Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
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RfC: Infobox for Category:Emotion and related pages
- The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
RfC was proposed prematurely, Hence, it has been withdrawn. Prarambh20 (talk) 10:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Should pages in the Category:Emotion and other related pages on human expression have a dedicated Infobox, either an existing one or a new Infobox (such as Template:Infobox emotion) specifically designed for emotions?
Currently, all the pages related to emotions, moods, and virtues do not include an Infobox. While it is true that the topic of "Emotion" is best expressed and explained through descriptive phrases, an Infobox can provide a concise overview of general information and characteristics of a particular emotion at a glance. Additionally, it may assist readers in understanding the basic features, specifications, and related groups of an emotion or expression. According to the MOS:INFOBOXUSE, no page is prohibited from having an Infobox, nor is it mandatory. Therefore, utilizing an Infobox could potentially enhance the presentation of information in a structured and easily understandable format.
To provide a basic idea, an Infobox about emotions could include parameters such as the extreme and mild versions of the emotion, synonyms, opposites, opposite extreme and mild emotions, dyads (based on the wheel of emotions), primary, secondary, and tertiary groups of the emotion, disposition or outlook, term meaning and origin, as well as general characteristics like symptoms, expression, causes, specialty, duration, evolution, treatment, diagnosis, coping mechanisms, and neurological or psychological factors. However, it's important to note that these are general ideas for the potential information that could be included.
In conclusion, considering the benefits an Infobox can provide in terms of presenting information in a structured and accessible manner, it is worth considering whether the pages in the Category:Emotions and related topics should have an Infobox.Prarambh20 (talk) 21:17, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think this RfC is premature without an example to go off of and then the WP:RFCBEFORE discussion to work out any problems. My main concern would be that anything in an infobox like this would be both simplistic and subjective. It's not like date of birth, for example, where it's a brief fact with a single correct answer. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
- Tend to concur with Thebiguglyalien. This isn't really RfC-ready yet, and it's hard to not picture an infobox that is very subjective and thus not appropriate. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:17, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
- Infoboxes work best with concrete subjects and least well with abstract concepts, and topics like emotion and happiness are generally the latter. Having a look at a few random emotion articles, I'm struggling to see what useful information an infobox would contain but I'm not a subject matter expert and haven't spent long thinking about it, so I'm not going to say these articles should not have infoboxes without seeing specific examples. I also agree with Thebiguglyalien that you've gone to an RFC too early. Thryduulf (talk) 09:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
New gadget: WikiEdit
Hi! I'd like to propose enabling a new gadget I'm developing. It basically adds a little pencil icon next to paragraphs, that when clicked, loads a small editor in place of the paragraph, without leaving the page. See mw:WikiEdit for the central documentation including a demo video, or add the following to your common.js or your global.js to test it out:
mw.loader.load( '//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:WikiEdit.js?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
The gadget is already enabled in the Spanish Wikipedia. In future versions, I'd like to extend it to edit list items, table cells, image captions and talk replies. Support? Objections? Sophivorus (talk) 11:56, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think it may be superfluous considering we already have an option to add a button to edit a specific section, but I could be wrong. - AquilaFasciata (talk | contribs) 17:38, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Sophivorus for example: article. == career == has 3 paras: para1, para2 & para3. Do you mean this gadget will add pencil button for all 3 paras in career section/heading? i believe right now, there is only one pencil button for career section/heading. హరుడు (talk) 15:55, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- @హరుడు @AquilaFasciata Yes, but the new pencil icons don't load the section edit interface. That'd be superfluous indeed. Instead, they load a small editor in place of the paragraph, without reloading the page. Check out the video at mw:WikiEdit or add the code to your common.js or global.js to see for yourself. Sophivorus (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- Ah, I see. Brilliant idea! In that case I'm on board! - AquilaFasciata (talk | contribs) 17:26, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- @హరుడు @AquilaFasciata Yes, but the new pencil icons don't load the section edit interface. That'd be superfluous indeed. Instead, they load a small editor in place of the paragraph, without reloading the page. Check out the video at mw:WikiEdit or add the code to your common.js or global.js to see for yourself. Sophivorus (talk) 16:08, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- Reminds me of User:BrandonXLF/QuickEdit. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:19, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Sophivorus Do you mean this gadget will add pencil button for all 3 paras in career section/heading? See screenshot [ what i meant is expressed in picture ]:
wikiedit screenshot: pencil icon for each paragraph [ green circle ] - @Qwerfjkl Does quickedit do same thing? హరుడు (talk) 02:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- @హరుడు, see File:QuickEdit screenshot.png. — Qwerfjkltalk 11:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- @హరుడు Yes, the gadget will add a pencil button for all 3 paragraphs in the section, as your screenshot shows. @Qwerfjkl The gadget is indeed similar to QuickEdit (in fact I thought of naming it QuickEdit first) but allows to edit with more precision (per paragraph instead of per section, and soon per list item, per reply, etc). Sophivorus (talk) 12:31, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
- I've tried it for a few days now, and I quite like it! It speeds up minor fixes and has a simple interface. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 22:35, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- This seems like it would be a great tool for people like me who make a ton of spelling errors which they have to then correct... Will get back with feedback once I use it a bit. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 10:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- Preliminary Feedback - This works fine, but it would be much better if you were to add it to Talk page comments as well. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 10:48, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- @CapnJackSp, you can do that with scripts such as Factotum and CD — Qwerfjkltalk 10:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Qwerfjkl, Thanks a lot! Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 11:21, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- @CapnJackSp, you can do that with scripts such as Factotum and CD — Qwerfjkltalk 10:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- Preliminary Feedback - This works fine, but it would be much better if you were to add it to Talk page comments as well. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 10:48, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- Unlike section-edit, sounds like this idea allows editing of just a high-level section that has subsections, not also including the subsections. The standard editor is poor in that regard because it loads too much and therefore clutters the edit box and the preview. I know we've discussed that limitation years ago, can't find it:( DMacks (talk) 03:30, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
- I decided to check this out, and while I do like the idea, could it be modified to allow syntax highlighting as well? Otherwise, very nice, very tidy. SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is a really cool tool – I read through the code too and it is really clean and easy to follow. I would like to report a bug though: the first paragraph of a random article I clicked contained a
<br/>tag in the wikitext, and the edit window truncated the paragraph to that point. I haven't tried saving it, but I presume it would replace the paragraph with what is shown in the edit window. Here's the page I found the bug on: 2011 Challenger Banque Nationale de Granby – Women's singles (first paragraph). I believe the bug is due togetParagraphWikitext()only returning a single match, but I don't have a suggestion on how to fix it. Excellent concept though, and I'll probably keep using this despite this bug (just watch out for <br> tags!) – bradv 02:24, 4 July 2023 (UTC)- Interesting tool, but with me it only shows the pencil in the first section/or lead of an article. In the following sections not. I'll still use it though, as it is a pretty nice way of editing and I hope you can figure out why it only shows the pencil in the lead. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:12, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, it looks like it interferes with the prosesize gadget (see discussion) and DYK check. If this could be fixed, that would be great. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 16:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for all the feedback and support! @Edward-Woodrow I found a fix for the issue with the Prosesize gadget, see here, and will try to figure out the DYK check issue next. @CapnJackSp I'd love the tool to be able edit talk page comments, list items, and possibly image thumbnails and maybe even table cells too! However, each is more tricky than the last (especially when deleting stuff) so I'd like to have this enabled as a gadget first and then do gradual improvements. @Bradv Glad you liked the code! :-) I did put a lot of ♡ in it. The <br> is actually very tricky to solve, I did a few tries but couldn't find a good workaround yet, so we'll have to live with it for a while I'm afraid. @Paradise Chronicle That's weird! Does it happen in every article? What skin do you use? What browser? Anyone else has the same issue? @SilverTiger12 I'd very much like to add some syntax highlight too, as well as live preview and maybe even a way to switch to the visual editor like with the reply tool! @AquilaFasciata @Qwerfjkl @DMacks @హరుడు & everyone: it's been a month since the proposal and although there're definitely things to improve (there always are), I feel there's mostly support for the tool in its current state. Can we enable it as a gadget then? If yes, then I'd be motivated to continue its development! PS, I created Wikipedia:WikiEdit to help move it forward! Kind regards, Sophivorus (talk) 00:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- So, there is User:Alexis Jazz/Factotum, there is User:BrandonXLF/QuickEdit, and there is now WikiEdit. Leave it to Wikimedians to implement the same thing thrice :-) For the record, I am not formally voting, since I am not really active in English Wikipedia, but I really don’t see how this tool is more useful than other alternatives to warrant its addition to Special:Gadgets. If anything, it is a really poor alternative to QuickEdit (since, for some reason, it loads far slower than that script). stjn 01:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- I too see little reason why this one in particular needs to be a gadget out of hundreds listed at WP:USL, some of which have far more users. Nardog (talk) 02:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's not really fair to compare userbases between established solutions and newly released ones. Folly Mox (talk) 02:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's my point. We should consider making it a gadget when it proves popular as a user script. Nardog (talk) 02:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- I see. That makes sense, thank you. Folly Mox (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's my point. We should consider making it a gadget when it proves popular as a user script. Nardog (talk) 02:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's not really fair to compare userbases between established solutions and newly released ones. Folly Mox (talk) 02:06, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- I too see little reason why this one in particular needs to be a gadget out of hundreds listed at WP:USL, some of which have far more users. Nardog (talk) 02:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- Personally I think I like to see a script get some adoption as an user script to show its utility, popularity, and quality. The usefulness of the "Gadgets" list is inversely proportional to how many gadgets are there, so only more useful and popular scripts should be there. Also once something gets added as a gadget it needs to be maintained for all of eternity, so it's good to show that the script has maintained utility for a while. The script does look neat though, but it would probably be better to wait for more adoption, and to see if people like it more than some of the alternatives mentioned.
- (acknowledging that I've gotten two gadgets added, but one was IIRC the most popular user script to not be a gadget and the other had at least gotten >100 installs) Galobtter (talk) 02:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- As many others have said, wait until it has a clear user base. Also, would you consider changing the name? "WikiEdit" is a little vague, and could cause confusion with WP:WikEd. Why not something more appropriate for the service it provides, like "MiniEdit"? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 12:35, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- Also with WikiEditor. Nardog (talk) 12:40, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- We could choose a name which reflect the USP of editing a paragraph: ParaMedic, ParaPet, etc. Certes (talk) 14:10, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- I like the name MiniEdit, and I agree it's more telling and less confusing than WikiEdit. Changing names is quite a pain because I have to go around renaming so many things, but I'm willing to do so one of these days. @Certes Good to see you around! As to your name suggestions related to paragraphs, I should mention that the limitation to paragraphs is only temporary. The tool will soon be expanded to edit talk page replies, list items, image captions, perhaps table cells. Kind regards, Sophivorus (talk) 15:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
- Hi @Sophivorus, sorry for the late reply. I use skin Vector2022 and the browsers Firefox and/or Safari. Interestingly in this very discussion I can apply the wikied/minied only to your first edit and the one, where you pinged me. For your last edit just above I can not perform a Miniedit ː). But then I also had some (a few) articles where the tool worked throughout the article. But usually it works only in the lead for me. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment That does seem like a cool gadget, used when you only want to update a specific paragraph (spelling or adding a small bit of info). Good idea.Oaktree b (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
AFDs
This isn't really a proposal but I have no idea where to post this request. We really need a few more administrators and dozens of experienced editors to participate in article deletion discussions. Right now, there are a handful of regulars, who I appreciate greatly, but they have an outsized influence on what articles are Kept or Deleted on the project. An article can be deleted based on a nomination and one editor who agrees with the nomination. We really need to hear from more editors about what articles they believe deserve to be on the project. We also have seen a great many brand new editors and sockpuppets showing up to participate in AFDs and their lack of experience or their phoniness isn't always apparent to the closer. It's disheartening to see editors with a few dozen edits weighing in on an article's deletion when we have so many great content creators who know about the subjects under debate and the relevant sources. I know that AFDs can be a tense area to participate in and involves an investment of time and effort but we could really use your participation in a few discussions a week or more. Follow one of the deletion sorting topics to focus in articles of particular interest to you. Thank you for considering helping out in some capacity. Liz Read! Talk! 02:42, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I should specify that this appeal is just coming from me and is based on my experience participating in the AFD area since January 2022. It seems like there used to be many more editors involved in this area but they may have gotten burned out. We need them back as well as some new blood! Liz Read! Talk! 02:44, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- The existence of this thread has a certain irony given that, just a few sections up, there is a discussion about AfD discussions from which the takeaway seems to be that a broad swath of good-faith participants -- one of whom has been an administrator since 2005! -- need to "stop participating disruptively at AfD." (As far as I can tell, those people do not seem to have been alerted to the fact that their supposed "disruptive" behavior was under discussion.) Gnomingstuff (talk) 03:11, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, okay, I will transclude it soon. jp×g 07:33, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- should article deletion discussions involve everyone or simply the writers of the article Pastalavist (talk) 19:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Pastalavist, all editors are welcome to discuss articles for deletion nominations. Schazjmd (talk) 19:26, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
- should article deletion discussions involve everyone or simply the writers of the article Pastalavist (talk) 19:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
- In response to this request I am breaking my self-imposed exile from AFDspace and am making a goal of opining in at least 5 relisted AFDs per day (or if I run out of relisted ones, at least 5 AFDs) for the next 30 days. We'll see if I make it, but it's already been educational for me. In particular, focusing only on relisted AFDs (rather than my earlier practice of zeroing in on the noms that make me say "they nominated what?") is having some interesting effects on my perspective. (I am apparently less of an inclusionist than some nominators these days.) -- Visviva (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Liz: (and others), a general reminder that one of the best way to increase participation is to tag articles with WikiProject Banners, so they get reported through WP:AALERTS. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:46, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- The night you posted this, I had begun my vacation xD So that wasn't doing any favors. I'll resume my participation shortly. SWinxy (talk) 13:23, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- Side question Liz, have you noticed that relists and closures have been lagging behind the 7 day discussion period? I began closing and relisting at the start of June iirc, and there were a lot of articles that had not been closed or relisted for more than 8 days. SWinxy (talk) 13:32, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment I've been a regular participant in AFD for the last year or so; the experienced editors that regularly participate has gone down in numbers. We see many that only show up when an article is being discussed that they were involved with creating. Any long-time editors are welcome to help, there are a few notability criteria to learn, but it's easy enough to get up to speed. Oaktree b (talk) 14:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
IPA pronuciation
Hello Wikipediaers
I love wikipedia! One of the few things I think that needs fixed is the sole use of IPA style for pronunciations. I think that you should have both IPA and a usable style. When I say usable, I mean something like what is used in most dictionaries. I realize the IPA style is more precise and defined, but it is also mostly useless unless you are one of the one in a million folks who have bothered to learn it (that is my best guess using the order of magnitude estimation method, I would also be willing to accept one in one hundred thousand, in other words almost no one). Also, IPA is an imperfect system at best. So why solely use a fairly flawed system that almost no one understands?
Bill Hicks 2601:548:C203:1F70:54FA:7FFF:E5C3:5E80 (talk) 12:26, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that the IPA can be sʌmwʌt kɹɪptɪk (somewhat cryptic, that is) but any simplified pronunciation would have to heavily regulated to ensure cohesiveness, not to mention actual usefulness. Interpretation of vowels varies widely not only between dialects, but between words themselves in the same dialects, (e.g., bit, bite), making any kind of simplified latin-alphabet pronunciation guide would be a very difficult task, to say the least. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 22:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- An IPA tool for speaking words is being worked on, but it is a hard project as it is relying on external pronunciations; some early mockups are at testwiki:Phonos. — xaosflux Talk 23:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think this will be the best solution. People may not know IPA, but they don't need to if they're able to listen to a recording. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:33, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
- I would urge caution about the number of different things that aren't content that we put in the top inch of an article. Pronounciations, hatnotes ... all of which crowds the content further down the page.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- Agreed. revision 1159880420 of Hoelun is just one example of this, where pronunciations, dates, alternate names, and etymologies crowd out the meat of the lead. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 23:03, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- Yes. See MOS:LEADCLUTTER. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
- Agreed. revision 1159880420 of Hoelun is just one example of this, where pronunciations, dates, alternate names, and etymologies crowd out the meat of the lead. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 23:03, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- The IPA template should be linked to a chart that will explain, and its symbols shouldn't be unfamiliar to those who want to learn exact pronunciation and aren't far from symbols used in dictionaries. However, there is also Template:Respell, which is for English words only and can be a more accessible way to convey such important things as which syllables are emphasized. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:26, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- This is a very American complaint. IPA is "what is used in most dictionaries" everywhere except the US and perhaps anglophone Canada, while Wikipedia is a global project. And as the table in Pronunciation respelling for English makes clear, there is no single standard or predominant style of respelling (so Wikipedia uses its own). Nardog (talk) 23:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
- I'm someone who has never bothered to learn IPA, but I've also never had a problem following the link to Help:IPA/English and using the key to decode IPA symbols. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:53, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- Hovering over each character also helps, giving a tooltip such as "/æ/: 'a' as in 'bad'" without having to open and pore over a table. Certes (talk) 15:48, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
- We also have Template:Respell which might be what you want. SWinxy (talk) 13:05, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
Phhht. "its symbols shouldn't be unfamiliar to those [who are like me]". And ~2/3 of native English speakers are Americans. The IPA is gobbletygook to me and lots of other people. We're count too. But, the editor corps is kind of steeped in bourgeois snobbery, and it's heavy lifting to get editors to realize and correct for that. But we should should always try to improve. Herostratus (talk) 02:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Citing multiple portions of single source
Sometimes it is appropriate to quote from multiple locations within a single source. There is currently no convenient way to do this. Possible solutions include
- Add parameters to {{sfn}}, e.g.,
|quote=|section=|section-url=
- Add, e.g.,
|quoten=,|section-urln=, to CS1 templates - Provide templates for hierarchical citations
The last is the most desirable, but the first two would be easier to implement. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- I don't understand what you are looking for. Can you be more specific, maybe with a concrete example? {{sfn}} includes parameters for single page (p=), multiple pages (pp=), and location (loc=) which can be used for chapters, sections, etc. How would what you're suggesting differ from these? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 17:24, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- For the first option,
|section-url=would eliminate the need to wikilink the location and|quote=is currently not available. <ref></ref>{{sfn curIPCS | section = Address processing parameters | section-url = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=41 | page = [https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=44 24] | quote = With read authority to facility class BLSACTV.SYSTEM, IPCS can look at the following storage (in addition to those storage areas it can access with no special authority): - • The ABSOLUTE storage - • Other ASIDs - • The data spaces owned by other ASIDs }} ... {{sfn curIPCS | section = Address processing parametersSETDEF subcommand - set defaults | section-url = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=257 | page = [https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=259 239] | quote = ACTIVE, MAIN, or STORAGE specifies the central storage for the address space in which IPCS is currently running and allows you to access that active storage as the dump source. You can access private storage and any common storage accessible by an unauthorized program. }} ... {{cite manual | title = z/OS 2.5 - MVS Interactive Problem Control System (IPCS) Commands | id = SA23-1382-50 | ref = {{sfnref|curIPCS}} | date = 2023-05-12 | url = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf | publisher = [[IBM]] | access-date = April 6, 2022 }}
- For the second option,
<ref>{{cite manual | title = z/OS 2.5 - MVS Interactive Problem Control System (IPCS) Commands | id = SA23-1382-50 | date = 2023-05-12 | page1 = [https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=44 24] | page2 = [https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=259 239] | quote1 = With read authority to facility class BLSACTV.SYSTEM, IPCS can look at the following storage (in addition to those storage areas it can access with no special authority): - • The ABSOLUTE storage - • Other ASIDs - • The data spaces owned by other ASIDs | quote2 = ACTIVE, MAIN, or STORAGE specifies the central storage for the address space in which IPCS is currently running and allows you to access that active storage as the dump source. You can access private storage and any common storage accessible by an unauthorized program. | section1 = Address processing parameters | section2 = SETDEF subcommand - set defaults | section-url1 = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=41 | section-url2 = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf#page=257 | url = https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R5sa231382/$file/ieac500_v2r5.pdf | publisher = [[IBM]] | access-date = April 6, 2022 }} </ref>
- Suggesting
|section=as an alias of|loc=is just for consistency with other templates. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC) -- Revised 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)- Can't all this be achieved with the existing
|loc=as described here? Either way you may want to post at Template_talk:Sfn to make sure the people maintaining the template find your proposal. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:52, 29 June 2023 (UTC)- There are a number of ugly hacks that will work, but I'm looking for something that is automated and doesn't require repurposing parameters. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- Makes sense. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- There are a number of ugly hacks that will work, but I'm looking for something that is automated and doesn't require repurposing parameters. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- The |ps= field was deprecated because it causes an issue when the {{sfn}} templates try to aggregate in the reflist, this will only make that problem worse. The current suggestion of using the |loc= field allows unlimited free text including wikilinks and urls. Two other points; short form references and meant to be short, once they are this big you may as well use a normal reference; and secondly you can't use {{sfn}} templates inside <ref> tags, it just causes a cite error, you must instead use one of the {{harv}} templates ({{harvnb}} or {{harvp}} for instance).
Another solution is to use one of those {{harv}} templates inside <ref> tags, and then include anything else outside the template but before the closing ref tag. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:38, 29 June 2023 (UTC)- {{r}} is pretty full featured and integrates well with existing template families. That might have the functionality the OP is seeking. Folly Mox (talk) 22:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- That's actually a good fit, especially as there's no method for linking the short form ref and cite on the example given. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- Personally I hate seeing the cryptic [1]:123 that {{r}} produces. I'm glad to see that m:WMDE Technical Wishes/extending references indicates someone is working on a real solution again. Anomie⚔ 11:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- I hope they're planning some way of warning editors who try to remove a ref that has extensions, and how it will behave when transcluded. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 11:05, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- I agree that that is both ugly and un-intuitive. Every time I see it I first think something is broken until I realize what it means. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:34, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- The {{r}} template has several issues, e.g., it requires manual construction of backlinks. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- The
<ref>...</ref>around {{sfn}} was a typo and I have removed it. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
- {{r}} is pretty full featured and integrates well with existing template families. That might have the functionality the OP is seeking. Folly Mox (talk) 22:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- Can't all this be achieved with the existing
- For the first option,
Provide template to wrap LaTeX markup
Currently wiki allows LaTeX within <math>...</math>. This works well as long as wiki does not support MATHML, but is confusing as soon as MATHML comes into the picture, since HTML uses <math>...</math> to wrap MATHML. I propose adding a new template (LaTeX?) for wrapping LaTeX and deprecating use of <math>...</math> for that purpose. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:34, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
- Which wikis support MathML ? And do they do any sort of content validation to make sure they have not added massive security holes into the software ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:21, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
- None that I know of. However, there have been discussions, and if it ever happens the current use of
<math>...</math>will be an issue. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
- None that I know of. However, there have been discussions, and if it ever happens the current use of
RfC: Add selected births and deaths in year articles
Going to this RfC, it was passed to have the births and deaths split from year articles. However, I suggest some births and deaths listed, but some significant only. See this sandbox and another sandbox and yet another one for examples. What do you think? RMXY (talk) 11:10, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- What criteria did you use to determine which births and deaths were “significant” (and which were not)? Blueboar (talk) 11:20, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blueboar: Significant is highly-covered worldwide, and long-term impact, like the death of Michael Jackson and assassination of Shinzo Abe. RMXY (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- Meh… not a hard “no”… but I think that criteria is somewhat subjective, and will lead to endless arguments. It will be less contentious to just say: ALL births and deaths should go in the separate “births and deaths by year” sub-article. Blueboar (talk) 11:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- The only deaths that may make sense would be the death of a prominent world leader (who was in office at the time of their death, i.e. Franklin Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth). --Enos733 (talk) 19:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- But even then, those deaths would probably appear in the main timeline, not a separate section. - Enos733 (talk) 19:20, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- I remember Years articles being super contentious, and splitting birth and death events into separate articles having ameliorated that somewhat. I think if there's a standalone non-stub article about an individual's death, it could go in the main timeline per User:Enos733 above, but I doubt reintegrating a contentious subset of the birth and death subarticles into Year articles is likely to lead to positive outcomes. Folly Mox (talk) 19:34, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- The only deaths that may make sense would be the death of a prominent world leader (who was in office at the time of their death, i.e. Franklin Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth). --Enos733 (talk) 19:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- Meh… not a hard “no”… but I think that criteria is somewhat subjective, and will lead to endless arguments. It will be less contentious to just say: ALL births and deaths should go in the separate “births and deaths by year” sub-article. Blueboar (talk) 11:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blueboar: Significant is highly-covered worldwide, and long-term impact, like the death of Michael Jackson and assassination of Shinzo Abe. RMXY (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
Edit menu to insert wrapped characters
There are many cases where a character, e.g., =, {, }, [, ], |, cannot be used directly but must be wrapped in a template, e.g., inserting an = requires {{=}}. Some of the templates, e.g., {{!(}}, are far from obvious, and a drop-down menu, for both edit and visual edit, would make inserting them less tedious. Menu support for wrapping templates, e.g., {{braces}}, {{brackets}}, {{tl}}, would also help; the menu item for, e.g., brackets would change the selected text foo to {{brackets|foo}} (rendering as [[foo]]). -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:45, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
The use of AI in writing and editing Wikipedia articles
My colleagues and I are increasingly coming across articles and parts of it that have the signature of being either produced by something like ChatGTP or a really inexperienced writer. What I mean are articles that are written in perfectly good English, but make only limited to no conceptual sense as well as lacking a clear logical structure. An example is the article on Vitellogenesis, Not sure AI produced articles are objectively detectable and can be flagged to avoid corruption of the information landscape. In fact this non-sense is self-amplifying since this non-sensical text will be added to the input to more "language" models. THIS IS A GREAT DANGER TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE WIKIPEDIA PROJECT! Gpwagner54 (talk) 19:05, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- Gpwagner54, I share your concerns about AI and Wikipedia, but the example you chose, Vitellogenesis, is not a good one. That article was first written in 2006, and at least ten separate editors have worked to expand it over the years. Cullen328 (talk) 19:21, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- A spot check of the references shows that they are legitimate. Cullen328 (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
- Could you point out which part of the article that seems to be the problem? Have a good day! ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 04:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
- Side topic -- We also need eyes open for bkf mirrors who have expanded to engaging in long discussions on borderline (ir)relevant topics on other boards. Can't make out those too. Lourdes 04:21, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
- The article had a substantial revision on 27 November 2022 (a few days before ChatGPT was released). Prior to that revision, the lead sentence described vitellogenesis as a process that occurred in "lecithotrophic organisms". Now it is described as a process that occurs with "non mammalian vertebrates". Prior to that revision, as well as after, there is a little bit of content about vitellogenesis in insects (insects aren't vertebrates). There was also an unsourced sentence about vitellogenesis in mammals that was removed in that revision. Presumably that sentence pertained to monotremes (the only oviparous mammmals). The image in the article (both before and after the revision) depicts vitellogenesis in a flatworm (invertebrate). Given the timing, it's unlikely that AI is responsible for the content, but the article is now incorrect. Vitellogenesis is not a process that only occurs with non-mammalian vertebrates. Plantdrew (talk) 16:07, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Gpwagner54 Wikipedia:Large language models and its talkpage may be of interest to you. We've also encountered editors using ChatGTP or whatever on WP-discussion pages. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:44, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
WP:PRIMARYTOPIC Move Request
There's currently an ongoing move request that would benefit from wide community input and then a formal closure. Thanks! - Nemov (talk) 14:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
Presidential judicial nominees automatically notable
I would like to propose a Wikipedia rule change. Whenever the president of the United Stated nominates somebody to be a federal judge, I propose that person is automatically considered notable & allowed to have a page created. I base this on several reasons;
1. Federal judges are the heads of one of the three branches of government. There are only approximately 860 judgeships authorized out of a country of over 330 million people. These are the most elite attorneys in the country & nobody will ever be nominated without having a notable career in the first place.
2. When the president makes an announcement he is nominating federal judges, it is covered in a variety of media outlets all across the country in addition to the local media outlets the judge is being nominated for.
3. Not allowing judicial nominees to be automatically presumed notable can lead to political reasoning for deletion request. Judges are a very hot topic & this can lead to certain nominees having deletion requested while others don't. To date, I do not believe any of President Trump's 230 federal judges ever had a deletion request put in for them. President Biden has nominated 176 nominees for federal judges yet only a dozen or so have had deletion request put in. This can lead to inconsistencies & unwarranted back & fourths in AFD's that I have personally seen turn ugly.
4. There is immense interest in the judiciary at this point & time so anytime the president makes nominations, people want to learn more about the nominees. Wikipedia has been a great vehicle to learn about these nominees until recently due to a small number of users putting in deletion request.
5. Once an attorney is nominated, they will in almost every case become notable. Either they will be confirmed & have a lifetime appointment on the judiciary or they won't be confirmed due to some controversy which certainly will make them notable.
6. There are many Wikipedia users who often update the pages for judicial nominees. @Snickers2686, @Marquardtika & @Novemberjazz are a few that come to mind. Allowing all judicial nominees to automatically be considered notable will stop users from getting frustrated after putting in so much time & effort to create & update pages, only to have another user put in a deletion request & get the page deleted.
7. I believe the justification for judicial nominees automatically being notable could fall under WP:Some stuff exists for a reason & WP:COMMON.
MIAJudges (talk) 05:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. Nominees who are rejected by the Senate, withdrawn by the President, or for any other reason do not assume the position are not presumptively notable. Cbl62 (talk) 05:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
nobody will ever be nominated without having a notable career in the first place
Aileen Cannon, Brett Talley, Justin R. Walker, and Sarah Pitlyk, among others, disprove that assertion. Cbl62 (talk) 05:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- WP:USCJN says otherwise: Nominees whose nomination is rejected by the United States Senate are inherently notable, as the rejection of a nominee to such a position is a rare and politically important event. Snickers2686 (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- There's a vast difference between REJECTED and NOT YET CONFIRMED. A Presidential nominee should automatically be considered notable. Once they are confirmed, they obviously remain notable. If they are rejected by the Senate, whether they are notable or not depends on the reasons for the rejection and the politics involved. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- WP:USCJN says otherwise: Nominees whose nomination is rejected by the United States Senate are inherently notable, as the rejection of a nominee to such a position is a rare and politically important event. Snickers2686 (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. Let's take these items one by one. For #1, as cbl62 noted, the concept that these are the "best attorneys" in the country is just your opinion and there is no real evidence to back up such a claim. For #2, again, it may be the case that the person in question is covered in some way by the press, but they still need to pass the requisite WP:SIGCOV to pass WP:GNG. Passing mentions and relisting the biography given by the WH does not cut it. As for #3, while this has been tossed around by many with little evidence, this is an example of WP:OTHERTHINGSEXIST which is not a reason for keeping any article. #4 is a clear case of WP:ILIKEIT and WP:FAN which are not reasons for keeping any article. Cbl62 already covered #5. As for #6, articles can be put in the draftspace so that editors can continue to work on them until they meet WP:GNG, like Charnelle Bjelkengren, or get confirmed, when they will meet WP:JUDGE. #7, simply WP:NOCOMMON. Let'srun (talk) 13:24, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose: I don't find the reasoning to amend WP:NPOL and WP:JUDGE compelling. This would also necessarily amend WP:ROUTINE to make an exception merely for judicial nominees regardless of whether they attain a position of notability. The difference here is a matter of weeks or months; given that there's no WP:DEADLINE, I don't find reason to make an end run around our existing guidelines. The OP cites avoiding deletion discussions and wastes of effort; that is what the draft space is for. There's nothing about this that isn't adequately handled already, especially with List of federal judges appointed by Joe Biden, which houses also pending nominations. Courtesy ping to @BD2412: the acknowledged major contributor to this field. I believe a courtesy notification to WP:USCJN is also in order. Iseult Δx parlez moi 17:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I have been thinking about this for a very long time. I think that it is generally uncommon for a person to be nominated to a federal judgeship who can not already be found to meet the WP:GNG, but that raises the question of whether we need a nominee-directed provision if these articles can be sourced and kept without such a provision. BD2412 T 23:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's where I am: if a person who is nominated for a federal judgeship is inherently notable for some reason, we ought to be able to establish that prior to actual confirmation, not merely through virtue of nomination. I don't see what's wrong with the current criteria. GNG stands. As for nominees rejected by the Senate, we ought to be able to make a difference between stonewalled privately as opposed to, say, the clock running out before the end of the term or session. The latter certainly confers no notability. To make a determination on the former is WP:CRYSTAL. Iseult Δx parlez moi 01:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I mostly agree with this, but every nominee is different and just asserting that a judicial nominee is notable without any additional justification seems like opening a can of worms which would lead to every Presidential appointee for every last agency receiving an article, even for the most trivial of roles where only primary coverage about the subject is readily availiable. @MIAJudges in particular seems in his arguments to fail the concept of WP:NOT, in that not everything needs a wikipedia article, and just because WP:ILIKEIT does not justify including articles about non-noteworthy subjects. As Iseult noted, articles can be moved to the draftspace when the person gets the needed GNG coverage as it is, or once they are confirmed, and there is no WP:DEADLINE.
- On another issue, what are your thoughts on the nominees for the D.C. courts such as the Superior Court of the District of Columbia? They receive much less coverage than even federal district court nominees do, in my experience, so I see no reason not to apply the current WP:USCJN district court guidelines there as well. Let'srun (talk) 15:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. For me, any proposal which includes "automatically notable" is a non-starter. RoySmith (talk) 15:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support @RoySmith: the notability standards are full of "automatically notable" provisions, although they are not specifically expressed with those words. Take WP:SPORTSPERSON, for instance: "A sportsperson is presumed to be notable if the person has won a significant honor and so is likely to have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. ..." The current proposal could easily be expressed by "A presidential nominee for a Federal judgeship is presumed to be notable if that person has received, before or after their nomination, significant national or local media coverage of their legal or political career in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject..." etc. This amounts to being the equivalent of "automatically notable". Let's not throw out a good idea due to some perhaps faulty wording. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:59, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - I think it highly likely that anyone nominated for a federal judgeship will have enough coverage to establish notability under GNG - but that is not the same as being automatically notable.What we perhaps need is a discussion about the type of coverage necessary. There may not be news coverage, but there may well be coverage in other types of sources. Blueboar (talk) 11:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I oppose for similar reasons, but the context here is that a couple of editors are trying (partially successfully) to wipe all of the articles for Biden's judicial nominees. I'd encourage those with similar thoughts to express their opposition to this campaign here. Iowalaw2 (talk) 19:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - In the current political climate, a president's nominees are highly likely to be be confirmed and become a part of the judicial branch. The fact that a President is nominating them almost in and of itself means that the lawyer is notable for their previous experience. As another user said, it's similar to a draft pick by a sports team. They haven't played for the new team yet, but it is highly likely that they will and also highly likely that they have previous noteworthy accomplishments. 167.7.37.83 (talk) 15:47, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- WP:CRYSTAL isn't a legitimate reason to have a wikipedia page for any individual. Let'srun (talk) 17:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
RfC on draftifying a subset of mass-created Cricketer microstubs
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Should the following biographical microstubs, which were mass-created by Lugnuts and cover cricketers, be moved out of article space? 06:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
List of microstubs
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Details (mass draftification of cricket articles)
Selection criteria: Generated using a Quarry query, these 1,200 articles are a subset of the articles that meet the following criteria:
- Articles are created by Lugnuts
- Articles are on cricketers
- Articles are smaller than 2,500 bytes[a]
- Referenced only to CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo[b]
- No significant contributions from editors other than Lugnuts[c]
If this proposal is successful: All articles on the list will be draftified, subject to the provisions below:
- Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months)
- Any editor may userfy any draft (which will prevent autodeletion)
- Any WikiProject may move a draft to their WikiProject space (which will also prevent autodeletion)
- Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG[d]
- Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia[e]
Background (mass draftification of cricket articles)
In the 2022 Deletion ArbCom case, ArbCom found (Finding #6) that User:Lugnuts had created over 93,000 articles, "the most articles of any editor ... Most of these were stubs, and relatively few have been expanded to longer articles", which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom.
Arbcom also mandated an RfC on mass deletion. A mass creation RfC took place but the mass deletion RfC did not, and the RFC mandate was rescinded, leaving the question of how to handle mass-created microstubs such as these unresolved. In March a proposal was made to draftify approximately 1000 articles on Olympians as a possible resolution to this. The proposal was successful and this proposal continues that process.
Survey (mass draftification of cricket articles)
- Support The alternative to continuing to address such mass creations through this process is bringing hundreds or thousands of articles through AfD each month[f] and that alternative is not practical. These are articles that took minutes, sometimes seconds, to create; each AfD consumes hours of community time and it would be a waste to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation. Further, editors who support keeping these articles object on the grounds that the workload is too high; that it is impossible to search for sources with the diligence required in the time available and as a consequence articles on notable topics are deleted.This proposal resolves both of those issues; editors will have time to search for sources and considerable amounts of our most limited resource, editor time, will be saved.We also cannot leave the articles as are; we have a responsibility to curate the encyclopedia, to remove articles that do not belong on it due to failing to meet our notability criteria or due to violating our policies on what Wikipedia is not. Failing to meet this responsibility is harmful to the project; it reinforces the perception among the public that Wikipedia is mostly empty around the edges and that anything is notable, and it reinforces the perception among editors that creating large numbers of microstubs that do not inform the reader is as good or better than creating smaller numbers of informative articles.These are articles that all violate the fifth basic sports notability criteria, on topics that usually lack notability, that no one edits, that almost no one looks at, and that are so bereft of information that they are of no benefit to the reader. Removing the group will improve the quality of the encyclopedia, and by doing it in this manner we provide the best hope of the articles on notable topics being identified, improved, and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per proposer. My feeling is that this is a good way to deal with the low-quality and WP:SPORTCRIT-failing microstubs with enough leeway for any editor who wants to keep any of the articles to do the needed research to expand the article. starship.paint (exalt) 06:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. The Olympics draftification has not resulted in any objective improvement to the encyclopaedia and this is just more of the same. Thryduulf (talk) 07:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Having a massive number of microstubs is detrimental to cleanup efforts and maintenance. If anything, this proposal is quite generous for articles that never should have been created in the first place. A good compromise overall, and it gives several options for anyone that might take an interest in one or more of these articles. I also support carrying this out for all other articles that meet the listed criteria. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, except for "If this proposal is successful" point no. 3: wikiprojects have no business holding onto drafts; it's just not normal, and it encourages the extremely bad habit of wikiprojects behaving like walled gardens and flexing in a WP:GANG + WP:OWN manner toward content they claim is within their scope. Draftspacing and userifying are entirely sufficient options. Aside from that, I wholeheartedly agree with draftifying (one way or another) these miserable micro-stubs, most of which have no hope of ever becoming proper encyclopedia articles. We have far too many half-assed pseudo-articles on minor figures in sport, acting, and other pop-culture subjects. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Their deletion would disencourage masscreation of microstubs based on databases. It would save a lot of time for the potentual participants in AfDs. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Paradise Chronicle - WP:NORUSH. The rush to mass create these articles and the rush to mass delete them seem like two sides of the same coin. Getting it right is more important than speed.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- “Two sides of the same coin” implies comparable effect - but that is not the case. One is essentially vandalism, the other is just respiring the situation as it would have been had the vandalism not taken place. FOARP (talk)| FOARP (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @FOARP - The idea is the same - it would take too long to do the research for each individual article and we need to do this NOW so we can move onto the next article despite WP:NORUSH. Lugnuts followed the rules when he created the articles. The rules have since changed. Those same rules may change again tomorrow.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- “Two sides of the same coin” implies comparable effect - but that is not the case. One is essentially vandalism, the other is just respiring the situation as it would have been had the vandalism not taken place. FOARP (talk)| FOARP (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Paradise Chronicle - WP:NORUSH. The rush to mass create these articles and the rush to mass delete them seem like two sides of the same coin. Getting it right is more important than speed.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - I think we need more granular detail on the people concerned. Personally I think someone who played more than 20 First Class matches in any country recognised by the ICC is notable. Someone who played 10 is possibly debatable, someone who played less than 5 probably isn't. For me there are extreme edge cases (for example some who appears to only have played one match in 1890) which can be redirected to a list. There are a bigger group where the sourcing is bad but could likely be improved (in my example maybe someone who played regularly for a first class team) and an intermediate group which could/should be draftified until such time as more information is found. Of course this requires buy-in from WikiProjects being prepared to engage in improvement; failing that I agree that we might as well just draft with a high likelihood that nobody will work on them and they'll be deleted. JMWt (talk) 08:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- In terms of granular detail, BilledMammal was kind enough to sort out a query for me that included the team categories. I've got a version of this at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox6 - it includes was more than just the 1,200 listed here. It doesn't get into the number of appearances because that wouldn't be categorised so it's not possible to pull that off. But it may be of some use.
- From cutting that list down, I think the 1,200 here are probably split up as:
- Indian - 283 (24%)
- Australian - 262 (22%)
- South African - 137 (11%)
- Sri Lankan - 122 (10%)
- New Zealand - 94 (8%)
- Pakistani - 83 (7%)
- English* - 70 (6%)
- Others - about 13% - Bangledishi, Afghan, Zimbabwean, West Indian and a few others.
- I would think most of the Australians, New Zealanders and English* will be on the redirect list eventually. Means we lose a lot of south Asian and African articles (list are less well developed in these cases). Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Caveat there are some issues regarding the redirect list that I need to get to, but if those are resolved then with the caveat that articles to be draftified should be tagged for a period of 7 days before that occurs I might be able to get to a position where I could think about being more supportive of this. There are simply too many articles here for anyone to check through, but individual editors may have them on watchlists and might be able to step in and deal with them in such a period (there are a number of cricket editors with an interest in and sources dealing with specific teams). A number of articles have already been removed from the initial lists produced, but there are simply too many here to check through.
- This is complicated somewhat by the inclusion of articles in this list where there are already prose sources in the article rather than simple database entries. This is a complicated issue, but essentially the CricInfo articles will sometimes contain prose, occasionally prose that originated from The Cricketer or Wisden - both clearly excellent reliable sources. CricketArchive occasionally also does this. It's difficult to know for sure how many, partly because there's just so many articles here. Again, tagging for a short period would allow editors with an interest in individual articles to check and ensure there there's no people included who already meet the source that could plausibly... condition. This would include people like Brett Matthews (cricketer) (where there's already a prose source which contributes in the article - this is the only one of the 250 or so articles I've checked which are still on the list to be on it in error in my view), Brett van Deinsen, Brendan Creevey, Brad Oldroyd for example. These are snapshots, but each has something that makes me feel that WP:NEXIST means that if we were to dig more that we'd easily find more on them. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Brett Matthews shouldn't be on the list, per the note attached to selection criteria #4 due to the presence of this reference. The reason it is on the list is because that reference is linked in an extremely unusual way; I've manually removed him from the list and am currently working to determine whether the problem applies to any other members of the list. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for that. Things like this are part of the reason I'd rather tag for a period so that things can be checked. I suspect there may be a handful of others. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Fixed. Six articles were on the list incorrectly and have now been removed. If I can work out how to have the template display a different message in main space than it does in draft space I don't mind leaving the articles in main space for a week after adding the template before moving them to draft space. BilledMammal (talk) 10:16, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for that. Things like this are part of the reason I'd rather tag for a period so that things can be checked. I suspect there may be a handful of others. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Brett Matthews shouldn't be on the list, per the note attached to selection criteria #4 due to the presence of this reference. The reason it is on the list is because that reference is linked in an extremely unusual way; I've manually removed him from the list and am currently working to determine whether the problem applies to any other members of the list. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Extraordinary situations require extraordinary solutions. This 1,200 is only a mere subset of Lugnuts' work, and certainly among the least developed. Put them in draft space where they can either be incubated or ultimately removed. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, per Indy beetle.—S Marshall T/C 09:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose any thinking that begins with an artificial sense of urgency, or claims that We also cannot leave the articles as are (we absolutely can; you just don't want us to), so we must do something right now. Don't just stand there, do something! (Except for genuinely trying to expand and source any of the articles yourself. People might discover that it was possible, and we can't have that, because it would interfere with our deletion goals.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- A very good point this, thanks for bringing it up. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Since posting this, I asked a website for a random number (3 out of 10), went 30% of the way down the hidden list above, and found Anwell Newman. I don't know anything about cricket, and I've never heard of this person, but in a little more than an hour, I'd turned the article into a decent start that cites half a dozen recent news sources and learned something about the apartheid era in cricket and discovered that veterans leagues are a thing, even though we don't have an article about Veterans cricket.
- I've obviously got no way to know whether this is just randomly the only one in the entire list that could be expanded, but I doubt it, because it was a randomly selected article that I know absolutely nothing about. This confirms my feeling that the "problem" here is Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Nobody's working on it (or impatience with improvement) rather than an actual problem with the article (which was 100% accurate, BTW). IMO m:Immediatism is a more honorable philosophy when you're willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work, rather than hiding accurate information from readers because nobody else WP:VOLUNTEERed to do the work on your schedule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
People might discover that it was possible, and we can't have that, because it would interfere with our deletion goals.
That is a bizarre statement. Of course it is possible; if it wasn't we would be proposing deletion, rather than draftification. The issue is distinguishing between the minority that it is possible to expand from the majority that aren't, and handling said majority in a way that doesn't consume a disproportionate amount of the communities time. BilledMammal (talk) 13:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- A very good point this, thanks for bringing it up. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Keep or Delete Draftifying this many articles is like stuffing your mess inside a closet —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, reluctantly - I just tried to rescue seven articles at random using relatively basic internet searches and went 0-for-7. I'm sure we're going to overlook at least one actually notable cricketer, but those articles can be re-created. SportingFlyer T·C 12:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer, I'm 1-for-1, with a randomly selected article. Would you like to post the names of the seven you looked at? Maybe someone else would like to have a go at them (or to make sure that they're looking at different ones). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: I searched for Aaqib Khan, Akoijam Tenyson Singh, Alfred Browne (cricketer), Alexander Robinson (cricketer, born 1924), Alexander Slight, Alfred Carlton, and Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), and I just now searched for Dennis Thorbourne. I would send them all to AfD if this is opposed. SportingFlyer T·C 17:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I should also note my WP:BEFORE was cursory enough - two searches per person - but the only hits I could find were for database sources, or for other people with the same name, with the exception of Alfred Browne who is related to another, more famous cricketer. SportingFlyer T·C 17:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I had no luck with regular web searches, as the top hits were all duplicative databases. I had better luck with news-specific searches. For your first, I see a description of him as a 17-year-old right-arm medium-pacer and another called him a young right-arm seamer (I don't know what that means, but I assume it means something. I also don't know what it means if someone pulled medium-pacer Aaqib Khan to deep fine-leg – the jargon here is deep). He was included in a list of youngest players,[1] and I'm pretty sure that this gives his recent salary, or at least something like it. He's Muslim.[2]
- But it turned out that what we really needed was the Hindi-language newspapers. The transliteration of his name is आकिब खान, and with that, you can ask your favorite search engine to look for non-English sources. For example, in the third-biggest daily newspaper in the largest country in the world, there are three sources that handle SIGCOV issues pretty nicely: https://www.livehindustan.com/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-khan-of-saharanpur-selected-in-under-19-india-team-2870012.html looks like a couple hundred words about his childhood and becoming a professional cricketer. https://www.livehindustan.com/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-of-saharanpur-is-ready-to-play-against-afghanistan-2871651.html is even longer and gives his parents names and professions and says he's the first from his town to be chosen for the Under-19's team. https://www-livehindustan-com.translate.goog/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-khan-selected-for-practice-bowler-in-mumbai-indians-3935545.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp announces him being selected as (what machine translation calls) a "practice bowler" with (what I'm guessing is) a professional team.
- Machine translation isn't great for Hindi, but I don't think we need a perfect translation to discover that these three news articles alone count as that ideal for the GNG, "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing - I've been in way too many AfD discussions where someone searches up the romanized version of someone's name and says "there's no coverage on this person". Then, when you search their name in their native language, a lot more results start popping up. It's a major problem on this website and I do hope something is done about it in the future. It'd be like searching Tom Brady in Bhojpuri and claiming he's not notable because no results pop-up.KatoKungLee (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Off topic, but I think it is worth considering adding a transliteration tool to Template:Find sources AFD, at least for articles with Category:AfD debates (Biographical). The issue is that editors don't think to search for their native name, particularily when it isn't included in the article; including such a tool in that template might provide the subtle hint necessary to boost the rate of searches for that name. If you open a discussion about that somewhere, please ping me; I would be interested in participating. BilledMammal (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @KatoKungLee, it would probably help if the articles consistently provided the local/original spelling for people's names. Most of us can copy/paste into a search engine, but fewer can figure out the relevant languages and make the transliteration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Off topic, but I think it is worth considering adding a transliteration tool to Template:Find sources AFD, at least for articles with Category:AfD debates (Biographical). The issue is that editors don't think to search for their native name, particularily when it isn't included in the article; including such a tool in that template might provide the subtle hint necessary to boost the rate of searches for that name. If you open a discussion about that somewhere, please ping me; I would be interested in participating. BilledMammal (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing - I've been in way too many AfD discussions where someone searches up the romanized version of someone's name and says "there's no coverage on this person". Then, when you search their name in their native language, a lot more results start popping up. It's a major problem on this website and I do hope something is done about it in the future. It'd be like searching Tom Brady in Bhojpuri and claiming he's not notable because no results pop-up.KatoKungLee (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer, I'm 1-for-1, with a randomly selected article. Would you like to post the names of the seven you looked at? Maybe someone else would like to have a go at them (or to make sure that they're looking at different ones). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support largely per my comment at the last RfC. If someone spends a few moments doing something mildly disruptive we should not be afraid to undue it – even if it's a page creation, even if they did it 1200 times. If someone finds a cache of sources and wants to create a well-sourced article on any of these cricketers, the existing articles would be of no help whatsoever. Ajpolino (talk) 12:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just expanded one, and that was not my experience. I specifically found three bits of information to be useful: the team he played for, his birth date (because Cricket World Cup is "50-over" tournament, and I spent a long time trying to figure out whether the "Over-50's Cricket World Cup" was the same thing or if it referred to the age of the players), and the year that he started playing first-class matches (so I could make sure that an article about his second career was the same person). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Removed Anwell Newman, thank you for expanding it. That information is easily available in database sources; us mirroring said sources doesn't make it easier to write articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Generally, when someone says that they found ______ easier than the alternatives, you should probably believe them. I personally found that it was easier for me to expand the article when that information was right there in front of me than if I had to do the extra work of looking it up on a different website.
- More generally, if you genuinely believe that you know more about my personal experience than I do, then the world needs you to consider a different hobby. Mindreading comes to mind; you might be the first person in history to actually be able to do it. Otherwise, please don't tell me that I don't know what was easier for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I picked three arbitrarily: David Mailer, Craig Marais (cricketer), and Chengkam Sangma. I personally did not find the existing articles helpful as they restate what's available at ESPNCricInfo, which is also the first Google hit when I search them. I used Google and TWL's Gale and EBSCO subscriptions with a handful of keywords (team name, approximate dates, etc.) and couldn't find any real coverage. I did find Mailer's obit which doesn't give much more to go off of. Just snippets of routine match coverage for the others (both of whom are still alive, best I can tell). Now I don't have the deepest confidence in my ability to dig up source material on cricketers, but my poking around plus the criteria for the article selection make me think these articles are mirrors of database content on topics that don't meet GNG. As for dealing with them en masse, my thoughts align with GreenC's below. Ajpolino (talk) 16:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at your first in TWL's NewspaperArchive.com, I find 159 records for David Mailer from 1874–1937 in Australia. I'm having trouble reading the fine print, but it's possible that there is something useful in there. The obit, which looks written by the newspaper rather than a paid advertisement, would support a sentence about a post-cricket career of grazier, and to say that he was married but had no offspring. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Removed Anwell Newman, thank you for expanding it. That information is easily available in database sources; us mirroring said sources doesn't make it easier to write articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just expanded one, and that was not my experience. I specifically found three bits of information to be useful: the team he played for, his birth date (because Cricket World Cup is "50-over" tournament, and I spent a long time trying to figure out whether the "Over-50's Cricket World Cup" was the same thing or if it referred to the age of the players), and the year that he started playing first-class matches (so I could make sure that an article about his second career was the same person). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per my general support for reducing the number of short stubs unlikely to ever be significantly expanded. - Donald Albury 12:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - "Lugnuts didn't take his time creating these, so why should we" is an entirely valid feeling. I found Lugnuts frustrating, too, and nobody is going to be forced to improve these articles or spend any time on them. It does not, however, create any urgency to [not just ignore but] delete them. None of these articles have been evaluated for notability. None of these articles have been evaluated for quality. It's use of draftspace to circumvent the deletion process (see WP:DRAFTIFY), and based entirely on metadata rather than anything to do with article subjects. I would support mass deletion of any stubs created after consensus formed that it's not ok to mass create articles based on databases. No need for draftification there. For articles created before that, though, it just seems vindictive. The articles aren't policy violations; there's no emergency that demands they be dealt with. If you're still feeling resentment towards Lugnuts, perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that he can no longer create articles at all, and then find something totally different to work on. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - For several reasons:
- 1) The Olympian draftifcation had multiple articles on there that were drafted erroneously like Addin Tyldesley and we already have spotted articles that don't belong there with this one. How many errors are going to be in this list? Nobody knows or cares. Why does getting articles drafted supercede drafting articles correctly? WP:NORUSH. Mass-creating and mass-drafting articles seems to be two sides of the same coin.
- 2) Deleting large batches of articles is obviously not encyclopedia building behavior. These articles do no harm to anyone by being here and many of them may be able to be expanded and improved. Drafting them makes them less likely to be improved.
- 3) WP:BIAS and WP:SBEXT plays a role here. We do not have access to the informational resources of various countries in the Middle East and Oceania, which limits research. Even if we did, being able to read other languages is yet another hurdle. We also know the English speaking media has generally little interest in non-political topics from these places.
- 4) Lugnuts does not WP:OWN any articles, yet he keeps being mentioned. He has nothing to do with this and should not be mentioned. Articles with limited information or sources is a collective failure.
- 5) The wikipedia notability rules were followed at the time of the creation of these articles. The notability rules were then changed and likely will be changed again in the future due to situations like this. It is asking a lot of articles to not only follow current rules, but follow future rules that do not currently exist and/or may only temporarily exist.KatoKungLee (talk) 13:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support For the same reason I supported the olympian draftification. To the contrary of the poster above, an article failing current notability rules is an excellent reason to delete it. Old articles are not exempted from the current notability rules. (t · c) buidhe 14:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
an article failing current notability rules
- Do these? This is a list based on article creator + size + current sourcing, not notability. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- @Rhododendrites: I think most of these fail WP:GNG, and all of them fail WP:GNG "on their face." They did not fail the guideline at the time because it was not tailored to GNG. The alternative is going through and searching for sources for every single one of these to see if they can be expanded, which is frustrating, given how little effort was put into their creation. SportingFlyer T·C 17:39, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Alternative, First put them all in a maintenance category, if not already in one, so they can easily be found and identified. Merge and redirect wherever reasonably practicable. Most can probably find a home in a list or other article where they should have been in the first place. Apart from saving information, this might show people that it is better to put the information into an existing article if it is so sparse, and split it out when there is enough to be worth the trouble. Any that are unsuitable for a merge and redirect should probably be deleted. Any that are still not merged or improved can be relisted after a year or so. Maybe someone can write a script for doing this quickly. If anyone wants to make a real article from any of them they can do it any time. Hiding them in draft space without an action plan is unlikely to save anything in the long run. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I would say this is feasible but the absolute lack of progress on almost every maintenance project means that the burden falls on a very very small subset of editors, who frankly have dwindling patience to clean up other people's messes. Sennecaster (Chat) Sennecaster (Chat) 15:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Pbsouthwood: See this discussion that I just opened at BOTN; note that it doesn't just cover articles that this process would apply to as I didn't see the need to limit the application of maintenance tags in that way - in other words, just because an article is on that list doesn't mean it would ever be proposed to be draftified under this process. BilledMammal (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support but I think the idea Peter Southwood presents may be a good step 1: tag all those proposed into a maintenance cat, and then re-notify the appropriate projects that these will be draftified in, say, 6 months unless there is significant improvement on them, and then follow the steps above. This should allow those that are easily proven notable to be taken out of the cat, or catch errors, so that there is far less bemoaning when the draftication happens. --Masem (t) 14:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think this is a better idea. Maybe give it a year and put up a notification on each categorised page. SportingFlyer T·C 17:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. This is such a terrible, terrible, really bad idea. To start, I want to let anyone thinking of voting here know that if this passes, BilledMammal will continue with several others every few months, until we've backdoor-deleted tens-to-hundreds of thousands of historical athletes and wasted enormous quantities of editor time. Is that really what makes the encyclopedia better? Now, for my reasons to oppose: many of my previous points at the Olympian discussion also apply here:
- Mass draftification is not the right approach for potentially non-notable articles. For one, it actually violates policy; WP:DRAFTIFY specifically states "Older articles should not be draftified. As a rule of thumb, articles older than 90 days should not be draftified without prior consensus at AfD." These articles are much older than 90 days, and this is not AfD. And it also states that it is not intended as a backdoor to deletion: this is effectively what this proposal is. Additionally, there are many more appropriate and more beneficial to the encyclopedia ways that these could be dealt with—for example, BilledMammal (the proposer) made the template Template:No significant coverage (sports) for the sole reason that articles would not have to be mass deleted (–BilledMammal: "I've created Template:No significant coverage (sports) to give editors an alternative to immediately [removing from mainspace] articles lacking significant coverage.") You could nominate the articles for deletion at AfD, PROD them, redirect them, or, my favorite, expand them.
- Many of these are notable and can be expanded. I admit that, unlike the Olympian discussion, I know nothing of cricket and am not great and finding sources for such articles, but I've seen users like Blue Squared Thing doing expansion after expansion after expansion to these articles before and after the discussion started. That clearly shows these are often notable and have the potential to be expanded.
- There is no wrong in keeping these. Unlike the deletionists seem to argue, the encyclopedia is not harmed in any way by the inclusion of stub articles. It is harmed, however, in my opinion by discussions like these which waste enormous quantities of editor time and result in the mass backdoor-deletion (specifically against policy) of enormous amounts of potentially notable articles. Explain in what way is Wikipedia made better by getting rid of notable articles (even if those articles are stubs)—would you rather have short articles on people you're interested in, or nothing at all?
- I could argue more but I am too tired to. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
For one, it actually violates policy; WP:DRAFTIFY specifically states...
WP:DRAFTIFY is an essay, not policy. Further, the section you are referring to, WP:DRAFTIFY#During new page review, isn't discussing draftification generally, but draftification during new page review. BilledMammal (talk) 15:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- The section is irrelevant—it still states that. But if you want a policy, see here:
Incubation must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion".
BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- It isn't being used as a backdoor to deletion; above, KatoKungLee gave an example of a Olympian from the previous RfC who has been improved and returned to mainspace, and you improved and restored Gyula Iványi - I see I made a few small edits to that one as well.
- It is being used to incubate the articles, so that those that are improvable can be improved and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
It isn't being used as a backdoor to deletion; above, KatoKungLee gave an example of a Olympian from the previous RfC who has been improved and returned to mainspace, and you improved and restored Gyula Iványi - I see I made a few small edits to that one as well.
– You're avoiding the 1,000 others that have not been improved... not to mention when I improved Gyula you and S Marshall tried really hard to delete it BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:49, 8 July 2023 (UTC)You're avoiding the 1,000 others that have not been improved...
We have five years to improve those articles. Of course, many can't be and in time will be deleted, but that is the purpose of this proposal; it is to give us time to sift through these microstubs that were dumped on the encyclopedia and improve the ones that are suitable and delete the ones that aren't without overloading processes like AfD. The fact that some have already been improved and restored to mainspace is proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.not to mention when I improved Gyula you and S Marshall tried really hard to delete it
At an AfD where after you and I collaborated to find a reliable source I !voted keep, a position that S Marshall concurred with BilledMammal (talk) 16:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)The fact that some have already been improved and restored to mainspace is proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.
Er... no. The fact that 2/1000 (0.2%) of the articles (of which, a much, much larger proportion are notable) were saved is not. at. all.proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.
At an AfD where after you and I collaborated to find a reliable source I !voted keep, a position that S Marshall concurred with
– Of course, after you initially voted delete and over an hour and a half of arguing about whether the sources were good enough switched to "keep" BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The section is irrelevant—it still states that. But if you want a policy, see here:
- Bringing articles to AfD is incredibly time-consuming. Multiple editors have to weigh in and do their due diligence in searching for sources to argue for or against notability (or whatever grounds the article is nominated for). Then there are debates which can just be so energy-draining. And hundreds of articles are sent to AfD a week. If notability were to be challenged on every single one here, that would take time and energy away from other deletion discussions. Doing it in bulk like this, while takes a month and a hundred-plus editors, takes far less time and editors' hours overall. SWinxy (talk) 01:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Where did I say AfD is the only option? BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - Best route to go. GoodDay (talk) 15:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per WhatAmIDoing. Spy-cicle💥 Talk? 15:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support It is clear that microstubs with insiginificant database sources are unacceptable. If you think some of these are notable and can be expanded, then no one's stopping you. But the interpretation that playing a single game of sport means you are automatically notable here and exempt from sourcing requirements is wrong and outdated. Bulk draftification is absolutely an appropriate response to recognizing that these articles are simply not ready for mainspace, and I believe the impossiblity of sorting though Lugnuts's mass-creation individually justifies an extension of the rule of thumb regarding article age. Reywas92Talk 15:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose I thank BilledMammal for the courtesy ping. I don't like the idea of hiding the intent to mass delete these articles. Delaying a mass deletion by 5 years is still a mass deletion, I think we're be better off with a more honest proposal to massively delete them on a more immediate time scale. I also am concerned that these files affected would be disproportionately be of Indian, South African, and Sri Lankan athletes where Wikipedia already has an Anglo-American skew, and this proposal would have the disparate impact of making that issue worse. I also don't like that this proposal seems to be a punitive one aimed at Lugnuts. I admit that I personally don't like that Lugnuts took no care in creating or maintaining the articles that they created. I also definitely sympathize with those who do the work of curating Wikipedia and the kind of mess that we've inherited from Lugnuts's negligence. Abzeronow (talk) 15:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Oppose I am opposing this for the reasons I opposed the Olympic one, although this one is even easier to expand the articles on because some are actually around recently enough to have digital coverage! QuicoleJR (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- Upon further inspection, many of these are not notable, and I have struggled to find sources online. I still do not feel comfortable supporting, but I am moving to Neutral. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:28, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - As I commented in the original WP:LUGSTUBS RFC:
It's clear that some kind of cleanup is required, and increasing AfD workload by something like half for literal years simply cannot be the only solution. The proposed extremely extended draftification seems like a suitably conservative approach (to the point that I'm not sure five years is truly required), giving editors plenty of time rescue any articles that warrant rescuing while ensuring that (most of) those which do not warrant retaining are eventually (even if after an extensive wait) removed.
-Ljleppan (talk) 16:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Oppose as an obvious backdoor to deletion. And quite frankly, anyone who doesn't think that mass draftification won't hit their editing area of choice sooner or later is naive. --Rschen7754 16:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- If my area of editing had a mess like this, I would be ashamed of it and first in line to get it cleaned out. This philosophy of "everything related to my area of editing should automatically warrant its own article without regard for high quality sources" just creates a mess that other users then have to clean up, and I'm glad to see that it's getting shot down more and more frequently. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- You seem to forget that we are all volunteers with other things to do besides Wikipedia, and as others have commented re the last RFC, "improving" an articles is often not sufficient to get it to be kept. Rschen7754 01:55, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- If my area of editing had a mess like this, I would be ashamed of it and first in line to get it cleaned out. This philosophy of "everything related to my area of editing should automatically warrant its own article without regard for high quality sources" just creates a mess that other users then have to clean up, and I'm glad to see that it's getting shot down more and more frequently. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Rschen7754. Obvious backdoor to deletion. Where does it end? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:30, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - Thanks for the notification; my stance has not changed. I oppose the mass deletion of articles whether it is explicit or via a backdoor, and whether it is done immediately or boiling frog-style. The latter is more insidious, though; per David Eppstein's comment from the original proposal: (I oppose this)
not so much because I care about these Olympian sub-stubs, but because I do care about WP:CREEP and about not expanding the already-problematic process of using draftification as a way of getting rid of articles for which there is no immediate prospect of active improvement and resubmission. Regardless of whether the gotten-rid-of-articles are deleted from draftspace or just left there to molder forever, they have been eliminated out-of-process as Wikipedia content, debasing both our proper deletion processes and our proper use of draftspace to foster drafts.
I also oppose -- as strongly as it is possible to oppose something -- the continued personal insults toward Lugnuts that seem to crop up in every single one of these things. WP:CIVIL is a policy. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Oppose: Other editors have addressed several cogent policy concerns, and @WhatamIdoing has demonstrated that at least one of the cricketers listed meets WP:GNG or WP:ATHLETE. My concern is more procedural. Rather than having deletion discussions every few months to deal with Lugnut's work, time might be better spent organizing with the relevant WikiProjects to systematically review articles for notability and only then nominating verified non-notable articles for mass deletion (or PRODing individual articles as articles are evaluated). There's no reason to give other editors five years to fix things; the community should start that work now. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- These have already been around for years, clearly no one really cares to systematically review them and it seems disingenuous to think someone will actually get through tens of thousands of these. If people do in fact care to sift through all of them, they can from draftspace as well. Reywas92Talk 19:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- 'Oppose per Rschen7754 and also... they aren't great, but it isn't really a crisis, is it? Let them simmer in the big pot of mainspace a while, the flavour will probably improve; no need to kick them back onto the cutting board (draftspace). Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Edward-Woodrow I don't have an opinion on this proposal, but I've found that the attitude of
Let them simmer in the big pot of mainspace a while
tends to end up with poor quality articles not being improved at all. They tend to be improved when there's a time limit. This is why people who participate at AfD discussions tend to be sensitive about AfD being used as a method of improving articles articles instead of exploring whether or not articles need to be deleted. (Summoned by bot) I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 18:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- @I dream of horses: The thing is when someone proposes so. many. articles. to be draftifed, and after that, so. many. more. articles, to the point that there's tens of thousands of articles in draftspace that will soon be deleted, there's gonna be a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11 Unfortunately, mass-direct-deletion will cause more controversy, to such a degree that it's not going to happen. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor.
Exactly. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @I dream of horses: The thing is when someone proposes so. many. articles. to be draftifed, and after that, so. many. more. articles, to the point that there's tens of thousands of articles in draftspace that will soon be deleted, there's gonna be a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Most of these have already been simmering for many years...there's a reason they haven't been expanded already and a reason it only took mass-creation to write them, these simply are not notable people needing articles. Reywas92Talk 19:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Edward-Woodrow I don't have an opinion on this proposal, but I've found that the attitude of
- Support the solution to mass-X is mass-Y. Nothing wrong with this method it's a measured response to a previous action. Slippery slope fear mongering presented by Rschen7754 is a logical fallacy aka appeal to fear ("mass draftification won't hit their editing area of choice sooner or later is naive"). -- GreenC 17:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- For the record, BilledMammal has not left the option of expanding this to other articles off the table, albeit admitting:
If we ever go down that path we'll need a tool more powerful than Quarry to build the list.
. While this is a hypothetical, they have stated as a concrete idea:While I don't plan to include creations by multiple editors in the same group, consideration has been given to creating groups of mass created cricketers made by other editors, such as BlackJack.
You can read the full discussion here, although it's understandable you weren't aware of it since it wasn't made public in this RfC. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- He does seem to want to go after others, see his comment there:
However, I do want to use this group to stretch the boundaries of what the process can be used for; in it I want to do at least some of the following: Change the article selection criteria, to avoid the specific values of the first group becoming a standard part of the process; Nominate articles created by editors other than Lugnuts, to avoid the process becoming a "Lugnuts cleanup process"; Nominate articles on topics outside the sports topic area - or at least the Olympics topic area - to avoid the process becoming a "sports cleanup process"; [and] Nominate a larger number of articles, to avoid the process being limited to ~1000 article batches
BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Yes; I have considered other groups of mass created articles, such as those created by BlackJack. I would agree that there isn't a slippery slope here though, as it will only ever apply to groups of mass created articles that don't include any significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- He does seem to want to go after others, see his comment there:
- You go look at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification - where one proposal said Nominate articles on topics outside the sports topic area - or at least the Olympics topic area - to avoid the process becoming a "sports cleanup process". Please tell me how it is supposed to only apply to sports. --Rschen7754 20:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- For the record, BilledMammal has not left the option of expanding this to other articles off the table, albeit admitting:
- Support We've long since discussed this repeatedly at this point and it relates back to many other discussions the community has already had, including making NSPORT explicitly clear that all sports related biographies must meet the GNG when challenged. The alternative to draftification here is outright deleting all of these articles, which I would also support, because the vast, vast majority of them are non-notable athletes who should have never had pages made on them in the first place. And any who are notable can very easily be recreated, considering the existing micro-stubs pinned only to database entries are tantamount to not having an article at all in the first place with how useless they are. Any sports Wikiproject editors above should probably focus on actually having good properly referenced articles on athletes in the first place, rather than complaining after the fact. The former should have been your requirement from the get-go and y'all should have challenged Lugnuts on their mass creation right when it started. Then we wouldn't have a mess to clean up at all. SilverserenC 17:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
And any who are notable can very easily be recreated ... Any sports Wikiproject editors above should probably focus on actually having good properly referenced articles on athletes in the first place
– Silver seren, do you know how difficult it is to write a properly referenced decent-sized article on a historical athlete? To find the sources, read them all, rephrase them and write them in the article - to add the references, do all the formatting, etc.? It often takes me hours to do that and in some cases (e.g. Draft:C. O. Brocato, my current project) days. You think us "sports Wikiproject editors" can "very easily" do that to tens of thousands of articles, with the consequence mass deletion if we do not? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- Not what I said at all. I said the Wikiproject should have prevented the mass creation done in the first place (and should be actively preventing any such creation going on right now without proper referencing). Draftification is a very minor consequence, compared to deletion, of this mass creation of improperly made articles that should have been dealt with years ago. SilverserenC 18:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Draftification results in deletion, so it is exactly the same consequence as deletion. The proposal here is not materially different from saying "I'm going to delete this unless you do a lot of work on my timeline". The timeline might sound generous to some editors – the proposal is ultimately to require the clean up of an average of two articles about cricketers every day for the next five years (plus one article about early Olympiads, plus who knows how many others will be proposed in the coming weeks), but it is still a proposal to delete them if people don't do the work on his timeline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Is it better to send cricketer after cricketer to AfD individually, though? SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer - Mass drafting articles is no different than mass creating articles. In both cases, the person behind it didn't feel like putting in the time (despite WP:NORUSH existing) to research the article due to time concerns.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, but most of these wouldn't survive an AfD, and the alternative - if this fails - is to AfD them one by one. SportingFlyer T·C 18:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We don't know that most of these wouldn't survive an AfD. We have editors asserting their preferences with no proof.
- So far, I've looked into three of the players proposed for deletion-via-draft, and I've found newspaper articles (articles entirely and specifically focused on each individual, not just a sentence in an article that's really about a game they played in or a list of team members) for all three of them. For two out of the three, a bit more than an hour's work (each) showed that the subjects are clearly notable, and for the third, 10 minutes' work showed that it was at least possible that he's notable.
- Where's your evidence that what's true for these three would not also be true for the next three, or for the next 300? WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:08, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, but most of these wouldn't survive an AfD, and the alternative - if this fails - is to AfD them one by one. SportingFlyer T·C 18:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer - Mass drafting articles is no different than mass creating articles. In both cases, the person behind it didn't feel like putting in the time (despite WP:NORUSH existing) to research the article due to time concerns.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Is it better to send cricketer after cricketer to AfD individually, though? SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Draftification results in deletion, so it is exactly the same consequence as deletion. The proposal here is not materially different from saying "I'm going to delete this unless you do a lot of work on my timeline". The timeline might sound generous to some editors – the proposal is ultimately to require the clean up of an average of two articles about cricketers every day for the next five years (plus one article about early Olympiads, plus who knows how many others will be proposed in the coming weeks), but it is still a proposal to delete them if people don't do the work on his timeline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Not what I said at all. I said the Wikiproject should have prevented the mass creation done in the first place (and should be actively preventing any such creation going on right now without proper referencing). Draftification is a very minor consequence, compared to deletion, of this mass creation of improperly made articles that should have been dealt with years ago. SilverserenC 18:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Such sloppy articles written by a condemnable fan don't deserve space on this wiki. Either an editor performs research and writes about notable subjects or they can leave this website. I, for one, enjoy seeing the political winds turn as we become more exclusionist. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- And here's those violations of WP:CIVIL I mentioned above. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose, all I have to say has been summed up pretty well by BeanieFan11:
if this passes, BilledMammal will continue with several others every few months, until we've backdoor-deleted tens-to-hundreds of thousands of historical athletes and wasted enormous quantities of editor time.
LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 18:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- Okay, so let's clear out more of Lugnuts's junk all at once. Reywas92Talk 19:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per Silver seren and others, but 5 years is way too long for them to sit in Draft space before deletion. I would prefer 1 year. Nosferattus (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Not convinced by the oppose arguments. There's no slippery slope that'll come for your WikiProject next. These were mass-creations straight from databases. When a user (DG) had systemic reliability issues in GAs, the presumption was to delete-by-default and rescue on a case-by-case basis. This one is about a user with systemic issues re: notability, and the logical response is the same as for DG. If this were a WikiProject I'm a member of and have to deal with the maintenance burden of, I'd have opposed these mass-creations from the start, and I'd now be screaming on rooftops for them to be draftified. What exactly are we here to do, except build good, minimum-medium-length articles on notable topics? Microstubs aren't fine to keep around indefinitely, they're an anomaly to be eventually eliminated; they don't provide encyclopedic coverage and go against the first pillar and WP:NOT. Non-notable articles must eventually be deleted, so to keep them around is to require editors to eventually go through each and decide whether to merge, redirect, or delete. We're talking many thousands of articles, and this unequivocally creates a huge maintenance burden, for articles that no one is reading. When someone created them with only minutes of effort, and even claiming that he inserted false statements into the microstube, that's disruption, and the best response is to mass-draftify. Not just these, but every single Lugnuts microstub sourced exclusively to databases. That's what we should have decided back when Lugnuts was banned, and it's really too bad we're now seeing "RfC fatigue" on this issue.
- By the way, are we supposed to completely disregard WP:SPORTBASIC #5, which was added after strong agreement at a well-attended RfC? The real "back door" is stealth-overriding that RfC outcome, not back-door deletionism. These articles must cite a non-database SIGCOV source inline; "the sources exist" is irrelevant. DFlhb (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose We thankfully have very guidelines guidelines for Cricket player notability. It states that "cricketers who have played at the highest domestic level, or in the lower levels of international cricket,[a] may have sufficient coverage about them to justify an article". I examined a random subset of these articles, and they are clearly articles that by and large fall within this gray area of potentially notable depending on source material. Just because the stub uses 1-2 sources today doesn't mean they don't exist, we have to take each article on its own and edit it. Given that there is no deadline, mass draft-fying these is basically backdoor deletion, which is against deletion policy. Steven Walling • talk 19:31, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Scroll up a bit on that page, which says "In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the general notability guideline." as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as Sports Reference's college football and basketball databases." and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to merit a stand-alone article." These pages do not meet this standard and should be out of mainspace if they aren't shown to do so with significant coverage. "May have sufficient coverage" does not mean "must have an article". Reywas92Talk 19:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The fundamental problem with this proposal is that it's trying to impose a WP:DEADLINE on improving them. Other people must meet my deadline because I don't like the current state of these articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Scroll up a bit on that page, which says "In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the general notability guideline." as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as Sports Reference's college football and basketball databases." and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to merit a stand-alone article." These pages do not meet this standard and should be out of mainspace if they aren't shown to do so with significant coverage. "May have sufficient coverage" does not mean "must have an article". Reywas92Talk 19:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support For at least 10 years the instructions at WP:NSPORT have been that "The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline" and "the article must still eventually provide sources indicating that the subject meets the general notability guideline". The bulk of the articles nominated here were clearly created in violation of that. There is no evidence that this is a "backdoor to deletion", since this RfC is being broadcasted through the front door in a community forum, and the whole argument just sounds like obstructionism and stonewalling. Avilich (talk) 20:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - the established, consensus position when top-level cricketer articles which can't be improved come to AfD is that redirection to a suitable list is the preferred alternative. Sometimes lists don't exist so we delete (or some mug goes and creates the list). Sometimes people have created articles on cricketers that have not played at the top-level and we delete those. There are something like 573 articles listed below that BilledMammal is prepared to redirect to straight away - these were the easy ones to identify. They provided me with a list of 625 other articles (which, annoyingly, is two short of 1,200). I've been through those. I think something like 306 have suitable redirect targets. That would leave 319 to send to draft (list at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox7 - where there will be some notes about this eventually because the geography is interesting). Honestly, that seems about right. **If** we're redirecting the 573+306, then I'm not that unhappy about drafting the others. To be honest, I could probably identify 15 or so that should be flat out deletes. I'm sure we'll have ended up missing some we'd want to keep - but people can work those up anyway if they want to. I think the first thing to do is to confirm that we're looking at redirecting almost 75% of these. If that's OK, then I could probably get on board with this despite my general reservations Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - this is going to sound really lame but I'll end up supporting whatever @Blue Square Thing decides. I don't think I've ever made a statement like this at an RfC or RfA. I know Blue Square Thing's been looking at this issue for weeks now and they've done a lot of detailed analysis. He/she is a prolific cricket editor but also supportive of purging unsuitable articles. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 01:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Some additional explanation. The initial planning for this was done at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification. This caused some concern among some other editors and discussion ensued at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket#Heads up. Since then, Blue Square Thing has been involved in looking at this from the cricket content aspect.
- I believe mass-deletion, properly done, is a good way to fix the problem of insufficiently referenced stubs.
- Each BLP represents a serious obligation by all of us to the person who's the subject of the article to keep their article correct and prevent it being subverted for libelous attacks. We have over 6 million articles to watch now. With BLPs, if in doubt as to notability and the availability of good refs, I believe we should err on the side of deleting or draftifying marginal articles.
- -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 03:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yikes! I just saw the comment below about Lugnuts admitting that he introduced deliberate errors [3] to BLPs. If in doubt about a group of these BLPs, we definitely need to get them out of article space. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 11:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Fwiw I've yet to come across an article about a sports person where I consider Lugnuts has introduced deliberate errors. There are errors, of coure - we all do that. But nothing that I can even begin to imagine is in any way deliberate. And I've looked at, well, a "few" of their article creations over the years... The outgoing message you linked to was clearly a "fuck you all" response by someone who clearly felt hard done by at that point. It's a shame, because it will presumably prejudice any appeal they might want to make, but it's not the first time someone's responded like that and it won't be the last. I should say, btw, that I appreciate the sentiment above. Thanks. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yikes! I just saw the comment below about Lugnuts admitting that he introduced deliberate errors [3] to BLPs. If in doubt about a group of these BLPs, we definitely need to get them out of article space. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 11:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I think the first thing to do is to confirm that we're looking at redirecting almost 75% of these.
Yes; as long as no reasonable objections are raised to the redirect targets then that is what we are looking at doing as a WP:BOLD action permitted by If this proposal is successful #5. The only question is whether you would prefer the articles to be moved to draft space and a new redirect created in their place, or a redirect created over the existing article? I am satisfied with either option. BilledMammal (talk) 07:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- I think we have to redirect the article as it stands now. There are a number that have been developed from stubs that Lugnuts created (Alfred Hollings for example) and if we add a new redirect and have a draft then I don't see how people would find the draft? It also preserves the page history, sources, images where they exist (like the one mentioned below) etc... I appreciate that there may be people who would like to see articles like these just removed, but a really substantial subset of them have potential for development - unfortunately it's difficult to be certain which ones do without digging quite hard.
- The targets can be changed if they need to be - there are ones I added to the list at my sandbox where I was choosing one of a number of possible redirects quickly, but that's easy to change at any point Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:12, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Personally, I see benefits of both approaches. Creating the redirect over the existing article makes it easier to find the underlying content, prevents it from even being deleted, and makes it easier to restore if improved. Meanwhile, having a new redirect, and thus allowing the article to be put in draft space, makes it easier for editors to work on the draft.
- I would say that for the second option I would create a R from draftified template, that would include a link to the draftified article and thus make it easier for interested editors to find the draft.
- Overall, I don't have a preference; I want whatever option works best for the editors invested in the topic area, and if there is anything I can during the process of redirecting/draftifying that can make it easier for those editors I am happy to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 15:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - this is going to sound really lame but I'll end up supporting whatever @Blue Square Thing decides. I don't think I've ever made a statement like this at an RfC or RfA. I know Blue Square Thing's been looking at this issue for weeks now and they've done a lot of detailed analysis. He/she is a prolific cricket editor but also supportive of purging unsuitable articles. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 01:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support I've had concerns about these articles for awhile. The very early entries will have been hand written by umpires at a time when spelling was option, later collated into stat books, and so onto an online database. Where there are no other sources to prove existence, there's nothing to say any particular article isn't just someone elses details written down wrong or fudged during the multiple format shifts. I've been few several, both after this RFC started and when I originally became aware of the issue, and haven't been able to find any additional sources. The solution to all this is to create properly sourced articles, something only longterm editors seem to be able to get away with ignoring. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per WP:LUGSTUBS. Lugnuts at the very least was excessively careless when creating articles and, if his parting message is to be believed, purposefully put errors into his articles (yes I know many think he wasn’t serious about this).The response to mass-creation of failing articles has to also be something of mass-effect, otherwise the problem is unsolvable. Clicking on five at random I found five short, single-reference articles about 19th-century/early 20th century cricketers with limited numbers of appearances. If articles do not match this profile, then bring them back to main space. FOARP (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose First, I see above a great point -
Mass-creating and mass-drafting articles seems to be two sides of the same coin
. Second, I see above the repetition of a not-great point, that the creation of these articles took little effort so why put effort into expanding them... if that's anyone's actual view, I don't know what they think Wikipedia is. Why it's being repeated as an argument is greatly confusing. Third, most importantly, there are users like myself who are interested in expanding such articles, but the Olympian mass draftification was so recent that there's no attention span left as well for these. The speedy mass-draftification of many more articles was a major concern introduced in the Olympian discussion, and I'm sad to see that it has proved true. WP:NORUSH. Kingsif (talk) 21:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Support per above. Therapyisgood (talk) 21:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Noting that I chose one random person on the list - Clement Bengough - and despite knowing barely anything on where to look for sources on cricketers, was able to quickly locate a full-page article on him from a major newspaper — 38 years after his death. BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- With all due respect, I'm not quite sure that article shows what you're hoping for it to show, i.e. that these articles can be easily sourced - you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area. His cricket career is but a sentence in that story and doesn't even mention the games he is supposedly notable for. SportingFlyer T·C 22:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
"you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area"
- LOL. I don't want to be mean to Beaniefan but when I saw his description I was expecting a full bio from the NYT. Instead it's a "Here's this weird old English dude that used to live here" local interest story from a small town newspaper. And this really was the issue with a lot of the LUGSTUBS: even when they were notable, they weren't notable for the thing Lugnuts wrote the article about. It's like the time I checked a cricketers's article and they turned out to have been an RAF Air Marshal. In this case, cricket barely features and the story is entirely about what an outcast this person was - it's a nice piece but I'd hesitate to say it shows anything towards notability. FOARP (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- With all due respect, I'm not quite sure that article shows what you're hoping for it to show, i.e. that these articles can be easily sourced - you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area. His cricket career is but a sentence in that story and doesn't even mention the games he is supposedly notable for. SportingFlyer T·C 22:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Whatamidoing. Ideally these articles should probably be merged into lists, but as it stands there's nothing too wrong with the status quo. J947 † edits 23:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. I made a lot of arguments at the prior RfC that are applicable here, so I won't repeat them. JoelleJay (talk) 23:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Strongly Oppose Mass draftification of this many articles without scrutiny is reckless and irresponsible. This also bypasses and usurps the existing AfD process. A quality check by users needs to be implemented before even suggesting these articles be purged. As I've stated twice before already, this is Wikipedia equivalent to the Beeching Axe. This action would also set a bad precedent for future actions toward other projects and articles on Wikipedia. This could be seen as the website purging articles to fulfill a political or social agenda by parties outside the website. Use the AfD process, not mass purge. Otherwise, content that meets notability guidelines in a mass purge could be easily removed and deleted, much like how crucial rail lines were destroyed during the Beeching Axe, creating logistical and public transportation-related nightmares for the United Kingdom which still plague the country today. The same scrutiny which was used to remove railway lines during the Beeching Axe is being demonstrated in this proposal. I refuse to support "The Great Purge" or a repeat of the Beeching Axe.— MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- What a strange concept to compare elimination of physical infrastructure that people rode in their daily lives to the removal of single-line descriptions of sportspeople with brief careers only appearing in databases..... Reywas92Talk 04:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That still doesn't change the fact the mentality of this proposal mirrors the reckless behavior done during Beeching Axe. I also don't appreciate the attempt to undermine my point with a passive aggressive sarcasm, as that is very unprofessional. And it's also the precedent this sets, as well as the fact AfD is being entirely bypassed and usurped. If I remember correctly, there are hundreds of articles tied into this. Do you know for a fact if all of them are not notable? Have you evaluated every single one? Can you say for certain wiping out over 300 articles at a time without scrutinizing every single one of them first through the AfD process isn't potentially reckless? — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:MatthewAnderson707, how familiar are you with the background of this proposal? Were you at WP:LUGSTUBS? It feels like you're just finding out about all this today. Folly Mox (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Again, it's the dangerous precedent this could set for other projects and articles beyond the ones related to WP:LUGSTUBS. Purging hundreds of articles at a time without properly checking the content? Can you not see how that could get out of hand should this be allowed? At the very least, use a more careful approach and ensure if EVERY article being deleted isn't notable.— MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:26, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The entire point of an RfC is to gather input from people who were previously uninvolved in the discussion. Literally the first sentence of WP:RFC.
Requests for comment (RfC) is a process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines or article content.
(bolding mine) Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What was reckless was creating one stub per minute without assessing if they were notable BEFORE they were created and then expecting thousands of man-hours to be spent debating them individually at AFD, what a joke. I find it sad that people can put zero effort into making pages but them expect others to scrutinize if scraping them from databases was appropriate (hint: it was determined long ago at WP:MASSCREATE and elsewhere that it's not). Reywas92Talk 14:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:MatthewAnderson707, how familiar are you with the background of this proposal? Were you at WP:LUGSTUBS? It feels like you're just finding out about all this today. Folly Mox (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That still doesn't change the fact the mentality of this proposal mirrors the reckless behavior done during Beeching Axe. I also don't appreciate the attempt to undermine my point with a passive aggressive sarcasm, as that is very unprofessional. And it's also the precedent this sets, as well as the fact AfD is being entirely bypassed and usurped. If I remember correctly, there are hundreds of articles tied into this. Do you know for a fact if all of them are not notable? Have you evaluated every single one? Can you say for certain wiping out over 300 articles at a time without scrutinizing every single one of them first through the AfD process isn't potentially reckless? — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- What a strange concept to compare elimination of physical infrastructure that people rode in their daily lives to the removal of single-line descriptions of sportspeople with brief careers only appearing in databases..... Reywas92Talk 04:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. I am generally opposed to mass actions of this type. Despite my reservations, and as with the prior Olympics RfC, I support this proposal given its narrow focus. My support is based on the following:
- (1) Mass creation. The articles at issue were the product of Lugnuts' well-documented mass process in which thousands of articles were created, often at the rate of approximately a minute per article.
- (2) Lack of substance. The articles are microstubs that contain very limited narrative text, simply reciting that the person was a cricket player who appeared in X number of games for X team. If the articles are ultimately deleted, nothing of real substance is lost. If SIGCOV is later uncovered and brought forth, and given the fact that only a minute or so was devoted to the original effort, the articles can be re-created without any meaningful loss of prior effort.
- (3) Violation of SPORTBASIC. The articles violate prong 5 of WP:SPORTBASIC which provides: "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." The articles here are sourced only to database sources and do not include SIGCOV.
- (4) Cleanup of "deliberate errors". A departure from normal processes is also warranted by the unique case involving Lugnuts' admission in August 2022 (here) that he added "countless deliberate errors on pages that have very few pages views." Draftification of these microstubs allows us to undertake screening for such errors before any such articles are returned to main space.
- In sum, I support draftification in this narrow situation. However, this RfC should not be precedent to evade regular order in less egregious circumstances. In such circumstances, normal AfD or redirect procedures should be followed. Cbl62 (talk) 00:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think the claim of
countless deliberate errors
is just plain trolling. It is just too much hard work to be plausible. Has anyone detected any of these countless errors? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:41, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think the claim of
- Support per previous RFC on Olympic athletes mass draftification. The fundamental question is if these articles would survive AFD if hypothetically debated in full, and based on the criteria described, they would all be closed "delete" without some compelling discovery of new sources. Even editors who would !vote "keep" in such AFDs can hopefully agree that a hypothetical article with such patchy sources would have a rough time at AFD. Since this is draftification not deletion, if it turns out that there was something valid to use as the basis of a future article, it'll still be there. But given that it's been some years since these were created with no substantial edits from others (per the criteria to build the list), it seems highly likely that most of these articles simply don't pass the notability bar. SnowFire (talk) 04:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- They wouldn't all be closed delete. If they were individual AfD we'd probably be looking at something like 20-30% keep based on expansion; 50-60% redirect and 20% delete. That's the way that these sorts of articles have gone at AfD over the last couple of years in general. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:11, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing: SportingFlyer says they sampled 7 articles and tried to see if they could be improved with more sources, and went 0/7. I'm not much of a cricket expert so my opinion might not matter, but I just tried 2 of those articles with simple Google searches, and also turned up nothing useful. I think 20-30% "keep by expansion" is a very optimistic estimate, and I'm not torn up about the difference between redirect and draftification/deletion. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd be interested in knowing what kind of searches @SportingFlyer: performed; a plain google search won't do the trick. Also, @SnowFire: I would trust Blue Square Thing as he seems to be the cricket expert here. Also, FWIW, I went 1/1 and so did WhatamIdoing. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11: Do you mean Clement Bengough for the article you investigated? Because I would absolutely still !vote delete on that article, even if the new mention you found was integrated, and I don't think my !vote would be unusual. I say this as someone who has voted reasonably inclusionist-y on things like D-list actors, so I'm absolutely a gettable keep vote if non-trivial coverage can be found. SnowFire (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You really don't think full-page feature stories from major newspapers improve his case for notability? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Full-page feature stories are never bad, but in his case it's a local story about someone who used to live there, completely unrelated to the reason why we claim he's notable (being a cricketer). I'd !vote delete at AfD if that were the only additional source presented since it's a human interest feature story unrelated to cricket. As far as my searches go, I use a couple major search engines with a focus on news and try a couple different search terms, which works well for modern players and horribly for older players, and also check the database sites to see if they have any additional news links. I feel like modern Indian players will be the easiest to save, at least using English language sourcing. SportingFlyer T·C 18:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You really don't think full-page feature stories from major newspapers improve his case for notability? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11: Do you mean Clement Bengough for the article you investigated? Because I would absolutely still !vote delete on that article, even if the new mention you found was integrated, and I don't think my !vote would be unusual. I say this as someone who has voted reasonably inclusionist-y on things like D-list actors, so I'm absolutely a gettable keep vote if non-trivial coverage can be found. SnowFire (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SnowFire: possibly, but 36% of the list are Australian, English or New Zealand cricketers and those are the easiest to expand - for example, Alfred Carlton - one of the ones SF looked at (and the only one who falls into any of those nationalities I think) - I could find sources for using Trove (he played for North Melbourne for example and there's a decent amount on him). It might not be a clear-cut keep and perhaps I should have stuck at 20%, which is where I started! If you factor in that a random percentage will have some kind of additional prose or linked article at either CricInfo or CricketArchive (for example, Edwin Mills (cricketer) who's not on this list but will be on the next one, has a detailed prose profile behind CricketArchive's paywall) then it won't be far off 20% at worst - and I'm largely writing off the majority of South Asian cricketers in this as they rarely get kept due to the transliteration problems, but if we could do the sort of thing that WhatamIdoing managed above then 20% starts to look low Blue Square Thing (talk) 17:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd be interested in knowing what kind of searches @SportingFlyer: performed; a plain google search won't do the trick. Also, @SnowFire: I would trust Blue Square Thing as he seems to be the cricket expert here. Also, FWIW, I went 1/1 and so did WhatamIdoing. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing: SportingFlyer says they sampled 7 articles and tried to see if they could be improved with more sources, and went 0/7. I'm not much of a cricket expert so my opinion might not matter, but I just tried 2 of those articles with simple Google searches, and also turned up nothing useful. I think 20-30% "keep by expansion" is a very optimistic estimate, and I'm not torn up about the difference between redirect and draftification/deletion. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- They wouldn't all be closed delete. If they were individual AfD we'd probably be looking at something like 20-30% keep based on expansion; 50-60% redirect and 20% delete. That's the way that these sorts of articles have gone at AfD over the last couple of years in general. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:11, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose The policy WP:ATD-I says "moving articles to draft space should generally be done only for newly created articles . . . or as the result of a deletion discussion. Older articles should not be draftified without an AfD consensus, with 90 days a rule of thumb". A desire to avoid performing a search for sources does not justify violating the policy WP:ATD-I. If I have to spend many, many, many hours searching for sources with Google (and I do have to do that these days), then there is no good reason why the rest of you should be allowed to avoid doing that. The proposer freely admits that he has not looked at any of these articles, but ran an automated query instead. Automated queries are worse than useless. The proposer's claim that these articles are only referenced to CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo is false, as some already have other references. For example, Angus Marshall is already referenced to "Marshall Retires", The Telegraph, Brisbane, 1934. The automated query presumably failed to detect this because the reference is not a footnote. James500 (talk) 06:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I share this concern, and which is why I requested for the Quarry query below (Link to query). @BilledMammal or whoever constructed the query needs to go back to the drawing board to better catch ALL references, not references that strictly follow a specific format. Soni (talk) 06:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at the Angus Marshall example it appears that the article includes a picture which in turn includes a refernece. I doubt even many humans would think to check whether the picture has a reference that the article doesn't; I wouldn't. As for a machine, because the reference isn't even on enwiki but is instead on commons, it is all but impossible to check. I think that such a bizarre outlier is acceptable, and given that the article doesn't include the reference within the criteria set out above. BilledMammal (talk) 07:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- A reference is a reference, no matter how it is formatted. Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site. And Angus Marshall is not an outlier or bizarre. There are similar problems with, in particular, Adam Maher (cricketer), Alan Davidson (cricketer, born 1897), Alan McInnes, Alan Reid (cricketer), Albert Bowden, Albert Brown (Australian cricketer), Albert Lansdown, Albert McGinn, Albert Scanes, Alex Ridley, Alexander Barras, Alexander Fisher (cricketer), Alfred Sullivan, Amit Banerjee, Andrew Lamb (cricketer), Andrew Pringle (cricketer), Aquib Nabi, Archibald Dean, Arthur Allsopp, Arthur Evans (cricketer), Arthur Kenny, Arthur McBeath, Arthur Muhl, Arthur Pellew, Arthur Wells (Australian cricketer), Athenkosi Dyili, Barney McCoy, Barry Rhodes, Bernard Mlambo, Berry Webb, Bill Beath, Bill Tallon, Brad Doody, Brad Oldroyd, Brad Stacey, Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), Bruce Such, Cecil Bryce, Cecil Gray (cricketer), Cecil Hanify, Cecil McKew, Charles Alsop, Charles Griffith (Australian cricketer), Charles Morgan (Victoria cricketer), Charles Patrick, Charles Ross (Australian cricketer), Christopher Dwyer (cricketer), Clarence McCoombe, Clement McFarlane, Colin Stibe, Dale Turner (cricketer), Dane Hutchinson, Daniel Noonan (cricketer), Darren Dempsey, David Mailer, Dean Bartlett and Des Hansen. On the face of it, all of these items should be removed from the list. You could easily have examined all of the articles, and the links in them, manually, and you have done so. James500 (talk) 12:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site.
If it is then it shouldn't be; WP:CIRCULAR tells us that if we want to reuse a reference from elsewhere, whether that elsewhere is intrawiki or interwiki, we are required to confirm that the reference supports the content and then use it directly. Do you have examples of where this is done outside of Lugnut's mass creation sprees?- Even when looking at a sampling of the references on commons I am not really seeing SIGCOV; I'm primarily seeing things like game recaps that involve mentions of the player. Of course, if you can find two examples of WP:SIGCOV you are welcome to add them on enwiki and I will be very happy to remove the article from the list.
- I am seeing some articles on your list with single references in the article, but for the most part those were added recently such as at Darren Dempsey. I think I can be forgiven for not having a crystal ball. With that said I am also seeing some articles, like Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), that should have been excluded based on them not meeting the criteria set out above at the time the query was run. I have corrected the error that resulted in them being included and will update the list when the query returns. BilledMammal (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've updated the list. Note that this means the number is now less than 1200; I don't want to force editors like Blue Square Thing who have done a lot of work with this list to have to redo that work with articles replacing those removed. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You have not removed the Wikipedia articles that have newspaper coverage in Trove. Would you like me to add footnote references to the Wikipedia articles in question, so that your automated query will actually work?
- For the avoidance of doubt, I am seeing significant coverage (or at least things that are capable of contributing to significant coverage). The following are a few examples already in the articles I listed above: Marshall Retires is significant coverage of Angus Marshall. "Stibe Looks Likely Sheild Batsman" is significant coverage of Colin Stibe. "C H Ross" is significant coverage of Charles Ross (Australian cricketer). "Bryce's Patience as a Batsman Rewarded" is significant coverage of Cecil Bryce. Where a person has one newspaper profile like that, there is likely to be more coverage. Accordingly, a WP:BEFORE search is actually necessary, which is why the policy requires an AfD. So, for example, when I run a search for Angus Marshall in Trove, I find a lot of newspaper articles that are entirely about Angus Marshall. And I find a massive amount of other coverage of Angus Marshall. (For the avoidance of doubt, Marshall played both soccer (including as an intermational for Australia) and cricket, so the soccer articles are about him: [4] [5]). The conclusion that I reach is that Angus Marshall, an example that I originally chose at random, satisfies GNG, he should be removed from the list, and his article should be rewritten to reflect the fact that his soccer career was important (and possibly more important than his cricket career). James500 (talk) 19:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BilledMammal Can you please move the list to a separate page and then transclude it back here? Not only is parsing the rest of this page extremely difficult, I cannot doublecheck removed entries or similar without going through Village Pump history instead of reading page history + any talk page comments/diffs. Right now everything feels a bit haphazard Soni (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've updated the list. Note that this means the number is now less than 1200; I don't want to force editors like Blue Square Thing who have done a lot of work with this list to have to redo that work with articles replacing those removed. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- A reference is a reference, no matter how it is formatted. Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site. And Angus Marshall is not an outlier or bizarre. There are similar problems with, in particular, Adam Maher (cricketer), Alan Davidson (cricketer, born 1897), Alan McInnes, Alan Reid (cricketer), Albert Bowden, Albert Brown (Australian cricketer), Albert Lansdown, Albert McGinn, Albert Scanes, Alex Ridley, Alexander Barras, Alexander Fisher (cricketer), Alfred Sullivan, Amit Banerjee, Andrew Lamb (cricketer), Andrew Pringle (cricketer), Aquib Nabi, Archibald Dean, Arthur Allsopp, Arthur Evans (cricketer), Arthur Kenny, Arthur McBeath, Arthur Muhl, Arthur Pellew, Arthur Wells (Australian cricketer), Athenkosi Dyili, Barney McCoy, Barry Rhodes, Bernard Mlambo, Berry Webb, Bill Beath, Bill Tallon, Brad Doody, Brad Oldroyd, Brad Stacey, Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), Bruce Such, Cecil Bryce, Cecil Gray (cricketer), Cecil Hanify, Cecil McKew, Charles Alsop, Charles Griffith (Australian cricketer), Charles Morgan (Victoria cricketer), Charles Patrick, Charles Ross (Australian cricketer), Christopher Dwyer (cricketer), Clarence McCoombe, Clement McFarlane, Colin Stibe, Dale Turner (cricketer), Dane Hutchinson, Daniel Noonan (cricketer), Darren Dempsey, David Mailer, Dean Bartlett and Des Hansen. On the face of it, all of these items should be removed from the list. You could easily have examined all of the articles, and the links in them, manually, and you have done so. James500 (talk) 12:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose as setting a bad precedent (per BeanieFan11 above). Frankly, the "strategy" discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification is quite alarming to read. It does not express a sincere intent to improve the encyclopedia and is more focussed on achieving a pre-determined course of action, rather than consensus building.
Whatamidoing's analysis above shows that these articles are quite likely to be notable. – SD0001 (talk) 06:56, 9 July 2023 (UTC) - Support, but only if pageviews are used as a criterion. I have found that stubs that get more than three pageviews a day are usually on notable subjects, and ten or more a day nearly always are. The nominator said nobody is reading these stubs, so that should be checked beforehand. Abductive (reasoning) 07:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- If we could figure out a way to list these by page views, that might be an interesting notability heuristic. SportingFlyer T·C 07:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive and SportingFlyer: I previously only did spot checks of this group but I have now done a comprehensive check; see User:BilledMammal/Cricketer page views. Three (0.25%) recieve more than ten page views a day on average; Aaqib Khan, Ali Haider (cricketer), and Aquib Nabi; I expect they will be easy to find references for. 79 (6.5%) recieve more than three page views a day on average. BilledMammal (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- My point exactly. The small fraction with pageviews like that should be allowed to remain in Mainspace. Some are probably because a non-cricketeer shares the name, but out of an abundance of caution..... Abductive (reasoning) 08:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've been trying to find sources for Aaqib Khan that would demonstrate notability but I am struggling to do so; even when searching for his name in Hindi I few results and they appear to either be primary or fail to contain significant coverage of him. I'll keep looking; I would prefer not to start excluding articles on the basis of criteria not included above, but if I can find coverage for any of those three I will be happy to pull them on that basis.
- With that said, I would support my proposal with your pageview criterion as a second choice to the base proposal. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just updated Aquib Nabi's article with a couple additional non-database sources, and there is more there. I already did a search for Aaqib Khan, it looks like he shares most of his name with an actor, there was a game recap but not much else came up for me. Haider Ali (not the listed Ali Haider) is a current notable cricketer. Balwinder Sandhu shares a name with a more famous cricketer. Going down the list, Nabi needs to be removed, Chintan Gaja needs to be removed as there's a photo and Cricinfo game recap on him specifically, Chetan Bist can be easily sourced, Abhinav Sharma is difficult to search for but there's at least a couple results. SportingFlyer T·C 08:52, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- My point exactly. The small fraction with pageviews like that should be allowed to remain in Mainspace. Some are probably because a non-cricketeer shares the name, but out of an abundance of caution..... Abductive (reasoning) 08:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive and SportingFlyer: I previously only did spot checks of this group but I have now done a comprehensive check; see User:BilledMammal/Cricketer page views. Three (0.25%) recieve more than ten page views a day on average; Aaqib Khan, Ali Haider (cricketer), and Aquib Nabi; I expect they will be easy to find references for. 79 (6.5%) recieve more than three page views a day on average. BilledMammal (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- If we could figure out a way to list these by page views, that might be an interesting notability heuristic. SportingFlyer T·C 07:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. These need to go to AFD individually. My reasons 1) we're going to be deleting notable cricketers. 2) We're not a printed newspaper and these articles can sit there without causing any overheads. 3) Lugnuts created these articles within policy at the time. It is spurious to say we need to discourage more mass creation of this kind because policy changed and it couldn't happen like this again. 4) There's no rush. Desertarun (talk) 09:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is untrue: per WP:MASSCREATE, approval has always been required for large-scale page creation, and WP:NSPORT has always said "In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline" as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as the College Football Data Warehouse." Lugnuts just blatantly ignored these. I believe it's poor faith to expect countless pages created in seconds by one person have to be debated for a week each by many, consuming many times more manhours. For the same reason no one wants to have thousands of individualized discussions, no one wanted to research these to create them properly individually either. Reywas92Talk 14:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The articles were not required to meet the general notability guideline at the time; it said before WP:NSPORTS2022 that "The articles should provide reliable sources showing it meets the general notability guideline or the sport-specific criteria below." BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Prior to 2022 cricketers were presumed notable if they'd played 1 first class game. All of those added by Lugnuts had done this - so you're retrofitting notability. Desertarun (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We're cherry-picking. NSPORT said in 2021, "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia." Articles which passed SNGs were still deleted for clearly failing GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 18:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. Let me tell you exactly what Nsports used to say about cricket - and I quote policy "A cricket figure is presumed notable if they; 1) Have appeared as a player or umpire in at least one cricket match that is judged by a substantial source to have been played at the highest international or domestic level". One first class match was sufficient to presume notability. There is no wriggle room or ifs and buts. Desertarun (talk) 19:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Don't nope me. I quoted very first line from WP:NSPORT from a random date in late 2021 - before all of this happened. Here is the link. First, as a sport guideline, NCRIC had to follow NSPORT, and second,
A cricket figure is presumed notable
. Presumed is a rebuttable presumption - if an article didn't pass the GNG, it should have been deleted, and often was (each AfD is different, obviously.) SportingFlyer T·C 21:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- Nope. Ncric did follow Nsport, if you can't see that - this is your problem. Desertarun (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I can see that. I've just shown you NSPORT clearly said that GNG had to be met. The sport-specific SNGs were supposed to be aligned to the GNG. Cricket wasn't. SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. Ncric did follow Nsport, if you can't see that - this is your problem. Desertarun (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- At the time, the "presumed" notability functioned as de facto automatic notability (with the exception of one-game soccer players and those without known first names) - also, you're missing the part where it says in bold that to be notable, "The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below." BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- First - the bold part is about making sure sourcing exists in the article to demonstrate either a GNG pass or a SNG pass. And "presumed" was de facto notability, apart when GNG wasn't met - for instance the arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abel Valdez (I did a lot of sleuthing to find an old AfD where it was clear GNG trumped SNG, even though this was no consensus.) It did mean a lot of players which passed the SNG weren't brought to AfD, but the entire reason we're here discussing this now is because that ice got thinner and thinner over time and finally broke. SportingFlyer T·C 21:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- As I said, it acted as de facto automatic notability except for soccer players with low amounts of appearances, plus those who we didn't have names for (e.g. the baseball player Smith) - until Pete Vainowski in December 2021 (after these cricket articles were created), which resulted in the destruction of NSPORT (the NSPORTS2022 discussion was due to that), meeting NSPORT functioned basically as automatic notability. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's true, but Reywas92 is still correct: the phrase
In addition, standalone articles must meet the General Notability Guideline.
has specifically been a part of WP:NSPORT since 2010, and was incorporated via linking to WP:BIO before that. So they've always been required to meet GNG, but whether we enforced it properly is a different question. SportingFlyer T·C 22:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- But then it also said "Subjects that do not meet the sport-specific criteria outlined in this guideline may still be notable if they meet the General Notability Guideline or another subject specific notability guideline," which implies that satisfying the sports criteria was sufficient to have an article; the whole thing was contradictory, but the practice at the time was that it was alright to have stubs and that they were notable if they met the sports criteria (playing top-level cricket games). I don't see why we're arguing about this though, since the criteria have changed, so I'm done discussing this point. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's not what that sentence implied - just that the SNGs were not exclusionary - but it doesn't matter. SportingFlyer T·C 10:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- But then it also said "Subjects that do not meet the sport-specific criteria outlined in this guideline may still be notable if they meet the General Notability Guideline or another subject specific notability guideline," which implies that satisfying the sports criteria was sufficient to have an article; the whole thing was contradictory, but the practice at the time was that it was alright to have stubs and that they were notable if they met the sports criteria (playing top-level cricket games). I don't see why we're arguing about this though, since the criteria have changed, so I'm done discussing this point. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's true, but Reywas92 is still correct: the phrase
- As I said, it acted as de facto automatic notability except for soccer players with low amounts of appearances, plus those who we didn't have names for (e.g. the baseball player Smith) - until Pete Vainowski in December 2021 (after these cricket articles were created), which resulted in the destruction of NSPORT (the NSPORTS2022 discussion was due to that), meeting NSPORT functioned basically as automatic notability. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- First - the bold part is about making sure sourcing exists in the article to demonstrate either a GNG pass or a SNG pass. And "presumed" was de facto notability, apart when GNG wasn't met - for instance the arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abel Valdez (I did a lot of sleuthing to find an old AfD where it was clear GNG trumped SNG, even though this was no consensus.) It did mean a lot of players which passed the SNG weren't brought to AfD, but the entire reason we're here discussing this now is because that ice got thinner and thinner over time and finally broke. SportingFlyer T·C 21:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Don't nope me. I quoted very first line from WP:NSPORT from a random date in late 2021 - before all of this happened. Here is the link. First, as a sport guideline, NCRIC had to follow NSPORT, and second,
- Nope. Let me tell you exactly what Nsports used to say about cricket - and I quote policy "A cricket figure is presumed notable if they; 1) Have appeared as a player or umpire in at least one cricket match that is judged by a substantial source to have been played at the highest international or domestic level". One first class match was sufficient to presume notability. There is no wriggle room or ifs and buts. Desertarun (talk) 19:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We're cherry-picking. NSPORT said in 2021, "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia." Articles which passed SNGs were still deleted for clearly failing GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 18:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is untrue: per WP:MASSCREATE, approval has always been required for large-scale page creation, and WP:NSPORT has always said "In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline" as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as the College Football Data Warehouse." Lugnuts just blatantly ignored these. I believe it's poor faith to expect countless pages created in seconds by one person have to be debated for a week each by many, consuming many times more manhours. For the same reason no one wants to have thousands of individualized discussions, no one wanted to research these to create them properly individually either. Reywas92Talk 14:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. As noted by many above this comment, this draftication (actually deletion) does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. Let's build an encyclopedia instead. If there is a concern that these articles are introducing content that fails verification, we should act. Ktin (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per BilledMammal. I checked ten of these at random and was unable to find significant coverage for any of them. Checking these ten articles took me about an hour; editors should not be required to spend this amount of time establishing the non-notability of these mass-created stubs. My first choice would be outright deletion, but I support draftification as a compromise. The information contained in these articles is readily available online, and none of them took more than a few minutes to create, so any one of them can be easily re-created if better sources are found. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:Sojourner in the earth, as a courtesy to avoid possible duplication of work, might you be able to list here the ten articles you spot-checked? Or mention on their respective Talk pages that you were unable to locate sources? Folly Mox (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The articles were Al Bashid Muhammed, Bikash Chowdhury (cricketer), Bakhtarullah Atal, Athi Mafazwe, Ashby Mutumbami, Arthur Dean (cricketer), Anuj Raj, Andrew Durham, Alok Chandra Sahoo, Alfred Black (cricketer). The most promising of these was Alfred Black, who according to this source took part in the Eureka Rebellion, but even with this lead I didn't find anything but passing mentions. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd like to add to my comment, in answer to those who are citing WP:NORUSH, that kicking the can down the road is not a sensible solution. As DFlhb said above:
Non-notable articles must eventually be deleted, so to keep them around is to require editors to eventually go through each and decide whether to merge, redirect, or delete.
The purpose of this proposal is to save thousands of hours of editor time. The urgency of the problem is not a relevant consideration; the only question is whether one thinks that the possibility of saving some of these articles is worth the massive expenditure of time that it will take to evaluate each one individually. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:55, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:Sojourner in the earth, as a courtesy to avoid possible duplication of work, might you be able to list here the ten articles you spot-checked? Or mention on their respective Talk pages that you were unable to locate sources? Folly Mox (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Neutral Comment I have fewer strong opinions on cricket notability than I do on Olympic notability, nor do I know the Cricket Notability requirements as well. I am generally in agreement with @WhatamIdoing and @Abzeronow's concerns, particularly that this will disproportionately affect Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan cricketers, but am aware that this is an area where I can't really help in expanding stubs so would feel bad giving a full oppose, given @BilledMammal's logic is reasonable. 20:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose, largely per Thryduulf and Whatamidoing. In addition, given that the underlying authority for deletion here appears to be the GNG, I would also note that doing mass-anything under a guideline, which is intended to have common-sense exceptions, is somewhat contradictory. (It does not appear to me that these articles fail WP:V#Notability, since the objection is not that they have no reliable sources, but that the source is a database.) Beyond that, I am troubled by the false urgency and the unsubstantiated claims that these articles are somehow hurting the encyclopedia by existing. From where I sit these stubs seem obviously to provide a net benefit to the interested reader, even if they are never expanded. Moreover, content attracts contributors, so mass deleting these articles (which is the only realistic outcome of mass draftification) is only going to aggravate the shortage of contributors who have the knowledge and interest to improve our coverage in the area. In sum, this seems to me to be unambiguously harmful to the project: mass removal of encyclopedic content can only diminish Wikipedia. -- Visviva (talk) 03:50, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Rhododendrites, BeanieFan11, and Rschen7754. There's no rush, and it does seem like this plan violates several policies. GretLomborg (talk) 05:25, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Could you explain what policies those are, GretLomborg? Because the existence of these articles as they currently are are already a violation of WP:NSPORT and would otherwise result in them immediately all going to AfD for deletion. This draftification alternative, which was already approved of in a previous RfC, is a way to ensure any notable subjects do get articles kept rather than just mass deleting/redirecting them. SilverserenC 05:31, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose as they are less likely to be improved as drafts than as articles. I they are trash, just delete as it may be better to have nothing, and let someone write from scratch if they wish to. I can easily see many of these getting a G13 demise if they are converted to drafts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose Individual AfD discussions appears to be the accepted way to delete articles.Harper J. Cole (talk) 09:15, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Disruptive mass-creation of database-entries masquerading as stub articles can only be effectively remediated by mass action - individual discussions at AFD is not practical with volumes this high. Mass-deletion would be entirely appropriate; however, this proposal is a reasonable compromise that allows interested parties a substantial window to expand these database entries into actual articles (although the percentage where that will be possible is very low) and return to main space. wjematherplease leave a message... 10:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support but only with the standard 6-month term, no special 5 year system which is setting up more exceptons for the sake of exceptions. Stifle (talk) 10:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. I have concerns regarding checks and balances with this proposal. Where does it stop? This could easily snowball to become a backdoor deletion 'policy', lacking community input and consensus. A much more constructive option would be to create a taskforce which methodically goes through each one and expands them; then a decision can be reached, as there will be articles there which can be signficiantly expanded upon. StickyWicket aka AA (talk) 12:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What exactly do you think this is? It's community input and seeking consensus. Please don't make baseless slippery slope arguments. This is so unrealistic to actually think that anyone will be going through so many thousands of articles (a task they can also do in draftspace). Seems you're concerned about your pages like Jack Sterland, who played a mere two games and similarly lacks significant coverage. Reywas92Talk 13:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's cute you stalk my contributions. I wonder if you have a problem with Francis Lacey, or Milo Talbot, or Erroll Tremlett, or perhaps John Manners? I'm actually more concerned about notable individuals being deleted, who might not appear to be notable. If we can take the time to go through this entire process, then yes, we can find the time to go through each on a case-by-case basis. StickyWicket aka AA (talk) 13:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Of course I don't, they have significant coverage. But we're not deleting them, and there's still time for a case-by-case process for those interested. Reywas92Talk 14:15, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's cute you stalk my contributions. I wonder if you have a problem with Francis Lacey, or Milo Talbot, or Erroll Tremlett, or perhaps John Manners? I'm actually more concerned about notable individuals being deleted, who might not appear to be notable. If we can take the time to go through this entire process, then yes, we can find the time to go through each on a case-by-case basis. StickyWicket aka AA (talk) 13:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What exactly do you think this is? It's community input and seeking consensus. Please don't make baseless slippery slope arguments. This is so unrealistic to actually think that anyone will be going through so many thousands of articles (a task they can also do in draftspace). Seems you're concerned about your pages like Jack Sterland, who played a mere two games and similarly lacks significant coverage. Reywas92Talk 13:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per well reasoned rationale from DFlhb (that everyone should read). Aza24 (talk) 13:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, rather reluctantly, as the best of two bad choices. It seems likely that the great majority of these would be deleted at AfD, and there is definitely harm to the encyclopedia in choosing an option that leads to massive extra work. Editors' labour is a finite resource and that has to be taken into account. And there's no prejudice against recreating any given one of these for which notability can be shown. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Mass-created articles with minimal amounts of information don't benefit the encyclopedia, and overwhelm our ability to handle them through normal deletion processes. The list of articles to be impacted has been tightly curated, and while any list of this scale is going to be inherently imperfect, it bears remembering that WP:NODEADLINE applies to creation just as much as to deletion: if a subject is notable, I trust that the community at large will eventually identify it and give it a proper article. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:26, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose I don't think merely not being notable is a sufficiently serious concern to bypass the usual deletion processes like this, and there don't seem to be any policy-based objections to these articles. Hut 8.5 17:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Suggestion - start taking these 10 at a time to AfD now. Don't cherry-pick. Just take 10 in a sequential row. See what happens. It may shed greater light on the pros and cons of mass-deletion here. It'll also demonstrate how unwieldy (or wieldy?) the alternative of AfDs is. Plus, if this RfC fails, you've at least got a small head-start on cleanup. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- P.S., I'm not talking about doing many batches of 10 right now -- just 1 or 2 as an experiment to better inform this discussion. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Discussion (mass draftification of cricket articles)
If there is a consensus for this proposal than I plan to boldly create the following redirects in line with If this proposal is successful #5, unless there are issues with doing so that I have missed. This is in response to a request by members of WikiProject Cricket.
BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Convenience break
- @BilledMammal: - why only A-D? How about E-Z? starship.paint (exalt) 06:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Doing from A-Z would have involved nominating ~5000 articles. We decided that was too large a step up from the first RfC and so decided to limit this nomination to the first 1200. BilledMammal (talk) 07:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I see. Thank you. starship.paint (exalt) 07:30, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Who is "we"? Why do the discussions among this unspecified "we" not appear in the Background section of this RfC? It would seem like important background. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Since @BilledMammal did not feel it necessary to answer this question, I did it myself. The discussion happened on this subpage of his user page, and the "we" in question appears to be Paradise Chronicle, Avilich, Levivich, Dlthewave, S Marshall, and FOARP. It does not seem to be a widely publicized discussion. I wouldn't call it "secret," because it is a public page; but I will note that when MatthewAnderson707 found it via Google, BilledMammal's reaction was
I'm a little confused how you found this discussion
, and when BeanieFan11 commented, the reaction was the same (I found it by going through BilledMammal's contributions. I suppose I should apologize for drawing public attention to this public page.) - I would agree with the comment by @Spike 'em:
hiding this away in user space and demanding to know how people found it does not come across as collaborative to me.
Its omission from the "Background" section is misleading. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)Since @BilledMammal did not feel it necessary to answer this question
I did not notice this question; it had only been up for two hours and this discussion has already become extensive. It would have been helpful if you had pinged me on the first message you left, rather than just the second.- Regarding the rest of your comment, there have already been a couple of discussions on that opened by an LTA; see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1129#Failure to assume good faith and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 182#NSPORTS proposal and outcome should be null and void. BilledMammal (talk) 18:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for the links to the discussions. (I had assumed you had seen it since you had responded to other comments in the intervening time; apologies for the assumption.) These should also have been included in the Background section; "the proposal was successful and this proposal continues this process" elides a lot of context. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I liken the idea of "mass draftification" of articles to be similar to what Richard Beeching did with British Railways in the 1960s. Removing vast pieces of the system without much care creates issues that still impact the United Kingdom today. This is very much the Wikipedia equivalent to the "Beeching Axe" and appears to be more of a reckless mass purge than something that would benefit the website. "The Great Purge", if you will. This action could easily be taken or misunderstood by the general public as "Wikipedia is purging articles as part of an agenda" or something of the like, coming back to impact the entire website in a negative light. I'd like to please appeal to the masses that this is a bad idea and will only create negative repercussions. I would also like to add that this could be a "back door" to bypass the AFD process and save time. I left a similar comment expressing the red flags mass draftification put forward in the discussion I was apparently not supposed to see, according to Gnomingstuff. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 18:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Gnomingstuff, BilledMammal is being hounded. His edits are followed and targeted by people who want to disrupt what he's doing. He started a discussion in his own userspace about which RfC to pursue next, and his stalkers materialised very promptly indeed. Note that there is no reason at all why that discussion had to be public. It was a strategy discussion, not one that would lead directly to a change. But prominent pointers to it were swiftly posted in the places where sports inclusionists gather, and they soon arrived en masse. I agree with you that there's un-Wikipedian behaviour in evidence here. I don't agree with you about who's perpetrating it.—S Marshall T/C 18:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I sincerely hope this isn't an accusation that I'm hounding or "stalking" BilledMammal, considering this was a reply to my own comment and not Gnomingstuff. If this was an accusation, then allow me to provide a defense in response. I came across the discussion in question by chance and have never interacted with or paid much attention to said user before or since. The only reason I even participated in this discussion is because I was notified after being mentioned. I have a right to partake in a discussion involving myself in any shape or form. If anything, I felt I should share my misgivings about the situation since I was brought into the conversation. I would like further to clarify the link to the discussion in question was provided most kindly by Gnomingstuff, allowing me to refresh my mind on this topic. I would like to conclude with if this happens to be an accusation directed at myself among others, I do not appreciate defamation or being likened to slanderous behavior or implied of causing such, and would ask you take your personal attacks elsewhere. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 19:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- You think its the "inclusionists" who are hounding others and are being un-wikipedian? I would say the opposite; there's at least one "deletionist" who's hounded the heck out of me for the past several months. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @S Marshall: I can confirm this has happened, after reviewing talk page archives for BeanieFan11, linked for everyone's convenience. I apologize in advance if this assessment is wrong, but at a glance, it appears BilledMammal has also participated in hounding, as there are several messages on BeanieFan11's archives, accusing the user of negative activity. Your accusations and slander are not only a potential violation of WP:CIVIL, but are a case of the teapot calling the kettle black. Also, accusations of hounding doesn't change the fact key details pertaining to the goals and purpose of this RfC were withheld from the RfC discussion page in a private talk page that would normally be unseen by users participating in this discussion. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- FWIW, MatthewAnderson707, BilledMammal wasn't the user I had in mind, though he's done a bit of that as well. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @S Marshall: I can confirm this has happened, after reviewing talk page archives for BeanieFan11, linked for everyone's convenience. I apologize in advance if this assessment is wrong, but at a glance, it appears BilledMammal has also participated in hounding, as there are several messages on BeanieFan11's archives, accusing the user of negative activity. Your accusations and slander are not only a potential violation of WP:CIVIL, but are a case of the teapot calling the kettle black. Also, accusations of hounding doesn't change the fact key details pertaining to the goals and purpose of this RfC were withheld from the RfC discussion page in a private talk page that would normally be unseen by users participating in this discussion. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Calling people "stalkers" is, unquestionably, a personal attack. (As someone with several friends who have experienced actual, real-world stalking, I find it rather offensive.) For that matter, I don't especially care about sports (besides very casually watching the NBA playoffs), let alone enough to be a "sports inclusionist" or to "gather" wherever those people gather. One of these days, people will start enforcing WP:CIVIL, which is official, longstanding policy.
- As far as "disrupt[ing] what he's doing," it is more disruptive to create a RfC with an incomplete version of the context, discussion, and planning leading up to that RfC than to provide links to it so that people can make informed arguments. It is more disruptive to hold an un-publicized discussion among a handful of editors with the stated intent of deleting thousands of articles and bypassing established deletion processes, while questioning anyone who happens to find it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 20:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I believe S Marshall is only saying that hounding has occured, which is obviously true, not that any of the editors here where involved. It's more likely some LTA trying to cause arguments. Also this wasn't planned in secret, although user space isn't necessary high visibility it is still publicly viewable. If it had been planned offwiki then it could be an issue, but that's not the case here. It was also brought to light both at ANI and VPP that the discussion was ongoing in BMs userspace. I do feel though that having somekind of pre-discussion at VPI could have alleviated some of these concerns. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The question is, why were key details only talked about in a private user talk page, rather than on the RfC for better transparency? It's still withholding key details from the public to easily see or access without stumbling across it by accident or actively searching through Billed's activity to find. If an RfC is being made, people deserve to know all details involved with it and not have those details kept to private discussions, otherwise it gives the impression there is something to hide from people voting on the decision. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- There's often discussions done between editors before RfCs, and anything not in the RfC isn't considered by the closer. It's normal. SportingFlyer T·C 08:55, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The question is, why were key details only talked about in a private user talk page, rather than on the RfC for better transparency? It's still withholding key details from the public to easily see or access without stumbling across it by accident or actively searching through Billed's activity to find. If an RfC is being made, people deserve to know all details involved with it and not have those details kept to private discussions, otherwise it gives the impression there is something to hide from people voting on the decision. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I believe S Marshall is only saying that hounding has occured, which is obviously true, not that any of the editors here where involved. It's more likely some LTA trying to cause arguments. Also this wasn't planned in secret, although user space isn't necessary high visibility it is still publicly viewable. If it had been planned offwiki then it could be an issue, but that's not the case here. It was also brought to light both at ANI and VPP that the discussion was ongoing in BMs userspace. I do feel though that having somekind of pre-discussion at VPI could have alleviated some of these concerns. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Gnomingstuff, BilledMammal is being hounded. His edits are followed and targeted by people who want to disrupt what he's doing. He started a discussion in his own userspace about which RfC to pursue next, and his stalkers materialised very promptly indeed. Note that there is no reason at all why that discussion had to be public. It was a strategy discussion, not one that would lead directly to a change. But prominent pointers to it were swiftly posted in the places where sports inclusionists gather, and they soon arrived en masse. I agree with you that there's un-Wikipedian behaviour in evidence here. I don't agree with you about who's perpetrating it.—S Marshall T/C 18:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Since @BilledMammal did not feel it necessary to answer this question, I did it myself. The discussion happened on this subpage of his user page, and the "we" in question appears to be Paradise Chronicle, Avilich, Levivich, Dlthewave, S Marshall, and FOARP. It does not seem to be a widely publicized discussion. I wouldn't call it "secret," because it is a public page; but I will note that when MatthewAnderson707 found it via Google, BilledMammal's reaction was
- Doing from A-Z would have involved nominating ~5000 articles. We decided that was too large a step up from the first RfC and so decided to limit this nomination to the first 1200. BilledMammal (talk) 07:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BilledMammal: - Help me out here - there are ones in the top list (Arthur Nott for example - just happens to be the first one I clicked on!) who should almost certainly be in this list aren't there? Is this list the ones where there was a link in the article to "List of..."? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Is this list the ones where there was a link in the article to "List of..."?
Yes. Happy to work on trying to add others to the list if you have any suggestions; where do you think Arthur Nott should redirect to? BilledMammal (talk) 08:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- List of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club players I should think. I'll check the other Gloucs ones at some point as it might well be that they were all done in one set and so the link wasn't included. Thanks btw - it makes sense to have filtered them on that inclusion. It would possibly be useful to include a column in the top table that indicates they're in the bottom table? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:42, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Luguts created the Gloucs ones in 2014. It seems the List of... links started to be added in 2015, so this might be an easier thing to deal with than I thought. What's going to be easiest - add the List of link to those articles are re-run the redirect query? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think I'll be able to fix that looking at the categories; it shouldn't be necessary to add the links unless you want to do so for unrelated reasons. I'll look into it when I finish looking into the Brett Matthews problem.
- Regarding adding a column to the top table, I want to keep this possible WP:BOLD action separate from the formal proposal; however, if you want a list of articles that do not currently have a redirect target (I assume that is the reason you wanted that column) I can create that for you elsewhere? BilledMammal (talk) 08:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Ta - it might make life slightly easier. You could add it at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox7 if that's suitable. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Done. Will work on using categories to expand the list of proposed redirects when my mind is fresher. BilledMammal (talk) 13:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Ta - it might make life slightly easier. You could add it at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox7 if that's suitable. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Luguts created the Gloucs ones in 2014. It seems the List of... links started to be added in 2015, so this might be an easier thing to deal with than I thought. What's going to be easiest - add the List of link to those articles are re-run the redirect query? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- List of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club players I should think. I'll check the other Gloucs ones at some point as it might well be that they were all done in one set and so the link wasn't included. Thanks btw - it makes sense to have filtered them on that inclusion. It would possibly be useful to include a column in the top table that indicates they're in the bottom table? Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:42, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is a much more mixed list than the last one. In particular, the mixture of much older athletes (eg. Arthur Nott) together with BLPs of currently active players (eg. Chintan Gaja) creates different considerations. Unlike with Olympic athletes, it's also less obvious to me where their context (if encyclopaedic) might be contained. (The Olympics info was already present elsewhere happily, how orphaned or not are these cricket articles?) CMD (talk) 09:58, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Most are contained within lists. Some, like Chintan Gaja, aren't because some of the lists are incomplete - although I have added him now. I'm going to try to craft a query that will allow me to identify those that should be in a given list but aren't. BilledMammal (talk) 12:28, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- BilledMammal Like the last RFC, I notice that there is mention of a Quarry query using those 5 metrics, but no accompanying query with it. Can you first show the query itself as well? In particular I am curious how you plan to implement #4 (only CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo refs) and #5 (no other editors) without adding some assumptions.Likewise, you should have added #6 (Alphabetically first 1200 among all articles that follow 1-5), because it wasn't clear to me without reading discussions that you restricted this to A-D (As opposed to taking everything that matched 1-5). In other words, I want to confirm again that the list provided above has no assumptions other than the 5 points mentioned aboveSoni (talk) 12:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Quarry:query/73984
- Regarding your #6, I did say
these 1,200 articles are a subset of the articles that meet the following criteria
, emphasis mine, but I could have made it clearer. BilledMammal (talk) 12:28, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- @BilledMammal That still does not clarify my main question. Did you apply any other metric other than #1-#5 (and #6, alphabetcal) when curating this list? I'm trying to figure out how much additional filters were applied.
- For example, did someone do a run-through of the list manually to quick-check things and remove any "this is obviously a mistake"? I'm trying to tell if there was any manual (or automatic) filtering from the quarry query Soni (talk) 06:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, while not every article in the list was reviewed we did review a substantial portion; when errors were discovered (articles that should be excluded per the criteria) we would modify the query to ensure that those errors, and any like them, were excluded. BilledMammal (talk) 07:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I estimate that I've probably looked at 300 or so in some detail - clicking through to the CricInfo reference on each - and maybe another 200 or so briefly. Obviously people have looked at others as well. The scale of the list and the sheer amount of work required the check is really problematic and something that I'm still not entirely comfortable with (although, as indicated above) I'm not unhappy to compromise). I think there are better ways to approach future lists - the list with team categories that BilledMammal provided is a really helpful way of picking out people that are more likely to show up as interesting. In some ways, providing a list for checking of, say, English cricketers (there are 298 that Lugnuts created that fall into the sort of category of articles BM is suggesting) would be much more manageable - it would let us pick out people like David Partridge (cricketer) quickly (he played in over 100 top-level games in England - there will be a tonne of coverage on him, although he falls into the time span where it'll be difficult to find online sources (he's worth removing from the list actually - I already have three or four sources)). I appreciate that there's a demand to get through the 5-6000 articles that have been identified, but smaller, more targeted lists might be a better longer-term approach perhaps Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BilledMammal: Can we make a "Draftified Lugnuts articles" category to keep track of all of the Cricket and Olympic draftifications? It would be quite useful. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- See Category:All drafts subject to special procedures BilledMammal (talk) 16:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- See what? QuicoleJR (talk) 16:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- NVM, I see it now. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, I messed up the link; thank you BeanieFan11 for fixing it. BilledMammal (talk) 16:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- See what? QuicoleJR (talk) 16:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- See Category:All drafts subject to special procedures BilledMammal (talk) 16:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think there are around 573 articles in the list for redirection, yes? On a rough count. BilledMammal provided me with a list of 625 articles (at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox7). Working through that and looking for other redirects I **think** I have another 306 or so which have lists to redirect to. That leaves 319 to draft - lists at that sandbox. There are a number of shortcuts that we could adopt in this sort of situation in future - I've noted those at that sandbox. I'll comment above regarding this as well as there are a few issues. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Random question: are we going to treat suspected WP:BLPs differently? SportingFlyer T·C 21:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't think I've come across a BLP of this kind where there's anything in the articles that isn't 100% verifiable fwiw Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:16, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I understand the thought process of discussing these mass created articles in chunks rather than all at once, but it raises another question: are we going to have to go through this agonizing debate every single time? I don't see the level of consensus significantly changing between WP:LUGSTUBS, this discussion, and the next one, but I do see it taking up many cumulative hours every single time a new one of these is opened, and more bad blood forming each time. And let's say that becuase of who happens to show up for a given discussion, the consensus does change. Say the consensus for E-H tilts oppose while the consensus for A-D and I-L tilts support. Does this mean we have an island of thousands of cricketers whose names start with E, F, G, and H that are immune to mass draftification and have to be sorted manually simply because of a procedural quirk? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:21, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The problem is that there's so many to check, especially when it comes to identifying redirect targets. The 625 that I checked through yesterday to identify redirects (309 ahve redirect targets) cost me a few hours of time. I think there are some future shortcuts we might take to be clever, but it's not straightforward Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm definitely going to be able to create the redirects targets in an automated way even when the article doesn't currently include a link to the list using categories. I also expect to be able to expand lists that are currently missing players based on the categories, but I will want to take that through a WP:BRFA first.
- In general I will want to go through larger groups in the future - my plan if there is a consensus for this is to do the rest of the articles that meet this criteria in a single group - but I also want to do whatever I can with quarry and possibly a bot to make it easier for you. BilledMammal (talk) 08:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not sure you'll get consensus for that many at once. I'm not sure that I could be persuaded that it's a good thing. There are better ways of dealing with these I think. We can get it done in a decent timeframe still, but there are significant issues that a number of editors have raised about checking articles; I don't think this passing gives consensus for presenting a much longer list you know. Trying to check 1,200 has been hard work; over 4,000 in one hit is a different ball game. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- My thinking is that while these RfC's are better than 1200 AfD's in terms of consuming the communities time they still do consume considerable amounts of time, and the community will become worn with them if done too often or frequently. At a rate of one every four months, and ~1200 in each, it will take us ten years to go through Lugnut's mass creations alone, assuming that half of them need to be brought through a process like this or similar.
- That doesn't mean we can't adjust the process. Perhaps if the list was provided to the relevant WikiProject - in this case WikiProject Cricket - three months in advance? BilledMammal (talk) 13:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Be much easier to deal with the lists broken down by nationality. There are about 1,200 Australians in all, for example. We know what we're doing with them - there are redirects for virtually all of them, but we might also be able to filter out some articles that there's clearly a good reason for setting to one side. The problem with the way they're broken down right now is that you're jumping around geographically so much, which has a major impact when you're considering redirects and sources and so on. If we broke those Australian's down further it would be even easier - people can cope with a list of 234 Tasmanians or 320 Victorians. That's manageable. Someone can sensibly sit down and push through most of the list in a day or so, make some decisions and then recommend some solutions. I think that's a way forward. Well, for me it is, but there's probably people who have created cricket articles who are sticking pins in effigies of me right now. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Would it be suitable if I provide the lists with groupings like that to WikiProject Cricket, but when it comes time for the RfC to group them together? I would prefer not to keep them split in that manner both because it limits the size of the group and because it will result in accusations about racism and systematic bias regardless of which nationality the group is "targeted" at. BilledMammal (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I was worried about that element as well - but the reality is that we have much better sourcing for some nations than others. And people have more of an interest in some teams than others - someone's already looked over the Surrey ones to check that there's nothing obvious that really shouldn't be there, for example. It's also going to be worth asking at various other wikiprojects - there are IPL and PSL projects and they might fancy looking at Indian and Pakistani articles. There are certainly enough people editing cricket articles from the south Asian area that if they saw a list might do something about it perhaps.
- I think the list at my Sandbox6 probably already does what we need to a greater or lesser extent. I'v just worked up a formula in Excel to check how many cats a players is in - if it's not 2 then there are decisions to be made. There are probably some other technical things that we could do to make things a little simpler to handle, but it'll take a little while to get that done. It would certainly be easier to categorise in various ways, just so as someone can say "hey, I got the Otago list; can someone else do Canterbury" Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:54, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm happy to send the subsets anywhere you like; it would make sense to let editors from the area take a look and see what they can do.
I'v just worked up a formula in Excel to check how many cats a players is in - if it's not 2 then there are decisions to be made.
It's probably easier for me to get that done in Quarry; just let me know the sorts of categories you want included in the count. In general, if there is some questions you have about the full dataset it might be easier to ask me; even if you're not convinced that it can be automated I might be able to manage something, particularly since I've recently started looking at bots - I'm hoping I can use them to reduce both the false negative and the false positive rate from our article selection criteria (for example, a bot would allow us to look at the number of words of prose, rather than estimating whether an article is substantial based on the number of bytes.)- If it needs a bot rather than a quarry query it might take a little more time for me to get you the answer, but I suspect it will still take far less time than doing it manually. BilledMammal (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Would it be suitable if I provide the lists with groupings like that to WikiProject Cricket, but when it comes time for the RfC to group them together? I would prefer not to keep them split in that manner both because it limits the size of the group and because it will result in accusations about racism and systematic bias regardless of which nationality the group is "targeted" at. BilledMammal (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Be much easier to deal with the lists broken down by nationality. There are about 1,200 Australians in all, for example. We know what we're doing with them - there are redirects for virtually all of them, but we might also be able to filter out some articles that there's clearly a good reason for setting to one side. The problem with the way they're broken down right now is that you're jumping around geographically so much, which has a major impact when you're considering redirects and sources and so on. If we broke those Australian's down further it would be even easier - people can cope with a list of 234 Tasmanians or 320 Victorians. That's manageable. Someone can sensibly sit down and push through most of the list in a day or so, make some decisions and then recommend some solutions. I think that's a way forward. Well, for me it is, but there's probably people who have created cricket articles who are sticking pins in effigies of me right now. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not sure you'll get consensus for that many at once. I'm not sure that I could be persuaded that it's a good thing. There are better ways of dealing with these I think. We can get it done in a decent timeframe still, but there are significant issues that a number of editors have raised about checking articles; I don't think this passing gives consensus for presenting a much longer list you know. Trying to check 1,200 has been hard work; over 4,000 in one hit is a different ball game. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The problem is that there's so many to check, especially when it comes to identifying redirect targets. The 625 that I checked through yesterday to identify redirects (309 ahve redirect targets) cost me a few hours of time. I think there are some future shortcuts we might take to be clever, but it's not straightforward Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - I supported the previous draftification, but I'm hesitant to support this process in general. In particular, the selected query criteria seem a little arbitrary, and I would love to see better justification for the selected criteria. This process makes me think of bot approvals discussions for things like vandalism removal or error fixing: a total set of articles is identified, but a small random sample is retained for initial, manual evaluation. Basically, what is the precision of your query, i.e. what percentage of these articles should we expect to be truly non-notable vs what percentage would be found to be notable (and improved) if submitted to WP:AFD? I would suggest that a test would be relatively cheap: submit a random 50 of these articles to AFD and see what happens. Has there been a thought about running a test like this, rather than Village Pump discussions about 1000 articles at a time with slightly varying criteria? Suriname0 (talk) 04:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Alternative proposal
- Most of these substubs would be quite acceptable content if merged into an existing article which already meets general notability.
- The existing database references are adequate for mention in an already accepted topic. I.e. the information itself, while minimal, is encyclopedic, verifiable, neutral and non-trivial. Someone may even find it useful educational or interesting. It is within scope for Wikipedia.
- Most of the articles already give enough information to find a suitable article or list to merge them into.
- A category for all these articles can be divided into subcategories based on the category of article which they could be merged into without dispute. This would make it quicker to find merge targets
- A few new articles and lists might be needed for the outliers. This should not be a problem in most cases.
- Merging one of them into a list and leaving a redirect would be about the same amount of work as commenting meaningfully and usefully on AfD for that article, and would be constructive and almost always non-controversial. Far less a waste of time than this RfC, because all of the work and time expended would actually be fixing the problem and building the encyclopedia.
- Some of the substubs might be found unusable, AfD them.
Looks like a no-brainer, what have I missed? Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 13:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Notifications (mass draftification of cricket articles)
The following people/pages will be notified:
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket:
Done (link) BilledMammal (talk) 06:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Those who commented in the previous RfC:
- @Abzeronow, ActivelyDisinterested, AirshipJungleman29, Ajpolino, Anarchyte, Aquillion, Avilich, Barnards.tar.gz, BeanieFan11, BhamBoi, BillHPike, BilledMammal, Bilorv, Blue Square Thing, BluePenguin18, Bluerasberry, BogLogs, Bradv, Buidhe, Casualdejekyll, Cbl62, Chipmunkdavis, Chris troutman, Curbon7, DFlhb, David Eppstein, David Fuchs, Donald Albury, Dr. Blofeld, Dr vulpes, Dweller, Ealdgyth, EdwardUK, Enos733, FOARP, Femke, Folly Mox, Freedom4U, Fyunck(click), GRuban, Galobtter, Gnomingstuff, Gonnym, GoodDay, Highway 89, Hobit, HouseBlaster, Hydronium Hydroxide, Iffy, and Indy beetle: BilledMammal (talk) 06:39, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Isaacl, Ixtal, J947, JMWt, Jayron32, JeffUK, JoelleJay, Jogurney, Joseph2302, JuxtaposedJacob, KatoKungLee, Kevin McE, Kingsif, Kusma, Lepricavark, Levivich, Ljleppan, Loopy30, Moabdave, Mr.weedle, Mx. Granger, Nerd1a4i, Nononsense101, North8000, Nosferattus, Oaktree b, Occidental Phantasmagoria, Ortizesp, Paradise Chronicle, Pawnkingthree, Pelmeen10, PerfectSoundWhatever, Phil Bridger, Pppery, ProcrastinatingReader, QuicoleJR, Randy Kryn, Red-tailed hawk, Redfiona99, Renata3, Reywas92, Rlendog, Rschen7754, S Marshall, SMcCandlish, SWinxy, Schierbecker, Schwede66, Sennecaster, and Silver seren: BilledMammal (talk) 06:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SmokeyJoe, SnowFire, Sojourner in the earth, Soni, Starship.paint, Steven Walling, SunDawn, Suriname0, Terasail, Therapyisgood, Thryduulf, Tim O'Doherty, Toa Nidhiki05, Tvx1, Valereee, Visviva, WhatamIdoing, XAM2175, Zaathras, Lettherebedarklight, and Scope creep: BilledMammal (talk) 06:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Done BilledMammal (talk) 06:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Please list any other groups of editors you notify here. BilledMammal (talk) 06:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Notes (mass draftification of cricket articles)
- ^ This excludes many mass-created microstubs, but it keeps the number of false positives extremely low
- ^ With the exception of ESPNcricinfo references with the subheading of "Stories" or "Wisden" as such references are not database sources
- ^ "Significant contributions" is defined as "larger than 200 bytes, excluding edits that are reverts or were reverted"
- ^ This does not mean that the article is guaranteed to be kept at AfD on the basis of the sources contained within it, just that it is possible to make a good faith argument at AfD that WP:GNG is met on the basis of those sources.
- ^ This option is provided to support editors who may determine that some of the articles on this list would be more useful as redirects than drafts.
- ^ Nominating 500 articles a month would increase by a third the number of articles going through AfD, and conservatively assuming that only half of Lugnut's creations have notability issues would take almost eight years
Redirects for article titles ending in periods
I am proposing that we mass-create redirects for articles with titles ending in periods and some other punctuation characters, such as the one to Mail Boxes Etc. from Mail Boxes Etc
For background, and to give your views, please see or join the discussion at VPT. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:21, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Banner shell design changes
Following about six weeks of intensive discussion, some changes have recently been rolled out to the WikiProject banner shell template. An example is shown below. The design is very much open for further changes and improvement and we would welcome any comments (positive or negative) from editors at Template talk:WikiProject banner shell#Discussion about new design
 | This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:16, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- For everyone not in the know, there have been a lot of complaints (including from me) since this was rolled out after a local consensus decision to deploy this across all Wikipedia pages was made at the above location by 10 editors. These complaints include the color of the sectioning (which was pure white originally and just an assault on the eyes) and how the entire format just doesn't look as professional or useful, especially when you have several projects with class, importance, and other features included. It becomes a color attack. Furthermore, as I just mentioned, there's been a lot of consternation that this was deployed without actually involving the community in the first place and was just a decision made by a few people on a small template talk page. The response from those involved has largely been along the lines of "that's how we've always decided on template changes" and "it's already deployed, so we're not going to do anything about it". I have a massive problem with this being how "consensus" is determined for such a change that impacts all of Wikipedia. SilverserenC 16:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- "it's already deployed, so we're not going to do anything about it": I do not think this is true. White background and bright bubbles were deployed initially which were changed to cream background and pale bubbles, because in fact they did something about it. And so is here this notification. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You're emphasizing my point. I didn't mean "do anything about it" to be changing minor aspects of the deployment. I meant "do anything about it" as in reverse the deployment. Even now, I'd guess that all of the 10 involved in the deployment have no inclination to even allow a reversal decision to be made or discussed. Which is one reason why y'all keep trying to make it about "what needs to be changed", rather than about the entire idea of allowing the deployment at all. SilverserenC 17:53, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- "it's already deployed, so we're not going to do anything about it": I do not think this is true. White background and bright bubbles were deployed initially which were changed to cream background and pale bubbles, because in fact they did something about it. And so is here this notification. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- A RfC on the new design has now been opened: RFC on WikiProject Banner shell redesign. All comments and suggestions welcome. SilkTork (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Improved navigation between articles using Template:Excerpt
A proposal has been made to enhance Template:Excerpt to improve the navigation between source and target pages for those using the 'edit' link at the source page. If you are a fan of {{Excerpt}} or its underlying module, your feedback would be appreciated at Module talk:Excerpt#Proposal: pre-load a helpful preview editintro notice on clicking 'edit' in hatnote. Just a friendly discussion, no Rfc or even disagreement; just looking for ideas and support (or not) or anything we may have missed. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)