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January 2024

Happy New Year, SMcCandlish!

Happy New Year!

SMcCandlish,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
Abishe (talk) 14:17, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 14:17, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Speed pool

Do you know if Speed pool is actually a thing? It's been unsourced for a decade and I couldn't find much about it aside from a few tournaments of the same name. Seems non-notable to me, but thought I'd check first. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:52, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

It's definitely a thing, a professional competitive discipline. Jeanette Lee was big into it, back before all her medical issues. AZBilliards and such probably have good coverage of it that we're not citing yet. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:19, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Dicing

Hello. You'll see that my edit was a typo, as I ' Claimed ', as inexpicably I'd typed ' qs ', not ' Vide ', and corrected it.

I'd say that this being an online dictionary, people who read it, by their nature, have an interest in what they don't understand; that not to use words, (though it wasn't my intention), that '...more than a few...' (sic) understand should be persuasive only if we weren't writing in English: to use that for a guide now, (not that that's contravening any Wikipaedia rule), should mean that at some past time somebody declared it is one, anyway; and it must have been sometime between one of the forms of Celtic speech used in Britain and today, since we're using English, here; words which, at one time, '...not more than a few...' knew, meaning we might still be uding Anglo-Saxon. So when did excluding the unfamiliar become a rule ? Dictionaries are still being published to explain both new and unfamiliar words; a pursuit disallowed, now, by this guide.

It's true I could have made ' Vide ' a link; but what's conversational for some is as abstuse as others' reasonings.

Yes, it was mentioned above ; but not all sections and sub-sections are read, and the re-emphasised words occupying the space of an old ink blot might very well, (for the majority, not ' The few ', who skip through what they read), have been the harmless ones that conveyed the distinction between tartan and dicing.

Anyway, regards to you. Heath St John (talk) 19:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

@Heath St John: Sorry about the "wasn't a typo fix" part; I had seen both your edits as a single combined diff, and only the edit summary of the second was visible, so it looked like the addition of the cross-reference was claimed to be a typo fix. I should have checked to see whether it was more than one edit with distinct edit summary rationales. Anyway, Wikipedia doesn't use q.v. (what I'm guessing was intended by qs) or vide this way. They're unfamiliar to too many readers, and don't really serve a purpose here (mostly because Wikipedia is not paper). If the mention was right there in the same block of text (as it was in this case), there is no reason to tell people where it is; and if it's widely separated, in a different section, the thing to do, if a cross-reference really seems needed, is to link to that section, e.g. with {{see below|[[#History|below]]}} or whatever, which produces output like (). The usual purpose of q.v. is to refer to a headword, such as is found in a glossary; and vide is generally used in academic material to refer to a specific passage (and your use of it didn't provide such specificity). Anyway, the lead section at Sillitoe tartan is now even clearer than it was, with the terminological quibbles consolidated, so there's little if any room for confusion any longer. PS: Wikipedia style for abbreviated Latinisms like "q.v." and "i.e." and "e.g." and "et al." is to use the dots, and the ones that are well-assimilated into non-specialist English don't take italics, while the more obscure ones like "q.v." and "p.m.v" and "op. cit." (lots of them are legalisms or academicisms) are italicized. "Et al." is actually an edge case with regard to the italics; there is or was recently a discussion open about this, though I forget where. (Frustrating, since I was going to comment in it.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:55, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Very clear.

Thanks very much. Heath St John (talk) 21:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Pushing beans

Hi there! In the future, I hope you can take a beat and consider WP:AGF instead of implying that someone is busy pushing beans up their nose, as you did in this edit summary. There's already too much gatekeeping at the project, and I don't think you want to come off as doing that. -- Mikeblas (talk) 02:04, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no AGF failure or gatekeeping in anything I said, or in reverting something I didn't (at least at the time) consider an improvement. I get the feeling you've not actually read or understood WP:BEANS. In short, it means don't give people ideas about monkeying around with stuff they don't need to be monkeying around with. It has nothing literal to do with noses and beans; its a metaphor. (And wasn't about you.) My point was that from my perspective, Trapper already had answered your query, and my further point was that people generally don't need to know about bot-related code, in detail in documentation of parameters for human editors to use, or a few of them are likely to mess around with it in unhelpful ways. Those who do have a reason to be involved with it (e.g. they operate a bot, or they're working on the cleanup category populated by the bot) are already going to know about that parameter and what it's doing (or will quickly know how/where to find out). That was the reasoning at the time (and doesn't fit in an edit summary). However, given what you said at WT:CS1 later, I already said I saw your viewpoint on it and you should just feel free to undo my revert [1]. I guess you didn't see that, but it's a little weird to get a hostile-ish note about some old revert from a few days ago. It's not like I have some magical power whereby a revert from me is permanent and unquestionable. :-) Anyway, I do see your point about documenting that parameter in a more general-editor-facing way, since there might after all be a reason for any given editor to do something with it. Just don't think it should be redundantly documented, when linking to existing documentation is fine. Even that I don't feel terribly strongly about, though. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Alternative to rp

Hi. In your archive Page-ception you have two paragraphs that outline ref= use as an alternative to Template:rp. Is that still current? Any chance there is a standalone description I can point out for others?

(I use rp primarily because it is much shorter. ref= has the same problem as sfn, additional points of failure. In <ref name=McNuttsIR2006/>{{rp|131}}</ref> vs <ref>[[#McNuttsIR2006|McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], p. 131.</ref>, the string "McNuts, I. R. (2006)]], p." isn't checked by reference failing.) Johnjbarton (talk) 19:31, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: I wasn't able to parse what you meant by "isn't checked by reference failing" and that quoted string. I haven't made the "Page-ception" thread's stuff into a page of its own, and I'm more and more leaning toward {{sfnp}} (which does not need a surrounding <ref>...</ref>), along with rare use of {{harvp}} inside <ref>...</ref> for cases that require additional annotations. The complicated |ref=Whatever 2023 and <ref name="Whatever2023">[[#Whatever 2023|Whatever (2023)]] ...</ref> stuff I did at Tartan and some other articles can all be replaced by those two templates for a leaner and less error-prone result.

Is there some kind of case you're having an issue with? I might be able to help work it out.

The problem (or a problem) with {{rp}} is that it is a form of inline parenthetical referencing, which was deprecated by community consensus entirely in 2022. It separates part of the citation data from the citation and clogs up the text. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Context: over at Electromagnetic field, we're dealing with a situation where there are a couple standard textbooks that are cited repeatedly, each citation pointing to a different page range, and then a bunch of one-off citations for specific points. One way would be to use a bunch of {{rp}} tags. Another would be to have a separate list of {{cite book}} templates for the textbooks and then point to the specific page ranges with {{sfn}}s. XOR'easter (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

@XOR'easter and Johnjbarton: Oh, that one's easy-peasy: [2] (along with some other cleanup). Did that while carrying on a debate at WP:VPPOL in the other window. :-) This one didn't need any |ref= twiddling. If it doesn't suit your needs, feel free to undo it of course (WP:CITEVAR and all 'at). Some folks prefer to have the multi-cited sources be under their own subheading after ==References==, such as ===Sources=== or ===Bibliography===, instead of between {{refbegin}} and {{refend}} (or even both at once). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix (at least @XOR'easter will be happier ;-)

I can't understand multi-cited in a separate section. Change the number of citations and fiddle with the sections. No thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:05, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If it comes to it, just go back to the older format or pick a new one; I wasn't trying to "impose my will" by that change; it was basically a demo, and I half-expected it to be reverted. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

PS: Another approach is WP:LDR, in which the multi-cited sources would be put inside a <references>...</references> structure or an extended {{reflist|...}} tag, directly under ==References==, each wrapped in <ref>...</ref>, but this strikes me as unnecessarily complicated. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't want to relitigate the decision, but for me the exact problem with sfn is that separates the citation data (in References) from the citation (in Sources). Or in the case of Electromagnetic field, "Reference" contains some blue links that point to otherwise-formatted citations and some blue links that point outside the article. Looks sloppy.

Now that I know that sfnp can be mixed with <ref> I'll try it. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, at least all the citation data is in the "References" section; this is clearly an improvement over (less sloppy than) having some of it there and some of it stuck in mid-sentence in the article (where for some readers it's probably not even clear what it is). At any rate, it is not possible to have all citation information on the same line, somewhere on the page, without entirely duplicating every {{cite journal}} or whatever for every page at which it is cited. This really is about as good as it gets. The whole site seems to be moving this direction. PS: I used {{sfnp}} instead of {{sfn}} because it produces the same "(2018)" date output as the main citation templates; {{sfn}} produces "2018" without the consistent parentheses/round-brackets, for no good reason. People only use {{sfn}} because it has a shorter name and they think it's "the default" or what is "normal", but it should really not be used unless the article has a citation style that is consistently using "2018" format, which is only possible if they're all non-templated, manually formatted citations, which is pretty much no longer done in any article on the system except old junk no one's touched since the 2000s. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Is there any documentation other than Template:Sfnp? I'm sure it is completely obvious to you, but don't understand how to use it.

In

{{sfnp | <last1*> | <last2> | <last3> | <last4> | <year*> | p= <page> | loc= <location> }}

there are an indefinite number of parameters (how many authors last names?) with ambiguous definitions (2002abcde?) ("de Broglie" vs "DeBroglie" etc). As I understand it these have to match a {{cite}} template correct? All of the parameters last1...year are essentially an identifier forced to match a function of the cite template as far as I can tell.

(None of this is an issue with ref because the name only needs to match, the authors and date are only given one place. Seems to me that a solution where the point of citation entry is an arbitrary string and page number like rp but which renders as the consensus desires would be nicer). Johnjbarton (talk) 16:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

For others and future reference: the information about how to use {{sfnp}} is in Template:Sfnp, in the "Possible issues" and "Implementation" sections. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: 'Far as I can tell, all the related templates share the same documentation, and as you've seen it has some troubleshooting info in it. But maybe someone should write up a how-to on their use (another thing for my to-do list?). Some usage points based on what I already knew and some sandboxing I just did; I guess this is the bare beginnings of the how-to:

A filled-out "maximal" example would be something like: {{sfnp|Chen|Jones|López-Garcia|Le Fevre|2021|p=99|loc=footnote 7}}.
The |loc= parameter is optional and can also be used in place of instead of along with |p= or its plural form |pp= (those two are mutually exclusive with regard to each other): {{sfnp|Chen|Jones|López-Garcia|Le Fevre|2021|loc=errata sheet}}
The author surnames must match those (in numeric order) given in the CS1 template, e.g.: {{Cite journal |last1=Chen |first1=Amy B. |last2=Jones |first2=C. D. |last3=López-Garcia |first3=Carlos |last4=Le Fevre |first4=Jean-Paul |last5= ... |date=2021 ...}} to match the above example.
- Spelling must be the same ("De Broglie" and "DeBroglie" and "de Broglie" are not equivalent).
- The surname matching also works with the generic CS2 equivalent template {{Citation |last1=Chen |first1=Amy B. |last2=Jones |first2=C. D. |last3=López-Garcia |first3=Carlos |last4=Le Fevre |first4=Jean-Paul |last5= ... |date=2021 ...}}
  If this is encountered in any article dominated by the more specific CS1 templates, it should be replaced with the appropriate one of those, per WP:CITESTYLE (and at this point, the vast majority of uses of CS2 {{Citation}} are inconsistent injections of this sort into CS1 articles; the number of articles consistently templated in CS2 is decreasing all the time).
- Surprisingly, it also works by extracting individual surnames out of the lossy and "reader-hateful" |vauthors= mess, as long as it's actually coded in the proper format: {{Cite journal |vauthors=Chen AB, Jones CD, López-Garcia C, Le Fevre J-P, ... |date=2021 ...}}
  This format, too, should be replaced on-sight with CS1's standard |last1=, etc., if |vauthors= is encountered in a article that is not consistently using Vancouver-style citations, which is almost all of the cases at this point. (Few articles remain using Vancouver consistently, but editors who are fans of that style commonly go around wrongly injecting it into articles that do not use it, which is against WP:CITESTYLE).
- It's also smart enough to treat |editor1-last=, etc. as author names for this purpose if there is no |last1=, etc. If there are one or more specified authors, then any editor names are ignored (they do not concatenate onto the author(s) list).
- |last=, |author=, and |author1= (and the rare |author-last=, |author1-last=, and |author-last1=) are all aliases of |last1=, and so forth. |editor-last=, |editor=, |editor-last1=, |editor1= are all aliases of |editor1-last=, and so on.
For multiple authors, the maximum is 4, not "an indefinite number". If you put in 5 or more, the template will throw a red error message. (This applies to {{sfnp}}, {{harvp}}, and all their variants.)
All the authors up to 4 must be included if specified in the full-length citation. For the above example, doing {{sfnp|Chen|Jones|López-Garcia|2021|p=32}} will not work because |Le Fevre is missing.
The CS1/CS2 special parameter |display-authors=etal, to output "et al." after the last specified author name, is not detected or supported. If the citation is {{cite book |last=Adebayo |first=Mohamed |display-authors=etal |date=1997 ...}}, this must be short-cited like {{sfnp|Adebayo|1991|p=23}}.
Dealing with two publications the same year by the same author(s) [or, technically, authors with the name surname]: This is where |ref= comes in. If you have {{cite book |last=Tāwhiri |first=Koa |date=2023 ...}} and {{cite journal |last=Tāwhiri |first=Moana |date=2023 ...}}, the solution is this: {{cite book |last=Tāwhiri |first=Koa |date=2023 ... |ref={{sfnref|Tāwhiri|2023a}} }} and {{cite journal |last=Tāwhiri |first=Moana |date=2023 ... |ref={{sfnref|Tāwhiri|2023b}} }}, each short-cited as {{sfnp|Tāwhiri|2023a}} and {{snfp|Tāwhiri|2023b|p=42}}, respectively.
- An alternative when there are two authors with the same surname is to be more specific about the author names: {{cite book |last=Tāwhiri |first=Koa |date=2023 ... |ref={{sfnref|Tāwhiri, K.|2023}} }} and {{cite journal |last=Tāwhiri |first=Moana |date=2023 ... |ref={{sfnref|Tāwhiri, M.|2023}} }}, each short-cited as {{sfnp|Tāwhiri, K.|2023}} and {{snfp|Tāwhiri, M.|2023|p=42}}, respectively. Doing both forms of disambiguation at once is not helpful. The name disambiguation is often helpful any time there are two authors by the same surname in the same article, even if the publication years do not collide.
- The formerly recommended practice was to "operator overload" the long-form citation's |year= parameter: {{cite book |last=Tāwhiri |first=Koa |year=2023a ...}}, which would work with {{sfnref|Tāwhiri|2023a}}, but it pollutes the long-form citation's date ouput with an invalid year string: Tāwhiri, Koa (2022a) The kluge to repair that was to do: {{cite book |last=Tāwhiri |first=Koa |year=2023a |date=2023...}}. But this is all just ridiculous awfulness, a case of the tail wagging the dog, the code forcing human editors to do confusing crap that abuses and juggles around template parameters for side purposes that don't match their citation-information intent. Worse, non-expert editors are apt to think that |year=2023a|date=2023 is a typo and "fix" it to just |date=2023, thereby breaking short cites to that source. The |ref= parameter was introduced to make such easily broken hoop-jumping unnecessary. Instances of |, with or without the compensating |date=2023 should be replaced with |date=2023 and an {{sfnref}} (also often called by the alias {{harvid}}) inside a {{ref}}. NB: Using |date= instead of |year= is universally better, because |date= also handles bare years along with fuller dates, and editors who encounter a |year=2023 but see a full date in the cited work when verifying it are apt to improve the citation by giving the full date; |year= is simply obsolete.
Dealing with excessively long author names (usually organizational ones): Another job for |ref={{sfnref|...}} . If you have {{cite report |editor1-last=Yi |editor1-first=Xiu-Yīng |editor2=Committee on Reptile and Amphbian Nomenclature |date=2023 |publisher=World Herptological Society ...}}, you can add |ref={{sfnref|Yi|CRAN|2015}}, and cite it as, e.g., {{sfnp|Yi|CRAN|2015}}.
Vancouver-style citation templates ({{Vcite journal}}, {{Vcite journal}}, {{Vcite book}}, etc.), which are rare but still occationally found, cannot be used at all with {{sfnp}}, etc., without adding |ref={{sfnref|...}} to them. Yet another reason to not use that citation style.
Author names used by {{sfnp}} and related templates have nothing to do with what is in <ref name="...">, only the surnames specified inside the citation template. If you have <ref name="DeBroglieMacDuff2019">{{cite web |last1=De Broglie |first1=Matt |last2=MacDuff Samuelson |first2=Jennifer B. |date=2019 ...}}, this would be short-cited like {{sfnp|De Broglie|MacDuff Samuelson|2019}}.
- It's helpful for everyone's sanity to make them consistent and clear, e.g. use <ref name="DeBroglie & MacDuff Samuelson 2019">. Note that the quotation marks are mandatory because of spaces and non-alphanumeric ASCII characters. The lazy practice of doing <ref name=DeBMacDS2019> with very simple ref names that do not contain spaces, punctuation, or other special characters is a terrible idea because someone else is reasonably likely to clean up such messy refs later and may forget the quotation marks and break the citation. Even doing <ref name=DeB-MacDS-2019> is technically invalid markup, though few editors realize it (MW seems to generally handle it okay, but this cannot be guaranteed in future versions because it's against the documented requirements of <ref>. Every time it is encountered, <ref name=foo> should be converted to <ref name="foo"> (though as part of a more substantive edit per WP:COSMETICBOT).

Regarding "a solution where the point of citation entry is an arbitrary string and page number like rp but which renders as the consensus desires would be nicer", I'm not sure that's technically feasible to do within this wiki (but see note below about future features of <ref>). Something I could ponder on. If it were doable, I think we would have simply already replaced {{rp}}'s functionality in situ. There might in theory be some way to do something like Here is some article text.{{magicref|Yamamoto2001|p=27}}, where the {{magicref}} template (actually Lua module – this would certainly have to be done with a complicated Lua program, not with normal template code) matched Yamamoto2001 to a <ref name="Yamamoto2001">{{cite book |last=Yamamoto |first=Sumiko |date=2001 ...}}</ref> probably defined in a WP:LDR block at the bottom of the page, and then extracted the necessary details from the long-form citation in essentially the same way that {{sfnp}} does, and generated a similar short citation. This would be "brittle" in that if anyone renamed the <ref>'s name the {{magicref}} would break. It also has the issue that, as with {{snfp}}/{{harvp}}, it would be generally desirable to put the full-form citation at the bottom of the page. If there were community appetite for this, someone else would have to implement it, because I can't Lua-code may way out of a paper bag.

If this is really just about speed/ease of entry, an interim approach but basically a messy one is to just put the full-length citation into the article body at first citation of the source. The templates really don't care where they "live". It would not technically be invalid to do Here is some article text.<ref>{{cite book |last=Adebayo |first=Mohamed |display-authors=etal |date=1997 |page=123 ...}}</ref> ... This is more article text much later.{{sfnp|Adebayo|1997|pp=289–290}} It's still citing sources, and doing it inline, just not in an ideal way (because the long citation has a page number "fixed" in it, and it will be mixed into the main <references> or {{reflist}} output. If you did this at a new article, no one would likely care, but if you did it at an article with already-established citation style someone might object to it as a change in citation style, or at least change it to put the long cite at the bottom and without an permanently embedded page number.

Two further notes:

I'm in the process of slowly writing up a {{rp}} replacement guide, with user script tools for making it easier (the scripting requires a boatload of testing and tweaking because parsing XML mixed in with {{...}} markup using JavaScript and regex is very difficult, even when just parsing for a single <ref> tag and its limited parameters like name= and group=).
The ability to directly cite different pages in the same source within the <ref> tag itself is (allegedly and very slowly) coming. The format will look like <ref extends="Miller 2019">Miller (2019), p. 42.</ref>, and such a short cite will have a clickable ↑ that links to the full citation (hopefully they'll pick another character, since in many cases the full cite might be below all the <references>/{{reflist}} output, not higher up inside that section). It's already in beta testing, and the preview documentation is at mw:Help:Cite#Citing different parts of the same source. It could be years before we get this functionality, though. MW development is slow, and deployment to here even slower. That feature was first documented as being in beta on 2 December 2019 [3]! FFS.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:22, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow, that's excellent thanks! It's much better to have the exceptions as indented sub-bullets. You should publish this or edit the template doc; let me know if you want feedback.

I probably use ProveIt for 90% of my references (mostly via DOI and ISBN), which is one force that pushes me towards in-line refs. Seems like tooling to adapt ProveIt to sfnp would include:

ProveIt to continue to insert inline
- it may only see one section in the edit window so it can't insert in Sources/Reference/Notes
Inline-inserted cite templates could be bot-moved to Sources/References/Notes.
- After user edits, as part of one of the citation clean bots.
- Does this exist?
ProveIt could offer sfnp insertion from cite sources parsed out of full article as alternative to cite insertion.
- This would reduce the matching-4-author-names drudgery.
- Does something like this exist?

Johnjbarton (talk) 01:47, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: I just now saved an improved version to User:SMcCandlish/How to use the sfnp family of templates; much easier to read and with some additional info. ProveIt isn't something I use; I'm an embarrassingly manual dinosaur when it comes to adding citation data. I just copy-paste names and titles and DOIs and such from the source material and massage it into a cite template. Probably very inefficient. I don't know of any bot task to do the kind of shuffling you're talking about. It might be feasible to create one, but possibly a challenge to get it approved, because some "don't you dare touch citations in my FA" clown is likely to claim it somehow violates their perfect and careful "citation style", if they don't happen to be doing the full citations at the bottom of the page. See also Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Fine style point with "Citations" and "Works cited" subsections; how to even do them at page bottom varies. I fear this is and will remain a per-article, editor-judgement cleanup task. As for "ProveIt could offer sfnp insertion from cite sources parsed out of full article as alternative to cite insertion", that sounds practical/doable, but I don't know who develops that and how active they are or responsive to new feature requests. Regarding the matching-4-author-names drudgery: It is a little of a hassle the first time around, but once you've got one it can be copy-pasted for the other-page citations to the same source; just change the page number. Careful use of regex (if you're geeky enough for it) in the advanced search feature built into the default desktop editor or the similar one that is part of wikEd, can be used to speed up a lot of stuff when doing conversion/cleanup (but copy-paste the article into a text editor between regex operations; if you mess one up, ctrl-z (Mac: cmd-z) doesn't work). I also find it exceedingly helpful to use a multi-clipboard utility. Windows 10 onward has this already built in (use Cmd-V to see a list of recent pasteables). For Mac, I can recommend the third-party utility iClip, though there are several good competitors. Anwway, to stop rambling, and get back to the subject, another alternative to the matching-4-author-names drudgery is to do {{cite journal |last=Smith |first=J. |last2=Jones ... |date=2021 ... |ref={{sfnref|Smith et al.|2021}} }} then use {{sfnp|Smith et al.|2021|p=92}}. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

A request

Howdy. I believe Dicklyon respects you greatly & not just because you support his 'lower case' stance. Maybe, if you were to 'suggest' directly to him, that he stop making such page moves while a related RFC is on going? he'll comply. I know it's not your responsibility to do that. But, it might help prevent Dicklyon from being reported by an editor (not me) to WP:ANI. GoodDay (talk) 21:18, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Didn't realize it was him. Yes, I'll do that; he probably has e-mail enabled, and it might be better to get his attention that way. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Done. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:49, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, no more gridiron-related moves or edits by me until the RfC resolves. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Dicklyon, the RfC has nothing to do with the page moves and will not resolve in moving anything, that's for an RM to decide. You may be surprised that I agree with some of your lowercasings of these topics, and opening RM's on many of them will likely get you the results you want. Quite a few editors think the National Football League Draft and other NFL Draft pages stand separate from other draft pages as proper names, and it will take another RM to resolve that, an RM separate from the others (that's how Amakuru got "civil rights movement" lowercased, by mixing it up in an RM with other civil rights movement pages which had nothing to do with the 1954-1968 Civil Rights Movement so the issue was diluted, and I request that you or others don't try that tactic with the NFL Draft RM, thanks). Randy Kryn (talk) 01:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Keep repeating that "nothing to do with the page moves", and maybe someone will be convinced. But thanks for admitting that I'm at least sometimes right. I can't see any evidence for the NFL draft standing out as more "proper" in sources, but I do see a lot people repeating it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

You are often right, and you know that I think that, so I'm not "admitting" anything. But I do think that you are damaging the purpose of both WP:RM and the Village pump (policy) page by this divisive RfC, purposes which will not get straightened out easily if you happen to get your way in substituting one page for another. I don't know why you can't take the location opposition into account, just close the RfC, move the NFL Draft question to an RM at the NFL Draft page, and then ping everyone who has commented at the RfC to haul their main comments and evidence to that one. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

The "location opposition" is utterly contrary to WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY policies, and the only reason it's happening is the American football wikiproject people know they can't control the outcome at a VPPOL RfC by swamping a process (RM) that nearly no one pays any attention to. VPPOL is huge and is the highest-consensus-level venue on the entire system. That a few people who don't care about football are piling on in a "screw our policies, always side with anything that sticks it to Dicklyon and the MoS" is unfortunate but predicable. Everyone has some nit-pick they don't like in MoS, and the most irritated of them always come out of the woodwork to wedge-drive in a "WP:OWN policy shouldn't exist, at least not for my pet topic" manner any chance they get. It doesn't mean there's a lack of consensus on any of these guideline or policy matters, it just means certain individuals will beat their dead horse straight to the center of the earth. Because it's a style matter and people are tired of tedious style debates, no action will ever be taken to put a stop to their antics, or even do anything about it when they engage in direct personal attacks, as they do against Dicklyon on a very frequent basis. If this were any other subject of any kind, this years-long tendentiousness and organized, programmatic incivility would never be tolerated. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how much of that is meant for me, Dicklyon knows I respect (most) of his work here. The point made is that this adds another layer to a requested move and its appeal process. WP:RM, then to WP:MOVEREVIEW, then to WP:Village pump (policy). This major change makes Village pump (policy) the Supreme WikiCourt for requested moves, and if that's what you and Dicklyon intend to do I think it's fair to voice opposition without being unduly criticized. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no "change" of any kind here. It is not only perfectly fine to seek additional community input when consensus on a P&G question is [allegedly] uncertain, it is a very good idea. It is why WP:VPPOL exists. It is why WP:CENT exists. It is why we have things like WP:NPOVN, WP:RSN, and other noticeboards (other than the "punish someone" drama factories like ANI and AE), and even a tradition of opening "WP:Requests for comment/subject" stand-alone RfCs when we think they'll run long. If there was any merit to your fantasy that an RfC is invalid any time some other, lower-level process also pertains to that type of dispute, then none of these venues would or could exist. So, quote me the policy that makes RM mandatory. Quote me the policy that forbids broader VPPOL discussion of any particular kind of matter, especially titles in particular. Quote me the policy that says there is a WP:CONLEVEL and WP:NOTBURO exception when it comes to article titles.

VPPOL has always been the "once it is decided here, there is no longer a question to keep asking" venue (unless something changes later and WP:CCC might apply so the question should be asked again). We have no broader-input venue for assessing community consensus. The entire purpose of it is to get as broad as possible a range of input on a question of P&G interpretation, application, or change, especially when it may affect a substantial number of articles and/or the question is mired in a tug-of-war between two opposing viewpoints without sufficent input from middle-ground Wikipedians who are not partisans in the dispute. It is completely routine to use RfC or other processes to arrive at decisions that might otherwise be handled at RM, if RM is not a good process for it in that particular case. (Just one of numerous examples: templates are often renamed via multi-template TfDs in which various templates need to be deleted, some merged, and one or more renamed. See also other examples already posted in the VPPOL discussion. There are many more.) Your notion that the only possible way to arrive at article titling decisions is through an RM is simply patently false. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear, you are fine with any "no consensus" decision endorsed at WP:MOVEREVIEW being brought to Village pump (policy), even many months after the close? Randy Kryn (talk) 14:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Any time there is "no consensus" on something (and it is something people are going to continue squabbling about), a consensus does eventually need to be reached on it. There are numerous ways to do this, including waiting a long while and asking the same question again (e.g. repeating the RM in this sort of case); waiting or not waiting a while but asking a different question (e.g. propose a move to a different name than one of the ones about which consensus could not be reached); opening a stand-alone RfC on the matter (generally only it's a broad question, like a swath of articles, and in which there is some kind of fundamental dispute like "the rule does not apply to this topic" or "this is/isn't a proper name", not just a routine "my sources say this" vs. "my other sources say that" routine dispute about some specific article); opening an RfC of that sort on a guideline talk page; opening an RfC of that sort on a noticeboard that is pertinent; or, if it's a P&G matter, opening such an RfC at VPPOL. Using VPPOL would not be appropriate if it were not a P&G question. But in this case it is one.

Doing it "many months after the close" would actually be preferable, for the same reason we strongly discourage re-opening the same RM shortly after it closed with no consenus, or re-opening the same RfC shortly after it came to no consensus. No one [or, no one who should get their battleground wish granted!] wants to continue the same unproductive discussion that recently failed. What we do want to see is either quickly a different, refining discussion that may get past the original roadblock, or much later a re-asking of the same question to see if consensus can be reached among a different pool of presently-active editors. Or, for that matter, asking the variant question but later instead of soon. There is no bureaucracy to follow here.

PS: The reason MRV exists is because it is a (not the only) possible way of questioning a closure result, by asking for review of it by univolved admins (and doing so at WP:AN is still how this is usually done; the RM-related ones were just so frequent that the process was spun off to its own noticeboard like WP:DRV was). Its existence does not mean that the community in an even broader venue is somehow prohibited from examining the question, e.g. at VPPOL. Just think about the implications of that idea for a moment. Name any other decision-making of any kind in which admins get to make up their own "micro-consensus" decision, and the community cannot discuss much less override or move past it. (I'll save you the trouble: it does not exist, not even for hardcore things like indefinite block decisions. Hell, even WP:ARBPOL is subject to community consesus review and revision.) It's also important that MRV exists for one purpose and one only: to determine whether the closer erred in summarizing the RM debate they closed (in this case a decision of "no consensus"). It is expressly not for re-examining any (or adding additional) rationales for whether pages should move and to what names. But the VPPOL discussion is about exactly that (it is a "mega-RM" in a broader venue than RM makes possible), based on what P&G arguments and sourcing apply.

PPS: Yet another example of how other processes than RM are used to arrive at article titles: if an RfC about a rule change or a new rule comes to a clear consensus, then pages are simply manually moved (or RM/TRed if blocked by an edited redirect) to comply with it. That's how the species over-capitalization mess was cleaned up. It required no additional RMs at all (though in theory some could have come up if some particular instance had been disputed). It's especially interesting that: a) the lower-case decision was reached by RM in the first place, b) MRV upheld it as not a faulty close, and c) the community re-examined the question via RfC (based on the claim of upper-casing fans that the RM and MRV had an insufficient consensus level). It's an exactly parallel case, other than it trying to overturn a disliked consensus instead of trying to resolve a failure to come to consensus. You were around for all of that, but did not raise any such bogus "wrong venue" or "wrong process" claims. It's obvious why: because those trying to use the RfC to overturn an RM decision were trying to get an exception from MoS (and AT and NCCAPS), and you consistently support topical "rebellion", ignoring all policy and other considerations to champion the cause of subject- and wikiproject-specific special pleading for exceptions even when they provably cannot be justified by usage in sources independent of the subject. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

A nice essay/summary (why don't you do more essays, lots of them can just be copy paste with a little editing). You were going good on the personal front until the end there. I didn't know about the species RfC and don't know which way I would have gone. When I agree with a lowercasing (you may or may not have noticed) I probably just won't comment or disagree. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:26, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Here I thought I put out more essays than I should already. I'm not trying to make this be "all about you". But if your last sentence means that because you feel put-upon by me that you are now going refuse to support MoS/NC/AT-complaint moves you agree with and are only going to oppose those you don't, I can't see that being constructive and it would just increase a perception of "always defending MoS defiance". But maybe you meant something completely different. Yes, I have noticed that you sometimes agree with a lower-casing; I don't think anyone's suggested you want to capitalize everything, just that you have a history of supporting capitalization when it is wanted (even in absence of independent source usage) by people focused on a particular topic (and relatedly of making or supporting claims that something "is a proper name" when there's insufficient sourcing to reach that conclusion). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

No, I don't spite edit. Seems an odd way to go about Wikipedia. I meant that if I see a move request for lowercase that I agree with, more often than not others have already chimed in enough to pass that RM so I move on. Only so many hours in an hour. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Gotcha. I'm the same way about this. My RM time has been dwindling, especially as I take on bigger stuff. I have too many irons in the fire already. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

"regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best"

Hi, thanks for your contributions on the discussion of "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best of all-time/his (or her) generation" in WT:MOS#MOS:PUFFERY. How is consensus on that page determined as there doesn't appear to have been any activity for over 10 days now? RevertBob (talk) 20:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@RevertBob: I don't think a clear consensus has emerged from that at all, and it would have a lot to do with the venue, because it's not really an MoS matter except in a very surface way, but primarily a mixture of WP:OR and WP:NPOV concerns, with a little WP:V thrown in. I think this is going to have to be a carefully structured RfC, probably at WP:VPPOL. There were a number of issues raised, and a striking point was that some editors think it is better (when there's sourcing to back to up) to state outright "is/was one of the greatest whatever" than to hedge with "is considered one of the greatest whatever", and that is not what I anticipated. All the arguments presented so far need to be accounted for in drafting an RfC on this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

School outcomes

Hi, I have a weird request that basically involves asking for further context on a comment you wrote in this 2017 RfC. The reason I'm asking you in particular is because as far as I can tell, you are the only one who mentioned school districts at all in that discussion that is still an active editor here.

So, the the story starts with me coming across a school district article that likely would not meet GNG and looking at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Education. There it says: "Populated, legally-recognized places" include school districts, which conveys near-presumptive notability to school districts per Wikipedia:Notability (geography). I have no idea what the orgin of this consensus is (or if there ever was one). Anyways, I noticed that this kind of conflicted with what is actually stated at WP:GEOLAND. So I tried to create an RfC a few months ago. You can read it at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 188#School districts and GEOLAND. A bunch of people thought my RfC was unclear or weren't sure if there was anything I was trying to change from the status quo... and I'd really just like to not be going in circles trying to understand what happened. As far as I can tell, this is the only RfC that's ever really had anything to do specifically with school districts. So I'd really appreciate it if you could prove me wrong? I'm not trying to change what happened, I just want to understand why this has been such a source of confusion. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:30, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Hmm. Okay, we have:

WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES: "Populated, legally-recognized places" include school districts, which conveys near-presumptive notability to school districts per Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). That's WP:NGEO for short.
The latter (at WP:GEOLAND specifically): Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history. Census tracts, Abadi, and other areas not commonly recognized as a place (such as the area in an irrigation district) are not presumed to be notable. Further down, WP:NGEO states: Geographical features must be notable on their own merits. They cannot inherit the notability of organizations, people, or events. School districts are "legally recognized", being formally established governmental jurisdictions/bodies for a specific purpose. But I'm not personally sure that they really constitute "places" in the sense meant here, especially given the "census tracts" caveat that follows; a school district is much, much more like a census tract than it is like a village or even a named neighborhood. I would think that school districts would actually be approached as organizations (governmental bodies, specifically), and thus subject to WP:NORG (in fact, WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES specifically says The current notability guidelines for schools and other education institutions are [WP:N and WP:NORG]. School districts are "educational institutions" (they were legally instituted, and they entirely pertain to education). WP:NORG also explicitly covers schools, and it also covers divisions of municipal governments (as a subset of divisions of organizations), and all organizations generally, though it does not happen to mention school districts in particular. Pertinent material from NORG, by sectional shortcut:
WP:ORGSIG: No company or organization is considered inherently notable. No organization is exempt from this requirement, no matter what kind of organization it is, including schools. (But see also WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, especially for universities.) If the individual organization has received no or very little notice from independent sources, then it is not notable simply because other individual organizations of its type are commonly notable or merely because it exists .... "Notability" is not synonymous with "fame" or "importance." No matter how "important" editors may personally believe an organization to be, it should not have a stand-alone article in Wikipedia unless reliable sources independent of the organization have given significant coverage to it.
WP:NONPROFIT: Organizations whose activities are local in scope (e.g., a school or club) can be considered notable if there is substantial verifiable evidence of coverage by reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area. Where coverage is only local in scope, consider adding a section on the organization to an article on the organization's local area instead. It is very difficult to interpret this as not also applying to school districts, especially since the recommendation is to merge NN schools into articles on the local area (town, etc.) instead, not to the school district, though I would do the latter if the district were notable, as being a more pertinent and specific target.
Same section: Local units of larger organizations: In some cases, a specific local chapter or sub-organization that is not considered notable enough for its own article may be significant enough to mention within the context of an article about the parent organization. If the parent article grows to the point where information needs to be split off to a new article, remember that when you split off an article about a local chapter, the local chapter itself must comply with Wikipedia's notability guidelines, without reference to the notability of the parent organization. Take care not to split off a section that would be considered non-notable on its own. This was written clumsily with fraternities in mind, but it is not actually limite dto them, and there is no reason this would not apply also to school districts, which are highly local units of a larger city government organization.
Same section: Aim for one good article, not multiple permanent stubs: Individual chapters, divisions, departments, and other sub-units of notable organizations are only rarely notable enough to warrant a separate article. Information on chapters and affiliates should normally be merged into the article about the parent organization. ... Information on sub-chapters of notable organizations might be included in either prose or a brief list in the main article on the organization. This clearly includes "division, departments, and other sub-units", and is not specific to any particular organization type, so would include municipal governments.
WP:NSCHOOL: All universities, colleges and schools, including high schools, middle schools, primary (elementary) schools, and schools that only provide a support to mainstream education must either satisfy the notability guidelines for organizations (i.e., this page), the general notability guideline, or both. For-profit educational organizations and institutions are considered commercial organizations and must satisfy those criteria. (See also WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES) This only mentions schools specifically, but the reasoning in it is not a new rule, it is an explication of existing rules and how they already apply, and they do already apply to school districts as well.

I have no idea what the full history is of these pages, but WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES (and all the rest of WP:OUTCOMES) is an essay attempting to summarize result patterns and the reasons for them; it is mostly old and crufty and on this particular point seems to be circular reasoning: it has made a claim that is not defensible, but people go along with it because that's what it says, the essay being (like WP:BRD and WP:AADD) treated almost as if it is a guideline. It is correct about schools, but is what amounts to a WP:POLICYFORK on districts, because it incorrectly cites WP:GEOLAND as the controlling guideline when it is necessarily WP:NORG, since school districts are definitely organizations but rarely conceived of as places, and only for administrative purposes serve a jurisdictional function, thus are exactly parallel to the census tracts that are ruled out as "places".

In short, I think this is cause for another RfC, to remove the incorrect presumptive-notability claim from WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES and to have districts treated exactly the same as any other local subdivision of any (in this case governmental) organization. If that were repaired, some other advice would have to be tweaked, to suggest merging non-notable schools to notable school districts or to the city/town article in the absence of one of the former, because a lot of school districts (probably most of them) are non-notable and should themselves merge to cities/towns in a subsection under government.

The previous RfC appears to have flopped because it did not provide enough of the contextual material. What I would recommend is using the material above (neutralizing some of my editorial arguments) in a collapse box like {{collapse top|left=y|Pertinent guideline and other material:}} ... {{collapse bottom}} (each of those templates has to be on it own line). Then lay out an RfC proposition something like the following:

The essay WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES claims that school districts are presumptively notable as "populated places", on the grounds of WP:GEOLAND (in WP:NGEO). However, that guideline specifically excludes things like census tracts that are not typically considered places in the usual sense, and this could also apply to school districts. Meanwhile, school districts are organizations (divisions of larger municipal governments), much more than they are places, and appear to be subject to the guideline WP:NORG, as are schools and municipal governments themselves. (Specifically, WP:ORGSIG and WP:NONPROFIT in several parts appear directly applicable to districts, along with the intent behind WP:NSCHOOL.) The essay's wording appears to be a WP:POLICYFORK, which needs resolution one way or another.

Options for addressing the issue:

Option 1: School districts are not presumptively notable, and are subject to WP:NORG. Update that guideline to mention them specifically, and revise WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES to agree.
Option 2: School districts are presumptively notable, are subject to WP:GEOLAND, and are not subject to WP:NORG. Update both guidelines to state this.
Option 3: Some other approach (please specify).

[Do the collapse box of guideline and essay quotations here.]

NB: A previous RfC on this was opened in December 2023, but closed as too unclearly worded to reach a consensus.

[Sig here]

[Then create a "Comments (school districts)" and a "Discussion (school districts)" subsection, disambiguated from other such sections on the VPPOL page.]

As a separate comment (since it's non-neutral), perhaps as part of your own !vote, maybe add: "The closer noted: it is not necessary to have a school district article in order to capture all the schools in a given area: they could be captured under another geographical article, such as the local town or city; and further that: common sense dictates that when a school district that otherwise does not merit an article more or less covers the same area as a town or city, or even a county or township, both the district & its schools should then be captured in that article."

So, I guess that's doing most of the work already, though I don't think I want to "run" this one myself. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

You gave me a lot to think about. :) I don't have much experience with RfCs, so I really appreciate your detailed reasoning here. The only thing that jumps out to me immediately as a possible issue with the options is that I worry #3 would lead to arguing about minituae that would derail a new RfC. For example, there was a decent chunk of people in the previous RfC who opposed the concept of school districts even being required to meet GNG (acting like it was an SNG?) and arguments about the differences (if any) between school boards and school districts. The latter argument could lead to a stronger emphasis on GEOLAND if theoreotically there are school districts that are not under the jurisidiction of school boards (which are organizations). Do you think I should change the options any to reflect these concerns or do you think I'm overthinking it? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Would have to sleep on it. School boards are kinda-sorta organizations, but are bodies of officials not entire organizations in the usual sense; they are basically like unto a board of directors, an advisory board, etc. That is, the distinction between a school district and a school board is illusory; some districts are administered by school boards and some are not (e.g. controlled directly by the town council, or by some other means). But I didn't pore over the original RfC, so I would have to read it all to look out for "gotchas" that the above draft did not account for, and that might be one of them. Though it also needs to be concise. PS: an "option 3: name your poison" (often resolving to "do nothing") might as well be included since people will make up their own options anyway and may be antagonistic about it if it wasn't already in there. Ultimately, people who want to try to split weird hairs will try to do it anyway. They'll definitely want to in some cases, because if option 1 prevailed, it would mean a lot of AfDs or at least hurried merges to avoid AfDs. This is an RfC I would expect a lot of FUD about. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the idea of a name your poison option is a good one, my train of thought was more maybe there'd be a strong enough recurring poison that would make a fourth option from the start worthwhile. I'm going to sleep on all this, too. Unfortunately, I work full time overnights, so the actual sleeping part will be a bit delayed. You don't need to worry about rushing to read it all, I'm just glad you're willing to give feedback at all. Get back to me anytime you're willing to. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Subantarctic vs. sub-antarctic

Do you have a view on the hyphenation of "subantarctic" or is there anything I've missed in the MoS? List of Antarctic and subantarctic islands and Subantarctic are internally inconsistent. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Not a question MoS addresses, since hyphenation is always in flux (leaning over time to less hyphenation the more familiar a term has become, and there seem to be regional/dialectal differences on the habit). This seems to be nearly the same argument as anti-Semitism versus antisemitism, where people in favor of consistency and a particular kind of logic prefer the former, because Semite is a proper name, and this how such words are usually written (anti-American, pan-European, pro-Armenian, etc.), and others in favor of typographic simplicity and concision, which is a logic of another sort, want the latter. On that one, antisemitism seems to be dominating on Wikipedia despite that fact that it is down-casing the emedded Semite – which itself appears to be an anti-Semitic gesture of no longer treating their name as a proper one! This seems to be the case simply because the lowercased, run-together version is the most common spelling in the press [4]; this is the common-style fallacy, and WP WP isn't written in news style, which is obsessively driven by concision and expediency. The spelling anti-Semitism clearly dominates in books [5]. Usage in journals is very mixed [6] (first page of results is mostly the compressed form, but going through subsequent results pages shows about a 50:50 mixture). The sub-Antarctic case is complicated by the fact that various sources are apt to treat this a capitalized (Sub-Antarctic or Subantarctic) proper name of a region of the earth, like Western Hemisphere and Arctic and so on, so there are really four options: sub-Antarctic, Sub-Antarctic, subantarctic, and Subantarctic. There are other geographical disagreements like this, e.g. Transcaucasus (a.k.a. Transcaucasia, now South Caucasus) has also been written by sources as Trans-Caucausus and Trans-Caucasia (capitalized as a place name; I'm not seeing use of trans-Caucasia, transcaucasia, etc.). For your case, it's probably a matter to ask in an RfC about what spelling to use across our articles, or in an RM to just move the article and then impose spelling consistency in text afterward. Some links: [7][8][9] — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:CONVENUE

@Thebiguglyalien, Snow Rise, and Levivich: I'd forgotten about it, but what was discussed at some length at "User talk:Snow Rise/Archive 22#Advice going forward on WikiProject Years" shouldn't be forgotten, and is worth developing further. Though that discussion was most immediately about WP:YEARS and "their" articles, WP:ITN, and a few other specifics, what Snow Rise said there (in part paraphrasing Levivich) resonantes strongly and is broadly applicable: [T]hese are en.Wikipedia articles at the end of the day, and whatever their unique format and considerations, they are governed by the same content policies as any other user-facing content .... [T]he entire reason we have an objective, WEIGHT-based standard is to prevent the idiosyncratic perceptions of the "importance" of a topic ... to prevent not just bias in our content, but also the introduction of insurmountable discord into the process of consensus building when such a subjective standard [as what a topical wikiproject might subjectively prefer] is utilized. ... [T]his is primarily a behavioural issue. ... I am certain that any solution has to be based on our existing RS/WEIGHT standards. It's simply the only approach that can be adopted on this project without the gears constantly locking up beyond our ability to repair. [Failure to apply P&G across topics evenly is] untethering our process from an objective standard and inviting our editors to do what they presently are disallowed from doing: basing content on their own assessments of what is actually "important" .....

All of that is central to the whole problem of "topical rebellions" against our WP:P&G (which rapidly spill into throwing WP:CIV and WP:NPA out the window), and some other walled-garden issues (ITN, DYK, FAC, and several others come to mind). These policy observations apply well beyond the core content policies themselves, including to guidelines on titles, style questions, notabilty, and other considerations, except where a subject has its own guideline-level (not WP:PROJPAGE essay) naming conventions page, MoS page, subject notability guideline or whatever (and some of those need re-examination and revision; much of their text dates to the 2000s, and is often problematic, especially with regard to topics that don't get a lot of editorial attention; but that'll be an issue for another time). The matter recently got raised again at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#General Sanctions (Darts), a very typical case where a niche subject with long-term "this is our topic" editors collide with other editors and it turns into a long-term battleground.

As I recall from the original discussion, the first idea was to revise WP:PROJPAGE, but it's not checked all that often, is not a policy, and is aimed only at wikiprojects' output, so it doesn't address topical PoV-pushing and walled-garden behavior by factions or tagteams that are not wikiprojects, nor individuals with this kind of bent. So, the idea after that was to revise WP:CONLEVEL with a WP:CONVENUE add-on (usurping the WP:CONVENUE shortcut from my essay, which may be useful for some points/wording, along with WP:PROJPAGE). Thebiguglyalien drafted something in a sandbox here, and Snow Rise had some quibbles with it (one of which got mentioned at the thread linked up top), but everyone got busy and it fell by the wayside. For my part, I think much of that draft is correct, but it over-states a few things, and glosses over a few others, and is about 10× too long; the whole concept needs to be compressed into a couple of concise sentences, a single paragraph; the community would not be willing to accept a large and complex policy addition, per the WP:CREEP principle.

I'm not certain how to proceed, but think this should proceed, even if takes some time and work. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Like I said at the darts discussion, this is still something I think should happen. And I agree that it would be ideal if we could get any potential changes down to a single paragraph or shorter. And I'm just spitballing now, but I also remember suggesting a year ago that WikiProject talk pages could have a banner to the effect of "This page serves as a noticeboard for the topic and for discussion about the project itself. If you want to discuss changes to the articles in this topic, do so at their respective talk pages or at the WP:Village Pump." Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:19, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Something like that might be a good idea, other than suggesting VP for that (it is not for discussion of changes at particular articles). But we'd probably need to get the policy adjusted first, so that such wikiproject-talk-templating was per that policy. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi SMc, thanks for the ping. My 2c: I'd be hesitant about introducing a new major concept (CONVENUE) in addition to the existing concept (CONLEVEL) at the policy level, because the fewer concepts, the conceptually simpler the policy, the better.

I also think the same result could be achieved just by making a change to the existing policy section at WP:CONLEVEL. CONLEVEL is also WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but the actual policy doesn't contain the phrases "local consensus" or "global consensus." It should.

The second paragraph of CONLEVEL should be moved in its entirety to WP:PGCHANGE, leaving room for a new 2nd para that explained more explicitly the idea of levels of consensus.

The new 2nd para should explain the relationship between "consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time" and participation, venue, advertisement (it should explain the importance of {RFC} and FRS, CENT and VPP/VPR). Levivich (talk) 06:02, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Good feedback. Sounds like a reasonable approach, but I've about run out of energy for the day. Will ponder upon it soon. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

My concern is that, ultimately, some level of cultural change will have to accompany a policy change. Most editors generally agree that global consensus beats local consensus, but being willing to do something about it is another matter. ANI regularly sees cases where editors are causing disruption but it's overlooked because it's "not that big of a deal" or "this is overblown", and CONLEVEL seems like exactly the sort of issue that would fall into that trap. It's not until we get into a WP:DARTS type situation where several editors without much "social capital" are being incredibly uncivil that it gets any sort of attention. We can get the wording changed, and that's all well and good, but I worry that things would keep on going the way they have been other than having one more all caps link to use. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:14, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this bears some thinking on. Getting community culture to shift is always a challenge. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:55, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

To get my brain moving on this, I reread the discussions and wrote up a quick outline of the points that we considered:

no discrete group of editors gets to make and enforce rules outside of established process, and thereby sidestep the normal community vetting of proposed guidelines – Snow Rise's summary of what we want to accomplish
All articles are subject to WP:WEIGHT, WP:POV, and WP:OR regardless of topical considerations. Editors who frequent one topic cannot decide that "their" articles follow separate standards.
Something's importance or significance should be determined by its coverage in sources, not by the evaluation of one or more editors. Editors must not create their own metrics or rules to determine the significance of a topic.
The media and other sources being biased for/against covering certain topics is not a valid argument for giving them more/less weight.
WikiProjects may not dictate content or create any other rules that must be followed. They operate in a purely advisory capacity. There is no such thing as "WikiProject consensus".
Groups of editors, including WikiProjects, are still subject to WP:OWN. WikiProjects and their members do not own any articles or any other pages.
Consensus on one article does not apply to another article. The talk page of one article cannot be used to dictate rules for a series of articles.
Suggested changes to multiple articles should be widely advertised to the entire community, not confined to one WikiProject or group of editors.
The number of editors supporting a local consensus and the length of time it has stood do not give it additional weight.
This is already expected practice and we are simply codifying it. ARBCOM has also made rulings to this effect (I don't know which cases off the top of my head).

Ideally we can weed this down and condense the main ideas into a few sentences that would fit somewhere under WP:DETCON. Also pinging Snow Rise and Levivich. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Ehhhhxcellent as Mr. Burns would say. Thanks for the effort to summarize that long thread, and produce a good summary, and I've taken the liberty of numbering the points for easier reference. I can already think of some ways to condense and wordsmith on it a bit (e.g. merge 5 and 6 and the second half of 2), but will hold off and think on it longer. One thing that strikes me is that the first half of 2, and 3 and 4 are really WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOR concerns, and better addressed elsewhere. They're very good nutshell ecapsulation of principles, but not really directly germane to CONLEVEL and "CONVENUE" matters. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:25, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey all, sorry for my being slow to join the discussion. I was vaguely aware of it, but late January and early February were among the most difficult weeks of my entire life, with some very serious emergencies and personal loss, and I just didn't have the bandwidth/ability to so much as pipe up.

That said, and as you know, I feel this is an issue that's time has well come. Moving what is essentially well-established policy regarding the proper methodology for forming multi-article consensus (that was merely codified in a peculiar place because of the idiosyncrasies of how community consensus developed) to a more appropriate namespace would have immense benefit for short-circuiting a lot of needless conflict that otherwise arises due to a lack of understanding of the limitations of WikiProjects (and small cohorts with their own preferred rules generally). Those issues are unambiguously a direct result of the established limitations not being properly elaborated on in the major policies on consensus, leading to these principles being underappreciated--sometimes even by fairly experienced and conscientious community members.

I know that all I'm doing here is stating the obvious and preaching to the choir, but it's my way of saying my silence since TBUA revived this issue is not from lack of support or appreciation. I've reviewed the above summary by TBUA, and find it essentially accurate, and any little caveats that I have about creative ways members of WikiProjects have sought to do their due diligence in terms of advertising discussions to the broader community while still holding the discussions at WikiProjects and attempting to have the results operate as binding consensus on multiple articles, we can discuss as we get along and try to incorporate into the new proposed wording. I personally am somewhat agnostic on the location of the new policy verbiage, but lean a little towards their being their own 'CONVENUE' section within DETCON. But that too we can work out as we go. I'll drop a more substantial bit of feedback on the more particularized points in a few days, as soon as I am able. Thanks for picking up the ball and running with this, TBUA. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 22:45, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

+1, I basically agree with everything Snow said, especially thanks TBUA for advancing this. (Sorry to hear about the loss and rough patch, hope spring will bring you some relief.) Levivich (talk) 19:27, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Yep. I think we are onto something. I just noticed User:Scribolt/Levels of consensus which is at least closely adjacent to some of the things we've been (slowly) talking about. Scribolt, care to join in? The summary above is probably good enough to go through (the original discussion was quite long). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:35, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I think I see things a little differently in some areas, maybe some of these (slightly disjointed) thoughts might help. I should point out that I'm sympathetic to what you're trying to achieve.

Philosophically, I'm not sure that I agree that an editing consensus impacting multiple articles that should be "respected", if not enforced, cannot develop outside of P&G pages or central noticeboards, which is where a lot of the numbered points above seems to imply. For me, the level of consensus something has (no matter what namespace it occurred in) is a product of participation x correct advertisement x correct venue x how well the scope of discussion applies to the new situation. You can overcome a deficit in one element if the others are in place and are high.
This is very much in line with the first part of Levivich's comment earlier in this thread, but for me trying to define local vs global consensus is a bit of a dead end. You're never going to find a definition that everyone will get behind and for me it's much more valuable to make this a relative term (i.e. the consensus for doing X is bigger than doing Y, because we consider A, B & C when thinking about how much consensus something has). You're never going convince many (including me) that there is a genuinely "global" consensus for doing almost anything.
The "respected" if not "enforced" piece is relevant when something is not well covered in existing P&G. Pointing out to an editor that there was a discussion before on the topic at another article or WikiProject is legitimate and the editor can choose whether to go with it or seek a new and greater consensus (and in these cases the new consensus formed, whether at the article itself, central noticeboard, or even by simply making and justifying their edit) would almost certainly be greater than the original.
In terms of mechanics of multi-page consensus, I'm not sure that something like this was such an awful way of working through things, would we really want every discussion like this to occur on a centralized notice board or P&G page? It might be worth distinguishing between discussions with open ended application vs those with a defined scope.
In terms of any language, while I agree that P&G by definition are likely to represent high levels of community consensus, this is clearly more applicable for some pages than others, so please consider the policy principles that define P&G as follow editing best practices and not the other way around.

Not sure if that was in any way helpful, but I'm glad at least someone read my essay. Scribolt (talk) 13:40, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

It is good food for thought. "would we really want every discussion like this to occur on a centralized notice board or P&G page?" Probably not, and the idea of establishing to a consensus to do/not do something at a particular article is laced throughout our P&G. However, this applies when the question is legitimately open, when an option is available. The problem arises when some topically-focused editors decide to defy a broad consensus (most frequently MOS:CAPS, but any guideline or policy of any kind could be at issue in a particular case) that already covers the question hand, to instead impose a divergent approach in "their" topic, and may become entrenched about it, hostile to anyone who tries to change it to the P&G-compliant form, or even expresses the idea that this should happen. This is a really bad "topical balkanization" habit with a lot of long-term disruption potential. There are numerous examples of this, that range all over the place, from weak sourcing "standards" being applied by camps of editors in various controverial topics that have resulted into ArbCom-imposed regulation; to a particular wikiproject deciding on its own to repurpose a biographical infobox parameter to contain information that doesn't belong there, and imposing this across many thousands of articles, simply because it suits the preferences of a small number of editors devoted to a certain sort of bio article. We need a generalized approach for dealing with such issues. In theory, just WP:CONLEVEL policy should have been enough, but it has proved ineffective at curtailing this sort of thing. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I agree with the sentiment. But when thinking about what to do, I think it's worth remembering that there's Policy, Guidelines and guidelines. Purely looking at this in terms of consensus is probably the wrong approach. The vast majority of actual policy pages are widely watched. Something like MOS:CAPS is also well stewarded, and it's fair to say it's current state has enjoyed enough oversight to mean that doing something differently should really mean updating the guideline or discussing more centrally. How much community consensus would you say MOS:PK actually enjoys? Based in pagewatchers and edits, I'd say you wouldn't need a hugely attended or advertised discussion elsewhere to have difficulty saying that MOS:PK is the consensus between a limited group of editors. Now, you could say that because it has guideline status it automatically applies, but then the argument becomes that if a rule exists, then it's followed until changed, which is a strengthening of the status of guidelines.

A possible approach would be to a) provide some better tools so that someone uninvolved can asses the strength of a consensus, and b) do something in the behavioural and or RFC closing guidance area to embed this Scribolt (talk) 16:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

There's not a MOS:PK; if you mean something like MOS:PAK, yes there are lots of narrowly topical MoS, NC, and N "guidelines" that were simply declared to be guidelines by a handful of authors back in the wild-and-wooly 2000s when people were just inventing "guidelines" and even "policies" out of nowhere. But these generally are not of much if any concern. Most have not been substantively edited in a decade, and either are innocuous (don't conflict with other P&G or do anything else stupid) and are actually followed (in which case they are fine as guidelines); are innocuous but not followed, for being too out-of-date with what the community's actual practice is (in which case they should be marked {{Historical}}, or updated to ecapsulate actual current best practice in the topic); or they are not innocuous and contain conflicts with other P&G, in which case they need to be repaired (whether actively followed or not), and that might entail RfCs and even a new WP:PROPOSAL process (a result of which might be {{Rejected}}). There are also a lot of WP:PROJPAGE essays, in which various wikiproject try to assert style (most often section layout) preferences, but these are mostly ignored. Where they are not and also are not problematic, they should be make into MoS subpages instead of wikiproject style-advice essays.

The vast majority of the "defy a guideline I don't like" disruption is against some particular provision in a central guideline, like MOS:CAPS and its WP:NCCAPS derivative, or sometimes worse, like ignoring aspects of core content policy to push agendas in particular topics (WWII/Nazis/Jews in Eastern Europe; various fringe or religion subjects; a number hot-button topics in Western and especially American politics; etc.). The topical "guidelines" like MOS:PAK and MOS:COMICS and WP:NCPARTY and WP:NEVENTS are rarely the source of the problem.

But, sure, various pages with {{Guideline}} on them probably need community review for updating (and often paring) or even for demotion to essays or {{Historical}}, especially when they represent hardly any input from anyone and/or they are out-of-step with consensus practice. It's not really clear how to go about this the best way. Generally it's likely to be a matter of WP:VPPOL referenda, but is apt to cause significant drama, especially if the "guideline" in question is the product of a wikiproject and they happen to like it. One such demotion was "WP:Manual of Style/Computing", which was principally authored by only two or three editors, and was basically a pile of opinated WP:CREEP that didn't serve an encyclopedia-building need. Contrast with WP:Manual of Style/Computer science which dated to the same era (as a PROJPAGE) and recently passed a PROPOSAL to become part of MoS; that was a page with significantly more community input, by people who knew better what they were talking about, to address actual encyc.-writing needs instead of impose personal-preference style pecadilloes, and subject to considerable revision after community input. Big difference. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:52, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Château

Moved to Talk:Palace of Versailles § French château

Regarding your edit here, don't you think "château" is a well assimilated loanword? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 13:14, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Disney move

Why did you want the Walt Disney Company to move to Disney in the first place? While it is a common name, it is not the only important Disney. You know Walt Disney himself, right? Please read the guidelines, think, and learn from your actions. GabrielPenn4223 (talk) 15:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

@GabrielPenn4223: Read the RM proposal. The company is by far the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (that is, the vast majority of reliable-source usages of just "Disney" by itself are in reference to the company, not to any other subjects), and it is the WP:COMMONNAME of the company (that is, the vast majority of RS references to the company are simply as "Disney" not as a longer term). This case is not different in any way from any other routine disambiguation case. The fact that Walt Disney himself might be referred to on second mention as simply "Disney" in a biographical context is completely immaterial. Hatnotes exist for a reason, and {{About|the company|the company founder|Walt Disney}} would resolve any navigational issue. There's a weird fandom-driven "local consensus" happening at that page to defy WP:AT policy and the WP:DAB guideline. It's silly (most especially since Disney still redirects straight to the company despite that recent discussion). This case not any different from Heinz. The company, H. J. Heinz Company, formerly Heinz Noble & Company, now a subsidiary and brand of larger company Kraft Heinz after a 2015 merger, is the PRIMARYTOPIC for that name. The COMMONNAME of the company-cum-brand is simply Heinz, and the founder, Henry J. Heinz is notable and would be referred to on second mention in a biographical context simply as "Heinz". Heinz doesn't even have a disambiguation hatnote pointing to him, though it could have one; it was probably thought unnecessary since he is mentioned and linked in the first line of the article. If you went and proposed moving Heinz to H. J. Heinz Company, Heinz (company), Heinz (brand) or some other name, you'd be WP:SNOW opposed because such a name would not fit WT:AT and WP:DAB requirements (see also Talk:Heinz/Archives/2015#Requested move 26 March 2015). The difference is that Heinz, unlike Disney, doesn't have a walled-garden fanbase who want things a particular way to suit their WP:ILIKEIT preferences instead of following our WP:P&G like every other subject does. Some day the company article will be at Disney where it belongs, though I'll leave it to someone else to get that done. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:38, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

It should not. Disney should be a DAB page in my opinion. GabrielPenn4223 (talk) 16:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Not according to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:DAB (and WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT for that matter). We don't just get to make up our own opinions to suit our personal preferences on such matters; they are governed by policies and guidelines (pretty much explicity to prevent particular popular topics being given special treatment by their fans). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:NATDIS, WP:NATURAL read these as an user said on the RM. GabrielPenn4223 (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Those both go to the same place, so you seem to be the one not reading the material. In particular, read the entire WP:TITLEDAB section in which this is found: nothing in there is invoked unless disambiguation becomes necessary, and it is by definition not necessary for a page if it is the PRIMARYTOPIC; that's what PRIMARYTOPIC even means. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:55, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Users could also be looking for not limited to: Walt Disney himself as I stated, Disney theme parks, Disney Channel, Disney Studios etc.! This seems to be the primary topic over Disney by usage but not globally. GabrielPenn4223 (talk) 17:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

That's why we have Disney (disambiguation). It's also why we have Heinz (disambiguation). There is nothing different about these cases, other than some Disney fans personally wanting things a certain way to suit their PoV preferences. Disney theme parks, Disney Channel, Disney Studios, etc., are also services, products, or subsidiaries of the Disney corporation. I fear you simply do not understand how WP article titling and disambiguation operate; your arguments strongly suggest this. And you have zero RS in support of your notion that globally "Disney" by itself has a primary referent different from the primary referent in the US (i.e., the Disney corporation, in both cases). I have no idea why you've come to my talk page to argue in circles about this stuff, but it is not constructive, and Wikipedia is not a debate forum. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

PS: Actually, I now see that you've only been here three weeks; I thought you were a long-term editor already, so that might have come off as unreasonably dismissive, given how long it takes to absorb all of WP's complicated rules and procedures. Article titling on Wikipedia is complex, but the nutshell is that we use the most common name for a subject by default, and disambiguate it only when necessary (on a per-page basis, not on an "everything ever called by this name" basis, and only to the extent necessary). We do not use a longer name than necessary. If something is overwhelmingly the primary topic for a name, it is not disambiguated, and takes that short and recognizable name as the article title, with the disambiguation page being at, e.g., Disney (disambiguation), and other topics by that name being disambiguated one way or another. That DAB page would move to the bare Disney name, without "(disambiguation)", if and only if no primary topic could be determined for "Disney"; but of course there is an overwhelmingly primary topic for that name, the corporation. To get up-to-speed on this stuff, start reading WT:AT from top to bottom, then read WP:DAB and then MOS:DAB. There are also some topical naming conventions pages at Category:Wikipedia naming conventions; the pertinent one here is WP:NCCORP (though a sentence or two in it is subject to an active dispute right now, as being contradictory to policy and several other guidlines). Anyway, Walt Disney Company (and some would move it to The Walt Disney Company to even better agree with the primary-source preference, not being at Disney is an abberation not a norm, and it will not last indefinitely. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:39, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 60

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Issue 60, November – December 2023

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

January music

Thank you for improving articles in January! I remember Ewa Podleś on the Main page, and have - believe it or not - two musical DYK. Shalom chaverim. On vacation, with something for your sweet tooth --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Today: the performance of Anna Nekhames --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:56, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Today a friend's birthday, with related music and a few new vacation pics --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Language preservation organisations has been nominated for deletion

Category:Language preservation organisations has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether it complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 23:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

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Must

Well, we don't or shouldn't be using "must" anywhere in MoS or any other guideline unless describing a policy or technical requirement.

@SMcCandlish, this is wrong. Here's a list of five statements in the main MOS page that use the word must. Notice the absence of policy and technical requirements:

Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
The heading must be on its own line, with one blank line just before it.
If a sentence includes subsidiary material enclosed in square or round brackets, it must still carry terminal punctuation after those brackets, regardless of any punctuation within the brackets.
Where such a word or phrase occurs mid-sentence, new terminal punctuation (usually a period) must be added at the end.
Names not originally written in one of the Latin-script alphabets (written for example in Greek, Cyrillic, or Chinese scripts) must be given a romanized form for use in English.

Do you see any here that ought to be presented as mere "should" statements – like, you "should" use proper punctuation at the end of a sentence, but it's sometimes okay if you don't? I don't.

Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Content says:

Be clear. Avoid esoteric or quasi-legal terms or dumbed-down language. Be plain, direct, unambiguous, and specific. Avoid platitudes and generalities. Even in guidelines, help pages, and other non-policy pages, do not be afraid to tell editors directly they must or should do something.

If something is actually required, even if it is "only" required by the rules of proper English grammar, then it should be indicated as a "must", not a "should". It is unfair and needlessly confusing to tell editors that something merely should be done this way when we are actually requiring it. There has never been a rule relegating the use of words like must to pages that say "policy" in a box at the top. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I said "shouldn't" for a reason. All of those things need to be revised. 1. "in the lead section are always right-aligned" (we don't appear to have any exceptions, and if one were found in some single-editor stub, other editors would fix it, so this is true). 2. It is correct that it must be on its own line, as a technical matter, but one blank like just before it is not a technical requirement, just a recommentation (and often ignored when a subheading immediately follows a heading or a hatnote after a heading), so needs to be reworded. 3. Should read "it will still carry terminal punctuation after". Just state it as a fact instead of a demand. 4. Should read "is added at the end." 5. Should read something like "also needs a romanized form for use in English." I would bet good money that all this "must" nonsense was added by a particular editor, now topic-banned from all of MoS, who was on a years-long campaign to make MoS emphatic and excessively prescriptive (in the direction of that person's particular preferences). It has taken many years to clean up after them, and I'm not surprised there are little bits still left to repair. PS: Please do not approach Wikipedia as if a bureaucracy. We absolutely do not need a rule that says we "must" avoid using "must" in things that are not policies or technical requirements. It's just sensible writing, and avoiding "must" in our guidelines simply matches 99.99999% of the rest of our guideline material. Consensus exists regardless of whether it has been recorded in a rule we do not need to record, and when so close to zero of our guideline material says "must" that you can only find 5 examples, that is clearly an overwhelming consensus on the matter. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

What's your underlying worry with the word must? It seems to be particular to the word itself, because your suggestions have the same level of force, just using other words. I don't think we should tiptoe about in a way that suggests we have people with Pathological demand avoidance in mind. If editors must do something, then they must; there's no benefit to trying to cover that up by saying "always" or "have to" or any of the other synonyms for must.

PS: What I want is for editors to stop saying that guidelines should not use words like must, out of the mistaken and misguided belief that only policies and technical requirements "deserve" to make firm demands on editors. If the community is making firm demands, then those firm demands need to be communicated with clarity and accuracy on every page, not just on pages that have a certain label at the top. (There are a lot more than five examples available, if you want to see them. Here's a list of 108 guidelines using the word must. That's 40% of the guidelines – far too widespread to suggest that it's the work of just one opinionated editor, and far too accepted to pretend that there isn't community backing for this.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

What's your fondness for it? The concerns are that to anyone familiar with the norms of technical documentation, the word "must" indicates an asbsolute, inflexible requirement, and there is no such thing coming from a style guideline (any policy or technical requirement such a page happened to be contextually reminding editors about comes from an authority external to the guideline, either the policy in question or the technical specs of MW). To anyone not familiar with tech-writing norms, the term still indicates a policy-level requirement, which nothing in MoS is, and it produces basically a "micro-WP:POLICYFORK" of MoS material posing as policy and conflicting with the WP:P&G definition of guidelines as always permitting commonsense exceptions. There absolutely is a benefit to using other teminology, even "always" or "never" if the case really calls for it, rather than "must", namely avoiding the technical confusion that something will break if it isn't done as advised, and the non-technical confusion that someone might be sanctioned if they don't do as advised. This stuff matters. I have no idea why you've this simple copy-editing matter as the hill to die on, but I guaratee you if I open an RfC at VPPOL proposing non-"must" changes to all of the above instances that it will be a WP:SNOW in favor of making them. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I like it because it's clear. Style guidelines do have absolute, inflexible requirements. See, e.g., the placement of the lead image or infobox. It will absolutely, inflexibly, invariably be placed on the right.

I don't think that "must" should be conflated with "enforced in software" ("something will break if it isn't done as advised"), and it's wrong to think of breaking a policy as resulting in sanctions. People get sanctioned for violating essays all the time. There are more block log entries citing the essay Wikipedia:Tendentious editing than there are blocks that happened because of violating the policy Wikipedia:Verifiability or the Wikipedia:Editing policy – and we know that both of those policies are violated every day of the week.

I think you would be surprised by the response to your hypothetical RFC. A clear question would be "Shall we first repeal the long-standing policy statement that says guidelines are permitted to use the word must, and if so, shall we then change the wording of all sentences in the Manual of Style currently using the word must, such as those declaring that punctuation "must" be added at the end of sentences, so that they no longer use that particular word?"

That sounds like a loser of a proposal to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

If you phrased it that way you would be yelled at for making a non-neutral pseudo-RfC abusing argument to emotion by making fake claims of a "repeal", when nothing at issue about the term "must" would be actually be raised about anything beyond a handful of usese when it does not actually refer to a "must" situation (requirement by policy or technical limitations). I have no idea why you're picking a silly fight about this trivia; we usually seem to get along, but you are coming off as excessively aggressive about this one particular thing, and I'd like that to stop. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:51, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

"Must" situations are not limited to technical limitations and policy requirements. This is not true in the tech doc world; this is not true on Wikipedia. It may be your personal preference, but it isn't true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

This is just turning circular. Let's stop. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:57, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

As for why I care: When good editors say "Oh, guidelines can't say 'must'" – even though they have policy-level authorization to do so, with none of the limitations you have assumed – then POV pushers and wikilawyers say "When it says 'must', it means 'optional'" when they don't like what the guidelines say, and they say "Well, it says 'should' or 'may', but it really means 'must', because we're just too polite to use hard words like must in a guideline". We lose coming and going when you say that guidelines can't or shouldn't communicate hard requirements, or that certain words are taboo when communicating that requirement.

The placement of the lead image on the right is a hard requirement. There are lots of ways to communicate that, and I don't honestly care which one is chosen. I want you (and anyone else) to stop telling other editors that it's taboo to communicate that hard requirement with the word must. The other options can be better, prettier, nicer, clearer, more alliterative, more concise, more parallel, or any other virtue you can think of; I just don't want you to keep telling people that it's wrong for a guideline to use the word must when communicating a hard requirement that arises from no source higher than the community's views of what that guideline needs to tell people. Editors really must place lead images on the right; we should not be telling them that this is a bad way to express that hard requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what part of "This is just turning circular. Let's stop" sounded like an invitation to repeat your viewpoint yet again in two more paragraphs. If "There are lots of ways to communicate that, and I don't honestly care which one is chosen", then you're contradicting yourself in demanding "must"-or-bust, and venting at me for no reason about material your profess to not care about the wording of. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

(Check the timestamps; you posted while I was writing.)

I'm not demanding "must or bust". I'm demanding that you stop telling editors that "must" is not permitted or appropriate in guidelines. Write whatever you think will be most helpful in the guidelines themselves, but:

So long as we have a policy explicitly saying guidelines are permitted to use the word must, don't tell other editors that we can't use "must" in guidelines. It's officially permitted, even if you don't like it.
When 40% of guidelines currently use the word must, don't tell other editors that we don't actually use "must" in guidelines. We don't need any more misinformation going around about that fact.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't respond to "demand that you stop telling editors" anything. You don't control what I say. Please just drop this; it's starting to irritate, a lot, and you should have picked up on that some time ago. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Why I'm opposing the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee Charter Ratification

A note for my talk-page stalkers – here's my opposition vote comment:

The "even those which would not normally be in the scope of the U4C" portion of this is not acceptable at all: "Movement government structures may also refer UCoC enforcement cases or appeals, even those which would not normally be in the scope of the U4C, to the U4C." Nope. U4C has to stay within its scope or this will just turn into a "forum-shop my buddies to get a result the community denied me" kangaroo court. This even directly contradicts previous rulemaking in the same document: "The U4C will not take cases that do not primarily involve violations of the UCoC, or its enforcement."

This is also problematic (aside from the grammar error in it): "Provides a final interpretation of the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and the UCoC if the need arises, in collaboration with community members enforcement structures". This "collaboration" is undefined, and too vague to be meaningful.

There may be other issues with it as well, but these two parts alone were enough to trigger my immediate opposition. Policy writing is hard, and the drafters of this are not trying or thinking hard enough yet.

The vote is somehow only open until 2024-02-02. Can anyone say "rush job" and "ramrod"?

The voting page: meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter/Voter information
The draft charter: meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Charter
Main page of the UCoC Coordinating Committee: meta:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:52, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Improper close of MOS botany

I recommend you undo your Plant Descriptions thread closure at WT:MOS. As you know from your own work on MOS:CS and your recent proposal to add it to the general WP MOS, the thread is indeed absolutely an MOS issue, WP:BOTANY does not have its own MOS under active development. It's also not a sourcing matter -- Meteorquake is describing the order in which content sections should be presented, and why it being unorganized as now causes confusion, which seems like exactly the kind of thing MOS:CS is set up around.

Meteorquake was correctly told to check with WT:BOTANY. But as this can be nothing other than a style issue, and as BOTANY has no MOS project set up yet, the thread is improperly closed, and the description and edit summary are inaccurate. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:26, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

"Meteorquake was correctly told to check with WT:BOTANY" is entirely correct, and that should be sufficient. There is no "improperly" about closing it; if you think otherwise, feel free to point me to the policy that says so. But it's not an admin close; you can just go revert me if you insist on it. The primary concern raised in that WT:MOS thread has nothing to do with article writing style or even article structure in the strict sense (what sections need to exist per MOS:LAYOUT and in what order). It is about content and sourcing pertaining to the phenotypic presentation of a plant in different environments. I.e., it's about whether sufficient source research on a given plant has been done by our editors. It's also very secondarily about the information architecture of the information that is available, i.e. whether the material is grouped in sections in a sensible manner, but MoS has no rule about this, and it's an article-by-article determination. WT:BOTANY needs to be made aware of the problems, with the topically competent participants there being the most likely editors to address those issues in the affected articles (which might be numerous and may be disparate in their cleanup needs, in ways no MoS line item could ever address).

"BOTANY has no MOS project set up yet" doesn't even really make sense. There is no such thing as a wikproject's "MOS project". The MOS:CS discussion is about the nonsensical situation that we have a long-standing style advice page that is actually followed and has MOS:FOO shortcuts, i.e. is basically treated as if it's part of MoS, but it not titled, tagged, and categorized as one, but as a wikiproject style essay. That WP:BOTANY has no corresponding page, either as a guideline or as an essay, is just immaterial. The vast majority of wikiprojects have never generated a style advice essay, much less gotten it elevated to MoS guideline status, because most topics do not have style matters we need to address that are topic-specific. The lack of more such essays and guidelines is generally desirable, for WP:CREEP and especially WP:MOSBLOAT reasons: We don't need more rules than we already have (actually need fewer of them), most especially style rules, which are subject to more dispute than any other kind. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Never mind; I reverted my own close and left a more detailed note about why this is off-topic. Nothing was wrong with closing it, but I'm tired of lame arguments. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants#Article_advice is mostly stuff that should go into a MOS, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template is guidance about what should go into a plant article (although it is certainly not obvious that "Template" refers to that). Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants § Toward a MOS:FLORA

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)