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Refactoring rules

A couple of important points for you to keep in mind, Adraeus, from Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages:

  • "Try to avoid refactoring when a conversation is still going on. This can cause additional confusion, and may not be liked by those involved in the discussion.
  • "Do not try to refactor a discussion where you have a strong point of view. The summarised version needs to reflect the original meaning, and this may be obscured by your own biases."

Gene Nygaard 12:17, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm aware. I don't agree with either point. Firstly, if an ongoing conversation is being driven off-topic for any reason, the discussion should be refactored to re-orient the participants. Secondly, the second point should read "do not refactor a discussion with your point of view" rather than "don't even try it, you can't be trusted, yadda, yadda, yadda". Wikipedia:Assume good faith. That directly contradicts the second point. Should we tell prospective and new editors, "Do not try to add or edit an article because your biases may affect the result?" No. This is a wiki. As such, anyone can edit it. Adraeus 19:35, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Note that I did not post anything on this talk page before this. Adraeus copied this start of the discussion from Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate/Alternatives, with no explanation here that he had done so, giving the misleading impression that I had started a discussion here. On that talk page he was violating both of those rules, refactoring arguments in which he was involved and raising questions on his paraphrase of previous statements while removing the original statements still under active discussion. Further discussion of this has taken place there. After copying the above to this talk page, he suggested on that talk page that we should probably move the discussion here, not even having the decency to point out that he had in fact already done so. Gene Nygaard 20:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Template question

I just found this page today, so forgive me if it's already been discussed, but shouldn't it have a template at the top like "Wikipedia guideline"? Or is it still being debated? Elonka 19:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring Article Pages

I got here via a link from Wikipedia:Editing_policy, which mentioned refactoring in the context of article pages, not talk pages. This article deals exclusively with refactoring talk pages. There should either:

If I have missed the text dealing with refactoring articles, please let me know. Thanks. Kiaparowits 20:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

i was looking for that too. would be very handy. ah well.. --MilkMiruku 22:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Overhaul May - June 2006

I've just overhauled the whole article. I pruned a good deal of repetition and reworded a majority of the rest. I removed contradictory advice from the talk page guidelines (such as suggesting that talk pages be reorganized in non-chronological order). I also made the tone more formal.

I hope that this edit is agreeable to the community. Please provide feedback. --DanDanRevolution 05:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

My editing is still in progress. -DanDanRevolution 18:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Turns out a bunch of my content is already, more appropriately, covered by Refactoring#Refactoring_other_text. I'll rework this article to deal specifically with the issue it is meant to cover (rather than being an overview of refactoring in general). -DanDanRevolution 20:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I suppose I'm done for now... I think it's best that we rename refactoring to editing, because the more examples I see the more I feel "refactoring" without losing original intent is impossible... (I'll put up a straw poll sometime) --DanDanRevolution 02:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Edit instead.... (proposal)

Please see /Edit_instead. Thank you. -DanDanRevolution 04:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring rude comments

Sometimes, editors violate WP:No Personal Attacks. I was wondering what community consensus was regarding refactoring such edits so that they still get the point across, but more politely (with, of course, a note that they were modified). I believe it may be helpful, under some circumstances, such as an angry editor with a legitimate complaint who may be new and won't state their complaint politely. It could possibly avoid a revert war resulting from simply removing their comments. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 01:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that comments should be left intact, even disparaging ones. An edit war requires two participants and in my view it is helpful to understand (and preserve) the wording of complaints in understanding the mind-set of the complainer. His violation of No Personal Attacks is not the concern of refactoring: I believe we should refactor as rarely as possible. (Though, I concede that I haven't had much practical experience of this sort on WP yet... perhaps someone can point me towards a reason that this is truly helpful to those of us that do follow the WP guidelines.) --DanDanRevolution 02:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
For an example, see User_talk:Tawkerbot2#Malfunction_on_Comparison_of_open_source_operating_systems. If you look in the edit history (rather deeply, as it's a high-volume page), you will see an edit war involving rude comments from a multi-IP person (65.94.59.238/65.94.101.206/etc). It should be somewhat obvious from the edit summaries. It starts here. Only one of the anon's comments was modified (and is labelled as such) - the rest were removed. The original, unmodified version of the modified comment can be found here. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 13:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
In such a case, I would still say let the original text stand for itself. There doesn't seem to be a reason to change it. I could have read your anon. user's offensive commentary and it wouldn't incite me to deragatory words against him in reply... so why shouldn't I see the text as he wrote it? His intention should be clear, and changing the form masks his tone. (My opinion is just that refactoring damages the original intent and should be avoided when possible. So when it doesn't seem to bring about a benefit to future readers, I would say we shouldn't mess with others' words.) --DanDanRevolution 14:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
If you don't think that rude comments should be messed with, then I assume you would probably consider removing them entirely to be even worse (which was what happened to the rest of the anon's comments)? How then do you think WP:NPA should be enforced? Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 20:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
It's my opinion that WP:NPA and other such guidelines need to be enforced only on the article namespace. The talk space doesn't need to be protected, or edited. --DanDanRevolution 00:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
People make personal attacks in the article namespace? Maybe we should move this conversation to Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks.... Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 01:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, people make such attacks on pages about individuals... especially controversial ones, like George W. Bush. I think it's useful here - maybe a link or a copy of this text? --DanDanRevolution 02:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. So how do you think editors should respond to rude comments on talk pages? Or should they just be ignored? A link... maintaining concurrent version of a conversation in two places is too hard. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 02:28, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
My conception of talk pages are just that they are a free ground. They are pages where we get to discuss articles, and our creation of them. If someone posts something outside the scope - it aught to get removed... if someone posts on topic but breaks a rule in the process, we should assume good faith and inform them of our policies/guidelines. Talk pages need not be perfect. --DanDanRevolution 04:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'm half-convinced. I guess won't do it if the rude comments are ever directed at me, but it still seems like a good solution for an edit war where one person wants their comments there, and the other person/people want to remove the comments entirely. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 14:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, an edit war is the fault of two individuals. Each person should see past the negative comments of the other, it is each person's responsibility to behave well. Taking away or changing comments changes the perceived intent of the authors, and so strikes me as undesirable. --DanDanRevolution 15:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC) (PS: I'm not trying to force you to my side, just having a conversation.)
Yes, but trying to resolve an edit war requires compromising, and not siding to strongly with one side or the other (though, being human, we are likely to). Rather than denounce both sides, why not try to recognize the valid points both sides have, admonish gently and minimally, and try to encourage them to meet on middle grounds (or at the very least talk about it civilly)? Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 15:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring is a great idea, the way to do it here is to leave the comments intact, and create an echo version that is refactored. This is a very good and useful way to deal with things, esp when you have to teach noobs coming from a combat culture how to communicate. (Or, as it is, Admins who are ignorant of the rules of logic, same problem.) Prometheuspan 22:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

While perhaps unhelpful in resolving a disupte, I don't blame people who choose to remove personal attacks outright. Perhaps they simply don't want to deal with it, or fail to understand that the negative comments reflect badly on the person who made them, rather than the person they are about. How would you feel about a refactored version with a link to the original in the page history? (That would remove the personal attack from the page, satisfying the person/people who wanted it deleted, while at the same time allowing people to compare the refactored version to the original easily, and hopefully make the person who made the comment happy.) Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 00:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that's an ideal solution. Providing a link to the page history satisfies everyone. --DanDanRevolution 03:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
An interesting version; simply linking to the history. Thats as good a total solution as any. I hadn't thought of that. I'm still getting used to the way the program works. Still, in serious cases that makes more sense, but refactoring is a great tool for a lot of very different situations. By the way, anybody wanna practice refactoring on my jimbo

talk page article? lol. Refactoring is an underused tactic around here, but we should be careful not to generate straw man arguments. Thats the biggest difficulty in refactoring. Prometheuspan 18:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the best way to handle personal attacks is to remove the most offensive part of the comment, and replace it with a link to the page history. Where this gets sticky though, is in cases where one person perceived something as a personal attack, and another perceives it as a valid opinion (i.e., "You did it wrong." "That's a silly argument."). But in cases of clear name-calling or threats, I think there's a pretty solid case for allowing the refactoring. --Elonka 20:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, if there isn't anything you can take out (to make the comment less offensive) without also removing the basic message (regardless of whether or not the message counts as "valid"), then refactoring wouldn't help, which to me makes the whole thing self-limitting. The ultimate goal, of course, is to calm down excessive arguments between editors while remaining true to what was actually said (or meant). Thus, edit warring over a comment refaction would be counter-productive, so I think anyone refactoring a rude comment should focus on promoting peace and respect between editors more than following a set of guidelines to the letter. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 22:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring signatures

Since last year the size of the average signature has expanded greatly and many contain hundreds of characters of formatting. Thus in refactoring for readability/editability it may be appropriate to remove many kilobytes of unnecessary formatting, etc, from signatures. I have therefore altered the advice on refactoring discussion entries [1]:

Before:

f a discussion has become lengthy in such a way that it obscures meaning and hinders further discussion, an editor is encouraged to summarize it in such a way as to preserve all significant detail. It is the editor's responsibility to ensure credit is given to those who posted the original commentary. (Wherever possible an editor should use the original signatures of all of the parties involved.)

After:

If a discussion has become lengthy in such a way that it obscures meaning and hinders further discussion, an editor is encouraged to summarize it in such a way as to preserve all significant detail. It is the editor's responsibility to ensure credit is given to those who posted the original commentary. (Wherever possible an editor should retain the original usernames and timestamps of the parties involved in signed comments, though it may be appropriate to remove obtrusive formatting.)

Strictly speaking this belongs under the next section, "prune". Perhaps the page needs to be refactored! :) --Tony Sidaway 12:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It is a common practice to use Template:unsigned or Template:unsigned2 to give credit to editors who do not sign their comments. While uncontroversial (as these templates acknowledge that the comment was originally unsigned), it should probably be mentioned. Though I'm not sure which section it should be put it, it should probably go with the other comment on editing signatures. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 23:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


Prune

From the article page:

Following Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate.

Where on the Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate? --PBS 17:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

This whole policy

And who gets to decide what is superfluous, for example. I say, "Ychhh" to this policy, mainly on account of, that is exactly what it is. It is controlling, made for those who would usurp the integrity of an encyclopedia, and downright infuriating to, (I would venture), anyone with objections to it. Shannonduck talk 21:29, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. Do you think it should be common sense, or do you disagree with the general idea of the policy? Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 11:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems simple to me, if you refactor, you should leave a link to the diff to what you changed. If consensus finds your refactoring out of order they can revert. The problems seem to be solved by existing WP policies. HighInBC 14:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Assumption of good faith

I have added a paragraph on "Refactoring should only be done when there is an assumption of good faith by editors who have contributed to the talk page. ..." I think this is necessary because on heated discussions any attempt at refactoring is likely to be seen as non NPOV editing even if the editor doing the editing is really trying hard to do a fair summary of the issues. In cases like this heated arguments and edit wars about the content of the article page do not need to be replicate on the talk page! So another editor object to refactoring of the talk page then the editor performing the refactoring should abort the process. --PBS 17:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Status

Is this a guideline, essay, proposed guideline or what? AndrewRT - Talk 16:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- what is this? A policy? I assume its a guideline... but nothing it said. MrMacMan 00:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Still waiting. MrMacMan Talk 19:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
How-to page. It tells you how to refactor, plain and simple. >Radiant< 15:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Specifically, it tells you how to refactor a Talk Page. Other types of pages might benefit from different methods of refactoring. Petershank (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Inserting headings subheadings or paragraph titles

I inserted a new subsection into the article explaining a very conservative form of refactoring that I experimented with success in two talk page sections (here and here) and in my user talk page. In the latter page, I used it in combination with the insertion of an introduction and a summary (see summarize).

This is, by no means, a much more conservative form of refactoring than summarizing, and I believe that in some cases it is preferable to summarizing.

Moreover, it can be also applied to ongoing discussions (see the text I inserted into the article). It may be used to make a discussion more appealing for the readers and to attract the attention of new contributors on interesting points that might otherwise remain unseen. Paolo.dL 08:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the latest paragraph insertion in my user talk page was the only circumstance in which one of the contributors did not appreciate my mild refactoring (see this section). His unexpectedly resentful reaction taught me that any refactoring, even the mildest and most respectful, should be always accompanied not only by a request of feedback to the author(s) of the refactored text, but also by a warning for all the readers such as this:

[I refactored the following section by adding paragraph titles. Paolo.dL 08:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)]

This warning grants due respect for the authors of the refactored text, which otherwise may be regarded by the readers as the authors of the titles as well. This is perceived as unpleasant by the authors, expecially (but not only) when the titles do not reflect exactly the original meaning of their contributions. For the same reason, headings, subheadings and titles should be written with maximum respect for the meaning of the text they refer to, and should be compiled by using, if possible, only the author's own words.

This warning becomes useless and can be removed only when the authors of the refactored text approve the changes. Notice that even a refactoring performed with care and in good faith may inadvertently distort the exact meaning of a contribution, and warning the readers that the titles were not inserted by the author of the text is always necessary, unless the author approves the titles. Paolo.dL 08:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"Summarize" section

I have removed the entire "Summarize" section, which read:

"If a discussion has become lengthy in such a way that it obscures meaning and hinders further discussion, an editor is encouraged to summarize it in such a way as to preserve all significant detail. It is the editor's responsibility to ensure credit is given to those who posted the original commentary. Wherever possible an editor should retain the original usernames and timestamps of the parties involved in signed comments."

That passage did not reflect current community norms. Such a précising of others' comments is very rarely appropriate, and is certainly not "encouraged". — Satori Son 12:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed rewording of Prune section

The current text at Prune states "Following Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate. See Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Behavior that is unacceptable for what is content that is not appropriate on a talk page." Based on previous discussions here, I suggest an improved statement (though without the formatting):

Following Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate. A link to the talk page history should be added if the removed text was part of discussions by other editors. See WP:Diff#Linking to a diff for guidance on creating a link to the page history and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Behavior that is unacceptable for what is content that is not appropriate on a talk page.

—Teahot (talk) 10:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

RfC: promote to guideline

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to promote to a guideline -- PBS (talk) 06:19, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

RfC on whether this page (currently listed as a 'How To') should be promoted to guideline status. It is usually treated that way, and the content (even before my revisions) were more about editing practices than editing techniques. --Ludwigs2 18:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Note 1: I have recently revised the page, so feedback should also be given on changes that need to occur before promoting the page.

Note 2: I think the page should be renamed simply 'Refactoring' to avoid the impression that it only applies in one namespace. That is a minor concern, however. --Ludwigs2 18:34, 19 March 2010 (UTC)


Discussion

I'm not fussed if its status stays as it is or becomes a guideline. But the name should stay as talk pages so that new users do not think we are talking about article pages or project pages or whatever. -- PBS (talk) 13:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

But noticeboard pages aren't technically talk pages because they live in the WP: space (as opposed to WT). So in some cases we are talking about project pages. Maybe "Refactoring discussions" ? –xenotalk 13:46, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
that was my concern, yeah. 'refactoring discussions' could work. --Ludwigs2 13:58, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
But this does not apply to those pages only to talk pages and I think it is best left like that. For example I don't think this should cover WP:RM only wikipedia talk:requested moves PBS (talk) 14:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
well, as I edited into the introduction, I think this applies anywhere editors make signed statements (i.e., speak for themselves) There are places (such as MedCab or ArbCom pages) where people sign their statements on the main page as well as on the talk page, and refactoring guidelines should apply there as well. --Ludwigs2 14:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
The are totally different things and processes. This page has always been for talk pages and typically for a talk page without much traffic. You must have been there. You arrive at a talk page. Over a five year period there have been 20 posts and no section headings. The first posting to the page was five years ago but then about two years ago an IP address added a random comment a the top, ten postings later someone replied to the one at the top. So the first thing you do is put those comments into chronological order, and then section the rest up by year or what ever. The other times when it is useful is to move an IP's posting from the top of the page down to the bottom, or alter a section heading or two and possibly add an indent to another's comment. That is a long way from using refactoring on MedCab or ArbCom pages where the rules have to be different, and those pages are not directly tied into wikipedia:talk page guidelines. -- PBS (talk) 14:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Before this essay is elevated in importance, it needs a lot more clarity. There have been at least two disruptive editors who have expressed themselves by refactoring lots of article talk pages in a totally unnecessary manner, including the refactoring of archived article talk pages. The users claimed that they were helping by adjusting indents and correcting typos (and sometimes more). Currently the only "normal" refactoring is moving new sections to the bottom, adding section headers, removing off-topic comments, and a tiny bit more, and is rare, so one can have reasonable confidence that the talk page reflects what the editors actually wrote (although you would need to find a diff if presenting evidence). The result of the routine refactoring was total confusion: unnecessary entries in watchlists, unnecessary need to check what changes were made, occasional dubious changes with consequent "should I bother reverting this, or would that just add to the confusion?" pondering, and history page complexity (hard to compare two versions of a talk page). There should be no encouragement of refactoring. Johnuniq (talk) 01:22, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

well, just for clarity, the reason this issue came up was because of a dispute over at {{hat}} where there arguments being made that using a template to close and hide a block of text does not constitute refactoring, and therefore not subject to any of the 'nicety' rules that the original version of this document had. I don't see how using a div with CSS that instructs the browser not to render text is any different than physically removing the text - the end result is the same, and the same potential for disruptive use is the same.
really this document needed some updating because times have moved on a bit.
I thought the statement that refactored text could be reinstated wherever it was done improperly was sufficiently strong to overcome disruptive edits (nothing we say here is going to stop disruptive edits), but what do you think needs to be clarified more? --Ludwigs2 17:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
We seem to be moving at HAT to a compromise where refactoring restriction will only (?) apply on talk pages. -- PBS (talk) 20:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I think it should be promoted to a guideline, but it doesn't look like it's ready yet. Maybe if it were promoted to a guideline, it would improve fast. - Rico 02:19, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
  • As this RfC will run out in 24 hours, and there has been little interest shown and in my opinion few convincing arguments for promotion, I am against promoting this to a guideline. -- PBS (talk) 21:16, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Overdoing it

Some editors overdo refactoring. Examples include repeatedly moving comments by other people, even after objections, deleting nonoffensive comments entirely, and deleting subheads for no good reason. I'm considering how to make more clear that these things shouldn't be done. Maurreen (talk) 05:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I consider it extremely disruptive to repeatedly move another editor's talk page edits, despite that editor's objections. Other audacious things I've seen done include inserting a subheader above another editor's post, separating it from the post it was replying to. A third is to delete a subheader that the original editor has created. People should just leave other peoples' posts alone, especially if there is objection to the refactoring. Wikipedia:Be_bold#User_namespace and Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Others.27_comments support this.
I've seen edit warring over this kind of stuff. -- Rico 05:42, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Do you think this should be clarified or strengthened? At which page, or at both? Maurreen (talk) 06:19, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree about "overdoing": my post above (01:22, 21 March 2010) shows my strong opinion that mindless refactoring should not occur, however I'm not sure how best to proceed. I don't think WP:Be bold#User namespace needs updating, but WP:Talk page guidelines#Editing comments needs some work. I remain open to suggestion, but I cannot see the point of this page (WP:Refactoring talk pages), and currently I would favor deleting it (add {{Refactoring}} and use "Advanced tools" to refactor a talk page??). Johnuniq (talk) 08:11, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies.
I'm not sure about this page or "Advanced tools."
But we have areas of agreement that we can refine. We can continue this at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#Altering what other people write. Maurreen (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Using refactoring to stifle criticism

This is a heads-up and a request for involvement by editors with experience with appropriate and not so appropriate instances of refactoring. Please go to WP:ANI#Using refactoring to stifle criticism. __meco (talk) 21:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately no administrators responded to my report and the complaint is now archived at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive616#Using refactoring to stifle criticism. I still would like regulars at this page to voice their opinions (here) on this issue which relates to Talk:Elvis Presley. __meco (talk) 07:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Many people will have seen the section in ANI (I did). The fact that there were few responses is an indication that many people thought the replies at ANI were sufficient (I did). In the case that you mention, refactoring was not used to stifle criticism. Discussion has to end, eventually, and the fact that a couple of editors don't like consensus is no reason to allow them to continue promoting their view. Johnuniq (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Term should be banished & proposal killed

"Proposal" sitting here for six years & should be deleted.
I agree that this silly & illegitimate term provides an invitation to a few arrogant & ill-informed "editors" to practice endless abuse.
It inappropriately and illogically mixes computer programming jargon with copy editing terminology.
Is moreover, probably unknown to large majority of Wikipedia participants.
English language has plenty of good words to describe "refractoring" as practiced on Wikipedia, by a few editors, often with questionable motives.

"Refractoring" is certainly not among these very good & useful words.

Term is foolish and utterly wrong and peculiar to Wikipedia.

Calamitybrook (talk) 04:59, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this howto should be be deleted and I think the name is fine. I have closed the discussion about promoting it to a guideline with no consensus to do so. There is a perfectly good prohibition on using refactoring if other editors object so I do not understand your comment "a few arrogant & ill-informed "'editors' to practice endless abuse", and I have been instrumental in having similar warnings to the one on the refactoring page placed on templates such as {{collapse top}} and {{Hidden archive top}} to stop similar abuse. Basically if someone (other than an uninvolved admin) refactors a page and another editor objects and reverts the refactoring, then if the first editor reverts the revert they are being disruptive and should be taken to an ANI. There are enough edit wars on article pages without them spreading to talk pages. -- PBS (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

One should simply stick with a good dictionary. Refractoring, as used here, isn't really a word. It's needless jargon & as such, in various subtle ways, slightly harmful. Mostly, it's just annoying.

Some of these arguements are made here: [[2]].

Calamitybrook (talk) 16:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I see no consensus for the proposal, nor for identifying it in the first sentence of the article. How is this helpful to readers? --Ronz (talk) 17:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Term is exclusive to Wikipedia (or more specifically, one suspects, to a rather small slice of "Wikipedians").
This exclusivity is most salient aspect of the term's proper context, and context is necessary for understanding.
Reader should be immediately informed of this in lede, else they might easily infer that term has legitimate wider reference.
Calamitybrook (talk) 17:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
No, the term is not exclusive to Wikipedia. It's a computer science term. However, its use in Wikipedia may be unique. Given how generic the term "edit" is within Wikipedia, a unique term is obviously helpful for the specific type of editing described in this article and used throughout Wikipedia. --Ronz (talk) 19:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Any good writing manual will advise the use of plain & simple English in favor of the $5 word. In this case, "refractoring" is a non-word.
The medium of communication in Wikipedia is English; not binary computer code. The conventions of English and those of editors in the English language are well-established. There is no need to create a new vocabulary here.
However, I now recognize that there is a small number of people who can't appreciate these facts & who will defend the use of nonsensical language against all reason.
Sticking with good plain English is an utterly futile suggestion.

Calamitybrook (talk) 23:05, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Using strike-outs seems poor advice

The section on How to refactor encourages editors to strike parts of comments of others if they feel the comment might violate WP:TALKNO. This seems poor advice as it leave the disruptive text visible and searchable and therefore just as disruptive while giving no indication on the page about who has struck what (I would assume that the original author of the comment has struck their own text and would find such an action misleading). This advice is not one of the options described by WP:TPO. Can we remove this option from this how-to guide as misleading? --Fæ (talk) 10:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Here is an example of talk page refactoring that includes the addition of a strikeout.  You can find it by searching for "/s>".  This was not because of disruptive text.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
If I'm looking at the right bit of the rather large diff example, that was just redirecting after a layout reorganization which is fairly non-controversial, though I would personally be uncomfortable with others striking words and adding new words to my comments without my agreement. I am specifically talking about dealing with disruptive text where striking out parts of the text would itself seem misleading, particularly as it would not be obvious that the reader should audit the page history in detail to check who did what rather than assuming that the person who signed the comment is responsible for any strike-outs. Fæ (talk) 06:40, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
If a comment has been struck it doesn't matter to the reader who has struck it. If I strike your rude comment and I tell you about it on your talkpage if you don't unstrike it then you accept the strike and thats enough - no drama, no need for detail, no need for admin intervention - no need for any blame or a comment to expose the blame on the stricken comment. A simple quiet solution between two users without any dramah. I have used this solution multiple times before and found it to work well and to keep dramah to a minimum. If the strike is disputed it is reverted and then the situation can be dropped or raised to an administrative request/report. Off2riorob (talk) 13:40, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Unless I am mis-reading your rationale, that rather assumes that we expect every contributor to review every change made on every discussion they have ever taken part in just in case someone ever decides to fiddle with the comments made. If the the contributor fails to spot these changes then it's their fault rather than the person changing other people's comments without agreement. --Fæ (talk) 13:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
As I said, if you strike a comment your should notify them on their talkpage to give them the opportunity to object or revert. A strike is clearly visible to the reader and needs no investigation, as I said if it has not been reverted then it has been accepted and the reader can simply read the comment as stricken. Off2riorob (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
That is not the advice given in this how to guide at the moment, and there are circumstances (such as disruptive material) where this would still not be an effective way of dealing with problems. Fæ (talk) 16:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Really disruptive additions I delete and warn. Like this edit from today. Personally I don't see a problem and imo as usual a little flexibility in enforcement of the letter of the law is beneficial to the guidelines. Unless it is broken it doesn't need fixing. Off2riorob (talk) 23:21, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Potentially unconstructive edit blocked

FYI: Archiving of talk pages describes a rather odd case, where refactoring a talk page did not more work as expected (compared to another refactoring in 2011). –89.204.137.133 (talk) 06:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile it is clear that this oddity affects only unregistered users in namespace 1 (talk), e.g., this page in namespace 5 (project talk) is not affected by Special:AbuseFilter/420. Is this filter really helpful? If yes it should be documented here or on WP:ARCHIVE, if no it should be disabled or refined, and if that's unclear a review could help to determine the consensus of registered users. –89.204.137.133 (talk) 09:49, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Documented on WP:ARCHIVE. –82.113.99.166 (talk) 13:12, 23 July 2011 (UTC) ("same user as above" (s)he says)

Suggested addition

Suggest including that refactoring of another editor's comments in a way that misleads readers is not acceptable.

This covers a range of scenarios, but I thought that leaving it as a generality might be best. North8000 (talk) 16:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

A few examples:

  • Retroactively putting a new title over the talk post where such misleads.
  • Removing the poster's comment from context where such removal misleads
  • Place the poster's comment in a different context where such placement misleads

North8000 (talk) 18:02, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I think this is already there, for example:
Restructuring – should be done with care to avoid changing meanings.
Unscintillating (talk) 19:11, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a little more complicated that I realized. I ran across a situation where an editor was doing aggressive refactoring where the refactoring was such that it was a warfare tactic. So I thought there is probably a guideline covering that and came here and didn't see it. Now I see that wp:talk page guidelines sort of duplicates this and has more specifics relevant to that behavior. So now I'm not sure what to suggest regarding this particular guideline. North8000 (talk) 21:47, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

If someone was intentionally, maliciously changing the meaning of my words on a talk page I'd probably call that Vandalism, a policy that can cover a large variety of bad-faithed edits. -- Ϫ 15:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Well one case is where I made a comment about Editor XXX's behavior at a particular article at the article's talk page (s)he put a new heading over my comment "Personal attack against XXX" Then another editor reverted that change and then XXX deleted my post from the article page and moved it to their talk page (where they could delete it) North8000 (talk) 18:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I see the need to have a talk page about the talk page for such discussions.  For example, suppose that in addition to the "Project Page" and "Discussion" tabs here, we had a "Meta discussion" tab that could be used for the refactoring of off-topic comments from the Discussion page.  I could use such a page right now at WT:5, where two editors are monopolizing the conversation with off-topic material, and it has been impossible to discuss the topic at hand.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Changing section titles should be (somewhat) discouraged

I'd like to see an addition to the list of examples under "Restructuring – should be done with care to avoid changing meanings":

  • Changing a section title

Motivation: I started a discussion in a talk page, asking for feedback on a proposal of mine. After a number of people had commented, someone changed the title of the discussion, which changed the meaning of the proposal and thus the apparent opinions of those who had commented. This was The Wrong Thing To Do, but I haven't found anywhere in the Wikipedia policies that forbids or even discourages this. This seems to be the best place. -- Dan Griscom (talk) 13:35, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

While sympathetic, that's not the correct place because it is one of the "types of refactoring [that] are legitimate", so to include changing a section title would imply that such changes are legitimate. Of course sometimes they are (I did one such change recently because the article talk page section heading was addressed to a specific editor, and it is usually best to avoid unnecessary confrontation), but we really do not want to encourage people to change talk page headings. I think this is one of the cases that has to be argued out for each situation, and there is no reason to clarify that it is undesirable to change a legitimate heading, particularly after a discussion has started, and particularly if it alters the meaning. That's just common sense, which can be in short supply, but which cannot be compensated by increasing the number of rules. Johnuniq (talk) 01:40, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Starting a new

Breaking this up into two points.

Template box

PBS, could you please clarify for me exactly as to the basis of your opposition of the template table? Mkdwtalk 06:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

RF Template

PBS, you said above that "I am not against adding a mention of Mkdw template ({{rf}}) on this page". This seemed like a different position than you had initially had when you said "I do not think that your template (refactored) is either necessary or desirable". Could you please clarify where you are at present and why on the issue as a means as to where to start the discussion?. Mkdwtalk 06:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I have made my position clear. I do not think the template is necessary or desirable, but as you are clearly wedded to it (after all you wrote it), I am not against adding a mention of it, providing it is done in text in an appropriate place and it is not phrased as an imperative.
However from what you wrote on my talk page I understood that this discussion was to be more wide ranging than just talking about this template. your editing of this page made me look at the text in more detail than I have done in a number of years I think we need to discuss the subsections: Moving text off-page and Hidden divs, collapsible tables, and templates,
  • Moving text off-page because moving text between pages is not usually considered to be refactoring (at the very least archiving should be mentioned as not being refactoring)
  • The prohibition of involved editors closing discussion with collapsible boxes (they were abused) needs mentioning in Moving text off-page and Hidden divs, collapsible tables, and templates.
-- PBS (talk) 08:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, PBS, it was unclear for me so I wanted to ask rather than make assumptions on your behalf. The conversation up until now has been admittedly long winded and the focus point has moved around a bit. I had no intention to make it an imperative and wrote the template to be useful to others. In the very least I'd like to 'give it a chance'. Finding the exact wording is key. Regarding the {{rf}} template, I will admit I largely wrote it with the use to be done following one of the four main definitions of refactoring at the top of the page: "Relocation of material to different sections or pages where it is more appropriate". Because you think moving text off a page and posting it somewhere else constitutes as 'cut and paste' as opposed to 'refactoring', do you think this wording should be removed? Also happy to discuss the other points you bring up but at presently, mostly in support of your ideas. Mkdwtalk 09:17, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that a discussion about why sections are moved on a page may be productive. Traditionally internet news groups are structured with new sections at the bottom and interlaced threaded conversations. For many years all the people who used internet email did the same. But some commercial products used within organisations such as Lotus Notes encouraged an inversion of email so that the most recent comment at the top and no threading of conversations. when corporate intranet networks using such products were linked to the Internet there was a gradual phasing out of internet new group style emails. Wikipedia talk pages are a sort of mix of both approaches (new sections at the bottom but no interlaced threading).

New users (and IP addresses) frequently assume that new sections should be placed at the top of talk pages (as per Lotus and similar products), and on many pages that carry few comments placed there over many years end up as a mixture of messages and sections with no particular chronological ordering. Occasionally I come across such pages and refactor them into the standard chronological ordering. Pages with more traffic may occasionally have new sections added at the top of a page and I will move such sections down to the bottom. In these two cases I would add a message to the edit history to explain the change and would not see the necessity to add a comment in the text, however you presumably would consider placing the {{rf}} template at the top of such a moved section with a comment something like this

{{rf|This section was move from the top of the page to here to place in in chronological order}}
  • Is that the sort of thing for which you envisage it use?
  • Can you think of any other situation when a section might be moved on a talk page, or {{rf}} might be used?

-- PBS (talk) 11:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

In the last year or so I've noticed an increase in the number of new threads at the top of pages. Many are from newbies - who these days seem to get an automatic "you are invited to the Teahouse" message. I have decided that they've been influenced by Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions, where the big Ask a question button goes to non-standard edit interface which inserts the new thread at the top. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Condensing or summarizing completed discussions

Shouldn't we remove "Condensing or summarizing completed discussions," per WP:TALK? For example, at the bottom of Wikipedia:TALK#Others' comments, it states, "In the past, it was standard practice to 'summarize' talk page comments, but this practice has fallen out of use. On regular wikis with no 'talk' tab, the summary would end up as the final page content. Wikipedia has separate tabs for article content and discussion pages." Flyer22 (talk) 17:47, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and just removed it. For the one-in-a-million occasion where that would be a good idea, WP:IAR is always available, but new users should not get the idea that "condensing" would be helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 20:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I came here after this and after refreshing my memory on the WP:TALK guidelines, though there's nothing too wrong with CFCF's edit there; he moved the posts, but didn't edit them. It's just that since a few posts were out of time stamp order either way, the editors chose where they wanted their posts, and I wanted mine to stay where it was, I objected to the change. Flyer22 (talk) 20:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
The only time I can think of when summarizing the discussion is perfectly acceptable, by the way, is when it's a discussion that requires someone to WP:Close it. Condensing is always a no (unless it's content that should be removed), and I was more concerned about that. Flyer22 (talk) 21:06, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Question

Should archive es be refactored?

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