Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)

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The idea lab section of the village pump is a place where new ideas or suggestions on general Wikipedia issues can be incubated, for later submission for consensus discussion at Village pump (proposals). Try to be creative and positive when commenting on ideas.
Before creating a new section, note:

• Discussions of technical issues belong at Village pump (technical).
• Discussions of policy belong at Village pump (policy).
• If you're ready to make a concrete proposal and determine whether it has consensus, go to the Village pump (proposals). Proposals worked out here can be brought there.

Before commenting, note:

• This page is not for consensus polling. Stalwart "Oppose" and "Support" comments generally have no place here. Instead, discuss ideas and suggest variations on them.
• Wondering whether someone already had this idea? Search the archives below, and look through Wikipedia:Perennial proposals.

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for two weeks.

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ITN reform

I am opening this discussion to invite suggestions and proposals to reform WP:ITN in anticipation of an RfC. Such reforms are long overdue: ITN has effectively shut itself off from the rest of the site as a walled garden and have developed their own system of rules that conflict with sitewide expectations, creating multiple problems:

• The inclusion criteria are entirely subjective and based on the personal whims and opinions of participants. Editors at ITN routinely use original research to determine "significance", applying their own analysis of each situation. Weight in reliable sources is not a major factor in whether ITN considers something to be "significant".
• ITN flouts community norms around consensus. Discussions are typically closed as head counts, without weighing arguments in regard to the application of policy. "I like it" votes are given equal weight in discussions. The discussions are also closed before consensus has time to develop: no other part of the project would dream of letting a discussion without a clear consensus be closed in under a week, but ITN's nature requires that they be closed in a few days at most. Many discussions are closed after just a few !votes one way or the other.
• ITN requires a fast turnaround, sometimes as short as a few hours. In addition to contradicting WP:DEADLINE, this creates rushed work and prevents in depth review. Nominal quality checks are done to make sure citations are present, but the window is short and most participants only evaluate "significance". This results in articles that are not only not ready for the main page, but ones that are unstable as they are oftentimes recently created, subject to early reporting errors, and undergoing significant changes.
• Since arguments about personal beliefs and opinions are built into ITN's processes, it is inherently less civil than other parts of the project. Over the years, drama at ITN has rivaled most CTOPs, to the point that applying general sanctions to ITN itself has been discussed in the past.
• The arbitrary selection of news stories (with a major systemic bias toward elections, sports, and mass-casualty events) misrepresents the overall state of what's actually in the news. Pushing this bias onto our readers does them a disservice.

These problems are intractable with ITN in its current form. I am asking for suggestions on how it can be reformed, or if that fails and there is consensus to abolish it entirely, how it can be replaced.

Examples of reforms:

• Remove the significance requirement entirely and include any article that is the subject of a recent news event.
• Require that a story receive significant coverage in a certain number of countries or a certain number of newspapers of record
• Promote articles based on trending topics (with oversight to prevent gaming the system)

Examples of replacements:

• Use the space to display several short blurbs for good articles each day, like smaller versions of WP:Today's Featured Article
• Use the space to provide links on how to edit and to help users find where to start in order to recruit more editors
• Move the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section of the main page into the space for easier navigation

These are ideas that have been suggested in the past. This is not an exhaustive list of examples, nor do I personally consider all of them viable. I'm requesting input from the Village Pump so we can develop additional suggestions and get a general idea of what the community thinks about them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:48, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Two issues with points raised:

• On the fourth point related to arguments: the only time general sanctions have been applied is when the topic itself falls into areas where general sanctions have already been applied (like AP2, etc.) There have not been any sanctions applies for topics outside these areas. So that's just how general sanctions should be applied, and not an ITN issue.
• On the fifth point, WP is not a newspaper and we absolutely should not share topics to match what is big in the news. Not every news story that gets a short term burst of coverage deserves a WP article (per NOTNEWS, WP:N and NEVENT) and ITN reflects that.

Remember that the main page as a whole is meant to showcase articles that represent some of the best of WP. Replacing it with a list of top stories in newspapers or with popular topics won't work at all, because not all those topics meet the main page requirement. — Masem (t) 19:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I would also offer a suggestion that the ITN box include a permalink to the Wikinews sister project, which may be more attractive to those potential editors who get confused or put off in their first reverts that we are WP:NOTNEWS. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Back when Wikinews was a news site, we had such a link. Wikinews is far too slow to be useful these days, possibly because of too much focus on quality given the size of the userbase. Overall, Wikipedia is a much better news site than Wikinews ever was, whatever WP:NOTNEWS says. —Kusma (talk) 17:22, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if there's even a consensus that ITN needs to be changed, before we even start talking about the specifics of how to reform it. But I do not see any indication on the above thread that such a consensus exists. If there is, please feel free to share the diff, otherwise I feel like this will just go around in circles again as such discussions always do. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:13, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that (much like changing the MP) consensus could be obtained for the general idea of changing ITN but it would break down when specific proposals are offered. I now believe that it should function more like RD with a reduced or nonexistent "super notability" significance requirement- but I don't think that would gain a consensus.(I've discusses it here previously) 331dot (talk) 15:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Just a thought on "article quality" as a criteria: maybe it shouldn't be one. Perhaps a purpose of ITN should be to direct readers to articles that are currently hot topics in the hope that the extra attention results in improvements. There's no better opportunity to improve an article than when lots of people are interested in it. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:18, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Content on the Main Page is supposed to demonstrate high quality articles and some of WP's best work. We can't remove the quality aspect with changing that aspect of Main Page. — Masem (t) 18:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I get that ITN has its problems, but I don't get why it gets singled out so much when the other sections of the main page all have their quirky ways of working. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 17:19, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

ITN has actually been working quite fine recently, in my opinion. I am not sure this is needed anymore. Curbon7 (talk) 18:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm still in favor of just removing it (make TFA 2 columns wide on desktop), and then if people want to propose adding something to the main page where it used to be, discussing that separately. I've written enough about why in the previous rounds of this discussion so I won't repeat myself here (tldr: because it's bad at its job, irredeemably and structurally). Levivich (talk) 11:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

In-page attribution of authors/contributors

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T120738

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how Wikipedia could provide better attribution for the contributors of its articles. After all, attribution is a key part of our license, but the authorship of an article is very much hidden away out of sight. In order to see the authorship of an article, one first needs to go to the "View history" tab, then click on the "Page statistics" external link, which redirects to an entirely different website, and even then you need to scroll down in the page before seeing authorship details. It also appears to only be visible in the web browser version, while it seems completely absent from the mobile app version. This presents a pretty unintuitive set of hoops for readers to jump through in order to discover (and attribute) the authorship of various articles. Even as a regular contributor, I didn't know this tool existed until a year or so ago.

This means that, to the lay reader or content re-user, all of our articles might as well be written by a monolithic "Wikipedia", or maybe a vague gesture at "Wikipedia contributors". Contrast this with other prominent encyclopedias like Britannica, which display the primary contributors to an article quite prominently beneath the article title and list secondary contributors in an easy-to-find section in the article history.

I was thinking that, either in the main page or at the top of the "View history" tab, it may be worth including such a list of contributors. It could be as simple as listing the primary author (with the most percentage/characters contributed), followed by any secondary contributors (with >10% contributed), followed by an "et al", which could itself link to further information about the article's authorship.

I think this would be a very important fulfilment of our own license's terms of attribution, both for in-wiki use and for anybody that might be reading or thinking about reusing the article's content. It would be a step away from the monolithic conception of "Wikipedia contributors". It could also provide a greater sense of impact for the articles' authors themselves, who would be able to easily see the fruits of their labour on screen. Of course, I understand this may come with its own drawbacks. I know some editors prefer the anonymity, while others may be worried that this could encourage low-effort edits in order to farm credit. But I personally think that the potential benefits of such a credit feature would outweigh the potential costs.

Having looked through the village pump archives, I'm confident this isn't a perennial proposal. I only managed to find one discussion of such a feature, which was opened by @Doc James almost a decade ago, but it didn't seem to gather a clear consensus and I'm not sure if anything ended up resulting from it. If anyone has any comments on this embryonic proposal, I would be happy to hear from you. --Grnrchst (talk) 14:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

@Grnrchst as an example, could you produce what you would expect the output of such to look like for this page? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

It's an odd example, because this is a discussion page, but it would currently be something like "Written by WhatamIdoing, Xaosflux, et al." --Grnrchst (talk) 14:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

So you'd be fine ignoring the thousands of other authors on such a byline? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:58, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's feasible nor particularly useful to include every single contributor in a byline, but I don't think they should be entirely ignored either, that's why I've included the "et al." (could also say "and others", or something). The reason I set the byline inclusion at >10% is because that's the rule of thumb used by the good articles project to determine major contributions. I think named inclusion in the byline should be limited to such major contributors, but linking to total authorship in the "et al." would also be useful for showing the full scope of contributions. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:05, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there is going to be any good way to programmatically determine those values. In your example above, what calculation did you use to determine that WhatamIdoing and I were >10% contributors for example? This is primarily why the cite this page tool example just says "Wikipedia contributors". (see more below) — xaosflux ^Talk 15:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I was using the "Top editors" section in the Xtools page I linked to in the "et al." As this is a discussion page, rather than a mainspace page, Xtools doesn't show an "Authorship" section in this case (hence why I didn't think it was a good example). Whereas in the one for Morgan Bulkely, there is an authorship section that shows Wehwalt at 79% of authorship, Real4jyy at 6.2% of authorship, etc. The authorship tool on Xtools is apparently powered by WikiWho, which we may be able to use for generating such a byline. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:25, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

As for the "Cite this page" tool, I think this is an example of how just vaguely citing "Wikipedia contributors" is unhelpful and even redundant. Of course it's authored by Wikipedia contributors, it's a Wikipedia article! --Grnrchst (talk) 15:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Another example, using today's featured article Morgan Bulkeley, would read: "Written by Wehwalt, et al." Grnrchst (talk) 14:47, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking this "Written by [...]" could go next to the bit where it says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". --Grnrchst (talk) 14:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

In the mobile view, we do advertise the "last" author (e.g. see the bottom of this page) - that could possible be ported to desktop. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:00, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the "latest contribution" is a good measure of recent activity, what I'm aiming at with this proposal is trying to demonstrate a broader scope of total activity. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• Note, a feature request that may address this idea is open at phab:T120738. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
• Note that we currently have https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/C418_discography and Who Wrote That which calculate the percentage, the latter using an API that does it Aaron Liu (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  I think you'd want to use the WhoColor API (which is what mw:Who Wrote That? uses). The other methods tend to overemphasize people who don't actually write any words. For example, if the article has 50 edits total at the time of calculation, and five of them are me blanking the whole article, or changing the whitespace on a template, then I've made 10% of the edits, but I haven't written a single word on the page.

  @Grnrchst, the last time I remember seeing a discussion about highlighting the names of contributors, a jerk who normally edited under his real name created an account with a vulgar username and made one edit, just for the purpose of asking whether we really wanted to have vulgarities displayed in the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  And his alt was banned for WP:DISRUPTNAME, right? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, but DISRUPTNAME was declared to be an insufficient reason to revdel or oversight/suppress the change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  I was having the same thoughts. It should be based on who contributed to what the article as currently displayed. It would be wrong for instance to list the top contributor as someone who hasn't edited the article since it was completely rewritten.
  It might also encourage more competitive editors to try and find ways to boost there standings, without having to do any actually helpful work. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

  For the reasons mentioned above, I'm not a big fan of crediting whoever ran the link archiver most often as being the "author" of the page. Nor am I fan of being assigned as the author of a page, even if I am indeed the #1 author. The mw:Who Wrote That? extension is excellent and should be promoted, because it allows seeing authorship of words and sentences currently live, which is an excellent (though not infallible) way of tracking down who has added nonsense to an otherwise decent page (caveat lector: sometimes someone who copyedits nonsense will be shown rather than the original nonsense-adder). One thing that may not be widely known is that you can run Who Wrote That? on old versions of pages, making it an arguably more efficient tool than WikiBlame.-- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 18:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  Although XTools is influenced by use of link archiver tools, the underlying WikiWho service provides token-by-token attribution of who added what. This can be used to determine authorship without considering anything between ref tags, as well as other markup that's seen to unfairly influence authorship stats. I have implemented this in SDZeroBot 6 task which makes the bot somewhat smarter about whom to notify about AfDs. – SD0001 (talk) 21:15, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

• I am concerned that this would encourage WP:OWNERSHIP of articles. The entire point of the Wikipedia model is that articles are “authored” by the community, not by individuals. Blueboar (talk) 20:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  This is a completely fair and valid concern. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the need for this. I do get a certain pleasure from seeing how much of the content in an article I have contributed (which I can see at Page Statistics), but I am well aware that no one else really cares, and the future of such content is out of my hands. I am not editing Wikipedia to build my curriculim vitae. Donald Albury 21:41, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

• As someone soliciting donations for your Wikipedia work, is this something you are considering using to attract donors? isaacl (talk) 21:43, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

  No. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:51, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Personally I strongly dislike the idea of articles where I have primary authorship saying "written by Levivich, et al." or anything like that. That is very much not the kind of attention I want. Also, xtools authorship is not really reliable. For example, I am listed as the #2 author of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [1] but that's only because I once ran the archive bot on that page [2], I am not actually anywhere near a top author of the actual prose on that article. Levivich (talk) 17:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

If you have a divisive article and then add a note that User X was its most prolific contributor, readers will immediately assume User X holds those divisive views. And all the better if User X is an IP and offended readers can immediately find their location. (Which is already possible, of course, but why place it front and center?)

Speaking of which, how would this even work with dynamic IP addresses? 2603:8001:4542:28FB:25EE:12B6:DCFA:E43E (talk) 18:43, 3 April 2024 (UTC) (Send talk messages here)

I agree with the concerns voiced by Levivich and others. And even if the authorship statistics were 100% accurate I still don't like the idea of omitting certain users; as sappy as it sounds I think every contribution matters. Potentially, we could do something like Based on the contributions of 328 users but even then I think a more appropriate place for this kind of thing would be the footer alongside the last edited date. ― novov (t c) 08:21, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

• I can totally see the issues with this: we'll never have a 100% reliable measure of authorship, you can't include everyone, and we'll probably see a slight uptick in WP:OWNERSHIP and authorship gaming. But overall, I think it would be a nice way to acknowledge our volunteer editors and to communicate to readers "look, this was written by real people – you can join us". And twenty years into the project, with declining editor numbers, increasing restrictions and expectations of those editors that persevere, and donations to "Wikipedia" siphoned off by an organisation that has increasingly little to do with it, I think we really do need to start prioritising looking after our volunteer base over other concerns. Relying on the ideal of the selfless, perfectly-self motivated contributor, happy to work in complete anonymity, was fine in the early days of the project when the internet was the playground of affluent nerds with utopian ideals; those days are long gone. – Joe (talk) 08:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I can see how algorithmically a shortened authorship list would be generated automatically, fine-tuned for a relatively accurate representation. And while anything like that could be gamed by users, that's why we have lots of human eyes to review abuse. I can also see how such a list would be useful to researchers and those making citations. However, were such an authorship list to be implemented, I'd suggest it be hidden out of the way a bit, at least certainly from the front page of the article, and perhaps even completely hidden from UI except as metadata.

I'll give some contrasting examples: Scholarpedia places its curator-authors (respected subject-matter experts) prominently at the top of its articles: non-random example is BCM Theory (SP). By contrast, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has its authors' names and affiliation mentioned simply at the bottom, under "Author information" following the bibliography; while Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has its author even more nondescript, being in a footer at the bottom under a copyright notice, and not implied to be an actual "author" until you click on the "Author and citation info" link on the sidebar. (Again, respected subject-matter experts; random ex.: Gender in Chinese Philosophy (IEP), Plato on utopia (SEP).) Wolfram MathWorld also has authorship given relatively subtly at the bottom of the page -- if it's contributed by someone other than the editor, the contribution note precedes the bibliography; otherwise authorship is indicated only in citation information (ex. Chen-Gackstatter Surfaces (MW)).

Given all this, I don't know what example editors here would want to find themselves compared to, especially since an algorithm listing authors would not distinguish one editor writing 95% of an article immediately preceding GA, from one editor writing 55% of the prose in a B-class, for which others had to find new citations (unless we'd want it to do so, but this would epitomize wp:ownership). SamuelRiv (talk) 15:37, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s really hard to measure the significance of contributions to an article. It’s not just a count of who added the most words, or even of who added the most words that survive into the current version. How should we weigh a user who adds some high word count nonsense to an article, against a user who painstakingly sifts through the garbage, deletes most of it, and copyedits down any remaining kernel of valid content? Or the user who contributes great source analysis to a talk page discussion on a matter which results in a single word changing? Perhaps the article on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is finished not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 18:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

This is an excellent point. We don't have any accurate automated way to assess contribution levels, and xtools authorship isn't it (neither is bytes added or edit count). Levivich (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Just because an algorithm isn't currently implemented, does not mean an algorithm doesn't exist. As a rough starting point: authorship+curation can be measured by taking the diffs made by an editor to bring text in line with the current stable state, weighted by time. (For the simplest measure, you can just use edit longevity with hysteresis.) Now, absent some new API properties, this is an expensive calculation to maintain for every article, but it's perfectly technically doable. (Another, more sophisticated method is analogous to a co-authorship network.) Of course this has been done before: Arazy et al 2010; Lanio & Tasso 2011 (citing Biuk-Aghai 2006). SamuelRiv (talk) 19:28, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

No algorithm will be perfect though, and the exact value of things other than clear-cut addition/removal is to some extent subjective. ― novov (t c) 01:57, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

• Fundamentally, I think this is a nice idea and seems like it would be easy to implement since we already track editor contribution metrics, so it would just be a matter of making this visible on the page itself somewhere, maybe in the footer (though, yes, XTools is imperfect and an alternate system would probably be better). That said, I would hope there might be some opt-out system for those of us who don't want any sort of public credit, which includes me. (I never let anyone IRL know what WP articles I've worked on because the layperson assumes that the current status of any given WP article I "created" represents my writing. And, in many cases, I want nothing to do with how an article I "created" has evolved.) Chetsford (talk) 02:07, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
• Much as with the hall of fame suggestion (people really seem to be concerned with credit and recognition, lately), this could go so very badly. Any algorithm that we set up is going to be full of holes. It is simply impossible to represent, with any sort of non-LLM algorithm, the extent to which an edit impacts an article's development and structure for a multitude of reasons. The first reason is the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia, and edits are happening on a constant, minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis. An article could look one way today and then look totally different the following day, if it gets a massive rewrite. How would one recognize contributions in that scenario? If Editor X wrote the previous version of the article before its replacement, do they lose attribution now that it's been rewritten? Or do they receive attribution for something that no longer resembles their work?

The second reason, for Wikipedia articles, especially larger ones, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One can do a massive amount of copy-editing in a large edit, mainly to make stylistic or grammatical corrections, and as a result it would have very little impact on the article's growth but they would be considered an outsized contributor. On the other hand, the addition of a few vital facts or details could contribute heavily to the article's development, ensuring that it's meeting WP:GNG or perhaps even putting it on the road to becoming a WP:GA.

The third reason is that someone will always disagree with the algorithm that determines who is an author. Attitudes on Wikipedia among editors regarding WP:OWNERSHIP are already very fierce. This would exacerbate it to a fever pitch. Or it would simply not be taken seriously, if enough people take umbrage with it. This metric would be divisive at worst, and superfluous at best. If one wanted to track the metrics of the article, the "Statistics" are available for this very reason. They do not attempt to ask the question "who wrote this article?" They simply provide the data. In fact, it's a good rule of thumb - Anytime you ask any sort of question regarding creative or scholarly human impact, the question should always be answered by a human and not by a machine. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

• I've got a slightly different idea that I think gets around Ownership issues and the algorithm not being able to make a perfect summary of "main editors". What if it just counted the contributors, that wouldn't be nearly as expensive a calculation and the text could read:

This article was created by 3,428 volunteer editors. (and you could be one of them).

The number of bot editors would need to subtracted of course. It would serve the purpose of directing anyone who wanted to know all the editors to the right page, and it would both more accurate and more precise than saying "This article was written by a monolithic 'Wikipedia'" And just for fun, there could be a text variant depending on whether the editors of that article includes the logged in user or not, saying:

This article was created by 3,428 volunteer editors. (including you)

I think one line like this could potentially be a lot more informative to a lay reader than the "about" pages that I don't know if anyone actually reads. -- D'n'B-t -- 18:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Like Levivich (talk) 19:25, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia Hall of Fame?

What are your thoughts? Is it going to work? Comment down below. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 17:28, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Hall of fame topic; section break 1

• I'll bite. What do I get? Like, a room with a comfy chair? The one caution I would have about this is that there are some editors whose positive contributions to the encyclopedia would unquestionably earn them a spot, but who are presently indef-banned for other reasons. BD2412 T 17:37, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  "The one caution I would have about this is that there are some editors whose positive contributions to the encyclopedia would unquestionably earn them a spot, but who are presently indef-banned for other reasons." That's a good point. Though, IMO, I don't think HOF should be behavior-exclusionary and should be open to anyone who has made an enduring impact on WP, regardless of how they made the impact. For instance, I say induct Jordan French (maybe not in the inaugural cohort, but eventually). Chetsford (talk) 18:47, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with Chetsford on this. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 04:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  French certainly made an impact but then so did many LTA vandals. If this idea is adopted, it seems appropriate to limit membership to those who have shown altruism rather than encouraging those who make Wikipedia worse for personal gain. Certes (talk) 08:24, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  Never say never. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 13:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's a good point, Certes. I think this was intended more as an exaggeration for emphasis that we not be rules-bound for a HOF, but probably not a good example to underscore that! Anyway, I agree with your suggestion. Chetsford (talk) 15:26, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

• We already have a lot of perks for experienced editors (Special holidays, Wikimedian of the Year, Editor of the Week, Service awards, ...), and I honestly don't think we need yet another way to separate "elite" Wikipedians from the rest of us. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 18:02, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
• Similar to Internet Hall of Fame, to be serious, there would need to be a reliable advisory board. They can help surface little known but important people from the early founder days. It could be a popular vote nomination process, like the Nobel, but picking the winners would need a small august body, known for deep institutional knowledge and experience. After a few rounds/years of winners, those winners then become members of the advisory board. Overall this is probably something that should be organized by WMF. Or you can just do it, but it will be another "This one is special. This one is also special" award. -- GreenC 18:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

  @GreenC, i like the discussion here of this idea, but how about an opposite approach? such as, anyone who wants to be in the hall of fame, can be?? and maybe split it up by topic, so that it would have some actual useful format to make it readable to others? Sm8900 (talk) 20:10, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

• I like it. While we may have a superfluidity of awards, these cost essentially nothing to produce so I'm not sure I ever understand the resistance. All recognition systems are voluntary and those who don't approve can opt-out. Moreover, a HoF -- if managed through some approximation of the way GreenC describes -- would be different from existing accolades which are either interpersonal recognition (editor to editor) or metric-based recognition (e.g. Four Award, etc.). Chetsford (talk) 18:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Hall of fame topic; section break 2

• Of course they "cost nothing to produce", that's not the problem, the problem is that they give one more excuse to divide Wikipedians between "the ones who have power" (i.e. the unblockables) and the plebs like us. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 13:36, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• It might be a good idea. 3.14 (talk) 19:07, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
• The key questions for any initiative is what is the objective, and how helpful is the initiative in achieving this objective? For recognition programs, it's important to also consider how the selection process will work, and whether or not it will create more difficulties than benefits gained. Recognition programs are tricky because the flip side of selecting some is that many others are not selected, and that can result in conflict. isaacl (talk) 02:36, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  That's how recognition programs work, but I don't think they'll necessarily cause any conflict. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 04:09, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  "it's important to also consider how the selection process will work" After the inaugural cohort is selected, maybe it should become self-perpetuating with all prior inductees selecting each subsequent cohort. (Though you'd still need some system to choose the inaugural cohort.) This would mitigate politicization and degradation as inducted members would have a vested interest in maintaining its reputational coherence. Chetsford (talk) 05:37, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

  That would be difficult if they are dead or so long retired from WP they don't give a toss about the place anymore/are out of touch about who is still active and "deserves" a shout. - SchroCat (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  "would be difficult if they are dead" I imagine it would. Chetsford (talk) 08:48, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  I would object to exclusion of the deceased. There are some amazing editors who left us too soon, but with great work done first. BD2412 T 02:37, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  We don't mean a blanket exclusion, just that we will ensure that batches of cohorts keep on coming; this line of discussion was about a proposal to have each cohort select the next. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:59, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think we'll select a cohort that are all dead or inactive, for the reasons you've mentioned. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:34, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  I think it best if you don't have any intake at all: voting for one's friends make this an inbred and insular process. As I've said before (as has Chaotic Enby), this is a bad idea - divisive and with the potential for conflict when the "wrong" people are elected and the "right" people over looked. - SchroCat (talk) 12:02, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• The English Wikipedia Hall of Fame idea sounds peachy keen, as Babe Ruth would say before tying his hands behind his back and hitting a home run with his neck (Ruth is, all kidding aside, the most underrated ballplayer in baseball history). The initial "class" obviously would include J and L, the pioneering heroes of our story, and I can think of several others who would be obvious. That first class probably shouldn't be large, maybe 7 or 8 inductees. Then the rules get tricky, but doable. In a perfect world we'd lock J and L in a room until they get to a place where they can come up with a plan of how to handle this that everyone says "Of course that's how it should be done". But, bottom line, I think an EWHoF is a good idea all around (without WMF involvement). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:22, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
• A second rate popularity contest with ill-defined criteria? What could possibly go wrong. Terrible and divisive idea. You think someone's great - give 'em a barnstar, or, even better, leave them a thank you note, but to 'promote' people who will undoubtedly be divisive to others? That way grief and conflict lies. And this ignores the fact that "hall of fame" is not a worldwide concept that people everywhere readily grasp or buy into.- SchroCat (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  Schro, the procedure is akin to the Wikimedian of the Year, except that it exclusively concentrates on the English Wikipedia. There's a purpose for these initiatives, and I firmly disagree that this is a "bad idea." Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 13:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  You are, of course, entitled to disagree. For what it's worth, I think the Wikimedian of the Year is a fairly crap award too, being a process with no criteria and something else that divides, rather than unites. Most people are happy to do the work for the sake of the work, not to seek vacuously external praise or validation just because they've caught the eye of someone powerful or happen to be pushing a zeitgeist line of thinking. - SchroCat (talk) 14:44, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  As you haven't yet stated the purpose behind your suggestion, nor proposed a process, there isn't enough info to understand the potential benefits and costs. There's an understandable view that costs quickly outweigh benefits as any process involves more people, adding up to more total effort expended. isaacl (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Hall of fame topic; section break 3

• More awards? At this rate, all our time will be spent giving ourselves pats on the back and giving each other shiny things. While I don't agree with the more extreme anti-award views (take wiktionary for example; wikt:Template:User barnstar has been nominated for deletion twice, and been described as cheesy and gaudy. I don't think we need all that Wikipedia's tinsel to encourage people.), we shouldn't go overboard with this. Cremastra (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  (the correct link is wikt:Template:User Barnstar, with a capital B. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. Cremastra (talk) 19:39, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  It's okay if you choose not to participate in the process. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 04:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  How would one choose not to participate? I would not participate, but saying so would make it look as if I thought I stood a chance of being elected, which I do not. I imagine that most of those who would choose not to participate think the same way. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 16:07, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't much like anything on Wikipedia which encourages elitism, political campaigns, cliques, inequality, etc. I can imagine that many wiki-politicians would waste a lot of time campaigning to be elected to a HOF and that the results would be divisive. "How come so-and-so got elected, and I didn't?" Smallchief (talk) 21:44, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• I think this sort of thing is better left to other sites. Maybe the people who hang out at Wikipediocracy would create a Wikipedia Hall of Fame? Or would it become a Wikipedia Hall of Infamy? Phil Bridger (talk) 08:09, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

  I especially don't like the idea of putting infamous characters in a HOF. Follow baseball standards. Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson are not in the baseball HOF because of scandal, despite being qualified. No bad actors, no matter how famous, in a HOF. Smallchief (talk) 09:04, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

  Good point, but Wikipedia is not baseball. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 06:57, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed. Baseball is a sport where defeating others on the field is encouraged. Wikipedia is a cooperative endeavour where it's frowned on. Certes (talk) 09:48, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, this program is designed for honoring purposes rather than competition. I hope that's clear to all. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 04:41, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  In that case, it seems the honor should not be of the Wikipedian itself, but of the work that they accomplished in a given area. That's why the Barnstars exist, of course. Just as WP:NPA encourages us to comment on the content and not on the creator, so too should we be aware to not place individual people on a pedestal.

  Frankly I find it disappointing that, in bringing forth the idea, the OP has not brought forth any comprehensive or detailed arguments in support of this idea and in response to the above critique. We are simply discussing a nebulous concept of recognition, which I think Wikipedia already addresses, and which if people really needed to see more of, they could use other websites or mediums for this purpose. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  And we do celebrate content, quite satisfactorily, with DYK and TFA. So there is no need for a "hall of fame", it's just more self-congratulation. Cremastra (talk) 20:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  how about a lounge for experienced wikipedians? would that be immediately misused, or could it serve a helpful purpose? Sm8900 (talk) 13:41, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  That would just be a way to create an in-group, and I don't really see how it would help the project. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 13:47, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with Enby. What purpose would that serve? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:27, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Who decides who is experienced enough? On what basis? I hope it's not edit count, which can vary enormously between people having the same overall effect. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Like an actual lounge, or some cliquey forum that would do nothing to benefit the project? All these ideas go against our core principles. Cremastra (talk) 19:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  ok, fair enough; all of these points are quite valid. so then, how about a lounge which would be labeled as being open to all experienced wikipedians, plus anyone who wishes to shmooze with them? that way, we are actually opening it to everyone, but giving it an underlying theme for those who are interested.

  to use an analogy, it would be like opening a lounge for woodworkers, or one for musicians, or one for ferryboat drivers, and also admitting anyone interested in that specialty. it would be basically open to anyone, and yet the theme would be clearly stated in terms of the specialty which is its actual focus. Sm8900 (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  can an editor nominate themselves for this "Hall of Fame"? if so, then it might preserve the grassroots nature of wikipedia, and still have a positive effect. kind of like hanging out at the local skateboard park, and popping wheelies to show off one's skills to other fellow aficionados. Sm8900 (talk) 20:08, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Don't we already have every single needed discussion "board" known to Man? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:24, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  What would actually be the point of having a lounge with this theme? Like, how would it help the project like, say, the Wikipedia:Teahouse, the Wikipedia:Help desk or the Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard does? Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 21:21, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  The idea of an "experienced user lounge" very much echoes of Wikipedia:Esperanza which, although it did result in useful derivative projects, very much had a problem back in its day with regards to ingroup/outgroup behavior. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:58, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

• One downside of this proposal is that it would involve a fair amount of the electorate's time if they are not to just elect people who they already know. That time would be better spent improving the encyclopedia, which is what we are here for (or at least are supposed to be here for). Phil Bridger (talk) 15:48, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  another idea; how about simply call it something whimsical or jocular, such as "Wikipedia League of Super-friends"? or "league of adventurers"? that way, it still retains the air of a unique league, yet it would be clear it is not anything awarding actual higher privileges here. Sm8900 (talk) 20:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  I still don't see what the actual point is. Even with a funny name, it will still be a pretty divisive thing. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 21:22, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Divisive programs, like the WP:Editor of the week, already exist. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 22:41, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  And that's not an excuse to have more of them. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 22:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  OK, if you say so. Let us see if we can reach a consensus. Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 23:10, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  Editor of the Week was set up with a specific goal in mind: to demonstrate appreciation of specific positive behaviours and collaborative spirit by its recipients, with an explicit disclaimer that it's not intended to be a judgement about their overall characteristics. It was deliberately set up as a no-big-deal award with a very lightweight process, to avoid making it something that people would argue a lot about. The original pool of candidates was lesser-known editors, in order to give them a bit more encouragement to continue contributing, but has since been broadened to anyone. It's basically a slightly fancier barnstar, with some people slapping recipients on the back with a "good job". As a result of this carefully planned design, it hasn't fostered division. isaacl (talk) 02:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Many such award schemes have been previously proposed. Only two, to my knowledge, still function: WP:QAI, because of the dedication of one editor, and WP:EOTW. If you want another one, set it up and run it yourself—if people like it, you can then apply to formalize it as a Wikipedia-wide process. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Timestamp on video references

If a web reference leads to a more than hour-long video, but the citation in question involves a 10-second clip, I believe that could be made more accessible to a reader. I see this being something like an optional field on the web citation, but I’m really not very sure. Aaronlearns (talk) 01:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

{{cite video}}? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:59, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

{{Cite AV media}} already has a time parameter. For an example of it being used, see the references section of Half-Life (series). ― novov (t c) 03:02, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for these, sorry to bother.Aaronlearns (talk) 05:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

For YouTube videos you could add {{rp}}, as seen at Draft:New York City Jazz Mach61 13:21, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Aaronlearns, the |at= parameter works in a lot of the citation templates. It accepts free-form text describing where to find the source. You could easily write something like "starting at 23 minutes, 11 seconds" WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Search bars within the article

This is just an idea I had just now that there should be little search bars in different writings such as articles, category pages, lists etc. I feel it would be more effective and easier to use Wikipedia and so you can search for exactly what you want instead of having to scroll for ages, (depending on length). Thoughts?

｡ 🎀 𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒾𝒹𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝟣𝟩 🎀 ｡ (talk) 01:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

It's already (kind of) a thing with Ctrl+F! Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 01:10, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

oh okay ｡ 🎀 𝒫𝓊𝓇𝓅𝓁𝑒𝓁𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒾𝒹𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝟣𝟩 🎀 ｡ (talk) 01:52, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I think we should just leave that to the browser. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

This discussion is a bit old but I will note that the wikipedia app has a search function, if that's any help. ¿VØ!D? ✨ 19:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

As others have said, this can be done with the browser's inbuilt search function. However, very few users seem to know about that feature, which is a problem especially for longer web pages (as many of our articles are). A second, Wikipedia-specific problem is that (by default) it does not work on mobile web because the sections after the lead are collapsed. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Recreating an article that was deleted in 2023

Hi. Am I allowed to try and recreate an article that was (ironically) created by me, but was deleted later, because it didn't have good sources. I'm asking this because I'm not sure if the article will be just automatically deleted. FYI, I have gathered much better references this time, so I was wondering if I could recreate the article with new sources. --Pek (talk) 16:45, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

See WP:REFUND. More specifically it would likely be best to approach the admin that deleted the article and ask that it be recreated in user or draft space, so that you can then add the references. Once you do that, you should then ask that admin if the article is good enough to move back into mainspace. Masem (t) 16:50, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

As Masem said, with the addition that if the article was deleted via the WP:PROD procedure it can be restored to article space, but you may find that it gets nominated for deletion at WP:AFD if you don't add notability-defining sources very quickly. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:36, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

In your place, I would start a new draft, take your time writing it, and when you're done, submit it for review. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

You can recreate it the day after it's deleted if you want – As long as the content is substantially different and you've made a good faith effort to address the reason for deletion. You can do so via draftspace as suggested above, but you don't have to. Either way, the important things to be aware of are 1) there's also nothing stopping someone else immediately nominating it for deletion again and 2) repeatedly recreating something that other editors don't think should exist is the kind of thing that very quickly exhausts the community's patience. – Joe (talk) 11:16, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Small utility

https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Wikimedia_trademarks/Word_mark_creation contain instructions to correctly create svg wikipedia logo. Is there any chance to create a small utility that contain only 3 fillable fields (first is for project name, second is for slogan and third is for language code) and one button (create svg, which save svg file on desktop), similar to this?

+------------------------------------------------+
|  __________________________                    |
| |__________________________|    ___________    |
|                                |create svg|    |
|  __________________________     -----------    |
| |__________________________|                   | 
|                                                |   
|  __________________________                    |
| |__________________________|                   |
|                                                |
+------------------------------------------------+

The utility could be used for help graphists to make faster the process of logo creation. --93.47.36.228 (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really into graphics design, but shouldn't there be more to this? The 🏎 Corvette 🏍 ZR1^{(The Garage)} 16:55, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Cite more articles faster and with better quality sources

Currently we have an embarrassingly large backlog named Category:Articles lacking sources with 94500 articles in it. The WikiProject Unreferenced articles, even with its fairly active membership, can only clear 500 articles every week, which amounts to around 3.5 years to clear the backlog. I'm curious, do you guys have any ideas to accelerate this progress? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 06:41, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I looked at a couple dozen articles in Category:Articles lacking sources from March 2024 and I found that more than half of them were incorrectly tagged. Specifically, they didn't have little blue clicky numbers, but they did contain external links that verified some of the content of the article, and one or two had a list of books.

I suspect that the fastest way to reduce the number would be to send a bot through all the articles to replace {{unref}} with {{No footnotes}} if there are any URLs anywhere on the page. It wouldn't catch everything, but it might clear thousands of articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:20, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

That would just push the problem to another backlog, which is bad practice. But you give me an idea... if a lot of these articles already have external links, why not use that to create an inline citation? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Triage is not bad practice. Levivich (talk) 14:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I think you're being hard on the Wikiproject if they're clearing 500 articles a week. That's admirable. CMD (talk) 08:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

One solution is the “one step back, two steps forward” approach: Delete the existing unsourced articles, and encourage people to create NEW articles on the same topics - this time with proper sourcing. Blueboar (talk) 12:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

This is literally Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Deprecating_new_unsourced_articles, but the community has rejected this proposal. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:01, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Yup… but… consensus can change. Not saying it has changed, just that it can. Blueboar (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

How about making a proposal to every WikiProjects so that they cite all articles belonging to the Wikiproject with at least one source? We already have the Bambot cleanup listings (click "by cat" then "Cites no sources"). We just need to put it to work. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

A WikiProject is a group of people who want to work together to improve Wikipedia. They don't own articles, and they aren't responsible for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Highly unlikely that it changed since 10 days ago. Even the month between that and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles was probably too little time for consensus to have changed. Anomie⚔ 16:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Essentially the reason that the proposal from a few days ago was rejected was because it created a "grandfather clause" where older unsourced articles would be allowed to fester while ones would be stopped at the gate. I would suggest then that any drastic action on unsourced articles should start at the other end of the backlog with articles that have been unsourced for over 15 years. -- D'n'B-t -- 17:52, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Fun fact: Non-BLP articles are not technically required to name a single source unless there is some specific material that falls into one of the categories listed by WP:MINREF. If you can write an article that avoids those categories (e.g., the content is something like "The capital of France is Paris"), then you are not required to cite any sources. Only the material that fits one of those sources is required to have an WP:Inline citation.

Consequently, if you want to be able to delete non-BLP unsourced articles the way that we currently delete BLP unsourced articles, that requires a change in policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Give deletion ability to pagemovers

I believe that the ability of deletion should be extended to pagemovers because there aren't very many of them (405 to be exact) and are probably able to be trusted with the tools. The CSD backlog can be high at times, and there are not very many admins to deal with that issue. 2003 LN6 14:32, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

"Are probably able to be trusted with the tools" is not a great argument given that any admin can add new people as pagemovers, and that the qualifications needed for pagemover are not immediately CSD-related. Plus, giving only one part of the block/protect/delete triad would lead to the law of the instrument. Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 14:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

(Note: Page movers already have the deleteredirect permission, but it is exclusively for moves overwriting previous redirects, and doesn't give them deletion powers outside of the scope of page moving) Chaotıċ Enby (talk · contribs) 14:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

One would think that admins were approved by the community because they are trustworthy. Dege31 (talk) 17:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Having only delete but not undelete is pretty bad since mistakes can happen, and WMF wants undelete to only be conferred to those vetted by the community, e.g. admins. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:50, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

It has been years since I last saw a serious CSD backlog (50 pages were normal, and 200 pages were common ten years ago), so I disagree that there is a need for more people at CSD. We generally need more admins for everything, though: those who "are probably able to be trusted with the tools" should just become admins as soon as possible. —Kusma (talk) 17:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

As a pagemover I agree, I wouldn't want delete without a way to undo my mistakes, and undelete as it currently exists in the software is not something we should be handing out widely as it can expose plenty of stuff that shouldn't be semi-public. That said, there's no reason that mediawiki couldn't add the ability to view and undelete only pages that you deleted, it would just take community consensus and the WMF to apply time and resources to making it happen. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:23, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

This is nontrivial: you should not be able to undelete any revisions except those you have deleted. —Kusma (talk) 17:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Kusma: Making sure I understand you correctly - if a page that had some revision(s) deleted was then as a whole deleted and then undeleted, you're saying those revdels would be undone? Tazerdadog (talk) 02:34, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The "undelete" screen shows all deleted revisions. To implement @Ahecht's idea, I think we would need an additional "pagemover-deleted" state that a revision can be in (in addition to visible, deleted and oversighted) and allow pagemovers to see and undelete all pagemover-deleted revisions. —Kusma (talk) 06:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Forgive my ignorance (I'm not an admin) but I wonder whether there is a wider problem here. Putting pagemovers aside for a moment, suppose an admin deletes a page which already had certain revisions deleted. The admin then undeletes the page. Does the admin have to remember to repeat the revdels, or at least deselect them from a list of versions to be restored, or do those revisions stay deleted automatically by default? From an ordinary user's perspective, revision deletion looks different from page deletion. I can see that a deleted revision exists and (unless someone deliberately stops me) see which user contributed it and read the edit summary. For a deleted page that data isn't available without some digging. Certes (talk) 17:55, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't remember how it is with revdel (when I passed RfA, revdel was done by hand, by deletion and selective undeletion, and some people dealt with bad revisions that are nowadays oversighted by a combination of deletion, undeletion and page moves), but if you delete a page, somebody recreates it, then you delete it again (this scenario is more common than undeleting pages that have revdel'd revisions), "undelete" makes no difference between the two sets of page revisions. —Kusma (talk) 18:07, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Revdelled revisions stay revdelled after a page undeletion. I was pretty certain this was already the case, but I've just confirmed it at User:Cryptic/sandbox4.

What I'd be more concerned about is whether there are old deleted revisions hanging around somewhere at a title that predated the deletion log, which is the only way to find out who deleted it. There don't appear to be any, but revdeletion and oversighting play nasty tricks with what's visible in the toolforge replicas. —Cryptic 20:11, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Random serendipity. I stumbled across some of those only a few hours ago at XXXDial. But they're just random nonsense that could be made public. Anyway oppose this as having too little to do with page movers' existing rights, but I could be talked into supporting a separate deleter role with many of the same caveats as above. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:15, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. I hoped that retaining revdels was too obvious a feature to have been overlooked. Obviously(?) oversight/suppression will be kept too, as most admins won't have the opportunity to restore those revisions in a visible state. Certes (talk) 20:23, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, duh, I badly bungled my query. Yes, there are lots of these. But on further reflection, I guess it wouldn't matter; since there aren't already any pagemover-deleted deleted revisions to worry about, it could be done by adding a who-deleted-this column to archive. (Not that I think the overall proposal is a good idea either.) —Cryptic 20:26, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that pagemover is not the ideal role for this, but I think Pppery's deleter role is worth exploring. We could make a role and give it delete. Then we make an adminbot, which will email and/or undelete the page for a deleter on request if and only if they were the most recent person to delete it. This should solve issues with WMF wanting vetting for viewdeleted (the bot only lets you view and undelete stuff you delete), issues with undeleting too much (the bot does the undeletion on the deleters behalf and so can't mess it up), and accountability (the deleter can view their deletions and fix mistakes - there's actually a higher level of accountability than there is for admins, because viewing deleted pages will be logged). This role could get combined with some level of protect/unprotect and block/unblock, but that can be hashed out later. Tazerdadog (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

That is an interesting idea, though I still don't see a need for it. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

There is no need for a separate role. Anyone who wants to be able to delete pages can apply for adminship. The requirements should be the same for deleting articles as for the other parts of the admin package. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that we can make unbundles that are both useful to the people who recieve them and require a level of trust such that they can be given out at the discretion of a single admin. It would be nice if the RfA process was a good solution, but it is often intimidating or unpleasant. Examples of these unbundles include giving a recent changes patroller the ability to delete a recently created page and use the bot to view/undelete, semiprotect a page temporarily, or block a non-autoconfirmed account temporarily. Alternatively, a regular at AFD who is good at evaluating consensus could be given the delete/use the bot to undelete buttons. AfD is an area where I have noticed significant backlogs. The enforcement on this can be social or technical - giving our AfD regular the full delete permission and a bright line social rule that they don't use it outside of an AfD closure seems perfectly workable to me. Tazerdadog (talk) 16:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Many editors are trusted to behave responsibly but do not claim competence in every single activity that the sysop bit makes possible. Such people are put off applying for RfA but could usefully contribute more if given carefully designed lesser privileges matched to their expertise. Certes (talk) 18:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The ability to delete articles is not a "lesser privilege", but the most powerful part of the admin toolset, because it directly affects what the reader can see. I can't imagine trusting anyone with that power who I would not also trust with blocking and page protection. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

This bot can't possibly work. As described, it lets you undelete any page: if you weren't the most recent deleter, then you just create it and delete it. It can't even work if you try to make it only allow undelete of pages where you're the only deleter, or only undelete revisions that you deleted: because of the deleted pages from before the deletion log - there are some 70000 of them - it won't even be able to tell that a page had been previously deleted, let alone when or by who. Pages whose deletion logs have been revdelled or suppressed have the same problem. —Cryptic 18:55, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't creating, deleting, and undeleting only show the version of the page one created? Aaron Liu (talk) 19:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think so too. Any earlier revisions are of a different page that happened to have the same title. Have we missed something? Certes (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

That's not how it works. See Kusma's comments above. —Cryptic 19:24, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

1. I'll admit that on re-reading, I don't understand what "no difference between the two sets of page revisions.
2. The user will not have access to the undelete screen; the bot will restore the last version deleted. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:39, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

So if someone replaces, say, Ton with spam, a minideleter deletes it, everyone shows up to his talk page to complain that it was a legitimate page, and he tries to undelete it, he only gets the single revision with spam? And he doesn't even have any way to first check that he's not undeleting spam - or, for that matter, something that should have been oversighted instead of just deleted? That's significantly worse than having no method of undeletion at all. —Cryptic 20:01, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

No. My assumption is that different creations of pages have different histories associated with them, and by "version"' I didn't mean revision, but everything associated with what was deleted by the minideleter (including re-suppressing relevant revisions) Aaron Liu (talk) 20:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Your assumption is incorrect. Once a page is deleted, it's only accessible by namespace+title, and its invididual revisions only by namespace+title+timestamp. This is why history merging works. —Cryptic 22:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The proper amount of history for the bot to restore is everything after the most-recent non-self deletion (i.e. what the minideleter could see when they deleted it). That means that the minideleter should still have the most recent versions of Ton to back up to almost always. The minideleter should be able to have the content eligible for restoration emailed to them, including the history and any revision they could see when they deleted the page, so I'm not worried about that excessively, although it might get annoying if it's complex. The problem is I'm doing basically what @Cryptic: said above - only undeleting revisions the minideleter deleted. Can't an adminbot see revdelled deletion logs? Can a database query get us the 70k pages with deletions that predate the logs? We could just exclude those pages and have the bot tell the minideleter to go get a "real" admin to sort those pages out, or have the bot refuse to restore a revision that predates the deletion log. Are deletion logs actually suppressed, and if they are, doesn't this create a minefield where a normal admin can restore oversighted pages without seeing they can do it? Tazerdadog (talk) 20:49, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, deletion logs get suppressed all the time, and revdeleted somewhat more rarely - whenever someone puts something suppressible in the page title itself, or in their username. Hiding either part by either method hides the entire log from queries, which means that any way to generate a list of deleted pages without corresponding logs is going to find both the ancient ones and ones where any part of the deletion log had to be removed. There are 1265 such titles in Draft:, for instance, and that's only counting the ones that have at least one deleted revision that hasn't also been revdelled or suppressed. A human will know not to undelete a page titled Draft:Tazerdadog's real name is Aaron Certes and he works for Cryptic Inc., and we can trust them not to because they've gone through seven days of community-wide vetting at RFA. If content like that is only in the page text, the revision will get revdelled/oversighted instead of the log and will remain so even if that revision is undeleted. Admins can see revdelled deletion logs, but have to jump through unintuitive hoops to do so. Forbidding restoration of old-enough revisions isn't a solution either; Wikipedia was already pretty big by the end of 2004, and lots of accidentally-deleteable pages have revisions that old.

This is a complex problem with many, many edge and corner cases, and the places it's most likely to go wrong are the same ones where we can least afford to let it. If we're dead set on doing this - and I don't think it's a good idea even without the technical considerations, at least a quarter of my deletions have to be followed up with a block, salting, blacklisting, or some combination - there are robust ways to do it. An adminbot cludge like this isn't one of them. —Cryptic 22:37, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. It sounds as if undeletion would be difficult to do correctly and hence unsafe. There's also the issue of undeleting revisions from before a page move, which sounds equally difficult if not particularly unsafe. Certes (talk) 11:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Yep, thank you for the patient explanation Cryptic. I would be interested in hearing what you had in mind as a more robust way to do it - an adminbot was definitely a clunky way to do it, but I didn't expect the level of corner cases. Tazerdadog (talk) 18:45, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I mentioned one above - add a column to the archive table with the actor_id of the person who deleted each revision. Or add a list of affected revisions to the log_params column of the delete log; that still might break, but doesn't need a schema change, and has the side benefit of making an operation like "undelete all revisions that were deleted by this deletion" possible and be a step toward making history merges less horrific to undo. The common theme is that they fail secure instead of open: if all or some part of the necessary data isn't there, then undeletion is denied. What I don't see is a way to implement this without any change to MediaWiki at all. —Cryptic 19:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

After my RfA passed, I quickly became curious about the contents of all the stupid goofy-ass deleted pages over the years, and set about to looking at some of them. Mostly, what I found is that the user interface for undeleting pages is horrifically bad. My hunch for why this is that, while Wikipedia's famous for being difficult to use, most of its features are exposed to hundreds of thousands of people -- whereas the admin-only features are only usable by a few thousand (many of whom have been using them for 15 years and have no desire to see them changed anyway). This means that not a lot of development time is devoted to fixing stuff like undelete, or making it easier to use, and it's not really that much of a priority (seeing as you only get to use the tools if you pass RfA, i.e. are extremely good at following complicated processes to begin with). Deleted revisions are also a total zoo: all sorts of crazy-go-nuts dreck is in there. jp×g🗯️ 04:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

No. There is no backlog worthy of the name at CSD. Even though my time zone doesn't match most admins it usually takes no more than a couple of hours for me to get a response. Don't be in such a hurry, and if you want to be able to delete pages then apply for adminship rather than for the pagemover right. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)