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The acronym WP:NOTNEWS should be retired for "WP:NOTTRIVIALNEWS"

I think it's a great thing that not all news stories are to be put on Wikipedia: some news is trivial, and some news is unimportant.

However the guideline has been used to suppress or attempt to suppress recently-developing news stories on ENwiki articles, without allowing for the content to be placed and later deciding whether it's lasting. WP:NOTNEWS is being taken to mean "don't put recent news on Wikipedia" even though that's not what's being meant at all.

I think the acronym "WP:NOTNEWS" should be retired in favor of "WP:NOTTRIVIALNEWS" to underscore that trivial news is verboten, but news in general is not.

I personally like to say "Wikipedia is news" because the dynamism of updating an article as stuff unfolds is what attracts people to the site, and has attracted people there since I started editing in 2003. This is one thing that makes the public like Wikipedia; trying to suppress that will make the public dislike Wikipedia and/or reduce the number of editors we have.

(I am aware the Japanese Wikipedia discourages adding information about recent news events, but I think this is a mistake on their part) WhisperToMe (talk) 02:24, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Can you give an example? I do think we absolutely need better clarity on what NOTNEWS is, but I'm not sure of a good example of trivial news? --Masem (t) 02:31, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

A good example would be a high school sports team winning an ordinary game "The Woodlands football win big over Klein Cain for fourth straight win." - IMO this content shouldn't be put into a Wikipedia article. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I see WP:NOTNEWS thrown around and used as a deletion argument by people who appear to not have read NOTNEWS. The Boston Marathon bombing was one example where an attempt was made early on to delete the article while the entire city was shut down and the story was top of all the networks for days. The redirect should be changed to something like WP:ROUTINENEWS since WP:ROUTINE is already take but pretty on point. Most experienced editors can tell the difference between a routine gang shooting and the attack on Parkland or San Bernardino. Legacypac (talk) 03:15, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Agree completely, I think WP:ROUTINENEWS is an excellent idea. A2soup (talk) 03:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I came here to say the same thing.

I've seen experienced editors cite NOTNEWS as a policy saying you can't cite a newspaper to verify a fact. Ever. I've seen NOTNEWS cited as a reason you can't mention anything in an article that happened in the last year, or five years. Or you can't create an article about something that happened this year. The language is so vague, you can understand why they'd think that.

Under "2. News reports." it says "routine announcements, sports, or celebrities" don't qualify for "inclusion in the encyclopedia". Then it says "breaking news should not be emphasized". Which is it, NOTNEWS? First it says we can't "include" it at all, then it says we can't emphasize it. Does "include" refer to stand-alone article creation/retention? Or article and list content?

We have hundreds of articles about sports team seasons or championship series that are updated with the latest results within seconds after a game ends. Nobody complains that NOTNEWS is being violated. Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are kept up to date with the minutiae of their lives, provided it is well sourced, and nobody challenges the FA status of these celebrity bios.

When it says "Timely news subjects not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews", does "not suitable" mean not qualified to be a stand alone article? Or that you can't so much as breathe a word of it in any article? *too lazy to copy-paste a shrug emoticon here*

The "not news" section could be deleted entirely and other guidance, mainly the WP:No original research policy and Wikipedia:Notability guidelines, would ensure that nothing changed. The MOS can address whether or not articles are written in a "news style", and it's just weird that we even have a style rule classified as policy. An article written in the wrong style has guideline problems, namely MOS, not something so egregious as to rise to the level policy violation. We don't clutter policy pages with WP:WBA advice.

The reason we should get rid of so many of these vague and redundant WP:NOT sections is the interminable debates they cause. WP:RS and WP:RS/N will affirm that newspapers or TV reports can be reliable sources, yet we still see editors wasting their time debating that because of this inane WP:NOTNEWS policy. It doesn't have to be this way, when we can clearly live without it. We could rewrite it to clarify what it is even trying to say, but that would be a monumental consensus building process. Much simpler to agree that the parts of NOTNEWS that are correct are redundant, and the parts that aren't correct are harmful. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:35, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I am really curious where experienced editors are saying you can't use newspapers articles as sources due to NOT#NEWS because that's not anything intoned by NOT#NEWS. There are a few places where we can't use newspaper articles to support new information but this is primarily over at MEDRS-type topics. --Masem (t) 05:17, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Purely out of curiosity? Or because it could make a difference? I can search up diffs up out of the memory hole, but you're asking me to relive nightmares here. I have come to expect to see WP:NOTNEWS flung about any time a news source counters whatever they're trying to argue. In AfDs, when the notability is only news articles. When a book says X and news sources say Y, NOTNEWS is cited to favor the book. If an editor wants to remove any content that happens to rely on a news source, they'll use NOTNEWS as an excuse. It's perpetually abused, and for what? Are there legitimate instances where if NOTNEWS didn't exist, some other policy wouldn't do? Isn't the 'Original reporting' paragraph derived from WP:NOR? "Who's who" is only restating WP:BLP1E or WP:BIO1E. Or "Not every match played or goal scored is significant enough to be included in the biography of a person." This is simply misleading. IF it's Serena Williams, then every single professional athletic act will indeed be recorded in one of 23 articles and lists devoted to her. Lesser athletes, yes, we only meniton the highlights. The sources generally, and WP:WEIGHT in particular, guide our decisions on how much depth of coverage to devote to one topic over another, while NOTNEWS offers platitudes, but not guidance. Why even have it? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The reason I ask for examples is to determine in context of its misuse, if it because editors do not read anything beyond the literal meaning of "Not news", or if it is because it is a misunderstanding of the policy guidance under NOT#NEWS. If it were strictly the former, that would be good reason to change the shortcut and deprecate "NOT#NEWS". But if it is a misapplication of the NOT#NEWS principles, that's something not to be fixed here but at AFD or elsewhere. --Masem (t) 17:26, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Chrysler/Archive 5 has an RfC thread, followed by a second thread that rehashes the fisrt, and both are muddled throughout by 'not news'. It's a question of whether mentioning JD Power and Consumer Reports rankings is neutral, and the fact that a news source reports what they said means it should be excluded. Specifically: "Including, for example, a 2012 article that says CR put Chrysler products below average in 2012 is basically reporting news." It was an ugly protracted discussion, and the poor wording and vagueness of 'not news' only made it worse.

I'll point out more examples. You can also just search the RS/N and see how often 'not news' gets dragged into a simple question of whether or not we can cite a given fact to a news source. Or that because the fact was published X days or Y weeks or Z months ago, 'not news' means we can't have it. If it isn't not news being misapplied, it is someone having to patiently explain, for the 1,000th time, that 'not news' isn't relevant. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

My read of those is definitely misapplication of what NOT#NEWS means based on the text, and not so much just reading only the words "not news". There is some logic in the claims made to omit information due to NOT#NEWS that falls within the bounds of what NOT#NEWS talks about but, IMO, way off the mark of what NOT#NEWS really means. Which does suggest rewriting the section a bit to be clearer, or having a guideline page that explains what is and isn't a NOT#NEWS violation. --Masem (t) 21:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• I agree that we should deprecate NOTNEWS and the underlying notions. I have heard the spurious NOTNEWS arguments for over nine years on this project, and I believe that the ridiculous argument "Timely news subjects not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews" should be removed from our guidelines. It is time to face reality. Wikipedia is the #5 rated website in the world, according to Alexa. Wikinews is #61,982 as rated by Alexa. Wikipedia contains countless outstanding articles about historical topics that began as coverage of breaking news stories and we should be deeply proud of that content. Wikinews is a failed project. No, we should not have articles about routine, run-of-the-mill news events, and no, we should not publish any original news reporting. But our current policies and guidelines, guided by the mainstream interpretations of experienced and productive editors, allows us to develop outstanding articles about truly important news events. I am living in a cloud of smoke downwind from the catastrophic Camp Fire (2018) and it is amazing to see our volunteer editors create such outstanding content in real time. The NOTNEWS notions are really harmful. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 03:58, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I will drop this link to the RFC I started just about a year prior about the status of NOTNEWS. The result was there was no consensus to change from how NOTNEWS is to be treated, so let's keep that in mind here.

I do think that when it comes to objective (non-subjective) news like disasters, elections, sports results, etc. that NOTNEWS does say we can stay current. But the point is that every random newspaper headline is not necessary a news-worthy topic; NEVENT exists to make sure that if it not obvious if the event will have long-lasting effects, it should ultimately be deleted. --Masem (t) 04:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

In that case I do support "NOTROUTINENEWS" as that communicates that "every random newspaper headline is not necessary a news-worthy topic" pretty well WhisperToMe (talk) 14:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes fix the conflict in language ....but as per normal academic endeavours we should mention we limit newspaper use for most topics here.... pop culture is an example of were it is used because of the non academic nature of it. - University of Hull...that said all reference material should be examined closely and used appropriatly - Yale. An example of poor use with click bait and day by day coverage is Fox News#Content....but many good examples like 2018 Kivu Ebola outbreak.--Moxy (talk) 04:33, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

My understanding is that this depends on the academic area. In hard sciences mainstream newspapers definitely don't cut it, while in social sciences in humanities they're okay. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:34, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 1

I tried to remove the misleading references to sister projects but was reverted. [1] WikiSource is off topic for this section and WikiNews is morbid - silly to send people to there. Legacypac (talk) 05:01, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The point of the line removed is that there are places not on en.wiki where editors can engage in writing primary sources. We should not be making rash changes to core policy without establishing a consensus (which is not here yet). --Masem (t) 05:15, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• No, WP:NOTNEWS is fine. Adjusting stuff in the hope that people will grasp the point rarely works—the problem is that the principle eludes some editors and changing the name won't fix that. If a major incident occurs, judgment is required to decide whether long-term notability will be satisfied or whether the incident is part of media noise. Adjusting the shortcut won't help provide that judgment. With the proposed shortcut, discussion would center on whether an incident is TRIVIALNEWS rather than whether it was merely NEWS. That doesn't help. Johnuniq (talk) 06:11, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The thing is, the opening line of NOTNEWS says "As Wikipedia is not a paper source, editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events. However, not all verifiable events are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia." - So the very idea is that the discussion should be centering around whether it's TRIVIALNEWS or not. (there may be unrelated WEIGHT reasons why non-trivial news could be excluded too, but the main idea is that trivial news is to be excluded) WhisperToMe (talk) 06:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Delete Whatever you call it, the policy is clearly a dead letter. For example, it supposedly prohibits routine sports news and yet we have a recent FA, History of York City F.C. (1980–present). This is the routine ups and downs (mostly downs) of a minor league football team which is explicitly framed in a recent rather than historical way. If the policy were taken seriously then the page would not exist at all as any significant content should appear in the main article, York City F.C. and the rest is routine. But instead of the article being merged or deleted, it is given top billing on the main page. Another item on the main page currently is "NBC controversially cut away from an American football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi, causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic ending." That's so trivial that it's funny. Our actual policy is WP:NOTPAPER and this better reflects our compendious content, "Other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page, there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover or the total amount of content." Andrew D. (talk) 07:02, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  Maybe the only aspect of NOTNEWS that we need is to say that timeliness is not a priority at all. If an editor is saying "This needs to go live right away! People need this information now!", that's where it is necessary to say that Wikipedia is not news. We have other guidance addressing what is a good source, and how to apportion weight to topics from most important to least, and all the rest of it. All that matters is that we don't work on deadlines and aren't influenced by outside timetables. "Out of date" in the Wikipedia timescale means months or years out of date, not hours or days. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 08:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  • It is true that sometimes people jump the gun at adding information about events, so for questionable stuff it is good to remind people that there isn't a time limit. At the same time, some people use NOTNEWS to argue that people should never just write about what's on the news; however the public likes the fact that articles about major events can be written in real-time. Take that away and it kills enthusiasm for editing Wikipedia within the public. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:21, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

    • There is an issues with RECENTISM in articles in current news, particularly when it comes to opinions and analysis , but when it comes to factual, objective information that would otherwise be part of the article in the long term, there is no problem with the rush to add it as long as the sourcing is good. This is how nearly all of our articles on major tragic events like the various terrorist/shooting incidents of late have been built out. NOT#NEWS works for those, and infact encourages those. --Masem (t) 15:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

• I'm for the name change. NOTNEWS is, in my experience, notorious for being cited at AfD by people who obviously have read only the title. Drive you nuts.Herostratus (talk) 09:34, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• If you want to write news, you are in the wrong place, there are newspapers and other news organizations to go work for. So, NOTNEWS is fine. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:43, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Alanscottwalker thanks for making the point - you come across as having only read the title. Legacypac (talk) 14:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Then you obviously would not know what you are talking about, because your assumption is false. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Alan, WP:NOTNEWS says: "Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events." - In other words it says "We Want News" despite its shorthand. It's just qualifying what kind of news it doesn't want. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:57, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

No. We don't want to be the news, being up to date does not require being the news. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:08, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

In that case I would suggest advocating for the deletion of the line encouraging creation of articles about the news. However the guideline as it currently stands encourages creation of current events content. I am asking for a rename of the shorthand of the guideline to reflect this. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:21, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The line is fine, you need to change all our core content policies if you want to be the news. In short, just because you have your own view of what up-to-date means, you still have to work through our content policies and remember our purpose before you have actually produced good content, for here.Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:37, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

If someone is adding up-to-date information that would otherwise still likely be part of how a topic would be covered if one was writing about it 5-10-20 years later, that's fine, that's entirely within the spirit of NOT#NEWS and all other policies. --Masem (t) 15:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, just, "part of how the topic" means, presented as a V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio compliant tertiary article would. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:36, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Alan, IMO arguing that Wikipedia should fight that mentality among editors is like trying to herd cats: editors want to write about events as they happen and they don't want to stop doing so. Now, it shouldn't be written in news style, and clearly not everything in the paper should be written about. I agree with much of what is in WP:NOTNEWS, but I think the shorthand needs a rename to reflect what it really means. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

That does not seem sensible. If, as you suggest, there is some strong innate urge to write news, and that is not what we are here for, then not news is the clearly useful response - 'hey!, hello! we are not here to write news, if you want to be a news reporter, you are in the wrong place.'. --Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:08, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Look carefully at Wikipedia article traffic after a major incident-say a plane crash, a building collapse, or fire with 20+ fatalities. The spike in traffic to such articles shows peoples' desires here. Wikipedia's tagline is to be "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and the readers-the public-expects Wikipedia to deliver. I understand you disagree with the idea of Wikipedia being a vehicle for current events, but this goes against the public's wishes. This is why WP:NOTNEWS supports news-related edits. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

So, allot of people come to Wikipedia to not follow our core content policies - assuming that is true, we have to bring them up to speed, quickly. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:37, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The core content policy WP:NOTNEWS in fact encourages such behavior; I have already quoted it above, and I encourage you to read it again. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:56, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

No, it does not. We never read a policy in isolation, and any claim that NOTNEWS encourages people to break our core content policies has to be nonsense. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Then it becomes necessary, in order to support such a claim, to quote multiple policies and show how they all work together. In any case Masem I believe has already responded to that point: An edit about newly-released news that breaks COPYVIO should be removed solely because of COPYVIO; there is no prohibition whatsoever on making content about newly-released news on ENwiki.

Also I can't see the sum of the other policies being opposed to this when the internal text of NOTNEWS very explicitly says: "editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events." - If we didn't want editors to do this, why is this policy asking them to do this? (yes, they do need to follow all of the other policies-V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio-, but the typical survival of current events articles shows this is not only possible but routinely satisfied again and again)

WhisperToMe (talk) 23:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Why is it asking them to write policy compliant articles, that should be obvious because we want policy compliant articles. It certainly does not want them to stop at their personal ideas of what "up-to-date" means, and 'up-to-date' cannot and does not mean write non-policy compliant articles. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:51, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Alan I assume you read the page, but your comment is exactly the kind of comment that makes people think those who make such comments have not read the page. NOTNEWS has little to do with writing news. Legacypac (talk) 14:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

No. We are here to produce V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio compliant tertiary articles, and we are never not about that, never. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:08, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The guideline as it currently stands encourages creation of articles related to current events-i.e. news-and such V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio compliant tertiary articles can be done with New York Times/Wall Street Journal/Wa Po/LA Times/The Guardian/Sydney Morning Herald/Toronto Star/Le Monde/Der Spiegel/Yomiuri Shimbun/Asahi Shimbun/The Hindu/etc. being the sources. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:21, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

And your job here is not to re-write the Wall Street Journal (etc.) because you are not here to do what the WSJ does. You are here to write V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio compliant tertiary articles, no matter how excited you are to get your edit in. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:37, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

That would kill the momentum of many, many, many excited potential editors, and that would be ill-advised. The Newseum in Washington, DC states that (something like) "the news is the first draft of history" - Wikipedia's essentially here to record history, the stories of humanity. Stopping someone from "[rewriting] the Wall Street Journal" is merely preventing a first draft of what should be written anyway. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Kill what? The only thing that you would seem to kill is what we are always suppose to be doing, here. The poor people who don't know and continue not to know are bound to be in trouble, here, and that is wrong and cruel. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS asks users to "include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events". The users' desire is in line with the wording of what should be done here. Based on my reading of this, policy would need to be amended to reflect an opinion against covering current events, as it currently states the opposite. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:23, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Your reading can only be misguided fundamentalism or determination to read it out of context (it's never meant to be read alone). Your proposed reading is entirely negligent or worse. What we mean by, articles, is always articles that comply with V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio.Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

How is one of WP's articles that has recently published news/data cited to NYTimes or BBC failing any of those policies? --Masem (t) 17:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

How? You can't tell an article is in any way complying with our policies by just saying it cites the NYT and BBC. Citing is not writing an article, and citing is certainly not writing a V/NPOV/NOR/BLP/NCpyVio article. You can have cited material that violates all those policies, or any one of those policies, individually. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:03, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

You are making an extremely broad claim. I'm asking, if we have an established article that already meets policy, and someone adds brand new information that just got reported by say the NYTimes or BBC to that article, how is that article now violating policies? You're claiming it does, right now. --Masem (t) 18:22, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Really? Come on, now. No one can tell you right now, whatever thing you are asking me to imagine was just added, was directly verifiable, just because you say you 'cite the BBC', they cannot tell you whether it is DUE, they cannot tell you whether its presentation is NPOV, or OR; they cannot tell you whether it is plagiarism or copyvio; they cannot tell you whether it offends BLP - none of that is determined by you saying, 'cite BBC'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Whether an addition is within UNDUE or a copyvio or whatever, that's not NOT#NEWS's realm. All those policies work together. The point about NOT#NEWS is that it allows for the include of up-to-the-second information that meets all other policies. If someone adds a copyvio from breaking news, we remove that not because NOT#NEWS, but because COPYVIO. And so on. --Masem (t) 20:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, it has to meet our core content policies because among other things, we are not writing news. That is part of what it means to not be writing news. Hold-up, you are not a news reporter, you need to be writing a policy complaint tertiary article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

The policy does explicitly say that the news style of writing is not kosher: " Wikipedia is also not written in news style." - the significant information from news is crucial to Wikipedia, but it should be written in a different style. The crux of this RFC is that people are using NOTNEWS to wrongly remove significant information, not to ask for a change in writing style. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:09, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

You claim "its significant", that is not enough, you have to be able to demonstrate its significant by the weight of reliable sources not yourself. That is clearly one of the ways we are not news, news reporters are not required to compare their writing against other reports (they are not tertiary writers), we are, and part of the job is to weed out misinformation, disinformation, mistake, etc. This is especially crucial in ongoing events (eg., it is good encyclopedia writing to consider not posting an election night story that declares a winner (instead you may look for a more restrained report, and not report the so-called declared winner from that report at all), when the next 48 hours says their so-called win is in doubt, and the next 48 hours says they lost. And that is just one of many examples.) Better to be silent then to actively spread disinformation. We are not working on deadline, because again we are NOTNEWS. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:33, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

NOT#NEWS does not sit in a void all by itself. All other policies (including parts of WP:NOT) also apply. So yes, posting the "results" of the election on the night of the election based on preliminary results before official results are posted should be handled with care. But as I recall for this last US election, at least for both the federal House and Senate election pages, the language added on election night avoided the CRYSTALBALL result, but instead say something that "preliminary results indicated that..." which is perfectly fine information - it followed what the press said, it alluded to the results not being final, and it was placed at a point people looking for information would see it quickly. Obviously, as the results became official, that wording was placed to be more concrete, but still, the summary of the election results is a standard piece of data that would be in the article otherwise. (I do not know how any single seat's election results were worded, but the same principle should have applied there). We should definitely make sure that NOT#NEWS reminds editors to make sure to not jump to conclusions based on news, but that's more coming from CRYSTALBALL more than anything else. --Masem (t) 16:00, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

What? That was just one example. The point remains that we are NOTNEWS because we are not news reporters, we have no deadline, we are tertiary examining and weighing multiple sources (excluding and throwing some of those sources out), avoiding disinformation, misinformation and mistake, and not going with the hunch of what "up-to-date" is imagined to mean. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

NOTNEWS as it stands isn't even adequate to avoid treating preliminary election results as facts to state in Wikipedia's voice: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 12#RfC Should articles say elections are decided based on preliminary returns?. You'd think media projections of election results should only be given with in text attribution, and to not say in Wikipedia's voice "Candidate has won and will take office on..." The certification of the result by the officials actually counting the ballots is now treated by Wikipedia as a meaningless formality. In other words, the level of confidence of the losing candidate and the whims of the media are what determines Wikipedia's truth.

It's a great example of how NOTNEWS is not helping anything. News media consumers demand to know who won the election, and they value immediate gratification over accuracy. News media are forgiven a few projections that have to retracted for the sake of a timely, if weak, answer. This should be a bright line that distinguishes an encyclopedia from a newspaper: we ought to cautiously say only "The Gazette has projected the winner and their opponent has conceded, and if that result is certified they will take office on..." But NOTNEWS doesn't even give us that. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

If we are talking election results of a national general election, the election is clearly notable and the results are clearly going to be part of the article 20 years from now. It's objective information. The only thing that we have to watch for is making sure pre-official results are labeled as official results, so that if the results drastically change in the official count, we can change that, and have not misinformed the readership.

Now there is something to be said about editors guessing what will be important when the information is subjective, or we have not had a similar type of event or topic, in which case we absolutely should be cautious. This is the RECENTISM point, and a point I had spoked to a few years ago about the inclusion of reactions/commentary on news articles, but the community was split on that point, or at least the way it was worded. I absolutely agree that if we are presented with a news story that we are unclear if that is something that would be present in the article 20 years down the road, we should avoid including it until it becomes more clear about its importance. --Masem (t) 17:37, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Oh, my. Did anyone even bother to read my election aside, it was an example, talking about a single race. At any rate, none of this has challenged NOTNEWS as being good shortcut, because the truth is we -- as painful as it may be for some (and apparently hard to accept) -- are not the news, we are not news reporters, and if you want to be the news or be a news reporter, you are in the wrong place. Editors should think about what our actual purpose and method is and an apparent and an obviously good place to begin is, 'you are NOTNEWS'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:53, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

• I think we have two separate facets here: do we change the NOT#NEWS shortcut to be a bit more precise, and in doing that, do we update the language of what is NOT#NEWS presently. Most of the opposition above is towards the misuse of the shortcut, because otherwise, NOT#NEWS as written doesn't stop editors from working in current news into articles or creating articles on breaking stories.
• From ITN, one of the mantras there is "ITN is not a news ticker", and that might be better here too. In that, we don't ignore the news, and we do encourage articles to be up-to-date, but every story that passes on the pages of NYTimes, BBC, etc. does not need to be reflected into WP. Mind you, this statement intersects with a lot of other policies: other WP:NOT elements (like NOT#STATS), WP:BLP (we don't include every bit of celebrity gossip that comes from RS), WP:NPOV, WP:N/WP:NEVENT, and so on. By emphasize that it's not that WP is not a newspaper but more that WP is not a news ticker (blinding reiterating every story that comes alone), that may make it clearly towards the problems addressed above.
• That might require readdressing then a few points within NOT:NEWS, but I think that's a first step is to be clear we don't incorporate every news article that is reported. --Masem (t) 15:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Comment WP:NOT is among our more important WP:POLICY statements. This discussion is not competent to make any significant changes to that policy. If you want to do this it will require an RfC. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment: Which discussion would be more competent, considering this is in the talk page of the said policy statement? An RfC can be added to this discussion if necessary. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

RfC regarding NOTNEWS

Should the acronym WP:NOTNEWS (of "Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_newspaper") be replaced with WP:NOTROUTINENEWS, WP:NOTTRIVIALNEWS, or a similar new shorthand? WhisperToMe (talk) 16:28, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support It is probably beneficial in a small way, and certainly not harmful. Much more extensive reworking is needed though. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose because I think it's micromanagement to specifically say there should be NO TROUT IN ENEWS, because trouts do sometimes belong on electronic news platforms. Also, I'm kinda sick of people suddenly posting RfCs in the middle of chaotic threads without discussion of framing of the question and so on. EEng 20:13, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Question Should I move the RFC template to the thread beginning? I don't often post RfCs, so I would like to improve this one. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)-

• Partial oppose. People can use whatever acronym they want/is helpful to the situation. The point of shortcuts is to make the names faster to type, and when they get longer like this, it sort of defeats the purpose of having shortcuts, resulting in them just becoming a tool to scare n00bs. So instead of using something like "Delete per WP:NOTTRIVIALNEWS", why don't you just say "Delete because WP:Wikipedia is not a newspaper" (the actual section title)? Creating these shortcuts and listing them in the shortcut boxes on WP:! is fine, but should we really be having a RfC about this? — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 20:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - The reason why I posted an RFC is because another editor said that the policy can't be amended at all without one. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:08, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Reply: The question of whether a policy change should be made is a separate one and one I am still considering. Just wanted to clarify. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 23:13, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
      • Comment If changing the suggested acronym "NOTNEWS" to "NOTROUTINENEWS" would require a policy change, then I am arguing that it does because of repeated misuse of the acronym "NOTNEWS" in content discussions. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:58, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose primarily because NOTNEWS is so pervasively ignored that I think the entire concept is de-facto WP:HISTORICAL. I don't like that. But we are where we are and the most egregious systemic bias on the project is WP:RECENTISM. There is no real interest in checking this so I think the best thing to do is accept it and move on. -Ad Orientem (talk) 20:23, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - People are still using WP:NOTNEWS as a justification incorrectly (without understanding what the policy actually says) on discussion debates, whether ultimately successful or not which is why I am attempting to rename the acronym. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• I don't think it's doable. I won't be able to delete NOTNEWS because it is linked so many times from so many places (and I would oppose running a bot to replace the NOTNEWS and modifying the old discussions). And if you keep NOTNEWS blue, people will continue linking it out of inertia. You can, of course, add any new helpful shortcut. I just don't think you can get rid of the old one. Renata (talk) 20:26, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I'm not recommending that one delete the redirect from old acronym, but instead to change the suggested acronym on the policy page to "NOTROUTINENEWS" - With a new acronym suggested, a person looking into the old one will see the new one quoted on the policy page. This would undermine the old acronym in favor of the new one. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:58, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose NOTNEWS means that not every exciting news incident warrants an article—only events with long-term significance (notability) should be recorded in an article. Adjusting the shortcut will not provide the judgment required to determine which events are significant. Johnuniq (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment -Problem is a lot of editors using WP:NOTNEWS to oppose content are not saying "this news is trivial, in that it is unimportant and will never have long-term significance for the subject" but they are saying "editors should not write about recently-developing subjects" - the point is to clear up misinterpretation on what NOTNEWS really means. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:05, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• You won't achieve that by changing the shortcut, particularly when people will continue using WP:NOTNEWS for many years. Johnuniq (talk) 01:03, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

• I feel like I would achieve it slowly. Immediately, maybe not, as people would still have "NOTNEWS" engrained in their minds, but as people click NOTNEWS and see "NOTROUTINENEWS" it starts to sink in. This would get more momentum if "NOTNEWS changed to NOTROUTINENEWS" is publicized. Lots of changes take time to work. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:13, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposed title does not seem a better fit to content of the article, e.g. it is not just for blocking Trivia. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:12, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Move NOTNEWS to § Style and format?

Many editors above agree that it's important to write recent events in an encyclopedic style. Perhaps NOTNEWS can be the second sub-section in "Style and format", no? wumbolo ^^^ 20:24, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

NOTNEWS is more than just writing style, its about content too. --Masem (t) 21:09, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Shouldn't this page be protected from vandalism?

This Wikipedia policy page does not seem to be protected in any form (right now if I wanted I could edit it, but I feel I should not do so without a valid reason). Shouldn't this page be protected in some form (including semi-protection or extended confirmed protection) so as to prevent vandalism of it, considering that it discusses important policies regarding this important online project? --SilSinn9821 (talk) 00:04, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

SilSinn9821, we're an open wiki, which means we don't protect preemptively, both from a philosophical standpoint and policy standpoint. Also, if you check the edit history here, there isn't a single vandal edit in the last 50 revisions, which go back to July. I haven't checked past that, but I think it'd be similar. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I see. Would WP:WHITELOCK be a better choice for this case, should the need arise? Not that it has to be done now, just to be considered in the future. --SilSinn9821 (talk) 00:47, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think either is needed here, but if they were, I would personally go with semi-protection for a variety of reasons. Namely: if vandalism on a policy page is bad enough that someone is going to protect, its bad enough for semi-protection. I've personally only ever used pending changes four times and have the philosophy that it's pretty useless since by the time you reach needing to use it, you can also justify semi-protection usually. Your mileage may vary depending on the admin. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

When I first started editing here more than a dozen years ago, I was uncomfortable with how open Wikipedia was about letting anyone edit. Over the years there have been attempts to start new encyclopedias with more restrictions on who could edit. Perhaps the best known of those has been Citizendium. Look at the article on it to see how well they have done. I now think our open editing policy is just fine. - Donald Albury 03:15, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• A great way to get perspective on this is to look at [2], which shows there are 1441 editors with this page on their watchlist, of whom 266 "visited recent edits" (maybe the last 30 days). In other words: there are plenty of eyes on this. (This info is got at via the Page information link in at the left of each page). EEng 04:34, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Appropriate use of WP:CRYSTAL?

A discussion at the talk page for the new Avengers movie could use some additional input. There's a dispute about whether to use "It is intended to be the direct sequel..." or "It is the direct sequel...". Argento Surfer (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Refdesks

The RefDesks should not be a forum or a place for original thought. I have removed an invitation to use them that way from [3] Kindly do not restore without a compelling argument and concensus here. Legacypac (talk) 06:43, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

User:SoWhy restored this policy contradiction without discussion, asking me to discuss [4]. Actually I did start a discussion but they failed to participate. SoWhy actually cited the removed sentence as justification for why the Ref Desks can be a Forum (over at Village pump) so evidently this can easy be interpreted that way. Unless someone can find a good policy based reason (outside this sentance) we should tell users to use the Ref Desks to skirt NOTAFORUM policy this sentence needs to come out. Legacypac (talk) 10:34, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

The policy is being cited by both sides of a current discussion about the fate of the refdesks. Consequently, it should not be significantly altered until that discussion concludes to avoid the impression of tampering (by either side). Also, I merely restored a long-standing part of the policy that has existed for over ten years and thus is presumed to enjoy community support. As such, removal needs to be discussed, not reinstatement. But only after the aforementioned discussion has concluded. Regards SoWhy 10:47, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

The sentence is on a policy page but is not policy per se about the Ref Desks. More of an invitation to violate policy. SoWhy is the only editor I've seen using this sentence to argue for keeping the Ref Desks, claiming this is policy about the Ref Desks (exempting them from the policy?) . Since the pointer to the Ref Desks is confusing I'll wait a bit to see ifna policy based reason to keep the sentence is advanced, and failing one, remove it again. The existence for a long time is not a persuasive argument since this is just a pointer not policy about the Ref Desks. Legacypac (talk) 13:11, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Have to agree that just because the refdesks are mentioned in NOT does not make this a policy page about the ref desks. --Masem (t) 15:18, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Masem: I did not say that this is a policy page about ref desks. I said (in another discussion) that the policy cited in favor of removing the ref desks explicitly advertises their use and has done so for over ten years, thus indicating some sense of consensus that the community thinks this is a good idea, lest someone had removed it by now. And since this part of the policy is mentioned by both sides of the discussion multiple times, I argue that changing the policy page to remove it will result in many arguments changing. It's like painting a house red while people are discussing which shade of blue the house is. Contrary to Legacypac's insistence, there is no rush to change this page right now while another discussion that involves it is still ongoing. On the contrary, per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, the policy on policy pages, "[e]diting a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system, especially if you do not disclose your involvement in the argument when making the edits." (and while I don't accuse Legacypac of doing so, it might well appear to be the reason for others). Last but not least, the change only makes sense iff there is consensus to close down the ref desks. If they continue to exist, it makes sense to continue directing users there. And if not, I'll happily agree to remove that sentence. Regards SoWhy 15:45, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

• RefDesks should not be used as forums, and we should say so, or at least not say the opposite. Their use as forums for debate and OR and bullshit is why there's a proposal (with quite a lot of support) to delete them or transwiki them to Wikiversity, because they are several kinds of WP:NOT problem at once.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Is wikipedia a thesaurus?

Sometimes people get a little crazy about how people use different names for basically the same thing. This is especially popular in political articles which can enumerate things with different names depending on region,"political inclusiveness", etc. Should I be able to reference this page to tell them the need to provide a reason why that information should be included, instead of just showing that a bunch of people have decided on a different name for essentially the same topic? Or is that a perfectly valid use of Wikipedia? Ethanpet113 (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I believe you're referencing your edit here? IMO, if there's a section about a topic where there are multiple terms for it, it's appropriate to have a section in prose about those terms. EvergreenFir (talk) 22:10, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Uploadsou14 Speedy Deletion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Please do not delete my page. I have posted 2 articles namely SOUVIK MANDAL and SOUVIK.. That is actually my name, mistakenly given to draft name. The draft name should be -Bahira Kaalimaata and Bhandirban Respectively but you the administrator has never guided me to edit me draft name. Uploadsou14 (talk) 21:18, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Uploadsou14 Ok, I will rename the drafts accordingly, in future if you need any help, follow the welcome message I posted on your talk page. --DBigXrayᗙ 22:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Technical research papers and summaries as articles

I'm seeing a number of drafts that are summary writeups of the editor's research papers as published by journals, dissertations, but slightly formatted so that the references are Wikipedia style. After scrubbing and filtering out the copyvios of their papers and postings to journals, at what level would the subject meet notability? Would a handful of citations by other academic papers be sufficient, or do they need to be mentioned in non-academic sources? The difficulty in tweaking the article for general readership is that it's highly specialized and that the editor feels it might inaccurately portray their concepts / WP:OWN. Alternatively, I could just blanket WP:NOTESSAY those articles. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 19:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Simple citations to a paper isn't sufficient. The paper should be noted as a key paper in its field or other reason, which still could be met through academic sources but more that just a simple citation. eg "How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension" being recognized as where Mandelbrot recognized the concept of fractals, or "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" by Maxwell --Masem (t) 19:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Masem It's more that they actually detail their work in that article. Here are some drafts for example:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Personal_initiative&oldid=881826935
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Celalettin-Field_Quantum_Observation_Tunnel&oldid=873875400 (which has since been contextualized better in later revisions)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Theoretical_calculation_of_the_power_of_a_wind_turbine_or_tidal_turbines&oldid=880986724
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Coordination_Dynamics&oldid=877438773

AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 19:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

YEs, all those are problematic. Even if you ignore copyright, that's not an encyclopedic approach to a topic. We are not here to publish research papers, but summarizing those that are appropriately as part of a larger topic. Basically, we are not a publisher of original thought, which these would all meet. --Masem (t) 19:43, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

I can vouch for the legitimacy of the theoretical calculation for a wind turbine article as a topic in general even if that particular draft isn't that great--Wind_turbine#Efficiency does cover it in brief but leaves aside the derivation. (C.f. we get 16/27 for C_c in both the current article-proper and the #Calculation of power from kinetic energy section in the draft.) That particular one could/should instead be cited to a textbook on the point, which I should have at home.... --Izno (talk) 23:29, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

And it looks like the derivation is at Betz's law. --Izno (talk) 23:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

• I sometimes think that in addition to Draft: space we should have Daft: space. EEng 23:47, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

RfC on not-a-newspaper section rewrite

Should the section Wikipedia is not a newspaper be replaced with a new version along the lines of the following text? --21:20, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

If you support the changes, please briefly indicate how much revision, if any, is necessary. If opposed, please say how likely you are to favor a rewrite even remotely similar, or if at this time you oppose any substantial changes to the current WP:NOTNEWS section.

Proposed rewrite

Current version

Wikipedia is not a newspaper See also: Wikipedia:Recentism and Wikipedia:Too much detail Having the most up-to-date information is not Wikipedia's highest priority. An edit that adds the latest developments to an article can be helpful, all else being equal. However, whether an edit makes an article better or not is determined by Wikipedia's core content policies: neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research, as well as major style and quality guidelines, like the manual of style. That a proposed edit makes an article incrementally more up-to-date less important. At what age content is considered too far out of date can vary, and is decided by local consensus. Original reporting is addressed by the no original research and verifiability policies. Events, whether they occurred minutes ago, or months or years, may or may not have stand alone articles about them, as determined by the notability guideline. Names in the news, like people covered in a news media spike, could have significant, independent coverage, but stand alone articles about people known only for one event might fall under the narrower restrictions of the biographies of living persons policy or the notability guidelines. Accumulating trivia, such as incremental updates about a celebrity or sports team or space mission, is addressed by manual of style guidelines, discouraging devoting sections of articles to miscellaneous collections of facts, added piecemeal without context, or clear purpose.

Wikipedia is not a newspaper See also: Wikipedia:Notability (events) and Wikipedia:Too much detail Editors are encouraged to include current and up-to-date information within its coverage, and to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events. However, not all verifiable events are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Ensure that Wikipedia articles are not: Original reporting. Wikipedia should not offer first-hand news reports on breaking stories. Wikipedia does not constitute a primary source. However, our sister projects Wikisource and Wikinews do exactly that, and are intended to be primary sources. Wikipedia does have many encyclopedia articles on topics of historical significance that are currently in the news, and can be updated with recently verified information. News reports. Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. For example, routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia. While including information on recent developments is sometimes appropriate, breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information. Timely news subjects not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews. Wikipedia is also not written in news style. Who's who. Even when an event is notable, individuals involved in it may not be. Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event, our coverage of that individual should be limited to the article about that event, in proportion to their importance to the overall topic. (See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for more details.) A diary. Even when an individual is notable, not all events they are involved in are. For example, news reporting about celebrities and sports figures can be very frequent and cover a lot of trivia, but using all these sources would lead to over-detailed articles that look like a diary. Not every match played or goal scored is significant enough to be included in the biography of a person.

Survey

• Oppose Having up-to-date information is not less important than the manual of style. If information is not up-to-date then it is more likely to be inaccurate and accuracy is a high priority. Andrew D. (talk) 21:39, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose This is the type of rewrite that paid editors, promoters, spammers, etc push for every chance they get. The details lost in the rewrite actually need to be given more emphasis to clearly communicate what is and is not encyclopedic, rather than removed completely. --Ronz (talk) 17:46, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - reason(s) why to do renaming are not presented, and the title does not seem a good fit to content. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:29, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: not an improvement. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:22, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Ronz. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:00, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Andrew D. Calidum 01:07, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion and alternate wording

• The intent here is to write down state-of-the-art practice, as suggested by the essay WP:GUIDANCE, and to remove redundant and unhelpful parts of NOTNEWS that tend to fuel debate rather than resolve it. Where the news policy is merely a derivation of other polices, we should only say so and point editors to that policy, rather than try to re-word NOR or NPOV in a new way, creating unwanted opportunities for reinterpretation. Many highly regarded Featured Articles, Good Articles, or just good articles, are maintained up-to-the minute, such as coverage of sports or space flight or elections. NOTNEWS should reflect this, and focus on why these quality articles remain encyclopedic, because they don't put having the latest news as the highest priority, and instead keep the focus on the core content policies. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:25, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• I want to say its too early to be proposing new language. We haven't identified what's "broke" about WP:NOT#NEWS, and again, I point to the Dec 2017 at VPP I linked before that shows there some significant disagreement about NOT#NEWS. --Masem (t) 21:30, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  I realize changes like this stand little chance, but given the logjam, a classic BRD use case, I thought rolling the dice on an alternative could move us forward, if not succeed. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:41, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Andrew Davidson, an up-to-date fact can be superficially accurate, but only superficially if the style is newsy and not encyclopedic. "The east coast is mired in snow right now" is only superficially a verifiable fact. "As of November 17, 2018, the US east coast was mired in snow" is both stylistically more Wikipedian, and more accurate if read in ten years. Adding a "right now" sentence might bring an article up to day, but we're often better off without it until it can be written in a more timeless style. There's no policy against using the present tense, but the MOS has gives good reasons why it is harmful, which is why I'd want NOTNEWS to allude to that without explicitly elevating the MOS guidelines to policy.

  Anyway, if the phrase about the MOS were removed, how would you feel about it? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:03, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Great! A second, competing undiscussed out-of-the blue RfC, presenting some new text without anything to show us what the current text is or how it differs or why. Good use of editor time and attention for sure. EEng 22:04, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Comment What EEng said. Sort of like editors rushing to quote the latest headline. - Donald Albury 23:37, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

  See, the fact that you haven't said what about the proposed text you don't like is exactly why starting a thread saying "what do you think of this proposed text" is a waste of time. It gets ignored unless someone has meta-commentary to add. Pretend this is the pre-RfC request for comments. Is there anything in the proposed text you like? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  I don't know. You didn't take the time to show us how your proposal differs from what's there now, or say why. Instead I guess everyone coming to this RfC is supposed to go find the current text, set them side by side, diff them in their heads, ... EEng 00:42, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  Yes. I read text A and text B and in my head I considered the differences, pros and cons, of the two.

  The very first post at the top of this discussion section is me explaining what this change hopes to accomplish. So I tried to say why. Perhaps it's not detailed enough? Too detailed? I don't know what you're asking for if you don't tell me.

  I'm not even sure what formatting you're asking for here. If I were to take wild guess, I fear it won't be what you had in mind at all. Can you go to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting and give us an example of this comparison or diff format? Currently we have nothing like that. Maybe a wikitable with two columns? That would be easy. You're idea is fine, but nothing at Wikipedia:Requests for comment suggests we have to do that. No mention of this formatting at Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance. I tried to heed Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard but nothing there says if you don't provide this special side by side formatting, you're doomed.

  My own experience writing policy was four years ago, at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 33#BLP1E, where an editor began a thread, over the course of which I said "let's change it to this", and right below that was a discussion saying "should we change it to that? Yes or no?". It was that simple.

  To say, "You didn't take the time to..." do this one thing that is suggested nowhere in any of the several pages that discuss policy changes... I don't know. What if you had just fixed it yourself? It's a good idea, but should you be biting my head off for not knowing you were going to ask for it in that format?

  I'll be happy to make at table with two columns if that's what you mean. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:47, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  When you're making a proposal it's your job to sell it. The two-column format is a good idea, though old on the left would make more sense. I suspect, though, that your proposed change is far too radical to be just dumped out as a proposal. I would have suggested careful collaborative development of new text bit by bit. Changes to policy aren't easy. EEng 04:13, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  You're welcome. Sorry my sorcery was too weak to intuit that you wanted the the old text on the left, not the right. Excuse me while, I shall now go commit seppuku. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:26, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  That the default presentation is left-right = old-new should be obvious. Try not to bleed on the new carpeting. EEng 05:00, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  If there's a particular preferred presentation I think the page on RFCs should give guidance on this. WhisperToMe (talk) 07:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

  Like that's the problem with this whole thing. EEng 08:21, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

• Yeah I hate WP:NOTNEWS. It's the most messed up thing. It has stuff like "we are not a diary" and "we are not a who's who" and what does that have to do with being or not being a newspaper? Not much.

The main sense that we are not a newspaper is that we don't act like a news reporter, writing our own news stories. If you see the Empire State Building vanish into thin air, that is obviously notable. However, don't rush to write an article about that and source it to "I just saw it myself!". Wait for the Times to publish an article on it and source to that. This is the main point that NOTNEWS is trying to make, I think.

And there are many other things that a newspaper does that we don't. We don't give advice to the lovelorn, we don't publish comic strips, we don't publish today's sports scores, we don't report that tongues are wagging because Gwynth Paltrow was seen having dinner with Tom Hanks, we don't publish classified ads, we aren't used to line birdcages or start fires (I hope), and so forth.

But all of this is fairly obvious and covered by other rules so it doesn't really need to be stated.

BUT... one thing a newspaper does that we also do do is to publish material on some events that have just recently happened. Of course we do. We do that because it would be silly not to. If the Empire State Building were to vanish, and there were reliable sources saying so, we would not refuse to publish material on that because it is current news. I hope.

All this escapes many people because, as for a lot of rules that are invoked, they only read the title (people are busy). Thus we very commonly see the following argument:

1. The Empire State Building vanished. This event happened yesterday. It's the headline in today's newspaper. It's exactly the kind of thing I would indeed expect a newspaper to report.
2. But we are not a newspaper -- WP:NOTNEWS says so.
3. Therefore, delete the article.

As long as we keep the current title and shortcuts, this isn't like to change, regardless of what you write into the body of the rule.

However, one good point that NOTNEWS does make is that even if an event meets the WP:GNG it shouldn't have an article if it's just passing ephemera. So if it was up to me, I would rename the rule to "Wikipedia does not publish ephemera" (WP:NOTFLEETING, WP:NOTTRANSIENT) and just cut it down to something like this:

Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. Breaking news should be treated like other material: if it is likely to have enduring notability, it may well be that there it ought to be covered in the Wikipedia; if not, probably not.

The fact that current headlines have much to say about an event does not give it special stature. Example: if there is a 12-car pileup on I-95, this may be the top headline in your local newspaper. This heavy coverage does not mean that there should be an article about the event, though; the event is probably of fleeting, rather than enduring, notability. Conversely, The fact that an event is recent and/or current headlines have much to say about it does not mean we should take special pains to avoid it, either.

There's no way to know if a person or event will have enduring notability. Editors are expected to use their wits to make the best educated guess.

The stuff about not being a diary etc I dispense with, because... is this an actual problem? Are people writing what they did today into articles, much? Are they writing today's horoscopes and sports scores into articles? Clutter makes the rule harder to read.

I don't know, maybe we should propose and RfC this. The wording needs to be worked on tho.

One objection to articles on recent events I see is "Well, but this event is still in motion. We have a lot of material, but developments in the next few days will probably mean we want to add a lot more and maybe change some. Let's delete the article, and maybe write one later". I don't address this because it's not entirely unreasonable and you'd probably get about 50-50 support/opposition if you tried to proscribe it.

It won't pass anyway, tho. Nothing does, usually. Herostratus (talk) 12:06, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comments: I am trying to wrap my head around the reasoning for a complete rewrite. As a participant at AFD I run into many articles that are created from current news and many with no "enduring notability". Many many times these "first-hand news reports on breaking stories" do not warrant an article and current wording gives a valuable and simple criterion for exclusion. When the accepted essay Wikipedia:Too soon, that has become an unofficial guideline, is added there is clear reasoning why such "breaking news" may not be acceptable. Many policies have guidelines and accepted essays so why over-simplify this just to end up with an explanatory guideline or essay. Bureaucracy can be a hindrance but sometimes it can have positive results. Changes to established policies and guidelines, that have endured longstanding community consensus, need to be somewhat complicated. Anyone can just make changes (and sometimes do) but they are quickly reverted so as not to "dump" new or different "rules" to the game. I will be resistant to any substantial rewrite, especially that appears (to me) to be a clear attempt to water down the criterion by multiple redirects to policies and guidelines, unless there is clear benefits over what is currently provided. Otr500 (talk) 17:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

NOTNEWS used as deletion criterion

NOTNEWS is currently being misused as an excuse to delete articles of major violent news events rather than as a guideline for creating articles. As it existed, it specified which articles are not sufficient to include, but does not state what topics are good candidates for inclusion such as mass shootings and terrorist attacks, and what sorts of events are already categorized in lists and articles. Every time an article is created for a terrorist or non-terrorist mass shooting or bombing that recieves world wide coverage, dozens of editors cite NOTNEWS as the primary reason for immediate and speedy deletion. Bachcell (talk) 14:59, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

News reports. Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, many newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. For example, routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia. While not every local crime is worth noting, major news events with international coverage often become topic of articles and new articles should not be deleted just because they appear as news stories. Events such as traffic accidents and crimes such as Vehicle-ramming attacks,mass shootings, bombings, terrorist attacks or murders often receive coverage over extended periods of time as suspects are identified, arrested, motives and causes identified and put on trial. While including information on recent developments is sometimes appropriate, breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information. Timely news subjects not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews. Wikipedia is also not written in news style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bachcell (talk • contribs)

We have WP:NEVENT to cover the more difficult decision of how to judge the notability of a news event. It doesn't need to be spelled out at NOTNEWS as a policy. But NOTNEWS is the correct policy to be used for news events that do not have immediately clear and broad significance to the rest of the world. And just having international coverage is not sufficient, it's the long tail of news coverage that must be considered. --Masem (t) 15:06, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

• Can you indicate a few articles that have been deleted with WP:NOTNEWS being the sole justification, and where you think that behavior drives a policy decision? Lots of editors say lots of things, but it doesn't mean much unless we have some examples of where practice and policy don't match. I know that many people say articles should be deleted because of NOTNEWS, but can you either point to a) where articles were deleted per NOTNEWS that probably should not have or b) where consensus exists that specific articles that SHOULD be deleted per NOTNEWS, but have not yet because of the existing policy. Policy change is only needed where practice and policy are not aligning, and it should be practice that drives policy (not the other way around). The only way we know if NOTNEWS needs fixing with regard to deletion policy is if we either are deleting the wrong articles, or if we are keeping the wrong articles. Examples of this happening would help decide if there really is a problem. --Jayron32 15:37, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Uhhh well you see it all the time. I do. I'm not going to dig up examples right now, because that's not a good use of my time. Articles about any kind of recent event are frequently challenged, with editors commonly cite WP:NOTNEWS. Sometimes the general thought process is something along the lines of:

1. Information about very recent events is commonly and rightly called "news".
2. WP:NOTNEWS is a rule. I haven't really read it (I'm very busy), but I gather the gist would be something like "the Wikipedia doensn't publish news". Otherwise it would be named something else.
3. Must delete per WP:NOTNEWS.

OK, and also a lot of editors just don't like articles about recent events. A lot of editors feel this way; whether most editors do I don't know, but a lot do. It's not unreasonable -- it's maybe harder to tell if the thing is going to be ephemeral or not, and the situation is maybe in flux so we're going to have to try to keep up,and I mean there's no hurry to write articles, we're not a deadline. I sure don't agree with that, but it's not unreasonable.

The problem for this people is, these are just opinions. There's no rule against articles on very recent events, at all (certainly WP:NOTNEWS isn't one). However, rather than saying "Delete, I'd prefer we not have articles like this", it carries more wait to say "Delete, as the important rule WP:NOTNEWS requires", especially since most editors are busy and some are credulous.

Since WP:NOTNEWS is thus a useful lever for a goodly number of people, it's not likely to change. I wouldn't worry about it. It's for this reason I'm not bothered to dig up examples. Herostratus (talk) 02:24, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

OK. So I'm not seeing the problem in your description of events here. "...these are just opinions. There's no rule..." is what we call "Wikipedia". Wikipedia decisions are based around WP:CONSENSUS and reasoned discussion. You've got it exactly backwards if you are expecting a rule to change behavior. Instead, our rules should reflect best practices and existing consensus. If the community widely behaves as though these articles aren't a problem, then the rules shouldn't be created to make it look like they are. Practice determines policy. --Jayron32 11:48, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely @Jayron32:. If the general consensus and practice is that articles on very recent events don't usually belong here (skeptical about that, but maybe), it'd be fine to have NOTNEWS say this. It doesn't now, and it's annoying to have people say that it does, is all. Herostratus (talk) 20:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Comment WP:NOTNEWS is so pervasively ignored that I have been inclined to regard it as de-facto WP:HISTORICAL. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:48, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • It is worth pointing out the straw poll at VPP from early last year that shows no consensus towards either strengthening or weakening NOTNEWS based on the current state of WP. So it certainly should not be marked historical. What I think we need to be better at is understanding how to filter breaking news and recognize what information remains enduring (as such, allowing up to be up-to-date on topics), and what information needs to be kept to the side to see what happens (our responsibility as an encyclopedia rather than a newspaper) --Masem (t) 16:58, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The straw poll is meaningless because it does not reflect the day to day reality on the project. The fact is that NOTNEWS is routinely ignored by those doing the editing and article creation. Most of whom I'm guessing don't spend much, if any time at the village pump. And I have seen very little inclination to uphold NOTNEWS, if my admittedly anecdotal/personal observation evidence from AfD is any indicator. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:14, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

You have to look at not only what people edit or create, but what sticks around after challenges like AFD or in long-term form. Heck , by the logic that a lot of editors include news-breaking stuff, we also should seemingly allow vandalism and joke edits to stay too because of how many are done. It's net effect of all edits that should be considered, and typically at the end of the day, NOTNEWS remains a supported policy in spirit, just maybe not the implementation that the current language suggests or that needs a guideline page to help clarify. --Masem (t) 17:21, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

It isn't routinely ignored, it has a lot of good guidance that is followed thousands of times a day. Also, "interpret differently than you do" does not mean "ignored". For example, it recommends against "routine reporting". Someone may read that to mean "you know, like high school football game scores and weather reports and the like" and someone else may put a different interpretation on "routine". The fact that each person is making a good-faith effort to exclude "routine" news doesn't mean that everyone will come up with the same examples of routine coverage. --Jayron32 17:53, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't see NOTNEWS routinely ignored at all. NOTNEWS tells us not to have material that reads like a diary, and we generally don't. NOTNEWS tells us not to use ourselves as sources for material -- "The Empire State Building Fire occurred on January 10, 2019 - source: I can see it myself right now" but rather to wait for news reports from reliable news organizations and source for those. And we do do this. NOTNEWS tells us not to have articles like "List of attendees at 2019 Golden Globes afterparties". And we don't. NOTNEWS tells us not to have articles like "Four-car pileup on I-96 in Newton on January 10, 2019". And we don't. NOTNEWS tells us not to have material like "Tongues wagged when Tom Hanks was seen dining with Gwyneth Paltro at the Rialto on January 10, 2010". And so forth. (Most of this is covered by other rules, but's it's OK to cover stuff twice, and I can certainly think of an example, at least in theory, where only NOTNEWS would militate against a bad article.)

Rather than ignored, I see NOTNEWS as overused and stretched, as OP is complaining about. NOTNEWS says literally nothing important about news. It says "breaking news should not be... treated differently from other information", which, OK. Got it! What it is saying there is, like, if there was an obscure event in 1651, too minor to mention, an event of of similar low notability which occurred yesterday should not be valorized above the 1651 event because it is recent (I don't really agree, I think that's a silly rule, but it is the rule, so fine.)

But I mean we do have articles on pretty obscure events... the Düsseldorf Cow War (casualties: two civilians, and a herd of cows taken prisoner) was in 1651, and so on. The Kostka-Napierski uprising was in 1651 too. Some peasants seized a castle and within a few days the bishop got a thousand men together and killed them and that was that. And I mean if you get into 1880, and 1927, and 1961, and so on, you get even more of these. The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident was in 1971 -- the president saw a rabbit. And so on.

So what I'm seeing is people taking "breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information" as meaning that it should be deemphasized. And it doesn't say that. (And remember, this is one sentence, one short section, in the rule. The Bible has one sentence about stoning gay people, and that's sometimes treated like the main point of that long book... but it doesn't work that way, generally.)

What we're really trying to do here is not have ephemera. That's way different from "news", and for a start the rule should be renamed to NOTEPHEMARA. (For a recent article you have to make an educated guess, and the definition of what is ephemeral will vary from person to person, so that's another question altogether.Herostratus (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The key part of NOTNEWS that is relevant is "Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events.". In a world of 24/7 news coverage it can be difficult to understand that a news story that may have a burst of coverage is not really encyclopedic in the long term. We can appreciate events like the Carter rabbit incident and the GHW Bush vomitting as then, we didn't have mass media coverage the likes of today, and of events that did happens, those stories still happened to bubble to stay in the press. On the other hand, we have a current media situation where a major political figure coughs and news rushes to report it because they have so much space to fill. This is the type of consideration we need to make on articles with regards to NOTNEWS. --Masem (t) 21:18, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

A huge problem is the pervasive dependence on a fringe theory that news reports are secondary sources, and therefore it's believed that coverage of breaking news by separate newspapers satisfies the demand of WP:N for reliable secondary sources. If our firm prohibition on the use of primary sources on BLPs were observed, and lots of people didn't advocate their own definition of "primary sources" in defiance of the definitions used by people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about history and advancing the body of human knowledge, we wouldn't have this problem at all. Nyttend (talk) 02:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Well I mean there are hella references to newspapers and straight-news magazines in a lot of our articles, not just ones on recent events. If you don't want to use those as sources, then you're going to pare back a whole lot of articles. You can call the practice of using them a fringe theory, or you can slap its ass and call it Susan, doesn't change that fact that very many thousands of editors have voted otherwise with their feet. (Fun fact, good newspapers and newsmagazines are generally more reliable than books, because their material is independently fact-checked and books usually are not, instead often relying mostly on the authority and reputation of the author, which is often fine but is sometimes a rather thin reed.)

I just had a thing where an extremely distinguished historian wanted to slip in a bit from a history book (not his). It was a load of nonsense. It was a load of nonsense because historians always want to try a new take on old facts -- of course they do, that's how you get noticed as a real historian rather than a hack, and it's a good thing they do; it improves knowledge and helps move the discussion forward. It doesn't have much to do with what we're doing here tho, because a lot of times the new angle doesn't hold water, or has other problems. (BTW I let the guy do it, not here to alienate extremely distinguished historians, even tho in this case he was wrong.)

So, I have limited interest in WP:THISRULE and WP:THATRULE beyond the degree they're useful for making the Wikipedia better. To say that (good) newspapers and newsmagazines are excellent sources for a particular use (as they often are) but technically are primary sources and technically there is a rule (clearly written with the subset of our articles that are on scientific, historical, &tc subjects) that discourages them... well if you want to quote rules, that sort of thinking violates WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY which is also a policy. And anyway rules are supposed to follow good practice. How many refs to just the New York Times alone do you figure there are? Not-fringe, much? Herostratus (talk) 03:43, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

The issue related to newspaper articles as primary sources is that topics should not be only sourced to primary works, as that doesn't meet notability guidelines. If you have a notable topic by other means, then all those newspaper articles are fine to include. But on breaking event articles, the only sources are going to be primary, so it is going to be difficult to tell if the event is going to be notable, hence the issue with NOTNEWS above. --Masem (t) 04:19, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Right. It is difficult to tell. It is for this reason that God gave us wits -- to figure out stuff like this. A lot of these are easy: if there is a thermonuclear strike on Tehran, this is prima facie notable. If a bicylist is injured on Mason St., this is prima facie not notable. Most other cases are not that easy, but they are still pretty easy.

This, I suppose, is why NOTNEWS leaves the decision to us. NOTNEWS gives us all kinds of help in determining how to deal with the immolation of the Tehran versus the bicycle accident: it tells us to avoid prima facie trivial stuff such as today's baseball scores, gossip about what a movie star did today, a "who's who" type list, and diary of the daily doings of a rock star. I think that we're all in agreement that this is fine. (Other newspapery things that we shouldn't include are horoscopes, comics, advice to the lovelorn, classified ads, and today's weather forecast; it'd be fine to add these also to NOTNEWS, but these haven't been a problem I don't think, so it's not necessary).

NOTNEWS also proscribes doing our own original reporting and offering "first-hand news reports", that is, sourcing material to "I am seeing it myself right now". This is also is fine, I think most people would agree. (It also says to not write in "news style"; hopefully they are not proscribing telling readers the who-what-when-where-why-how of an event. Whatever.)

As to reporting on very recent events... it's a bit of a muddle. "Editors are encouraged to... develop stand-alone articles on significant current events", but "most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion" (altho it then says by example that the newsworthy events it's talking about are "routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities" which is not the issue here). It does say two important and useful things tho:

1. "Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events"
2. "Breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information"

Treating breaking news differently would be something like "The big car crash on I-95 is ephemeral, but since it happened today people are going to be interested in it for a while, so I'll write it up". This is fine. We don't do that, and let's continue not doing that. We can kind of assume an article like that would have very few page views ten years from now.

So then, the "enduring notability of... events" should be at least considered. Well but in marginal cases you can't know. "Can't know" doesn't necessarily "I'm a deltetionist, so I get my way". I mean George H. W. Bush vomiting incident is getting 829 page views/day (363 if you discard a recent spike). Who knew? But apparently things that one might not think would retain notability continue to be of interest to readers, like it or not. So I would recommend being conservative about telling readers "Well, we had a decent article on the topic you are looking for, but we deleted it, because fuck you".

So anyway, I mean, of course we are going to have material on events occurring in 2019 that, if a very similar event had occurred in 1219, we would not have material on it. There're reasons this, the one being that we don't have sources for events of 1219 except really big ones. Well let's see... there's 1219, and Category:1219. I'm not going to count "Deaths in 1219" and "Births in 1219" and "Establishments in 1219" and mere lists or sub-stubs, because those articles are not about events of 1219. The fact that Tettsū Gikai was born in 1219 and this is mentioned does not make his article about a 1219 event in any meaningful way. (If there were articles or article-worthy material titled "Death of John de Courcy" or "Founding of the Duchy of Samogitia" etc. that'd be different; but there aren't any.) I count four actual articles about events in 1219: Nicaean–Venetian treaty of 1219, Mongol conquest of Khwarezmia, Battle of Lyndanisse, and Siege of Damietta (1218–1219).

Would it be appropriate to have four articles about events in 2019? Of course not, not unless you want a radically smaller encyclopedia. We have the sources, and the editor interest, to create many more articles about events in 2019 so that, going forward, readers in 2119 will have a record of those events which they can read (they won't have to; they can if they want). In this way we enhance the historical record, make the internet suck less, and enrich mankind.

And NOTNEWS doesn't say not to. Rather it says the opposite: "Editors are encouraged to... develop stand-alone articles on significant current events". And if it did say not to, so what? Herostratus (talk) 13:42, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Keep in mind that something like Bush's vomiting was first created in 2009, 17 years after the event, so at that point of article creation it was easy to judge "hey, this was significant". People are trying to create similar articles on current events at the drop of the hat anticipating that will be significant in the future, and that's where the problem is. We know some events, the moment they happen, will be significant, like commercial airline disasters. Most other events take time to let events settle down and figure out if they really are encyclopedic events. But unfortunately, the combination of expanded real-time news coverage and Wikipedia co-existing cause editors to create news event articles on anything that just happened that they believe will have future significance, which is not how we should be creating articles. It's why we'd really like those people to edit at Wikinews such that when the event becomes significant we can bring that content back in, but Wikinews is unfortunately not a solution anymore. Instead, we have to strive to remind editors NOTNEWS prescribes a wait-and-see approach. --Masem (t) 15:47, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes. These are good points. I understand. OK... so "create[ing] similar articles on current events at the drop of the hat" might be a problem. I'll grand that. I don't know if it's really a problem, but it might be. I've certainly seen instances of problematic very-recent-events articles. Not many, but I haven't been looking, and my definition "problematic" is pretty narrow. OK, so even if it is not a huge problem, how to address this without being too tight either. I've got an idea, not too great, but something.

Before I go there, I just want to point out (again) that, however much this is or isn't a problem, NOTNEWS doesn't have much useful to say about it. To recap, excluding obvious stuff such as not doing our own reporting etc, this is what NOTNEWS has to say, and all of what NOTNEWS has to say (all emphasis has been added by me):

1. Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events.
2. BUT Editors are encouraged to... to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events.
3. BUT Most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion.
4. BUT the examples given of newsworthy events that do not qualify for inclusion are "routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities", which of course we don't do. The examples given are not stuff like Sarah Huckabee being thrown out of a restaurant, or Donald Trump tweeting "covfefe", or a bus crash with sixteen killed, or the 2018 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, or a military parade in Prague, or a heat wave in Britain, or the passage of the United States Water Infrastructure Act, and so on. None of these are routine news reporting of announcements (Ben Folds Five announcement of three-record deal with Columbia Records) or sports (Yankee's 5-4 defeat of Orioles on June 23, 2018), or celebrities (Sighting of Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman in a romantic Pacific hideaway). They could have picked different examples to include stuff like this, but they didn't. Please note: I am not saying we should have articles on Sarah Huckabee being thrown out of a restaurant and so on. Maybe we shouldn't. I'm just saying that NOTNEWS doesn't tell us not to.
5. AND FINALLY Breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information.

That's it. That is the sum total of what NOTNEWS has to to say about very recent events. You can see by the BUTs that it's pretty vague and wishy-washy. (If my excerpts aren't fair, you may correct me).

I think that's what drives me, OP, and others to claw the drapery. "DELETE, this is not in our wheelhouse, the situation is too fluid, I don't think we should have these kinds of articles, I personally believe that this is trivial or emphemeral" is fine. "Delete, recent event, so we're required to delete per NOTNEWS" is not fine. It's like someone saying "DELETE, does not meet WP:RS since sources are all in French". Drive you nuts.

OK. So... I think that, politically, it would be some very heavy lifting to get any changes made to NOTNEWS. I doubt it could be done at all, and I know I couldn't. So, I think the crux of the problem is the examples. The examples prescribe our publishing things which we obviously wouldn't publish anyway, so they're useless.

What I think might be possible is to hammer out some better examples. I dunno, this would take some work, and you're dealing with editors who have pretty different opinions on what is "encyclopedic" regarding very recent events. But possible. Then might to put that in an essay (easy), get it accepted into mainspace (hard), get it accepted as a {{Supplement}} (hard), and get it accepted to have NOTNEWS point to it (hard). But just getting it as mainspace essay would be a start. Herostratus (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

What could be said very simply is that NOT#NEWS should not be used as a deletion reason, but its associated guideline, WP:NEVENT absolutely should be. And NEVENT has the space to go into all the considerations of determining a significant event is, how to tell what enduring coverage is, etc. I would at least treat people that use NOTNEWS as a reason to delete really stating NEVENT, at least when they are talking if the event hasn't been determined significant. In terms of the language at WP:NOT, I could see potentially adding some positive examples of what are acceptable event articles, but I feel that's going to still be a better job to be done at NEVENT (We should consider NOT as a long article and try to remain as concise as necessary). --Masem (t) 17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I think it is entirely feasible to successfully propose to delete NOTNEWS from the policy page and move it elsewhere, such as WP:DETAIL and Wikipedia:Notability (events), effectively demoting it from policy to a guideline. The weakness of the phrasing means that a de facto guideline anyway, not policy, and we'd be better off if we made that clear. The frequency of discussions about NOTNEWS where there's nothing even resembling consensus is further evidence that it doesn't deserve to be called policy. WP:POLICIES "have wide acceptance among editors", and that' doesn't describe NOTNEWS. Editors can still cite it and use it as a basis for their assertions, without the nebulous "policy" status that always clouds the issue. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:33, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Except that from the straw poll last year, NOTNEWS does have strong consensus. There certainly is a subset of editors that do not like NOTNEWS (eg OP in this thread) because they like to work on current event articles and NOTNEWS puts those at constant risk, but the poll shows that the majority think NOTNEWS is appropriate. Sure, WP:CCC and all that, but unless we want to rerun an RFC on that, we should presume it has consensus to stay as policy. How to make the policy statement stronger (recognizing we are meant to be description and not specific) and what can be said in a guideline is a fair subject for debate. --Masem (t) 22:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Which straw poll? Do you mean Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not/Archive_44#WP:NOTNEWS? That was an attempt to put a band aid on the problem by removing a shortcut, in the hopes that somehow the shortcuts WP:NOT#NEWS and WP:NOTNEWSPAPER would fix what's wrong with the content of the not-a-newspaper section. The opposition was generally that the shortcut is beside the point. Not really anyone saying clearly that they think it's a good policy, let alone a well written one, or uncontroversial one. Most editors are aware it's a nightmare policy and nobody agrees on what it means, or how or when to apply it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:52, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant this one at VPP that I started last year, at a time where there were editors wanting to get rid of NOTNEWS and editors wanting more enforcement of it. --Masem (t) 18:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• You guys might be interested in User_talk:EEng#X-day/week_"embargo"_on_articles_on_breaking-news_topics. EEng 17:40, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, OK, WP:NEVENT. I didn't remember that one (there're a lot of rules here). So that. It's already a guideline, so maybe you could get NOTNEWS to point to it? (I for one would be against that, as it looks like NEVENT is a basket of pig lips which I mostly don't agree with. That's just me, and it is a guideline and not just an essay, tho. So maybe there's your quest, grasshoppers.)

I am totally, totally fine with with a guideline which advises "Don't waste your time writing articles about very recent events. It's just dumb, go do something useful instead". I'm not OK with a guideline which advises that an article which has the Six Virtues ((1) Decent article (correctly formatted, written, appropriate length, etc); (2) is properly sourced and meets WP:GNG with notable, reliable sources; (3) does not violate WP:NPOV or WP:BLP in a non-easily-fixable way; (4) likely is and will be of interest to some non-zero number of people; (5) is not frima facie trivia or ephemera (Where Tom Hanks had dinner yesterday, what the weather was in Chicago last week, a pedestrian run over at 5th and main, etc.), and (6) exists) ought be deleted. Obviously five of the Virtues are fairly objective; but "trivia or ephemera" is in the eye of the the beholder, and that's what most of these articles come down to. My personal opinion is that WP:NEVENT defines it far too harshly.

Rules are OK sometimes, but worth ignoring if they suck. I'm more interested in filling in the blank in this statement: "Deleting this article will enhance the experience of people searching on this topic because ________________". If there's a good answer that goes in the blank, fine; and there often is. But I've very seldom seen anything compelling in the blank for articles that possess the Six Virtues.

As to the rest, above... no, you are not going to get substantive changes to most any policy, NOTNEWS included, I think. As to an embargo between the event and our article -- people come here for a whole lot of reasons. One is to get an overview -- neutral, sourced, well written and formatted, short -- of an event which is crossing their radar screen; for many articles, this is the time when they will have to most value to humanity that they will ever have. Snobbery aside, I don't see the reason for telling the reader "Well we had that, but we deleted it, because fuck you". If our wits, experience, and spider-sense tell us that the event is truly likely to be of zero or near-zero interest a few years from now (pedestrian hit at 5th and Main), that's different. Unlike our articles on molds and lichens etc. tho, that's true of few articles about events that meet the GNG. Anyway, this is going beyond reforms to NOTNEWS and getting into the weeds of what we are actually trying to do here (increase rather than destroy information, maybe?)... so as I said valorizing NEVENT is the way for you guys to go I think. Herostratus (talk) 17:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Your point #2 related to the GNG is where most current event articles break down: first-hand news reporting is primary sources, and thus most news events fail the availability of secondary sources. Some events we can project those sources will come about : a major aviation disaster is going to have what groups like the FAA report as the cause of the accident, but many of the event articles that get created lack any assurety that the event will be followed up on in the future. Some will, such as Bush's vomiting, but then we have things like Trump's "Cofveve" that I know we had an article at one point but really has gone nowhere since that tweet was made. We really need the factor of time for us to determine if any event is really notable in the long-term.

But lets take all of your points 1-6 as valid otherwise. The whole purpose of WP:NOT as a whole is to recognize that there is a plethora of topics that could have articles that meet 1-6, but we should not have. NOT's fundamental purpose is to keep the encyclopedia to being an encyclopedia and not other types of references works. For example, I do a lot of work on video games, and some games are so popular that major works publish game strategies for them; these game strategies fully meet points 1-6 above, but its not the type of material that is appropriate for WP per NOT (we aren't a guidebook). NOT#NEWS is that same aspect: we do not simply publish articles on events. The news, today more so than ever, is highly indiscriminate about what they publish because they are publishing for the now, not longevity. WP has determined by consensus that no, we should not cover all events that the news does. Where we can cover events in existing topics, we should (and you'll see for example Covfefe is placed in a article about Trump's use of social media) but sometimes an event happens with little relationship to any other topic. This also addresses the point that readers that come to WP to look for current events are coming to the wrong place: we have clearly noted we are not bound to be up-to-date, we are not news, and we are often not reliable. Readers that have come to expect WP to be a newspaper are clearly using the tool wrong, there are much better sources for that. --Masem (t) 18:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I mean, everything you say is reasonable and cogent. I just don't agree with much of it. Some of it I agree with. I agree that that there is a plethora of topics that could have articles that meet 1-6, but we should not have. It's just a matter of defining "should not have", and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what the bar should be, and what we're trying to do here generally. I believe that, to the extent reasonably possible, our watchword ought to be "out of the darkness" -- to make pretty obscure information available to the public and preserve it, as well as more notable stuff. What's the harm, we're not running out of paper.

As for newspapers, again: newspapers are pretty reliable. Some newspapers (New York Times etc) are pretty notable. And they're not primary sources, which IMO is things like government documents etc. And the rules don't say not to use (good) newspapers as sources. And in fact it'd be silly to say that you can't use a New York Times article to ref an event that occurred in 1940 -- few people would say that. And WP:RS and the WP:GNG don't say that sources have to have been printed X months or years ago to be reliable or to be used to establish notability for GNG purposes. They could have if they had wanted to. Herostratus (talk) 07:11, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

The bulk of what newspapers publish, news channels report, and so are are primary sources under WP's definition because they are not transformative works, putting analysis, commentary, and more atop the facts of the case. Newspapers do frequently publish secondary source material, long-form analysis and review and commentary, but your day-to-day reporting is primary. Which for us reflects that just because something happened doesn't mean WP needs to cover it.

The time factor comes from making sure that the topic wasn't just a blip in the news, and that takes more than a couple days, ideally towards a couple weeks. News needs to fill tons of space so they will focus on what may seem important at the moment, but really is nothing in the larger scheme of things. --Masem (t) 14:53, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand about the blip in the news thing. What is and what isn't a blip, it's a matter of opinion and judgement. I don't think there's really an applicable rule. I don't know if there should be, and anyway there probably can't. "Do it the way User:Masem prefers" (that is, wait) isn't a good rule really.

So anyway, there's a big difference between truly primary document -- a birth certificate, the minutes of a meeting, a diary entry, the transcript of a speech -- and a newspaper article. Of course there is. If the people who write our rules think differently they're wrong, and who cares what people who are wrong think? If we need to different words for these -- looks like it -- then we should have them instead of using the same word for two very different things.

I get that primary-secondary-tertiary is a categorization used in academic writing and research. Academic writing and research are fine and good, and useful for a good part of what we are doing here. But we're playing a different game really, so we need different terms I guess, no matter what that the people who wrote some rules in 2004 or whenever where thinking. (And not only that, but the rule says "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis" which exactly what we want to avoid a lot of the time, so it's not clear why we would valorize that.)

But whether I'm write or wrong, what matters is that hella editors apparently agree, since the string "Los Angeles Times" returns 127,347 69,608 instances in articles, "New York Times" returns 369,472 230,623, "Washington Post" 143,539 64,609, "Indianapolis Star" 12,027 2,488, "Time Magazine" 242,166 16,997, and so forth. Because of course a ten-year-old Los Angeles Times news article (that, is describing an event that happened the day before the article was written) is a good source. Right? Few would dispute that, I would think. Rules are supposed to be codify practice, and I mean you've got some heavy lifting to roll back... looks to be maybe a couple million a good number maybe?... cites to these sources before it can be stated that it's not usual practice to cite them. [Numbers updated 23:20, 23 January 2019 (UTC)]

So... I assume that as a practical most editors would, all things being equal, accept a ten-year-old Los Angeles Times news article as a valid source for statements of fact. Right? Since it's not recent one wouldn't reject it on those grounds. It'd be silly to say it's not reliable, since in fact the Los Angeles Times is pretty reliable. That makes sense since getting their facts right is an important part of their business model, and they have the resources to do it.

So the question we're talking about is whether or not a ten-year-old Los Angeles Times article should be treated different than a one-day-old Los Angeles Times article, and if so how and to what extent. That is a legit question about which reasonable people can disagree and maybe compromise about, since there certainly are reasonable grounds on which to treat them differently.

The problem is, neither WP:RS not the WP:GNG have anything useful to say about how to treat these two articles differently, I think. (One could, I suppose, read WP:RS and/or the WP:GNG to reject both. But there's no guidance on how to treat them differently.) In particular, for better or worst, the GNG has bo-diddly to say about when a source was created.

So anyway, the rules about primary, second, and tertiary sources don't help us here. They're either wrong and unpopular (and thus widely ignored, as is proper and actually somewhat common with wrong and unpopular rules) or don't apply.

What does help is WP:NOTNEWS. My point stated earlier is that it doesn't help us much, basically saying that we ought to consider enduring notability (agreed), but offering no useful examples or further elucidation about how to do that. Which is fine, because we're not rule-bound here; a lot of these cases are marginal. Which some people are are of the mind "Enh, I don't like us to have articles on very recent events". That's a reasonable opinion. (It's a mostly useless opinion, no more useful than "I don't like us to have articles on very obscure fungi" or "I don't like us to have articles on very obscure chunks of rock" etc.; but it's reasonable).

So if a person doesn't think article X should exist, then tell us -- the situation is too fluid, or the event is unlikely to have enough legs, or there's no way to write an NPOV version yet, or there aren't good sources yet, or whatever. (Or say "I don't like this type of article generally" if you want to, I guess.) Just don't deploy WP:NOTNEWS as a false authority, which it is, because it doesn't have much useful to say. It's a rule, so it looks as if your "I don't like it" has some punch behind it. But it doesn't. Which is what OP is complaining about, and she has a point. Herostratus (talk) 03:57, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

GNG absolutely does have a statement on this, and that is looking for enduring coverage. A news blip that lasts for maybe a few days is not enduring. On the other hand, if the events of a news event continue for a few weeks or longer, in the sense that there's more than just mere mention of the event (that is, secondary coverage), then that's where its reasonable to have an article on the event. Very straight forward, reflecting that as an encyclopedia, not everything mentioned in the news gets written up.

Also see Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources which specifically talks about most news coverage as primary. That's how we work on WP. --Masem (t) 04:37, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

If that's how "we" work on WP, why are there 384,000 instances of articles containing the strings "New York Times", "Los Angeles Times", "Washington Post", "Indianapolis Star", and "Time Magazine" in articles? Sure a lot of those are to think-pieces or use in the article text rather than news reports, but a lot aren't; and anyway there are 7,416 instances of articles with the different string "LA Times", 1,311 of "L. A. Times", and I'm sure it's similar for the New York Times and Time magazine (which is usually just called "Time") and many others. And of course 384,000 doesn't include "New York Daily News" (10,507) or "Times of India" (29,964) or "London Times" (1,445, but usually called just "The Times"), "Le Figaro" (3,427), "El Universal" (3,142), "Chicago Tribune" (29,383)... now we are near half a million, and there are many many more... the Plain Dealer, the Boston Globe, the Denver Post, Asahi Shimbun, The Guardian (112,067 right there), Wall Street Journal, and on and on... and many smaller more local papers ("Bangor Daily News" for instance is 1,919, and there are scores and scores of these and hundreds and hundreds of small town papers with like 20 or 40 instances, but they add up)... surely quite well over a million... suppose half of those are not to news articles, that's still over half a million WP articles containing refs to newspaper news articles. That'd be 9% of our 5.8 million articles, but of course the majority of articles are about butterflies and geological strata and Indian villages and physical phenomena and so on where news stories are usually not going to be involved anyway. So let's say that's half of our articles, so double that 9% to 18%, so 1/5 of our articles that might be ref'd to news articles are. So what do you mean "we", kemosabe? Herostratus (talk) 23:20, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Primary sources are not bad sources. But we do expect articles to be built around secondary sources, with primary sources used to help flesh out details. If the article only has primary sources (which would include a current news event), that's going to fail our notability guidelines. --Masem (t) 00:17, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

OK. Herostratus (talk) 04:05, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Newspapers are often secondary sources. Indeed, the days when every city paper came out with brand new investigations where they talked to the people involved and "broke" a story to make their reputation seem nearly over. Now, newspaper articles are usually based on other articles, press releases, and (almost as a matter of regulation) government announcements. Of course, the question with that kind of "churnalism" is then, does the rehash-article really qualify as a secondary source, or is it plagiarized, I mean paraphrased, so extensively from one source that it is essentially just a reprint of the primary source? Which too seems more and more common. That kind of article we need to just click through as we cut straight to the primary source, which by the flattery of imitation is revealed to likely be worth using in our article, with minor caution of course. Wnt (talk) 00:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Actually, I looked into a little bit, and what I concluded is that dividing things by primary-secondary-tertiary doesn't work for us. This tripartite division was not worked out by us for us; it was imported whole cloth from the real world, where it's used for academic and literary purposes. We are not an academic or literary publication, really, and we have different needs.

For one thing, we say "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts." We then go on to basically valorize secondary sources.

Well, excuse me, but isn't this precisely the kind of thing that we want to avoid, usually? We are here mainly to present facts. The last thing I want is someone's "own thinking". I want facts, not "an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts". Sheesh.

Without having thought deeply about it, maybe the divisions should be along the lines of :

1. Source documents: Birth certificates, census documents, transcripts of speeches, field notes, that sort of thing.
2. Reportage: News stories. Those parts of journal articles and magazine articles which are mainly reportage. And like that.
3. Analysis and summarization: Most books. Those parts of journal articles and magazine articles which are mainly analysis. Textbook and encyclopedia articles. And like that.

So all three have uses, but "reportage" seems to be a pretty useful category: reporting facts, with reliability (if it's a good source). Source documents are OK to a more limited extent, and analysis and summarization are OK too. Especially if there's consensus in a field over a particular interpretation, or if you're presenting as facts what people have written. But it's not called for to deprecate reportage. Herostratus (talk) 01:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

At some point we have to draw a line of what is not indiscriminate information, we are not here just to present facts. Finding multiple independent sources that are secondary to the topic is the primary means we do this. We want to use what these sources are saying as a secondary factor to establish why the average reader should care about a topic, in the context of these sources rather than ours, the editors, to avoid that facet of original research. There are a LOT of news stories repoted on every day, but only a fraction have attention drawn to them to make them encyclopedia topics. --Masem (t) 01:26, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

And it's actually more complicated than all that (in this whole sub-thread), in at least two ways:

1. Much material published in newspapers is primary sourcing, not secondary, and not the kind of tertiary regurgitation commented on above. Reportage that is entirely dependent on eyewitness accounts or talking-head opinion statements without any analysis is just a string of primary material. Perhaps more importantly, entire genres of material commonly found in newspapers is primary sourcing by definition, and this includes editorials, op-eds, letters-to-the-editor, advice columns, film and book reviews (of the sort published by newspapers) in large part (though they sometimes also contain secondary material, that which is not the subjective opinion of the reviewer but based on research). Another form is the intensely personal and opinionated investigation piece, a common format in magazines and increasingly seen in news weeklies, though not very common in daily newspapers. (And, of course, there's all the advertising between the editorial content; certainly primary!)

   And there's the general principle (familiar already to historical researchers) that news reportage and similar material must be treated increasingly as if primary the closer in time it is to what is reporting on, and the further in time those events and those reports recede from the present – regardless how in-depth and believed-to-be-accurate it was when first published. Better analysis happens years, decades, centuries after events and the popular, myopic interpretations of them when they were new[s]. This principle applies even to reportage on events from a few days ago if more facts and analysis have come to light since then, and it likewise means we can't take Geoffrey of Monmouth as reliable history even if people did in his own day. The more apt a secondary source is to turn out to be wrong or only partially right later, the weaker the source is, the closer to primary it is, and the sooner we have to classify it as indistinguishable from primary (at least as for WP:V purposes; it may be indefinitely good for WP:N purposes).

2. WP hasn't simply imported "the" definition of primary-secondary-tertiary from the wider world. There is no such thing. Different fields define them very differently and often in directly contradictory ways, both in regard to other disciplines and in regard to WP's definitions. What we've actually done is crafted our own definitions which closely suit our purposes. This is not a problem or an error, it's a necessity. The operational problem (the human not systematic difficulty) is that people from particular fields, like science and the law, have to learn our meanings and learn which kinds of sourcing we accept for what, and why. This is part of the WP learning curve, though it's a particular part that mostly only the academics and "professionals" have to struggle with (they have to unlearn, for WP, something they have deeply absorbed for their work-life).

   The fix for this problem is to explain it for them, probably in industry-specific essays on sourcing. Examples:

   • Make it clear to science academics that their focus on primary research – both for professional credit purposes and because that's the "sexy" research while secondary academic material like literature reviews are boring and dumbed down, in the eyes of many academics – isn't appropriate here. We want the third-party digested and re-viewed material, specifically because it's been subjected to additional analysis, and editorial and peer review. The primary research is something we may link to as a secondary citation for additional detail, but it cannot be used for any analytical, evaluative, interpretative, or synthesizing claims on Wikipedia.
   • Rather differently, the legal profession (in the US anyway) basically doesn't have a concept of "tertiary source" and treats all non-primary material as secondary (but similarly cares most about primary: what does the statute say? How did the judge's decision in the case read? – and about certain kinds of secondary research, like formulaically Shepardized caselaw). They have to be clued into what tertiary means, and specifically means on WP and why it matters more here than in many other kinds of publication.

As the two links in the last sentence above show, some essay material already exists, but none of it's focused on particular subsets of incoming editors from professions with different P/S/T definitions.

And none of this tertiary-related stuff addresses the first issue above; the community has to re-think how it approaches secondary; there are levels to it, gradating into primary, that we tend to overlook. Our material and credibility suffers as a result, as do inter-editor relations (e.g. common insistence on inclusion of a "fact" on the basis that it was published in a newspaper which "must" be a reliable source, when we have reason to think otherwise and opposing editors are providing those reasons but being WP:STONEWALLed). It's another one of those "WP is not a suicide pact" matters; we must not pursue a particular interpretation of policy wording to a point of stupid results, yet various editors do exactly that too often when it come to "secondary".
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:07, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, I seems like you're broadening the definition of "primary source" to the extent that it's no longer useful. If I'm reading you correctly, the script of a play and a review of the play are essentially identical, both being primary. That there's no important difference between citing a New York Times article which says the murder rate in NYC is the highest in 20 years, and me poring over official police documents, determining that the murder rate in in NYC is the highest in 20 years, and stating that in article. Both are citing primary sources. I think these things are different enough that we need different terms to describe them.

Also, since the world is complicated, the same source can have primary, secondary, and tertiary data in the same document, in adjacent sentences, or even the same sentence. "We hit 100 subjects in the head with a hammer and 90% died, compared to 0% for the control group. [raw data -- primary] This shows that humans are quite vulnerable to being hit on the head with a hammer." [analysis -- secondary]. "The explosion of the Empire State Building on June 23 2019 [raw fact -- primary] was the largest in Manhattan since 9/11." [analysis by comparison -- secondary]. And so on.

It's not worth being overly pedantic about these things. If the Empire State Building blows up tomorrow, then obviously we want to have an article about that right away. Hopefully we are not going to be of the mind "well all we have is news reports, so let's wait until some books come out about this, so we know whether or not its important." Right? That'd be pedantic. Conversely, if my neighbor's home is burglarized, obviously we don't want to have an article on that, even if it is reported in the paper. Right? Can all agree on this so far?

So then, so all we're doing is arguing about where the margins lie. Well, there's no answer to that. It depends on how you, personally, roll.

For instance, let's consider five made-up examples:

1. Empire State Building explodes
2. Cavaliers win the NBA title
3. Sarah Huckabee gets thrown out of a restaurant
4. Hugh multi-car pileup on I-95, three dead
5. Random person's home is burglarized

Well most everyone agrees that #1 and #2 belong, #4 and #5 don't. There's no problem here, so it's not worth talking about. The question is where on the margins lays #3 -- in, or out? Well **** if I know -- or you either. It's largely a question of one's personal conception about what we're trying to here. I don't think you can have a rule on it that could get adopted. Marginal cases like that just have to be looked at and hashed out individually. We could save countless thousands of man-hours if we just had a professional editorial board that could quickly rule on these cases. But we don't and won't, so we're stuck with what he have.

All OP is saying is that WP:NOTNEWS has, quite literally, absolutely nothing whatsoever useful to say on that question, notwithstanding the title of the rule. So people should stop citing NOTNEWS as if it has something useful to say on the matter, when it doesn't. It's mediocre to do that because it is misleading to people who aren't very familiar with the rule and maddening to those who are. (We see this with other rules -- "We have several pictures we could use to illustrate the article Tennis, but per WP:NOTCENSORED we are required to use the one where the players are naked" -- but you see it more with NOTNEWS than any other, I think.)

As to the other, in terms of reliability (e.g. WP_:TSF) -- which is kind of off-topic to what we're talking about here, which is more notability or encylopedia-worthiness -- my take is that, like eyewitness identifications in court, sources (even "reliable" sources) are wrong shockingly more often than most people think, but we use them because we have to use something. Books in particular -- we really should mostly avoid books as sources, since most books are independently fact-checked as much as my blog: not at all. But we're not gonna, because otherwise we can't have much of an encyclopedia.

(For instance, here I was just working on a claim that Suzi Quatro was a Penthouse centerfold, which is an assertion made by several "reliable" sources, including Melbourne's paper of record and others. But forensic analysis determined that this is almost certainly not true. But it took a lot of work. Which is not usually done, or doable. So we have probably millions of wrong statements in our articles ref'd to "reliable" sources. But even so, it's a pretty useful encyclopedia overall.) Herostratus (talk) 17:34, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Just on one point: When you say "the script of a play and a review of the play are essentially identical, both being primary..." That's not quite right: The review of a play is both a primary and a secondary source. It is a secondary source for the play, and a primary source for itself. That is, a New York Times review of the play Hamilton would be a secondary source for the article titled Hamilton (play) and a primary source for an article titled New York Times Review of Hamilton. Things printed in the news could be both secondary or primary sources, depending on what is being reported, and for what purpose you are using the information. Anything that is a raw reporting of data, statistics, or direct quotes (for example, interview transcripts) are primary sources. Anything that is an analysis of those data (i.e. anything that says "These numbers mean yada yada yada" or "When so-and-so says "yada yada yada" it means "blah blah blah"), now that's acting as a secondary source. Most news does both of those things. --Jayron32 17:52, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Encyclopedic content or WP:NOT

What if anything is typically done about pages such as User:Dottasriel2000/sandbox? It could I guess be seen as some kind of infobox testing, but to me it seems more like somebody's strange WP:FANCRUFT and using Wikipedia as a free web host. I've come across this kind of thing quite a number of times where somebody is using a user subpage for fictional infoboxes of events yet to occur (most likely never to occur), such as wars, elections, etc., and it never seems to have any encyclopedic relevance at all. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:16, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

NOT#WEBHOST applies. This is clearly not expected to be a real event (at least per CRYSTAL); if there was a possibility of war coming between two countries, I could see trying to outline an infobox in prep of such an article, but that's just not the case here. We normally delete these but have to go through MFD for that - and here it would just be to remove the unnecessary material. --Masem (t) 01:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

It's possible that the person was learning the format tho -- it is a sandbox page after all. I wouldn't destroy people's drafts like that without contacting them first. If there's no reply after a reasonable time, that's different. Herostratus (talk) 17:05, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

That's why I suggest MFD, since that at least implicitly notifies them that it is in question. --Masem (t) 17:20, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

I have no problem with people using their sandboxes to test infoboxes and learn how their formating works; however, some of the things I've come across (like the example cited above) seem to go beyond that. Learning how to format a infobox, etc. can be sufficiently done in a user sandbox by simply copying and pasting a random infobox from an existing article and just tweaking the parameters, etc. The stuff I'm referring to is when some one takes a generic infobox template and starts populating it with random people data/images (usually celebrities or politicians) for some kind of make believe event that is never going to occur. For example, User:ElbridgeGerry/WikiWar, User:Kfc18645/Wikipedia-Uncyclopedia-Conservapedia War, User:Whoop whoop pull up/Wikipedia III: Revenge of Jimbo, User:Brambleberry of RiverClan/Wikipedian-Uncyclopedian War, User:Xxhopingtearsxx and User:Californication99/sandbox are some examples I found using "What links here" for and Template:Infobox military conflict and Template:Infobox election. These might all be harmless and maybe even considered funny, but I'm not sure they have any real encycloepedic value. Anyway, MfD seems like a reasonable suggestion since it at least gives the user a chance to explain what they're doing. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:55, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I looked at the history and see nothing to be even slightly alarmed about. The user was testing a sandbox with some made-up data to see how it worked. In general I believe that NOTAFORUM enforcers are about the lowest form of life on Wikipedia, standing in the way of routine necessary discussions, proposing crazy things like the current vote to destroy the Refdesk, and in this case, interfering with appropriate self-instruction on a user sandbox page. People shouldn't have to be afraid while exploring what the templates and software can do. Wnt (talk) 01:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Once again, I have no problem with people using their sandboxes to test stuff; at the same time, there should some encyclopedic relevance to it, shouldn't there? There might also be other issues (like WP:BLP) involved as well. For example, User:Wikipedian770/sandbox could be another example of editors just testing out infobox templates, but is there any reason to test and infobox for the "1906 Upper Pacifica general election" using File:Arvid Posse.jpg with a caption to "Thaddeus Goodale" which links to Theresa May. Similarly, is there any reason to test an infobox for the "2018 Itsukushima general election" using File:Hyon-YongChol.jpg (a non-free image since removed per WP:NFCC#9) captioned as "Takayuki Komeda" linking to Nicola Sturgeon and File:Xi Jinping March 2017.jpg captioned as "Kaimei Hayashi" also linking to "Nicola Sturgeon" There are many more examples of this in the sandbox. Not sure why the same "test" cannot be done using "photos" and "links" for the persons mentioned by name in the caption. If such persons don't yet have Wikipedia articles, then there are plenty of ways to still do this kind of testing using something from c:Category:Wikipedia image placeholders and simply linking to some generic Wikipedia page (perhaps WP:LINK). If you think about it, this editor had to find pictures of a North Korean general, the current leader of China and a long dead former PM of Sweden, and then purposely link them to articles about a living Scottish Politician and the current British PM to test infoboxes of possibly ficticious elections. That seems to be more than simple testing or exploring what templates and software can do. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:41, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Pages in userspace don't have to be "encyclopedic." They should be related to the process of collaboratively writing an encyclopedia. We have all manner of goofy userboxes, autobiographies, fun and games, humor pages, etc. and even templates for those things. They don't contain encyclopedic content, but they serve to build community among those who participate in that project. That's why they're relevant. I see no problem with people playing with silly templates, drafting non-articles in userspace. It might be helping them get comfortable with wikitext, allow for testing various templates or whatnot, might build their own confidence, or might just serve to build community. The key thing to consider is whether the person is doing so in one of these capacities. In other words, if someone creates an account just to create hypothetical Big Brother scenarios (an example I've seen), they're not doing any of the above. If someone has shown that they're here to be part of this community, then who cares what they use their userspace for, as long as it's not destructive. We can take specific instances of people linking to their userspace pages from other namespaces or destructive content on a case-by-case basis. Otherwise, nobody's going to see these pages aside from the user whose userspace it is and someone going out of their way to do maintenance to userspace pages (i.e. nobody's going to confuse it for an article). Dottasriel2000 has more than 900 edits, and almost all of them to mainspace. This is someone who's WP:HERE. Let them have their sandbox. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:52, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

• I just Speedy'd that page. The subject of it is not merely a fictitious exercise, but a fictitious exercise that takes a deep dive into one of the most problematic areas on WP, and wallows in one of the most sensitive geo-political subjects in the world. It also doesn't look at all like an actual sandbox usage, given the Editor's contribs and the fact that the sandbox is nothing but one template. If the user has a good explanation for it, then they can contest the speedy. If not, then that page doesn't belong here, anyways. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 00:29, 20 February 2019 (UTC)e
• @Rhododendrites: What do you think about User:Wikipedian770/sandbox? Is it similar to Dottasriel2000's sandbox or more of a hypothetical Big Brother scenario? To me, part of the page looks likes someone fantasy about being elected US President, being married to "Saki Taneda" (i.e. Michelle Obama), and having a VP "Jeremy Cobb" (i.e. Joseph Stalin), while at the same time using a photoshopped photo (i.e. File:POTUS Peyton.jpg) for identification purposes. The only "real" information in that infobox might be the Twitter link. I'm not seeing how any of that is not WP:NOTWEBHOST type of content or how any of it fits one of the capacities you've listed above. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:09, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

• The big difference is that Wikipedian770 does not appear to be here to build an encyclopedia. Most of his efforts appear to be based on that page, and not on anything resembling building an encyclopedia (and/or participating productively in the community intending to do so). There are plenty of experienced users with silly photoshopped pictures of themselves or other users, silly games and jokes for the sake of building community that have nothing to do with the encyclopedia beyond that. If that's all you're doing, though, that's when IMO we should be deleting as not webhost... because you're just not here for the right reason. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:33, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Acronym proliferation

This policy has a very large number of acronyms, and going back over the history it looks like it keeps creeping up. I reverted one -- WP:NOPRICES, which I think would encourage very erroneous misinterpretation of the actual policy as written. But where we had NOTRESUME now we have NOTCV, where we had NOTDIRECTORY now we have NOTYAHOO. On the other hand I see someone just tried to get rid of the geeks' WP:!, though it still leads here. Is there a way to draw up a clear limit to the number of different ways you link to the same paragraphs of the same policy? Wnt (talk) 01:37, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

611 pages redirect to Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not... I consider us lucky that people dont try to add more. Shortcut overuse is one of the reasons why this page does not get taken seriously by newbies till they understand it is a policy. The average newcomer would never think a policy page would be so full of shortcuts or images like a poster of a guy holding a crystal ball or a pic of the yellow pages with the caption " Nuh-uh". The page does not give the authoritative impression that it should. --Moxy (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Given WP:IAR, the rules, including this one, are pretty fluid anyway. There's a lot of stuff, like list pages and comparison pages, that's not really encyclopedia-ish, yet it gets kept because of its usefulness and notability. MW131tester (talk) 08:05, 10 February 2019 (UTC)'s example is unclear. Andrew D. (talk)

• PRICES doesn't seem to be an acronym and so Wnt's primary example is unclear. Andrew D. (talk)

Sorry, I meant "shortcuts in capital letters". I realize that acronym theoretically has a more specific definition, but if you've followed US politics you know that literally anything can be claimed to be an acronym nowadays. Wnt (talk) 15:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Comments: I just consider them shortcuys also. There is often attempts to wikilawyer the simple one sentence WP:IAR when a fundamental factor is when an edit is "improving or maintaining Wikipedia", which can be subjective, and "still" subject to consensus. Sometimes editors create things just because they like it but sometimes it is easier to use a provided shortcut than piping. I would suggest if you see one that seems overly excessive just delete it with a good edit summary. If it is restored then start an RFC if it still seems unnecessary. If enough editors use a particular shortcut it would certainly mean it is beneficial. Otr500 (talk) 19:38, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is

I think we should redo this article to be Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is.--Wyn.junior (talk) 17:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Already exists at Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Snuge purveyor (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The article should mainly talk about what Wikipedia is.--Wyn.junior (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The first sentence of this policy is: "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect." That sums up what Wikipedia is. The rest of this policy is in place to disabuse people of the notion that Wikipedia is anything else. - Donald Albury 18:49, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

We should use positive only to describe Wikipedia.--Wyn.junior (talk) 19:31, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

So you're talking about What Wikipedia is not is not? EEng 20:43, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Given how many newer editors come to WP thinking we should add content for various reasons, we have to point out that there are limits to WP must cover, and that's best done by saying what we can't do, not what we can. --Masem (t) 22:12, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The OP is correct. This "policy" is a grab bag of a bunch of different policies all written inversely. It would be far better to have them written in a positive way, in many cases independently, except perhaps for the strictly limited instances -- now more the minority than the majority -- where it is actually saying "don't put this here because you should move it to sister project X instead and link it". For example, a WP:UNCENSORED policy could easily be cast as a positive standalone policy. That said, the bureaucratic inertia of Wikipedia is such at this point that I wouldn't hold my breath; furthermore, the overall global decline of ideals like democracy and freedom is such that if the bureaucracy were loosened at this point it is more likely that a bunch of lobbyists would come in and turn a new standalone policy against censorship into a laundry list of sacred cows we're not allowed to touch. So the OP is right... but that won't prevail anyway. Wnt (talk)

This policy is just a ragbag of pet hates and statements of the obvious. What is especially funny is that it undermines itself with NOTs like WP:NOTBURO, WP:NOTLAW, WP:NOTCENSORED. It's WP:STUPID and WP:CHAOS. Andrew D. (talk) 10:27, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

The shortcut issues sort of goes with the discussion below. Otr500 (talk) 21:47, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Change to "Memorial"

In the section "Wikipedia is not a blog, web hosting service, social networking service, or memorial site", under #4 ("Memorial"), an editor made an addition. It's shown bolded, below (the bolding is not in the actual page text):

Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements; this includes those who do not meet standards for coverage in a broader article. (However, for the Wikipedia page for deceased Wikipedia editors, see WP:RIP).

I don't have an opinion either way on the merits, what we are trying to say here, whether it could be said better or is necessary to say, and so on. However, as a matter of principle, substantive changes to important rules need to be proposed and accepted first, so I remove the added text and let's see if there's consensus for this change. Herostratus (talk) 07:41, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: The addition you made seems to be similar to what's already in WP:Namechecking, WP:CSC, WP:ALMAMATER and even possibly WP:NOTEVERYTHING, but worded more specifically to make particular reference to deceased individuals. While notability requirements don't generally apply to article content per WP:NNC, I'm not sure why this type of mentioning wouldn't be covered by those other policies/guidelines or wouldn't be resolved through normal article talk page discussion. Was there one article in particular which you came across that made feel this change was necessary or was it a combination of things? -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:32, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Yet these are scattered and no one cites them in this kind of context. We clearly need something in this section that gets at it. It's completely wrong-headed for this to be written in a way that many Wikipedians (even in this very thread) are certain boils down to "MEMORIAL only applies at the whole-article level and is tied to WP:N". It isn't true, but too many editors aren't reading it right (mainly because the MEMORIAL line-item gives such an impression when read alone instead of as one example in a larger section that is not limited to entire pages or even to encyclopedia content at all).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

• The whole section just restates the concept of notability and so is redundant to pages like WP:PEOPLE. The entire section should be pruned per WP:CREEP. Andrew D. (talk) 10:17, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
  • I absolutely does not, since it specifically covers in-page content, not just entire pages, in userspace. The confusion you're showing is precisely the reason for the change I made. I.e., asserting the change isn't needed or is wrong on that basis is the inverted form of the begging the question fallacy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

The change would be extremely bad and I'm glad you reverted it. Taken literally (and some people would take it literally) it would mean that, in a biography of a notable person, you could not even mention the names of their parents unless they were separately notable. For historical figures in particular this would be a bad item of policy. Thincat (talk) 10:22, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Then it needs to be approached from other angles, some other specific wording. However, your interpretation is not actually plausible. If there's consensus to include names of relatives, etc., then it cannot be that they do not meet standards for coverage in the broader article, by definition.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:13, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Comments: Regular editing practices would normally weed out unnecessary memorial content without undue bureaucracy. For those cases where local consensus gives unneeded allowance there is dispute resolution. At any rate a case can be made that the history and family sections of articles actually give latitude for some such content which would still be covered by content policies and guidelines regarding sourcing. Otr500 (talk) 19:01, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Except too often regular editing practices don't do that. If anything, the opposite is true for anything subject to WP:RECENTISM / WP:NOT#NEWS problems, and/or fandom or activism POV/SOAPBOX issues; too many editors approaching the topic are not really neutral, and are not thinking of long-term encyclopedic significance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Scope of WP:NOTCENSORED

I have seen several editors opine that WP:NOTCENSORED only applies to articles and images used in articles, but the policy does not state this explicitly. In particular, does it apply to audio files and video files in articles? Outside of articles, does it apply to policies, essays, noticeboards, user talk pages, redirects, etc.?

Please note that I am specifically asking about removal of content that the author wishes to retain when the sole reason for deletion is that some readers consider the content to be objectionable or offensive‍. I am not talking about the many ways we delete content for reasons other than someone considering the content objectionable or offensive‍. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:00, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

NOTCENSORED would still apply to File: space content used in articles.

NOTCENSORED starts to become iffy to its application outside mainspace. Editors should not go around posting inappropriate content (eg nudes) on random pictures just because they can on talk pages - there's still a decorum we expect editors to follow. But we're not going to block content that may seem offensive to someone if it is within reason in the context of discussion. (eg swearing on talk pages). But knowing the situation I think you're talking about, NOTCENSORED off mainspace is subject to consensus. --Masem (t) 19:19, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

The first step, Guy, is to note that WP:NOTCENSORED is part of "Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not" in the subheading "Encyclopedic content". This only applies to the content we are here to build: the encylopaedia. On Commons, for example, the related policy only applies to the media content hosted. The text gives the reason for this policy: "Attempting to ensure that articles and images will be acceptable to all readers, or will adhere to general social or religious norms, is incompatible with the purposes of an encyclopedia" (my bold). You will also note that WP:NOTFREESPEECH and WP:BATTLEGROUND are part of the same policy but in the "Community" subheading. Which, do you think, Signpost comes under?

We have other policies and guidelines, some of which are behavioural. For example Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. Of course many people over the years try to cite NOTCENSORED in order either keep material that is in user or project or other non-content spaces that has been or in danger of being deleted or blanked or moved. They are wrong. Perhaps the policy should be even more explicit. However, it is a fact that people do not read instructions and "WP:NOTCENSORED" is as much of this policy as many people bother to read. So I suspect it will continue to be wrongly cited no matter how carefully worded.

It is worth remembering what a wise person once said: "Anyone who defends their edits by citing WP:NOTCENSORED doesn't have the first clue."

Many people mistakenly think that NOTCENSORED means we should not exercise editorial restraint. The Wikipedia:Offensive material content guideline says "Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available". So we are obliged to avoid causing offence, in article space, if there an equally good alternative way of getting the article information across. And in community/user space, we are surely encouraged to get along with each other and to express our opinions on contentious subjects in a way that seeks to promote consensus, inclusivity and positive outcomes, rather than using inflammatory language and mocking and insulting minority groups. -- Colin°^Talk 21:02, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'll preface this comment by making it clear I do not know what the situation being alluded to is, so my comments are general in nature. NOTCENSORED applies to the whole encyclopaedia, mainspace and non-mainspace, but it is not, on its own, a reason for the addition or removal of any content. All content in mainspace must be both encyclopaedic and relevant to the article. All content outside mainspace should be for the purposes of improving or supporting the encyclopaedia directly or indirectly (with reasonable latitude given to the userspace of established users). The addition or removal of content for other reasons is frequently disruptive, regardless of what that content is. For example a gallery of free images on a talk page, some or all of which happen to contain nudity, is perfectly acceptable if the aim is to discuss which of the images is most appropriate to illustrate the article but it is not acceptable to place such a gallery on a page where it is not relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I do not know what the situation being alluded to is – Presumably you've been in a coma for the last few days. EEng 21:26, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

No, I simply do not follow MfD or the Signpost. Thryduulf (talk) 21:33, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

It was on MSNBC, Oprah, and Dr. Phil, plus Trump tweeted about it. EEng 21:40, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

:-) -- Colin°^Talk 21:50, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm even less likely to see anything in those venues (seriously)! Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Colin asked on me on my talk page to reconsider my above post. While the letter of NOTCENSORED may apply to mainspace only, the spirit most definitely applies to the entire encyclopaedia, and I'm not sure how the mainspace could be uncensored if the supporting namespaces were. I will reiterate that simply being offensive to some people is not a reason to include or remove anything - things that are offensive may be deleted for other reasons of course. Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how you can support the "letter/spirit" distinction when the policy has clearly (and for a decade) explicitly stated that NOTCENSORED is a policy about articles in the encyclopaedia whereas, for example, NOTFREESPEECH, is a community policy. If it covered both encyclopaedia and community spaces, then it would be trivial for someone to put that portion in a different, common, section. We routinely delete postings on talk pages that are rants against or for some agenda, and they are generally not (by sensible folk) defended on the grounds that we need to host those rants because wikipedia does not censor. Further, being "offensive to some people" is actually a reason to remove content if there are alternative ways that are equally as good (per Wikipedia:Offensive material). Perhaps your comment about "supporting namespaces" refers to the use of article talk pages to discuss article content, and clearly it would be difficult if such pages were more strictly "censored" than the article was. But Guy's post is about a Signpost article. Wikipedia doesn't exist as a platform for people to express any view they wish on Signpost. We're here to build an encyclopaedia. -- Colin°^Talk 22:13, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

"... but the policy does not state this explicitly." First by being under Encyclopedic content section, further constrated by Community section. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:51, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• WP:NOTCENSORED applies to article content per those above who have quoted parts of WP:NOT. I cannot put an offensive picture in the edit notice on my talk and claim that NOTCENSORED means it cannot be removed. Gratuitous nonsense is not the purpose of Wikipedia. Whether an attributed opinion piece in the Signpost should be deleted because of its content is an issue that people will disagree on, with some claiming it's censorship or at least contrary to the spirit of an attributed opinion piece and others arguing that no page is available to publish whatever someone feels like. The Signpost matter is related to the concept of censorship, but it has nothing to do with the WP:NOTCENSORED policy. Johnuniq (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• NOTCENSORED relates to encyclopedic content, but that is not synonymous with saying that the policy is confined to mainspace. To use the classic human sexuality example, if we were having a serious discussion about Clitoris or Scrotum, it may be perfectly appropriate to have images of these anatomical features on a user talk or article talk page, if we are doing so in the interest of improving encyclopedic content. Similarly, we have, not even articles, but dab pages for fuck, fuck me, fuck you, fuck it, fuck off, and holy fuck, and it would be difficult to have an editorial discussion about the contents without using the word fuck. That doesn't mean someone's user page can have a giant picture of a scrotum and the caption "fuck you, you fucking fuck", because that has nothing to do with encyclopedic content, and that's why it's not allowed. Apply WP:COMMONSENSE liberally. GMG^talk 23:20, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• That's not quite right because I could put a giant picture of a duck on my user page and it would not be challenged despite the fact that, like a giant scrotum, it would have nothing to do with encyclopedic content. Some things are judged to be unnecessarily offensive and are removed for that reason. NOTCENSORED means encyclopedic content is not toned down simply to avoiding offending someone, and of course talk pages discussing encyclopedic content follow the same reasoning. Johnuniq (talk) 23:37, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• Except that NOTCENSORED specifically deals with offensive or objectionable content. If someone is offended by a giant duck, then they're an idiot. Apply WP:COMMONSENSE liberally. GMG^talk 23:42, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

• WP:CENSOR applies to the whole project, its articles, talk pages, and background pages. How do I know this? The first sentence of 'What Wikipedia is not' contains the definition of what Wikipedia is: "Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect." So....for this page and this discussion, Wikipedia is defined as both the online encyclopedia and its attendant Wikipedians. My uncensored user name: Randy Kryn (talk) 23:29, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• I wondered if this question had arisen before, and found Not censored applies to what? (10 years, 11 months ago) and Clarification of not censored requested (1 year, 10 months ago). In each, more editors seemed to conclude that the policy is about article/main space than editors who felt it covers everything. I guess any community with a dynamic population will have trouble settling any questions for once and for all. Schazjmd (talk) 23:58, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
• Well... I would not like to see NOTCENSORED applied to user pages and so on, no. There was one guy that had all the most egregious sexual images from Commons on his userpage, for no good reason. People like that are up to no good, so I can't get excited about giving them extra protection.

For the immediate kerfluffle, rather than taking the approach "Like it or not, our iron rule NOTCENSORED requires us to host stuff like this, even of >90% of editors don't want to", I'd prefer to see stuff along the lines of "I feel removing this is censoring a valid voice". Even better, I'd just as soon not see the term "censorship" used at all (it's highly charged, inherently polemical ("You're not one of those Nazis who favor censorship are you?" is the implied subtext), and not very accurate ("censoring" is something that is exercised by an outside body and is quite different from "editorial judgement").)

Instead, let editors state their opinions directly: "I believe that keeping [or: removing] is a net benefit, because [cogent reason]." Sounds more like an adult conversation to me. So also on those grounds I wouldn't want to see it expanded to non-article areas (and I say that as a person who doesn't have a problem with the article in question). Herostratus (talk) 01:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

How about "I think that the essay that User:Example1 just wrote is stupid, wrong, and offensive, but I do not believe that User:Example2 should be allowed to delete it on the grounds of it being offensive." Explain what cogent reason for retaining it I can insert into the previous sentence.

Related: "I think that the essay that User:Example1 just wrote is stupid, wrong, and offensive, but I do not believe that User:Example2 should be allowed to delete it on the grounds of it being offensive, even though Example1 posted an announcement at Wikiproject Nuke Offensive Shit and a hundred people showed up and swamped the MfD with delete !votes". Note that in this, like the previous example, I do not think that the essay is a net benefit, but I still think Example2 shouldn't have the right to decide what I can and cannot see. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:47, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

• I am amazed at the link published above (Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 50#Clarifification of NOTCENSORED requested) where Guy Macon asked the same question nearly two years ago and got similar answers. WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT applies here, clearly.

The original policy was phrased "Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors". In other words, it is an encyclopaedia for adults and we won't remove the naughty bits just because children might read it. The policy has shifted to include any educational content that is potentially offensive for some people. One of the problems with abbreviated shortcuts like WP:NOTCENSORED is that clearly few people read beyond the shortcut, and bring with them their own baggage around the word "censored". It is a loaded word, because in many liberal democracies we like to think nobody censors us. So people can use the word "CENSORED" in big shouty letters in a debate as a weapon to subdue their opponents. But publishers, such as quality newspapers, who would robustly challenge attempts at censorship, exercise editorial restraint all the time. Gratuitously offending people ends up detracting from the point and makes you look thuggish and ignorant. Our editorial restraint wrt offensive material is what Wikipedia:Offensive material guideline covers: "This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles may contain offensive words and images, but only for a good reason." NOTCENSORED is not a licence to offend, even in article space.

In community space, the kind of material we'd like to see published and retained on user pages and forums and newsletters like Signpost reflects our values. One of our values, as an international project for "everyone", is inclusivity. Hence the backlash against a provocatively offensive "humour" piece that mocked (among other things) a marginalised and poorly understood minority group. -- Colin°^Talk 12:30, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

(Sarcasm) You are absolutely right! What a fool I was, not realizing that Consensus Never Changes and that deleting a silly refdesk discussion about about whether fake looking breasts could be real is exactly the same as deleting an editorial in The Signpost!! And thanks for the nice complement recognizing my magical ability to remember every one of the 47,234 edits I have made to 16,113 pages over the last 13 years. It's nice for someone to finally recognize that I have superpowers... --Guy Macon (talk) 16:32, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

• The scope of WP:NOTCENSORED is defined by WP:NOTFREESPEECH and other policies such as WP:ONUS and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Insofar as material published in the non-article-space areas of Wikipedia 1) Bring the project into disrepute and 2) have nothing to do with the mission of the encyclopedia, the community has no obligation to allow a free-for-all with regard to being forced to retain all text ever written at Wikipedia. Even in the article space, editorial decisions about content, even that some content is not relevant to the context of an article, do not amount to censorship. --Jayron32 13:35, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Glossary vs dictionary

I currently have the page Glossary of graffiti on AfD as I believed it to be "dictionary" that shouldn't be here since shares the format with printed slang dictionary. How do you draw the line between a glossary and a slang dictionary on Wikipedia? Graywalls (talk) 23:26, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

See MOS:GLOSSARIES. The gist is that entries in an encyclopedic glossary are (or mostly are, aside from some short ones included for completeness) richly detailed with non-dictionary content – more than just a rote definition, pronunciation, and etymology. For the case in point, see Glossary of graffiti#crew for a good example of an encyclopedic glossary entry (scope-wise, anyway; I have not looked into how well-sourced it is, etc.). Glossary articles are of great use when dealing with jargon-heavy topics (e.g. cue sports); if we lacked a glossary article (or a @#$*-load of dubious stand-alone articles), we'd have to explain in situ every single time we needed to use the field's terminology, which would be a) annoyingly brow-beating to anyone already familiar with the topic, and b) intensely frustrating for anyone reading multiple of our articles in the same topic area, seeing the same re-re-re-explanations of the same terms over and over again, page after page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:03, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikivoyage

"If you do wish to help write a travel guide, your contributions would be welcome at our sister project, Wikivoyage."

What a joke. Nobody uses that, do they? Benjamin (talk) 09:17, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

More than you'd think, as it's generally near the top of Google results (40% of their visitors have come direct from Google). They're not up there with Tripadvisor in terms of reach, but they now get about the same reader figures as their commercial rivals at Wikitravel. ‑ Iridescent 10:04, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

How does that compare with Wikipedia? Do we have any data on what people actually tend to look at when thinking about travelling somewhere? Benjamin (talk) 12:47, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

So? Do you have any idea how many people look at Wikipedia when thinking about traveling? When Wikipedia's content was sparse and low quality, it got little traffic, but it increased as the content improved. In cases like lane splitting, several editors have tried to fill the article with country-by-country and state-by-state lists of what the exact legal code for lane splitting and lane sharing is. And listing every single country's motorcycle helmet law. It's how-to advice, and using Wikipedia as a data dump. Originally, the Wikipedia article gave detailed histories one or two specific jurisdictions as illustrations of the kinds of legal confusion that have arisen about the subject. In Wikipedia if you mention two countries, many see that as a demand that every other country gets mentioned. A list of two or three things at the end of a paragraph becomes a list of 75 things, obscuring the point entirely.

Meanwhile, the Wikivoyage Motorcycling article is a perfect place to collect that kind of travel advice. If somebody reading Lane splitting is wondering whether they can split lanes in Ontario, they can click the link to Wikivoage, and there it is.

How is any of this a problem? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:28, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

If you think such a list would make the article too cluttered, then simply split it off. Benjamin (talk) 16:35, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Feedback requested

Your feedback would be appreciated at a discussion concerning whether a list of supporters of a proposed new law meets standards for encyclopedic content. Please see: Talk:Equality Act (United States)#Support from major businesses and public figures. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:42, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC on List of suicide crisis lines and WP:NOTDIR, etc.

I have created an RfC on the application of WP:NOTDIRECTORY, WP:LSC, and WP:IAR as it pertains to the content of the article List of suicide crisis lines. The RfC is located here. Thank you. 9³ (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

RfC about independent sources for academic biographies

An RfC which might be of interest to watchers of this page has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)#RfC about independent sources for academic notability to decide the following question:

Current wording: Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable.
Proposed wording: Academics/professors meeting one or more of the following conditions, as substantiated using multiple published, reliable, secondary sources which are independent of the subject and each other, are notable.

Shall the wording in the section Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#Criteria be changed to the proposed wording above?

Editors are welcome to join the discussion. -- Netoholic @ 23:43, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Santa Claus

Please see the RFC at Talk:Santa Claus#About Santa Claus. "NOTCENSORED" was the first policy mentioned in responses to this question. I'm not certain that it's the most obvious application of that policy, but I thought that people who watch this page might be interested in sharing their views. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Genealogical entries

Please see discussion on ahnentafel: Template_talk:Ahnentafel#Ancestry_of_5_generations_"overdetailed"?. PPEMES (talk) 19:37, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

News

The Main Page has an "In the news" section; therefore, WP:ISNEWS. -- Shyam Has Your Anomaly Mitigated (talk) 13:06, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

"Wikipedia more useful than academic journals, but is it stealing the news?", The Signpost, 31 May 2019. -Lopifalko (talk) 07:15, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Fake news! -- Shyam Has Your Anomaly Mitigated (talk) 07:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to be descriptive, not prescriptive

This doesn't appear anywhere in WP:WWIN. An example of this is:

Jeanne Calment is generally believed to have lived from 1875 to 1997, which is 122 years. A recent theory proposed slightly less than a year ago that was based on good studying said that she actually died in 1934, and to avoid tax problems her family pretended it was the death of her daughter Yvonne by having Yvonne adopt Jeanne's name and birth date. Although it is based on good research, gerontologists are not admitting it; they're simply taking for granted that it was fake, and the mainstream belief continues to be that Jeanne's longevity is genuine. Per "Wikipedia is supposed to be descriptive", Wikipedia itself should say that Jeanne Calment's 122-year-life is genuine. But this group of words doesn't appear anywhere in this project. Does it appear with a different wording?? A variant is "Wikipedia is supposed to follow the most common beliefs, not the most sophisticated ones." Georgia guy (talk) 15:48, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I think it is properly covered by the section "Scepticism regarding age"- not that exact wording you want, but that the "1934 death" appears to have been dismissed with strong evidence of the 1997 death via scientific testing. I don't see a problem here - the article presents the 1997 as fact and the 1934 death as a disproven rumor. --Masem (t) 15:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Was it really disproven?? That is, it's not something people don't want to be true and thus are successfully trying to disprove?? More importantly, please note the reason I'm putting this in this project talk page. It is talking about the statement about Wikipedia being supposed to be descriptive and not prescriptive. Jeanne Calment's longevity is just an example I'm using to demonstrate this. Georgia guy (talk) 15:57, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, I mean, reading the section, its more than some people, very recently, tried to put forth this 1934 idea, and it has failed to hold up to documented records and scientific challenges. So the 1934 death should be treated as a WP:FRINGE aspect and not given factual weight at this point. So our article leads off "Jeanne Louise Calment (French: [ʒan lwiz kalmɑ̃]; 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997) was a French supercentenarian from Arles, and the oldest human whose age was well-documented, with a lifespan of 122 years and 164 days." which is basically factually stating, the 1997 death is correct and of no doubt to WP. The lede only goes into brief mention of this doubt of her death but doesn't give weight to it being factually correct. We don't say exactly "the 1997 death date is guinine" but the language of the lede clearly implies this without any doubts, in WP's voice.

Now, are we supposed to be that explicitly clear, if that's what you're asking? I don't think its necessary to be that exact, and that might come off a bit POINTy in wikivoice. We don't want to express doubt to the 1997 claim in wikivoice, obviously, but we don't want to be haughty about it, that's just not impartial. --Masem (t) 16:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not (very) censored

A serious, earnest proposal: replace "Wikipedia is not censored" with "Wikipedia is not (very) censored". I think this closer to the truth. Do we boldly host lots of offensive, uncensored words and images? Sure, as we should. But are we completely, 100% uncensored? No, nor should we be. We may disagree on where the line is, but there is one. To quote Merriam-Webster's definition of censor, we do, from time to time, suppress or delete [content that is] considered objectionable. WanderingWanda (talk) 00:43, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

No, we don't censor. The only content we will refuse to allow is outright illegal content. Any other questionable content we would allow but we ask editors to make sure it is wholly appropriate and use the principle of least surprise to make sure such images are used where they are appropriate and not where they are not. At that point, we will likely remove content that doesn't really show how it meets this appropriateness level but that's more about decorum and MOS, and not because we're censoring the content. --Masem (t) 00:51, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Hm... I suppose I would ask, what would be the policy relevance for if, say, a fictional trans character had an article written about them expressing disgust over the character being trans. - Bryn (talk) (contributions) 01:43, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

The only content we will refuse to allow is outright illegal content. Well, then, couldn't you say that we censor illegal content? WanderingWanda (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Doesn’t that generally go without saying though? That sort of thing - following the law - is generally already expected/understood... Sergecross73 msg me 11:31, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I would think that "censor" implicitly means otherwise protected free speech. Illegal content is not protected. --Masem (t) 15:58, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

On the question : a fictional trans character had an article written about them expressing disgust over the character being trans.. Assuming we're talking mainspace here, if that statement of disgust came from a WP editor only, that would be unallowable not because we're censoring but because of NOR and NPOV. If that disgust came from a reliable source, then its fine to include as criticism, though here WP:UNDUE may come into play, but that's still not censored. We are not saying that statement cannot be made at any point (which is what censoring would be) but we do require strong editorial considerations to include it. --Masem (t) 15:57, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Hm, I see. Thank you for the explanation. I'd question whether it doesn't fall under illegal activity, as some countries have hate speech laws. That said, it does bring up the question of what "illegal content" means. What countries' laws do we follow? Is it US, UK, Canada, and Australia? - Bryn (talk) (contributions) 17:55, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Servers are in US, so we follow US laws for what is illegal content or unprotected speech. Be aware, however, that some countries may have laws or provisions of what its citizens can say or do even on foreign servers that that US law would otherwise allow, WP would not be responsible if you get in trouble for that. See the general disclaimers at the bottom of any WP page for the specifics of all this. --Masem (t) 19:44, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's also important to understand that Wikipedia as a private site (where editing is a privilege) is not subject to free speech in relation to editors. The policies (and consensus on a case by case basis) determine what can be included. On a related topic, I was myself surprised when I noticed drawings often replacing pictures on sex topics. On the other hand, it makes sense: there are licensing/copyright requirements, with the donated works welcome, and we don't really want those pages to become galleries of every exhibitionist editor. As for illegal content, it's not really censorship, just like the prevention of undue promotion, although some may view it as such... Some material is simply inappropriate for a serious mainstream encyclopedia and legal issues could also bring the site and foundation down if unregulated. —PaleoNeonate – 16:45, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Picture of Muhammad

-EEng

• Pro tip: if you are invoking NOTCENSORED in any discussion that doesn't involve curse words, naked people, or pictures of Muhammed then you are almost certainly doing it wrong. GMG^talk 16:33, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
• @WanderingWanda: No. Wikipedia really isn't censored. At all, ever. The reason we show pictures of Mohammed isn't because we're not Muslims and we think their rules are dumb. The reason we allow images of unclothed people isn't because we disagree with those who consider it harmful. The reason we show spoilers without warning, and break the Rorschach test, and provide potentially dangerous (according to some views) information on weapons and paywall-breaking and DRM-cracking and drugs, isn't because we think certain views are wrong. Wikipedia content may be objectionable, even to people who don't object unless something's really really bad. We have set the line to the only place that's viable without taking a side, which is "no censorship, even if we really think we have a good reason to censor something". --Yair rand (talk) 22:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Try making an illustration of Muhammad the lead image of Muhammad, or adding a pornographic image to Pornography. WanderingWanda (talk) 23:34, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
    • The positioning of the various images on Muhammad are not due to censorship, it is due to exclusively encyclopedic reasons. The argument to not offend people was not taken into account. I'm confident that the project is mature enough that we don't need to go out of our way to extra-prominently display things that someone might want to censor, just to make sure that everyone knows we will never censor. --Yair rand (talk) 02:27, 24 July 2019 (UTC)