Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) - Wik

I would like to propose that we discontinue the use of the “baby globe” animations on Wikipedia. I find them childish and distracting. Please discuss. Blueboar (talk) 23:06, 5 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You can always turn them off in your settings. But Baby Globe is adorable and I love it. Targets (talk) 23:11, 5 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

At best, cutesy crap like this should be “opt-in” not “opt-out”. Blueboar (talk) 02:17, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you missed the RfC that was advertised on WP:CENT and open for five weeks. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 02:22, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I must have, yes. Targets (talk) 14:41, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I missed it too. Glad it is ending. Blueboar (talk) 15:20, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it opt-in? Sure, I don't mind changing it, I agree with you hear. Targets (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

GRAMMAR CristianA.Castillo (talk) 00:41, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Per Special:CommunityConfiguration/WP25EasterEggs and Meta:Wikipedia 25/Easter egg experiments, birthday mode will be removed on April 6th, which includes the baby globe. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 00:09, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

NO!! YOU MEAN I'LL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN??? EVEN IF I TURN ON BIRTHDAY MODE??? Targets (talk) 01:55, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You will alway be able to find Baby Globe at c:Category:Baby Globe (the animations are at c:Category:Animated GIF files of Baby Globe). ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 02:04, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, okay that's fair. Targets (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There is also a way to have him replace the Wikipedia logo! I don't exactly remember who made it, but I have it in my common.css! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:10, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Just found it, it is here from @sapphaline! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:20, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Chaotic Enby, could you possibly turn off Birthday Mode, or at least make it not on by default? The RFC specified an end date of March 16th and its been 22 days since then without the mode being turned off. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 01:27, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

With a heavy heart, it has been done. He will be dearly missed. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 06:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

:( At least we still have the userscripts. 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} -⃝⃤ (they/he) 07:24, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

yep, we didn't have a "permanent" mascot the wiki community promised. CristianA.Castillo (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And here's another customization from me. This one allows to have the Birthday Mode turned on indefinitely (only for Vector-2022 though). Note that this will appear on all pages across all namespaces, including non-view ones (e.g. ?action=edit). sapphaline (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, any help with reducing the resolution of the official gifs and reuploading them would be greatly appreciated, because currently most of them work only with the original resolution (1080x1080px), which would mean downloading a ~10-20 MB file if they were in the script. sapphaline (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I did one of them a while ago, the resized files are very nice for user pages since they autoplay as thumbnails ScrubbedFalcon (talk) 16:10, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed seeing Baby Globe on Wikipedia, and was saddened by seeing Birthday Mode turned off. I've left one comment already about the Baby Globe Browser Extension, but I wanted to ask another: How difficult would it be to keep this feature to users that would like to explicitly keep Birthday Mode enabled?

Looks like some people are making customizations, but I am a Wikipedia newbie, and I'd like a toggle in the settings (similar to dark mode) to enable Baby Globe. From a purely technical perspective, would this be difficult to implement? Ilmikko (talk) 18:22, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It would be very easy to implement, I've started a subsection just below to gain consensus for it, given the apparent support! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:23, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi folks, I was surprised to see that there was no option to keep Baby Globe around after April 6th.

I really liked the way I could keep Baby Globe on different Wikipedia pages, and decided to take a try at creating a web extension that adds Baby Globe back onto webpages, with a similar interactivity as seen on wikipedia.org. The extension is currently being reviewed by Mozilla, but once it is published, I can share a link here to those who would like Baby Globe back. Ilmikko (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Good news! If you wish to have Baby Globe on more pages, it can now be downloaded for Firefox. Ilmikko (talk) 07:45, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This will be the fastest successful pump proposal of all time. CMD (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So… April 6 came and went… and the animation has not been discontinued. So, next step? Blueboar (talk) 11:06, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Badger an admin to toggle the toggle. CMD (talk) 11:46, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

EXPAND UNTIL MAY 6^TH! CristianA.Castillo (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

GRAMMAR Targets (talk) 01:14, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely disagree with you because it is a way to celebrate 25 years of the collaborative online encyclopedia, and many people share that they support the feature, and they unlike you, should keep birthday mode longer. CristianA.Castillo (talk) 13:39, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t mind celebrating 25 years, I do think we should celebrate in a more mature way. Blueboar (talk) 16:19, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What’s a bit of fun here and there on Wikipedia? I think it’s nice to play around a little bit sometimes; nothing immature about enjoying yourself. If that means you want a little animated globe guy to replace the official Wikipedia globe, have at it!

(P.S. What specifically do you imagine when you say to celebrate in a more mature way?) 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} -⃝⃤ (they/he) 20:22, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Drawing a baby Bishzilla (unbearably cute)? bishzilla _ROARR!! pocket 20:36, 8 April 2026 (UTC).[reply]

It's adorable. No. Mrfoogles (talk) 15:29, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

As many people (me included) dearly miss Baby Globe, would there be consensus to bring it back as an optional feature that people can choose to enable? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:20, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes please! I wholeheartedly support the feature. I think the Baby Globe is a fun and engaging way to get more people involved in the project. :) Ilmikko (talk) 18:31, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think making it opt in is fine. Though, it appears the community config option for birthday mode is gone. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 19:33, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the idea is to bring that option back as an opt-in! Special:CommunityConfiguration/WP25EasterEggs gives us an option for it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:40, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think I didn't properly read the opening statement. My apologies. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 20:04, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned in a different thread (though for slightly different reasons), personally I prefer for a user-script approach for this type of decorative enhancement. It allows for more flexibility in implementing an enhancement that supports most users interested in it, without having to spend the extra effort needed to ensure universal support. It also allows for crowd-sourcing any ongoing sustaining work. For example, users could create and share their own lists of where Baby Globe would serendipitously appear, and they could update the lists over time as needed or desired. (I designed my custom logo replacement user script to enable this type of collaboration.) isaacl (talk) 20:41, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would support mentioning one or two scripts at WP:BABYGLOBE. CMD (talk) 03:14, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I miss baby globe already... Starlet! (Need to talk?) (Library) (Sandbox) 17:49, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes! We need him! Opt-in is a great idea because some people hate him, but not me! Bring him back! Hamimh2 (talk) 21:59, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm proposing removing the remaining mainspace transclusions of {{Wikinews}} (3.3k), {{Wikinews category}} (321), and {{Wikinews inline}} (251) as part of the looming closure of that sister project.

Wikinews links have long had a dicey foundation on the English Wikipedia. To name two prominent RfCs, eight years ago we had a near-unanimous consensus for significantly restricting where/when we could link to Wikinews, and 13 years ago we had an "obvious, overwhelming" consensus to remove a prominent main page link to it. For these templates specifically, seven years ago an editor proposed depreciating {{wikinews}} because the project was even then "essentially dead."

Now that Wikinews will no longer be a sister project, we should probably not continue giving special prominence to the links that remain. I am thinking that there will be broad agreement on this, but it could become a RfC if needed. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Since Wikinews is no longer a sister project, I agree that they should be treated the same as any non-Wikimedia external links of their quality. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 08:48, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason not to. Feeglgeef (talk) 02:25, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Note: {{wikinews}} has been taken to TfD. Discussion of that template should really be over there. CheeseAndJamSamdwich (talk) 09:46, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll leave a comment there. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 18:56, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The current {{Phanerozoic 220px}}, shown at the top of most fossil taxoboxes and used in {{Geological range}}, is, well, 220 pixels wide. This slight increase from the original 200 pixels took place back in 2010, and monitor resolutions have greatly increased since. In fact, the default thumbnail size has climbed up to 250 pixels, leaving some unused space on each side of the range, while the comparatively thin Silurian and Neogene are cramped.

The equivalent Precambrian template, {{All time 250px}}, already uses a wider resolution, and I don't see why this can't work for the main timeline (and the period-by-period {{Period fossil range/rangebar}} which also uses 220px).

I've made a 280 pixels demo at User:Chaotic Enby/Phanerozoic 280px, inspired by what is currently being done on the Hebrew Wikipedia. You can see a comparison to the right in "real conditions", inside a taxobox with bold text and 88% font size, although without the range or the timeline zoom. This width gives some breathing space to the Silurian and the Neogene, while also allowing us to add a white highlight to blue links for readability (instead of having to alternate blue and white links depending on background color).

Should we go ahead and widen the timeline templates to 250 or even 280 pixels? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 02:34, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

CE you are always cooking. Yes, that looks good, though I have a harder time reading the blue links with white shadow. I wonder if altering the back colors to make the links white instead of blue would be easier to see? 3df (talk) 08:18, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's feasible too! My hope was that the shadows would make reading easier without having to alternate link colors, although we could very much keep the existing link colors and still widen the timeline.

Sadly, the period colors we're using are the "official" ones (from the International Commission on Stratigraphy) which are used virtually everywhere and do serve as a useful shorthand for people familiar with paleontology, so I'm not sure they can be changed.

(also, I just added slightly brighter outlines, tell me if that's more readable!) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:20, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely approve of expanding the width, it looks better. New link colors are imperfect, but pretty good. Mrfoogles (talk) 23:56, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's been a week, I'm going ahead and updating the timeline width. Open to more feedback regarding the readability of the link colors, and how to improve them. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:41, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think 280px is too wide for taxoboxes. The default image size for taxoboxes is 250px. With a 280px fossil range, there is now white space on the sides of the image. And images already make taxoboxes wider than they would be without out them, increasing the white space in the Scientific classification section. Plantdrew (talk) 02:23, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that this is just the default size for images, but many (such as Gibbon) are actually quite wider than even the 280px range, and some (like Kentrosaurus) provide a much closer match. Conversely, 220px adds white space on the sides of the timeline, compressing it for no reason. Would you prefer to compromise on 250px, as it doesn't widen any taxoboxes more than the default images already do? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 02:40, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I was thinking 250px would be reasonable. Plantdrew (talk) 23:06, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There's been some discussion at WP:ANI#Return to potentially POINTy editing regarding an editor who's been mass-nominating "Comparison of X" articles like Comparison of 3D printers for deletion. The general standpoint seems to be that indeed most of these 'comparison' articles are dubiously notable, and even the arguments for notability seem to mostly point to things like tech blogs hosting such comparison articles.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the concept of an article comparing products seems to be inherently unencyclopedic. We are not a product catalog, after all. Why is it that we say Listings to be avoided include, but are not limited to... products and services... Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare prices and availability of competing products or a single product from different vendors. But we are, apparently, a quasi-tech blog where one can see comparisons of the technical specs of phones or 3D printers or cars or what have you? The technical aspects of these things can always be discussed in the main article dedicated to them, perhaps even inclusing some limited comparative discussion; are standalone articles for this purpose really within scope?

Should we have a blanket ban on these kinds of articles? Athanelar (talk) 20:39, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If the comparison of products is commonly done in reliable sources, including a discussion on those differences, such as the case for home video game consoles, that makes it fair for us to include. But if that comparison is just because we have specs for each and just putting them into a table, and RSes dont discuss these differences, that's likely beyond our scope. Masem (t) 21:08, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My suggestion is that such comparison is out of scope even if it's being done in RSes. We don't necessarily need to include articles about everything that any RS writes about; we have carveouts everywhere for things like WP:CORPTRIV for example. I think product comparison articles should be out of scope per se regardless of whether someone else is already doing it. Athanelar (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'd argue that even if a comparison is covered in reliable sources, an article starting with "Comparison of" would be about the comparison and how they've historically been compared by others. Not comparing them ourselves. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Actually listing the properties of products and performing the comparison comes under the "not a product catalog" rule, I'd think. But if there are sufficient sources for an article about the comparisons, not about the products, then that would be OK. I doubt many (or even any) would qualify, though. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:29, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a great fan of blanket bans (or, indeed, blanket anything) but I agree that most such articles are inherently unencyclopedic. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'd go a bit further than that; which such articles are encyclopedic, and which would meet the required SIGCOV element of discussing the topic itself? Ravenswing 21:59, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison of lions and tigers isn't... A sad day for anyone looking to invest in that market. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:45, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly oppose any sort of blanket ban. Very often these comparison articles are the best way for readers to understand how two similar encyclopaedic subjects differ - a necessary part of providing complete encyclopaedic coverage of those topics. Thryduulf (talk) 22:06, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

As long as that comparison is done by RSes, or at least routinely done in RSes. If not RSes makes these comparisons, then that's OR for us to make them. Masem (t) 22:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How is it be OR to list characteristics of products if characteristics are reliably sourced, as long as we don't judge one "better"? Hyperbolick (talk) 00:30, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Which features are we picking to make a comparison? Just that choice itself can implicitly bias one of the products over another if we include or exclude certain features. Letting RSes show how they make comparisons removes that possible OR bias. Masem (t) 11:29, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comparisons are secondary source material, so that's partway to the WP:GNG right there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give some examples of good comparison articles? Orange sticker (talk) 07:14, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely not encyclopedic. Among other things, such articles would be ephemeral. Who is going to care a year later which printer some magazine or other rating service recommended? Donald Albury 23:19, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that's such comparisons are ephemeral. Sure, "ExpertsRUs recommended X from 1994 to 1997" is unimportant, but I thought the point of the comparisons was less ephemeral.

For example, the Comparison of 3D printers compares these points:

Year released
Print technology
Max build volume (mm)
Max build volume (in)
Min layer resolution (μm)
Print speed (mm/s)
Kit or assembled

We might agree or disagree on what's important, but none of that feels ephemeral to me. It sounds like stable, objective facts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This can lead to bias by omission though, if criteria are left out it can be impossible for a reader to judge, say, which printer is the most efficient or high spec. But really, although "provider of retail advice editorial" isn't under WP:NOT I don't think it's our role to provide comparisons of consumer products. I'm less bothered about the articles that compare languages, road signs or alphabetic country code, but nearly every other "Comparison of" article is about a tech product. We're not CNET. Orange sticker (talk) 07:24, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Which criteria are used in a comparison is not relevant to this discussion, the question here is only whether to have these sorts of comparisons at all. Detail about what is compared is something that can only be determined at the individual article level. Thryduulf (talk) 10:18, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

But the fact is there's nothing stopping editors cherry picking criteria and, by the nature of the article, using them as comparison indicators, if we allow these types of article. This is what's happened and why it's WP:OR specifically WP:SYNTH - though that's not to imply bad faith. It's just inevitable. Orange sticker (talk) 10:22, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We do not and should not ban whole categories of articles because they might contain OR or SYNTH, we fix and/or delete specific articles that do contain OR or SYNTH. It is not at all inevitable. Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not arguing in favour of a carpet ban, but certainly a policy or guideline that discourages their creation and ensures no OR. Preventative measures are better than having to fix large volumes of problematic content which is the position that's been created now. Orange sticker (talk) 10:52, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We don't need or want a policy or guideline that discourages the creation or adding of encyclopaedic articles or content, we already have policies and guidelines against creating or adding non-encyclopaedic articles/content, including original research. You haven't yet identified any content that is actually problematic, nor any evidence that there is a large volume of such that can't be handled by normal editing. Thryduulf (talk) 11:15, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There's currently an ANI complaining about that an editor is nominating these at too large a volume, and those AfDs discuss the matter of OR and unencyclopedic content in them. This is a case where policy could be more explicit to save editors' time and improve the project. Orange sticker (talk) 12:37, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Doing anything in “large volume”… be it creating articles, or nominating them for deletion… is always a negative behavioral issue. Our policies, guidelines and procedures don’t handle “large volume” well. Blueboar (talk) 21:06, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

there's nothing stopping editors cherry picking criteria ...except for our anti-cherry-picking policy, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, by their very nature this type of article is not in keeping with WP:NPOV. They could be if they only relied on comparisons done by third parties, but there's very few examples of that. Orange sticker (talk) 06:58, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are a limited set of product comparison articles that are worthwhile: those that compare generations of a single product. Often these end up embedded in the products main page, but if there is enough text, it makes sense to break it out. Examples: List of iPhone models, List of Intel processors. Note they're labelled "lists", but the body is primarily comparison information. Sometimes the same product is produced by multiple companies: the comparison is still useful: Comparison of ARM processors. Note that I'd differentiate this from comparison of unrelated products with the same functions (e.g., Comparison of server-side web frameworks), which I wouldn't see as appropriate for Wikipedia. That said, there are some heterogenous categories where the comparison page appears useful, e.g., Comparison of programming languages. Note that the programming languages comparison is going over the various attributes that we'd normally use when describing a programming language, so it's not a marketing comparison, rather a look at the inherent characteristics of programming languages that differentiate one from another. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 02:15, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, I don't have a big problem with Comparison of Google Pixel smartphones in terms of WP:OR because there's been no curation by editors, it's an exhaustive list and the specs also seem comprehensive (much of the sourcing isn't independent though). However I don't see why "Comparison" is in the title. "List of Google Pixel smartphones" would be fine or "Technical specifications of Google Pixels" would be more accurate. Comparison implies we are telling readers which is better/worse, faster/slower, bigger/smaller etc. These articles just present the information for readers to use how they see fit. Orange sticker (talk) 07:28, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison implies we are telling readers which is better/worse, faster/slower, bigger/smaller etc. Why do you think that? With the exception of better/worse, why is it a problem if we tell readers objective facts about them? Thryduulf (talk) 09:49, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It's just that laying out objective facts isn't making a comparison, so those articles should just be called lists. It stops being objective when the (rankable) categories of facts are curated and someone selects which criteria to use to describe a product. It's like me creating a "Comparison of UK Cities" article and using "Number of Beatles born there" as a ranked category :) Orange sticker (talk) 10:04, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

But we've got to make some "selection" of criteria, because there is eventually a hard limit of how much content can be put in a single page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If product comparisons are to be banned (which imo they should not be, per my above comments) it will be necessary to define what a product is in this context. Obviously Comparison of word processor programs is (although given that it compares software currently underground active development with programs with a most recent release date in 1986 how much it is a "marketing" comparison is debatable) and Comparison of graphics file formats is not, but what about Comparison of text editors, Comparison of operating system kernels, Comparison of open source wireless drivers, Comparison of North American ski resorts or Comparison of orbital launch systems? Thryduulf (talk) 02:52, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm less bothered about the articles that compare languages, road signs or alphabetic country code, but nearly every other "Comparison of" article is about a tech product. I categorised every article starting with a title starting "Comparison of"

Category	Count
Software (inc. operating systems, libraries)	185
Computer, smartphone, digital camera, etc hardware	37
Protocols, standards, encodings, formats, etc	33
Websites and online services	23
Languages, writing systems, accents, etc	33
Sports	15
Programming, scripting and markup languages	13
Medicine and biology topics	10
Vehicles	11
Other technology (e.g. battery types)	9
Religion topics	5
Other	34

Even if everything in the first top two categories is a product (which they very much aren't) then they only account for 57% of comparison articles. Thryduulf (talk) 11:04, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

wikt:every other is usually taken to mean "every second" or "half of", so that number does check out. Some software might not count as products, but that might also be offset by some online services and other technologies, although we'll need more details to be sure. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:47, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It all goes back to my earlier question of what is a product? And even within things that are clearly products there is a big difference between e.g. Comparison of iOS devices, Comparison of DVD ripper software, Comparison of HTML parsers and Comparison of early word processors. I suppose it depends what the exact problem you have with these articles is, as all the reasons given above are vague gestures towards non-specifics and complaints that some articles might contain things that are already not allowed. Thryduulf (talk) 12:57, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally have any problem with these articles, I was just hoping to clarify the terminology matter! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:07, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the point about defining products, when is a list a comparison? List of battery electric vehicles is not a "comparison of" but includes lengthy tables through which readers can ... compare various aspects of each. Is any table of [products] with more than their name a comparison? If it makes sense to include more than the name of something, is the key just not putting the information in a table? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:00, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Making the the categories rankable makes the list a comparison because it implies some factors are > than others and means entries can be easily grouped into the haves and have nots. But it would be petty not to allow users to rank tables. My solution would be to ensure the title says "list", otherwise we risk putting into Wikivoice "product A ranks higher than product B according to Wikipedia's comparison". Orange sticker (talk) 13:09, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Eh? You want to ban whole categories of articles because some people might choose to compare encyclopaedic information about encyclopaedic topics in way that might suggest something was better or worse than something else? This is screaming WP:IDONTLIKEIT and trying to police the way readers use our content. Thryduulf (talk) 13:21, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Eh indeed. I've already replied to you directly saying I'm not arguing in favour of a carpet ban. I'm saying we shouldn't be making unsourced comparisons in Wikivoice, and I'm explicitly arguing that readers be allowed to read and manipulate the tables how they see fit. However, it's up to us to ensure WP:NPOV and no WP:OR and we're currently failing to do that. Orange sticker (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What unsourced comparisons are being made? If product X has a sourced list of features, and product Y has a sourced list of features, neither become magically unsourced by placing them in a table. This proposal completely fails to demonstrate that product comparisons are a failure of NPOV or OR in and of themselves and completely fails to demonstrate that any such problems that do exist would be solved by adopting it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:42, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If no independent third party expert has ever published a work that compares product X to product Y, we are introducing WP:OR. If an editor decides to create a table and chooses which criteria should be included for comparison and what is left out, that is WP:SYNTH. And beyond hypotheticals, a lot of the existing articles have vast amounts of unsourced info, e.g.: Comparison of genealogy software, Comparison of CRM systems, Comparison of DVD ripper software. Orange sticker (talk) 13:53, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely none of this is a problem with the type of article itself, its a problem (and I'm not convinced on the OR or SYNTH claims) with the individual articles. Thryduulf (talk) 13:57, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And yet its evident on so, so many of of them. I chose those three at randon from Category:Software comparisons and they all had glaring problems. It's clear allowing this type of article without any clear guidelines has lead to vast amounts of unsourced, original research being added to the project over the years. We have the opportunity here to improve Wikipedia. Orange sticker (talk) 14:01, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Even if that is true, you still need to show that this will actually improve Wikipedia, and removing or discouraging whole swathes of encyclopaedic content is not an improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 14:02, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In re If no independent third party expert has ever published a work that compares product X to product Y: And yet the complaints focus on tech subjects, for which comparing product X to product Y is the everyday normal form of the reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In the three examples I give above, I can only see once source that comes close to being a third party comparison,[1] and oddly it does not explicily support the information it is cited for (that Hubspot CRM Free is a SaaS). Orange sticker (talk) 07:03, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Are you looking only at the sources that are already cited in the articles? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the point I'm making is that for several years these articles have been created without proper sourcing and its likely that will continue to happen without better guidelines. Orange sticker (talk) 07:16, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Are you familiar with the WP:NEXIST guideline? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Orange sticker, Does "Making the the categories rankable" mean "making it possible to sort the table by columns"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I think on its own it's nothing but a handy feature for readers, but when you combine it with an article called "Comparison of..." I think it introduces WP:NPOV. Orange sticker (talk) 06:55, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for explaining. I disagree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather surprised to see that count being used to say that not many such articles are about tech products. It shows that about 70% of them are directly related to computers. It may surprise some Wikipedia editors to know, but the world is not made up of 70% computers and 30% everything else. The table shows just how bad the systemic bias is that's caused by young first-world males being vastly over-represented among us. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not all of the first two categories are directly related to computers, unless you take a very broad definition of "computer". For example graphical calculators and digital cameras are included in the hardware category, and not everything related to computers is a product, even by a broad definition. Tech products are probably the largest single thing, but they don't account for 70%. It's also worth stressing that this only considered articles named "Comparison of", not "list of", "table of" or anything else, even if there was a redirect from a "Comparison of" title. Thryduulf (talk) 22:02, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My take is that they are important but appear to be WP:SYNTHESIS. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:11, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We can compare topics frequently compared in reliable sources but that doesn't mean that all comparison-cruft has a place in this encyclopedia. As you point out, the choice of comparison-criteria itself should be reliably sourced to avoid WP:OR. A ban seems over-the-top and like rule-creep. However, it may help to articulate your arguments against comparison articles in an essay and cite that in relevant discussions. Joe vom Titan (talk) 00:24, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the scepticism of these tabular comparison articles but I don't think that they are intrinsically illegitimate and would oppose a blanket ban. In many cases the tabular comparison articles contain content that nobody would be complaining about (apart from its size) if it was included within the main article about the topic. So, if no blanket ban, how do we sort the comparison of sheep from the comparison of goats and then put them through the sheep dip to get them clean?

As I see it, the tabulated comparison articles are pretty mechanical supplementary content that exist to aid the understanding of existing coverage in other articles. They are more like indexes than articles. They should only contain data drawn from the article covering each entry. That would automatically exclude any entries without articles or (at the very least) substantial sections in other articles. It would take most of the burden of sourcing off of the comparison articles (because we don't need to source the same information twice) and also eliminate most of the concerns about SYNTH and cruft. SYNTH or POV could still creep in when deciding what columns to put in the tables but if we stick to what is already covered in the entries' articles then it can't get too far out of whack.

This does not apply to other types of comparison articles, which are prose based. Those are not mechanical. They are normal articles and need to be referenced to sources making the comparisons in order to avoid SYNTH or POV in the choice of what aspects are compared and in what ways. --DanielRigal (talk) 16:34, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For the AfDs I have open, some are deleted or keep based on just a lottery as they are very similar. It seems there is no policy. For an external observer this looks bad and Elon/Trump fans will see this as Wikipedia decadence and argue that Grokipedia is the future. Please, have some coherent policies! Don't let Wikipedia die! Dncmartins (talk) 07:47, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, the lottery comes on account of the varied people who turn up at each AFD. AFD is a greater problem than "comparisons". Thincat (talk) 09:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm getting rather fed up with your Grokipedia boosterism. You are the person responsible for all the disruptive low effort AfDs that prompted this thread. You can't credibly turn up here, commenting almost as if you are an impartial observer, when you had such a large hand in making this into a problem in the first place. --DanielRigal (talk) 11:15, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm getting fed up of your accusations of disruptive editing. No one has created a problem. This is a productive conversation about how to maintain Wikipedia's standards that along the way has uncovered a large number of poor quality articles that many editors agree are suitable for deletion or a massive overhaul. This is hardly the footprint of someone abusing the AfD process. Orange sticker (talk) 11:32, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but, what are you talking about? That link is all but irrelevant. Dncmartins has started 12 AfDs (all identical low-effort nominations) apart from those, the only other AfD he has participated in is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of smartphone brands which was the inciting incident for this current vendetta. He currently has something like 150 more AfDs in the pipeline! (Just search for "Starting deletion process" in his contribution history to see them.) Whether he intends it or not, this absolutely is disruptive! Sure, this thread is constructive but that is to Athanelar's credit not Dncmartins'. If it leads to a coherent and beneficial outcome then that will be despite Dncmartins' actions, not because of them. Please can we stop excusing this awful behaviour just because it has accidentally brought to light a legitimate issue? --DanielRigal (talk) 17:12, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You are the one that is being disruptive by adding speedy keep to AfDs where editors already suggested delete. Please, stop your disruption and try to be constructive. I can take either outcome of this discussion, but I need to see coherent policies. Dncmartins (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So it is not disruptive for you to start multiple low effort AfDs in retaliation for another AfD which did not go the way that you wanted, but it is disruptive for me to !vote on those same AfDs? How is me !voting disruptive? Are you serious here or are we being trolled? --DanielRigal (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Well, are you adding anything productive with those comments? Dncmartins has started the processes that have led to six (so far) non-encylclopedic articles being deleted, and following on from him I have started a couple and will do more. (Personally, I'm quite happy to say that's a coherent and beneficial outcome because of Dncmartins' actions.) Sure, he's making a point, but the point seems quite a good one, unlike your "I don't like the point so I'm going to put even less effort in than Dncmartins". ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:39, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Further up this thread I made quite a detailed suggestion for when tabular comparison articles might be legitimate which included suggested rules that could address the valid synth and cruft concerns here without giving in to the very obviously abusive vendetta to delete hundreds of articles in retaliation for the deletion of one. Let's be clear that there was a right way to do this. That would have involved starting a discussion here before trying to delete articles one by one. It would also have involved making a small number of AfDs each covering multiple articles where it is proposed to delete several for the same reason. Those AfDs would have a coherent nomination not just a casually pasted line. Dncmartins did not start this thread. Athanelar did. Athanelar gets the credit for trying to do things the right way. I do believe that all the currently open AfDs should be closed as Speedy Keep because they are blatantly deficient and an abuse of the AfD process. That would be without any prejudice to anybody renominating them properly. --DanielRigal (talk) 02:31, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add to/support DanielRigal, the manner in which Dncmartins has gone about these proposals has been unhelpful and prickly. Dncmartins began by mass tagging over 150 Comparison of X articles with WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS, pasting the same useless explanation and linking to an essay about comparison articles of the form A and B compared. They did this without care or attention; tagging up to four articles every minute, clearly not enough time to individually evaluate them. Some time later, they began creating AFD proposals, all with the same unhelpful rational ([2], [3], [4], [5], [6]). When asked for elaboration, they repeatedly pasted the same vague, non-specific, and often wrong justification ([7], [8], [9], [10], [11]). Then they simply went silent.

Dncmartins seems to believe that all Comparison of X articles should be deleted. There are many better ways to make this point than mass-tagging and vague, copy-pasted rational. A discussion such as this is one of them, but it was not something they elected to try, even after it was clear their approach was causing friction. This is either very poor judgement, or, less likely, a sign of bad faith. CommonsKiwi (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

One path for Wikipedia to die is for it to delete information that readers want to find here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:55, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you. That is why Wikipedia needs consistent policies. Dncmartins (talk) 18:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's relevant. A consistent policy of "delete everything" would lower Wikipedia's value for readers. An inconsistent policy of "keep things when we feel like they're cool or interesting or helpful" would raise it. An individual's actions of "send things to AFD to protest inconsistent policies" is WP:POINTY and unhelpful to readers.

If you could explain your concern, we might be able to identify inconsistencies (the first step in fixing them), or explain why they're not actually inconsistent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Given the excessive effort of redoing the potentially valid ones from scratch, I don't think that's the best idea but if they were all to be draftified instead then that might work. --DanielRigal (talk) 04:07, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe after a spot check to see if the article is just not named correctly and should be renamed? ~2026-22071-94 (talk) 04:57, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would be to extreme a reaction. As DanielRigal has pointed out, it would take an excessive amount of time to restore the legitimate article, which I believe are probably a majority anyway. CommonsKiwi (talk) 13:38, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm uncomfortable with banning all such articles. After reading through this discussion, I'm convinced that they're generally not good article topics (Donald Albury on ephemeral) and should be strongly discouraged (Orange Sticker on "certainly a policy or guideline that discourages their creation and ensures no OR"), but an outright ban seems unwise to me, primarily because there might be some false positives. Imagine that there's a topic that we all agree to be article-worthy, but it necessarily includes "Comparison" in the title, and maybe it includes a few lists that are definitely in its scope. Confused people might see the blanket ban, the title, and the lists, and seek to have the article deleted as violating the ban. Even if we didn't end up losing this useful article by accident, we'd end up with a lot of controversy (and maybe some deletions and undeletions) by the time it finally got kept. Better to say "these articles are generally not good" and to encourage AFDs, and we can get rid of them more slowly; they're not harming anything, so they can wait for AFDs. Nyttend (talk) 02:41, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Before deleting "Comparison of X" articles, should consider renaming to "List of Y", where "Y" may be same as X or slightly different. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 22:57, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The community portal only offers to ask for help, but it should also link to important policies like the core content policies and assume good faith along with MOS, this makes it so new users can read the important policies and guidelines of wikipedia relatively quickly without asking for them from someone else. Misterpotatoman (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not opposed… however, most new editors don’t know that the Community Portal even exists… so first we would have to point them there (say in a welcome message). And as long as we are pointing them to places, we might as well skip a step and just point them directly to these core policies. Blueboar (talk) 23:18, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The community portal is right on the left sidebar. I'm not sure but I imagine new editors will eventually think "Ooh, what's that?". Don't remember exactly how I found it myself. I think the core content policies worth adding. Mrfoogles (talk) 23:58, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That’s how I found it at first too; I think adding the core policies — perhaps the five pillars and WP:42, as some examples — would be rather beneficial. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} -⃝⃤ (they/he) 08:29, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm smiling because you've suggested adding the core policies, and then gave two examples, both of which are essays. "The core policies", by the way, are generally taken to be WP:V, NOR, NPOV, and WP:NOT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least I made someone smile and learned something at the same time! :) I wasn’t aware that the five pillars was an essay, and I also didn’t know that there was an official set of ‘core policies’. I figured since the five pillars is cited in the traditional welcome message, it was an official policy (though I probably shouldn’t base my talk page messages off of erstwhile assumptions!). But the point stands that they’re pretty important and I still think they’d be valuable to cite. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} -⃝⃤ (they/he) 21:44, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that it's best to give newcomers short, simple pages that highlight the key things they need to know. This is IMO much more important than whether the page they're reading has a tag at the top vs WP:NOTAG. It could even be a custom/new explanation written just for that purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:27, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think Cheatsheet would also be very useful to new users, even if it doesn't cover a policy, essay or guideline on Wikipedia. Misterpotatoman (talk) 00:35, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There's already the "Protocols" link piping the list of policies and guidelines. Dunno whether that's necessary, but addition of links to AGF and core content policies might help. George Ho (talk) 02:51, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if this has been talked about - Cant tell you how many times I have seen editors trying to talk to blocked users. Strike blocked usernames by default for registered users? Yes there is Preferences → Gadgets → Strike out usernames that have been blocked but I assume many not aware. Seems like a "time sink" we could help our editors avoid if they had a visual clue that the person there tlaking to is not going to reply (well not right away in many cases). Moxy🍁 16:01, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely didn't know about that gadget; that got enabled right away. Athanelar (talk) 16:52, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

On from this, it also seems that expired TAs get indicated as blocked. That is not ideal. CMD (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is good for expired TAs to be flagged in some way, but it probably shouldn't be indistinguishable from the flag for a blocked account. Athanelar (talk) 17:04, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree.

TAs start with the year so that it's easier to spot when the TA is way too old to expect a response. Obviously, with their current max age set to just 90 days, a lot of same-year TAs will be expired, but it at least gives us a hint, and especially in the future, it will be easier to see which TAs are from years ago. I would not want them marked as 'blocked'. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

They're not indistinguishable, actually:

For expired TAs, the username is struck, and that's it.
For blocked users, the username, contribs link, and talk link are all struck, italicized, and faded to 0.4 opacity.

In addition, when you hover over an expired TA, a popup immediately comes up that says "Temporary account has expired".

Personally, I find it pretty easy to tell the difference. Cadddr (talk) 18:32, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The main confusion is with blocked TAs, not normal users. It seems you are right that the talk is also struck, but for me that talk is separated from the username by the IP address button (and I've got custom CSS to make this less obtrusive) and the information panel button. I'm not seeing an obvious difference in opacity. CMD (talk) 18:42, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I did check, and those differences (including the opacity) are still present for blocked TAs, not just blocked regular accounts. But if others don't find the difference in italics and opacity as noticeable as I do, that probably means it's too subtle. Cadddr (talk) 18:54, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I edit primarily on mobile, so any hover-to-reveal information is useless to me. Athanelar (talk) 18:59, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have this gadget enabled, and I've definitely wondered why it's not on by default. It's very useful. Cadddr (talk) 18:33, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve had that enabled almost since I started editing as a registered user, and it’s massively convenient in talk page discussions, recent changes patrolling, and contribs logs. It’s honestly been there so long I forgot it wasn’t an automatic feature. I hugely support this idea; I think it’d streamline on-wiki conversations wonderfully if everyone could see who’s blocked and who isn’t. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} -⃝⃤ (they/he) 21:51, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I use it, and hovering over the username shows a handy popup showing why they were blocked.

Doesn't work with popups enabled though... Starlet! (Need to talk?) (Library) (Sandbox) 17:52, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've used it in the past but disabled it again, I would not want to stand in the way to enable it for users by default but I would really like to see a tiny bit more innovation put in it if it's on by default. For example it's easy confusable with revdel, expired TA's look identical, as well as that it registers all links to the userpage and stikes them out which sometimes is confusing if the link is not serving as a reference to the user but the actual page itself. (e.g in some logs) Squawk7700 (talk) 19:41, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is it worth designating Indian cinema as a community-designated contentious topic? The subject is a magnet for sock farms and disruptive editing; just look at DoubleGlazing's comprehensive report at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jha09 highlighting just a handful of active sockfarms in this topic recently; which doesn't even mention the chronically active Alakmarsaify (who notably recently recreated Mission C1000 (telugu film) by hijacking the completely unrelated Draft:Business as Mission in order to avoid the salting of Draft:Mission C1000). Add to that the recent hubbub with accounts engaging in edit warring over Dhurandar 2; I'm wondering if it might be worth subjecting the whole topic to some kind of heightened editing restrictions to prevent disruption? Something like "all new indian cinema articles need to go through AfC" or maybe just extended-confirmed protection for the whole topic. Indians have a huge nationalist interest in their cinema industries, which attracts a lot of superfans (c.f., Wikipedia:General sanctions/Professional wrestling which is a CCTOP for much the same reason) and tendentious editors, who are uniquely determined and motivated. Athanelar (talk) 19:32, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The topic area can certainly be problematic, for multiple reasons (politics, promotion, chronically-poor sourcing, fancruft...) but I'm not entirely convinced that endless expansion of CCTOP scope is the solution to issues like this. It risks watering down attention to more seriously-affected areas, and unless a lot more contributors familiar with policy are prepared to step in and watch systematically, is likely to result in some very erratic enforcement. I wish I could think of a simple solution, but unfortunately it's a direct consequence of 'anyone can edit', combined with an experienced-contributor demographic that largely doesn't have much subject-matter interest. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:42, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think something like a requirement for all new Indian cinema-related articles to be reviewed at AfC (including immediate draftification of any new articles which don't follow that) would eliminate most of the burden on mainspace without requiring all that much effort or subject matter interest/knowledge on the part of other editors. No doubt it'd bloat the AfC queue a bit more, but I'm always of the mind that a bigger AfC queue is always preferable to more bad articles in mainspace. Athanelar (talk) 19:49, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Who said the page was hijacked? I have already declared that the temporary account I used to add the information was mine. So what is the problem now? ~2026-23926-00 (talk) 20:22, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The page was completely changed from being about a Christian missionary practice to being about an Indian movie. Athanelar (talk) 20:47, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

WP:XC says the following:

Membership in the extendedconfirmed group is typically revoked if a user is in another group with which it is redundant (for example, administrators)...

I think this is unhelpful, and I'd like to see this practice stop. I've been around for 20 years and have hundreds of thousands of edits, so I got the right automatically in 2023 (I assume this is when the right was created), some while after I lost admin rights for inactivity. I requested the restoration of admins rights in 2024, and in the process of restoring them, bureaucrat 28bytes complied with the policy and removed XC as redundant. This caused me a bit of confusion just now; see WP:VP/T#Template:Extended confirmed restriction wording. Now imagine that I lose admin uncontroversially in the future, either because of inactivity or resignation. Unless the bureaucrat remembers to give me this right, I'm suddenly unable to edit XC articles, so I have to go and request the right. Isn't this a bit absurd? Now, barring some egregious actions on my own part, obviously it would be granted, but it just seems inconvenient for everyone involved. Shouldn't we just ignore the redundancy, as we already do with rights such as rollback? Nyttend (talk) 02:50, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Anything that stops editor time being wasted is a good thing. CheeseAndJamSamdwich (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Of course that shouldn't happen. The current policy defies common sense. What's wrong with a bit of redundancy? Phil Bridger (talk) 16:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who gets their sysop bit deactivated periodically (I think I hold the record for this, actually), it would be better to just leave the redundancy in so it doesn't have to be remembered each time. It isn't hurting anything by being redundant. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 04:35, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at my rights log, you see that it was sometimes removed, sometimes not, when I regained the sysop bit. Barkeep49 kept the EC and IPBE active, which I would prefer both be kept, even though I have global IPBE, to make future changes simpler prevent any accidental leaving it off the next time I drop the sysop bit for a break. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 06:40, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I asked Barkeep about this case on his talk page. I don't know if we really need to do anything, but the current situation is that occasionally a 'crat will forget to add or remove the EC right. No big deal, but could theoretically be a minor inconvenience. Novem's bot idea would solve this, but whether it's worth it I don't know. Toadspike [Talk] 23:13, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I would just note that this is true of every permission that is included in the admin set (rollback, NPR, etc). As far as I am aware, though, ExCon is automatically restored when the admin bits are removed, and even then it is trivial for a bureaucrat to simply re-tick the ExCon box when removing the sysop bit. Not really "inconvenient". Primefac (talk) 08:47, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I am aware, though, ExCon is automatically restored when the admin bits are removed. Can anyone confirm this? I wonder if the system only auto awards ac & xc once, before the person became an admin, to avoid edit warring with an intentional removal. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:28, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Judging by the rights log for Firefangledfeathers, it doesn't appear to be automatic. However if the account became an admin before XC was created it does seem to grant automatically, at least per Smalljim's user rights log. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 19:17, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The automatic granting is done only after they have made a subsequent edit; FFF has not edited since requesting a desysop. Primefac (talk) 19:29, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Automatic granting only happens if the group has never been removed from that user, specifically so as not to override an intentional removal as Novem Linguae describes. —Cryptic 09:37, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Good to know. I suppose the only time I've seen it is for that category of former admin. Primefac (talk) 10:15, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I’m not convinced by this proposal. One of the features of adminship is that it automatically bundles most of the other user rights. When you pass RFA you immediately become a page mover, a template editor, event coordinator and everything else, including extended confirmed. As such, I don’t think the rights you happened to hold beforehand are especially relevant, and we should avoid the notion that they should automatically define the set of rights you retain if you are later desysopped. By that point it may be years or decades later, and the circumstances may be very different. And if someone is desysopped for cause, it may or may not be appropriate for them to retain lesser rights, depending on the circumstances. IMHO it should be up to the crats who remove the bit, in discussion with the affected editor / Arbcom / the community where appropriate, to make that determination, rather than admins retaining a variable set of redundant rights underneath the sysop bit that silently reappear later. Now I realise XC is probably the least controversial of the additional rights, but the above logic still applies and I don't see a good reason to treat it separately. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 08:58, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I take the exact opposite view to Amakuru. If someone is desysopped for inactivity then all the other rights (that don't have their own activity requirements) should be automatically retained as they have done nothing wrong and it might give a slight psychological benefit to those who return (it certainly won't do the opposite).

For those who are desysopped voluntarily the standard is already to give them everything they had prior to being an admin unless they ask otherwise. This proposal would therefore have absolutely no impact on who holds what permission but means less work for the crats and fewer log entries.

That leaves only those who are desysopped for cause. That is the best time to determine what other rights (if any) should also removed, as the context is known to everyone relevant. So I fully support the proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 09:23, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I suppose you could add all the rights explicitly and as standard whenever anyone's made an admin, and the concrete effect would be similar. What I don't support is the idea that editors retain whatever motley collection of rights they previously held, and that is then taken as the default state on desysop. So if the approach were to make all bundled rights explicitly standard for all admins, rather than dependent on what they happened to hold beforehand, I’d be less concerned. I'd still lean to retaining the current system though. The key point is that adding these permissions is redundant, and we strive to avoid redundancy because it causes confusion. The proposal seems to be predicated on something that WP:AINTBROKE, particularly given Primefac’s point that, in practice, there appears to be little or no inconvenience. — Amakuru (talk) 11:44, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to add administrators to every user group corresponding to the rights bundled into the sysop user group. It would result in a make-work project to assign all administrators to a new user group whenever a new right is bundled into the sysop user group. isaacl (talk) 17:37, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
isaacl and Amakuru, you seem to misunderstand me. I'm not asking for admins to get additional user rights that would be redundant to our current rights; we don't need someone to go and give XC and rollback to all current admins. I'm asking that when an account is given admin rights, its pre-existing Extended Confirmed status (and, I suppose, other rights) be retained. This would take no additional work — probably a little less, since the bureaucrat wouldn't have to tick the XC box to remove that right — and would avoid the problem of a longstanding editor later being unable to perform certain actions, should the admin right be removed and the bureaucrat forget to restore all previous rights. Let's say I resign my admin rights tomorrow, and the bureaucrat forgets to give me extended confirmed. How is it a case of AINTBROKE that I can no longer edit pages that anyone with 500+ edits and 30 days' tenure can automatically edit, unless I go and request those rights? Nyttend (talk) 19:59, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I understood your proposal. I was responding to Amakuru's suggested alternative of assigning administrators to all the corresponding user groups. isaacl (talk) 03:02, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Ah okay, sorry I misunderstood you. Nyttend (talk) 04:57, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If the goal here is to make sure that people who resign as administrators get their extended confirmed user group back, then maybe writing a bot to do this automatically would be the cleanest solution. Let me know if folks would be okay with this. Someone could use a positive consensus here to file a brfa for an admin bot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:54, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The other option is just to remind 'crats that ExCon should be re-added when removing the sysop bit. Other than FFF (who as mentioned hasn't edited since requesting a desysop) I can't think of anyone who had to ask for the perm later on down the road. Per the NOTBROKE comment above, we seem to be dealing with this "issue" fairly well (but reminders never hurt). Primefac (talk) 12:59, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if we ran a quarry for the number of former admins who are not extended confirmed and who are not blocked, if there'd be a couple more than just FFF. Will run this quarry when I'm back at a computer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:06, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

On it. There are 13, including two indefinitely blocked sitewide, three that have had RTV renames, at least three that are deceased, and one bot account. —Cryptic 13:25, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There are four editors that do not fit into the above categories. Two (Jack and Jon) disappeared and were desysopped, one stopped editing four edits later, and one lost access to their account, had their mop transferred to another account, then lost it for inactivity, but has not hit the EC threshold on the newer account to get it automatically granted. Primefac (talk) 14:56, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Novem Linguae, the goal here is to end the practice of removing this right. Your idea wouldn't hurt, but still it requires a bit of work, and maintenance too; if we stop saying that this should be removed upon granting admin, it won't have to be bothered with, at least with new admins. Nyttend (talk) 20:30, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think the simplest option here is to simply add an instruction to WP:INACTIVITY that says crats will automatically grant EC to sysops desysopped via inactivity. For resignations, admins are already free to request rights (and typically are granted by default) so not much else should be done there I reckon. I'm still not sure where this lands us on WP:AINTBROKE but this seems to be... easy enough and not posing much danger to the wiki if implemented. --qedk (t 愛 c) 22:02, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Since 2013, ArbCom has asked the community to create a list of factors that editors could weigh when deciding whether to include or exclude an infobox in a given article. Please see the proposed list at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RFC on infobox criteria. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, we're going to fight today? Lulfas (talk) 20:31, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So far, if any respondents were inclined to fight, they are doing a pretty good job of concealing it. I would be interested in your view on whether the proposed text is practical, given what you know about infobox disputes. (Over there, not here, of course. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We can never address the gender bias on this platform as long as we gatekeep new articles but allow any mediocre articles to remain. Why do we even have backlog drives to find sources for unsourced articles after 15 years? Why do we allow AfD to go to a vote (yes, I know we say it's not a vote) where articles like:

To mark all articles for men (in the global north) created over 10 years ago without proposed deletion that can't be removed by a sole objector.
To delete them automatically after 1 year if two sources aren't added.
To have them reviewed by an AFC reviewer at the end of the year if two pieces of coverage are purportedly added.

Mme Maigret (talk) 00:06, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Part of this is making sure Admins at AFD actually have the backbone to delete articles, like that of Decker, that are not identified to meet the GNG or any SNG, with handwaves of sourcing attempts. Unfortunately, when an article is deleted, there's still a portion of WP editors that scream and shout that the deletion was improper. Masem (t) 00:11, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that the first of the listed article was creating in July 2025, and nominated for deletion by the author of the current proposal. Something as drastic as tagging all articles for men created over 10 years ago for deletion will mostly create a massive burden on volunteers (as most of them will have enough sourcing, but the proposed deletion can't be removed by a single person), and deleting content to achieve equality is fundamentally worse for the encyclopedia than adding new content. May I invite you to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red instead? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 00:14, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Chaotic Enby I was involved in all of those AfDs and PRODs in some way or the other - why would I go searching for others to make my point? Everyone has examples. Women in Red is not the solution because you're always starting from behind. I started March by creating these six articles for Women in Red before focusing on the unreferenced backlog (another thing btw I alluded to in my proposal):

- Mme Maigret (talk) 00:34, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) The way to fix We can never address the gender bias on this platform as long as we gatekeep new articles is to address the gatekeeping of new articles. Deleting articles en masse is just going to fuel resentment without solving anything.

There will always be a gender gap on Wikipedia as long as fewer women than men are covered in independent reliable sources. This is a societal issue that is not within Wikipedia's power to address, and is probably never solvable for pre circa 20th century topics as the primary source material to write reliable secondary sources often simply does not exist. Thryduulf (talk) 00:45, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting articles en masse is just going to fuel resentment without solving anything.

Hardly. I suggested a 1 year PROD for articles older than 10 years which currently have no references.

That would allow the author, and other interested editors, a full year to find sources for articles that have already had enough time.

Pages for women and ethnic minorities routinely don't get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to AfD, and we know this and don't do anything to stop them being nominated, instead allowing these other weak pages to be retained. Mme Maigret (talk) 02:22, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For many (if not most) of these old articles, the original author is no longer active. Why does there need to be a deadline on an encyclopedia that has no deadline? Katzrockso (talk) 02:24, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Katzrockso Why are we putting new articles that don't have sig cov through an AfC process but indefinitely keeping articles that don't have any references? Why are you even arguing for this? When you PROD the same article now, it only get 7 days. I'm suggesting a whole year. Mme Maigret (talk) 03:55, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

AfC is entirely optional (except for editors with less than 10 edits and editors with a conflict of interest), and draftification can be contested by the original author. In case of a disagreement, these matters are sorted out at AfD, whether for a new article or an old unreferenced article. You are free to bring any unreferenced articles to AfD (after a cursory search for potential sources), which would be much more efficient than a blanket PROD process on tens of thousands of articles. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:43, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, the process you suggested, while you call it PROD, is noticeably different, as it can't be reverted by a single editor and requires two sources providing significant coverage (stricter than even BLPPROD, which can be reverted by anyone with one reliable source, regardless of the extent of its coverage) Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 14:45, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Why are we putting new articles that don't have sig cov through an AfC process but indefinitely keeping articles that don't have any references?

Because this is 2026 and a substantial proportion of new articles are now AI-generated, and thus require more review and, sure, gatekeeping. This was not the case 10 years ago. There is no comparison. Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:44, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In the best case scenario, all of these articles have notable subjects, sufficient references are found and we've spent a lot more time and energy writing about men than we otherwise would have. Deleting articles about men might slightly and superficially affect quantitative bias, but this doesn't feel like a good tactic for addressing this. Codifying lesser notability requirements for female subjects is maybe an opposite proposal to achieve the desired effect. ~2026-24598-55 (talk) 15:02, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That would still cause a gender bias in my opinion. Plus, I feel like deleting articles about men might draw some unhealthy attention to Wikipedia from ultra right-wing groups... TheClocksAlwaysTurn (The Clockworks) (contribs) 17:05, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A few years ago, I saw a breakdown for gender gap content that split sports vs non-sports, and it was enlightening. Most of the gender gap (in terms of number of biographies) was explained by the real-world difference in the number of professional athletes. I wonder if anyone else remembers that and could find those numbers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This may be this and this from 2019, which had athletes making up 46% of BLPs, and athletes making up 32% of female BLPs. Whonting (talk) 10:59, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I think that work by Andrew Gray is what I was remembering. The linked comment says he was working with a dataset of 900K BLPs, of which 66K were female athletes and 348K were male athletes, and 23K are female politicians and 73K are male politicians. Both of those are subject areas in which Wikipedia's own internal biases are believed to be somewhat lower (e.g., we have articles on 100% of past and present United States senators, and 97% of them have been male so far), and I think these two areas account for a large fraction of the gender gap in our BLPs.

The math runs roughly like this: Of the 900K BLPs in that dataset, 23% are female, so there are 207K female BLPs and 693K not. That means 118K female non-athlete, non-politician BLPs and 272K non-female non-athlete, non-politician BLPs. That's 30% vs 70% for non-sports, non-politics BLPs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

30% to 70% still, frankly, seems to be a serious gender gap that I don't think would happen without a systemic editorial bias. The alternative is that women alive today are less than half as likely to be notable as men alive today, even outside of politics and sports. MEN KISSING (she/they) Talk to me, I don't bite! - See my edits 06:10, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@MEN KISSING After those discussions in 2019 I went back in 2023 and looked at it by age as well as field. For all BLPs, I found the gender ratio was roughly flat at ~25% F once you were born in the 70s, and dropped off from there for older people. But in non-sports BLPs, it grew consistently over time & once you got to "non-athletes born in the 1990s", ie ~people 23-33 when I ran the analysis, it was slightly over 50% female. In absolute terms this wasn't a very large cohort of people (maybe 22k) but it does suggest a very positive direction of travel, and that just counting BLP vs non-BLP is concealing some more recent shifts.

I'll see if I can get some updated figures on these estimates later this week. Andrew Gray (talk) 08:38, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@MEN KISSING (and also @WhatamIdoing, @Johnbod, @Whonting) - I figured out a more efficient way to test this, and ran some scripts to update the figures - details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Statistics by age and sports/non-sports - 2026 update since I think it's of broader interest than this specific discussion. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:48, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Mmemaigret "Articles for men"? What are those? David10244 (talk) 04:34, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Biographies of male humans. MEN KISSING (she/they) Talk to me, I don't bite! - See my edits 06:28, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Since when are articles about men, articles for men? Do women not read biographies about men? Warudo (talk) 15:28, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's helpful to nitpick a casual preposition. Have you never typed a word that turned out to not be quite perfect?

That said, people of any identity group disproportionately read articles that align with their identity and interests. Consequently, we can expect an article about, say, the first African-American woman to become a lawyer to be read by more African-American women in law school than by, say, Russian farmers or French bakers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see it that way. This feels like an important distinction to me rather than a nitpick. Wanting Wikipedia to more accurately reflect women's place in history involves writing articles about women. Wanting Wikipedia to be more useful to our female readers involves writing articles for women. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of overlap between the two but they are still different things. Consider for example articles about male fashion designers such as Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent (designer). They are biographies about men but are they really articles for men? I'd say no, certainly not exclusively. Warudo (talk) 18:37, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There might be an fine distinction to be made here, but a single preposition is too weak a hook to hang that heavy claim on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Let's agree to disagree on that one because it is frankly a moot point. Mass deleting articles for men and mass deleting articles about men are both bad ideas. Warudo (talk) 19:32, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I think Mmemaigret did mean articles about rather than for men. As an anecdote, I don't read that many biographies, but those I do are roughly equally male and female (looking at my history I've looked up four in the past 2 days, Lulu (singer), Esther Rantzen, William Stroudley and James Baskett, although I didn't read any of them in-depth). However there is a different aspect of the gender bias that we generally have greater coverage of subjects that are stereotypically more likely to be read by men than women - we have more in-depth content about topics like steam railway locomotives than e.g. wedding dresses.

Thinking about that now, this may be a lesser but not irrelevant aspect related to AfD outcomes of biographies. It is probably easier to get an understanding of how significant (or otherwise) that a claim of importance is in relation to a subject you don't know if we have an article about that thing than if we don't. For example if the claim is that they invented an improved Foo Widget and we have an article explaining Foo Widgets that's easier and quicker to understand the significance of the invention than if you have to find external resources first - especially if you don't know where to find reliable sources about Foo Widgets. This is just my speculation though, I've not seen (or looked for) any evidence to back it up. Thryduulf (talk) 16:28, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that this proposal hits the mark, but I do think the premise is interesting.

We can't (because we shouldn't) have different standards for sourcing based solely on gender. But we can (and do, with projects like WP:WIRED) address our systemic bias against women through editorial focus. Maybe part of that can be to give unreferenced articles about women more grace than unreferenced articles about men. MEN KISSING (she/they) Talk to me, I don't bite! - See my edits 06:26, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You can't fight sexism with more sexism. Enforce the standards regardless of sex. Flag biased articles. Yes, it takes more time, but that's the right way forward. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:54, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your attempts to resolve ~~so-called~~ gender bias (and to right great wrongs), but I doubt this proposal is solvable. As I suspect, this proposal will be archived or closed. @Mmemaigret: For next time to address this type of bias generally, you may wanna consider alternative venues, like Wikipedia talk:notability, Wikipedia talk:Notability (people), or WP:village pump (policy). Or you may wanna read essays, like ~~WP:gender bias~~. George Ho (talk) 22:08, 22 April 2026 (UTC); edited, 14:02, 23 April 2026 (UTC); edited, 23:22, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
- That's now called Wikipedia:Gender bias and editing on Wikipedia and is I think entirely about the gender of editors, not dealing with subjects of articles at all. Also it's about 10 years old. I don't think the proposal here concerns notability at all, so those pages would be the wrong venue. Johnbod (talk) 12:57, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  - Oh... I stand corrected about "WP:gender bias". The proposal here perhaps doesn't address notability, but the premise may have, i.e. examples the OP used in the Problem section. These articles might need some individual re-evaluation... but I don't know whether any one of us would spend time and energy to do so. Meanwhile, where else can the OP discuss gender bias if not WP:VPP? Perhaps WP:VPM (Miscellaneous)? —George Ho (talk) 14:02, 23 April 2026 (UTC); clarified, 14:03, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
- What about the gender bias makes it "so-called" according to you? There are, in fact, much less articles about women than men in the aggregate, even if some of the disparity does come from real-world factors. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:17, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  Struck out ~~"so-called"~~. I don't wanna give an impression of some "gender bias denial", ya know. Possibly, there have been less articles about females... but in which fields or categories? If general, then that makes Wikipedia or any other active encyclopedia bad, huh?
  
  Let's go specifics: what about winners and runners-up seen on Survivor (American TV series)#Series overview and The Great British Bake Off#Series overview? All right. Too specific, huh?
  
  What about female figures of pop cultures, like Category:Women singers, and Category:Women politicians?
  
  Unsure whether I should give you statistics. George Ho (talk) 23:34, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  Ideally what we should be aiming for is not 50% of biographies being about women, but 100% of notable people having biographies. Less than half of notable people are women (and it would be so even in a perfect world because non-binary people exist).
  
  Given that it's very tricky (if not impossible) to come up with a comprehensive list of people who are notable but don't currently have an article and so measure how far along we are to the goal, but a realistic aim would be for the proportion of existing articles about women in a given field to approximately match the proportion of people in that field who are both notable and female. This does require determining what appropriate fields are to measure - for example we're doing a lot better if the field is "female tennis players" than if the field is "tennis players". There is also the issue of what statistics exist in the real world - it's a lot easier to know what proportion of notable golfers are female than it is to know what proportion of notable linguists are female. Thryduulf (talk) 23:47, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  Reading stuff about gender bias on Wikipedia.... George Ho (talk) 23:58, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  
  While major Anglophone national legislatures are pretty/totally complete for recent periods, those for other countries - France say - are not. It would be interesting to see some figures on them. Johnbod (talk) 01:05, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  
  Honestly overlooked one comment about athletes and politicians. Well, I suspect some overlap of non-athletes and non-politicians. Indeed, non-politicians include athletes, while non-athletes include politicians, IMO. (Not trying to come across a nitpick-y or combative or something like that...) George Ho (talk) 23:45, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just a terrible idea. Btw, the first line of the "Proposal" is presumably " missing words, as it makes no sense at all: To mark all articles for men (in the global north) created over 10 years ago without proposed deletion that can't be removed by a sole objector." Missing "sources for" perhaps? As the comments above from WhatamIdoing and Andrew Gray show, the assumption that there is a serious "gender bias on this platform" in terms of biographies, though universal in the media, is actually rather dubious, and needs much more careful examination than it normally receives. Johnbod (talk) 12:34, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hey... a female editor proposed a flawed solution to systemic gender bias on Wikipedia (historically, a very real problem on the site), and has been essentially piled-on by a bunch of male editors about why it's not a good proposal. I'm certain none of you fellows mean anything wrong, but I think we ought to be at least a little nicer and more thoughtful than "Just a terrible idea". MEN KISSING (she/they) Talk to me, I don't bite! - See my edits 22:25, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, hey - not all those editors are male, y'know. Johnbod (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 01:05, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I did check to make sure, perhaps I could have checked a bit more closely. The editors in this thread most dismissive of Mme's original proposal are all men, as can be verified by looking at their userpages or checking the output of {{they}}. That's counting Thry, Chatul, George, and you. The folks who I feel are being nicer about it (if not being outright supportive) are a mix of men, women, enbies, and users without a stated gender.

I should make it clear that I don't think that you fellows are wrong, or that your opinions on the matter should have less weight, and I'm certainly not trying to imply there's any intentional misogyny going on here. I'm just pointing out that this kind of thing can have something like a chilling effect. The gender gap in BLPs might be in dispute here, but the gender gap in Wikipedians is a very real thing. MEN KISSING (she/they) Talk to me, I don't bite! - See my edits 02:49, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just pointing out that this kind of thing can have something like a chilling effect. The gender gap in BLPs might be in dispute here, but the gender gap in Wikipedians is a very real thing.
We didn't mean to make such effect, ya know. We're just pointing out implicitly that this proposal may have been one of attempted efforts to counter the bias (and to bridge the gender gap). Well, I just am able to find the gender equality article, especially its "Criticism" section. I can look for past proposals addressing the gender disparity... or bias if you like. Perhaps this one?: one from 2019 (uses "gender gap"). This other one is more general: proposed pillar from 2013. George Ho (talk) 04:00, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Although it is horrible to think about, the reality is that for most of history men were the only ones allowed or encouraged to do notable things. Only in recent history have people realized that actually women can do everything men can do. The Lyceum was probably a complete sausage fest! Wh1pla5h99 (talk) 13:45, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure this would have much impact on gender bias – if the proposal has a similar response to WP:LUGSTUBS it will result in a number of editors spending more of their time focussing on improving these male biographies rather than creating or improving ones about women. Also how many articles would be tagged, and how many would need reviewing at the end of the year? – AFC already has 4,000+ submissions (2 months+), so sending thousands more there could be an issue. EdwardUK (talk) 16:29, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@EdwardUK I think there are just over two thousand articles that fall in this definition - pages in a subcategory of Category:Articles lacking sources, where the Wikidata item includes male (Q6581097) (this is not a perfect test, there are a few false positives), and which were created before 1st May 2016 (there may occasionally be some other false positives here due to pagemoves etc). Worth noting as well that those two thousand articles represent ~0.1% of our two million biographies, so deleting them wouldn't noticeably change the overall statistics.

That said, of course, if anyone wants to go to work on salvaging some of them, then here's a list... Andrew Gray (talk) 17:54, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So not a massive number to start with (though a matching search for female gave only 117 results) and a brief look at the list suggests many are about people from non-English speaking countries which can be improved using the sources given in the equivalent articles in the other languages. After a year for clean-up, there is no reason why the majority of them should not have been improved. EdwardUK (talk) 19:37, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It occurs to me that one useful thing we could do is go over the matching search for female and find more sources for them. That won't directly improve the ratio but it will improve our coverage of notable historical women overall, and it is comparatively easy (in the sense that few people are likely to oppose it, and it doesn't involve the amount of legwork needed to identify women who need an article from scratch.) --Aquillion (talk) 04:32, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The list is here – there are a few fictional characters, and a mix of film, music and literature biographies, but mostly it seems to be Thai princesses or European nobility. The other language pages for some of the Europeans are generally poorly sourced, but a google book search may find something useful. The Thai language articles have some sources (several are PDFs of old documents so not just click to translate) which someone at the Thailand wikiproject might be able to take a look at. EdwardUK (talk) 07:34, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Beeker held state-wide elected office. He absolutely passes WP:NPOL. Jahaza (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I personally am all for cleaning up old articles that lack sources, but I don't feel that deleting bad articles on men really helps with the gender-balance problem, at least not in the way we ought to be worrying about; the issue is the lack of articles on notable women, not really the fact that we have too many articles on non-notable men. I mean people talk about the lopsided gender ratio to illustrate the problem, but it's really a symptom; fixing the ratio by deleting a bunch of bad stubs about men... well, it'll improve Wikipedia by removing badly-sourced articles on non-notable individuals, assuming we can identify them, so I'm not really opposed, but it won't address the actually important part of our gender bias. If you feel articles on notable women are being gatekept then the thing to do is to focus on that instead, which would be a more pressing problem. --Aquillion (talk) 04:26, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I agree basically with others who have stated that this does not really address the core of the problem. I would add that this proposal's primary effect will be to juice the metrics that we use to assess the gender gap, while its effect on articles "that matter" would be precisely nil. The idea appears to conflate a gender gap with some kind of numerical parity averaged over every article in existence, rather than article quality. Sławomir Biały (talk) 08:00, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose Using bias to delete articles en masse isn't going to fix any problem. This proposal will cause more bureaucratic bloat on Wikipedia. Men in the global north is an extremely large group; editors would have to spend hours going through tens of thousands of articles. There is already a 2 month backlog at AFC; we are already stretched too thin. Also, PROD was made for uncontroversial deletions. That is the reason anyone can delete it. If we were to implement this policy, it would turn PROD into AFD. Mikeycdiamond (talk) 12:28, 25 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Articles have been incubating in mainspace for more than 12 years that don't meet WP:GNG

Move all stubs created over 12 years ago that have less than two sources to draftspace (subject to the standard 6 month deletion). Ping all editors who have worked on the draft to give them the opportunity to improve or rescue them. Mme Maigret (talk) 02:46, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Mmemaigret, I don't know if it's clear enough in the text of the GNG ("A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."), but there's no rule saying these sources have to actually be cited in the article. The GNG says that a topic is notable if independent sources paid attention to it; it does not have any restrictions like "counting only those sources presently cited in the article".

See also WP:NEXIST, which opens this way: "The absence of sources or citations in a Wikipedia article (as distinct from the non-existence of independent, published reliable sources online or offline) does not indicate that a subject is not notable. Notability requires only that suitable independent, reliable sources exist in the real world; it does not require their immediate presence or citation in an article." I suggest reading that whole section, including the color-coded table at the end.

And that's even assuming that the GNG is the relevant guideline; I'd estimate that for something on the order of 20% of articles, the GNG is not the controlling guideline.

The community has tried a few times to adopt a rule saying that all articles must WP:CITE at least one source. So far, all of those efforts have failed. Have you looked at those prior attempts, to see if there's anything you could do to avoid making the same mistakes? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you "Ping all editors who have worked on the" article, you're going to annoy a lot of wikignomes and drive-by taggers. Using the example from @Chaotic Enby, pinging all prior editors means pinging:

The creator, who hasn't edited for 10 years
Three editors adding categories
One editor adding a stub tag
Four bots
An editor changing the infobox template
An editor adding a navbox

Which is to say: Nobody who wants or would likely respond to any such ping. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Less than two sources is a less than ideal metric. Many specific notability guidelines don't require two or more sources, and the amount of coverage in the article doesn't necessarily reflect how much exists (which is how notability is determined). As a good example, Mopsea was one of these one-sentence stubs with a single database source (Special:Diff/1046081815) before I improved it to GA as a challenge to prove exactly this, and finding quite a few quality sources was absolutely doable. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:26, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Some editors are working through articles with zero sources at the moment, per WP:URA at the time of this comment there are 38,186. GNG can be less of a concern here than the more basic "is this real?", "is this being represented properly?". That said, 38,000 is roughly 0.5% of articles, so on relative terms we are in a position where the concept of an unreferenced article isn't even really a rounding error. CMD (talk) 08:05, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

When we banned unsourced new BLPs, we had a grandfather clause to accept the pre-ban ones. We couldn't get that changed until the community had finally sourced, merged, or deleted all the old unsourced BLPs. (It took seven years.) I don't think the community will accept a "get rid of all {{one source}} articles" rule until it first accepts a "get rid of all {{unreferenced}} articles" rule. I don't think the community will accept a "get rid of all {{unreferenced}} articles" rule until we have already gotten rid of all {{unreferenced}} articles, which at the present rate, I estimate will be in the second half of 2027, assuming (probably wrongly) that all the {{unreferenced}} articles are already tagged as such. Even then, I'm doubtful that the community will agree to a "minimum two citations" rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I spent a considerable amount of time on the draft for electrostate. At the time I started, there was no such article so I decided to create one. But been busy with finishing other drafts, so I haven't really finished it. The issue is after I started the draft; a month ago, another editor suddenly created this article - electrostate - which is practically the same thing I wanted to do. They didn't even go through AfC review and it got published immediately. The issue is nobody told me. I could have wasted a lot of time building something that's already created. Is there any mechanism on Wikipedia to alert editors working in draft space when a corresponding article has already been created? I believe there should be. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 08:06, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a note that a page with the same title as your draft exists in mainspace, e.g. if you try to create Draft:Docklands Light Railway there is a a line in the header that says

Note: There is a Wikipedia article named Docklands Light Railway. (diff)

And this note also appears when you edit an existing draft, see e.g. Draft:Overhaul.

This obviously only works when the title of the draft is exactly the same as an article in mainspace and doesn't take subject matter into account - nor can I think of a way for it to do so (other editors may have better ideas than me).

We could make the note more prominent, but I honestly have no idea whether that would be useful?

I suppose that in theory a bot could leave a message on your talk page if you created a page in draft space and a mainspace article with that exact title is created in some way other than by moving your draft to the mainspace. It would obviously still have all the limitations of exact title matches and I have no idea how easy or otherwise it would be to program, nor do I know how reliable or useful it would be.

You can watchlist pages that don't yet exist, so they will show up on your if they are created, but this also has the exact title limitations and requires you to know this and to pay attention to your watchlist.

Ultimately though, you do not own a topic and starting a draft does not give you any rights over that topic. Draftspace and AfC are not compulsory (unless you have a COI with the subject), so there is no issue with someone starting an directly in mainspace nor with drafting in their userspace. Thryduulf (talk) 09:27, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf I already know all of this and not what I asked. And I had a feeling my comment would be misunderstood. :( I thought I made it clear the CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. To be clear - The article did not exist three months ago. At that time, I had diligently checked if such an article was created and found it wasn't. Hence why I started working on a draft titled "Electrostate" 3 months ago - [12] and even raised it at the Teahouse 2 months ago to ask whether it was appropriate to develop the topic. Check timestamps - [13] So my draft predates the article creation by at least 2 whole months.

I already know the obvious basics that of course you cannot start a draft if main space article already existed. It prevents you from doing that. Except that didn't happen for me as there was no article for electrostate 3 months ago. The issue is after I created the draft and started working, another editor published the article with the exact same title couple months after I already started my draft, and I was not made aware.JaredMcKenzie (talk) 09:58, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I did understand you. Topics do not have owners, starting a draft does not give you any more rights to the topic than you had before. Someone starting an article in mainspace for a title that exists in mainspace is made aware that the draft exists, but they are under no obligation to do anything with that knowledge. Thryduulf (talk) 10:15, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If someone else creates an article on the same topic you are working on in draft, and the draft you are working on has content that is not covered in the other article, or is an improvement on part of the content in the other article, merge the content you created into the other article (see [14], for example). You won't get credit for creating the article, but you will get credit for adding to the article's content. Donald Albury 19:45, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Donald Albury But I wasn't asking if I could get credit. I already know I obviously won't get credit and in fact, I am actually relieved someone finished that difficult article instead of me. Problem is not credit - it is when the system does not tell you that the draft you are working on - suddenly already has a main space article. That can potentially waste a good editors time unfairly and why I want this potential issue to not be repeated. That's ALL I AM ASKING and nothing more. I am proposing, if it doesn't currently exist - a future mechanism on Wikipedia to alert editors working in draft space that a corresponding identical article has already been created in main space, as I believe there should reasonably be one already. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 21:30, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And I have had it happen to me a number of times, including a case in which an article I created had been in main space for a while before I found out that another article on the topic had been in main space longer than the one I created (different versions of a multi-word title). The article I created was merged into the other one (see [15]). It can be difficult to predict exactly what someone else will choose as the title for an article about a topic, and despite all the tricks suggested, you can still miss the creation of an article on a particular topic. I just don't worry about it. If it happens, I may add content I've created to the other article, if it is appropriate, and move on. Donald Albury 23:23, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Based on what you told me - your specific example is not the same thing that happened to me. It's a different issue entirely'. What happened to me is I created a draft article. Later, another created a new article with the "identical title - (Electrostate). This time however I consider myself very lucky. By chance, I became aware they created this article very early on instead of much later where I could have probably spent the next 6 months slowly building the draft obliviously. Also, I doubt I will ever have this issue again in the future as long as I follow the bottom 2 editor's good advice. But I bet there will be future unlucky editors outside of me, who will feel bitter they wasted their time unnecessarily as nobody alerts them when a 100% IDENTICAL titled article appears in mainspace. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 00:52, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A workround is to create right at the start a redirect to a suitable article, if need be modifying the article to contain reference to the topic in question. Wanting to be first to create an article on a new topic is generally criticised on enwp but has the advantage you can easily watchlist the redirect. A significant benefit of creating an article "first" is that the system generates suppressible "page link" notifications if a new link is created to it.[16] Thincat (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Another workaround would be to create a list on your user page or elsewhere in userspace of mainspace links corresponding to drafts you're working on and watch to see if any of the red links turn blue. I'm planning of someday doing articles on Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Thomas Sieger Derr, and presumably I'll notice if someone turns the links blue before I do. In fact, you could even put such a canary at the top of the draft article itself and watch to see if it goes blue while you're working on the draft. Jahaza (talk) 20:36, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Jahaza Thank you. I appreciate you giving me a really smart tip on how to avoid, and I will probably use that indeed. But perhaps my expectations of VP proposal is flawed - as I was actually expecting you guys to simply request someone to program a bot alert system that can help not just me alone but all others for these scenarios. It is the first time it happened to me but I think such an issue is bound to happen to others particularly when working on new subjects that are only recently a thing. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 21:16, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Respectfully - 80 to 100 percent of replies are just telling me things I already know. And not what I specifically asked. Ie; I already know I don't own that article, can't stop others in being "first to create" and that other editors are under no obligation to ping me when they create that article. I wasn't even asking for that. Yet I keep getting that advice repeated to the point I have to clarify to stop telling me this. Personally I now know how to deal with it sufficiently in the future with @Jahaza 's, Isaacl's advice.

However, I didn't think this place was the Teahouse for receiving beginner advices. This is the place for PROPOSAL? NO? Maybe this is the wrong place but the only thing I came here to do is just propose an automatic system that alerts editors if a main space article is suddenly created out of nowhere - that's identical in title to a draft they been working on for a while. And if that cannot be done, then that's fine. I requested and hope it's now clear.

JaredMcKenzie (talk) 21:12, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You can put pages that don't exist yet on your watchlist, so you'll see the edit in your watch list if they are created. isaacl (talk) 22:26, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Isaacl Thanks. That's a solid idea I didn't even think of earlier and so I would try that too in future. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 00:32, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Jared, I'm sure it's frustrating even to think about potentially wasted time. I know this happens, but the last time I personally heard about it happening was maybe two or three years ago, and that was for a recent event. Multiple creations are most likely to happen if someone just won the Big Award (about 10% of Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine/Physiology don't have Wikipedia pages when the prize is announced), or if there's a major natural disaster. For more academic subjects like Electrostate, it's uncommon. And, for better or worse, that means that the amount of time and effort to police such a thing might actually exceed the amount of time and effort that is potentially lost. The cost of automation is not necessarily small, and it is frequently an ongoing cost. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Might be worth leaving a note at Wikipedia:Bot requests. I actually don't think this is a bad idea at all, but your first step probably needs to seeing whether anyone would be willing to put in the time and effort to code and run the bot. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:04, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Making the messages Thryduulf noted larger might be an easier step, it took me a bit to find them even with the prompting. CMD (talk) 03:06, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, you're probably right. This is Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Draft, just to give a link. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:16, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Draft:Electrostate, it has the standard unsubmitted AFC template at the top. Rather than an editnotice, I wonder if a box on that template would be an appropriate place to have some kind of note that there is a mainspace article of the same name? Andrew Gray (talk) 18:14, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

oooh, that's a good idea Jahaza (talk) 18:57, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think the watchlist functionality is a good existing, proven approach that doesn't require any additional ongoing maintenance, so I'd prefer it rather than rely on a bot. (A watchlist label could be assigned to make it easier to check.) isaacl (talk) 04:29, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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