Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not

Topic: Galleries (November 2005–January 2006) Topic: Newspaper Articles (May–July 2007) Topic: Unencyclopedic (2003) Topic: Trivia (July–October 2007)

By-the-book approach against NOTBURO and IAR?

I've been thinking. If my way of enforcing rules is too "by the book", would this be against longstanding WP:NOTBURO and/or WP:IAR? What about following strictly WP:NFCC or WP:N, including WP:GNG, or whatever better example? George Ho (talk) 19:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• You have asked us to assume that your way of enforcing the rules is "too" by the book. Given that assumption, my answer to your first question is "yes."
  

With regard to your second question, IAR says to ignore rules when they prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia. Can you suggest a situation in which, for example, it would improve or maintain Wikipedia to violate copyright laws and subject the Foundation to being sued (putting Wikipedia at financial risk)? - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:22, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Can you suggest a situation in which, for example, it would improve or maintain Wikipedia to violate copyright laws and subject the Foundation to being sued (putting Wikipedia at financial risk)? Hmm... (Assuming your question is rhetorical,) Good point. I shouldn't have mentioned NFCC broadly. What about "contextual significance" criterion? It's interpreted variously, especially in FFD discussions, yet WP:NFC#CS is doing its best to clarify (the meaning and enforcement of) "contextual significance". —George Ho (talk) 16:00, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm guessing that disputes over the contextual significance criterium are about whether proposed content will "significantly increase" or be "detrimental to" understanding. If the result of such a dispute is that copyrighted material is only marginally beneficial or, worse, detrimental then I don't see the "improving and maintaining Wikipedia" condition is present and IAR does not apply. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 23:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

be "detrimental to" understanding – Umm... I don't think "detrimental" means the content's presence would harm the project. Rather it refers to whether omitting, i.e. removing or deleting, the non-free content from an article or the whole project would harm readers' (contextual) understanding of a certain topic in question, i.e. article subject, like a person or a song. If omitting the NFC file or text doesn't harm what's already understood, then the said non-free content would automatically fail that criterion and fail to contextually signify the said topic. (BTW, I don't mean to make you feel bad, but "criterium" means bike race consisting of closed circuits. Criterion is a singular form of criteria; bacterium, bacteria.) George Ho (talk) 00:30, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I submit that content that is detrimental to understanding an article does not improve or maintain that article. And, if it does not improve or maintain the article, it does not improve or maintain Wikipedia. (Thanks for the BTW. It's good to learn things.) - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 02:09, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

There is no danger whatsoever that Wikipedia will violate copyright laws and subject the Foundation to being sued (putting Wikipedia at financial risk). This is because nearly everything we do falls under fair use. Our rules go well beyond what is legally required. What it would mean though is that someone could not appropriate all or part of the Wikipedia for commercial use. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:41, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

NOTNEWS

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)

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"

1. Original reporting: not applicable here
2. 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.
3. Who's who: not applicable here
4. 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)

WP:NOTFILESTORAGE and WP:Freedom of panorama 2nd

Second discussion; first discussion was at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not/Archive 59#WP:NOTFILESTORAGE and WP:Freedom of panorama.

Is the "collection" of 12 Villa Savoye images" existing on English Wikipedia – at Category:Villa Savoye — still acceptable and do not breach WP:NOTFILESTORAGE? Only three of the images are in use; the rest unused. IMO, having more than 5 or 10 is already making enwiki comparable to a file storage service/site, which is against the said policy (WP:NOT is higher than WP:Freedom of panorama which is essentially just a guidance page that is not yet an established policy). Ping again the users that I pinged before in the prior discussion: @Matrix, Iruka13, WhatamIdoing, JPxG, and SMcCandlish:. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:45, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

If they are decent-quality, freely-licensed photos of a thing with encyclopedic relevance, why should we care? How many kilobytes, or megabytes, of squabbling over whether images are "good enough" does it take before the arguments consume more space than the images in question? More importantly, how many hours of contributor time have to be spent arguing about this before it outstrips any conceivable cost of hosting the images? I would argue this point has already been reached, but I suppose it depends on how valuable editor-hours are. At any rate: it seems clear to me that having decent images is good, in general, for the purposes of writing an encyclopedia. For example, File:VillaSavoye3.jpg is currently not in use. But it is the only photo of this staircase that we have here (?) and deleting it would make it permanently impossible for us to use it for anything. Say someone is writing an article about trends in interior architecture, or about different types of spiral staircases. Should they be forbidden to use this image? What difference does it make? jp×g🗯️ 03:56, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@JPxG if that is the case, then WP:NOTFILESTORAGE should be rewritten again, and WP:Freedom of panorama should be made into a policy needing consensus. As the boilerplate notice on the top of the latter page stands, it is not yet a policy. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:01, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTFILESTORAGE rather clearly says "Please upload only files that are used (or could be used) in encyclopedia articles or project pages" -- these files could be used in encyclopedia articles or project pages. I do not see any contradiction. jp×g🗯️ 04:03, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Same here, especially given how recurrent various "which picture(s) should we use?" disputations get. "Not used right this instant" does not equate to "unusable".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Although we do have Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance, it might be true years ago, but may not be in recent times, as seen in the case of proposed Wikidata split and alleged watchlist time-out on Commons, though I haven't seen any discussion (so far) relating to low server performance effect on English Wikipedia itself. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 03:56, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

If only we had hundreds of millions of dollars of donations coming in that could be spent on doing basic stuff like paying for hosting costs! jp×g🗯️ 03:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@JWilz12345, would you have fewer concerns if a WMF employee directly told you that you genuinely do not need to worry at all about twelve possibly unnecessary photos, or even about twelve thousand of them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing in technical aspect, I may not need to worry. But on the possible conflict between WP:NOTFILESTORAGE and WP:Freedom of panorama, that needs to be addressed in a concrete manner, not just confined to the wording that is open to multiple interpretations ("or could be used"). I will only accept the situation if WP:Freedom of panorama is made as a policy page, not a guidance page that states that it reflects the varying degrees of consensus and vetting (as stated on the top of the page). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 05:28, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. Since we run on a WP:Consensus basis, I don't think that any single editor actually has the ability to reject the situation. If it upsets you enough, I suppose you could quit editing, but you can't force the community to do things your way. The community can choose to leave the situation exactly like it is, even if you claim you "will only accept the situation" if it's done your way. Sometimes the community wants its policies to be open to multiple interpretations. I suspect that this is one of those times. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

It's also too often the case than one particular editor gets it into their head that there's some kind of "policy conflict", but the community itself finds no such conflict, ergo there actually is not one. (That is, if the community's interpretation and implementation of policy doesn't result in a real problem, then the policy is not in fact broken, even if some particular individual can willfully misinterpret it in a way that for that specific person produces some kind of cognitive dissonance.) Ultimately it's simply not a community problem, but a personal matter. In my tenure, I've done a whole lot of policy-wording cleanup, but not every attempt to do so is successful, because sometimes the wording problem I think I see isn't one that others see. Such cases simply have to be let go, not clung to and recycled endlessly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

In this case, I don't think anyone is engaging in willful misinterpretation. I think it could be resolved by changing it from its current form:

• File storage areas. Please upload only files that are used (or could be used) in encyclopedia articles or project pages; anything else (e.g., personal photos) will be deleted. Ideally, freely licensed files should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where they can be linked from Wikipedia.

to something like:

• File storage areas. Please upload only files that are used (or could be used) in encyclopedia articles or project pages; anything else (e.g., personal photos) will be deleted. Ideally, freely licensed files should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where they can be linked from Wikipedia. So long as each individual file could be used in an article (even if it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be used in an article), editors may upload an unlimited number of files."

Alternatively, we could specify a limit, e.g., "up to 100,000 files without seeking permission in advance, and an unlimited number with permission". (There are about 920,000 local files at the moment, so 100K would add 10% 'locally', and less than 0.01% globally.)

But as there is only one editor who worries that five or ten files might be too many, it would probably be WP:CREEPY to add such a sentence, even though it's true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

2028 US presidential election is an "appropriate topic", but we keep deleting it

The WP:CRYSTAL section states that "Examples of appropriate topics include the 2028 U.S. presidential election"; however, this is currently a red link and even a draft of this article was rejected as recently as April 2024 because it's WP:TOOSOON, which links to WP:CRYSTAL. Which one is wrong, the policy or the implementation? Jpatokal (talk) 03:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The year in CRYSTAL is determined using a formula, I wonder if it doesn't always generate the correct date. 2028 would be a valid topic in 2024, but by convention only after the 2024 election. However the formula jumped from 2024 to 2028 at the beginning of 2024. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:17, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on application of NOTCATALOG criteria

there is currently a discussion on the application of WP:NOTCATALOG at Talk:Survival_Records around the exhaustive listing of album releases by a record label. Graywalls (talk) 21:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect regarding Wikipedia policy

Ever since the Wikipedia Group "The Guerilla Skeptics" became a known mainstream subject it shows that Wikipedia does not have a neutral stance and this group has gone out of its way to make changes to ridicule individuals and subjects. The problem is not the evidence, but the tone of their message towards the person or subject matter which is unbecoming of this website.

if we're going to follow "wikipedia is not" then that group needs to put down their fists and try to be neutral, and if not they should have their privileges be revoked. My apologies if this is not the right talk page, but I do not know where to go to address this issue. 2606:A000:9FC0:57:6937:10A7:B067:6E7B (talk) 17:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of this group. Ridicule would have no place on WP, but would need to be addressed at the administrators' noticeboard (WP:AN/I). It's easier to address the neutrality of articles at their individual talk pages. But if it became systemic, it would help to provide multiple examples of articles, as evidence of a pattern. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:27, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Mainstream? Because someone complains about the way UFO-related articles are handled here? Not to be taken serious. The Banner talk 23:17, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

RfC on lists of airline destinations

An RfC on whether lists of airline destinations are acceptable content for Wikipedia is taking place here: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lists of airline destinations. Sunnya343 (talk) 16:09, 20 July 2024 (UTC)