Re-instating this proposal, I want to make the icons look more clear and sleek; I will eventually add on more to the icons (such as good articles, audio articles, etc.) I also want to add region-based letter shackles, so for example 拡 (拡張, Kakuchō) would be the Japanese extended-protection icon, same with 満 (満杯, Manpai) for full-protection.
Agree with others that these new icons look dated. However, if we are discussing changes to lock icons, then I must say the the purple for upload protected is incongruously gaudy. Cremastra — talk — c20:23, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think the gradients or bevels make these icons less clear and sleek, at least in their current iteration. The icons also become less readable at smaller resolutions since the shackle part of the padlocks takes up more space, making the actual symbol inside smaller.
Pretty strong oppose trying to run a geolocation script on every load to try to make dynamic labels here. If anything (which I also don't like) labels should follow user interface language. — xaosfluxTalk17:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the differences, I was just suggesting (because I don't really speak any other language you could propose a specific version) Also, I will later add the letters on the shackles.
Oppose making the primary (only) differentiation be color, as that gives out less information then the current scheme and is useless for those without color viewing abilities. — xaosfluxTalk17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Xaosflux on this one. Furthermore, the two issues of the old icon scheme (color and "realistic" shading that doesn't look great on small icons), which were the reasons for the change to begin with, are present on this one too.Regarding the region-based symbols, it would make more sense to display them based on the language edition, and, since each language edition already sets its own standards for this stuff, there isn't much more we can do. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, but only slightly. If you added the letters, it would be better. Also, a solution to your region-basing could be to do a Language-based (like "O" for "Office" would become "S" for "Schoolhouse" in a theoretical "Reversed English") The Master of Hedgehogs(converse)(hedgehogs)14:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought we were using "shackle" as the word to describe a thing by a single aspect for the purposes of avoiding conflation with protecting/locking editing. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we shouldn't, because as @WhatamIdoing noted, the shackle is one part of a padlock. And simply using the word "padlock" avoids conflation, without calling things the wrong thing. (It's even the exact same number of letters.) FeRDNYC (talk) 03:55, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:WIKICLICHE we've been asked to not say this quite as much, due to supply chain issues – if we use them too much we could see a huge shortage down the road. But I hope I'm not generating more heat than light with this comment, or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cremastra — talk — c20:22, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Never throw the baby out with the bathwater. This will contaminate your greywater collection system. Like other meats, babies are not compostable, so they should be sorted into the landfill waste stream unless otherwise advised by your municipal waste management authority. Folly Mox (talk) Folly Mox (talk) 20:46, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The pseudo-3D shading looks dated compared to the current flat icons. Most modern design systems (including codex, which is the new design system for Wikimedia wikis) are built around flat icons. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)18:36, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just for funStill feel like a step backwards. The current "Good article" icon, on top of having less of a distracting shading and being more readable, is in a consistent style with a lot of our other icons. The current "Featured article" icon, although not consistent with the others, is pretty unique and recognizable in design, while this one looks like a generic star.Just for fun, I did once make a "Good article" star in the style of the FA one – not meant for any official implementation beyond my personal script of course, but it's neat to see how it would look like. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:14, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Have you ever looked at the Featured Article icon, full-size? (If not, check it out at File:Cscr-featured.png. I'll wait.) ...Like or lump @Chaotic Enby's GA star, it's actually of a fairly harmonious style with the current FA star, which is (as noted) currently not consistent with anything else anywhere. Arguably it's well-known/recognizable — Chaotic makes that argument, anyway — but TBH I have a feeling the great majority of readers never see it larger than head-of-a-pin-scaled, and wouldn't even recognize the actual, full-sized image AS our FA icon. FeRDNYC (talk) 04:10, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen the full FA icon; the GA star is just straight out of Cthulhu (...positively). It is fun, but I think GA should be more inline with the rest of the article-rating icons because of the kinda lesser rigor. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:26, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, it's definitely a concept design rather than an actual proposal. If anything, I far prefer having the current GA icon as our official one, as it is more harmonious with basically anything that isn't the FA star. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:18, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are not visual improvements whatsoever, unfortunately. They are clear regressions in design, and the current icons are fine. Our system is particular to the English Wikipedia, so it's perfectly appropriate for their design to be relative to the English language.Remsense ‥ 论19:29, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Color me baffled. By starting with Re-instating this proposal, you make me think you want to reinvigorate some failed proposal. But then I follow your link and see that the proposal led to the implementation of new padlock icons, which; I guess, you mean to reverse. I also fail to understand what you mean by region-based letter shackles; do you mean for articles about, e.g., Japan? Or articles viewed by somebody we're supposed to have guessed might be in Japan? Or somebody with the Japanese language listed in a userbox on their User page? It's English Wikipedia, so I can't see the last two being useful options, and the first one will only lead to arguments and confusion and we've got that already. The current icons seem clear enough to me, although I don't know how to measure "sleek", I guess. In summary: baffled. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)12:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean region-based letter shackles basically like the letters on shackles but different regional translations. (This'll probably not work because of @Chaotic Enby's post.)
So (just to see if I understand it finally), you're proposing on English Wikipedia that Japanese Wikipedia use icons with Japanese symbology, and Spanish Wikipedia use some Spanish-language indicator on the padlock, etc. Yes? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)22:30, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for now. Status quo is fine. It's really cool that you're contributing your graphics skills to the movement though. I'm sure there's some less high profile areas that could really benefit from your skills. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: New proposals are nice but I personally like the style of the old ones better, and flat icons also seem more up-to-date to me. Regional shackles sound like a good idea, but don't appear to be in this proposal, so I'll just say I support those (maybe in the old design-style in my preference). Mrfoogles (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Remsense. The new 3D icons look like something from the early days of the internet. Plus the shadowing makes the icons appear unnecessarily "bulky" (not sure how to say this). Nythar (💬-🍀) 22:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose here as well. It's not about status quo or resistance to change, I vastly prefer the current icons to the proposed replacements. (Admittedly subjective) points in favor of the current icons over the new ones:
The flatter look will render better at small sizes (since these icons are actually shown at a fraction of the size they're displayed in this thread)
Ditto the blockier font
Ditto the thicker shackle arcs
The skinny shackles and rectangular body give the proposed replacements the appearance of handbags, not padlocks
The letter placement is more uniform and precise in the current icons; the proposed replacements appear to have been "eyeballed". IMHO SVG art of this sort is best hand-coded (if not from scratch, then at least as a finalization pass to clean up the code), with all of the dimensions precise and uniform.
I appreciate the effort, and I'm sorry to be critical, but I'm just not into them at all. The current set, OTOH, are actually fairly well-designed and optimized for their purpose, which is an important consideration in designing functional artwork of this sort. It's puzzling to me that anyone would be looking to replace them, as there's surprisingly little room for improvement IMHO. FeRDNYC (talk) 13:19, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposed sets may been cool at the time of the previous proposal. Those locks would be more appropriate for something like in 2008. It's for the same reason why traffic lights are always (from top to bottom) red yellow green. And why train doors on British trains need doors to have sufficient contrast to the rest (see PRM TSI). In other words, using colour alone for distinguishing isn't enough.
Oppose - not a fan of the proposed icons (see also Nythar's comment), and the current locks work quite well. however, I would be supportive of a redesign of the GA/FA icons (/the various icons of the same style) in a style similar to the current locks. Rexo (talk | contributions) 20:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What if we kept the shackles and good icon, get a new featured icon, and make a built-in feature that allows shackles to be compatible with dark mode? 2I3I3 (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(to clarify: the style used by a lot of icons across the wiki (including FA/GA) feels dated, and the locks have a cleaner look that I think could be used as a basis for further redesigns. I don't think that would inherently lead to the quality symbols implying protection.) Rexo (talk | contributions) 13:54, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the Norro or FA icons are dated, and using padlocks to indicate quality just makes no semantic sense. We adopted padlocks because it showed that the article was locked from editing. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our article Shackle says "A shackle is also the similarly shaped piece of metal used with a locking mechanism in padlocks.[1]". Some here seem confused, but anyone using "shackle" to refer to the handle part of the handbag-looking icon is correct. Anomie⚔21:18, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the section heading to not be confusing (except, I guess, to one person whose idiolect equates locks and shackles, which is rather like calling your door a "handle" or "knob". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While I personally favor skeuomorphism in electronic interface design and am not fan of the last decade or so's fashion for making everything flat and same-looking, we cannot sensibly re-inject a cluster of skeuomorphic design elements and leave the rest anti-skeuomorphic. Design and user-experience do not work like that. PS: The actually-named-a-shackle part of the lock depicted in the proposed new icons looks farcically thin and weak, like those on the pretend-security of luggage locks, so even if WP went with a skeuomorphic design (for everything) again, these icons in particular should not be used. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 21:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.
Should a new pending changes protection level - extended confirmed pending changes (hereby abbreviated as PCECP) - be added to Wikipedia? AwesomeAasim19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ARBECR (from my understanding) encourages liberal use of EC protection in topic areas authorized by the community or the arbitration committee. However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption. Extended confirmed pending changes would allow non-XCON users to propose changes for them to be approved by someone extended confirmed, and can be applied preemptively to these topic areas.
It is assumed that it is technically possible to have PCECP. That is, we can have PCECP as "[auto-accept=extended confirmed users] [review=extended confirmed users]" Right now it might not be possible to have extended confirmed users review pending changes with this protection with the current iteration of FlaggedRevs, but maybe in the future.
Support for multiple reasons: WP:ARBECR only applies to contentious topics. Correcting typos is not a contentious topic. Second, WP:ARBECR encourages the use of pending changes when protection is not used. Third, pending changes effectively serves to allow uncontroversial edit requests without needing to create a new talk page discussion. And lastly, this is within line of our protection policy, which states that protection should not be applied preemptively in most cases. AwesomeAasim19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's better than EC, which already restricts being the free encyclopedia more. As I've said below, the VisualEditor allows much more editing from new people than edit requesting, which forces people to use the source editor. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:52, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is not somehow less or more restrictive as ECR. It's exactly the same level of protection, just implemented in a different way. I do not get the !votes from either side who either claim that this will be more restriction or more bureaucracy. I understand neither, and urge them to explain their rationales. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:32, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By creating a difference between what non logged-in readers (that is, the vast majority of them) see versus logged-in users, there is an extra layer of difficulty for non-confirmed and non-autoconfirmed editors, who won't see the actual page they're editing until they start the editing process. Confirmed and autoconfirmed editors may also be confused that their edits are not being seen by non-logged in readers. Because pending changes are already submitted into the linear history of the article, unwinding a rejected edit is potentially more complicated than applying successive edit requests made on the talk page. (This isn't a significant issue when there aren't many pending changes queued, which is part of the reason why one of the recommended criteria for applying pending changes protection is that the page be infrequently edited.) For better or worse, there is no deadline to process edit requests, which helps mitigate issues with merging multiple requests, but there is pressure to deal with all pending changes expediently, to reduce complications in editing. isaacl (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think this would be fixed with "branching" (similar to GitHub branches)? In other words, instead of PC giving the latest edit, PC just gives the edit of the stable revision and when "Publish changes" is clicked it does something like put the revision in a separate namespace (something like Review:PAGENAME/#######) where ####### is the revision ID. If the edit is accepted, then that page is merged and the review deleted. If the edit is rejected the review is deleted, but can always be restored by a Pending Changes Reviewer or administrator. AwesomeAasim21:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of programmers who struggle with branching; I'm not certain it's a great idea to make it an integral part of Wikipedia editing, at least not in a hidden, implicit manner. If an edit to an article always proceeded from the last reviewed version, editors wouldn't be able to build changes on top of their previous edits. I think at a minimum, an editor would have to be able to do the equivalent of creating a personal working branch. For example, this could be done by working on the change as a subpage of the user's page (or possibly somewhere else (perhaps in the Draft namespace?), using some standard naming hierarchy), and then submitting an edit request. That would be more like how git was designed to enable de-centralized collaboration: everyone works in their own repository, rebasing from a central repository (*), and asks an integrator to pull changes that they publish in their public repository.
(*) Anyone's public repository can act as a central repository. It just has to be one that all the collaborators agree upon using, and thus agree with the decisions made by the integrator(s) merging changes into that repository. isaacl (talk) 23:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense. This has influenced me to amend my Q2 answer slightly, but I still support the existence of this protection and the preemptive PC protecting of low-traffic pages. (Plus, it's still not more restriction.) Aaron Liu (talk) 23:20, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, functionally a more efficient form of edit requests. The volume of pending changes is still low enough for this to be dealt with, and it could encourage the pending changes reviewer right to be given to more people currently reviewing edit requests, especially in contentious topics. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:25, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support having this as an option. I particularly value the effect it has on attribution (because the change gets directly attributed to the individual who wanted it, not to the editor who processed the edit request). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support: better and more direct system than preemptive extended-confirmed protection followed by edit requests on the talk page. Cremastra (u — c) 20:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, Pending Changes has the capacity to take on this new task. PC is much better than the edit request system for both new editors and reviewers. It also removes the downsides of slapping ECP on everything within contentious topic areas. Toadspike[Talk]20:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've read the opposes below and completely disagree that this would lead to more gatekeeping. The current edit request system is extremely complicated and inaccessible to new users. I've been here for half a decade and I still don't really know how it works. The edit requests we do get are a tiny fraction of the edits people want to make to ECP pages but can't. PCECP would allow them to make those edits. And many (most?) edit requests are formatted in a way that they can't be accepted (not clear what change should be made, where, based on what souce), a huge issue which would be entirely resolved by PCECP.
The automatic EC protection of all pages in certain CTOPs is not the point of this proposal. Whether disruption is a prerequisite to protection is not altered by the existence of PCECP and has to be decided in anther RfC at another venue, or by ArbCom. PCECP is solely about expanding accessibility to editing ECP pages for new and unregistered editors, which is certainly a positive move.
I, too, hate the PC system at dewiki, and I appreciate that Kusma mentioned it. However, what we're looking at here is lowering protection levels and reducing barriers to editing, which is the opposite of dewiki's PC barriers. Toadspike[Talk]10:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Agree with JPxG's principle that it is better to "have drama on a living project than peace on a dead one," but this is far less restrictive than preemptively setting EC protection for all WP:ARBECR pages. From a new editor's perspective, they experience a delay in the positive experience of seeing their edit implemented, but as long as pending changes reviewers are equipped to minimize this delay, then this oversight seems like a net benefit. New users will get feedback from experienced editors on how to operate in Wikipedia's toughest content areas, rather than stumbling through. ViridianPenguin 🐧 ( 💬 ) 08:57, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Idk what it's like in other areas but in mine, of edit requests that I see, a lot, maybe even most of them are POV/not actionable/nonsense/insults so if it is already ECR only, then yea, more filtering is a good thing.Selfstudier (talk) 18:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support assuming this is technically possible (which I'm not entirely sure it is), it seems like a good idea, and would definitely make pending changes more useful from my eyes. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 20:00, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support per @JPxG:'s reasoning—I think it's wild that we're willing to close off so many articles to so many potential editors, and even incremental liberalization of editing restrictions on these articles should be welcomed. This change would substantially expand the number of potential editors by letting non-EC contributors easily suggest edits to controversial topic areas. It would be a huge win for contributions if we managed to replace most ECP locks with this new PCECP.– Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 02:07, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's a lot of history here, and I've opposed WP:FPPR/FlaggedRevs consistently since ~2011. Without reopening the old wounds over how the initial trial was implemented/ended, nothing that's happened since has changed my position. I believe that proceeding with an expansion of FlaggedRevs would be a further step away from our commitment to being the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit without actually solving any critical problems that our existing tools aren't already handling. While the proposal includes However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption as a problem, I see that as a positive. In fact that's the entire point; protection should be preventative and there should be evidence of recent disruption. If a page is experiencing disruption, protection can handle it. If not, there's no need to limit anyone's ability to edit. The WordsmithTalk to me03:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Wordsmith, regarding "However, some administrators refuse to protect pages unless if there is recent disruption as a problem, I see that as a positive.", for interest, I see it as a negative for a number of reasons, at least in the WP:PIA topic area, mostly because it is subjective/non-deterministic.
The WP:ARBECR rules have no dependency on subjective assessments of the quality of edits. Non-EC editors are only allowed to make edit requests. That is what we tell them.
If it is the case that non-EC editors are only allowed to make edit requests, there is no reason to leave pages unprotected.
If it is not the case that non-EC editors can only allowed to make edit requests, then we should not be telling them that via talk page headers and standard notification messages.
There appears to be culture based on an optimistic faith-based belief that the community can see ARBECR violations, make reliable subjective judgements based on some value system and deal with them appropriately through action or inaction. This is inconsistent with my observations.
Many disruptive violations are missed when there are hundreds of thousands of revisions by tens of thousands of actors.
The population size of editors/admins who try to address ARBECR violations is very small, and their sampling of the space is inevitably an example of the streetlight effect.
The PIA topic area is largely unprotected and there are thousands of articles, templates, categories, talk pages etc. Randomness plays a large part in ARBECR enforcement for all sorts of reasons (and maybe that is good to some extent, hard to tell).
Wikipedia's lack of tools to effectively address ban evasion in contentious topic areas means that it is not currently possible to tell whether a revision by a non-EC registered account or IP violating WP:ARBECR that resembles an okay edit (to me personally with all of my biases and unreliable subjectivity) is the product of a helpful person or a ban evading recidivist/member of an off-site activist group exploiting a backdoor.
Oppose, I hate pending changes. Using them widely will break the wiki. We need to be as welcoming as possible to new editors, and the instant gratification of wiki editing should be there on as many pages as possible. —Kusma (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We already have a similar and larger backlog at CAT:EEP. All this does is move the backlog into an interface handled by server software that allows newcomers to use VE for their "edit requests", where currently they must use the source editor due to being confined to talk pages. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... if the number of protected pages does not increase. I expect an increase in protected pages from the proposal, even if the terrifying proposal to protect large classes of articles preemptively does not pass. —Kusma (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most PCECP pages should be ECP pages (downgraded?) as they have lesser traffic/disruption. So, the number of pages that will be increase should not be that much. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping>13:35, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma Isn't the loss of instant gratification of editing better than creating a request on the talk page of an ECP page, and having no idea by when will it be reviewed and implemented. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping>11:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — Feels unnecessary and will only prevent other good faith editors from editing, not to mention the community effort required to monitor and review pending changes requests given that some areas like ARBIPA apply to hundreds of thousands of pages. Ratnahastin(talk)01:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a very good reason I reference Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums in my preferred name for the protection scheme, and the answer is generally no since the topic area we are primarily talking about is an ethno-political contentious topic, which tend to draw partisans interested only in "winning the war" on Wikipedia. This is not limited to just new users coming in, but also established editors who have strong opinions on the topic and who may be put into the position of reviewing these edits, as a read of any random Eastern Europe- or Palestine-Israel-focused Arbitration case would make clear just from a quick skim. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques18:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except that is how pull requests work on GitHub. You make the edit, and someone with reviewer permissions approves it to complete the merge. Here, the "commit" happens, but the revision is not visible until reviewed and approved. Edit requests are not pull requests, they are the equivalent of "issues" on GitHub. AwesomeAasim19:03, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may come as a surprise, but Wikipedia is not GitHub. While they are both collaborative projects, they are very different in most other respects. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With Git, submitters make a change in their own branch (which can even be in their own repository), and then request that an integrator pull that change into the main branch. So the main branch history remains clean: it only has changes that were merged in. (It's one of the guiding principles of Git: allow the history tree of any branch to be simplified to improve clarity and performance.) isaacl (talk) 22:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Edit requests are supposed to be pull requests.
Clearly indicate which sections or phrases should be replaced or added to, and what they should be replaced with or have added. — WP:ChangeXY
Yeah that is what they are supposed to be but in practice they are not. As anyone who has answered edit requests before, there are often messages that look like this:
This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y".
The edit may be made by any extended confirmed user. Remember to change the |answered=no parameter to "yes" when the request has been accepted, rejected or on hold awaiting user input. This is so that inactive or completed requests don't needlessly fill up the edit requests category. You may also wish to use the {{EEp}} template in the response. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request.
Oppose, per what JSS has said. I am a little uncomfortable at the extent to which we've seemingly accepted preemptive protection of articles in contentious areas. It may be a convenient way of reducing the drama us admins and power users have to deal with... but only at the cost of giving up on the core principle that anybody can edit. I would rather have drama on a living project than peace on a dead one. jp×g🗯️18:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as unnecessary, seems like a solution in search of a problem. Furthermore, this *is* Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit; preemptively protecting pages discourages contributions from new editors. -Fastily22:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose I do understand where this protection would be helpful. But I just think something is EC-protectable or not. Don't necessarily think adding another level of bureaucracy is particularly helpful. --Takipoint123 (talk) 05:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm inclined to agree that the scenarios where this tool would work a benefit as technical solution would be exceedingly niche, and that such slim benefit would probably be outweighed by the impact of having yet one more tool to further nibble away at the edges of the open spaces of the project which are available to new editors. Frankly, in the last few years we have already had an absurdly aggressive trend towards community (and ArbCom fiat) decisions which have increasingly insulated anything remotely in the vain of controversy from new editors--with predictable consequences for editor recruitment and retention past the period of early involvement, further exacerbating our workloads and other systemic issues. We honestly need to be rolling back some of these changes, not adding yet one more layer (however thin and contextual) to the bureaucratic fabric/new user obstacle course. SnowRise let's rap11:23, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The more I read this discussion, the more it seems like this wouldn't solve the majority of what it sets out to solve but would create more problems while doing so, making it on balance a net negative to the project. Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and Point of Order Oppose because pending changes is already too complicated and not very useful. I'm a pending changes reviewer and I've never rejected one on PC grounds (basically vandalism). But I often revert on normal editor grounds after accepting on PC grounds. (I suspect that many PC rejections are done for non-PC reasons instead of doing this) "Point of Order" is because the RFC is unclear on what exactly is being opposed. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty sure that what happens is that when vandals realize they will have to submit their edit for review before it goes live, that takes all the fun out of it for them because it will obviously be rejected, and they don't bother. That's pretty much how it was supposed to work. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today22:22, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a very good point, and I ask for @Awesome Aasim's clarification on whether reviewers will be able to reject edits on grounds for normal reverts combined with the EC restriction. I think there's enough rationale to apply this here beyond the initial rationale for PC as explained by JSS above. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewers are given specific reasons for accepting edits (see Wikipedia:Pending changes § Reviewing pending edits) to avoid overloading them with work while processing pending changes expeditiously. If the reasons are opened up to greater evaluation of the quality of edits, then expectations may shift towards this being a norm. Thus some users are concerned this will create a hierarchy of editors, where edits by non-reviewers are gated by reviewers. isaacl (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that and wonder how the reviewer proposes to address this. I would still support this proposal if having reviewers reject according to whether they'd revert and "ostensibly" to enforce EC is to be the norm, albeit to a lesser extent for the reasons you mentioned (though I'd replaced "non-reviewers" with "all non–auto-accepted"). Aaron Liu (talk) 00:13, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure to whom you are referring when you say "the reviewer" – you're the one suggesting there's a rationale to support more reasons for rejecting a pending change beyond the current set. Since any pending change in the queue will prevent subsequent changes by non-reviewers from being visible to most readers, their edits too will get evaluated by a single reviewer before being generally visible. isaacl (talk) 00:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I meant Aasim, the nominator. I made a thinko. Currently, reviewers can undo just the edits that aren't good and then approve the revision of their own revert. I thought that was what we were supposed to do. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:13, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Anything that is obvious vandalism or a violation of existing Wikipedia's policies can still be rejected. However, for edits where there is no other problem, the edit can still be accepted. In other words, a user not being extended confirmed shall not be sufficient grounds for rejecting an edit under PCECP, since the extended confirmed user takes responsibility for the edit. If the extended confirmed user accepts a bad edit, it is on them, not whoever made it. That is the whole idea.
Of course obviously helpful changes such as fixing typos and adding up-to-date information should be accepted sooner, while more controversial changes should be discussed first. AwesomeAasim17:37, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but also edits made in violation of an already well-established consensus. Edits that enforce a clearly-established consensus (proven by previous talk page discussion), are, from my understanding, exempt from all WP:EW restrictions. AwesomeAasim18:38, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Thryduulf and SnowRose. Also regardless of whether this is a good idea as a policy, FlaggedRevs has a large amount of technical debt, to the extent that deployment to any additional WMF wikis is prohibited, so it seems unwise to expand its usage. novovtalkedits19:05, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the more productive approach would be to reduce the overuse of extended-confirmed protection. We have come to rely on it too much. This would be technically difficult and complex for little real gain. —Ganesha811 (talk) 18:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Someone who is an expert at configuring mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs will need to confirm that it is possible to simultaneously have our current type of pending changes protection plus this new type of pending changes protection. The current enwiki FlaggedRevs config looks something like the below and may not be easy to configure. You may want to ping Ladsgroup or post at WP:VPT for assistance.
Extended content
// enwiki// InitializeSettings.php$wgFlaggedRevsOverride=false;$wgFlaggedRevsProtection=true;$wgSimpleFlaggedRevsUI=true;$wgFlaggedRevsHandleIncludes=0;$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReview=3;$wgFlaggedRevsLowProfile=true;// CommonSettings.php$wgAvailableRights[]='autoreview';$wgAvailableRights[]='autoreviewrestore';$wgAvailableRights[]='movestable';$wgAvailableRights[]='review';$wgAvailableRights[]='stablesettings';$wgAvailableRights[]='unreviewedpages';$wgAvailableRights[]='validate';$wgGrantPermissions['editprotected']['movestable']=true;// flaggedrevs.phpwfLoadExtension('FlaggedRevs');$wgFlaggedRevsAutopromote=false;$wgHooks['MediaWikiServices'][]=staticfunction(){global$wgAddGroups,$wgDBname,$wgDefaultUserOptions,$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces,$wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels,$wgFlaggedRevsTags,$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions,$wgGroupPermissions,$wgRemoveGroups;$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces[]=828;// NS_MODULE$wgFlaggedRevsTags=['accuracy'=>['levels'=>2]];$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions=['accuracy'=>['review'=>1,'autoreview'=>1],];$wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['movestable']=true;// T16166$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings']=false;// -aaron 3/20/10$allowSysopsAssignEditor=true;$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces=[NS_MAIN,NS_PROJECT];# We have only one tag with one level$wgFlaggedRevsTags=['status'=>['levels'=>1]];# Restrict autoconfirmed to flagging semi-protected$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions=['status'=>['review'=>1,'autoreview'=>1],];# Restriction levels for auto-review/review rights$wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels=['autoconfirmed'];# Group permissions for autoconfirmed$wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['autoreview']=true;# Group permissions for sysops$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['review']=true;$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings']=true;# Use 'reviewer' group$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='reviewer';$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='reviewer';# Remove 'editor' and 'autoreview' (T91934) user groupsunset($wgGroupPermissions['editor'],$wgGroupPermissions['autoreview']);# Rights for Bureaucrats (b/c)if(isset($wgGroupPermissions['reviewer'])){if(!in_array('reviewer',$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat']??[])){// promote to full reviewers$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'][]='reviewer';}if(!in_array('reviewer',$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat']??[])){// demote from full reviewers$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'][]='reviewer';}}# Rights for Sysopsif(isset($wgGroupPermissions['editor'])&&$allowSysopsAssignEditor){if(!in_array('editor',$wgAddGroups['sysop'])){// promote to basic reviewer (established editors)$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='editor';}if(!in_array('editor',$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'])){// demote from basic reviewer (established editors)$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='editor';}}if(isset($wgGroupPermissions['autoreview'])){if(!in_array('autoreview',$wgAddGroups['sysop'])){// promote to basic auto-reviewer (semi-trusted users)$wgAddGroups['sysop'][]='autoreview';}if(!in_array('autoreview',$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'])){// demote from basic auto-reviewer (semi-trusted users)$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][]='autoreview';}}};
I basically came here to ask if this is even possible or if it would need WMMF devs involvement or whatever.
For those unfamiliar, pending changes is not the same thing as the flagged revisions used on de.wp. PC was developed by the foundation specifically for this project after we asked for it. We also used to have WP:PC2 but nobody really knew what that was supposed to be and how to use it and it was discontinued. Just Step Sidewaysfrom this world ..... today21:21, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on what exactly is meant by "implementation". A configuration where edits by non-extendedconfirmed users need review by reviewers would probably be similar to what was removed in gerrit:/r/334511 to implement T156448 (removal of PC2). I don't know whether a configuration where edits by non-extendedconfirmed users can be reviewed by any extendedconfirmed user while normal PC still can only be reviewed by reviewers is possible or not. Anomie⚔13:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the MediaWiki documentation, it is not possible atm. That said, currently the proposal assumes that it is possible and we should work with that (though I would also support allowing all extended-confirmed to review all pending changes). Aaron Liu (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the RfC summary statement is a bit incomplete. My understanding is that the pending changes feature introduces a set of rights which can be assigned to corresponding user groups. I believe all the logic is based on the user rights, so there's no way to designate that one article can be autoreviewed by one user group while another article can be autoreviewed by a different user group. Thus unless the proposal is to replace autoconfirmed pending changes with extended confirmed pending changes, I don't think saying "enabled" in the summary is an adequate description. And if the proposal is to replace autoconfirmed pending changes, I think that should be explicitly stated. isaacl (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal did not specify if it assumed co-existence is possible, or enabling it is possible, which could mean replacement. Thus I feel the summary statement (before the timestamp, which is what shows up in the central RfC list) is incomplete. isaacl (talk) 22:31, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While on a re-read, It is assumed that it is technically possible to have PCECP does not explicitly imply co-existence, that is how I interpreted it. Anyways, it would be wonderful to hear from @Awesome Aasim about this. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The key question that ought to be clarified is if the proposal is to have both, or to replace the current one with a new version. (That ties back to the question of whether or not the arbitration committee's involvement is required.) Additionally, it would be more accurate not to use a word in the summary that implies the only cost is turning on a switch. isaacl (talk) 22:49, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is assuming that we can have PC1 where only reviewers can approve edits and PCECP where only extended confirmed users can approve edits AND make edits without requiring approval. With the current iteration I don't know if it is technically possible. If it requires an extension rewrite or replacement, that is fine. If something is still unclear, please let me know. AwesomeAasim23:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest changing the summary statement to something like, "Should a new pending changes protection level be added to Wikipedia – extended confirmed pending changes (hereby abbreviated as PCECP)?". The subsequent paragraph can provide the further explanation on who would be autoreviewed and who would serve as reviewers with the new proposed level. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think inclusion of the preemptive-protection part in the background statement is causing confusion. AFAIK preemptive protection and whether we should use PCECP over ECP are separate questions. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:11, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Q2: If this proposal passes, should PCECP be applied preemptively to WP:ARBECR topics?
Also to add on there needs to be some enforcement measure for WP:ARBECR. No technical enforcement measures on WP:ARBECR is akin to site-banning an editor and then refusing to block them because "blocks should be preventative". AwesomeAasim19:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Blocking a site-banned user is preventative, because if we didn't need to prevent them from editing they wouldn't have been site banned. Thryduulf (talk) 21:16, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, including on talk pages. With edit requests mostly dealt with through pending changes, protecting the talk pages too should limit the disruption and unconstructive comments that are often commonplace there. (Changing my mind, I don't think applying PCECP on all pages would be a constructive solution. The rules of ARBECR limit participation to extended-confirmed editors, but the spirit of the rules has been to only enforce that on pages with actual disruption, not preemptively. 20:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:21, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm going to disagree with the "no" argument entirely - we should be preemptively ECPing (even without pending changes). It's a perversion of logic to say "you can't (per policy) do push this button", and then refuse to actually technically stop you from pushing the button even though we know you could. * Pppery *it has begun...20:52, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support (Summoned by bot): While I disagree with ECR in general, this is a better way of enforcing it as long as it exists. Constructive "edit requests" can be accepted, and edits that people disagree with can be easily reverted. I'm slightly concerned with how this could affect the pending changes backlog (which has a fairly small number of active reviewers at the moment), but I'm sure that can be figured out. CFA💬23:41, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think this is necessary at this time. I think it should be usable there, but I don't feel like this is a necessary step at this time. We could revisit it later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, we still shouldn't be protecting preemptively. Wait until there's disruption, and then choose between PCXC or regular XC protection (I would strongly favour the former for the reasons I gave above). Cremastra (u — c) 20:43, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I feel this would be a bad idea. Critics of Wikipedia already use the idea that it's controlled by a select group, this would only make that misconception more common. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not. No need for protection if there is no disruption. The number of protected pages should be kept low, and the number of pages that cry out "look at me!" on your watchlist (anything under pending changes) should be as close to zero as possible. —Kusma (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No need for protection if there is no disruption. Trouble is, the ECR restriction is enacted in response to widespread disruption, this time to the entire topic area as a whole. Disregard for POV, blatant inclusion of unverifiable or false (unreliable) information, and more all pose serious threats of disruption to the project. If WP:ARBECR was applied broadly without any protection I would agree, but WP:ARBECR is applied in response to disruption (or a serious threat of), not preemptively. Take this one for example, which is a long winded ANI discussion that ended in the WP:GS for the Russo-Ukranian War (and the ECR restrictions). And as for Arbitration Committee, ArbCom is a last resort when all other attempts to resolve disruption fail. See WP:ARBPIAWP:ARBPIA2WP:ARBPIA3WP:ARBPIA4. The earliest reference to the precursor to ARBECR in this case is on the third ArbCom case. Not protecting within a topic area that has a high risk of disruption is akin to having a high-risk template unprotected. The only difference is that carelessly editing a high-risk template creates technical problems, while carelessly editing a high-risk topic area creates content problems.
Either the page is protected technically (which enforces a community or ArbCom decision that only specific editors are allowed in topic areas) or the page is not protected technically but protected socially (which then gives a chance of evasion). I see this situation no different from banning an editor sitewide and then refusing to block them on the grounds that "blocks should only be used to prevent disruption" while ignoring the circumstances leading up to the site ban.
What PCECP would do is allow for better enforcement of the community aspect. New editors won't be bitten, if they find something that needs fixing like a typo, they can make an edit and it can get approved. More controversial edits will get relegated to the talk page where editors not banned from that topic area can discuss that topic. And blatant POV pushing and whatnot would get reverted and would never even be seen by readers.
The workflow would look like this: new/anon user make an edit → edit gets held for review → extended confirmed user approves the edit. Rather than the current workflow (and the reason why preemptive ECP is unpopular): new/anon user makes an edit → user is greeted with a "this page is protected" message → user describes what they would like to be changed but in a badly formulated way → edit request gets closed as "unclear" or something similar. AwesomeAasim14:21, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. We should be quicker to apply protection in these topics than we would elsewhere, but not preemptively except on highly visible pages (which, in these topics, are probably ECP-protected anyway). Animal lover|666|17:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying such a discussion exists, but changes to Arbitration remedies/discretionary sanctions are something they would want to weigh in on. Arbitration policy (which includes WP:Contentious topics) is in their wheelhouse and this would have serious implications for WP:CT/A-I and any further instances where ArbCom (rather than individual editors, as a discretionary sanction) would need to resort to a 500/30 rule as an explicit remedy. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques04:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is not my reading of WP:ARBECR. Specifically, On any page where the restriction is not enforced through extended confirmed protection, this restriction may be enforced by...the use of pending changes... (bold added by me for emphasis). But if there is consensus not to use this preemptively so be it. AwesomeAasim05:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I appreciate the forward thinking that PCECP may want to be used in Arb areas, this feels like a considerable muddying of the delineation between the Committee's role and the community's role. Traditionally, Contentious Topics have been the realm of ArbCom, and General Sanctions have been the realm of the Community. Part of the logic comes down to who takes the blame when things go wrong. The Community shouldn't take the blame when ArbCom makes a decision, and vice versa. Part of the logic is separation of powers. If the community wants to say "ArbCom, you will enforce this so help you God," then that should be done by amending ArbPol. Part of the logic is practical. If the community creates a process that adds to an existing Arb process, what happens when the Arbs want to change that process? Or even end it altogether? Bottomline: Adopting PCECP for ARBECR is certainly something ArbCom could do. But I'd ask the community to consider the broader structural problems that would arise if the community adopted it on behalf of ArbCom. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓05:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. I'd say ArbCom should be able to override the community if they truly see such action fit and worthy of potential backlash. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just a terminology note, although I appreciate many think of general sanctions in that way, it's defined on the Wikipedia:General sanctions page as ... a type of Wikipedia sanctions that apply to all editors working in a particular topic area. ... General sanctions are measures used by the community or the Arbitration Committee ("ArbCom") to improve the editing atmosphere of an article or topic area.. Thus the contentious topics framework is a form of general sanctions. isaacl (talk) 15:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the general point: I agree that it is cumbersome for the community to impose a general sanction that is added on top of a specific arbitration remedy. I would prefer that the community work with the arbitration committee to amend its remedy, which would facilitate keeping the description of the sanction and logging of its enforcement together, instead of split. (I appreciate that for this specific proposal, logging of enforcement is not an issue.) isaacl (talk) 15:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Extended confirmed started off as an arbcom concept - 500 edits/30 days - which the community then choose to adopt. ArbCom then decided to make its remedy match the community's version - such that if the community were to decide extended confirmed were 1000 edits/90 days all ArbCom restrictions would update. I find this a healthy feedback loop between ArbCom and the community. The community could clearly choose (at least on a policy level, given some technical concerns) to enact PCECP. It could choose to apply this to some/all pages. If it is comfortable saying that it wants to delegate some of which pages this applies to the Arbitration Committee I think it can do so without amending ArbPol. However, I think ArbCom could could decide that PCECP would not apply in some/all CTOP areas given that the Committee is exempt from consensus for areas with-in its scope. And so it might ultimately make more sense to do what isaacl suggests. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The "contentious topics" procedure does seem like something that the community should absolutely mirror and that ultimately both the community and ArbCom should work out of. If one diverges, there is probably a good reason why it diverged.
As for the broader structural problems that would arise if the community adopted it on behalf of ArbCom, there are already structural problems with general sanctions because of the community's failure to adopt the new CTOP procedure for new contentious topics. Although the community has adopted the contents of WP:ARBECR for other topic areas like WP:RUSUKR, they don't adopt it by reference but by copying the whole text verbatim. AwesomeAasim17:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not the same structural problem. The community hasn't had a lot of discussion about adopting the contentious topic framework for its own use (in my opinion, because it's a very process-wonky discussion that doesn't interest enough editors to generate a consensus), but that doesn't interfere with how the arbitration committee uses the contentious topic framework. This proposal is suggesting that the community automatically layer on its own general sanction on top of any time the arbitration committee decides to enact a specific sanction. Thus the committee would have to consider each time whether or not to override the community add-on, and amendment requests might have to be made both to the committee and the community. isaacl (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Prior to contentious topics there were discretionary sanctions. Those became very muddled and so the committee created Contentious topics to help clarify the line between community and committee (disclosure: I help draft much of that work). As part of that the committee also established ways for the community to tie-in to contentious topics if it wanted. So for the community hasn't made that choice which is fine. But I do this is an area that, in general, ArbCom does better than the community because there is more attention paid to having consistency across areas and when a problem arises I have found (in basically this one area only) ArbCom to be more agile at addressing it. But the community is also more willing to pass a GS than ArbCom is to designate something a CT (which I think is a good hting all around) and so having the community come to consensus about how, if at all, it wants to tie in to CT (and its evolutions) or if it would prefer to do its own thing (including just mirroring whatever happens to be in CT at the time but not subsequent changes) would probably be a good meta discussion to have. But it also doesn't seem necessary for this particular proposal. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Q3: If this proposal does not pass, should ECP be applied preemptively to articles under WP:ARBECR topics?
Support as a second option, but only to articles. Talk pages can be enforced solely through reverts and short protections so I see little reason why those should be protected. AwesomeAasim19:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support for articles per Aasim. Talk pages still need to be open for edit requests. (Also changing my mind, per above. If anything, we should clarify ARBECR so that the 500-30 limit is only applied in cases where it is needed, not automatically, to resolve the ambiguity. 20:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:20, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Chaotic Enby and Pppery above and think all CT articles should be protected. I am generally not a fan of protecting Talk pages, but it's true that many CT Talk pages are cesspools of hate, so I am not sure where I sit on protecting Talk pages. Toadspike[Talk]20:57, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Under the current wording of ARBECR, When such a restriction is in effect in a topic area, only extended-confirmed editors may make edits related to the topic area. We should protect pages, rather than letting new editors edit and then reverting them for basically no reason. This is a waste of their time and very BITEy.
I am not opposed to changing the wording of ARBECR to forbid reverting solely because an editor is not extended confirmed, which is a silly reason to revert otherwise good edits. However, until ArbCom changes ARBECR, we are stuck with the rules we have. We ought to make these rules clear to editors before they edit, by page protection, instead of after they edit, by reversion. Toadspike[Talk]10:55, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because I think this is a bad idea. For one thing, just making a list of all the covered articles could produce disputes that we don't need. (This article might be covered, but is it truly covered? Reasonable people could easily disagree about whether some articles are "mostly" about the restricted area vs "partly", and therefore about whether the rule applies.) Second, where a serious and obvious problem, such as blatant vandalism, is concerned, it would be better to have an IP revert it than to mindlessly follow the rules. It is important to remember that our rules exist as a means to an end. We follow them because, and to the extent that, they help overall. We expect admins and other editors to exercise discretion. It is our policy that Wikipedia:If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. This is a proposal to declare that the IAR policy never applies to the rule about who should normally be editing these articles, and that exercising discretion is not allowed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am neither Arb nor admin, but I think the words "broadly construed" are specifically chosen so that if a topic is "partly" about the restricted area, it is included in the CTOP. @WhatamIdoing, could you please show me an example of a case where CTOP designation or ECP was disputed? Toadspike[Talk]10:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I avoid most of those articles, but consider "the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted": Does that include BLPs who come from Israel/Palestine? What about BLPs who are in the news because of what they said about the Israel–Hamas war? IMO reasonable people could disagree about whether "every person living in the affected area" or "every person talking about the conflict" is part of "the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
David Miller is what we call a "partial" Arbpia. So while it's a BLP in general, parts of it are subject to Arbpia/CT, not a particularly unusual situation. The talkpage and edit notices should, but don't always, tell you whether it is or isn't, part of. Selfstudier (talk) 20:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IAR stands for IgnoreAllRules. The latter two cannot be claimed valid based on IgnoreAllRules because they don't have strong IgnoreAllRules arguments for what they did, not because IgnoreAllRules somehow only applies to content. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that "ignore all rules" applies to rules – including rules about behavior. ARBPIA is a rule about behavior. IAR therefore applies to ARBPIA.
Of course, if breaking the rule doesn't prove helpful to Wikipedia in some way, then no matter what type of rule it is, you shouldn't break the rule. We have a rule against bad grammar in articles, and you should not break that rule. But when two rules conflict – say, the style rule of "No bad grammar" and the behavioral rule of "No editing this ARBPIA article while logged out, even if it's because you're on a public computer and can't remember your password" – IAR says you can choose to ignore the rule that prevents you from improving Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While there's already precedent for preemptive protection at e.g. RFPP, I do not like this. For one, as talk pages (and, by extension, edit requests) cannot use the visual editor, this makes it much harder for newcomers to contribute edits, often unnecessarily on articles where there are no disruption. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:47, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mu - This is basically my reading of the 500/30 rule as writ. Anything that would fall into the 500/30'd topic should be XCP'd on discovery. It's worth noting I don't view this as anywhere close to ideal but then neither did ArbCom, and given the circumstances of the real-world ethnopolitical conflict only escalating as of late (which in turn feeds the disruption) the only other - even worse - option would be full-protection across the board everywhere in the area. So why am I not arguing Support? Because just like the question above, this is putting the cart before the horse and this is better off being discussed after this RfC ends, not same time as. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques02:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely not, pages that do not experience disruption should be open to edit. Pending changes should never become widely used to avoid situations like dewiki's utterly absurd 53-day backlog. —Kusma (talk) 21:53, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very strong oppose, again Kusma puts it excellently. Protection should always be the exception, not the norm. Even in the Israel-Palestine topic area most articles do not experience disruption. Thryduulf (talk) 13:50, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RUNAWAY sums up some of the tactics used by disruptive editors: namely Their edits are limited to a small number of pages that very few people watch and Conversely, their edits may be distributed over a wide range of articles to make it less likely that any given user watches a sufficient number of affected articles to notice the disruptions. If a user is really insistent on pushing their agenda, they might not be able to push it on the big pages, they may push it on some of the smaller pages where their edits may get unwatched for months if not years. Then, researchers digging up information will come across the POV article and blindly cite it. Although Wikipedia should never be cited as a source, it still happens. AwesomeAasim14:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The number of revisions within the PIA topic area that violate the ARBECR rule is not measured. It is not currently possible to say anything meaningful about the amount of 'disruption' in the topic area by non-EC IPs and accounts. And the way people estimate the amount of 'disruption' subjectively depends on the timescale they choose to measure it. Nobody can see all of the revisions and the number of people looking is small. Since the ARBECR rule was introduced around the start of 2020, there have been over 71,000 revisions by IPs to articles and talk pages within the subset of the PIA topic, about 11,000 pages, used to gather statistical data (ARBPIA templated articles and articles that are members of both wikiproject Israel and wikiproject Palestine). Nobody has any idea how many of those were constructive, how many were disruptive, how many involved ban-evading disposable accounts etc. And yet, this incomplete information situation apparently has little to no impact on the credence we all assign to our views about what would work best for the PIA topic area. I personally think it is better to dispense with non-evidence-based beliefs about the state of the topic area at any given time and simply let the servers enforce the rule as written in WP:ARBECR, "only extended-confirmed editors may make edits related to the topic area, subject to the following provisions...". Sean.hoyland (talk) 17:22, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since we're assuming that PCECP is possible and the last two questions definitely deal with policy, I feel like maybe this should go to VPP instead, with the header edited to something like "Extended-confirmed pending changes and preemptive protection in contentious topics" to reflect the slightly−larger-than-advertised scope? Aaron Liu (talk) 23:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think policy proposals are also okay here, though I see your point. There is definitely overlap, though. This is both a request for a technical change as well as establishing policy/guidelines around that technical change (or lack thereof). AwesomeAasim00:26, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If this proposal is accepted, my assumption is that we'd bring back the ORANGELOCK which was used for the original incarnation of Pending Changes Level 2. There's a proposed lock already at File:Pending_Changes_Protected_Level_2.svg, though it needs fixes in terms of name (should probably be something like Pending-level-2-protection-shackle.png or Extended-pending-protection-shackle.png), SVG code (the top curve is a bit cut off), and color (should probably be darker but still clearly distinguishable from REDLOCK). —pythoncoder (talk | contribs)21:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think light blue is a better color for this. But in any case we will probably need a lock with a checkmark and the letter "E" for extended confirmed. AwesomeAasim22:22, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am actually starting to wonder if "protection" is a bit of a misnomer, because technically pages under pending changes are not really "protected". Yeah the edits are subject to review, but there are no technical measures to prevent a user from editing. It is just like recent changes on many wikis; those hold edits for review until they are approved, but they do not "protect" the entire wiki. AwesomeAasim23:40, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Add AI translation option for translating from English to non-English article.
AI certainly improved a lot by now. It can translate to many non-english language better than traditional translators . My suggestion is to add AI translation option for translating from English to non-English article. User will review the AI translation to see if its correct. It will increase the translation quality. I dont suggest using AI for English article, that could have a devastating impact. Dark1618 (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's out of scope here, and would need to be asked on each and every individual language-edition of Wikipedia, as those would be the ones dictating policy for translations into their respective languages. —Jéské Courianov^_^vthreadscritiques19:10, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would a translation into English be devastating, but a translation from English into any other language be acceptable? English just happens to be that most used language in the world by some measures: beyond that it has no special status. Anyway, we can not decide here what is appropriate for other language Wikipedias. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good Idea! That’s actually what I was going to propose but you took it. To add to your amazing proposal, I suggest that every wiki translation must be approved by a speaker. Like If someone translated an article from English to Arabic, the translated article goes to an Arab speaker, by algorithm when the person would press a button that says “send for approval” or something like that, and the Arab person who gets the translated article will read the Wikipedia page and look for any errors, then the Arab corrects it and it gets published to the world. And why can’t the opposite happen, when an article gets translated to say french To English the same thing happens the French person machine translates the article, it gets sent to approval, a fluent English speaker goes and corrects it, then it gets published. If it is an extinct language, a person who is a professional in the language will correct it, and as for rates, I mean Wikipedia has at least 1 person who knows the language. Anyway have a good day! Cheers! Datawikiperson (talk) 10:10, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure of the technical backend for that tool, but I do see at English Wikipedia a constant inflow of articles translated from sister projects, usually without proper attribution, sometimes with broken templates.Some of these translations are pretty good, up to idiomatic phrasing; others have the appearance of raw machine translation, with errors no one fluent in the target language would leave in.As to the original proposal / idea, a flow of machine translations from this project to sister Wikipediae, that is indeed out of scope here, and would have to be brought up individually at each language project. Except maybe Cebuano Wikipedia. Folly Mox (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I occasionally translate from English to Chinese and vice versa, and take on some bits from Japanese and Korea projects to be translated on to here if the information and sources can be used on here. And I strongly discourage automated AI translations from English to other languages, which you are proposing, without further inputs from the targeted language projects. AI translations to other languages from English are not perfect and can have the same devastating impact you don't want to see on English Wikipedia. – robertsky (talk) 14:30, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Machine translation from English to most other languages is already enabled (and where it isn't it is a choice of the to project, not of the English Wikipedia). I don't think there is anything for us to do about this proposal? — xaosfluxTalk10:33, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A sandbox for testing redirects, which redirects to Wikipedia:Sandbox and has a sandbox notice when you click for more information about that sandbox. It can be redirected anywhere and is automatically reverted like all other sandboxes.
What is there to test that this would be good for? If you make a mistake while creating a redirect, you can just fix it. Remsense ‥ 论08:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The cliche is “Size doesn’t matter," but it does in many things — paintings, sculptures, jewelry, crystals, anything larger or small than usual and even if it’s the usual size if readers don’t know what that it. It makes a difference if a painting is 2” by 3” or 2’ by 3’. Especially in TPOD, because more people will see it, but really everywhere. I suggest that writers be encouraged to provide the relevant size in the text or caption of every photo where it’s necessary and that the editors working on TPOD be strongly encouraged to give the size whenever possible. If the size is not given in the text being referenced, that information is often in the photo's "details," in addition to the editing history. Wis2fan (talk) 04:51, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, excuse my ignorance, but what is TPOD? Secondly, I don't see any clear proposal here. Yes, size is often important, but what do you think we should do about it? We can cajole editors into providing size, but we shouldn't reject images without it. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:48, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I got the abbreviation wrong — POTD. Today’s (11/10/2024) POTD is an example of what I’m talking about. The reader knows a bark beetle is tiny, but why not give the actual size? It’s not that the information isn’t available. I clicked on the photo, then on "details." The description of the photo says the adult male is 4.0 mm to 5.5 mm long. I came back to the post and clicked on the name. The linked article includes the same information. The information is there this time. I agree, it’s not always either place. But when it is, it should be provided to be complete. Wis2fan (talk) 04:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A picture caption is finite, it does not need to (and indeed in most cases cannot) include every detail about an image and its subject. Therefore it should only include information that is most relevant, and that will not always include the size. For example the POTD for 8 November was an 1860 photograph of John Tarleton (Royal Navy officer), is the size of the print really the most relevant information or is it the size of the subject what you want to know? It's fine to encourage people to put the size of the image and/or subject in the caption where that is relevant, but it is not always going to be, so a one-size-fits all rule is not going to be appropriate. If you want to know, just look at the extra details. Thryduulf (talk) 14:37, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thryduulf is absolutely correct, the size of the object in a photo is unimportant when it is a human. The size isn’t necessary for today’s POTD (11/11/2024). But I still think it is important when it is a bark beatle. And many other things. I also think that a writer should anticipate a reader’s questions and provide the answers. Suggesting that if a reader wants the size of an object they should look at the extra details is not helpful. I’d bet most readers don’t know how to find them. Wis2fan (talk) 04:29, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I vaguely remember I suggested something similar at commons once, requesting that more people who post photos consider including a scale-bar if it's the sort of subject that would benefit from one (biological specimens, museum artefacts whose size is likely to be unclear to a general reader). I think I got shot down in flames for general naivete. My opinion is: In any situation where a reference book would use a scale bar, or indicate prominently by caption or other means, the size of an illustrated object, we should do the same, so far as we can. This would probably include articles about most species (birds, insects etc.) and articles about things where the size is central to the article (an article on miniaturisation of transistors, for example, should show the size of the transistors in its photos). Elemimele (talk) 13:52, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! I have made an infobox for artist collectives (inspired by my own frustration trying to use the regular artist one for graffiti crews) and would like feedback from the community before publishing it. The old infobox proposal page is now defunct and suggests posting here instead.
Personally, I'd much rather not see this, or anything like it, used. Almost everything in it will be disputable or disputed, or is really vague. It seems a classic example of where an infobox is just unhelpful clutter, and will displace or make too small an image that would be more helpful. Are you asking at the VA project, & if not, why not? It's not really for here. Johnbod (talk) 05:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Heya, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that while interface administrators and central notice administrators need 2FA, bureaucrats, who can grant interface admin don't need 2FA. To me this seems a bit weird, because if you wanted to compromise an account with access to interface admin tools, bureaucrats may not all have 2FA. Hence, I'm proposing requiring all enwiki bureaucrats to enable 2FA as a precaution. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 09:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see non-restricted adjacent bugs T242553 and T242556 were both created on 12 Jan 2020. Would it be accurate to describe this as an evaluation which has been unresolved for about 5 years? -- zzuuzz(talk)13:58, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support per pppery and zippybonzo - should be a requirement locally. Waiting for phab tickets could take years while I imagine a RFC would pass pretty quickly. BugGhost🦗👻19:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that 'crats can assign interface admin (a role which requires 2FA) but are not required to have 2FA personally enabled is wild. Support a local rule (and hopefully the largest WMF project implementing such a rule will encourage others to make such a change). HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 00:43, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definite support. I am personally in favor of a 2FA requirement for any privileged group, but it is something I doubt will happen anytime soon. Crats should absolutely have it enabled. EggRoll97(talk) 01:51, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question. How are you going to check whether the user enabled 2FA or not? This information is not public. Only WMF can confirm this. Ruslik_Zero20:02, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, stewards can check this, and we periodically audit this for compliance on projects. Also, 'crats will very likely soon be able to check this as well - just some paperwork in that way right now (primarily so they can check it before assigning intadmin to others). — xaosfluxTalk10:29, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, because the last time I checked, WMF's self-developed version of 2FA was not really fit for purpose. It's not like they're using Duo or Google or something. If anything, I'd support removing it from the roles requiring it now. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It works OK, but is certainly not ready for large-scale deployment due to the support model and capacity. Staff is generally responsive to recovery requests for those that WMF requires enrollment though. — xaosfluxTalk10:30, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in theory - I use 2FA as a crat. Makes all the sense to me. As Xaos says above it's not ideal how it's setup. If it was just a "should this user group use 2FA", then I think yes. And, I'd argue administrators should as well. I can't support the technical solution we currently have being rolled out further without more Dev time. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)13:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RfC: Should a blackout be organized in protest of the Wikimedia Foundation's actions?
I think we should have infoboxes for rituals and cultural practices, as studied in anthropology and religious studies. Parameters like associated culture, associated religion, purpose, origin, place, whether or not it is extinct, and when it is observed could be included. Examples of articles that could benefit are Akazehe, Savika, Sikidy, Haka, Bar Mitzvah, Quinceañera, Nggàm, and Hajj. ꧁Zanahary꧂19:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, there’s not really enough fields they’d have in common. Although I personally believe that every article that has an applicable infobox should use it, there’s also many articles that work best without them. novovtalkedits10:38, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, infoboxes work best when there are a number of basic uncontroversial factual characteristics that are shared by a group of articles. That's very far from the case here. Johnbod (talk) 14:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Lee Vilenski Even the most diehard of infobox supporters recognise that infoboxes don't work on every page (broad, abstract concepts like Love and Existence for example) and that is one reason why we don't have (and never will have) any requirement for every article to have an infobox. That doesn't in any way preclude setting a policy that specific subsets of articles where they are uncontroversially useful (e.g. countries and NFL teams) must have an infobox if we wanted to. Some of the types of articles mentioned could have useful infoboxes (Hajj already does for example) not all of them can, so the OP's suggestion would not be a good set for such a policy, but that's not an argument against any set being appropriate. Thryduulf (talk) 20:58, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I propose that extended confirmed users should be allowed to get users from the IP address that they are currently logged onto because to see and disclose on Template:User shared IP address. Extended confirmed users are trusted (30 days and 500 edits) and the CheckUsers can see the log to see who's outing. 1.144.109.84 (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
White
Silver
Blue
Pink
Gold
Red
Green
Skyblue
Purple
Turquoise
Black
Agree, but only slightly. If you added the letters, it would be better. Also, a solution to your region-basing could be to do a Language-based (like "O" for "Office" would become "S" for "Schoolhouse" in a theoretical "Reversed English") The Master of Hedgehogs (converse) (hedgehogs) 14:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
) Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 21:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
