I remember reading about something like "the community doesn't have the authority to enforce Terms of Use that belong to WMF." (paraphrased) Is that true or am I remembering it wrong? Thank you.--V. E. (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

The community can enforce any idea it wants to enforce, even if the WMF has a similar prohibition. Indeed, most Terms of Use issues are enforced by the community, e.g. most things (by volume) in wmf:Terms_of_Use/en#4._Refraining_from_Certain_Activities. Certain things fall into the WMF's remit because they're more qualified to do it (child protection issues, self-harm, threats of violence, etc.) but functionaries might take interim actions. Copyright issues are often discussed in community venues, but copyright holders can always send legal notices to the Foundation too. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:36, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

What ProcrastinatingReader has said + members of the community likely do not have legal standing to enforce the Terms of Use in court. JBchrch talk 14:45, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@Visnelma: WP:PAID is an example of the community enforcing the terms of use. RudolfRed (talk) 17:39, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@RudolfRed: WP:PAID isn't an example. The meta:Alternative paid contribution disclosure policies lists the enwiki paid-contribution disclosure policy as a strengthened version that supersedes the terms of use. Chess (talk) (please use ((reply to|Chess)) on reply) 01:59, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I see ProcrastinatingReader made that addition in December 2020. In actuality, Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure was originally created as a place on English Wikipedia to describe the paid-contribution disclosure requirements from the terms of use, was expanded to include various bits and pieces from other guidance pages, and has a tiny bit of original content (as I recall, Users who are compensated for any publicity efforts related to the subject of their Wikipedia contributions are deemed to be paid editors, regardless of whether they were compensated specifically to edit Wikipedia., Interns are considered employees for this purpose. If they are directed or expected to edit Wikipedia as part of an internship, they must disclose., and When discussing changes to the policy, disclose whether you have been paid to edit Wikipedia.). It's never been approved by the community as an alternative paid contribution policy, as required by the terms of use. Accordingly, I am reverting the change on Meta for now. isaacl (talk) 03:34, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I believe the purpose of that page on meta is, de facto primarily, to provide a convenient list as examples for other wikis. I think that bit which has consensus is enough to say that we have stricter requirements than the general TOU ones. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:53, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The page is mentioned in the terms of use as part of the steps of enacting an alternative policy: An alternative paid contribution policy will only supersede these requirements if it is approved by the relevant Project community and listed in the alternative disclosure policy page. I have started a discussion on the paid-contribution disclosure talk page regarding its listing at meta. isaacl (talk) 14:50, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that that page is specifically mentioned in the Terms of Use as the definitive listing of alternative paid contribution policies that supersede the WMF baseline. It's not a "convenient list" and the listing of our policy there has legal implications w/r/t the TOU paid contribution requirements. Chess (talk) (please use ((reply to|Chess)) on reply) 00:37, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Some articles mention that "[subject] received widespread media attention", with 5 or 6 citations that link to media articles that gave attention to [subject]. Questions:

1. Without a reliable secondary source that explicitly states that [subject] received widespread media attention, does this fall under WP:SYNTH?
2. If not, what policy allows for this?
3. If so, should phrases like this be considered unsourced statements and be removed from the article?

Thanks in advance, MarshallKe (talk) 13:30, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd think so, yes? It's the same principle as outlined in WP:RS/AC; editors can't determine themselves what the scientific consensus is just by reading a bunch of articles and citing a barrage of them. Same applies to "widespread media coverage" IMO. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:34, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I also think it's redundant to mention that it received widespread media attention because you're basically saying "this is notable" IMHO.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 13:39, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

"The media", referring roughly to mainstream news outlets, doesn't necessarily have to cover a topic at all in order to be notable enough for a Wikipedia article. I think it does indeed add useful information most of the time. MarshallKe (talk) 13:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

There are times when in a history of a topic, it is helpful to outline when the topic when from small scale to large scale due to the fact that mainstream media started covering it, which usually leads to more in-depth considerations or changes that happened as a result. So this type of phrasing is useful to include to explain that transition. Ideally it should be sourced (and if widespread reporting affected the topic, that should be easily documentable), but I think it can be also non-OR/SYNTH if it is clear in reading the history that the initial sources are field-specific RSes, and then after said point, we're seeing numerous works from NYTimes and CNNs and other types of mainstream sources covering it.

This is to contrast the condition where the statement "it has received widespread coverage" is just used to try to say its notable (as per the above). We don't need to state that in general, we have the standalone article that implicitly asserts that the topic had coverage, so unless that's clearly said in reliable sourcing, its not needed at all. --Masem (t) 14:00, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Just as a practical example of the former, while I never used that exact phrasing, the Controversy section of No Man's Sky explains the point where media came in and hyped up the game. But that's sourced to post-release sources that explain how this hype happened (it has been well-studied), and so I don't have any synth issues. But this is the type of situation where I could see editors striving to use "gained widespread coverage" in relation to the history of a topic. --Masem (t) 15:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

And a second practical example of the former is the COVID-19 lab leak theory where there is documented sourcing that points out the rise of coverage of that theory due to increased media attention. But again, that's sourceable so not an issue here. --Masem (t) 18:46, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd say yes, in general, unless you have an rs actually saying so or its bluesky, in which case you probably don't need to say it, anyway.Selfstudier (talk) 14:32, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's funny how WP:BLUE seems to cut both ways like that, but it doesn't stop the article for Finger from stating that most human hands have 5 fingers, and it was subject to a protracted edit war about whether or not the statement required a citation. MarshallKe (talk) 14:47, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

That article can be written better IMHO. For example, the lead is already referencing digits, and if it's referring to the image on the infobox, it really shouldn't be there. What would be better is to say "the average human hand has a pinky, ring finger, middle finger, index finger, and thumb. Not controversial, can be cited, and much more clear than just 5 fingers (4 thumbs and a pinky?). But thats just my humble opinion.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 15:12, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly and invite you to make the edit, as I am too chicken shit to do it myself and respark a thousand year war MarshallKe (talk) 15:22, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

The facts are not controversial, but the wording is. Here in England very few people would refer to the "pinky", but to the "little finger". Phil Bridger (talk) 17:20, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

1 yes, 2 n/a, 3 yes. Otherwise "widespread" is the editor's opinion stated in wikivoice. None of the sources cited support "widespread," so "widespread" would be a conclusion that no source arrives at, and thus WP:SYNTH. (And anyway 5-6 citations is not "widespread.") Levivich 15:51, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

• Without a reliable source that explicitly states "So and so received widespread media coverage" (or an equivalent statement), then Wikipedia articles should not say that. To simply find media coverage yourself and say "because I found media coverage, I can say this is widespread media coverage" is clearly WP:OR/WP:SYNTH, and such instances can be removed, unless of course they are cited to a reliable source that itself states that there was widespread coverage. --Jayron32 15:55, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
• Any such statement should have a reliable source that says that a subject received widespread media coverage. A handful, or even a few handfuls, of examples of such coverage does not necessarily make it widespread. Individual facts about a subject can be cited to media, although we need to be careful about that term - breaking news reports are primary sources, not secondary. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:16, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
• 1. Yes, 2. n/a, 3. Yes. Per Jayron. — TransporterMan (TALK) 18:53, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
• Regarding (3), there are often better alternatives to removing these lines from articles wholesale. For instance, just change "[subject] received widespread media attention^[1][2]" to "[subject] received media attention^[1][2]", and then it's fine due to WP:ABOUTSELF. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 22:11, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks, I was hoping for an answer like this. I suppose it's a judgment call. Maybe a ^{[dubious – discuss]} or ^{[failed verification]} could be an alternative too? MarshallKe (talk) 23:22, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I'd say those tags would be appropriate when it's likely that a source for "widespread" might exist. But tags should always be addressable. I think the kind of situation we're mainly talking about here is one with a medium flare-up, where it's significant enough to warrant a mention in the article but not significant enough that newspapers will have the kind of meta-coverage where they talk about how much other newspapers have covered the issue. When the sourcing just doesn't exist, we need to go with what we can, which is to just say that something received coverage without trying to characterize how much. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 20:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• No, this is not necessarily synthesis. It could be puffery or an NPOV problem. Masem demonstrates the possibility of use cases, but in each specific case you need to ask "Is there no other way to write what I'm trying to communicate here?" You can pick anything apart as synthesis if you have the impetus to: any article that contains more than one source and no plagiarism is juxtaposing something in a new way and giving off connotations not found in any original source. Extremely minor synthesis issues are a necessary evil to achieve prose that doesn't read like it was machine-written (which too many of our articles do), and that doesn't beat about the bush with obvious and necessary facts that are apparent from the given sources. — Bilorv (talk) 22:57, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not here to oppose Wikipedia:Psci, and I'm not saying that it's unreasonable, but I just sometimes wonder: Is there philosophical or moral reason why Wikipedia editors hate pseudoscience so much? Most other encyclopedias (edit: e.g. Britannica) I've read don't attack pseudoscience that much (but they still note when something is unscientific), but why does the typical Wikipedia editor do so? (Some editors are very short tempered to such people.) Félix An (talk) 01:27, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Other encyclopedias can't be edited by the proponents of pseudoscience. It gets a little old pushing back against nonsense. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:44, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Presumably because it is diametrically opposed to the goal of an encyclopedia. Pseudo-, which means "false, not genuine, fake" is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do here. Zoozaz1 talk 01:47, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

It befouls the very concept of science, substituting some mixture of superstition, folly, and outright fraud for actual scientific inquiry into truth. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:51, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I think the answer to this should be common sense but basically pseudoscience ruins the reputation of the encyclopedia.CycoMa (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Pseudoscience topics can be suitable for Wikipedia provided that they are Notable (as evidenced by many independent reliable sources) and clearly LABELED as pseudoscience or as being outside the mainstream canon (for example see Heim theory). What must never be done is to imply that pseudoscience topics are in the scientific mainstream, although this is what their proponents often try to do. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:39, 19 June 2021 (UTC).

A more interesting question is "Why do followers of pseudoscientific topics like promoting them as not pseudoscientific?". Johnuniq (talk) 03:50, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Johnuniq - I think that is a relatively easy question to answer. That is because it is often difficult for people without a scientific education to tell pseudoscience from science (and it isn't always easy with a scientific education). And often pseudoscience, unlike science, has simplistic answers. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:21, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

That is for sure the root problem. Wikipedia goes ahead and calls pseudoscience what it is, and people whose income is dependent on selling healing crystals or tiger penis wine don't like seeing it clearly stated that it's a bunch of nonsense. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:45, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

That's what makes it so dangerous, it's nonsense disguised as science. —El Millo (talk) 04:49, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

If the only information about a topic comes from within a WP:walled garden of true believers the topic will not be suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:10, 19 June 2021 (UTC).

I can think of two reasons. In Medicine, where I work, money is a major factor. The "dietary supplements" industry rakes in several billion dollars a year, but it's pennies on the dollar compared to what gets spent on real medicine, and they know it. But the other factor, I think, is that some forms of pseudoscience are akin to a religious belief for some people (and indeed, there are some new (ie within the past century) religious movements that incorporate pseudoscience. "Toxins" is just the new word for Haram or Traif, "natural" just means the same as Kosher or Halal. Hyperion35 (talk) 15:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

For those who have access to Netflix, I recommend a watch of Behind the Curve for an explanation of why flat-earthers believe what they do. Sdrqaz (talk) 01:39, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Because one set of POV pushers mostly beat the other set. There is a way to cover the topics with more neutrality, as mentioned above like real professional encyclopedias. But as Beeblebrox mentions this one can, for the moment, be edited by anyone. Pros and cons to everything! PackMecEng (talk) 01:43, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia provides an environment where bad reasoning is discouraged. Personal attacks, red herrings, argumentum ad populum, to mention just a few instances, will not work here. (Insofar, it is similar to science, which has high standards for reasoning too, but slightly different ones.) That means that in a discussion between two "sets of POV pushers", the side with the good reasons on their side will beat the bluffing windbags. This is what happened: climatology beats denialism, medicine beats homeopathy, physics beats perpetual motion, evolution beats creation. Of course, the people who are not competent enough to tell good reasoning from bad will only see that one side won, but not be able to make out the pattern. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:00, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

That is a good theory but I am not so sure that is what really happens in practice. Each side seems themselves as the one true bastion of reason and the other size as crazy POV pushers. As noted above and below our pseudoscience articles tend to go to far in one direction or another pushing them outside neutrality. Your statement sounds alarmingly like you are trying to right great wrongs. I only mention that because I do consider you a close friend on here and just want to help. PackMecEng (talk) 15:26, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I am not so sure that is what really happens in practice Of course not, because you don't look at the actual reasoning and try to determine whether it is good or bad, using expert knowledge about quality of arguments as well as about the scientific subjects in question. If you did, you would see the difference and be sure that is what really happens in practice.

The right-great-wrongs thing does not make sense. The only wrong I am trying to right is wrong content of articles based on bad sources or original research. That obnoxious one-sided fake friendship thing of yours is also wrong, of course, but I have no way of making that right. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:50, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Again right great wrong is an editing style. You keep harping on that your arguments are obviously right so we need to stomp down and push the POV way to the other side. So instead of making an encyclopedic article it becomes a pov hit piece. Your view is apparently the exact same as the pov pushers for the other side and just as much of a problem for creating an encyclopedia. Again you are not looking at this objectively with the aim of creating encyclopedic content, rather from a perspective of someone that is fighting the great wrongs of the other side. It's not a sides thing, it is an encyclopedia thing my friend. Fight as you may, we are still buddies though. Don't worry! PackMecEng (talk) 17:22, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Your comments about being friends read like passive aggressive harassment to me. Also, you're grossly mischaracterizing Hob's points. Taking those two facts together, this discussion really strains my ability to AGF here, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hob's ability to do the same was null.

Even if you're being completely sincere, it really doesn't look like you are.

And to be clear: I don't have any issue with you. We can be buddies, if you like (as long as you add a song or two to my little collection). I'm just explaining what I'm seeing here, because I think you might benefit from a third opinion. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:33, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Yeah the friend stuff is a bit of fun since they get so uppity about it. I have no problem with either of you! But I do think they get a little blinded by their opinions of pseudoscience which leads to unencyclopedic editing. It's a distinction that Hob and others truly seem to be missing in this discussion. Yes, by all means describe pseudoscience as what it really is. That does not mean that every other sentence needs to be alone the lines of "and its a terrible such and such". It's repetitive and just bad writing style in general, let alone for an encyclopedia. That is the issue I have with all people that have strong feelings for or against pretty much anything and why WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS fits so well to describe the situation. Heck I remember we had to have a full RFC to remove one sentence out of like 3 or 4 from the lead of a pseudoscience article, not because it was wrong but because it was already said 3 other times in the same section. It's tiring dealing with both sides honestly and that's why people with strong feelings gave up there. PackMecEng (talk) 20:49, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I've heard a few editors express this sentiment, but I've never seen an example of this in action, except on dangerous medical pseudosciences, where it's absolutely warranted. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:59, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Without an example to point to, I would think it is completely possible to make sure a few running sentences can be worded as clear attributed claims and assertions to the pseudoscience, followed by the necessary rebuttals based on sound science and medicine. I agree in the area of bad medical pseudoscience that there needs to be more "break points" in the narrative of the pseudoscience to call out to why it is wrong/bad/etc, but again, doesn't need to be a per-sentence rebuttal. Should be a thought-by-thought aspect. --Masem (t) 21:43, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree. What I was saying is that I occasionally see it claimed that many of our articles on pseudoscience do stop every other sentence to refute the BS, or that they use intemperate language to do so, but I've never once been shown an example of either.

In my entire Wikicareer, I've seen exactly two examples of skepticism going too far. One was so long ago I can't even remember what it was about, and the other time was when I butted heads with JzG and SlimVirgin about the definition of "conspiracy theory". You can read that whole shebang through several sections here, and you can check the article to see that my preference (to not state that all CSs are categorically false in the lede) won out.

That's the biggest difference I've seen between skeptical editors and fans of pseudoscience; skeptics can and will change their minds, even if things get heated and heels get dug in, so long as the evidence is there. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:19, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Which also brings up a point that likely dominates individual discussions: editors (both new and old) tend to qualify which "category" ("skeptic" vs "fanatic" vs "Anti-pseudoscience") an editor is on simply by which side they argue, which may not always be true, and that itself can cause problems. Arguing for a nuanced approach rather than a hard "refute" mode is not necessarily the sign of a "fanatic", but perhaps an editor seeing to balance what can be said from RSes. Its a good idea to remind all editors that we comment on content, not commentators, and if there is a behavioral issue (a "fanatic" that won't drop the stick, for example) that's where AN/I comes into play. This is probably not as major a factor overall here, but knowing how I see it come up all the time in other discussions related to neutrality on pages where we're talking ideological issues, I'd expect it is a frequent occurrence. --Masem (t) 22:35, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes we get new users who would be "on the side" of skeptics, but for the fact that they do not behave in the way required of Wikipedians, especially WP:IDHT and WP:NPA. They never stay long because they are even opposed by the people who are against pseudoscience. On the other hand, there are some profringe editors who are able to stay longer because they can stop themselves at the right moment, or are good at Wikilawyering and stay just below the sanctionable limit. They still try to turn articles into fringe propaganda pieces again and again, they whitewash criticism away, you have to explain to them the same basic principles again and again in different Talk pages, and that is a very good reason to categorize them on the dark side - their goal is a different, lower-quality Wikipedia. But usually, bad behaviour, disrespect of rules, and short Wikipedia life closely correlate with a profringe position. In any case, that "simply by which side they argue" thing is not strictly true. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:52, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

OP, "Most other encyclopedias I've read"... which ones? How many general purpose encyclopedias except for us and Britannica are out there anymore? I mean... Colliers? Funk & Wagnal's? Encarta? I kind of have to question your experience. If you're talking about the many specialized encyclopedias out there, music encyclopedias and biology encyclopedias and comic book encyclopedias, I'm not sure how they relate to what we do... If you're talking about Encarta etc., I mean these articles are like 15 years old at least, so... if you're talking about just Britannica, well, I dunno, who knows why they do what they do. Maybe it's not that we're too hard but that they're too soft. Ask them. Herostratus (talk) 03:03, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that most Wikipedia editors hate pseudoscience. I for example think that articles on any pseudoscience should explain that it has no support in science, then explain to readers what it is about in a neutral tone using reliable sources. The tone of many of these articles is preaching, which harms the credibility of what articles say. If I read the Journal of the Plague Year and want to know more about how doctors of the time treated it, I don't need to be reminded every other sentence that their methods were not based on science and didn't work. I'm smart enough to know that modern medicine has improved since the 1600s.

In my experience, the most anti-pseudoscience editors have backgrounds in GMO research, chemicals and agribusiness, since a lot of often unfair criticism comes from pseudoscience. Hence the Genetic Literacy Project ("Science not Ideology"), which has overlapping support with climate science denial websites. Since the runup to the 2016 U.S. election, a lot of these editors have broadened their interests into U.S. politics.

Bear in mind though that since some readers may rely on Wikipedia articles to treat illnesses (even though they shouldn't), we need to take extra care that claims that have no support in science are never given credibility.

TFD (talk) 04:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

This right here. Wikipedia definitely should not show any type of legitimacy to pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean we should treat the topics with hostility or contempt in Wikivoice. There are ways to still write neutrally to present what the theory/concept is behind the psci - without necessarily commenting on its bad science - and then going into a breakdown of how its been refuted or the like from appropriate scientific RSes. Instead, we sometimes treat these topics as if they are morally reprehensible in wikivoice, which is a problem. We can stay completely out of giving pseudoscience any weight while staying neutral in tone while writing about them. --Masem (t) 06:07, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The topics definitely are "morally reprehensible", but I agree that we should not use the encyclopedia's voice to say this. A major problem, as is made clear by comments above, is that pseudoscience supporters regard any information on the ineffectiveness of pseudoscientific medical practices, however well sourced, as attacking and non-neutral.

@Masem: write neutrally to present what the theory/concept is behind the psci - without necessarily commenting on its bad science - and then going into a breakdown of how its been refuted or the like. I thnk this is impossible (or at the least very difficult) to do without violating WP:STRUCTURE, since it will appear as one section for the proponents and one for the opponents, which is explicitly (and rightly) prohibited. You cannot present pseudoscience neutrally without incorporating the evidence that it is not correct. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:31, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

While it is likely impossible to generalize to all cases, I would expect in a reasonable neutral article on psci that the pseudoscience at the basis of the matter would be only a section, elements like its history and impact/reactions/etc. fleshing out the rest of the article. And keeping to the fact that we're sticking to RSes and not to primary works, we would then only briefly summarize enough of the pseudoscience in one shot as to give context to these other sections of the article, and then following that in the same section, the refuting sound science fact that disproves the psci. If for some reason there's many parts of the psci then there it would make sense to present one facet, then the refuting RSes, then another facet and the refuting RSes, and so on. We do not need to set constant flags that the psci topic is false/mistaken/bad (This is what leads to the apparent hostility). We can use wording to be clear anything said about the psci concept is not in Wikivoice and part of what the pseudoscience theory is, and making sure that after brief summaries we're there with the refuting text, its still clear WP is not treating the psci in any way as true. I do agree we do not want one big section that lets the psci topic be introduced without addressing its problems overall, but we also don't need to be at the per-sentence rebuttal level either. Its a tonal balance. --Masem (t) 13:42, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

With medical topics, it doesn't matter how neutrally you phrase "X is unscientific nonsense that has no medical use" (i.e. Homeopathy), you are still going to get supporters and exponents of those things complaining about it. There's simply nothing we can do about that. Black Kite (talk) 14:08, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I know of hardly any, if any, anti-pseudoscience editors with backgrounds in GMO research and agribusiness. Even if there is "overlapping support" of the Genetic Literacy Project and climate science denial (I haven't seen any evidence), some people are pro-(part of)-science for the wrong reasons. Some people on the political left support climate science mainly from being anti-corporation (Big Oil), which then leads them into denialism with GMOs, which they perceive as benefiting big corporations. The same thing happens at least as much on the right with reversed polarity (especially regarding climate science). Crossroads ^-talk- 20:43, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

User:Jytdog for one works in biotechnology at a univerity.[21][22] A number of other editors report similar backgrounds on their user pages. Note his edits on Himalayan salt: he added additional cites that health claims are baseless. Himalayan salt is sold in specialty sections of grocery stories are purchased because some chefs recommend it and it has a pleasing pink hue and some people erroneously think it has health benefits. But there's no need to turn this into an article about pseudoscience. (If you are interested, you can read through the edit wars and discussion page.) Some people buy pink lemonade. We don't need paragraphs explaining that it tastes no different from yellow lemonade and has no additional health benefits.

The Genetic Literacy Project was (GLP) founded by Jon Entine who began his pro-GMO advocacy as a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute which advocates climate change denial. I found it ironice that the GLP would accuse anti-GMO activists of denialism and anti-science, comparing them with climate change deniers.

TFD (talk) 21:44, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Given that there are actual RSes that point out that there are claims that pink Himalayan salt provides health benefits (and which go on to say these are hooky), it makes 100% sense to include that those claims exist and then include MEDRS sourcing to refute them. Jytdog (and presumably others) did not pull this nonsense out of thing air to add because they are anti-pseudoscience - there was actual documentable (via RSes) pseudoscience to cover and properly refute. As soon as you point to sources that make the claim that pink lemonade had health benefits over normal lemonade, then the same issue can be raised at that page. --Masem (t) 21:58, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

A broad answer is that since most Wikipedia editors are interested in accruing knowledge, there will be an intense dislike of falsehoods and lies and such. Additionally, pseudoscience generally disrespects and actively opposes values like verifiability, NPOV, accuracy, etc. A more focused answer is that many Wikipedia editors work in scientific fields or in fields that are essentially applied science, like medicine or engineering. So for us, we have experience in decisions based on science and evidence, and in having a responsibility to make those decisions carefully. We're often more aware of the costs of pseudoscience. And finally, I think you also have to take into account that most forms of pseudoscience, at some point or another, wind up involving conspiracy theories against actual scientists and people who work in these fields. My patience for hearing that I gleefully watch people die of cancer because I won't agree to cover Laetrile is so infinitesimal that Planck would have difficulty finding it. Hyperion35 (talk) 15:31, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I think we are all pretty constant. -Roxy . wooF 15:44, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

To iterate on this point, WP editors should be interested on the how and why a piece of pseudoscience came about and/or why it is maintained despite science and medicine pointing out why it is flawed. e.g. how can people still believe in the Flat Earth theory? We are not going to document, in a great extent, the theory itself, but the reasons why - as documented in our reliable sources - why the theory continues to propagate or the like, and that helps to keep these topics neutral without conceding too much toward inclusion of the pseudosicence. --Masem (t) 21:41, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes. We are biased

I'm aware of that essay, and I've even made a minor contribution to it. I'm mainly wondering why the editors are sometimes impolite regarding pseudoscience. Félix An (talk) 13:41, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Because the editors trying to whitewash pseudoscientists and promote pseudoscience are frustrating otherwise patient users trying to maintain a neutral tone. I literally see multiple talk page posts each day that fall into the following categories:

• "Edit Request: take the words "pseudoscience" out of this article because I know it's real."
• "Wikipedia is a liberal/skeptical/atheist cesspool and it sucks and nobody believes it.
• "Please look at this geocities blog that confirms that [pseudoscience] is not pseudoscience, but very real."

Almost all of them get reasonable responses from the regulars, but about 1/2 of those responses result in the (almost inevitably) brand-new editor going on a tear about how stupid, biased, ignorant and stupid (and did I mention stupid?) we are for not doing what they want. Of the remainder, about 1 in 10 results in the new editor trying everything they can to get the editors that answered them blocked.

On top of that, every once in a blue moon, we get an experienced editor show up who will inevitably hurl aspersions at every regular watcher of that page, make dire threats about getting us sanctioned, go on and on about how we're ruining Wikipedia, and eventually end up ranting and raving about how Wikipedia is a cesspit.

So yeah, it's a little tiring to work on pseudoscience-related articles. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:48, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I’d be interested in seeing the reasoning behind the OP’s conclusion that Wikipedia editors dislike pseudoscience. Brunton (talk) 08:14, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Well said User:Guy Macon, not all heroes wear capes. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 08:19, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Guy Macon, that response is brilliant. I might steal that for a subpage of my profile! doktorb _words^deeds 09:09, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

It already is Guy's subpage: User:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased., with three WP shortcuts and the redirect Wikipedia:All your bias are belong to us. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:58, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Furthermore, I released it under CC0 instead of CC BY-SA 3.0 specifically so that anyone can use it as if they thought of it themselves without attributing it to me. Information wants to be free. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:34, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

It's not a question of hatred but of describing topics with accuracy in mind, aiming for a good encyclopedia. Describing science and its methods properly would be unrealistic here but scientific method and epistemology may help. Science aims to be universal as well as to test its tenets, correct them and revise its knowledge and textbooks. This allowed it to gain a certain reputation and led to advances in technology, medicine, etc. Conversely there are belief systems that when contradicted by evidence or confronted for the lack of evidence to support them, can come up with science-like apologetics or already were based on science-like, but discredited methods or untestable tenets (in some cases, prescience, protoscience). The demarcation line can be difficult to draw in some cases but is also often obvious. In the latter case, critical sources usually are easy to find and it's part of a respectable encyclopedia's role to educate. This may also avoid unnecessary harm that can result from dangerous practices or the failure to recognize them as lacking evidence, especially if it also leads to the avoidance of more reliable or safer solutions that exist (medicine comes to mind). It is also common for pseudoscientific arguments to be used in attempt to justify ideologies of all types, including some that are divisive or harmful to education, peace, the environment, etc. The last two points touch ethics, possibly partly answering the part about morality. Some argue that ethics should be outside of science, but it certainly can be informed by science and is unavoidable as part of its process. Many universities have good introductions to the scientific method and pseudoscience on their sites. —PaleoNeonate – 17:03, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Are you kiddin me? I LOVE pseudoscience! It's one of my favorite things, alongside conspiracy theories. The way adherents create their own little worlds, the amusing stupidity on display by some of the more vocal and less-well-educated believers, the narratives of Fighting For The Truth™... It's fascinating stuff. And each one has a puzzle in terms of discovering how and why it's flawed, or occasionally, even if it's flawed. Pseudoscience is awesome and I love it.

I just wish people knew better than to believe it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:38, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

That's basically the whole point of our systematic bias, which is a combination of external and internal factors, most that we cannot resolve since it all stems from sourcing. All we can do is recognize that we do have this bias and that should be of concern when we are looking to points of tone and neutral writing style, not necessarily content, on these topics. We can maintain an impartial, dispassionate voice in writing about psuedoscience while still treating them with the implicit bias of underlying sourcing that these are "wrong" and reflect bad science or poor critical thinking. It is just often difficult to do when we have the supporters and avid followers of that psci areas wanting better promotion of that (eg the recent mess on the Wuhan lab leak stuff). --Masem (t) 17:43, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it's pretty obvious that competent Wikipedia editors should hate pseudoscience - it denies the basic concept of an encyclopedia based on accepted, confirmed knowledge. Having said that I think that there are editors who convert that hatred into unencyclopedic, non-factual activity. As one example from many years ago I remember editing an article about a homeopathic society that was established well before homeopathy had been debunked, and others insisted on it containing a long screed about how homeopathy is now considered pseudoscience (as it is) rather than consisting of content about the history of the society, to the extent that more of the article consisted of the former rather than the latter. Of course such content belongs in our article on homeopathy, which was linked, but we don't need to reproduce it everywhere as if this was an encyclopedia for small children who are incapable of recognising bunkum when they see it. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:11, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

There's a point where someone can treat science as a religion. The role of science is to find theories than can predict future events rather than a search for absolute truth. In that sense they are turning science into a religion. I don't hate Babylonian astrologists or shamans. I just think they tried to interpret the world and were wrong. People who look for wisdom in their teachings are misguided. I think articles should say that without preaching, which is more typically associated with religion and belief systems than objective science. TFD (talk) 20:43, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is a species of cultural pathology and is as worthy of study as any other pathology is. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC).

Why do Wikipedia editors like the word pseudoscience so much?

I think a legitimate question is: Why do Wikipedia editors like labeling things as "pseudoscience" so much. Outside our Wikipedia bubble it's not that common of a word, but we so often use it in the first sentence of an article. Like, "So and so is the pseudoscientific practice of blah blah blah." (My spellchecker (Firefox) is underlining the word pseudoscientific.) Really we should be defining the subject before going off on its pseudoscientificness.

Here's a current example from an article:

Astrology is a pseudoscience that claims to divine information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects.^[1][2][3][4]

That might be better written as:

Astrology is the practice of attempting to forecast information about human affairs and earthly events by studying the movements and positions of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets.

That's more fair to its long history as a protoscience. (I'm not an expert on the topic, but I assume that many early astronomers were astrologers, as many early chemists were alchemists.) And the 2nd paragraph makes it clear that modern astrology has no basis in science. (Though if we took the word "pseudoscience" out of the first sentence we should put something in the 1st paragraph the way Brittanica does when it says Astrology is "diametrically opposed to the findings and theories of modern Western science."

I suspect part of pseudoscience's ubiquity here stems from constant fighting over categorization of certain articles, and the title of Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience. But in the majority of cases I think it would be more clear to our readers if we used plain language like "So and so is not supported by science" or "So and so contradicts many scientific principles" or "So and so contradicts many scientific principles" instead of "So and so is pseudoscience." ~Awilley (talk) 00:14, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is easy to identify. A topic in mainstream science will be extensively cited in the science citation databases, all of which deal only with reliable sources. If the topic is not in those it is outside the mainstream and likely to be pseudoscience. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:21, 22 June 2021 (UTC),

Definitely a non-sequitur, but I'll reply. It certainly would be convenient if we had a canon of scientific knowledge. But reality isn't as tidy as you describe. There's plenty of undiscovered truth that hasn't yet found its way into the scientific literature, and plenty of what was once considered common knowledge that has since been overturned. As Carl Sagan said, "Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking." ~Awilley (talk) 01:30, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I am talking about what is in the current mainstream. If somebody has their own little nugget of undiscovered truth then it is up to them to get it into the mainstream by means of scholarship and research that is accepted by the scientific community. Until then, Wikipedia will regard it as fringe. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:35, 22 June 2021 (UTC).

That's because astrology is pseudoscience, and utter horseshit. That is the current status of astrology, and our article needs to reflect that. You can, after making it clear to the reader that this is considered nonsense by anyone with half a brain, discuss the history of astrology and the like. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:07, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Astrology is nonscience. Astrology makes no scientific claims whatever. By the way, it isn't Wikipedia's job to "make it clear to the reader" what is or isn't "considered nonsense by anyone with half a brain." If that were the case, all of our Christianity articles would say that the belief that a human was resurrected from death after being in the earth three days, then physically floated up into the sky where he's still up there hanging out with angels and saints, AND that everyone who doesn't believe this is going to be tormented in a lake of fire for eternity is considered nonsense to anyone with half a brain. And has caused a HELL (pun intended) of a lot more real world damage than people believing that what time of the year your birthday happens to be might influence your personality (not at all far fetched - there are social implications of this that share common patterns). Of course, we all know that that would not be allowed to stand for more than about two seconds. (maybe that's one of the reasons for all you zealots' crusading against "easy targets" - new age and anything that comes from dark-skinned or squinty-eyed populations - frustration that you can't target western religion, because that's off limits?). Firejuggler86 (talk) 16:12, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

While I'm no fan of pseudoscience, I would say that awilley has a point. It seems that our internal lingua of marking things as "pseudo science" has crept into the lead of lots of articles.. I do think that that is problematic. Many in the general public have never heard of the term pseudo science I presume and they would never qualify things organically as such. This means that the term probably isn't good for the first sentence/lead of an article. Descriptors like "a custom", "a practice" , "a religion" or "a speculation/theory" seem much better to me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Xxanthippe, I find that pseudoscience is not always easy to identify. More specifically, I find that some reliable sources use 'pseudoscience' as a kind of general insult for anything they disagree with, without using the word precisely and correctly. It's easy to find sources, for example, that say economics is a pseudoscience. Or religion. The main problem with calling everything a pseudoscience is not that you can't find some source, somewhere, to back it up, but that it's usually WP:UNDUE outside of things like homeopathy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

And how do you identify which things are "like homeopathy"? Is it easier than identifying pseudoscience? There is no problem with having terms the applicability of which is difficult to decide; there is no restriction saying that everything needs to be easy.

You seem to have your own definition of pseudoscience which is different from that of reliable sources. You are second-guessing reliable sources here: some reliable sources use 'pseudoscience' as a kind of general insult for anything they disagree with. Of course, you are free to do that, but your opinion cannot be used as a foundation for policy. If you think a reliable souce is not as reliable as others believe, you know which Wikipedia page to go to to have it pegged down. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:20, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

By "things like homeopathy", I refer to subjects about which many reliable sources say that the subject is pseudoscience, or they provide a description of the subject that is sufficiently similar to the first sentence of our article on Pseudoscience ("statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method") that it is no stretch at all to use the term.

One can find the occasional claim that art history is pseudoscience, that economics is pseudoscience, that religion is pseudoscience, but these sources form a tiny minority. We do not need to have these sources rejected as unreliable to note that their views are undue, and contradicted by others.

My own views appear to align with reliable sources such as https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Pseudoscience_Wars/SqOPw9Yq-MEC

As is surely obvious, "pseudoscience" is a term of abuse, an epithet attached to certain points of view to discredit those ideas, complemented by "pseudoscientist" to designate the practitioner. ... On the imagined scale that has excellent science at one end and then slides through good science, mediocre science (the vast majority of what is done), poor science, to bad science on the other end, it is not the case that pseudoscience lies somewhere on this continuum.  It is off the grid altogether. The process of demarcating science from non-science is a central and quite general aspect of all scientific activities, but pseudoscience attracts particular vehemence as compared to, say, non-science.  Scientists rarely spend much energy arguing that the Catholic Church or Vietnamese literature is pseudoscience; they are just not science—and devotees of those domains are quite happy with that designation. Pseudoscience is different.  This is a combative notion deployed to categorize (and, its users hope, weaken or eliminate) doctrines that are non-science but pretend to be… WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

non-science but pretend to be... is the defining factor. Non-science that does not pretend (claim) to be science is not pseudoscience. It fails the definitive test. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

• In answer to the original question of this section, I think in some cases it may be intellectual laziness or the inability to effectively argue the point without resorting to simplistic labelling. I may be wrong, but that is an impression I get. There are cases where the term is quite appropriate, but it does appear to be overused, and sometimes applied like a blunt instrument. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:38, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I also agree with many things User:Awilley is saying, including having a point in overusing the label of pseudoscience, and as Firejuggler86 says, Astrology for example is a nonscience-- so there is no need to label as pseudoscience something that is clearly distinct from science. Just like religions are. And Wikipedia is at its best by describing religions without constantly labelling them as something scientifically unproven. User:WhatamIdoing also is persuasive in that the label of pseudoscience is an amorphous and biased label. I think we should find a better way to describe topics, especially non-western cultures/traditions, without being derisive. Al83tito (talk) 07:23, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Al83tito Astrology for example is a nonscience-- so there is no need to label as pseudoscience

The very article you link to contains several citations to reliable sources that label it as pseudoscience. We do rely on reliable sources for selecting what to say and what not.

There may be reliable sources that call astrology a "nonscience", and/or deny that it is pseudoscience. Can you cite them? (Please keep WP:BURDEN in mind.) Paradoctor (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Two points:

• In a typical ontology, all pseudoscience is a subcategory of non-science. (Bad science is still part of science, but 'pretend science' is part of the 'all the things that aren't science' category.)
• It may be too simplistic to describe astrology as only being a pseudoscience. I expect that Western authors have spent more effort over the centuries condemning it as sinful than as pseudoscientific.

— WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no problem with astrology being both. It is Al83tito who wants to avoid the pseudoscience label on the grounds that the nonscience label applies.

More to the point: We go by what the sources say. It's that simple. There is really nothing to discuss. Paradoctor (talk) 22:46, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this answer is inefficient

The article on Feng-shui is far from a flat, historical and scientific study of the phenomenon, across countries and centuries. Rather, it gives the impression of a leaflet writen by a preacher deprived of some market share by another preacher. Geomancy has been used to build cities, palaces and tombs. But the good preacher doesn't care. His target is the cheap house decorating pendants sold by the bad preacher around the corner. In the CJK world, geomancy has been criticized from ages, as can be seen in the Dream of the Red Chamber, and so many other sources. But the good preacher doesn't care. His pet books, writen here and now by his pet preachers, are circumscribing his horizon. Across the centuries, a lot of social unrest has arisen around the motto "powerful people are monopolizing favorable places". This is not even alluded to. And now, the most important question: why are there people who are not convinced by the argument: "pray with us, or be branded as a laundry ball advertizer" ? Pldx1 (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

No. We are not going to treat on Feng-shui as if it is anything other than complete bullshit. And we already do a great job of discribing the history of Feng-shui. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I recommend WP:FIXBIAS and to post suggested changes at the article's talk page instead of here, —PaleoNeonate – 01:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Dear User: PaleoNeonate. My previous post was not about the Feng-shui article, but about the "ineffectiveness" of preaching against Feng-shui. To be proud of being biased is ridiculous, and rather counterproductive. Once again, many cities, palaces and tombs were planned and built using Feng-shui. The existence of Beijing, Xi'an, etc. is a rather massive fact, and deserves scientific and respectful studies. Even including the fact that Feng-shui did not prevent the Summer Palace from being ransacked by the opium soldiers. Shouting "bullshit" ... and rearranging other people's posts won't change the story. Pldx1 (talk) 08:17, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon, you know how to make stuff don't you? @Pldx1's mention of laundry balls reminded me that it's summer, and the world still doesn't have a machine that will get fine sand out of swimsuit fabric. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

We already know how to do that. Let it dry, suck up the sand with a shop vac (I recommend Ridgid[27]), and follow up with a trip through a standard washing machine. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I can give it a try. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: No. We are not going to treat on Feng-shui as if it is anything other than complete bullshit. Would you say the same of religion generally? 156.57.13.133 (talk) 20:36, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

(Answering because this involves my essay at WP:YWAB.) Ignoring for the moment the fact that Feng shui is not a religion, as long as religion does not make testable claims, Wikipedia does not say or imply that the religion is valid or invalid. We just describe what some people believe. Thus we would say "Latter Day Saints consider Joseph Smith to be a prophet comparable to Moses and Elijah". We would never say that Smith actually was a prophet, nor would we ever say that the claims about Smith being a prophet are bullshit.

The claim is untestable; no scientific measurement will ever tell you whether or not someone speaks on behalf of God. On the other hand, Smith made claims (detailed in our Archaeology and the Book of Mormon article), which are testable, and are bullshit. (And I should add that many members of the LDS church get along fine worshiping their God without believing the bullshit.) Wikipedia make no exception for religious bullshit. We don't care whether you believe bullshit because you are deceived, because it is part of your religion, because a politician told you it was true, or because you are just plain stupid.

Feng shui is indeed bullshit. There is zero evidence that Qi actually exists and abundant evidence that it doesn't work the way feng shui says it does. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:35, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

pseudoscience vs religious belief

• I would like to ask people to examine how we write articles on pseudoscientific beliefs and compare that to how we write articles on religious beliefs.

In articles about religious beliefs (even fairly fringe beliefs), we tend go out of our way to be respectful to believers. We are able to neutrally describe the belief as being a belief - without feeling a need to editorialize and caution the reader by noting that non-believers find that belief utterly ridiculous.

This isn’t how we write articles about pseudoscientific beliefs. With pseudoscientific beliefs we sometimes go out of our way to note that non-believers find it ridiculous.

My question is - why? Why don’t we write articles about pseudoscientific beliefs using the same neutral tone and language that we use when we write about religious beliefs? Blueboar (talk) 12:22, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Blueboar: the problem is repeatedly that what appears to be a neutral tone to one editor/reader does not to another. I think that the articles on Christian Science and Traditional Chinese medicine are neutral – too neutral in places in my view – but I suspect that believers in either would take a different view. Certainly it has been a constant battle to get any criticism into some of the articles on traditional Indian medical systems, and believers are constantly adding bits to articles about plants used in these systems that violate WP:MEDRS and have to be removed. So the key question is "who defines neutral"? Peter coxhead (talk) 12:39, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:All your bias are belong to us I have, with the invaluable help of the Wikipedia community, documented places where wikipedia has been accused of being biased against holocaust denial, acupuncture. laundry balls, creationism, conspiracy theories, etc. It is fascinating how few items on my list have not generated such complaints. Note that the complaints have resulted in a more favorable treatment of the subject exactly zero times.

As it says on that page, saying that "Wikipedia is biased" or that "Wikipedia fails to follow its own neutral point of view rules" is not a set of magic words that will cause Wikipedia to accept your favorite conspiracy theory, urban myth, pseudoscience, alternative medicine or fringe theory. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:58, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

"we tend go out of our way to be respectful to believers", not really. We make things clear that religious beliefs are religious beliefs. When religious beliefs overlap with the real world, and are held in spite of evidence, we call them out as such, like faith healing. Or when Mormons claim that Native Americans are descendants of a lost tribe of Isreal, we also clearly label it as not accepted by anyone that knows anything about archeology/genetics. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:13, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

But we don't say that the Mormon religious beliefs are pseudoscientific. We say that there's no scientific evidence, which is a more normal/less fight-y way to disagree. We don't try to slap derogatory labels on their religious stories. The same is true for origin stories when we're writing about Native American people. We may say that the traditional belief is that the tribe originated in this or that way, and that genetic research indicates this or that instead, but we don't say that these are pseudoscientific beliefs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is just one type of non-science and the term should be restricted to examples that fit the definition. Religion is usually not pseudoscience. One of the characteristics of pseudoscience is that it is claimed to be science, but is not. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:13, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes indeed. And this is the reason why starting the said article with the assertion Feng shui, 風水, is a traditional pseudoscientific practice [1] [2] [3] originating in ancient China is as misleading as possible. Traditional practice, at least according to Wikipedia, began around 4000 before our era, that is to say a few millennia before Matthew [2-3] started to preach. It was not only well before the emergence of the concept of science but, on the contrary, this protoscience, that is, all these attempts to collect and organize facts and interpretations, formed the path which has led to science and technology today. Extracting the metal from an ore leaves out some slag. But describing cartography, astronomy, compass etc. as only bullshit, seems to be the biggest bullshit ever. Pldx1 (talk) 14:19, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

A simple test for pseudoscience could be: do the practitioners claim that the practice is based on scientific principles, or that their claims have been tested following scientific methodology? If they make such claims, and they can be shown to be invalid, then it is pseudoscience. If they make no such claims then it is another form of non-science. (feel free to test this hypothesis). Mislabelling other forms of non-science as pseudoscience is a disservice to our readers. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:07, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood, looking at Talk:Feng shui#"Pseudoscience" and the rest of the talk page, I don't get the impression that editors care whether they are using the word precisely, so long as they can use this derogatory word. The first source cited in Feng shui is titled "Superstition and the Chinese Real Estate Market", and its main point is to say that superstitions related to feng shui have a significant effect on real-world prices, but we're not citing it to say that it's a superstition or that it affects real estate value; we're citing it to say that it's a pseudoscience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:30, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Using an inappropriate term to label something with the intention to give the readers an inaccurate impression is extremely undesirable and fails neutrality. It is unfortunately a common tactic of fallacious argument, and many of the perpetrators may not even realise what they are doing, Competence is required, but not always evident.
I have not looked into feng shui, so I don't know if the practitioners make any claims that can be used to justify labelling it as pseudoscience. I accept that it is not science, but who claims that it is? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:22, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

You don't understand; Abrahamic religions are the only legitimate religions and deserve to be treated with respect because Europe, being primarily Christian, is the most important continent in the world. Christianity deserves the most respect, then the rest of the Abrahamic religions, then the rest of the world religions. If Chinese people make a claim about the functioning of the world not testable by science, that's pseudoscience. But if a Christian person makes the claim that it's possible to turn wine into the literal blood of Jesus, well that's a religious belief that we need to respect. There is no room for us to respect all world beliefs by instituting a Wiki wide standard that for something to be considered pseudoscience, it must claim to be science and not actually be scientific. It doesn't matter what so-called "reliable sources" say about the definition of pseudoscience. What matters is that we can call beliefs held by uncivilized Chinese or Indian people "pseudoscience" and that we call beliefs held by civilized peoples "religion". Chess (talk) (please use ((reply to|Chess)) on reply) 21:49, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

But we don't say that the Mormon religious beliefs are pseudoscientific. We call creation science a pseudoscience. I'm not sure what our main article about Mormon beliefs about Native Americans is, but I'm of the opinion that if it's not referred to as "pseudohistory", and any lines of evidence touted by Mormons as confirming it labelled "pseudoscience", then it's not neutral enough.

Religious convictions are not the same thing as pseudoscientific beliefs, and should not be treated the same way. This is why I'm okay with not defining the broader belief of creationism as a pseudoscience. But pseudoscience which is based on religious convictions should not have any special privilege in relation to pseudoscience stemming from secular beliefs. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:01, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

• Assimilating the whole Feng-shui topic, across countries and millenia, to a pseudo-science is just another religious belief, as unfounded as to affirm the Real Presence of Christ in what president Biden ingests every week. But why people so proud of being biased would care? To say the least, it seems rather ludicrous to criticize people of the past ages for not using what took millennia to emerge from their attempts to record, classify, and tentatively extract some general rules. This amounts to require people from the past to not discover the compass until the full emergence of Maxwell's theories. This amounts to require people from the past to not wonder where to put their dwellings. Probably, they should have waited a few millennia under rain or frost and then enlist the services of a modern architect. Maybe one from Florida and/or from Fukushima? Such an attitude is ignorant of the process which led from protosciences to modern sciences. To quote the famous [2-3]

  The legitimate, sure and fruitful method to prepare a student to receive a physical hypothesis is the historical method. To trace the transformations through which the empirical material accumulated while the theoretical form was first sketched out; describe the long collaboration by means of which common sense and deductive logic have analyzed this material and molded this form until one is exactly adapted to the other: this is the best way, surely even the only one , to give those who study physics a fair and clear vision of the very complex and living organization of this science (Duhem 1954, p. 268) .

In other words, metal mining should not start by discarding the ore as an impure and shameful substance. But why people so proud of being biased would care? Pldx1 (talk) 12:15, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, Feng-shui became a pseudoscience only after the considerable success of modern science. Beforehand, it was just a traditional practice, not a pseudoscience. It is pseudoscience now. tgeorgescu (talk) 06:45, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• It's fine to call pseudohistory, pseudoarchaeology and mythology, respectively, what they are, including in relation to religion. Origin myth and flood geology, for instance. —PaleoNeonate – 13:27, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Clarifying my question

I think that pseudoscience should still be opposed. The thing is that I think some skeptics are impatient (for lack of a better word) with editors who promote pseudoscience. I think those people are people too, and we should more respectfully let them learn from their mistakes. Félix An (talk) 13:45, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

The battle

I've seen out of line nastiness on both sides. A part comes from wiggle room in the meaning(s) of the term. The core meaning is something that claims to be science but isn't. And so the main meaning is "falsely claiming to be science" which makes it a PEJORATIVE. But there is enough wiggle room in the term to allow people who are on the warpath against belief systems that aren't science-based to let them (try) to apply that PEJORATIVE to bash the target of their choice, even where the belief makes no claim to be scientific. I'm a very skeptical, very scientific atheist and so I am surrounded by belief-based stuff that I consider to be baseless at best. And though I always nicely call "baseless" or BS on those when I hear them (except I don't touch religion) I feel no need to bash those things. And in Wikipedia, that includes not stretching the use of the pseudoscience term to apply it to beliefs that do not generally claim to be based on science. Plus one solution to many eternal wiki-battles is that our mission is to be informative. Wikilawyered-in value-laden words are generally not informative. There are always better, more informative words to use than value-laden words.

The other side of the wiki-battle is to prevent things going in appearing as fact or scientific that aren't. And until we evolve policies and guidelines to reduce that, wikilawyering can get that type of stuff in. Which, of course, certainly raises the blood pressure of the people trying to keep that out. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@North8000, I ran across this on the definition of Pseudoscience when an editor questioned whether the term is actually derogatory, and it lines up with your thinking: "definitions of pseudoscience range widely among authorities depending on their personal criteria for an acceptable scientific method, and the only consistently clear quality of pseudoscience is that the term is derogatory".[28]

That said, I don't object to using value-laden words in articles – if they're DUE. What we shouldn't be doing is saying "All the serious sources say this is <your choice: religious, paranormal, superstition, performance art, fraud, whatever>, but I found one guy who says it's pseudoscience, so the article needs to start off by saying it's pseudoscience". The same principle applies for all value-laden terms (including the reverse: if most sources say it's pseudoscience, then that's what we say, even if you find one guy claiming that it's not). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing:I was wrong in calling it (flatly) value-laden. If it's something that clearly claims to be science but isn't, then that falls within the core definition of the term and then the term is informative / providing information. And in the example you gave, where sources overall strongly call it that, then certainly it should be used. But I happened to drop into the article which is more typical of the endless battles on certain types of articles. Basically trying to wikilawyer it in as a "bash" based on 1 or 2 biased (= unreliable) "WP:RS" opponents. North8000 (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it's always value-laden. The value it's laden with is that science is good and lying is bad. Words can be objective and still laden with human values. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I don't see how lying relates to this in general. The most common situation is a sincere belief that has no scientific basis. E.G most religion. Then there are people who sincerely believe that there is science supporting that belief. My sister who mistakenly believes that there is a scientific basis for astrology is an example of that. They don't understand what science is. Probably the most extreme is snake-oil stuff where they know that their claim is baseless, and they know that their claim of it being science-based is false. IMO this is the rare case of being outright lying.North8000 (talk) 04:59, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Intentional fraud and quackery are not uncommon in the 'product' range.

Your definition ("belief that has no scientific basis") is not pseudoscience. To be pseudoscience, you'd have to claim that your sincere belief was actually scientific. The guy who claimed that his car never needed gasoline is pseudoscience. The person who says they feel better when they look at a beautiful piece of artwork, or when they engage in a religious ritual, or when they wear red clothes, may have a sincere belief that has no scientific basis, but they're not claiming that their belief is based on science. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:44, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Part of the problem here seems to be the use of the weasel word "is claimed to" (by who?) in the definition of pseudoscience. The same underlying belief (feng shui, say) may be promulgated by some people without claiming it is science, but by others who represent that it is. So people eager to claim that things "are" pseudoscience can dig up sources where people present it as science, and people eager to claim the opposite can dig up sources where people are not presenting it as such.... CapitalSasha ~ talk 16:56, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Good point. IMO if the claim isn't widespread amongst proponents, then IMO the pseudoscience term is not informative and IMO should be left out.

@WhatamIdoing: I agree 100%. For my example which you were discussing, I was not saying that it is pseudoscience and agree with you that it isn't. We may have been involved on the same one. I briefly visited Feng shui. But an editor was unleashing a continuous barrage of false accusations of wiki-violations at everyone wh disagreed with them. My choices were endure it, take them to ANI or leave, and I chose leave. North8000 (talk) 23:28, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

As did I. Some editors are pushing their version of the truth in a very agressive way. The problem of that is that it makes other, well-intentioned editors to leave this project. As such, it causes Wikipedia to be more partisan, which is a bad thing for an encyclopedia. That is worrisome. Secondly, on the Feng Shui-article: the version we had five years ago was more neutral, only with an elegant judgement at the end of the lead:

Modern reactions to feng shui are mixed. The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience states that some principles of feng shui are "quite rational", while noting that "folk remedies and superstitions... [have been] incorporated into feng shui's eclectic mix".

That invites so much more to read the rest of the article, as opposed to say "this whole concept is a bunch of lies" in the first sentence. After all, why would anyone read it further if it is a bunch of bullcr*p anyway? And finally, please take a look how the Brittanica discusses homeopathy. I think Wikipedia can learn from that.Jeff5102 (talk) 09:20, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I prefer our approach to homeopathy. Brittanica is trending towards Lying by omission – everything they say is true, but some very important things they don't say are also true. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

My experience and opinions on the matter are a close match to what North8000 describes above. Any attempts to question the evidence are labelled as original research and attempts to undermine a reliable source, and any attempts to question the logic of these claims is labelled as off topic, disruptive, or personal, rinse and repeat. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:23, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

A proposal (pseudoscience)

So... pseudoscience is a term that sparks passionate opinions. Proof of that is that even though this wasn't started as a policy proposal, we all jumped to discuss the matter here.

This is how I see it:

• Some wikipedians find it very important that claims of science that are actually unfounded, be clearly labelled as such in the articles.
• Some wikipedians find the use of the term "pseudoscience" an often derogatory term that should be used much more sparingly.

No one objects to calling something being "scientifically unproven" or there being "no scientific evidence" for it.

It seems to be that those terms could replace the term of "pseudoscience"; it would achieve the goals of the first group, while also achieving greater neutrality in the tone and precision in the language, as seen by the second group.

And, the term pseudoscience could still be used, when an article is tested against this question (as proposed above): do the practitioners claim that the practice is based on scientific principles, or that their claims have been tested following scientific methodology?

Could this be a reasonable proposal for all? In my view this would be a great way to build consensus around this matter in our community. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 07:52, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Corrected the header. It is not "the" proposal, just "a" proposal.

(I was not aware that this was still going on. Just read all the contributions since my last one.)

I suggest that we continue as before instead:

1. If high-quality reliable sources call it "pseudoscience", Wikipedia does.
2. For that matter, if high-quality reliable sources call it "schnorglebompff" instead, Wikipedia does.
3. If high-quality reliable sources are divided on the matter, some saying it is pseudoscience and some saying it is not pseudoscience, Wikipedia says they are divided.
4. If some high-quality reliable sources say it is pseudoscience and some do not, that is actually the same as case 1.

Your proposal suggests we should second-guess the reliable sources and avoid a term they use, because some of us do not like it, and on top of that, that we do WP:OR to use it when we do like it. We shouldn't do that, and it should be obvious that we shouldn't. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the foundational principle that we ought to base wikipedia on what the authoritative sources say, instead of our personal beliefs.

There are some (surmountable, with good will and intellectual humility) challenges to the practical application of this principle.

• It is entirely possible that a good number authoritative sources don't use the pseudoscience term, but it easy for the lack of use of the term in some sources to go unnoticed, and for the sources that do use the term to be very noticed. (and the scientifically-proven selection bias can be a factor impacting the source selection by editors)
• Also, some judgement calls can be too quickly discredited with an argument of no original research, but all wikipedia articles require of judgement/editorial calls.

• The most basic is that we are supposed to summarize from multiple sources into our own words- that requires of an intellectual effort that is not necessarily original research. I suspect that there will be an array of reliable sources that talk about the unreliability of astrology (for the record, I don't have any interest in astrology); some may say that that "there is no evidence" that it is accurate, and other sources may call it a "pseudoscience". So it is still the call of the editors to take the overall consensus of the scientific literature, with different sources using different wording, and summarize it in our own words. In those instances I think it valid to have a conversation along the lines I was suggesting above, to discuss about wording that we would all believe to accurately portray the scientific consensus, while being seen as neutral by the greatest number of editors.
• Another is how much weight different aspects of a topic are given. So it is not just about whether astrology is described as a pseudoscience, but where and how prominently in the article it is mentioned. The weight that something is given can carry its own bias, even if there are valid underlying sources. Having a reasoned deliberation on how prominently to talk about astrology as pseudoscience, is very much a subjective decision that does need of thoughtful conversations in good will. There is risk of bias in either direction: in underplaying something, and also in overemphasizing it.
  • For example, in a maybe parallel discussion going on now in the Idea lab ( Should slave ownership be mentioned in the first sentence of articles about slave owners?) some of us were suggesting that the lead paragraph should focus on what about the person makes that person notable: if they were notable for being owners of enslaved people, then that belongs in the top paragraph. If they were notable for another reason, and they also happened to be owners of enslaved people, that information still belongs in the article, but not in the top paragraph.

Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 12:42, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I like your last point a lot -- if something is notable primarily as a pseudoscience, then it can be called that in the lead sentence, but if it straddles the line between pseudoscience and, say, traditional or religious belief, and the pseudoscientific aspect isn't the primary part (e.g. some kind of religious belief system that has attracted pseudoscientific justifications that then become part of the system itself, but don't make up its primary substance) then the pseudoscience part should be later in the article. CapitalSasha ~ talk 02:44, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

There are some (surmountable, with good will and intellectual humility) challenges to the practical application of this principle You seem to be saying that your challenge against my reasoning is "surmountable, with good will and intellectual humility". I guess this is just an accident.

• So, there may be selection bias for sources which use the term. So what? There may also be selection bias in the other direction.
• Same with judgement calls. All you are saying here can be added, with equal justification, on both scales and is therefore devoid of power.

There is nothing wrong with weighing the sources: if every source we can find says "this is pseudoscience", we repeat it a few times. If half the sources mention the term and the other half doesn't, we say that depending on which aspect the sources want to focus on, they call it "pseudoscience" or "myth" (or whatever they do call it). If there is only one source calling it "pseudoscience", we name the source: "X calls it pseudoscience".

It is like Blind men and an elephant: if pseudoscience is the trunk, religion is the tail, myth is the ears, interest groups are the tusks, worldview is the legs, and politics is the belly, those who want to eliminate the word "pseudoscience" are demanding that we should not mention the trunk when describing the elephant.

Since the beginning of Wikipedia, that word, and every other word with a negative flavor, as a description of fringe ideas has been the target of proponents of those fringe ideas as well as of dogmatic fence-sitters who reject any categorizing of beliefs by credibility (to pick one representative subgroup of that group: postmodern sociologists), and by people who see a little merit in what the first two groups say. This is just the newest round of that conflict. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:46, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: if my words have offended you, I am sorry, it was not my intention. I come at this with as much good will and neutrality as I can. I meant my words with sincerity and not as an underhanded jab at you or anyone. Al83tito (talk) 08:23, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Offended is the wrong word. It is just that I have heard pretty much this same thing every week for fifteen years on some Talk page or other. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

On the original proposal: "No scientific evidence" is not an adequate substitute for "pseudoscience". There is no scientific evidence for many things, and yet they are not pseudoscientific.

On the numbered list's point 4 ("If some high-quality reliable sources say it is pseudoscience and some do not, that is actually the same as case 1"): I'm not sure exactly what this means. For example:

• "If some sources say homeopathy is pseudoscience, and others don't mention any sort of science or efficacy at all, and instead only talk about the business and marketing aspects of the industry, then..."
• "If some sources say homeopathy is pseudoscience, and others say that it is best classified as a traditional European treatment that 96% of people never use, then..."

In the first example, a source that is silent on any given quality doesn't "undo" what other sources say about that specific quality. The pseudoscience-focused source doesn't contradict the high-profit-margins source, and the high-profit-margins source doesn't contradict the pseudoscience classification. Both of these are true.

In the second example, the sources disagree with each other (a little bit), and the solution is about determining what's WP:DUE, not treating the second source as having nothing to say on the subject. (In the example of homeopathy, that probably means mentioning both views somewhere, with the more common view [i.e., pseudoscience] being first and more prominent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I do not see any disagreement in the second example. "Pseudoscience" and "traditional European treatment that 96% of people never use" are almost orthogonal properties, meaning that there is almost no correlation. Actually, if something is a traditional treatment, it is more likely to be pseudoscience than not. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling:@WhatamIdoing: thank you for your responses. I agree with you that most of these areas that area labelled as pseudoscience in Wikipedia, don't hold water when evaluated scientifically. So I believe we agree on the substance. I don't have an agenda about these topics (astronomy, acupuncture, etc.), I am just an interested editor hoping to have a collegial deliberation to find out how we can refine our processes for making determinations on how to label subjects in Wikipedia. @WhatamIdoing: I further agree with you that not all reliable sources can be used to determine how to label a subject -- your point that for example an article on the business of homeopathy may not delve into what homeopathy is, is well taken. @Hob Gadling: your point that it is easy for sources to be cherrypicked to advance many differing opinions, is also well taken. I wonder if we could still find a way that enable us as a community to make a more objective, and more consensus-building determination on what the reliable sources say overall.

One possible more objective way would be to create a list of a subset of sources. For example, the five top other encyclopedias, plus the top five Google Scholar search results, plus the top five New York Times search results. We try to exclude those sources that (per the "business of homeopathy" point above) don't provide a description of the subject (if the top-fourth and top-fifth listed sources are stricken out, then we look at the sixth and seventh to fill the "top five"). Most importantly, we list/commit to them before knowing how they describe the subject, so that we remove as much as possible individual predispositions to any outcome. Then we go and see how they describe the subject, and determine how do the sources predominantly describe it. This is a rough idea; don't take it as a template purporting to be complete and final, but see if the spirit of it has something going for it, to then build upon.

I'm sure this rough idea has flaws (how do we agree on that "objective list" in the first place? Wouldn't some editors pre-research lists and propose only the ones that are in their favor?), and some other practical kinks to be sorted out. But, is there any kernel of it that something better could be built from it?

At a personal level I don't care for astrology, or many other systems of belief and superstition. But as a member of humankind as and enthusiastic contributor of Wikipedia desiring to compile and preserve all human knowledge, I think that many of those are important subjects with a long and rich history, and I just want to participate in developing practices that make those articles the best they can be according to Wikipedia's principles. From this deliberation, I would much rather have come out of it a clarified and consensus-driven process, than predetermining any result in any individual case. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 10:54, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that the demarcation problem can be solved by simple algorithms like that. The system is not broken and does not need a fix. If there have been wrong decisions in individual cases, they can be fixed individually, not by applying a rigid mould. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

That would have the effect of outsourcing editorial judgement to Google's algorithms, which isn't going to work (even if we all got the same results in the same order, which we won't).

OTOH, I think that our usual approach (e.g., scholarly publications trump magazine articles) basically works, as long as editors are more committed to high-quality sources than to getting a favorite term incorporated by any method necessary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

"Pseudoscience" has a widely accepted definition which is claims to be science but isn't. If a source uses it based on some other unusual meaning, that doesn't mean that that should be used in Wikipedia, usually because group of editors wants to bash the subject. There is no mandate to use it in Wikipedia. "WP:reliable source"s are often unreliable in many contexts and there is no mandate to use them. Somewhere we need to end this mess by saying that the meaning of pseudoscience in Wikipedia means claims to be science but isn't.North8000 (talk) 13:47, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

In other words: fuck reliable sources, Wikipedia editors know better. Except those Wikipedia editors who disagree with you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling, I don't think that's what he meant. I think he meant that if, merely by reading the text, it's obvious that the source is applying a label sloppily, then we should apply some Wikipedia:Editorial discretion and not use that source, or if a source uses "A" when the more common word is "B", then we should write what the source clearly meant, rather than copying their exact wording.

Have you heard the story about a London club, which banned dogs? To accommodate a blind member, they then adopted another rule: "Any dog leading a blind person shall be deemed a cat." Is the service animal really a cat? No. Could you find at least one publication that claimed it? If the story's true, then yes.

This is hopefully much more extreme that we would encounter in a reliable source, but this sort of thing does happen, especially when you're looking across a wide variety of sources. The accepted definition of a term will change over time; what was normal, becomes autism, becomes Asperger's, and eventually becomes autism again.

One thing that might help is to prefer sources that are directly about the subject's classification. For example, I've got a browser tab open for Feng shui that says modern Western feng shui is (or at least involves) pseudoscience. I'm satisfied that I have a solid source for that claim. The first citation for the word pseudoscience in the article, however, is to a magazine article:

• whose main subject is how much feng shui affects real estate prices in Chinese cities, and seems just to toss in the label pseudoscience in passing, and
• was written by someone who wrote a book, published last year by Oxford University Press, in which he classified feng shui as superstition instead (immediately after the paragraph in which he classified astrology and homeopathy as pseudoscience, so it's not like he forgot that pseudoscience was a thing).

I would guess that @North8000 would encourage us to remove the magazine article from that sentence (and perhaps substitute in another, although there are already three there). I wonder whether you would recommend that we use such a weak source for such a contentious claim, or if you'd be inclined to apply a little editorial discretion in that situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Just as I said, you think you know better than he reliable source: you believe that the label was applied "sloppily" because the same author used a different word in another source. But something can be a pseudoscience and a superstition and a myth and a tradition and a business and a lot of other things at the same time. That is what I tried to explain with the blind-men-and-an-elephant reasoning. The logic of your attempt to override the reliable source is invalid. And that is exactly what I am talking about: Wikipedia editors putting their own understanding above that of the source by flimsy reasoning.

I say: No, wrong. Reliable sources win. There may be rare cases where it is so obvious that the RS meant something else that all editors can see it. In those cases, consensus can override the RS. But when I fight six profringe editors who claim that the RS meant something else that what it wrote, I do not want them to be able to point to a Wikipedia rule saying that "editorial discretion" is stronger than the RS when it comes to the word "pseudoscience". --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:09, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

No, I think that this is a case of "scholarly source trumps magazine article" and "source directly about the specific subject trumps passing mention". Isn't that what you'd recommend? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

If the scholarly sources explicitly say it is not pseudoscience, then, yes, by all means, remove the source with the passing mention!

You folks are playing bait-and-switch here: at first, the subject is a general rule like deciding whether something can be called pseudoscience by checking the definition which is claims to be science but isn't, and when people argue against that by revealing that it is just an attempt to allow original research in a special case, you replace it by a concrete example - in this case probable feng shui again - and argue that scholarly source trumps magazine article decides that case. What do you need the exemption from the OR rule for, if the case is already decided by existing rules?

We should !vote on the proposal. No red herrings anymore. It needs to be called exactly what it is: a special exemption from WP:No original research for the use of the word "pseudoscience". If you want to use the word "pseudoscience" in an article, Wikipedia editors need to demonstrate that the idea in question claims to be science, and Wikipedia editors need to demonstrate that it is not science. Reliable sources have no say in the matter, only the research of Wikipedia editors is allowed as a criterion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:17, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

There are a couple of scholarly sources that explicitly say that feng shui is not pseudoscience, but I'm not sure that I trust them enough to say that they're "high quality". More relevantly for that subject, it seems that feng shui means multiple things to multiple people, so that the thing we call feng shui in the 21st century in the US is fairly described as pseudoscience (I have a high-quality source for that), but the mostly different thing that they called feng shui in the 16th century in China was a mix of paranormal superstition (e.g., angry ghosts) and practical folk science (e.g., if you build a house in a flood plain, then expect it to get flooded). In other words, it's more complicated and nuanced than it would seem from a passing mention.

Nobody is asking for a special exemption for this word. We might, however, be asking whether a special exemption already exists in the other direction – if, e.g., it wouldn't be good enough to label an actor as being a porn star, or to label a publication as being anti-Semitic, on the basis of a passing mention in a magazine article that's mostly about something else, but that kind of weak source would somehow be good enough for labeling a centuries-old collection of ideas as being pseudoscience.

Remember: Other sources exist, so there's no need to fear that the word pseudoscience won't appear somewhere in Feng shui. The questions instead are whether you want that word backed by a magazine article that mentions it in passing, or by scholarly sources, and whether you want it presented according to due weight (meaning: if 10 high-quality sources say "mostly superstition" and only two say "mostly pseudoscience", then both get included, but superstition is presented more prominently than pseudoscience). This is how we'd do it if we were talking about other subjects. Should we treat pseudoscience like other subjects, or should it have a special rule that gives it preference? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Hob Gadling, so you built an insulting and profane answer upon your failure to understand what I wrote. WhatamIdoing understood and illustrated what I wrote. To expand on the point, the common meaning of "myth" includes something that is false, but there are less common meanings that do not include "false". So if a source says "The Holocaust is a myth that states that..." while that statement could be technically true, by the common meaning of the term it is not accurate, and based on sticking to the common meaning of the term in order to be informative, if one source says "The Holocaust is a myth that states that..." there is no wiki-mandate for including that. North8000 (talk) 21:22, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

If a source says something like that, using a niche meaning of the word "myth", then it is not due for the subject of the Holocaust.

But this has nothing to do with the proposal under discussion. The proposal suggests a special rule for the word "pseudoscience": Whether something is pseudoscience or not is not determined by its appearance in reliable sources but by Wikipedia editor's original research. Editors need to check for one condition (is it science?) and for another condition (does it claim to be?). That is a lot more work. And you seem to want to expand that OR exemption to the word "myth". If this happens, we will soon have a whole list of terms with their definite Wikipedia definitions. None of those terms will be used in articles unless editors do research on whether the RS used the term right. This will not be Wikipedia anymore.

But maybe you do not want that. Maybe you want pseudoscience to be a special case. Then the question is: why should this specific word be treated differently from every other word? The fans of specific pseudosciences always want to exclude the word from their articles. Those fans would be the ones who profit from such a special anti-pseudoscience rule, and they would push for such a rule. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:09, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Well to start with, merely being "not science" is not an insult / value laden characterization. But the common meaning which in essence is "falsely claims to be science" is a value laden word. So maybe we should just recognize and treat it the same as other value-laden words is the answer. Try to minimize use, and require particularly stron sourcing for it to be used. North8000 (talk) 14:34, 28 July 2021 (UTC).

Either this does not change anything, since we already have rules about "value-laden words", or it makes the job of users trying to keep fringe ideas down more difficult by giving PROFRINGE editors a weapon they can use in any random situation because "particularly strong sourcing" is vague. I can already see, say, climate change deniers rejecting sources using the word by arbitrarily claiming that the source is not "strong" enough.

The problem is that the word "pseudoscience" usually accurately describes the fact that some idea is bad. Giving the word "pseudoscience" the value-laden label "value-laden" and demanding that it be used less means that articles describing bad ideas become less accurate. It means protecting bad ideas from criticism. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Ideas can be, and frequently are, bad or wrong without being pseudoscience. When the idea is bad or wrong but not technically pseudoscience, we should use other words to indicate that it is bad or wrong. English has plenty of words that can be used to condemn bad ideas. We don't need to overuse this one, especially on the basis of a weak source when we have high-quality sources in hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

When I wrote, the word "pseudoscience" usually accurately describes the fact that some idea is bad, I did not mean that usually, when an idea is bad, the word "pseudoscience" would accurately describe it. I meant that the word "pseudoscience", when it is actually used, usually accurately describes the fact that some idea is bad. Of course, not everybody who uses the word does so correctly, and that is why I said "usually" instead of "always".

Before you explain something very obvious to someone, you should ask yourself, "does this person really need this explanation? Could it be that they already understand that? Maybe I should have a look at what they actually wrote." In your case, I did that and, unfortunately, came to the conclusion that I needed to explain those obvious things to you. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:11, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

• The notion in the OP of this subsection that "scientifically unproven" is a valid substitute for "pseudoscience" is either hilariously naïve or POV pushing. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:37, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
  • @MPants at work: Let me amend and clarify then. No, they are not the same: spiritual beliefs are scientifically unproven. Homeopathy is likely pseudoscience. The difference, in my view is that not all scientifically unproven subjects claim to be making scientific assertions. For something to be pseudoscientific, as I understand the definition, first it must portray itself to be making scientific assertions. Generally:
    • Systems of belief or superstition would be best characterized as scientifically unproven.
    • Systems of (claimed) fact may be characterized as pseudoscience when their claims run contrary to science.
    • There is a place in Wikipedia for labelling some things as pseudoscience (homeopathy possibly), and but not others. Mythology, religion, divination, superstition, being more systems of belief, would not "rise" to the level of pseudoscience.

    But that is just my opinion. Others have other opinions. I think both "sides" believe that the reliable sources support their views, and both sides probably think that the sources overwhelmingly support their point of view. Rather than each side bring supporting proof of their position (my expectation would be that each side would find proof for what they already believe), we can agree on an approach that is a bit more neutral: commit to a list of reliable sources without doing cherrypicking, and then see what they say as potentially representative sample. For example the five top other encyclopedias, the top five google scholar results, and the top five New York Times search results. For any subject that could be potentially labelled at pseudoscience, see what the results say. I am not predetermining an outcome, just suggesting a process, based on reliable sources and with the advantage of being more trustworthy for a greater number of editors. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 22:36, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

    It's not claiming to be factual that makes something pseudoscience. It's claiming to be scientific. If a colorblind person claims that his shirt is green, when it's really pink, then his factual claim is wrong, but he's not engaging in pseudoscience. If a group of researchers claim that their new experimental drug works, and the next trial proves that it doesn't, then their factual claim is wrong, but they're not engaging in pseudoscience.

    Pseudoscience sounds like "If you use the same size and shape of bottle as this guy in the 1800s, and you tap your water solution on a padded, leather covered box the same number of times that he did, then the water will develop a 'memory' of the miniscule amount of arsenic that you put in it, and it's been scientifically proven that drinking a few drops of that water will cure anxiety." WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

    @WhatamIdoing: Agreed! Al83tito (talk) 00:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

    Also, "Mythology, religion, divination, superstition, being more systems of belief, would not "rise" to the level of pseudoscience.". Again, that depends completely on whether their adherents attempt to present them as science. A religious belief system is clearly not in itself pseudoscience. Creation science or Intelligent design, however, clearly are, as they attempt to validate religious beliefs in terms of science. Black Kite (talk) 00:41, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

    @Black Kite: Thank you, you make interesting thoughtful points. I think I agree and I will take it in. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 00:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

• If reliable secondary sources describe something as pseudoscience then that is how Wikipedia should describe it. If anything, we are sometimes too tentative in labelling pseudoscientific woo as such. Reyk _YO! 12:50, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
  • However we should be only using reliable secondary sources which have the appropriate expertise to identify what is "pseudoscience". This means we should not be relying on mainstream media that merely use the word because they think it applies, though if they are reporting the determination of an expert or three, then that's good. And while it is important to call out any notable false or mistaken scientific claims where the demonstration of that false/mistaken nature has been proven out by proper scientific method elsewhere (eg as in the original cold fusion experiments), as to make sure WP does not propagate bad science without clarity that it is bad science, we should not be in the business of being anxious to label things as "pseudoscience" , given the subtleties and complexities of the definition of that term against other types of bad/mistaken science. --Masem (t) 15:23, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

    I agree with what @Masem says, and I'd add "especially when there are stronger sources saying the same thing". In many cases, we don't need to rely on weaker sources for this content, so why should we? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

• As well as stuff that is scientifically unproven, there is stuff that is scientifically disproven. Take Easter Island as a bit of a honeypot for pseudoscience, but also a century or more of scientific development. So someone writing a hundred years ago about Easter Island being a mountain top and the last dry remnant of a lost continent was in accord with the science of the day. Then Metraux visited the place and saw that the broad roads heading down the mountain and into the deeps were actually old lava flows, and in the 50s someone mapped the fallen statues and found they were mostly just above the current coast line, such a clear correlation that the coast now has to be pretty much where it was in the statue building era. Anyone now regurgitating the lost continent stuff is either very out of date or pseudo scientific, on a par with the racist trope of mere pacific islanders couldn't have moved such large stones, it must have been aliens or a "more advanced civilisation". But there was a time when it was the best fit to the known data. ϢereSpielChequers 15:06, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Does a consensus substitute for a non-existing guideline? An example in point is the consensus in aircraft crashes to not name survivors, dead, or those who miss the plane unless they are WP notable. In 1960 New York mid-air collision, for example, addition of the sole survivor's name gets reverted with reference to the consensus, but there is no named guideline for this. Jay ^(Talk) 11:02, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Nearly all decisions made about content are on the basis of consensus, rather than anything spelt out exactly by a guideline. Indeed, guidelines themselves are simply a reflection of consensus when it needs to be spelt out explicitly. I find this a rather strange question for a long-standing admin to be asking, so maybe I am missing something? Phil Bridger (talk) 11:46, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I have gone by guideline where possible. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale." If train or boating disasters, or shooting events articles do not have a restriction on naming victims or survivors, what is the applicability of a local consensus for aircraft accidents, in the absence of a guideline? (I'm a long standing admin, but I've had my breaks.) Jay ^(Talk) 14:34, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Unless there is some guideline or specific consensus calling for the inclusion of the name of survivors (rather than just something we do sometimes), then choosing not to include them is not overriding a guideline or a consensus. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

What consensus, where? There's probably been a discussion somewhere; are you saying you don't know where it is? If so, ask a regular in that area or the aviation project, rather than here. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Provided that no policy or guideline mandates or prohibits a particular action, then a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS rules the day, and attempts to change that without discussion may be swiftly reverted. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

• Consensus carries up a hierarchy. It starts with consensus on one article, so long as there is no wider principle violated, then the consensus for that one article stands. If there is a consensus that covers a group of similar articles, then individual articles in that group should not override that wider consensus, and likewise, if there is a site-wide consensus, then consensuses decided at the "group of articles" level cannot override the site-wide consensus. That's the essence of what WP:LOCALCONSENSUS says... If there is a wider, further reaching consensus on an issue, obey that. If not, it's decided on the article level. --Jayron32 12:44, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

For purposes of this discussion, I am now clear that a consensus is acceptable as long as there is no conflict with a guideline. For the specific example of naming people based on events, WP:BIO1E says: "When the role played by an individual in the event is less significant, an independent article may not be needed, and a redirect is appropriate." Per WP:R#ASTONISH, the target should try to make sure to have a mention of the redirect title, to avoid the element of surprise. Hence, I will go with when a guideline implies supporting something, a local consensus should not oppose it. Jay ^(Talk) 10:16, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Full announcement in other languages

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned for 17 August 2021 through 17 October 2021.

These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. Provide comments about these guidelines by 17 October 2021. The committee will be revising the guidelines based upon community input. Comments are invited at Wikipedia:Universal Code of Conduct/Enforcement draft guidelines review or at the draft review talk page on Meta in any language, talk pages of translations, local discussions, round-table discussions, conversation hours, through other forms of outreach, and by email to ucocprojectwikimedia.org.

Input from Wikimedia communities has been gathered throughout the UCoC project. The collected material was reviewed by a drafting committee of 11 volunteers and four Wikimedia Foundation staff members. They met over several months to produce the enforcement draft guidelines for a comprehensive community review. The input collected will be used to further refine the guidelines.

Discussions will be summarized and presented to the Drafting Committee every two weeks. The summaries will be published here.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 17:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

As you might know I have been serving on a committee that has been writing how the Universal Code will be enforced. While a lot of work has been done, there is a lot of work to be done, and crucial questions remain open. I am hoping that we can get a wide range of English Wikipedians contributing feedback and offering answers to the open questions from the committee. Notably many of the details around what can/will be enforced on a local basis and what can/will be enforced by a global body remain undecided. This has historically been something many on English Wikipedia have strong opinions about, from many perspectives, and I hope that those many perspectives are represented in the feedback process. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 19:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

A discussion at AE raised the question of whether a page move can be considered as a revert. There was a semi consensus that it could be but that the policy is not 100% clear on the point. Comments? Selfstudier (talk) 19:03, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Selfstudier: page moves are not "edits", they are "actions". Please note, WP:3RR calls out "actions" in the edit warring policy. If some arbitration remedy only applies to "edits" and you think it should apply to "edits or actions" you should seek clarification or amendment to the remedy. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:39, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  Well, it says An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. So... a revert is an edit that undoes another editor's action(s)? If you make the distinction between edits and actions then page moves seem not to be coverred. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  @ProcrastinatingReader: as far as the edit warring policy goes, it specifically calls out: A "revert" means any edit (or administrative action) that reverses the actions of other editors... - this demonstrates that while edits and actions (such as page moves) are different, for the purpose of reverts in the scope of the edit warring policy they are equally relevant. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:08, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  I don't follow your reading, xaosflux, unless you're saying a move is an admin action? If a move isn't an edit, it can't be an edit that reverses someone else's action. (nb I'm only disagreeing with the reasoning here, not the principle; of course move warring is the same thing as edit warring) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:12, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  @ProcrastinatingReader: yes, I'm saying that it is an administrative action - as in an action done in the administration of the encyclopedia - not necessarily only an action performed by a sysop. The same could be said for other non-edit actions such as: repeatedly changing a page's content model, repeatedly changing the current version of a file, or the marking as reviewed and unreviewed of a page. To be clear I'm 100% in agreement that the edit warring policy applies if editors are repeatedly reversing "moves". — xaosflux ^Talk 21:19, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• Page moves are definitely "edits." Differentiating between "edits" and other "actions" is wikilawyering IMO (that is, making a distinction without a difference). A change to content is a change to content, and the article's title is definitely part of "content." Levivich 19:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Levivich Yeah, I would agree, but the problem is that the ARBPIA 1RR restriction (which is the issue here) states "One Revert Restriction (1RR): Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any edits made to content within the area of conflict." and one could argue that changing the page name doesn't change its content (I probably wouldn't, but you certainly could). Black Kite (talk) 20:13, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
    • I certainly could, hell I could argue about anything, I'll argue about whether water is wet. But if I did, no one would agree with me, because everyone agrees that water is wet and also that title disputes are content disputes, and therefore titles are content, and therefore a change to a title is a change to content, and therefore a move is an edit. Levivich 20:33, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  I'd use the term "semantic quibble" rather than "wikilawyering", but I think the core thing here is that yes, whatever label we choose for page moves, they're clearly something that you can't war over any more than you can over an article's wording. (If anything, the controls should be even tighter, because moving a page is more disruptive.) ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 20:54, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Selfstudier: I suppose some better context for this discussion may be helpful? This is VPP, so is there a specific policy that you have a question about or want to make a change in? VPP is not the correct forum to debate remedies imposed upon the community by arbcom cases. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  I just followed the suggestion from Ymblanter there, he suggested an RFC here, it's supposed to be for policy, right? Although the AE case is the immediate context, I didn't post this here with the intention of further debating that case, I am guessing there are several potentially affected policies if we did want to be able to count page moves as reverts.Selfstudier (talk) 21:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  The problem is that this seems to be asking for a clarification of what Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#ARBPIA_General_Sanctions encompasses - RfC's are not the way to clarify arbcom remedies - WP:ARCA is. The remedy calls for a very exacting control to be imposed as the committee would have found it necessary to create the control after finding that the community policy was insufficient for the specific conflict. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:54, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

  I am only asking what people think about defining page moves as edits (nothing to do with Arbpia at this point it is mainly about edit warring) so that they then can be counted as reverts without a debate, if there is agreement on that, then we can have a look at what policies need fixing up (here's an example, not saying we should do this but Guild Wars Wiki:One-revert rule is specific, "Undoing page moves ("move warring"), recreating deleted pages, and similar activities are also considered reverts." Selfstudier (talk) 23:13, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• For non arbcom-remedy purposes, I don't see any reason we need to call a "move" an "edit" as opposed to an action. The edit warring policy already covers both edits and actions, though it could be spelled out better. Perhaps improving: An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. to An edit,action, or a series of consecutive edits or actions that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. ? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:48, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
• The crux of the matter seems to be whether the article title is part of the article content. I think it would be an absurd situation if section titles were content but the article title was not. Following from this, I believe that a page move is clearly an edit even if it is also an action. But the main thing is that warring over the title should not come with a get-out-jail-free card based on the meaning of "edit". One way or another, this needs to be clarified. Zero^talk 05:08, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Zero0000: what policy is ambiguous over the term "content"? — xaosflux ^Talk 07:47, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

  Heh, I did try to find out what the definition of content was and gave up but I am no expert in these things.Selfstudier (talk) 08:48, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux: @Selfstudier: The policy page WP:Edit warring uses the concept "content" multiple times without ever defining it. My idea is to add a statement that the page title is part of its content so that nobody can claim it isn't. Zero^talk 01:59, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

  WP:Article titles is classified as a content policy in both its categorisation in Category:Wikipedia content policies and position on ((Wikipedia policies and guidelines)), however it is not the same sort of content as article prose - as evidenced by the need for distinct policies and guidelines. Thryduulf (talk) 12:51, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

• It's rare that you can change a title without a change in content. Doug Weller talk 13:32, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
• Of course titles are covered by 3RR or any of the other edit-warring stipulations, including all 1RR restrictions, ArbCom sanctions, and the like. The clear purpose of all such restrictions on reverts is to prevent people from fighting in the article space over matters that should be resolved on talk pages first. Any back-and-forth anything (use literally any words you want here, "action", "edit", whatever) is covered by all policies. If you're making back-and-forth changes to anything with someone else, you're edit warring, and subject to whatever restrictions are coming your way. --Jayron32 18:20, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
• The defense, move not an edit/not content, failed in the case giving rise to the question I posed at the outset. So there now exists a consensus along the lines of the comment above which can be pointed to in the future should the need arise. Still, it seems reasonable to go ahead and implement Xaosflux suggested amend above? Selfstudier (talk) 07:10, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Are admins aware of the findings just out from a recent trial on the Portuguese WP?

Long story short: Workload for admins is down more than 70%, account registrations are up, and editor retention and content contributions have been solid for the last three quarters since they turned off IP editing last October.

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Tony (talk) 09:34, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

The business of IP editing has been discussed previously I think, don't know where though. I have always thought that IP editors should be allowed a trial period before deciding on a signup but other than that I think stopping IP editing is probably a good thing, on balance, especially if the metrics are as you say.Selfstudier (talk) 09:50, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Is a trial period technically feasible? Is it not a major feature of IP editing that there's nothing to connect you to two different edits you made unless you have a static IP? — Bilorv (talk) 23:10, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Does the study assess article quality (changes)? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:25, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe it does; that would be a subjective minefield, or would at least involve very tricky methodology. My question is: if someone wants to make worthwhile contributions, why not via a username (which is not outing oneself). It would bring a sense of responsibility and accountability. That would make admins' lives a bit easier too, I suspect. Tony (talk) 12:01, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Tony1 and Jo-Jo Eumerus: There is a way to more-or-less "objectively" assess changes in article qualty: ORES at https://ores.wikimedia.org/ui/ . This is an AI type application that "predicts" how a real person would rate the article based on certain inputs. I don't think they actually give the inputs (to prevent gaming the system), but these might include things like the number of words, # of references, sections, photos, infoboxes, nasty tags, external links, etc. It's a pretty good system as far as consistency of ratings, and updating (every version can be rated). Just as a demo I went to https://ores.wikimedia.org/ui/ , selected ptwiki and "article quality". I also input "59678632, 61772850" the permanent article version IDs, for "Porto" for the last version in October 2020 and for today's version (at ptwiki). The ratings turned out to be very similar - let's say "no change" for this one article. Well, it woulda helped if I read Portuguese! More likely articles to look at to see changes would be shorter and less viewed articles, or just a random sample of "new articles started Sept. 2020" vs "new articles started July 2021". It would be a lot of work to do right for a random sample of articles, but it could be done. (Maybe even do a cross-wiki comparison of the same articles over the same period, say pt vs es or en). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:07, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

I think admin workload is already down on enwiki compared to a few years ago thanks to tools like edit filters, sophisticated bots and more comfortable scripts. For example, page views of WP:AIV have dropped from 589,000 in 2016 to 434,000 in 2020, despite 2020 being a year with a lot of people sitting at home with nothing to do but be online. On the other hand, there were 56 million edits in 2020 compared to 52 million in 2016. So overall edits have increased by ~8% but access to AIV has decreased by ~35% in the same time. I don't think we need to ban IP editing to really lessen the admin workload when there are so many other tools already doing that job. Of course, I also object to the idea on a philosophical level but that's a different discussion. Regards SoWhy 15:02, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

• Some earlier research on the impact of IP editing, which I believe still holds up: m:Research:Value of IP Editing. --Yair rand (talk) 18:17, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
• Annoyingly it didn't assess admin workload on the issue I most wanted to see - Checkuser requests, SPI (equivalent) backlogs, and similar. en-wiki already has too few active CUs, so any expansion on that aspect is a major negative to me. @Tony1: - presumably this hasn't notably affected, say, deletion closes, and a variety of other admin-tasks on pt-wiki, so how can a % be put on admin workload? Beyond that, some blocks take me ages to assess, others are under 3 minutes - I didn't see anything in the report trying to go as nuanced as assessed average time for various tasks, so even within the "blocks" section, how could an accurate workload figure be calculated? Nosebagbear (talk) 22:54, 10 August 2021 (UTC)
• My expectation would be that IPs who vandalize focus such efforts on popular or controversial topics. If we are going to move in the direction of reducing IP editing, I would start with articles with the most potential for mischief (high-viewership, MedRes, politics, fringe theories). BD2412 T 02:25, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
  • This is not really true. Popular/controversial articles do attract a lot of vandalism as a side effect of attracting a lot of attention in general, but people will also vandalize stuff they're studying in school, pages off Random Article, really anything. In many cases the lower profile actually encourages it, because the vandalism is more likely to stick around indefinitely. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:50, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
• Many ip edits are very valuable, corrections by people with expert knowledge, and so on. Most are not. If it were technically possible, I'd favour a limit of say 10 on edits by any ip address, allowing experts to edit occasionally. After that you are told you need to register. Johnbod (talk) 15:05, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
• Another idea, aside from the technical limitations that might prevent it, is to allow IPs to edit as they do now. However, after a certain number of reversions in a given IP range, the range becomes flagged and registration becomes a requirement. The flag can then be set to exist for only X amount of days or weeks, and increases in duration with each repeat violation. Just thinking of a way to have the best of both worlds. --GoneIn60 (talk) 15:18, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Except as we know, mobile editors aren't see all of these notices, so they'd just be wondering why they weren't allowed to edit Nosebagbear (talk) 16:54, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

True, but if it can be implemented in such a way as to simply direct them to the registration page (or a custom registration page with an explanation of why they were sent there), that might be a suitable replacement for missing the warning notices. Also, the same argument could be said about IP ranges that get blocked for vandalism: "What if they missed the notices?" Yet we still block them as needed. --GoneIn60 (talk) 03:20, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@GoneIn60: There it's a question of damage. On a IP where significant vandalism has been occurring (enough to trigger a block), were we not to do the block, the odds are high for any specific future edit in the near future will also be problematic. Whereas, on an IP that has had 10 edits and not been blocked, then the likelihood is actually significantly lower than normal that any future edit would not be productive. Therefore the damage calculus when you can't communicate is entirely different. I, and others, also spend an inordinate amount of time handling the current non-communication cases, and would rather not have our work in that regard doubled. I'd be less hostile to a compromise solution like this than complete scrapping if you could get the WMF to sort these issues Nosebagbear (talk) 06:34, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Nosebagbear, in the proposed scenario, the threshold could be something absurdly high like 10 reversions in a 72-hour period, which is a clear indication something's amiss with their editing behavior. The IP can still communicate by registering an account. This roadblock (for lack of a better term), would just be an additional hurdle they'd have to climb to continue editing. It's the inconvenience factor that would hopefully waste some of their time in return for wasting some of ours, without outright discriminating against IPs. Plenty of room to play with thresholds to ensure we are capturing the most disruptive of the bunch and at the same time reducing false positives. Appreciate your insight, however, and given your comments perhaps there's more to consider that I don't have the experience to weigh in on. --GoneIn60 (talk) 10:15, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@GoneIn60: sorry I misread and thought you said edits, not reversions. If that's technically possible without too much work, I'd have no particular objection to that - even on a lower standard than 10/72hr, perhaps something like 6/72hr. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:27, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

• I'm presenting on this topic at Wikimania this year and am writing it up as a paper at v:User:Wugapodes/WikiBreathing, so I'm not going to write much here particularly since the last time I reviewed this author's work I got no response. That aside, I've found that IP edits are valuable for more than their immediate contributions. These edits create meatball:PageChurn which brings pages to the top of recent changes and watch lists and prompt editors to regularly review articles that would otherwise be forgotten. Further, as SoWhy suggests, I support the findings of Kiene, Monroy-Hernández, and Mako Hill (2016) who found that technical tools are an important system for communities responding to rapid growth. The use of edit filters and ClueBot have reduced the workload of volunteers in general and allowed more time for review of good faith but imperfect contributions. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:07, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I think we can come up with better ways to churn the list, particularly given the sporadic nature of IP edits, which will leave some topics untouched even where they merit revisiting. BD2412 T 02:53, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
    • I would have thought so too, is there such a thing as lists of articles with no edits in (some time period)? Selfstudier (talk) 08:40, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
      • @Selfstudier: Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles or Special:AncientPages? 192.76.8.91 (talk) 12:15, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
        • Thanks. How can people not care about Kummer's function? Tsk.Selfstudier (talk) 14:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
    • For me, it's really useful to have IPs popping up with bad edits on news developments (e.g. TV show has just been renewed for a new season). It lets me know that I need to do a Google News search and write up the new development properly. I would hazard a guess that many of these IPs would not bother to drop their note in the lead saying "This is coming back for season 3" if they had to register for an account (or remember the bloody password to the account they registered 3 years ago...). There is no adequate substitute to this atomically precise page churning (even a Google Alert search wouldn't substitute because it would give a lot of false positives on minor developments; and a pageviews analysis would also not substitute because spikes aren't always major developments). — Bilorv (talk) 23:10, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
• Are there any recent (ie, last 5 yrs) studies re IP editing on Wikipedia? (eg on how much IPs contribute towards building an article.) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:30, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry that I selected the wrong page to post this in. MarshallKe (talk) 15:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• @MarshallKe: It's no big deal, but I think you'll get much further collecting your thoughts on these topics into an essay of your own (or improving/expanding an already-existing essay) than in starting a noticeboard discussion about it. See, e.g, same discussion on this page from 11 years ago, which ended with an editor writing, "Just call it a rebuttal essay and tag it as an essay." You're not the first and you won't be the last to raise these issues, not by far. Yet, still, we don't really have a WP:NOBOOMERANG essay, which we could probably use. Levivich 16:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

When revisions are suppressed, tools like WIKIBLAME don't work. In addition, valuable information on the revision history, which may be important to SPI investigations, or for researchers outside WP are lost. Without getting into BEANS territory, it seems that if a piece of copyrighted work is inserted, and it remains, the only solution to remove it is to essentially expunge every occurence of it in the revision history - an example can be found here, where over a year's worth of revision histories are suppressed.

Obviously the opportunities for abuse are rife. I wonder if it could be improved upon with a tool that allows specific text in a revision history to be removed, so that diffs still work, but with the suppressed text replaced perhaps by template:redacted, so that the objectionable text would just look like (Redacted)? 69.172.145.94 (talk) 19:26, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

@69.172.145.94: just as a helpful note, because it made me interpret your comments very differently. Suppression is what Oversighters do, copyright problems as you discuss are dealt with by revision deleting "revdelling". Nosebagbear (talk) 09:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion: If copyrighted material is believed to fall short of WP:NFCC, but still complies with the legal definition of fair use, then we should not redact the offending revisions. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:41, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Just to add: We keep plenty of things in the history which are policy violations (e.g. POV pushing, statements not sourced to reliable sources, etc.) so we should only redact when it is not legal for us to host it or when the benefits of redaction outweigh the costs. I would put legal NFCC violations and contributions by banned users in the latter category; when there are no other significant edits, then sure, get rid of it, but not when redacting it also throws out legitimate diffs from other users. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:34, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Not only is "fair use" very difficult to define enough to tell if it is fair use (it's a weighing test, not a bright line in the sand), the fact that something has been deleted from the article makes it harder (in this not-a-lawyer's eyes) to argue that it meets fair use. The first of the four tests for fair use gives some leeway for "nonprofit educational" use, and when the material is part of the current version of the article, we can claim that it's presence serves a clear educational purpose. However, if we're not revdeling previous invocations simple to maintain access to the history of revisions of that article, that would seem harder to argue as being "educational". --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:48, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

+1, we should reduce the revdeling. Levivich 21:13, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

I feel like this should be a policy change - copyright is fundamentally not so fatal a problem that it requires us to throw out revision histories. As long as it's not on the content page, no reasonable court is going to conclude that the project is wilfully or recklessly trying to infringe the IP rights of the copyright holders, ie as user:King of Hearts said. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 01:33, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Assuming we're talking only copyright text (like the revdel'd lyrics above), we do need to balance how much revdel is needed versus how much we could defend fair use. The issue with something like the copyrighted lyrics is that the whole of those were included which is pretty much against one of the four factors in considering fair use (the extend of material used) as well as the potential commercial value. It would different if we were talking, say, someone that copy-pasted 4 paragraphs out of 20 from a NYTimes article - that would be something while against our copyright policy, would not make sense to revdel away since there's some potential fair use factors to be defended. Only when the copyvio is very much whole and clearcut should we revdel. --Masem (t) 03:00, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Masem:, surely there must be better ways to revdel than a binary yes/no decision? If the objectionable content is the copyrighted text - we already have the redacted template for that. The binary choice is what's fundamentally problematic about this. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 03:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

The issue is that something like the full lyrics would remind in the article's history from the point of their insertion, and that history is searchable. A partial copyright violation that can be revdel isn't as bad as a problem, but if we're weighing all fair use factors, full inclusion of a work that has commercial value (like lyrics) means we've failed 2 of 4 fair use evaluations, and that's probably a good reason to strip via revdel. --Masem (t) 03:33, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Masem:, but then wouldn't that just be a technical problem? Perhaps a finer-grained revdel that allows suppressors and oversighters to strike out individual words and paragraphs from revisions instead of the whole revision? 69.172.145.94 (talk) 06:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Masem:: Except this puts the person evaluating the revdel into being in a position of a legal scholar beyond most legal scholars. You may think a 4 paragraph chunk out of a 20 paragraph piece is fine, but in Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, the court ruled against using 400 words out of a 500 page book, a fraction of a percent of the work. --Nat Gertler (talk) 12:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Which is why that if such revdel situations come up, where one is talking dozens of diffs to be revdel that would clearly impact the history of the article, there should be an AN-type discussion to try to judge the weight of the potential history disruption to the copyright necessity. No, most admins aren't copyright lawyers either, but a group judgement towards how bad this looks is better than nothing, and most admins do know the value of respecting copyright. --Masem (t) 12:26, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

I sigh at the idea of making removing copyvios even more cumbersome. Were we to go down the path you suggest, it should be as a remedial effort -- i.e., we revdel, and then if there are any concerns voiced about said revdel or active need for general access to the history that was revdel'd, the revedeling can be reviewed, rather than being something that had to be gone through every time such a revdel had taken place. --Nat Gertler (talk) 12:35, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

My understanding is that there are two issues. Violation of the copyright by including the copyrighted material, and the development of a derivative work based on that copyrighted material. Even if the material is removed from the article, there's still an argument that it remains in history and that the subsequent versions, by building on the copyrighted material, are in turn derivative works. - Bilby (talk) 07:15, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

• Correct me if I'm wrong but I think most copyright revdel is done contra revdel policy, or at least with apathy toward it, meaning no one checks if the revdel would be policy compliant. Usedtobecool ☎️ 07:42, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
  • On reading that, I agree that revdel is not appropriate if there has been an intermediate edit (so the above example is an inappropriate revdel use). That said, we then are left with no mechanism of dealing with flagrant copyright issues (what we'd be uncomfortable keeping even taking a broad view of fair use) that may have been added long in the past. This might be a question to ask WMF legal about - while we can revdel immediate copyright violations without issue, are we risking WMF's legal place by leaving these older copyright vios in place? --Masem (t) 13:04, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
    • One example that comes to mind is Syrian Kurdistan, where 30+ revs were deleted in January because of one sentence deemed "too close paraphrase" (which isn't even a copyright violation, it's plagiarism). Levivich 13:19, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

    Isn't the obligation to remove content upon receipt of a DMCA request? Until then, the publisher is protected. So I don't see why it's a legal problem at all. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:33, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

    And on the other end, even for sizable and blatant violations, if there have been say hundreds of revisions in the interim, revdels have been declined. So, I think it would be fair to say that copyvio revdel, as it is done currently, is neither consistent nor policy compliant. I think it would help to get clarification on what cv-revdel is, exactly. Is it no more than non-compulsory good practice or is it required? Is it a legal issue or need it only be done if the owner requests a takedown (or maybe the revisions need to be permanently deleted from the server if the owner requests)? Which is more important, making sure all revisions are publicly attributed (a case can be made that attribution is present after revdel, only more restricted, though that's not what revdel policy says), or making sure all copyright violations are hidden from the public? Usedtobecool ☎️ 14:06, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

    That's why I suggested now might be a good time to contact WMF Legal to ask about this situation - in that should we worry about clear, well-beyond fair use copyright violations that may exist hundreds of revisions in a page's history, in terms of WMF's legal concerns? If they do feel this is an issue, then we need to talk about fixing up revdel to address that situation. If they don't think this is a problem, then absolutely the current state of copyvio revdels (in which at least one intermediate has been made that retains the copyvio) is unnecessary per REVDEL policy. --Masem (t) 14:14, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

@Masem:, @Usedtobecool:, @ProcrastinatingReader:, I agree that it'd be a good idea to get WMF legal's view on this. However, I don't think Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises is relevant law here - in that case, actual harm was done, and the main purpose of the infringing work was to, in the view of the court, acquire profit whilst informing the public of the memoir. In the case of granular revision deletion and suppression, the text is not actually going to be present, it would be redacted as revdels already are. I also object to the notion that revdels should be a "shoot first ask questions later" policy. In your experience, how many revdels are actually challenged? For most editors, going after an admin, asking them to review a revdel, especially if its just to do an SPI or whatever is a hassle - with no guarantee of any results. Admins are frankly already heavily burdened - having to follow up on bespoke requests to review revdels would be a major time sink. This whole problem would be avoided by judicious use of revdel along with a more granular tool that doesn't wholesale delete revisions. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 20:37, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

The idea of a granular revdel is simply something that doesn't exist in the mediawiki source. All a revdel can do is hide the whole of the change (including the page that results from it), the user that made it, and/or the edit summary. --Masem (t) 21:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Hence, the need for a technical patch to the MW source code. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 21:53, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

It still wouldn't work. Let's say an editor inserter 20k of words of copyright and super-close plagarism to be a problem, but lets assume this was prose rather that a clear block of material like the lyrics. Other editors then may come along and add material internally and external to that block ,perhaps unaware of the issue about copyright. Now even if we could partially revert just the copyviols, that would leave those other contributions in the cold. --Masem (t) 03:16, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

• This would require several things: confirmation that we'd be clearly safe on copyright grounds with whatever method we went to; technical methodology if we're opting for anything other than "revdel less"; technical methodology that was sufficient so that workload did not increase. I think all of those are going to be too big hurdles to jump. The copyright situation is going to vary, wildly, depending on circumstances. Then it would be a significant mediawiki patch, plus the testing, and I think proving it's necessary could be tough. Nosebagbear (talk) 09:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't know where I've been, but I just today realized that if you're logged out on mobile, article pages apparently contain no link to the article talk page at all. So a big percentage (more than half?) of the people reading/editing articles don't have a link to the talk page. We've raised similar problems with mobile apps (see WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU), but apparently this is also a problem affecting everyone using a mobile browser while logged out. Maybe I am just having a brain fart and missed where the link is, but if not, I can't be the only one who thinks this is totally unacceptable.

The proposal: should we have a policy that requires all editing/reading user interfaces (mobile browser, desktop browser, apps, whatever) to prominently display a link to the talk page on every apage? (This would be a policy by the community that would mostly bind developers, not editors. I haven't thought through how the policy would be enforced, but I'm hoping that devs would just follow the policy in future software releases without objection if the policy was enacted.)

I don't know if anyone agrees with this idea so I have not added an RFC tag to this thread in case the proposal dies on the vine. Levivich 15:17, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

That would be a function at Mediawiki and less about an en.wiki issue? --Masem (t) 15:20, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm specifically suggesting enwiki pass this policy, that is, that it should be a requirement by the enwiki community applicable to enwiki pages. Other projects can do what they want. I'm suggesting our project create a rule, wfhich anyone creating a user interface for our project must follow (whether it's a volunteer editor or a WMF employee). Levivich 15:23, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

The mobile app is trash, this is already widely known and we have already been asking the foundation to unfuckulate it. That being said there is no mechanism for this project to actually bind the foundation to a local policy. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:22, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

What Beeble says really. While this isn't necessarily a bad idea, a page setting out the community's minimum expectations that any software client connecting to the Wikipedia sites must conform to, the real question is what do we do if this proposed policy is violated? How is it enforced? Really, there is only one enforcement mechanism, and that is to disable editing from the app. If that thing is desired, and TBH I would probably support such a proposal until the WMF fixes all those bugs, then we should just go and propose that directly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:29, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Although, this seems to be a problem with Minerva (the mobile web platform) too. Just for the talk link issue, we can probably use JS to add that, and it'd work on any modern browser. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:36, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah that's the whole point, it's not just the app it's also the mobile browser (see third sentence of OP). I think a policy would be step #1, and then we can talk about implementation (which is different for the app than the browser). I don't see enforcement as an issue really; it's not that kind of policy. It's using policy to set a technical specification, really. I don't think WMF devs (paid employees) would ignore enwiki policy, and enwiki devs (volunteer editors) definitely wouldn't. Levivich 22:43, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Writing up such a specification and making sure it's complete would require a lot of people to participate in drafting. It would probably be the first enwiki policy that sets rules that we can't really enforce or implement ourselves. (I guess we could implement some using JavaScript but that's about it.) Even if MediaWiki devs adhere to it, it's a very unusual place for it to be. Maybe slightly less unusual as a global specification (set on metawiki), but meta RfCs seem to be a bit more draining and have less activity, so probably better luck doing it on enwiki if done at all, at least in the first instance. I guess I'm pretty neutral on the idea personally; I see some pros and cons. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:00, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Levivich, you're right. Visit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa while logged in and below the title you see "Article Talk. Now visit the same page while logged out and it's gone. You're not missing it, there is no "talk:" to be found even in the page source. I just filed phab:T289409 for this. If the devs don't pick this up we could always hack this into MediaWiki:Common.js, but let's await the response from the devs first. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:01, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

"I'm specifically suggesting enwiki pass this policy" Are you planning to rewrite the CC by-sa licence, and have all contributors (past and future) sign up to your rewrite? Because unless you do, there is no requirement for anyone reproducing Wikipedia content to include talk page links. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:25, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Related discussion Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Dealing with mobile editors who_appear to be ignoring warnings/refusing to discuss has been ongoing for almost 2 weeks.—Bagumba (talk) 23:55, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Imagine my surprise at learning that not only do mobile app users not get notifications, but mobile IP editors don't even have a talk page link. How have we been operating like this for 20 years?! 🤯 Levivich 00:28, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the mobile app is that old, but yeah, it took a moment for the community to beome aware of the extremely serious issues with it. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

But what about the non-app mobile view for IPs? No talk access there either. Perhaps an extreme on not biting the newbies—don't let them see the talk page, period.—Bagumba (talk) 06:18, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose this is the wrong forum for this. Local projects (like the English Wikipedia) can make all the "policies" they want - but these policies don't apply outside the project - such as to mediawiki software developers or the WMF. Just imagine if every single project that uses mediawiki software started making software policies! As this could really only be limited to things that community can control (on-wiki configs, upstream configuration values that are community options) this is a non-starter. It certainly is a discussion that should continue - but this is the wrong forum. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:36, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Xaosflux, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enable Article / Talk tab bar for mobile anon users is the right forum, no? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Alexis Jazz: assuming no one from WMF is going to try to block us (I did post one question there) - think that is the right direction - we certainly don't need a community "policy" to request a configuration change that has consensus. And "all user interfaces" is a much further stretch. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Why is "policy" in scare quotes? The reason to make it a policy and not just a consensus request is to ensure all future clients include links to talk pages; i.e. to make sure this doesn't happen again. The phab ticket shows that this came up in 2013 and it hadn't been switched on because the devs apparently weren't sure if there was consensus for it. So if there had been a policy documenting the global consensus in 2013 (or at any point since), this would have been fixed already. We should make our basic functionality requirements for editing clients into a policy to document global consensus that can guide developers in the future. Levivich 06:10, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Levivich: the editors of enwiki don't create clients (in their capacity as editors, what they do when they are not editing we can't really know) - what do you want this policy to do? Say I create a new client the day after this goes live and start using it, how are you going to enforce this local policy? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I want this policy to do the same thing every other policy does: document global consensus. Why? So everyone knows what global consensus is. How do we enforce the WP:IAR policy? We don't. A policy doesn't need an enforcement mechanism to be helpful. "...editors of enwiki don't create clients ... Say I create a new client ..." ... well, which is it? If editors don't create a new client, and the WMF does, the WMF will follow this policy. We don't need to enforce it on the WMF. Although we could enforce it by blocking non-compliant clients. But that really won't be an issue, because the WMF will absolutely follow community consensus when it comes to coding clients, and, as you say, editors don't create their own clients (usually, anway). Levivich 15:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  FYI That VPR thread has been closed by RoySmith—Bagumba (talk) 15:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  It's been reopened.—Bagumba (talk) 17:09, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  • Lets break down this policy proposal a bit more, it wants to: requires all editing/reading user interfaces (mobile browser, desktop browser, apps, whatever) to prominently display a link to the talk page on every article page? So does this include very popular applications like WP:AWB? How about a skill on my smartspeaker that reads me an article? Maybe I'm reading wikipedia using a Wikipedia:Syndication client - so now I'm not even allowed to read articles because my client doesn't have a displayed link to a talk page? How will preventing someone from creating some new innovative reading client that doesn't include such a link further our mission? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:18, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
    • AWB would be improved by adding a link to the article talk page if for no other reason than convenience. I think Huggle already has one but I don't have it installed anymore. Levivich 15:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support I am speaking as a long time editor who does 99% of my editing (including this edit) using Android smartphones and also using the misnamed but fully functional "desktop" site on my phone. For well over a decade, the WMF has failed to bring mobile interfaces and apps up to bare minimum standards of collaboration. There are literally billions of operational smartphones in service which are capable of collaborative editing on the desktop site but the WMF foolishly redirects all of these potential editors to the crippled mobile apps and interfaces. The only reason that I can think of is that a lot of people are getting fat paychecks for perpetuating an ongoing failure. I support whatever technical measures that the English Wikipedia can implement to restrict or prevent usage of these deeply flawed mobile apps and interfaces, and to redirect mobile users to the fully functional desktop site, which should be renamed the "Fully functional site" or something similar. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support Lets show a message like "Due to your client's failure to implement essential functions of this site you are unable to edit using it. To edit please use a web browser or a client that was actually finished being made."... but you know, more diplomatic. As for this being the wrong forum, I don't agree. We already have edit filters that identify certain clients like the mobile client, we just have to block their editing. The devs will get the message when users start complaining that it does not work. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 09:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• I think I've supported a very similar thing at WP:VPR just yesterday. I support making all clients/sites fully functional, and I also support blocking all edits from non fully functional clients/sites. —Kusma (talk) 09:43, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support. This wouldn't be an empty gesture. For one, it will clearly state that the enwiki community think that it is important that all editors can and do communicate with each other. I can't believe that even needs to be stated, but given the years of WMF inaction on this issue, apparently it does. And for another, while xaosflux is correct that we can't control what MediaWiki developers do, we can control who we let edit this project. I hope we don't have to use the nuclear option of enforcing this policy by preventing logged-out mobile users from editing, but if the situation doesn't improve we will have to start considering it. – Joe (talk) 09:49, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Joe Roe: did you see that this policy wants to apply to all reading user interfaces as well? So this is far beyond editing. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I didn't, thanks, and yes I think preventing people reading Wikipedia in talkless interfaces would be a step too far. – Joe (talk) 12:18, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I believe that, intentionally by design, there is no such thing as a "reader client," meaning every client that allows reading also allows editing, so that "anyone can edit." That's why the basic client... browsers... include an "edit" button. But they don't include a "talk" button, and that's a problem. Levivich 15:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Levivich: the RSS syndication client, clients that integrate in to things like smart speakers, integrations in to things like including the lede on Google Search results -- these are all examples of UI's that don't even have write interfaces - but they are all reader clients, that can access article content and certainly don't display links to an article talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Putting aside whether those examples are "reader clients" or "user interfaces", let's specify "editing clients" and/or "editing user interfaces." I.e., wherever there is an "edit" button there should also be a "talk" button. Levivich 16:04, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support as is it wastes time and energy for editors to post explanations/guidance/warnings for contributors who cannot respond. Can this proposed policy be implemented at enwiki? Using an edit filter? If so, please restart this as an RfC with a specific proposal (that x be done to alert contributors that they need to use a non-broken client). Johnuniq (talk) 10:21, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Johnuniq: did you notice that this policy says it will apply to any client used by any reader as well? So even someone who never edits or intends to edit, should have their client blocked somehow? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:21, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  That's probably not what Levivich means, not least because it's impossible for the community to disable reading through non-web clients, and I think his proposal has enforcement distinct from the policy itself. Of course, if there is community desire for such a policy, it will need to go through drafting stages to get the wording right between all interested editors. This seems like a discussion to decide whether we want to make such a policy, rather than suggesting creating a page with the content:

  ((policy tag))
  All editing/reading through user interfaces (mobile browser, desktop browser, apps, whatever) is required to prominently display a link to the talk page on every article page. [and other provisions]
  

  ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah this proposal did not propose any specific text for the policy, or a name for the policy, or even if it's a new policy or an addition to an existing policy. All those are details to be figured out after the initial question: do we want this to be a policy at all, in any form? Levivich 15:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• Moral support This should absolutely be a function in all versions of the software. That it isn't needs to be remedied. I note that this is above our heads here at en.wiki, but it is something the Foundation and the Devs need to fix ASAP. --Jayron32 12:32, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Tagging on to Jayron32's "moral support"... I think we should rather deprecate/discontinue the mobile app itself. It's so deeply flawed it's tantamount to malware. In any case the reason for its existence is pretty much obsolete. Mobile phones and tablets have all been capable of running proper web browsers for probably the last decade! Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

    Using the desktop (web) interface on a phone sucks. The only reason people (including myself) use it to edit is because the alternatives suck more. As many people have pointed out, mobile is how most people access the internet these days. And by "these days", I mean the last decade. So it's critical that we improve our mobile support.

    That being said, people need to realize that mobile imposes many physical constraints. Screen real-estate is limited. Touch screens offer far less accuracy than mice. Processors are slower than on desktops. Virtual keyboards suck compared to real ones. Bandwidth is limited (and usage is often billed by the MByte). Connectivity is transient. Wide variability from one device to another. On the other hand, mobile devices often have features that desktops lack. Interfaces based on voice commands, swipe gestures, hand motions, or device orientation. Cameras (often more than one). GPS. Compasses. It's silly to think (at least given current software development technology) that a single app will be optimum on all platforms. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

    I just want to emphasize that this is about all mobile interfaces, including the browser, and not just the apps. So anyone reading Wikipedia on a regular phone browser doesn't see a talk page link right now, and that's by design (see below). Levivich 15:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

    I don't use the mobile app myself, but I think the assumption it's obsolete is questionable. As someone else pointed out in some previous discussion, on Google Play the app is 4.5 stars with over 660k reviews and 50 million downloads. This isn't extremely unusual and I'm sure a big chunk of the positivity over the Wikipedia app comes from our content but IMO it's not something that tends to happen if the app is useless and everyone prefers to use a browser. And we can't assume everyone is too stupid and uses the app when there's no reason and if we would just remove the app they would be better off. Finally, while obviously those reviews don't rule out it being from 5 years ago and now everyone finds it useless, this seems extremely unlikely and I'm sure you could look into archives if you really think this is what's going on. (I'd note that both the Android and iOS app must also post date mobile devices having decent browsers. Although it could be true that for a while apps were far better able to handle pages with excessive resource requirements, I'm not sure.)

    I'm not a fan of the excessive appisation culture on mobiles myself, especially when the apps are basically glorified web browsers, but such a culture clearly exists so many people do seem to prefer apps even if others like me find them dumb a lot of the time since you can just use the browser. At least the WMF isn't trying to force people off the browser into apps like some other websites.....

    More importantly, I don't think it's even correct that the browser can easily replicate the app in all ways. Notably implementing offline functionality is AFAIK more difficult to do reliably with a browser. There are probably other features I'm not aware of since I'm outside the target market and only touched it briefly to check stuff.

    As for the mobile web vs desktop site, I appreciate some people find the desktop site better, but even with a Huawei P30 which is a fairly fancy phone, I prefer the mobile site for reading probably 99% of the time, and for editing maybe 75% of the time despite the limitations. I never edit from IPs. While I respect those like Cullen328 who have different preferences, I don't think we should assume just because some editors find the desktop site perfectly fine, even editors who do all their editing with mobile devices, this somehow means this is going to hold for everyone. My personal experience is different, and I think we do need to recognise that for many there are big differences and limitations from editing with mobile devices, like those mentioned by RoySmith and so we need to cater for these somehow.

    I brought up reading here, and I'd note that many possibly most or even all the advantages the app has may be for reading e.g. offline mode. This may seem irrelevant to this thread, but it's not. We all should be here for our readers, who vastly dwarf editors. It's imperative the WMF has the tools e.g. a mobile website UI and apps and whatever that helps ensure people can easily access our content in a way that works for them. So if the WMF app is useful for a reasonable subset of readers in a way the browser cannot be they should keep it.

    As for editing, well they could just completely remove editing functionality from these tools, but this will disconnect Wikipedia from it's 'any reader can be an editor' roots and likely harm efforts to reach new editors especially in areas where these different tools may be more common. They could make the editing function exactly like the desktop site on a mobile browser, but as I said, although I respect this works well for some editors but there's good reason to think it's not going to work for others. Anecdotally, we know at least one, me, and I'm fairly sure I've read others saying they prefer to edit via the mobile site at least some of the time, or at least find the desktop site flawed. So it's reasonable for the WMF to have a mobile focused editing experience on both the app and mobile site.

    IMO the problem is some of their ideas of what's good for mobile editing are not things the community sees as good. (Probably an additional problem was only thinking of the reading experience and not the editing one.) While I can sort of understand their PoV on how IP talk pages are often useless on mobile devices considering IPs can change even more frequently, unfortunately until they have an alternative which to be fair may be coming soonish for different reasons, it was clearly a mistake to ignore the need for an IP to get notifications and access to their talk page.

    By the same token, while I suspect the WMF is right that talk pages in general are incredibly confusing to a lot of new editors, unless they can develop an alternative which gains acceptance which seems unlikely, editors need to have access. So when IPs are editing a page, they need to also be able to easily access its talk page. There are other problems with the mobile site so I'm in no way suggesting it's great or there isn't a problem. (Although as with a lot of things, I think we'll also end up with disputes that can't be resolved since no way is better, it depends too much on the individual.)

    The WMF needs to fix these problems whether it means dumping what they have and starting again or improving the existing tools. But I find it incredibly frustrating when I read people suggesting there's a simple solution as app or mobile site or whatever serve no purpose since the desktop site on a mobile browser is perfectly fine when I've seen no evidence for this. Instead just anecdotes from some people who feel that way when there are others who don't.

    (Funnily enough lack of talk page access for IPs is one of the key annoyances I have with the mobile site. While I do not edit from an IP, I sometimes do browse especially a month ago when my wikibreak was stronger and I was always logging out between edits. But then if I want to see some talk page, crap I have to edit the URL. Note despite that I still generally preferred to do that than switch to desktop.)

    Nil Einne (talk) 17:25, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

• Practically, I think it would be preferable not to word this as a mandatory requirement for clients, but a specification for clients intended to serve as a user's sole access to Wikipedia that if not met could lead to blocking of the client's access. There are many types of interfaces that access Wikipedia; ones that are designed to be complementary to others may not need to provide talk page links. For example, although it's not apparent to me from Huggle's manual if it provides links to the corresponding talk page for the article it is displaying, I think it's assumed users are accessing Wikipedia through other methods that do provide access. WikiBlame is a reading interface that has no inherent need to show links to talk pages. As per the traditional open source community ethos, individual users are free to create clients that are optimized to their personal needs. However if a client ends up getting used by a broader population whose needs differ (such as needing to be made aware of having to monitor talk pages as appropriate), then the community is also free to restrict its usage (as technically possible; absent creating a client authentication mechanism, the server can only rely on the goodwill of the client to identify itself accurately). isaacl (talk) 14:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks to AJ for pointing me to Phab:T54165, which has the history. It's important to understand that this change requires (apparently) adding one line of code, and that the WMF intentionally removed talk page links for logged-out editors. Here's a summary of the phab ticket:
  • 2013: "add a thin set of tabs at the top of the page, as on the non-mobile interface. Include at least "Article/Project" "Talk"."
  • 2015: "Access talk pages in the mobile interface from main article" receives 6 supports, 1 oppose, at the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey [31]
  • 2016: "... the reason to hide from logged out was to prevent naive readers from stepping unknowingly into a confusing experience."
  • 2017: "... since this has already been open for 3 years (longer in other forms actually), I don't think that that problem outweighs the one where people don't have access to talk pages at all, right ? I propose we just flip the switch..."
  • 2018: "given this came up again and dates back to 2013 maybe we can just do this? I've never been convinced that hiding the talk page link to anons is a good idea"
  • 2020: "Based on this ticket, it sounds like we have some sort of consensus for showing the talk page link for unregistered users, but nothing has happened since 2018..."

    Response from WMF: "I think this is mostly a matter of prioritization - we've been working almost exclusively on desktop recently and this was deprioritized in the process."

    "Enabling this on a wiki is as simple as $wgMinervaTalkAtTop['base'] = true; so if we wanted to do it on a specific wiki or run an A/B test that is all that should be needed..."

    Response from WMF: "...I think a good next step might be to turn it on on a medium-sized wiki..."

    "Swedish Wikipedia is now testing this..."

  • 2021 (yesterday): AJ posts the salient "If a user can edit, they must be able to reach talk pages. Either enable the talk link or disable the edit link."

  So, I think we need to tell the WMF that we want $wgMinervaTalkAtTop['base'] = true; for enwiki. Levivich 15:33, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• At this point I'm inclined to add an RFC tag to this thread and list it at CENT. However, maybe this would be better as a pre-RFC discussion, with a more specific formal RFC launched later? I'm not sure, so I'm going to leave it to others to decide the best way forward. Levivich 15:34, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Levivich: I think this could have done better going through some mock ups, perhaps at VPI, first. There are some things that I agree are very useful that are lacking that we probably should push for, some which can probably be split to have quick immediate results (like the VPR thread that was speedily-closed) - and some things that should probably be considered on their own (e.g. the parts that are purely reader-centric vs editor-centric; the difference between WMF branded, "official" clients and any possible client). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:53, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Xaos, this thread is the mock-up. This is the discussion about what do about it. I can tell that you're not actually opposed to the idea that IP editors should have a talk page link. Because no editor would ever possibly oppose that. And, you know, we, the community, have been "discussing" this for eight f'ing years (see above). So I don't think any more pre-discussion is really needed, let's take concrete action now. Making "must have talk page link" a policy will allow the WMF to add $wgMinervaTalkAtTop['base'] = true; for enwiki. So, $64,000 question: do you support adding a talk page link for logged-out editors? Levivich 15:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Levivich: to be clear, I personally think that the WMF branded/"official" editing clients should include the related discussion pages when viewing pages here on the English Wikipedia - for logged in or for logged out users. I also think that the slightly-related issue of empowering communications with logged out users by resolving why we do not notify logged out users of new messages on their user-talk depending on their client should be resolved. But, that is a far reach from a blanket policy against any possible client that any possible reader could ever use. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:03, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  So I wrote "should we have a policy that requires all editing/reading user interfaces" and you'd support it if it was "editing user interfaces" instead of "editing/reading"? Levivich 16:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Not really, not from making a policy - but it is a big start. One, I don't think this requires a project local policy unless we are going to actually do something about it locally (e.g. have local blocks against something) - and I'm on the fence there. Two, I'm still opposed to actually forbidding editors from making use of any custom client that doesn't display a talk link - for example, say I change my web client to hide that tab - should I be barred from editing - no way! This seems to be looking at a very narrow set of problems (there are problems with the current WMF mobile app, there is problem with the current minerva skin config while on the mobile web site.), and trying to solve it with an overly excessive rule that could hamper innovation. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:25, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I think if Google were to make an editing client as a browser extension for Chrome, or if Apple did that for Safari (which either could do tomorrow if they wanted to), it would be good to have a policy that "guides" (or "restricts") those innovations by telling them to include a talk page link where they include an edit link. Same for the WMF's future editing clients, whatever those may be (desktop, mobile, virtual reality, holographic, who knows): we should guide (or restrict) them to ensure there is a talk page link, and we can do that by means of document global consensus in a policy. I'm also on the fence about enforcement through blocking noncompliant clients but I still think agreeing whether it should even be a rule is the first step, and then enforcement is only necessary if there is a problem with compliance, and we can cross that bridge when/if we come to it. Probably the enforcement mechanism is a strongly-worded letter pointing the developer to the policy. :-) Levivich 16:35, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I think it would be best to fix some specifics first. For example, would this be a new policy page, or an addition to an existing one? (WP:CON? WP:CIV? WP:DR?) Editing/reading or just editing? What would the text be? – Joe (talk) 16:12, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Just spitballing, but maybe add to WP:Editing policy something simple like "Software editing clients should display a talk page link along with the edit page link". Levivich 16:35, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  My suggestion would be to sidestep the problem of not being able to dictate what MW developers do by focusing on how we as a community will react to uncommunicative editors. Namely, add the following text to WP:DISCUSSCONSENSUS:

  Discussion is a fundamental part of Wikipedia editing. Not participating in discussions related to your editing can be disruptive, and users that consistently fail to communicate can be blocked as not compatible with a collaborative project. Some editing interfaces make it difficult to find and access discussions,^a but ultimately it is your responsibility to participate in consensus-building. Developers of alternative editing interfaces are nevertheless urged to provide full access to MediaWiki's communication tools for all users.

  ^a Notably, as of 2021, the various mobile interfaces have a number of outstanding communication bugs.

  – Joe (talk) 16:46, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I’m not personally a fan of formally/explicitly shifting the responsibility onto end app users, because they’re the only ones we *can* easily hold accountable. If a user doesn’t even know a talk page exists, because the official WMF app they’re using has the link buried in the settings and doesn’t give notifications, “but ultimately it is your responsibility” is reasonably criticised as being unfair, as it suggests blame lies on the end users. I’d also say don’t add this to the Editing policy because that’s more about what editors should do. My suggestion would be a new ‘procedural policy’ page setting out minimum standards for editing clients (be they WMF or external). In there, perhaps add a note that the community may block individual editors or clients altogether if they fail to comply with these standards. Test it in a two part RfC, the second option being whether we should disable editing from the mobile apps until fixes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:52, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  Well, as discussed above, we don't really have any other means of enforcement. A policy that tries to tell WMF developers what to do would be an absolute non-starter; they already have their own byzantine web of consultations and plans and in my experience fall somewhere between agnostic and openly hostile towards what enwiki wants. But it's not really "shifting" anything: we already block chronically-uncommunicative mobile editors, because while they're not to blame, what else are we supposed to do when they're causing disruption? This would just be making what's happening more explicit, and (hopefully) nudging the WMF to allocate some resources to finally getting this fixed. – Joe (talk) 17:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  I suppose, although in some cases the community has been willing to be tolerant (if the app user is doing things right, minus the communication part). Non-communication is already a policy problem but I'm guessing those policies were written considering users who are able to communicate but intentionally choosing not to, rather than the current issue which is users using official WMF apps that don't facilitate communication at all. A move towards labelling this case as the end users' fault feels unfair (IMO); I'd prefer a policy change that is more impersonal and targeted at app developers, who are really the ones responsible for this mess...

  And on that note, we do have one other means of enforcement and that's to disable app editing altogether (via the edit filter). I think a generic "Editing via mobile apps has been disabled on the English Wikipedia. Please visit en.wikipedia.org in a web browser to edit.", is more impersonal and helpful, verses a generic block message to users that is hardcoded in the app (they don't see the blocking admin's block reason). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:46, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  If they are a mobile IP, they'll need to use a web browser in desktop mode to see a talk page notification (WP:THEYCANTHEARYOU).—Bagumba (talk) 18:25, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• I would support a policy of blocking edits from users who are unable to see their talk page, with a reasonable grace period once the policy goes into effect to allow for the developers to implement the change. If this means blocking mobile IP edits if the developers cannot implement the feature, so be it. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
• Please don't make a formal RFC out of this discussion! This is such a WP:TRAINWRECK that I can't even figure out if we are talking about user talk pages, or article talk pages. When we get to the inevitable "no consensus" the WMF will say "See! The community doesn't really care about communication after all!" and that will be that. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:25, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

  That said, has anyone looked at the (article) talk page interface on mobile? The banners are hidden behind the eesny little "about this page" link, and editnotices are nonexistent. There's nothing to tell you what talk pages are even for. Just a big blue button, that if clicked, opens a box where you're asked What is on your mind?. As far as any new user can see, it's just a place for general blog-style comments. Do we really want to make that easier to find? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

  @Suffusion of Yellow: sliding off on to the spur, that "What is on your mind?" can be localized, the value is stored here: MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-talk-add-overlay-content-placeholder. If you (or anyone else) have a good idea for it, perhaps open a section at MediaWiki talk:Mobile-frontend-talk-add-overlay-content-placeholder, and link in to it from WP:VPM - then we can update it. Note, it does not support wikitext. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:10, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Levivich: I know it's closed now, but I went back as far as June and found 4 unblocks within 24 hours which discussed with the blocking admin, 2 that didn't, 1 edge case, and 1 right outside the 24 hour period. Special:Permalink/1041652204. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:20, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

An editor has been mass replacing the word "manned" by a range of other terms on the grounds of using gender-neutral language, but I see nowhere in the policy that this verb is banned or even deprecated. In many cases there is not even a gender issue since, historically, forts, castles, garrisons etc. were defended by men anyway. One problem is there is no obvious gender-neutral word that replaces it and so, in some cases, the meaning is being changed without checking the sources. For example, a Baltic watchtower was described as "manned", but this was changed to "used" which is quite a different meaning. "manned" in this context means "continuously occupied", whereas "used" could mean troops just utilised it to store equipment without occupying it to provide observation and report. I don't have a problem in principle with gender-neutral language as long as it does the job and doesn't confuse, but AFAICS there is no ground for changing every occurrence of the verb especially if it changes the actual sense or if it is entirely "men" doing the "manning". Bermicourt (talk) 10:50, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Well in a military context when you talk about a structure, garrisoned would work in most cases. It wouldnt work where you talk about manned emplacements (you dont garrison an object). Do you have some article examples? Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:58, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Is there a policy about using gender neutral language? I found WP:GNLP which is an essay about using such language in WP policies. Is it tucked away inside some other policy? Selfstudier (talk) 11:08, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

There probably isn't a written-down rule, no. Rules generally codify general practice, and there's probably not an accepted general practice on this particular question yet. However, for the word "manned" in particular, I'd let editors change it and I'd recommend OP do so also. It they make a mistake (as in the "used" example you describe above), probably change it to something that does work, such as "garrisoned" as suggested above.

We're going thru a long term cultural change on stuff like this. It's complicated and stressful and can be contentious, and sometimes people go a little off the rails in order to get ahead of things, and that cam be annoying. However, my opinion is that getting ridding of "manned" is not one of these. It's easy enough to use another word that sounds just as natural ("crewed", for instance), there's no good counter-argument (as there is for continuing to use "actress" or "she" for ships), and it's something that people mostly seem to be coming around to agree on. I don't think it's banned or anything, but I think it's probably a good idea to stop using it in new writing, and if an another editor wants to go around changing it, you should let it go. Right or wrong, it's not a fight you're likely to win.Herostratus (talk) 11:41, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Is there a policy about using gender neutral language?: There is the guideline MOS:GNL. It doesn't explictly apply here, so the question would be whether its spirit should or not.—Bagumba (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

There should not be mass changes to remove the word "manned" where it is perfectly accurate. There is no point in changing it to a gender neutral term if only men were involved, and it will cause confusion with readers. There is no need to use a gender neutral term if the gender is not mixed but is entirely one gender. However for generic topics or modern situations where there is not only men, then "manned" is not suitable anymore. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:09, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

@Herostratus: that's a pretty poor argument to be pushing. Functionally whatever was in first should apply, unless there is specific good reason for it to change (one example could be a particular navy went for phrasing as "crewing", and their media picked it up). Nosebagbear (talk) 12:34, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

That seems eminently reasonable. Another suitable word in a mixed context might be "crewed". But again, it has a specific meaning so we can't just replace any occurrence of "manned" in a mixed setting with "crewed". Bermicourt (talk) 12:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Even if it is accurate in some instances, the idea that we should have a separate term for the same action when done by men and when done-by-people-who-could-include-men-but-weren't-necessarily-entirely-men carries a sexist implication -- that there is something inherently different about when men do it. Also, if we accept "manned" as meaning "staffed, exclusively by men", then that throws other terms definitions into question. If we talked about an "unmanned space flight", might there have been women aboard? So yes, there is a point in changing it to a gender neutral term even in cases where only men were involved. --Nat Gertler (talk) 12:42, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Are reliable sources calling thing like spaceflights "unmanned" because they haven't confirmed the sex of the crew members? — xaosflux ^Talk 12:58, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

WP should not be proactive in adapting gender-neutral language or similar language shifts compared to the rest of society (a similar case has been raised over "man-made disasters" too). When society does shift, then we absolutely should, but we should not lead. Yes, we generally should include neutral language in broader terms, but this shouldn't mean stripping out long-standing language or terms-of-art used in the respective fields. --Masem (t) 13:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately when it comes to gender stuff there are enough activists around that they seem to have been generally successful in overriding Wikipedia:Advocacy. Anomie⚔ 13:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

The Wikipedia "Typo Team" page lists violations of the Manual of Style, including articles using the word "manned" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Typo_Team/moss#Manned). This in turn references these two driving sources: MOS:S/HE and the NASA style guide. I agree it can be tough to find a suitably subtle replacement, and the cited example ("manned" to "used") was probably a sloppy update. That being said, I interpret the consensus to avoid "manned" or "unmanned" except for some specific cases (like UAVs) and historical instances. At the conclusion of this, I would still like to see the word "manned" on the Baltic Sea watchtower, Kühlungsborn page updated as appropriate. CaptainAngus (talk) 13:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

• NASA switched to "crewed" years ago. Get with the times, people. No more patriarchal language. It's not a Wikipedia thing, it's an English-language thing. Welcome to the 21st century. Levivich 13:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • As long as it can be shown that this is what is more commonly accepted in English language, great. The problem is that we tend to have editors that try to fight for these language changes without demonstrating proof that the shift has widely happened. (Eg a similar recent case is the language around "committed suicide" that was at a recent RFC). We definitely need to shift language as wider adaptions are made, but we just have to avoid being proactive and at the whim of a few editors. --Masem (t) 13:43, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
    • In general, sure, but for gendered language that ship has already sailed. I think we can just avoid using patriarchal language because it's the right thing to do. We don't need to be the last English-language publication on Earth to give it up. When I say "Welcome to the 21st century," I mean that ship sailed a long time ago. It's not "chairman" or "fireman" anymore, it's not "manned" or "man-made" anymore, all of that is gone already and this has been happening for decades now. It's not even a new change anymore. I mean really, everyone who thinks "manned" is a word that should be used needs to get with the times. Just like singular they is a thing, so is all gender neutral language. The human race is just done assuming male is the default. And so is Wikipedia. Or at least we should be. This was published a few days ago for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Levivich 13:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
      • Just because a word stems from "man" doesn't necessarily mean it is gendered nor needs to be replaced. Eg there was a recent discussion somewhere about "manmade-disasters" of which there is no implication there of gendered language in the larger media, nor a concise replacement for it. But where there is clear, external sources like other MOSes that show this, then absolutely we should strive to follow. The key is that we follow, not lead here. --Masem (t) 14:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
        • Just because a word stems from "man" doesn't necessarily mean it is gendered nor needs to be replaced. Yes it does, that's exactly what it means, and that's what I mean when I say get with the times. We aren't leading on this, we're being too slow to follow. "Man" is no longer a generic word for "person." That change happened in the English language the 20th century, everything since has just been clean up. Heck, "man" doesn't even mean "person with a penis" anymore, and even that change isn't new in 2021. Levivich 14:27, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
          • The thing is, there are still cases of words in English that use "man", intended to refer to or relating to any human, but where there is yet a readily accepted gender-neutral equivalent, eg like manslaughter. We know numerous accepted cases of gender-neutral equivalents out there and that's what GNL gets to, but where there isn't yet clear guidance in reliable sources to follow, we should not be trying to invent that ourselves. As soon as it can be shown readily that there is a gender-neutral accepted version, and concensus agrees that exists, then yes, we should be using that, but there's still many many edge cases that are not simply "substitute 'man' for a neutral term" that resonate what happens in external sources. --Masem (t) 15:06, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
            • So what uses of the term "manned" can't be replaced by words like "crewed," "stationed," or "staffed?" Levivich 15:21, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
              • • "Unmanned aircraft. ~Awilley (talk) 15:32, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
                  • FAA already changed it to "uncrewed." [32]. So did Canada [33]. So did Wikipedia: Uncrewed vehicle. Levivich 15:40, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
                    • However, the US DoD has yet to transition to this language ("site:af.mil 'uncrewed'" gives only 8 results, for example, "site:navy.mil 'uncrewed'" is only 21; whereas both with "unmanned" gives 26,000 and 52,000 respectively. When and where to use gender neutral language is going to be topic dependent. --Masem (t) 15:48, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
                    • That said, I see that as of June 2021 the DOD has a style guide to push these towards "crewed" (per Rhod's link below). But that means we're in a period of transition here and should be careful. --Masem (t) 15:52, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
                    • Aerial vehicle not crewed by person who may or may not have a penis? Sounds snappy. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:42, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• The Guardian and Observer style guide, NASA style guide has used it since the early 2000s, NARA style guide, [one of the] DoD style guides (haven't come across the others yet), ABC style guide (AU), MIT News style guide, ... and the WikiProject Spaceflight style guide includes it already. That NASA uses it is obviously a big deal considering the context in which this term is used. A few articles in reliable sources about this, too, some relating to the change in the NASA style guide: The Atlantic, Slate, Washington Post, Independent... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:02, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

No changing it en masse to contexts where it is awkward or does not fit, etc does not make sense. We are not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS we are here to build an encyclopedia.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 14:34, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

• • Can you give an example of a context where changing "manned" is awkward, does not fit, or does not make sense? Levivich 14:57, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

    @Levivich, I think don't think that there are very many synonyms for Manning the rail. "The crew manned the rail while parting company" might be hard to re-write without the gendered word. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

    "The crew saluted at the rail while parting company" is not only gender neutral but IMO a clearer description. I believe US, UK and probably all the other anglophone navies have officially moved to gender neutral language now. Levivich 03:33, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

    I'm not sure that's an exact synonym. Technical jargon sometimes doesn't behave like everyday English words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

    That's true and we're not supposed to write using WP:JARGON. I wouldn't suggest we change the title of the article manning the rail but when describing the ritual, there are gender-neutral options. There are always gender-neutral options. Levivich 05:03, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

    @Levivich, I'm doubtful about that last sentence. What's your gender-neutral option for "person with a masculine gender identity"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think the word can or should be banned but I do think that gender neutral terms such as "staffed", "crewed", etc should be preferred whenever there is a suitable term available. I think that this should be included in the MOS. I think that replacing unnecessarily gendered terms is legitimate normal copyediting, and should be encouraged, but it should not be done in a rapid, thoughtless or automated way. Sometimes "manned" or "unmanned" will still be appropriate terms, particularly in historical contexts and/or where we are specifically talking about men. Care should be taken to pick appropriate replacement terms. Obviously, anything automated that might fiddle with quotations or phrases of official terminology is going to do much more harm than good. --DanielRigal (talk) 15:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
• Banned? It's no more banned than "forsooth", but as NASA indicates it's historical or archaic. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:19, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

WP:RGW applies here. A while back, I came across someone who said that using the word "blacklist" on Wikipedia was offensive. It is true that some sources now regard this as deprecated.[34] However, Wikipedia still has a spam blacklist.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:43, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Ianmacm, It seems the devs are planning to rename it: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T254646 MrOllie (talk) 15:56, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I have a different take on who may be trying to RGW. It rather seems, those who insist on holding the fort for "manned" are attempting to 'right the great wrong' of writing guidance against unnecessary, archaic, or ambiguous gendered terms, which is widely deprecated by published style guides, and Wikipedia's guide. And why would it not be deprecated: generally, using something like, the individual word "man" to mean "human", or "manned" to mean "crewed", is unnecessary, archaic, and/or ambiguous, as the style guides say, and thus generally poor writing. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:07, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I think its more to the point that WP should not be leading or creating language shifts but should only follow, and when we follow, it definitely no longer is a RGW issue. But when editors come to insist language must be shifted but fail to show evidence of widespread shift (eg the recent RFC on "committed suicide"), then that effort to push the language change does feel like a RGW, and editors that are resisting that are simply making sure we have the proper evidence from style guides or other such documents to be sure we're following and not leading. It's not about holding onto arachic and discriminator terms because they want to maintain that discriminatory aspect, but simply that if it isn't a well-document practice in other style guides, then WP shouldn't be doing it either. (But that's clearly not the case demonstrated here for "manned"). --Masem (t) 13:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

More the point? But that point is irrelevant, here. In no way is Wikipedia leading the charge, Wikipedia's guidance follows the published guidance -- that part of guidance was not invented on the pedia. So, your point seems irrelevant, and whether or not you are raising the irrelevant point to hold on to the archaic, or the discriminator, that rather looks like its effect. You place a burden for one term, but place no burden the other term -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

In the specific case of "manned" we are following - sources have been provided to prove that we are following, and that's what I think editors that were questioning "Why shift from 'manned'?" wanted to be clear about, not that they were holding onto an archaic word because they wanted to. I doubt any editor in this discussion intentionally wants WP to stick to gender-discriminating language as long as we follow the lead from others; just that we didn't have that documentation readily in one place until now. --Masem (t) 13:58, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

To the extent that's the question, the question, the accepted and sourced guidance implies, is not "why shift from manned?" -- it's "why not shift from manned?" -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:21, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

If you ask the question that way and you don't provide the sources that show that other style guides/RSes have routinely shifted away from archaic language, then that looks like you are begging the RGW issue of making WP be progressive, which we shouldn't ever be. This is essential the situation around the "committed suicide" language debate (where there is some but not sufficient/universal reason to shift from that language for WP's purpose, as determined at the last RFC. --Masem (t) 14:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

No. If anything, it is your argument that is trying to 'right the great wrong' of the Wikipedia style guide, which is backed up by multiple style guides. "Committed suicide" is obviously irrelevant with respect to gender-neutral guidance, and raising it, here, is plain distraction. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:38, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not opposing shifting from "manned", and I'm speaking on very general terms about WP and shifting language, what the requirements should be since we're not supposed to be progressive or a leader here. Please don't assume bad-faith here. --Masem (t) 14:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

No ABF. Unless, what you did in the comment prior to mine was ABF. Is that what you tried to do with your 'begging RGW' claim backed by a non-gender example? It makes little sense to take a general stance to apply to a different more specific context, when the more specific has already been adopted in Wikipedia guidance. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure that NASA is an authority on Wikipedia practice. They're just one of the thousands of national agencies around the world. Bermicourt (talk) 13:35, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia already has guidance in accord with NASA's and multiple other style guides. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:11, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

NASA are only an authority on US space flight, not the worldwide English language in general. Bermicourt (talk) 15:02, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

NASA is in accord with Wikipedia guidance and multiple other style guides on use of the English language. What's in issue is not disapproving NASA's guide (although it seems rather 'don't like it' to do so), it is analyzing under Wikipedia's gender-neutral guidance, which is in accord with multiple style guides. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Anyone mass-changing "manned" better know what they are doing. It sounds like they are most interested in eliminating and the replacement word is a secondary concern. It does require skill and knowledge of the topic area. If they are not doing a good job, they should stop doing it. -- GreenC 15:06, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, it's just one of those situations that is impossible to solve satisfactorily. But... a binding RfC to deprecate "manned" would fail at like 50/50. On that basis a mass effort to change it would not be at all a good idea, anymore than a mass effort to change "like" to "such as" or vice versa, or "burned down" to "immolated" or vice versa, and so on etc etc etc. Like most phrasing, it remains up to the individual writer. Like it or not that's the current situation on the ground, and mass efforts are for when there's consensus.

Someone could start an RfC to prove this. But we can see from the above that it would fail, so why bother.

That said, if someone does it an individual article you are watching, You should let it go, if it's done properly. After all, you are rowing upstream, and some (if only a minority) think it's archaic and not a good look for the project, or are even annoyed by it. Why fight. It's not important. But you can per WP:BRD, and nobody can really gainsay you absent a consensus to on the talk page of that individual article. But enh... just don't. Herostratus (talk) 17:51, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Agree with Masem, it is not Wikipedia's place to lead this charge, when the majority of contemporary sources replace the term then Wikipedia should follow, but for the time being manned is still very much used and should not be deprecated. I find the argument of following in house style guides for government agencies unconvincing, when the majority of publishing houses and news outlets make the change we should. Looking at one widely used military source, Janes, a search for "manned" throws up 50,832 results whilst "crewed" gets 33,153 results. *Cavalryman (talk) 05:47, 23 August 2021 (UTC).
• Typical Wikipedian attitudes, bending over backwards to rules-lawyer why we can - and should - continue to Do The Wrong Thing, and why those who want change are Wrong and Stupid.--Jorm (talk) 05:53, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

People mostly are discussing what other publications do, what consensus exists here or doesn't, whether or not we're getting ahead of a trend, if not whether we should, what's kind and inclusive and what's woke and annoying, what's idiomatic English and what isn't, and like that. I'm not seeing a lot references to arcana of any rules, so no call to be such a sourpuss. Herostratus (talk) 08:49, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• We already have MOS:GNL. This is a lot of words, and I think many people may have missed Bagumba above pointing out this guideline. It works perfectly well (although I wish we'd get rid of the ships exception)—anyone who wants to replace instances of "manned" with "crewed" is welcome to do so, so long as they don't do it in proper nouns or similar circumstances. That's really all that needs to be said. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 08:25, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

So what happens when it gets rolled back per WP:BRD? I'm not seeing a consensus that a person doing would necessarily be in trouble. So maybe there is more to be said. Herostratus (talk) 01:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

BRD isn't justification for overriding a guideline. In practical terms, if someone reverts, the best thing to do is probably just to drop the stick, but if someone wanted to push the issue and the other editor deliberately insisted on violating the MoS, that'd be cause for taking them to ANI. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 17:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

• There isn't the minutest bit of evidence that "manned" has a gender implication. Since words mean what people use them to mean, I suggest you search for expressions like "manned by a woman", "manned by N women" (N being a number such as "two"), "manned by a female". Very large hit counts are unreliable, but I see more than half a million. This issue is manufactured out of whole cloth. Zero^talk 09:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
• I suppose I don't really care if an editor replaced manned with crewed with a sensible result, I think I might object if a bot appeared on the scene and started doing it.Selfstudier (talk) 10:03, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think a bot could easily figure out if it should put in "crewed" or "garrisoned" or recast the sentence tho. So that's not going to happen. A big campaign by humans could be put together. I would consider that heavy-handed also tho. Herostratus (talk) 01:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Let's not forget those birth attendants, who probably ushered many of us into this vale of tears - but what are we going to do about domesticated canines or large hirsute felines or bovine quadrupeds? More seriously, female Lord Mayors of London, choose to remain 'Lords' so the idea that "one size fits all circumstances", or that de-gendering is inherently virtuous, is just silly. Pincrete (talk) 11:16, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I think you're just "crying wolfe" here. You must mean Lady mares?? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Not to mention Lady Town Criers: [35]. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:01, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Like Sdkb said, we already have MOS:GNL. It works fine. And it really just brings us in line with the style guides of rather stodgy institutions. XOR'easter (talk) 02:12, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
• on looking at the Oxford English Dictionary the meaning of manned says having a human crew. The Cambridge English Dictionary says past simple and past participle of man with man being described as an Adult Male Human Being or men and women. It is much like Actor now the chosen term for men and women, when it was once th preserve or men only. Manned is non gender specific. Crewed is however wrong for using on land based items, as this relates to vessels, which means NASA should have been using that term since day one, as the Navy have always stated their ships are crewed (though subs can be crewed or unmanned!). For a military structure, the word should be garrisoned or in un-garrisoned. As previous commentator said above, male midwifes aren't mid husbands are they? The English language has many words that mean more than one thing, and manned is such one of those words. (ps. If manned means men attended as some people are insinuating above, should we have a new name for woman as it contains man?) Davidstewartharvey (talk) 08:03, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
• This discussion has been remarkably devoid of actual content. Anyway, some facts:
  • Ngrams shows that usage of the term "manned" has not dropped at all in the past twenty years: [36]. There has been no widespread phasing out of the word.
  • In common use, the term is used for both men and women. Whether this makes it "gender-neutral language" appears to be a point of dispute, in the discussion above.
  • Replacing the term in the area of spaceflight was approved by RFC in July 2019, specifically based on NASA's style guideline. The proposal was to adopt NASA's verbatim. This was added to MOS, again specifically referencing space programs.
  • Several major style guides have adopted rules against using the word. This has not considerably spread outside those institutions.
• I really wish we could just generally settle "how we decide on language conventions". Common writing? Newspapers? What's the baseline? What motivations should we have when editing MOS? Anyway, please be civil, don't try to right great wrongs, and keep discussion productive. --Yair rand (talk) 20:03, 2 September 2021 (UTC)