User talk:Svampesky/Archives/2024/August

Careful with de-orphaning

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hello Svampesky. I've just reverted your attempt to de-orphan Whitenife at Miss World Australia. My impression is you were not being adequately careful to make sure this addition was proportionate in the context of the article, but rather you merely did so for the sake of reducing the number of orphaned articles in the backlog. Please don't do this. It makes things worse, not better.

The fact that an article has not received any organic links (that is, links arising from ordinary editorial activity on other articles rather than an explicit de-orphaning process) can often be a good signal that the topic isn't notable in the first place. Indeed, I've put Whitenife up for deletion as failing our notability guidelines. It's usually a waste of time to de-orphan an article on a non-notable topic: by nature, there's very few articles it could be reasonably linked from, and even when you can find such an article the link is often inappropriate to include because it would give undue prominence to an insignificant subject. – Teratix ₵ 16:26, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for informing me. It's my understanding that the primary objective of WikiProject Orphanage is to reduce the backlog, and nothing else. I did have concerns that the project might hide non-notable articles; but articles that might not meet the required standards should still be attempted to be de-orphaned, but be tagged with Template:Notability. I should've added the template in my edit. Svampesky (talk) 16:55, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

the primary objective of WikiProject Orphanage is to reduce the backlog You have a responsibility to ensure reaching this goal does not come at the expense of Wikipedia's content policies, especially the requirement for articles to avoid undue focus on topics' minor aspects. Be careful about Goodhart's law.

I should've added the template in my edit. The sentence you added still gave excessive weight to Whitenife – adding a notability template doesn't fix that problem.

Look, I don't want to come across like I'm on your case or something, it's just something that would be great to keep in mind for the future. – Teratix ₵ 03:00, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Given that the project is aimed at newcomers as an introductory task, it might be beneficial to provide them with a notification regarding this. Should we draft something and post it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage? I believe this would greatly assist newcomers, as I remember feeling quite uncertain about this particular issue. Svampesky (talk) 15:17, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

@Teratix: I don't really see anything at Wikipedia:WikiProject Orphanage about users being expected to do notability checks/initiated AfDs when they're deorphaning them. Not that they shouldn't, it just seems a little unfair to hold a (relatively new) user personally responsible for doing what the instructions tell them to do. jp×g🗯️ 03:32, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

This was like my 400th edit, I wasn't even extended confirmed at this point. Anyhooo... Svampesky (talk) 05:42, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG: there's a little passage at Wikipedia:Orphan#Notability that conceives of the possibility an article no-one has linked to for years might be non-notable and begrudgingly acknowledges "appropriate action" might include a deletion nomination. The mention is short and non-committal enough that I agree people aren't blameworthy for not doing notability checks. But the notability check is not really what I'm concerned about – it's more that singling out Whitenife was unbalanced in the context of the Miss World Australia article, and that this appeared to come about as the result of a certain approach to de-orphaning which prioritised lowering numbers rather than actually improving things. – Teratix ₵ 07:28, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

@Teratix: certain approach to de-orphaning which prioritised lowering numbers rather than actually improving things, WikiProject Orphanage is a project with the sole objective/priority of lowering the number of orphaned articles. You mentioned that "appropriate action" might include a deletion nomination. However, the passage you referred to at Wikipedia:Orphan#Notability also states that appropriate action may include tagging the page with {{Notability}}, which aligns with my point that you disputed, so I'm unsure why you chose to skim over that part. This WikiProject also targets new users who may not yet know how to successfully nominate an AfD, so using the Template:Notability is fine. Please direct any further discussions to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Orphanage. Svampesky (talk) 09:02, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Orphanage is a project with the sole objective/priority of lowering the number of orphaned articles. That's not a licence to do whatever you can to reduce the backlog, if it means making Wikipedia worse off. Every Wikipedia editor has a personal responsibility not to make things worse. – Teratix ₵ 09:21, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Your email

Thanks for contacting me through email. I think I can answer sufficiently here without going into any trouble areas. Wikipedia:Harassment#Posting_of_personal_information has a note which specifically covers disclosure on other wikimedia projects. The problem here is that the images in question claim "Own work", which would normally mean they are the photographer, not the subject. In this case, it probably indicates either the person has a direct conflict of interest (WP:COI) or they are misleading us about who created the image. I'm very sure it would be appropriate to use those images to query the user with regard to a conflict of interest. Let's imagine a different case. I upload a picture of, I don't know, Wil Wheaton clearly taken by Wil Wheaton in a bathroom selfie (i.e. a mirror), and claim it's my work. But I upload it to Commons. Now we are in dangerous territory. It's fine to query me on Commons to determine if I really am Wil Wheaton (I'm definitely not). But it's less clearly okay to do so on en.wikipedia.org, as per Note 1. In such cases (if I'm editing Wil Wheaton inappropriately and without the proper disclosures), the best path forward is to follow the advice in Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard/Archive_13#Special_Circumstances_Blocks, under "Off-wiki evidence", by emailing paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org. I think this fully answers your question. I prefer answering on-wiki whenever possible, but will certainly accept further private information by email if you like. Note that I'll be away for a long-weekend trip out of town so may be slow to respond. --Yamla (talk) 22:07, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm watching this talk page for a while so feel free to just respond here if you can avoid private information! --Yamla (talk) 22:08, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. One image is a picture of them and another is a selfie. This seems misleading, unless its a timed countdown. All the same, I'm not going to get directly involved in this issue. I'll email paid-en-wp so I can leave it to those with more experience on this matter. Svampesky (talk) 22:15, 8 August 2024 (UTC)