Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 204
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WP:NEXIST with regard to sources only mentioned in Primary Sources
This is coming off of an AFD discussion for the cyclist David Gillow, and the Keep side is arguing that because Gillow's personal website does feature background images of newspaper clippings. However, the nature of the website is to advertise Gillow's personal business.
I wanted to bring this up directly at VPP since I think that this is a gray area that imho should be resolved: does NEXIST still apply if the only mention of a potential source is from a promotional, self-published, non-independent or unreliable source, especially in cases where the source cannot be located otherwise? Or an alternative way to phrase this - if only a subject's personal website or non-independent source shows newspaper clippings but there is no verifiable evidence on where such newspapers came from, and searches performed for the headline show no results, is there NEXIST grounds? InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 17:17, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- It seems likely to me that cases will be rare and are likely to vary, and possibly this should be dealt with on a case by case basis. Wehwalt (talk) 17:47, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with Wehwalt, there is always going to be far too much individual context to give an answer that is always correct. However as general principles, what matters is the reliability and independence of the actual sources, not the reliability or independence of the discovery method. For example it is far from uncommon to learn about the existence of reliable sources due to mentions in unreliable ones (e.g. books and newspaper articles quoted in internet forum discussions). It's also worth remembering that independent secondary sources are only required to demonstrate notability, primary sources and non-independent sources can be fine for verifiability (indeed in some cases primary sources are more reliable than secondary ones). Thryduulf (talk) 18:11, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
what matters is the reliability and independence of the actual sources, not the reliability or independence of the discovery method.
I agree with this as a general matter for WP:NEXIST and other verifiability and notability standards. "Discovery" is a critical piece here. WP:NEXIST points to Wikipedia:Published. If an unusable source mentions or identifies a source that would be usable per the applicable P&G but then no one is able to confirm the existence or content of said source, then it fails verifiability. A similar issue arises with LLMs "hallucinating" plausible sounding but bogus citations. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 18:40, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- If I were asked to close an AfD where this was an issue, I would be creative and state: “No Determination… AFD is paused… editors have 1 month to look into the potential sources further and report back.” Blueboar (talk) 19:02, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
[if] no one is able to confirm the existence or content of said source, then it fails verifiability.
generally yes, although there is a distinction to be made between "we've looked high and low and can confirm with very high confidence that the source doesn't exist" (this is likely to be the case for at least most LLM hallucinations) and "we've looked as hard as we can, but we still can't say whether the source exists or not" (say something claimed to be published in 1940 in French West Africa). In the first case it's a clear WP:V fail, in the second that's a much harder call. Thryduulf (talk) 19:51, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- I agree it requires more care, and I agree with @Blueboar that in the right circumstance it is appropriate to allow more time. I would further distinguish between "we have a plausible title, author, publisher, publication date, and location and we have not been able to get ahold of it" vs. "we have a grainy photo on a personal website where only newspaper headlines are legible, with hard-to-decipher handwritten dates and no other publication information". --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 20:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with Wehwalt, there is always going to be far too much individual context to give an answer that is always correct. However as general principles, what matters is the reliability and independence of the actual sources, not the reliability or independence of the discovery method. For example it is far from uncommon to learn about the existence of reliable sources due to mentions in unreliable ones (e.g. books and newspaper articles quoted in internet forum discussions). It's also worth remembering that independent secondary sources are only required to demonstrate notability, primary sources and non-independent sources can be fine for verifiability (indeed in some cases primary sources are more reliable than secondary ones). Thryduulf (talk) 18:11, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Is there any reason that, with the necessary legwork, the sources given in the primary source can be found and used instead? Masem (t) 19:17, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I tried to see the extent to which national newspaper archives exist for Zimbabwe--there is one potentially promising archive with offices in Harare and Bulawayo , that charges a fee for access in person. There don't appear to be any digitial archives for pre-21st century Zimbabwean newspapers, regrettably. Another possible route would be to try to contact Gillow himself, since he would appear to have had the snippets on hand when putting together his website, and may be able to provide additional bibliographic information and/or text of the snippets themselves. signed, Rosguill talk 19:25, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I have suggested asking the various WikiProjects tagged in the article and Wikipedia:Reference desk. Unfortunately, the website doesn't identify the sources. It's a poor-quality image of a stack of old newspaper clippings, where only the headlines are legible, with no names or dates of publication. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 19:44, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Some of them do appear to have the dates, FWIW (one I can tell is "3/7/1978" for example). BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:46, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- As a general rule, you should assume that sources aren't actively lying to you, and that unless you have a specific reason to believe that the specific website actually is lying to you (e.g., it's a satire site, it's about a subject who has been accused in other sources of lying). Therefore, when a "promotional, self-published, non-independent" website claims that various news sources exist, you should assume that those news sources exist.
- Of course, you can't use the sources until you can read them yourself. You have to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, and that means you can't write "The actor's performance was praised by Unread Critic in Unarchived Newspaper", citing the review you haven't read, just because the actor's website says "Dear Unread praised my performance in his review for the Unarchived Newspaper the next morning...". But you should assume that this review exists – or, perhaps more to the point, that it existed. At some point, Wikipedia:Verifiability#Accessibility of a source is a requirement. It's not necessary for you to be able to access the source, but someone has to be able to do so. In case of doubt, an AFD might be suspended to allow time for a search. Particularly determined editors might even broadcast pleas for help through relevant Wikimedia affiliates or social media. But it's also valid to close an AFD with a soft delete and a note saying that we're pretty sure that sources existed, though can't access them, and if anyone is able to get the sources in the future, then a WP:REFUND will be cheerfully granted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- As a historical note, the WP:BFAQ used to recommend that businesses that wanted a volunteer to write an article about them create a "News" section on their websites, listing/linking to news stories about the business. Having a handy list of sources can be a great timesaver for volunteers. So it would be very ironic if we now say "Oh, those terrible self-promotional people: How dare they do exactly what we recommended, by making a handy list of sources that show they qualify for a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article!"
- Also, remember that, despite all our complaining about "promotionalism", business articles are among the most popular subjects with our readers. We don't want advertisements – see Wikipedia:Identifying blatant advertising – but we do want accurate information, including information that accurately presents the subject only in a positive light (because not every subject has had negative information published about them). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think that WP:SELFSOURCE guides us in another direction on anything that might be considered boastful ("unduly self-serving"). And this would actually hold more true today than in this older item we're looking for, as some people are AIing their bios. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 20:24, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
Convention for naming Australian place articles
There is a RFC on the convention for naming Australia place articles at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#RfC: The convention for naming Australian place articles. Editors are invited to contribute. TarnishedPathtalk 03:20, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
Is using selective transclusion to remove citations ever an acceptable way to reduce page size or overcome template maximums
A few weeks ago I came across a development over at the list of common misconceptions, one of our most famous articles: it is now displayed to readers without references. There was consensus some time ago to split the large list into three pages. In the course of those discussions, an idea emerged that the three could be transcluded to reconstruct a slimmer version of the original (some of the support was indeed predicated on such a plan), leading us to the current version without references.
The citations still exist, but in order to see them you have to find the link to the subject-specific page and click it. According to pageviews for the last 30 days, the main article received 141,198 pageviews. The other three combine for 3,917. In other words, almost nobody clicks through to where the citations are. While it's true that citations take up a lot of space, they're also quite important where big claims are made (like X is a common misconception, Y is how it really is).
I thought about opening an RfC on the article talk page, but -- with apologies to the regular contributors there -- it seems like the underlying concept is something that could really use more centralized discussion: is using selective transclusion to remove citations ever an acceptable way to reduce page size ^or overcome template maximums? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:46, 13 July 2025 (UTC) Expanded on request — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:42, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:02, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Talk page discussions don't override community expectations on referencing for articles. I've tagged the page as unreferenced.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:09, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'm undecided so far on the issue at question, but your edit seems pointy to me. I'd recommend you self-revert, allowing this discussion to reach a conclusion and that conclusion to be implemented. Anomie⚔ 16:26, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- My edit has been reverted, so that point is now moot. I couldn't find any discussion where consensus was obtained for removing all references from the page (there was a discussion on splitting it, but that isn't the same thing at all.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:48, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think we should be using transclusions for content at all - this is effectively presenting the casual user with an unreferenced article where they cannot edit the contents and someone has to watchlist all of the subpages to check for vandalism. This is a bad idea.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Normally, transclusions do carry standard inline references over, but the split was done as to wrap the refs in a manner that they were excluded from the transclusion. Masem (t) 18:07, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Let me correct myself, the references were already wrapped in the #invoke magic word which prevents reference expansion from triggering the "too many templates" limit on pages, which made sense given how many items and references were used. But when the split happened, the #invokes were kept, so the references do not get transcluded.
- Obviously, it would be a problem if the transcluded split pages replaced the #invoke with normal ref calling (the full list would still be a problem).
- We're still left with a page that appears to have no references. What should have happened is gradual splitting of the larger sections of the pages, leaving only main/seealso calls to those lists and not transclusions, as to still direct readers to those lists with references still all in place in the main and sublists. Masem (t) 19:15, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The
#invokehack does not "prevent" reference expansion from triggering the "too many templates" limit on pages. It merely makes it possible to cram a few more things in there before the WP:PEIS limit is hit. Think of it as a compression system for a big suitcase: it lets you put some more clothes in, but it doesn't let you put an infinite number of clothes in the suitcase. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 13 July 2025 (UTC)- Ah, so the refs are just not there on the big page due to the template limit still being hit when all the transclusions, invoke or not, are included. That would make sense. Masem (t) 23:00, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The issue is that since every entry is a short summary that is carefully cited, the character count of the references is quite large in comparison to the actual text of the article. To keep the article size to a manageable level, <noinclude> tags were placed around the references so that they appear in the sub-articles but not the main article.
- The #invoke directives were a stop-gap solution that bought a bit more time and predated the split by several months, but as the article grew there was concern that it was not sustainable, hence the split. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:18, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, so the refs are just not there on the big page due to the template limit still being hit when all the transclusions, invoke or not, are included. That would make sense. Masem (t) 23:00, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The
- Normally, transclusions do carry standard inline references over, but the split was done as to wrap the refs in a manner that they were excluded from the transclusion. Masem (t) 18:07, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think we should be using transclusions for content at all - this is effectively presenting the casual user with an unreferenced article where they cannot edit the contents and someone has to watchlist all of the subpages to check for vandalism. This is a bad idea.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- My edit has been reverted, so that point is now moot. I couldn't find any discussion where consensus was obtained for removing all references from the page (there was a discussion on splitting it, but that isn't the same thing at all.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:48, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'm undecided so far on the issue at question, but your edit seems pointy to me. I'd recommend you self-revert, allowing this discussion to reach a conclusion and that conclusion to be implemented. Anomie⚔ 16:26, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I've now posted a reference to this discussion on the article's talk page, since that was
apparently overlookedonly mentioned deep in an earlier discussion on the page. Anomie⚔ 16:29, 13 July 2025 (UTC) - Its never acceptable. Pages have to be comprehensive as standalone articles so pushing the citations elsewhere is not acceptable. Masem (t) 17:22, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I just figured out what happened in that in this diff, the list was replaced with several transclusions to the subpages. The subpages have the references but were implemented in a way so that they do not get transcluded into the full list. This just doesn't work again that every page should be standalone and references must be there on that page. The split should have literally just split off major sections to subpages without worrying about transclusions, so that the sourcing remains in place as normal for all articles. Masem (t) 17:33, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- That was a BAD idea. Thanks to the way the WP:PEIS limit is calculated, all those citations would now double their contribution to the limit (their size gets added once when transcluded on the original page, and then thanks to a quirk in the software, gets counted a second time when that page is transcluded). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:02, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- That was a BAD idea. Thanks to the way the WP:PEIS limit is calculated, all those citations would now double their contribution to the limit (their size gets added once when transcluded on the original page, and then thanks to a quirk in the software, gets counted a second time when that page is transcluded). --Ahecht (TALK
- I just figured out what happened in that in this diff, the list was replaced with several transclusions to the subpages. The subpages have the references but were implemented in a way so that they do not get transcluded into the full list. This just doesn't work again that every page should be standalone and references must be there on that page. The split should have literally just split off major sections to subpages without worrying about transclusions, so that the sourcing remains in place as normal for all articles. Masem (t) 17:33, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- No, and a local consensus can't override policy. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:29, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would expect anything on a page about common misconception would be "likely to be challenged". -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:32, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Stop! You're not being given a complete set of reasons why we set up the page like that.—S Marshall T/C 21:44, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The reasons do not matter, it's not policy compliant no matter what reason editors have come up with. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:07, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- No. I don't care why the current setup exists, all that matters is that article content should always be supported by references to reliable sources and the references should always be on the same page as the content they support. Thryduulf (talk) 21:48, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- On a technical level, there is a hard cap about the number of templates that can display on one page. And I expect you're thinking, "What?" I know I did when I first came across this. Why is there a hard cap on the number of templates that will display? Well, it's necessary to protect the servers from certain kinds of sophisticated vandalism that amount to attacks. A clever vandal could set up templates that called each other recursively, so you end up with very large numbers of templates proliferating and absorbing our resources. There are good security reasons why we wouldn't want to change the cap. And the cap is set at such a high level that it almost never comes up (which is why it's confusing).How does the hard cap affect this article? Well, all our references are in templates (and they rightly should be). So, around November 2024, we'd made this article unexpandable: we could not add further references. For a while now, editors had been using a workaround by adding special code into the references, but that too was on the point of failure.That is a policy disaster. From a WP:V perspective, we could not possibly allow an article to exist that we couldn't add further citations to.WhatamIdoing arranged an RFC. She advocated splitting the article into subarticles, but editors insisted on having a version of the article that displayed on one page. So after a truly enormous amount of discussion, we implemented a split into List of common misconceptions about arts and culture, List of common misconceptions about history, and List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics. Each of those articles can be expanded, can have citations added to it, and is not the policy disaster we were previously faced with.Then, in obedience to a talk page consensus, we created a version that transcluded the split articles. But the version that displays on one page is not the article. It's a single page that transcludes the three articles without the citations; but with a link to the subarticle with citations very prominently displayed.You can of course reach consensus to change this at this discussion, but I do think it's important that you fully understand what you're doing before you !vote.—S Marshall T/C 21:57, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for this explanation, S Marshall. The template limit is interesting indeed. But I think the crux is
but editors insisted on having a version of the article that displayed on one page
- "Split the page but treat the split pages as templates to transclude without references where the list once was" is simply not a valid option for a split proposal, so IMO should've just been disregarded upon closure. At the end of the day, we cannot have an article (and whichever page the reader is on when they're reading the text is the article) without references. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:01, 13 July 2025 (UTC)- I'd have written "but some editors insisted..."; otherwise, I think S Marshall's description is fair.
- The split-or-not discussion was Talk:List of common misconceptions/Archive 33#Split proposal (15 editors, 70 comments; includes first description of ref-hiding system).
- A further discussion about how to split was at Talk:List of common misconceptions/Archive 34#How to split.
- The how-many-sublists RFC was Talk:List of common misconceptions/Archive 34#RFC on number of pages to split to (17 editors, 49 comments). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- ...and WAID was thorough. The split proposal RfC was advertised and crosslinked on this page (Village pump policy), on Village pump technical, on FTN, and on WikiProject Lists. This wasn't some halfassed local consensus.—S Marshall T/C 22:26, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Many of the reasons to maintain one single list (even with the transclusions) are very weak ("its a popular article"), in comparative weight to the core need to have comprehensive pages with everything appropriate sourced, even with the use of summary style splits. It would be far better to just have a notice box on the article page to explain that the topic is too large for a single page and thus split for readability and usability. Masem (t) 22:27, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Equally, a decision that involved multiple sitewide RfCs doesn't get overturned on the basis of one discussion on VPP.—S Marshall T/C 22:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The split proposal was advertised and crosslinked. The "how many to split into" discussion was likewise advertised. But neither of those produced a consensus to create a transclusion zombie article. In fact, the first says explicitly
There is not, however, a consensus whether to split the article in 2, split it into 3, or to do some wizardry using templates and transclusion to somehow be even more creative.
The "How to split" discussion linked above was not advertised, and involves only five people. Nobody is suggesting to overturn either of the RfCs. What I am suggesting is that the basis for the subsequent decision of creating a high-teaffic unreferenced article is concerning, and that, in general, we should not remove references from the actual user-read versions of articles to save space. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:57, 13 July 2025 (UTC)- Yes, the decision to split, and how to split, seems both well advertised, decided fairly by an RFC. Its this last minute of "but lets keep one big article using transclusions" that doesn't have that support, and that's what is breaking policy requirements. Masem (t) 23:01, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I invite you to re-read the RfCs, paying careful attention to the sequence in which these ideas were introduced to the community. It is profoundly unfair to call that proposal "last minute". In fact, the idea was discussed and agonized over for weeks. The community didn't love it. But it thought the alternatives were worse.—S Marshall T/C 23:14, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Amusingly, I see that when we discussed the idea at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 82#Source display, ActivelyDisinterested who was so opposed to this just now, seemed quite supportive!—S Marshall T/C 23:19, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- You've misunderstood my comments, they were never in support of removing all citations. Maybe I should have made that clearer at the time. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:09, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- But of course, that's not what happened. Nobody removed all the citations.—S Marshall T/C 12:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- The entire split discussion seemed predicated on the fact that while the full list was fully sourced, even with #invoke, the template limit was reached and the citations appeared "removed" in the rendered code (not in wikitext), which is why some type of split was required. Masem (t) 12:24, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- But of course, that's not what happened. Nobody removed all the citations.—S Marshall T/C 12:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- You've misunderstood my comments, they were never in support of removing all citations. Maybe I should have made that clearer at the time. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:09, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Amusingly, I see that when we discussed the idea at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 82#Source display, ActivelyDisinterested who was so opposed to this just now, seemed quite supportive!—S Marshall T/C 23:19, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I invite you to re-read the RfCs, paying careful attention to the sequence in which these ideas were introduced to the community. It is profoundly unfair to call that proposal "last minute". In fact, the idea was discussed and agonized over for weeks. The community didn't love it. But it thought the alternatives were worse.—S Marshall T/C 23:14, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Rhododendrites, I'm not sure from your comments whether you're more interested in a Wikipedia:Close challenge or finding out whether there is currently a consensus for this arrangement. If the latter, then it doesn't really matter what the previous discussions did/didn't say. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- My question is still the one in the heading. I was responding there to S Marshall arguing that a discussion here would not take precedence over well attended discussions at the article. My point is, there was no strong consensus for creating an unreferenced list -- only to split, and then to split in 3. So, on one hand, there's no closure to challenge. On the other, I'm looking to gauge opinions on the general concept. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- At this rate we'll need a list of common misconceptions about the list of common misconceptions.If there hadn't been a one-page version option, then the split proposal failed and we're back to one merged list.—S Marshall T/C 00:02, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that's true, but I think the more important question is "What do we want today?", not "Exactly how would you interpret comments made last year?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- At this rate we'll need a list of common misconceptions about the list of common misconceptions.If there hadn't been a one-page version option, then the split proposal failed and we're back to one merged list.—S Marshall T/C 00:02, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- My question is still the one in the heading. I was responding there to S Marshall arguing that a discussion here would not take precedence over well attended discussions at the article. My point is, there was no strong consensus for creating an unreferenced list -- only to split, and then to split in 3. So, on one hand, there's no closure to challenge. On the other, I'm looking to gauge opinions on the general concept. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 23:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, the decision to split, and how to split, seems both well advertised, decided fairly by an RFC. Its this last minute of "but lets keep one big article using transclusions" that doesn't have that support, and that's what is breaking policy requirements. Masem (t) 23:01, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- One RFC on a talk page can't overturns WP:V even if it did have 70 participants. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:55, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- The split proposal was advertised and crosslinked. The "how many to split into" discussion was likewise advertised. But neither of those produced a consensus to create a transclusion zombie article. In fact, the first says explicitly
- Equally, a decision that involved multiple sitewide RfCs doesn't get overturned on the basis of one discussion on VPP.—S Marshall T/C 22:39, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for this explanation, S Marshall. The template limit is interesting indeed. But I think the crux is
- On a technical level, there is a hard cap about the number of templates that can display on one page. And I expect you're thinking, "What?" I know I did when I first came across this. Why is there a hard cap on the number of templates that will display? Well, it's necessary to protect the servers from certain kinds of sophisticated vandalism that amount to attacks. A clever vandal could set up templates that called each other recursively, so you end up with very large numbers of templates proliferating and absorbing our resources. There are good security reasons why we wouldn't want to change the cap. And the cap is set at such a high level that it almost never comes up (which is why it's confusing).How does the hard cap affect this article? Well, all our references are in templates (and they rightly should be). So, around November 2024, we'd made this article unexpandable: we could not add further references. For a while now, editors had been using a workaround by adding special code into the references, but that too was on the point of failure.That is a policy disaster. From a WP:V perspective, we could not possibly allow an article to exist that we couldn't add further citations to.WhatamIdoing arranged an RFC. She advocated splitting the article into subarticles, but editors insisted on having a version of the article that displayed on one page. So after a truly enormous amount of discussion, we implemented a split into List of common misconceptions about arts and culture, List of common misconceptions about history, and List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics. Each of those articles can be expanded, can have citations added to it, and is not the policy disaster we were previously faced with.Then, in obedience to a talk page consensus, we created a version that transcluded the split articles. But the version that displays on one page is not the article. It's a single page that transcludes the three articles without the citations; but with a link to the subarticle with citations very prominently displayed.You can of course reach consensus to change this at this discussion, but I do think it's important that you fully understand what you're doing before you !vote.—S Marshall T/C 21:57, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- No, this is a terrible idea. And now the current version just had a permanent template at the top? It looks awful. Just make gosh darn separate sub pages, like we do with so many other primary high level topics. Transclusion in this manner is a non-starter. SilverserenC 23:18, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- The article was approaching 600kb, so something had to be done. I do not agree with this particular solution, but once page sizes get that large slowdowns occur, especially on weaker systems and when opening source editor. A potential solution could be turning it into a pseudo-disambiguation page pointing to the other subpages as we do at List of Nazis. But I tend to agree that presenting without citations should be avoided. Curbon7 (talk) 23:20, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'll say what I said on the talk page in question:
For a list that is meant to combat misinformation, it would really help to be able to see the citations whenever necessary; just looking at the page gives the sense that things are made up, and then I have to click on another page just to see where the information came from. Given that a fair few of these are related to actual political controversies (such as the vaccines and autism one, or the tariffs one that was recently added), I think that saying "these are false" would fall within the "likely to be challenged" part of WP:V and thus need citation here. Compare Lists of unusual deaths, which was also recently split into a list of lists.
Also note that tags like {{Better source needed}} and {{Citation needed}} are not excluded from the combined list. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 23:44, 13 July 2025 (UTC)- Vaccines and autism isn't politics. It's woo, plain and simple.—S Marshall T/C 23:58, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- Given what's happening in the US right, vaccines and autism are 100% in the political arena right now Masem (t) 00:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Oh for the love of... It's woo. Fully disproven and discredited.—S Marshall T/C 00:13, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Indeed, woo, but an example of how the politicization of science is now in a world where both the left and right wings are departing from the consensus reality-based community into the world of alternative facts. Wikipedia should not do that, though, Wikipedia should firmly treat this as a question of science, not politics. Andre🚐 00:23, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Exactly. I fully believe the science here, but in terms of the doubt being thrown around by ppl in high government positions, we as a neutral work should absolutely still be sourcing (using the good medical sources that disprove there is any connection, of course, in addition to those that identify that there's a misconception). These need to be with the text, not shuffled away in in a sub-list article, which, given we're always going to be limited by template inclusion limits, means that the main transclusion list is broken in light of WP:V and other core content policies. Masem (t) 01:00, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- I, too, believe the science; I'm just using it as an example of material likely to be challenged. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 17:19, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Exactly. I fully believe the science here, but in terms of the doubt being thrown around by ppl in high government positions, we as a neutral work should absolutely still be sourcing (using the good medical sources that disprove there is any connection, of course, in addition to those that identify that there's a misconception). These need to be with the text, not shuffled away in in a sub-list article, which, given we're always going to be limited by template inclusion limits, means that the main transclusion list is broken in light of WP:V and other core content policies. Masem (t) 01:00, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- "All content likely to be challenged" per policy requires
onlineinline citations. It is very hard to see how any of this isn't going to be challenged, even if the challenges are poor. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:57, 14 July 2025 (UTC)- Inline citations - not online citations. Blueboar (talk) 12:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Good spot, corrected. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:06, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Inline citations - not online citations. Blueboar (talk) 12:01, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Indeed, woo, but an example of how the politicization of science is now in a world where both the left and right wings are departing from the consensus reality-based community into the world of alternative facts. Wikipedia should not do that, though, Wikipedia should firmly treat this as a question of science, not politics. Andre🚐 00:23, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Oh for the love of... It's woo. Fully disproven and discredited.—S Marshall T/C 00:13, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Given what's happening in the US right, vaccines and autism are 100% in the political arena right now Masem (t) 00:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Vaccines and autism isn't politics. It's woo, plain and simple.—S Marshall T/C 23:58, 13 July 2025 (UTC)
- I closed the first discussion with there being a consensus to split; as Rhododendrites notes, I didn't see a consensus of how to split. I do have some slight reservations about hiding references but as WAID has noted, most people do not check them anyway, and as S Marshall notes the split compromise allows the existence of 3 full split articles and a merged form for convenience. I see this as a valid use of templates and a valid, well-advertised, local consensus. Andre🚐 00:28, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- WP:BURDEN "
material the verifiability of which is likely to be challenged
" given the content of this article this can not be a valid format. And a local consensus, no matter how well advertised, can not over turn a policy. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:00, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- WP:BURDEN "
- There are technical issues and there are editorial issues; although there is an argument to be made that a long articles like this should be broken up for readability, this issue arose from a technical problem: since the entries are all short summaries that are carefully cited, the citations are much larger than the actual text of the article, making the page load hit some internal limits.Since this is a technical problem, we should seek a technical solution that preserves the editorial decisions as much as possible. The current transclusion approach that suppresses the cites is one; I understand the arguments being made against it.Is there another, better, technical solution? If I were writing the article on my own I would look to some JSON/Ajax solution that does partial rendering and only loads what the reader clicks on. I'm not aware of anything like this that is available, but perhaps someone knows something. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- IMO it makes sense to explore other technical options on the article talk page -- all I want to establish with this discussion is that any solution that removes references from view of the reader is not something we want. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:49, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Given the RFCs on splitting, the only reason I see mentioned for trying to maintain some version of a single page version is along the lines of ITSUSEFUL which seems like a very weak rational to try to force a technical solution for what is basicly a non problem if a normal page split was done. It really doesn't make sense to try to justify trying to maintain one master list page for minimal returns for the purposes of being an encyclopedia Masem (t) 14:58, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Mr. Swordfish is one of the top editors to that page, and within the limits of WP:OWN, I think that his assessment of what works (or doesn't) should be respected. That said, he made arguments along these lines throughout the prior discussions, and I mostly felt like they boiled down to (a) Change is bad [it is! I agree with him!] and (b) a genuine inability to believe that anyone would want to split up this list for editorial reasons, even though I have personally told him more than once that I really do want to split this list up for editorial reasons [specifically, the unreasonable amount of time that it would take someone to read the whole page because of the WP:SIZE of the readable prose] and would want to do this even if the technical issues hadn't made it urgent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- The technical solution would be to WP:NAVIFY the page instead of having massive transclusions. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:04, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Was there significant consideration given to converting the main page into a more formal Wikipedia:Lists of lists rather than trying to preserve the single list? That technical contortions are needed to avoid PEIS seems to be a strong signal that the topic itself is incredibly diffuse and likely WP:TOOBROAD. CMD (talk) 15:00, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- The list is WP:TOOBROAD by definition; a misconception has to be common among a group, it cannot be common in and of itself. A misconception common in America is not common in the world. There's a common misconception in Texas that picking bluebonnets is illegal: is that a common misconception? Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 15:17, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, make a list of lists. What's the point of doing a SIZESPLIT and then just smushing the whole thing together again? Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:28, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, it's definitely too broad by our normal guidelines. The community is well aware and doesn't care: we're keeping it, at least in its current split form.—S Marshall T/C 15:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- When we started the discussion, I assumed that we would end up with something approximately like this:
This is a list of common misconceptions.
- Yes, it's definitely too broad by our normal guidelines. The community is well aware and doesn't care: we're keeping it, at least in its current split form.—S Marshall T/C 15:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- List of common misconceptions about history
- List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics
- ...and quickly send readers along to the page that interested them most. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- No. Citations should never be cut from an article to "reduce page size". Citations are the most important thing in an article. Displaying this list without citations is a disservice to our readers. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:00, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- ...and this is a problem. People !voting without taking the time to read and understand.—S Marshall T/C 19:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- @S Marshall, I read and understood fully, kept my comment brief, but I will explain further. Yes I understand technically the citations are available in a separate page. However, this list uses a non-intuitive way of citing material that as far as I'm aware is the sole time its used on wikipedia. We already have ways to deal with long articles (clean cuts into separate articles), which don't include surgically transcluding the readable text back into a main article. The matter of fact is most readers will not reach the sub pages. The main page has 2100 views on July 14, whereas the Arts and Culture subpage had 50 views. History, had 55 views also. Science and tech had 38 views, again just on July 14. So all together, the subpages have 7% of the viewership of the main article. This is a problem. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 03:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Why is that a problem? Don't most readers not bother clicking on citations anyway? We insist on citations for various reasons, but as far as readers go we stop at making them available and most don't avail themselves of them. If you want to pursue this view-count based argument, you'd need to do more to establish that readers really aren't finding the citations they want to find. As it is, those numbers seem well in line with readers who care about cites finding their way to the sub articles. Anomie⚔ 11:59, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I had a look at https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=List_of_common_misconceptions which agrees that the sub-articles are not popular destinations. Since only 0.3% of readers try to read sources (and even some of those will be misclicks), this is what I expected.
- But I also noticed that most of the incoming traffic to the List of common misconceptions is redirects, disambiguation pages, and links in articles. Much of that should be re-pointed to the subarticle. For example, the link in Fan death#See also should probably be redirected to the List of common misconceptions about arts and culture. I have fixed three today; anyone who wants readers to see the little blue clicky numbers (or just to get to more immediately relevant information!) could do this. I suggest starting with the Wikinav pages, as they're the most popular ones, but most of these redirects should be repointed, and many of these links should be retargeted to a more specific article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I at least took care of repointing the redirects. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you! WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I at least took care of repointing the redirects. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 20:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- My "problem" is the fact that this article is unique and very different in how it handles citations. It is very inconvenient to have to navigate to a sub page, do ctrl-f and find where you were reading, just to find the citation. Wikipedia, for like 24 years, has inline citations next to every claim that needs one. The fact that this article should be treated any differently is absurd and will confuse readers.
- I'm not going to argue how many readers actually care about citations, because thats probably fairly low. Most of the trust of Wikipedia is seeing the cite (and lack of [cn] tags) and trusting the process. If a reader doesn't see a cite, they will get the idea this isn't a checked page and there could be misinfo.
- Why hiding the cite just to make it look pretty still baffles me and I believe its the wrong move. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 22:31, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- @JackFromWisconsin, the point is not "to make it look pretty".
- The point is that the servers have Template limits, and when you exceed them, then it does its best, but eventually it stops showing the content of the template, and instead just shows the name of the template.
- That means that although you would usually expect to find the refs the looking something like this:
- References
- Brown, Rebecca (2006). "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51 (78).
- Miller, Edward (2005). The Sun. Academic Press.
- and so forth, through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of refs, it will instead actually display something like this:
- References
- Template:Reflist
- You can see a screenshot of the "sources" – or at least, where the sources would have been displayed, if the template limits weren't exceeded.
- The options therefore are:
- have one page that doesn't display the refs, because so many templates "physically" can't be displayed on any single page, or
- split things across multiple pages, so that we have several pages with a few hundred templates each, instead of one page with ~a thousand templates.
- I proposed the latter. Editors chose "both!" WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Why bring in all the talk about only 7% of readers viewing the sublists if that's not relevant to what your actual problem is? The way you wrote it, it seemed like you were saying that it being only 7% is the problem. Anomie⚔ 12:11, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- Why is that a problem? Don't most readers not bother clicking on citations anyway? We insist on citations for various reasons, but as far as readers go we stop at making them available and most don't avail themselves of them. If you want to pursue this view-count based argument, you'd need to do more to establish that readers really aren't finding the citations they want to find. As it is, those numbers seem well in line with readers who care about cites finding their way to the sub articles. Anomie⚔ 11:59, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- @S Marshall, I read and understood fully, kept my comment brief, but I will explain further. Yes I understand technically the citations are available in a separate page. However, this list uses a non-intuitive way of citing material that as far as I'm aware is the sole time its used on wikipedia. We already have ways to deal with long articles (clean cuts into separate articles), which don't include surgically transcluding the readable text back into a main article. The matter of fact is most readers will not reach the sub pages. The main page has 2100 views on July 14, whereas the Arts and Culture subpage had 50 views. History, had 55 views also. Science and tech had 38 views, again just on July 14. So all together, the subpages have 7% of the viewership of the main article. This is a problem. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 03:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- ...and this is a problem. People !voting without taking the time to read and understand.—S Marshall T/C 19:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- My thoughts: Splitting the original list article into sub-articles was the correct resolution to the technical issues. However, re-merging (transcluding) the information back into a main article (without the citations) was a serious mistake. As others have noted, citations are needed in every article on which “likely to be challenged” information appears. “But it’s cited over in the other article” is never acceptable. This can be resolved by making the original page into an index or “list of lists”. Blueboar (talk) 21:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- A version of an article stripped of citations is fundamentally flawed in its failure to comply with the letter or spirit of WP:V. In the case at hand, I support replacing the uncited merged list with an index or list of lists.--Trystan (talk) 21:28, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- No, that shouldn't be done. If the page is too large, split it up into several smaller pages. This applies to any page large enough where removing citations can be considered. --cheesewhisk3rs ≽^•⩊•^≼ ∫ (pester) 22:10, 14 July 2025 (UTC)
- In this discussion: First, Rhododendrites asks whether selective transclusion is an acceptable way to reduce page size; then I explain that the purpose of the selective transclusion isn't about the page size, but is to overcome template display limits; then substantial numbers of editors come along and !vote on the original, erroneous framing of the question. Rhododendrites, may I fix the question and the header, or would you prefer to do that yourself?—S Marshall T/C 00:28, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- It seems to have evolved (or I have been corrected). I have amended the heading/question. Is anyone really going to revise their statement to say "no, we should not toss aside basic wikipolicy for page size, but for template maximums yes"? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Again: That is not a fair framing of what happened. Please: be fair.Nobody has tossed aside basic wikipolicy. Everything that's challenged or likely to be challenged is supported by an inline citation to a reliable source. The issue is that that source is one click away. You're framing that as a policy violation, but WP:V does not say what you think it says. It was written before transclusion was commonplace and before new features like LST were implemented, and on the question of whether the references can be a click away from the thing they're citing, it is silent. Because we knew this was novel, WhatamIdoing asked on WT:V about it here.WAID was scrupulous about asking the community about this before we did it and she got very little response. Now we're getting a big lot of responses, but they're responses to the wrong question. You've framed this as "using selective transclusion to remove citations", which would be outrageous behaviour, so of course it's getting the response it is. The citations have not been removed. They're in place, one click away, with prominent links to help readers find them. It's been done after a great deal of thought and discussion, with the utmost transparency. But when WAID asked this, she framed the question accurately, and therefore got much less engagement and drama.—S Marshall T/C 01:58, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- A citation on a different page that the overwhelming majority of readers will never even see is not an inline citation.
which would be outrageous behaviour
- Yes, it is (an outrageous decision, that is -- I don't think there's a behavioral issue here). That you can try to justify it as a well-meaning kludge doesn't change that it strips away references from the only version of the article most readers will ever see. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:24, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- I'm not "justifying it as a well-meaning kludge". I'm telling you it's a thing we did openly, transparently and after a substantial amount of policy consultation in the appropriate places. And I'm telling you that it doesn't violate the black letter of policy. If the community thinks citations absolutely must be on the same rendered page as the claim, and it might think that, although we did ask---if that's the community's view then that needs to be added to policy, because the policy doesn't say so, and it never has.—S Marshall T/C 02:50, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Where content is referenced on article A, the community has never accepted a link from article B to article A as an acceptable reference for content on article B. That is hasn't explicitly said that the specific transclusion method used here is unacceptable previously is not relevant when the situation has never come up previously.
- Please can you link to these consultations about not including references on the page, because while the "should we split?" and "into how many should we split?" questions were widely consulted on, the fundamental question here "is it OK if the combined page is unreferenced?" doesn't seem to have been. Thryduulf (talk) 03:02, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 82#Source display is the cleanest attempt at addressing the sourcing question (by "cleanest", I mean that it's by itself and not distracted by other questions).
- NB that present List of common misconceptions is not an uncited page. It lists six ==Sources==, plus eight Wikipedia:Further reading pages and three Wikipedia:External links (all of which look like they should be moved to the end of List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics). The only failing is that material Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged is not displayed with an inline citation in the main page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not "justifying it as a well-meaning kludge". I'm telling you it's a thing we did openly, transparently and after a substantial amount of policy consultation in the appropriate places. And I'm telling you that it doesn't violate the black letter of policy. If the community thinks citations absolutely must be on the same rendered page as the claim, and it might think that, although we did ask---if that's the community's view then that needs to be added to policy, because the policy doesn't say so, and it never has.—S Marshall T/C 02:50, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- It doesn't matter how we got there, we have a page that was purposely designed to not include references, which violates content and cannot be overridden by local consensus. We know the citations exist elsewhere, but that's absolutely not an acceptable solution, so it doesn't make sense to dwell on the how we got to this situation and instead how to resolve the situation, of which there is a KISS solution (remove the transclusions, and simply make it a list-of-list page). Masem (t) 03:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- And that's not true either. The page was purposely designed to show that there are references, and to make sure people can find them.—S Marshall T/C 08:27, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- But it was still by design not made to include those referecens, which is a minimum requirement for sourcing. It doesn't matter that you have a big arrow pointing "Refs are this page", even though that may seem like a way to show the reader where the refs cite. Pages have to be fully comprehensive even if viewed offline, so a page that says the references are elsewhere is fails that. Masem (t) 12:11, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- And that's not true either. The page was purposely designed to show that there are references, and to make sure people can find them.—S Marshall T/C 08:27, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- A citation on another page is not inline to the statement on the page it was transcluded on. Therefore, it cannot be considered a inline citation for the purposes of WP:MINREF on that transcluded page any more than a bibliographic WP:GENREF would be, even if it was used as an inline citation on another page that the reader can get to. Alpha3031 (t • c) 11:36, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- A citation on a different page that the overwhelming majority of readers will never even see is not an inline citation.
- Again: That is not a fair framing of what happened. Please: be fair.Nobody has tossed aside basic wikipolicy. Everything that's challenged or likely to be challenged is supported by an inline citation to a reliable source. The issue is that that source is one click away. You're framing that as a policy violation, but WP:V does not say what you think it says. It was written before transclusion was commonplace and before new features like LST were implemented, and on the question of whether the references can be a click away from the thing they're citing, it is silent. Because we knew this was novel, WhatamIdoing asked on WT:V about it here.WAID was scrupulous about asking the community about this before we did it and she got very little response. Now we're getting a big lot of responses, but they're responses to the wrong question. You've framed this as "using selective transclusion to remove citations", which would be outrageous behaviour, so of course it's getting the response it is. The citations have not been removed. They're in place, one click away, with prominent links to help readers find them. It's been done after a great deal of thought and discussion, with the utmost transparency. But when WAID asked this, she framed the question accurately, and therefore got much less engagement and drama.—S Marshall T/C 01:58, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- It seems to have evolved (or I have been corrected). I have amended the heading/question. Is anyone really going to revise their statement to say "no, we should not toss aside basic wikipolicy for page size, but for template maximums yes"? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I understand why it was done this way. It's a novel attempt at a solution. But I'm not sure why the other two solutions commonly used - either splitting alphabetically or by field (such as by sciences, math, arts, etc) - into multiple articles that could be linked from a template on each other wouldn't have worked. In fact, it looks like there's three good separations into separate pages on that page already, which are being used for these transclusions. This page can be turned into a disambiguation page that just links to those three other pages, and the three pages can have see also or similar added to their top. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 00:33, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- The common solutions do work. The 'problem' is that some (a few?) editors really, really, really want all 27,000 words about common misconceptions all on the same page, without having to click between them. This method was suggested as a way to (attempt to) give everyone what they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No. I understand and appreciate the problem this solved, the work that went into the discussion and implementation, and the frustration editors who worked on this may feel. But every list and article requires references and the very problem that this was designed to solve points to the particular importance of references for List of common misconceptions. The current setup is also a barrier to editing. The fact that most readers don't look at references is not sufficient, nor is the fact that motivated readers can click through to check references and edit the real lists. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 03:04, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- About "every list and article requires references": Technically, we don't have a policy or guideline requiring a source to be cited in every list or every article. That rule applies only to BLPs, and to articles containing WP:MINREF content (so not, e.g., a list or article that contains purely 'obvious' content, such as "The capital of France is Paris" or "Cancer is a disease"). I have been surprised how little interest the community has in creating such a rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- WP:WHYCITE specifically calls out this situation, "If a section from the wikilinked page is copied or transcluded, sources must still be cited in the sampled section even if the wikilink page already has it cited." Masem (t) 03:37, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Also (emphasis added):
In particular, sources are required for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged
. MINREF contains similar statements. By definition, List of common misconceptions requires lots of citations. The P&G rarely use such strong language, often saying what "should" be done or avoided. And in practice, pages with zero references face steep challenges at AFC and AFD. I overstated the breadth of the requirement but the circumstances where references are not required do not apply here. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 04:45, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- Yes, we know what it says. There's been a lot of unintentional mansplaining to WhatamIdoing in this discussion, so I feel as if I need to stress that she is one of the principal authors of WP:V. Compared to her, I'm a callow newbie on policy pages, but even I have racked up some four-figure number of edits to WT:V over the last sixteen years. Everything we've done is meticulously compliant with the core content policy that we, to a substantial extent, wrote. We have set aside a guideline or two -- which we did knowingly, in unusual circumstances, and after copious quantities of discussion.—S Marshall T/C 08:41, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thing is, the end result of how you handled this ISN’T in line with core content policy. Blueboar (talk) 12:01, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- What I'm learning from this discussion is that the community thinks the inline citations must appear on the same rendered page as the information they're meant to cite. But that's not actually to be found anywhere in core content policy, and we did ask. We seem to need to add it -- most likely to WP:V, which is where it naturally fits.—S Marshall T/C 13:05, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- As noted above there has never been a need to explicitly say it previously, because everybody previously agreed it was the case anyway. Thryduulf (talk) 13:09, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- An inline citation should appear inline to the text that it is meant to support. That is why it's called an inline reference, and not a general reference or a "reference on another page". Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:10, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Huh… We have had multiple discussions through the years about the need for articles to stand on their own in regards to verification and citations. We have repeatedly reached consensus that “but it is cited at the linked article” is not good enough. The idea that we must repeat citations in every article in which (likely to be challenged) information appears is hardly new.
- I am actually rather surprised that two editors with the years of experience and policy involvement of WAID and S Marshall were not already aware that this was consensus.
- That said, S Marshall is correct in saying that this consensus isn’t directly spelled out in policy. And the fact that (despite their years of experience) they apparently didn’t know of this consensus tells me that perhaps it needs to be. Blueboar (talk) 15:11, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- As I've noted WHYCITE does express this requirement, but that's also a guideline and not a core content policy. This probably needs to be very clear in WP:V, particularly on citing any material that could be challenged. Masem (t) 15:14, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) @Blueboar
this consensus isn’t directly spelled out in policy [...] perhaps it needs to be
. I don't know whether it needs to be, but I don't think adding it will harm anything. Exactly how and where to add it is probably something best suited to a separate discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability rather than here. Thryduulf (talk) 15:15, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- We could add an explanatory footnote to
must be accompanied by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material...
clarifying that "accompanied by" means displayed on the same page as the content, including where the content is transcluded, subject to the narrow exceptions in WP:WHENNOTCITE (DAB pages and most lead content).--Trystan (talk) 15:36, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- On this point, Thryduulf is correct. This discussion isn't a sufficient basis to make a substantial edit to a core content policy. There needs to be workshopping on WT:V.—S Marshall T/C 15:41, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would agree that this should be workshopped at WP:V. Blueboar (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think you mistake or understate the consensus found in policy: it is explicit consensus that you don't need to inline cite in situations where challenge is unlikely, thus we may allow it in limited circumstance like the often broad unconstrovertial overview of a lead, some uncontroversial lists and otherwise . . . but not where challenge is likely (or quotes) in any matter, including lead or list, per policy. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Not having citations in the lede when that information is cited in the body of the article is reasonable, because if the page was being viewed offline or in print, those citations are still present. The problem is when the citation information exists on a completely separate page. Masem (t) 12:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- As leadcite says, its still not a pass from when an inline cite is required, in any event. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Not having citations in the lede when that information is cited in the body of the article is reasonable, because if the page was being viewed offline or in print, those citations are still present. The problem is when the citation information exists on a completely separate page. Masem (t) 12:06, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Do we really need to refer to a committee the task of workshopping a proposal to formally discuss the decision to confirm the fact that inline, does, actually, quite literally, in fact, mean in-line (adj. from in, meaning in; and line meaning line). Alpha3031 (t • c) 16:51, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think you mistake or understate the consensus found in policy: it is explicit consensus that you don't need to inline cite in situations where challenge is unlikely, thus we may allow it in limited circumstance like the often broad unconstrovertial overview of a lead, some uncontroversial lists and otherwise . . . but not where challenge is likely (or quotes) in any matter, including lead or list, per policy. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would agree that this should be workshopped at WP:V. Blueboar (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- On this point, Thryduulf is correct. This discussion isn't a sufficient basis to make a substantial edit to a core content policy. There needs to be workshopping on WT:V.—S Marshall T/C 15:41, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- We could add an explanatory footnote to
- Perhaps I am easily confused, but I see the inline requirement as already quite clear:
WP:V — This page in a nutshell box: ... any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by inline citations.
WP:V — In the very first sentence, after the TOC: All content must be verifiable. ... it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source ...
. WP:INLINE — Defines the concept: On Wikipedia, an inline citation is generally a citation in a page's text
vs.... a general reference. This is ... often placed at or near the end of an article
. Nothing about citations outside the article. wikt:inline — An element that occurs within the flow of the text.
wikt:in-line — (writing) Inserted in the flow of a text.
Perhaps WP:V is not explicit that an inline citation should be visible, but does it honestly need to say not to hide it? What did I miss? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)- I agree, the standard is clear. I suppose explicit clarification is harmless but I'm not sure it's necessary. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 18:13, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I have been hoping for several years that we could get community consensus to add a line to WP:V that says completely unreferenced articles are disallowed. However, the community has so far rejected this (usually for overreach – instead of saying "c'mon, guys, there really ought to be some kind of source in every article", the proposal is usually too close to "You must add an independent secondary source that indisputably provides SIGCOV of the exact subject all by itself, under penalty of instant deletion").
- Before this was implemented, I asked about this at WT:V in the full expectation that the community would immediately land on it like a ton of bricks. However, @Blueboar was the only editor who directly opposed it at the time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Can you link? I am curious as to what my comments were at that time… what the context was, and whether I have changed my mind? Blueboar (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sure.—S Marshall T/C 20:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, but not what I was asking for. I was asking for a link to the discussion WAID was referring to (where I apparently opposed his suggestion for needing some kind of source in every article) Blueboar (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- That is the discussion. Your comment was the third one (out of four). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- ...and, this is how confusions arise. WAID wrote: "Before this was implemented, I asked about this at WT:V..." By "this", she meant, "the combined/transcluded List of common misconceptions". But that was actually a change of subject; her previous paragraph was about a policy requiring some kind of source in every article. Blueboar, being a little less close to this, didn't see that the subject had changed (and why would he?) He thought WAID was saying he'd !voted against a policy requiring some kind of source in every article. And so we get confusion. Two people reading the same text and understanding completely different things by what they read.That confusion is at the heart of this. A requirement that every controversial claim on Wikipedia is verified by inline citations is written in policy. A requirement that every controversial claim on Wikipedia is verified by inline citations on every mainspace page where the claim appears is not written into policy, and it never has been.All these people who think there's no possible confusion and it's all so blindingly obvious that it doesn't need writing down, were nowhere to be seen when we specifically asked this question. And all the people who think it's absolutely verboten to split up the List of common misconceptions for any reason including technical constraints, are nowhere to be seen now. Got to love consensus.—S Marshall T/C 09:15, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- It is natural for even very experienced editors undertaking careful, good-faith interpretations of policy to reach different conclusions about how it applies. That sort of thing happens all the time even in fields when the wording being considered is more formally drafted (like an appellate court overruling a trial judge's interpretation of a statute), and our WP:PG are not written or intended to be applied in a legalistic way. It's the unfortunate risk of innovation that sometimes, once the thing is actually created, having more eyes on it will escalate issues that for whatever reason didn't attract much attention at the conceptual stage.--Trystan (talk) 12:55, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- ...and, this is how confusions arise. WAID wrote: "Before this was implemented, I asked about this at WT:V..." By "this", she meant, "the combined/transcluded List of common misconceptions". But that was actually a change of subject; her previous paragraph was about a policy requiring some kind of source in every article. Blueboar, being a little less close to this, didn't see that the subject had changed (and why would he?) He thought WAID was saying he'd !voted against a policy requiring some kind of source in every article. And so we get confusion. Two people reading the same text and understanding completely different things by what they read.That confusion is at the heart of this. A requirement that every controversial claim on Wikipedia is verified by inline citations is written in policy. A requirement that every controversial claim on Wikipedia is verified by inline citations on every mainspace page where the claim appears is not written into policy, and it never has been.All these people who think there's no possible confusion and it's all so blindingly obvious that it doesn't need writing down, were nowhere to be seen when we specifically asked this question. And all the people who think it's absolutely verboten to split up the List of common misconceptions for any reason including technical constraints, are nowhere to be seen now. Got to love consensus.—S Marshall T/C 09:15, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- That is the discussion. Your comment was the third one (out of four). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, but not what I was asking for. I was asking for a link to the discussion WAID was referring to (where I apparently opposed his suggestion for needing some kind of source in every article) Blueboar (talk) 20:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sure.—S Marshall T/C 20:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Can you link? I am curious as to what my comments were at that time… what the context was, and whether I have changed my mind? Blueboar (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Ghost… what we don’t explicitly state is that the inline citation has to be repeated in every article containing the information… saying “but there IS an inline citation over at (linked article)” isn’t good enough. Blueboar (talk) 18:19, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, to imagine that scenario, rather robs the word "inline" of meaning. An article (or sentence, or phrase) that does not have an inline cite, does not have an inline cite, and that's all there is to it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- In the situations I am referring to, everything is technically supported by inline citations - it’s just that those citations are “inline” at other articles, not at the article being read.
- I suppose you could say that problem is less whether an inline citation has been provided, and more where one hasn’t been provided. That’s why we need something in policy that says… “repeat the inline citation in every article where the information is stated” (or similar) Blueboar (talk) 21:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- That seems like a strange use of "technically", rather it seems what you actually are saying is it's not technically inline cited, rather it is inline cited elsewhere, just not here. Which means it is not inline cited where it matters and is required to be. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:24, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Ok, sure … but while currently that requirement is implied, but not explicitly stated anywhere, and I think it should be made explicit.
- FYI - An attempt was just made to add language on this to WP:V, but it was reverted pending conclusion of this discussion. Blueboar (talk) 21:50, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I know, I was called to explain something on a user talk page about this discussion and that change. I don't see a need for change but if anyone wants to discuss it at the policy page, fine by me. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:55, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with those saying that an inline citation is, by definition, contained inline within the text that it is supporting, and not in another text passage elsewhere. I appreciate the desire to add more text to guidance whenever someone presents a different interpretation, but I think we should do our best to avoid adding more specialized guidance. Less text is more likely to be read than more text. isaacl (talk) 22:27, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- That seems like a strange use of "technically", rather it seems what you actually are saying is it's not technically inline cited, rather it is inline cited elsewhere, just not here. Which means it is not inline cited where it matters and is required to be. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:24, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, to imagine that scenario, rather robs the word "inline" of meaning. An article (or sentence, or phrase) that does not have an inline cite, does not have an inline cite, and that's all there is to it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree, the standard is clear. I suppose explicit clarification is harmless but I'm not sure it's necessary. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 18:13, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- What I'm learning from this discussion is that the community thinks the inline citations must appear on the same rendered page as the information they're meant to cite. But that's not actually to be found anywhere in core content policy, and we did ask. We seem to need to add it -- most likely to WP:V, which is where it naturally fits.—S Marshall T/C 13:05, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thing is, the end result of how you handled this ISN’T in line with core content policy. Blueboar (talk) 12:01, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, we know what it says. There's been a lot of unintentional mansplaining to WhatamIdoing in this discussion, so I feel as if I need to stress that she is one of the principal authors of WP:V. Compared to her, I'm a callow newbie on policy pages, but even I have racked up some four-figure number of edits to WT:V over the last sixteen years. Everything we've done is meticulously compliant with the core content policy that we, to a substantial extent, wrote. We have set aside a guideline or two -- which we did knowingly, in unusual circumstances, and after copious quantities of discussion.—S Marshall T/C 08:41, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Also (emphasis added):
- WP:WHYCITE specifically calls out this situation, "If a section from the wikilinked page is copied or transcluded, sources must still be cited in the sampled section even if the wikilink page already has it cited." Masem (t) 03:37, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- A requirement for challenged or likely to be challenged material to be
accompanied by an inline citation
is clearly not met when that material appears unaccompanied by any citations. It is already quite explicitly stated. I have no objection to making it even more clear, but I see this more as a hyper-specific technical clarification than filling in any sort of gap in the policy.--Trystan (talk) 22:04, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- About "every list and article requires references": Technically, we don't have a policy or guideline requiring a source to be cited in every list or every article. That rule applies only to BLPs, and to articles containing WP:MINREF content (so not, e.g., a list or article that contains purely 'obvious' content, such as "The capital of France is Paris" or "Cancer is a disease"). I have been surprised how little interest the community has in creating such a rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- No, and whatever was tried to be done, it does not work, eg. someone going to List of common misconceptions#Judiasm or the following "Sports" section, etc. has no idea what the cites are or how to find them or correct them or dispute them. And by the list's nature, these things are subject to challenge. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:34, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- There is absolutely nothing about this topic that warrants invention of a new type of list article. The topic is perfectly suited to be a list of lists, which is such a common article style that we even have a list of such articles. Zerotalk 12:40, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- Moreover, people who claim there is no policy against it are wrong. We have all seen newbies who think that a wikilink to another article removes the need for a citation, and we tell them that Wikipedia is not allowed as a source. That's policy. This newly-invented article style is both unnecesssary and policy-violating. Zerotalk 14:12, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Comment. I don't think the transclusion limit will go away just with just wishing it wasn't there and trying to restore the old style of the article. So while the solution is not great, I respect why it was done, but we should still be searching for a technical workaround. Is it possible to have a per-article exemption or extension of the limit? Also, if not, have we considered basically a custom script for the article? For every reference, we'd have the template'd citation in a comment with some magic processing flag. Then we'd run the script and it'd create plain wikitext equivalents of all the references. No substitutions at all, that way, although the page will still be huge. e.g. something like:
- <ref name="some-reference"><!-- REF-TEMPLATE: {{cite book |title=Reliable Book |last=Doe |first=John }} -->Doe, John. ''Reliable Book''.</ref>
- It'd be a hassle for maintenance since people would have to run the script every so often to replace with the wikitext rollout of the template, but it's doable. SnowFire (talk) 18:54, 15 July 2025 (UTC)
- I've been giving this some thought, and where I've come down is this: As a general matter, no, we shouldn't do this. An article's citations should be on the article page, and ideally inline when the article is well developed. But for this specific article, I could see an argument that WP:IAR applies if there's good reason for the list to be all on one page rather than split into subpages with list of common misconceptions being a list of lists (although in that case it should probably be renamed to lists of common misconceptions). Is there an IAR argument for that? So far I've seen assertions both ways, but no real reasoning given here. Anomie⚔ 12:12, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- The primary argument I've seen based on this and the RFCs was that keeping one single article with all of them is a nice thing to have for readers that want to see all this misconceptions in one place. Which to me, is a very very weak argument for evoking IAR on a core content policy (WP:V in relation to sourcing). That might fly at TVTropes, but not Wikipedia. Masem (t) 12:20, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Hopefully the people making the argument will come here to make it, instead of letting it be strawmanned and dismissed with a facetious reference to a site that doesn't use sourcing at all. Anomie⚔ 12:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- I would oppose an IAR on this. Consider the situation where a reader has limited access to a computer, and so prints out the article in hard copy.
- Normally, that hard copy would include any relevant citations. But in this case it wouldn’t. The article would not stand on its own… in order to know which sources verify the information, the reader would also need to print out all the sub-articles. Blueboar (talk) 12:52, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Personally I don't find that very convincing. If that reader cares about the cites in their printed copy, shouldn't they have paid attention to the notices and printed the subarticles instead? You could use the same reasoning to try to claim we should disable the ability for people to print only the pages they care about, without the list of references at the end that come later in the document. Anomie⚔ 12:18, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't see much of an argument that articulates that it actually makes the encyclopedia better, it appears to have been done because it was 'liked' and there was some technical issue, but the path chosen then ran over 'core policy' -- so 'not better'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- The primary argument I've seen based on this and the RFCs was that keeping one single article with all of them is a nice thing to have for readers that want to see all this misconceptions in one place. Which to me, is a very very weak argument for evoking IAR on a core content policy (WP:V in relation to sourcing). That might fly at TVTropes, but not Wikipedia. Masem (t) 12:20, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- No I have seen nothing in the arguments here that justifies ignoring our policies on verification and citing sources. - Donald Albury 15:43, 16 July 2025 (UTC)
- Several editors have asked above for an explanation or reason why keeping the article as a single page is desirable. I'll re-iterate what I wrote at the time - I don't expect it will change very many opinions, but here it is:
- The current article is THE wikipedia list of commmon misconceptions. Once split, what remains is just several articles in a collection of List of misconceptions about yada yada yada. That is, it loses its gravitas once it loses its singularity.
- By way of analogy, The US Academy Awards gives out an award for Best Picture. It also gives out "lesser" awards for categories like Best International Feature Film, Best Animated Short Film, Best Documentary Feature Film, etc. Imagine if the academy decided to eliminate the Best Picture prize and instead split it up into two or three, with no one film getting "best picture". That would be a major change, and my guess is that it would receive roughly zero support. Splitting this article is roughly analagous to eliminating the best picture category for movies.
Full thread is here
Mr. Swordfish (talk) 19:36, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think "gravitas" is a good reason to ignore our well established policies on verifiablilty, etc.
- It still will be "The List", just split into different pages for technical reasons. No different than a book having multiple pages. I don't follow your analogy, we (as Wikipedia) don't really rank things or proclaim importance on topics. We follow the reliable sources. Making an editorial decision based on "rank" and "gravitas" feels like a misstep. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 21:41, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
- We did have the Wikipedia:Books namespace that could do precisely this sort of pagination, but it was not really used. However, Wikibooks still exists and could possibly be used to carry out a similar function. CMD (talk) 03:58, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- I do not, in general, like the practice of transcluding articles into other articles at all, even via {{excerpt}} or the like. When a reader sees something on that article, they should be able to edit that article text without going elsewhere. So, I think a solution needs to be found that doesn't involve doing that, especially when that also removes references. If that means a split, that means a split; if that means asking about a longer-term solution to the technical limitation from the appropriate people, maybe that can be done as well. Generally, performance/crapflooding limits should be permissive enough that a legitimate user of a site would never run into them or even notice they're present, so that probably indicates a problem in and of itself if that's happening. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I don't think the difficulties of such cross-page templates is really appreciated by some. Years ago, I had a devil of a time trying to correct an article, and I gave up for months trying to do it. No idea how to find the template, not aware that it was a template I had to find, etc. etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:59, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Consider the main page The page in question doesn't seem to merit special treatment. But note that there's already a more prominent page of this sort – the main page. This is assembled from transcluded pages and, by convention, does not include any footnotes or citations. It contains numerous facts and many of them are controversial but we are quite used to the idea that readers will have to drill down to verify them. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:53, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- The main page is not an article, and I don't think readers expect it to be one. We don't source on non-article pages like Portals and Categories as well. (Well technically it's in the article space but you know what I mean.) CMD (talk) 15:19, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- We', the Main Page does not have an "edit" tab (at least to ordinary users), this List does. That's quite a difference. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
Selective transclusion- close? next step?
I think it is fairly clear that the community consensus is opposed to the selective tranclusion that took place at List of common misconceptions. Can we close this, or is there something else to discuss? Blueboar (talk) 12:36, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- We need to determine the consensus for what to replace it is: the current situation is clearly unacceptable but the status quo ante was broken, so a simple revert is not enough. That discussion of course doesn't have to happen here, but if it isn't here there needs to be a clear pointer to where it actually is. Thryduulf (talk) 12:58, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- OK… to me the obvious solution is to undo the transclusion, and use the original article title for an index or “list of lists” pointing to the various split articles.
- To give an example of at least the direction I would go: see what we did at List of Freemasons… the original list article was deemed too lengthy, and so we split it (alphabetically) … we turned the original page into an index page pointing to the split sub-articles. We created a lead section that is repeated on all of the articles - index and sub-articles (and I think we use transclusion to do that part). I think something similar would work for the various misconceptions articles. Blueboar (talk) 13:15, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- If you go back to the RFCs that started this, there is clearly support for splitting into lists (eg lists of lists). The idea of using transclusion was not a topic addressed in the closure of the RFCs (not that it wasn't rejected, just that only a few editors in those RFCs seemed passionate to want the transclusion approach). So it seems just falling back to a list of lists still meets the end point of the RFC closures while maintaining policy complaince. Masem (t) 13:56, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- List of lists is the usual way to do it and nobody has given a good reason why this example is special. Zerotalk 14:31, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- List of lists per Zero0000, just reduce the page to plain links to the three sub-articles instead of transcluding them. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 18:19, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- List of lists per Zero and others in prior threads. This is a sensible solution to the original problem with page size and to the same-page inline citation issue. --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 19:06, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- Enforce plaintext citations only. Nobody else replied to my idea above but if the problem is the template expansion limit, we can just... not use templates. It's fine. It's an explicitly accepted style. It's something we could write a script on to turn template citations into plain text ones as well, and the templated version can be in invisible comments next to it. SnowFire (talk) 06:11, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that this would be sensible. Can this be done by substitution of the {{citation}} templates? In other words, by using subst: Andrew🐉(talk) 09:21, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- This is another sensible solution. Sorry I missed this in long thread. I think there is a view that the list was too long regardless of the technical limitation on template use. I don't have a strong view either way and would defer to others but would accept plaintext refs. (Honestly, I find {{citation}} templates tedious and harder to use but muddle through out of a sense of conformity. It has stopped me from editing on more than one occasion.) --MYCETEAE 🍄🟫—talk 15:52, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Unfortunately this won't work because of T4700, a bug that recently celebrated its 20th birthday.—S Marshall T/C 17:22, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Change the parent page to a simple, plain List of lists. This would be normal for a list that has become too large and needs to be split into several lists. Clean out all of the noinclude tags in the sub-lists and stay with real, maintainable references — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:57, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- As several others have noted over the years, the lists should probably be deleted; they are a magnet for bad contributions and most of the entries don't have references that support that they are rebutting misconceptions that are common. Quite a few of the "corrections" are, arguably, as misleading as the supposed misconception. Setting that aside for now, the only solution is a list of lists; that is the approach taken for every other article with this problem. A local consensus of XKCD fans who want a giant, bloated, unsourced "List of common misconceptions" cannot override site policy. 217.180.228.155 (talk) 12:58, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- List of lists per Zero. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 16:30, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- Next step should be do take the default action where there have been two RfCs deciding (a) to split, and (b) to split into three articles: create a list of lists. Consensus can change, but alternatives don't need to be discussed at the policy village pump. What's important for here is just a consensus that whatever solution editors on that page come to should ensure references are visible to readers in the place where readers see the text. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:56, 19 July 2025 (UTC)
- There appears to be clear consensus that suppressing cites via transclusion is not allowed under wiki policy, and that the obvious solution is to do a "normal" split, with the main article being a list of lists without transcluding the material. This has been implemented, along with a bit of cleanup to remove the transclusion markup. I'd say it's time to close this discussion, with further discussion moved to the talk pages of the four articles affected. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:47, 20 July 2025 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion § RFC: New CSD for unreviewed LLM content
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion § RFC: New CSD for unreviewed LLM content. Ca talk to me! 17:08, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
Are RfCs required to amend MOS pages?
A user has removed the MOS:AIUPSCALE paragraph of MOS:IMAGES because I didn't raise an RfC before adding it back in 2023.
The paragraph's addition was proposed and discussed on the MOS's talk page. The thread ran for three months, had some strong support, and included a full month's wait to see if anyone objected to a proposed wording before applying it. It didn't occur to me to open an RfC, as a consensus among those watching MOS:IMAGES seemed very clear.
Is the user right to remove this paragraph? If I need to start a new RfC to add the paragraph, how should the broken inbound shortcut be handled during that? Belbury (talk) 10:28, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- An RFC is required to create a new policy or guideline page (WP:PROPOSAL), but not for changes (WP:PGCHANGE). The change in question was discussed and clearly had consensus, so there was no reason to proceed with an RFC. The editor objecting to the material should seek consensus to remove it.--Trystan (talk) 12:55, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
How to get ban removed
Hi. I'm currently not allowed to create new articles, because in past I've made extremely short and poorly sources articles. However, I would like to appeal to get the ban removed. How do I do that? Best regards. --Pek (talk) 09:01, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1171#User:Pek_continuing_to_mass_create_poor-quality_stubs_after_ban_expiry, I believe. If I understand WP:UNBAN correctly, you go to WP:AN, explain what you did wrong, if you have breached the topicban at any point since it was implemented, and why you think the topicban is no longer necessary. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:40, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Ping to @GorillaWarfare if you want to add anything. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:44, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ping. I've left my comments over at the unban discussion: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposal for article creation ban removal. GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 15:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
Intrusive animations
I have just encountered an active user's talk page with animated snowflakes. It was such a severe barrier to accessibility for me (and no doubt for others), that I could not read the page without viewing the source.
I have copied the relevant code to User:Pigsonthewing/Snowflakes so you can see what that looks like without singling out the individual.
At what point do we deem such gimmicks as contrary and detrimental to Wikipedia's purpose, and remove them? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:18, 21 July 2025 (UTC)
- Wikipedia talk:User pages/Archive 19#RfC: allowing editors to opt-out of seeing floating decorative elements arrived at a consensus
to wrap "floating" decorative elements that do not otherwise conflict with the user page or talk page guidelines with a CSS class.
so that it can be hidden, see WP:STICKYDECO. That is not directly relevant given the markup used on your snowflakes page (and presumably the page you originally saw it) doesn't keep the object in a fixed position. I would argue however that non-sticky decorative elements that "interfere with communication between editors" meet the spirit of the policy and should at minimum be similarly wrapped. Thryduulf (talk) 11:47, 21 July 2025 (UTC)- The underlying HTML code is indeed flagged with a
sticky-decorationCSS class and so users can opt out of seeing it, following the instructions at Wikipedia:User pages § Sticky decorative elements. isaacl (talk) 17:23, 21 July 2025 (UTC)- Which is of little use to logged-out editors; those (including me, before now) who are not aware of this facility; those who lack the technical chops to make use of it; or those who wish to see most other "sticky" elements, but not those which cause accessibility issues.
- I now see that WP:SMI says:
"CSS and other formatting codes that disrupt the MediaWiki interface, for example by preventing important links or controls from being easily seen or used, making text on the page hard to read or unreadable ... may be removed or remedied by any user."
Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:43, 21 July 2025 (UTC)- Logged-out editors spend very little time looking at pages outside the mainspace; you are now aware of this facility (and are welcome to advertise it further); I've never encountered a registered editor whose "technical chops" does not include scrolling to the end of the Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets-gadget-section-appearance section, ticking the box for the last item, and saving their change to their prefs, but if there are any, then the principle behind Wikipedia:Competence is required may be relevant.
- If you meant that people who have the "technical chops" to create such CSS elements will not also have the "technical chops" necessary to make them hideable, editors who can do CSS (a group that does not include me) assure me that this will never be true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
"I've never encountered a registered editor whose "technical chops" does not include scrolling to..."
- I've encountered a great many. It's not an issue of competence; you will find no mention of user-gadgets on the linked page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:18, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- The underlying HTML code is indeed flagged with a
- Keeping our editors happy by allowing them to customise their user page is usually more helpful for Wikipedia's purpose than policing other people's userspace. Editors who do not like it can opt out or ignore the user pages they dislike. —Kusma (talk) 17:03, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
"Keeping our editors happy by allowing them to customise their user page is usually more helpful for Wikipedia's purpose than..."
- I can understand why someone might think that; I'd love to see some evidence to back it up (for some value of "keeping happy", if that's what such animations really do). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:20, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Proposal: Streamlined Good Article → Featured Article Path
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I propose creating a streamlined path for promoting Good Articles (GAs) to Featured Article (FA) status when they already meet or nearly meet FA criteria.
Currently, the FA nomination process (WP:FAC) is long, intimidating, and often repeats much of the work already done at GA review. Many GAs already meet the majority of FA criteria, but editors are discouraged from nominating them due to the bureaucratic and adversarial nature of FAC.
Key Points of the Proposal
- **"Fast-Track FA Review" for GAs**
Create a shortened FA review process for GAs that have been reviewed recently and clearly meet a high standard. The review would focus on fine-tuning rather than repeating all GA checks.
- **Reuse GA Review Assessments**
Allow GA reviews to serve as part of the evidence for FA criteria. FAC reviewers would only confirm that GA standards still hold, rather than starting from scratch.
- **Encourage Collaborative Upgrades**
WikiProjects could "adopt" existing GAs and work to bring them to FA level with a clearer, less burdensome process.
- **Align GA and FA Criteria More Closely**
Consider adjusting GA criteria so that the gap to FA is smaller and less procedural.
Rationale
- **Quality over Quantity:** Wikipedia has millions of articles but only a small fraction are FAs (about 0.1%). We should prioritize improving existing content.
- **Reduce Bureaucracy:** The current FAC system often discourages nominations for articles that are already close to FA quality.
- **Encourage Editors:** A streamlined path would reward editors for improving articles without burning them out on process.
- **Better Reader Experience:** More polished and comprehensive articles benefit readers directly.
Questions for the Community
- Would you support the creation of a "fast-track" FA process for recently reviewed or high-quality GAs?
- Should there be a time limit (e.g., GAs reviewed within the last 12–24 months) for eligibility?
- How can we preserve the rigor and prestige of FA while reducing unnecessary duplication?
I welcome thoughts, refinements, or alternatives. Would this help us move toward a true "quality-first" model?
—ExoNeos (talk) 00:24, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Why are there accessibility style guidelines at WikiProject Usability?
Hey, could anyone assist with my question at WikiProject Usability:
- Why do they have local web accessibility guidelines, duplicating Manual of Style:Accessibility, etc.: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability#What is the distinction from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility?
ITN and consensus
Among the various problems arising from ITN and its process, there are some issues about how WP:CONSENSUS is applied there. I'm asking the community to clarify which parts of consensus and other P&G apply to ITN, and what the appropriate action is when those are not followed.
The first problem is head count votes. Votes that are normally subject to WP:DISCARD are included under headcounts. Especially prominent are "I don't like it", "other stuff exists", "crystal ball", and "arbitrary quantity" arguments, where editors support or oppose based on whether they personally find the subject interesting, whether past flawed ITN-consensus resulted in posts, predictions about how a different event could happen (or not happen) in the future that overshadows the one being discussed, or whether there's some arbitrary metric like people dead (which is why you see so many random "people died" posts of questionable notability). I raised this issue last year at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive365#Close review: X blocked in Brazil, where it was deemed so bad that it led to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments.
The second problem is the rushed and improper closes. I get that the standard one week isn't practical at ITN and shorter discussions are necessary, but it's common for consensus to be decided a few hours after they begin, even when there is disagreement and further discussion is taking place, as admins will cast WP:SUPERVOTEs to post or archive a proposed item.
I fear that many of the editors at ITN do not understand how consensus works on Wikipedia, because many of them participate in this area almost exclusively. A few weeks ago I raised my concerns on the talk page of one of the admins who frequents ITN, Stephen, but he disagreed that the standards for closes should apply at ITN. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:46, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- Diff for the discussion with Stephen mentioned. Curbon7 (talk) 22:16, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Thebiguglyalien, at the most fundamental, basic level, consensus means that editors agree. A lack of consensus means that they don't agree. (BTW, this fact, which occasionally surprises editors, is stated in plain language, in the same section as the WP:DISCARD paragraph, as its second sentence.)
- All this stuff about which arguments should be accepted are ways of determining whether the couple of folks in a particular discussion are likely forming an agreement that the broader community will be able to tolerate. And they don't apply in every situation. For example, it's perfectly fine to have your recommendation in a Wikipedia:Requests for adminship discussion be "based on personal opinion only". And DISCARD is self-contradictory: It begins by saying not to count votes, and in the middle of the paragraph, says the closer is expected to close by judging which view has the predominant number of responsible Wikipedians supporting it. One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others), right? I therefore suggest that you put less emphasis on the Official Rules™ of closing a discussion and more on whether most editors, mostly, most of the time, more or less agree.
- It's also important to remember that ITN is not a "content" decision (e.g., like whether X source supports Y statement, or whether it's WP:DUE to say that a notable person was arrested for drunk driving). ITN is a "process" decision (e.g., like whether an article does/doesn't meet the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria). Therefore some content-focused rules simply don't apply to ITN. Others (e.g., Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a crystal ball) might be even more important (e.g., CRYSTAL being a perfectly reasonable argument against including any proposed page that's full of "unverifiable speculation, rumors, or presumption" on the Main Page – though one might suspect that the editors naming it are actually saying that the event's Wikipedia:Subjective importance seems low to them, and that their objection has little to do with the policy at CRYSTAL, which you may find worth reading some time). As you say, some procedural differences are expected. Closing within hours should be expected for ITN, just like closing within hours should be expected at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Tempus fugit, and some parts of Wikipedia shouldn't sit around chatting for a minimum of 24 hours just for form's sake, especially if the decision is "over my dead body". If we add something to ITN and regret it, we can remove it. And if we reject it quickly and regret that, we can add it later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- DISCARD says to discard arguments not rooted in PAGs, and then evaluate which of the remaining valid arguments has more support among editors. That ITN is a process decision vs. a content decision is irrelevant. Your comparison to FAC is particularly inapt. FAC has a clear set of standards, whereas ITN's standards (if you can call them that) are based on subjective determinations of whether a topic is "important" enough to be on the main page. The idea that an entry can be rejected at ITN because a bunch of ITN regulars (many of whom don't regularly participate in other parts of the encyclopedia, as TBA has noted) don't think something is "important" is absolutely contrary to the praxis of consensus. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:52, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- @Voorts, I think you're overlooking the contextual factors. When was the last time you saw an RFA support vote discarded on the grounds that it was "based on personal opinion only" or "not rooted in PAGs"? (Ever?)
- Since RFA isn't strictly following the advice given at DISCARD, then only two things are possible:
- All of our RFAs are violating the One True™ Rules for closing discussions, or
- DISCARD isn't telling us the whole story that applies to every single decision.
- Which do you pick? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- The 'crats abide by pretty clear standards when they have to evaluate an RfA in a 'crat chat. RfA is also different because it's about the trust of the community, which can only be measured by editors' opinions. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:03, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- I suggest to you that many decisions are about editors' opinions. Shall we tag this page as a policy, guideline, or essay? Editors' opinions are the only thing that matters. Even things that are directly and obviously in the mainspace, such as the RFCs about which of several acceptable images to put in the lead, are ultimately decided by editors' opinions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that editors opinions matter. Those opinions are usually guided by some ground rules that we as a community have adopted. ITN has been resistant to having any such ground rules other than a vague, subjective standard. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:32, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sometimes ground rule that can be derided as "a vague, subjective standard" is the only workable ground rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that editors opinions matter. Those opinions are usually guided by some ground rules that we as a community have adopted. ITN has been resistant to having any such ground rules other than a vague, subjective standard. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:32, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- I suggest to you that many decisions are about editors' opinions. Shall we tag this page as a policy, guideline, or essay? Editors' opinions are the only thing that matters. Even things that are directly and obviously in the mainspace, such as the RFCs about which of several acceptable images to put in the lead, are ultimately decided by editors' opinions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- The 'crats abide by pretty clear standards when they have to evaluate an RfA in a 'crat chat. RfA is also different because it's about the trust of the community, which can only be measured by editors' opinions. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:03, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, it is a content decision about what goes on the Main Page, but it is basically a mostly unbounded editorial judgement, like an eccentric collective editor-in-chief, who decides what goes on the front page, because . . . and follows some basic content decorum. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:11, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- That's my impression as well. A decision has to be made, and so editors make a decision. But the decision is based on "mostly unbounded editorial judgement".
- There is, frankly, no possibility of finding reliable sources that will provide solid external guidance. We're not going to see "Science proves the English Wikipedia should put more articles about science and fewer articles about deaths in ITN". There's nothing to stop an editor from forming their own ideas about the criteria that they believe – using their own, mostly unbounded editorial judgment – would be best, but they're not going to be able to force others to follow their rules.
- Ditto for all the other sections on the Main Page, by the way. TFA is a selection process, and it is not driven by what reliable sources say should be highlighted in the top left corner. DYK is a selection process, and it is not driven by what reliable sources say should be highlighted. TFP is a selection process, and it is not driven by what kind of image reliable sources say we should put on the Main Page. ITN draws more fire, but that might be because of two factors: More demand for the limited space, and being more honest about the selection being made by editorial judgment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- At the core, I think a big problem is that ITN still has an identity problem, some editors want to be covering news, others as featuring articles that happen to be in the news, which work to two different ends. I asked that question a handful of years ago, and it was very much a near-even split. Which is why we get these types of debates about what is consensus are not cleanly resolved. And our guidelines that drive how such discussions should go is very much a core of that identity problem because they seem to cover both directions. Masem (t) 03:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- That reminds me that I haven't seen your name at m:Public consultation about Wikinews, which is "a community reevaluation of Wikinews, by Wikinews and other communities" (emphasis in the original), with the possibility that Wikinews will be spun off to a different organization, archived, or whatever else we suggest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- Well, I'm not convinced by the no external sources thing, as a deciding issue -- the problem is no internal consensus to further bound the judgement. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:18, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think the problem is that, even though there is an internal consensus (after all, the process has been working this way for many years), some editors are surprised to discover that said consensus is "use your judgement" and specifically not to "follow the sources". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- But that's not a consensus problem, that is a lack of consensus problem. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- Two sides of the same coin?
- I think it might be a values problem: The community has a consensus (i.e., this is how this process works, for pragmatic reasons), but "I" think the community is wrong, because I think the process should be based on our reverence for sources instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:06, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sure, two sides. But seems overwrought to call it "values". It's a process issue, concerning guidance for judgement making that can be agreed upon or not (here, there being thin guidance or even purpose disagreement within ITN). Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:32, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think the disagreement is based in a difference of values. ITN has several such, e.g., "I value helping readers find relevant articles, so put that article up now" vs "I value Wikipedia's reputation for quality, so delay that article until it has been improved".
- In this case, I think that the traditional dispute over which content to list ("Whatever's most popular with the readers" vs "Ugh, not another article about ____ – we're here to educate, not to mimic the internet's pre-existing systemic biases") has developed a different dimension: "Use common sense and some vague advice" vs "Every decision must be backed by a reliable source, even decisions about which items to put in ITN and for how long". It appears that some editors believe we'll get a better result by following sources instead of common sense. They value sources above judgement. This POV was certainly a small minority back in the day, but I think things have changed. I suspect that most of our younger editors really can't imagine a circumstance in which Wikipedia:Ignore all rules should be invoked. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 30 July 2025 (UTC)
- Sure, two sides. But seems overwrought to call it "values". It's a process issue, concerning guidance for judgement making that can be agreed upon or not (here, there being thin guidance or even purpose disagreement within ITN). Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:32, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- But that's not a consensus problem, that is a lack of consensus problem. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 29 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think the problem is that, even though there is an internal consensus (after all, the process has been working this way for many years), some editors are surprised to discover that said consensus is "use your judgement" and specifically not to "follow the sources". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
- At the core, I think a big problem is that ITN still has an identity problem, some editors want to be covering news, others as featuring articles that happen to be in the news, which work to two different ends. I asked that question a handful of years ago, and it was very much a near-even split. Which is why we get these types of debates about what is consensus are not cleanly resolved. And our guidelines that drive how such discussions should go is very much a core of that identity problem because they seem to cover both directions. Masem (t) 03:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
- DISCARD says to discard arguments not rooted in PAGs, and then evaluate which of the remaining valid arguments has more support among editors. That ITN is a process decision vs. a content decision is irrelevant. Your comparison to FAC is particularly inapt. FAC has a clear set of standards, whereas ITN's standards (if you can call them that) are based on subjective determinations of whether a topic is "important" enough to be on the main page. The idea that an entry can be rejected at ITN because a bunch of ITN regulars (many of whom don't regularly participate in other parts of the encyclopedia, as TBA has noted) don't think something is "important" is absolutely contrary to the praxis of consensus. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:52, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
- This has come up before. Recently, there was a close it down discussion. My take, you are stuck with a vote there, with some norms followed, except when they are not. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:45, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
The second problem is the rushed and improper closes. I get that the standard one week isn't practical at ITN and shorter discussions are necessary, but it's common for consensus to be decided a few hours after they begin ...
: If you're referring to closes without posting, WP:ITN/A reads:
Personally, I've stopped early ITN closes, not wanting to deal with the occasional passionate editor who insists there's still a chance, while everyone else remains silent. —Bagumba (talk) 09:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)If there is not consensus to post the item and the nomination has had suitable time to run (generally 24 hours), nominations can be closed.
- Doesn't seem to be mentioned or linked in this thread, but about a month ago, there was also the village pump discussion WP:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 82#Follow up discussion on ITN. Left guide (talk) 16:32, 26 July 2025 (UTC)
Ranking criteria for List of highest-grossing Indian films
I have a question about the List of highest-grossing Indian films. This list is managed by the Indian cinema Task Force.
On that list, each film’s total gross is shown as a range. For example:
- ₹1,300–1,387 crore
Right now, the Task Force page does not say which number in the range we should use to sort the films.
Here are some ways we could do it:
- **Lower bound**: Use the lower number (₹1,300 crore in the example).
- **Upper bound**: Use the higher number (₹1,387 crore).
- **Middle value**: Use the average of the two numbers.
Which method should we follow when only a range is given? If a rule already exists, please share a link. If not, could these guidelines be added to the Task Force page?
Note: Box office figures reported by many news articles are often inflated or influenced by producers or trade sources for their own benefit.
Tonyy Starkk (talk) 07:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
External links to geoltime.github.io in the body of the article
Perhaps this has been hashed out before, but I'm reading some articles that have a lot of external links to urls like https://geoltime.github.io/?Ma=50.6%E2%80%9335
Wikipedia:External_links says "With rare exceptions, external links should not be used in the body of an article."
Is geoltime.github.io an exception? If not, should those external links be removed? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 03:37, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- That's an interesting edge case. It's clearly designed to function as part of the article, and appears to take you back to the article you came from (although I can't test that without finding it in a live article), which is very different to the sorts of external links envisaged by WP:EL. I wonder whether it could be replicated as a lua module or something locally? Thryduulf (talk) 03:49, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- I've left a note for the developer, User:Smith609, on their talk page. They make it clear not to expect a speedy response though so if they haven't responded in a few days someone should emila them. Thryduulf (talk) 03:53, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- See LinkSearch. For example, Chordate has "558 million years ago" with 558 linking to https://geoltime.github.io/?Ma=558. The wikitext includes
{{ma|558}}from {{ma}} (see {{ma/1}} and {{ma/2}}). I wouldn't worry about a well-implemented and (presumably) useful external link like that. The whole point of WP:EL is to prevent abuse from minor self-promotion to major spam. This is not any kind of abuse. It would be better if the tool were internal for future maintenance but the basic system set up by Smith609 seems to have been working well since 2008. Johnuniq (talk) 06:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)- At the very least, if it's intended to be integrated with Wikipedia articles, it should be hosted on toolforge or another WMF-owned server. Linking to an external source can expose IP addresses and other identifying information to a third party with a different privacy policy than Wikipedia. It's freely licensed, so we could in theory re-host it on toolforge, but I'd want to give User:Smith609 a chance to chime in on that. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:48, 31 July 2025 (UTC)- It's worth noting that this pre-dates toolforge by some years (the predecessor, WP:Toolserver, shut down in 2014 and I don't think it was around much before then but haven't been able to quickly confirm that) and there has probably been an attitude of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- Looking at the edit history of {{Ma/1}}, it was created in 2008 using toolserver, updated to wmflabs in 2014, possibly was intermittently broken for a few years, and switched to github in 2022. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:37, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- It's worth noting that this pre-dates toolforge by some years (the predecessor, WP:Toolserver, shut down in 2014 and I don't think it was around much before then but haven't been able to quickly confirm that) and there has probably been an attitude of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks. I wasn't sure about this and didn't want to start simply deleting them in a boneheaded attempt to implement "policy". Agree that hosting it on a WMF-owned server would be an improvement, but it seems fine as it is. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:54, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- At the very least, if it's intended to be integrated with Wikipedia articles, it should be hosted on toolforge or another WMF-owned server. Linking to an external source can expose IP addresses and other identifying information to a third party with a different privacy policy than Wikipedia. It's freely licensed, so we could in theory re-host it on toolforge, but I'd want to give User:Smith609 a chance to chime in on that. --Ahecht (TALK
Are there any MOS guidelines to the appropriate level of nesting for section headers?
Not easy to explain to non-chessplayers, but in chess opening theory there are typically several viable move choices for either side. All have their pluses and minuses and are largely dependent on the player's personal taste and playing style. However in the last 10 years or so computer programs (called "engines") have become incredibly strong and can flatten anyone including Magnus Carlsen under normal playing condiditions, which has led to a lot of reassessment of opening theory. However, using analysis from chess engines is contrary to the Wikipedia policy against Original Research. We kind of skirt around that by selecting sources that agree with the engines.
Anyway... the article on the opening known as the King's Gambit, an ancient opening no longer highly regarded but still occasionally played, includes nesting to level 4 in its commentaries on the various options. I personally think it's justified in view of the theory that's developed around it, but recently an editor has split part of it off into a new article entitled King's Gambit, Classical Variation, saying that the level of nesting makes it difficult to follow.
"Classical Variation" is not a term that would make sense to most chess players; they'd just call the line in question "3...g5" (the notation for Black's third move). He made no attempt to obtain consensus before making such a fundamental change to the structure of the article. Furthermore among the alternative third moves for Black are some that carry similar themes and might lead to the same position (i.e. transpose) by a different move order. Another concern is that this editor (ok let's be honorable and ping him: it's User:Dayshade) rarely if ever cites sources. He is an enthusiastic editor who has made a lot of changes to chess opening theory articles in the last couple of months; problem is, I seriously question whether they are changes for the better. Yes those articles can be improved, so can any wikipedia article. But they can be improved by citing sources, not by doing original research or remodeling the article according to one's own personal preferences. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 11:26, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- There is a discussion about this going on at Talk:King's Gambit with points on both sides if anyone wants to take a look. I've agreed to leave the 3...g5 section as is unless another consensus forms. I note possible transpositions in my writing, also. And, I'm not recommending lines or anything. Just describing possible lines and frequency and perhaps a notable tactic/bad side line.
- Anyway, I've also been discussing the citation issues on a few talk pages. Since I have also learned about these lines in grandmaster videos/recordings, but also use the opening database and Stockfish eval, there is an element of OR but it is more just to verify what I have heard and catch mistakes/any notable omissions. Honestly, maybe Stockfish eval should become non-OR? It's basically like asking someone 1000 elo above Magnus Carlsen how well they regard some moves, that's all. GMs care about engine recommendations greatly. Not putting in anything exact, just if a line seems strong or weak.
- Current thought is to just add citations to the videos, but I'd def argue observation of a common line in a database and/or a named line in theory is fair game to note in an article anyway. These lines definitely should be verifiable, so I am also looking for assistance in anything that might come up in physical books I don't have access to. But when it comes to chess openings, theory evolves a lot, and chess books aren't subject to nearly the same level of peer review as e.g. a scientific article, and particularly for openings become outdated quickly. I've had to correct several false claims from outdated books. So, I think we should be using more online sources, but still been trying to figure out what's best and what the guidelines for be (e.g. I don't think it's necessary to give the same citation to a website every single time for introducing the name of a line or an alternative move or a transposition order or a brief description of an obvious tactic etc, but I might be wrong). Dayshade (talk) 14:05, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- Also here's my old revision of 3...g5 if anyone is curious: Dayshade (talk) 14:13, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- I think the answer to the question in the section heading is no, MOS:OVERSECTION is the closest we have.
'Classical Variation' is not a term that would make sense to most chess players...
- That's not a problem because we aren't writing articles for chess players, were writing articles for non-chess-players, who will not understand chess notation and won't know what "3...g5" means. "Classical variation" is a perfectly descriptive title for a section talking about the classical version of the King's Gambit.- I'd say spinning off a sub-article to avoid having too many subsections or subsections that nest too deep is perfectly reasonable. Remember, most of our readers are now on mobile, and the mobile skin has no TOC and collapses level-2 headers. So unless it's a level-2 header, the mobile reader won't see it until they uncollapse the level-2 and scroll down. So fewer nesting levels are better, IMO. This is a real problem with Wikipedia btw that the WMF needs to address. With the mobile skin, only level-2 headers can be used for navigation, levels below that are just decorative text elements. To understand what I'm talking about, just take out your phone and go to King's Gambit and see if you can find the section about the Becker Defense. Was it easy to find? Would it have been easier if there were a level-2 heading called "defenses"? Anyway, whether and how a spin out should be done is squarely a content dispute to be discussed on an article-by-article basis on the article talk page.
- As to the problem with engines making some info obsolete, that's why we have WP:AGEMATTERS. The article should be sourced to more recent high quality secondary sources that will have accounted for recent developments in the field (eg engines). A chess book from 25 or 50 years ago is probably now obsolete. Levivich (talk) 14:31, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- In this particular opening, theory really hasn't changed all that much in the last 50 years. It's still regarded as basically inferior, but will catch out amateurs who are unfamiliar with the theory. The chess engines have not significantly changed the assessment of the opening. Even before the chess engines took hold, it was already quite heavily analyzed due to its long history, and was mostly abandonded in the early 20th century.
- I don't like arbitrarily ripping the guts out of the article into a name that most chess players won't even be familiar with. I prefer the nesting. And I definitely prefer better sourcing than some database or other, and running some engine or other. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 15:06, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- Let's continue this at Talk:King's Gambit, where I have some other points outlined at the bottom. Lots of opening article names are unfamiliar to players. Lots of players are surprisingly unaware of even fairly basic names. Dayshade (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- Also I feel like there's a bit of an assumption of a perspective where only winning matters. I like the beauty of many KGA lines, and I think they're worth displaying. Helps people get an understanding for why early modern/Romantic players loved it so much. Dayshade (talk) 16:40, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- And there has been new theory, although mostly outside of 3...g5. Dayshade (talk) 16:56, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
- You're kind of exhausting. I came to the village pump to get some second/third opinions, not to have you spam my thread. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 04:39, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
