Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

I've heard it discussed around a fair amount, and I'm sure it's one of those 'perennial proposals' that the veterans here are going to roll their eyes and say "ugh, somebody's bringing THIS up again," but I do think it bears saying. Notability is an awful descriptor for what we're actually looking for, which is presence in sources. That's 'notedness' if anything, not 'notability', and the inevitable result is that every time you tell someone you can't accept their autobiography/company's article/article about their favourite media thing because it's 'not notable,' they get their haunches up and go on a tirade about how many awards they/the thing have won and how many cool things they/the thing have done, etc. Pretty much every mention of something being notable or not notable has to be accompanied by a mandatory disclaimer of what notability means here and how it doesn't mean what they think it does. It's a thought particularly spurred on by my deletion nomination of the article Deaglán de Bréadún, which led the man himself to post a response essentially calling me a nasty person for daring to imply that him and his career aren't notable... which, of course, is not actually what we mean, despite literally saying the words "you aren't notable enough for a Wikipedia article"

So, the obvious question is; what would we call it instead? I've heard the term "Criteria for inclusion" mentioned, which I think would be a graceful solution, since you can explain that the criteria for inclusion is presence in sources etc without ever having to use the scary word 'notability.' Whatever alternative option is presented, I do think it is seriously high time that Wikipedia take the big step of retiring the term 'notability' Athanelar (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you. Notability is a dumb name. However, there's never going to be a consensus to change it. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:55, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

And then, what would we call all the lists of "notable" people/residents/alumni/etc.? "People/residents/alumni/etc. who meet the criteria for inclusion"? Donald Albury 01:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I think you could probably still keep those; the definition there would logically run in the opposite direction, they are notable because they meet the criteria for inclusion. It's not an ideal solution, but obviously cuts down on some of the logistical challenge. Athanelar (talk) 01:41, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Renaming notability has been an WP:PEREN issue, repeated discussed without finding any term that has a benefit over "notability" that would not be disruptive (how many P&G depend on it) but would be more descriptive. And no, "presence in sources" is an indicator of notability, but not how notability is defined. Masem (t) 01:16, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

It is undoubtedly true that it would be a lot of work changing the nomenclature all over the project if we got rid of 'notability,' but I don't think "It'd be a lot of work" is a compelling counterargument. There would no doubt be a long transitional period where lingering remains of 'notability' were still all over the place; but that doesn't have to be an issue, it's not like the change has to happen overnight. We could just say "from today on, the term 'notability' is deprecated and we prefer this new term instead" and people can change mentions of it as and when they catch it. Just today I heard about the NSPORTS 2022 RfC where the definition of notability for athletes was radically changed; that too would've had far-reaching implications on the project, but that didn't stop people from doing it just because it was a lot of work ahead of them to clean up the now non-notable athlete articles everywhere. Athanelar (talk) 01:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

The NSPORT change did not radically change what notability was, just eliminated a very poor presumption of notability (playing one professional game) that had led to thousands of permastubs on athletes that was a constant problem at ANI.

We've been through what the downstream impacts of changing the term notability to something else as part of past discussions (because this being PEREN) and its not as simple "from now on it will be known as..." "notability" is embedded in WP culture and in coverage of how WP works, so it would be a massive shift, so any new terms must carry a lot of massive benefit to make it worth the effort to make the change. And dozens of suggestions have been made and failed to show this. Masem (t) 04:47, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• My 9-year-old essay's time has finally come! WP:Noted not notable. (Note: It's a very, very short essay, admittedly.) EEng 01:58, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  We could put this in big letters on the notability page and all the spin-off pages like WP:42. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  This is also a fairly elegant solution, hut unfortunately relies on people actually clicking the link and then actually reading the words on their screen. The 'headline effect' is real when it comes to WP links. Athanelar (talk) 09:23, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Nice essay, EEng. I especially like how the "nutshell" explanation is nearly twice as long as the essay itself  ;) —Fortuna, imperatrix 19:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  EEng 20:16, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• For reference, the last big discussion on this topic that I know of is Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 84 § RfC on change of name, from April 2025. isaacl (talk) 02:07, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Much appreciated. Starting to read through some of that, I think 'eligibility' is quite a strong contender. It's an easily-understood English word already, which perfectly encapsulates the concept being described, and also would actually allow us to broaden our definition in some useful ways (because eligibility is a catch-all term that could include not only the presence of positive indicators like strong sources, but also the absence of negative indicators like WP:NOT or criteria for speedy deletion.) A subject which is 'eligible' is one that is both suitable for inclusion and unsuitable for deletion, which 'notability' does not currently encapsulate. Athanelar (talk) 02:15, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  No, eligibility is a terrible idea, because it implies a brightline yes/no answer. Notability is a greyscale, its why notability is based on presumptions and not a hardline test.

  The only real issue with notability is for editors encountering the term for the first time, and coming to learn that real-world definition of notability is not exactly the same as WP's definition of notability, but reading the P&G should quickly resolve that. Masem (t) 04:53, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

The only way to get the name changed? would be to propose only one alternative. GoodDay (talk) 02:10, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I disagree, the bugbear for a lot of people seems to be whether we'll get consensus that changing the name is worth the effort. I think people first have to be disgruntled about the old name to be resolved to change it before we worry what the new name ought to be. Athanelar (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you have a proposed name? GoodDay (talk) 14:37, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

No! God please no! This is a perennial issue based primarily on WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It’s too late and too entrenched to change and someone is just going to bitch about how dumb “eligibility” is down the line. A better proposal would be outright banning perennial proposals and requiring consensus to unban them before allowing them to be discussed again, since that would require more extraordinary reasoning than “I know this has been talked to death, but just me out, I swear”. Dronebogus (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

While I agree that changing it has a less-than-ideal cost-reward, this post (and the others before it) explain legitimate downsides to the current name besides preference. Also, a discussion to unban a perennial proposal would look almost identical to the proposal itself. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:28, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

A discussion to unban a perennial proposal would look almost identical to the proposal itself. Maybe so, but it would force proposers to go through the process twice, which would discourage most proposers from doing it at all and save everyone a lot of time. Additionally, it wouldn’t necessarily always result in the aforementioned situation— if a proposal was banned because it was a hot-button issue now, it might be uncontroversially removed from the list 10 years later after things cool off, without actually endorsing it. It would be sort of like the MediaWiki:Bad image list or a gold lock for proposals. Dronebogus (talk) 09:51, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I totally agree with you and I was disappointed that there wasn't consensus to change the name in the aforementioned April 2025 RfC. But given the outcome of said RfC, I struggle to see the point of rehashing the discussion so soon as it's very unlikely that there will be a different outcome. Perhaps give it a year or two.  novov talk edits 05:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• Coverage perhaps? Or renown? Or just noted ... I doubt it'll ever actually change though. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Coverage is a distinction without a difference. Renown is far more pretentious than notability. Noted is barely even a change and couldn’t be used rationally in a sentence. Dronebogus (talk) 09:53, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• WP:Eligibility was recently suggested by Wikipedia expert Bill Beutler. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:00, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Eligibility is the rename option that sucks the least, since it most accurately reflects what “notability” actually means. But “notability” still at least puts a vague idea in people’s heads (namely, is this thing/person significant in some way?) whereas “eligibility” could mean pretty much anything and could actually put a worse idea in people’s heads (namely, eligibility is whatever somebody says it is, or is some arcane ruleset known only to insiders that isn’t easily summarized). Dronebogus (talk) 09:59, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I still think "notedness" would be better than "eligibility", as "eligibility" seems like it should include non-WP:N things such as WP:NOT and WP:BLP. Anomie⚔ 13:50, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't see that as a negative. We are, ultimately, looking for a term that describes "eligible to be included on Wikipedia." In fact, some of the AfC decline notices literally use "your references do not demonstrate that this subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article" as a piped link to 'notability' anyway. If anything, having a more comprehensive term would be an advantage, since then you don't run into the tricky situations of 'well, we TECHNICALLY have enough information to presume this person is notable, but there's still not enough coverage to substantiate an article about them' amd so on.

  Eligibility includes what we now define as notability, but way more succinctly communicates the point of whether or not something should have an article. Athanelar (talk) 14:02, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Having an all-encompassing term actually referring to just one facet seems like it would make it harder to discuss that facet versus other facets. "Ok, that meets WP:ELIGIBILITY, but it's still not eligible because it doesn't meet WP:BLP1E." "Wat?" Anomie⚔ 00:01, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  Exactly. Dronebogus (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  “notability” still at least puts a vague idea in people’s heads: but I think that’s the problem with the term. People don’t realize they are encountering a jargon term and substitute their own meaning. I’d argue that “eligibility” is better because there’s more precedent that contextual criteria will define eligibility for a particular thing; it might cue people that they need Wikipedia-specific information. (I’d almost want to try a complete neologism that people would know they don’t know the meaning of, something like “wikifiability” or “AAOEW” (Article Allowed On En-Wiki) that they’d know they don’t know.) ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 07:35, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  Anomie said it best with the “wiki-eligibility is not dictionary definition eligibility” example. Notability still hits the general vicinity of the right idea; eligibility doesn’t and has the potential to be more confusing. As for a neologism, I don’t support that either because (on top of being a solution in search of a problem like all these replacement suggestions) it just adds MORE incomprehensible jargon to Wikipedia— which is what this proposal is supposedly trying to cut back on. Dronebogus (talk) 14:39, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  I feel like you might have misunderstood my argument. When it comes to the one-word name for this concept, I contend that "trying to cut back on" jargon is counterproductive; any one-word name for this mess of concepts is inherently jargon. Accordingly, I think there's no point trying to change to something "clearer", but it could possibly be helpful to change to something less "clear", because it could make the term into a "known unknown" instead of "something you know that isn't so". Personally, when I want to avoid jargon with newbies, I write out a whole explanatory phrase instead (eg "our criteria for a book to have an article"); I think that's the only approach that can actually effectively cut down on jargon. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 02:42, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

• Notability was never a good choice of name, but we've stuck with it because of the cost of changing; it's a QWERTY vs DVORAK problem. Personally I'd quite like to call it "Citability".—S Marshall T/C 09:45, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I think the 'cost of changing' would quickly be outweighed if you tallied up the editor-hours required and compared it to the editor-hours that have been spent and will continue to be spent in perpetuity explaining to disgruntled would-be article creators why appearing on a list of the Top 100 Best Things doesn't confer notability. Athanelar (talk) 13:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Don't misunderstand: I personally would support most reasonable alternative names because "notability" is still (after all these years) a misleading, dramagenic, and generally awful choice of words. But there's a non-zero cost of changing and a lot of neophobia to overcome here.—S Marshall T/C 14:40, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  Is “dramagenic” a word? Dronebogus (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  As I discussed last April, personally I encourage everyone to focus on providing more complete explanations on the standards for having an article rather than just linking to a jargon term. The key obstacle is that the community has to want to reduce its use of jargon. isaacl (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• It is highly unlikely that the community is going to rename "Notability", this being as noted a perennial proposal that gets enmeshed in the long and complicated history and complicated current understanding of the concept of 'notability' on en.wiki. However, a creative smaller change probably worth exploring might be to create an alternative name for WP:GNG that somehow does not include the "N". GNG is the aspect of notability that best describes "presence in sources", it is the least likely aspect of notability to get enmeshed in notability politics. I don't have a perfect suggestion offhand, but creating an alternative name for GNG is a smaller task then renaming all of notability, and would capture much of the practical benefit of a full notability rename even if that full rename never happens. CMD (talk) 14:11, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
• The community's inertia is such that a proposal to change this isn't a good use of my time or anyone else's. But I agree, and if I had my way I would want the policy not to be a near-synonym of "significant". The practical consequence I see most often is the eliding of "should we as an ambitious global encyclopedia cover this in principle" and "can we as an encyclopedia that cares about verifiability write an article about this in practice". I could go on at length, but a more prosaic name may help us a good bit, perhaps something as plain as "standard for inclusion". Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:47, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  “Standard(s) for inclusion” is by FAR the best proposed option so far; but there are multiple “standards for inclusion” beyond notability. Dronebogus (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Dronebogus: This is precisely the distinction that I want to make. To my mind there's not multiple standards for inclusion, because in our most overarching policy language, "notability" is used as a synonym for standards of inclusion. We do have multiple was of showing notability beyond GNG/SIGCOV. And the frequent use of "notable" to mean "has SIGCOV" therefore causes considerable confusion as well. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  "Notability" is one commonly discussed standard, but there are others such as WP:NOT and WP:BLP. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  @Anomie: I see those as standards for exclusion, which may require the removal of notable topics, but will never compel the inclusion of non-notable topics. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:49, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

  Two sides of the same coin. You could just as well say that WP:N will never compel the inclusion of topics that go against WP:BLP, and so on. It all goes together to determine what's included, i.e. multiple criteria. Anomie⚔ 03:20, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

• Wikipedia jargon. We use a word with a meaning that differs from its normal English meaning. Any other word would therefore have the same issue unless we created an entirely new word like "cituated". My personal favourite is "living persons", which includes dead persons. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  I don't think that this is necessarily true; "eligibility" "suitability" and "criteria for inclusion" which have all been mentioned all transparently mean what we would want them to mean; the bar a subject has to pass to get an article. This isn't an unsolvable dilemma, it's just hard work. Athanelar (talk) 19:33, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

  "Criteria for inclusion" leads us straight to one of the most common points of confusion: inclusion of an article in the encyclopaedia versus inclusion of details within an article. The criteria applied to the creation or retention of an article are not the same as those applied to the content inside it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:36, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

• "Notability" really is a terrible name. Yes, you are correct. Toadspike [Talk] 18:49, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
• Yes, it is really a terrible name. The fixation that it needs to be one word is also bizarre. Neutral Point of View is not one word, Original Research is not one word, Biography of Living Persons is not one word, Article Title is not one word, etc.: so, Article Criteria, or some such. 'On Wikipedia, Article Criteria is a test . . .'; It meets the AC; it does not meet WP:AC; and done. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:44, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Unpopular opinion I guess but I like the word "notability," especially when paired with "Wikipedia:Verifiability." Notability gives a lot of wiggle room but suggests there is some minimum for inclusion, and we can adjust what that is.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:23, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

It’s not an unpopular opinion. I’m pretty sure the silent majority either likes it or has no strong opinion on it. Otherwise we would have changed it by now. Dronebogus (talk) 14:50, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• I think some people are confusing the aim and the criteria. We really do want to write articles on topics that are notable according to its everyday meaning (that's the aim), but to achieve that in practice we have to make guidelines for notability that editors are able to follow and agree with each other about (that's the criteria). So my opinion is that "notability" is actually the best of the options mentioned so far in this discussion. "Eligibility" is way too vague (neither an aim nor a criterion) and "citeability" is just wrong (that would refer to sources, not topics). The word that has annoyed me the most, for the past 20+ years, is "verifiability", which in wikispeak means something entirely different from its meaning in plain English. In plain English, something is verifiable if its truth can be confirmed, which is why the ancient slogan "verifiability, not truth" is my nomination for the worst own-goal in Wikipedia history. Zero^talk 10:35, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  In defense of verifiability, it's purely a question of which frame of reference you're using. Sure, in everyday speech it usually means verifiable [against objective truth] but it's not a stretch or corruption of the meaning that on Wikipedia it means verifiable [against a source text]. The whole point of 'verifiability, not truth' is to clarify that the thing we're verifying against is not objective truth, merely source->text integrity. Athanelar (talk) 10:48, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  No, that was not where "verifiability, not truth" came from (I was here when it was adopted). The "not truth" part refers to "no original research". The idea is that we use what reliable sources say is true and not what we personally believe is true. It isn't a reference to objective truth. The problem with the slogan is that it was commonly taken to mean that Wikipedia doesn't care about getting the facts right, and this misunderstanding got "out there" to our detriment. And we threw it at newcomers before they had a chance to grasp that "verifiability" didn't mean what they thought it meant. Zero^talk 11:40, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  When it comes to "verifiability" I view it as "is the notability verifiable." Something can be true, but not notable. There is a lot of stuff about me floating on the internet, my existence is verifiable, however none of it meets the criteria for notability, my notability is not verifiable. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:01, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I would probably call it "sourceability" which is somewhat more accurate. However, as said before it's one of these entrenched terms that are hard to change. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:25, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

What name is being proposed, to change "Notability"? GoodDay (talk) 14:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Nothing currently; I'm not trying to make a proposal, just to discuss the topic. There's no point in proposing a candidate if nobody thinks it should be changed to begin with. Athanelar (talk) 14:42, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

No-one can decide. And most likely no decision will be made. This is such an obvious waste of time I don’t really know why I, or any of the many high-profile editors here, dignifying it with a response beyond “WP:PERENNIAL” Dronebogus (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I note WP:PERENNIAL doesn't actually have this topic listed (yet). Anomie⚔ 20:57, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

"Notability" is fine. It means what subject can be noted on Wikipedia. I don't see a glaring problem with it. Joe vom Titan (talk) 14:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

The glaring problem is that that's an extremely unintuitive and niche use of that word, which usually means "important" or "significant" Athanelar (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

That's what "notable" means, while "notability" reflects how much someone is likely to be notable, which matches the intent of what WP's notability does. Masem (t) 16:47, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

But "importance" is subjective (my wife is important to me, the road I take to work is important to me, the band my friend started when he was 15 is important to him; none of them are notable in the Wikipedia sense). "Notability" (or at least the GNG) aims to be an objective standard that is either met or not and has little to do with what most people think of as "importance". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:49, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Also worth adding that we do "note" unnotable things on Wikipedia, just within articles rather than as standalone topics. CMD (talk) 04:18, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Its far from an objective standard, which is why notability is a rebuttable presumption. Show that the topic is given in-depth coverage from at least a few independent, reliable sources (generally being secondary sources), and we'll presume that the topic can merit a full article. But there's so much variability in what qualifies as in-depth coverage, how many and what kind of sources, etc. that its far to call the test solely objective. Otherwise, we'd not have any problem at AFD with deletion.

But we do associate being notable as if the topic was important enough to independent authors to cover in-depth, that is, is the topic demonstrated the quality of being notable based on sourcing. Masem (t) 04:29, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

When you read that notability is necessary for inclusion on Wikipedia how is it not glaringly obvious that it is Wikipedia that sets the standards for what is notable?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:09, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

While we’re here, why don’t we look at all the other less-than-ideal names used for rules on Wikipedia? WP:NPOV (which isn’t neutral) WP:IAR (don’t actually do this) WP:DELETION (pages aren’t deleted). I could probably find lots of examples. Wikipedia is just like any hobbyist subculture in that it has a lot of weird jargon that doesn’t necessarily mean what the dictionary and common sense say it means. “Fixing” that will just create more problems as now both newbies AND veteran editors are confused by the weird new terminology. On top of that Newbies still won’t understand what it’s meant to convey, veterans will just keep using the same terminology they always used, and eventually it will just get reverted back with the same unnecessary cost as changing it. Dronebogus (talk) 15:00, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

• Notability is a terrible name because it's easily conflated with "importance", which is subjective—everything is important to someone. I've previously advocated for "criteria for inclusion". HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:20, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  One word synonym could just be "Includable." GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:03, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

  It looks like we have a nice set of redirects in the Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion line. I think that's a good thing. People can use whichever they like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

• I prefer "Notability". While "criteria for inclusion" would convey the idea, it would be awkward to use regularly. None of the other suggestions above work for me. - Donald Albury 19:04, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

  My POV hasn't changed since the discussion last year, specifically that we should eventually change this, and that the way to go about it is to pick some other word or phrase and use both, e.g., "On Wikipedia, notability, or eligibility, is a test used by editors..." or "On Wikipedia, notability is the article creation criteria that editors use..." Then editors have a choice, and if they choose to say "It's Wikipedia:Notable" or if they choose to say "It meets the Wikipedia:Article creation criteria" or if they choose to say "I think this meets our Wikipedia:Eligibility standards", then that's fine (though it'd be preferable if the guideline suggested a single alternate name). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey @Athanelar, I'm the person who started the last massive discussion. Good luck. The main message I came out of it with is there will be many more opposing people in actual RfCs rather than discussions; I started an RfC thinking I would have significantly more support than I did based on my experience discussing it at the idea lab. I think the only way to make this work is to make a smaller change first -- maybe some sort of movement among AfD contributors to use eligibility (linking to notability) would work to get it off the ground, but I have no idea how that would be organized. Maybe a WikiProject? Mrfoogles (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

• Can we at least footnote the WP:N lead sentence with an explanation along the lines of:

  (1) Wikipedia notability is largely independent of real-world notability, (2) while this is confusing, we continue to use the word because multiple discussions have failed to find a better one, and (3) alternative names (that have been considered, but not adopted) include notedness, criteria for inclusion, eligibility, suitability, admissibility, and wikinotability.

  New editors start out assuming that Wikipedia notability is at least somewhat related to real-world notability, which isn't helped by WP:N statements like Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity. While new editors don't start by reading all the PAGs, WP:N and WP:GNG are quoted so often they'll likely see them first, making it even more important these pages clarify common misconceptions. An overview of previous discussions will also be of value to more experienced editors. Preimage (talk) 06:41, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  Alternatively, we could remove the term altogether (in effect, making WP:N a self-referential acronym): "On Wikipedia, WP:N is a test used by editors..." Preimage (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  Please note that the existence of the term "Notability" is essential to a joke on the signpost. I think it was in the comix section of the last January edition. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 19:51, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

• I dunno why people have complained how terrible "notability" is other than... probably it's unfair to those who may not be "notable" but might deserve an article perhaps. This is more akin to (failed?) efforts to repeal and (failed) constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act, both perhaps time- and money-wasting. Right? Frankly, "notability" has been fine as-is, despite hostile backlash and all, and something that consensus should practice often. Too bad certain others here wanna change it. BTW, have standards of "notability" been that low or that high? George Ho (talk) 19:55, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
• I like Preimage's solution of referring to Notability as a native concept abstracted from outside usage, but I like better the idea of changing the word notability. I've created WP:WOTABILITY to try to best differentiate outside notability with WP's notability. If anyone has any better idea than my sort of clunky one please share - I suspect this may be a big problem in editor retention, to have such an onerous stumbling block placed so early in editor lifetime. Embyarby (talk) 04:02, 5 March 2026 (UTC)
• I am not sure what is wrong with the word notability. There are lots of citable subjects that are not really notable. Citability (is that a word) does not necessarily mean that the subject alone is notable, unless of course those citations come from notable or established sources. Wikipedia has much bigger issues right now than the usage of notability for establishing subjects. Words in the Wind(talk) 21:11, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

While I very much agree with this, I'm not sure what singular/compound word could replace it.

At AfC, I've started to refer to Notability to newcomers as "what Wikipedia calls 'notability'", or just saying "hasn't been covered in multiple reliable, secondary, independent sources". Nothing will scare someone off for good than saying that the topic they're writing about isn't notable, or perhaps even that THEY themselves aren't notable, in the case of autobiographies (which can very easily be taken as a passive-aggressive insult!).

I do agree with @Preimage - putting something at the top of WP:N to differentiate between real-world notability would be good. Or maybe even a change to the "This page in a nutshell" banner.

I do think a newbie friendly page to the notability guidelines could work out. It would be more detailed than Help:Introduction, but less jargony than other P&G pages. Pretty much, a line-by-line breakdown of key points like WP:GNG, WP:NTEMP, WP:WHYN. EatingCarBatteries _{(contribs | talk)} 05:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

"Notability" is clearly the best option. As Masem noted, "eligibility" is awful because it implies that notability is binary, which is only true if you treat the blurry line between inclusion and exclusion like an obnoxious WP:WIKILAWYER. "Notability" clearly means notable to Wikipedia – just like events notable to Kotaku and to The Law Society Gazette will have minimal overlap. Theoretically, that concept is capturable in "Relevance", which I haven't seen discussed here yet, but (just preempting this, because the anti-"notability" camp is ostensibly desperate for any alternative) this is even worse: 1) it's a lateral move at best because we're a general-purpose encyclopedia, and 2) it would completely overload the common word "relevant" across Wikipedia.

Having read this entire discussion, the suggestion is well-intentioned but nonsensical bikeshedding. No better term has been put forward (because, in my opinion, it can't be – unless we all decide on "cromulent" and use our hivemind to collectively understand it), the concept has already been baked-in for over 20 years, multiple attempts to change it in the past have ended in failure, the definition is literally right there and plastered around any discussion thereof if there's any confusion, the consequence of misunderstanding it is excruciatingly low-stakes, most misunderstandings of any real consequence come from not reading guidelines that a word or three could never capture on their own or meaningfully encourage someone to read, and in 99.9% of cases, it comports with the lay meaning just fine anyway. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 01:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Notability/Eligibility/whatever you want to call it should sound binary, because whether we have a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article for a given subject is also binary.

(Also, did you read the literal "definition"? The one that says "Notability is a test"? Notability is not a test.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I prefer to treat the issue of notability as; "is notable::notability has not yet been established". There will always be a grey area, border notability, where we will argue over the notability of a topic, a point where finding one more piece of significant coverage in a reliable source might push the topic over the line to notability, or an obscure topic captures enough attention in the real world to result in new significant coverage in reliable sources (I repeatedly reverted attempts of a certain musician to add themselves to Wikipedia until one day I saw that they had finally made enough of a splash to get significant coverage in reliable sources). Donald Albury 16:53, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

There are 2 pages that in conflict: TLC and NSYNC. Both have pre-debut members who never released any song as the group member. The problem is, some Wikipedia editors list them as past members. In this case, Blackpink's page should also include Miyeon, BTS with Supreme Boi, Big Bang with Jang Hyunseung, SNSD with Soyeon, and Innosense with Britney Spears.

Now, what is the consensus? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 14:18, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. As long as the group has maintained the same name, then those pre-fame members are still former members of the group. There should definitely be a clear delineation of when a person was a member of the group in the prose and there may be special organization or footnotes in lists or tables, but they still need to be in there. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 17:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Reading the further responses, I see some possible distinctions to draw. A group of musicians may come together and practice. At some point, they try out for bookings and print materials to advertise themselves. Eventually, they begin booking shows. They finally receive a recording contract and release their debut album. People may come and go at any point in this sequence. My position is that anyone who is presented to the public (either in marketing materials or actual performances) should be counted as a member. Where in this sequence do the people you mentioned fall? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:35, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know exactly why the pages for TLC and NSYNC have the very early members listed, but in the case of the K-pop groups listed; just absolutely no. You'd need to add over half a dozen "members" just for SNSD alone, because leading up to their debut, their management was swapping potential members in and out at seemingly a moments notice. There were at least four different line-ups prior to debut, with as many as twelve members in them. And that's just the ones we know of, I'm sure there were plenty more, are we gonna add every SME trainee from that period as a potential past member? Which brings me to a further point: good luck finding reliable sources any of this, because every thing I could find in my research for this reply was terrible fansites, or "sources" known to be unreliable. Pre-debut trainees are just that: trainees. They are not official members.DragonFury (talk) 22:28, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I mean, the actual final plan of SNSD was 10-member group before Soyeon left voluntarily.

But yes, pre-debut members should not be included since it's not official. I also don't know why they including pre-debut members on NSYNC and TLC. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 22:34, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

And to add another point; Twice was formed from the TV program Sixteen, so do we add the seven people not selected in the program as past members? Because if so, I'd like to see someone make the same argument for Kep1er and the NINETY contestants from Girls Planet 999 who weren't selected for the group. DragonFury (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

With TLC, it's because 1) she's mentioned in reliable sources as 2) the founder of the group. Similarly with NSYNC, it's because 1) Jason is mentioned in reliable sources as 2) a formative member of the group. We should default to sources here. Is someone reliably claimed to have been a member of the group? Then they should be included. Now, should they always be in the infobox? Should they never be in the infobox? No. That's editorial judgement, and it depends on the band. And I don't think a recording contract or "official" debut release is a good enough rule of thumb. Someone could be an important member of the group without that. Some groups release music without a contract. And judging "importance" here is often arbitrary, anyway.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 21:03, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

It should be whatever is reflected in reliable sources. If reliable sources describe those people as actual, bonafide former members of the band then sure.

For most of the examples you listed, however, this wouldn't be the case... they were just trainees in the same company along with the people who eventually became the final lineup. Agencies add and remove people from lineups all the time before they actually release any music. It doesn't mean they're a member of the band. RachelTensions (talk) 01:41, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

so you agree that we should not include pre-debut members? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 19:44, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to quickly reject "never released any songs as a member" as the dividing line, because bands can have a healthy life as a performing group before they become a recording group. There were no The Beatles songs released with Stu Sutcliffe on them until he was dead over thirty years (if I recall correctly), but he was a key player in their pre-record-contract days. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:16, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

The Beatles does not include Sutcliffe, Pete Best, etc in the infobox -- instead they add a link to the former members section, so that would be a solution for this kind of issue. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 04:18, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Based on your contribution, this discussion seems to originate from a content dispute involving a temporary account that has since been blocked. As such, it is unclear why the argument is being revisited here rather than being handled on the relevant article's talk page, or whether it is intended to validate that blocked account's viewpoint. Regardless, there is general mutual understanding among most editors that only individuals who officially debuted and/or released work with the act are listed as members. Those involved solely during pre-debut stages, such as auditions or trainings, are typically excluded and do not carry long-term encyclopedic significance in relation to the act. Such information, if sourced reliably, may instead be included in the individual's biographies instead, should they have an article here. This standard has been applied consistently across comparable articles, with limited exceptions that are likely the result of per-article consensus. — 🧧🍊 Paper9oll 🍊🧧 (🔔 • 📝) 03:16, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

So the consensus is only official debuted members are listed, right? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 07:33, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

For clarity, when I refer to "general mutual understanding", I'm specifically referring to South Korean musical acts only. That wording is intentional and is applied in conjunction with WP:VERIFY. As for anything else, refer to the last sentence in my earlier reply above instead. Additionally, it appears you are conflating two different categories of group formation. Certain Western acts where membership may be tied to founding history, name origin, or early lineup evolution are being treated as directly comparable to K-pop acts, where membership is defined through a formalized debut system and post-debut activity. Applying the same framework to both assumes a one-size-fits-all standard, which does not reflect how these industries function. Because of that conflation, comparisons such as invoking NSYNC to justify listing pre-debut trainees in K-pop groups are not particularly meaningful. For cases outside the K-pop context, exceptions and differing treatments may and or could already be accounted for on a per-article basis, or may not be, as noted previously. — 🧧🍊 Paper9oll 🍊🧧 (🔔 • 📝) 08:25, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

I mean, “pre-debut” means before debut, right?

Before debut = unofficial. Does it mean the same everywhere, or does each country have its own definition of “pre-”? Doesn't matter. It’s still unofficial.

I feel like Wikipedia is turning into a Wiki Fandom now. Why are we including unofficial members / non-final members in the same list as the official members? Where’s the standard? What makes Wikipedia different from Wiki Fandom? It's unofficial, like how I explain it better to you all. It's unofficial. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 11:07, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Alright let's summon User:Binksternet who putting Jason Galasso as former member of NSYNC. In his defense, Jason's name was part of the NSYNC name (which is already changed to Lansen). ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 07:47, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

• Why are we having this content dispute on VPP?—S Marshall T/C 10:23, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Because it's still about guideline. We are literally talking about an undisclosed guideline for hundred pages related to musical groups. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 11:27, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  No we aren't. This decision is fact-sensitive and needs to be made on a case by case basis. It depends on the person's contribution -- did they help write a key song, did they affect the band's development or sound, were they just a hired gun for a few shows? What do the sources say about them? There's no guideline to write. It's a simple matter of editorial judgement. If there's dispute then they don't go in the infobox (WP:ONUS).—S Marshall T/C 12:28, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Exactly that's why we are here. You think we are here for planning slumber party? No, we are here for discussion. And there is a big disagreement about whether people should include pre-debut members or not. Did those pre-debut members help the group? Put them on the History section, not the main infobox. That's the function of History section, to tell the story behind the group's creation. Infobox is only for the official information. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

  Official in whose eyes? Is there an office somewhere where a team of people decide who is official or not? Without answering that queston it's no good bolding "it's unofficial". There are so many differences between times, places, genres and individual bands that it's pointless trying to create a general rule that will apply to everyone. And it seems that by pre-debut you mean before the recording debut. Many notable bands don't make recordings until a few years into their careers. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:42, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

  "official in whose eyes" oh my goodness. Wikipedia is using what kind of source for reference? Reliable sources, right. So it should be according to reliable sources. What those reliable sources say about "official members of the group"? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:09, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  I would be surprised if there were reliable sources on American bands that made a distinction between "official" and "unofficial" in the way you describe, and I'd expect them to simply describe the people you're trying to remove as having been members of the band. Sesquilinear (talk) 03:23, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

  Let's change the definition from "recording debut" to the time they sign the contract. That's the exact situation when the member is the official member of the group. ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:13, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

The sources talking about the formation of NSYNC all agree that the name of the band came at a time when bass singer Jason Galasso was in the group. Galasso was warmly received when he joined, with other group members telling him his voice was what they were finally looking for. It was this formation that was deemed ready for a record label deal. Timberlake's mother Lynn remarked that, with Galasso on bass, the group now sounded very much "in sync". They noticed that the final letter of each group member's name could be assembled to form the name NSYNC, with Jason supplying one of the letters. That means Galasso was a foundational member of the group. Supporting sources include a Timberlake bio book and a People magazine piece on Galasso, calling him the "original fifth member of NSYNC".

I don't think there is any basis for artificially drawing a line for the purpose of rejecting Galasso. We should not be determining band membership on our own by saying "pre-debut" or whatever. That would be a violation of WP:No original research. The reliable sources should be telling us who are the group members. Binksternet (talk) 20:40, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

I mean, he was the original member YES there are reliable sources telling that he was the original member. But that's not the point of this discussion.

Looking at the article, it literally says that he backed out the plan to debut, so he didn't sign the contract. After he left, the second N word for NSYNC is placed to Lansen (Lance Bass). So basically there's no Jason in the name, his name is replaced by Lansen.

The point of this discussion is about whether we should include pre-debut members in the main infobox, as pre-debut members are unofficial members. Why putting people that didn't sign the contract to the main infobox? They are unofficial. Unofficial. Should i repeat it for the third time? ~2026-41110-5 (talk) 03:07, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Bands and groups exist before signing contracts and after losing contracts. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:13, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

You're creating an arbitrary, or at best industry-specific, definition of "official" and "unofficial" as a blanket rule for every band page. As has been said repeatedly, people can be members of bands without a formal contract or releasing a recording. We go by what sources say.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 20:53, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the problem with this is that the OP seems to think that one tiny genre of popular music, where terms like "unofficial" and "pre-debut" have some meaning, is representative of the whole. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:21, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I already tried to start a discussion at

Wikipedia talk:Vandalism#Update needed due to IP being replaced by temp accounts, but only one person responded, so I’m APPNOTE’ing the discussion here.

It is basically about policy/guideline pages still being largely written with the existence of IP editing in mind, despite this no longer existing. I think this really needs to be addressed. Slomo666 (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

@Slomo666 The proposals there seem fine, I think you can simply boldly update relevant pages. If you're reverted and this goes to an RfC, then maybe you need wider input. Currently I don't have much to add beyond "yes, please update these pages". Toadspike [Talk] 21:20, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Agree with Toadspike here. Be bold, then discuss further if needed. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 21:50, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I think it may not be clear what I’m asking. It isn’t just the fact that the text is outdated that I am raising. I am not sure what the actual guideline is now. I actually came to that page originally because I wanted to know how to deal with temporary accounts and (suspected) vandalism as I until then only knew how to deal with IPs or registered users.

I still don’t know what the advice would be. I would even less personally strive to write the guidance. Slomo666 (talk) 09:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Seems like @SuperPianoMan9167 has rewritten some of the text per what was discussed on the talk page. Some more work still needs to be done though.

As I see it, there are three main ways that the policy is outdated. The first is that it refers to "IP editors" in a general way to mean editors who do not have an account, or are not logged in. These can mostly be replaced directly with "Temporary accounts" without further changing to the sentence.

The second is that some parts of the policy refer to what happens when a user changes IP address or if multiple people share an IP address. These need to be changed, and largely removed, as temporary accounts are not shared by users on the same IP any more.

The last is what was brought up on the talk page, which has been edited by SuperPianoMan, but may still need some more work, and likely requires some consensus building for substantive changes. {{GearsDatapack|talk|contribs}} 10:07, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Note that guidance related to tracing behaviour based on IP addresses continues to be relevant, for those in the temporary account IP viewer user group, and IP address-based blocks may be suitable for some situations. I agree that best practice has evolved with rollout of the temporary accounts, and so appropriate changes are desirable. isaacl (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there a process wherewith we could essentially request comments (not really an rfc tho bc it would be more like a survey) from people who are in that group (TAIP viewers) so they can give their experience, talk about what they think is best, what kind of customs they are converging on (if applicable)? Slomo666 (talk) 12:05, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I recently edited a stub Jean-François Fournel, which was originally translated from the corresponding Swedish Wikipedia article. With my edits, the "Translated page" template on the article's talk page doesn't seem accurate anymore. (The content I added basically rewrote the stub.) Is it ever appropriate to remove that template (like in this case)? Chao Garden 🌱 (hi) 06:42, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chao Garden Yes, it seems reasonable to remove the tag here. More generally, those tags are optional and not necessary for attribution purposes: legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries in the edit history, which we already have . Toadspike [Talk] 09:24, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I would tend to suggest leaving the template up and using its insertversion parameter to make clear which revision of the page contained the translation. That's not strictly necessary but I do feel it would be best practice, not least in case the changes you made were to be reverted in future.—S Marshall T/C 09:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Do we not mention it in references or external links? I recall we (at least used to) do that on nlwiki. (And I personally think that is a good system) Slomo666 (talk) 09:39, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Different wikis have different systems. Here we do not put attribution in the page itself, only in an edit summary, like the example at WP:TFOLWP. On dewiki they import the entire edit history of the original article. Different ways to reach the same goal. Toadspike [Talk] 17:11, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@Toadspike, this is wrong: legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries in the edit history. The license accepts any "reasonable" method of attribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

And whether or not a disclaimer on an entirely different page is reasonable is a matter for courts to decide, and is very much the thing that long, protracted, legal battles are fought over. All Wikipedia editors agree that a hyperlink to the original text is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license; that or listing their name. Local guidelines, as written by MRG many years ago, specifically say we put that in the edit summary. (Though, tbh, if somebody puts "this was copied/translated from X article" in the actual article... I'm leaving it.) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 00:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think that’s very valid. As I mentioned, nlwiki does both essentially. There you must link in the edit summary to the permalink of the correct revision, and place on the bottom of the page (I think in external links or references, but I’m a bit fuzzy on the specifics) the template that says it was partly or wholly translated from parts or the entirety of whichever article (again: permalink) you translated. I think that is relevant, because you should show what kind of translation (automatic or human and in the case of automatic: how much human redaction/eduting went into that) was used. Anyways I know the policy here is different, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t allow it as an option. Slomo666 (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

As an aside, the specific template discussed here isn't chiefly related to attributation but cleanup - it is (was) {{Cleanup translation}}, not templates such as {{copied}} or {{Translated page}}.

And as an aside to the aside: While {{Translated page}} promises WP:TFOLWP will contain the rationale for the edit summary requirement, it only explains why attributation is required in general, it doesn't actually discuss or explain how and why edit summaries were chosen as the attributation delivery method (and it doesn't detail what other delivery methods were considered but discarded) CapnZapp (talk) 11:12, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

There is no "edit summary requirement" in the first place, so there cannot be any rationale for why it is required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with this pedantry. Unless you have evidence that courts would accept attribution outside of the edit history (or the article itself), it is for all intents and purposes "required" that we provide attribution there. Toadspike [Talk] 08:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The license says "any reasonable manner". The license does not say anything whatsoever about an edit summary. For all we know, a court could decide that the edit history is an unreasonable form of attribution for some purposes. Since having no visible attribution at all has been declared "reasonable" before (e.g., for images printed on T-shirts, "reasonable" has been interpreted as providing the information and a copy of the license separately instead of printing it on the T-shirt), it's likely that many forms of attribution would be acceptable.

What I am trying to accomplish is: I want you to stop spreading the false rumor that only edit summaries or in-article text is acceptable. It is not true. Also, there's a risk that if you keep saying things like this, not only will we have editors worrying that Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia#Repairing insufficient attribution is wrong, but we might have a copyright troll using your words as "proof" that "any reasonable manner" is a narrow thing ("See? The Wikipedia admin said it, so it must be true!"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing You seem to have missed the part of the license that says ... in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. Since the credits for all contributing authors are in the article history, it seems quite clear to me that "as part of these credits" means the attribution must appear there at a minimum.

The Terms of Use say that an edit summary in the page history is sufficient and do not suggest any other method of attribution. This suggests to me that we should use the legally approved method (yes, "legally", by the Board of Trustees and, presumably, WMF Legal) of edit summaries in page histories and not invent other methods of dubious legality. (Quote: You agree that, if you import text under a CC license that requires attribution, you must credit the author(s) in a reasonable fashion. Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the text.)

Finally, and of least legal weight but most practical import on this project: Our policy repeatedly states that edit summaries are required "at a minimum", while talk page notices are optional. I stand by the statement that only edit summaries are acceptable, and since in-article attribution is more prominent than an edit summary, I could be convinced that that is also acceptable.

I really don't care what a court could decide; I don't see how anything I've said conflicts with WP:RIA, which prescribes fixing attribution through edit summaries and which I do constantly; and copyright trolls will troll regardless of what you or I say here.

Since I avoid making personal attacks, I will not accuse you of spreading a false rumor in return, but I would appreciate if you were to withdraw that accusation against me. Toadspike [Talk] 18:49, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

If our policy says that edit summaries are required, then our policy is wrong. If you interpret "At a minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page" as meaning "This is the simplest way to do this, but there are other options", then that would be correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Do you have any evidence for this claim, on which you based a personal attack? Your reading runs counter to all of the evidence I have seen. Toadspike [Talk] 20:47, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I don’t see anyone claiming that there aren’t other options. But that it is simple, and the current guideline, should mean this is what we do. (Unless in cases where something has gone wrong)

“then our policy is wrong”

I do not see what you are trying to achieve here. Do you aim to change the guideline? Because in that case, I wish you good luck trying to establish a project-wide consensus for this change, but you will find me on the opposing side.

What do you envision as the other options? Because I don’t dispute these exist (I think Toadspike does too) but in your hostility to edit summaries, it would almost appear as if you prefer things that would just make things harder for literally every party involved. (Editor, reviewing editors, and any potential copyright lawyer)

I do not get it. You do your name justice.

What are you doing?

Sincerely,

Happy editing,

Slomo666 (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

People claiming that there aren’t other options is exactly the problem: Toadspike – and presumably other editors, because where else would Toadspike have gotten that information? We teach our rules via telephone game, after all – appear to be saying that "Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary" means "Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is not merely sufficient, but actually necessary to give attribution in the edit summary".

Toadspike said "legally, the only attribution that counts is edit summaries". AFAICT this is wrong. Attribution can take any reasonable form. We, as a community, prefer and normalize edit summaries as the form of attribution, but that doesn't mean that legally edit summaries are the only option.

The main other options that I envision is the use of talk-page templates and in-article templates. We have used these since at least 2003 (since at least 2006 specifically for translated articles – Wikipedia wasn't even using the CC licenses at that point). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Please stop encouraging editors to commit copyright violations. Attributing a translation solely on the talk page is a copyright violation. If you are still confused, go back to "You seem to have missed" above and reread those two sentences. Toadspike [Talk] 09:54, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Those two sentences don't stats that attributing a translation solely on the talk page is a copyright violation, nor do they imply it. Katzrockso (talk) 11:33, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

The 3.0 license (see below) requires attribution as part of the credits for all contributing authors. The talk page is not the location of those credits. Not complying with the license is violating copyright. QED. I'm not saying this is the end of the world – per WP:RIA, it's not a huge deal – but it's not something we should encourage in any way. Toadspike [Talk] 12:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I don’t care about what we “legally” have to do according to (presumably) US copyright law. It may surprise you, but I have the utmost contempt for US copyright law.

While a licence may use the word “reasonable”, what is reasonable depends greatly on context. This reasonability standard is not limited to Wikimedia-based usage, but also usage after something has been published on Wikipedia. So necessarily it includes other forms of attribution than edit summaries, because other media forms/publications do not use edit summaries at all.

In my view, while a talk page template may be useful, I think it is not enough to qualify as reasonable and I do not think it falls into the established practice on enwiki (or even other projects).

I can illustrate this with an example: if you respond to an edit request, the guidelines call upon you to directly link to the edit request in the edit summary of your implementation of the request. (the summary would say “Per talk page edit request [link] by [user:insert user]”)

This is easy, and the fact it is the easiest way that appropriately attributes, is what makes it the “reasonable” option.

The fact this is the established practice, in my opinion, means you should try to use it when possible (by default) to make it so people will not have to go beyond the list of edit summaries for any legal issues related to copyright. (If it goes wrong, we should attempt to remedy this when- and however possible of course)

A talk page template requires checking a different page, in another namespace. Something that is not expected of non-contributors.

I think a template on the article itself (in references or another section of sources) can be sufficient, but I also do not see why you would want to do this without also saying it in an edit summary, and I am neither a lawyer nor an expert of Wikipedia’s guidelines. Slomo666 (talk) 12:05, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The requirement is in a guideline? Maybe there isn’t a law that says we have to do this specific thing, but this is what our guidelines say, which themselves are how we implement the policies which in turn are what the WMF foundation expects, and is necessary to deal with the rulings from *their* legal departments.

I trust that the system is well thought-out and I would not want to jeopardise the legal situation of this project or the foundation because we think the current policy or guideline is too strict. I think, if that is the position of a large number of editors, we would first need to have a discussion on the policy, subject to intervention from above, before we change things about how we do things.

And personally, I think the system is fine, the current guidelines (mostly) suffice and I think it is not too much to ask to follow them. Slomo666 (talk) 12:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

"The system" was created before the Wikimedia Foundation existed. WMF Legal has never said that an edit summary is a necessary or mandatory way to provide attribution. In fact, when you look at things the WMF Legal department has uploaded themselves (example), you'll find that they do not always use an edit summary to provide attribution (in that example, the images are correctly attributed in plain text at the end of the document). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

That is...a PDF. It is not a Wikipedia article. I am seriously impressed by how many red herrings you've been able to come up with. Toadspike [Talk] 23:11, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The CC license isn't specific to Wikipedia articles. It doesn't have one set of rules for wiki pages and another set of rules for PDFs. As a legal-as-in-contract-lawyers matter, the CC rules are the same for all media. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

"The CC license" does have a rule that applies to adaptations that credit all contributing authors (which Wikipedia pages do in the edit history), but does not apply to random PDFs with no named author(s). Or, at least, it did.

I've noticed that the guideline WP:CWW, under "The CC BY-SA, section 4(c)", is quoting an older version of the CC BY-SA license, the 3.0 version (Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License). In 2023, we switched to the 4.0 version (Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License), which does not include the wording about attribution credit appearing as part of the credits for all contributing authors. I will update the quote accordingly. However, Wikipedia edits published before 2023 (which is most of them, including the "translation" that kicked off this thread) still fall under 3.0, which means, afaict, we must provide credit in the edit history "at a minimum". Toadspike [Talk] 10:16, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

A CC license applies to anything that's licensed that way, including random PDFs with no named author(s).

Just to be clear: I've got no problem with the English Wikipedia establishing any reasonable system that works for us. My problem is in someone saying that this is a legal problem, as opposed to a violation of our own guidelines. The legal requirements can be met in multiple ways. A re-user is perfectly free to run an article through Wikipedia:Who Wrote That?, carve the usernames of editors responsible for the visible parts of the current text (ignoring all others) into the floor tiles, and lay a printed copy of the article reverently on top of the names. This would comply with the license requirements and would therefore be legal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree with this. Per what I also just said in my comment. Reasonable standards are reasonable for a medium. For Wikipedia, edit summaries are always reasonable. For media that don’t use edit summaries, there must be something else that is reasonable.

but besides I guess the factual inaccuracy of using the word “legally” which implies consequences beyond WMF projects, I think this discussion is kind of moot since you agree with wmf/WP/enwiki establishing its own standards to fulfill the “reasonable” requirements.

Slomo666 (talk) 12:09, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I have a feeling that there is a 90% chance that the answer will be no, but then 10% is 10%. Is there any hope of a policy that will limit edits by class projects? I have been wondering if I should spend the time to fix pages such as Entropy (information theory) that need help, but most edits to the page were by a student in 2021 for a class project. The rest of the edits may be appropriately described as "entropy/chaos" as well. How can I tell myself that another class project will not start in 6 months? It is a complicated subject when it relates to thermodynamics and that is where the student made most errors. Typical editors would not make large edits because it is too complicated, but students "have to" and mess up. Is there any hope of protection from class projects? Else I would just move on. Thanks Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 15:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

The problem is not class projects per se, it's inappropriate class projects and/or inappropriately supervised class projects. There isn't really any easy way to stop class projects (of either kind), as in at least many cases they are technically indistinguishable from normal editing.

The best place to discuss these matters though is Wikipedia:Education noticeboard, where folks more knowledgeable about the issues are most likely to see it. Thryduulf (talk) 16:32, 12 March 2026 (UTC) Missing word "not" added Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Pretty sure The problem is class projects per se --> "is not class projects per se". EEng 20:37, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Indeed, now fixed. Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

If there wasn't an education program, there would a lot of class projects conducted without any coordination with Wikipedia. I was involved with the education program for a while about 14 years ago, but dropped out for reason I won't go into. I know others have had a more positive experience with the program. All-in-all, blocking class projects, even if it were possible, would not improve Wikipedia. There is the potential, and sometimes realized, benefit of adding content to Wikipedia and recruiting new editors. As long as are we open to new editors, which we must be to survive, we will have a problem with problematic edits by inexperienced editors. Maintenance is one of the perpetual tasks, and cleaning up problem edits sometimes leads me to adding new well-sourced content, which I hope is a net good for the encyclopedia. Donald Albury 16:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

If there wasn't an education program, there would a lot of class projects conducted without any coordination with Wikipedia. I think this is really the salient issue. It happens even now; I've seen editors bashing their heads against the AfC process to no avail and explaining that they need to get it published because a teacher assigned them the task of getting an article published on Wikipedia. It is absolutely a good thing that WikiEd provides an organised avenue for these kinds of teachers to arrange class projects that actually have sensible expectations and requirements. Teacher Randy in Boise High School isn't going to know that Wikipedia has internally banned class projects and is going to continue to tell his students to edit information about sword-wielding skeletons into the Peloponnesian War article whether or not we officially endorse it; and it is a good thing that WikiEd provides a means by which we can reach out to Randy and offer some guidance and quality control to his project idea. Athanelar (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I think what you are talking about is not the same thing at all. This Randy, as it were, is not merely a teacher acting in good faith, but engaging in BRIGADING, treating Enwiki as a Battleground. That is much more severe and the community could act in a much less restrained way with people who do that. Even without those violations, that article would quickly be placed on Requests for page protection , which might already be enough to stop Randy’s (likely unconfirmed, certainly not EC) foot soldiers students. ~~~ Slomo666 (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. But I hope you will understand that I can have no clue as to the likelihood of a properly supervised class project. The real issue is if one feels that he is building a large sandcastle when starting on these non-trivial page improvements. Making small corrections all over does not have that problem, but major rewriting is another issue. I wonder if we could have a tag that would "suggest" to professors not to assign a page to a class. Anyway, I will mention this on the education page and see what they say. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:04, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

So I have two suggestions:

1. Make it an FA. Students are already warned against editing FAs. (Get busy now, because most classes start in January and September.)
2. Just wait until the class is over, and revert back. A majority of students never edit again (at least not in their school accounts).

I have not had good success at warning students away from specific articles. When we shoo newbies out of Anorexia nervosa (a darling of Wiki Edu students for several years running), they just turn up at some other article, and sometimes the mistakes are worse (e.g., a series of newbies – definitely not all from Wiki Edu – that changed statements like "90% of women experience menstrual cramps at some point in their lives" to the gender-neutral but innumerate claim that "90% of people" do).

More generally: The stats show that newbie students are less horrible than newbie non-students (e.g., more than two orders of magnitude less likely to be blocked, if memory serves). The better the article, the less likely any new editor will get their necessary practice in that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

What about guiding students to making/editing drafts to be reviewed or making tentative edits that can then be reviewed, like with AfC?

alternatively, creating some sort of list of assigned pages where someone supervising it would know they are editing it. You could put pending changes protections on those pages (assuming the students don’t have advanced permissions) so that the supervisor (from their school, class or from the wiki projects) or a (dedicated) admin or other volunteer can review their edits first.

I see a clear benefit in letting students learn how to use Wikipedia, how to edit, contribute, etc. Even if it doesn’t necessarily recruit them as long time contributors, it could make them better at writing and researching. Slomo666 (talk) 12:13, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Students normally work in their sandboxes (because we recommended that years ago). If they are creating new articles, they often submit them through AFC. However, often they're just trying to update an article. In that case, they usually copy the article to their sandbox and make the changes there. The students review each others' work, hopefully the instructor will, and if the class is supported by the Wiki Education Foundation, then it's often checked by the Wiki Edu staff as well.

The Wiki Edu classes (but not necessarily independent classes) already post notes on the articles' talk pages and make centralized lists so that anyone can review them. Start at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard and look around to learn more.

As a general rule, students in the Wiki Edu classes are a net benefit to the English Wikipedia. Not everyone does a good job, of course, but most of them. And frankly some of our popular articles are pretty outdated and really need someone to sit down and do some boring work. For example, I think that Disease has statistics from 20–25 years ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

If they are creating new articles, they often submit them through AFC. - Just quickly on AfC: It's been some years since I've been fully up on all this stuff, but last I knew, WikiEdu students are not supposed to use AfC for the simple reason that they don't want to create a drain on the already-backlogged community review processes (same reason why profs aren't supposed to force students to go through GAN or DYK). That's what the trainings, class review, professors, and staff are for. IIRC one of the reasons for the custom sandbox banner is to take away the AfC button (and better structure the task). But also, the time to review at AfC is also kind of incompatible with the typical time constraints of a class. In general, if you see a WikiEdu student at AfC, something probably went wrong and it may be worth quickfailing and pinging staff. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:09, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Folks may want to check out the existing infrastructure for students if you haven't already. If you look at that student's userpage (Joycecs), there's a link to a course page on the WikiEdu dashboard. You can click around the tabs at the top to see other students in the class, articles they worked on, the professor's username, the name of staff assigned to the course, etc. So if you notice problematic edits and you're worried it might run through all students in the class, you can pull up e.g. this page to make such an audit simpler. If you find a class that has big problems, ping the staff member assigned or bring it up at WP:ENB. This class was five years ago, but clicking the professor's name will bring you to a page like this to see if they continued to run the project (in this case the class looks like a one-off). There's a step early in the process, following the idea Slomo666 mentioned, where the instructor decides whether they want to create a pool of articles to choose from. It looks like that was the case here (whether entropy was part of that pool at the start is unclear, as some classes let students assign themselves articles not on the list). If you want to see what courses are active this semester, you can see them here. Worth noting that those are just the classes that are (a) based in the US or Canada, and (b) decided to accept WikiEdu's infrastructure/guidelines. There are typically many others happening either in other parts of the world (some of them can be found on the other dashboard) or without any support (and thus harder to trace and tie to a particular university/professor). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:22, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

For example, this suggestion (the second link) to link a reference to a fairly ancient sketch to the obviously unrelated more recent magazine, The Sketch. I have seen numerous instances of editors following suggestions for equally bad links. This is doing more harm than good. BD2412 T 22:54, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

That's a bad one. Please raise it on Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features. CMD (talk) 09:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

In my view, responsibility lies primarily with the editor who added the incorrect link. I see they have already been warned and have agreed to do better, though this is now their third warning. You are welcome to suggest modifications to the suggestion algorithm, but calling it "problematic" because someone can't be bothered to check their work misses the real issue. If I make a mistake, I expect to be blamed; I do not expect people to blame the visual editor, or Twinkle, or my computer. Toadspike [Talk] 09:50, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree. The link suggestion feature isn't supposed to be doing the thinking; otherwise we'd just have a bot which automatically implements the link suggestions. Obviously it's a bad suggestion, but we should also be able to trust the editors using it to give it some thought and make sure that the link they're adding is actually relevant and adds something to the article. After all, the whole point of the link suggestion feature is to be a low-risk way for newer editors to contribute. If anything, the occasional bad suggestion encouraging them to use some critical thought in their editing is a feature, not a bug. Athanelar (talk) 12:57, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but it'd be nice if we could have the best of both worlds: better algorithm-based suggestions and better human thinking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

For the record, I wouldn't have raised it here at all had I not seen the problem arise more than once. BD2412 T 21:37, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features#Suggested links are problematic. @Toadspike:, I gather that suggested links are a tool for newbies to get use to editing. I do hold the algorithm responsible if it is making suggestions based primarily on a linkable phrase appearing in some vaguely connectable context. BD2412 T 00:42, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

It seems to be implied but not explicitly stated that paid editors are required to have an actual user account rather than a TA (since the WP:PAID policy mentions that one must publicly link their userpage to any external account where they solicit paid editing services, for example.) My question is;

1. Is it commonly understood that this is a requirement for paid editors? If so, I'll go ahead and add some verbiage to that effect to WP:PAID.

2. If it is not already assumed to be the case, would there be support for amending the policy to add this requirement? It is obviously harder to track a paid editor's contributions across temporary accounts which may change, so for the sake of convenience and disclosure I think this would be a sensible requirement to institute. Athanelar (talk) 12:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

• I had assumed it to be true. WP:PAID doesn't seem to actually insist on it, but it would be difficult to comply with without an account. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:19, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

PAID pre-dated temp accounts - primarily considering that "main user page"'s were for users - not for IP pages -- so I would think it would follow. The main question is would you have let an "ip user" disclose previously -- probably not. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:25, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and boldly added the line In order to ensure that this disclosure can be tracked across an editor's contributions, paid editors must have a registered user account, and must not engage in paid editing on a temporary account to the 'how to disclose' section; anyone who objects please do feel free to remove it. Athanelar (talk) 16:56, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Yup, given dynamic IP, the current non-visibility of all IP addresses to most contributors, and given the temporary nature of TAs, any 'disclosure' is liable to become rapidly unverifiable. This is clearly incompatible with the objectives of WP:COI disclosure policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:01, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

You'd have to re-re-re-re-disclose under those circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I’m not sure if an account needs to be required. An editor who is paid to make one single edit can simply disclose when they make that one edit. No need for an account.

Of course, if they wanted to make multiple edits without an account, they would have to re-disclose for every edit. Now, I suspect this would quickly become tiresome… and thus there is an incentive for them to create an account (so they can make a blanket disclosure and save time). But ultimately that would be their choice. Blueboar (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I'd change the "paid editors must" to "paid editors will find it easier to". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Counterpoint; if you've got an editor who's an editor on a freelance basis rather than working for one particular company, we wouldn't want them cropping up on different TAs every now and then making the odd paid edit here and there without us knowing it's the same person, right? WP:PAID already mandates that these sorts of editors need to publicly link any of their offwiki freelancing accounts to their wiki account so we can know who's who; I suppose you could argue they could separately disclose that on every TA (since TAs technically can have user/talk pages), but that would leave us having to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to connect the accounts, when they could just have a registered account so we can clearly see their entire paid contribution history in one place. We have to consider that it's not just about what's convenient for the paid editor but also what's convenient for anybody who wants to audit them. The whole reason we have paid editing disclosure requirements in the first place is for this kind of transparency, so why make it possible for these editors to obfuscate things to even the slightest degree? Athanelar (talk) 22:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Anyone with a CoI who wishes to edit should be obliged to make it transparent. If they aren't prepared to do that, they shouldn't be editing at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:48, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

This discussion seems ongoing. I would have expected a done deal. WP:PAID have already been changed to make it a requirement. But only in a single non-prominent place. And initially without any talk discussion or edit summary to link to this consensus - I am here because I reverted the change, asking for context and background.

I don't really have an opinion either way - just an open question: is this discussion over and has the site-wide community reached a consensus, and discussed where and how to advertise this change? (If so, great!) CapnZapp (talk) 11:04, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

It is indeed ongoing, but given that nobody has really raised any substantial critique of the concept (or my implementation thereof except for WAID's minor wording tweak suggestion) and the initial responses were to the effect of "I assumed that was always the case," I thought it prudent to add.

If you think it shouldn't be done at all (or if you think it should be done more prominently with its own section on WP:PAID or something) please do say so. Athanelar (talk) 11:11, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I do believe your edit is a change. Previously, three ways were offered, including disclosing on edit summaries, which did not require you to have an account back when IP editing was a thing (I checked PAID from before TAs were added). I have zero objections if this change is an intentional and deliberate decision made by the community at large; however, if this is just a bunch of random editors thinking they are only clarifying how it has always worked, I strongly suggest you first get your ducks in a row. And with that I am leaving this matter. CapnZapp (talk) 12:10, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I think editors here agree that paid editors need to either (a) have a registered account, or (b) disclose consistently every time they make a paid edit. As I think about it, it occurs to me that there can be a potential problem with (b). If an individual who is being paid pops up from time to time with different temp accounts, there is the opportunity to make edits that don't quite measure up to being paid edits, but which reflect the COI that comes with paid editing, and those might not be disclosed, even though they would draw scrutiny if it were a registered account that had disclosed previously. That could be an unwanted loophole. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I have been replacing archive.today links in some articles and i remembered seeing people suggesting using the quote field of Template:Cite web more liberally as an additional hedge to preserve relevant information during the whole archive.today discussion.

In the template documentation the following is written about use of quote:

quote: Relevant text quoted from the source. [...] When quoting a copyrighted text, only brief quotations to attribute a point of view or idea are permitted; extensive quotations are prohibited.

In the linked Non-free content article this is expanded on:

Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea.

Do i understand correctly that statements of fact (e.g. in an online news article) therefor must not be used in the quote field (since they are not points of views or ideas)? Statements such as these:

• "Video game x was released on date y on platform z"
• "Person x was hired as CEO starting on date y"
• "Math theorem x was proven today by person y"

Or in other words: must quote only be used to attribute quotes directly to the author (e.g. quoting an opinion piece on the authors Wikipedia page to establish political views, etc.), and never if the cited page is not written from the point of view of the author? 05hundred (talk) 18:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think the non-free content guideline prohibits this kind of quote, since it would fall under "illustrate a point" or "establish context". However, we usually don't need this kind of quote, since the information should be fairly easy to find and verify, especially in a web source. Toadspike [Talk] 12:18, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Should links to sources for game recaps be added to be specifically allowed to Wikipedia:External links? They exist in article schedule tables such as 2025 Seattle Seahawks season#Schedule, 2025–26_Los_Angeles_Lakers_season#Game_log, 2025 Toronto Argonauts season#Schedule etc. Or are these all in violation of WP:ELNO?- UCO2009bluejay (talk) 21:59, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § AI help in c/e

To me, this copy edit appears to use an AI editor to produce the changes. I base this on the similarity to changes suggested by Grammarly (a product I use largely to detect typos that an ordinary spelling verifier would not detect). Beyond the blandness of the writing style that this produces, it can put errors into the article. In this instance I have had to change "across the Mediterranean" back to "the length of the Mediterranean", as the the two have quite different meanings in the context involved.

What is the Wikipedia view on editors using AI for copy edits? ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 08:34, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Might it not be a good idea to ask the person who made that edit whether they used AI, or any tool? Let's at least ping them. Meleager91. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:42, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

There's no current rule on using AI for copyedits. That said, quite a few of those edits changed the meaning of the sentence, so it is worth asking the editor if they meant to do that. CMD (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, a ping is appropriate; thanks. I only checked a part of the article that I knew well for retention of meaning, as I was short of time. I've not looked further at the changes for more changes of meaning.
Just out of interest, Grammarly decided to check the two posts above. User:Chipmunkdavis has a writing style that it thinks needs fixing, whilst User:Phil Bridger only gets one complaint from the software (the comma before "or any tool"). To be clear, I think both original versions are perfectly OK. The second sentence of this post is something that Grammarly wants to change to a version which seems to me to have no meaning whatsoever. The lesson is, I suggest, always proofread the output of the proofing software.

I should probably alert User:HopsonRoad, who may be interested in this discussion due to the article involved. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 15:50, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I think my comment is correct either with or without the comma, but subtly different in meaning. I guess Grammarly doesn't do subtle. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be moved to WP:VPP instead? We now have this guideline about LLMs for articles (WP:writing articles with large language models)... Actually, it now applies to only new articles. George Ho (talk) 19:18, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

I have no problem with this discussion being moved to Village Pump (policy). You presumably look for opinions from the other contributors. I am going to be limited on further involvement in this matter as I will be on the road for 2 days. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

Moved this from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), especially since I feel the matter may be more rule-related... or not? @Chipmunkdavis: Is what you said about lack of guidelines against AI-generated copyediting true, despite the list of rules seen in WP:AI? George Ho (talk) 22:44, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

As far as I am aware there are three broad "rules" (so to speak) regarding AI usage: don't create articles using AI, carefully research your AI translations, and with few exceptions avoid AI images. However, the issue here is a second-order issue of AI use, as AI use often creates issues with meaning, with source integrity and outright fabrication, with effective communication, and so on. CMD (talk) 06:28, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced whether this is an AI copyedit -- it could be, could not, the changes are so minor that it basically doesn't matter. Besides one or two small oversights it's a good edit regardless of where it came from; the problem with AI copyedits is when they start changing the meaning or injecting promotional tone (example), but this isn't that. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:20, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

update - upon spot-checking some other edits I think that one probably is AI-assisted in some way, just by association based on the speed of the editing and other changes that are much more unambiguously AI output: the text added here, the failure to eliminate obvious puffery here despite the edit summary claiming that happened. (The puffery seems to be AI-generated by someone else in 2023.) So I think that's a fairly good gamut of the three cases with AI revising: minor-but-good copyedits, bad "copyedits" that introduce slop, and "copyedits" that fail to do what they claim they do but are ultimately pointless either way. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:30, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The edit cited does change the meaning in quite a few places, from the first change onwards. Whether the new meaning is an improvement or not would require a deeper look, but meaning is being changed. CMD (talk) 06:31, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

The "across the Mediterranean" from "the length of the Mediterranean" change definitely moved the article away from the cited source on this, and on the key point that both the source and Wikipedia are trying to make. "Across" is, at best, ambiguous and distance-wise is about 1500 miles out (or 60%).ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 08:35, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for the clarification -- I was referring to most of the stuff like "give an indication of" => "indicate," which is clearly an improvement. Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:33, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Copying and pasting... and quoting below post by Meleager91:

Apologies for any disagreeable edits. I can confirm that I edited the article with the assistance of Grammarly, but I was reviewing each suggested change and inputting any edit manually in the plaintext. I certainly did not intend to worsen or confuse the meaning of the article. I apologize if any of my edits missed the mark.
— Meleager91 (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

George Ho (talk) 03:52, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models/RfC. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:27, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

Tables of things quite often use a coloured background for a row or a cell to indicate some specific property of the item in the row/cell.
We have an accessibility policy, MOS:COLOUR, that says we should not use only a colour change as screen readers do not announce this distinction.
However, I was unable to find any statement about not using only bold text as an indicator in a table or list.
Do we advise against just bolding an entry and if so, where? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:01, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

<i> (''), <b> ('''), <em> and <strong> have no semantics in modern screen readers, so these also should not be used as the only indicators. sapphaline (talk) 10:04, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

strong is explicitly defined in standards (i.e. https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/text-level-semantics.html#the-strong-element ) to be meaningful. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:49, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

This doesn't mean that screen readers must convey this meaning. sapphaline (talk) 14:48, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I was thinking of installing some reader software and seeing what it did, but a nice summary table is so much kinder — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:26, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Based on their own user feedback, most screen readers do have "strong" and "em" off by default (it became annoying / may websites misused these tags in the past) - but screen reader UIs change a lot more frequently than HTML standards. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:56, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

"many websites misused these tags in the past" - they're still massively misused, because a lot of CMSes/forum software use Markdown as their markup language, and the only kind of italic and bold Markdown supports is <em> and <strong>. sapphaline (talk) 14:48, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

MOS:NOBOLD and MOS:EMPHASIS are probably the MOS sections you want to see. Nthep (talk) 10:18, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

MOS:EMPHASIS does not cover bold, but points to MOS:NOBOLD, which talks about avoiding bold in headings and other places which are already bold. It also covers not using bold for emphasis, but does not really say anything explicit about using bold as a status flag or category indicator. Sports or election results tables often use bold to highlight the winner, which also often puts bolding over a link — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:54, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I suspect that <strong>could replace this use case, though the MOS discourages its use in articles. As a discussion point here, I'd be fine with promoting the use of strong over bold (including via '''...''') as an indicator in tables, even on articles. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:45, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Using strong emphasis within a table or list to mark entries with a certain property wouldn't follow semantic usage, though, unless the intent is to give those entries particular emphasis. Best practice for accessibility would be to include another indicator, such as an asterisk, in addition to setting the text in bold. isaacl (talk) 17:55, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

A note at Template:Dagger#Accessible symbols lists a few symbols that should be read by screen readers. Of these, degree ° and prime ′ are rather small and might be part of text anyway; * and # have significance in wiki-text, so I tend to avoid them. Which leaves only dagger † and double-dagger ‡, although the arrows might also be usable. Is this list still valid/complete? Should that information be added to the MOS? I have been tending to use the dagger symbol as a flag instead of bold text. Can somebody who uses a screen reader say if the dagger sign is a good option? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 22:42, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

As listed at Note (typography) § Numbering and symbols, the traditional order for endnote indicators starts with asterisk, dagger, and double-dagger. I think following this order would best align with reader expectations. (There are cases where specific indicators are traditional, like dagger to indicate death or extinction.) isaacl (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

As a screen reader user, yes, the note at {{dagger}} is still correct. Most screen readers don't indicate bolding etc. by default but can indicate the formatting attributes of the text under the cursor if asked to do so. Graham87 (talk) 04:58, 18 March 2026 (UTC)