Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss already proposed policies and guidelines and to discuss changes to existing policies and guidelines.

• If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use Village pump (proposals).
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« Archives, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189

Adding a policy bias against articles without sources

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The page is getting large, which is a problem for some editors. This discussion already had almost 150 comments and it was just added to WP:CENT to draw even more attention. Please comment at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles instead of here. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

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Currently, there are over 114,000 articles on Wikipedia that contain no citations or sources, making it one of the largest clean up categories on the site. WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles has been one of the main WikiProjects attempting to dig through this giant haystack in order to give as many articles proper sources. Unfortunately, a main obstacle to cleanup has been how stringent deletion policy is. If you WP:PROD an article, it takes a week to delete, which is fine, and can be reversed by anyone. The issue is that many of these articles are unsourced stubs with no indicated notability, an article that me and others would agree to be a uncontroversial deletion via WP:PROD. Many of these PROD's are contested and then must go through the possibly month long review process VIA WP:AFD. The conclusion to this process usually is delete, but I believe that a criterion should be proposed that biases an article in favor of deletion, which is not having any sources. If this is written into the WP:DELETE policy, then I believe that editors like me will have a much easier time combing through the massive garbage dump that are unsourced articles. Tooncool64 (talk) 06:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't our current policy effectively do that? Editors arguing for notability are already required to provide or attest to the existence of sources which support notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 07:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

True, but this is more directed at solidifying a valid reason for deletion, or a secondary reason, an article lacking sources, such that a PROD could say "Article fails WP:NGEO and WP:NOSOURCE", and be viewed as uncontroversial. Tooncool64 (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think to some extent PROD will always be controversial. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. I proposed deletion for this article [1] but the tag was reverted. The reason was supposedly that other elections later on are notable, but regardless, the problem is many of the earlier articles are unsourced and redundant, and many just redirect to the nominated Emperors' pages. Yr Enw (talk) 07:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Its not a great reason, but its nice that they gave a reason at all (none is actually required to remove a PROD). The next step would be opening a talk page discussion on notability, hopefully the editor who removed the PROD is willing to work with you to find sources and if not will be willing to support a move towards AFD. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I did talk page them, but they never responded. I get the need for collab, but often it can just become unintentional filibustering Yr Enw (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What if the concepts of WP:BLPPROD were expanded to non-BLPs without any sources? At a minimum, a deprod could be required add one reliable source.—Bagumba (talk) 08:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This might be the best option. I wasn't even aware of the WP:BLPROD policy myself, but having a similar policy apply to unsourced articles would allow for both one, editors to more quickly sift through unsourced articles, and two, editors who want to do specialized research to find obscure sources for articles that are proposed via this hypothetical process. If no sources can truly be found, reliable or otherwise, then it would be an uncontroversial deletion that would be able to avoid the lengthy WP:AFD process. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant. 100% support this.—S Marshall T/C 08:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also support this. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Support this idea myself as well. Let'srun (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't. AfD exists for a reason: inclusion criteria are based on whether sources exist, and whether it's possible to write an article on a subject. They aren't based on whether Bill has time tomorrow afternoon to go get an interlibrary loan and then drive out to pick up eighteen books and spend the entire evening going through to frantically reference 53 articles before the guillotine falls. AfD lasts seven days. If an AfD is relisted because of lack of participation, it means that there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess the article. If there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess an article...there isn't enough volunteer effort available to come to a firm conclusion that the topic is non-notable. jp×g🗯️ 09:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone wants to re-create the article in the future with sources, then more power to them. It would be a soft-delete, allowing an editor to re-create the page. Tens of thousands of these articles have no reason to exist, no content, no usability for information. Like I said previously, Wikipedia is not meant for collecting items that exist. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's not meant to be a shoot-em-up game either -- the fact that deleting articles causes an enjoyable sensation on the back of the neck isn't a reason to do it. There are plenty of reasons why stubs exist. They're written by someone who had access to some information, or maybe to a lot of information, but who for whatever reason wrote a very short article; for the vast majority of them, it's completely possible to write something longer. If it's not, and the article is such a turd it needs to be wholly extirpated from the project, we have AfD, which sees approximately fifty nominations per day, with a turnover of somewhere around a week. In fact, we also have draftification, PRODs and speedy deletion -- that makes four separate processes by which stuff can be taken out of mainspace if it's bad. Why do we need another? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Bagumba, a proposal to establish the system you describe recently failed at an RfC a few months ago (Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 207#Request for comment: Unreferenced PROD). Curbon7 (talk) 08:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I can completely understand why many people where against this in the way it was worded. If an unsourced PROD were to exist, it would need to have at the very least a 7 day time limit, like current WP:PROD. The major reason I am in favor of something like this is because I believe, at the very least in 2024, articles on Wikipedia need to have sources, even if it is just one. No article would pass WP:AFC without sources attached. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out. After a quick glance, it seems it involved a new tagging process that people objected to, as opposed to just expanding a known process, PROD. The proposal just waved at a link, and some likely thought TLDR or made some wrong assumptions, and rejected for that reason. Not saying this would necessarily pass, but an improved presentation and concise pitch could go a long way. —Bagumba (talk) 09:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. I tried an RfC on that. Snow-opposed. (Although the wording was really badly done, as I recall, so everyone was at least moderately confused.) 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 00:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

This is close to becoming a perennial proposal. Policy is the way it is a foundational principle of this project is that imperfect content is an opportunity for collaboration, not something that needs to be expunged. If you instead choose to look at articles that fellow volunteers have taken the time to write as a "garbage dump" and deletion as the preferred way of dealing with them, then of course you're going to meet friction. – Joe (talk) 09:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

My rhetoric might be harsh, but unfortunately, many of these unsourced articles are tens of thousands of one sentenced geography stubs, that may or may not even meet WP:NGEO, or tens of thousands of unsourced "Topic in Year" articles. If you are looking at these articles as part of a maintenance category, which they are, then you are forced to realize that many of these are not worth keeping, if for the very fact that they are unusable for information. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Clearly at least one person disagreed with you about that, or the articles wouldn't exist. – Joe (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the standards for creating articles was much lower back in the day. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

So what? Here are some "one sentenced geography stubs", generated as single-sentence stubs from a database: Chain Island, Tinsley Island, Bull Island (California), Kimball Island, Joice Island, Island No. 2, Russ Island, Atlas Tract, Empire Tract, Brewer Island, Fox Island (Detroit River), Spud Island, Hog Island (San Joaquin County), Fordson Island, Tule Island, Headreach Island, Stony Island (Michigan), Aramburu Island, Bradford Island, Van Sickle Island, Powder House Island. You will notice these are twenty GAs and a Featured Article, all of which were written from said stubs -- the "garbage dump" of which you speak. The issue is that writing things requires effort and skill: the solution is not to spend all day sitting around coming up with new ways to delete stuff. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's amazing how much hard work and care went into those articles! If an editor in the future wants to re-create an article that was deleted via this hypothetical process, it wouldn't be difficult. We do not need to hoard unsourced articles currently for the possibility in the future that they may be found to be notable. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes it will: our hypothetical editor will have to notice that something's a redlink (from where?), look through the deletion log, ask the deleting admin for a WP:REFUND, wait on a response, and then get it restored to their userspace or draftspace. This is a rather long and complicated process that, generally, only power users are able to do. What concrete benefit is brought by forcing them to go through this? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Or they can just...create the article themselves without going through REFUND... The difference between expanding and de novo creating a 1-sentence stub is like, the one minute it takes to create a 1-sentence stub... An admin could literally paste the entire REFUND of the text in an edit summary, it's not like we're talking about valuable starting material here. JoelleJay (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Creating a new article on a title that has been deleted before requires one to know that one is encouraged to recreate some, but far from all, deleted articles. The box that comes up for all deleted content is far from encouraging. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:13, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem in that regard is that the way PROD is set up collaboration is "encouraged, but not required." Why not require collaboration as a requirement of challenging a PROD? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The fallback collaboration option is a formal AfD. PROD offers some rare opportunites for lightweight deletions if nobody is looking or people agree and don't contest, but a WP:REFUND is typically possible. —Bagumba (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

TBH I think the ideal collaboration option is actually in between the two... A talk page discussion should be able to settle the issue the vast majority of the time... If the challenger was required to open a talk page section with their rationale (preferably in the form of sources) I think that would go a long way towards facilitating collaboration without the wounded feelings that jumping to AfD can cause. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Could not agree more. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I consider PROD a failed experiment at this point. The grey zone between CSD and AfD is just too narrow to support an extra process, and the awkward process (add a template, wait a week, keep checking back in case it's removed and you need to turn it into an AfD) makes it useless for anybody who's patrolling articles en masse. – Joe (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love to see some statistics on PROD... What percentage get challenged... What percentage of those go to AfD... What percentage of those survive AfD... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: what do you think of the notability tag? Also in the grey zone? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that nominating an article for prod takes a few seconds, and editors often nominate many in a short space of time. Finding a source will often take hours or more, and needs to be specific to the article in question. They are not symmetrical operations. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The creator of the article can take as long as they need to find sources, years even. There is no need to create the article in mains space to work on it, it can be done in draft or namespace . Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No problem with requiring sources for new articles, but we're talking about the backlog of old ones here. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

There has never been a time when that wasn't true, its as true of the old ones as the new ones... If the creator didn't want them judged by mainspace standards they wouldn't have created the article in mainspace. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Requiring a source be added to dePROD an unsourced article would be ideal. JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 Mccapra (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• oppose incredibly strongly. Merge and redirect them if you can't source them rather than run them through afd. Deletion isn't clean up. If the merger is undone, build consensus for the merge. Job done. There's no deadline. We don't need to constantly revise the rules to do the work, we just need to use the rules we've got to make Wikipedia better and coach the editors around us on the way to use the tools. Merge. Redirect. Build consensus that that's the right approach. Hiding T 22:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Haven't we discussed this recently? The existing procedures (prod, then AfD if challenged) are adequate for removing nonnotable unsourced material. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• I think this is a bad idea for the reasons I've explained above. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD. The topic of an unsourced article is often notable. The content of unsourced articles is often accurate and verifiable. In fact, the content of unsourced articles is often WP:BLUE. James500 (talk) 11:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  “The content is often WP:Blue”… really? prove it! 😉 Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  The article is so obvious, we don't need sourcing! Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• So your suggestion is to merge unsourced material elsewhere...? JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If the info is unsourced, then we shouldn't be merging it anywhere. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Nah, part of the merge process is either sourcing what is unsourced or discarding it and improper for merging. This discussion is about entire erstwhile articles with no sources, not about snippets of text without sources in articles that otherwise are sourced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge and redirect them if you can't source them is directing us to merge the unsourced content of an unsourced article into another article. JoelleJay (talk) 18:44, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. I agree with Hiding, above. We aleady have the policies we need; what we lack is editorial focus to get the job done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

My idea would be to increase the “unsourced article deletion” time to 60 days. Then I would probably accept it. 71.239.86.150 (talk) 20:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles?

Should a special PROD category, similar to WP:BLPROD, be created for unreferenced tagged articles? Tooncool64 (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

This category for deletion would have four caveats.

1. Articles could be removed from this process by having at least one sourced attached to it, removing the unreferenced tag.

2. Articles held within this category would not be deleted until 30 days have passed, hopefully allowing editors ample time to go through these articles and potentially find sources.

3. This would not be an automatic process. Unsourced articles would optimally be only tagged for this special PROD after editors have looked for a source and have failed to find one.

4. This proposed PROD policy would not supersede WP:AFD or WP:CSD.

Survey (RFC for an unreferenced PROD procedure)

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deletion of uncited articles

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.

Make Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style into Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science

This is a proposal to promote the WP:PROJPAGE essay Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (MOS:COMPSCI or MOS:CS for short) into an actual MoS guideline page, at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science. This isn't suitable for WP:RM because it entails a change from {{WikiProject style advice}} to {{MoS guideline}}, and recategorization as part of MoS.

• This "guideline in all but name" has been remarkably stable for a long period of time, and is actually followed. I.e., it already is used by consensus as a guideline.
• It is written in guideline-appropriate language already and does not need substantive revision, aside from removing a handful of self-references to WP:WikiProject Computer science (or user essays therefrom).
• It is consistent with other topic-specific MoS pages such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics (though much less detailed, which is surely a good thing).
• It has various "MOS:SOMETHING" shortcuts to it which are accepted in use and treated like any other; a 2022 WP:RfD to delete them closed with a consensus to keep.
• Most of our topic-specific MoS pages originated this way, as wikiproject style advice pages and were moved to be integrated into MoS later.
• A competing essay, now at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computing (failed proposal), was firmly rejected by consensus (even proposals to keep a few elements of it were rejected), while the page under discussion here was kept and praised.
• If promoted, it definitely should be part of MoS as a site-wide guideline, not something held within a particular wikiproject (per WP:CONLEVEL and WP:POLICYFORK); same as with all the other topic-specific MoS pages and naming-conventions guidelines already.
• This should not be interpreted as a proposal to elevate any other wikiproject style essays. Those that were viable have already been merged into MoS, and the rest seem to be disused and even problematic (though some might be reparable). This is the lone straggler, and I meant to nominate it years ago but forgot or pushed it off.
• Having wikiproject style essays laying around as neither incorporated into MoS nor deprecated as {{Historical}} or {{Rejected}} is a hazard; cf. this RM in which a non-admin closer incorrectly came to a "no consensus" decision when people cited a wikiproject essay that contradicts both MOS:& and WP:COMMONNAME policy, as if the essay was coequal with side-wide article title requirements. Policy-forking often happens at pages like that essay (since corrected) when they are not part of MoS and thus don't get watchlisted by the guideline-shepherding editorial pool.

PS: MOS:COMPUTING, MOS:COMP, WP:MOSCOMP, and perhaps a few other shortcuts that currently point to the failed proposal should be usurped to redirect to the "new" guideline after the change. PPS: I have had almost no input into the page myself other than minor cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC); rev'd. 18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey (MOS:CS)

• Support as nominator, of course, and willing to do whatever cleanup is needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:55, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support seems fine, generally in favor of making it clear what pages are actually guidelines (with consensus support) and what pages aren't. Galobtter (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support. A good summary of what we currently expect for computer science related pages. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 05:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

  Neutral per Red-tailed hawk's comment below. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 04:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

• Support This page seems to provide very useful advice, especially the Style guidelines section, and it would better fulfill its purpose as a community-endorsed guideline. However, the concern below about the Design patterns subsection linking to a rather messy Wikipedia article about a book should be fixed first. Toadspike (talk) 12:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy is just an essay and we can treat essays with contempt -- but this is an essay too. Its unexceptionable bits are in effect re-asserting what's already implied by some PAG or other, which means we don't need to elevate it, and where it might contradict some PAG or other I'd remember what Caliph Omar supposedly said: “So if these books all agree with the Koran, they are redundant and thus can be burned. If they disagree, then they are heretical and thus should be burned.” Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:42, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

  Your dislike of an essay I mostly wrote, and of Koranic commentaries, don't really seem pertinent to this matter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I said "can" not "do", and Omar's an analogy. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

• Support Guidelines are just that, guidelines. I think this reflects consensus on how CS pages are structured with the caveat that pages that do not conform can and should exist. Sohom (talk) 11:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support I still don't find the design patterns guidance helpful, however I don't write CS articles and those who do have apparently had no problem with the instructions. Appreciate SMcCandlish being so responsive to stated concerns and for doing all of this work. Schazjmd (talk) 13:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral I also don't find the current design patterns guidance helpful, and I gave two specific examples below of how the given advice conflicts with two existing articles of prominent design patterns. I'm not concerned about having to retrofit those articles, so I put myself in the shoes of someone who is going to look at the MOS for the first time and found that I wouldn't know what to do and that there aren't any good on-wiki examples provided to help me understand. But I'm not involved enough with editing in that area to get too noisy about it. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:55, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support. No objections from me. SWinxy (talk) 17:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support; I do not have an objection to this. –Gluonz ^{talk contribs} 16:40, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
• Support: useful subject-specific guidance for standardisation (particularly the pseudocode treatment). I can see it helping newcomers and used to resolve disputes. I'm not sure how much I like the example articles given (some have issues like technicality of the lead, unverifiability or indiscriminate detail), but these can be improved over time. — Bilorv (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (MOS:CS)

I find the statement The article should start with an introductory paragraph (or two) to be in a bit of tension with MOS:LEADLENGTH, which explicitly recommends larger leads for larger articles. If promoted, would this advice be removed, or modified to be in line with the general lead length guidance? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, any glitches like that would have to be normalized to agree with central guidance that governs it, like LEADLENGTH in this case. I figured I would probably miss something or other in going back over it before nominating. We don't tolerate WP:POLICYFORKs, so any such issues would have to be ironed out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed. Also updated the lead paragraph example to agree with the current version of the selected article.[2]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of the example articles seem to be outdated or aren't actually best examples we have in those subareas. For algorithms, binary search is a featured article on this topic, compared to Quicksort which is B-class. For programming languages, Python is C-class, and IIRC the best we get on programming languages is Rust, which is a GA. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 16:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Which other examples did you want to replace with which? Happy to do it, or you could just have at it. I don't think replacing the examples with better ones (or updated versions of the same ones, when quoting examples) would be substantive (i.e. no WP:PGCHANGE concerns).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done with regard to those two.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Many computing articles date from the early years of Wikipedia when sources weren't required; in particular if material was in textbooks was not thought necessary to provide sources. The result is much unreferenced material in these articles, which is becoming problematic. The proposed guideline says

It is quite important for an article to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

Can this be made more in line with current policy? The math guideline says

Per the Wikipedia policy, WP:VERIFY, it is essential for article content to have inline citations, and thus to have a well-chosen list of references and pointers to the literature.

StarryGrandma (talk) 23:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done, though in more specific terms [3] that reflect the policy better (inline citations are only required for specific sorts of things).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I like that better than my suggestion. I am a member of the decreasing number of editors who believes "likely to be challenged" means "likely to be challenged as incorrect" rather than "likely to be challenged, even if correct, because there is no inline reference". StarryGrandma (talk) 05:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

One would certainly hope the former continues to prevail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current version is an improvement over the old version, but I don't think that either Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Concluding matters or Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style#Including literature and references should be in the page at all. Neither of them say anything unique to the subject. They are redundant with existing guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Will look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I suspect this revision, also to address primary/secondary concern raised by Sohom Datta below, will do the job. The new version focuses on source matters as they pertain to the subject. I basically can't address both WhatamIdoing's delete-the-section idea and Sohom Datta's improve-the-section idea simultaneously, except by trying to improve the section sufficiently to resolve the desire to delete it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk and StarryGrandma: Anything else to patch up?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If this is to become part of the MOS, can we drag ourselves into the 21C and get rid of the insane prohibition on using binary prefixes? Adding a short paragraph would be sufficient to explain the difference between and to note that the SI prohibits the use of decimal prefixes with a binary meaning. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Would be a substantive change and something to propose in a separate RfC (also advertised at WT:MOSNUM, where this has been argued to death for over a decade). It's been a while, so it's vaguely possible that consensus could have changed on this question, though I doubt it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I fear that you are right in the assumption that the usual suspects would pile in and the sheer number of !votes would guarantee that nothing is done. It's really quite odd how we have metric measures forced on us by the SI enthusiasts - until - something that the SI bans but they like is mentioned! Maybe try again in another decade. :-( Martin of Sheffield (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Related discussion has opened (by someone else) at WT:MOSNUM#Added_MOS:BINPREFIX.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think including a "overview" section is something that I have seen in a lot of CS articles. Most articles will call this section a "background" section and what is being described as a "motivation" section is normally included with the history section. (Also maybe we can give a example of such usages of background sections (I'd personally say Small_set_expansion_hypothesis or maybe Cross-site leaks ?)

I'd also like to see some discussion on the use of self-published wiki/book content/blog posts from primary sources in the references section. (for example, referencing a blog post/ from the Rust development team is fine when specifically describing the internal architecture of the Rust compiler, or the motivation behind a specific issue with language design of Rust, however, it is discouraged in most other cases for example when describing Rust benchmarks or the features that set it apart from x language etc). Sohom (talk) 15:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

On the sectioning matter, probably need to look at what GAs/FAs in the topic are doing and see how to update that material a bit. On the primary/secondary point, can you suggest some specific wording to use?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done [4] (also to resolve issue raised by Toadspike, below). Haven't yet addressed the primary/secondary point, and another editor below wants to remove the entire section in question as not specific to the topic. There may be some kind of compromise solution; will look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done entirely now [5] – Added the primary vs. secondary distinction, and generally revised to address WhatamIdoing's concerns above about the material being too redundant with existing guidance, for not being specific to the topic, and thus the entire section being worth deleting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

If I were to start writing a CS article, I'd be seriously confused by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_science/Manual_of_style#Design_patterns. It's one sentence that links to an article about a book; is the article the example to follow (even though it's tagged for layout issues)? Or am I expected to get this book to learn how to format an article about design patterns? I think that subsection either needs to be expanded to be more descriptive or removed. Schazjmd (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

This well known book follows a very specific pattern when describing each design pattern See the entry about "Abstract Factory" I think following the pattern used by the book is what the guideline is talking about here. Sohom (talk) 18:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining, @Sohom Datta. I think this subsection would be more useful if it provided a descriptive summary of the pattern used by the book. Schazjmd (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides ("Gang of Four") book (1994, O'Reilly; also 1995, Addison-Wesley) is findable online in full text easily, but it's unclear whether any of the copies are legit (I'm skeptical). There are "cheatsheet" summaries available on various websites, similar to citation-style cheatsheets findable at various universities, etc. There are a lot of such patterns, and our page would get long if it tried to address all of them, so referring people to the book, to our own article on it and the specific-pattern articles we already have, and to some good cheatsheets, are likely to be the best we can do. The patterns themselves might actually call for additional mainspace material, i.e. expand on what's covered at Design Patterns#Patterns by type and the articles linked therefrom, but that's an separate article-development matter. A similar book with a similar title by Pree (1995, Addison-Wesley) is available for free reading via IA [6]. Weirdly, IA does have the 1998 CD-ROM that goes with the Gang of Four book [7], but not the book itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Then at least can we say explicitly to follow the examples in the book? Just linking to the article about the book, "The classic GoF format is a good guideline for the structure of an article describing a design pattern.", is decidedly unhelpful. Schazjmd (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that seems easily doable, and I might link in a "cheatsheet" as a ref.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:23, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done This should do it. I ended up no linking to external "cheatsheets" since most of them seemed to be based on our own articles, were too rudimentary to be useful for our purposes, or were language-specific.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

As a reader with basic familiarity with the subject of design patterns (i.e. I took Ralph Johnson's class in the '90s), I'm still confused as to what the advice really means. I chose two of our pattern articles at random, flyweight and builder, and the structure of those two articles is rather far afield from structure provided in the GoF book I have open in front of me right now. For example, GoF intentionally dedicates a section in each pattern explicitly listing which other patterns a part of common interactions, and the two articles here that I reviewed do not do that, instead sometimes wikilinkng to other patterns as part of the implementation details. Another example is that GoF dedicates a separate section to concrete examples of real-world usage for each pattern, whereas I didn't see any of that in these two random articles. I'm aware that we can't just copy the book and am not claiming that the structure is even worth adopting, but it's hard to connect the structure of these articles to the recommended references given in the MOS. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

It might just be that the material in that part is too old and/or aspirational, even with my attempts to reconfigure it. Maybe it should either be changed to a looser "see these books for good examples of how to write about design patterns" advice, or just removed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I think relaxing the language would be a good improvement. I think there's room for future improvement where the guidance includes what basic information to include, much like the other sections about what to include in theorem and language articles, but for now, loosening the language would address my concerns. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little confused as to what "motivation" means – is it supposed to be the purpose of the software/algorithm? This isn't, to my knowledge, a common definition of the word "motivation", so I would appreciate if better wording or a parenthetical clarification could be found. It was also unclear on my first read whether "motivation" referred to the motivation of the article's subject (purpose of the software/algorithm) or of the Wikipedia article itself (along the lines of a "this article will explain..." sentence, which I think is unencyclopedic). Perhaps

It can be helpful to have a section on motivation or applications in the informal introduction

could be supplemented with

It can be helpful to have a section on motivation (purpose of the subject) or applications in the informal introduction

Other solutions would be appreciated. Or maybe someone will be able to explain why this isn't an issue at all, such as by providing evidence that this usage of "motivation" is common in computer science writing. Toadspike (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done Fixed [8] (also to resolve issue raised by Sohom Datta, above). "Motivation" was just someone's unusual idiosyncratic wording, and not some kind of standardized jargon usage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk, StarryGrandma, WhatamIdoing, Martin of Sheffield, Sohom Datta, and Schazjmd: I've addressed (to the extent I can) the issues reported above. If there aren't more to raise, then some additional explicit support comments above would be good, so there's a better consensus record here. There are some parts of it that could use more concise wording and other non-substantive tweaks, but anyone should just go do it. I'm hard-pressed to find more substative changes that really seem necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:04, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I have a slight qualm with the instruction Write the article title and any alternative names in bold in light of WP:AVOIDBOLD, which could also apply depending on the title.

Separately, and in general, I think the WikiProject style guide is quite good, provided that it's treated as a rough tool. Some other parts of the MoS are often cited by editors as if they are pseudo-policy, and as such I'm a bit queasy on !voting support on something with such an explicit suggested structure for an article unless there's some language added to the top of that section indicating that the "suggested" structure is not required. Adding a final sentence to the first paragraph of the "Suggested structure of a computer science article" section like Please note that the following structure is merely suggested; computer science articles can be structured in other ways if the authors of the page desire would work to ameliorate those concerns. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

 Partly done @Red-tailed hawk: MOS:BOLDTITLE and MOS:BOLDSYN are necessarily exceptions to MOS:AVOIDBOLD. You didn't just now notice this did you? "Suggested" already means not-required, but I added such a codicil, in more "guideliney" language [9].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?

See here; over 300 of these are Samsung Galaxy models. I'm sure they're fine products and all, but an awful lot of these articles are on the short side, and an awful lot seem to be doing little more than listing the qualities of the product. There are too many similar examples to consistently handle this piecemeal, and too many articles for an individual editor to handle. BD2412 T 22:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

My feeling is that this is an awfully good time for WP:NOPAGE to be invoked and for articles of products of the same series to be merged. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

"an awfully good time" Edward pluribus unum (talk) 19:40, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

My position is that whenever there are many similar short articles, they should be combined into a longer article or list that covers all of them (see WP:NOPAGE and WP:HASTE). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like many of those could be combined into larger articles and soec comparison tables. Lack of any discussion of individual models also begs why the need for separate articles. — Masem (t) 23:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's nuts. RoySmith (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the various comments about combining these up, but it's a lot. Is there a WikiProject or task force that would take this on? BD2412 T 23:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I was somewhat surprised at the arguments made here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samsung SCH-U470 and would gather mass action to be controversial, unfortunately. Star Mississippi 02:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

It always is. That said, there is lower hanging fruit than that: Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018). CMD (talk) 02:24, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Let's take a look at that AfD. The first keep vote says he added two sigcov sources; looking at the diff, he added two links to listicles as bullet points in the references section and then coupled it with an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. (least surprisingly of all, this person is a legacy admin). The second keep vote is just a plain WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. The third keep vote asserted that it meets GNG because of the listicles and because it has a "notable design". It was then closed as keep without relisting by another legacy admin. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a no-brainer for me. For starters, the year models like Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) should be combined. The differences between those models must be pretty minor. If we look at a comparable aircraft or car where there are multiple variants and years in a single model, there is nowhere near this level of content forking. That AfD was exceptionally weak. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep, that was my Surprised at the arguments made comment, although DRV would be fruitless as there was no other way to close that. I missed that OwenX was an Admin, however. Star Mississippi 02:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best option would have been to relist with a warning that WP:ATAs would not be given serious consideration when closing, and we really need to start clamping down on !votes that cite weak sourcing as GNG. Getting back to the issue at hand, there's really not much in terms of precedent for combining groups of articles, even though it's something we should be doing more often. I tried to do this with List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present), but months later someone went back through my edits to undo all of the merges because "no consensus", so now in many cases the smaller pages duplicate the content on the larger page. That's in addition to the fact that most of these only have routine coverage and don't meet GNG in the first place. If such a combination were to take place with the Samsung Galaxy A7 articles, for example, what would the first step be? And what would the target article look like? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The first step to merging the A7s would be identifying the merge target, which would probably best be Samsung Galaxy A7 (2015), which is the oldest and was originally named Samsung Galaxy A7. The articles are short enough that they'd work simply as subsections of a model/edition section. There could even be a summary table as there is by year at Samsung Galaxy A series. CMD (talk) 03:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by all this handwringing at the possibility of merges being opposed for not having consensus and what to do about it. The answer is simple: get consensus. Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers exists for exactly this purpose - make a proposal, advertise it here and at any relevant WikiProjects then after a couple of weeks (or sooner if it starts snowing) ask someone uninvolved to close it. If there is consensus for the proposal then go ahead and implement it, if there isn't then either just move on or listen to the feedback you got and make a revised proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this. The correct procedure in cases like this, I think, is to propose a merger at the relevant location and, if/when the merger attains consensus, perform the merges (and redirects - leaving categorized redirects, I would hope). The problems encountered previously, I suspect, result from using AfD as a venue - it is profoundly ill-suited to making the kinds of decisions required here. Newimpartial (talk) 17:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

What handwringing? I proposed a merge structure. This can be taken to PAG or any other board. There can't be consensus for a nonexistent proposal. CMD (talk) 01:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The ToF listicle, in addition to being a "use with caution" source and thus likely ineligible for NCORP, has all of 25 words on it, 6 of them being just the name. On what planet would anyone consider that SIGCOV?? And the Business Insider listicle has just 3 sentences, nowhere near SIGCOV. Is this another walled garden maintained by a small number of AfD participants? JoelleJay (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably, but that's true for most of AfD. You could find people to !vote keep on just about anything if it was mentioned in a local newspaper once. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@Star Mississippi: The first objection raised in that AfD was that the nominated subject received far more news coverage than most Samsung models, which suggests that this will not be a baseline concern for most Samsung models. BD2412 T 15:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Not to take issue with any individual editor, but this is a great example of why AfD isn't a good venue for making decisions like this. The question shouldn't be anything like "which Samsung (phone) models are famous?" but rather, "what treatment of Samsung (phone) models serves the purposes of our readers and offers encyclopaedic coverage?". There is a constant tendency at AfD to answer the former type of question rather than the latter. Newimpartial (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with what Newimpartial said. And because of that I think that a general discussion is a useful place to discuss this. Having a different 3-4 participants at each AFD decide is not the best way to do this. Also due to the complexity of the considerations, with input/influence from both wp:notability and wp:not dictating the best course. North8000 (talk) 18:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Newimpartial and North8000 here. The implied question at AfD is always "should the article(s) about this topic be deleted?", even if the nominator is actually asking something different or more nuanced. Accordingly people who think there should be coverage of this topic on Wikipedia will usually only !vote delete if the article is bad enough to require TNT and frequently this means they recommend keeping even if they would be happy with a merge, or even think a merge would be better. If you want to ask a different question, AfD is the wrong venue. Thryduulf (talk) 19:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Who's suggesting using AfD to combine articles? The AfD example just demonstrates that the most vocal people who want to keep the status quo generally don't understand or don't care about how notability is evaluated. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course not. How many of these actually receive non-routine SUSTAINED coverage? JoelleJay (talk) 22:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

More than 0 but less than 600. If you want a more precise answer than that you're going to have to look for sources. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Too many phones for 1 article, too many phones for separate articles. With cars, they often separate into generations of models eg. Toyota Corolla third generation Toyota Corolla (E30). Do phones have generations yet? -- GreenC 01:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of those generation-specific car articles add additional context that wouldn't be feasible in the primary article. A lot of the articles listed in this discussion seem like permastubs; I wouldn't be opposed to some of these articles being merged. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 02:10, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

No one suggested only 1 article. Phones are sometimes referred to with generations, I guess. Edward pluribus unum (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Multiple proposed mergers seem to be needed. I think that initially only one WP:PROPMERGE discussion should be started, for one set of year models, perhaps Samsung Galaxy A7 /edit: actually, that would not be a good target; the targets should be figured out by studying the nomenclature at Samsung Galaxy A series/. If successful, that proces could be a template for subsequent mergers. The resulting article should be presentable. Merging is not about getting rid of articles, it's about improving content. The content, in totality, should become better, irrespective of how many articles it's divided across. That's also why AfD is bad for merging because AfD doesn't especially care about whether and how will the target article be improved by receiving content from other articles (AfD consensus to merge can be rejected at the target article and the added content can simply be removed with an argument that the target article has only been worsed by the addition [which can easily be true], and with PROPMERGE it can't be rejected at the target article because the discussion is held on the target article's talk page). Since this content work could be a lot of work, starting multiple proposed mergers at the same time is probably not the best. In principle, I support merging such articles per WP:NOPAGE; these products receive the same treatment as cars—see Opel Astra (Opel Astra F, Opel Astra G, Opel Astra H, ... all covered in the same article).—Alalch E. 11:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

While at the topic of "hundreds of short articles for a series of very similar entities", I would like to draw some attention to solar eclipse articles in Category:Annular solar eclipses and other similar categories. The consensus of AfDs like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar eclipse of February 25, 1914 seems to be that it's fine for them to be sourced to NASA databases or local news reports from the time these eclipses occurred on. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 11:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Ugh, has no one read SUSTAINED, PRIMARY, and NOTNEWS? What an awful AfD... JoelleJay (talk) 15:04, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Plus NOTDATABASE, which is what addresses "hundreds of short articles for a series of very similar entities".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

The only thing that makes this currently a viable conversation is that the techie crowd hasn't caught on yet. No, we should not have an article on every version of hardware or software, but they're so prolific it's often a fiat accompli. It's often just too much time and effort to get rid of them and ends up being a net negative. GMG^talk 15:48, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with many people when I say that these articles must be merged with one another and to eliminate the clutter these articles create. Edward pluribus unum (talk) 15:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

A lot of these are low-end models that don't really meet GNG. There are as many "cheap" Samsung phones and tablets as there are cheap Windows PCs and Chromebooks — of which only a few have articles. Really, only the flagship models (that's the "S" and "Note" series) should have standalone articles. InfiniteNexus (talk) 04:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Strongly agreed on all of that. Though, as noted above, there are too many for one article, so it would have to be a split-up WP:LONGLIST, by one criterion or another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:09, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Mockup-merger as a proof of concept

@BD2412: What do you think about this: User:Alalch E./sandbox/2017 edition of the Samsung Galaxy A series? It is a merger of Samsung Galaxy A series#Galaxy A (2017), Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017), Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017), and Samsung Galaxy A7 (2017). (There is some repeating prose that can be trimmed; this is intentionally a minimal-effort-proof-of-concept [edit: I subsequently did some obvious trimming after all]) —Alalch E. 12:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I am wondering if there isn't some way that we can consolidate those lengthy infoboxes. There is some repetition of information in them. Perhaps a table comparing properties of the the three models? BD2412 T 14:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That's the first table, in the overview section. Those tables are in Samsung Galaxy A series. It could be expanded with a bit more information from the infoboxes. —Alalch E. 14:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

If we can trim those infoboxes by half, that would be great. BD2412 T 14:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

That isn't possible, I fear. This is the standard set of phone specs, and it's really the specs that people look for. If we stick with infoboxes, this is how they have to be, I think. —Alalch E. 14:52, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, nothing is impossible. We can make a custom infobox if needed. What if we used one of these infoboxes for all three, and just put specifiers within the parameters for the different models, where there were differences? BD2412 T 14:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

We could make a "multi-infobox" along the lines of Special:Diff/1196804364 ... —Alalch E. 15:03, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd also point out that specs that only exist in the infobox shouldn't be there at all. We already have more complete technical specs lists in article bodies. If someone is trying to fit every single thing about a phone in the infobox, they're doing it wrong, and it's that practice that should change. There's plenty of other places readers can go to get that info—we're not a product catalog. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with that in principle, but if there are infoboxes, they should contain the usual, expected, set of specs, because that's what the reader cares about. All of those specs. There is no doubt that if we leave out almost any spec that is currently in those infoboxes, it will be perceived as missing information, and will not lead to reader satisfaction. Information can be made to match across the prose and the infobox by propagating information from the infobox to the prose too. The solution is to have the complete infoboxes or no infoboxes, but then perhaps have some other template with a similar purpose. But truncated infoboxes, templates that are these cellphone infoboxes, but contain significantly less information, aren't realistic at all IMO. —Alalch E. 15:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I suppose you can argue this is a WP:IAR situation, but huge swaths of Wikipedia are structured against "reader satisfaction" because we cannot be everything to all readers. This is not an all-or-nothing situation where any minor detail is so crucial its removal harms the article.) If you feel that way, you should be bringing that to a wider RfC, because right now you're absolutely arguing against MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:56, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm leaning toward removal of the infoboxes, because it's all or nothing in this specific case. These will be really crappy infoboxes if shortened by as much as a third. Edit: What is your opinion on User:Alalch E./sandbox/2017 edition of the Samsung Galaxy A series in its current state? —Alalch E. 17:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: What's your opinion on this draft that is intended to replace the three articles? —Alalch E. 16:26, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it's good, would certainly !vote to merge those articles into it if it went to a merge discussion. JoelleJay (talk) 19:35, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this is generally a good plan. WP would not tolerate this level of fragmentation about trivially different products, a number of which do not individually pass GNG, and the majority of which are low-end consumer junk, in any other subject, such as every identifiable sub-model of HP, Dell, and Lenovo PCs, or every known LG and Samsung and Panasonic TV, stereo system component, and other electronic device. The cell phone crowd has just somehow "gotten away with" ignoring WP:NOT#DATABASE, for far too long.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I have mainspaced the draft and redirected the phone articles to the edition page based on WP:PAGEDECIDE and there being a massive WP:OVERLAP. I will not do this on a mass scale with the other products, meaning sequentially in a relatively short period of time, but over a relatively long period, I think that I intend to proceed with this scheme of merging. —Alalch E. 20:51, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like a +6 Plan of Goodfulness.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:31, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

If someone is trying to fit every single thing about a phone in the infobox, they're doing it wrong for phones, it's so widespread as to be the ingrained practice, unfortunately. Enough so, that changes to {{infobox mobile phone}} may be warranted DFlhb (talk) 22:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Nice mockup. Yea, please merge thoughtfully per Alalch. – SJ + 02:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Latitude and longitude articles

Along the lines of #Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products? above, do we really need articles on individual latitudes? I stumbled across 85th parallel north, which led me to Category:Circles of latitude and Category:Meridians (geography), all of which (at least the ones I spot-checked) are 1) boilerplate and 2) completely unsourced. Is there any value in these? RoySmith (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

My inkling is "yes, but....". It feels very paper encyclopaedia to have these, a simple explanation of what they are and what they mean. A quick Google and there we are, this is what 85th parallel north means, which is the basic duty of a reference guide. If you're looking through the lens of "Wikipedia purity", I can see why you'd want to purge them all. It's another balance of argument question for me: if Wiki is a place you go for answers, here's an answer. doktorb _words^deeds 03:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Why can't we have two Circles of latitude/Meridians articles containing all the answers in one place? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia articles for every interesting number, which as it turns out there are a lot of. (And then once you find the smallest non-interesting number, then hoo boy are you in for some fun.) But enumerating all the integer parallels with an article as if there's something worthwhile to say? When you wikilinked that, I was expecting the article to say at least something even *mildly* interesting, like such-and-such town lies exactly on this parallel.

Auto-generated trash. At least the auto-generated asteroid articles had a tolerable excuse of 'at the pace of research, at any week a paper may come out that features asteroid 12345 as its centerpiece' -- and we still consolidated the asteroids into list articles.

Interestingly, these wouldn't even qualify for a list article: == List of parallels== ;1 ;2 ;3 ;4 ;5 .... Speedy delete all of them that say nothing beyond the obvious; consolidate the purely geography trivia ("X city is on # parallel"); keep the otherwise notable ones (38th, 49th, etc). SamuelRiv (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

What I'll say about "otherwise notable" is, on whose perspective? The line which cuts the Korean peninsula, the US-Canada border, certain no-fly zones; that's a lot of politics we need to tiptoe around. doktorb _words^deeds 03:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

On the perspective of reliable sources that have written about the specific latitude or longitude independently of the others. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Circle of latitude has a list of "Other notable parallels", although it appears to be not the Wikipedia definition and instead lists latitudes used in border demarcation. I wonder if most lines would even if covered be better covered in a consolidated article, for example this short article on these 'lines' in tourism mentions a few different latitudes (among other lines) within a wider context. CMD (talk) 05:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I've found these articles both useful and interesting. Although light on sources, their information is clearly verifiable. They might be borderline for a paper encyclopedia, but Wikipedia won't run out of paper. I see advantages to keeping them but little to be gained by deleting them. Certes (talk) 10:10, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

The proposal made is merging, not deletion. CMD (talk) 12:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Both options seem to be on the table. The original question was "do we really need articles... Is there any value in these?" Merger would create some rather large articles covering multiple topics. There's little overlap, unlike Samsung where we can combine the 1234A with the 1234B saying that they share the same features but the B model has a better camera. Certes (talk) 13:16, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the move for merging these into a large article/articles, a jumbo-sized table, etc. Over 500 individual, unreferenced articles provide minimal benefits that couldn't be concatenated into a series of clear and comprehensive tables. Kazamzam (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Just keep in mind that one big unsourced article isn't an improvement over lots of little unsourced articles. RoySmith (talk) 15:24, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. When space constraints allow it, it's much better to have all of the information where we can manage and maintain it in one place instead of having a bunch of forgotten stubs of questionable notability that only paint part of the picture. That's why we have WP:PAGEDECIDE. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

• My initial feeling is these are generally encyclopaedic, some of them are over 15 years old now and appear to have gone largely unquestioned, no AfDs since at least 2016, and there is some trivial usefulness to say 3rd parallel north. There's also some that will be clearly notable, for instance 15th parallel north needs a couple sources as it's been important in war, and 49th parallel north will be clearly relevant to North Americans. Instead of removal I think we should see how they can be improved, and only then either remove the ones we can't source or agree that these are all relevant as a set of articles. SportingFlyer T·C 12:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm curious to know which specific articles you spot-checked, @RoySmith:. pbp 14:03, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a fair question. Based on what I see in my browser history:

• 85th parallel north
• 31st parallel south
• 84th parallel north
• 87th meridian east
• 97th meridian east

I also looked at these which, unlike the above, are useful articles:

• 32nd meridian west from Washington
• 27th meridian west from Washington
• 25th meridian west from Washington

RoySmith (talk) 14:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Compare 31st parallel north, for example. One thing I would caution you is that two of the three parallels you looked at are in the Arctic, where a) they are shorter in length than parallels closer to the Equator, and b) they are in an area that is almost entirely depopulated.

I'm inclined to believe that there is massive variability in the notability of parallels and meridians and that we shouldn't have a single predetermined outcome for them pbp 19:21, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

84th and 85th north should be merged to Arctic Ocean, just like 86th–89th are. Most of the rest could probably be consolidated into 5-degree chunks like the navbox is (as it is, they all violate WP:BIDI). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I've just taken a look at a couple, starting with 3rd parallel north as highlighted by SportingFlyer above; i think the key words are "trivial usefulness", as i struggle to see the point of those i glanced at: Of the six i opened, only 80th parallel south seems to give any useful information (the UTM zone thing). As for, "no AfDs since at least 2016", to my mind that doesn't show anything more than an acceptance of a situation like that of WP:OUTCOMES, where AfDs for schools effectively stopped because, despite general apparent acknowlegement that not all are notable, every secondary school AfD ended up as Keep, so no point in trying, thus i see it as a circular argument when applied here. Happy days, ~ Lindsay^Hello 14:57, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's just as far back as the geography AfD archive goes. I don't think it's necessarily acceptance of a situation since it's possible nobody has brought this up for being un-encyclopaedic before. SportingFlyer T·C 15:01, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

As with Roy above, I would appreciate knowing what parallels you researched. pbp 19:22, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

This does seem like something important that any reasonable encyclopedia or reference work ought to cover, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in their own separate articles. Merging them into a few as suggested would probably be a good idea, though there are definitely some with enough content to remain independent. 38th parallel north is an obvious one that comes to mind, as well as 49th parallel north. The raw data could be combined into the parent article, but having a Template:Main article leading to the independent one should work nicely. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 15:12, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

38th parallel north is an obvious one that comes to mind. I took a look at 38th parallel north. I assume you're talking about the Korea section. I went through that sentence by sentence and couldn't find any significant facts that aren't already covered in greater detail in Division of Korea and again in Korean Demilitarized Zone. 38th parallel already has links to those articles, which is exactly what's needed. RoySmith (talk) 16:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

That's true, but any page on the 38th Parallel should have at least a summary of its significance to Korea and the war (more space than the single sentence at Circles of latitude. However it doesn't seem like it would belong in a single page on all the latitudes, nor would linking to both those separate articles be great. Some duplication/summarization of content is necessary in an encyclopedia, but we can still safely reduce at least 90% of the redundancy for latitude and longitude by merging most into the parent article. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:20, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, sure, but this is the tail wagging the dog. The point of {{main article}} is to include a little context in a related article and provide a pointer to where you can get more detail. For example, Abacus has a section Abacus#Rome which links to Roman abacus and gives a summary of the major points in-line. The difference between that and the situation here is that Abacus clearly justifies a stand-alone article covering a broad topic, with a great deal of information about abacuses in general. In this case, the Division of Korea summary is the only content in 38th parallel north which is notable. RoySmith (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Merging them into one or two articles seems eminently sensible. I would like to think that the basic geographical facts would be sourceable to a good atlas. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as what these lines on a map are, (1 degree increments of Latitude and longitude) IMO that would best all covered in 2-3 articles which would include sun visibility, which is the only content in many of these. And then we have a lot a special types of articles that are somewhat like list articles (whether or not they are called that) that group things together that are already covered elsewhere in Wikipedia. To be a bit usefully facetious, it's like creating a "Tuesday" article which covers all of the events that happened on a Tuesday. That's sort of what these are. Wikipedia provides very little guidance on these, and the little guidance that there is is scattered between policies and guidelines. IMO the criteria should be that a reasonable number of people would be seeking that particular grouping. (which is also common sense and indirectly alluded to in one guideline) IMO these articles fail that criteria. People aren't going to seek grouping based on what is near a particular 1 degree increment line on a map. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed these should be merged into a couple main articles. I cannot think of any general paper encyclopedia that would contain even a tiny fraction this info. Certainly not the WorldBook set I grew up reading. JoelleJay (talk) 21:25, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm curious what the active editors who created some of these articles think about the potential for a merge, so pinging Bazonka, Presidentman, and Buaidh. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We already have List of circles of latitude that can be restructured as a merge target, and it shouldn't be an issue to create List of meridians. And if/when it's shown that any of them are independently notable (such as the 38th parallel north and the 45th parallel north), then the list can link to them. The 71st parallel south is not notable, and if it's not merged, then there's no justification to keep it at AfD. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The lines of latitude actually get some fairly decent page views - some 50 a day, the 38th parallel north in the 300s a day. Meridians much less so. These pages also exist in a lot of different languages, albeit not all of them. I think my issue is that these clearly serve some sort of reference purpose, albeit trivial. SportingFlyer T·C 00:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• In terms of whether a merged article would become unwieldly, currently the most notable latitude and longitude articles (and ones that will presumably not be in strong consideration for merging), Equator and Prime meridian, come in at under 2,000 words each. CMD (talk) 01:43, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
• Agree with the sentiments above that most can be merged into main articles. I'm not entirely sold that the relevance of certain parallels to borders inherently makes them notable (the discussion is very much about the borders, just because it's fixed on a parallel doesn't mean that the parallel is really what's the notable element) but at least there's something to say about those that will be clearly beyond just trivia. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:02, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I created many of these articles (thanks WhatamIdoing for bringing this discussion to my attention), and I certainly oppose a merger.

Each integral line of latitude and longitude is notable in its own right. Admittedly, some are less notable than others, but each of them is a significant feature shown on maps. People live on them, administrative borders and satellite orbits etc. are defined by them, and many of the lines' articles are referenced from other articles.

For example (to pick one at random) London Company says "The London Company was a division of the Virginia Company with responsibility for colonizing the east coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N." Without the links to the parallels' articles, a reader might not understand what they mean, but now with a click or two, they can quickly be taken to a map showing the line, thus improving the understandability of the referring article.

Sure, the articles contain more than the sort of information than you'd find in a paper encyclopaedia, but that's not what Wikipedia is! I feel that setting out the list of countries, territories and seas that each line crosses is useful almanac information. Essentially, these articles have translated cartographic information into textual information. (Consider a visually impaired user who can't look at a map, but who can now interpret the information.)

It's been claimed that these articles are mostly unreferenced. This isn't really correct, although I agree they're not referenced in the usual way. All of the coordinates in the table link to a map, which is essentially a reliable reference source. (This has been discussed before and consensus was that it was OK.)

I should also point out that several of these articles have been to AFD before and the consensus has always been to keep them.

By all means merge the articles, but I don't think it will be possible to do this without losing useful information. Bazonka (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Bazonka, on Wikipedia, notable doesn't mean important or useful. The requirement is defined at Wikipedia:Notability. For something to be notable, there have to be reliable sources that give in-depth coverage to the specific topic of the article. So a map isn't enough to demonstrate notability. We'd need, for example, sources that specifically analyze the importance of 43rd parallel south in a way that isn't just a listing of all the circles of latitude. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I can see I'm going to have to dig out all of the discussions that have previously taken place about this, which all resulted in a Keep. Bazonka (talk) 17:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

TBUA, since "notable doesn't mean important", we don't actually need "sources that specifically analyze the importance". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

That's what I get for rewording my comment three times in a row. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

We've gone round these circles before, so to speak, and such "Wikipedia purity" gets us nowhere. Sometimes we need to remember that some facts are just pints doktorb _words^deeds 17:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as many of the lines' articles are referenced from other articles goes, this entire thread started when I was reviewing an article prior to a FA submission and suggested that the link to 85th parallel north be removed because it didn't say anything useful. That led me to look more closely at 85th parallel north which led to Category:Circles of latitude, etc. I'll also note that These pages also exist in a lot of different languages, mentioned upthread, is WP:OTHERLANGS. RoySmith (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Here are some discussions in which deletion/merger of these articles have previously been raised and rejected (or at least reached no consensus): Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/Archive 29#Articles for each meridian/parallel, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. I may have missed some others. Bazonka (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe this is an accurate representation of the situation.

• Virtually all of these AfDs that you've listed are part of a bulk AfD that was split into individual ones. Notice the timestamps; they're all concurrent.
• Speaking of the timestamps, this was 15 years ago.
• Next, look at the usernames. In nearly all of them, it's the same 4–5 people. Many of the comments are even copied and pasted from one AfD to the next.
• Most importantly, I don't see a single reference to GNG in any keep !votes in any of those AfDs. I don't see any of them offer anything remotely resembling a genuine reliable secondary source as evidence that these subjects have received significant coverage.

You're saying that we shouldn't merge these articles because ~5 people ignored the need for reliable sources 15 years ago, and you're presenting it as if this has been litigated over a dozen times. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Yep. Consensus can change, and 15 years is plenty of time for it to happen. Specific, focused merge discussions and AfDs are the best path forward. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:46, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll also note that most of the AfDs linked to above were closed by John254, who has since been banned as a prolific sock, with the SPI notes indicating that AfD was one of their areas of interest. That doesn't prove the closes were wrong, but it doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence that they were carefully considered. RoySmith (talk) 18:52, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:OTHERLANGS is a fine argument for AfD, but this is the second discussion in a couple weeks about the essence of what is encyclopedic knowledge... In reality we're really discussing whether the tables found on the Equator page showing what is on the equator is valid encyclopedic information or not, since it's both so obviously compiled and potentially useful. SportingFlyer T·C 20:04, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

SportingFlyer, did you look at "WP:OTHERLANGS" before you linked to it? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course I did, and I know the rule well: just because an article exists in another language or langauges does not mean it is valid for inclusion on the English wikipedia. But we're too narrowly focused on notability here considering Wikipedia is a gazetteer, and the fact other languages include this pure reference information as well should be a sign that it may actually be encyclopedic. SportingFlyer T·C 20:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

If you have an issue with WP:N, then make a proposal to change it. Simply deciding to create your own standard for notability is just going to cause problems. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The fact we're a gazetteer isn't my own standard for notability. SportingFlyer T·C 20:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

What WP:5P1 says is Wikipedia combines many features of ... gazetteers, which often gets mis-quoted as "wikipedia is a gazetteer", which in turn seems to often get mis-interpreted as "anything related to geography gets an automatic free pass on WP:N" RoySmith (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

You're overstating that, it simply means that we require WP:V instead of GNG for certain types of geography articles, since you should expect to find an article on a populated place in an encyclopedia. That's sort of the crux of my argument here - you'd expect to find this specific subset of an article in an encyclopedia, which is backed up by the fact they're in other languages and have decent amount of daily page views. SportingFlyer T·C 10:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The only overstatement is "we're a gazetteer" which simply is not true... We are in fact not a gazetteer, we just have some features of one. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

What encyclopedias are you people reading that have individualized coverage of every latitude/longitude degree or every populated place?! Encyclopedias have never been comprehensive directories, and having entries for items we don't expect to have any secondary coverage goes directly against NOT. JoelleJay (talk) 19:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:V is for confirming individual facts. The standards for the existence of an article can be found at WP:N. Particularly relevant is WP:NRV: No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

There isn't a single policy or guideline that claims we're a gazetteer. There isn't even an essay that says this, as the one you're probably referencing only says WP contains certain aspects of gazetteers.
Other languages have wildly different concepts of what is encyclopedic and regularly include material that would be against policy here. That they have (what are likely often bot-generated or machine-translated) pages on any of these topics is irrelevant. JoelleJay (talk) 23:59, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Gazetteer... – Joe (talk) 08:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Bazonka (talk) 16:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC) gives good reasons to keep them as they are. The benefits outweigh the costs. Being a good navigational aid is a good reason for a page separate from the concept of notability. SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Like Categories, lists, and navigation templates, and disambiguation pages, lines of latitude and longitude are justifiable without reference to notability. Instead, could incoming links as justification as navigation aids. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That would make sense if you have all of them on one page, instead of spread out across hundreds of pages as if they were articles. Putting them all on one page sounds like a fair compromise to me. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Note: I've raised some procedural questions at WT:AFD#Mass AfD? RoySmith (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia is a gazetteer maybe just leave the pages alone and let them present gazetteer information to readers who seek it. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:56, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That is incorrect, wikipedia is not a gazetteer and never has been. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:31, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Ridiculous. If we all started thinking like that, we'd be overrun with articles about things that people want to read about. – Joe (talk) 16:54, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Per the AfD talk page discussion, I now propose merging these into 36 articles each covering five degrees of latitude, and the same for degrees of longitude. I would note that any selection of a number of pages is arbitrary. There is nothing that (technically) prevents us from having a unique page for every tenth of a degree of either, but we have stopped at whole degrees, so a block of five degrees with appropriate incoming section redirects would lead readers to a comfortably nested set of whatever information they were seeking. BD2412 T 14:18, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'll support that when you open the RfC. BilledMammal (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

And which parts of the completely unsourced material would you merge? RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

How would you present the maps? Just fatten up the line so it covers five degrees instead of one? The already existing articles are adequate in their intended coverage, and readers looking for these pages would in all likelihood search for a specific degree instead of a tenth-of-a-degree or five degrees at once. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: There is a difference between what is unsourced and what is unsourceable. It is absurd to think that anything currently in these articles could not be sourced. @Randy Kryn: The maps are small, so I would include all five. If there's a hankering for one map, it could be delineated by color. As for readers looking for the page, if they are searching for a specific degree they will find it as a section. I doubt that any readers would be discomfited by this resolution. BD2412 T 15:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem here is the hard line between "everything must be sourceable!" and the very nature of these articles, which are easily verified and serve potentially valid navigational purposes (at least for latitudes - longitudes are a bit more arbitrary.) I've said it before, you don't need to quote someone in the newspaper to say that it's raining. It should be common sense that we don't necessarily need a secondary source to tell us where something is - that's the whole nature of the gazetteer prong in 5P... SportingFlyer T·C 16:17, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

You do in fact need secondary sources for that rainstorm to be notable, the vast majority aren't. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

How have you established that those new pages will meet our notability requirements? Groupings of give degrees would appear to be more obscure, not more notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:34, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly correct. Grouping a bunch of non-notable things into larger collections doesn't make them notable. RoySmith (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Why groups of 5 rather than just group all the parallels together in one article and all the meridians in another? They still won’t be long articles, and we can group them in sections of 5 if you like. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure any WP:SNG covers this. WP:Notability (geographic features) is probably the closest, and I've posted a pointer to this discussion on the talk page. RoySmith (talk) 14:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

• The majority of such articles don't appear to meet either the GNG or SNG and as such should either be merged or deleted. Of course the real solution would be for the non-notable articles to have never been created but people decided to be incompetent/disruptive so here we are. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I think these just need to meet WP:V, though because of their geographic scope which is basically a given. They're clearly encyclopedic but present a unique sourcing issue.

  SportingFlyer T·C 16:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not familiar with any articles that just need to meet V, what would be the policy or guideline basis for that? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Secondary schools only need to meet WP:V. Oh, wait, we fixed that problem a few years ago. RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Since Wikipedia:Notability is a guideline, "occasional exceptions may apply". We still don't have a bright-line requirement for subjects to meet the GNG (or for articles to contain an Wikipedia:Inline citation if they don't contain WP:MINREF material, or several other things that some editors like to assert in favor of their personal preferences). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I would note that the enumerated exceptions all have to do with deleting/merging an article which does meet the notability standards... Not with keeping one which doesn't... But IAR covers all eventualities. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:48, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Horse Eye's Back, please remember that all these articles were written by real people who took the time to contribute something to Wikipedia that they thought was useful, even if you don't agree. – Joe (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Hence incompetent... Which assumes good faith but a lack of competence. All of these articles will have to be cleaned up by real people, my sympathy lies with those who clean up the mess not those who take a shit in our collective hallway (even if "back in the day" taking a shit in the hallway wasn't seen as an issue or was even seen as a virtue). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I checked a few of these and those were created in 2008. At that time there was a presumption that geographical features were inherently notable. It is hardly represents a lack of competence for an editor not to anticipate future changes to our guidelines. Rlendog (talk) 18:57, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Is the argument that the editors involved were unaware of those changes and only learned about them in the past week? If you know you did something that is now not kosher you need to go clean it up, thats how good faith editing works. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  It's possible the argument may be that calling other editors' contributions to Wikipedia "shit" and accusing people of having "decided to be incompetent/disruptive" (emphasis added)—which is explicitly an attribution of destructive motive (saying other editors deliberately chose to be disruptive) and therefore not a case of assuming good faith on the part of the editors in question—constitute unproductive and even uncivil behavior. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:44, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Sure if one wanted to abandon AGF they could make that argument, just like if I abandoned AGF I could argue that you followed me here to harass me (can't actually come up with a plausible way for you to have gotten here besides for our recent interactions on other pages, I can just assume that your intent in stalking me was educational and not intended to deprive me of pleasure in editing). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  The Village Pump is a public page meant for many Wikipedians to read; it is a major venue for policy discussion, not a new or niche article with few links to it. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 22:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  And how did you find yourself here replying to my comment? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:28, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'm just astounded you think the fact that someone would create pages about such an obvious thing to create an article about could possibly be considered a lack of competence. SportingFlyer T·C 17:54, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  What would be astounding is if many of such articles survive AfD or a merge discussion. We will have to see I guess. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  Folks, could we please cut out the personal attacks? There's room for people to have good-faith differences of opinion about whether these pages pass WP:N, and it's great that we're discussing that. But let's not sink to questioning the competence of our fellow editors. RoySmith (talk) 18:21, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not a geographic feature, it's an imaginary line corresponding to a particular degree of a a particular coordinate system. And even the more substantial articles in question aren't really covering the ostensible topic. The are basically list articles of things that that imaginary line crosses. Like if I made an article that is ostensibly about 5:01 GMT and it consisted of a list of things that happened at 5:01 GMT....such is not coverage of 5:01 GMT. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

No more imaginary than a national border. BD2412 T 21:54, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The vast majority of national borders aren't notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:01, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

All national borders should be covered, just usually within another article. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:07, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Very true that not being notable isn't the same thing as not being worthy of mention anywhere. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:10, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

National borders are much much more directly impactful and much less imaginary. But nevertheless, even they are much less the topic of a separate article. North8000 (talk) 19:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

The brevity of these articles is disheartening not because the topics aren't notable, but because they are. Improvements to these pages are possible, as the parallels and meridians are treated in fields of geography and environmental studies. Searches for parallels on Google Scholar (for example, the 85th) reveal enough hits that it would suggest there are sources that could be cited to develop the pages, making retention plausible. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Going through all seven pages of Google Scholar results I'm only seeing passing mentions, where are you seeing significant coverage? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

What sort of significant coverage would you want exactly from a line of latitude? These are odd topics. SportingFlyer T·C 14:30, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Geographical articles generally have a rather low threshold for notability. I'd say that most parallels and meridians have more global significance than, say, Demidovo, Cherepovetsky District, Vologda Oblast. Certes (talk) 14:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Somebody took the time to name the town, build stuff there, and track the population.

Literally the only reason we're discussing the specific lines we're discussing, and not other lines like 49.5 north, is because they are integers. And as I note, there's some very good reasons we don't have a list of integers article. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

We should probably redirect that to List of numbers#Integers. Certes (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Please read my comment above on the notion of notable and/or interesting numbers, which is a matter of significance in mathematics itself. Indeed, the lede of the article you link also notes this, and the section you link is actually a list of SI prefixes. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Of course, not all numbers are notable. Being an infinite set, almost all integers cannot have a Wikipedia article. But that still leaves about 400 which do – not an unreasonable tally. Certes (talk) 19:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

This seems to miss the point that there are reasons of mathematical interest for a given integer to have its own article. On the other hand, the only justification given so far for having an article on most of these lines of latitude is that they are integers (in our arbitrary pi=180° angle measurement system). SamuelRiv (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources use integer parallels and meridians because they are convenient. GNG follows reliable sources. James500 (talk) 18:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Any significant coverage that meets our normal standard for such. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:43, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Some of these also have cultural significance (at least locally), as evidenced by the various things you can find in commons:Category:Parallel markers by latitude. —Kusma (talk) 16:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

If these articles are merged, what would a combined article look like? With circles of latitude, for example, I'm assuming we would rewrite List of circles of latitude. Alternatively, if that's too long, we could do List of northern circles of latitude and List of southern circles of latitude. I see two ways we could do this. The first would be a standard table list. Possible columns would include name, solstices, intersections, map, and notes, where notes would be up to a paragraph of prose describing anything else relevant. The second would be a list where each entry has its own level two or level three subheading, with a paragraph of two or prose describing the main points and maybe each section having a map. Either way, if an individual line is notable, then the longer article can be linked as a Template:Main article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I just began a sample of what a table might look like at List of circles of latitude. (We might speedily WP:Draftify the article as a WIP, as it was useless in its current state anyway.) I did 1N and 83N, the latter being the northernmost integer line crossing land, thus having an article. Any land or seaform crossing much more than one degree of latitude (that is, North-South span exceeds about 150 km) should be omitted from notable crossings, imo. Alternatively, in the table, where multiple islands in a small archipelago intersect 1°0'0"N (for example), I just give the name of the archipelago. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

That looks perfectly reasonable to me. I like that if I was an exploratory sort of mood, I could use my browser's search (Command-F, etc) to look for places like Nias or Sverdrup. Or find all the entries that contain "island". Of course, it still needs sourcing, but I've been assured that "unsourced" is not the same as "unsourcable", so I'm going to AGF that somebody will add sources. RoySmith (talk) 22:05, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Geographic coordinates are linked to an outside map source, and the islands themselves to their main article. That is verifiable enough for a list. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

SamuelRiv I agree that listing the archipelago instead of every single island seems like an obvious choice. The other countries should still be included in some form though. For example, it seems strange to list the 1st parallel north without somehow mentioning Brazil or Uganda, among others. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:18, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Or you could just note there's the northernmost and southernmost points of Brazil instead of repeating every single country on every single table entry. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

That seems logical. Chile crosses (if I did the math right), 35 degrees of latitude. RoySmith (talk) 00:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

@SamuelRiv You're quickly going to run into WP:PEIS issues with that page as you fill it in, just like all the other list pages that include flags and coordinates. I'd highly recommend switching {{Coord}} (~1.5kb) to {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}} (~0.8kb) and the various flag icons from something like {{RUS}} (0.5kb) to {{#invoke:flag|country|RUS}} (0.2kb) --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:40, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I vaguely remember this coming up once before on a page that used a ton of country flags. I seem to remember that there was a different set of flag icons based on svg instead of png that could be swapped in and that solved the problem. RoySmith (talk) 01:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

PNG vs SVG makes no difference when it comes to post-expand include size (and mediawiki converts SVGs to PNGs before displaying them anyway). The problem with a template like {{RUS}} is that it calls {{flag}}, which calls {{country data Russia}}, which calls {{flag/core}}, so the actual code to display the flag gets counted four times. When using #invoke: directly it only gets counted once. Same with the {{coord}} template -- since the template calls {{#invoke:Coordinates|coord}}, the code to display the coordinates gets counted twice compared with directly invoking the module. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Depending on how severe the issue is, I was thinking about a split to List of northern circles of latitude and List of southern circles of latitude or something like that, should the list get too long. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

My preference would only be to list notable lines to begin with and not every stupid integer pi-mod-180 arbitrariness. Delete the flags wholesale -- they're completely unnecessary. And move any further this discussion of work on this article specifically to Talk:List of circles of latitude.

I gave a template and regexp for quickly converting the individual articles. Merge them or no, those articles should and will all be deleted, for the reasons gone over many times by others. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Additional info: there are several redirects like Latitude 84 degrees N that imo usefully point to Arctic Ocean instead of the non-informative 84th parallel north article. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

And when we're done with this, we can start working on declination and hour angle :-) RoySmith (talk) 00:19, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

• I oppose the mass merger or other mass elimination of these articles. I have been watching this discussion for some time. Some of the parallels and meridians do satisfy GNG. James500 (talk) 18:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

  No one is suggesting the merger of a parallel or meridian that meets GNG. The 38th, 45th, and 49th parallels north have already been mentioned above as probably warranting their own articles. If you think there are any others, you are welcome to prove it with examples of significant coverage of a specific parallel or meridian. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:16, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Lack of edit summaries

Every now and again, I see somebody editing an article I'm watching (usually because I've spent substantial time working on it) without an edit summary. If it's a drive by IP or a newbie, I don't really mind this, but I can think of one or two regular editors who make significant edits without edit summaries, and who then get mildly annoyed when their edit gets reverted. In that case, the edit was a good edit with reasonable intentions, but hard to work out from the text changed, so it gets reverted as "unexplained". Even disregarding that, I've heard the argument that "I don't need to leave edit summaries for simple typos"; well I've seen people change British to American English without an edit summary, and thought they were POV pushing instead of fixing a typo accidentally. I don't want to name names here, that's not really what I'm getting at.

I've seen discussions in the past about upgrading the edit summary information page to a formal guideline, without any real agreement what to do. Indeed, a salient point mentioned in this discussion was that edit summaries such as "rm bullshit" or "what a load of POV-loaded crap" are just as bad as none at all. I agree with that entirely, and would consider bad / uncivil categories just as bad as none at all.

So I want to see if we can get some formal agreement to make WP:ES a formal guideline, so the handful of people who can't be bothered explaining big edits can be aligned with everybody else. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose because it's a handful of people. Just deal with the people. Levivich (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like the remedy actually addresses the problem... You aren't just asking for edit summaries you're asking for expository edit summaries (for example not "Edit summary: CE" but "Edit summary: changed glaceir to glacier"). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Ritchie, have you considered the views in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Automatically prompt for missing edit summary ? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Note the page you've linked to, Help:Edit summary, is appropriately written as an instructional page, so from a literal perspective I don't think it should be made a formal guideline. More generally, the page quotes a passage from Wikipedia:Consensus § Through editing: All edits should be explained (unless the reason for them is obvious)—either by clear edit summaries, or by discussion on the associated talk page. Although Wikipedia:Consensus is a policy page, this passage is more descriptive of best practice, rather than prescribing a mandatory behaviour. From an on-the-ground perspective, I agree with Horse Eye's Back that trying to enforce edit summaries will just move the argument to whether or not an edit summary contains an appropriate level of detail, or whether or not the reason is sufficiently obvious. Personally, I think well-written edit summaries are useful, even if just to help myself remember why I've made an edit, but I appreciate that there is a significant number of editors who don't feel the advantages are sufficiently compelling. isaacl (talk) 17:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm in favour of improving prompts that encourage edit summaries/make it harder to automatically publish without an edit (whether intentional/accidentally) but weary of creating WP:INSTRUCTIONCREEP. I do think many bot/automated messages could be improved by linking to policies/affected sections in their edit summary, but I wouldn’t want to start a policy argument. We defacto frown upon low edit usage in RfA and elsewhere already. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

For example "reply" as default edit message is very bad UI in the visual talk editor. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

This mania about edit summaries is downright silly. In some cases, it makes a lot of sense. For example, Special:Diff/1199699096 has an excellent edit summary which not only describes what was changed, but also gives the rationale behind the change and a citation to a policy to back it up. The edit summary for what I'm typing now will be auto-generated and probably say something like "reply", which is equally sufficient in this context. When I'm doing a lot of writing on a new article draft in my userspace, I do frequent saves with useless edit summaries like "more", and that only because I've got it configured to prompt me for one. Some people prefer to write new content off-line and copy-paste the completed article in a single edit. Have I provided any additional value by producing a detailed revision history with 100 edit summaries of "more"? Hardly.

I wince every time I see an RFA where somebody comments on a candidate's edit summary percentage. RoySmith (talk) 01:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Especially unfair because the edit software accepts comments as valid summaries, but the edit summary software does not. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Those aren't the scenarios I'm talking about. Rather, I'm thinking of making an edit to a featured article, which could be anything from vandalism to a good copyedit, but without an edit summary, one or more editors have to take time out to examine it to see if it's worth keeping or not. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Somebody needs to look at them anyway. Unless you're thinking you can count on the vandals to leave "vandalized article" as an edit summary and you can safely assume all the other edits are OK? RoySmith (talk) 15:18, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

So let's stipulate that you have to at least take a quick glance at each edit. The edit summary gives you some idea of what to expect, and if it's clearly different from what was described, that's going to get your attention. If there's no edit summary (or an otherwise "content-free" edit summary), then you miss out on the opportunity to suspect something is malicious based on an evident discrepancy between the content of the edit and the edit summary. Fabrickator (talk) 19:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Let me approach this from a different direction. I've been on wikipedia since 2004. There were pushes to get everybody to use edit summaries back then, and we're still pushing. If we haven't convinced people to do it in nigh on 20 years, what makes you think changing WP:ES from an "information page" to a "formal guideline" will have any effect? RoySmith (talk) 19:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

After reverting thousands of unconstructive edits over the years, the edit summary is the thing that I'm least interested in, because anyone can say anything in an edit summary. I instead look for things like zero-byte changes to popular articles by IPs or redlinked editors, and I have the popups extension that lets me see the change directly from the watchlist, a very low-effort way for me to examine the actual change rather than rely on a dubious edit summary. In fact, just a few minutes ago I reverted a change exactly like that, and while there was no edit summary for that change, it could have said anything and I still would have reviewed the change for the reasons given above. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 03:11, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I see this once again as "people should behave perfectly". They won't, they never have. Wikipedia inherently is resource intensive as an authoring and maintenance process. WP:BRD and all, it's kind of what a wiki wants! There is no perfection. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm with you on this. I think some of the concerns are expressed could be avoided—comments on talk pages plausibly require less robust of an edit summary (since there's an expectation to read the comment anyway), and I think saying "more" in a draft space edit summary is reasonable. But on articles in mainspace, I try very hard to fully summarize what I've done, to not only link policies a la WP:ALP but moreover explain why a policy applies, and why I've made an edit the way I have. I think this is a practice that would be healthy for our community to more clearly encourage. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:01, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Sex and gender distinction in policies

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: This idea is not developed enough for a proposed policy change yet. It may be helpful to talk about your idea at the Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab). If you do so, please consider starting with an example of one existing sentence that you think should be changed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

---

Firstly, sex and gender are completely different things.

Just because an individual has a penis does not mean that they are male.

Just because an individual has a vagina does not mean that they are female.

Besides genitals (external sex organs), sex is defined by presence of many anatomical structures such as gonads (internal sex organs e.g. testes, ovaries), accessory reproductive organs (uterus, fallopian tubes, cervix, prostate, etc.), sex hormones, secondary sex characteristics, etc.

I know that without context, anatomy should not be mentioned in all articles.

But differences between sex and gender must be stated.

Male ≠ man

Female ≠ woman

Intersex ≠ non-binary

This is because sex and gender are different things.

It is possible for people to be born without any gender, and they are called agender people.

But it is impossible for people to be born without a sex.

Secondly, the usage of "male" to refer to the "man" gender, and usage of "female" to refer to the "woman" gender cannot be justified, because if it were, then "intersex" could also be used to refer to "non-binary", but it isn't. There is no valid reason for such ambiguous usage of words, since it rather causes confusion to readers.

It is WP:VAGUE and confusing to use words, that generally refer to sex, to refer to words that generally refer to gender.

This ambiguity in usage of words, for sexes and genders, is rather discriminatory, and, to be fair, transphobic in some cases.

Thirdly, I propose that all relevant policies be rewritten to accurately differentiate between sex and gender.

The policies that will be directly affected by this proposal include, but not limited to, the following:

• WP:WAW
• MOS:GNL
• WP:GNL
• WP:GNLP
• MOS:GENDERID
• WP:GENDERID
• MOS:DEADNAME

The policies that may be indirectly affected by this proposal include, but not limited to, the following:

• MOS:BIO
• MOS:LEAD
• MOS:LAYOUT

— CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 06:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

First, the sex/gender prescriptive language isn't that widely used. West & Zimmerman's suggested language never really caught on. Today we tend to use AMAB/AFAB more than female man / male woman.

Second, when has this ever led to confusion among editors interpreting or implementing policies or guidelines? We don't need to fix anything that isn't broken.

Last, many trans folks use man/male and woman/female interchangeably as is the norm in English. It is incorrect to insist that failure to adhere to the prescriptive languaige is transphobic. EvergreenFir (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir:

For the part that is about language:

In articles, language should be objectively respectful for everyone. And that includes everyone.

For the part that is not about language:

many trans folks use man/male and woman/female interchangeably as is the norm in English

This is not about language. This is about the scientific differences between sex and gender.

Sex is anatomical and physiological, but gender is not.

Failure of language to adhere to objective moral standards is discriminatory. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:25, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

It appears to be very much about language and your preferred definition of certain words, which is not reflected in how English is used or understood. Many words have multiple definitions, "male" and "female" among them. For "male". Merriam-Webster has sex in definition 1 a), gender in definition 1 b). The Cambridge Dictionary lists gender before sex. Oxford Learners puts gender before sex.

There may be situations where we need to be careful to be clear whether we are referring to sex or gender, but in many cases such distinction is either clear from context or makes no practical difference. A newspaper may run a run-on sentence about a baseball player who was run down while running the bases and therefor failed to continue his run of having scored a run in seven consecutive games, but as long as we can understand the word in context, a word having multiple meanings is not an inherent problem. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@CrafterNova - Regardless of my or your thoughts on how things should be, the insistence that sex/male/female refer only to anatomical or physiological traits is not widely accepted and generally limited to academic venues. Additionally, prescriptive language is usually not respectful (e.g., insisting on he/she instead of they) and to say that people cannot use male to mean man is prescriptive and limits people. My comment that you say is "not about language" is indeed 100% about language. Reflecting their colloquial use, many trans folks use male/female to refer to gender. Insisting that they cannot do so is discriminatory, not an "objective moral standard". EvergreenFir (talk) 20:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree with your analysis of the language... and even if I did, I am left very uncertain with what changes you are calling for. You seem to be concerned about the terms "male" and "female", but then you point to MOS:GENDERID and MOS:DEADNAME as examples of things that need changing. Not only do neither of those sections of MOS:BIO use the terms "male" or "female", but they actually aren't two sections -- they're two pointers to the same location. And as that section is part of the MOS:BIO page, it's not clear what you mean by that the section must be changed but the page on its own may only be "indirectly affected" (although the whole of MOS:BIO does indeed include the term "female", as part of the phrase "Where a female historical figure is consistently referred to using the name of her husband".) WP:GNL is not a policy, nor is WP:GNLP, nor WP:WAW, nor WP:GENDERID -- they're all just essays. The only things gendered in MOS:LAYOUT is a reference to Winston Churchill as a "British statesman" (and to the best of my knowledge Churchill was a man in every working definition of the term) and a reference to Wikipedia having "sister projects", which I suppose could be degendered but I suspect doesn't go to the heart of whatever it is you're calling for. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@NatGertler: You are right. These changes are not limited to policies, but also essays, Wikiprojects, and many other types of pages.

I have tried gathering support for this proposal earlier, and have been doing for some weeks.

However, I live in an area of my country where there are very few Wikipedians, if not none at all.

I tried discussing similar changes on off-wiki social media Wikipedian and Wikimedian groups; some say it's "too infeasible", some disagree, and many do not engage in such discussions. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:44, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Please be extremely cautious of off-wiki canvassing. EvergreenFir (talk) 20:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Rather than just saying that policies should be changed, I think if you want to win editors over you're going to need to propose at least a few specific changes so that editors know what you explicitly have in mind. DonIago (talk) 07:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

@Doniago: You are correct.

Perhaps such changes may require an RfC, but I'm willing to consider other options before creating an RfC, such as third opinions.

We need participation in this discussion from many editors of all sexes, genders, and sexualities, to reach consensus that is neutral in points of view, and does not conform to social norms. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 18:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you mean by 'neutral' in the above? Do you mean 'neutral' per WP:NPOV (i.e. "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic"), or 'neutral by some other standard - because if you mean the former, I'd have thought that it rather implies 'conforming to social norms', or at least, giving them a great deal of weight. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:52, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: Social norms are often discriminatory because they generalize people's personalities, which are unique in case of every person. No person should have to conform to social norms because such norms restrict rights to freedom of people who are ethical and have good intentions. Hence, social norms are not neutral, and consensus should not conform to social norms.

Hence, I intend the meaning of "neutral" here to be "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on topics" as well as non-conformity to social norms. — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 15:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

So, "neutral so long as neutral does not happen to conform to social norms, in which case something else"? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@NatGertler: What do you mean by "in which case something else"? — CrafterNova ^{[ TALK ] [ CONT ]} 16:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

You seem to be positing that we should apply our standard rules unless the result conforms to social norms. It would be one thing to say we should not take conforming to social norms as a goal, but your phrasing suggests that disconformity should be our goal ("We need[...] to reach consensus that[...]does not conform to social norms." "consensus should not conform to social norms" "meaning of "neutral" here to be [...] non-conformity to social norms." Setting non-conformity as a goal rather than just as a likely outcome of true neutrality is non-neutral. It's stacking the deck. It's like saying I want to know the height of the average man, but I'll disallow any answers between 5'1" and 5'8". I don't know what the "something else" would be, I just know that the language you are putting forth appears to call for something else, if vague.

But then, there's a vagueness to your proposal that seems to be causing difficulty for those who wish to comment on it. Perhaps your suggestion might gain more traction if you could come up with a concrete example, Here's sentence V in article W that has the problem X, which could be addressed if we added language Y to MOS:Z., something like that. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

There are controversies within controversies in this. For one thing, there is considerable dispute about the terms "male" and "female" (specifically as being terms for sexes not genders, with "woman/girl" and "man/boy" being the latter, except of course to those with a denialist, transphobic bent, for whom the latter are also sex terms). And AFAB/AMAB is also controversial, because these terms originated in the sex assignment of biologically intergender babies, and describes a process of somewhat arbitrarily "assigning" a child to a particular sex category on the basis of whichever seems the closest fit based on detailed diagnosis (and largely in response to rather binary bureaucracy, which expects either F or M on a birth certificate). This is a process that doesn't apply to non-intersex babies, who are simply observed to have either female or male genitalia, not subjectively "assigned" something dubious. But the AFAB/AMAB terminology has been borrowed to mean something completely different to a subset of people, something highly socio-politicized. WP has to take care not to pick up and promote usage that is found primarily in activism materials and some journalism following them, but which does not agree with mainstream scientific usage and other writing that follows that.

Anyway, I agree with above comments that this "proposal" is too vague to very meaningfully evaluate. If there are problematic policy statements, they need to be specifically identified and some specific revisions to them suggested.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The use of 'infobox country' for fictitious states

It has always been my understanding that the intended purpose for infoboxes is to provide a summary of key non-controversial data for an article. It appears to me however that with regard to one particular article topic - so-called 'micronations' - this has not been the case, and that instead they have been systematically misused. Specifically, it has been common practice to use 'infobox country' for in these articles, despite the fact that the entities they describe are essentially fictitious entities, invariably lacking diplomatic recognition, and almost always lacking any property of an actual nation-state whatsoever, beyond those existing in the fertile imaginations of those promoting them. It seems to me to be self-evident that the use of an infobox otherwise reserved for real entities is liable to be misleading to our readership, many of whom may not take the time to read the entire article, and to (hopefully) discover that the 'country' being described has no basis in reality.

The 'micronations' topic has sadly been plagued for many years by promotional editing, the citation of dubious sources, dishonest representation of content from more reputable sources etc, etc, along with associated sockpuppetry, off-Wikipedia canvassing, and general abuse of the platform, and in my opinion the manner in which the use of the 'county' infobox has seemingly become standard practice appears to be a remnant of that.

To give a specific example, the Liberland 'micronation' is one of the more well-known and systematically-promoted of these supposed entities, with the consequence that the presence and/or content of the infobox in our article has been the subject of multiple ongoing disputes. Over the years, it has at various times been graced with all sorts of unsourced and/or otherwise untenable claims regarding everything from the size of the population (which is zero, as far as any credible source has ever reported) to the existence of a whole slew of self-appointed government officials (at least one of which was added by said 'official' himself), claims regarding 'official currencies' and 'official languages' and even a specific 'calling code' - the last at least labelled 'proposed' and citing a source, though the source itself fails to provide any evidence that a proposal has actually been made to anyone in a position to act upon it.

At various times, those supporting the use of the infobox in this content have made various arguments in its favour, most of which have come down to the questionable assertion that since the article describes the subject as a 'micronation', it isn't necessary to explain anything further, nor to use them for any other purpose than to present the partisan claims of those promoting the entity described. This seems to be disingenuous at best, if not outright dishonest, given that it relies on the readers careful reading and/or prior knowledge to counter the inherent bias in presenting what is essentially fiction as fact. It shouldn't be necessary to have to read an article to discover that one is being misled by the accompanying infobox.

Given the above concerns, I would have to suggest that the appropriate course of action would be for WP:RS, WP:NPOV etc, etc to be properly enforced, and that the systematic abuse of infoboxes in this context be dealt with - by explicit change of policy if that is needed - and that this misrepresentation be dealt with by removing these boxes of disinformation entirely. Infoboxes for countries should describe countries, not fantasy worlds, and they don't belong in artices describing the latter. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I completely agree. SportingFlyer T·C 15:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Some of them aren't even real micronations. Certes (talk) 16:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Just wondering… is the type of info someone would expect to see in an infobox for a micro-nation the same or different than what is standard in the country infobox we use for a recognized nation state?

I ask because I can see how having an infobox for these entities might be useful… but perhaps it should be a new, separate infobox, with different parameters. Blueboar (talk) 18:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Fictional locations should use Template:Infobox fictional location. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:35, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

The name of the template is almost meaningless in this discussion. It's just a name used to let other editors know what type of content it should be used on. If you look at the template's redirects you will also find Template:Infobox micronation which has been redirecting to it since 2013. The discussion that resulted in the removal of the infobox was short sighted. If you have issues with the data entered, handle it like we do any other piece of information. Gonnym (talk) 18:32, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Normally, we deal with 'information' that violates WP:RS, WP:NPOV etc by removing it entirely. Which is what I am proposing. The problem isn't the name of the infobox (I never suggested it was), the problem is the way a convention normally used for non-controversial fact is systematically being used to promote fiction. This is dishonest, and would remain so regardless of how the box of fictions was renamed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:43, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

If information added to the infobox is not verifiable or is not cited to reliable sources, that falls under policies like WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc. The name of the template of the infobox being used seems secondary. To use a parallel example, academic scholarship tends to regard the Book of Esther as being probably fictional, but the Esther (permalink) page's use of the "infobox person" template isn't a problem since the information it contains simply provides plot-and-analysis-relevant information about her in the narrative's setting. So if reliable sources don't say what Liberland's population is (to use your example), the Liberland infobox doesn't say it; if reliable sources don't say someone is part of Liberland's self-purported-but-unrecognized government, then they don't get added to the infobox.

I'm not seeing what policy needs to be changed. WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NPOV seem adequate for dealing with information added to infoboxes; the infobox and its name are secondary. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 18:50, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, here's a practical example: the infobox for Liberland stated that Vít Jedlička is 'President'. Is that verifiable? It is certainly verifiable that he describes himself thus, but should we be presenting such an unsupportable claim as if it is factual in an infobox? I'd say that it was a gross violation of WP:NPOV to present his claim that way - and that is essentially the only way these infoboxes are being used. Nothing they contain is uncontroversial fact, and given that empty boxes are useless, policy requires removal. Not endless arguments over sourcing, not endless addition of promotional BS. Removal. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's verifiable (at least for 2015). Gonnym (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

"...self-declared President Vit Jedlicka...". That doesn't make him a president. It makes him someone who calls himself one. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Micronations are not fictional, in that they're not in the domain of fiction drafted up by some writer or alt-history person. They're real claims of land, almost always completely BS. Despite their lack of recognition, micronations still have concrete claims of land area and population (haters may claim 0 isn't a population). They also have flags, insignia, mottos, anthems, etcetera. Anything that fails verification may be removed, but my opinion is that it should still have infoboxes. Liberland, in its infobox, said its status was an "unrecognized micronation", which I believe is sufficient to convey it has no diplomatic basis. The infobox should stay.

As mentioned, unverifiable information must be removed per V, RS, and NPOV. SWinxy (talk) 17:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

But, micronations are fictional in that they are inventions of someone's imagination. Sealand did manage to create a physical (but not a legal) presence by squatting for a while on an abandoned defense tower, but micronations in general have no physical or legal existance. Our articles about micronations are not about things that exist in the real world, they are about fictitious entities, no matter what claims their proponents put forth, Donald Albury 20:23, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

there are editors here who are peeved that people come from offsite to try to promote a microstate that they either like or maybe even have personal ties to, which is understandable. hitting upon the idea that the denial of a infobox somehow dilutes the legitimacy of the micronation status is just daft and petty. as long as it is clearly stated what they recognized/unrecognized status is, an infobox should be returned to the article. ValarianB (talk) 17:54, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

There's a lot of side points people are making but I think that a dedicated Micronation infobox would smooth much of the drama out. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

The other comments above have it exactly right. There seem to be a small cohort of editors who are just personally irked that a "fake" or "illegitimate" or inconsequential country can have a page of its own, let alone an infobox of its own. Of course, this is highly biased, especially when notability and reliability of sources guidelines have all been properly followed, and claims cited. Rather than recusing themselves of being editors of these articles, they're engaging in the opposite: starting proposals to remove infoboxes, etc.

Infoboxes are fundamentally summaries of basic information that one would find within the body of an article; plain and simple (it's in the name: it's a box with information that comes from the body of the article). They have no fancier or more stringent requirements than do the bodies of articles. Insofar as the body text of an article exists with properly cited sources, that same information can be summarized in an infobox, which is what is being done in every case on WP. Articles on micronations are no exception to this.

Regarding these arguments about "unsupportable claim": if the entire article is prefaced with the words "unrecognized nation" or the like, it's amply clear to anyone reading that the claims made by the entity in question in the article are disputed. This is hardly any different than the article on Taiwan claiming that it's a "country" when even the UN seemingly disagrees with them. There's variation in how much legitimacy there are to these claims, but insofar as these claims exist, what matters is whether they are notable and are verifiable (by way of secondary sources reporting on them); that's it—nothing else matters.

Finally, what's especially ridiculous is like the previous editor wrote, we're ultimately talking about a "Infobox micronation" template being used here. Why would there be a problem with a micronation article using an infobox made specifically for it? What other infoboxes should it be using if not the one tailor-made for it? Getsnoopy (talk) 20:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

While it would be a good thing if Wikipedia articles on 'micronations' made their unrecognised (and almost always entirely fictitious) status clear in the lede, there have been consistent efforts to prevent this (see e.g. this edit, and the edit summary [10]). And in any case, as I wrote above, it shouldn't be necessary to have to read an article to discover that one is being misled by the accompanying infobox. As for comparisons between Taiwan (population 24 million) and Liberland (population zero), I'd have to suggest the numbers speak for themselves. This isn't about diplomatic recognition, this is about entirely imaginary entities which have none of the attributes of a nation state at all. No population. No infrastructure. No economy. Nothing. Objectively, almost all are little more than websites with delusions of grandeur. Describing them as 'unrecognised' anythings is of itself misleading. They aren't 'unrecognised'. They are fictitious. Taiwan isn't. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:09, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

If there are problems with editors not including the per-verifiable-reliable-sources unrecognized status of a micronation in the lede, that seems like a content dispute matter about the lede rather than a policy question about infobox use. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 21:27, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

If people would actually address the policy question I have described here, rather than looking for ways to avoid it, we'd maybe get somewhere. I have so far seen nobody offer any sort of explanation as to why any infobox (on anything) should be allowed to present fringe and/or fictional promotional bullshit as if it is objective fact. That is what I am objecting to. Not because of the name of the infobox. And not because of the presence or absence of words elsewhere in the article. The 'information' in the infobox is misinformation. It violates core Wikipedia principles. Or if it doesn't please explain why. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

You haven't satisfactorily explained how the information is misinformation. No one would actually be misled by the claim that Vít Jedlička is the president of Liberland, for example. Micronations are "made up", but so are all nations. Removing the infobox just makes the relevant information harder for our readers to find. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:29, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Ditto; I couldn't have phrased it better. In the same way that the article on Middle-earth has an infobox that makes a bunch of claims without every one of those claims being prefixed with Warning: this is a fictitious claim, infoboxes about nations (whether micro- or not) do the same thing. The topic of the article might be fiction per se (but then again, all nations are fictitious like you said), but that doesn't matter; what matters is within the realm of that topic, whether the claims being made are true. This applies to literally every article that is about a human construct. Getsnoopy (talk) 06:48, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

"Micronations are "made up", but so are all nations." This is exactly the facile drivel that has blighted the topic for so long. Yes, nations-states are social constructs. That doesn't make them all equivalent under Wikipedia policy. Or under common sense. Try getting through US immigration with a Liberland passport, using the same arguments. You'd probably do as well by proclaiming yourself a Sovereign Citizen and citing Admiralty Law. Social constructs become real things, when people sufficient people collectively act on them. And, in the case of nation states, when they have the power to back it up. That's what a state is. That is how one recognises one. Not something that people believe should be one, but one with the means to enforce such a belief. The United States is a social construct. The USS Nimitz isn't. If people want to concoct a fantasy world where the existence of the Nimitz doesn't come into such questions, good for them. Just don't do it on Wikipedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:29, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you're flogging a straw man there. No-one is saying "Micronations are indistinguishable from internationally recognised countries". They are saying "There is no problem in stating the uncontroversial facts about a micronation using the same template as a country, provided that the infobox is clear about the status of the purported micronation". For what it's worth I wouldn't mind using Infobox: Country for Gondor or Narnia either, provided that it was entirely clear in the infobox what the status of the thing being described was. (I think it's also worth mentioning Transnistria, South Ossettia, SMOM, Northern Cyprus, even Taiwan against the idea that it's entirely clear and undisputed what is and isn't a country.) TSP (talk) 12:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

So how exactly is the infobox here "clear about the status of the purported micronation"? [11] The only indication in the infobox is the word 'micronation'. Add 'unrecognised', it gets removed (and the same thing has happened repeatedly in the article lede for that matter). And the arguments are almost always the same 'all nations are social constructs', 'it is all sourced' (it is, to the people promoting it), 'it says micronation so that makes it clear' (which it doesn't, since expecting readers to know what 'micronation' is supposed to mean isn't appropriate in a general-purpose encyclopaedia). And round and round it goes. Any excuse to make these fictions look more credible than any legitimate application of Wikipedia policy would permit. It's been going on for years. It is systematic. And in some cases (e.g. Liberland) it is being done by people with a direct financial interest in plugging their imaginary territory, along with associate cryptocurrencies and the rest. These things matter. They aren't just concoctions for entertainment. Not while e.g. the Government of Egypt has had to put out warnings about social media posts plugging 'Liberland' as a destination for emigration. [12] Wikipedia is being used to spread disinformation, for profit. And those being profited from are in such cases the most vulnerable, and worst place to take the loss. We don't plug snake oil. We don't plug Sovereign Citizen 'Admiralty Law'. Why are we plugging 'micronations'? How are they any different? AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:42, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

It's interesting that you mention "snake oil". The page for Medical uses of silver does have an infobox for colloidal silver, and there is an infobox on the Bates Method page. As with micronations, I don't quite see how summarizing information in an infobox constitutes "plugging", as you say. We aren't plugging books, politicians, or tropical storms by summarizing their data in infoboxes. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Then that's a totally different thing. I certainly was never against adding the word "Unrecognized" in the Infobox because it's right there in the lead of the article; it would be silly for someone to be against putting that information in the Infobox. That's an entirely separate point from whether the Infobox per se should exist, let alone on all micronation articles. This seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Getsnoopy (talk) 19:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

• It's very clear that AndyTheGrump has a problem with micronations. There is nothing wrong with that. What however is a problem is the battleground attitude displayed above in attempting to impose that point of view on Wikipedia articles in multiple ways. We are not "plugging" micronations any more than we are "plugging" South Ossetia, Taiwan, Microsoft Windows, Book of Genesis, Kim Kardashian, Al-Qaida, Church of Scientology, Sovereign Military Order of Malta or anything else by having an article on them. If the subject is notable then we should have a neutral, factual article about it and there is no problem with having an infobox on that article. Which infobox to use is dependent entirely on which is best suited to display the appropriate information, nothing else. Thryduulf (talk) 13:51, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  I also have a problem with the way micronations are promoted on Wikipedia. There is an ongoing effort to treat micronations as equivalent to real nation-states. Yes, some micronations are notable, in that there is abundant, independent coverage, as is the case for Sealand or the Conch Republic, where there are/were real-world events, but one was a pirate radio, and the other is an ongoing publicity campaign to promote tourism. Many other micronations are fantasies, with "coverage" being largely self-generated or no better than "mainstream" sources repeating press releases. Micronations have no legal existance, and, in most cases, no real-world presence, yet their proponents have repeatedly tried to present them as real nation-states. Donald Albury 14:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

  Donald Albury puts it well. Using the country infobox helps validate those who want to believe that this bullshit is real and makes it harder to edit in an already contentious area. SportingFlyer T·C 12:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

So pointing out on WP:VPP that policy has been systematically violated is 'battleground behaviour' is it? Nice way to shut a conversation down... AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:02, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Articles cannot be exclusively sourced to self-published sources, that is entirely clear. If there are instances of that, fantastic, please propose them for deletion. But if they're being picked up by mainstream media, sorry, we follow that, even if you believe that they're just repeating press releases. I'm not clear which policy you think has been systematically violated here.

I absolutely agree that these articles need to be clear on the status of the institutions depicted, but I'm not really sure what that has to do with use of infoboxes. It kind of feels like you're trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS here? There's no evidence in the Egyptian article you posted above that people believing Liberland is a recognised country has any connection to to do with Wikipedia - especially not English Wikipedia, as it's stated that most of the discussion is in Arabic.

On how to make status clear, This seems fine? 'Micronation' in the heading; 'Status: Unrecognized micronation' in the body; 'Area claimed' and similar in describing attributes; 'Liberland ... is an unrecognised micronation' and 'Liberland has no diplomatic recognition from any recognized nation' in the article lead. Looks good to me. TSP (talk) 14:10, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

The purpose of an infobox is to quickly summarize key facts for the reader, and I agree that use of the Nation infobox results in a misleading outcome. What we include in the template listing micronations includes failed historical rebellions, municipal publicity stunts, and Liberland-style entities. It is not clear to me that the sources treat all of these things as of a kind, as we do. An infobox for the third type of micronation should indicate at the top that it is about an "Unrecognized Micronation" - arguably a bit redundant, but "Micronation" is not a commonly understood term, and too easily confused with "Microstate". I think the relevant fields would be "Claimed by", to identify the people or group promoting its existence, "Dates claimed", for the period it was promoted, and "Area claimed", with a map. Attempts to fill in the other fields in the Nation infobox invariably result in an infobox that misleads the reader more than it informs by leaving the reader with an impression that this is a genuine state, and puts undue weight on aspects that are trivial in this conext, like flags, mottos, and currency, in a way that is out of step with the body of reliable sources.--Trystan (talk) 14:17, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

If infobox country was forked to infobox micronation, or if infobox fictional location was used instead of infobox country, would the reader even know it? I don't think the name of the infobox matters to readers. Levivich (talk) 16:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

The Sealand infobox below looks good to me. Using an {{infobox micronation}} with parameters that reflect the actual key components of micronations (which are not the same as the key components of countries), and that accurately label those components ("area claimed" etc) makes sense. Levivich (talk) 03:32, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

No infobox. Using an infobox identical to that of actual countries is putting the micronation's unrecognized claims in wikivoice, which is not compliant with NPOV. Infobox country params were chosen because they are considered to be the most unifying, fundamental data and are reliably released through official government (or scholarly/NGO/tertiary) publications for all nations. They are inherently DUE because they are expected to be reported widely in high-quality RS.

These infobox country params for micronations can NOT be expected to have the same level of robust, official/RS sourcing, and in fact most would require attribution or context when in the article body. They are no more inherently fundamental to the topic than a glossary of trivia/maps at the end of any fantasy book, and there is certainly no expectation of uniform attention or treatment from sources across all of what we call "micronations". JoelleJay (talk) 00:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I can think of nothing more fundamental to a micronation than claims of location, area, population, founder(s) and leader(s) (flag(s) are also common to both but not essential to either) - i.e. the same information as for countries. Infoboxes, whether for country or micronation, simply state in wikivoice what the verifiable claims are, not how truthful or generally accepted they are. Absolutely all of your objections can be overcome by simply noting clearly in the article lead and infobox that the subject is a micronation - and we already do that. We even wikilink the term "micronation" so that those who are unfamilar with it can learn. Thryduulf (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

• 2 questions (not directed at any specific editor)… 1) Which parameters currently included in the country infobox would we have to remove if we created a separate micro-nations infobox? and 2) What parameters would we have to add if we were to create a separate micro-nations infobox? Blueboar (talk) 01:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

An infobox treats the micronation as if such details are always reasonable to report at all. If a given detail would simply be primary-sourced trivia that doesn't belong in the body of the article, we should not be emphasizing it in the infobox. Different micronations will have different amounts and quality of sourcing for any of their claimed attributes; even if those attributes are verifiable, they may be nothing more than fancruft with strictly in-universe relevance to the topic. And yet if a parameter can be filled it will be. The fact that "micronations" is so similar to "microstates" just makes an infobox even more misleading. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If information isn't covered in secondary sources, aren't the policies for talking about that WP:N and WP:V? I don't really understand what's being asked for. If there isn't verifiable and due information that is due and can be summarized in an infobox, then an infobox can be foregone. If there is verifiable and due information in the body that can be summarized in an infobox, then an infobox is fine and even appropriate. Existing policies seem plenty sufficient, and I don't see a need for some explicit change in policy specifying micronation topics. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 02:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Editors very frequently see infoboxes as forms to fill in with anything remotely verifiable regardless of how relevant or BALASP it is to the topic. JoelleJay (talk) 04:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Then the “form” should only have fields that are “relevant to the topic” for the editors to fill in. What would those fields be for a micro-nation? Blueboar (talk) 12:31, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

• Founder(s)
• Location(s)
• Capital(s)
• Area
• Population
• Dates active
• Website
• Leaders
• Form of government
• Flag
• Anthem
• Motto
• Official language(s)

Not every micronation has all of those things, they are all relevant (when they can be reliably sourced) for the ones that do. This is wholly a subset of the parameters of template:Infobox country and almost(?) all the ones that aren't included are things that (afaik) no micronation has (things like GDP, Gini, driving side, cctld, ISO codes, international calling code, patron saint, etc) so can't be included regardless of whether the parameter exists or not. Thryduulf (talk) 13:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

In the past there has been a similar debate about the amount of detail to add to churches. From the introduction to {{Infobox church}}: Churches vary from small chapels to large cathedrals; from corrugated iron sheds to architectural masterpieces of international importance. This template has to be adaptable to the worship locations of all religious denominations and as a consequence, it has many parameters. It is therefore important that editors exercise discretion in selecting an appropriate number of parameters. If the infobox for a particular church becomes excessive WP:BOLD applies and less significant parameters should be removed. Could a similar caveat to the talk page be applied here? We don't need more templates, we need more selective use of them. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If a given detail would simply be primary-sourced trivia that doesn't belong in the body of the article, we should not be emphasizing it in the infobox An infobox summarises the body of the article. If something is not in the body of the article, for whatever reason, then it shouldn't be in the infobox. Whether something is "trivia" is a matter of subjective opinion, if editors disagree then seek consensus on the talk page, seeking additional input (e.g. WP:30) if necessary. Whether something is primary sourced or not is irrelevant - primary sources are entirely unproblematic (and sometimes desirable) for simple factual information and WP:ABOUTSELF material (which covers most of what infoboxes cover). Secondary sources are required to demonstrate notability, but if the topic isn't notable it shouldn't have an article (with or without an infobox), if a topic is notable enough for an article then there is no reason for it not to have an infobox. Thryduulf (talk) 02:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

This is put better than I could've said it. I'm inclined to Thryduulf's sense of the matter. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 02:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I am arguing that which "simple factual and ABOUTSELF" material is actually encyclopedic enough for an infobox is far too variable and inconsistently relevant for micronations. There is plenty of factual, verifiable-in-RS info available for almost all members of some groups that still doesn't make it into infobox params because editors have determined it is not vital info on that topic. Like an actor's eye or hair color. Why shouldn't the considerations that led to those facts being excluded from a particular infobox be repeated here, for a group where it is not clear if any parameters are expected to be integral details for many members? A micronation's "national anthem" could have the same broad sourcing as that of a real country, or it could exist in name only sourced to an offhand comment in an interview and not actually represent a real song. JoelleJay (talk) 04:54, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Your problem is not with infoboxes, it is a content dispute with other editors. The way to resolve a content dispute regarding what should be in a specific infobox is to discuss the content with other editors at the article concerned and then abide by the consensus reached. Trying to remove infoboxes from all micronation articles because you disagree with the content of some of them is exactly the same as, and exactly as inappropriate as, trying to remove infoboxes from all articles about actors because you think eye colour and height are trivia that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Whether something is primary sourced or not is irrelevant - primary sources are entirely unproblematic (and sometimes desirable) for simple factual information and WP:ABOUTSELF material (which covers most of what infoboxes cover). The article still needs to comply with WP:ASPECT. The information given prominence in the infobox doesn't need to be merely verifiable, but should be presented in a way that "treats each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." For micronations, I think the fields that would generally be emphasized by sources are who promoted it, where it was claimed, and when it was claimed. Everything else, including the purported structure of its government, population, etc. is either not likely to meet WP:ASPECT or requires too much qualification and explanation to be easily summarized in an infobox field.--Trystan (talk) 15:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Everything about your comment is a matter for consensus among editors at the talk page of the individual article, because what weight is due will be different in every case (for example, location is a more important aspect of Liberland than Independent State of Rainbow Creek). It's not a reason to remove infoboxes from micronationa generally. Thryduulf (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't suoport removing infoboxes from micronation articles. As set out in my comments above, I support the creation of an infobox for micronations that has fields and labels that are generally appropriate for micronations: "Claimed by", to identify the people or group promoting its existence, "Dates claimed", for the period it was promoted, and "Area claimed", with a map.--Trystan (talk) 18:56, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see the need to fork the country infobox given that fields relevant to micronations are a complete subset, and there isn't any promotion happening, no NPOV violation, or any other reason why we need to batter readers over the head at every opportunity that micronations are not countries. If they are reading an article about a micronation, that explicitly says its a micronation, that links to the article explaining micronations, etc, then its already clear enough without needing to insult their intelligence or fear that "proper" countries might get infected, or whatever other reason there is for the hate displayed here. Thryduulf (talk) 22:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

How do you think infobox parameters are chosen? JoelleJay (talk) 22:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Which parameters are chosen for the template or chosen to be filled in on a given article? For the former, template editors and maintainers tend to include all that are relevant for a substantial number in the relevant set. For the latter, a consensus of editors at the individual article. I don't get why you are asking that though? Thryduulf (talk) 22:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

template editors and maintainers tend to include all that are relevant for a substantial number in the relevant set. I am arguing that we have not yet determined the set of "which parameters are relevant" for micronations. If we are to have infoboxes for them at all, the parameters need to be chosen based on what has actually been treated as "fundamental" info by independent secondary RS, not what we assume would be fundamental through analogy with real countries. JoelleJay (talk) 00:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Without wading into every side argument in this, I'm going to support the notion that this template should not be used for any fictitious country or for any alleged micronation that is not treated as a real country in numerous independent reliable sources. For disputed territories, break-away republics, occupied territories that were formerly countries, etc., there should be a criterion that it have (or at the time had - some of these will be articles on historical polities/nations) an actual functional government, not just a declaration of a rebellion or whatever. It's not WP's job to "label" things as countries/nations/states that the majority of pertinent RS do not treat that way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Using infobox country does not label the subject as a country, see for example Sealand and Austenasia. Thryduulf (talk) 00:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

This is one of those issues where I really wish Wikipedia had some basic capacity for user testing. My strong suspicion is that a group of users shown those two infoboxes, and then asked to describe what they think those things are, would largely come away with the impression that they are real, functioning governments of places. Which would be clear evidence that the purpose of the infobox, to summarize the key features of the page's subject, is not being met.--Trystan (talk) 01:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Aerial view of Sealand in 1999

Do you really believe that most readers, if shown an infobox that contains this image, with this caption, would largely come away with the impression that they are real, functioning governments of places?

If so, then I suspect that user testing for the opening paragraphs would produce equally disheartening results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Principality of Sealand
Unrecognized micronation
Aerial view of Sealand in 1999
Claimed by	Paddy Roy Bates, Michael Bates
Dates claimed	1967 to present
Area claimed	Offshore platform off the coast of England

In that one case, the picture might well give them pause. At the same time, the presentation of the infobox is saying, "Here are the key features you need to know about this topic: this place has a flag, a coat of arms, a motto, an anthem, it's a constitutional monarchy, it's led by a prince...". By contrast, an infobox that summarizes the actual key points of the topic, as framed in the article and supported by the sources, would leave little possibity for confusion. Those fields are not the same as the available fields in Infobox Country, and that is true in general for micronation articles.--Trystan (talk) 03:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

You mean the presentation of the infobox, with "Micronation" at the top equal in size to the title and titles such as "purported currency", no population figure and a size of "approximately 1 acre" might might not leave people with enough of an impression of how much disdain for the subject they should have or they might confuse it for a "real" country? I don't buy it. Remember that NPOV applies to everything, regardless of how real or important we personally think something should be. Thryduulf (talk) 04:10, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Does the infobox I proposed convey disdain? I don't see how. I think a NPOV approach requires us to highlight the unrecognized status (and often complete lack of de facto existence) of these entities as their single most important defining feature, but that is to comply with WP:ASPECT. I personally don't feel disdain for them.

But I'm happy to turn to addressing the specific points you raise, and why I think the infobox I have proposed presents a more accurate, neutral, and clear summary of these topics than the current application of Infbox Country. "Micronation" as a term is uncommon, recent, and easily confused with microstate. Readers can't click on every link in an article, so I don't think adding the clarifying word "unrecognized" is undue. For size, yes, Sealand is small, but most micronations are not distinguishable from microstates based on size. I don't think it is reasonable for a reader to be expected to notice that population is missing from the Sealand infobox, or to make any inferences from that fact. The notion of what is meant by "population" for a micronation is inherently unclear (c.f. Glacier Republic), so I don't think that is a meaningful field for micronations generally. "Purported currency" is probably the best field label in the current application of Infobox Country, but from reviewing several micronation articles, I haven't found one where the purported currency is actually a key feature of the subject. Clarifying that the currency is "purported" is good, but then why are we not similarly qualifying the statement that the organizational structure and various other aspects are also merely "purported"?--Trystan (talk) 14:13, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

It certainly comes across as disdainful even if thats not what you intended. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:47, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think WP:DUE applies here too. Putting the flag and crest of Sealand in an infobox isn't neutral. SportingFlyer T·C 14:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. I don’t necessarily disagree that an infobox could be useful on these articles, but mimicking the trade dress of legitimate country infoboxes serves to mislead. I also find it misleading to fill in the “Government” fields like “President” and “Minister of Finance”. The people self-appointed to these roles are not at all what readers will understand a president or minister to be. Words have meanings. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

What about a generic "People" or "Key people" category like we use with companies? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Who are we to decide who is and who isn't a legitimate holder of a title? Once we start doing that for micronations we also have to start doing it for states with limited recognition, and for "proper" countries where there are disputed claims to the legitimate government. Thryduulf (talk) 16:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I don't think this is a slippery slope... Sealand is not Kosovo and this wouldn't establish any sort of consensus or precedent for those vastly different categories of articles. I don't think its a question of legitimacy, we can still have the full title in the article after all, but a question of due weight. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:44, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Sealand is not Kosovo, but it is all one continuum from serious but non-notable micronations through to micronations that actually control some tiny territory (e.g. Sealand), to nations that control non-trivial territory but are unrecognised by everyone, to those that are recognised by a few, to those that are recognised by most. Then there are entities like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Holy See, that don't neatly fit anywhere on the continuum. Thryduulf (talk) 16:59, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

This is my concern as well. Much of the thread has circulated around emphasizing what is "official" and "real", but the "official" and "real" are not nearly so uncontroversial as implied. If "unrecognised micronation" in the lede isn't clarifying enough, then as another example is "Native American reservation" too unclear and unusual a term for Navajo Nation? Someone without familiarity with of U. S. history might plausibly not know what reservation means in the context of nation-state sovereignty. Should the "infobox settlement" of the Navajo Nation not resemble that of a country so much, with its capital, government, population, GDP, etc.? P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 17:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Navajo Nation is a legally-defined entity whose governance and land claims are recognized by the US. There is no similarity here between it and an micronations which by definition do not have legal recognition. JoelleJay (talk) 23:01, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Except some micronations do have some legal recognition, as noted elsewhere in this thread. Thryduulf (talk) 01:12, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Where are these examples of micronations with legal recognition? Note that diplomatic recognition is limited to sovereign states. JoelleJay (talk) 03:51, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

"Sovereign state" is not black and white. For example, Libreland has recognition from Somaliliand, which has recognition from Taiwan, which has recognition from multiple indisputably sovereign states. The Sealand article claims "de-facto recognition" from the UK and Germany. Where do you draw the line? Thryduulf (talk) 11:12, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Just a note that whole Taiwan extends legal and other forms of recognition to Somaliland they do not extend diplomatic recognition. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:31, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that the Navajo Nation has no diplomatic recognition but does have legal recognition. No matter how hard you try, it is not simple. Thryduulf (talk) 19:26, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I draw the line at "most recent sources call this a micronation"! It's not that hard. JoelleJay (talk) 18:41, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Note that legal and diplomatic recognition are completely different things, take for example Taiwan which enjoys legal recognition from far more counties than it enjoys diplomatic recognition. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:27, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

No it is not a continuum, the cutoff for what is a micronation is its designation as a micronation in RS. No one here is arguing about anything other than micronations, so entities that have not been widely described as micronations are irrelevant. However, the diversity you note among what have been classed as micronations is precisely why the country infobox is inappropriate to use, as there is too much variation in coverage and topic relevance of most of the parameters. JoelleJay (talk) 23:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

The point is that what is a micronation and what isn't is not black and white. There is no more variation among micronations than there is among countries and other entities that don't fit neatly into either category. Thryduulf (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

"Legal recognition as a state by sovereign states" is pretty black and white. And there certainly is far more variation among micronations in whether any particular infobox parameter can be filled and sourced to IRS coverage at all, let alone coverage demonstrating it is a fundamental aspect of the micronation. JoelleJay (talk) 03:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Legal recognition as a state by sovereign states is very much not black and white - see the lead of Sovereign state. Everything else is irrelevant to whether there should be an infobox and if so what it should be called as explained by multiple people multiple times in this discussion already. Thryduulf (talk) 11:17, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

This doesn’t need to be complicated. If reliable sources don’t treat it as a real country, then us treating it as a real country would be undue promotion of a fringe perspective. The existence of a continuum does not seem to prevent sources from clearly distinguishing the things at the opposite ends of the continuum. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:25, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, what is the objective definition of a "real country"? Secondly, explain how us including information in an infobox (but not the article) about a "non-real" country is promotion but including the same information about a "real" unrecognised country isn't. Thryduulf (talk) 12:47, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I suggest that a real country is whatever reliable sources treat as a real country. We don’t need to get into any deep epistemological debate here - we just need to follow the sources. The due weight of reliable sources clearly treat micronations as something quite distinct from what the majority of readers will recognise as countries, and also distinct from other types of disputed regions.

I mentioned trade dress above because even completely factual information can serve to mislead if packaged in a form with a strong association with a thing that is clearly different. This is one of the reasons we wouldn’t use Template:Chembox on Dilithium (Star Trek). Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:21, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Exactly this. WP is not the arbiter of what is and isn't a country, let alone the extent of its legitimacy. Hence, it refers to them using neutral language and just presents the facts as they are: "hey, it's a country, but an unrecognized one according to so and so reliable sources." Nothing more, nothing less. I'm not sure why this discussion is veering toward "what will users think? will they think it's a real country?"

Just for context, Liberland has full diplomatic recognition from Somaliland, which is an unrecognized (though not micro-) nation itself but has a large land area with actual people living in it and such. It is an insult to all the people living there and their government (which, mind you, operates in basically exactly the same way as does that of Kosovo) to say that "WP doesn't think Liberland is a country, so that's what's real" when they obviously thought it is and decided to enter into relations with it. Getsnoopy (talk) 19:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

No one is saying WP should decide what is or isn't a country. We are going by what the sources say, and if they designate an entity as a micronation then that means we do too. Micronations are definitionally not legally-recognized by sovereign states and thus are definitionally not classified the same as any of the other types of non-sovereign polities that have been mentioned so far. From our own article: Micronations are aspirant states that claim independence but lack legal recognition by world governments or major international organisations.[5][6] Micronations are classified separately from states with limited recognition and quasi-states, nor are they considered to be autonomous or self-governing as they lack the legal basis in international law for their existence.[7] While some are secessionist in nature, most micronations are widely regarded as sovereignty projects that instead seek to mimic a sovereign state rather than to achieve international recognition, and their activities are almost always trivial enough to be ignored rather than challenged by the established nations whose territory they claim
Sources do not treat them as "real" countries and neither should we. JoelleJay (talk) 23:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

It is my opinion that we will have another shouting match about the definition of a micronation if Liberand manages to get diplomatic recognition from the Javier Milei Government in Argentina, who had previously vocally supported Liberland.

Furthermore, if you search Liberland on YouTube and set it to show recent results, you will find dozens of videos of people settling Liberland starting from mid-August 2023. At the very least, one can see the Liberlanders permanently parked a houseboat on there, and selling accommodation for $100/night on said houseboat. (Check their website.) This brings the question, does Liberland really fit in the definition of a micronation presented above? 2001:4430:4141:7BBE:0:0:81D:C0A4 (talk) 03:57, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

If Argentina formally recognizes Liberland and sources state it is no longer a micronation, we can revisit its classification on wikipedia. JoelleJay (talk) 04:02, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Here are some items related to how Croatia views Liberland, for future reference:

Document UP/I-216-04-23-01/1873 (expulsion of an EU national): “[Vít Jedlička] as the creator of the idea and the project of the parastatal entity [of Liberland]… . ”

Document: NK UP/I-216-04-23-04/192 (expulsion of a non-EU national): “The given area is claimed by a Czech citizen Vít Jedlička as the state of Liberland and the proponents of the parastatal entity…” 2001:4430:4121:E806:0:0:DE5:F0AC (talk) 04:10, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The following link contains the reply of the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a Liberlander letter-writing effort in 2023. One can say that this means that Croatia views Liberland a mere trivial project, or on the flip side that it warrants enough attention for an official reply.

https://liberland.org/en/news/522-liberland-responds-to-croatian-foreign-ministry 2001:4430:4121:E806:0:0:DE5:F0AC (talk) 04:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I completely disagree. When an organisation/similar has a visual emblem, displaying it in the article is absolutely DUE, and the infobox is a suitable place for that where one exists. Thryduulf (talk) 16:18, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

When the organization is fictional, using visual emblems make it look like the organization actually exists. SportingFlyer T·C 09:42, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Firstly micronations are not fictional, but even if they were that wouldn't be a reason not to display their emblem in an infobox, see e.g. Umbrella Corporation, S.H.I.E.L.D., Department of Extranormal Operations, H.A.M.M.E.R., SPECTRE, ... Thryduulf (talk) 11:24, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Those aren't WP:FRINGE though. WP:PROFRINGE clearly applies here. SportingFlyer T·C 13:22, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Why would documenting the existence of an unrecognized micronation and its visual logo be promotion? It seems like a mainstream point of view that Sealand and Liberland exist as human phenomena, and they have coverage in relevant news media. The views that are fringe are their claims of sovereignty, and the pages don't promote those claims of sovereignty; the pages report that they have claimed sovereignty and report those claims have gone unrecognized. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 13:54, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Policies discourage this: if the only statements about a fringe theory come from the inventors or promoters of that theory, then "What Wikipedia is not" rules come into play. This would include flags and seals, I would imagine. SportingFlyer T·C 15:44, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

If the existence of a micronation is unestablished by RS, then the quoted policy applies and we shouldn't have an article about it. If RS confirm the existence of the micronation, even if it's only as a micronation, then its graphical symbols should be usable even if they are only based on the micronation's own data. Animal lover |666| 18:37, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

On what grounds? WP:FRINGE explicitly disallows that. SportingFlyer T·C 18:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

FRINGE does not disallow the neutral reporting of factual information about a fringe topic. Using an organisation's own symbols on an article about that organisation that explicitly puts the status of that organisation into context (and having "unrecognised micronation" in big letters does do that) is neutrally reporting the factual information about that organisation. Including such symbols in other articles will be UNDUE in almost every case I can immediately think of (List of micronations being an exception) but that's a different matter.

NAMBLA is a notable organisation that promotes a fringe POV (that could lead to real-world harm, unlike anything to do with micronations), yet there is no suggestion that using their logo in the infobox about them violates either guideline you quote (or the WP:NPOV policy to which it relates). Indeed not using an organisation's logo (where there are no venerability or copyright issues) could be argued to be contrary to NPOV. Thryduulf (talk) 19:45, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh come on, NAMBLA's logo is infamous and widely reported in RS. In contrast, the various details and visual paraphernalia that can be associated with micronations in general rarely get mentioned anywhere besides the micronation's own website/publications. JoelleJay (talk) 20:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Mentions/inclusions of the flag of Liberland in reliable sources include: CNN, The Japan Times, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, EUObserver, and Vice. Thryduulf (talk) 21:16, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I said in general, for the full set of params, not "specifically the logo of arguably the second-most famous micronation". JoelleJay (talk) 21:28, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

So what does "in general" mean then? What is the objective standard that defines when including a micronations symbols is "fringe" and when it isn't? Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

whoever added the infobox proposal to the right, i'd support that. restore a box, but redesign it so it doesn't copy the nation infobox style, layout, and fields. ValarianB (talk) 16:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I think it doesn't really matter, tbh, as long as the infobox conveys the info, the status of the entity in question. Selfstudier (talk) 17:07, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Interesting issue, and one I had not previously considered. It appears to me that the essence of the discussion is whether the decision to use the country infobox at all is effectively a communicating non-neutral editorial viewpoint. I think that on balance I mostly fall in line with those concerned that the country infobox serves to give an inaccurrate impression of micronations. The modified box modeled on this page would be acceptable. I share the concerns voiced here that the infobox by its very nature is intended to summarize and convey the essential facts of the topic. For micronations, the most essential fact is that it lacks status recognized by any other entity and the box should instantly make this apparent to the reader. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 15:32, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

It’s simpler than that … having an infobox in an WP article is simply a way to provide information about the topic in an organized format… it does not confer “legitimacy” on that topic.

That said… when it comes to micronations, while I do think having some information presented in infobox format is useful, I agree that there is a valid discussion to be had over what information should be provided in that infobox. Blueboar (talk) 15:43, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the point that several other editors that "micronation" should almost always be prefaced with "undrecognized." I don't think it's a fair expectation that a general readership inherently knows the difference between a micronation and the European microstates.

On infoboxes: like it or not, they are perceived a certain way by the general WP readership in my opinion. That perception being that it's the bare facts of a subject, and the ultimate form of wikivoice. So real care needs to be taken into consideration on what information gets included. I picked a random micronation I remember reading about, Principality of Hutt River, which also happened to be one of the more "real" ones before it was ended. I think it's overall okay at presenting information neutrally, but are things like an anthem, motto, ethnic groups, time zone essential to understanding an Australian's oddball tax evasion scheme (with apologies to the memory of HM Prince Leonard)? At best it's crufty, and at worst it adds to the presentation of the subject as "real" as the general readership perceives it. Seltaeb Eht (talk) 00:52, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I wonder why the |status= parameter isn't used more in these infoboxes. Something like |status = unrecognized micronation with links, or even a plain English summary like |status = failed attempt to start a new country would likely be appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Such is stating unrecognized or generally rejected claims as fact in the voice of Wikipedia. Should not be done. Infoboxes should only (explicitly or implicitly) include undisputed facts because they are too brief to include anything that needs explanatoin, calibration or attribution. North8000 (talk) 19:07, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Use Template:Infobox fictional location for micro "nations" just like we presently do with Land of Oz, Camelot, Gotham City and 556 other fictional countries. This useful template gives information for micro nation believers and aficionados while making it clear to the general reader an article is not describing a real country. If this bothers them, said "nations" can send their navies to San Francisco to bombard Wikimedia's offices.--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 19:44, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Micronations are not fictional though, so that would be completely inappropriate. Thryduulf (talk) 19:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

@North8000 so why do the infoboxes for places like Taiwan, Northern Cyprus and Guyana present statements about the country's area that are the subject of disputes? Thryduulf (talk) 19:49, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Inappropriate to use a different infobox or inappropriate to sortie their fleets and deploy their armies?

In any event, if they're real countries, they can get Interpol to arrest @AndyTheGrump for opening this libelous useful discussion. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 19:51, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

It is decidedly not NPOV to describe a non-fictional entity as fictional. Whether or not they are "real" countries (whatever that means) is not relevant - it is unarguable (at least in the cases I'm familiar with) that they claim to be countries and so we report those claims neutrally and report the status of those claims (i.e. who recognises them, etc) neutrally too. Thryduulf (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Agree. And if that explanation / clarficiation / context won't fit in the info box, IMO the item should be left out of the info box. North8000 (talk) 21:05, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

We don't put the explanation of the status of claims about/by "real" countries in their infoboxes, indeed we're far more explicit about the status of micronations in the infobox than we are about places like Cook Islands, Northern Cyprus, Ingushetia, Wa State, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: I would recommend changing all of those. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:03, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Then, per List of territorial disputes you should be recommending removing the area from the majority of "real" countries. Thryduulf (talk) 21:19, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Of course I don't have a recommendation that would be tidy. And degree of acceptence would also be a factor. But, as a note, specifying an area of the country is not directly weighing in on the disputes which affect the area.North8000 (talk) 21:32, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

So if specifying disputed facts is not weighing in on the dispute for a "real" country, why is it for micronations? It is generally accepted as fact that Taiwan claims the area controlled by the PRC even though it doesn't have de facto control over that area, it is generally accepted as fact that Liberland claims the area not claimed by either Croatia or Serbia even though it doesn't have de facto control over that area, it is generally accepted as fact that the Hutt River Principality claimed 75km² of land on the Australian continent even though it is at best debatable whether it had any de facto control over that area, it is generally accepted as fact that Ukraine claims the area of Crimea even though it does not have de facto control over that area. The basis for the claims differ, as does who disputes them and why, but they are all disputed. Thryduulf (talk) 22:40, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not pretending to have a tidy answer, I'm just discussing considerations. Let's say that somebody claims that Rhode Island is an independent country and not a part of the USA. If in the USA article it discussed the State of Rhode Island, that is a pretty clear claim that Rhode Island is a part of the USA. And if in the Rhode Island article, there is an an infobox titled "Republic of Rhode Island" that is a pretty clear implicit claim that it is a country. But if in the USA article, the the listed total area of the USA includes the area of Rhode Island, thast is not such a clear claim/statement that Rhode Island is a part of the USA. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I support the idea that vanity projects do not deserve to be treated (and infoboxed) the same way as real states. The Banner talk 09:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Compare the infoboxes of Israel (a real country with recognition by most, but not all, UN members) and Principality of Hutt River (a micronation). The former has fields "Area" (with footnotes due to the territorial dispute) and "Currency", while the latter has "Area claimed" and "Purported currency". And the latter says "Micronation" at the top, which the former doesn't. Animal lover |666| 14:47, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Moving forward

Based on the above discussion, it looks like there may be a consensus, but a formal RFC would be needed to test that theory. Would the options of keeping Infobox Country and adopting the micronation infobox proposed above be suitable? Does anyone have any suggested changes to the proposed infobox first?--Trystan (talk) 14:57, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I would oppose changes, because it's simply not necessary (micronation infoboxes and articles already make everything perfectly clear while maintaining NPOV) and the proposed version is less useful - particularly the "claimed by" field makes it appear that the claimants were working in partnership whereas in reality one is the successor of the other. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The "claimed by" label should read "initiators", "proponents" or "founders" or something to that effect. A "claimed by" label can be read to suggest that the initiators are claiming the territory for themselves, which not all of them do. Freetown Christiania for example, one of the only two or three micronations with real and lasting cultural significance, was very emphatically not "claimed by" anyone.

Renaming "area claimed" to "location" would generally lead to shorter descriptions and easier consensus.

A "type" label of sorts describing the raison d'être might be worth considering. Freetown Christiania was an intentional community; this is the most important thing to know about the project besides its location and approximate extent in time. Kugelmugel was an art project. The Hutt River Province was a political statement. The Kingdom of Elleore is a private leisure activity. The OWK is a business venture. The raison d'être is generally the most important property of any of the handful of micronations that actually matter. (The only possible exception I can think of is Sealand, whose most important property may have been the fact that it had a colourable (if ultimately insufficient) claim to independence.)

I believe it is important to make a clear distinction, on the infobox level, between micronations with real political or cultural impact on the one hand, business enterprises that just barely meet technical notability requirements on the other. People have already pointed out that many readers absolutely will read a country box as a low-grade certificate of legitimacy and that it therefore is a stealth NPOV violation to stick normal country boxes on sleazebag affinity scams like Liberland. A dedicated micronation box will help; a type label of some sort will help further. GR Kraml (talk) 16:07, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

"Proponents" and "Location" sound good to me. I agree that a "Type" field would be useful, as the subjects we describe as micronations variously include failed rebellions and self-described publicity stunts. In some cases, "Type" might be difficult to determine from available sources, but it could always be left blank on a case-by-case basis. What would you suggest for what I had as "Dates claimed"? Something like "Dates promoted"? Or just "Dates", but then it is potentially unclear whether we are talking about the period during which it was promoted or the period of its de facto existence (if any).--Trystan (talk) 17:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "type" would have to be left blank in some cases and I don't mind.

Either "dates claimed" or "dates promoted" should be fine. "Dates claimed" doesn't have the legal ambiguity issue that "claimed by" has, and if you're not the product of a formal claim of some sort you're probably not a micronation.

I agree that "dates" alone is bad. In micronations that have permanent residents or that come with long-lasting non-resident communities attached to them, the community as such can (and often does) start earlier and end later than the claim to sovereignty. GR Kraml (talk) 18:23, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Here are the different types of infobox side-by-side (hopefully my bodged formatting works, please fix it if it doesn't).

Infobox country with micronation parameter	Infobox country without micronation parameter	Proposed custom infobox
Principality of Sealand Micronation Flag Coat of arms Motto: E Mare Libertas (Latin) "From the sea, Freedom" Anthem: "From the sea, Freedom" Aerial view of Sealand in 1999 Organizational structure Constitutional monarchy Prince   • 1967–2012 Paddy Roy Bates • 2012–present Michael Bates Establishment • Declared 2 September 1967 (1967-09-02) Area claimed • Total 0.004 km2 (0.0015 sq mi) (approx. 1 acre) Purported currency Sealand dollar Website sealandgov.org	Principality of Sealand Flag Coat of arms Motto: E Mare Libertas (Latin) "From the sea, Freedom" Anthem: "From the sea, Freedom" Aerial view of Sealand in 1999 Government Constitutional monarchy Prince   • 1967–2012 Paddy Roy Bates • 2012–present Michael Bates Establishment • Declared 2 September 1967 (1967-09-02) Area • Total 0.004 km2 (0.0015 sq mi) (approx. 1 acre) Currency Sealand dollar Website sealandgov.org	Principality of Sealand Unrecognized micronation Aerial view of Sealand in 1999 Claimed by Paddy Roy Bates, Michael Bates Dates claimed 1967 to present Area claimed Offshore platform off the coast of England

Given the clear distinction between the first two, and how much clearer they are, I simply don't buy the argument that people will confuse it for a "real" country. Labels, etc. can be tweaked if necessary (I actually prefer the header presentation of the proposed box as it makes it clear "Micronation" is not part of the name), but there isn't any need for major changes or for wheels to be reinvented. Thryduulf (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

No offense, but this comparison is a great illustration of why standard country boxes are out of place in micronation articles: they improperly amplify and foreground a bunch of meaningless trivia. The fact that Sealand purported to be a "constitutional monarchy" is vacuous considering that the royal family never ruled over anyone but themselves. The number of readers whose attention needs to be drawn to the fact that Sealand's purported currency was the Sealand dollar as opposed to the Sealand drachma is zero. The number of readers who will profit from being able to recognize the Sealand flag next time they see it in the wild is also zero. The list goes on.

It is objectively bad editing to needlessly front-load an article with irrelevant factlets. No infobox at all is better than an infobox whose main effect is pushing meaningful information further down the page. GR Kraml (talk) 17:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Centering the trappings of countryhood, as in the first two examples, gives them undue weight. The flag, the anthem, the motto, the coat of arms… these are all calculated to confer legitimacy-by-association. Micronations are dressed up to look like a country, but this is essentially deceptive mimickry, and we shouldn’t participate, particularly for micronations that are enmeshed with shady cryptocurrencies. Calling the Sealand guy a “prince” is effectively taking a fringe claim at face value. Yes, I know there’s no mathematical objective definition of a prince, but just because something is a social construct doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean something. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not a micronation's claims are deceptive mimickry or are good faith assertions (that the rest of the world disagrees with) seems like a determination for reliable secondary sources, and something to be summarized on a case by case basis at each article. If reliable secondary sources report that someone is the unrecognized president or prince of an unrecognized micronation, how is it "participating" for Wikipedia to summarize that information? Or will we go through the articles for biblical figures and say it's "deceptive mimickry" to note the probably-fictional Esther is identified in the Book of Esther as queen of Persia, or to list the Tomb of Job in Job's infobox? Is the Goncharov infobox "deceptive mimickry" despite the body-text reminders that it's a meme? Is it "deceptive mimickry" to report that the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest had a government type of "consensus decision-making with daily meeting"s when it was never recognized as a "real" settlement, government, country, etc.?

I think these are fully contextualized, and it's possible for micronations to be contextualized as well. It is not Wikipedia's purpose to decide what is "real" and "not real"; Wikipedia summarizes reliable sources. If reliable sources say an unrecognized micronation has an unrecognized currency, or an unrecognized prince, etc., we summarize that. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 23:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I completely agree with P-Makoto. It is not Wikipedia's job to say what is and isn't "dressed up like a country", "deceptive mimicry" or whether any given person, organisation or thing is "enmeshed with shady cryptocurrencies". We report what reliable sources say about the subject. Including a flag in the infobox at Azawad, Rojava, West Papua or Islamic State is not "participating" in anything, it's not "deceptive mimicry" or any other epithet you wish to denigrate the subject with. Anything else is a gratuitous failure of NPOV. Thryduulf (talk) 00:11, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Why do policies like WP:UNDUE exist? That's right, because the choice to include something is unavoidably a choice to give credence to it. To pretend not to understand this is to pretend to be epistemologically illiterate. The path to making Mr. Sealand's claim to princeliness "fully contextualized" begins with not investing it with misleading distinction. GR Kraml (talk) 00:12, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Please explain what is "misleading" about presenting the facts neutrally. Thryduulf (talk) 00:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying you disagree with WP:UNDUE? If so, why? GR Kraml (talk) 00:21, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

No. I'm saying that what is and isn't DUE can only be determined at the individual article level, that including things that are due is not giving it credence, engaging in "deceptive mimicry" (or anything else of that nature), and that everything discussed here (flags, coat of arms, etc) is potentially DUE on some articles about micronations. Thryduulf (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

If they're DUE for some micronations, they can be included elsewhere in the article, just like any other info that we don't put in the infobox. There is no indication any of these items is actually a core aspect for most of these topics, as evaluated by IRS sources. It is not NPOV to treat artistic endeavors or corporate promotion or cryptocurrency vehicles or protest communes or profit ventures as if we assume they all occupy a single point along the spectrum of "nationhood" and are all inherently likely to even have any of the above extra features from infobox country let alone place the same meaning on them.

Micronations are much more defined by what they are not than by what they are, which makes anything beyond a barebones infobox unacceptable. JoelleJay (talk) 02:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Thryduulf remains more persuasive in making a case that hews close to Wikipedia policies. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 02:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Not according to the majority of commenters here, nor the text of INFOBOXPURPOSE the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored, with exceptions noted below). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content., nor other guideline criteria like Is the field of value? How important is the field to the articles that will use the infobox? Is it summary information, or more extended detail that may be better placed within the body of an article? and Will the field be relevant to many of the articles that will use the infobox? If the field is relevant to very few articles, it should probably not be included at all. and INFOBOXUSE The meaning given to each infobox part should be the same across instances of that type of infobox. Nor accessibility guidance that states Pages with excessive icons can also cause loading problems for some people. JoelleJay (talk) 03:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

The majority of commenters here have expressed opinions that (in whole or in part) directly contradict core content policies and so the majority of their comments can and will be disregarded by whomever closes this discussion. Everything else you've written is either stating things that are not in dispute (the infobox should summarise key facts that are already in the article) or completely irrelevant (e.g. there are a grand total of zero icons across all three infoboxes). Thryduulf (talk) 03:22, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

What I quote directly concerns which parameters to put in an infobox template, which clearly should require some consideration beyond "if it's an important aspect for recognized countries it must be a key fact for micronations". And I'd love to know which "core content policies" mandate that infobox country or any infobox must be in certain classes of articles!

icons encompasses any small images – including logos, crests, coats of arms, seals, flags. JoelleJay (talk) 04:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

As I've explained many times in this discussion, NPOV requires we treat subjects neutrally, which in this instance means treating a micronation and a non-micronation with the same coverage in reliable sources equally not going out of our way to denigrate micronations based on some editors' beliefs. If we have infoboxes for countries (and we do) then we need to have the same type of infobox for all countries, including unrecognised ones, and each infobox should have the fields relevant to that subject. There is no difference between what is relevant to micronations and what is relevant other nations (as classes). What fields should be populated on a given article can only be determined at the level of the individual article, because that's the only level at which you can determine due weight.

Regarding logos and crests, either they are fine accessibility wise on articles about all countries or they are problematic on articles about all countries. There are no "small images" in either infobox, and in terms of total images from the page title to the top of the references section (including prose and infobox) there are 8 images on the Sealand article and over 50 (plus an audio widget) on the Kosovo article. Of the two the Sealand isn't going to be the one with accessibility concerns. Thryduulf (talk) 04:27, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

You are saying NPOV requires us to structure our articles on micronations as if they were legally recognized countries and, therefore, requires us to give them the same infoboxes because there's no difference in what is relevant to them. WOW.

You don't think it's just a little bit OR to consider, automatically, the thousands of online-only micronations (like this "hypothetical project" formed by some teenagers in the 90s, or this one designated as an extremist social network), or a one-man effort to become a new province under another country's rule, or advertising campaigns, or projects with the stated intent to start a micronation via crowdfunding, or admitted scams, or a documentary project with no intent to declare independence, or a "political and constitutional simulation" by law students, or an underwater libertarian paradise proposal/scam; or entities primarily known as art projects or cryptowebsites or migratory fraud schemes or non-profits or neighborhoods that happen to also be called "micronations", as being on equal footing with each other let alone comparable to "other countries", inherently deserving the same emphases and display of regalia? All because some RS or an editor characterized them as micronations, a term that has no basis in international law or shared criteria other than "not legally recognized by sovereign states"? You think any of this supported by NPOV? Really? JoelleJay (talk) 06:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

NPOV requires we treat subjects neutrally, which in this instance means treating a micronation and a non-micronation with the same coverage in reliable sources equally I think what you’re missing is that micronations and non-micronations don’t receive the same coverage. Consider, for example, this Wired article about Liberland: [13] which takes a skeptical tone, uses “country” (their scare quotes), and describes it as a “crypto project”. Or, this paper: [14] which ends with a quote that sums up the non-Sealand projects nicely: The rest of the virtual states do not have statehood, but only exploit the myth about it. They earn by selling souvenirs and coins, and at best they are a local landmark. The legal creation of new states by private people is no longer possible, and, therefore, the problem of virtual states is finally transferred to the virtual space, becoming one of the methods of conducting an entertainment Internet business. The myth of statehood has finally become a part of the digital civilization. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:21, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Or this one: Westarctica, Sancratosia, Slowjamastan, and other fake nations may have some things to teach real ones. We can ignore the title per WP:HEADLINE but the rest of the article does the job more than adequately: They replicate the symbols, documents, and acts of legitimate states. Micronations create flags, passports, and currency; establish constitutions; and hold elections or plan their lines of succession. and Their online citizenship applications have been known to accidentally deceive individuals who legitimately hope to immigrate. Framing micronations as the same type of thing as legitimate countries, when the sources go out of their way to explain why they are different, is not NPOV - it’s false balance. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 09:08, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Fine, one last time:

NPOV requires us not to take sides where there is a controversy. NPOV does not require us, and UNDUE expressly forbids us, to pretend there is a controversy where there isn't one. "Is Kosovo a country?" is a controversy. We are required to stay neutral on this. "Is the Kingdom of Elleore a country?" is not. We are required not to push the falsehood that the answer is up to meaningful debate.

In addition, as @JoelleJay has demonstrated, INFOBOXPURPOSE requires us to use infoboxes to summarize things that are key facts and to exclude any unnecessary content.

Readers come to any given article with the implicit assumption that the infobox will contain key facts, both because of the interface affordances involved and because this is what infoboxes do in every other article. They implicitly expect these key facts to be key in both senses: germane to understanding and contextualizing the subject on the one hand; well established and largely unassailable on the other. A picture of the flag of Liberland is neither: it tells you absolutely nothing useful; it's not even the flag they actually use; you would struggle to find so much as a single independent RS that clearly defines and describes it.

Actively lying to readers about the meaning and significance of what they are looking at strikes me as an NPOV violation of the first order. I mean seriously, if actively pushing all-but-unsourced random bullshit is not against the rules then what is. GR Kraml (talk) 08:55, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Hold on...what do you mean "Is the Kingdom of Elleore a country?" is not. We are required not to push the falsehood that the answer is up to meaningful debate. While you might have a point about Slowjamastan, micronations such as Liberland have been acknowledged and/or recognized by other nations (e.g., Somaliland, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Colombia, Malawi, and even Croatia/Serbia). And what Thryduulf is referring to is that UNDUE applies at the article level, so whether the country is notable enough to be written about on WP is determined by at that level. Once you've decided that an article is DUE, then it needs to have some content in it that justifies having the article in the first place. That is exactly what's going on here. And besides, it's frankly silly to suggest that content is DUE when it's in the body, but suddenly not when it's summarized into an infobox.

I'm not sure what you mean by A picture of the flag of Liberland is neither: it tells you absolutely nothing useful; it's not even the flag they actually use; you would struggle to find so much as a single independent RS that clearly defines and describes it.. That's literally the flag that is used by Liberland, and is sourced in NYT; I'm not sure what you're on about. And if flags of countries are not useful, then we should remove them from all country articles? Getsnoopy (talk) 00:00, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

...it's frankly silly to suggest that content is DUE when it's in the body, but suddenly not when it's summarized into an infobox. Why would that be silly? Per MOS:INFOBOX, "...the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article..." Per WP:ASPECT, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." It logically follows that aspects of a subject not treated as key facts in the body of reliable sources should not be presented as such by including them in an infobox.--Trystan (talk) 00:25, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, but what the key facts are about a given subject can only be determined at the level of the individual subject. Based on a skim of sources, the flag of Liberland seems just as important to the topic of Liberland as the flag of e.g. Myanmar is the to the topic of Myanmar and more important than e.g. the flag of the Islamic State is to the topic of the Islamic State. We have (seemingly uncontroversially) included the flags of both Myanmar and Islamic State in the infoboxes about those topics, so there is no justification for excluding the flag of Liberland in the infobox about Liberland. In contrast I'm uncertain whether the Grand Duchy of Avram even has a flag (it has a coat of arms which might also serve as the flag but that's unclear). Thryduulf (talk) 01:00, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes are meant to hold key facts very common to a class of subjects, and which parameters to include when making a new infobox template necessarily requires looking at the class in general. The class of micronations is meaningfully distinguished, by secondary and tertiary RS, from all types of real countries.

We have numerous tertiary sources treating significant subsets of the real countries as a "complete" group (even when differences in sovereignty are noted and those members are separated from the main group), often accompanied by individual blurbs for each member of what those sources consider the most important facts for countries in general. This informs on which details are BALASP for countries in general and thus should go in the country infobox.

We do not have a solid body of RS treating substantial subsets of micronations as part of the same group as real countries. The variation among micronations is so substantial, and the appellation so informal and inconsistently applied, that any infobox aiming to represent key facts from IRS sources shared by most members of the class will be very small. JoelleJay (talk) 01:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so that's a nonsense interpretation of DUE that doesn't warrant further discussion.

Something being verifiable in IRS does not make it a BALASP. Something receiving substantial coverage or description in IRS (which the flag does not receive whatsoever in the NYT article) does not necessarily make it BALASP. Something actually being BALASP for a page does not mean it should be in the infobox. And it certainly does not mean that thing should be a parameter for infoboxes in all pages of a certain class.

Whichever discussion determined the items that should be in the infobox for real countries decided that flags should be in there, probably because that's one of the standard pieces of info accompanying each country in academic/tertiary RS that address both the set as a whole and some details of each member. E.g. CIA Factbook. The same is not true for micronations. We do not have a comparably large body of high-quality tertiary RS, on micronations as a set, demonstrating which aspects of a micronation are considered fundamental. Almost every recognized country will have IRS sources discussing or at least describing its flag (and most other major parameters in the infobox). The same is not true for even every notable micronation, therefore being included in an infobox cannot be supported, per INFOBOX. JoelleJay (talk) 01:31, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

That's literally the flag that is used by Liberland, and is sourced in NYT; I'm not sure what you're on about. As I explain in this edit, the Liberlanders use the flags of Croatia, Serbia or Hungary in places where flags have actual significance, e.g. when the boats in their "official" "state fleet" need to be equipped with ensigns. Their videos are staged and edited to hide this fact, but they do.

They are generally very careful to avoid claiming sovereignty or nationhood in any context or forum where such claim could potentially matter. As the very same NYT article shows, for example, they do not challenge the presence of Croatian cops in "their" "country", nor do they attempt to evict the Croatian civilians who (continue to) use the beach for summertime leisure activities. Their web sites and communiqués keep going on about bona vacantia and whatnot, but when they get dragged to court for criminal trespass to land they meekly plead unrelated jurisdictional issues. The fact that the purported state of Liberland never, ever, under any circumstances actually uses its purported state flag is just one of the things that tell you they do not believe what they say they do.

And if flags of countries are not useful, then we should remove them from all country articles? Flags from real countries obviously are useful, but then again you know that, and you also know that nobody claims otherwise. GR Kraml (talk) 04:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't really see a clear distinction between the first two, just subtle wording differences. The side-by-side presentation convinces me that the proposed custom infobox is better for readers. Schazjmd (talk) 18:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

i like the 3rd one. the flags and coats of arms aren't real, toss em. ValarianB (talk) 18:37, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

What a shocking disregard for NPOV (and WP:V). They are as "real" as any other coat of arms or flag. Thryduulf (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the header "Unrecognized micronation" is a good change, but all else in the third infobox seems if anything a reduction of information. Why not have the flag? Recognized nation-state status seems hardly like the hurdle we expect for whether or not a logo is pertinent and informative. We don't require companies, sports teams, or NGOs to be sovereign before we include their imagery, flags, logos, etc. Why wouldn't a reader be interested in knowing what flag an unrecognized micronation flies, if it does fly one? P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, the less trivia we emphasize in an infobox, the better. If a flag or coat of arms actually has significance in secondary sources then an image of it can be put in the article, it doesn't need to be an infobox parameter. And definitely agree with everything @GR Kraml said. JoelleJay (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

The third infobox is clearly the best and minimises the amount of trivia proponents might be able to add. SportingFlyer T·C 00:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Now we're getting into failures of WP:AGF as well. We don't neuter the encyclopaedia because non-neutral editors might add things which may or may not be trivia. Thryduulf (talk) 00:19, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

they are not as real as the coat of arms and flag of say Great Britain or Wales, the idea that anyone would suggest they are raises issues of competence here, tbh. something that has centuries of reliably-sources tradition a and coverage has no comparison to a thing created in Photoshop in a day. retaining an infobox for these articles is a good idea, but lessening their likeness to a real nation inbobox is preferable. ValarianB (talk) 20:56, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

They are not as respected and they have none of the heritage or prestige, etc. but that doesn't make them somehow not real. Unless you are claiming that the new Flag of Kyrgyzstan or Flag of Afghanistan (the Islamic Emirate one) are not real? Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that many people here are engaging in WP:IDONTLIKEIT while trying to masquerade it as legitimate WP policy.

Why does England get to have its own flag?

- Because it has centuries of heritage and tradition.

So why doesn't Liberland get to have its own?

- Because there are very few articles citing it.

How many articles does it take for a flag to become "real"?

- ...

Maybe we should take down Somaliland's flag, and hell, even South Sudan's flag, since it's only been around since 2011, which is a mere 13 years. Getsnoopy (talk) 00:07, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Precisely. It's not centuries of tradition that bestow notability and due weight. It's not even "reality" (contestable as that is with social constructs) that bestows either; the fictional Gondor quite appropriately has its coat of arms in the infobox as a quick and way for viewers to identify the topic, and Rohan, Middle-earth has its flag. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:12, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

References

I like the third one, with the suggested changes of "proponents" and "location" etc. JoelleJay (talk) 19:23, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

So I think we have a clear question. "Should articles on micronations (a) use Infobox Country with the micronation parameter, or (b) use an infobox with the label "Unrecognized micronation" and the fields: type, proponents, dates claimed, and location?" If someone wants to start an RFC on that, I think that would be the best way to resolve this issue.--Trystan (talk) 14:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Anyone know how many there are? Micronation infoboxes, that is. Selfstudier (talk) 14:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

There are approximately 159 articles and redirects categorised in (subcategories of) Category:Micronations (I say approximately as my de-deduplication wasn't rigorous). Not all of them are going to be suitable for an infobox (e.g. Kickassia) so see that figure as an upper bound (unless and until there is a new notable micronation of course). Thryduulf (talk) 14:58, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

+1, that seems like a good way forward. Levivich (talk) 19:53, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I think there should also be the option for no infobox, considering there are several that are primarily known as other things or are not called micronations in RS. JoelleJay (talk) 05:13, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Arguably if an entity is not primarily described as a micronation in RS, then it wouldn’t be in scope of this RfC. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 07:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

The question could be phrased as "Where articles on micronations use an infobox, should they use...".--Trystan (talk) 13:47, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

+1, this seems just about ideal. GR Kraml (talk) 18:59, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. JoelleJay (talk) 22:58, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

+1 Levivich (talk) 18:50, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

RfC on MOS:LEADLENGTH/Wikiproject Consensus

Hey everyone, per the recommendations on the RfC page, I'm posting a link to the RfC I opened on DOY articles and their lead length here. Here's the brief version of the question for the RfC:

Should the leads of Days Of the Year (DOY) articles be expanded to comply with MOS:LEADLENGTH/WP:FLCR or should those policies be modified to create an exception for DOY articles per the apparent consensus against changing DOY leads?

Link to RfC

I added a expanded explanation of the question on the RfC page so please go there to get a full understanding of the issue. Cheers, Dan the Animator 02:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)