Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 147

Vote for your favourite Wikimedia sound logo

Please help translate to your language

We are really sorry for posting in English

Voting in the Wikimedia sound logo contest has started. From December 6 to 19, 2022, please play a part and help chose the sound that will identify Wikimedia content on audio devices. Learn more on Diff.

The sound logo team is grateful to everyone who participated in this global contest. We received 3,235 submissions from 2,094 participants in 135 countries. We are incredibly grateful to the team of volunteer screeners and the selection committee who, among others, helped bring us to where we are today. It is now up to Wikimedia to choose the Sound Of All Human Knowledge.

Best wishes, Arupako-WMF (talk) 11:22, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Rollback confirmation

Is there any way to add popup rollback confirmation in mobile so I cannot rollback something important accidently. Koqkpa talk 15:11, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

@Koqkpa: Yes. Go to Settings --> Appearance --> Advanced options, then check the box for "Show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link". -- Auntof6 (talk) 16:26, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much Auntof6. Koqkpa talk 16:31, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to move Mecklenburgisch dialect to Nordostniederdeutsch

I moved the German article de:Mecklenburgisches Niederdeutsch to de:Nordostniederdeutsch. This resulted from a consensus on its talk page. There were major doubts on the factual justification of the concept. This was the reason I stated for moving en:Mecklenburgisch dialect to en:Nordostniederdeutsch. Sarcelles (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

hjust did that, seems to be the correct name Eptalon (talk) 08:55, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The change has made the title completely incomprehensible instead of being just difficult. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:21, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The problem is, that Mecklenburgisch dialect is a doubtful concept. Nordostniederdeutsch is a concept without an English translation known to me.

https://books.google.de/books?id=r6GNDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=mecklenburgish-pomeranian&source=bl&ots=q_EvqIZTkA&sig=ACfU3U0z5GQmSgfd-KdRj3eq6mjaqiHxpQ&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2z6_h2YD8AhXjnf0HHV5vBI44FBDoAXoECDIQAw#v=onepage&q=mecklenburgish-pomeranian&f=false suggests it is sensible to group the dialects thus. Sarcelles (talk) 13:03, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but we're Simple, and your change is not. The point you make is not so relevant as the need for our readers to understand the articles. That's why we were set up, because many of them cannot understand even their own language in the prose of En wiki. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:08, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Feminism and Folklore 2023

Please help translate to your language

Dear Wiki Community,

Christmas Greetings and a Happy New Year 2023,

You are humbly invited to organize the Feminism and Folklore 2023 writing competition from February 1, 2023, to March 31, 2023 on your local Wikipedia. This year, Feminism and Folklore will focus on feminism, women's issues, and gender-focused topics for the project, with a Wiki Loves Folklore gender gap focus and a folk culture theme on Wikipedia.

You can help Wikipedia's coverage of folklore from your area by writing or improving articles about things like folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, women and queer folklore figures, folk game athletes, women in mythology, women warriors in folklore, witches and witch hunting, fairy tales, and more. Users can help create new articles, expand or translate from a list of suggested articles.

Organisers are requested to work on the following action items to sign up their communities for the project:

1. Create a page for the contest on the local wiki.
2. Set up a fountain tool or dashboard.
3. Create the local list and mention the timeline and local and international prizes.
4. Request local admins for site notice.
5. Link the local page and the fountain/dashboard link on the meta project page.

This year we would be supporting the community's financial aid for Internet and childcare support. This would be provided for the local team including their jury and coordinator team. This support is opt-in and non mandatory. Kindly fill in this Google form and mark a mail to support@wikilovesfolklore.org with the subject line starting as [Stipend] Name or Username/Language. The last date to sign up for internet and childcare aid from our team is 20th of January 2023, We encourage the language coordinators to sign up their community on this link by the 25th of January 2023.

Learn more about the contest and prizes on our project page. Feel free to contact us on our meta talk page or by email us if you need any assistance.

We look forward to your immense coordination.

Thank you and Best wishes,

Feminism and Folklore 2023 International Team

Stay connected  

--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:24, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Suggestion

We should move the GA/VGA discussions to its own page, so that we don't get the text mixed with general stuff. We do need to discuss the issues with GA/VGA fully. It has been needed for a long time. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:51, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Requirements_for_good_articles#Revising_the_requirements... Eptalon (talk) 12:16, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Programming blocks

For some time now, programming blocks and similar articles have been the home of several issues. Most of it revolves around a constant flood of edits adding information that is hard to verify and is not referenced. At the best of time, the articles are often not up to date and accurate. It is rare for someone to look to Wikipedia to know if Discovery Kids Africa carried Peppa Pig at some time. It is rarer for us to be able to ensure that the information we provide on the subject is accurate. For the most part, much of this information is not encyclopedia. With few exceptions, we should be covering the information we can prove. When it was created, what it provided (generally), issues, history, etc. Example of exceptions could include HBO's Sopranos. The Wire. Sex and the City and Game of Thrones as they were each historically important to the channels history.

How much call is there for the minutia of the programming outside of the shows that pretty much defined the channel and were historically important to its development? We do not have the manpower to keep the ever expanding lists of programs accurate but we certainly do have the "troll power" to keep adding fake info which we often fail to catch. In addition to often being highly inaccurate, most of the time they are very poorly written and need large amounts of cleanup and yet provide little useful information in return.

I propose we stop the use of these lists where they are not historically useful and are not verifiable. Too much time and effort is being spent trying to prevent vandalism and correct issues to these articles. This effort could be applied to other areas. Pure Evil (talk) 21:02, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Automatic updating of the translation of the week?

It would be easy to update the translation of the week using a bot. Likely that would be easy to write, in essence it is one check, and one template to replace. Anyone interested? Eptalon (talk) 14:57, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

It would seem easy to set up a task to mirror the meta template TOWThisweek to a local template used to list the current version. Just strip out the language tag (normally en:), formatting and doc and then set up the template locally as Whatever ([[:en:whatever| Whatever (en)) Pure Evil (talk) 17:10, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

If have spent about two hours, and it's about 50 lines of Java code, with a little pattern-matching, and a bit of substring, but nothing fancy. Part that replaces the page isn't there yet. Eptalon (talk) 20:09, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Extensive WTF-ery

Looking at New Changes, I fell down a rabbit hole of very questionable edits over the last couple weeks. It all started with me tracing Yah (Stephen King). It says it is the character Pennywise from It in a 2022 series and that it is based on the series Woh. Main problem? nothing sees to exist that says Yah is real. Woh is, It is, Pennywise is. but Yah gets nothing. Pulling the thread, a host of IPs have been making edits to many of the It related articles. The deep dig to root out the extent of fake info here needs someone with the free time to dedicate to examining it all. I'm more a "big list of small edits" type of editor. I'm best with 1000 articles that each need a minor fix rather than the extensive examination of what may be LTA. If anyone, far better suited to the task, is up for the deep dive, have fun with the mystery. Pure Evil (talk) 19:04, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

We have a large number of IPs making mass questionable changes to film and television show articles. It's quite concerning. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 00:16, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

please help me

how do i change back to the old look this new one sucks i cant make my way around this site... please dont tell e that en.wiki is gonna switch to it too... 2604:2D80:AB02:A100:9424:8986:5CF4:DBA0 (talk) 07:04, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I think you can only change the appearance if you're using a registered account. As long as you edit using an IP address, you get the default skin. -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:10, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

EN Wikipedia hasn't switched yet the last time I checked when I was logged out. --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 03:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Russian films

The speed and similarity of these stubs suggests the use of a bot. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:06, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it is scraping IMDB. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:14, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

There ended up being further discussion about this on AN: #Russian film bot. --Ferien (talk) 17:26, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Did you know?

According to the main page, 100 million people (1/3 of the people in the US) were lynched because of false info. I am pretty certain that should read "one third of the people who were lynched were lynched because of false evidence" or "1/3 of the lynchings that took place were because of ..."

in the United States about a third of the people were lynched because of false accusations

— main page

that is really worded badly. Pure Evil (talk) 22:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the grammar found on DYK has often been substandard. It is a continuing problem. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:27, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Cleaned up the wording. The article was fine and well referenced but the blurb needed tweaking a bit to denote it was only about 1/3 of the 100 cases that were investigated and not 1/3 of the people in total. Pure Evil (talk) 20:33, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, "300 million" is sometimes a shorthand for the whole population of the States. What's the context? Are they saying "throughout human history on Earth, a total of 100 million have been lynched on false evidence; by the way, that's the same as about 1/3 of the Americans around today"? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:47, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

The complete blurb was: "that a study done in the 1940s found that in the United States about a third of the people were lynched because of false accusations?" The article and reference were about the fact that of 100 lynching cases that took place in the United States after 1929, a third of them were due to false accusations. There is a noticeable difference between "in the United States about a third of the people" and 1/3 of the 100 cases. Basically 100 million vs 33. (99,999,967-ish people still alive) Pure Evil (talk) 03:19, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. This is a very good example of what happens with inexact language. We should remember it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed VGA Demotion: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

The discussion is here. The article had many major corrections after promotion, but still has multiple significant problems. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 00:09, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I demoted it to regular article; much work has been done, but there's more to do. At some point, we need to say that it no longer meets the criteria and is demoted. When the issues are fixed, anyone can nominate for it to be re-assessed. Eptalon (talk) 10:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Suppressredirect rights

I've been thinking about this for a while: Add the suppressredirect right to the patrollers user group. The Simple English Wikipedia does not have a dedicated user group for the suppressredirect right. When a page is created with a bad title that cannot be reasonably turned to a redirect (for example: Francis Poulenc. A French Composer), it's necessary to move the page without a redirect (in this example, that would be Francis Poulenc). Right now, only administrators have this right. I think it would be beneficial to patrollers to have this right when they are patrolling pages. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 11:59, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Although I'm not a patroller, I can say that the flag must be given to Patrollers. We have limited patrol users in this community. Also admins are busy in their work. So for a faster progress, we should allow the Patrollers to have the right. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 15:15, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Considering the number of patrollers we have and the process to obtain this right, I support this proposal. BRP ^ever 00:24, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I believe this was discussed before at Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 130#Requesting page mover rights and Wikipedia:Simple talk/Archive 130#Proposal:_Unbundle page mover from the administrator toolset. Looking at Special:Log/move, I can't seem to find any recent cases where this has needed to be done. I would oppose this idea per what Yottie and Djsasso said on the proposal to unbundle page mover. --Ferien (talk) 14:11, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Rollback Feature Differences

Hello Wikipedia Community, I currently use Twinkle to help welcome and warn users, in addition to rollbacking unconstructive edits. In a few weeks, I am planning to apply for the Rollback permission. I was wondering what the difference between Twinkle rollback and Wikipedia provided rollback is? 🄰🄽🄸🄼🄰🄻 🄴🄳🄸🅃🄾🅁 - 𝙇𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

AnimalEditor, Twinkle rollback and Wikipedia rollback will both rollback all edits a single user has made to a page. However, using rollback is much quicker and convenient, particularly if you are reverting many bad edits a user has made. --Ferien (talk) 17:49, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Also take a note that in Twinkle rollback can allow you to undo changes for one particular edit, and you can add the reason why you undo the change. In normal rollback right, you can undo one or more recent changes made by any user/anonymous at once. Just to be ensure that normal rollback will not have any reason. It is used for reverting "vandalism only" changes. So you can't add any reason. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 03:57, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

The Rollback permission uses the interface to rapidly revert changes a user has made to a page. The Twinkle rollback button "fakes" rollback by selecting the last diff and restoring. It's not a real rollback, but functionally there is no difference from the average user perspective. Operator873 ^connect 04:05, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Requesting move of The Divine Comedy to Divine Comedy

per enwiki and other language translations. Gingermead (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Redirect changed. "The Divine Comedy" redirect is requested to delete under G6/Move Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 03:43, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

It's a valid redirect. No reason to delete it. Pure Evil (talk) 04:29, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@DRC-B5: When a page is to be moved to a name that currently exists, please do not do the move by editing the two pages the way you did. Doing it that way loses the history of the page being moved. In this case, it lost history going all the way back to 2005. I have undone your changes and done the move the correct way, as an actual move. If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask.

@Gingermead: If you have similar moves to request in the future, where a page exists at the target name, it's better to request them at WP:AN, because the admins can take care of the redirect at the same time as doing the move. Thanks. -- Auntof6 (talk) 04:47, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6 I forgot the process? How does it work? In future such mistakes will not be repeated. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 05:35, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@DRC-B5: The process requires an admin. They have to delete the target page, either before the move or as part of the move. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6, is it related to supressredirect feature? Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 06:49, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@DRC-B5: I don't think so. That process is to allow moving without leaving a redirect in place of the original page name. The process I'm talking about would overwrite an existing page at the target name. -- Auntof6 (talk) 06:52, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Uhhh.. now that makes sense. Thanks Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 06:53, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6: Thanks for the information. I raised the issue here as Wikipedia:Requested moves redirects here. If WP:AN is the preferred noticeboard to raise requests, I suggest the redirect goes there instead. Gingermead (talk) 10:43, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

@Gingermead: It only needs an admin if a page already exists at the desired new name. If not, anyone who is autoconfirmed can move a page. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:53, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for explaining and sorry to be a pain! Gingermead (talk) 10:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Cleaning articles for demotion...

I have cleaned articles for demotion: Jaqueline Kennedy-Onassis and Chopsticks have been demoted (to regular article); Neptune was kept at Good Article; Jupiter is still pending. The different lists GA/VGA by date still need updating. Eptalon (talk) 09:21, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Jaqueline Kennedy-Onassis was quite good though for some time. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 11:19, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

No one keeps you from renominating. At the moment, a lot of work has been spent, and not all issues have been addressed. Therefore neither GA nor VGA-Eptalon (talk) 13:17, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

And my answer to that editor is : well, it should not have been. Macdonald-ross (talk) 13:28, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

No, actually it wasn't. If it helps any, it never was accepted for promotion. It got the promotion to VGA but was never accepted as very good. There were always unfixed issue that just got ignored. It spent its time on the VGA list constantly getting fixes made. It never got to the point where is was acceptable as a VGA. Pure Evil (talk) 00:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Ideas for article improvement...

If we ideed take the time and organize a big weekend, here are some ideas:

• There are many "average" articles, of reasonable length - Many of these haven't changed much in the last 5-10 years. Take one or a few such articles, and as a community get them into a form that they can be proposed for GA. Ideally, focus on social issues, and try not to be centered around Europe, and the United States too much. What will be the first article about an African or Asian leader, (of the 20th/21st century) at GA?
• I don't know what state they are in, but what keeps us from improving articles such as abortion, slavery, or apartheid? - or for the historically inclined: the Boer war(s)? the American civil war?

Those are of course jusr ideas... Eptalon (talk) 13:42, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the 'X is a Y in Z' stub expansion for a big weekend was a good idea. I do not have any experience hosting events, but would be happy to help someone with co-hosting a big weekend. Just wanted to put it out there, to get the organization of it moving (because town stubs are quite the problem right now.) 🤘🤘 DovahFRD (talk) 00:29, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Just searching "is a commune" gets me 11,146 hits. "is a former commune" gets 594 hits. These are almost all minimal stubs. Even if we all work all weekend on these, we will barely make a dent. Not that these aren't a big problem. The best time to address these was up front when they were being autocreated, but they need a more systematic approach, I think. Eptalon's idea of selecting a few average to pretty good articles to bring up to GA and to address some of our topic imbalances would be a more productive use of a big weekend, I think. Gotanda (talk) 23:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject addition

Could WikiProject Stub to Articles be a thing? Like any short enough article (not necessarily stubs) to become bigger articles! SikiWtideI (Speak to the backwards police) 01:46, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@SikiWtideI: I'm not sure what you mean, but on this wiki WikiProjects are unofficial and are kept in userspace. We don't put WikiProject banners or categories on any pages (articles, categories, etc.), including talk pages. Does this answer your question? -- Auntof6 (talk) 01:56, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6 I believe that @SikiWtideI is trying to ask if they can create a Wikiproject that tried to convert stubs to complete articles. 🄰🄽🄸🄼🄰🄻 🄴🄳🄸🅃🄾🅁 - 𝙇𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 01:57, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@AnimalEditor: Thanks for the clarification. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:12, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure, No problem. 🄰🄽🄸🄼🄰🄻 🄴🄳🄸🅃🄾🅁 - 𝙇𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 03:13, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I have created the WikiProject for you. See it here. 🄰🄽🄸🄼🄰🄻 🄴🄳🄸🅃🄾🅁 - 𝙇𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 02:01, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, and also yes that is what I meant. SikiWtideI (Speak to the backwards police) 02:28, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, could you move it to my userspace without a redirect? SikiWtideI (Speak to the backwards police) 02:31, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

 Done 🄰🄽🄸🄼🄰🄻 🄴🄳🄸🅃🄾🅁 - 𝙇𝙚𝙩'𝙨 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠 02:32, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• You do realize it won't flourish as a user sub-page? Few other users will add anything. Perhaps that's what you wanted? Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  @Macdonald-ross: It's true that past ones went that route, but that doesn't mean this one will. It's not like there's an alternative anyway. Let's give it a chance. -- Auntof6 (talk) 09:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  I would say that is extremely optimistic. People have been creating Wprojects here since since 2007-09 and none of them lasted more than a few months before people got bored and wandered off. I would even be comfortable to say weeks or even days rather than month. People add there name to a list, edit for a week or two then stop. As nothing major has changed with the user base, it would take a miracle for it to change now.

  It would be far better to put the effort into doing the work than creating a project to try to get the work done. Short term collabs will occur but there is little hope for anything long term. That is the situation we work in. Pure Evil (talk) 14:28, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  There's nothing wrong with being optimistic. There is something wrong with discouraging an editor who has good intentions. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:05, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  I do not see anything wrong with discourage anyone to not do something that has historically proven to always fail and waste the users time. The best of intentions will not make a bad idea be any better. If anything, it prevents them from investing a large amount of effort into a dead end venture. That then leads to them being disillusioned and stops them editing as there is little to show for their effort. Better to inform them that the action is very likely to fail then to allow them to waste their time until the quit entirely because it failed after the got their hopes up artificially. Pure Evil (talk) 15:35, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

  Many of them may not have accomplished much, but I wouldn't say they failed. We don't even know that participants became disillusioned: they may simply have decided to move on to other things. Even if all they do is focus someone's attention on a problem, that's helpful.

  Since WikiProjects here exist solely in userspace, and we don't put banners on articles or anything, they're not affecting anything else just by existing. If you feel they're a waste of time, then don't spend your time on them, but don't tell others where to spend their time. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:10, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Have Wikiprojects always been in Userspace ever since this wiki was created? --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 21:13, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

No, this Wiki never had Wikiprojects in mainspace/project space. I am just guessing, but I think the user base (in terms of number of editors, not in terms of who edits) on this Wiki probably hasn't changed much, in the last few years. And for that many users, a Wikiproject in mainspace is just overkill. Eptalon (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, the success of a Wikiproject doesn't depend on where it is; it is about finding enough motivated people, and keeping them interested. Eptalon (talk) 21:25, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

No, but yes..

No is the correct answer there. Wikiprojects have not always been in the userspace. In the early days, there was an attempt to follow the trend in en. and have them in the wikipedia space. Ferien points to several past projects that were not in the user space. One project (stubs) technically still exists but it has not been in the form of a real wikiproject for a long time. The lack of stamina and follow though watched them each die quietly. This being said, the bulk of projects have been in the user namespace for most of the existence of the wiki. One of the reasons behind this and the practice of not tagging article centers on the fact that pretty much every wikiproject has failed. Using the Wikipedia space, tagging pages and adding cats based on projects just lead to more work when it all has to be removed later when the project is no longer active. Pure Evil (talk) 15:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

...which is why we don't tag things as being related to WikiProjects. There's nothing that needs to be maintained outside of userspace. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:11, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@つがる: I don't know, but they have been in the 14 years I've been here. There was a proposal to put them under a dedicated user name (User:Project, which has since been renamed to User:Project~simplewiki). That didn't get very far, though, maybe because the intended process would have had multiple people using the account, which isn't supposed to happen. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:27, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know about this, Auntof6 and Eptalon. Tsugaru let's talk! :) 21:36, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

It appears some WikiProjects were in Wikipedia: space before 2008: Wikipedia:WikiProject History, Wikipedia:WikiProject Taiwan and Wikipedia:Esperanza. However, they have all since been deleted and we're only left with Wikipedia:Simple Stub Project in the Wikipedia: namespace, and that's more of a guideline than a Wikiproject. --Ferien (talk) 21:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

There is also one called Wikiproject Check Wikipedia, but that one is just a redirect to the EN Page Tsugaru let's talk! :) 21:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@つがる: It may redirect to enwiki, but the processes for this wiki are live. I work on this fairly often, but I don't look at it as a WikiProject. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:12, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

There's something silly about suggesting a change before an editor has any real experience of the wiki. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:26, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps a very basic question: Suppose there was this Wikiproject (don't worry whether in user space or project space), what would it allow you to do, that you can't do now? - We have zillions of stubs, and likely also zillions of them that have the stub tag, where it should be removed. The 'X is a city/town/village/hamlet/... in Y. Z people live there.' is just an example. Eptalon (talk) 09:41, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

This is the kind of reasoning behind my lack of interest in WikiProjects here. If I want to work on a certain subject area, I just work on it. If somebody wants to drum up interest in something with a project, good for them, but we've seen much better results with some of our big weekends. The weekends have more-specific, shorter-term goals, which are easier to get interested in. I've also seen good results when a couple of people decide to just work on something, like when TDKR Chicago 101 and another user were doing a lot of work on death-related pages. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:55, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

It's one thing if an experienced user suggests something new, but we are not here as a free scribbling pad. If a user wants to add to stubs, just do it! Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:52, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know why a few people are so opposed to users creating their own WikiProject. WikiProjects have done some great things on this wiki over the years. Chess, for example, was made a good article after the work done by members of WikiProject Chess and Gettysburg Address was made good after work done by WikiProject Literature. Let's just wait and see what this WikiProject actually does before discouraging newer users from helping out in this fashion. --Ferien (talk) 15:54, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Then let me explain it to you. I am opposed to people wasting their time on a wikiproject that history has proven is very likely to fail. All the time devoted there does nothing to help the wiki. As evident by the number of post in this single thread on wikiprojects, they take time an effort from many non involved editors that could be used to create or improve articles here. Yes there are exception but there are far more failures that successes. It is only being realistic to accept that any long term project here has a high likelihood of failure. Yes, it is their time and effort to waste. Mostly.. as it is taking up much of the time I have for editing today from articles that need work so it is not only their time being used. That aside (as I am choosing to waste my time on this), I feel it is negligent of me to support (even through omission) them using the time they want to spend here in a way that is very likely to do noting for the wiki and is actually likely to prevent them and others from helping. In 16 years, there have been less than a handfull of articles with noticeable improvement from the practice and a horde of edits done to wikiproject pages and discussions that have no effect on articles here. Over all Wikiprojects have historically been shown to waste more then they help. All the time spent on them would be better spent on the articles they propose to help.

That is why I am against people creating wikiprojects. I see them as a waste of resources that are detrimental to the wiki.Pure Evil (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Even the WikiProjects that don't accomplish much don't waste all that much time. There's some activity at the beginning for a week or a month or whatever to get it set up, but after the initial effort they either do or don't accomplish something. If they do, great! If they don't, then at least people were showing interest in improving things here.

I'm interested to know where you got the statistic to say that "In 16 years, there have been less than a handfull of articles with noticeable improvement from the practice".

Don't get me wrong: I don't see a lot of value in WikiProjects the way they've historically been managed here, which is why I don't participate. But I'm not going to campaign against them because once in a while they do something good. Again, if you see them as a waste of time, then don't spend your own time on them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I some how missed the part where anyone was campaigning against them. I said you were being overly optimistic in thinking the past will not happen yet again. I said that historically they have not been helpful. I still feel that they are a total waste of time, that even a discussion about them such as this, serves no use to the wiki and absorbs time that could be used to help the wiki. But, if people want to do something that I feel has been shown to be a complete waste of time, that is there decision to make. I tell no one what to do or not do. At the same time though, it I feel what they are doing is not useful, I will tell them that. If the choose to heed the advise fine. if not, fine. It is their call.

As to where I got that statistic, it comes from being an editor here since 2006. Even during my medically forced hiatus, i was seeing things, I have been an editor since before Eptalon was even an admin.. Heck, I was the first person to support him for admin on his second try at it. that long. Ive been a part of too many wikiproject discussions to count and without fail, the seem to have died quietly with little to no effect. The people hype it up, edit the user pages and make a small number of edits (which the could have done anyway). And soon they either stop editing completely or move on to other topics.

You also say if they drew attention to an issue, they at least did that.. there is no proof that this is true. What evidence is there that all the effort which was put into the project yeilded more attention to the issue than they could have drew by using that effort in other way. A Big weekend event takes less to set up than a wikiproject and those have had far greater impacts here. People seem more likely to bust their butts over a short term event than an eternal project. A Big Weekend is likely to impact the project by orders of multitude more than a wikiproject will. Just because the got eyes on an issue does not mean they could not have gotten more eyes on it far easier and actually accomplished some good. Pure Evil (talk) 00:02, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, I agree with that. It's easy to credit a whole group when the reality is that just one or two people did all the work, and they would have done it anyway! Useful contributions on many topics depends upon competence in the topic and on fluent literacy. Macdonald-ross (talk) 16:42, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

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Section Break

• For inactive Wikiprojects, what's the policy on them? --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 01:41, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I do not know about that. English Wikipedia has more detail of WikiProjects than we have (semi-active, inactive tags). It would need lots of agreement. SikiWtideI (Speak to the backwards police) 01:46, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@つがる: Since WikiProjects are unofficial, there is no policy related to them. In the past, we have occasionally deleted inactive WikiProjects after trying to contact the coordinator, if it seemed like they should be deleted (various factors went into that), but it was contentious. What are you thinking: taking one over? Deleting one? Something else? -- Auntof6 (talk) 01:51, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Auntof6 I came across the origami Wikiproject, it seems the user has not been active for over 10 years, and is blocked on EN Wikipedia. I was wondering what would be the next steps for that Wikiproject? Tsugaru let's talk! :) 02:23, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@つがる: Like I said, since WikiProjects here are unofficial, we don't have specific rules for them, other than that they are conducted entirely in userspace. Is there something you want to do with that one? -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:57, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

@つがる: Although I supposed that another rule for them would be the same as for any other page in userspace: the page belongs to the user whose space it's in. -- Auntof6 (talk) 03:58, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Heads up: CommonsDelinker is down

And it has been down for over a month now. I have notified the maintainer through the Meta-wiki talk page, but I have not yet received a response. Category:Articles with broken file links may need more human eyes for now (Special:WantedFiles is almost useless).

Enwiki and several other wikis have an alternative: Filedelinkerbot. While it does appear to have a local account here, it is not currently set up to run here — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 14:38, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Bad news @Fehufanga, can you make any arrangements for setting Filedelinkerbot in our wiki here if CommonsDelinker is not working or maintenance for a long time?
In the meantime, I will have an observation on this. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 14:54, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

DRC-B5, Krd runs Filedelinkerbot. It depends on whether they are willing to run it here. --Ferien (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm in process of clearing the backlogs as possible. I will take care of the backlog. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 17:17, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

I have cleared the category for now. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 23:05, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks like Category:Templates_with_broken_file_links may need monitoring as well. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 23:06, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

It was a bit over 90 earlier today, I clear out most of the easy ones. I left the ones that required checking for replacements to do later. Pure Evil (talk) 05:32, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Did you use Flood flag for that? Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 04:39, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@DRC-B5 No, there were only 26 or so pages. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 04:46, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Good Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 05:24, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The bot is now running again today. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 10:02, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

That's great. Still, I will look after the category just in case. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 13:10, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

That talk we should have

We should talk about the impact of leaving content created by LTAs, Vandals, and otherwise blocked contributors in place. See above conversation about Are we doing a good job?. I understand the original intent was to keep as much as we could to grow the project. However, the backlog of work is high enough now that the original intent of keeping everything, no matter what for the good of the project has turned into a major weakness of the project. I suggest that, while it will never be a requirement to delete anything made by a blocked user, it should grant the latitude to the sysop corp to consider it all pages created by that user and if they should be kept, or if the page represents a debt of work if kept. If a deleted page raises contention, the existing process of undeletion can be utilized. Therefore, I propose we instate/reinstate WP:QD reason G5 which is currently kept as an empty placeholder because enwiki's G5 is Creations by banned or blocked users which this community initially decided not to follow. If anything, let this conversation shake the status quo tree and see what falls from it. Operator873 ^connect 19:06, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

@Operator873 I don't understand why the QD reason wasn't instated in the first place, the backlog amount is too much. SoyokoAnis - talk 19:45, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this. We spend a lot of time on articles from sockpuppets that should clearly be deleted. The original discussion about removing G5 can be seen here Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy/Archive 1#Remove G5 (SoyokoAnis – this did exist as a QD reason before but it was removed). The argument was that if good articles are created then who cares who created them? However, now it's more the opposite. We're getting quite a few bad articles that don't clearly meet another QD criteria, and the fact that articles created by already blocked users can't be quickly deleted is, at least IMO, something that would encourage block evasion and sockpuppetry. --Ferien (talk) 20:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. If a blocked editor makes an actually good article, G5 doesn't/wouldn't compel deletion. We can keep good articles. However, Ferien hit the nail on the head. As a generic example, we do have global spam LTAs come here because they know the article will last at least 7 days while we RfD. If the account is already blocked, or later locked by a Steward, these should be expeditiously nuked, imo. Operator873 ^connect 22:03, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I support adding a deletion rationale for pages created by blocked/banned users. This will discourage socking and reduce the RFD backlog.

In the case of bans, I thought the point of bans is to disallow the banned user to make an edit anywhere on the wiki (with the exception of making an appeal on their talk page). Not having a QD rationale for banned users is counterintuitive to me. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 22:16, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

@Fehufanga: Would that be only for banned users, or would you include indeffed users as well? -- Auntof6 (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6 Yes, the criteria should apply to pages created by a blocked user in evasion of any standing block.

I agree with others here that it's not a requirement to delete everything made by a blocked user, but when it is needed, the rationale is there. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 03:59, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

@Fehufanga: I can agree with that. However, I can also see users thinking that it's a mandate and tagging a lot of pages just because a blocked or banned user created them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 04:03, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with removing content just because the content was created by someone who is now blocked. The decision to block someone doesn't automatically mean that everything that they ever did was bad. We should treat each case on its merits. If someone is bad from start to finish and there is reason to believe that every single edit they ever made was secretly bad, then in those cases we should delete everything, but if they were genuine for a time but did something bad besides then we should only remove the problematic edits. Blissyu2 (talk) 00:34, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

@Blissyu2 re We should treat each case on its merits: that is what is suggested here. The G5 criteria is not a must, it is a can. Pages created by long-term abusers and sockpuppets can be dealt with faster with this criteria, rather than having to waste community time by going through an RfD every time. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 00:53, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

: I would say that if a user is blocked for any notable length of time because their actions harm the wiki, the admins have the authority to delete/revert/whatever anything from that user that the admin determines is not in the wiki's best interest. Most often, it is easier to undo a deletion that is challenged that to deal with a host of extremely bad articles that no one has the free time or willingness to fix up. The rational only gives the admins another tool to deal with problems. The rationals are valid reasons to support an action, they are not mandatory reasons to take the action. ie the admins do not have to delete the page, but if they feel it is in the best interest to do so, nuke away freely. As to what is a "notable length of time". that would depend on the actions and the mess they made.. 31 hrs, 1 week, 6 months, indef, permanent.. If nuking is needed, push the button. No need to award the person by leaving a pile of trash with their name on it laying around for a couple years. Pure Evil (talk) 02:57, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Given the lack of simplicity in even expanding what an admin is allowed to do by a marginal amount, I have little to no expectation that this could go anywhere, let alone be of any use here. Too much drama to try to change it. Best to just ignore it all and leave things unchanged. Pure Evil (talk) 02:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with what most people have said here. It would help if this was a QD criterion as long as it's not used for good pages. While slightly outside the topic, there is an essay here. Lights and freedom (talk) 04:21, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this, however there should be some language that indicates that G5 is an option, not a requirement for creations. While we all know the intent now, 10 years from now, it may become more grey if we don't define it now. Griff (talk) 16:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

That is sort of covered already, but it is placed in the lead-in for the general rules rather than the intro for quick deletion. "A page can be quickly deleted in the following situation." The problem is that first, it is in the wrong place and second, people don't bother to actually read it to notice the word used is can and there is no extra information to tell them the difference between can be and must be. That statement really should be in the intro for quick deletion and given how often people need to be helped to understand some things, explaining what can means may be needed. All QD criteria are reason that a user can provide to explain why they feel an admin should delete something. No admin is required to do so though in most cases it is probably a good idea. Some cases are far more strongly suggested to be followed (attack, copyvio) but still a suggestion. The admin may lose the mop for not deleting certain things but it is not strictly required that they quick delete any article. There just could be consequences if they do not (and can not defend their actions to the communities acceptance.) Admins are expected to act in certain ways, but they are not actually required to. They are just required to act in community accepted ways if they want to keep the mop. Pure Evil (talk) 21:34, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello all, I will perhaps present another view of all of this: If quick deletion is what it should be, then I must be able to decide if an article stays or gets deleted solely based on the content of the article. I need not look at who created it, or who modified it. So, any qd criterion that involves anything else than the article content, is a no-go. Yes, suppose that a bad editor created the article, and that the editor got blocked or banned. If the text of the article is keepable, then there is no reason to delete it. If it isn't then its easy to find the criterion it does not meet, and delete it. If on the other hand the content is reasonable, then I don't need to involve an argument that it was created by a banned/blocked user, and delete it. This hasn't happened with the zillion of "... is a city in ... . ... people live there" (and variations) articles, no one is happy about; but as we said that geographic places are inherently notable, we cannot delete them. So in short: there'll almost always be another reason to QD a problematic article, we don't need to involve the fact that the article was created by an editor who is currently banned. Eptalon (talk) 18:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Nothing here says that you are not able to decide anything, You can always chose to not delete any page. This only gives you the option to delete if you chose to do so based on the actions of the creator. The option is always yours. This just gives you more options. It takes no option from you. It the worst troll on the internet writes the most impressive article you have ever seen, you can keep it if you chose to. Nothing says you have to delete it. It only says you can delete it. It would all come down to your opinion on if the page in question is worth keeping. If you feel someone has taken actions that warrant them being banned, you can also chose to remove those actions if you feel it is best for the wiki.

You are implying that an admin must delete any article that meets a requirement. This is not the case/ No admin must delete anything. Even with a clear cut RfD, no admin is forced to act. They can always refuse to take action. Some action are more strongly suggested be taken (deleting copy/vios and attack page) . There may be negative consequences for openly refusing to do so (an admin can always just quietly not see the qd request with no negative), but there is nothing forcing you to delete something you chose not to. Pure Evil (talk) 22:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

To expand on your example: User: Blahblah creates 40 such place articles. He gets advised multiple times that this is not a good thing but ignores it all. He comes bak the next day and does the same. Days go by and eventually he gets a block for ignoring all attempts to curb the action (being disruptive and such.. it happens). He registers a new name and keeps on going. Now we have evading a block so the new acct is blocked after another 25 article. New account the next day, another 45 before the new block. He gives up on accounts and just IP edits from variable IPs over the next few months. What does he care as he is still producing articles (for whatever reason he does it) and gets the bonus of annoying people. Checkuser and WP:Duck agree on it all being the same LTA editor. Then one day, an admin says screw it all and a5's 97% of the articles created (there were a couple decent ones and a couple others fixed by other editors). Now the IP has nothing to show for their work and no reason to continue. They wander off for a couple months before boredom sets in one day and they pop in and start up again. Only to have an admin block and nuke on sight. Eventually, it all grows old and they never come back. Pure Evil (talk) 22:23, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Look at Category 'Cities in Ohio' (just picked one, there are several others). No, I am not implying all were created by the same user, nor am I implying all are bad. Look at Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio (also just an example). What we have is a one-sentence-stub,but the article exists in 31 other languages. So, even if I presume a problem user created it, what can I reasonably do? - EnWP says there are roughly 7.5k people in that city, don't they deserve an article? - But that's beside the point: what I say is, we don't need that new QD criterion, because in anything but the most trivial cases, it will not help us. Eptalon (talk) 22:39, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

You know better than most that the existence of an article on En. wiki has no bearing on one here. Do they deserve an article. Certainly not . No one and no thing deserves an article here. Are they notable enough to warrant an article. Yes, Should we have an article at all costs no matter how bad or useless that article is? That could be argued either way. Neither of those sides has much bearing here. The true question would be "Do you, as an admin, feel the wiki would be better off without that page?" If you say no, fine. Leave it as is. If you say Yes, fine. Delete it. You make the call based on how you see the situation. If there is a difference of opinion then that would need to be settled between concerned parties. This is in no way different than an admin deletion under any other rule with the probable exception copyvio as that can be a documented copy/paste violation of copyrighted material which isn't likely to be challenged What constitutes an attack or a claim of notability? pretty much every criteria is open to admin discretion to some degree, Admin are tasked to make these calls. They are not always right nor always universally accepted. People are people. It is rare for us to all agree but it is not more so in this case than any other criteria.Pure Evil (talk) 04:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This might be a special case. Over the years, many people have written lots of one sentence stubs about settlements. Some have been banned/blocked; others have not. So for example, will all these articles be mass deleted (the person who created them was banned)? I guess the options are probably (1) Delete all stubs like this, no matter who created them (2) Delete all stubs like this created by banned users (Does this apply to stubs created before the ban?) (3) Starting now, delete all stubs like this that get created (4) Starting now, delete all stubs like this that get created by banned users (5) Prohibit any user from mass creating stubs and block them and delete the stubs if they do it anyway.

I understand that deletion wouldn't be mandatory. But what is the goal in this situation? Lights and freedom (talk) 23:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Or take this example: Special:Contributions/104.243.162.121 The IP is creating very short stubs, but likely wasn't banned. Is the plan to delete these if this is approved? Lights and freedom (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Lights and freedom: Just as a point of interest, IPs are not banned or even indeffed. Only registered users can be banned or indeffed. Even if the IP is editing in violation of a ban or block, the most they can get is a long block. -- Auntof6 (talk) 05:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I wasn't sure about it. I should say, the IP probably isn't being used by a banned person, unlike the example above. Lights and freedom (talk) 05:11, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This is only tangential, but some users who primarily use IPs have been banned (banned banned) on the English Wikipedia. en:WP:LTA/BKFIP is such a case. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 00:53, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, please reinstate G5. I did not even know it had existed. --Gotanda (talk) 08:25, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• So, I just think we need to be careful and very specific in how this is worded. I think I'm ok with the idea of g5 coming back, however before saying yes or no, I think we need to see a draft proposal of the criteria, and possibly some examples of pages we're looking to capture with this criteria. I think we need to clearly define that this isn't retroactive. A user who creates a bunch of pages, and then is later banned for something else, would not apply. How would we handle users blocked/banned on en, if they're creating similar content here? Would G5 apply because they're creating pages after being blocked for the same on another wiki? I think I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about the right way to phrase this criteria... --Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 23:35, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

My thoughts on this so far:

• G5 applies to pages created by users evading a standing block or a ban. In the case of a ban, it must be a ban on editing the Simple English Wikipedia (not any other Wikipedia) or a WMF ban. The ban may be a sitewide ban or a topic ban. This means the rationale does not apply to pages created by a user banned on the English Wikipedia and not here. If they continue creating bad pages as on another Wiki, then WP:ONESTRIKE applies. This doesn't
• G5 only applies to topic-banned users if the page being created in violation of that topic ban. For example, if a user with a topic ban about cats creates cultural depictions of cats, it can be deleted under the G5 criteria. However, if they create domestication of the dog, G5 does not apply.
• G5 does not apply to pages created before the block/ban.
• G5 should not be used to delete pages which has had major good-faith contributions from other users.
• G5 is an option. There is no obligation to delete any and all pages created by blocked/banned users in evasion. An admin should be trusted enough by the community to judge whether or not to delete a thousand one-sentence geographical stubs created by a blocked user.
• G5 would be very useful to delete the contributions of some of the persistent spammers that often return to the Simple English Wikipedia (as recently as yesterday).

Whether or not we should continue to accept one-sentence geographical stubs is to me a different question. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 02:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Re this, "G5 does not apply to pages created before the block/ban." Why not? That would seem to be one of the best uses to maintain the quality of the wiki. User gets blocked/banned for creating a bunch of disruptive articles of dubious usefulness, quality, accuracy, complexity, whatever, and they can be cleared out quickly. Otherwise we know the result: either they linger forever, or clog up RfD, using up time and attention that would be better applied to improving articles. --Gotanda (talk) 03:24, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

The precedent for deleting pages created after a block/ban comes from Enwiki. Admittedly, the community here is orders of magnitude smaller and does not have time to discuss in every RfD. Thinking about it again, I'd be fine either way. Anyone else can always ask for the deleted page to be restored if they would like to improve it. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 14:10, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine either way as well. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 02:49, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• People are going about this backwards.. This is not a case of "Here is a rule, go follow it". This is "wow. I really need to delete this article but how do I defend that action? Ah, G5 works, lets use that reasoning." It is not "heres a rule, take this action". Its "I need to take this action, lets use this rule" This is not about following a rule. its about having a rule to support what an admin feels they need to do. "how does this apply to <such and such> pages?> Do you think those pages need deleted? (no? then why are you looking here?) Are you looking for a reason to delete them? (Not notable but A4 does not apply as its not a specific type of group of people) Does G5 fit as a valid reason to delete the article you are looking for valid reason to delete? Yes? delete away! Pure Evil (talk) 03:38, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

  I'd support that. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 14:10, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

• I'm in favor of adding this. I think it's important to emphasize that if an uninvolved editor opposes the usage of this QD criteria on a specific article, then it optimally should go to RfD. We don't have this in policy, and it might be helpful to add something along these lines to this criteria, but generally that's how it has worked. This is not a license for admins to delete any page they want without reason, this is a license for admins to clean up problematic content created by blocked or banned users (in violation of the block or ban?), provided that there are no legitimate objections to it. This would not be saying that the content must be deleted, simply that it can be if a reviewing admin thinks it needs to be, such as if it would require a large amount of community effort/time to fix it. Best, Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 02:56, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

  I would be interested to see some more discussion here on the question of: What if it is a good article?

  The reaosning for the G5 as laid out is to minimize volunteer time wasted through simplification and RfDs created by bad faith, blocked editors. The English Wikipedia's rationale is a bit different, afaict, to disincentivize such editors creating pages because they will be deleted. I think that, in our situation, if a blocked editor does create good content then it generally should not be deleted, save for the situations where verifying that the content is good would be too laborous. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 03:00, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with Vermont. Now suppose if an user have changed to good faith but evaded its block and started making good contributions (like me for example), somehow they will be reblock again but what happens with the articles created. If the contents met our condition but we put G5, then it will look odd. Putting G5 might be unnecessary if the articles or content are in good condition. We must enhance and improve the conditions to be met for G5. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 05:31, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

  I think most here agree that if the deleted article can be salvaged, then it can be restored easily. What we don't want is an excess of articles that the community can't patrol. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 11:54, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• I don't have much to say as most of them have given their consent. We didn't emerged as more populated Wikipedia like in enwiki nor even jpwiki, but I favor in reinstatement of G5. The content on which the particular blocked user made, has to be checked whether it met our conditions or not. G5 has established to make sure that the articles must be deleted by the user, who breached the Wiki terms (block or ban evade)/Sockpuppet case. I think we should start practicing this process. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 05:20, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
• Fehufanga answered my questions. So long as if the article happens to be simple and good we're free to keep it, so long as it is linked to blocks/bans made by this community and not any other Wiki, so long as it's liked to blocks/bans that exist and not those that don't exist, so long as it's not applied retroactively, etc. etc. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:30, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
• It has been over a month now. There are still some disagreements about whether or not it can be applied retroactively, but besides that, I think the the goal is clear here, to minimize volunteer time wasted on creations by blocked/banned users. I will try and word out the criteria.— *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 10:08, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Issues with new interface

I'd also like to add that this Wikis reader interface has recently changed and seems to be more difficult to read and edit for non-registered users. Whenever I sign in, the interface changes back to the previous regular Wiki format. But when I sign out it changes to a completely new format. I am not sure if this is good for readers or encouraging to non-registered contributors. Although I am not a regular contributor and reader, I still think this new reader interface is unnecessary and not very reader-friendly. But I'd like other people's opinion on this.----NadirAli (talk) 23:58, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

@NadirAli: That's not something we can control. The default for non-registered users is controlled by the base software. Any issues with it need to be brought up with MediaWiki. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:22, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

@Auntof6: can you tell me the contact info? Thank you.--NadirAli (talk) 23:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

@NadirAli: Sorry, no. I don't know where to bring this up. -- Auntof6 (talk) 00:15, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

@user:Auntof6I think Wikimedia's contact information, which I found, should be good enough. Thanks anyways. NadirAli (talk) 01:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

NadirAil In Preferences (Not sure if it's called that in the menu as I am using the British English setting) there is an option to restore the old vector skin. --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 01:05, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

NadirAli fix ping, see above --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 01:06, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Yep! We've been moved to Vector 2022 by default; existing users preferences haven't been changed, but the new skin is the default for logged-out users and for new accounts. Imo it's a lot nicer in terms of reading (and switching from en to simple!!), and looks more modern, though I'll always be a Timeless fan :p Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 20:21, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Some things, such as adding an IW link got more complicated though. And as most of our articles won't be fabulations out of thin air, adding such links will likely be a common task. Eptalon (talk) 20:24, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean by IW links? Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 20:34, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Vermont, I think he means interwiki links --Ferien (talk) 21:08, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Try creating a new article on a subject, that exists, for example in enwp. Once you are done, try adding the interwiki link to enwp from this interface. It might look very new, and appealing, but thats the functionality that basically makes it unusable for me. Eptalon (talk) 21:11, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I would disagree, because it might not be good for attracting more readers and editors. But if there is a discussion pending on this, please do notify me. I think there should be a standard format for all Wikis.--NadirAli (talk) 02:17, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Quality offensive...?

If I look at the topics above, there have been some studies that rated us, and that gave us a bad rating. If I look at the most wanted articles, the first 300 or so are what looks like (French/Belgian/Swiss?) towns and villages. Looking at the sample, over 90% are for such articles.

I am now guessing (I don't know), that the bulk of our articles are 'X is a city/town/village in Y, Z people live there'.

I see two things that we can do as a community:

1. Take these articles, and make them bigger. In the case of cities/towns/villages, there may be a church; or the city may have been founded as a mining community, or it may have become a commuter town of another place close by. Railway station? - etc.
2. Revive the GA/VGA process. These articles are our showcase articles; considerable work is needed to get them to that status. Its like going into a museum, and finding that most items collected dust, lights don't work, glass showcases are broken, etc. Do we really want to give that impression?

As the second item is a lot of work, and commitment, I'd like to propose something different: Take one of the small articles, and edit it. When you are done editing, it should be considerably bigger? What do other people think? Eptalon (talk) 10:02, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Item #1 sounds like a job for... <dramatic music> ...THE BIG WEEKEND!!!! -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:09, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Those 'most wanted pages' are script-generated, I have on idea how up to date the listing is... Eptalon (talk) 10:16, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I thought you were talking about expanding the existing ones. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:42, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

No-one in their right mind will spend time on these place name articles, which are mostly machine-edited by a bot. I tried to improve a few, and the bot ran over my changes within days. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:08, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

@Macdonald-ross: Should we keep them or delete them, then? I'd be interested in seeing one of the cases where the bot undid your work. -- Auntof6 (talk) 17:47, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

I have been consistently against allowing these endless bot or bot-like geo stubs. They add no value. The information to be had is just the same as the infobox on EnWP. We also have thousands of useless and out of date footballer stubs which were allowed. I do not know if they should be deleted but am pretty sure it would be hard to get a consensus on that, but one issue now is that for a new visitor, they look like the norm and they go create more of them. If not deleted, all of the X is a place in Y with Z people in it stubs should be tagged somehow to indicate their low quality and that they are not examples to be followed. A new editor recently commented that their new slew of such articles was patterned after what they had seen all over the wiki. --Gotanda (talk) 05:19, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Another thing I thought of: sometimes people look at various special pages to get ideas of things to do. Special:WantedPages seems like a good place to start until you realize that many pages show up there because they're in navboxes that are used in many articles. For example, right now it contains a lot of links to pages that are redlinked in the (huge) template Template:Nord communes. The hundreds of articles that use that template all link to every red link in it, making the missing articles show up at the top of wanted pages. Can/should we do anything to prevent this? Maybe eliminate the navboxes? (How useful is a navbox with several hundred links in it anyway?)

It's hard to explain to people that, yes, the special page says that page X is wanted, but that it's better not to create it if you aren't going to do a decent job. And, of course, sometimes people are just trying to increase their edit count. -- Auntof6 (talk) 10:55, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Auntof6 here, we have not had a Big Weekend since I've started editing here and having one would encourage people to improve a lot of these articles. --Ferien (talk) 12:43, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

The VGA process just makes this place look worse. It is putting articles which are rarely very good onto a highlighted pedestal. Certain articles should not have been promoted. Others, while they were valid choices at one point, have either been through a host of edits since then (complete changes) or completely ignored (outdated - Jupiter). If a subject is not constantly changing, there really is little that would be needed to be changed in a VGA article. New scientific discoveries could warrant constant updating but when dealing with a historic bio, there should be little change so almost no edits over time. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has had almost 175 edits in the one year as a VGA. If it needed that much work, how was it VGA in the first place? With that number, how is it the same article that went through the process? How does the current article make us look if we say it is among the best we have while there is no consensus that the current version is anything we agree on? Pure Evil (talk) 15:05, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

There is a point to be made here about our VGA process, but remember that VGA doesn't mean complete, and edits do not inherently mean that the article was of an inherently low quality prior to those edits. It's not that there's no consensus on the current revision, it's that there's always changes to be made. This is the same on enwiki and elsewhere. Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 16:11, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Had I been a member of this wiki in its earlier days, I would have spoken against the idea of GA/VGA because of its long-term consequences. Much that has happened on the negative side can be summed up as: "well, this article is not really so good as it's cracked up to be". That's OK, I'm with the idea of constant improvement, but in practice every suggestion tends to get rejected. Editors show "ownership" at every stage and at every level, and clearly see themselves as authors rather than editors. We do best when we actually do simplify an En wiki page, but that has become rare. Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:25, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, in that case, it did mean the article was (and still is) low quality. --Gotanda (talk) 05:20, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Does a VGA need to be complete, not really. But they are required to be comprehensive which is often quite similar. With current events, science based or BLP articles, it will always be hard to stay comprehensive. People do new things, new things are learned regularly, current events are always in flux. These topics make for bad choices for VGAs as the are constantly in flux so keeping them up to date will most likely always affect quality. But for older articles.. people dead a decade or centuries and historic events where there is little changed in what we know of them (not much has changed in our knowledge of the Battle of Little Bighorn in the last few decades), what was comprehensive 5-10 yrs ago is likely comprehensive today. These topics are better choices for VGA with our limited editor base as they are rarely time intensive. Watchlist -> vandal -> revert -> good as new. If an article about a person who died before Wikipedia even existed is very good, it should be comprehensive to the point that is does not need major changes unless new information is learned. 175 edits in a year, many of them large changes, should not be expected if the article was comprehensive. Compare Onassis from the Dec 2021 version that got the VGA tag to the one before the Dec 20, 2022 version that got the suggested demotion. That rules out all changes of caught vandalism and its reversal. There is still a huge amount of the article which was changed. We can only hope each of the editors involved did so at a level that most editors here would accept was of VGA quality. And we have to hope all vandalism was caught and reverted. I am willing to bet that this is not the case. If an article goes from VGA to getting a {{complex}} tag, it is certainly not an example of our best work. Pure Evil (talk) 21:57, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

We should likely revise these criteria:

• GA first, then VGA. Saves a lot of work, and discussion. ("Only good articles can be made very good articles")
• Both for GA, and VGA: Artiicle is submitted, accepted for review (time period:1 week), 1 month issue-fixing, second review (a few days) by different admin who promotes. Declined articles have a waiting period of one month.
• No accepting/promoting articles where you contributed a lot.
• No single-author articles. No ownership.
• Perhaps re-evaluate VGA critera completely, given the issues we have.

Eptalon (talk) 10:17, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

See discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Requirements_for_good_articles#Revising_the_requirements... Eptalon (talk) 12:15, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

There is a problem with this discussion. If a GA/VGA has been edited a lot since promotion, and the edits haven't improved the article, the solution is not to demote, but simply to revert the edits. This is actually what I brought up here. In fact, many of these edits were being made by sockpuppets who were making the article more complex. If, however, the article never met the VGA criteria, then demotion is reasonable. My point is that a good or very good article should generally STAY that way, unless it's about a currently active topic (mainly living people). Maybe editors who vote at GA/VGA need to comment more specifically what needs to change so they will approve of promotion, without changing their mind later. Lights and freedom (talk) 00:07, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

How do I install RedWarn?

I am a user from EN-Wiki, and there I use Redwarn to revert vandalism. I haven't been able to find RedWarn here, other than a few users with it in their common.js. I was wondering if someone could find a way for me to install RedWarn and provide me with directions on how to do so. Fiction Tiger (talk) 18:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

1. Find a user who uses is.
2. open their commn.js page
3. locate the command to call RedWarn
4. copy that command completely
5. Open your common.js page (or the .js page for whatever skin you use)
6. paste the command there.
7. refresh your cache of the .js page (Shift + f5, I think)
8. Profit

Hope this helps. Pure Evil (talk) 20:48, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Pure Evil and @Fiction Tiger! While RedWarn is a useful tool for anti-vandalism, I do not think you should use it on this wiki. Although I have RedWarn, I do not use it as my main anti-vandalism tool. RedWarn is made for the English Wikipedia therefore some or most of its assets are missing because they are not made for the Simple English Wikipedia which we are currently on. I would personally prefer to use Twinkle because its imported for wikis outside of the English Wikipedia and it is officially in the Preferences/Gadgets page. However, I am not stopping you from using RedWarn. I really hope this helps your decision. Happy editing! SoyokoAnis - talk 14:08, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

I am curious as to why I was tagged here. I never gave any indication I would ever use RedWarn. I have no interest in it at all. What decision is this in reference to? Pure Evil (talk) 15:38, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@Pure Evil, Soyoko just gave Fiction Tiger more tips about RedWarn. They didn't told you about using this tool. Although they tagged you to know about it. See it is upto your wish whether you use it or not but this reference you may learn so that you can help others if they are in trouble. Dibyojyoti^{let's chat} 15:47, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

By pinging me, they are drawing focus that they are saying something to me. There is nothing there that has anything to do with me. There was no reason for me to be pinged in this message. Pure Evil (talk) 16:31, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@Pure Evil You gave additional advice to Fiction Tiger so I pinged you both. Apologies. SoyokoAnis - talk 18:23, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Template Import

Can someone import en:Template:Cite_constitution for Governor of Karnali Province? Nunabas (talk) 17:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@Nunabas:  Done For future import requests, it's better to ask at WP:AN because for the most part, only admins can import things. -- Auntof6 (talk) 19:04, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Proposed moves - citizens

There are two forms of naming used for ethnicity/citizenship - Demonym or Nationality peoples. (ie. Germans and German people) Where an article exists, one redirects to the other. When no article exists, any redirects target the nation. The problem is that there is no standard. Which is the redirect seems to be up to the whim of the creator. Some redirect to the "people" name while others redirect from it.

I propose "<nationality> people" be the article as "people" makes it obvious we are talking of a group of people. The demonym would redirect to it (Germans -> German people, Brits -> British people, Americans to American people. If the page doesnt exist yet, both would target the country as we do it now. The only effect I see here is that people would know which version to link to with out having to guess and check if they were correct. "...peoples" would also redirect to "...people" as needed. "People of the ..." would be handled case by case with a preference for that naming being a redirect as well. (People of the Netherlands -> Dutch people, People of the United States -> American people)

If accepted, this would take an account with Move-over-redirect rights (any admin) to make the actual changes for existing articles. New articles would be handled as they are created naturally. Pure Evil (talk) 16:46, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I just looked at how English Wikipedia ("enwiki") does this. In the cases I looked at, enwiki has articles at both terms. The "demonyms" form is used for ethnic groups. The "nationality people" form is used for people of the country, whatever their ethnicity. There are also some articles that use "peoples" to include multiple groups.

For what it's worth, Commons avoids using demonyms at all. They use "People of <country>" for the people of a country.

I suggest that we do the same as enwiki. We would need to check existing articles to make sure they follow the convention. -- Auntof6 (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Are you offering to create the articles we are missing to make this viable? We will need to have 2 articles for each country, so you need to create say 300 articles? 195 countries x 2 and we have what, 100? You just need to write the others to either fill in the blanks or replace every redirect. Nice of you to volunteer. My idea was just to deal with what we have here rather than all 400ish articles with most of that being from scratch but if you want to write 2 articles for each country, thanks. Oh, and you will likely also have to redo every article we have on the subject as up to your offer, where wh have an article, we have one article for both cases. Those will all need to be split and fleshed out to not be one line stubs. Pure Evil (talk) 17:37, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

@Pure Evil: You have misunderstood. No, I am not volunteering to create the articles we don't have. When I said "do the same as enwiki," I meant that our existing articles should be titled accordingly. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

But we don't have the articles enwiki has. There is no way to do what they did unless we make split the articles we have and then create the missing 300 articles. As that is not going to happen, doing what they do is not an option. Our articles are a combination of their two articles. As such, both names would be used for the same article. That means one is the name on the article and one is a redirect to the first... Which brings us right back to the start with nothing done. So again, which title should be the main and which the redirect? Or should we just stay at the mercy of editors whim on naming as we are now?

Another point in support of "<nat> people" is that not every group had a demonym. Americans, Germans, Italians do but many "the demonyms" ( The English. The Chinese, the dutch) while <nat> people applies to every group. (American people, German people, French people, Chinese people, Dutch people) Pure Evil (talk) 05:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@Pure Evil: Splitting articles I can see, and that would create additional articles, but why would we have to create any other articles that don't currently exist?

Another issue is that if our articles are combinations of ethnicity and citizenship (or whatever you want to call the two groups) and enwiki's are not, then our articles should not be linked in Wikidata to enwiki's. -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

They would have to be created because the IP didn't finish the job. The lack of quality is bad enough (unlinked copy pastes saying the people are an ethnic group and nation.. the people are a nation.) but to omit countries smacks of nationalism... and to omit one of the top ten?

For splitting, as the first few demonym I looked up on enwiki was the target for the related people page.. could you point to the ones you found? Germans, English people and Egyptians are all single article groups and the targets for German people, The English and Egyptian people. Seems they are not consistent in their names either.. Pure Evil (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias

By accident, I opened simple-English Wikipedia without being signed in. Therefore, I got the new format (which I had opted out of). What surprised and dismayed me was that I could not see any links to other languages' Wikipedia pages. Why is that? 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:618D:3A7E:5451:6D73 (talk) 15:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I signed in before I wrote this note, but for some reason, my comment indicates I am not signed in. ? 2600:6C67:1C00:5F7E:618D:3A7E:5451:6D73 (talk) 15:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

There should be some symbol near the top right. It looks like an X with a line over it next to an A. If you click on that, the list of languages should come up. Lights and freedom (talk) 17:19, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

We are not Sockpuppets of Nalanidil

Hello, We are not sockpuppets of @Nalanidil, as is claimed in english wikipedia. We want to make that clear !.

we are a Roma Family, who live togehter, sure we have the same IP address and we have only one PC. Of course as a Family we have similar interests. Of course as a Family we also write with the same words, we always say thanky instead of thank you. We all learned the same English.

Being treated like this as an entire roma family just because only one of us got blocked isn't right. Is this like collective punishment of a whole clan ?

Again, we are not sockpuppets of @Nalanidil, in the name of our children, please do not call us sockpuppets.

Sincerely: The Sepečides Family The Sepečides Family (talk) 17:57, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Noting that this is a locked account, as a sockpuppet of another locked user, and does not warrant response. Best, Vermont 🐿️ (talk) 21:49, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Gender-related categorization...

We recently had some gender-related categories that were up for deletion, so I will start a discussion on this issue. I will perhaps start out with what is my personal opinion, which is probably very close to what the policy on this wiki is:

• By "gender-related category" I mean the classical split into male, or female. Covering the extended spectrum of non-binary gender, LGBTIQ+,people feeling that they were born with the wrong sex (etc) is more complex, and should only be discussed, once this issue is settled.
• In general, classification by gender should be avoided; in many cases, there are better ways to classify (for example: geographical area).
• The one big exception where such a classification might make sense is sports. There are male tennis players, and female ones. At least at a professional level, the events where the male ones directly compete with the female ones are rare to nonexistent. In these cases, we must have a male category, and a female category, at the same level of the hierarchy, in order not to be sexist (and yes, I know that's only 2 of the three entries you need for a category...)
• In all other cases, we should avoid classifying by gender: Male/Female artists/performers, actors, scientists (...) are not a good way of categorizing.
• Between 1901, and 2020, 876 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to men, 58 have been awarded to women. Does that warrant that we have a category for male Nobel-Prize-Winners, and one for female ones? - Probably not.
• Don't follow stereotypes. There are male midwives, and female firefighters. Not many, but there are. IMO, this still does not warrant gender-related categories for either.
• This is Simple English Wikipedia; so even if EnWP has male/female categories at some point, we don't need to follow them. EnWP has many more articles and editors, and one of the things that may make SEWP attractive is that many of the processes are simpler, and less bureaucratic.

Likely, what will follow below is a heated discussion, so:

• This is a discussion, not a vote; when you express your opinion, try to be as clear as possible. Stay polite.
• This thing is time-limited. I'll ask a bureaucrat to look at what we have, on December 15, end of day.

Thanks Eptalon (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Separate categories for females have been done in a couple of ways:

• Having a category for males and a category for females. This means twice the number of categories. It also means having to monitor the main category to make sure people are put into the correct subcategory (or not, for example in the case of genderfluid or nonbinary people, but that adds its own complexity).
• Having a category for females but not for males. (Sometimes the female category is designated as a non-diffusing subcategory, as with Category:Women judges.) Sometimes this is done because there are fewer females in a given area, sometimes because they are seen as somehow unique or rare, and sometimes just because someone wanted to highlight females. In either case, this results in removing the females from the main category, making the pages about them harder to see.

I also wonder if we really need to look at sportspeople any differently than anyone else. We (including me, at times) have said in the past that there should be separate male/female categories for sportspeople because they compete separately. However, how is that any different from actors? Male and female sportspeople do the same sports (with a few exceptions, such as different gymnastics events) but usually compete separately. Male and female actors do the same work, and they also compete separately because that is how the award organizations set up the award categories. Is the difference that sports awards are seen as a bigger deal than acting awards? Is it the general difference in strength and physical ability between males and females, and if so would that be leaning into the stereotypes?

Finally, we should ask ourselves this: if we decide not to have separate gender categories now, will we want to change that in the future when we have more articles? If the answer is yes, are we prepared to do the work of separating categories by gender in future when it will be more work to do so?

For reference, here are some of the categories we currently have where males and females are categorized separately:

• Category:Sportsmen and Category:Sportswomen
• Category:Male athletes and Category:Female athletes
• Category:Male tennis players and Category:Female tennis players
• Category:Gay men and Category:Lesbians

And here are categories where we have categories for females but no corresponding category for males (unless I missed it, in which case, please correct me):

• Category:Women composers
• Category:Women judges
• Category:Women politicians
• Category:Female scientists
• Category:Women's sports
  • Category:Women's football
    • Category:Female footballers

There are probably others, but these lists are long enough. Looking at those category names, it looks like we should standardize the names to either women or female.

There is also the question of categories that currently contain only one gender or the other, but which could contain the other in the future. An example is Category:First Ladies; there is no general "first spouses" category, only "first ladies and gentlemen" categories for individual countries -- and they are categorized under women!

Finally, I think it would be good if people didn't jump in and fix parts of this until we have an agreement of how we want to handle the bigger issue. Auntof6 (talk) 22:40, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Although I do accept that upbringing and past experiences will bring a difference between groups of people, I do not see a need to segregate people based on genetic sex, self defined gender, race, religion, age, creed, whatever. There are far too mny ways that each person is an individual. A pedigreed white gay male protestant doctor is different from a doctor who is from an underprivileged background or Asian or sis or trans female or atheist or any combination of traits. There will always be some need to diffuse large categories, but I feel this should be limited to well defined criteria that are fairly well defined or widely accepted and referenced as needed. Gender based in the modern era is not actually possible as gender in no longer accepted as binary but a location on a spectrum defined by the individual.

Categorizing a person is often complicated under the best of circumstances. To add in criteria which is often subjective and poorly defined just makes it less simple. We already deal with people who don't categorize at all, people who try to avoid subjective cats and those that add every possible cat. Adding more to this only complicates things. Ways need to be found to limit the creep that is the cat section of articles, not expand it. --Creol(talk) 23:46, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

• I don't have a strong opinion whether gender-based categories should exist or not. My only strong opinion is, that if a category for one gender exists in an occupation and a category for the other gender does not, it should be a non-diffusing subcategory - otherwise people of one gender will be hidden from the main category. I would also prefer if all categories for women in an occupation used "female" rather than "women" because "women" is not an adjective and the categories for men use "male". I hope that the people with strong opinions will participate in this discussion because there has been a lot of arguments about this, including claims of sexism, and it never gets resolved. Lights and freedom (talk) 23:27, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

  Additionally, I hope this discussion can decide how far the categories should go. For example, if we keep Category:Female scientists, do we subdivide it into "Female astronomers", "Female biologists", etc.? What about "American female scientists", "British female scientists"...? What about "American female biologists" and similar overlaps? Lights and freedom (talk) 23:31, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• It's 17 December and we've just had two other comments. Why are we getting so few comments on this issue on simple talk but when it's at RfD we have a confusing mess where some categories are kept and others are deleted? --Ferien (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
• Well, I will chime in then. I think the category classification by gender should be for competitive sports only because that is the way the sports themselves are organized and there is clarity. Entertainers can be categorized by gender in the relevant award categories where that matters (e.g., Jessica Chastain Categories: American movie actors Best Actress Academy Award winners). The gender(s) of scientists, lawyers, academics, politicians, etc. are not useful for categorization and may be harmful. Keep it simple. --Gotanda (talk) 05:41, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Summary

This is now more than ten days overdue, so I guess anyone wanting to express themselves had the opportuninty to do so. If I sum this up, we don't need gender-specific categories. If I wanted to write about a tennis player: "Hildegard Sperling (1908-1981) was a German tennis player. Between 1935 and 1937, she always won at the 'French Open' championships. With Steffi Graf, Cilly Aussem and Angelique Kerber she was amongst the most successful German tennis players.' (Category:Tennis Players, Category: Winner of French Open Tournaments, or similar). Likely we'd have Gottfied von Cramm, Fred Perry, and Henner Henkel in the category: French Open tournament winners, as they were the men who won 1935-37.

So, who would like to help putting that into a guideline, and cleaning the category system?--Eptalon (talk) 14:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

• With so few comments, its hard to know if there is consensus. Lets see how many agree with certain opinions that were suggested.

1. Gender based categories should be avoided for the most part. Certain areas where there is a large differences are an exception. These would include sports related articles where the sport is divided by sex (ie. football - yes. chess - no). Sexual preferences would obviously be an exception as they are all about gender. (gay men, Lesbians, LGBT people - yes, subcategories - not so much. see #4)
2. "Female" is the chosen naming convention. Other variants (Woman's) should not be used when naming categories. Exceptions if the official name of a group includes such a term. (Woman's rights, Sportswomen)
3. Exception will always exist but should not be the norm. These occur when the division is well accepted and limited in scope. (Best Actress in a.. awards).
4. Non binary gets too confusing but is entirely gender based so exception are to be expected. Similar groupings under the LGBT category/name is likely be best call for most groupings. (LGBT sportspeople). This part of the topic is probably beyond the scope of this discussion (ie. dealing with the use of separate categories for women)

The first three points are the main ones that seem to address the thoughts presented. The last is just a side thought. If all this is acceptable, are we talking policy, guideline or addition to Wikipedia:Categories (advised way to things, essay, suggestion)? Pure Evil (talk) 15:25, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it should be a guideline. Since Wikipedia:Categories is a guideline (not an advised way to do things, an essay, or a suggestion), it could be added there. It would also be good to document the exceptions.

LGBT is a separate issue, because it includes both gender (the "T", and also the the "I" if you extend the initialism) and sexual preference (which is outside the scope of this discussion).

By the way, it's "women's", not "woman's". -- Auntof6 (talk) 19:21, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Exceptions: Case-by -case/per category. And yes ,anything more heavily gender-related is not the issue here. Can we start with no exceptions? Eptalon (talk) 19:37, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Tropical Storm Angela, Macdonald-ross, Djsasso, Blissyu2, Alextejthompson, MrMeAndMrMe, and Ferien: The users listed here voted in earlier RfD's about this subject. If you have a preference on this topic, can you please provide your opinion? Lights and freedom (talk) 18:41, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I just got an alert about this. I don't feel strongly about this either way, and I am happy to accept the voice of the majority, but my general feeling is that more categories are better than less. The issue is that we don't want to cause offence and with the current global viewpoint about transgender issues, there is the potential that this might cause harm. However, I don't think that that should lead to us not having categories. Rather, I think that we should be careful when we have them, and make sure that they are fair, correct and not offensive. We need to be aware that Simple English is essentially joining several different languages and cultures and we need to try to be respectful to all of them at once. It is not merely a majority view that we need to worry about, but something that is fair to all. Blissyu2 (talk) 00:33, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello all, thank you for the input. I have now added a section in the guideline on categories. It is the text that I proposed earlier. I firmly believe it gives us something to work with and build upon. Eptalon (talk) 11:16, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Working on Emu War

I've been working on a simplification of Emu War for a while and getting close to being finished. About a dozen red links to fill in. I would appreciate it if someone from Australia could check the language and make sure I haven't Americanized any spelling or used incorrect vocabulary. There is a topic for this on the Talk page. Thanks, --Gotanda (talk) 06:21, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure, but as I understood, we don't have the requirement that articles on America use American English, those on Great Britain use British English, etc. So I thgink as long as the form is correct, it is probably ok. Eptalon (talk) 10:41, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure. I can check. I am Australian. Blissyu2 (talk) 01:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. I simplified it a little bit. It's more of an issue that it might be too complicated for Simple English. But it is fine as far as Australianism is concerned. Blissyu2 (talk) 02:00, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the Australianism vs Americanism check. Just about there now. Once we get a few minor red links completed. --Gotanda (talk) 21:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

And, I just nominated for GA. Please comment if you have time. --Gotanda (talk) 00:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Requested pages" needs attention

Hello,

the pagew listed above is a human-generated list, where people can request that certain pages be added to Simple English Wikipedia; they then add the tittle of the page, and a link to the EnWp page. It is basically a list of red-links, and by clicking on a red-link the page can be created.

I do see problems though:

1. There's no moderation; created pages need to be removed "by hand". That would likely be the work of a bot.
2. It is just a listing; there's no information when the page was added, how many incoming links it has, how often it was searched for (etc). Suppose I wanted to create one page, but I would like to create one that is important, how do I find the page?

So, there would be work for a bot:

• Remove the pages that have been created
• Create / Amend a table: number of incoming links / date added (perhaps per lettter)
• Remove the pages that haven't been created in like 6 month (they are unlikely to be created)

In addition, I would ask editors who add a page there to also create one of the red-link pages.

As is, the page is a next-to-useless collection of red links.

And before you ask: No, to my knowledge, there has been no fundamental touch of the page, since I am here.

So what do other people think? Eptalon (talk) 14:22, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

That page has existed forever.. It is just a place for people to request the creation of an article. There is no rhyme nor reason on what gets added other than what a user wants. It may have 100 incoming links. It may have none. There is no tracking data on most of these entries. The current entries are all up to the whim of random people who are often non-editors. There is little incentive to clear items off the list as those entries rarely impact other articles. Why bother creating an article that just one person wanted at some random time and will likely never see? There are much better uses of peoples time here.

A template could be set up to add "what links here" info and date added to each entry. Having a bot assigned to adjust adds when they are made (add the template) seems doable. It would only need to check that an edit was an add and not a fix or delete. This seems like it would just be a variation of scripts used for vandal reverting, unsigned and archiving. "did they add a link? append template. Change a linK or just change unlinked text? ignore" The bot could also clean blue links and old requests (by the date on the template) on a scheduled basis.

There are other lists that track what articles all wikis should have and the missing articles most linked to. The first works fine and if someone was looking for something to put time into, that list would be a good idea to work from. The most linked list is good in theory, but in practice it is flooded by links caused by nav templates. This causes a glut of topics on a small group of subjects. Municipalities in .. and Nobel prize winners take up much of the list. It is hard to find a missing article that would actually fill in redlinks outside of these templates.Pure Evil (talk) 16:40, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

"Also clean blue links" is almost no extra effort. Question is whether the community is committed to a process where we say: look you can put your request there, and if it gets created within 6 months it will have been done, otherwise you need to relist the entry. How it is done technically is a different story. At the moment, the question is whether replacing the unmaintained listing with a minimally-maintained one is something the community wants. Eptalon (talk) 20:14, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Several of these central pages are useless, and have never or rarely been used or developed. They were created before we started. We should cull central pages which are rarely or never used, unless a convincing reason can be given. I would keep pages referring to basic Simple English concepts, because experience shows that many editors need it when they first arrive. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:39, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

As an alternative, imagine a page with sections, one per month, newest one at the top. A user could then add an article to be created in the section for the current month, and the bot would then simply remove the pages that have been created (once a day) and (once a month) the sections for the months that are older than the attrition period. Plus perhaps update a counter? - In both cases, we'd start with an empty (or hand-picked) page. Eptalon (talk) 10:33, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

For example: 4 months, for example 30-50 pages per month is managable; what we currently have isn't. Eptalon (talk) 10:36, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

The problem of what wanted pages list is used has been around for a while. We currently have several lists and each has its own problems. Discussions on the topic happen all over (atm there are two subjects with it on Simple Talk)

1. Special:WantedPages: its a system generated list that includes the page titles that do not exist but are linked to the most. Pros: it generated by the system regularly so no user time needed and relatively up to date. Cons: Nav templates flood the list. While the pages are linked to, those links are relatively artificial. The page is not wanted for other articles or by users. 2. Wikipedia:Requested pages - This list is created by users. Pros: These are actual pages people want to see. Cons: Each entry is wanted by one person, there is no way to know if it is widely wanted. The list is not upkept or moderated. Overall, the list serves little purpose in its currect form. 3. Wikipedia:RecentChanges/Most Wanted: This is part of the header for New Changes. It is a varied list of topics selected by hand from Special:wantedpages. Pros: easily to find the list, the items are most wanted. Cons: There are a small number of options, only updated as often as some one want to do it. It fills up fast then sits for a long time with no changes - some topics are done and others are ignored then no changes to the list for a while. 4. Wikipedia:Most wanted articles: User generated list created from the most linked to names in the SQL database of all articles. Pros: article are wanted, updated monthly. Several hundred redlinks providing a lot of varied topics. Cons. Expensive cost of user time. Each monthly update took much of the day to generate and format the list. In the past, the list was updated monthly but it has not been managed in over a decade.

A balanced approach needs to be found. A way to do #4 in a much more economical (or automated) way would be best. It was the most useful but the most costly to maintain. At the minimun, a combo of wantedpages and New changes could work. It would require some user time but not a huge investment. I suggest created an extended list of real page requests. On a regular basis (monthly) go through the Mostwanted list and make a selection of topics that are not navlink adds. This list would be the basis for the entries on New Pages. That page could be updated as needed from the monthly list.

Adding a way to bypass/ ignore nav templates could also help a lot. Templates could be added to the top and bottom of the navbox template where the new templates would just say <noinclude> at the top and </noinclude> at the bottom. Turn the template on and all the navboxes go silent. If the page check was run then a valid count would be generated and then the template turned back off. The difficulty would be in getting the system to set the templates to on before it checks the listing then turning it back off afterwards. this is likely a developer level fix. It would at least require the action be set up to run when the check is made by whoever manages that aspect which is beyond local.

• I think Wikipedia:Requested pages should definitely be kept. It serves a purpose and many of these articles ARE in fact being created. It would be okay in my opinion if pages were removed after a certain amount of time, by a bot, but this would require someone to code the bot which is a lot of work. I believe it has been suggested before to set up Special:WantedPages so links from templates aren't counted. If possible, that change would improve that list. Finally, there is a list of articles which someone thinks are actually important at Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have/Expanded. Lights and freedom (talk) 23:51, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

As I think I pointed out elsewhere: I have spent a few hours, and I think that after about a weekend, I might have a bot to:

• Add a date to an entry, when it's added.
• Remove entries that have been created
• Remove entries that are older than a given time period, say 6 months.

Once this is done (and went through aopproval process), it could like once a day. Eptalon (talk) 21:59, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Changes to displaying political party colors

I am updating the way that we display political parties' colors in articles. The change is to match the way that English Wikipedia does it. This mostly affects articles with lists of politicians.

The change consists of replacing templates whose names end with "/meta/color". The function of those templates is being replaced by Template:Party color. That template uses data modules that are listed at Module:Political party/doc#Data pages. Those data modules should probably be re-imported from enwiki periodically. I imported most of them not long ago, and I see that enwiki has updated some of them since then.

Instead of one or more templates for each political party, there will now be one data module per letter of the alphabet plus one for parties whose names don't start with a letter. This will result in having many fewer things to maintain.

After first making sure that some underlying processes were in place, I started methodically working through the replacement of the meta/color templates, an article at a time.

Some interesting things I noticed:

• In some of the articles, I noticed that the colors displayed were different after the change. I believe this is because our individual templates didn't match enwiki's data modules.
• In some cases, colors are hardcoded in a list instead of using a template. That is something I plan to address after I get the new process in place everywhere.

I have a semi-automated process that is letting me work through the updates fairly easily. If anyone happens to be working on an article that displays political party colors and you'd like some info on how to use the new method, feel free to let me know if you'd like any help with it. Otherwise, have patience while I work through the changes.

If anyone has questions about this, feel free to ask. -- Auntof6 (talk) 07:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

---

I believe I have finished this project, except for possible minor cleanup work. I did the same thing for the meta/shortname templates, whose function is replaced by Template:Party shortname. If anyone has any questions or sees any issues with this process, please let me know. --Auntof6 (talk) 07:24, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Returning

Hello everyone! I have returned from my wikibreak(even though I didn't announce it.) I am here to keep editing. SoyokoAnis - talk 15:04, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Welcome back! Tsugaru let's talk! :) 01:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

DJ Parisa

Hi there I'm so surry to buther you. I have a question : Could you please translate to Simple English [1]This article ? You have sources References here [2]. Thank you so much Best Regards. If you don't want to translate it into Simple English could you than do it Translate to another language ? Thank you. 80.11.161.28 (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello, there have been several attempts to push this content into SEWP, there have also been several RfDs, if memory serves me. So far, we weren't able to establish that the lady is notable. Western Frisian /Frysk is a language spoken in the Netherlands, perhaps in Germany. There are about 350.000 speakers. If the lady is indeed notable, why doesn't she have an article in Dutch, German or French wikipedias? Eptalon (talk) 19:23, 16 January 2023 (UTC)