Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) - Wikipedia


4 people in discussion

Article Images

The proposals section of the village pump is used to offer specific changes for discussion. Before submitting:

Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for nine days.

Could we add "Abyssinica SIL" to the list of display fonts for Ethiopic script? The supplemental blocks display as tofu for me despite me having a supporting font installed. The only one I can see is Extended-B, which is the one not supported by Noto. (And I do have Noto installed.)

For comparison, wikt:Appendix:Unicode/Ethiopic Extended etc. display in Abyssinica SIL on my browser.

(Abyssinica is free and covers all 5 Ethiopic blocks.) — kwami (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

You forgot to link to the page where you experienced a problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:09, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, the tables in Geʽez_script#Unicode and the pages they link to, e.g. Ethiopic Extended.
The table for Ethiopic Extended-B displays correctly. Ethiopic (Unicode block) is mostly good, but has a bit of tofu scattered in it, e.g. for ሇ. Note that the tofu in the basic block is covered by Noto, as are the extended blocks up to Extended-A, so it almost seems as if Noto is the problem: Both the characters that are not handled by Noto (Extended-B), and those that are handled by more limited system fonts (most of the basic Ethiopic block), display correctly. The ones where Noto might kick in (I'm guessing) display as tofu. But they display fine if I set them to Noto in a text doc. — kwami (talk) 03:28, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Interestingly, most of these are working for me even though I don't recall installing special Ethiopic fonts. The exception is Ethiopic Extended-B, which for me is a sea of tofu with no characters displaying. Double sharp (talk) 08:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Same goes for me Ca talk to me! 04:33, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

I originally posted this on WP:VPT but got sent here by Izno. My original message was: Either have a user right that is given only to trusted people without any additional rights attached to it (and with a matching level of protection) or make extended confirmed be given manually. There are too many people gaming the system to be hateful pricks on editors' user pages or to push a POV on CTOPs. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 22:34, 30 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

This is barely a proposal at this point. But it is a bad idea, so rather than suggest a further run-around I will explain why here.
I don't believe there is a problem that people are making 500 non-trivial and non-vandal edits just to be "hateful pricks" on talk pages. But, if they are, that seems like a largely-acceptable tradeoff; they can be easily blocked and everybody can move on.
As far as the existence of people pushing a POV on contentious topics; that will never ever stop no matter what the requirement is (at least as long as this is "The Encyclopedia Anyone Can Edit"). Whatever idea you have for "trusted" will also be gamed. It will not help. 500 edits is already a lot (outside of bots and gaming-the-system). And the various "ANI/ArbCom are understaffed" discussions demonstrate that a surplus of volunteers is not a luxury we can assume when designing policies. Walsh90210 (talk) 23:29, 30 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
On top of the issue of it adding a new massive backlog, I'll quote Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Even if it is only given to trusted users, the users who will care the most about asking for the user right might not be the users that we would want the most, and edits on non-contentious topics won't give a perfect idea of the behavior they might have in more contentious environments. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 08:03, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is still not the right forum (and Izno did not explicitly send you here). Please note the header that clearly states This page is for concrete, actionable proposals. Consider developing earlier-stage proposals at Village pump (idea lab). Sdkb talk 07:31, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
But since the discussion has already been moved once, we might as well stick with it here. The downside to choosing VPPR over VPIL, of course, is that we can all weight in with "* Oppose" votes instead of at least pretending to explore the idea.
On the subject matter, I sometimes think we should reduce the 500+30 down to 300+30. There's little statistical difference between 300 and 500 edits; people who make 300 will usually manage the second (whereas people who manage one or two edits usually don't manage 10).
I have seen a small number of editors claim that unnamed[*] others are gaming the system. I have personally seen no convincing evidence of this. Additionally, having fewer folks involved in an ever-greater number of articles violates the principle that "many hands make light work". Something we don't need is a greater percentage of skilled wikilawyers, which is what a manual system will give us.
Something we do need is people with enough self-awareness to realize that, even if we stipulate that my own views are always correct, etc., if I'm running into constant POV pushing around a subject, that could be a sign that the articles are not complying with WP:YESPOV. YESPOV means that the articles need to acknowledge the existence of significant differences in opinions, including in CTOP articles. To name a few of these POVs, consider "some people think abortion shouldn't be described as 'safe' because the baby dies" or "some people think that Israel is perpetrating genocide" or "some people think Donald Trump was the greatest president ever" or "some people think that private citizens shouldn't be allowed to own guns" or "some people fear demographic changes in their society" or "some people think it was unfair to restrict liberty during COVID-19 pandemic just to prevent the virus from spreading". You don't have to agree with any of these to realize that these comments and edits are feedback on how well an article meets people's actual needs. Donald Trump should acknowledge why his supporters think he's great, even though I don't agree with them. Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic should acknowledge that some people (e.g., lip readers) were harmed by mask use. Writing a decent article that respectfully describes and (when appropriate and WP:DUE) explains the flaws or limitations in these viewpoints really can help, occasionally dramatically. Forcing one POV out of the article, or treating it in a derogatory fashion, is going to produce a steady stream of complaints and attempts to "fix" the perceived problem.
[*] This is not a suggestion to name/shame any individual editors here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:37, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Gaming definitely happens (obvious example), but maybe you mean more that it's not happening as much as is often suggested. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:45, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Regarding "I have seen a small number of editors claim that unnamed[*] others are gaming the system. I have personally seen no convincing evidence of this."...not that it makes any difference, but gaming the system is not unusual for people trying to tunnel through the EC barrier into the WP:PIA topic area, and Wikipedia kindly provides several tools to help them. This is probably the most impressive example I've seen, but there are plenty of other examples. The topic area is apparently rather good at attracting new editors and people pretending to be new editors. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:48, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Regarding "if I'm running into constant POV pushing around a subject, that could be a sign that the articles are not complying with WP:YESPOV", while this is possible hypothetically in a world of rational rule-based agents, in PIA the arrival of large numbers of new users and the amount of POV pushing can often be connected to influence operations on social media and partisan media coverage. It is apparently extremely easy to manipulate people and send them to Wikipedia. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:17, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Gaming of the extended confirmed restriction is extremely common. It's easy enough to find straightforward examples just by searching the ANI archives, where they usually get reported, and the AN archives, where people often go to request it back when an administrator removes it; often this results in EC being revoked or the user being blocked as a sock (remember, slowing down socks is part of the purpose of EC protection.) Most recently the PIA topic area has produced a lot of it, since the recent conflict has attracted a lot of new editors with strong POVs who are eager to "fix" what they see as problems in its articles, and since it has attracted rampant socking; but it's a universal issue that occurs whenever an EC topic area attracts attention. --Aquillion (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
It is probably worth mentioning that while "slowing down socks" is certainly one of the objectives of EC, for the PIA topic area at least where ECR was introduced on 2019-12-20, it does not appear to have had a significant impact in terms of revision counts by identified socks. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:32, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
The overwhelming majority of ECP articles are per arbcom remedies - if we just decide to weaken ECP threshold what I think is going to happen is: arbcom will just change their remedy again (creating another sweeping broken problem that causes all admins to try to scramble around to enforce it). Now, do we really need all these pages so protected -- good question that could be asked to candidates running for arbcom this year! — xaosflux Talk 14:22, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Certainly for ARBPIA, in practice, the vast majority of articles covered by ECR are not EC protected. Enforcement is carried out by people and is quite expensive. As far as I can tell, answers to the question "do we really need all these pages so protected" appear to largely depend on the extent to which editors are grounded in the day-to-day reality of a topic area. The more time they spend active in the topic area dealing with non-EC edits/editors, the more likely they are to regard the restrictions as necessary/helpful etc. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:00, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is confusing, "only to trusted people without any additional rights attached to it (and with a matching level of protection)"- if they have no permissions, then what is the point of yet another protection level? — xaosflux Talk 14:12, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's so I don't get another transphobic pile of trash vandalizing my user page again. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 01:02, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I see that your userpage been vandalized a lot, and I'm sorry that extended-confirmed protection wasn't enough to stop it. In the absence of a stronger protection level (that you're still able to edit through), I think the following approach should be able to simulate one:
I know this is kludgy, and doesn't completely address the reasons behind your proposal, but I hope it might help you. jlwoodwa (talk) 18:53, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
...this is a 200 IQ play right there. I'll get to it later today. LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 21:00, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
@LilianaUwU So aside from the workaround above, you still haven't explained much about this project-wide proposal. You want us to create some sort of user group, that contains no permissions (which we can't really do but we could make it contain something like 'read pages') and then also make some new protection level. So what would the point of this new protection level be? What changes are you proposing to the protection policy for its use? It sounds like what you are proposing is to create yet another protection level, and permissions for editing this 6th (more like 8'th) protection level -- and creating a new group that does have permission to make edits at this new level. In which case, this is also a seriously premature proposal. I suggest you close this down, go workshop up all of your new group and protection level suggestions on their own draft pages, then pop back here to get people to provide you feedback on the workshopping, then eventually come back here and propose it for community acceptance.
Now if what you are really after is something along the lines of: My userpage keeps getting vandalized, please help - the suggestion above is an option, or that is something you can ask for help over at WP:AN that wouldn't require a very complicated new scheme. — xaosflux Talk 22:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure why I even came here to ask about this when I could've went to AN, honestly. My main thing was about my user page being vandalized. Is there a way to close the proposal? LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 22:14, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Marked as archived - this is a huge place, easy to end up in the wrong forum. If there is a continuing problem, please do let us know at WP:AN -- if the admins can't figure out a way to manage disruption they will also know other people that can be brought in. — xaosflux Talk 22:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The current system is very convoluted. Being on a fourth level subpage on a different wiki with 90% of the comments not being signed, and using an emoji system for distinguishing resolved/unresolved issues makes it a nightmare for a) finding issues, b) responding, and c) asking for more details. It would be easier to have a page like Wikipedia:Dark mode reports so more editors could help fix issues. We should import the page here and archive the MediaWiki wiki page. Thoughts? @SCP-2000, FeRDNYC, and I Am Andumé: as editors involved there on fixing issues (if I've missed someone feel free to ping them). —Matrix(!) {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 14:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Proposal for trial: assignment to a small random group of editors to elevated permissions for a fixed short term by sortition.

  • Test 1: Selected extended-confirmed editors, who have edited in the past 100 days, get AfC and/or new page reviewer, which have backlogs. They still have to read the instructions. (PCR is too weak for a practical experiment imo.)
  • Test 2: Selected auto/confirmed editors, who edited recently, get bumped into extended-confirmed.
  • Rules: Any admin can strike for any behavior at any time; one strike and you're out; no extension of term; no exceptions. Also: you cannot refuse permissions, and your editing or sanction history (but not block history) has no bearing on whether you get or don't get permissions. Every admin and editor with equal permissions capable of oversight will have a readily-accessible list of test editors. (It's not difficult to deduce otherwise.)
  • Numbers: As a conservative estimate for a first experiment, maybe 200 editors on both tests simultaneously for 6 months, depending on the activity level of those in the sample -- if 20 editors substantially increase their activity in response, that's measurable and manageable.

The purpose is to increase engagement by somewhat active editors across the spectrum, and perhaps even motivate requests for permanent permissions and adminship down the line. In that spirit, if a test editor loses permissions in the one-strike rule, it should have minimal or zero bearing on requesting permissions in future. This is a learning and motivational experience. That permissions here are ultimately reversible and have oversight means that, on balance, if an ill-behaved editor now ends up being able to credibly seek permissions in future, this model, should it be causative, was indeed a success.

Research and benefits and cautions

Sortition literature addresses both issues that have zero bearing on WP governance, and issues that are quite important. Additionally, I believe there are issues unique to WP that sortition may address that the literature has not yet done. Review: (TG Bouricius 2013 "Democracy Through Multi-Body Sortition: Athenian Lessons for the Modern Day").

What is proposed is called partial governance by sortition with rotation and mandate (Owen and Smith 2018 "Sortition, rotation, and mandate"). Known and possible benefits and cautions:

  1. Random selection is more likely to give demographic and ideological representation (Ebadian et al 2022 "Is Sortition Both Representative and Fair?"). While WP editors are not representative of general populations, our adminship is even less representative (in Corple 2016 "Beyond the Gender Gap" p.25: 6% vs 15%+).
  2. A high barrier to entry of WP adminship and some permissions, combined with thanklessness of tasks and relatively low social prestige, means that we are probably below rate-of-replacement on adminship, and there are backlogs for areas needing permissions. Sortition, if it results in participation, relieves this burden. It also increases representative fairness and ideological diversity to those who would handle the content and administrative backlogs. (Afaik this is a WP-unique issue.) In Polish Wikipedia the exclusionary effect on new candidates of acquaintancy among admins was studied (Spychała et al 2014 "Does the Administrator Community ... Acquaintance Relation?"); so if a similar phenomenon exists in all permissions then sortition would help disrupt it.
  3. If there is admin corruption (and some editors have claimed as such), sortition is suggested to reduce it (Bagg 2024 "Sortition as Anti-Corruption"). It also potentially is a check against administrative subversion (Sutherland 2011 "What sortition can and cannot do") by cabals of editors, as exposed recently in Croatian Wikipedia.
  4. On the effects of granting priveliges/power: In (Sassenberg et al 2014 "Power corrupts: revisited"), the relationship of elevated power and a sense of communal responsibility vs individual corruption (whether one is elevated as opposed to the other) is complex with contradictory results in the literature. In general, if people are in a socially-oriented environment and goals, which I'd suggest epitomizes WP editing, then power would orient them toward the former. However, the review also suggests that the perception of power as an increase opportunity or promtion, rather than just increased responsibility, is a big part of the increased motivational effects, which would suggest that since sortition may lower the prestige of elevated priveliges, it would have a negative effect on motivation; but this seems again highly social-context- and goal-dependent in the literature.

My brief literature stroll suggested possible routes for future investigation on WP; for further on power and motivation is Pappas APA 2021; and in particular we might push hard to raise the social prestige of elevated priveliges on WP, as well as their associated social responsibilities, per management papers like (Friedrichs 2023 "The benefits of prosocial power motivation in leadership"). Also while it's tempting to consider, if this experiment is successful, a radical future proposed sortition of admins, akin to the admin-for-a-day proposed in 2012, but per WMF this is not legally doable, the prohibitive priveliges being rollback and deleted material. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is a request for comment on the In the news criteria at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § RfC: In the news criteria amendments. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:01, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply