Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not
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NOTNEWS
[edit]What's happened to the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS? I look at a number of articles created in the wake of October 7 that pay no heed to this. The article is the Wikipedia version of a live blog of a news event. Is this not a main tenet of Wikipedia anymore? MaskedSinger (talk) 20:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
- @MaskedSinger on top of that, several Philippine-related articles may run counter to WP:NOTNEWS, in particular 2013 Metro Manila Skyway bus accident and 2010 Balamban bus accident. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:06, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
- Interesting. MaskedSinger (talk) 07:48, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
- @MaskedSinger just a discovery now: one of these two was nominated before but ended up with no consensus. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
- Interesting. MaskedSinger (talk) 07:48, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
- You may want to propose a change to NOTNEWS, so that it more clearly proscribes the types of articles that you are objecting to. As it stands, NOTNEWS has an overview and four bullets.
- Overview: does not restrict what types of articles are forbidden, explicitly supports "stand-alone articles on significant current events"
- Original reporting: not applicable here
- News reports: the examples given are pretty limiting. Editors seeing "routine news coverage of announcements, events, sports, or celebrities" are not likely to count major news events as falling into that bucket. News event are "events", but the policy links to WP:ROUTINE, which makes it clear the events in question are things like "Wedding announcements, sports scores, crime logs", "sports matches, film premieres, press conferences", "Run-of-the-mill events—common, everyday, ordinary items that do not stand out", and "brief, often light and amusing (for example bear-in-a-tree or local-person-wins-award), stories". Deadly attacks or accidents would not appear to be included.
- Who's who: not applicable here
- Celebrity gossip and diary: not applicable here
- I would be interested in expanding NOTNEWS, but we'd need a carefully written explanation of what new article types should be included. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:22, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Firefangledfeathers Sounds wonderful! How should we proceed? MaskedSinger (talk) 20:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
- I don't have a bright idea. Maybe you could pull together a few articles you think should be proscribed by NOTNEWS and propose some language that would describe them narrowly? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:15, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'd say a lot of deadly attacks or accidents do fit into "routine" news coverage, as they get the usual brief spurt of coverage in the immediate aftermath and then disappear entirely, the same way an average film premiere or the like would. Obviously the amount of coverage shifts, generally with how exceptional the incident is or how many casualties, so there's no hard line, but I think you have to do more than just robotically look at a list of sources, say "GNG pass" and move on. The Gaza war is the latest example, but there's plenty more, such as the absolute train wreck that is the exhaustive day-by-day coverage of Covid. I don't think NOTNEWS is really what needs revision, though, beyond pointing people to WP:NEVENTS and specifically WP:PERSISTENCE, which have much more useful and detailed information on why news stories alone are not inherently notable. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 11:25, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
- NOTNEWS does link via a "See also" link to NEVENTS, but a more emphatic point might help. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:54, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
- @David Fuchs@Firefangledfeathers@MaskedSinger one more possible example: 2020 Masbate earthquake. Is the article a breach of the policies y'all mentioned? JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 07:58, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- NOTNEWS does link via a "See also" link to NEVENTS, but a more emphatic point might help. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:54, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
- @Firefangledfeathers Sounds wonderful! How should we proceed? MaskedSinger (talk) 20:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
- Wholly separate example, Withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 United States presidential election. Moved to that today, there are effectively only three paragraphs that are of "new" material in addition to quoting the letter (which we really don't need to do, it exists on commons and other sites), all which could be part of the Biden campaign. There was a AFD, but it closed no consensus, but my read of the keeps show little adherence to our purpose as an encyclopedia to summarize the news, not detail it to this level of coverage. This is just an example systematic of the problem we have we that we are writing for the now, and not for the 10yr or longer encyclopedic view, causing all of these excessively detailed articles to be created. --Masem (t) 04:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
- Is the concern more about too many too specific articles existing at all or merely that their content is too specific, or is it something else entirely? Mathwriter2718 (talk) 21:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Creation of product catalog under a new article
[edit]Per WP:NOTADIRECTORY #6, it specifically says author pages can have a list of their creative works, but publishers shouldn't have a book catalog in their page. I have noticed that Nonesuch Records discography was essentially created as a product catalog for the obscure record publisher/record label Nonesuch Records. I am not exactly familiar with SNG WP:NLIST, but I feel like this should not have been created. Graywalls (talk) 04:53, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Per the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Cleaned_up_the_article_7, I was wondering if we could propose adding a standard for the notability of facts about numbers to this policy. Allan Nonymous (talk) 20:52, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- I don't know that it's a big enough problem that we need to cover it in a policy, but I'll echo here what I said there. My personal inclination is that a number appearing in an OEIS entry is only worth mentioning if the sequence is "nice", "core" (of central importance to some topic), or "hard" (which often means that it comes from an unsolved problem). Because the source is reliable but intentionally rather indiscriminate, we should focus our attention on the subset of it that is marked as more interesting than the rest. Or, in other words, we should follow the source when it comes to emphasis. This is roughly going to be equivalent to mentioning properties that already have their own blue-link-able Wikipedia articles. I say "roughly" because it's not hard to imagine edge cases where an article could be written but hasn't yet because nobody has gotten around to it. XOR'easter (talk) 21:01, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think it makes sense to have a two-tiered standard, based on my read of that discussion.
- Certain properties (e.g. parity, primality, triangularity) that are sufficiently well known and generally applicabile, are worth assuming they would be of interest for anyone reading an article on a specific number.
- Otherwise, properties should only be noted if there is significant attestation in sources specifically regarding the number in question having said property.
- Remsense诉 21:01, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think maybe this all should be addressed at WP:NNUMBER rather than WP:NOT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- Good to know people at Wikipedia have beaten me to it, but adding something here might be a quick little guideline to help people avoid the most egregious examples. Allan Nonymous (talk) 21:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think maybe this all should be addressed at WP:NNUMBER rather than WP:NOT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
Additional journal verbiage
[edit]@CommonKnowledgeCreator: I don't think the additional verbiage about official journals et al. is necessary. Do other editors actually treat Wikipedia this way in your experience, and aren't existing guidelines sufficient for explaining why they shouldn't? In any case, the section title has been made much clunkier by the additions. Remsense ‥ 诉 23:06, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
- Not sure about the journals but the added language regarding govt codes, etc. is something that can be a problem. I see people do laws or court cases that cite only the primary sources without considering the coverage of these in third party sources, and that's both a notability (WP:NOT) and an original research problem (in interpreting what laws or cases imply without aid of third party sources). Its reasonable to discuss. I don't think we need the additional language coveraging different journal types though. --Masem (t) 23:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'd support to the new section about laws/etc, separately from the additional journal types language. There are hundreds of years of such laws and rulings, the vast majority of which won't be notable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:28, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I don't think the additional verbiage about official journals et al. is necessary. Do other editors actually treat Wikipedia this way in your experience, and aren't existing guidelines sufficient for explaining why they shouldn't?
The short answer is "Yes, other editors do use Wikipedia in this way in my experience, and no, existing guidelines are apparently not sufficient for explaining this." I've encountered numeorus Wikipedia articles about bills proposed in the United States Congress during a particular session that were never enacted and may have never even been voted out of committee. All bill proposals during a session of Congress are included in the Congressional Record, which is the official journal of the United States Congress. The inclusion of proposed legislation that does not satisfy WP:N seems little different than people using Wikipedia as a soapbox (WP:SOAP), but these articles were created anyway.- I have also encountered many Wikipedia articles about laws, regulations, court cases, public policies, treaties, and other international agreements that do not appear to satisfy the WP:N policy, and it occurs to me that government gazettes, legal codes, and law report series are more analogous to manuals and academic journals than they are to repositories since repositories are generally indiscriminate collections of information while manuals, academic journals, government gazettes, legal codes, and law reports are not. This is why I'd argue that unless we make
these guidelinesthe instructions I added into explicit policy, articles about these topics that do not satisfy WP:N will continue to be created. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 15:20, 18 August 2024 (UTC) - If the section title is that much of a concern, then we could just include my contribution as a separate section on the article. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 17:06, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- That seems fine; thank you for the additional elaboration. Remsense ‥ 论 03:07, 22 August 2024 (UTC)
Moxy, per your edit here, you have added a maintenance tag indicating that the section requires copyediting. What content in the section do you believe violates WP:COPYEDIT? Please state it here and I will address it. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:29, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- The whole thing's a convoluted mess..... instructional creep at its best. Moxy🍁 03:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- I completely agree. We simply do not need, and should not have, sections on absolutely everything Wikipedia is not. – Teratix ₵ 12:32, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
Moxy and Teratix, per the comments in this talk page discussion and WP:CREEP, the section was not added to deal with a hypothetical problem and the language was not too long. Additionally, other editors here have expressed support for the additional language so it is unclear to me how there was not a consensus for adding the additional instruction per WP:CON. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 12:44, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think you need to rethink it as a section under the Not a Guide/Textbook section. It didn't need a whole separate section, but we should clearly have something that we aren't here to mirror govt documents (though where appropriate, that's a function Wikisource can do when copyright's not an issue); legislative and case laws should be documented through third party sources, not simply because the law exists. Masem (t) 13:42, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Here's the text before it was removed:
- Wikipedia articles about individual statutes, regulations, constitutions, court opinions, public notices, public policies, treaties, and other international agreements that have been enacted, issued, ratified, or proposed may satisfy Wikipedia's general notability guideline (WP:N). However, Wikipedia itself is not a code of laws or regulations, a series of law reports, or an official journal of a legislative body, regulatory agency, international organization, or supranational union. Many such official governmental and intergovernmental publications often have hundreds of volumes with countless entries and transcriptions of proceedings that span thousands of pages. Unless a specific entry or proceeding—the latter of which would fall under Wikipedia's subject-specific notability guideline for events (WP:EVENT)—has significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent, then there is no reason for there to be a Wikipedia article about it. When such sources are not used, the content of such articles often veers into original research (WP:NOR), personal essays (WP:NOTESSAY), public domain material better suited for Wikisource (WP:NOTREPOSITORY), or advocacy, propaganda, and opinion pieces (WP:SOAPBOX). This also applies to all articles, amendments, sections, and clauses of the aforementioned legal documents, to unwritten and uncodified constitutions, and to customary laws.
- What language specifically do you think should be removed and how should the title of the "Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal" be retitled for its inclusion? Use direct quotations please. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Here's the text before it was removed:
Reviewed WP:CREEP; shorter wording:
- Official journals, legal codes, or law reports: Wikipedia articles about individual statutes, regulations, constitutions, court opinions, public notices, public policies, treaties, and other international agreements—as well as specific sections or clauses of these legal documents—that have been enacted, issued, ratified, or proposed may satisfy Wikipedia's general notability guideline. However, Wikipedia itself is not a code of laws or regulations, a series of law reports, or an official journal of a legislative body, regulatory agency, international organization, or supranational union. Many such official governmental and intergovernmental publications often have hundreds of volumes with countless entries and transcriptions of proceedings that span thousands of pages. Also, Wikipedia does not exist to codify customary laws and unwritten or uncodified constitutions. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 19:39, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- This is just a long way to say articles on laws and regulations have to meet our notability standards – just like every other subject on Wikipedia. What's special about these topics that means we should single them out to reiterate this general guidance, in a policy that's already bloated as is? – Teratix ₵ 01:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- What is special about these topics is what has already been said in this discussion by myself and by others: articles are being created about these topics that do not satisfy the general notability guideline despite its existence, and that such articles will continue to be created unless instructions are included that explicitly direct editors to not do so—like the proscriptions against all of the other topics already included in the policy that were presumably added for the same reason.
- As for the article size, the Page Size tool puts the article word count at 2,145 words, but this excludes the content in the numbered lists. When including that content, the word count of the current revision is 6,127 words. The shorter wording proposed here would add only 119 words. Per WP:SIZE, that is not a length where trimming or division of the article would be required or recommended. As such, the article would not be bloated by its inclusion and is not currently bloated. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:11, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Articles about non-notable subjects will get created. No matter how many rules you create and how much text you add to other pages that will not have been read by newbies. IMHO your proposal is superfluous. The Banner talk 02:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Sounds like what's needed is to actually enforce existing guidance on notability, rather than adding more.
- WP:SIZE is a guideline relating to articles, not Wikipedia policies. 6000 words is, indeed, far too long for a policy, at least if we're actually expecting people to read it. – Teratix ₵ 02:48, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Problems with this policy and trimming things back
[edit]Inspired by the above section, let's lay out some problems with this policy.
- The page is a bit conceptually incoherent – obviously there's any number of things Wikipedia is not, so there's no clear criteria for when to add sections beyond "a consensus of editors felt it was important enough". But editors are more likely to be motivated to add new sections than to remove obsolete sections, so there's always going to be this tendency for the policy to be bigger than it needs to be.
- Additionally, "things Wikipedia is not" is just a bit of a strange grouping, full stop. To pick three at random, why should our policies on censorship (NOTCENSORED), using Wikipedia for research (NOTLAB) and avoiding dictionary entries (NOTDICT) all come under the same policy? I don't think it's because they're a natural fit to be discussed together – I think it's because, at some point, someone came up with a way to conceptualise them in terms of "Wikipedia is not X" and added them here. So it's pure chance we have, say, the policy on password strength at Wikipedia:Password strength requirements instead of a sub-section here called NOTWEAKPASSWORD.
- Related, there's a stupidly large number of redirects, anchors and shortcuts to various sections, I believe because editors are attracted to the WP:NOT[X] form and like to make redirects for every conceivably relevant value of X. Probably any individual example of these redirects is reasonable but their aggregate effect is a sort of "death by a thousand shortcuts" where the mass of hatnotes and shortcut boxes starts making the page too busy. Plus they make it more difficult to condense and merge points that really don't need to be separate, because you need to think about what to do with the shortcuts and anchors as well.
Anyway, upshot is I had a go at condensing things down a bit and knocked off a third of the page's total size just from trimming back the content section alone. I didn't set out to actually change the meaning of anything, just to merge similar points together and cut out redundancies.
Did I break a million anchors? Probably. Did I inadvertently overturn seven RfCs on subtle points of wording? Probably. Is it a net improvement? Yeah, once the kinks are ironed out, I think so. What do you think? – Teratix ₵ 14:18, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- If we were to start a new Wikipedia, I am sure that we would organize our policies differently. (Even if we wanted our policies to be basically the same.) But I'm against this even just on a procedural level. It creates a lot of conflict for very little gain. The usability/readability issue is mostly addressed by good anchors, and anything else can be accomplished with an essay about whichever point of NOT needs clarification. Shooterwalker (talk) 14:30, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
I applaud the effort. It's overwhelming to try to comment on a bundle of many dozens of changes to a core policy. There are two areas where if there were be a substantial rewrite there should be a bunch of careful work:
- The linked not a dictionary has evolved a bit to recognize that terms can, are and should be a subject of coverage. The term often either creates the subject or creates a particular view of the subject.
- The not a "collection of data" to reinforce that as encyclopedia, our approach is to cover things in enclyclopedia articles, including prose. This might help provide guidance on the areas where Wikipedia lacks guidance (on what is OK regarding list articles) and strengthing up guidance against 99% "stats only" articles.
Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:41, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
It's overwhelming to try to comment on a bundle of many dozens of changes to a core policy.
Very fair! If it helps, maybe think of it not so much as "these are the exact point-by-point changes we need, the RfC opens tomorrow" but rather "whoa, we can make this a lot shorter and I don't even think we broke that much". – Teratix ₵ 15:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)- The many links to other essays, policies and guidelines etc. might be summarized in a navigation template. No clue if there already exists one. The Banner talk 16:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Maybe a bundle where there no changes of substance. North8000 (talk) 19:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- If take that approach, what it probably needs is a close review by that the bundle does not contain any substantive changes and that it really does tidy it up. And for them to state their findings. I took a first look for "does not contain any substantive changes". Maybe I missed where it was retained, but it looks like you took out the "but articles can sometimes be on a term tweak of the not a dictionary section. IMO this is substantive change, and as a sidebar, one which I'd oppose. North8000 (talk) 19:25, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's still there, just in a footnote. No problem with moving it back in the main text if that's preferable. Again, I haven't set out to make substantive changes, but I'm realistic: condensing down the page by a third will inevitably trample on some sensitive wording in a few places, even when that's not my intent. This is more like a proof of concept or an "artist's impression" of how much shorter this policy could be – not every detail will be faithful and accurate, but it demonstrates the core idea is workable. – Teratix ₵ 03:24, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- The other thing this page is is a trump card, used to shortcut discussion about whether something should be included in the encyclopedia. This is most obvious with NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. If I had one wish for how this page would be rewritten, it would be that each criterion should follow the same rules as WP:NEWCSD, most specifically #1, objective:
Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion. Often this requires making the criterion very specific.
That is, if good faith editors can differ whether something meets the criterion or not, I believe it's insufficiently explicit to be a NOT policy element. Jclemens (talk) 19:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC) - Do admit you killed some content. 2601:447:C600:4840:67:712D:772A:F99E (talk) 23:23, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Does WP:NOTTVGUIDE need extra info?
[edit]WP:NOTTVGUIDE is currently in the "Wikipedia is not a directory" section, stating "An article on a broadcaster should not list upcoming events, current promotions, current schedules, format clocks, etc., although mention of major events, promotions or historically significant program lists and schedules may be acceptable." Not only that current programming schedules should be included on article about a TV station, but MOS:TVINTL also follows this guideline and other cable networks can allow current programming on their separate articles, but they should all need a reliable source to support it. If needed, can this guideline be slightly expanded? Sparkbean (talk) 20:00, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
- We write for a 10yr view, so the "current programming schedule" is immediately outdated information. If there is historical aspects of the schedule to be kept, that's different, but no, we aren't going to include those current schedules. Masem (t) 20:18, 1 September 2024 (UTC)