Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines

The following discussions are requested to have community-wide attention:

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Is the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) a reliable source for determining the reliability of fact-checking organizations? — Newslinger talk 14:35, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Risk disclaimer

In this article following is written:

BE AWARE THAT ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY FIND IN WIKIPEDIA MAY BE INACCURATE, MISLEADING, DANGEROUS, ADDICTIVE, UNETHICAL OR ILLEGAL.

What we should do with it?

• A. Remove the word ADDICTIVE,
• B. Keep the word ADDICTIVE,
• C. Any other suggestion

12:27, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Reverting

Should we add the following section directly after the "when to revert" section?

Do a partial reversion when appropriate

Further information: Wikipedia:Restoring part of a reverted edit

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater!

Often, editors bundle multiple changes into a single edit, such as adding a new section while also fixing a copy error elsewhere on the page. If you object to only part of an edit, be careful to revert only the part you disagree with, leaving the rest alone. The encyclopedia is damaged when positive contributions are caught up and lost in a revert. It is also impolite to the editor you are reverting, since if they wish to restore the uncontroversial portion of their edit, they must edit the page again, which can make it seem to others superficially reviewing the page history like they are edit warring, when actually they are not.

If you do feel that all parts of an edit containing multiple distinct changes warrant reversion, it is best practice to explain or at least note your objection to each change in the edit summary. Otherwise, the other editor may reinstate the unaddressed portion of their edit, believing it to be uncontroversial.

- Sdkb (talk) 08:42, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Are geonotices such as this one (requested by EllenCT, added by Deryck Chan, full request here) appropriate? It requests users to "Please send email asking the US government to require open access to federally supported research." My opinion is that no, it is not okay to use Wikipedia for political activism, regardless of how noble the cause. I've asked for removal, but I doubt the geonotice request page gets much traffic, so in the mean time, I think this is probably worth bringing up here to get some wider input. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:49, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

As seen above on this page, MOS:JOBTITLES has been disputed numerous times due to strong disagreements in whether the names of political offices should be capitalised in the lead sentences of political office articles and elsewhere following the article/modifier. A retrospective analysis of 19 of these discussions dating back to 2011 (above) showed that the overall view is against the guideline as it reads now by approximately 2:1, but no discussion has ever been able to come to a reasonable solution.

Should the Manual of Style section be removed entirely as a guideline that does not have "general" support? (A substitute can be added later if it does have general support.) · • SUM1 • · (talk) 18:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Template talk:COVID-19

The "Data and figures" section of this navbox links either exclusively or almost exclusively to the template namespace. Here are three options:

• Option A: Keep as is and continue to link to template namespace.
• Option B: Expand the linked templates into standalone articles.
• Option C: Remove the linked templates from the navbox.

I look forward to reading your thoughts.  Bait30  ^Talk? 05:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism

Hello, there is currently debate about the proper use of self-published sources.

1. Editors in most areas of the Wikipedia seem to use self-published sources (WP:SPS) according to the verifiability policy set forth there: in a nutshell, that SPS can be used with caution as long as they meet certain criteria, and secondary, indepdent sources should typically be preferred as the basis for a good article. Any business org article can be seen to use SPS in this fashion, such as Boeing, Google, and Apple Inc. There has been little to no resistance or protest against using SPS for all manner of statistics and information, as long as reliable secondary indepdent sources are preferred for analysis and support.
2. Editors editing in the anti-abortion topic area have adopted a novel interpretation: SPS are never to be used because their information is considered promotional. For example, an organization publishing its membership numbers or revenue cannot be used as a source, because the organizations always inflate those numbers falsely, making the SPS a decidedly unreliable source. In particular, view #2 has been adopted by Avatar317 (talk · contribs), on the article Knights of Columbus and related articles.

RFC question: So which view is correct? Should the WP:SPS policy be interpreted so strictly that we practically never use SPS? If #2 is true, then what are the actual acceptable criteria? What is the action plan for implementing the reinterpretation across vast swaths of topic areas that apparently have had it wrong all this time? Elizium23 (talk) 10:22, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Vita

A dispute has arisen whether or not "Vita" can be used as an entry on this Disambiguation page when referring specifically to a book by that title, written by the 1st-century historian Josephus. One of the conditions for adding a name to WP:DAB is: "Ensuring that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily, whichever of the possible topics it might be." For the relative arguments (pros and cons) of adding the name "Vita (Josephus)" to this page, see the discussion here. Please advise.Davidbena (talk) 03:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

"Unless the cause of death is itself a reason for notability, a single sentence describing the death is usually sufficient, and often none is included in the lead at all, just a death date."

Is this guideline clear enough to be useful to a user trying to determine whether somebody's cause of death should be included in the lead of their bio? What I see as a lack of clarity - especially with wording like often none is included - can lead to long animated discussions such as this recent one. Those discussions wouldn't be such a waste of time and effort if briefer, or if altogether unnecessary, given we had a clearer guideline.

Being rather a strong anti-sensationalist myself, hoping always that Wikipedia articles about people will not develop into tabloid-type material, perhaps I have misunderstood the guideline along those lines. If normal (statisticlly) suicides, car crashes, drug overdoses, for example are to be considered by Wikipedia as defining factors in what's notable about those people, then I am wrong in removing them from leads, whereas with a clearly notable death such as that of Christine Chubbuck I would not do that. If a celebrity's cause of death is widely reported in media, and that alone makes the cause of death in itself a reason for notability, then I am also wrong in feeling it should be removed from the lead as non-notable.

I am inviting other editors to chime in here, and to help write a clearer guideline in this detail. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:14, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Question: What should the general rule/principle/guideline be for categorizing current localities by historical administrative subdivision in Central and Eastern Europe? There are quite a few articles of cities and towns that have been categorized not only in which administrative subdivision they currently are in, but also by the former subdivisions.

Typical example: Eišiškės, a small town in Lithuania, is in these categories: Category:Cities in Lithuania, Category:Cities in Vilnius County, Category:Šalčininkai District Municipality, Category:Vilnius Voivodeship, Category:Lidsky Uyezd, Category:Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939). The first 3 categories reflect the current administrative subdivision. Vilnius Voivodeship was a subdivision in 1413–1795. Lidsky Uyezd was a 2nd-level subdivision sometime between 1795–1915. Nowogródek Voivodeship (1919–1939) was an inter-war subdivision.

General options:

• A: categorization should be limited - by what? Whether it is referenced in the article? How long the subdivision lasted? How large the subdivision was? To the 1st-level former subdivision? To how recent subdivision was? Etc?
• B: categorization should not be allowed (i.e. current localities should be removed from the former subdivision categories; historical information could be preserved in a different venue like a separate list or an addition to the locality article or something similar to the "historical affiliation" box as in Görlitz#History)
• C: status quo; no general rules; specific issues with individual categories should be addressed at WP:CfD

22:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

To increase transparency and robustness of the process for classification of sources, increase the review requirement for actions that prevent use of a source. Guy (help!) 17:17, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Template talk:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data/China medical cases (confirmed)

Should we use the current graph or make visual changes to become a more standard epidemic curve per WP:MEDRS? As we can see in the best current data source (Figure 4). --Almaty (talk) 06:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)