and in most cases that will get you unblocked. ϢereSpielChequers 17:25, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Enumerated type lists in templates?

Would it make sense to enable enumerated type as a parameter type in Wikipedia templates? An example of usage would be to standardize on a set of colors and layouts for templates under a particular topic category. I'm suggesting a usage something like: 'object_type=plutino', resulting in a particular template layout, with object_type including {planet, giant_planet, ice_planet, dwarf_planet, plutino, asteroid, comet, ...}. The benefit would be ease of template management across a potentially broad series of articles. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 19:38, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Are you imagining this as part of TemplateData? Templates themselves don't really have "parameter types"; for instance, numbers are passed around as strings. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:26, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

And in TemplateData I think suggested values are already enough. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:05, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "enable". MediaWiki doesn't support typed parameters in templates, though as alluded to by Jlwoodwa, VisualEditor's template editing mechanism does overlay some typechecking for templates that provide that information through TemplateData. Your example sounds like you are thinking of treating one parameter as a selector to choose different behaviour. You're free to do that in templates you create. It's a tradeoff, though: you may be able to reuse code with a template that serves multiple purposes (using helper templates or by implementing it in Lua), possibly saving maintenance costs, but it adds complexity, adding maintenance costs. isaacl (talk) 01:05, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

My 2 cents, as I spend time on many wikis: it is a recurring topic, mainly about infoboxes. A parameter can turn a generic infobox into a specialized one. Wikidata-based infoboxes can even hide the parameters that aren't relevant to the object type. While the work on the content of the infobox, through a generic infobox, can save maintenance burden, I already read discussions that highlighted the increase in complexity. Also, if each parameter calls its own style, it can multiply styles and hence increase maintenance (not counting the amount of conversations about styling, i.e. choosing the "right" color) and, potentially, confuse the reading experience. Trizek_(WMF) (talk) 19:01, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

In a limited-use case (e.g., choosing infobox colors), you could just program the template to ignore any input that doesn't match the approved values. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:47, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

One of the issues is the "Monkey mayor issue". You think all mayors are humans, but Hartlepool elected a monkey. Rome had a horse as co-emperor. One party in a UK lawsuit was (depending on your perspective) either a rock or a god. More pedestrianly there are a slew of exception labelling values, n/a (with at least two meanings), none, unknown, "see list" etc. etc. What is the RGB value of infra-red? (See also, Impossible color.) All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:06, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

Of course you can write template code or Lua code to do what you describe. And indeed Template:Infobox baseball biography (for example) does that. It's important to remember that information should never be given only by a visual style or colour. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

Different effects of search.

Let's say I have searched for "mint ice cream", I'm now at the search result page. The search result page has two different search boxes I can fill in and hit the search button. The one at the top that is part of the normal header and the one below with all of the choices like limiting to a different draft space. What seems really confusing to beginning editors is that those two searches are different. If I type "John Hopkins University" in the top search box, since that is a redirect (for a mispelling), I'll end up jumping to the "Johns Hopkins University" page. On the other hand if I type "John Hopkins University" in the lower one, I'll see all of the occurances of the string "John Hopkins University in enwiki. Would it make sense to differentiate those two somehow?Naraht (talk) 13:51, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

@Naraht This is why the top one has an extra item in the autocomplete results: "Search for pages containing [x]" —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:17, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Naraht (talk) 14:43, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

If you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?useskin=monobook and look in the left-hand sidebar, you'll see that the (tiny) search box has two buttons: "Go" and "Search". The first takes you straight to the article/page. The second takes you to search results. This difference is the functionality they're trying to replicate with these two behaviors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Add all pages in a category to your watchlist

I would find a feature like this useful. Since I only have an original idea about once a decade, I assume this has come up before. I guess it's not very difficult to do this with a DB query and some messing about in Special:EditWatchlist/raw or via the API, but a button that did it might be nice. Maybe there is already a tool that does it... Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

There are two scripts at Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Categories that would seem to do what you want. Thryduulf (talk) 18:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

You can also do like Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Birds of Central America to get a watchlist-like view of changes to pages in the category, if that's all you're wanting. Anomie⚔ 19:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

These are both excellent suggestions. Thank you both. Sean.hoyland (talk) 02:55, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Sending a user a copy of their speedily-deleted page

Just a thought:

After a page is deleted, the page creator (and/or other major contributors?) gets a copy of the deleted article sent to them. This way, they could see what the offending bit was and resubmit it down the line.

It's kind of like draftifying but for pages that qualify for CSD in both article and draftspace.

This wouldn't work in all situations. For example:

• Pages that are libelous (or other major BLP violations)
• Pages that are illegal for WMF to have in their servers (such as CSAM)
• Pure spam/vandalism
• Pages that break arbitration remedies
• Blank pages

The page Biz by the Water is an Australian sports broadcast article that is currently being CSD A7-ed for not indicating notability. The author would be sent the page, fix it, then resubmit.

Obviously kinks would need to be worked out, like how would the page be sent to the user (talk pages won't work)? Worth a thought.

Could help with editor retention. Not sure. EatingCarBatteries _{(contributions, talk)} 05:52, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

You can request a WP:REFUND for (almost) any deleted page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:49, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Also, they could just contest the speedy with a request to move the page to their sandbox for improvements. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

You assume the user is on-wiki between the time the speedy is nom'd and the deletion takes place. In my experience this is often not the case. In fact when I was patrolling the CSD queue (many years ago) I found that most were deleted before I had the chance to make an informed decision. I believe (based on a sample of speedy deleted items I reviewed) that admins were deleting without more than a cursory check at best. No doubt things are much better now. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 14:12, 2 November 2025 (UTC).

How would we send it to them without it being publicly published ? Email ? some sort of sandbox environment ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:07, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Email is the normal non-public way to send refunds. Sometimes people do their creative writing or homework in a Wikipedia page, and so may have a reason to want pages. Another possible way is to find an archived or mirrored copy that exists outside Wikipedia and point the user to it. Sandboxes are unlikely to be archived. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Publicize WP:RSP ratings

In the articles about Wikipedia's potential sources, such as The New York Times, mention the RSP rating in some fashion; e.g. "Wikipedia considers the Times a generally reliable source."

If it's permitted to link from mainspace to WP space, the article could even link to the RSP rating.

If this were placed in a separate section with a standard heading (similar to See also), that would make the information that much easier to find in the article. I know, many editors dislike one-sentence sections, and there's probably a guideline discouraging it. I think an IAR exception would be justified in this case.

If a citation |work= parameter linked to the article (I believe it should), a reader could see what we think of the source. That would support verifiability and improve transparency. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 13:27, 28 October 2025 (UTC) Edited per discussion 23:47, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I doubt this will gain acceptance (whether Wikipedia considers something a reliable source or not really isn't relevant to the topic in the majority of cases), but it'll be interesting to see how many bad policy and guideline references people use when opposing it. Anomie⚔ 15:01, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Alternatively, create a new CS1 citation parameter that produces an icon in the rendered citation, indicating its RSP rating. Green check mark, etc. That would be ideal, but it would require more work for both Trappist and general editors. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 15:09, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

That idea sounds like something better suited to a user script than a CS1 parameter. In fact, I'd be a little surprised if such a script doesn't already exist, as it seems like something people doing FA reviews and new article patrolling would find really helpful. Anomie⚔ 15:14, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

A script run by a roaming bot. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 15:16, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

There is a user script somewhere, someone mentioned it to me the other day. Katzrockso (talk) 00:35, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards opposing this on the basis that "generally reliable"/"generally unreliable"/"deprecated" are Wikipedia jargon that most of our readers will misunderstand. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:21, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's in the encyclopedia's interest to shield readers from understanding of Wikipedia content policy. If they "misunderstand", it's because they haven't been educated. Readers aren't stupid, for the most part. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 16:34, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

It’s not about readers being stupid, my concern is that it’s not possible to explain the nuances of how we treat this in practice while holding to WP:DUE. Anecdotally, RS tend to only discuss RSP when they’re talking about Wikipedia; I am skeptical that RS coverage of NYTimes, for example, is ever going to center Wikipedia’s assessment of it as a source. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Rosguill.

Also, who says that readers actually want to spend any part of their life "being educated" about Wikipedia's content policy? Most people are just looking for a quick fact: What's the website for this company? What's the name of that actor in that film? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I admit that I am a little wary of RSP ratings, because folks treat them as a binary yes/no when WP:RSCONTEXT is still a guideline. The New York Times for example would not be a reliable source for medical claims. Even the most fake of sources are reliable sources for their own claims (although WP:DUE is then often a problem). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:49, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

As a side note, I invite you all to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Restructuring RSP.

In line with what Jo-Jo Eumerus says here, several of us have explicitly opposed a "cheat sheet" or "quick look up" that would give only the name of the source and its general category (this suggestion would have a link to further information, but we fear that most editors would only look for the color coding and not care about the details. For example, we've got one "GUNREL" and one "deprecated" news source whose explanatory text says that their sports coverage is okay – but you won't notice that, if you just look for the colored icon and believe that it applies to everything). No source is reliable for everything, and any source can be reliable for something. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I have contemplated writing a user script to indicate a media outlet's status from @Headbomb's WP:UPSD or RSP. (Just an idea at this stage. I haven't thought about how to implement it yet.) Due to the current PEIS issues, if I see an unfamiliar source mentioned in a discussion I am more likely to look for an article describing it than try to load the whole RSP. I agree that RS assessments generally shouldn't be included in articles as they could introduce more confusion or misunderstanding among non-insiders. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 22:29, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Have you looked at m:Meta:Cite Unseen? (Pinging @SuperGrey) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Of course, it's become indispensable for identifying problematic references just by glancing at a reference list, but it doesn't (AFAIK) tell me anything about a source when I'm reading an article about that source. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 09:57, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Usually, by the time I'm looking at a Wikipedia article about a source, I want to know about the source, rather than about which discrete pigeonhole an RFC shoved the source in. We have many sources at RSP that are "generally reliable, except for X" or "generally unreliable, except for Y", and several sources that have to be divided up (e.g., there are three separate rows in RSP for Fox News – politics and talk shows aren't reliable, but ordinary, non-political news may be okay). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

This sounds a lot like navel gazing. Wikipedia doesn't consider a source to be reliable or unreliable, they may be a consensus of editors that a source is unreliable or reliable for the purposes of Wikipedia. Although discussions tend to use the former wording, the actual meaning is always the latter. That some editors on Wikipedia considers a sources as more or less usable when writing articles doesn't seem like something that should be included in an article about the source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:03, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

I think we're past inclusion in the articles. As the proposer, I am. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 22:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

If you don't want people to respond to that part of your proposal anymore, I suggest striking it. jlwoodwa (talk) 23:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

that part of your proposal That's the entire proposal, but I am striking it. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 23:47, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Non-technical summary section or page for technical topics

TLDR (or non technical summary :P):

So many math pages (and other technical ones) are only readable by people in the field, when the concepts are valuable and searched for by quite a few people. Could we make them more readable with a new type of section that is standardly implemented or different types of page (i.e. toggle between non-technical and technical)? Otherwise/additionally, could we have some initiative to copy-edit them to be more readable?

Explaination:

As it stands, when I was younger and using wikipedia, up till now, when I look up more technical topics (such as in math or computer science) I am met with an absolute mish-mash of word salad and formulae.

This does most of the time serve formally as a definition, but unless I have prior knowledge of the topic helps me about as much as a dancing chihuahua in a raincoat (or less, for at least the chihuahua is entertaining, whereas this simply leaves me slightly befuddled and frusturated before I go on to search for a more useful explaination elsewhere).

Advancing from a standpoint of clarity, simplicity, and usefulness, I would propose that a new section be commonly implemented across some of the more trafficked technical pages (or ones useful for many people). Alternatively, we could have pages which have two different parts, a non-technical part and a formal part.

An example: scope, which 'in short' as it currently stands defines itself as 'the part of a program where the name binding is valid,' and meanders through about 4 paragraphs of text which is all formally (blah blah blah) important for it's definition and usage (and yes completely understandable to many programmers). However, for those who are more new to the topic, it means hot sh- I mean... for beginners in code looking to understand scope it also doesn't help much. Those 4 paragraphs practically can be condensed into: "Scope determines where a variable (like x = 1) can be accessed in your code. It's usually determined by where you define the variable. If you define a variable in a function, usually it's scope is only within said function; if you define it in the file, it can be accessed in that file etc." Which I hope my fellow devs can agree is a more effective definition practically. In fact, all this boondoggling of the formal definition would just confuse me - it's not just useless, it's anti-helpful!

Another (more minimal) formulation of this idea could be that: many practically useful ideas that were once technically developed (such as baysian statistics) are locked behind 'intellectual paywalls' or gatekept (unknowingly). Taking the concept and expressing it as it matters practically disseminates the knowledge more effectively, and helps people develop their understanding of the world. There could be some initiative to translate important, useful or fun technical concepts for a wider audience.

Yes, I can be bold and do this myself, in fact I probably will. However, it seems a useful thing for wikipedia to do in general. The most interesting contents of human knowledge are usually (if they have formulae) on this site incomprehensible to anyone outside of the field. We should make them accessible!

"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity." At least I just want to verbalise a problem I've had (perhaps my own simple mindedness): that it seems many technical pages are correct in definition but are incorrect in transmission. Briefly noting I'm new to excuse me from any mistakes if I have made them here :)

- Julius Chandler (talk) 12:05, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello Julius Chandler. Our current guidelines already say that the article's lead should be understandable to a wide audience, per WP:EXPLAINLEAD. But we often fail to comply with that guideline. So instead of giving two different leads, these overly complicated leads need to be rewritten to be understandable to an interested layperson. There's a project to rewrite the WP:Understandability guideline, where I'm looking for one more person to give feedback during the workshop phase before launching Wp:request for comment asking people whether they prefer the old or new version of the guideline. If you have time, feedback on the workshop text would be welcome on its talk page.

When you encounter an article with an overly complicated lead and you don't have the ability to simplify it, feel free to tag it with {{Technical}}. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:22, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense. See my comments on the talk page and someone feel free to archive this. Also any interested editors in making technical concepts from mathematics and other fields should really get together and do some initiative if only to rewrite the 80/20 articles (if you get what I mean a la views/ease to rewrite). I'm not really sure how that works on here though. Julius Chandler (talk) 16:43, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Julius Chandler! There's a couple of ways to organise people. One effective way is to organise a contest (which has lost on my to-do list), as gamifying stuff is the best way to really get momentum on Wikipedia. My idea was to make it a contest where people work in pairs (one layperson, one expert) to tackle our most-read articles across all technical topics. If you like that idea, and have the bandwidth to organise, I'd be happy to help set this up (feel free to leave me a message on my talk page). Other ways is to see if you can get people at WP:WikiProject Mathematics interested in a project by posting on that Wikiproject's talk page. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:52, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

WPMATH has tried to do this in the past. What they mostly need is people who are both willing and able to do the work.

The table in Wikipedia:Readability tools#Build a balanced article might be a useful explanation about how to meet the needs of different groups of readers in the same article. It uses Abstract algebra as one of the examples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:54, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes the simple English wikipedia does a better job. I would agree, our maths articles are generally incomprehensible. I asked a mathematician about this, and her comment was "that's because they're not written by mathematicians, they're written by grad students who want to show off", which is possibly a rather harsh generalisation. The difficulty is that if you try to edit maths articles, you encounter the arguments "we are not a textbook", "anyone who knows anything about the subject will understand", and "your edit that squares have four corners is wrong because in a Hoffmannian semi-polar set of isobaric coordinates the tertiary quadrilateral apex disappears to negative infinity". My feeling is that articles that can only be understood by someone who already knows exactly what they are trying to say, are utterly pointless. There is a fundamental difference between a textbook and an encyclopedia, but it's a bit subtle, and lost on hard-core maths article editors - who tend to turn the articles into extreme secondary reviews with little context or background. I don't know the solution. Elemimele (talk) 17:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps we can amend WP:NOTTEXTBOOK to say that sometimes the textbook explanation is the only one that allows compliance with our WP:Understandability guideline. (That exact wording might not find consensus, but I'm sure we can workshop something sensible). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Article wizard should impose a process

I looked today for the first time at the article wizard. It seems to be no more than a set of warnings to ignore and click through, followed by free-form editing. That's not a wizard, it's just a slow-motion nag screen. A real wizard forces you to make appropriate choices in an appropriate order, and a real wizard would be nice to have on Wikipedia. In my opinion, probably the best thing it could do is disallow writing any text until you have cited several reliable sources, and then only allow you to type "under" the sources you've specified, so that you are required to attribute every word you type to one of your sources, and no freestanding sentences are possible. (With, of course, an "add new source" button easily accessible.)

The concept of writing an article "backwards" is often mentioned as a problem. The point of my suggestion is that the function of the article wizard ought to be to force people to write "forwards" - not to give warnings and advice and then turn them loose to do whatever. TooManyFingers (talk) 05:56, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Sounds like good UI design. Well-designed wizards etc. can make various types of errors impossible, including the ones stated above. ―Mandruss ☎ 2¢ IMO. 06:00, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

A wizard that is giving blank pages to end users is not ideal. I would like one where you have sections per-arranged in a template and this template would also include a place to paste a reference. LDW5432 (talk) 03:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@TooManyFingers, it looks like you've never tried to write an article. Were you looking at the Wikipedia:Article wizard because you wanted to start Your first article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

No, I was looking at it to think of ways it could be made even more useful than it currently is, by actually compelling some good habits rather than just recommending them during the "click through and ignore" preliminary messages. (Of course I know no one ought to click through and ignore, but it's clear to both of us that that frequently happens.) TooManyFingers (talk) 05:20, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe you should create a couple of articles before you decide which the advice is helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think headings are barely even a concern. If someone gets them wrong, they're easy to change. IMO, forcing people to adhere to their source material - or else be shut out of writing until they specify the sources - could be extremely helpful.

If I see an article with no headings, I can often give it some semi-reasonable headings in just a few minutes of very light work (depending on its length and complexity of course). But an article that isn't written according to its sources is a discouraging, time-consuming, conflict-filled mess to sort out. TooManyFingers (talk) 05:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

A-Class Reviews hub concept.

Hello! A few new page reviewers and I have come up with an idea to revive the A-Class review process, which are currently only held at some WikiProjects, most notably WikiProject Military history. The idea is to create a page or project, that includes a noticeboard for requests to be submitted directly without needing to go to a WikiProject that may not have one, and a feed that provides up-to-date listings on currently active A-Class Reviews or those that have been requested at a WikiProject.

I have created an essay for the concept: Wikipedia:A-Class Reviews/Hub. This will take quite a bit of work, beyond what I can do alone or with a handful of editors. Please let me know your thoughts and if you want to help, please do! Thanks!

(Disclaimer: I did not come up with this idea myself. Credit to @Squawk7700, @HurricaneZeta, @Hekatlys and @MCE89. {If I've missed anybody I apologise.) 11WB (talk) 14:59, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. With the disclaimer that I have no experience with the A-Class assessment process, I don't necessarily mind the idea of having a centralised place to list all open A-Class reviews. While it would probably be entirely or almost entirely made up of MILHIST reviews, I don't think it would hurt to have a page that explains the A-Class assessment process and links to open A-Class reviews, including any that happen to be open at other Wikiprojects. I'm a lot less convinced that there should be a centralised place to request A-Class reviews outside of Wikiprojects thoughs, especially when there is already a perennial shortage of reviewers at GAN/FAC/PR. MCE89 (talk) 15:51, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Just to want to add, this post isn't to gather a consensus on this concept. The page will need to be in a functional state, so that a formal RfC can be opened at WT:ASSESS. 11WB (talk) 15:55, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I think this could open the A-Class status up to more articles, as of now almost all A-Class articles are from MILHIST. Z E T A³ 15:54, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

If the GA, FA, and PR processes were running smoothly, I might support something like this. As it is, PR often goes ignored, GA is backlogged at an absurd level, and FA is only getting by because it throws out nominations that don't attract reviewer interest. Expanding a fourth process will make all four less efficient. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 02:22, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not in the know regarding how the other article reviews are running. I waited about two months for a recent GA review, which isn't too long. I don't know what the usual wait time for an FA review is. I would hope that something like this hub idea would promote activity with both A-Class reviews and peer reviews. This discussion isn't to gather consensus, instead it's just to get some feedback and maybe some help! 11WB (talk) 05:55, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Why do you think that an idea (A-class articles) that has been rejected by most of the community as not worth bothering with would be a good thing to do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your question! It is definitely a shame that A-Class reviews are not more prevalent on the project. My reasoning is based on how they improve the article respectively. A GA review is excellent as a fellow editor, not necessarily with experience in the subject, can suggest improvements to prose, formatting, images, check references to make sure information that's in the article text matches the source. These are all important. The difference with A-Class is they focus on the actual information itself, which is why they take place at the WikiProjects, so editors with background knowledge or maybe even a degree in the subject can assist in improving the veracity and depth of the actual information rather than just how it is written. Then an FA does both of these things with even higher boundaries. A-Class Reviews I personally think definitely have a reason to exist, it's unfortunate that so few WikiProjects offer them. 11WB (talk) 04:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Maybe those groups of editors think there are better uses for their limited time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

An idea like this was discussed a few years ago. The admin who started the discussion for abolishing A-Class said that building a process for it is preferable to just doing away with it entirely. That discussion did take place two years ago, so I would be interested to know @MSGJ's thoughts on this now. 11WB (talk) 07:11, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Encouraging new editors on the main page

We have a huge editor recruitment problem, and I'd like for us to add some form of invitation to edit on the main page. I've put this together as a starting point:

Get involved!

Every article you read on Wikipedia is written and maintained by hobbyists, and anyone can help!

• Learn to edit with the Introduction to Wikipedia
• Read a detailed guide at Contributing to Wikipedia
• Ask questions about editing at the Teahouse
• Practice editing in the Sandbox

What would be a good way to approach this, and what else might be added to something like this? This is just an example to demonstrate what I'm talking about, I would love to hear other people's ideas. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 02:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Looking at old main page versions, the language used there is more personal:

Visit the help page and experiment in the sandbox to learn how you can edit any article right now.

than it is now:

the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Maybe this line could be changed to

the free encyclopedia that you can edit right now.

? sapphaline (talk) 14:18, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Someone's trying to get Wikipedia:Articles for improvement back on the Main Page. Maybe these this idea should be combined with that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I like it a lot, but where would it go? Kowal2701 (talk) 09:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 72#h-Final round of suggestions for This Week's Article for Improvement before WP:VPP-20251011020400 (pinging @Bremps). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

AI citation-checking bot

Please note: this is not a proposal for AI editing of Wikipedia articles, but rather for AI annotation via templates to aid human reviewers.

Wikipedia has always had the priniciple of supporting material in articles citations to reliable sources. But do those sources actually check the content cited? It's asy to put citations into articles, but does anybody check them. This problem has also recently been exacerbated by the introduction of AI editing that generates pseudo-articles with bogus citations.

This is an ideal opportunity for the use of LLM technology. Here's the idea:

• a bot reads a Wikipedia articles, and retrieves all the cited sources that are fetchable at that moment
• point by point, it compares each paragraph/sentence in the article with the cited sources. If it's all fine, it just marks the article with a review template that states that the article has been auto-reviewed, and when.
• If any material is either unsupported by the cited material or contradicted by it, it surrounds that material with some variation of {{citation needed span}}, with parameters that specify when it was auto-reviewed and what's wrong with it. Maybe from a small range of choices: "source disagrees", "source does not support", and with a free-text comment. Perhaps it also puts in a short checksum (say 6 hex digits) of the enclosed content, so that changes to that content are easily detectable in later scans. The article is also marked by an invisible template in the same way as above. It could also generate "source unavailable" annotations, or edit URLs if sources get moved.

And that's it for the automation. Now comes the human part. Once articles have been marked, they will automatically be put into categories by the template, marking them for human review. Human editors can then confitm whether the bot is right, by removing the bot metadata from the template, turning it into a human review, or by removing or amending the material, in the normal Wikipedia fashion.

So this is bot-annotation, not bot-editing: the bot should never make any changes to actual article text other than adding the templates. We can set the threshold for false positives quite high, so it should generate very few of them. And we can also make the bot respect human annotation: if it flags something as bogus, and a human editor disagrees and removes its annotation, the bot won't keep on making the same warning over and over again.

All this fits entirely within the existing Wikipedia ecosystem of bots, templates and categories.

Running this bot on millions of pages may work out quite expensive, but that's what grant funding is for. Even if it only costs $0.01 per article, that's still $70,000 to scan the whole encyclopdia - but the gains in reliability and authenticity should be well worth the cost. Whether this is a small amount of money or a large amount of money depends entirely which end of the telescope you are looking down.

Some extra comments:

• Wikipedia Library access could provide access to references which are behind paywalls
• Also, while it's at it, it can also check that the given citation template actually matches the content of the cited source - author, title, publication date, etc.
• Writing the bot is the easy part

— The Anome (talk) 16:39, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This is the holy grail, right? And if it can verify existing, why not also find sources for uncited material. People are working on this later idea right now. With human in the loop. But I think your idea makes sense, it only requires test cases to see how well it works in practice. If the false positive rate is low enough that editors trust it. — GreenC 17:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think putting sources for uncited material into articles would be dangerous. The bot should only flag, never edit. What it might perhaps do is to add suggested source recommendations to talk pages to allow human editors to review those sources themselves. There should always be a human in the loop, or it just becomes encyclopedia-slop, and that's all too easy to generate these days. — The Anome (talk) 17:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The Anome, "with human in the loop" is confirmed, what I said right. Nobody is advocating for fully automated AI anything, that's obviously a bad idea. — GreenC 21:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@GreenC I've had bad experiences with the latter. There are facts that I know are true due to first-hand experience, but when I've asked an LLM to find me reliable sources so that I can add them to Wikipedia, it confidently feeds me a bunch of links to websites that don't actually verify the statement. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:14, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No you can't do it that way. There are other techniques though that can work. — GreenC 21:44, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I am not confident in the ability of llms to handle verifying citations as citation use lies further from being a close paraphrase towards uses that require actual textual understanding. There would need to be a pretty convincing display to support editing articles directly, even if it is just adding a template. Marking this for human review risks creating a whole new backlog as long as the encyclopaedia, plus an explicitly bot template implicitly suggests to readers that llms are involved in the editing process. The way I've envisioned such a tool being most useful is something similar to WP:EARWIG, where a report can be generated on request for easy review, perhaps in two neat columns. This would help with things like GAN spotchecking. CMD (talk) 17:16, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

You might be right: perhaps report generation is the right way to go, rather than direct editing of articles. But I think it should be a within-wiki process (perhaps on the talk page?) rather than an outside-wiki process. Putting it on talk pages would also mean that it could perhaps be flagged for the attention of relevant WikiProjects. — The Anome (talk) 17:28, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The talkpage might work for short articles the way some bots post there, but it would be unworkable for longer articles. If you intend it to be something that can be updated to take into account human review (eg. noting that source X actually does support text Y) I could see how it might function on an onwiki subpage that can be updated, but that brings its own set of additional coding complications that a one-off post would not have. CMD (talk) 17:45, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

In early stages, you'd probably want to run it on a single ==Section== of an article at a time. Nobody's going to actually check hundreds of sources to see whether the AI got it right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Given my experience with LLMs, I am not confident in their ability to understand and interpret sources well enough to have any use for this sort of project.

Recently Acrobat has incorporated a LLM that will summarize key points of a pdf document. I tried it on some reports from work and the results were less than inspiring. It did not understand what the most important parts of the document were, did not know the meaning of phrases, at times giving them the opposite of what they were saying, and was generally worthless in summarizing the document. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Based on my understanding of LLM function and architecture, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that they are suited to directly do the operation proposed by Anomie; perhaps as part of a larger piece of software that incorporates LLM functionality alongside small language model heuristics, it could work. But as a general rule, LLMs don’t verify things, they extrapolate guesses. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No. The sheer number of hallucinated references/references that do not support the content they are cited for in LLM-generated articles is convincing proof that LLMs cannot ensure source-to-text accuracy. The systems have no concept of "correct" and "incorrect", only "likely" and "not likely".

Besides, a similar verification idea has been rejected before; see WP:PADEMELONS. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I find merit in the idea of a bot which can identify and tag articles for bias by looking for emotional language. Then a human can review it and stop hallucinations. LDW5432 (talk) 03:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think, based on my recent real-world experience on other projects, LLMs might well do much better at verifying specific claims as they relate specific documents, rather than verifying it against their rather nebulous knowledge of the world. Using 'thinking' and asking them to explain their rationale for their decision, and then running a separate checker pass on verifying that explanation before coming to a final conculsion, should have very much better results than 'true or not?'. This because where they really excel is as language transformers, not as oracles. I've got API accounts on a variety of LLMs, and doing the Python coding isn't really hard - pehaps I should do some experiments, and see how well this works compared to human review, before people jump to conclusions about how well it would work. — The Anome (talk) 21:55, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think something like this is a good idea but I'm not super convinced by the specific implementation above.

In particular I don't want a bot adding {cn} tags to the actual article itself. If the point of this is to do bot-annotation not bot-editing, a {cn} tag is absolutely bot-editing. It's taken widely to mean that the content that is tagged is dubious, and for good reason. (Also I'd like to point out here that if we were going to do this the actual template we'd want to use is {failed verification}.)

Ideally we'd put this information into a separate list somewhere so a human can check it before any editing to the article actually happens. If that's not practical, the tag we'd actually want is a custom tag that says something like [a bot reviewed this claim and thinks it failed verification], though obviously shorter than that. Loki (talk) 22:53, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Verifying specific claims is definitely something that would be interesting, and, while I'm not certain that this will work out, I do believe that it is absolutely worth a shot to try to develop it. "Is X sentence supported by Y text" is a much more specific task than "write a Wikipedia article about Z", and one for which LLMs could potentially be used (and even, if needed, fine-tuned). It will take some time before we have something that is ready (and trusted enough) to be run at the scale of the encyclopedia, and it might not turn out to be reliable enough to be worthwhile, but it might just work, and I would be glad to help with this project if you want to go forward! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 03:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes. It's the specific nature of the problem that is interesting here, and makes it more plausible that this might actually work, by avolding treating the LLM as an oracle. Thanks for the offer of help, I'll see what I can do. — The Anome (talk) 03:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I was unaware of this discussion whe I vibecoded today a python script that pulls the text of a list of Wikipedia articles, inputs it into the chatgpt model of your choice (I used gpt-5 mini), looks for 1 factual inaccuracy, and spits out the results into a wikitext table. With an n of 4, I found no issues, including one article where it didn't find anything, 2 articles where it found clear in inaccuracies, and 1 article where it found something that while supported by a source may be incorrect based on the weighting of other sources. Because I wrote it to use the OpenAI API, I didn't run it too widely though my back of envelope calculations suggests it could be run fairly economically (especially if I adjusted the prompt to cut down on the verbosity of the output (which is the most costly part). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There is someone in the Village pump who posted something similar: Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#c-86.33.69.28-20251015115200-Pilot project for GPT-5 powered article bias analysis WikiTool LDW5432 (talk) 03:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I am much less comfortable with using LLMs to measure bias, as it is less likely that they will correctly weigh dozens of RS, and they might just as well flag words that carry some emotional weight without checking whether sources justify them. Especially since sentiment analysis is a much more common task and one which the model is likely to mix up with bias analysis. Plus, it's much harder to get an AI to search for, retrieve and synthesize many sources vs to read one given source they get as input. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

In addition to what CE said, the biggest issue with using LLMs for bias analysis is that what sounds neutral to an outside observer and what is actually demanded by our WP:NPOV policy can be wildly different.

So for instance, the last sentence of the first paragraph of Zionism:

Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.

is not neutral-sounding at all, but because the NPOV policy is about reflecting the balance of sources and not some kind of view-from-nowhere, it's not only in compliance with NPOV but NPOV basically forces us to say it like that. The number of scholarly sources that support that statement is more than I've seen for any other claim on the whole wiki, so there's really no way we could even hedge it.

And especially in articles in contentious topic areas we have tons of cases like this, where high quality scholarly sources agree on something that doesn't sound particularly neutral in a lay political context. Loki (talk) 04:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

You don't even have to look at contentious topics. "There is no such thing as ghosts", which is not "neutral" to the billions of people worldwide who believe in ghosts.

I spent several years at Breast cancer awareness helping editors grasp the difference between what reliable sources said on the subject and what the popular opinion is. After all, neutral is what the best sources say, and while all significant viewpoints need to be represented, those viewpoints are best supported by scholarly sources instead of fundraising/promotional sources. (With Komen's near collapse a few years back, the pressure of Pinktober has decreased.)

Towards the end of every October, I check Poisoned candy myths, because we sometimes have people who are just sure that it's "not neutral" to plainly state that no child has ever died by because a stranger gave poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters. And almost every December, there's someone complaining that Santa Claus is not neutral, since it (gently!) says that Santa is "legendary" instead of "real". Most of them are afraid that their children will read the Wikipedia article and discover the facts (but kids who are capable of understanding that article are old enough that believing in Santa would be an age-inappropriate belief). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• As others have said, you cannot just ask an LLM for fact checks or reliable sources that are new (as in, external to Wikipedia's current text) using a pretrained model with its existing knowledge base and a limited tool ability to web search or call the Wikipedia API. It will provide the same old ones (from Wikipedia) or it will hallucinate new ones that don't exist. But what you can do and it works reasonably well is download a bunch of PDFs or web pages and upload them and tell the LLM to read them all and provide you with verbatim quotes and page numbers and authors and dates for everything alongside whatever new generated text it makes - a report, or summary, or fact checks or tasks, in a constrained mode. Then you can check those with non-LLM code or by hand to eliminate hallucinations. Some will even highlight the PDF to show and make checking easier, YMMV. You can also give a document to an LLM, along with a statement, and ask it if the document supports the statement, and to provide verbatim proof. This produces fewer hallucinations and they are caught. I think having a bot to do this is a good idea. It could leave messages on a talk page or in its own set of user pages or in an interface. It would speed up improvement of thinly patrolled and maintained articles and it's a way to use LLMs for good without actually generating the article text itself, which does not work well and shouldn't be done. Andre🚐 05:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
• Nope doesn't work that way. Even when given sources, AI "summaries" usually introduce their own interpretations of the material -- which frequently follow the same contours as the usual WP:AISIGNS slop, just in this case put in someone else's mouth.

Here's an example from Grokipedia (choosing it because we know unambiguously it's AI text, because it really likes to claim it "fact-checks" everything, and also to dunk on Grok) This sentence from their "Woman article" -- Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), drawing on the historical trauma of slavery, earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and contributed to her 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, emphasizing African American experiences through nonlinear storytelling -- is cited to this Reddit poll. Nothing after "Toni Morrison's Beloved" appears in that thread. Gnomingstuff (talk) 07:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• That is exactly what AI is incapable of doing: checking sources. Don't believe me. Pick a big topic on Crockipedia. Go through the "sources" at the bottom in the form of raw URL links. Start counting how many are inaccurate or utter fabrications. Have fun with it. We need to keep AI as far away from WP as possible as its enshitification of the internet proceeds apace. Carrite (talk) 08:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Neutrality policy for genocide

Should Wikipedia have a neutrality policy that gives more specific guidance on how to describe genocide or alleged genocide? If so, what should it say? (A new WP:GENOCIDE was proposed on Talk:Gaza genocide, where many comparisons have been made to other genocide articles. I am not expressing an opinion on this question, just moving the conversation here.) -- Beland (talk) 01:43, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

To clarify (and based on comments so far), this is not necessarily a suggestion that Wikipedia should come up with its own definition of genocide and just use that (but advocate for that if you want). It could instead be a guide that points editors to common definitions used in the field, documents technicalities and sensitivities of various terminology, helps identify expert sources, and helps editors apply NPOV and other policies to statements. On the reader side, we have some of this information in List of genocides and Genocide definitions. We could also make this broader than just genocide to include other violent or otherwise sensitive types of event, add some words to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch, or abandon this whole idea because instruction creep or some other reason. -- Beland (talk) 09:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

A serious question: why create a guideline for this particular label and not others? What purpose would it achieve given that guidelines are superseded by policies that are usually diligently applied to contested labels? M.Bitton (talk) 01:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Would you prefer to see genocide, or some broader list of labels added to MOS:LABEL? Or if we're creating a new page, would you prefer it to cover a broader scope, like violence or government acts or something else? -- Beland (talk) 02:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose using a different standard for genocide than other events would itself be a form of bias, in favor of those who argue that genocide is exceptional rather than a recurrent theme in history. (t · c) buidhe 01:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

One option is to write up guidance that maintains the current policy, but just explains in more detail how it applies to genocide. Another option would be to write an explanatory extension with a broader scope - I think some editors suggested violent acts in general. Genocide and murder, for example, have technical legal definitions which make them different from mass killing and individual killing; it might help editors to have an explanation of the special considerations around those terms for that reason. -- Beland (talk) 02:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

From my conversations with genocide scholars, the legal definition(s) of genocide are highly criticized for a number of reasons. I don't know if enshrining these into Wikipedia policy is a good idea (and indeed, as buidhe notes may itself violate NPOV). Katzrockso (talk) 02:11, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like you're thinking the guidance would be "if it's not legally considered a genocide, Wikipedia can't say it's a genocide". That doesn't have to be the case. Given this concern, what would you advise editors on how to use the word "genocide" in Wikipedia's voice? -- Beland (talk) 02:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

No different than the advice for editors on any other topic - through consensus-building and the weighted balance of reliable sources. That this topic area needs a specific guideline is not clear to me at all. Katzrockso (talk) 04:16, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Pointing to my own comment below as to what a guideline could do to help: we don't want a guideline telling us what is and isn't genocide, but one telling us how best to assess and weigh reliable sources in this area. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:20, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it would be a form of bias to pick and choose between the many definitions of genocide used in academic research. Relatively few genocide scholars besides the lawyers actually use the UN Convention definition. (t · c) buidhe 05:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It's also possible to write a guideline that's biased in favor of those who argue genocide is not exceptional, depending on the wording, no? If you were going to advise editors on how to use the word "genocide" in Wikipedia's voice, given this concern, what would you say? -- Beland (talk) 02:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It should be treated the same as any other text, write what most of the scholarly sources say. (t · c) buidhe 05:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Support Emotionally charged words like "massacre" and "genocide" should have a NPOV guideline for the project. The resulting policies should be added to WP:WORDS and other relevant sections. LDW5432 (talk) 03:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I would oppose having one specifying on a single term and giving our own definition of the term (which might not follow what reliable sources use), although a wider guideline about emotionally charged words would absolutely be helpful. I don't think it should be part of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch as these aren't words that should be avoided (and we don't want to introduce bias by toning down languages), but it could be a separate guideline cross-linked from there.

As for the content of the guideline, it shouldn't write our own definition for these terms, but give indication as to how we should best follow reliable sources. For example, how much weight should be given to experts vs media vs governments, what level of consensus (affirmative consensus vs silent consensus) is enough for these labels, when to attribute claims vs use wikivoice, or whether we should have separate guidelines for titles and prose (cf. Tamil genocide for an example where the title uses "genocide" but the prose clarifies it as a specific framing rather than a consensus). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 03:26, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this take. There are cases where having a literal flowchart can be useful (see WP:DEATHS) but I don't think this is one of them. Instead we should have a more general guideline about what kinds and numbers of sources we need to have to justify charged terms. Loki (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

As I questioned above (funny that you replied to me there as I was writing my comment here), what necessitates an extended guideline for this topic that isn't already covered by our existing policies and guidelines? All of the things you describe seem to be adequately covered by our existing guidelines, from what I have seen. At best, what you describe here seems to warrant an essay or a page on Wikipedia:WikiProject Genocide, not a guideline. Katzrockso (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

While I agree that it would proceed from our existing guidelines, there have been recurrent discussions about how exactly they should be applied to represent sources about possible genocides, and it could be good to have some reference points to avoid circling around the same arguments again and again. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it would be useful to have somewhere to collect common thinking on the topic to avoid repetitive discussions, but this is when an essay is warranted, not a new guideline. Katzrockso (talk) 04:32, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The thing with essays is that they don't carry the weight of community consensus (anyone can write one), so it might not be especially helpful. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 04:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Community consensus on the application of our existing can be established through the discussions on each particular page in question, there is still no compelling reason for a new guideline on this topic area. How particular guidelines and policies are applied within particular topic areas is typically covered by essays (I only see topic specific guidelines for at WP:LGL for naming conventions - largely to the extent that these are formalized other non-Wikipedia guidelines, notability and style), which don't "carry the weight of community consensus", but still fulfill the rationale you provided for having a guideline. I worry about instruction creep and the fact that this seems like it might be the first content guideline that applies to a contentious topic area. Katzrockso (talk) 04:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Good information can be helpful no matter what tag is at the top of the page. For example, I suspect that many editors would benefit from a handy summary of the difference between various legal definitions of genocide vs current scholarly understandings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I see both of your arguments, and agree that a guideline might be too heavy-handed for this, although I'm still worried that an essay might be ignored as, well, "just an essay" even if it carries broad community consensus. Instruction creep is definitely something to be careful of, so I'm absolutely open to non-guideline alternatives. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 05:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

So don't call it "an essay". Call it "an information page". Or consider {{Wikipedia how to}}, with the opening lines saying that the page tells "how to" handle disputes over this term. Make a custom tag with {{notice}}. Or put WP:NOTAG on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It's also possible for an essay to become a guideline if it's widely supported and followed. Just getting something out there that can be iterated may be more productive than arguing too long about what might be said in an abstract way. -- Beland (talk) 07:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I started writing something earlier about how I'd rather see specifically what we are talking about in order to evaluate whether or not it should be a guideline. It's very difficult to support such an abstract idea of a guideline, for me. Katzrockso (talk) 09:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Truthfully I felt we are really too close to this conflict and that everyone has their own biases in determining whether or not the Gaza War is a genocide. While the discussion on that talk page has raised examples of sources pushing back terms to describe the Armenian genocide and similar massacres/genocides, other scholarly content accessing these events are also made decades after the event, and with sufficient distance to discuss the event objectively. Right now, I felt there's really too much emotions across all parties (and potentially some antisemitic/anti-Israel/Islamophobic bias) to really properly access the conflict, especially since this is part of a broader contentious topic.--ZKang123 (talk · contribs) 04:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. I don't think it has been established that a guideline is necessary here vs the already existing guidelines and policies on this topic that address this adequately. Katzrockso (talk) 04:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose as its not really a good idea to treat genocide different from similar words like massacre, etc. Instead, what we should be doing is not trying to rush to name such events in Wikivoice until many years have passed and we can then judge what the academic consensus is, assuming their is one. It is the same approach to how we handle scientific topics (For example, we do not assert COVID-19 was zootrophic but instead say the scientific consensus is that it was zootrophic and did not have a lab origin). Masem (t) 04:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Comment - I am not opposed, but I expect the discussion over how to formulate the policy will be heavily weighed upon by the question of whether the Gaza genocide will make the cut. Additionally, I worry that the definition which comes out of this will be such that it is effectively impossible to call a genocide in Wikivoice until decades after the fact. There seems to be a group of editors (Jimbo included) which believe that the opinions of directly implicated governments and affiliated NGOs should weigh strongly against the designation. Such a policy would be very corrosive to our ability to describe objective reality. StereoFolic (talk) 05:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

As you point out, I suspect that any such discussion will simply be the relitigation of every previous genocide discussion combined and multiplied. I am not sure how productive such a discussion could be or whether meaningful consensus could result it. Katzrockso (talk) 05:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes I worry about this too. There might be a push to adhere to strict rules, for example confining it to genocides that have been litigated at the ICJ or warrants issues for genocide at the ICC or other tribunals, which would ignore extensive studies into genocides of native Americans for example, just because the predated certain international conventions. Or there might be an appeal to constrict such calls to events that enough time has passed for consensus maybe putting into question something like the Yazidi genocide. If there is to be a consensus it will never be just custom made to exclude this one event, it will inevitably lead to more genocide denial down the line. Tashmetu (talk) 08:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

One way to resolve these worries would be to propose text you do want to see, and make some enlightened arguments. I think if a guideline has to cover all genocides and alleged genocides, it becomes difficult to argue for an unfair rule to favor a preferred outcome for a partisan fight without that becoming somewhat transparent as a tactic if as it fails to fit less controversial cases. Or if the drafting process goes off the rails and produces something unacceptable, there's always the option to vote against making it a guideline. -- Beland (talk) 08:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: What would it cover that WP:LABEL and other guidelines already don't? Let me give a somewhat related example, there has been a liberal use of dictator being added to a lot of BLPs and otherwise without discussion, sources or the weighing thereof. But that is perfectly countered by extant guidelines like LABEL which I have argued for and used in discussion. Would we then need a separate WP:DICTATOR guideline, I think not.

But to add, I think both the genocide proposal and the dictator example given by me can be covered in use cases (for when and how to voice these) at the extant guideline pages. Gotitbro (talk) 06:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Are you voting for adding "genocide" and "dictator" as examples at MOS:LABEL, then? -- Beland (talk) 07:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think "dictator" is a good example of a value-laden label, but I disagree that "genocide" functions in the same way. Whether or not someone is a dictator is not typically the subject of significant scholarly analysis (there are exceptions here and there, especially in the historical literature), but whether or not an event is a genocide is. This makes "genocide" distinct in that while it may have value-laden implications, the actual usage of the term in Wikipedia should be governed by e.g. our other content guidelines that emphasize WP:RS. Another important distinction is that genocide refers to "events", while MOS:LABEL examples refer to people/groups. Part of the justification for MOS:LABEL is WP:BLP, which doesn't apply here for an event (genocide). Katzrockso (talk) 07:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, there are governments being accused of genocide, which are made of living people, some of whom have international criminal warrants issued against them, and some of whom are aghast what has been happening.

But it's true that events are just a different class of thing than people which may require different advice. For example, whether to describe an event as a death, killing, murder, manslaughter has to take into account whether the cause of death was indisputably another person, and whether a specific legal category has been assigned to the killing through a conviction. Labeling an shooting as a terrorist attack or militant action or liberation attempt may have similar considerations to labeling someone a terrorist. Is this transportation event a collision or an accident?

I can actually brainstorm a fair number of event-related words and phrases to watch: direct action, sabotage, protest, activism, eco-terrorism; civil war, rebellion, insurgency, terrorism, resistance; strike, supply disruption, work stoppage, lockout; occupation, liberation, invasion, annexation, reunification, restoration; coup, revolution, liberation, regime change, change in power; parade, protest, demonstration, riot, uprising, insurrection, rebellion.

There are also more people-related words we don't cover, but which are sensitive: refugee, asylum seeker, alien, immigrant; homeless, unhoused person; "discovery" of the Americas.

We could just expect editors to educate each other about the technical considerations and connotations and cultural sensitivities around various words and otherwise expect them to follow sources or common sense, or try to document terminology for sensitive events for reference and to guide discussions toward faster and more predictable consensus. We could also scope such an expansion broadly - whatever we can think of that's been the subject of e.g. a page move dispute or lede RFC - or narrowly, just for words where there's a burning need to ensure they are treated consistently across many articles, either because we are being inconsistent or we are just arguing too much and codifying where we always land would save time.

-- Beland (talk) 08:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

While yes, governments are made up of people and warrants have been issued for arrests, the application of the term "genocide" to events doesn't have such a direct implication on people in a way that is relevant to Wikipedia. From the basis of determining that any particular event is a genocide, I don't believe we have gone to attach these labels to individual people, but still keep the type of attribution requested by MOS:LABELS.

WRT the event-related words to watch, This is good pushback, I think many of those words could broadly construed as sensitive and value laden labels that are subject to the same sorts of disputes as the ones in MOS:LABELS, so parts of my argument aren't quite as strong there. I do think that genocide, ironically, is unique in its position that its extension is uniquely studied in academia - other than maybe terrorism, I can't think of any large body of academic research that consistently studies whether or not any particular event constitutes a type of event or not. In this case, genocide is if anything the one category of event that does not need a specific guideline to govern its use per MOS:LABELS or anything similar, imo. Katzrockso (talk) 09:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

LABEL is broad enough to cover insances beyond bios/orgs to including events. The reason MOS:TERRORISM to it for example. These to me are close enough to not warrant a separate adjudication.

@Beland: "Are you voting for adding "genocide" and "dictator" as examples at MOS:LABEL, then?" Yes. And if it is not considered bloaty most of the rest of the examples given by you above. Gotitbro (talk) 10:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: We should primarily go with what the reliable genocide scholars say regarding each case, and follow the official standards in this world, not develop our own standards that go against them, especially as this can easily be abused to lessen said standards so much that we do not recognise serious crimes against humanity. David A (talk) 08:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Do you think it would be helpful to have a WP:GENOCIDE that documents various genocide definitions that should be referenced by articles? And maybe gives some advice about where to look for reliable genocide scholars or how to figure out which are and aren't reliable? Do editors need advice on how to evaluate statements made by scholars and what sort of sources to discount from "scholarly consensus" or to report with attribution (like governments involved in a conflict)? -- Beland (talk) 08:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That seems much more reasonable, yes. David A (talk) 08:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

OK, that's certainly well within the scope of what I'm asking people to propose. -- Beland (talk) 08:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

My next question was going to be, what are the major definitions we should be highlighting? Then I thought, oh, maybe we could just link to Genocide definitions...but there are so many definitions there! It sounds like the 1948 Genocide Convention is almost universally used for legal purposes. Do scholars tend to only reference that, or are there other common definitions used in the academic literature? Or in other reliable sources, for that matter? -- Beland (talk) 09:00, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I am not a genocide scholar, so I am not sufficiently well-informed to be of much help for you in that regard. My apologies. David A (talk) 09:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah, OK, perhaps some experts will chime in.

List of genocides may be a good anchor; that list is scoped to only include events "recognized in significant scholarship as genocides". Perhaps if it isn't on that list, it shouldn't be described in wikivoice as a genocide. That's partly just a matter of synchronization, but it could also serve as a public documentation of what our threshold for that is, with sources that can be used for easy comparison.

That list article also has a good summary of definitional controversies. It seems we now think of ethnic cleansing and politicide as distinct atrocities from genocide, and I'm not sure how "forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce" is treated in modern times. The article also says: "The academic social science approach does not require proof of intent, and social scientists often define genocide more broadly." I find that a bit mysterious and it may help editors to clarify that, and help readers to explain how that relates to inclusion on the list.

-- Beland (talk) 09:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

See my comment below on how it may be described outside of the legal definition. I was active in crafting the new inclusion criteria for that article. I would just clarify that while The academic social science approach does not require proof of intent most definitions from this area still have intention, and treat it with some primacy. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Spurred by your comments, I've tweaked List of genocides a bit as the cited source was actually closer to what you're saying. -- Beland (talk) 09:42, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

While the legal definition is engaged with regularly and thoroughly in the literature, it is also highly contentious, as the majority tend to view it as too restrictive (due in part to the political climate it was developed under), though a minority also view it as too broad. These views have existed since prior to the adoption of the Convention, and are not just "humanities and social science scholars" but are also expressed, again regularly, by legal scholars in literature. There are a couple of definitions (more aptly called frameworks, in my opinion) that scholars will gravitate towards, and these definitions come from the more prominent individuals in the field. But there is no singular standard alternative used instead of the legal definition. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Are those frameworks listed on Genocide definitions? -- Beland (talk) 09:43, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, there has long been a discussion around how Lemkin expended every last bit of him political capitol to get the UN to adopt a definition of genocide that gutted its meaning. Katzrockso (talk) 09:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Comment - While I support the notion in theory, and have been mulling over the idea of starting one myself for a few years now (I do have a draft), I have not pushed forward with it as it seems as though we would ultimately end up in OR territory with it. If we do start working on an essay (with the view of it eventually becoming a guideline or policy) I will engage with the matter, but for now, I can not make a vote either way to it existing. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

OR because we'd be coming up with our own definition of genocide? That's not the sort of thing we really do; as David A and I were talking about above, I would expect it to be more about looking at existing definitions of genocide and helping editors navigate them and apply NPOV and other policies to them. -- Beland (talk) 09:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I understand that isn't what we (should or otherwise) do, as I said though, when I try to play out pushing and developing such an essay, I ultimately end up seeing us discussing the matter in ways I consider to be within OR territory. This view could (and hopefully) be ultimately wrong, but is the reason why I have not pushed forward on it. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Editors seem to be pretty good at yelling "original research!" and deleting as needed, so I expect we'd be able to distinguish between that and making better editorial decisions, which actually still requires some thinking and occasional guidance. I think we're at the point of working on this now...it seems better to be concrete and vanquish fears about what might happen by going ahead and not doing the wrong thing or demonstrating we can recover from it. So I'd welcome a draft even if we decide it's not a direction we want to go in. -- Beland (talk) 09:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There were suggestions of making up our definition/analysis of genocide in the other thread, I believe VPP suggested something like this. Katzrockso (talk) 09:40, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Very Polite Person:, I think this is referring to you. Are you interested in a guideline that says "if reliable sources say X, Y, and Z have happened, it can be called a genocide in Wikivoice", or something that references existing legal and academic definitions and helps editors look for reliable sources that reference those (and maybe documenting considerations and sensitivities around terminology, etc.)? -- Beland (talk) 09:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, this was in reference to Very Polite Person from this comment in particular and I hope I didn't mispresent their position (which is legitimate even if I disagree with it). Thanks for tagging them into this discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 09:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This topic is contentious and argued enough that at least an essay with some centralized guidance and summaries of previous discussions and community consensus would be useful. Not as a tool for winning arguments or forcing specific practices, but as a shortcut to common understanding. ~2025-31078-40 (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Support - My vision for such a centralized policy page would be a place to explain the synthesis of various Wikipedia policies related to covering the topic of genocide on Wikipedia. It should explicitly not be trying to define genocide. Instead, it should focus on addressing commonly raised issues. For example, it can explain that Wikipedia policy does NOT require that the ICJ declare that an action is genocide in order for Wikipedia to use Wikivoice to refer to it as genocide. It should clarify that genocide studies is an academic field and that the opinions of scholars in that field should be given more weight (per NPOV) than government officials asserting denial. It should explain that Wikipedia is not limited to only using the legal definition of genocide, and instead it is up to reliable sources to use the word, which we can then attribute. It should explain that Wikipedians should refrain from original research and avoid synthesis of facts to conclude genocide or lack thereof (and that talk pages should not be filled with such material of Wikipedians soapboxing their own assessment of events, such as "the low/high number of deaths means that it [is] [is not] genocide!"). These are just a few suggestions, but the general theme is that it should not be trying to (1) authoritively define genocide or (2) declare certain events as genocides. JasonMacker (talk) 15:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Those seem like good ideas. David A (talk) 15:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Genocide is draft live with my notes inspired from that talk on Gaza genocide. Any of you are free to adopt and edit as needed. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Genocide

@Katzrockso: and @Beland: I have put my idea and notes here: Wikipedia:Genocide. Please feel free to run with that as needed. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:49, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

!Voting on sanctions at ANI

Interested to hear what people think about this, I know there's been lots of discussion on reforming WP:ANI (like here and here) but I can't see that this has been suggested before from the archives. I think that when !voting on sanctions at ANI that are to be imposed by the consensus of the community, people who are involved in the underlying dispute should preface their !votes with something indicating that they're involved (like {{nacmt}}). This could be limited to the underlying dispute preceding escalation to ANI and historical disputes with that editor, or could be broadened to meet WP:INVOLVED (ie. disputes in the topic area). Reasoning is the same as at INVOLVED, involved [editors] may be, or appear to be, incapable of making objective decisions in disputes to which they have been a party or about which they have strong feelings; having some identifier makes it easier for newcomers to the report to analyse the discussion.

Imo the benefits of this is that it would encourage transparency and honesty, make it easier for newcomers to the report, and hopefully would make ANI fairer and slightly more functional (at the very least make it appear fairer, moreso to the reported editor). Whether closers ought to weigh involved !votes less or the same as uninvolved, idk. Downside is that it takes admin time to 'enforce' and could derail reports with people back-and-forth arguing about whether they're involved (maybe it could be written somewhere that this should be discussed on user talk pages instead). Thanks for reading Kowal2701 (talk) 19:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)