Wikipedia talk:Consensus/Archive 23

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rv pending resolution of discussion

user:Nikkimaria, in my edit summary I said "Some wp:Verifiability editors may argue that wp:ONUS applies to more than verifiability. But there is no consensus that this is so." Can you point to a discussion that puts into question the content of the very limited text you have reverted? If so, please provide a link to a talk page post that argues content should be included when Verifiability is at issue. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

This ongoing discussion calls into question the limiting of ONUS to only verifiability-related disputes. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

What if we keep the text and link to wp:BURDEN instead? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

That's certainly closer, but the text there is a bit more nuanced than what was proposed here. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:38, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Please help me wp:FIXTHEPROBLEM you see. What should it say to accurately reflect ONUS or BURDEN? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:37, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Per BURDEN, material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it is excluded. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:49, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

So "If the dispute relates to verifiability and the disputed content lacks a reliable source then it is excluded"? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 02:26, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

If material lacks a reliable source supporting it, it is excluded. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Of course WP:ONUS is not limited to Verifiability related disputes. The entire POINT of the ONUS section of WP:V is to remind editors that there is more to inclusion/exclusion than just Verifiability. Blueboar (talk) 02:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, that's the first point. Then there's the second point, which is whatever the "include" sentence means. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Revert number 2

user:Kolya Butternut, with regard to your revert, I respectfully suggest that the text does not conflict with the RFC because the text applies here only after (a) a dispute has arisen, (b) a good faith discussion has taken place and (c) the discussion has resulted in no consensus that the content is not verifiable. This circumstance would be unlikely to occur for verifiable content because an editor would supply the verification and the discussion would end with consensus that the problem is solved. - Butwhatdoiknow 21:24, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I restored your edit. I did not carefully read it in context. I have no opinion on your addition at this time. (Your ping didn't work.) Kolya Butternut (talk) 22:38, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for being willing to look at this issue dispassionately. Too few editors share that trait. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:50, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

@Kolya Butternut I have more evidence then you can change or convince anyone of granting it any further 2600:6C54:7800:2E20:3441:E9DF:BDC0:C52D (talk) 05:24, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Revert number 3

Regarding this revert, I fail to see the need for this clarification. Typically if disputed content lacks support from a reliable source, it will fail WP:V and not be subject to a discussion. Though there could be exceptions, it is a WP:CREEP move to specify what to do in rare circumstances. --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:00, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Note: Comment below added from a separate subsection

@GoneIn60, you raise three concerns in your revert:
(1) "Shorthand links are unnecessary changes." I must admit to ignorance, please tell me what a "shorthand link" is.
(2) Grammar. I would hope that, once we get past your other concerns, you will help me wp:FIXTHEPROBLEM rather than simply object.
(3) Not an improvement. As you may read in the edit summary for one of the edits you reverted, the purpose of the edits was to fix a problem posed above: editors applying NOCON in the midst of ongoing discussions (before there is "no consensus"). With that explanation, do you still think my edits were not an improvement? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Discussion determining text subject to GoneIn60's third concern

Butwhatdoiknow, hope you don't mind but I moved your comments here. The comment about shorthand was a reference to the "more targeted" link (as you phrased it), as seen here. I think "external links" should continue to point to external links, and a different phrase like "disputed links" would make more sense to redirect to ELBURDEN, or simply state "See ELBURDEN" at the end in an additional sentence. While those are acceptable workarounds, I don't really see a need to make any changes, which also goes along with your concern in #2. As for #3, see my comments above regarding CREEP. I don't yet see a convincing case that shows why this is a helpful addition; as of now it seems like unnecessary bloat. Would you mind explaining why you think it's necessary? --GoneIn60 (talk) 22:21, 14 December 2022 (UTC) @GoneIn60, your comments at the beginning of this section appear to refer to your edit removing pre-existing text regarding BURDEN. My three points were in response to your earlier revert undoing my edit changing wording without adding any new content. I don't see how CREEP applies to my edit. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:53, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have moved your comments to this section. My apologies. The comment about CREEP refers solely to your edit here. As for the other changes you made in an attempt to add clarification, I still found those to be unnecessary. Let's look at one example:

In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

PaulT implied that the wording here could be confusing to newer editors, that it might encourage the deletion of "contested content" prior to discussion rather than after. I think we need to drill into this further before concluding that a change is warranted. This is a policy page, and the text in this example has essentially remained unchanged for over a decade. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:22, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

You do not say the proposed change would make NOCON worse, just that it won't improve NOCON. If that is the case - and maybe I've misunderstood - then I gather that the rationale for your objection is that we shouldn't change the text of policies unless the new text is an improvement. Do I have that right? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 06:05, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Before we get into the weeds of whether or not a specific change is good, bad, or meh, I think we should first establish the need. Is there a need for change? I am of the mindset that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. --GoneIn60 (talk) 06:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

PaulT and I think it is broke because folks are citing NOCON during active discussions. I'm having trouble seeing why you don't take the position that "well, I don't see the problem but they do, and their change doesn't make things worse, so I'm not going to object just because it is a change." I would think that position would be particularly attractive to someone who recently said "it's worth pointing out that NOCON favors the longstanding version after discussion fails." - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@GoneIn60, I would appreciate you responding to the substance of my post above: what is so sacred about the existing text that it must not be edited to solve what you perceive as an insignificant problem? This is not the case of adding a new topic (in which case CREEP would come into play), it is simply a matter of changing the text of an existing topic. If it does no harm, why object? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:22, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

The "why" in my objection has been explained already, and there are additional comments below explaining this further that you may find helpful. There is a valid concern that the cosmetic changes may be unnecessarily repetitive warranting further discussion. I'm not opposed to changing existing text; I'm opposed to changing existing text unnecessarily. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Have we established that "folks are citing NOCON during active discussions" is indeed a common pattern, or are these simply anecdotal accounts by a handful of editors? And if that is indeed an established trend, then is it a problem with the wording in NOCON, or is it simply an educational issue involving inexperienced editors? I think it's important to establish what exactly the problem is before attempting to find a solution. BTW, you didn't mention you personally observed the citing of NOCON during active discussions until just now (unless you're referring to an earlier thread I didn't participate in). --GoneIn60 (talk) 07:30, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

It's both.

I've done a few inappropriate reverts because I thought NOCON applies to any longstanding changes, interpreting its wording that longstanding text shouldn't be changed or removed until there's a positive consensus to do so.

I've also seen a few major edit wars, one currently discussed at WP:AN, apparently stemming from a similar misunderstanding.

While you're correct that it's an "educational issue" to an extent, I don't think it excuses the policies being worded in an unnecessarily arcane way. PaulT2022 (talk) 13:07, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely. If there's widespread confusion that can be linked to the wording, we should definitely do something about it. The concern was that we were jumping immediately to that conclusion without hashing it out first. The first line of NOCON states:

"No consensus" occurs when good faith discussion results in no consensus to take or not take an action. What happens next depends on the context:

To me, if there's confusion about each bullet point that follows, perhaps this initial statement is being glossed over; "results in no consensus" is essentially what Butwhatdoiknow was attempting to add to each bullet point, but is that really necessary repetition? "What happens next" is also a key indicator that the actions listed should follow discussion. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

PaulT and I answer that question "yes." Now, here's a question for you: what is the downside to the repetition? It adds an insignificant 8 bytes to the article size (even less now that the BURDEN sentence is removed). As I asked above, if it does no harm, why object? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 16:35, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I would supportprefer phrasing without repetition, but the one that's clear.

The current version says: In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit. I get the point about the first sentence, but "in" is massively misleading as one if its meanings is "during". It's less than obvious that the first sentence overrides it. PaulT2022 (talk) 16:43, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, repetition is something I think is best avoided. What if we change "lack of consensus" so that it reads something like: "In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a conclusion of "no consensus" commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Thoughts? --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I like the direction, but I don't think it alleviates ambiguity of "in" and introduces one of it's own (whose conclusion? if I see a discussion and conclude there's no consensus, do I go ahead and restore per NOCON? - ultimately that's the problematic behaviour).

If the only problem with Butwhatdoiknow's edit is repetition, then perhaps we could rephrase somehow else? When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit is commonly retained.? PaulT2022 (talk) 17:21, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure, sounds reasonable, however not a huge fan of "commonly retained". Perhaps we lead with your suggestion but end it with: "the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." Keeps it closer to the existing text. Final thoughts/suggestions? --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

No objections, sounds good to me. PaulT2022 (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm in as well. Unless someone beats me to it, I'll make the changes tomorrow. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:31, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

This sounds like the ONUS dispute...I don't think we should be making changes which will affect that. Kolya Butternut (talk) 02:15, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The proposal is to change this:

Example from Butwhatdoiknow
In discussions of proposals to delete articles, media, or other pages, a lack of consensus normally results in the content being kept. to this: When discussions of proposals to delete articles, media, or other pages end without consensus, the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

I suggest that the new version, if it affects the ONUS dispute at all, brings NOCON closer to ONUS by excluding new content when a discussion results in "no consensus." - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 04:41, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

None of this belongs on this policy page. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

That is a separate discussion. Please feel free to start a separate section to discuss removing the text entirely. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

It is bloat on bloat. Why do you think this text is important even to discuss? What do you think are the implications of this text to editing or anything? SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Kolya Butternut and SmokeyJoe: would you mind elaborating a bit further? The most recent discussion is about a slight cosmetic change to existing text of NOCON. The substance of the current policy will remain intact.

Here's an example taken directly from the discussion (I collapsed the example above to avoid confusion):

In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

would change to this:

When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

--GoneIn60 (talk) 15:50, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Cosmetic tangential matters. The intensity of discussions and reverts on cosmetic tangential matters, on a concept outside of the scope of consensus, suggests that editors think what they are doing matters. I ask: What do you think is the implication of these words? SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:32, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

• I look beyond the words and favor stability, hence my participation here to understand why a change was being pursued. Personally, I think a bigger overhaul to get the whole longstanding stance out of NOCON would be more productive, but unfortunately it's not on the table at the moment. I'll presume this small potato cosmetic change is of no interest to you, point taken. --GoneIn60 (talk) 01:04, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
• I'm not sure whether "these words" mean the current text or the proposed text, but I can tell you that the purpose of the proposed change is to drive home that NOCON is about what happens after a discussion fails, not what happens during a discussion. If you think that distinction doesn't matter one way or the other, why are you wasting your time to participate in this discussion? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:26, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Kolya Butternut, please respond to GoneIn60's post (above). - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:02, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

[T]he purpose of the proposed change is to drive home that NOCON is about what happens after a discussion fails, not what happens during a discussion. Isn't the current text consistent with QUO? I don't think we should make changes to lose that. Kolya Butternut (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

QUO applies during a discussion, is designed to prevent edit wars and, as it says, "should not be used for any other purpose." NOCON applies after a discussion (when the result is no consensus). Accordingly, I suggest, they do not need to be consistent. That said, I think the practical effect is the same in both circumstances: under QUO the status quo remains temporarily in place and under NOCON (either the current or the proposed text) the status quo remains "permanently" in place until there is a consensus to change it. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 05:15, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I think if there's a possibilitly it would weaken QUO then we shouldn't do that. And you suggested that this might bring NOCON closer to ONUS, but I think it should be the other way around. Kolya Butternut (talk) 05:29, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding your QUO concern (I'll speak to your ONUS concern later), let me ask you these questions:

(1) Do you agree that the intent of QUO is that it be applied only during discussion and the intent of NOCON is that it be applied only after a discussion fails?

(2) If you do, do you also agree that NOCON is not intended to support (or, if you will, strengthen) QUO?

(3) If you do, do you also agree (a) that some people mistakenly cite NOCON during discussion when they should be citing QUO, and (b) that causes confusion?

(4) If you do, do you also agree that - if we can do it without affecting any conflict between ONUS and either QUO or NOCON - we should tighten up the text at NOCON to make it clearer that it applies only after discussion? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:57, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

(Side note… during discussions, I much prefer to cite m:The Wrong Version rather than argue about whether QUO applies) Blueboar (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

(1) a, yes. b. not sure. Kolya Butternut (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Kolya Butternut, It's not clear why there is any confusion about the intent of NOCON. The first line of NOCON already declares we are talking about next steps after "discussion results in no consensus". The proposal is to drive that point home in the bullet list that follows. While I don't think that's absolutely necessary, since the first line of NOCON is already clear to me, I can see how others might find the proposed cosmetic changes helpful. If you think some meaning is being changed, could you please be more specific instead of hypothetical? --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:26, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

And the issue that this change brings NOCON closer to ONUS? Kolya Butternut (talk) 20:47, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

• I'm not sure why that was mentioned. The proposed change doesn't move the needle in any direction; it's simply a clearer way to state what is already being stated. --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
• @User talk:Kolya Butternut, does this question mean that we've resolved the "weakens QUO" issue to your satisfaction? If not, with your indulgence, I'd like to continue with that issue before moving on to NOCON/ONUS. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:39, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Maybe, but I'm not comfortable making changes to a contentious major guideline without opening up the discussion to the village pump perhaps. Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:38, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Let's talk about that if and when we resolve your ONUS concern. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 06:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Regarding your ONUS concern, I said the new text "brings NOCON closer to ONUS by excluding new content when a discussion results in 'no consensus.'" What I should have said was "makes clearer that, when a 'no consensus' discussion about new content results in 'no consensus,' NOCON and ONUS reach the same result." Do you think that is not the case? If so, how do you see the proposed text changing NOCON? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 06:00, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

"[M]akes clearer that, when a 'no consensus' discussion about new content results in 'no consensus,' NOCON and ONUS reach the same result." How does it do that? Kolya Butternut (talk) 09:50, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

To recap, the current text:

In discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

The current proposed text:

When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the common result is to retain the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit.

This change is designed to make it clearer that, as is the general intent of NOCON, this text applies only after discussion fails. The purpose of this change is to reduce the number of editors who cite NOCON during discussion instead of QUO or The Wrong Version (which is cited in QUO).

Turning to your question, now that I look at it I think you and GoneIn60 are right: the change is so innocuous that it doesn't change anything vis-a-vis ONUS. (In my defense, I did preface my statement to the contrary with "if it affects the ONUS dispute at all." That said, now that I look even more closely at my post, I see that in the collapsed text above I quoted the wrong text. I sincerely apologize to all for the confusion that caused.)

Does that resolve your concern about a NOCON/ONUS conflict? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm still curious what you had thought the effect might have been, so I can evaluate whether there would be one. Kolya Butternut (talk) 18:12, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

I think that both times (when I said "closer" and when I said "clearer") I was looking at the erroneous collapsed comparison. So whatever I thought when I said that was based on the wrong comparison. That is why I re-stated the correct comparison in my recap. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:11, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

@Kolya Butternut: Do you have any remaining concern that the proposed change affects the NOCON/ONUS issue? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm always nervous about the effects of changes to NOCON/ONUS, but I'll neither object nor explicitly support the change? Kolya Butternut (talk) 03:16, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

That works for me, thanks. Perhaps someone else will see a problem and then we can always go back to the prior text. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Different Types of Consensus

We're having some interesting discussions regarding silent "consensus" (compare the sound of one hand clapping). I thought it might be helpful to compare the consensus that arises from other paths as well. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 18:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Step One: Identifying edit pedigrees

To start, let's take a step back and consider the ways that text ends up on (and off) Wikipedia. So far I have identified three paths:

• text that is added (or removed) without discussion (before or after edit) or modified
• text that has been modified without discussion
• text that results from or has been approved by discussion (including edit summary “discussions”)

Are there more? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 18:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I would love to see User:Andrewa, author of User:Andrewa/Consensus is consensus, make the first answer here. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:40, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Andrewa's essay seems limited to policies and guidelines, wp:EDITCON is not (although wp:PGBOLD is). Perhaps that is part of the problem as we try to figure out silent consensus. As you say, Andrewa may well help us move forward. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:34, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

It was supposed to be about anytime we work towards consensus. But consensus is a good servant not a good master. The term was a favourite of arguably Australia's most manipulative Prime Minister to date. Rumour has it he now doesn't even get Christmas cards from his former Cabinet. Andrewa (talk) 10:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I am indeed flattered. But I think my best comment on consensus is actually at wp:creed#consensus.

It is the people that make Wikipedia work, not the rules. Andrewa (talk) 10:34, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

NOCON - only after vs when

Regarding this edit, I think "only after" is better because it makes clearer that this section does not apply during discussions. It's a small difference, but important because too many editors cite wp:NOCON (what happens when discussion fails) when they should be citing wp:QUO (recommended practice when discussion is taking place). - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 16:10, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

It is true that the "No consensus" section focuses on discussion and what happens after one ends with no consensus. However, discussion isn't the only path to no consensus. An editor can determine through editing alone that they don't have consensus for an edit they've made (e.g. Alice makes a bold edit, Bob reverts bold edit, Alice sees the revert and moves on instead of pursuing consensus through discussion). Inserting "only after" in front of "good faith discussion" can be misleading in that regard. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I would interpret Alice's decision to leave the playing field as a form of consensus - she concedes, agreeing to let Bob's revert stand. There is in contrast to a "state of 'no consensus'" situation where Alice enters into a discussion with Bob and there is no compromise or concession.

As user:Thinker78 has pointed out, the problem with the sentence is that "no consensus" appears twice with different meanings. That's a problem I'm hoping to solve when I have more time. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Guess it's a matter of perspective; at some point someone is conceding. If discussion stalls and neither party escalates further, you could argue by the same token "a form of consensus" was reached. To me, it makes no difference at what stage of the interaction Alice decides to walk. It's the same outcome, regardless if you call it "no consensus" or "a form of consensus". --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:19, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

If a discussion stalls? How do you tell the difference between one party exhausting another, and one party silently conceding? I don’t think that a discussion stall should ever be considered even silent consensus. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:00, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Exactly my point. We can't read between the lines. "Stall" in this sense is just like Alice walking away before discussion; neither situation necessarily means one party is conceding. But from a certain perspective, some may choose to call it that. I choose to call it "no consensus" until there is one. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

NOCON cited during discussions

I joined this year and my impression is contested content more often deleted prior to discussion than after. I think the current wording is highly confusing to new editors. (And acts to inflame edit wars in a form of 'no consensus' reverts, which I've occasionally done myself mistakenly seeing NOCON as an overriding principle in disagreements about longstanding content.)
I did note that removal before discussion mostly happens when sourcing or BLP claims are at play, so perhaps changing "When the material in question lacks a reliable source" to something like "When the verifiability of the removed material is contested" (closer to the referenced WP:BURDEN) would suffice?
"No consensus" clearly still is a guiding principle for most changes overall - see Talk:Recession#RfC:_Phrasing_of_the_infamous_sentence closure for example. PaulT2022 (talk) 16:14, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to edit NOCON to try to add clarity. Thanks for pointing out the issue. FYI, the recommended practice during discussion is wp:QUO. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:58, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I think WP:QUO contradicts WP:BURDEN, especially the part buried in a footnote (why?):

Once an editor has provided any source they believe, in good faith, to be sufficient, then any editor who later removes the material must articulate specific problems that would justify its exclusion from Wikipedia (e.g. why the source is unreliable; the source does not support the claim; undue emphasis; unencyclopedic content; etc.). If necessary, all editors are then expected to help achieve consensus, and any problems with the text or sourcing should be fixed before the material is added back.

The list is open-ended, explicitly includes NPOV violations (undue), and explicitly forbids restoration of status quo even for non-verifiability problems (note the "any problems"). Have no opinion on the remove vs preserve debate, but I feel the policies should be written in a more straightforward way. PaulT2022 (talk) 19:02, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that CONSENSUS is the place to discuss whether QUO and BURDEN conflict, but here goes:

First of all, I'll bet dollars to donuts that you are the first person to read BURDEN footnote 3 in more than 4 years and 7 months. Good for you for doing that, and I share your desire for clarity in the Wikipedia space. But I'm guessing the reality is that no one pays any attention to BURDEN footnote 3.

Secondly, footnote 3 only comes into play after the following sequence of events: (1) Editor A adds unsourced content. (2) Editor B deletes it because it is unsourced. (3) Editor A restores it with a source. (4) Editor B deletes it for some other reason. (5) Editor A disputes Editor B's new rationale. Yes, at that point footnote 3 and QUO diverge, but how often will that occur?

If you nevertheless wish to pursue this issue then I suggest you follow up on the wp:V talk page. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 19:46, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

After browsing archives, I don't see a lot of appetite for changes in WP:V so raised it on WT:RV instead. Please feel free to post a notice to WT:V if you think it's useful for that page's watchers.

In my experience the situation you describe occurs often because Editor B's "other reason" would more often than not say that either the source isn't good enough, or text misrepresents it or something to the effect - which is covered by WP:BURDEN even without going deep into footnotes. PaulT2022 (talk) 20:20, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

There is no conflict in situations where the status quo ante bellum version doesn't contain the disputed content, but when it does, then unfortunately we need to keep in mind that QUO is just an essay. It wouldn't hold any weight over BURDEN, although it's worth pointing out that NOCON favors the longstanding version after discussion fails. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:23, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

it's worth pointing out that NOCON favors the longstanding version after discussion fails - but this is not WP:NOCON says:

When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles result in no consensus the common result is retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit. However:

• When the material in question lacks a reliable source, it is excluded.

It sounds to me like it prescribes to exclude material when there's a disagreement on source even when no consensus to remove it is reached in discussion (which makes sense in light of the WP:BURDEN wording). Am I reading too much into this? PaulT2022 (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

No, it's a valid concern. When material lacks support from a reliable source (i.e. it is unverifiable), then it's in violation of WP:V and cannot be included. Its inclusion at that point is not subject to discussion and consensus, so NOCON does not apply. If the source is still being debated, then we haven't yet reached the determination that "the material in question lacks a reliable source", and NOCON still doesn't apply. That line you quoted was recently added with very little discussion, and given the attention it is already receiving, it should probably be removed. Discussing it currently above. --GoneIn60 (talk) 22:44, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

If you turn "the common result" into "is required", you are reading too much into this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Lack of consensus should not result in inclusion

I favor this revision, with changes by me and a refinement by User:Blueboar. It states:

When discussions of proposals to add, modify, or remove material in articles end without consensus, the common result is to remove the contested material.
* In biographies of living people, contested material that is removed should not be restored until a discussion results in affirmative consensus to include.

This enshrines both accepted practice, and long-standing consensus from policy discussions.

The current wording of this policy "locks in" material when there is no consensus for its inclusion. That contradicts the numerous (and extensive) recent discussions at WT:V, including the latest one, in which most editors agreed that material needs consensus to be included. That's also the plain wording of WP:ONUS, and repeated attempt to water it down have failed. Per WP:POLCON, this page needs to change to reflect the version above, which far better reflects wider Wikipedia consensus. DFlhb (talk) 15:37, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Courtesy ping: @Butwhatdoiknow DFlhb (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• The first part of the above version does not match my understanding of consensus re “NOCON-after discussion”. Except for BLPs, an end result of “No Consensus” does not always mean we “remove the contested material”… it’s more case specific than that: we return the article to whatever state it was in prior to the contested edit. The retention/omission of the material depends on that prior state. If the contested edit was an addition to the prior state… yes, we omit the addition. BUT, if the contested edit was a removal from the prior state… we return the removed content.

In other words, “no consensus” (in a non-BLP) rejects whatever the “change” was. But that rejected “change” can be either an addition or a removal. Blueboar (talk) 17:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• That said… one issue that keeps coming up in debates is the question of what constitutes the “change”… this is why we have endless arguments about which version is “long standing” and has “implied consensus”. The NEW wording (above) does cut the gordeon knot of such debates. Thus I am not necessarily opposed to it. Blueboar (talk) 18:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

  If I may advocate for it a bit more: it may motivate the pro-inclusion side to try harder to come up with better sources or phrasing. The encyclopedia wins out. And it clarifies that we don't need affirmative consensus to remove content added by an IP ten years ago, on a page that may be obscure enough that such affirmative consensus is hard to form. It incentivizes editors to think about whether the content is actually good, rather than treating any content as if it were immanent. What is, stops being valued more than what could be. DFlhb (talk) 18:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It is unclear exactly what change this section is about. Including whether or not it applies only to BLP's. The link is to a version of the entire page. If this section is to be meaningful, that should be clarified. North8000 (talk) 19:56, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

True. Here's a proper diff. DFlhb (talk) 20:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I would oppose that bundle of many changes for several reasons. A blanket / categorical statement that anything needs a supermajority (which is basically what a consensus is, and yes, I know it's not a vote) to be added, kept or removed would be handing a giant hammer to wililawyers /and POV warriors. And also wading into an area where there are too many variables to be making such a simple categorical statement. This mess, including the conflict with ONUS is going to need more than just a tweak to fix. next, it removes any weight given to the "last stable version" . Also it changes "contentious" to "contested". For example a POV wililawyer warrior that wants an article on someone to be a hit piece would want to exclude that they won an academy award. So "won an academy award" is not contentious material but it is a contested inclusion thus requiring a full debate plus winning a supermajority in order to include. North8000 (talk) 20:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with changing back "contested" to "contentious"; that was poor wording on my part. But is the rest of this actually a problem in practice? It's purely equivalent to ONUS, which has been policy for years, has been widely invoked and applied, and hasn't led to this doom-and-gloom. I'll note that BLPs already function the way you describe: no consensus on contentious material already leads to its removal. DFlhb (talk) 20:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, @DFlhb, you're right about BLPs. But imagine that we're talking about, I dunno, a film from decades ago. Someone wants to the article to say that the director died the day after the film was finished. It's well sourced and the facts are undisputed. Someone else, however, thinks this is just unimportant trivia and belongs on some fansite (or only in the biography for the director). There's an RFC, and the outcome is split straight down the middle, with 50% of participants demanding its exclusion and 50% of them demanding the inclusion.

NOCON says we usually go with whatever the article "always" said, which could be including or excluding. You're saying that it should be excluded per ONUS, even if it's been in the article without any hint of concern for 15 years now. I'm asking you: Is having less well-sourced, accurate information always best for Wikipedia? That is the natural result of applying ONUS to such a case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Fair points; but boldness is preferable to stability. Technology was untouched since 2012, but awful, and I needed to remove half of it, even sourced stuff, to improve dueness and remove stuff a professional encyclopedia wouldn't cover about the subject. Many articles contain sourced statements that come from a 10 min Google search, rather than books or studies. So our articles on operating systems can include utterly routine coverage of 0-days that's sourced, but completely undue. And sometimes, things may be cited but may not reflect the majority of sources (see my comment at Talk:Joe Biden#Taiwan).

Stability would be preferable if half our articles were FA-class. But most of them suck! Only 11% are rated above Start-class. Again, see Technology, before and after. Enshrining stability stunts article quality. If material was never scrutinized, why require affirmative consensus to remove? The stability mindset is the wrong one altogether: it leads editors to think "why should anything change", rather than "how do we make the best article?". The random walk framing in Paul Siebert's first comment at WT:V#Answers, is simply brilliant, and completely true. Many editors' takeaway from WP:NOCON is that the status quo has inherent validity, so they're not incentivized to scrutinize that status quo or consider whether it's any good. That benefits no one. DFlhb (talk) 07:36, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your work on Technology. Articles on fundamental subjects are incredibly difficult to write well.

There are two axes available to us:

• Boldness – Stability
• Include – Exclude

Your examples tend towards "boldly excluding". But if we write the rule as "boldness", that encompasses "boldly including", too. Do you want people to boldly dump new content into articles? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Do you want people to boldly dump new content into articles? That's fine, as long as that material can be challenged just the same if it's 1 minute old or 10 years old.

My fundamental issue is the fact that CON says that implicit consensus evaporates instantly when material is challenged, and yet I still hear people say: "it's been there for years, that's the consensus version". The only time that ever actually applies is when an RFC decided on the exact wording. Otherwise, the "consensus" is just stonewalling or wikilawyering. People should have to defend the status quo on its merits, not on technicalities. DFlhb (talk) 02:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

RFCs don't produce binding decisions. They help is identify the consensus (if any) at one point in time, but Wikipedia:Consensus can change even if you had an RFC about it in the past. Also, you can have a solid demonstration of consensus (at that point in time) without an RFC.

I think the way we've been talking about implicit consensus for the last several years has been misleading. Part of this is just because Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, so when someone says something like "WP:ALLCAPS says that I'm right and you're wrong", then people tend to believe that the rules are being accurately and fairly represented. After all, why would any editor ever lie, given that all I have to do to discover their duplicity is to click the link they gave me? But the editor talking to you probably hasn't read that page for years, if ever, either, because they had exactly the same thought. They aren't being duplicitous; they're just repeating the rumor they heard.

It might be helpful to suggest/model some more appropriate language in such disputes. Right now, some people are saying "This has been included in (or excluded from) the article for so long that it has implicit consensus". Imagine if people saw others saying "You've just disputed this, and WP:IMPLICIT says as soon as anyone's disputed something, we can no longer presume consensus for it. That said, I think the old version of the article was better..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

DFlhb, the current wording is necessarily non-prescriptive and relates to situations with an immense range of variables and considerations. Your proposed change is much more prescriptive; I think that in your proposal and discussions you have a particular type of scenario in mind and feel that the policy should be modified to provide a more desirable outcome for that particular type of scenario. I don't support that change, but perhaps the current systems is better at what you seek than you perceive from a simple reading. I think that implicit consensus is simply a way to put into words that, in consideration of multiple factors, some weight is given to the status quo based on it having been there, with amount of time it's been there and how many eyes it has had on it being additional factors that determine that amount of weight. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

NOCON is among our most abused policies. People treat it as prescriptive when it benefits them. Some even use it to defend statements in BLPs, despite the BLP exception to NOCON. BTW, the assumption that longstanding content has been properly scrutinized is often false. Almost no one does spot checks outside of GANs. I've even seen articles pass GAN with zero spot checks, and numerous errors! DFlhb (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Related RFC two months ago: Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 78#Straw poll about verifiability and consensus.

I was a little surprised to see few editors willing to support inclusion of well-sourced verifiable material. I know we've been trending that way for years, but this was more than I expected. Fifteen years ago, I think editors would have said that since an AFD closing with no consensus results in keeping an article, if a discussion about removing a paragraph ends with no consensus, we should keep the paragraph. I don't remember hearing that analogy for several years now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I never understood that analogy. I think there is a huge difference between: “should we have an article on this topic?” (Default being “yes” if no consensus at AFD) and “should our article contain this specific bit information?” (Default being “no” if there is no consensus in discussion). Blueboar (talk) 13:57, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The way the question is posed could make all the difference. Are we (1) removing a recently-added paragraph, (2) removing a longstanding paragraph, or simply (3) adding a new paragraph? Your straw poll addressed scenario #3, which seems to me like the easiest "exclude" conclusion out of the three. But is there really a difference between scenarios #1 and #3? Should #2 have the potential of reaching a different outcome? Some argue the framing of the question and what is considered the bold edit matters. I can see them changing their answer accordingly based on those factors.

North8000 once described ONUS as putting "a finger on the scale towards exclusion of material". If you agree with tilting the scales in favor of exclusion, then you are probably more likely to frame the question in such a way that your opposition must defend inclusion (as opposed to them forcing you to defend removal). --GoneIn60 (talk) 07:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. As I recall the context of that was to say how the fuzzy Wikipedia system successfully deals with the the prima facie conflict between onus and wp:consensus. IMO onus is a mis-worded attempt to to say something that needed saying in that spot (note that it is in wp:ver) and needs to be fixed. There was a multi-month discussion on that which ran out of gas. I was going to formulate an RFC but never got it done. North8000 (talk) 16:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Sorry if I digressed into ONUS territory...also wasn't my intention to steer the focal point away from DFlhb. Just wanted to point out that it does seem that the framing of the question asked during debates can have an impact on the responses and how a "no consensus" result is interpreted. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:31, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

This is true… “No consensus” can be interpreted as (a) “we don’t agree to do X” or (b) “we don’t agree to NOT do X” depending on how the original question was framed. There is also a third, more neutral interpretation: (c) “We could not agree either way… neither to do X nor not to do X.” The first two interpretations (a & b) imply rejection, the third (c) does not. Blueboar (talk) 17:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I have wondered occasionally whether we ought to be clearer about that in NOCON. Sometimes "no consensus" means "this is a strong candidate for Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars, but I'm trying to de-escalate this situation by being vague." NOCON is about the (c) situation, not diplomatically phrased rejections. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

My scenario was this:

Alice and Bob decided to create an article together. They were editing collaboratively until they ran into a serious disagreement. One of them wants to briefly mention a related subject, and the other doesn't think that related subject should be mentioned at all (in this particular article).

In this scenario, all the content is presumably "recently added" and "new", because the article itself is new. There cannot be any "long-standing" content when the article itself was just created. You don't know whether someone has added or removed it, but that doesn't matter, because it would obviously be silly to talk about a "long-standing" or "status quo" version in a brand-new article.

You also don't know whether it's "a paragraph". This scenario encompasses not just a short paragraph but also a sentence, a short phrase, or even just a single word ("briefly mention").

@GoneIn60, I think your #1 and #3 are the same thing. They're both about disputes involving new content in old articles. Let's imagine that Alice adds a new sentence to an old article, and Bob promptly removes it. If there had been a long-standing version (which, again, there is no long-standing version in the RFC's scenario, so you are talking about a different scenario), then QUO maximalists would argue for removal in both cases. ONUS maximalists would also argue for removal in both instances. What difference does it make to the outcome if the dispute is said to be "Bob removed Alice's new sentence" instead of "Alice added a new sentence that Bob rejects"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Question: what do Charlie, Dave and Ellen think? Blueboar (talk) 17:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

In the original RFC scenario, the hypothetical respondents in Alice and Bob's dispute were exactly balanced, and both groups had equally strong arguments.

One (real) respondent to the (real) RFC said that in the scenario I gave them, the question ultimately came down to editorial judgement. I thought this a very clear way of phrasing it, exactly in line with what I intended. Either response could be considered reasonable, appropriate, and fully compliant with Wikipedia's rules. In that specific scenario, in that discussion, more respondents recommended exclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

In your example, letting "editorial judgement" tip the balance was the perfect outcome rather than trying to imagine a binary flowchart rule from policies. Well-intentioned Editors might consider the degree of WP:Relevance/germaneness, importance in relation to coverage of / understanding the topic, whether or not the addition or exclusion is POV'ish, how encyclopedic the addition is, the strength of sources for it, principles behind wp:weight (even though wp:weight is dysfunctional) etc. Even if it fails to produce the "supermajority" result of a wp:consensus, wp:consensus is also about that discussion process. North8000 (talk) 19:19, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree, but when you have a discussion that takes into account all the relevant facts and circumstances, is unable to resolve the question of whether editorial judgement is "include" or "exclude" in the specific instance, then what? Tell the closer to flip a coin? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. From my perspective, #1 and #3 are essentially identical in your scenario, so the framing of the question makes no difference. We don't really see #1 and #3 diverging from one another until the disputed material in question becomes a "long-standing" concern. So unsurprisingly, the framing seems to always matter for #2.

Back when I weighed in favor of exclusion in the hypothetical scenario, I suppose the line of thinking was that the bar for inclusion should naturally be just a little higher, especially in regard to new content. If it ultimately belongs in the article, we'll eventually get there. And honestly, I'm not sure the idea of applying AfD "no consensus" outcomes to content disputes ever crossed my mind. AfD seems like a nuclear option, whereas content disputes are more like small battles over tiny steps forward or backward. --GoneIn60 (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Contested material during vs after discussion

• We seem to be mildly edit warring about two related but distinct issues in the NOCON section. A) what to do during discussion, and B) what to do after discussion if there is no consensus. It may help to divide our instructions to deal with each situation separately. To aid in this, here is my summary of each situation:
  • A) My understanding is that during discussion, we usually keep contested material in place (so that editors can easily see what the discussion is about)… however, in a BLP we do the opposite (favoring removal during discussion, due to the extra care that BLPs require).
  • B) My understanding is that if there is still no consensus after discussion, we usually return the article to “status quo” (ie whatever state it was in, prior to the dispute - which might mean either keeping or removing the contested material, depending on what the previous status quo was). However, in BLPs we always favor non-inclusion if there is no consensus.

Please discuss if need be. Blueboar (talk) 15:51, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree on A, and agree that the distinction between conduct during discussions, and after discussions, should be made clearer. But I disagree on B; there was "overwhelming consensus" that ONUS should not apply only to recent insertions, and therefore that the status quo does not take precedence over ONUS. That still seems to be the consensus. I just don't understand why we would ever want to include material when there is neither affirmative consensus, nor implicit consensus (since the material was contested). DFlhb (talk) 18:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

That is not what that consensus says. It was about whether to move ONUS to CONSENSUS and to rewrite it in one specific way; many of the opposes are premised on that aspect and clearly did not support the sweeping interpretation of ONUS that some people expressed in recent discussions. The closing statement summarized it purely as a rejection of that one change, not as a sweeping endorsement of one view of ONUS. Clearly there is not a more general consensus about the applicability of WP:ONUS given that a long-running discussion then and there has failed to reach a conclusion after months of discussions. --Aquillion (talk) 20:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

But rewrite it in what specific way? The proposal was to change ONUS to require affirmative consensus to remove, not just to keep. In other words, making ONUS substantively identical to NOCON. As Blueboar summarized it in the WT:V archives, most of the opposition focused on the language change, not on the move.

User:Buidhe's close found overwhelming consensus against the change, primarily due to concerns that it would undermine verifiability and efforts to remove poorly sourced information. That's a direct repudiation of the idea that ONUS should force us to keep things unless there is affirmative consensus. So why should NOCON? DFlhb (talk) 20:55, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with DFlhb, that is, not Blueboar's B. My reasoning is saying "status quo" is unhelpful, and it's not about being prior to a dispute, the wording is "prior to the proposal or bold edit", which means prior to the insertion in this sort of case. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

A blanket / categorical statement that anything needs a supermajority (which is basically what a consensus is, and yes, I know it's not a vote) to be added, kept or removed would be handing a giant hammer to wililawyers /and POV warriors. And also wading into an area where there are too many variables to be making such a simple categorical statement. This mess, including the conflict with ONUS is going to need more than just a tweak to fix. North8000 (talk) 20:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I generally agree with this. I feel that a lot of people are trying to solve complicated issues with sweeping statements (a problem we have with WP:WTW, among other things), but that it rarely works out in practice. The reality is that most editing relies on implicit consensus and the fact that all edits are presumed to have consensus until they are challenged. I think that our policies beyond that - for when a challenge occurs - should be focused on trying to bring people to the table, get them to clearly state their objections or what they want to change / add / remove, and push them towards a consensus. Sweeping policies that people can point to to say "I win, I don't have to give you a detailed rationale, start an RFC if you disagree" with minimal engagement are bad because they encourage WP:STONEWALLing and generally make consensus-building more difficult; policies work better when they give everyone a reason to come to the table. At the very least, one thing I would like to see is policies that discourage "rv., get consensus" sorts of edits (unless there's an established objection, dispute, or contrary consensus that the editor is clearly referring to) - allowing people to revert or remove material without stating an objection tends to lead to more WP:TEND editing because people making tendentious edits often can't articulate their real reason for removing something. And even when someone is editing in entirely good faith, it's good to force them to think about and articulate their reasons - sometimes "this just feels wrong, somehow" has sound grounding, and sometimes forcing them to think through and articulate why an edit they object to feels wrong will lead to a productive compromise.--Aquillion (talk) 20:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

You have it mostly right… however, the same argument can be made about people who want to add disputed information… they (too) need to articulate why they think that the addition is an improvement. Why it should be retained.

Second, I think you are too focused on defending additions. “No consensus” isn’t always about additions. It can also be about removals. A lot depends on how the question is asked (are we seeking “consensus to add” or “consensus to remove”? Often that isn’t clear).

This is why I feel that (when there is a disagreement) the responsibility to build a consensus should be on those who want to change the article - regardless of whether that change is to add or subtract information. Those seeking change need to positively outline why the change is beneficial. And when it turns out that there is “no consensus” to change, we default to “change is not accepted - return to prior version”. Blueboar (talk) 21:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I think this "changes" framing is imprecise. I made a table for what each policy recommends under different scenarios.

After a no-consensus discussion:	ONUS	NOCON
To add material:	Ng Not added	Ng Not added
To keep material:	N Remove	Y Keep
To change existing material:	Ng Keep as is	Ng Keep as is

The only question is whether we should have a bias toward inclusion or toward exclusion in matters where there is no consensus for inclusion, since that is the only substantive difference between ONUS and NOCON.

I can think of numerous reasons to have a bias in favor of exclusion (including verifiability and keeping out fringe POVs). If an editor cannot convince others that a piece of content is worth including, why should it be given a platform on a site that gets hundreds of millions of daily visitors?

A great example is the debate over the inclusion of a flag and seal on Jerusalem. They were added with zero discussion and zilch verifiability (so bad that the Flag of Jerusalem article was itself later deleted). A discussion on removing them yielded no consensus, so a 151-comment RFC was needed to get rid of them. That's a huge waste of editor time, when ONUS would have avoided the need for the RFC. Can anyone provide examples of NOCON situations where we wouldn't want to delete, at least until proper sourcing/dueness is shown? DFlhb (talk) 22:18, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Sourcing falls under the rest of WP:V - ONUS (verifiability does not guarantee inclusion) only applies once WP:V is satisfied, and should therefore never be invoked for sourcing concerns - in fact, by invoking ONUS, you are implicitly acknowledging that the contested material satisfies WP:V and is properly sourced. I've noticed a lot of defenders of an expansive interpretation of ONUS and a minimalist interpretation of NOCON tend to make this mistake; possibly the confusion is part of the reason for that position in the first place. Anyway, when talking about whether to include or exclude things that everyone agrees is verifiable and properly-sourced, the fact is that the vast majority of text on the wiki does not have explicit consensus. This means that if our resolution to no-consensus situations worked the way you're saying (ie. defaulting to removal), anyone in a contentious article could delete huge swaths of its text and demand a full RFC with a clear consensus to restore it. For an example where I'm involved, if ONUS / NOCON worked the way you describe, I would immediately delete most of the content on eg. Mermaids (charity), which I feel is undue and lacks an unambiguous consensus (and I don't think an unambiguous consensus could be demonstrated in favor of keeping the current text overall.) I think that this would improve that article, but as tempting as it is, if we applied that as the general rule, no article would be stable because massive removals of anything that hadn't previously achieved unambiguous consensus would become the norm; and any significant text on a controversial article would end up requiring reaching formal consensus, which is a time-consuming process that was never intended to be applied at that scale. This isn't workable - once the basic requirements of WP:BLP and WP:V are satisfied, article stability becomes a significant concern. Major changes to articles need to require consensus, including massive removals of text, or it becomes too easy for articles to destabilize; requiring a process-heavy demonstration of consensus just to retain the longstanding structure of a high-traffic article isn't feasible and would make editing in controversial areas even more time-consuming. --Aquillion (talk) 22:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the overall picture given in Aquillion's posts. Another way that I would say it more mechanically to say that the decision making process is influenced by wp:Consensus, WP:Onus, strength of arguments given and other other factors per Wikipedia:How_editing_decisions_are_made which includes "we're here to build an encyclopedia". In turn, the implementation of wp:consensus is itself influenced by other variables such as the details of history of the questioned material in the article (such of time span and amount of scrutiny under an implicit consensus). Any categorical statement of which should be include or excluded based on just 1 or 2 factors is usually a recipe for trouble. North8000 (talk) 22:57, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

• I've noticed a lot of defenders […] tend to make this mistake I notice it too, but note that it is not my mistake. My reading of ONUS is the same as yours: it applies when WP:V is already met. I was imprecise: the flag was poorly sourced, but the coat of arms was fully verifiable. But the Jerusalem RFC was needed to prevent editors from edit-warring to enforce NOCON. That proves my point that it is NOCON that is harmful and oft-misinterpreted, not ONUS.

The Mermaids article is a highly contentious one, and I don't think it's too much to ask that its contents have affirmative consensus. That's exactly what we want with these kinds of articles, to prevent fringe POVs, WP:FALSEBALANCE, and especially stonewalling. But the amount of contentious articles is overall tiny, and WP:IMPLICIT consensus works just fine for everything else.

Perhaps an RFC would be good? It should ask whether ONUS should apply only to BLPs or to all articles? The former is utterly uncontroversial (per Blueboar), but I agree the latter is somewhat contested, though I argue it matches the consensus of previous discussions.

I also argue that if ONUS works well on our BLPs, including our most controversial ones, then there's no reason to think that making NOCON match ONUS would cause a torrent of instability. There's no wording in ONUS that states it only applies to BLPs, so this apocalypse would already have happened long ago. DFlhb (talk) 23:39, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

For good order's sake, the sourcing problem came up during the course of the RFC, it was not the basis for the initial challenge, which was based on conlevel (none and silence thereafter) and contradiction with an earlier RFC (so not NPOV) with a much greater level of consensus) for the included material. Selfstudier (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that table is correct. I think it looks more like this:

After a no-consensus discussion:	ONUS	NOCON
To add material:	N Not added	Ng Keep as is
To keep material:	N Removed	Ng Keep as is
To change existing material:	(Silent)	Ng Keep as is

ONUS doesn't say anything about changing existing material (e.g., simple copyedits). It's all about inclusion and exclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

• One thing we have to make clear… “usually” does not mean “always”. This is an area where we have made lots of exceptions. We can find examples where we removed due to “no consensus”, and examples where we kept due to “no consensus”. The question is, what do we usually do? Answering that requires some statistical analysis, not a few specific examples. Blueboar (talk) 00:37, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm on this same wavelength. We are not and should not be prescribing what has to happen. Whatever is decided, the phrasing should remain clear that it's simply a common result; there are always exceptions. Perhaps some who hesitate to change NOCON forecasting disaster are neglecting to take that into account and forgetting to apply a little common sense. Editors aren't all of a sudden going to start removing large swaths of verifiable article text just because they can. They'll still have to make a reasonable argument if they expect the ensuing discussion to reach the point of no consensus; without one, their position is vulnerable to a landslide of opposition. --GoneIn60 (talk) 02:48, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

As I've said below, our current practice is that longstanding text is retained with a no-consensus outcome (unless someone can affirmatively demonstrate that it lacks consensus); I think that this is so obvious that it hardly needs demonstrating. The reason why I'm so vocal about the need for WP:NOCON as it stands is because I absolutely believe that this is one of our "load-bearing" policies, one that we've frequently relied on for the outcome of key disputes on highly-controversial articles. This isn't a minor accident of policy that was added without people noticing and which only survived through the passage of time (the way, to be blunt, the problematic sentence on WP:ONUS is), this is a key pillar of how we've historically resolved disputes. If people are going to argue that that somehow isn't the case we can go through and demonstrate it, especially if demonstrating that fact would finally put this to rest, but I think the fact that no-consensus RFCs normally result in the status quo is obvious. Since that has been our policy for a long time, the burden is on anyone who wants to change it to demonstrate that a change to it would be beneficial. Beyond that, our policies on no-consensus outcomes are an extremely delicate balance - I agree that the phrasing only proscribes the default outcome, but I feel that the proponents of "everything must have overt consensus somewhere in order to stay" are the ones who fail to understand this. If consensus breaks down over longstanding text, and no one can convincingly demonstrate that it never had consensus for one reason or another, then that shows that, overall, it probably has sufficient support that it is not a problem, which means that we should prioritize article stability over WP:BOLD changes to an article's longstanding text made without consensus; if someone wants to make a significant change to an article, they should be the ones who have to make the argument for it and convince people, or at least they should bear the burden of showing that the text that they want to remove lacks even implicit consensus. And I feel that shifting too much weight towards a default outcome of removal in nearly all circumstances would make writing articles in highly-fraught topic areas - especially ones that have discussions break down along the faultlines of real-world disputes - much more difficult. Our default outcomes work better when they are cautiously-worded and function in a way that encourages everyone to come to the table; in my view the current practice (mostly) does that, while the proposed changes do not. --Aquillion (talk) 16:40, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@Aquillion, I'd be more willing to believe your nice speech about how the NOCON section is a key pillar, except that you'd already been editing for about a decade when I started that section. We managed for more than a decade without it; if we got rid of it, I think we'd manage to survive.

I do agree that editors in certain areas (e.g., geopolitical disputes) are more likely to prize article stability over removing possibly bad content. Editors in other areas (e.g., pseudoscience) have the opposite view. Both groups seem reasonable to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Surely you recognize that WP:NOCON merely describes long-established practice. As early as 2007 (when it first started to really be fleshed out), this page stated that longstanding text was presumed to have consensus. To me, the real issue here is that I think that some people have mistakenly interpreted WP:ONUS as not accepting that sort of consensus as valid, and therefore quietly reversing longstanding practice in that regard. But clearly that isn't what it says; if we accept that "longstanding" text (for a certain idiosyncratic definition of longstanding that isn't just about time) has consensus and that a new consensus is therefore required to remove it, then the contradiction disappears. --Aquillion (talk) 09:13, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

@Aquillion, I created NOCON. I intended for it to reflect the community's view. But I didn't add that particular sentence because I was unable to establish that it truly represented the community's view. The disputed sentence was added later, by another editor, who has since been blocked. Since then, we've tried to make it work, but that's happened mostly by adding exceptions. The BLP exception alone means that the "QUO" notion of NOCON doesn't apply to more than a million articles.

The contradiction doesn't disappear. ONUS appears to require a real/demonstrable consensus, not just a presumption. The contradiction only exists in rare circumstances, though; it is not especially common for discussions to truly end in no consensus either way. It's much more common to find that there is no consensus in favor of X, and therefore we will do not-X. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:00, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone else see the irony with "that particular sentence" getting stuck as the longstanding version? Infinity mirror effect? --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

This is due to people asking: “Should we do X?” instead of the more open ended: “What should we do?” Blueboar (talk) 16:32, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Having asked "What should we do?", in multiple discussions on several pages, is why I refused to add a statement about what we should do. I got such a variety of answers that I became convinced that whatever we wrote would be wrong in some significant fraction of situations, unless we wrote a really long (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes-long) description.

@GoneIn60, I agree with you that it's ironic that this sentence has gotten stuck, and also unfortunate. Usually, if a policy statement doesn't reflect reality, we can get it removed without too much fuss. (For example, a mostly-wrong statement in this section about reverting admin actions was removed, and nobody was fussed about it.) In this case, though, I think that it's sticking because some people find it a very useful weapon: They can't get actual/demonstrable consensus, so they need a written rule that they can use to overrule the discussion outcome. Even if you only want this occasionally, when you want it, you really want it, and that can make you a staunch defender of its existence, even if you think it's wrong or unimportant 90% of the time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Let me rephrase… before we ask: Should we do X?” we need to ask: “Should we do something?”… I find it is often helpful to first lay out what I think is problematic with the current state of the article, and establish a consensus that “something needs to change.” Then we can discuss what that change should look like. It may take time to reach consensus on the second part, but at least we know that the previous version doesn’t have consensus. Blueboar (talk) 17:37, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

• I mean, I don't think there is a reasonable dispute over what we do currently: As a general rule, "longstanding" text (a complicated and dicey term itself, but overall, any one where the removal can reasonably be called WP:BOLD) is retained following a no-consensus outcome, unless someone goes out of their way to proactively demonstrate that it has never had consensus. eg. if they can show it was disputed from the moment it was added, or the article is so low-traffic that they can reasonably argue that nobody has reviewed it before, then it can be removed - but they must affirmatively demonstrate this and convince whoever is closing the discussion of that fact, so it is clear that the "default" is otherwise for longstanding text to be presumed to have consensus and therefore to be retained when a discussion fails to reach consensus, with the burden of demonstrating that it lacks consensus being on whoever wants to remove it. That is current practice and has been our practice for well over a decade. We can survey no-consensus RFC outcomes if you want, but surely you aren't seriously arguing that, historically, any significant number of no-consensus outcomes over longstanding text or WP:BOLD removals have defaulted to removal? --Aquillion (talk) 16:13, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  surely you aren't seriously arguing that, historically, any significant number of no-consensus outcomes over longstanding text or WP:BOLD removals have defaulted to removal - I've seen this happening more often than not in low-profile contentious articles where there isn't enough participation to generate a discussion that can be meaningfully closed.

  Something gets removed and if you have a disagreement between 2-4 editors, there's no affirmative consensus to restore and ONUS applies. I do agree with North8000 about the dangers if this were to be changed, but it does come at a price. PaulT2022 (talk) 06:57, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I concur with and reinforce what Blueboar, GoneIn60 and Aquillion said. North8000 (talk) 16:36, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• Are we having a mild edit war about what NOCON should say about contested material during discussion? If so, we shouldn't. NOCON is only about what happens when discussion fails. wp:QUO is about what happens during discussion. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 04:35, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

A way of resolving "No consensus"

There is a discussion about a way of resolving "No consensus" at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#A way of resolving "No consensus". Your input would be appreciated. Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:58, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Question

Is an IP user allowed to start a discussion to establish consensus? Or is this for logged-in users only? 85.91.205.144 (talk) 16:44, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Sure. Why not? Just make sure to follow talk page guidance if you want to debate something in an article. Selfstudier (talk) 17:05, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Consensus dispute with editor

Hi all. I have a dispute with an editor at User talk:Bon courage#Please join active discussion instead of unilaterally reverting. It is about not following proper consensus procedures. If you can join the discussion to offer your insights that would be great. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

This forum-shopping is getting disruptive. You got reverted three days ago – let it go or make your case on the talk page. – bradv 01:52, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@Bradv please assume good faith. I am simply seeking input of other editors in this dispute, not because of the reverts but because of the procedure. I have lingering questions and I no longer know for sure if the other editor is right or I or both or neither.

You did state your opinion but I read it after I posted here (notice the time stamp of my reply to you in Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring, 01:53, 26 May 2023). Btw, what talk page should I make my case on? Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 06:56, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@Bradv you never answered. Interesting. Btw, I did not understand your claim of forum shopping. Does it means you have the ultimate decision and I cannot appeal whatever you say with the community or other editors? Can you clarify? Sorry I write until now but until now I stumbled on this again. Thanks. Sincerely, Thinker78 (talk) 04:41, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Multiple editors have now told you what's what. Time to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Bon courage (talk) 06:45, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Ok. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 06:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Please see WP:QUO for a recommended "best practice" regarding reverting during an active discussion. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 05:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

When I followed the bread crumb trail to WT:NPOV#Achieving neutrality tweak, it would appear that only 3 editors participated at the time you attempted the first implementation. This was done in good faith and was reverted. A new editor joined the discussion with an alternate proposal, which was then implemented again with only 3 editors weighing in. It was reverted as well by the same editor. In neither case was this out of the ordinary. The reverting editor then joined the discussion, along with several more, and it seems to be progressing toward an RfC of sorts. To me, this is part of the normal editing process with some bold edits mixed in. Without wide participation, especially on a policy page, there's no reason to conclude that the reverting editor acted maliciously against existing consensus. It's simply a change that needs more discussion. --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Consensus after RfC followed by new RfC to undo

At WikiProject Boxing, an RfC took place in March–May. It reached a clear and good-natured local consensus amongst almost all participants. Many users were notified of the RfC (see my edits from 21 April), and most joined in; some did not. This user was invited, and was actively editing at the time, but chose not to participate in any way. Four months later, the same user has started a new RfC, complaining about the previous RfC despite the aforementioned invitation, and now wants to overturn the consensus. This isn't good practice, surely? Mac Dreamstate (talk) 19:17, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, consensus CAN change, although it is rare for it to change that quickly. For those who formed the March-May consensus… think of this as a way to reaffirm and solidify that consensus. Blueboar (talk) 19:41, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Very lame. After all that work it took. The same editors might not bother going through all that again. I still say it's very poor form to duck out of an RfC, wait for consensus, then start up a new RfC to change it. Gaming the system, even. Perhaps this is a conduct dispute instead. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 20:02, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this happens. Sometimes it's even a good thing.

If it's not feeling like a good thing, then you might be amused by Wikipedia:You don't own Wikipedia#How egotistical power users react. (Just don't apply those descriptions to any actual individual on wiki, because they'll feel insulted, and we all know that "I felt insulted" is the One True™ Definition of Wikipedia:Personal attacks.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

CONLEVEL as any level that agrees with me

I've seen several editors recently claim that WP:CONLEVEL requires a high level of participation that is always, somehow, at least a little bit larger than any group that disagrees with me.

Specifically, I've been seeing people invoke CONLEVEL in RFCs, AFD, and other sitewide processes, which are never "local" discussions, even if few editors comment in any given discussion. It's 100% possible that a bad decision could be made (you can always re-nom an article for deletion) and it's 100% possible that a bad summary could be made (that's what Wikipedia:Closure review is for), and it's 100% possible that Wikipedia:Consensus can change from one discussion to the next, but sitewide discussion processes aren't "local".

I think it might be worth adding something about this, to bring some balance back, but I'm not sure what wording would actually help. Maybe "Sitewide processes such as RFCs and AFD are assumed to represent sitewide consensus rather than local discussions"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I've tended to see the opposite problem: a very specific RfC (for example, whether a source is reliable for claim X in article Y) is represented as a sitewide consensus (eg on the general reliability of that source). I think if any wording is added it should be nuanced enough to balance those cases. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:26, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

That is an even worse misinterpretation, I think. An RFC of the sort you describe is not a "local consensus", but it's also not a decision about all articles (or for eternity). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I like to think of the level of consensus gained is a combination of "how widely and correctly was the discussion advertised to get community input" with a bit of "how specific was the scope of the question discussed" and a sprinkling of "how many people actually turned up". The venue of the discussion is less relevant (not a big fan of the term local consensus). A discussion on an article talk page by its nature tends to only apply to the subject of the page, but a wikiproject discussion on cricket is sitewide (everything on Wikipedia about cricket!), we just tend to down weight discussions there, as they tend not to be well advertised/ attended by non members, and also the discussions are more specific (use of capitalisation of cricket teams Vs capitalisation whatever subject area you're writing about). Not sure how you put that in a bullet though.Scribolt (talk) 18:08, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a discussion on a single group's page (when not an RFC/otherwise advertised) is "sitewide". A WikiProject is a group of people who want to work together to improve Wikipedia. The scope of that group might be everything on Wikipedia about cricket, but the group is not everything/everyone on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the fact that wikiproject discussions tend to have a lower consensus level than elsewhere. I think though we get too hung up on the namespace itself though. An unadvertised discussion only ever attracts talk page watchers. A discussion on RSN attracts the people who are interested in sourcing accross the site enough to follow the page but no one else. How is that conceptually different than a group of people who are interested in cricket site wide? Now, you can (and should) argue the vast majority of questions related to sourcing in general are better discussed at a page that is focused on sourcing, but that's only because the discussion is more correctly advertised (by being in the right place it attracts the people who want to know about the topic). It isn't any less or more local thought than any other discussion. And if wikiproject cricket managed to hold a discussion that was for some reason attended by a significant % of active users, I don't think the venue invalidates any consensus that comes out of it. They won't though...

Last comment would be that this is also a result of the culture that's emerged where we value consistency in content between topic areas. It's not so hard to imagine a version of the encyclopedia that evolved with strong topic area governance and standards with a much more flimsy centre. This affects our determining what decisions are more important than others. Scribolt (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I think your distinction about the advertised/unadvertised discussion is important.

An "unadvertised" discussion can produce a local consensus, which is perfectly fine for a local action, assuming that it's not blatantly in conflict with other rules. (And if it is – if "me, myself, and I" decide to form a "local consensus" that copyvios are okay on my User: page, then as soon as someone else notices, the usual policy can be applied, including having a non-local, i.e., advertised, discussion if necessary.)

If we define "advertised" discussions as including discussions on major community pages (e.g., Village pumps, noticeboards) and established community processes (e.g., RFCs, XFDs), then we could tell editors that although discussions there could be both "inapplicable" (e.g., were specifically discussing this source in this exact article, not everything written by that author or in all articles) and/or "wrong" (and also that consensus can change), they do not produce a "local consensus".

We'll still have the occasional dispute about whether a given community process (e.g., WP:ITN) should fall into that category, but I think that would be workable overall. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Tends to be that one wants to compare conlevels, a silent consensus, no matter for how long, being the lowest and least persuasive, at the end everydiscussion is a consensus issue anyway, arguing that the conlevel is/was too low/not high enough is just an argument that one might present in an RFC, say. Selfstudier (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Current text, with a possible sentence added:

Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. By contrast, a decision made through a sitewide process such as RFC is normally assumed to represent community consensus. WikiProject advice pages, how-to and information pages, template documentation pages, and essays have not gone through the policy and guideline proposal process and may or may not represent a broad community consensus.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:45, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately while I think that works well for the situation you identify, it would worsen the one I noted. Can we add something about a central venue to help with that? (Although that wouldn't get us 100%). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:26, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, do you mean something like "...a decision made at a central venue, such as a village pump, or through a sitewide process..."? That still wouldn't deal with someone stretching a conclusion beyond its scope (e.g., "The RFC said that penicillin is a beta-lactam antibiotic, and penicillin is a drug; therefore the RFC says that all drugs are beta-lactam antibiotics, and anyone who claims aspirin isn't an antibiotic is editing against consensus"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I know, that's why I said it wouldn't get us 100%. But I think there needs to be some recognition that an RfC on one article talk page isn't the same beast as an RfC at Village Pump. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:32, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Agree with this; same with AfD's, there needs to be a recognition that an AfD doesn't have the same CONLEVEL as a policy RfC. BilledMammal (talk) 08:38, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

And are we agreed that an AFD, being a sitewide and well-advertised process, is a better indicator of the community's views than a discussion on an article's talk page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:06, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Assuming it's a standard talk page discussion, yes; the AfD would have a high CONLEVEL. However, I would consider it to have a CONLEVEL below an RfC and equivilent to an RM. BilledMammal (talk) 09:45, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The only reservation I have about this is that when you consider not "an AFD" but "all the AFDs, taken as a whole", it can cause people to think that the written guidelines are correct and community practice is wrong. WP:NOT says the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected. I think that principle is sometimes not taken seriously by people making CONLEVEL-type arguments. When the written rules and actual practice diverge, WP:PGCONFLICT says that our job is to make the written rules accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice – not to make the practice conform to the written rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The reason why we consider an AfD to have a lower CONLEVEL than the a village pump RfC is because the latter reflects the opinion of the broader community, while the former represents a subset - and typically a non-representative subset.

Considering multiple AfD's doesn't change that; they still only reflect a non-representative subset and unless this subset can convince the broader community that they are right then they cannot ignore or change policy - and nor should they be able to do so. Closers need to be empowered to dismiss their arguments, and the current wording of LOCALCON does so, although the wording could be improved to make it clearer that arguments that have been rejected by the broader community should be dismissed by the closer. BilledMammal (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I think it's more complicated than that. An individual AFD should be assumed to represent the community's current consensus about the individual article, as they are advertised on central pages (e.g., AFD and DELSORT pages) as well as on other pages (e.g., Wikipedia:Article alerts). Most individual RFCs happen on talk pages, and their subjects are usually as narrow as most individual AFDs.

As for the representativeness of the participants, policy-related RFCs also attract a non-representative subset of editors. Consider Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources (a planned RFC from a couple of years ago), about which we can say:

• A total of 29 editors participated.
• Four of them (14%) are currently admins, compared to 0.7% of registered editors who have made an edit during the last 30 days.
• At least eight more (27.5%) currently have some kind of advanced user rights (e.g., rollbacker).
• About half have been editing for more than a decade. @BilledMammal, yours is the second newest account in the entire discussion.
• All of them are extended confirmed. None of them have made less than 1,000 edits at the English Wikipedia.
• Only three (10%) have made less than 10,000 edits. Two have made more than 400,000 edits. That means that all of the people participating in the discussion are in the top 1% for lifetime edits, and nearly all of them (90%) were in the top 0.025% of all registered users.
• More than half of them have made 50+ edits in the 30 days (now, not then). That means that more than half the participants made a number of edits, in just the last 30 days, that ~98% of registered accounts never achieve.

It's not just this one page. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/RFC on pharmaceutical drug prices had 45 participants (including the closers but not Legobot), including 10 admins and three checkusers. 40% have made 50+ edits recently. The median participants registered their accounts in 2011. The number of participants who have made less than 10,000 edits is approximately equal to the number of participants who have made more than 200,000 edits.

It would probably be better for us to think of the editors whose names we see in big discussions as being like the people who show up for political rallies, than as being like the typical person. It looks like 6% of US voters attended a political rally or campaign event during the previous presidential election cycle. Since 40% of eligible voters didn't vote, and presumably most of them also didn't attend rallies, then that's an activity engaged in by 3.5% of citizens. Then round down because of non-citizen residents. Round down again to account for children and teens who are too young to vote. We're that highly motivated but very small group. We aren't representative of typical people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

An individual AFD should be assumed to represent the community's current consensus about the individual article Assuming the closer keeps WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in mind and rejects arguments against policy, yes.

You're right that even Village Pump RfC's aren't perfectly representative, but I don't understand the point you are trying to make saying that? BilledMammal (talk) 01:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

The closer shouldn't keep LOCALCONSENSUS in mind; the closer should keep Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion in mind.

What I'm hearing from you is that if the community decides, whether in the course of a single AFD or even as expressed over the course of hundreds of AFDs, that they have a particular standard (for a single subject in the case of a single AFD, and perhaps for a class of articles – see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes – in the case of hundreds of AFDs), then you feel like the community's actual practice and actual decisions don't matter unless and until they go through a huge bureaucratic process to create written rules that say this is their standard. You seem to be saying that the community's actual practice is invalid unless and until the moment they update the written rules, and that given a choice between following the community's actual current practice (e.g., applying WP:TNT to tiny stubs that nobody really cares about) or potentially outdated written rules (e.g., which say not to delete articles based solely on the fact that they contain only two sentences and two lousy sources), you believe that the closer should prioritize the written rules. Is that a fair summary?

If so, then I say again: We have two long-standing policies saying that community practice comes first, community practice sets the accepted standard, and that policies exist to merely to document the community's actual practice. But you seem to be thinking that the policies are primary, and the community's actions must conform to the written rules, rather than the rules reflecting actual community practice. You cannot follow the written policies by requiring closers to follow the written notability guidelines when those guidelines do not reflect actual, current community practice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

you feel like the community's actual practice and actual decisions don't matter unless and until they go through a huge bureaucratic process to create written rules that say this is their standard It depends; there are four scenarios that I can see:

1. Common practice at AFD that doesn't conflict with our policies and guidelines
2. Common practice at AFD that doesn't conflict with our policies and guidelines, until a policy or guideline is changed to make it conflict
3. Common practice at AFD that does conflict with our policies and guidelines, and proposals to remove the conflict succeed
4. Common practice at AFD that does conflict with our policies and guidelines, and proposals to remove the conflict fail

For the first, we can follow that standard. While precedent is a weak argument, the position is typically endorsed by arguments from policies and guidelines; I don't think there is any controversy here.

For the second, once there is a broader consensus that the common practice is wrong then the practice is invalid and needs to change; closers should dismiss all votes that don't reflect the new policies and guidelines. An example of this is WP:NSPORTS2022; the closer should reject all arguments along the lines of "Played in three games, sources must exist".

For the third and fourth, when common practice conflicts with our policies and guidelines then we need to determine whether the communities position has changed, or if a local consensus is occurring. We do this by proposing that policy is updated; sometimes this will be an uncontroversial change, and other times it will require an extended RfC. If these proposals fail then as with #2 the practice is invalid and needs to change; closers should dismiss all votes that don't reflect the existing policies and guidelines.

Do you disagree with any of these?

We have two long-standing policies saying that community practice comes first, community practice sets the accepted standard, and that policies exist to merely to document the community's actual practice. I assume you are referring to WP:POLCON, which says If policy and/or guideline pages directly conflict, one or more pages need to be revised to resolve the conflict so all the conflicting pages accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice and WP:NOTBURO which says Although some rules may be enforced, the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected.? I think you misunderstand what "community" refers to here; it is referring to the whole community, not a subset of it; a local consensus isn't the consensus of the community, even if there is a group of editors that are very prolific and persistent about enforcing it. BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Similarly, I think you misunderstand what "community" refers to here; it is referring to the tens of thousands of editors who make edits to hundreds of thousands of pages, even if there is a group of editors (e.g., you and me) that spend a lot of time on policy and guideline pages.

When hundreds or thousands of editors "vote with their feet" to do something different from what the written rules recommend, then ten or twenty editors voting on a policy page about what the written rules should say are not "the community". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I think replacing our current consensus model with “voting with your feet” is against policy and dangerous to Wikipedia, but we’ve already had this debate.

I think it would be more helpful, and more likely to progress this discussion, if you explain which of those four scenarios and resolution methods you disagree with, and what you would replace them with? BilledMammal (talk) 05:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I think "voting with your feet" is exactly what those two policies say is the sitewide policy about what policies are supposed to respect. I think you have completely misunderstood NOTDEMOCRACY. NOTDEMOCRACY says our "primary (though not exclusive) means of decision making and conflict resolution is editing and discussion leading to consensus—not voting." Hundreds or thousands of editors "voting with their feet" == editing and discussion leading to consensus. An RFC with ===Support=== and ===Oppose=== sections is what NOTDEMOCRACY says to not use for determining what the actual rules are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I think your four scenarios are the wrong way of looking at it. You are still looking at policies as prescriptive tools for changing people's behavior. Polices and guidelines should (mostly) describe, not prescribe.

1. You say "Common practice at AFD that doesn't conflict with our policies and guidelines" – I say "The policies and guidelines are accurate".
2. You say "Common practice at AFD that doesn't conflict with our policies and guidelines, until a policy or guideline is changed to make it conflict" – I say "Unless the practice is already changing, the policy or guideline may be now be inaccurate".
3. You say "Common practice at AFD that does conflict with our policies and guidelines, and proposals to remove the conflict succeed" – I say "Congratulations on improving the accuracy of that policy or guideline".
4. You say "Common practice at AFD that does conflict with our policies and guidelines, and proposals to remove the conflict fail" – I say "Unfortunately, in some cases, our policies and guidelines are inaccurate. It can take some time to find the correct way to describe a situation, and unfortunately, sometimes the big problem is one self-appointed gatekeeper, who strenuously opposes having policies and guidelines accurately reflect our true practices".

I realize that analogies are not always convincing, but let me try this one:

• Legalistic approach: You should not murder people, because we agreed on a rule, supported by a vote that complies with all of our bureaucratic rules, that says murder is now illegal. Before we voted in the law in, murder was technically acceptable, but now anyone who murders someone is is violation of The Policy™.
• Wikipedia's approach: We don't murder people because that's bad. Hey, maybe we should write that down, for the convenience of anyone who wants to look up what our usual practice is.

You're trying to legislate statutes. That's not how the English Wikipedia works (or, at least, it's not how it has traditionally worked; it is always possible that this practice, too, will evolve). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe the outcomes of AfDs have consenus over siteqide RFCs. A small subset involved of editors getting their way other time, is still just a small subset of involved editors. If the wider community at an RFC decide their arguments are no good then the fact they keep making them doesn't change that. The issue here is that editors will have different opinions about what is wrong with Wikipedia's policies, and there own biases will tend to lead them to beleive that they are in a majority. A site wide RFC is the way to confirm what the community opinion is, not what has happened in past AfDs. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:43, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

(What makes an editor be "involved" at an AFD?)

If the wider community at an RFC decides that a certain type of article should generally be kept, and yet multiple admins keep deleting the articles at many AFDs, what do you think is the community's policy? Its words or its actions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:01, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Involved would be editors involved in those AfDs, what else could it mean? If those actions are against community guidelines, then the gyidelines. There is a discussion about a similar point at WP:VPP#Clear consensus by use ignoring discussions. I'll make the same point here as I did there, Wikipedia is used as a reference a lot. There are thousands of articles that use Wikipedia as a reference, and that fact doesn't change WP: CIRCULAR a tiny bit. The community has decided that something Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a reference, misuse of Wikipedia as a reference is not a reason to change WP:CIRCULAR. If a policy already has a high level of consensus, then the miss application of a small group of editor doesn't change that. Instead those editors are editting against policy and should stop.

If you won't to change a policy you need to take it to the appropriate forum, not disregard it and then use that to say policy should change. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:16, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

What else could it mean? WP:INVOLVED, obviously, but I'm not sure why your AFD editors are "involved" in AFD, but your RFC editors aren't equally involved in the RFC.

The idea that you have to comply with a bad law while working to change it is very legalistic. In fact, in the US, it is a principle taught to first-year law students in their ethics classes.

But the wiki way is a do-ocracy, not a statute-based, rule-following system. I have put a lot of work into notability guidelines (especially Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)) over the years; other people have put a lot of work into writing articles and evaluating whether they are notability. Why should my contribution, which is writing the guidelines, be considered more important that theirs, which directly determines what information is available on wiki? Why should a general statement ("in general, universities and hospitals are notable") be considered more important than a specific statement ("this particular hospital isn't notable")? I don't think they should. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

If the general statement is backed up by large swathe of the community, and the specific statement is made up of a small group of editors who always attend the AfDs for a specific subject, then the general statement is a better. Absolutely IAR is policy, but ignore the policy against editting to make a point and you'll be asked to explain your use of IAR at ANI. If a small group of editors have overtime been doing something one way and it's been accepted for no other reason than noone outside that group has noticed, and then the larger community notices and disagrees then that is the communities opinion. Working under that is not working under a bad law, because Wikipedia doesn't have laws it has policies and there are policies for dealing with editors who won't edit within community agreed guidelines (this is a general mention of the word guideline, which is why I didn't link it). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 09:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

So you think that if the practice is:

• Alice Athlete: 100% of AFD participants say delete, admin deletes
• Bob Business: 100% of AFD participants say delete, admin deletes
• Chris Celebrity: 100% of AFD participants say delete, admin deletes

and then the larger community (i.e., people who do not care enough to actually show up at AFD, but who are happy to post their opinions on the internet) says "No, no, you shouldn't delete all these BLP articles – what if one of them wins a Nobel Prize next year, and we look stupid because you deleted it based on the information you had at the time?!"

and the next day, Doug Developer is put up at AFD, and 100% of the AFD participants say delete, what do you want the admin to do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes absolutely, if the community decides on a certain set of notability standards, then editors make arguments at AfD that don't take those standards into account should be given less weight. There is even an essay on this already WP:NOTAVOTE. If the community decides that all articles should be kept as any topic could in some possibility be notable, then any editor who tries to delete articles would be editting disruptively.
The idea that a small group of editors who are interested in a particular area and in participating in AfD discusions in that area, can ignore core policies set by the community is plain nonsense. It is really nothing more than saying "I don't like that, and so what I believe is right", even after you have been shown to be wrong. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 09:53, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

What's the admin supposed to do when 100% of the views expressed at AFD "should be given less weight"? (You've assumed that my AFD participants have made arguments that don't take the new standards into account, but I have said nothing about their arguments.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

If the new standard is that such arty should be kept, and the participants are voting to delete, how could they be voting Having taken the new standard into account. Two things that are diametrically opposed can not be the same. As for the AfD relist. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 10:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually that's wrong. If a group of editors are nominating articles after a recent discussion that all such articles are kept, then the AfD should be speedy-kept and the editors warned for pointy nominations. The correct way of disagreeing with community decisions is not pointy editting. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:30, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

(od)

Are you sure that it's POINTY to nominate a single article for deletion? We don't have any rules that say every article in a given class must be kept (and haven't, for basically all of Wikipedia's history). Even at the peak of the "all high schools are inherently notable" sentiment, we still deleted the occasional article about a high school for being unverifiable.

So imagine that the !votes say "Having taken into account the new standard, and applying it 'with common sense and the occasional exception' per the tag at the top of that page, I think Wikipedia is better off not having a separate article about this BLP." What do you expect the admin to do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Your example was one were a community wide discussion had come to a recent consensus that all such articles should be kept, if just directly after that discussion editors nominated those articles for deletion then that would be POINTY behaviour.
No we don't have any such rules, but that is just beside the point as your hypothetical example was set up that way. I was never saying we do have any such rules, you used such a scenario as an example to which I was replying. So no I'm not going to imagine anything.
Very, very simply a community wide discussion such as one at VPP is the highest consenus level, disregarding that because you don't like it is editting against consensus and is disruptive. The fact that a few editors, who are obviously not in the majority as otherwise the community wide discussion would have closed in their favour, edit against that consensus does not change that consensus. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:59, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

So you get 10 editors over here saying "The general rule is X", and you get 10 editors over there saying "Even though the general rule is X, in this particular instance, we should Y", and you think we should always follow the general rule, even when a significant number of editors say that, given all the facts and circumstances in the particular case, we should do something else?

Does Wikipedia:Ignore all rules mean anything to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

No I'm not saying anything of the sort, in fact I made a statement against such a point in my last comment who are obviously not in the majority as otherwise the community wide discussion would have closed in their favour.

As to IARs see the many other discussions on the subject, it is meant for use in exceptional circumstances not for ignoring policy because you don't like it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:38, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, then let me re-write my scenario with greater specificity.

• In 2023, when articles of a particular type (e.g., about BLPs in a particular profession with few independent sources) appear at AFD, the part of the community that participates in these AFDs argues for deletion, and the admins who participate in AFDs agree with them. A typical AFD for this subject gets 10 participants (=higher than the average AFD) and unanimous or near-unanimous agreement is typical.
• In January 2024, the part of the community that participates in discussions outside of AFD (e.g., at any of the three village pumps whose page views are lower than WP:AFD's; at any of the notability guidelines, whose collective page views are dwarfed by AFD's alone) decides that this same set of subjects should normally be kept anyway. About 10 editors participated in the discussion.
• In February 2024, one (1) article of this type is sent to AFD. The AFD page has ten editors saying "Even though the general rule is to keep articles of this general type, in this particular instance, we should delete this one for common sense reasons. The notability guidelines themselves say that they're 'best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply'. This specific subject is definitely one of those occasional exceptions."

The closing admin asks you for advice. If they keep it, what do you predict will happen? If they delete it, what do you predict will happen? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

To jump in, I don't think this is an appropriate hypothetical, as it doesn't reflect what the real situation will be; there is no chance that in 2023 a notability RfC will only receive 10 !votes. Further, your page view comparisons aren't useful as they don't tell us anything about the visibility of a proposal. Part of that is because you are comparing apples to oranges; WP:AFD is a page that allows editors to navigate to RfC's that editors go to on a daily basis, while the pages you compare it to are discussion pages that editors only go to when there is a discussion in progress.

You can see that if you extend the timeline out; you see that the views on these discussion pages spike when a major discussion, such as Notability of train stations, is underway.

Further, you make an odd choice of discussion pages; if a notability RfC is held at the village pump it will be held at WP:VPP or WP:VPR, not WP:VPI, WP:VPM or WP:VPW.

Your hypothetical isn't one we need to be concerned about because it isn't realistic. To answer a more realistic one, if 50 people at VPR decide that we should normally keep these articles, then it depends on the common sense reasons that the editors at AfD raise; are these common sense reasons exceptional that apply only to a very small number of articles in the relevant category and that weren't rejected by the broader community? BilledMammal (talk) 04:16, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Most changes to notability guidelines, including some significant changes, are done without RFCs, and almost all of the discussions are held on the talk page of the guideline being changed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Again who are obviously not in the majority as otherwise the community wide discussion would have closed in their favour. Your hypothetical is reductio ad absurdum, there is no need to legislate for ever eventuality as these are not laws.
In the absurd case where a centralised board made a sweeping decision with only a small amount of editor input, then the correct procedure would be to review that at ANI. This exact situation recently happened at RSN, where a major news source (I'd not a great one) that have never been discussed before was deprecated after a short RFC with little input. The review at AN was short and the discussion was reopened.
This system in fact works better than what your suggesting, as the poor turnout in the RFC was solved by the review causing the issue to be highlighted to the community. That inturn lead to a much greater turnout in the reopened RFC.
Bad decision with small turn out can be reviewed and in being reviewed generally end with better decisions. This is a far, far better system than saying "I don't like that" and ignoring it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:22, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

So, given an AFD with a greater number of participants than usual, you would advise the admin to go straight to ANI – a page that says at the top, in large type, that its purpose is to discuss "urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioral problems" – and you want the admin to say, what, exactly? "I'd like to report the urgent and intractable behavioral problem of people at AFD using good judgment and considering the particular case instead of mindlessly following rules"? The admin is going to look elsewhere if you give that advice.

It looks like your account is just 23 months old, so perhaps you haven't seen this, but I have seen exactly the situation you claim doesn't happen. I have seen community-wide discussions that closed against the community's own POV. I've even seen this happen with a CENT-listed RFC at VPPR, which closed with unanimous agreement to make a change, and as soon as the change happened, there was open revolt by editors claiming, essentially, that the lack of their personal agreement meant that a widely advertised, centrally located, unanimous discussion did not represent the true view of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:21, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

I've stopped reading. As long as you again ignore that I said who are obviously not in the majority as otherwise the community wide discussion would have closed in their favour, there is no point. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 10:26, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

How do you know they "are obviously not in the majority"? The actual majority of editors never participates in an RFC. The actual majority of editors has never posted to the village pump. We get something on the order of 500 editors posting to a high-traffic village pump each year. That's less than 0.5% of the people who edit each year.

BTW, we have an RFC at VPP right now in which an editor worries that two widely advertised RFCs, totaling 179 comments between them, and agreeing both with each other and long-standing practice, might be merely a local consensus. The person starting the RFC disagrees with the outcome of the previous RFCs. It makes me wonder whether CONLEVEL is sometimes being used for Wikipedia:Asking the other parent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

There is a third RfC that the opener of that discussion missed, that I as an inexperienced editor opened in 2021; I recognize now that holding it at a Wikiproject was a mistake as doing so produces a partisan audience as members of the Wikiproject get greater exposure to the discussion than non-members do. The concern is a reasonable one.

It makes me wonder whether CONLEVEL is sometimes being used for Wikipedia:Asking the other parent. It's going from asking the table to asking the room; seeking a broader consensus. There is nothing improper about it - and I note that even if all the RfC's had been held in the same location it would still be appropriate to open a new one now, given how many years it has been. BilledMammal (talk) 23:09, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

When you have an RFC, you are already asking the whole building. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose WhatamIdoing's proposal. As few as four RfC supporters can cause a sitewide ban i.e. they can affect all Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean they are the millions of people in the Wikipedia community, it doesn't even mean they're superior to four people who support a change of a specific matter in a specific article. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

@Peter Gulutzan, I'd like to know more about the situation you're describing. I don't remember seeing a WP:SITEBAN listed as an RFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:48, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Examples are in WT:RSN thread Deprecation RFCs and quorums. I had "four" in my mind because I noticed it two days ago re RfC: Reliability of PanAm Post. The idea that such an editor group is the Wikipedia "community" got into Haaretz in 2020. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:51, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

That discussion about the reliability of a source, at the time it was closed, had 65 comments by 13 editors (including the closer). You might accuse the closer of enacting a WP:SUPERVOTE (and someone did, in the WP:AN discussion to overturn the summary), but it's not just four editors. (That discussion presently has 173 comments from 33 participants.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I said the WT:RSN thread includes examples, and if you had looked at the thread you would have seen posts like this: Voltairenet was deprecated by 5 editors. MintPress had 8 voting for deprecation. Two editors voted to deprecate Hispan TV and a further four voted for option "3 or 4". Seven editors voted to deprecate New Eastern Outlook and News Break. Six editors voted to deprecate Unz. Two or three editors voted to deprecate Taki's Magazine. (This was not the only relevant post in the thread.) And if you had looked at the WP:RSN thread post mentioning "4", referring to the number of supporting participants for RfC: PanAm Post, you'd have seen I can count. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:00, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Voltairenet, for example, had unanimous agreement among five editors (plus presumably the closer). It was also listed as an RFC and there were ten thousand page views during the days when the discussion was open. I don't think we could make a credible argument that this happened with nobody noticing or having a fair opportunity to disagree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:26, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

And if you had looked at your own proposal -- "By contrast, a decision made through a sitewide process such as RFC is normally assumed to represent community consensus." -- you would know that it said nothing about whether there had been pageviews on WP:RSN in the same month. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 22:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

True, but I'm the one who thinks that discussion should be assumed to represent community consensus. According to me, that's discussion represents consensus; according to my proposed wording, that discussion represents consensus.

If it hadn't been an RFC, then the fact that it was discussed on a high-traffic noticeboard would also have been sufficient for me to assume that it reflected community consensus.

If you are looking for someone to say that it doesn't represent consensus, I'm afraid you will have to find a different editor to make that argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion with you is fruitless so I'll cease it, I remain opposed. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 12:34, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

I have an issue with the proposed placement of the text. Currently the section reads:

• Global better than local
• Example, wikiproject can't proceed differently than policy / guideline
• Be careful when trying to change policy

The insertion of the text after the second bullet point, especially because we're stating that it is "in contrast", can make it appear as though a centrally advertised RfC could overide what is defined in policy, even if it is contradictory. That's obviously fine as an outcome, but it still needs to trigger a policy update, the central discussion alone isn't enough in my view for everyone to start working contrary to policy. I would suggest something like the following, possibly as a new para in between the current two.

Widely advertised or central discussions are normally assumed to represent community consensus and should also not be supplanted by the outcome of more localized discussions. However, if a new community consensus would diverge from what is already defined in policy, this change should always be reflected in the corresponding policy page prior to implementation. This may require an additional discussion on the relevant policy page.

Scribolt (talk) 07:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I like your suggestions overall. I add the following points:

• There is a problem with people not knowing which things 'count' as "Widely advertised or central discussions". An example ("such as RFC or AFD") would help.
• As @Nikkimaria has reminded us, there is a problem with people claiming that an RFC (a "widely advertised" discussion) specifically on the narrow subject of Foo is also binding on Bar, Baz, Bat, and Banana. We don't want people to claim that having separate discussions is would amount to "supplanting by the outcome of more localized discussions".
• Abut the second sentence, both Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines say that community practice comes first, and the policies exist to document it. So you really should change practice first, and the policy or guideline only second.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

• Agree that examples could be added
• Nikkimaria's point is more about misinterpreting the scope of an RfC rather than the level of consensus at which the RfC has behind it, but I can add an additional comment.
• I take your point re policy reflecting practice rather than the other way around. However, what is written in policy in my opinion the highest level of community consensus possible for a certain topic at a certain point in time. Community practice and thinking can and does change, and policy pages can and do lag behind, but I think that as we are writing a section contrasting different levels of consensus, I have a hard time accepting that an advertised RfC on a talk page has a higher level of community consensus than what is defined in policy. This is also a policy page, and it and any other policy page can be ignored for the good of the encyclopedia (NOT specifically references IAR when discussing ignoring policy). However, I think it is better practice to at least discuss changing the rules after a group of people have decided to do things differently. With that in mind I will soften that language (which then also leads in nicely to the unchanged final para which discusses how to update policy). Revised proposal:

Widely advertised RfCs or those occurring at a central venue such as the village pumps, are normally assumed to represent community consensus and should also not be supplanted by the outcome of more localized discussions. It is important to note that these only represent community consensus on the specific aspects of the topic discussed and should not be used to determine consensus outside of this scope. If a new community consensus diverges from what is already defined in policy, then a discussion should occur to assess whether the relevant policy should be updated.

Better? Scribolt (talk) 11:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest:

Widely advertised RfCs occurring at a central venue such as the village pump represent the highest level of community consensus and should not be supplanted by the outcome of more localized discussions. These only represent community consensus on the specific aspects of the topic discussed and should not be used to determine consensus outside of this scope. If a new community consensus diverges from what is already defined in policy, then a discussion should occur to assess how the relevant policy should be updated.

I've made a few changes; first, I don't want to equate an RfC on a article talk page with an RfC in a more central location; one has a far high CONLEVEL than the other. Second, I've changed normally assumed to represent community consensus to represent the highest level of community consensus; the former will invite wikilawyering from people arguing that the community consensus that they dislike is the exception. Third, I've changed should occur to assess whether the relevant policy should be updated to should occur to assess how the relevant policy should be updated; when there is a clear community consensus that goes against a current policy I don't think of any circumstances where it makes sense to not update the policy - although I'm not very committed on the third point. BilledMammal (talk) 12:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that the "should not be supplanted by the outcome of more localized discussions" idea is going to result in more disputes, as people with then fight over whether you are "supplanting the outcome" in this "IMO 'more localized discussion'" by not rolling over and playing dead when I suggest that the win I barely got in RFC #1 should be applied to the related but not strictly identical situations in articles #2 through 99.

Second, all RFCs should be understood to be "widely advertised" discussions, and non-RFC discussions on high-traffic pages (e.g., popular noticeboards) should also be understood as representing the current community consensus. I don't think that an RFC on a talk page automatically has a lower level of consensus than an RFC on a central venue. For one thing, the location of an RFC doesn't necessarily make that much difference, because a lot of people participate if the subject matter interests them, and nobody looks at the RFC lists (e.g., Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Society, sports, and culture) or the bot-delivered messages and says "Oh, that's an interesting – nope, it's just on an article's talk page, so I'm not going to bother participating in that one".

Also, consider discussions like Talk:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy/Poll Results, Talk:Chelsea Manning/October 2013 move request, Talk:Hillary Clinton/April 2015 move request: These have extremely high levels of participation, and they're all on regular talk pages. Nobody sensible would say that 100+ editors in the Talk: namespace is less likely to represent the community consensus than a few editors at the village pump. And if you really insisted that an RFC at a village pump in particular was the epitome of consensus, then we'd have to say that some of the biggest and most consequential RFCs ever were not truly "the highest level of community consensus".

I think that it's a mistake to declare any particular format as "the highest level of community consensus". There was no "Widely advertised RfCs occurring at a central venue such as the village pump" to adopt any of the core content policies; do they therefore not enjoy the highest level of community consensus? Instead, I think we would be better off either saying that certain general forms should be assumed to represent community consensus. Alternatively, we could make purely relative statements. We could say that widely advertised discussions (a category that includes all RFCs but is not limited to RFCs) are more likely to represent community consensus than unadvertised discussions, or that discussions in central venues (e.g., RSN, XFD, Village pumps) are more likely to represent community consensus than discussions on low-traffic pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with the changes. 1st one, I agree with WAID that the venue itself doesn't automatically endow a discussion with a higher consensus level than one elsewhere, see my comments earlier. A widely advertised, well attended RfC can demonstrate a high level of consensus (though I accept that central ones by their nature tend to be better advertised which is why they should be listed as examples, but the new wording is too prescriptive). 2nd change, same rationale. Third point, I also don't feel too strongly but would prefer that this is also left open, otherwise it would mean every IAR exception needs to be documented in policy. In some cases cases they should, but I don't see this as being a certain outcome.

As a general comment, I consider that we shouldn't get too detailed in this section in terms of how consensus levels should be measured (which is where the discussion is going). Currently it says that policy has a higher level of consensus than a local wikiproject and nothing else. The proposal is to mention that other discussions outside of policy can also represent a higher level of consensus than a local discussion, but imo going any further than providing some high level examples isn't helpful. An additional essay / supplement might be useful (actually considered writing one a long time ago, hence the watchlisting of this page), but there's always going to be a degree of subjectivity involved in assessing how "binding" a discussion outcome going forward. The alternative would be to add nothing regarding non policy consensus vs local consensus. Scribolt (talk) 14:12, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you, but I don't think that binding is the word that you want. Perhaps generalizable? The problem isn't when a small group of editors make a decision, in an unadvertised discussion or on an isolated page, about a single article; it's when they say that their decision (at one time, in one place, for one article) applies to everything everywhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:50, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I was getting at. The misapplication of a discussion outcome to other topics is a related but separate issue to the level of consensus that the discussion has. Agree that it helps to mention it though, hence my addition to the proposed text.Scribolt (talk) 08:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

• Hard oppose the entire argument being made here. First, an RFC on an article talk page is by default local, and any conclusions it reaches are local; that is the heart and soul of WP:CONLEVEL and I would strenuously oppose any attempt to change it. In rare situations it may be considered in very closely related articles, but even then that is more a matter of saving time (ie. if the articles are very similar, and edited by the same group of people, then it is pointless to demand a second RFC to reproduce the results of the first one.) But you absolutely cannot have an RFC on a single article's talk page in order to produce a sitewide change. I'm also baffled by the argument that AFDs are non-local. An AFD is, generally speaking, local to the articles it discusses, affecting their fate and nothing else; again, there is some slight fuzziness around the edges when it comes to re-creations of closely related articles, but you clearly cannot use an AFD to set sidewide policy. (A particularly important case is that an AFD with a "merge" result is, generally speaking, not binding in any way when it comes to the target of the merge - if the merge process is contested there, a separate consensus must be reached, and that discussion starts from scratch; the AFD consensus has no bearing or weight there.) Even with less unambiguously local RFCs that aren't held on article talk pages, the level of participation and the prominence of the page where the RFC is held is relevant, especially when an RFC would overturn or change a preexisting affirmative consensus; claiming that a consensus of five editors on a relatively obscure policy page can directly overturn an RFC that had hundreds of editors participating on a more central page, for instance, is absurd. The vast majority of RFCs are local and represent only local consensus; for things to work any other way would turn editing into absolutely impossible minefields where you would have to review innumerable specific RFCs all over the wiki for every single edit. Look at the strict rigid list of consensuses on eg. Donald Trump at its most controversial, and imagine what editing would be like if those were non-local - a non-local RFC, almost by definition, ought to produce a change to a policy page or related general document, and such changes (when high-impact) should be difficult to avoid weighing down editing by red tape. It is simply not true that every RFC is automatically assumed to represent a sitewide consensus or that they all have equal levels of , and the proposal that they ought to is an awful suggestion that ought to be thoroughly rejected. If you want to make a sweeping non-local change, you need to propose an actual policy change in an appropriate venue; it cannot be done on an article talk page, by design. --Aquillion (talk) 08:03, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Aquillion, I wonder if we are talking about different things.

  An RFC is the canonical example of a widely advertised discussion; it is not a "local discussion".

  I think you're saying that the effect of an RFC about a single article should (normally) only affect the one article, and the effect of an AFD about a single article should (normally) only affect the one article.

  What I'm talking about is much more concerned with who is able to participate. A decision is not a "local consensus" if it is made by people drawn from all over the community. A whole-community discussion can affect a single page or thousands, but the key point is that it's in a central (i.e., not "local") forum, and therefore the opportunity to participate is not limited the couple of people who happen to have an obscure page on their watchlist.

  In my model:

  • Any discussion listed at WP:CENT is never a LOCALCON, because CENT makes it easy for editors to learn about the discussion.
  • Any discussion advertised through WP:RFC is never a LOCALCON, because RFC/FRS makes it easy to learn about the discussion.
  • Any discussion at a major noticeboard is never a LOCALCON, because lots of editors will learn about the discussion.

  It sounds like in your model:

  • A discussion at CENT is a LOCALCON if it only affects one page, even if a hundred editors participate.
  • A discussion advertised through WP:RFC is a LOCALCON if it only affects one page, even if a hundred editors participate.
  • A discussion at a major noticeboard is probably a LOCALCON, since most of them affect only one page.

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I would definitely never accept the idea that simply advertising an RFC on an article talk page through WP:RFC makes it non-local; that's completely absurd. That notification happens automatically! You're undercutting your entire argument by suggesting something so bizarre - by that model, in order to stay appraised of possible wiki-wide changes that affect every single article, everyone would have to constantly watch WP:RFC/ALL at all times, and in order to review existing consensuses, editors would... what, have to review every single RFC that has ever happened on any page? There isn't even a central place to review past RFCs like that! Your argument seems to be that you can pop into any article at any time, point to any RFC on any other article talk page anywhere, and say "sorry, we already decided that", which simply isn't workable - it would turn the weight of existing consensuses into an utterly unworkable tangle. The "hundreds of editors" you affixed to your interpretation of my views also alarming because it implies that you seem to believe that you could hold an RFC on an obscure article talk page, then argue that it affects the entire wiki based on the participation (and since your original post was objecting to people who demanded high participation, the implication is clearly that you would dismiss any objections to your attempt to assert your local consensus everywhere as mere "wrangling" over the participation - you attached "even a hundred editors" to your interpretation of my views, but not yours, avoiding stating whether you actually believed that a threshold was necessary.) Your other two examples also strike me as obscuring your real question and the change you're trying to make - obviously major noticeboards are not LOCALCON; that is their purpose. Formal (not automatic) notices at the WP:CENT noticeboards could also sometimes raise something outside of being LOCALCON, though I would always be extremely skeptical of any attempts to set widespread policy on a an article talk page (for a variety of reasons, since it still makes it less visible than it would be if held in a more appropriately non-local venue); and there are some suggestions sweeping enough that I would say that no article talk page RFC for them would ever be appropriate, no matter how widely it was advertised - if you want to eg. drastically change BLP or the nature of consensus-building, you plainly cannot do it on Talk:Biography. As I said, there's some fuzziness around the edges, but as a general rule, the heart and soul of WP:LOCALCON is that RFCs on article talk pages always default to being local; substantial efforts would be needed to change that (ie. to ensure that the people editing them reflect the general population of editors and not just whoever was on that page) - the automatic notification on WP:RFC/ALL is utterly insufficient and has no value in this regard. And in particular, by default, the outcome of an RFC on one article talk page has no bearing or significance on anything that happens on another talk page whatsoever. Otherwise you end up with all sorts of problems; for one thing, it becomes too hard for editors to track widespread changes or established consensuses, which are often hard enough to track even constrained to a single article. It also creates substantial risks that an article talk page may have a non-representitive sample of regulars - notification on WP:RFC/ALL isn't enough to change that. Providing a way to ensure that a broader and more neutral group of editors is reached is to a great extent what the larger discussion forums are for. --Aquillion (talk) 03:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

• You don't have to watch all RFCs, just like you don't have to watch all policy pages or all village pumps. You don't even have to watch any of the RFC pages, because you can sign up for the Wikipedia:Feedback request service and have the bot tell you directly about RFCs in the subjects you're interested in, or – if you prefer to be more detailed – watch a single Wikipedia:Article alerts page to learn about not only RFCs, but XFDs, RMs, and more for an arbitrary list of pages you care about.
• I don't think we've had a Meeting of the minds yet. So here's a pair of examples, and how I believe we each understand them. Maybe you could tell me what (if anything) I've got wrong about your view:

1. Talk:Hillary Clinton/April 2015 move request:
   • I say: Wikipedia:Requested moves is a community-wide process, more than 100 editors participated, it was very widely advertised. Therefore: not a local consensus. This consensus represents the whole community's view (at that time, for that one page).
   • You say: It doesn't matter how it was advertised or how many people participated; all decisions affecting a single article are just a local consensus. It may or may not represent the community's consensus, depending upon whether it adheres to the written rules.
2. Talk:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy/Poll Results:
   • I say: More than 350 comments, advertised as an RFC. Therefore: not a local consensus. This consensus represents the whole community's view (at that time, for that one page).
   • You say: It doesn't matter how it was advertised or how many people participated; all decisions affecting a single article are just a local consensus. It may or may not represent the community's consensus, depending upon whether it adheres to the written rules.

Do I understand your viewpoint correctly? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

• Think we are making a lot of complexity out of something relatively simple. Conlevel is simply whatever it happens to be in a given case. If someone chooses to argue that some particular conlevel was insufficient (or sufficient) then they can make that argument and it will stand or fall as a matter of consensus and how that consensus is reached is just the usual way it is reached.Selfstudier (talk) 16:44, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  When editors use the same shortcut to mean incompatible things, we tend to end up with avoidable disputes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

• If I understand correctly, you are looking for a way to contrast the WikiProject example with another that demonstrates sitewide consensus. RfCs do contrast with local discussions on talk pages (including a local consensus formed within an WikiProject), because they are advertised to uninvolved editors. While the actual discussion may be about a specific change that only affects a single article, the result should generally be interpreted as "the voice of the community" when there is significant participation. How that relates to existing P&G is a separate matter, but one would generally expect that trends in multiple RfCs could generate interest over time to update P&G if there is a conflict, or at the very least, lead to further discussion at that policy or guideline talk page.
  I don't quite understand the argument from others that RfCs are only localized discussions. The subject may have a localized focus, but the result is based on community participation and feedback. It should therefore be held in a higher regard as say a non-advertised discussion where the only participants are those interested in the subject matter.
  Perhaps a slight tweak to the proposed wording may help:

...a sitewide process such as RFC is normally assumed to represent may better reflect community consensus.

Having an RfC tag does not inherently guarantee the result reflects a community consensus (e.g., low participation, local participation only, poorly-worded questions/choices, etc). Any substitute phrasing that implies there are exceptions may be helpful. --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree and wouldn't have a problem making that softer as per your wording.Scribolt (talk) 07:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Reset

Much of the conversation above has moved into the "how" to gauge consensus levels or general disagreement as to how policy evolves and is applied. I'd like to take a quick straw poll, to see if there's any appetite to make any sort of change at this point.

As-is CONLEVEL section structure

• Link to ArbCom principle (says local consensus can't override global consensus, where no global consensus exists a local consensus can guide editing, doesn't define either term)
• Policy text - States "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." Also doesn't define the terminology used.
• Provides an example of a global consensus versus a local consensus i.e. a wikiproject can't say that policy / guidelines don't apply.
• A section on best practices for updating policy.

The proposal is to add additional text that states that a wide / global consensus that exists outside of policy / guideline pages also shouldn't be overriden by a more local consensus. This serves the same purpose as the example already provided for policy and guideline pages (i.e. to guide editors on how to apply this policy without providing hard definitions of what community consensus / limited group / one time / one place actually mean and how they should be balanced). Optionally, a caution can be added that a consensus on one topic should not applied inappropriately in other circumstances.

@GoneIn60, WhatamIdoing, Aquillion, BilledMammal, Peter Gulutzan, ActivelyDisinterested, Nikkimaria, and Selfstudier: I'd greatly appreciate if you could indicate briefly whether or not you would support an addition on that basis. If no one believes that this is adds anything beyond what we already have, or is not likely to be achievable (or indeed if CONLEVEL should be only ever be considered for what is defined in policy / guidelines), then I think we can consider this topic closed. Scribolt (talk) 07:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Would not support. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 12:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't see that your terminology is anymore defined than what is already their, and would be strongly against "wide" as I could see that being misused. Could you give an example or more defined wording of where you see this being applied? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:37, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting any specific wording above, (although I did earlier), just the content to be covered and rationale. I don't want to discuss wording again here, it's a moot point if people think what we have is sufficient. An example of where this principle would apply, would be that the outcome of say WP:LUGSTUBS2 would have a higher consensus level than an internal wikiproject discussion that chose to reject it for their sport, despite it not being a policy or a guideline. Scribolt (talk) 15:06, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

If a project can get several hundred editors together in an RFC that opposed LUGSTUBS then maybe the previous results would require additional thought. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:50, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

If I believed that this part of the policy, should be applied in a situation with a equally well attended RfC that occured in a wiki project talk space, I would have said so, and not "an internal wikiproject discussion". Scribolt (talk) 17:01, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Not needed.Selfstudier (talk) 13:58, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to expand the existing "WikiProjects claiming to override site-wide guidelines" example to include the opposite example, e.g., "editor claiming an RFC is 'just local' when the result doesn't suit him". (It is very rare for an RFC result to actually conflict with a policy or guideline.)

As a result of this discussion, I am now more concerned about the idea that any RFC affecting a single article is "just local". I don't think this is a common viewpoint, but it's IMO completely wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it would depend on the RFC question, and how well attended it was. If the question is very specifically about that article, then applying it's result to other articles might not be appropriate. However an RFC being hosted on an article talk page about a issue effecting multiple articles that is well attended would have a higher level of consenus than a poorly attend RFC at a project for instance. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

If the question is very specifically about a single article, then applying its result to any other articles is probably not appropriate, and it would almost certainly be a bad idea to claim that "The RFC at Alice said this, so that proves that the community consensus is to do this over here at Bob".

But (mis-)applying the results of RFC #1 to dispute #2 isn't the point. In this (IMO dubious) model, an RFC about any single page, even with 100+ participants, is "just a local consensus" because it's about a single page. If you start defining local consensus as a decision affecting a single page, then you don't need to know anything about the RFC question, the number of participants, the thoughtfulness of their comments, etc. The options are "single page, therefore local" or "multiple pages, therefore not local". Even if (logically) that "multiple pages" one is a quiet chat among like-minded individuals about how the normal rules shouldn't apply to our articles. That's not a decision about a single page, and therefore isn't "local consensus". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem you seem to be highlighting is one of a rigid understanding of levels of concensus, a>b>c etc. But such a simplistic understanding is always going to run into problems. Article talk pages are a poor choice for a discussion about larger issues, but that doesn't mean that such discussions are prohibited. Those that disagree can also take their arguments to a central noticeboard to see if they gain any traction, the same way any editor can ask for a review of a decision. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

The problem I'm trying to highlight is that when:

• you think a local consensus is primarily about where the discussion takes place,
• he thinks a local consensus is entirely about how many articles are directly affected by the discussion, and
• she thinks a local consensus is about how well advertised the discussion was,

then we don't have a good shared understanding of what this policy says. We will end up with confusion and avoidable disputes, as each person shows up at ANI claiming that "obviously" this is (or isn't) a local consensus and therefore "obviously" the result should be what I think is the policy-based outcome, and it won't be. That results in distrust of the whole system and a belief that decisions are arbitrary. We can reduce this problem if we define terms when we discover that people don't have a shared understanding of what they mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:38, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

But that's trying to codify a>b>c. It's a framework for how the community decides to decide, and very legalistic. I'd rather the sanity checks of ANI (although I would be opposed to a better forum for RFC reviews), as that allows for situations that exist on the fringe.

If the intent is to define an exacting standard of consensus levels, then I would suggest working that out somewhere more visible then here. If editors currently don't agree then it would be best, if it must be resolved, to resolve it with as many editors input as possible. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 17:39, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not trying to codify that 'this consensus' is better (or worse) than 'that consensus'.

I'm trying to get a shared understanding that 'this WP:UPPERCASE' means X and 'this other WP:UPPERCASE' means Y, so that editors can communicate with each other.

I want more "This decision affected a single page, and that's UPPERCASE" or "This decision was held in a central forum, so that's OTHERCASE" and less "Look at the moron who thinks that's UPPERCASE when any idiot can see that it's <insert editor's personal belief about what UPPERCASE means>". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Would need to see a specific proposal before deciding whether to support. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:34, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Role of Village pumps

Related to the conversations above about whether a discussion at a Village pump is essential, some editors here might be interested in Wikipedia talk:Village pump#Who posts at the Village pumps?

Bottom line up front: 83% of experienced editors (500+ edits) have never edited any of Village pump (including subpages) – and of the minority who have, very few have made an edit there this year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't mean that editors haven't read posts at village pump. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:03, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

If someone reads but doesn't post, then we aren't finding out what their opinion is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Their opinion is they are not interested, or don't see any need to put forward an opinion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:58, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

When people decide not to share their opinion, it makes it difficult for us to know whether the responses we got are representative.

Have you ever seen a sign in a small store that says something like "Satisfied customers tell one person. Unhappy customers tell fifteen. Please tell us if you have a problem"? The person who "is interested" and "sees a need to put forward an opinion" up isn't necessarily representative of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The comparison you made at the other thread is also a bit apples and oranges. Take the current RFC on geoland for instance, not all editors editting AfDs are editting AfDs where geoland is relevant. Instead a sub-faction of editors at AfD would be interested in that discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure. And most editors at the Village pumps are not interested in the RFC on geoland. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 207#Changes to GEOLAND, for example, got comments from 81 people. That's a lot for an RFC, but it's still only one for every 1,500 active editors (=registered accounts that made at least one edit during the last 30 days). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

81 editors chose to take part, but edits don't equal visibility. How many page views does the page have since that RFC was started? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:55, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Thousands, I'm sure, but how would you apportion them between "Admins and being paid to advise on editing" (150% as many editors, more than 700 individual comments so far), the 26 people who commented in "RfC: Deprecate the minor edit system", the 67 people discussing "RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles", the 52 people discussing "RfC on reducing the privileges afforded to the WMF under WP:CONEXCEPT", and so forth? Some people read the whole page, and others are following a link to an RFC or a ping. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

How do you apportion editors at different AfDs to the specific discussions at VP that would effect those AfDs? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Even if an active editor has the village pump on their watchlist and looks at their watchlist twice per day, they'll just see 2 posts from a random selection of the many topics on the pump. They can completely miss a major RFC unless they are an even more (unusually) intense watcher of the pump. So it's more like people don't even know that the RFC exists rather than they do know and are not interested. IMO the centralized discussion list should show up in more places. Maybe even (lower) on the main page North8000 (talk) 00:30, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps put the central discussions list on peoples watchlist? BilledMammal (talk) 00:42, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Could discussions posted to cent not be highlighted in the way RFA are? This would certainly raise their visibility. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Good ideas. One simple way to implement BilledMammal's idea would be to make it a page. Keep it sparse so that only addition or removal of items shows up.North8000 (talk) 14:03, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Since WP:CENT primarily lists RFCs, then you could bypass that and just encourage people to sign up for the Wikipedia:Feedback request service. That would get more people to more discussions. We could also promote Wikipedia:Dashboard (for bookmarking, not for watchlisting.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:24, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Change to "Through editing" section

I would like to propose something like the following:

All edits should be explained (unless the reason for them is obvious)—either by clear edit summaries, or by discussion on the associated talk page. Substantive, informative explanations indicate what issues need to be addressed in subsequent efforts to reach consensus. Explanations are especially important when reverting another editor's good-faith work. Consistently failing to use any edit summary at all in edits to articles after being directed to this policy can be considered disruptive editing.

Some editors are extremely reluctant to use edit summaries and never or almost never use them and I think there should be clear recourse. Someone who simply refuses to use them after being warned should be eligible for a block on those grounds. I think even the exceptions carved out here ("obvious" or "by discussion") are unnecessary and too easily gamed, but the point to me is if the user simply never (or almost never) uses them. —DIYeditor (talk) 05:48, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

• This, like much of the bloat in this policy, is not WP:Consensus per se. It would fit better in Wikipedia:Editing policy. SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:11, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
• Not needed. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:18, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Roger 8 Roger, why is it not needed? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

• Support the concept (whether here or at Editing policy). Explanations of edits save other editors the time of looking at edits and prevent edit wars. That said, I'm not sure that it's Disruptive. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2023 (UTC)
• I oppose this - first, if you are going to exempt “obvious” edits… who determines whether an edit is “obvious” or not? I might think my edit is obvious (and thus does not require a summary), but someone else might disagree.

Second, it does not account for someone boldly editing as the result of discussion - which may not need explanation in an edit summary.

Third, if someone else makes an edit that you would like explained… just ASK. It’s not hard. Blueboar (talk) 16:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

1. I didn't want to exclude "obvious" that is already excluded. Like I said that is not a good criterion and is too subjective and easily gamed.
2. What would it hurt to put "per talk page" so anyone looking at the edit history will know to look for it?
3. What if a person persistently refuses to use any edit summary at all despite being asked? That's all that's covered by the sentence I want to add.

—DIYeditor (talk) 16:52, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Why are they being asked? Blueboar (talk) 17:10, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

To use edit summaries. Should I send a separate request for clarification for each of hundreds or thousands of edits that some people make without edit summaries? —DIYeditor (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

See WP:ANI#Being hounded by an administrator for the discussion that led to this proposal and an example of why one may be requested to use edit summaries. Sincerely, Novo Tape (She/Her)^{My Talk Page} 19:57, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Blueboar, you made three points. @DIYeditor gave you three counterpoints. I'd appreciate it if you would respond to the substance of DIY's post. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:03, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Although I would be all for mandating the use of edit summaries I don't believe the community consensus would back me up, and this feels like mandating the use of edit summaries through the back door. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:40, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

^ This.

See also Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Automatically prompt for missing edit summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:59, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

A related WP:GAMING proposal

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Followers of this page may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Gaming the system#Proposal for an additional point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Consensus is BS

Yeah, consensus is BS. Just because some (or most) people agreed with something does not mean it is always good. Some Wikipedia editors seem to be regarding consensus as even something "sacred", but that's just nuts. 58.87.228.112 (talk) 17:21, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

In Wikipedia we guide edits and discussions through the basic principle of consensus, which is not really "what most people agreed with something". Rather it is a process to provide evidence, hear each other out, refutation, and discussion to determine what may be the best compromise for an edit. Although sometimes there is certainly a group of editors that form what is known as a status quo of a page and protect such, in general edits and discussions in Wikipedia should be guided by the principle of consensus. It may not be a perfect process but it may be the best process among the alternatives. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree that a consensus option may sometimes be "wrong." But what is the alternative? Compare "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Some of the wikis use straight-up voting to settle disputes. Of course, that wouldn't solve the IP's concern about what "most" people agreed with, but it is an alternative to our style. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The original poster's "some (or most) people agreed" would suggest that they would also consider a vote to be BS. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 06:49, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The alternative is: "My argument is obviously stronger than all of the opposing arguments, so it should prevail." This thread is BS. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:25, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Anyway, the majority doesn't always prevail. An uninvolved closer can close in favor of the minority if they have a stronger policy basis. Otherwise, it's a matter of trying one's best to sway others toward their view, without dragging things out too long, and then counting !votes. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:45, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Granted, others are rarely swayed, since most humans aren't very good at leaving their minds open to change. So extended discussion is usually a waste of editor time, and we might as well straight-up vote; the outcomes would be the same. We very occasionally see one or two editors change their position, but not enough to change the outcome. But good luck trying to convince the community of that. We like discussion because it exercises and stimulates our minds; and, for some, because it creates satisfying drama. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the best idea is to start a multi-part well advertised RFC at VPP to settle the matter. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:52, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Or we could refer it to the WMF for an office action. Blueboar (talk) 23:48, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

BTW, the tag {{sarcasm}} may be helpful. Not everyone will recognize in-jokes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:22, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Alternatively, just avoid sarcasm. Saves time, reduces pointless clutter. I recommend it. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:29, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Please Blueboar only helpful suggestions. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:25, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

My bad… sorry. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, human beings are not perfect. So people may sometimes reach a conclusion that is (or looks like) "BS". This also happens outside Wikipedia.

But when there is a problem or a conflict, you need to have a discussion to resolve that, whether the outcome is good or not.

At least, people are usually doing their best to reach a good conclusion.

I guess this kind of thing depends on how you see things. 97.124.242.247 (talk) 04:32, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

It can sometimes go awry but is overall a good approach for Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 16:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Yea, better than all the alternatives. Selfstudier (talk) 17:05, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

As others have already said, the main problem with how consensus is used on Wikipedia is to support the status quo, encourage bureaucratic inertia and slow incrementalism, and to discourage experimentalism, alternative approaches, and in some sense, suppress creativity in general. My own guess is that this isn’t a chicken and egg problem; the belief in consensus as a driver attracts those who want to impose an artificial stability on things. In the real world, progress never occurs by consensus, but quite the opposite. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viriditas (talk • contribs) 00:08, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Great observation. Although consensus is needed in a society with different views, certainly fringe views generally are the ones that make things evolve to the next stage and are the views generally dismissed by consensus. But as it has been mentioned, what would be a better alternative than a consensus process? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 06:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

For every fringe views that later become the new norm there were many more that only become more fringe. If we could sort one from the offer scientific advancement would happen instantaneously, but we can't. The same issue is true with new methods or suggestions, we can't know for certain what is or is not a good idea. Consensus is the hope that stumbling along in the dark together we will find the right solution. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 10:57, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Dogmatic and intolerant status quo preservers are one reason that the consensus process has been corrupted in civilizations throughout history. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:29, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I afaid I don't understand how this applies to my comment, or is it just a general statement? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 00:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

"Consensus is the hope that stumbling along in the dark together we will find the right solution." Then I mentioned an issue about the consensus process, which I took you were talking about society in general. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

My comment was about the consensus process not society in general. I meant we can't know with certainty what the future is, so any attempts at consensus are always made in the dark. Only afterwards can anyone know what was or wasn't the correct way to go. That being the case our only hope is that by working together we will come up with the best way forward. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:46, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, the Galileo gambit is beloved of WP:PROFRINGE editors but, as has often been observed, in Galileo's time Wikipedia would have consigned him and his views to a fringe ghetto. This is a feature, not a bug however because all we are attempting to do is summarize accepted knowledge. Bon courage (talk) 05:00, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Adding a new name?

Adding new sports players Wullie1984 (talk) 23:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not clear what you are saying (or asking). Please elaborate. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 06:56, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

WP:BDP RfC

Followers of this page may be interested in WT:BLP#RfC on whether BDP should apply automatically or only after editorial consensus

FYI

 – This is merely a notice. All discussion should take place at the linked discussion on WT:BLP

.

Sincerely, Novo Tape (She/Her)^{My Talk Page} 18:40, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Interpretation of "widespread consensus"

I need some help with closing a discussion that IMHO hinges on the interpretation of the words "widespread consensus" in WP:PGCHANGE. This is a WP:PAG issue but could also matter for this page as well. Please reply at this Discussions for discussion thread. Thank you. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:57, 19 December 2023 (UTC)