Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) - Wikipedia


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"WP:VP(P)" redirects here. For the proposals page, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.

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For almost any non local article there is a huge difference in quality between the Dutch Wikipedia and the English one. (Note: On some more philosophical subjects the German Wikipedia may surpass the EN version). On politically more problematic subjects there is also the problem that bias is not or not correctly tackled in NL. Most Dutch people understand enough English to use the EN version. So it is a huge loss of energy to write and discuss new NL articles in stead of just translating the EN one's and participate in writing good EN articles. Maybe there can be given some thought to this problem. I suggest something like this:

For many categories, for instance EN pop-music, the policy could be that any local page is replaced by a direct link to the EN one, pending translation. This translation should be more or less monitored for quality and updates.

For pages of local (Dutch) subjects NL would be leading. Of course it does not make much sense to link to an untranslated NL page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Victor50 (talk • contribs) 15:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

How would this affect the English Wikipedia? It seems like you would do better to make this proposal at nl:Wikipedia:De kroeg. Anomie⚔ 16:12, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
This suggestion seems completely bonkers. It's not up to English editors to dictate the content of any other language's Wiki, any more than they can decide the English language version doktorb wordsdeeds 16:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I would like to see more cooperation in the area of articles in different languages and a more unified system of rules for Wikis in other languages. USchick (talk) 16:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm appalled and distressed at this apparent surrender to the imperial rule of English over all other languages; and I'm a native speaker of English who doesn't speak a word of Nederlands! --Orange Mike | Talk 17:45, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
If the NL Wikipedia has a consensus for this, then do so. I don't see that you are proposing a policy that affects the EN Wikipedia. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
If I understand the original proposal correctly, it's just saying "why start a new article from scratch, if there's already a good article in another language that can be translated?" It just so happens that many English Wiki articles may be further developed that those in other wikis, because it's been around longer. I don't infer any suggestion that the English is in any way "better" than other language. Equally I often translated articles from German because there's little or nothing on them in English and it's far quicker than starting from scratch. That doesn't stop anyone enhancing them from English or German sources. The main problem is the paucity of translators. --Bermicourt (talk) 20:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
There is also the difference in policies. For example, the Dutch wikipedia does not have a notability guideline and they are much less strict about unsourced contents then we are. For example, their current featured article of the day is nl:Ku Klux Klan, which does not contain a single reference. Yoenit (talk) 00:07, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose using Dutch wikipedia as "leading" on some subjects, don't give a shit on what they decide the other way around. Until nlwiki starts using proper inline references (see example above) there is nothing worth translating. Yoenit (talk) 00:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
  • Question: How is this different than current operating procedure? An editor who is conversant enough in both languages will open the foreign language one for editing, start typing and translating the article to our article space, insert references as they appear in the foreign language, add the categories, infoboxes, interwiki-link, and assorted wiki-extras. At some later point it'll get reviewed and if the article creator did their job correctly, the reviewer won't have too many issues with the new article. Hasteur (talk) 00:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I agree - we are already doing this, at least with German Wiki articles, which is my field. I don't see this as any one Wiki "leading" another; just sensible transfer of information between them. Sometimes they're well referenced, sometimes not. In the latter case we just need to find suitable refs in due course. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:38, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  • I've translated quite a bit between the English and the Dutch wikis. It's clear that Osdorp Posse, for instance, was written according to what I see as Dutch standards: somewhat informative, but too chatty, too full of lists, and totally lacking reliable sources. Letting the Dutch wiki lead--lead what? Compare these two articles: nl:Claw Boys Claw and Claw Boys Claw. Or nl:Annie M. G. Schmidt and Annie M. G. Schmidt--and those are "local" articles. Maybe their list of Dutch prime ministers has more blue links than ours, but what those links are leading to isn't necessarily any good at all. Sorry Dutchies, but your wiki needs work, and I'm putting this mildly.

    Cross-wiki cooperation is of course to be applauded--but what I'd like to see even more is someone from the main office calling the Amsterdam office to tell them about things like WP:RS and WP:V. I mean, someone there nominated this for deletion based on tone. Drmies (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't get it... what's the "policy" proposal? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 16:23, 9 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's not fair to be a critic of any other language articles if you:
  1. don't understand the language well enough
  2. don't understand anything of the area's culture
  3. don't understand anything of the area's politics
  4. etc.

If I would say anything about the French WP everyone would laugh, because I'm Dutch by birth and my school French is worse than my practical Itakian and even to criticize the latter I don't. I live in Italy, but the way they write about their musicians, paonters, politicians I leave up to them and take a more neutral point of view [sounds familiar? ;-)]. Please, let all locals do their thing their way. Freedom of speech, right? Cheers and don't worry, be happy, ZeaForUs (talk) 02:44, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply


May I humbly suggest before making unjust assumptions and jumping to conclusions to compare some articles on nl-wiki and en-wiki about non-typical-dutch topics please? Please take a look at:

If help is needed translating and expanding the en-wiki version I am sure several knowledgeable Dutch editors including me would be glad to be of assistance. Kind regards, MoiraMoira (talk) 09:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

It is simply two ways around, some articles might be better in language A, some might be better in language B. En-wiki has 30 times more editors, so you've much more time to put into the articles, thus they have a higher chance to become bigger and better. That doesn't mean that all articles on the dutch wiki are shit. For instance on the part of vandalism the dutch wiki is, for what I've seen ahead of the english wiki, it's very rare to see any vandalism (things like: Pete is crazy) in articles there because everything gets checked. I don't read that often on the English wiki, but as a reader I sometimes see vandalism allready 3 months here. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 10:17, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

On politically more problematic subjects there is also the problem that bias is not or not correctly tackled in NL; in some respects, this is absolutely right. To understand what I mean, compare for example Geert Wilders to nl:Geert Wilders or Party for Freedom to the equivalent Dutch article, more in particular some older versions such as [1]. It's surely not absolute nonsense what Victor50 writes, though it is of course highly generalizing as it has been put. The Wiki ghost (talk) 10:25, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Well, it's just all a bit smaller so you can expect these kind of problems, I don't understand the need to say that everything is way worse over there. Showing an old version means it has changed since then. But offcourse there are articles on the dutch wiki that are not good and could be way better. I believe these articles also exist on the English wiki althought they might be relatively in smaller numbers due to a much higher work force. But why do you want to close writing articles in Dutch, and why on earth is that discussed here, it seems a completely stupid plan to me. There are a lot of people who're not able to read English, and computer translations are improving but are still much worse then native articles. Another thing is that the abilty to read doesn't automaticly mean the abilty to write. I simply haven't written in English the last years because I believe that my articles would not be as good as when I would write them in Dutch. But simply stating that the dutch wiki is worse in handling problems doesn't seem fair to me if you don't have been involved on processes in both wiki's. Offcourse the dutch wiki can improve on neutrality, but according to the Category:NPOV disputes the same can be concluded for the English wiki. I don't understand the need of this discussion on this place, what is it going to improve? Giving critic in a place where it's not going to be read by the ones you want it to read. If you think the Dutch wiki has no chance of improving, then you can simply write articles on the English wiki, if you want to improve articles on the dutch wiki, you can simply go there and improve them. Everybody can decide for themselves what they prefer. I think there are quite a lot dutch natives, not writing on the smaller dutch wiki, but writing here. I don't see the problem given in this discussion as a specific Dutch wiki problem. I believe problems are pretty much the same, but due to a big difference in the number of editors their size and options to be tackled differ. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 10:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I cannot take your NL-coloured line of argument very serious. For instance try to compare "EN: Materialism" to "NL:Materialisme", and compare the discussion pages too. What would be the fun or use of ever trying to reach the EN-level if possible at all by sheer lack of capacity? What use is the NL version to someone who would like to really learn something on the subject? Isn't it just vanity and unwillingness to subject yourself to knowledgeable assesment to not work on a translation but try to write your own? --Victor50 (talk) 20:39, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above gets a bit messy and partly not very much to the point. However I sense not much disagreement on the fact that on "general" and non NL subjects the non-NL versions are in (far) more than 50% of the cases superior to the NL-versions. I guess this holds for a lot of other local versions. Also, from a standpoint of reliability, verification and moderation to keep track of just one language per article is much to be preferred. For practical and quality reasons for the vast majority of articles this should be the EN-version. I'll try to make a practical suggestion to make some start:

On each NL-page on a general or EN subject add some notification at the top directing to the EN-version further noting that a translation (kept updated) is to be preferred. On some very poorly written pages the contents could be replaced by a redirecting notification in somewhat harsher terms. Maybe some bot can be constructed that does this for some categories and could compare the two versions in length and number of citations. At the same time try to encourage translating and controlling, updating and discussing the quality of translation and taking part in the EN discussion in some way. I take it's understood that NL-EN version comparison is just an example and that there should be a lot of thought on how to get Wikipedia more concise over the different languages.

Sorry I didn't partake earlier but somehow the notification did not seem to work. --Victor50 (talk) 20:39, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to propose that a record of all the edits that contributed to a deleted article, and its talk page, are made publicly available. Is there a reason why they are not? Anyone thinking of recreating a similar article would benefit from its history, and hopefully not make the same mistakes. There may even be information that is suitable for other articles. --Iantresman (talk) 14:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Edit histories (not content) and edit summaries were available for deleted pages up until about 2005 (?). This was turned off because of abuse - people were leaving abusive edit summaries, which remained visible after the pages themselves were removed.
As far as making deleted content visible, see Wikipedia:Soft deletion. The problem is that historically deletion has been used for two reasons:
a) Material not wanted by the Wikipedia community (the sort of thing that usually results in an article being deleted at AFD)
b) "Bad" content - attack pages which are offensive or defamatory, copyright violations, etc.
Restoring type a) is no problem if it can be used for useful purposes - so long as it's not done in a way which makes Wikipedia a permanent web host for the unwanted content, which would sort of defeat the point of having it at all! Many admins will selectively undelete content like this for you on request, or provide copies by email.
However, type b) is obviously a problem - we delete this stuff because we definitely want it gone, and not to be publicly available. As deletion currently doesn't distinguish between the two, we'd need to have a parallel "proper deletion" process, and find some way of auditing past deleted material to decide if it was suitable or not. Quite a technical challenge, even were it widely demanded! Shimgray | talk | 15:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
Yesh, not a sensible use of resources. We've enough problems dealing with BLP complaints to existing articles, without having to have someone deal with complaints about deleted materials. It is better to keep hard deleted, and if and when someone wants the material, then to judge whether or not it is problematic. Although, I'm happy with soft deletion being used on occasions, when an editor explicitly wishes access to the otherwise deleted material. It is easier on those few occasions to check for libel problems with the material. --Scott Mac 15:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
That said, soft deletion does implicitly happen a lot of the time - there's plenty of cases where a non-problematic but unwanted article is redirected to a different page, without copying any of the content over or deleting the history, leaving it removed from the live pages but still in history. Shimgray | talk | 15:58, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
(1) you don't have to deal with complains about deleted material, if you don't delete it in the first place. (2) I think the most AfD's fall into the type a) category, as I've found that attacks, copyright issues etc, are generally dealt with differently. In which case, I think it would be better if an AfD blanked an article and added a banner linking to the result of the AfD, unless there is good reason to delete specific information. I think a public record is more important. And if an article is deleted, I'd like to see an edit record, again giving a reason why, and a link to the decision process. It's all about public record, openness, transparency and accountability. --Iantresman (talk) 16:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
Actually, in this case it's more about not leaving around vandalism for people to show off as trophies or hosting copyright violations. --erachima talk 15:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
It was briefly possible to view deleted edit history in 2005. But it's not a good idea because there is plenty of junk in the deletion archives that should not be visible to ordinary users. Graham87 09:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
While I will admit that most of the stuff that is in the deletion heap is of dubious quality (especially most of the vandalism and about 95%-99% of the speedy deletion stuff), there are some real gems in that heap too. Where there has been a highly contentious AfD in particular that "failed" (aka was deleted), there are certainly some articles that are rather well written... just contentious or having some "problems" of various reasons that led to their deletion. These don't usually have problems of copyright violations or being "trophies" for vandalism, although if there was substantial "original research" or poorly sourced references (or none at all), they still don't meet Wikipedia standards. The real issue for articles of that nature is how to sort through the heap even if the content was available on a separate website.
There have been some efforts to try and sift through some of that stuff, posted by both admins trying to "rescue" an article or some very cynical "former editors" who have culled out some of these gems that have been run through the sausage mill of the AfD process and "failed". A good example of this can be found at Deletionpedia, and there are some other sites to look to as well. For myself, I think sites which do stuff like this is an excellent service to the readers of Wikipedia. --Robert Horning (talk) 09:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) no longer marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cuisines) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a guideline. It was previously marked as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

There is a discussion currently on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council talk page about the status of style guides developed by various projects. These pages contain style directives that are usually specific to particular projects, often arcane and technical, and are usually the result of discussion and consensus by project members. On the other hand, they are not guidelines sanctioned by the WP:PROPOSAL process, which means that they have the status of an essay - that is, they are mere recommendations, that editors are free to follow or ignore as they wish.

Several of us feel strongly that these style directives are more than recommendations; they are necessary to ensure consistency across articles. For example, the classical music project style page specifies how instrumentation of a symphony is to be presented. The Elements project guideline specifies the precise format and structure on an article about a chemical element. These directives need to be followed if the encyclopedia is to be consistent across specific families of articles.

The issue (of course) is that sometimes - rarely - style directives of a project conflict with those of another project, and then the poor editor caught in the middle has to decide what to do. An example of this is the dispute whether to use the {{Drugbox}} or {{Chembox}} format for drugs - which fall under both the Pharmaceuticals and Chemistry projects.

I believe these project-level style directives need to be sanctioned as something more than an essay, but something less than a guideline. I also think they should be standardized, and put on a project subpage with a standard name so they will be easily accessible.

I invite you all to join in the discussion at the council talk page so we can resolve this issue. Thanks, --Ravpapa (talk) 10:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm basically in agreement with most of this. But I think a spade should be called a spade. WikiProject guidelines have sometime been referred to as 'essays', but they are not in that form, i.e. they are not expressions of personal opinion written in continuous prose. Instead they are documents drafted by groups, typically as itemised lists. I'm in favour of calling them 'guidelines' because (1) that's exactly what they are, and (2) that's what we've always called them. (Some background: this issue originated in some undiscussed changes made to the Council guide page earlier this year, and the more recent debate here). --Kleinzach 01:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
Please see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Role (WP:ESSAYS). What is begin talked about is how we can distinguish the difference between the advice/recommendation/style preference/project gudlines pages vs Wikipedia project wide guidelines. Meaning the difference between those guideline-advice type pages that have gone threw the WP:PROPOSAL process and those that have not. Should we have a fourth tier level of instructional type page as mentioned above (a new name-space perhaps)?. Should we have a more "committee type" system to mediate inter project disputes when in comes to theses project guideline pages that conflict. All that explained there seem to be not much of a willingness to change the status quo in any dramatic way.Moxy (talk) 02:47, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm in favour of project guidelines being Wiki guidelines by default. The only caveat is that occasionally a project will come up with guidelines designed by specialists who understand their jargon, but no-one else does. I'm thinking of the botanists who insist on naming all plants, even common ones, by their unintelligible Latin name, cutting right across WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:09, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
That is going to be the hard nut to crack. Generally there are not problems with article layout types of information. When conflicts over those points do pop up, they are usually resolved with a discussion on a talk page. When there are problems, it is with advice that might be in conflict with major policies or key guidelines, or at least perceived to be in conflict. Besides your examples, there is WP:HOCKEY to use diacritics, WP:SCHOOLS and no need for meeting WP:GNG or WP:PORNBIO. So I guess I'm in favor of the style issues having a higher standing, but draw the line somewhere. Also consider how this applies to other areas. There are some projects that either do or did mandate the use of specific templates in all articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I definitely support a concerted effort to centralize style guidelines (whatever they are called). Perhaps a way to achieve it could be by starting a Wikipedia:WikiProject Style continuity. All the style guides and essays could be brought together under one roof, and willing volunteers could then go through them as a group (using discussed consensus), fixing them all.
Continuity is bound to be difficult to maintain on a site with millions of pages, edited by millions of people. Very surprisingly though, it really doesn't look that bad, considering. However, it is growing at an alarming rate, so maybe now would be a good time to bring everything together in one place, so it can be monitored more easily. fredgandt 12:12, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
Some of these pages are way off some of our core principles like Wikipedia:Be bold and our moto "Anyone can edit". We need a way to make sure that these pages are not the opposite of community consensus and dont lead to conflicts (and if so how do we resolve it). Moxy (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
In the event of a conflict between a Project guideline and a general Wikipedia guideline, the general one should prevail. In an article which spans two articles, local consensus should be achieved on the talk page, with neither Project's guidelines assumed to take precedence. IAR and anyone can edit would still apply, if an edit is made which does not follow guidelines subsequent editors can reformat it to meet the guidelines. Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 21:49, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I think that there is already too much attampted assertion of project decision/rules/.guidelines/preferences over articles. Also consider that a particular article many have many different projects "claiming" it. North8000 (talk) 22:50, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I own all of them, and they should all be turquoise! fredgandt 22:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I agree with North8000 and strongly oppose the proposal to permit WikiProjects to establish "guidelines" without consulting the community at large.
Certainly, they're welcome to create pages advising editors on how to apply existing guidelines to specific subject areas (and I don't oppose coming up with a designation other than "essay"). They also are welcome to author potential new guidelines and present them to the Wikipedia community for consideration.
But as helpful as WikiProjects are (and believe me, I don't seek to downplay that fact), many already attempt to impose too much control over "their" articles. One more than one occasion, I've encountered so-called "guidelines" directly contradicting Wikipedia's normal practices. Upon questioning the WikiProjects responsible, I've been informed that there was "consensus" to treat "their" subjects differently. Invariably, this has turned out to refer to agreement among a handful of WikiProject members who briefly discussed the matter and never bothered to seek outside input.
So yeah, we can establish a new label, but we must maintain the distinction between a WikiProject's recommendation and Wikipedia-level consensus. —David Levy 23:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I (as the person primarily responsible for writing all of the guidelines and other pages that strongly encourage WikiProjects to write these pages, by the way), see several problems with providing any sort of official, blanket community endorsement to such pages. Most of them are based on three misconceptions:
  1. That WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays is that one type always "outranks" the other, so if a WikiProject's advice is "merely" an essay, then it can be ignored at will.
    Anyone want to try ignoring WP:TE this month? You'll end up blocked. How about WP:Common sense, another "mere essay"? Do you think that's purely optional advice just because it doesn't say "guideline" or "policy" at the top? How about WP:BRD? Does that seem like something people dismiss as unimportant because it's an essay? Several of our policies link to more than half a dozen essays. Is it "demeaning" to call WP:ATA an essay rather than a guideline? And if "essay" is an acceptable label for these truly important pages, then why is the same label an insult when applied to a few sentences put together by a couple of editors at a WikiProject?
  2. That all WikiProjects are equal.
    If MILHIST puts together advice on how to handle some relevant page, I'm going to follow it. Why? They know more than I do about their content area, there are a lot of them working to make their advice the best possible, they produce excellent work, and their advice doesn't conflict with the community-wide advice (because they identify and excise such errors).
    Now let's contrast that with the "guideline" at WikiProject Cornwall: It was written by a single, sporadically active editor. Four years ago. With zero maintenance effort. On behalf of a "WikiProject" that posts less than two messages per month to its talk page, and most of those are from people who aren't even part of the project. I'm willing to believe that it is good and helpful advice, but are you really going to accept that one guy's advice as being anything more than the advice of one guy, just because he named the page "WP:WikiProject Cornwall/Guideline" rather than "WP:My personal opinions about Cornwall-related articles"? Do you really want to officially elevate this one person's opinion above any other person's opinion? There are hundreds of examples like this. Groups like MILHIST are the exception, not the rule.
  3. That "WikiProject" means something materially different from "group of editors". Why should two newbies who decide to call themselves a "WikiProject" get to bypass the WP:PROPOSAL process and have their advice (no matter how bad) accepted sight-unseen as being more than just the advice of two newbies, while a dozen experienced editors who don't choose to apply that label to themselves are expected to have the community double-check their work if they want to assert that other people should follow their advice?
    All it takes to start a WikiProject is creating a page. Any editor here can create a new WikiProject at any time. All it takes to actually be a bona fide WikiProject is finding one other like-minded person to join you. That's it. There are essentially no limits on creating WikiProjects—and consequently, there are no limits on ignorant or pointy editors writing "WikiProject advice pages".
As a point of context, Kleinzach has been involved in (and lost) a long and painful RFC about whether WikiProject Composers was entitled to declare that bios of composers were never permitted to include infoboxes. This is a good, productive WikiProject that others ought to emulate, and I actually agree with them that WP:DISINFOBOXes are not desirable. But their advice needs to remain their own advice, not something that's automatically endorsed by the whole community merely because the editors called themselves a WikiProject. The current system permits them to give their true advice without forcing their preference on everyone. If they want official, community-wide recognition, rather than a space in which to share their best advice, they can make a WP:PROPOSAL and (if their advice is good) get that recognition. Otherwise, they should be left alone, to make their advice but not to pretend that their advice is automatically better than the next person's advice merely because they're calling themselves a WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
You are citing an extreme case. There are not many WikiProjects with 2 newbies creating the sort of mayhem you describe if any. We need to base our policies on the mainstream situation. That's not to say there should be no scrutiny at all of individual project guidelines; perhaps there should be some sort of independent assessment as well. Can we not find a sensible middle course? --Bermicourt (talk) 00:31, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
You haven't ever watched the WikiProject proposals page for any length of time, have you? WikiProject creation by newbies or by single editors is unfortunately common. The tiny fraction of WikiProjects you have personal experience with is not the same thing as "the WikiProjects". In fact, since few of us deal with failed WikiProjects, most of us have a far more positive experience than the median WikiProject offers. I can give you plenty of examples of problems from perfectly average WikiProjects, if you want them. WikiProject Hospitals, for example, is essentially a one-man shop. His initial notability advice was that all hospitals were inherently notable no matter what. I happened to notice it and fixed it for him, but that's the advice you would have been buying.
We already have a perfectly good system of providing status in return for independent scrutiny. It's called making a WP:PROPOSAL. The members of WikiProjects who are pushing for this special status do not choose to make a proposal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:52, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
In larger WikiProjects, so-called "guidelines" have been created when three or four members participated in a tiny discussion and none of the others objected.
But even if all members of a sizable WikiProject discuss something for weeks or months and arrive at unanimous agreement, this is not a substitute for consensus within the Wikipedia community (which can differ for a variety of reasons).
As WhatamIdoing notes, if a WikiProject wishes to establish a new policy or guideline, it can propose it to the community at large (as is expected of everyone else). Why do you believe that it's necessary to bypass/compromise this step? —David Levy 01:08, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
The questions that I original proposed that brings us all here were - Should these Wikiproject advice pages use the title of "guidelines" like Wikipedia:Wikiproject Flowers/Guidelines or should they be re-titled as to avoid confusion between the two? Should they be in a category called Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects or moved to something like Category:Style recommendations of WikiProjects? Keeping in mind there are many projects that have there "guidelines/Manual of style" simply as a sub-section of main project pages. Moxy (talk) 06:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
To avoid confusion, the term "guideline" shouldn't be used to describe WikiProjects' recommendations (unless the Wikipedia community actually has accepted them as guidelines, in which case they shouldn't remain parts of WikiProjects). So yes, the pages and category should be renamed. —David Levy 06:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
That sounds reasonable. Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 11:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I agree with others that editors should be able to readily distinguish project-specific recommendations from guidelines that have demonstrated more widespread acceptance that have better quality control (e.g., actively maintained, wide range of participants). older ≠ wiser 15:29, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Under no circumstances should projects' style advice get special status. While most projects are valuable, evidence shows that some (composers/ opera, US roads) will use their style advice to hammer through the persona preferences of a small clique of editors contrary to wider community consensus, or to avoid bothering to obtain such consensus. If the projects advice is popular and well-argued, the community will be happy to adopt it as part of the MoS. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:32, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think this might need an RFC. I'm seeing a small number of editors here and all talking from the same side. It would be worthwhile to canvass a bit on both the smaller and larger WikiProject talk pages to see what they have to say about the subject, as this directly impacts their work. For some WikiProjects (MILHIST, VG off the top of my head), it seems backwards to call their style guidelines anything but guidelines, as they are generally accepted if not always agreed with (largely because they keep in mind the greater consensus of guidelines and policies "above" them). Did either of them go through the WP:PROPOSAL process? I don't think so (I could be wrong). Even if they had, would anyone but VG and MILHIST editors have been interested in commenting on that process? Not many others, if any.

Of course, the middle ground is that we segregate the style guidelines of a larger or more successful project from a smaller or more inactive project. This would raise some concern, I'm sure. I simply don't understand why it should be necessary to rename them, even if they haven't been through the process. In the end, the style guidelines are just guidelines, and can be ignored as necessary, or can be changed to "be in-line" with the greater community consensus. Changing them, whether they're guidelines or "recommendations", will probably take the same amount of time, and that seems the important part: how difficult they are to change.

Speaking to that point, what happens after they've gone through the PROPOSAL process? Even if the greater community does approve of it at the time, who's to say that will be the case a year from approval? Even the great[ly sized] MOS morphs quickly, and in certain sections, becomes unrecognizable to someone who has looked at it before. Is there some belief that this also doesn't happen on the WikiProject style pages? Does the MOS have greater scrutiny? Probably. But I would attribute that to the fact that it affects all 3.8 million pages, and not simply the 100k or 40k pages or even less you might find beneath MILHIST or VG (never mind BIO with it's even 1 million...).

So, I'd reiterate that there need to be more views on something like this. Raising it at VPP is a good first step, but there are more steps that should be taken before anything is done. I'm rather certain the WikiProjects (just as the states in the US) would feel rather prickly about having anyone cast down their "recommendations" from guideline status... --Izno (talk) 15:52, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

The difference between policies, guidelines and essays

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Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Role
Should Wikiproject advice pages use the title of "guidelines" like Wikipedia:Wikiproject Flowers/Guidelines or should they be re-titled as to avoid confusion between the two? Should they be in a category called Category:Style guidelines of WikiProjects or moved to something like Category:Style recommendations of WikiProjects? Should there be a clear difference in titles between guideline pages that have been approved by the WP:PROPOSAL process and those that have not. Should we have a fourth tier level of instructional type page for project recommendations (a new name-space perhaps)?.Moxy (talk) 16:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

An aspect of this issue that no one has yet mentioned

I have spent most of my life as a professional editor in one capacity or another, and I don't even want to mention how many years that has been. In the course of my career, I have used most of the leading style guides of this world: McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Chicago, AP. In fact, these are all sitting right on my shelf as I type this.

The great depth of these style manuals notwithstanding, none of them has the scope of the Wikipedia style guidelines (including the project guidelines). None of them contains standards for naming chess pieces or typography for football players or how to present computer code in an article.

In other words, the work that Wikipedians have done in developing style standards for a tremendous range of subjects is unique, and is a huge potential asset to the world. Unfortunately, that asset is currently almost unusable, since there is no uniformity or indexing of all these style directives.

The concern of some editors here is that some of these project-level style directives are or might be frivolous, or contradictory. But surely they are talking about a small, small percentage of this total body of work. An indication of this is that the same three or four examples of contradictory guidelines keep popping up again and again. Is that because these are the only examples there are? The vast majority of style directives developed by projects are thoughtful and valuable.

I strongly urge that all these guidelines be indexed, organized, and reviewed (even if only by members of the projects involved), and sanctioned. Wrinkles can be worked out over time. But let's make this asset accessible to the rest of the world. --Ravpapa (talk) 19:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Dont think anyone is saying "The vast majority of style directives developed by projects are NOT thoughtful and NOT valuable". What is being asked is do they whole the same merit as those that have been scrutinized by the WP:PROPOSAL process. As of now or policy says they are different - yet they have the same title, thus misleading our editors as to there true nature be it correct information or not. If they do hold the same merit all is ok - if not should they be renamed to reflect the fact they are not officially sanctioned "guidelines" regardless of how informative they may be. I for one think the pages for the most part are great (I have also written a few) and believe they should all go threw the WP:PROPOSAL process, but until then how do our editors disgusting between the two kinds. Moxy (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't make too much of the WP:PROPOSAL process. Most guidelines are approved by just a few people, and are regularly changed without any process other than someone editing them and no-one who happens to be watching them objecting. What matters far more is whether the would-be guidelines reflect what happens in practice.--Kotniski (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2011 (UTC)Reply