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Should we disallow opening parallel RM and AfD discussions?
Latest comment: 8 minutes ago192 comments36 people in discussion
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I propose removing the provision in Wikipedia:Political endorsements that allows local consensus to overrule our general policy that facts be sourced to independent reliable sources for organizational endorsements. Specifically, I propose striking the following sentence from the guideline: Local consensus can determine whether a specific list requires independent sources or sources connected to the organization itself, such as its website or official social media accounts.
Support per WP:VNOT and WP:DUE, as other editors have pointed out. A social media post or other statement endorsing a candidate is a primary source for the endorsement. It might be verifiable, but that doesn't make it due for inclusion. Inclusion of endorsements should require secondary sources. It should also require independent sources, because, e.g., a list of endorsements published by a campaign might be secondary and verifiable, but it doesn't establish WP:DUE. We should only include endorsements when reliable, secondary, independent sources (like history books and newspaper articles) establish that inclusion of the endorsement is due. Levivich (talk) 00:19, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Comment. This is not meant to be a put-down: from what I know, WP:VNOT necessitates consensus but not necessarily "sources need to be this type", and WP:DUE does not necessitate source secondariness or independence. DUE only needs sources to be "reliable", and WP:RSPRIMARY separates secondariness and reliability by saying "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources" and even saying primary sources "can be both reliable and useful in certain situations". Needless to say, these issues of VNOT and DUE are quite annoying. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 01:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)(edited 02:47, 30 July 2026 (UTC))Reply
I don't read the current guidance as suggesting an exception to DUE or VNOT. And it doesn't allow for citing a source from the campaign, only sources from the endorsing organization itself. DUE is contextual and can be assessed in a number of ways. For example, only including organizations with blue links to articles would be a reasonable bar to set in national and other high profile races. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:29, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
...and WP:BESTSOURCES if we're going to nitpick over various parts of WP:NPOV (emphasis added): In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, secondary published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV issues.
Wikipedia policies aren't laws. They're not well-written. Just because the words "independent" or "secondary" don't appear in the specific section WP:DUE doesn't mean that one can make a determination about what content should be included in an article from non-independent or primary sources. But in case there was any doubt about this, there's the WP:BESTSOURCES section of NPOV.
You can certainly make an argument that that is the case. It is certainly not what is written in the policies and guidelines. I think we should go by what is written in the policies and guidelines, not what words editors wish were in the policies and guidelines.
That section of WP:BESTSOURCES does not have the 20-year consensus you claim below - it was added relatively recently (a few years ago, if I'm remembering right). It's certainly a good thing, but it's a goal to aspire to, not the end-all of every discussion and certainly not a license to excise every non-secondary non-independent source from discussion altogether.
WP:BESTSOURCES, despite your allusion to the other WP:UPPERCASE in WP:NPOV, is the only place in the NPOV policy where the word "independent" is contained. WP:AGEMATTERS has nothing to do with independent sources, so it's curious why it's being cited here.
However, both WP:REPUTABLE and WP:BESTSOURCES say that articles should be based on "reliable, independent, published sources". That is certainly not the same thing as saying that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned. I completely agree with the WP:BESTSOURCES statement that articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources. I do not agree that non-independent sources should be banned, which is probably why that is supported by none of the policies and guidelines you've cited. Katzrockso (talk) 23:58, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's a lot to cover: what I quoted from our PAGs is in fact written in our PAGs. I claim no 20-year consensus below. (There's no plausible way to understand the words "20-year veteran" as referring to the age of consensus rather than the age of an account.) Nobody is trying to excise or ban every non-secondary non-independent source. NPOV isn't the only policy that talks about having independent sources, another example is WP:RS. WP:AGEMATTERS was being cited here because the prior sentence said most recent. Based on ... is certainly not the same thing as saying that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned, so it's a good thing that nobody is arguing that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned. I do not agree that non-independent sources should be banned either, and so I'm glad that's not required by any PAGs.
And yet I believe endorsements are the type of content that should be cited to the reliable, independent, secondary sources that our PAGs say articles should be based on.
I don't know why you wrote that long series of fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said, requiring me to write this long correction, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that to me again. Levivich (talk) 00:23, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Policy does not support looking to the "we must look to the highest-quality, most-reliable, most recent, secondary, independent, published sources" to establish what is WP:DUE, not only because these are often contradictory and exclusive. We don't look to sources that don't exist, but evaluate those that actually exist and see which ones are the best to base our articles on (which is different than the inclusionary criteria for particular elements of content). Moreover, the policy that determines whether or not we include things remains WP:WEIGHT and WP:BALANCE, which once again do not mention the independence of sources. I once again think that editors should read the words that in a policy, not the words that they wish were in a policy.
For example, WP:AGEMATTERS explicitly points out that the "most recent" source is certainly not always the most reliable source, so we should not simply look for the "most recent" source, but the WP:BESTSOURCE when evaluated holistically. There are numerous reasons why we might prefer an older source to a newer one. "Most recent" is certainly not a good summarization of WP:AGEMATTERS.
Adding in auxiliary information like endorsements is certainly not the same as writing the bulk of our articles. Indeed, WP:SELFSOURCE states the great majority of any article must be drawn from independent sources. I don't find any conflict whatsoever between WP:RS, WP:NPOV (specifically WP:REPUTABLE and WP:BESTSOURCES) and using a non-independent source to verify an endorsement, because using a source is not the same as basing an article on a source.
The argument presented here is effectively one that non-independent sources should be banned - you present no distinctive argument that wouldn't apply to every single use of a non-independent source. Indeed, there is no particularity to the argument here specific to the context in question - political endorsements. That suggests, or rather proves, that the issue is not specific to political endorsements, but with the use of non-independent sources altogether. Whether or not you take your argument to its logical conclusion is no import to me, you can call it fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said or whatever you like.
If we are talking about fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said, we can start with this:
what I quoted from our PAGs is in fact written in our PAGs
I never stated or suggested that the quotes you provided were in any way made up. What I suggested was the the accompanying commentary misrepresents existing PAG, which is a charge I still contend is true. Katzrockso (talk) 02:34, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You said It is certainly not what is written in the policies and guidelines, but what I'm saying is in our PAGs, is in our PAGs. I'll show you in a moment. But first my Bernie impression: I am once again asking that you not put words in my mouth. Nobody is calling for banning all non-independent sources. Just because someone thinks non-independent sources shouldn't be used to source political endorsements doesn't mean they think non-independent sources shouldn't be used for anything. You can call that the argument's "logical conclusion," but it's actually a strawman argument: you're arguing against something (a total ban) that nobody is arguing in favor of.
Now, the first sentence of WP:BALANCE, key words bolded:
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.
If no independent RS is writing about an endorsement, if the only people writing about an endorsement are the endorser and endorsee (both non-independent), then that is, indisputably, a low proportion of coverage in RS, it's like 1 or 2 sources out of all sources when only non-independent sources are writing about it and no independent sources are writing about it. Because of this low proportion of RS covering the endorsement, it's a "minor aspect" to which we should not give "undue weight."
Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "See also" to an article about those specific views.
If an endorsement is only published by the endorser and/or endorsee (who are non-independent), and no other RS are writing about it (so no independent RS), then it's a "tiny minority" (1 or 2 sources out of all sources) and so that view should not be included at all.
In sum: if the only place an endorsement is published is in non-independent sources, such as a social media post by an endorser, or a campaign website, then that means the endorsement is a tiny proportion of RS, a tiny minority of RS, and therefore the endorsement should not be included, per WP:BALANCE and WP:DUE, even though those sections don't have the word "independent" in them. Levivich (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Mildly oppose Just to give some background information to others here, I'd have to imagine that this discussion is coming from the 'discussion' that we had here? I would like to point out that the provision regarding organization endorsements explicitly says that there isn't a consensus regarding sourcing, so I don't exactly agree that local consensus is overruling the rule. I very much do prefer independent sourcing when available, but there are definitely places where it just won't be. If an endorsement isn't mentioned in an independent article, I don't think it inherently means that they aren't notable, especially in elections like state legislatures that do get far less media coverage than national or statewide ones. These types of endorsements are also helpful in things like nonpartisan elections and help readers get a better idea of the candidates that were or did run. I would go along with the rule if the carve-out does get removed, but I do think that it could remove some important information for a lot of elections that just don't get as much media attention as they deserve.ABlitzz (talk) 01:42, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that's helpful. I was about to ask for links to articles that were viewed as including problematic examples and/or to prior discussions about this. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:20, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose on principle. I'm not fond of the way some people increasingly like to claim that every individual fact (that they dislike) in an article has to pass WP:N-level sourcing to be included, rather than using editorial judgement and consensus to determine what is relevant to the topic. As Myceteae noted below, the opening statement of this RFC itself is already erroneously biased in that direction. Anomie⚔14:35, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
What is important to a topic is ultimately determined by reliable and independent sources. Once we as editors start determining that based on primary sources, it's just original research. Cortador (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You're welcome. It's nice when someone appreciates what the policies actually say rather than fictions like "OR requires multiple independent sources, not just reliable ones". Anomie⚔19:09, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Anomie, did you seriously just call our core content policies WP:V and WP:OR "bogus"? That's wild from a 20-year veteran. WP:BESTSOURCES literally says: In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, secondary published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. So arguing that endorsements shouldn't be included unless they're in reliable, independent, secondary published sources is ... very much in line with very old and very widely accepted core Wikipedia policy. I'm not sure how you can characterize that as "bogus." Levivich (talk) 19:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
"Bogus"? "Falsehoods"? Suggesting I'm a troll? In response to people saying "we should have independent sources"? What's with this ridiculously-unwarranted hostility? What the heck has gotten into you today? Levivich (talk) 20:42, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You can have an article that is WP:Based upon reliable independent sources without every single line in the article being cited to an independent source. It would, in fact, be quite "wild" to suggest that only reliable, independent, secondary sources are permitted by policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
What is the material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable source has ever been published in question here? Katzrockso (talk) 20:55, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose per AnomieX. This is just an extension of the primary sourcing paranoia - WP:DUE says precisely nothing about the independence of a source or whether it is primary, secondary or tertiary. Editors often attribute to particular policies meaning that is contained nowhere within them, and unfortunately DUE is in the club. From the original RfC, the point that I find most pertinent is that newspaper endorsements are organizational endorsements that could be of relevance to our articles, but tend to receive less coverage than other types of endorsements. When mandating secondary, independent sourcing, editors must consider whether these secondary, independent sources will tend to produce a bias in their coverage that will tend to affect our coverage. In this case, I don't think this bar has been met.As for WP:VNOT, this is of tangential relevance to this guideline, as it is silent on the independence of sources or whether they are PTS. Indeed, it simply says that consensus can decide that a verifiable fact does not improve an article. This applies to everything, including content sourced to independent, reliable, secondary sources.Katzrockso (talk) 20:54, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'd be curious if anyone could find even one newspaper endorsement that should be in an article that is not mentioned by any independent source. In practice, the bit we're debating here has nothing to do with newspaper endorsements and everything to do with, say, a barely notable advocacy group that issues two hundred endorsements that nobody reports on but make it into two hundred separate Wikipedia lists. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 21:31, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
When you define "should be in the article" as "has independent sourcing" and then find that every example that should be in the article has independent sourcing, it's hardly surprising. Katzrockso (talk) 21:44, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure how that responds to what I said. To rephrase: what's an example of a newspaper endorsement that was not covered by an independent source? (because there are an awful lot of the other kind, where we cite social media posts of local advocacy groups to add them en masse). —Rhododendritestalk \\ 21:46, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Any newspaper from a small region covering an endorsement from another newspaper from that region is, from a certain POV, not an independent source (given that they're business rivals and whatnot). So I'm going to guess... the vast majority of newspaper endorsements can't be covered by an independent RS? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸22:20, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure I've ever seen the "it's not independent if the subject is a competitor/rival of the source" argument, but certainly haven't seen consensus for that. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 22:53, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
WP:IIS states that an independent source lacks conflicts of interest (i.e., there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication).Katzrockso (talk) 23:11, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is now a tangent. If someone would like to make the case that e.g. we can't use CNN or NBC to report on FOX because they're not independent, or that relationship is somehow radically different at a different geographic scale, that's probably a discussion for another place. I'm happy to be pinged there, but cannot imagine any real consensus for it beyond a "yeah, I sorta guess you could say there's technically a COI, but no that's not a reason to decide they lose their independence". I could be wrong, but again we're getting away from the point here. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Nobody's arguing that strawman; I hope I'm not putting words in Katzrockso's mouth, but I like to think we've been pretty clear than independence is not the be all and end all when it comes to newspapers reporting on each other. (Though the potential COI is something I do take into consideration when I'm sourcing and writing articles; I hope you're not asking me not to?)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸23:24, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The mistake here is thinking that non-independent sources are some "bad" category of sources that we need to completely eschew. They certainly need to be used more carefully, but they aren't supposed to be some verboten evil that needs to be excised from every article, despite the increasing tendency to characterize anything that isn't an SIRS as such.
I don't see how by the definition of independent sources used by Wikipedia, they are independent. If you'd like to propose a change to the WP:IIS essay or WP:ORGIND guideline, I wouldn't be necessarily opposed. For what it's worth, WP:ORGIND also specifies that competitors are not independent;
Independence of the author (or functional independence): the author must be unrelated to the company, organization, or product. Related persons include organization's personnel, owners, investors, (sub)contractors, vendors, distributors, suppliers, other business partners and associates, customers, competitors, sponsors and sponsorees (including astroturfing), and other parties that have something, financially or otherwise, to gain or lose.
I would say that this is probably where I'm at as well. I can see the concerns that people have and are bringing up, but I think that, for the most part, the guidelines are fine as they are currently. ABlitzz (talk) 23:30, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Lists of endorsements seem to be a blatant violation of WP:SOAP which is policy and states that Wikipedia is not a soapbox...or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising, and showcasing. The proposal raises the bar and so is a move in the right direction. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose (Just to be up front, my opposition stems from my opposition to the rigid applications of criteria #2 generally, eventhough I agree with the principles behind it) Endorsements are, by definition exercises of expression of bias, of advocacy of a subjective opinion. Lists are means to comprehensively present relevant factual information in an organized manner for ease of consumption. Lists of endorsements therefore would by definition conflict with various basic WP principles, but their continual existence are tolerated/accepted/even desired by some of us because they comprehensively enumerate relevant factual information in a succinct, organized manner, allowing reader to draw insights and informed assessment. If we accept that premise, then rejecting an undisputed entry that meets criteria 1 & 3 by rigidly enforcing the independent aspect of criteria 2 without any consideration of weighing of other facts (such as the reliability aspect of criteria 2, local context, scale of the contest, substantive relevance or significance of a particular entry to the particular context) is to me quite illogical. 1) Given endorsement is an expression of bias, an unindependent source, such as the endorser themselves, actually is the ultimate reliable source. 2) Existence of independent source is generally an strong indicator of notability but only an reasonably good indicator of relevance. Some inconsequential endorsement get attention because they are unique or interesting or even entertaining, while some clearly consequential endorsement get no little media play because they were expected or boring but nonetheless impactful. For example, endorsements of politicians by celebraties like actors or singers often get covered in the news for their entertainment value, because they are interesting and unusual, but they rarely have meaningful impact on electoral outcome. An endorsement from a former office holder that retired long ago may general little press interest while having huge impact (especially in internal contests like primaries or nomination fights where older voters, and long time party activists are have greater presence.) Ultimately, the purpose of this policy is to ensure entries included in such lists are realiable, notable, relevant and consequential. Exisitence of independent sources would be decent indicators for those things but not conclusive proof, and the absence of independent sources certainly does not conclusively disprove any of those things. If the notability of the endorser, the factual reliability of the endorsement, and its relevance to the the subject election are not in dispute, exclusion would arguably amount to censorship. JacobW2 (talk) 15:10, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
An endorsement from a former office holder that retired long ago may general little press interest while having huge impact (especially in internal contests like primaries or nomination fights where older voters, and long time party activists are have greater presence.) This isn't really germane to this proposal since the current exclusion currently only affects organizational endorsements, not individuals. For what it's worth, I don't think be opposed to a very narrow exception for current (and former) officeholders who represent(/ed) part of the constituency being contested. If anything, the fact that a former elected's endorsement is excluded unless covered by independent media but an endorsement by an organization, however irrelevant, can be included cited to only their website highlights how odd the status quo is. Dcpoliticaljunkie (talk) 19:08, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notability has to do with whether an article should exist for a topic, it has nothing to do with whether content should be included in an article. Katzrockso (talk) 23:54, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - What to do about noteworthy endorsements by media outlets that are covered by the outlet's competitors is an excellent point. (Plus, there's the issue of organizations and independent sources potentially disagreeing that I brought up below.) WP:DUE would apply regardless and seems orthogonal to this issue. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:03, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Still hoping for even one (and preferably more) example of noteworthy endorsements by media outlets that are covered by the outlet's competitors, but this is the last time I'll mention it. It's a big flood gate to leave open for a hypothetical. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well, largest circulating weekly:) but regardless we have an article about it and I, too, cannot find independent coverage. Thanks for digging up an example. I'm more inclined to support an exception for certain kinds of companies/organizations (like notable media outlets), but still not quite convinced it's in our best interest to include every endorsement by every organization or company, regardless of what they are or how much they're written about. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 00:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Who said we have to include every endorsement by every organization or company, with or without independent sources? Anomie⚔01:07, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I completely agree that we shouldn't be including every endorsement by every organization or company. The status quo of guideline doesn't require this, and if that is what happens in practice, I would support any effort to trim non-notable and non-noteworthy organizations. Katzrockso (talk) 03:04, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As the person who has added a lot of the endorsements to the Michigan Senate race's article, which is the article that kind of seems to have started all of this, I'm just wanting to give some of my own thoughts here. There have definitely been a lot of endorsements listed in articles that I haven't added simply because the endorsers don't have a Wikipedia page. If they have a Wikipedia page, I'll usually add them because that's a symbol, in my mind, that they're notable enough to be added. If they have no Wikipedia page, then I'll typically avoid adding them to articles unless there's another reason that would make sense (i.e. a local or House election where a candidate is endorsed by a notable person in the city/district but the endorser doesn't have a Wikipedia page). Personally, my opinion is that if there is a source that follows the guidelines and the endorser is notable enough due to having a page here or some other reason, then there's no reason not to add in the endorsement ABlitzz (talk) 13:06, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can understand the point you're making there, but wouldn't editors be interfering with the neutrality of the page if we're able to just decide who is relevant and who isn't? As long as the endorser has a good source and page, I really don't see a reason why they shouldn't be included. Under your example, it could also show the start of Joe Celebrity getting more involved in the political scene and becoming prominent in both movies and politics. ABlitzz (talk) 15:23, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
By this interpretation, most articles about news orgs would fail notability guidelines since almost other source would be considered a competitor and therefore not independent. This seems to be something to address within that guideline (stipulate that media outlets that are competitors of each other are independent) rather than this one. Dcpoliticaljunkie (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notable news organizations tend to get at least some coverage in journals, books, and other newspapers not operating in the same market; for an example, the Weekend Times, a Malawian tabloid that operated for only about 6 years, is primarily based upon such sources. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸18:10, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In practice, though, I would also like to note that the community treats newspapers and academic journals very differently than commercial organizations in general. (You can argue that a newspaper as an actual isn't technically a corporation, but that's splitting hairs in most cases). WP:NJOURNAL and WP:NNEWS are essays, but they do emphasize impact/influence as a pathway to notability that we'd never allow under a typical application of NCORP. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸18:21, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that we treat articles about publishers differently from articles about other businesses, but I think it's practical of us. Sometimes we need that information as editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose The inclusion/exclusion of a particular endorsement that lacks independent sourcing can always be debated on the article's talk page, just like with any other disputed content. Some1 (talk) 23:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. I'm just not seeing any evidence of an actual problem here that needs solving. At 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan §Endorsements, there are far fewer organizations listed than individuals. As others have noted, celebrity and other "big name" endorsements are prone to garnering at least some media coverage even when their encyclopedic value is questionable. PACs and political organizations, whose endorsements may be less newsworthy, may be a more meaningful reflection of a candidate's ideology and support base. Looking at other articles that were shared at Talk:2026 United States Senate election in Michigan#Organizational endorsements, most have much shorter endorsement lists. Weighting these lists towards celebrities and other individuals is of no value to these articles. The current guidance is in no way an exception to WP:DUE or any other broadly applicable policy or guideline. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:54, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - current system functions quite well, and WP:DUE doesn't appear to be violated because of it - I don't see a reason to prevent endorsements being sourced to verifiable primary sources. Jishara (talk) 00:53, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support I agree that generally primary sources may be used for a wide variety of information. But this provision is so poorly written, it should go. The first glaring mistake was its mention of largely discredited local consensus, when it could of just used "editors may", but even worse it then suggests that verifiability is all you need for content additions, and that is plainly untrue, see WP:VNOT. No editors at any article can vote to ignore the other content policies, and no guideline can either. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just to be clear, I would also oppose a rule that said only secondary sources count. That's not what DUE requires, in every case, we may use primary sources. I think the rule should still go because of its poor wording. Go back to the drawing board, get ride of "local consensus" and make clear the all content policies not just V matter. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. This would create a more stringent sourcing requirement than that of most other content where the concern here isn't the veracity of the endorsements, but whether they are DUE. Jessintime (talk) 15:21, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Cortador, a simple example of when a primary-only viewpoint is needed is when someone is accused of a crime, and they deny it. We rarely have secondary source material for that (that would mean a source that analyzes, evaluates, interprets, etc. their denial, rather than merely repeating the fact that the accused person denied the accusation), and it is the near-universal practice of the community to mention the existence of such denials, even if they have to be sourced to the subject's social media (which is both primary and non-independent). We can't meet the goals of either the BLP policy or the NPOV policy by removing the accused's POV about his innocence from a Wikipedia article just because there isn't a high-quality secondary source. We need a source that is strong enough to support the claim in the article (the usual claim being "He denied the accusations"), but a fairly weak source is strong enough for that.
News articles include responses from accused people all the time. I don't know where you get the idea that this "rarely" happens. Cortador (talk) 08:30, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Cortador, most news articles are primary sources. See WP:PRIMARYNEWS. A typical newspaper article is a:
No, they absolutely are not. You are confusing how e.g. academics use that term with how it is used on Wikipedia, and so is that essay. Cortador (talk) 19:58, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The policy WP:PRIMARY itself says "A primary source is a first-hand account of an event. Primary sources may include newspaper articles...". It specifically calls out breaking news: "For Wikipedia's purposes, breaking news stories are also considered to be primary sources". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support As if RS do not care, why should we (see wp:undue). Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 9 August 2026 (UTC
Oppose - this is a case where one size doesn't fit all. While with US presidential elections and nominations there are always numerous published sources listing endorsements this is often not the case for smaller contests, particularly with the decline of the media. The recent 2026 New Democratic Party leadership election for example was not closely covered by the media until the last few weeks so even though there were prominent endorsements by current and former politicians these were often only reported on the candidate websites and press releases and did not receive "independent" coverage until very late, if at all. This gave an unbalanced and misreprestarive impressio of the relative support candidates had. Major political parties such as the NDP have strict campaign rules and a leadership candidate who falsely claimed endorsements would have been fined or expelled - but even so we had editors insisting these endorsements could not be listed, even though under the circumstances they were reliable (due to the consequences for candidates for making false claims), due to global wikipedia rules. Some sort of flexibility is required and if there are other reasons why a self-reported endorsement can be considered reliable, then that should be sufficient. Wellington Bay (talk) 15:32, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose: many of the others gave good reasoning. Especially for the smaller cases, not every endorsement is going to be covered by a secondary one. I also believe that wikipedia should in general consider being more open to primary sources though that would probably warrant a separate discussion. Also, WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD explicitly states "Primary sources can be reliable, and they can be used. Sometimes, a primary source is even the best possible source", so there should be no good reason to support removing this section. Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:37, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose Media coverage varies wildly depending local market and perceived importance of the position. One size fits all fails when most English-language local print media in Canada is owned by a small number of conglomerates that have eliminated local coverage outside major markets. American markets may get horserace coverage; we're lucky to get any mention of equines. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Our job is not to ignore valid information when no "reliable, independent sources" are available. One could argue that Canadian English-language media has almost no reliable, independent sources left outside a few major urban markets. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 18:15, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Endorsement cruft takes up a huge amount of space on election articles, to the point that 5 of the top 50 longest articles are about state-level elections. Requiring third-party coverage would be a great way to cut down on this. I would even propose going one step further and applying the MOS:CULTURALREFS standard of secondary/tertiary sources that discuss the endorsement in depth, not just a brief mention. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)21:37, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
and because Ballotpedia is an independent source that reports all endorsements for all US elections (both state and national), I don't see any effect of this rule on most of these election-related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That, and, Texas and California are really big and have a lot of districts. I'm not surprised that their election articles are prone to being very long. These articles vary somewhat in the number of endorsements listed per candidate and in the promotion of individual vs. organizational endorsements but it doesn't appear to me that organizational endorsements are driving this problem—to the extent it is a problem that need solving. Maybe some other approach is needed to trim these articles or maybe the size of these articles is acceptable and unavoidable given the nature of the subjects. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:13, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I compared 2021 2021 California gubernatorial recall election §Endorsements with Ballotpedia's notable endorsements list in the same race, as this is the only true US state-level race in the list of long pages. For the recall question, I count 38 organizational endorsements on our list and 36 on Ballotpedia's. This is not a meaningful difference. Our article contains many more individual endorsements than organizational, despite already requiring a higher standard for independent sourcing. If we look at the section sizes, §Endorsements is up there but the big problem is §Results. Again, this is just a result of having a very large state. I suspect that the table formatting and markup is increasing the bytes but this is an attempt to make a massive amount of data digestible. If the size of this article is truly a concern then some intervention besides removing (at most) two endorsements is needed.
Section sizes in 2021 California gubernatorial recall election
We both responded to your similar sentiments about Ballotpedia below. The only examples of 'problematic' articles provided have been US elections articles. (For the record, I don't find the endorsements sections of these articles especially problematic.) I offered an alternative explanation for why California and Texas elections articles are prone to being so large. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Not all media in every country is created equally. Certain places are going to cover endorsements more than others, and I think that is in of itself biased, as it will result in certain regions having better coverage than others.-- Earl Andrew - talk02:36, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with the notion that listing endorsements is strictly promotional, or that it has no encyclopedic value. It's supposed to tell readers something about the candidate's support base, affiliations, and affinities, and is often relevant to campaign finance. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:32, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Systemic bias is an issue on Wikipedia, but there's not typically consensus to lower standards to the level of "include it because it exists, regardless of whether anyone has judged it worthy of note". —Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:20, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that we wouldn't want to lower standards, but my concern about this problem is:
we're talking about requiring higher standards, not the ordinary ones, and
the point is to deal with lists of endorsements in US, and this proposal will have no effect on lists of endorsements in the US.
A proposal that would address the identified problem would sound something like this:
If there is a reasonably comprehensive list of endorsements at Ballotpedia (or a similar site), then link to that webpage in the Wikipedia:External links. When a comprehensive external list is available, articles should contain only a high-level summary of endorsements in the article, e.g., "The candidate has been endorsed by anti-tax advocacy groups and law enforcement agencies[1]" (when reliable sources directly support such summaries) or information about endorsements that produced significant media attention, e.g., "The Abrasive Activists club announced an unsolicited endorsement and donation, causing the candidate to disclaim the endorsement, return the money, and announce support for raising taxes[1]" or "The candidate was endorsed by the prime minister, and the election result was widely seen as a test of the PM's political influence[1]".
Support. If the endorsement isn't reported on by independent RS, then it's not passing the bar for BALASP (and if the candidacy/election itself has so little sourcing that an endorsement announcement from 1-2 non-independent sources actually is proportionally weighty coverage-wise, then either the subject itself is not notable or there's a pressing case for IAR). By policy, Wikipedia articles about a person, company, or organization are not an extension of their website, press releases, or other social media marketing efforts. Endorsements are inherently promotional, self-serving, and (when sourced from the endorser as an individual person) are SPS with claims about third parties. They should be contextualized, or at the very least noticed, by independent RS.I also don't see how a political campaign shouldn't be held to the same standards as Listings to be avoided include, but are not limited to: business alliances, clients, competitors, employees ... equipment, estates, offices, store locations, contact information, patent filings, products, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions.JoelleJay (talk) 20:13, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
One way that political endorsements differ from these other listings to avoid, as I said elsewhere is that they may tell readers something about the candidate's support base, affiliations, and affinities, and is often relevant to campaign finance. There is some superficial similarity between political endorsements and business business alliances or (corporate) sponsors but there are meaningful differences. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If an endorsement actually tells readers something meaningful about the candidate, then that especially deserves to be validated as real and attention-worthy by an independent RS and ideally contextualized. What's stopping malicious announcements by bad actors or self-promo ones by businesses hoping to have their name associated with a candidate? JoelleJay (talk) 11:35, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is the kind of case-by-case assessment that can be made on the article talk page. I'm not seeing evidence that this is a real-world problem. Primary sources are almost always reliable for statements about what the source itself says. Effective self promo will, by definition, be picked up elsewhere so this doesn't necessarily address that, anyway. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 14:46, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
These considerations should not be applied case-by-case according to whether editors think an endorsement carries some implicit meaning, they should be the default. JoelleJay (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The part that says coverage should be proportional to how the topic as a whole is covered in RS (so something being citable to only source will almost certainly be proportionally trivial), and also per V Self-published sources may be considered reliable if published by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.[g] Be careful when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources.[1] with note [1] stating Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of the content. Further examples of self-published sources include press releases, the material contained within company websites, advertising campaigns, material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group, self-released music albums, and electoral manifestos:. Press releases, social media, and company websites are SPS and thus considered non-RS by default, but even when they are RS (topic experts) we are still cautioned against using them because if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources. ABOUTSELF, being roughly equivalent in reliability to expert SPS, should be interpreted in the same way. JoelleJay (talk) 11:53, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notwithstanding your contentious interpretations of other parts of the policy, so something being citable to only source will almost certainly be proportionally trivial seems to be false. Why would an endorsement reported by one reliable independent source be a higher WP:PROPORTION of the reliable sources that an endorsement reported by one reliable non-independent source, according to WP:BALASP. I'm not asking about other policies, I'm asking about what BALASP says. It seems to be a common occurrence here to cite policies for things they don't say. Katzrockso (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because an endorsement reported by the endorser and endorsee is less coverage of that endorsement than the endorser's and endorsee's reports plus an independent source?Our policies on acceptable SPS use explicitly discourage including information that is not published in independent RS even when it's by an expert; why would this be treated differently for political endorsements? JoelleJay (talk) 15:06, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Most reports of endorsements are primary sources that merely report what the endorsement itself says. We are often told to treat primary sources that offer no transformative commentary as the same source as the original - why is that any different here?
Joe Schmo endorses Linda Lesson for local office. She announces it on her campaign website.
Local outlet FOX11 publishes a short story that is essentially just the endorsement.
I don't either. A PROPORTION issue would arise if we wrote a lengthy paragraph quoting extensively from a press release and no other sources, especially if this is done to the exclusion of other endorsements in the same race. But I don't see the problem with list entries where the organizational endorsement list is a relatively short part of the article and endorsements for all candidates are subjected to uniform criteria such as only including blue-linked wiki-notable orgs. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 15:31, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The calculus is ≤2 pseudo-RS vs ≤2 pseudo-RS + 1 independent actual RS. Why should the organizational endorsements have a lower requirement for reliability than the individual endorsements? Also we don't limit the endorsers to just blue-linked orgs... JoelleJay (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There isn't any question about reliability here - reliable sources are still required for adding endorsements. Also, we do require that the listed organizations are notable. See WP:Political endorsements, point #1 under organizations. Whether or not they need to be blue linked is something the guideline says can be decided at an article level, but that's a distinction without a difference, as Wikipedia should eventually cover all notable topics. Katzrockso (talk) 17:55, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is a practical difference. Blue-linked is an objective, binary status. This criterion can prevent disputes about entries that some editors argue are "probably notable" or "likely to pass GNG soon" or whatever. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 14:58, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Blue-linked has trinary status: blue article, blue redirect, and red link.
It's also gameable (Oh, you require an article to exist? Okay, here's a three-sentence, two-source stub article). I would not recommend using it as a blanket recommendation. That approach works best when we have very long lists and need an arbitrary way to shorten it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Blue-linked is binary (red or blue). Whether it's a standalone article or a redirect and the quality of the linked article are additional considerations. We could drill down even further on redirects—does it target a list entry that just names the org or a multi-paragraph section describing the org in detail? I'm not suggesting "blue-linked" is a good universal criterion for endorsement lists. Merely disagreeing with Katzrockso's assertion that "notable" and "blue-linked" is a distinction without a difference. To be clear, I mostly disagree with JoelleJay. But if the organizational endorsements list in a particular article is really out of control—something I've yet to see convincing evidence of—both the current wording of WP:ENDORSED and the broadly applicable WP:SELCRIT guidance permit additional requirements at the article level. The tools and guidelines are already in place to manage these endorsement lists. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:13, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well, for one, I would also support a requirement that endorsements have secondary coverage in addition to the current proposal that the coverage be independent. But that's not what's under discussion right now. An independent RS reporting an endorsement verifies that it is considered genuine and noteworthy enough to mention by an RS. It does not involve editors combing through (and validating identities within) social media to hand-curate endorsements themselves and requiring it would preempt editors trying to interpret the equivalents to RECs in non-Anglophone countries and non-American political systems. JoelleJay (talk) 15:36, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we need to have a requirement for independent sources to prevent social media being used as sources. We could simply ban social media as a source, if that were deemed necessary. Katzrockso (talk) 16:44, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The issue isn’t either of those… the issue is whether the specific endorsement in question is meaningful or trivial. The issue WP:VNOT and WP:DUE - not WP:RS. Blueboar (talk) 12:43, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
VNOT is not a license to exclude content, it simply says we don't have to include verifiable content. It's a bludgeon to use against newbies who think that since they have a source it has to be included. This is about creating a higher requirement for adding endorsements than our policy on RS requires - VNOT doesn't mandate anything of the sort. Katzrockso (talk) 13:14, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You invoked the picture of editors scrounging up social media posts to find endorsements and the issues of identity validation. Those are not issues with campaign website endorsements, despite being self-published. What are the issues with self-published sources (generally and not specific to social media posts) in this context? Katzrockso (talk) 13:12, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think that social media was given as an example because social media is one of the few kinds of self-published sources that we (almost) all agree are SPS. If you look at an article like Cass Review (warning: CTOP), there are a number of sources that I'd say are self-published, but which reasonable people could disagree over the application of the WP:SPS rules, such as a white paper from a think tank, open letters from advocacy organizations, and even a Google Doc organized by two professors as part of a larger project. I think the community does sometimes make a distinction between levels of self-publication (in addition to the WP:EXPERTSPS exemption). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Obviously by WP:PRIMARY we can trust an organization's own attestation of support. And we do not require independent sourcing of trivial material. (For instance, if Joe Biden tweets out "I had a dog named Wooper as a child", we would generally not require anything else to include that in the childhood section of his article.) A requirement of independent coverage for a couple of words in the latter half of an article is overkill. RedSlash03:14, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If Joe Biden's tweet about having a dog in childhood is the only mention of that dog, then it absolutely should not be included in his article because it fails DUE and BALASP. JoelleJay (talk) 11:20, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Having a dog isn't a "viewpoint", so DUE is not very relevant.
BALASP asks editors to use their judgment. If the tweet were the only source for having a childhood dog, we would omit this, because editors do not judge the possession of a childhood dog to ordinarily be basic information for a biography in an encyclopedia; if the tweet were the only source for the names of his parents or his birthdate, we would include it, because editors do judge that information to ordinarily be basic information for a biography in an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because it has an easy, memorably shortcut? Also, because you see someone else use it this way, so you assume they're correct and repeat their usage. To be fair, NPOV's organization was pretty bad for years. We've made some progress with stepwise rearrangements and the occasional clarification, but we've been taking it in baby steps, once or twice a year, to make sure that we're not accidentally breaking anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support: This isn't really about primary vs secondary - its more about whether coverage is WP:DUE. Can we really say that endorsements are due if independent sources can't be bothered to discuss them?Nigel Ish (talk) 20:21, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As I read it, the proposal isn't to do anything but remove the present project guidance. This would just throw it back to general policy. If a better, more subtle, project guidance can then be written and gain assent, that's another discussion to have later. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:22, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
True, but the section heading is ==Proposal to require independent sourcing for all political endorsements==, so I suspect that it will be interpreted as requiring INDY sources, rather than merely removing the sentence and reverting to standard rules (which permit the use of non-INDY sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Any closer should not mangle policy, nor can they change policy, when all that is being proposed is to remove a sentence in a local guideline. All it can mean is the sentence won't be there. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm concerned about all of it. A closer will have to make sense of the actual opinions expressed in the RFC and future editors will have to interpret and implement the RFC outcome. And if participating editors thought they were !voting on something meaningfully different this is likely to lead to more disputes and frustration. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:49, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not that "concerned" because, we often have quite good closers that separate the wheat from the chaff, and any overstep or irrationality in the close is subject to call-out and review. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
People make confused or confusing statements or arguments regularly, an argument does not change policy nor any guideline. The local guideline is poor, beginning with its use "WP:Local Consensus", as if agreement in a project guideline can override any general policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:46, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do you think that any closure of this discussion that ends with consensus in favor of the change would not immediately be followed by an addition to the guideline requiring independent sourcing for organizational endorsements? Katzrockso (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The local guideline may be poor, and the wording of this RFC certainly is—as I and others have pointed out from the beginning—but many editors have (reasonably) interpreted the intent as requiring independent sources and many !votes and comments have been on this basis. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You can't require anything by removing the sentence. Practically, all these discussions on Wikipedia wander around hither and yon. That's just the way is.
To answer the above question, if anyone else wants to require anything new, they need to get agreement on a new sentence and it needs to align with policy, which this sentence does not. It is bedrock principle that verifiability does not end the issues of whether something should be content. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:01, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
But you can require something by having a discussion in which many editors agree that it should be required, even if the first post does not propose exactly the thing that the discussion formed a consensus for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This project is not an experiment in anarchy. Write down in guideline how to guide people and conform that guidance with policy, otherwise there is no consensus on it, that's one of the lessons of WP:local consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:13, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is a consensus-based project. It is not a parliamentary system, in which proposals have to be voted on as-is. If someone proposes "X", and the community forms a consensus for "Y", then "Y" is the winner. There is no law that says "Oh, but it can't be "Y", because that wasn't the original wording, and letting editors form a consensus without a formal proposal and a !vote is too chaotic for some people". Indeed, the law of the wiki is the opposite: Whatever the community agreed upon is what the community agreed upon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
How does this sentence not align with policy? You can certainly disagree with it, but it doesn't say that verifiability is sufficient to include something. Katzrockso (talk) 21:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ah well, even if everyone agreed with you on what it is trying to do (which they don't), it obviously has created confusion due to its poor writing. Again, that means it has no consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As was pointed out in the "BEFORE" at WP:RSN, the framing that the current guidance allows local consensus to overrule our general policy that facts be sourced to independent reliable sources is not quite accurate. A "dependent" primary source is often reliable for a statement made by the source itself, such as an explicit endorsement on an official website or social media account. WP:SELCRIT provides some general guidance but more or less allows for local consensus at the level of individual list articles. All that said, I can imagine these lists getting out of hand. WP:WEIGHT, WP:PROMO, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and other general principles apply to endorsement list articles. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:45, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yup… while a selfpub source can reliably verify an endorsement, WP:VNOT and WP:DUE apply. We need independent reliable sources to demonstrate that the endorsement matters enough for us to mention it. Blueboar (talk) 21:57, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
What happens if an independent source claims Organization A endorsed Candidate B, but Organization A says it isn't an endorsement (and it's not a clear-cut case of either side being wrong)? Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:30, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would think that endorsement lists generally include uncontroversial, uncomplicated entries. Beyond that, this has to be a case by case determination and is not something a general guideline can address. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 16:51, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ballotpedia is a great source for US elections, perhaps, not so much for the rest of the world. This looks like a case of making rules suitable for the US based on US conditions and assuming they should apply worldwide. Wellington Bay (talk) 15:42, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is an ongoing debate in Canadian politics articles where some editors argue that self-published social media posts or campaign websites are sufficient for inclusion in endorsement lists, regardless of independent coverage. On local talk pages, this frequently leads to attempts to establish a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS for inclusion of these into a "list of endorsements" which closely resembles the tables used in AP2 articles (see 2026 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election#Endorsements for the most recent example of this debate coming up). Requiring independent secondary coverage, even for organizations and at "local" talk pages ensures that Wikipedia endorsement lists reflect encyclopedic WP:WEIGHT. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)18:23, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ordinary discussions about how to best apply/comply with our policies and guidelines are not LOCALCONSENSUS violations. I suggest reading WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, especially the bit that says:
YDesired outcome: A small number of editors arrive at an agreement about how to best apply sitewide policies and guidelines to a given Wikipedia article.
If it is not clear enough that this "Desired outcome" (emphasis in the original) is not a LOCALCONSENSUS, then let me know, and I'll see about clarifying that, possibly by adding a sentence that says "Doing this is not a 'local consensus' and does not violate this policy." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would opine that some editors are arguing to be allowed to decide that Nrelevant sitewide policies and guidelines should not apply to particular articles, on account of "poor" or "slow" secondary coverage. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)21:19, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There's no policy or guideline that requires secondary coverage for a small detail, such as whether a candidate was endorsed by an organization. Arguing that primary and/or non-independent sources should be allowed within the confines of the relevant sitewide policies is the opposite of arguing that relevant sitewide policies and guidelines should not apply. The WP:PRIMARY policy says "Primary sources that have been reputably publishedmay be used in Wikipedia". Why are you arguing against the long-standing sitewide policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If anything, I am arguing that a simple tweet or candidate website is insufficient sourcing for inclusion of endorsements of individuals on Wikipedia per WP:ENDORSE/WP:DUE. If they have not been covered by independent, secondary sources, why would Wikipedia, if Wikipedia's purpose is to be a reflection of what is written in reliable, secondary sources? ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)00:45, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia's purpose is to be an encyclopedia that fairly represents all the sources, which sometimes requires including facts that are not written in secondary (=analytical, evaluative, interpretative, etc.) sources.
Note that WP:ENDORSE doesn't even mention WP:SECONDARY sources, much less require them. ENDORSE says editors working on an article can choose to use sources connected to the organization itself, such as its website or official social media accounts for endorsements by organizations.
The arguments in Canadian politics articles centre around individuals, not organizations, which are specifically covered by WP:ENDORSE. I am aware that this specific RfC is in regards to organizations only. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)01:06, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The text on WP:ENDORSE literally says This means endorsements should not be sourced solely to a Tweet or Instagram post by the endorser, endorsee, or an affiliated individual or organization, for example. If my semantics are poor, I apologize, but editors are arguing that a simple tweet or a link to www.JaneDoe2026.ca/my-endorsements should be enough for inclusion of individuals. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)01:22, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's under "2. Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements which have been covered by reliableindependent sources" in ===Endorsements by individuals===
The difference between WP:SECONDARY and WP:INDEPENDENT sources is not mere semantics. It is the difference between a source that analyzes an endorsement ("The ____ endorsement of my esteemed opponent has proved an embarrassment to his campaign; I should be appalled to think that such a deplorable organization approved of my platform") and one that has no vested/financial interest in the outcome (e.g., a news outlet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In fairness, which definition of primary source one uses and how it categorizes news articles is a semantic issue. A mess that's been acknowledged earlier in this discussion. Of course, our house definition is what ultimately matters in assessing the application of P&G. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
True; there's a quite traditional definition that says anything published within a few years of any event is automatically a primary source, which would mean that "must have a secondary source" would mean "cannot be included until the election has been over for several years". But that definition is mostly people writing about pre-modern history, and 'our house definition' does not require that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
And you have resources like this and usage in different disciplines and contexts. Most descriptions I've seen, including ours, will say that newspapers (and by extension, online news articles) can be primary or secondary depending on various factors but the factors differ as do the determinations based on a particular factor. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:38, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
anything published within a few years of any event is certainly the definition I was taught, and it's the one I use for anything pre-2016 or so. (This is a viewpoint which does not make you popular at AFD) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸02:39, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because it would mean we can't write about anything that happened recently, which I think is a viewpoint that would garner very little support in a community wide discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 02:42, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Only because there is further confusion that reliable = secondary (or tertiary). Even though our P&G don't say that, it's no surprise that this is a source of conflict and confusion. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:51, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If our notability criteria specify secondary sources are required and we say that recent coverage (ie within the last few years) is all primary, then nothing in the last few years is wiki-notable. Katzrockso (talk) 03:11, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
But we already have tons of articles on ongoing infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, elections, upcoming films, etc. built almost entirely on news articles and other sources we define as primary. Maybe some of these are able to scrounge up two or three secondary sources. I agree that GreenLipstickLesbian's definition would be unworkable but there already seems to me to be a disconnect. Anyway, this is increasingly off-topic… —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 03:54, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
And now hopefully you see why even I, a bit of a hardliner of this, have a built in post-2016 exception clause for anything not excessively contentious. (If you can't find a source 5 to 10 years after the event with sigcov and everything, is the event notable? I say no, obviously not, other editor say yes, obviously yes. ) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸03:55, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Back when the word secondary was first added to WP:N (in 2007), we had a different definition of WP:SECONDARY. When it spread to the explanation of the GNG (you may have noticed that it's not in the GNG sentence itself), the notion of "secondary means secondhand" was very popular. If a house burned down on Monday, and a journalist interviewed an eyewitness for Tuesday morning's paper, then that was "secondary". It's wrong, and we've moved firmly away from that during the last decade, but I think that anyone concerned about secondary sources at AFD should remember that 'secondary' back in the day was a very low bar indeed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You're right that our guidelines and practices should take a global view. A relatively small number of articles have been provided as examples in this and the other linked discussions to illustrate what exactly the problem is, and all of these have been US elections articles. If we were to adopt the proposed rule and follow the guidance that Ballotpedia is generally reliable, the likely outcome would be that US election articles remain largely unchanged—or expanded, as Ballotpedia likely catalogues endorsements that aren't in some of our articles—while endorsement lists for other countries' elections are trimmed unless there is a similar source that can be used to catalogue endorsements for every either country. Or if we wanted to limit/down-weight Ballotpedia endorsement lists, we'd have to impose an even higher bar that at least two independent sources are required for organizational endorsements. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:30, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Out of curiosity, I looked at Ballotpedia's Abdul El-Sayed page. I count 58 "organizations" under his endorsements in the 2026 senate race. Our article on the senate race lists just 37 in the primary (8 labor unions, 25 organizations, 1 political party, 2 newspapers). —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:35, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I also looked at the size of 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan. The Democratic primary endorsements section is indeed huge. If we require independent sourcing then it would be reasonable to pick Ballotpedia as our standard bearer. Nearly doubling the number or organizational endorsements would only worsen the problem. Size aside, I don't think the article would be improved by including non-notable orgs like Cat Ladies For America. I suppose we could come up with additional criteria to duplicate the output of our current practice. This is an awfully convoluted fix, to the extent there is even a problem here.
Section sizes in 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan
Latest comment: 2 days ago44 comments20 people in discussion
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Should any of the following be added to WP:ITNBLURB:
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, ITN should generally not report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair and Wikipedia has an article surrounding this, consensus at ITN can develop to report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, consensus at ITN can develop to report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, ITN should generally report or indicate this characterization.
Remove elections from ITN/R as the current formulation too often results in insignificant elections in microstates being posted while elections which are actually important such as the Mayor of NYC, the Scottish government or the Indian state legislative assemblies are denied. The nominal RfC question is badly formed because ITN/R doesn't determine the format of blurbs. The fact that such postings are often contentious is a further reason to have open discussion without any ITN/R constraints which lead some to suppose that elections should be posted in a mechanical, monotonous way. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:10, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for pointing out the flaw in the RFC question (the first person after 24 days of workshopping...). I have reworked it to hopefully resolve the concern. 1brianm7 (talk) 21:06, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Your constant prejudice against the politics of small nations is duly noted. Again. However, the course of action you are calling for does not form part of any of the proposals currently under discussion. GenevieveDEon (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
ITN/R is explicit prejudice − an arbitrary list of supposedly important topics regardless of the actual coverage and facts. My position is that we should judge topics on their merits, not by preconceived prejudice. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:05, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can agree that ITN should be more open to posting sub-national elections; the most recent NYC election was inarguably one of the biggest political news stories in the world last year. But instead of posting it, ITN - as per usual - shot itself in the foot by caring more about strict adherence to its incoherent set of unwritten rules than doing anything resembling what it's supposed to do. But I don't think this would be solved by removing national elections from ITN/R. ITN/R blurbs and RD postings are the only semi-functional parts of ITN precisely because they bypass these debates over what is "significant." We just need to stop making the mistake of acting like anything that's not ITN/R is automatically not blurbworthy at all. That, and nuke ITNSIGNIF, and maybe also replace our whole ITN/C community with different editors who'll be able to form a consensus to fix the broken mess that is ITN, because with every passing year I lose faith that the bunch we have now will ever be able to agree to do that. Vanilla Wizard 💙21:01, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose instruction creep that doesn't appear to be well-justified by prior discussions. This more or less aligns with options 3/4, but I'm not seeing a reason why we need a separate instruction about this that wouldn't simply be subject to regular workshopping of the ITN hook to reflect RS coverage. Even when blatantly unfair, election results tend to be significant (if nothing else, confirming the intended continuity of the ruling regime), protests resulting from rigged elections can also be quite significant, and judging fairness is itself a gradient, not a binary. That having been said, I think that Andrew D's concerns above could perhaps be resolved by adding a clause that ITN should also run blurbs for elections for cities and dependencies with a population in excess of [2 million? 5 million? 10 million?] signed, Rosguilltalk20:21, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose instruction creep. I don't see any evidence that the status quo (option 3) is not working. How a blurb should be worded depends on the circumstances of the individual election and every other option is too rigid to account for this. I don't see any benefit in explicitly stating that consensus may be for or against mentioning how free and fair an election is. Thryduulf (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose either of the options numbered 1, support any of the others, with a preference for option 3 - I think it's misleading to have a policy against mentioning the unfairness of an election if that unfairness is widely reported in reliable independent sources. I'm less concerned with the exact phrasing of the rule, but I do see the concern about instruction creep. With option 4, although I am in favour of its sentiments, there is the risk that the requirement to include such a reference might lead to such stories not being posted at all, because the nature of the reference cannot be agreed. Options 2 and 3 are both close to my understanding of the status quo, and clarify it. I do not think that we should specifically be avoiding posting elections simply because they are unfair - but I do have a preference for mentioning the unfairness. GenevieveDEon (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Remove ITN, first choice. Remove elections from ITN/R, second choice. Follow the sources, third choice. If the sources say it's a "sham" election, say that so-and-so won a "sham election." If they say it's a "rigged" election, ITN should say so-and-so won a "rigged election." If they say it's an "election with widely-reported irregularities," then we should say so-and-so won an "election with widely-reported irregularities." Levivich (talk) 21:25, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It wouldn't really, since all those controversial / sham elections would be nominated under the normal ITN process... Khuft (talk) 18:59, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Generally oppose, free is not a binary, fair is not a binary. Reporting purported election results without going over the same arguments repeatedly seems the purpose of the ITN/R entry, mandating freeness and fairness assessments will not aid with that goal. CMD (talk) 01:31, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose cover all in the same way and don't judge. The reader is not stupid and sees bias. Let's not give them more opportunity to see it.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
If RS say one thing is an election, and another thing is a sham election, and we call both things an "election," we're misleading the reader. If RS say one thing is "X", and another thing is "called 'X' but not actually X," and we call both things "X", we're lying to the reader. On the main page. Dropping "sham" or "rigged" before "election" would be a lie of omission.
"Free" and "fair" aren't just adjectives describing some kinds of elections, they're prerequisites for something to even be an "election." We shouldn't use the word "elect" when the reality is "appoint" (or "self-appoint"), even if government propaganda uses the word "elect." Levivich (talk) 13:26, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can editors opposing any changes mention whether they think the status quo is along the lines of "ITN participants can propose and gain consensus for blurbs that report or indicate an election not being free or fair" or whether it is "Any blurb that mentions an election not being free and fair is procedurally invalid and will be altered by ITN admins to omit it", and whether that extends to the subtle games with wording Masem mentioned below), even if ITN participants supported such a blurb. Anyhow, Support 3>4, oppose 1 and 2; whether an election was a sham is the second-most important thing after the result, on equal significance with the election happening. Support 5 - the fact that a military dictator decided they needed a fancy new title is not inherently significant. 1brianm7 (talk) 14:03, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can editors opposing any changes mention whether they think the status quo is along the lines of "ITN participants can propose and gain consensus for blurbs that report or indicate an election not being free or fair" or whether it is "Any blurb that mentions an election not being free and fair is procedurally invalid and will be altered by ITN admins to omit it" this is a false dichotomy. Editors can reach a consensus to mention that, but if they haven't then it won't be included in the blurb. If admins are altering blurbs against consensus that's a problem that none of the changes proposed here can solve. Thryduulf (talk) 14:29, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm kinda at a loss here. Admins are doing that (see the discussion I linked in my reply to you above). When asked why, they said that's how it has always been done and to start a discussion at WT:ITN if you want it changed. I did, there was no consensus, so I started this RfC. What should I have done?1brianm7 (talk) 14:47, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
A significant contingent of editors respond to proposals to mention or indicate sham-ness by saying that there is an unwritten rule to never do so. I can't think of a way to prevent that simpler than a written rule saying that it is allowed. 1brianm7 (talk) 15:08, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose change, keep status quo / keep elections in ITN/R – "X is declared the winner of" is just a wordier way of saying "X wins". As mentioned before, the arguments on whether an election is "free or fair" is arbitrary and ITN editors will never agree. If protests are significant enough where they would normally merit a blurb, it would make sense to merge the two blurbs together. If reliable sources are reporting on a specific aspect of an election, such as voter turnout in the 2021 NewCaledonia referendum or the recent HongKong election (in which the pro-China camp, pro-democracy camp, and international media all focused primarily on turnout), then it would also be appropriate to include that in the blurb when also reflected by the targeted article. Nice4What (talk · contribs) ♥14:35, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support this initiative in general; agnostic re exact wordings. I never really agreed with the "consensus" that we should use standardised wording when posting election results (sham or not). Our guidance should be what reputable sources say, and if they tend towards questioning the freedom and fairness of certain elections, we should be free to editorialise accordingly. (And: Keep all elections at ITN/R - not sure why that is even being questioned here as irrelevant to this proposal - the Russian "election" will be nominated anyway when it happens, whether as ITN or as ITN/R) Khuft (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
we should be free to editorialise accordingly No! Absolutely not! The personal opinions of ITN editors should not determine how we describe election results. The last thing we need is editors only using the term "sham elections" for regimes they personally disagree with. Warudo (talk) 15:24, 3 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Follow the sources/target article language above all else. I guess this is an anything except 1 with a preference for 4 !vote? But it really does just depend on what the sources say. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, ITN even less so. It should just be a chain of repetition: ITN should follow what the article says, the article should follow what the sources say, simple as. This should be the only thing that determines whether the language of the blurb can or should suggest that an election is contested, not what us at ITN have to say about it.
As CMD pointed out, it is not possible for us to cleanly and objectively separate "real" elections from "sham" elections because most countries on Earth don't fit neatly into a binary between true democracies and true dictatorships; it's a spectrum and most of the world is somewhere in the middle, and where exactly a country falls on that spectrum will vary from election to election as countries either backslide or democratize over time. This is why it needs to be determined on a case by case basis, based on what the sources say and how much weight article writers assign to those sources, how an election should be described. If the article can say the election was described by international observers as neither free nor fair, then ITN can. If the article can't say it, ITN can't say it. Easy as that, no need to complicate things or debate it at ITN/C. If this is contested, contest it at the article talk page, not ITN/C. The less leeway ITN gives itself, the better. Not just with regard to election blurbs, but all blurb discussions, because this mindset that ITN is somehow separate from the articles it features & gets to act as its own decisionmaking body with minimal objective instructions is really the root of every one of ITN's problems. Oppose removing elections from ITN/R, agree with Khuft that it's not really clear why that's even being discussed.
Oppose. It's not for us to judge elections in such a way; we can note that observers view an election as unfair. Instructions creep, too. 331dot (talk) 20:55, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
To be fair to the nom, the options provided are about how/if we should follow the sources, not leaving it up to us to judge elections ourselves. Noting that observers view an election as unfair is roughly options 2-4, but opposing all of them and forming no consensus here would leave us stuck with the current situation where the editors feel they are allowed to judge elections themselves. ITN doesn't have an instruction creep problem, but I wish it did. It has a "there are no instructions" problem. Vanilla Wizard 💙21:16, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Exactly that we have no instructions. I'd note that about half of the oppose votes are doing so because there is no need to spell out the status quo (one) and another half are doing so because there is no need to spell out the status quo (roughly two or three). 1brianm7 (talk) 21:52, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose / keep status quo Pretty much agree with Nice4What. Readers can always click on the blurb's wikilink to the election page to learn more about the election, including its controversies. If "reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair", then that would usually be covered in the article's lead. Some1 (talk) 23:24, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
From news style: To "bury the lead" is to begin the article with background information or details of secondary importance to the readers, forcing them to read more deeply into an article than they should have to in order to discover the essential points. - perhaps we should just adopt the format "John Smithis set to continue as president of example.", we wouldn't be deceiving the reader anymore (if they don't click on the link, which most won't) 1brianm7 (talk) 00:52, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose any changes. Any articles we post where they are described as shams should say as much in the articles in question. We don't need to editorialize in the blurbs or in what we post. All election blurbs say anyway are "[person] was elected as [title] of [country]", and that is all that needs being said in most cases. The article is the ideal place for expansion upon the circumstances around the election. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:08, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think that's the whole issue that is being flagged here... "X was elected" implies a democratic process was adhered to, which isn't the case in sham elections. It is editorialising, but in the opposite direction (if that makes any sense) because it doesn't follow what reputable sources would be saying. Khuft (talk) 10:15, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
"X was elected" implies a democratic process was adhered to I don't think that's true. It implies that an election was held and that that X was declared the winner of that election, but it doesn't imply anything about the nature of the election - after all whether a process is "democratic" or not is neither a binary nor objective, whether the defined process (whatever its nature) was followed is frequently not knowable until days or weeks (at least) afterwards and sometimes contentious. For example whether the 2020 United States presidential election was "democratic" and whether the defined process was followed depends on who you ask - e.g. those who believe Donald Trump's claims, those who believe the Electoral college is not democratic, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose change This proposal seems to rely on a biased view that free and fair elections is the control stage and any departure from it needs to be indicated. In the same way we don't characterise elections as 'free and fair', there's no point to do so if they're 'non-free and unfair'. In any case, the reader can view the article for further details. Democracy is a view, not a universal rule. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support. This isn't AfD. This is literally just "is this newsworthy enough to make the front page of Wikipedia". Putin or Kim Jon Un winning "reelection" by a 90-10 margin once again is just not newsworthy. This is the same reason that a tornado in Kansas won't make ITN unless its death toll is absurd, whereas a similarly powerful tornado in Tokyo would definitely make it regardless of death toll. Man bites dog is news, dog bites man is not. RedSlash03:21, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
An issue that I've raised is that the determination of what is or isn't a sham election, or what is or isn't a free-and-fair election, is not an objective meausure. There are election watchdog groups that will review an election and sometime after the election will assess the free-and-fairness but not in time for ITN's purposes; and even if these groups deem an election to be a sham, their statements should be included with attribution as other similar groups (like SPLC for hate groups), to keep it out of wikivoice. Which leaves us with journalism commentators making that assessment at the time of the election, which we should avoid resting too much weight on even if it seems clear they are correct. ITN's blurbs need to stay factual as they are all in wikivoice - we don't have room for attribution or sourcing like article space has, so trying to force in a claim that an election was a sham or not free-and-fair just doesn't work. We can play subtle games with the wording, de-emphaizing "win" and more "selected" or "named" in the cases of such elections like in Russia, though we should also be consist with that across known free-and-fair elections too. Masem (t) 13:37, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is also worth noting that there are times when different observers have different opinions about how free and fair a given election is (although usually only in degree). Thryduulf (talk) 13:58, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The alternative just as problematic - we present an election as-if it were a true election ("Russia elects" or "Putin wins"). "wins" and "elects" have specific implications and invoke particular meaning for a reader, so it is simply not neutrally reporting the facts if in fact we are reporting on a sham election. Instead, we would be misinforming our readers. Katzrockso (talk) 22:09, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
+1 - If there is clearly a dispute over whether an "election" was really an election at all, and there is due weight to note this in an article lead, then presenting the event as an election in Wikivoice with no qualifiers is very much an NPOV vio. NPOV is about giving due weight to relevant perspectives, failing to do this is not neutral. The only sensible solution is to assess the sources and the article content to determine whether there is due weight to present an election as contested. Writing "Vladimir Putin wins the Russian presidential election" with no asterisks as though it were a totally normal and legitimate election is just as much of a WP:WEIGHT vio as "Joe Biden is declared the winner of the United States presidential election amid allegations of fraud"; both unduly promote a WP:FRINGE perspective. Vanilla Wizard 💙23:11, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem is whether an election is a sham or not , regardless of how many journalists are commenting on it within the days of that election, is subjective and cannot be said in wikivoice. It falls under NPOV that the claims should be attributed and given context which is fine in the article body, but in the short sentence we have at ITN, we have no room for attribution and context. (This is true for all ITN blurbs, they have to be presented in wikivoice so must be demonstrated fact and not subjective assessments). WEIGHT obviously applies in article space as to put the sham aspect up high in the lede, but obviously outside wikivoice, eg: "Putin wins the Russian president election in what many observers consider as a sham election." but that's language that can't work at ITN. Masem (t) 01:12, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's why there are wording formats we can say that do not imply that the election was a fair one without going there, like "X is elected as president in the 2026 Y election." That applies if the election was fair or not, but we should be using that same format for all elections so that we're clearly not putting our finger down on the marker. Masem (t) 01:07, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Don't run any donation banners until the union-busting is completely ended
Latest comment: 3 days ago79 comments23 people in discussion
The "suggested links" tool, which prompts newbies to add links in articles, is more trouble than it's worth. Every few weeks, at least, I see an article edited as suggested with the addition of links that are just plain wrong. One that sticks out in my memory was the linking of the phrase operation of law in a sentence about the day-to-day operation of law schools. Today it was on List of Blue Bloods characters, where, in reference to a character having worked in the Brooklyn South Division it suggested linking Brooklyn South, which sounds like it makes sense if you don't know that Brooklyn South is just the name of an unrelated TV series, and not relevant to the article where the link was added. On other occasions, I have seen a slow motion project-wide edit war between suggested links and editors dealing with WP:OVERLINKING (which suggested links often amount to). There are more than enough tasks needing work that a low priority busywork tool with a high enough error rate to make me go "not this again" should be eliminated. BD2412T15:58, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
MMiller (WMF) is the most likely person to be able to change this, at least among my limited "people I remember working at the foundation and work in this area" mental checklist. KStoller-WMF has also participated in some related discussions. I will say this isn't the first time I've seen this feature suggested as harmful to the new user experience. It definitely prompts a lot of new editors to try and use it, but I think it kind've defeats the point of more active participation if they'll get reverted for it. It's demoralizing to get told not to do something you were told to do by the software itself. Clovermoss🍀(talk)16:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think it kind've defeats the point of more active participation if they'll get reverted for it. We’ve found that being reverted is one of the most demotivating experiences a newcomer can have. This is actually part of what motivated us to create Add-a-Link, as we wanted to give newcomers an easier, more structured task where they would be less likely to get reverted and could build up their confidence.
Given their inexperience, newcomers are still going to make mistakes and get reverted sometimes. But compared to the baseline of newcomers making unstructured edits, we’ve found the tool to be a success. In the A/B experiment we ran, we found:
The group of newcomers for whom the feature was enabled was 33.7% more likely to successfully make an edit that was not reverted ("constructive activation"), 3.7% more likely to stay active ("constructive retention"), and 19.6% less likely to have their edits reverted ("revert rate"). This is similar to our prior findings for the feature in other languages.
I just worry that the percentages aren't accurate, given the manual and slow nature of a lot of the reverts. And I do think that the impact of being reverted is heightened when it's a consequence of the software literally telling you to do something vs an independent decision where you might feel like "oh, it probably makes sense that I messed up". Clovermoss🍀(talk)23:31, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Any "manual and slow nature of" reverts ought to apply equally to other good-faith edits, though, so even if that's a problem, it's a problem equally distributed across the two groups. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that's nessecarily the case, although I think statistics shouldn't just be for a short time frame and should try to account for reverts that might not be as easily tagged, but I'm not sure how technically possible it is. I think this type of edit would be more likely to be "hidden" by filters, less likely to be immediately reverted because someone doesn't have that specific article on their watchlist, etc. I guess what I'm saying is it's the exact sort of small change that might have a skewed ratio on paper in a favourable looking direction. Clovermoss🍀(talk)02:21, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
From the notes: "These figures reflect the revert rates for all article edits made by users in each group on English Wikipedia rather than only edits made through the “Add-a-link” structured task. Edits made via “Add-a-link” specifically have a lower revert rate than the overall rates presented here."
The only difference between the two groups is that one randomly selected group had the feature enabled – not that they all used it, but that the software feature was there. It's about "Users assigned to the treatment group", not "Users who made this type of edit". This is the same kind of trial run when researchers want to know whether telling someone to floss their teeth improves dental health: you're comparing the ones in the treatment group, including the ones who didn't floss their teeth, against the ones in the control group, including the ones who decided to floss their teeth without being told. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
And I'm saying that having the feature enabled by itself matters, because being prompted to do something affects people's behaviour and how they perceive what comes after. I'm not saying we need to get rid of the feature entirely, I'm just pointing out the flaws of "metrics are good" reasoning. Clovermoss🍀(talk)03:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
When users add multiple links, when one is bad the others can be good or neutral. Partially reverting the bad ones may not show up as a reversion. CMD (talk) 03:17, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that the tool leads to a lot of overlinking (and the wrong links as pointed out by BD2412 are really bad). There would need to be quite big advantages for the tool to counter these downsides. Does anyone or @WhatamIdoing know if we have any research about that? —Kusma (talk) 18:02, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm sure there is some research. However, the research we need would answer a question like "Is the main problem this particular tool, or is the main problem that newbies make mistakes?"
Anecdotally, the most frequent bad newbie link pattern that I see is linking common English vocabulary, and links to disambiguation pages. signed, Rosguilltalk15:56, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This tool shouldn't be suggesting any dab pages. Of course, the editors can manually change a link to something else. Do you have diffs of a few? Maybe we could find a pattern. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There have been 558 such edits in the last 24 hours. 297 of them were from accounts that haven't even made 10 edits yet (and so not autoconfirmed). Only one (1) of those edits has been reverted so far. This does not look like evidence of a serious problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I've found a lot of errors, but I don't revert unless every link they add is incorrect. Instead, I manually remove the bad links. (For example, removing a wikilink to the wrong person or to the wrong target for that context.) The problem that I've seen is the tool suggesting bad links and new editors not having the experience to recognize them. When a new editor adds an inappropriate link, I fix it, but then also feel obligated to go through their other edits to correct similar problems on articles I'm not watching. Schazjmd(talk)18:40, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Would it be easier for you if we only let the tool suggest one (or even two) links at a time? It's currently set to a maximum of three suggestions per edit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If they could only make one link per edit, it would be a quick revert. I just wish the tool made smarter recommendations. Recent examples of bad ones: Schazjmd(talk)18:53, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Schazjmd: I see a very clear problematic pattern here of the tool wanting to link lowercase phrases (e.g. "fashionable friends", "a taxi driver", "why her") with capitalized names of works (Fashionable Friends, A Taxi Driver, Why Her). I can't imagine why on Earth anyone, machine or not, would think that such a title would reflect the generalizable lowercase phrase. Barring non-matching capitalization from the tool would prevent the bulk of these, though ironically not the two cases that mentioned, which do have matching capitalization. BD2412T19:38, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is a case for withdrawing the tool entirely, but the absolute minimum change needed is a capitalisation filter: stop suggesting A Taxi Driver whenever someone writes about a taxi driver. Such links will almost never be an improvement. Searching a text dump for [[Any Phrase|any phrase]] and selectively unlinking would be a massive exercise with many false positives. It'll be far quicker if we can get access to the list of such links which have been suggested and reverse the systematic damage one phrase at a time. Certes (talk) 12:01, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
... Of course, the first letter of the title is exempt. "Hot money" and "hot money" can both link to Hot money, but only "Hot Money" should link to Hot Money. On the other hand, it may be better to avoid suggesting cases where two articles (not redirects to the same article) differ only in capitalisation. Perhaps the system already does. Certes (talk) 12:21, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In the category of "low priority busywork": If you see this tool exclusively as a method of adding desirable links, and you assume that its users would do something more significant if it didn't exist, then I can understand describing this as "low priority busywork".
However, I suggest that you consider:
that the tool's real value might be in teaching newcomers how to make links and that we want to Wikipedia:Build the web between articles,
that many newcomers probably can't do complex tasks, so the realistic choice is better "low priority busywork" and nothing, rather than between "low priority busywork" and "high-priority contributions", and
that if someone is consistently sloppy about making links, it might be better to find that out now, while they're doing "low priority busywork", and let them earn a block for incompetence instead of waiting until their sloppiness extends into areas that are more subtle or complicated to fix.
If we're getting too many poor suggestions, then I think that it might make sense to look at making a few changes to Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits#link recommendation. We're already limiting access to the tool (no more than 15 articles per day; never for anyone with more than 150 edits). Should we change the "Weight of underlinked articles" (currently set to 50%) to make it pick articles that are more severely underlinked? Should the "Minimum required link score" go up, to increase the required confidence in link suggestions? We've got some levers here that don't involve just a binary on/off. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Your last point is an interesting one. At the German Wikipedia, users are limited to one link per task (rather than three) and seven tasks per day (rather than 15); the task is turned off after the user has made five edits (rather than 150); and the "Minimum required link score" is 0.7 (rather than 0.6). Maybe some of those changes would be worth making here. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:35, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think that the approach taken by the German-language Wikipedia won't work for us, especially with cutting off the task before many people have had a chance to try it (especially if they start with Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure, which can make more than 20 edits). But I think we should try making a small change in that direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree. I'll be honest, there's been a few times I've ignored edits with this tool that probably should have been reverted because it felt like too much effort and didn't seem like that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I figured that if someone else cared enough, they would revert later, and sometimes they do, even if it takes months. I don't think reversion rates are entirely accurate if people are manually fixing these as they come across them much later. Clovermoss🍀(talk)19:11, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, one link per task seems sensible. Making it easier for patrollers will presumably result in more problematic links being reverted. That, in turn, should make the revert statistics more reliable—that is, more reflective of the true "bad link" rate. In theory, the current revert rate is artificially low because the effort required to review multiple links tends towards keeping more bad links and because manual correction (reversion) of just one out of three links may not be consistently logged as a revert. I don't know enough about these levers to have a strong opinion but a modest increase to the link score also seems reasonable. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 19:38, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for raising this point about the difficulty of reverting Add-a-Link suggestions when there are multiple suggestions in an edit, @Extraordinary Writ/@WhatamIdoing/@Kusma/@Clovermoss/@Myceteae. Limiting to one link per task will resolve that, although it may also lead to a few more instances where only one item in a list gets linked.
One other approach to this issue we briefly considered (and could explore again if there is interest) is to make each added link a separate edit, just publishing them in rapid succession after clicking "publish" when a user adds multiple links in one article. This would make reverting easier, but it could also clog watchlists by producing more overall edits. I'm curious to hear from folks — would this be more desirable? Sdkb‑WMFtalk23:55, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I believe that the tendency towards poor suggestions arises out of the nature of Wikipedia as a very large general purpose encyclopedia. As with the recent Blue Bloods example, there are just way too many titles that sound like some general topic but are in fact titles of specific works, which could be films or songs or albums or books. Similarly, the "operation of law" instance is misuse of a term of art within a specific profession. If links were limited to topics that were definitively the topic, like titles properly categorized as place names or names of people, presuming that we didn't get mistakes in the identity of ambiguously named places and people, that would be much better. At the same time however, place names tend to be some of the most overlinked in articles. BD2412T19:30, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It looks like this problem was identified for Vietnamese at phab:T278864#6961431 but I don't see a more general Phab ticket. From the comments above, it sounds like our plan so far is:
to write a Phab ticket asking for lowercase text to not be matched to proper nouns, and
to edit the configuration to suggest just one link at a time.
@WhatamIdoing: I would say at the least to only link where there is already exactly matching capitalization, but I am wondering if we can just exclude all subjects categorized as titles of media from the tool altogether. There are plenty of other things to be linked without these in the list. That, and limiting to one link at a time and perhaps fewer instances per day, would address the immediate concerns. BD2412T21:56, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Matching the capitalization should be a one-way street, because a link to the article Chocolate cake should be suggested when it's capitalized at the beginning of the sentence ("Chocolate cake is good") as well as when it's not capitalized in the middle of the sentence ("This chocolate cake is good"). What we don't want is a sentence like "Prison and Chocolate Cake was first published in 1954" to be linked to Chocolate cake, because Prison and Chocolate Cake is the title of a book. Our article on cakes made of chocolate should be suggested for any sentence-case string (chocolate cake, Chocolate cake) but not for the title-case string (Chocolate Cake); if our article is in title case, it should only be linked if the article text is also title case (e.g., the article Alice and Bob can be suggested for any mention of Alice and Bob, but not for Alice and bob. Unfortunately, we'll lose Alice And Bob matches). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:44, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Exactly matching capitalization may be ideal. At a minimum, not suggesting title case links for sentence case phrases would be a substantial improvement. Discrimination in link target/primary topic based on capitalization is a fundamental approach on English Wikipedia. It's also not something I expect newcomers to be attuned to since many publish works use title case for, as the name suggests, titles. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:21, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think we should try raising the "Minimum required link score" a bit, maybe to 0.7. Special:NewcomerTasksInfo indicates that there are over 1.1 million possible tasks in the pool right now, so I don't think there'd be any harm in being a little more selective (although finding the right threshold might take a little experimenting). Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:20, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamIdoing Thanks for chiming in and offering to support Community Configuration changes. I agree adjusting some config settings seems like a good place to start.
We are aware of two main issues with the model currently, both of which I see reflected in the concerns raised above:
The model looks at individual words, rather than phrases, which is resulting in many of the partial name links over proper nouns (sometimes improperly capitalized), including in the Brooklyn South diff. To address this, in T405185 we are introducing named entity recognition, which should resolve this. I discussed this task again just now with the product manager of the Machine Learning team (which works on the model), and they've committed to moving that work forward.
The model is trained on the first sentence of every article, which we believe may be leading to some of the overlinking tendencies because first sentences contain contextual links to more generic topics. In T415623 the Machine Learning team will explore retraining the model to instead use the first sentence after the lead section, which I’m hopeful will help address the overlinking issue. To help reduce overlinking suggestions, admins can also increase the "Weight of underlinked articles" score via the Suggested Edits Community Configuration form to prioritize articles that are more severely underlinked.
@KStoller-WMF: Does that mean that the requested fixes are not possible? One of the above examples is of an article with a sentence ending with saying that someone "was a taxi driver", which the tool advised to be linked to the media, A Taxi Driver. If these kinds of edits were not being pursuant to the suggestions of the tool, I would think a vandal was trolling us through intentionally bad links. I don't see how the partial name check would have prevented this one, as it is a complete phrase. What we should be doing is forcing sentence case capitalization matching, and excluding media titles from being linked at all. BD2412T23:54, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@BD2412 The requested improvements are possible, although they’re not trivial, which is why they weren’t prioritized immediately.
The capitalization matching specifically is something we’ve been thinking about beyond just named entity recognition. The bottom half of the description of T405185 captures work on training the model to make use of the signals case sensitivity provides, which is essentially what you’re describing: in your “taxi driver” example, the mismatch between the lowercase phrase in the article and the capitalized title “A Taxi Driver” is exactly the kind of signal that work aims to have the model learn from. There’s also T409138, a related but separate task that looks at instances where the model suggests a link to the wrong proper noun (e.g. if there were two films both titled A Taxi Driver).
We’re prioritizing named entity recognition first because we believe it will have the greatest impact. However, we’re committed to continuing to improve the quality of Add a Link suggestions. Once that work is complete, we’ll evaluate the remaining issues and continue exploring additional improvements where they’re needed.
At the same time, no machine learning model will ever be perfect. That’s why we the onboarding instructions for newcomers make it clear that suggestions may be incorrect and encourage them to use their own judgment. Our expectation, however, is that these improvements will make the suggestions significantly more accurate than they are today.
And sorry that you've found these newcomer edits frustrating. I'm hopeful that, together with the Community Configuration changes discussed in this thread and continued improvements to the link suggestion model, we can strike a better balance by preserving approachable, less intimidating ways for new editors to get started while reducing the burden on experienced editors and patrollers. - KStoller-WMF (talk) 02:42, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
My inclination would be to suspend use of the model until the proposed improvements are implemented. I am not in principle against link suggestions as a learning tool. I am very much against link suggestions that have an excessive probability of being erroneous. While we do want to encourage more editors, ultimately our encyclopedia is for the readers, and readers should not face the confusion of following links to the wrong place. BD2412T02:55, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi! I'm Sucheta, from the Machine Learning team. We're starting work on the first improvement that Kirsten mentioned (Named Entity Recognition) this month, and have outlined a plan in the Phabricator ticket. We need to do a bit more technical digging to construct a time estimate for delivery, but we'll keep the Phabricator ticket updated once we have that. Please feel free to subscribe and add any questions to the ticket. SSalgaonkar-WMF (talk) 15:15, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi all (and thanks for pinging us, Clovermoss)! Add-a-Link is a feature we created as the Growth team, so Kirsten and I can speak to these concerns.Add-a-Link's onboarding instructions, telling editors to judge each suggestion as it may be wrongAdd-a-Link is a type of structured task. We’ve built these to break down the editing process into a series of steps that newcomers can accomplish easily, particularly on mobile, to help them get used to editing. We gave all newcomers access to Add-a-Link last September after this discussion. We’re trying to help improve underlinked articles by suggesting potential links, but editors are still instructed to use their own judgement to evaluate whether or not they are appropriate to add (see screenshot). As with other forms of assisted editing, editors are ultimately responsible for the edits they make, and like with other editing, some will edit less carefully than others; in this case they can be warned with {{Uw-addalink}}.I know it can seem like a lot of these edits are getting reverted, but unfortunately newcomers in general are reverted frequently. As I mentioned to Clovermoss above, our data shows that Add-a-Link improves on the baseline and results in fewer reverts than newcomers editing without structure.All that said, we do recognize that having the suggestions reflect the encyclopedia’s best practices for linking is important for teaching newcomers about them. I hope resolving the two issues with the model that Kirsten mentioned above will improve this significantly. In the meantime, the Community Configuration controls I hope will allow you all to mitigate them sufficiently that it won’t be necessary to disable Add-a-Link overall. Bringing in newcomers with easier structured tasks so that they can build up their confidence before diving into more complex tasks is vital for onboarding the next generation of editors, and we want to handle it in a way that results in as few reverts/as little extra work for other editors as possible.Cheers, Sdkb‑WMFtalk23:38, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Advising newcomers to add incorrect/irrelevant links as part of a training exercise is not going to go well for anyone. BD2412T23:51, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
We sometimes face the choice between using Wikipedia as a training ground and keeping the encyclopedia as correct as we can. I tend to prefer the latter but others may disagree. Most other ventures have a dedicated testing area where newcomers can make mistakes harmlessly, and it is unfortunate that we have to let ours loose on the live system immediately. Certes (talk) 11:18, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I just want to add one quick perspective on this -- the way we've seen success with teaching and onboarding people to Wikipedia is through them doing real wiki work, as opposed to training-work. That makes it possible for them to quickly feel the excitement of changing the encyclopedia and seeing their impact. My thinking on this was shaped by the concept of "legitimate peripheral participation" in which people new to a community get involved by doing real work around the edges (like adding links!)
Doing real work certainly helps motivation. I created an account after fixing a few typos as an IP editor and enjoying the contrast with other reference sites whose errors I would have helplessly ignored. I think the tool has potential to do more good than harm if we can tame some of the less appropriate suggestions. I'm happy to see capitalisation being taken into account. Another possible improvement is not to suggest a name which has alternatives, e.g. don't offer a link to Joe Schmoe if we also have an article on Joe Schmoe (singer) because it might mean him instead. Perhaps that already happens – with an opaque evaluation algorithm, it's hard to tell.
Is there a log anywhere of which articles have been suggested as link targets? If so, that could be a starting point for undoing the remaining damage. Certes (talk) 17:56, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Certes, individual edits where Add-a-Link was activated are tagged (here's the feed), but there's no master list of which articles have been suggested because the model can suggest any article.
The Joe Schmoe situation you're describing is an example of a homonym; T409138 is the task where we're tackling that problem. Systemically identifying which articles have a homonym is unfortunately non-trivial from a technical perspective; we'd welcome engagement/ideas about how we could do so! Sdkb‑WMFtalk21:21, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This does make sense. Making live edits is also the way that errors are discovered and can be corrected in a way that supports learning and better contributions over time. Except, of course, when the correction is discouraging, so there is a balance here. If an editor links to the wrong 'Joe Schmoe' or mistakenly links a phrase like 'a taxi driver' in a training environment, who will catch the mistake? —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:14, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support tweaking Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits to one link an edit. Perhaps in the same way as checking multiple links takes up reviewer time, it may contribute to new users not bothering to check the links. phab:T405185 which is about an issue which directly leads to bad links has been open since September, phab:T415623 and phab:T415622 which relate to less directly bad issue of overlinking have been open since January. All are still set to "Needs Triage", so we should take our own action as we can. Switching to one link an edit would give more relevant reversion statistics too. CMD (talk) 03:29, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do we have a list of known mislinked articles? I just fixed the remainder of A Taxi Driver (10) and Why Her (1) but there will be other targets that can be unlinked systematically. I didn't find any Fashionable Friends or other articles mentioned above. Certes (talk) 11:01, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Certes, while you're doing cleanup, if you find that any particular article is constantly being mislinked in the other direction (that is, suggested links tasks on the article, not to, the article, are overwhelmingly bunk for some reason), could you report it at WT:GTF (in case that helps fix whatever the issue is), but also add {{no newcomer task}} to that article so it doesn't keep happening? Thanks. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 16:01, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Will do, but I've rarely found more than one set of three outgoing links added to the same article. I can't do much more without a list of targets that the tool has suggested, but I don't think we have or can easily get that. Certes (talk) 16:07, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Certes, inspired by your comment, I've logged T434255, which would create a mechanism that would allow you or other editors to exclude pages like A Taxi Driver from being suggested as links at any article. Feel free to take a look and make adjustments! Cheers, Sdkb‑WMFtalk21:02, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Settings changed: Given the comments above, I've changed the settings for this task so that it only suggests one link each time, and correspondingly bumped up the number of tasks that can be completed per day. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 05:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just noticing this discussion, switching to just one link per article was one of the most important changes we made on German Wikipedia to increase acceptance of this newcomer task. I don't have any data but in our perception the tool is usually able to identify one useful suggestion while the second and third link suggestion are significantly worse. @Sdkb-WMF perhaps that's something the Growth team wants to investigate? Increasing the minimum required link score to 0.7 also seemed to have a positive effect (and still leads to more than enough article suggestions on dewiki).
Even after making these changes we decided to significantly limit the number of edits because we want newcomers to progress to more useful tasks more quickly (e.g. adding references), given that users are automatically promoted to dewiki's autoreviewed user group once they reach 50-150 article namespace edits. I've heard from other wikis also setting limits stricter than 150 edits, e.g. to avoid users getting eligible to vote in local admin elections entirely by completing "add link" tasks. Johannnes89 (talk) 06:31, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the input, @Johannnes89, that's really helpful. We actually haven't changed the link scores at all, and we have so many articles with barely any links, so increasing that probably won't cut off the task at all. As far as the number of edits goes, I think en-wiki is perhaps uniquely placed to tolerate high numbers per editor, since we have WP:XC, which doesn't apply until 500 edits. I've actually heard feedback from several mentees that they miss the add-a-link task when they "age out" of it, so I wouldn't want to drop it, myself. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 15:57, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Exterminate, BD2412 had it correct right off the bat: "The 'suggested links' tool, which prompts newbies to add links in articles, is more trouble than it's worth. Every few weeks, at least, I see an article edited as suggested with the addition of links that are just plain wrong." Sending newbies into the world of clutter and tools has enough content without this. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:26, 6 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, just no: The suggested links feature is the least of the problems with Newcomer Tasks. At least fixing overlinking is easy, compared to dealing with the AI slop that is introduced via every other task (copyedit, expand, reference, update). Why is this the one that is getting traction to be removed? Gnomingstuff (talk) 01:10, 7 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think that's a problem specific to newcomer tasks – at least those come with onboarding pop-ups like this teaching newcomers about our rules. Whenever I see newcomers clearly ignoring task instructions, they are usually also doing regular edits which are just as unhelpful. Johannnes89 (talk) 04:58, 7 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem is the gamification that encourages this stuff. I am currently around 150 tabs deep in cleanup related to this and have probably done many more hundreds total. I have actively done an audit showing a dismal rate of good edits. Nothing seems to matter and so the workload continues to balloon and the articles continue to deteriorate.
By contrast, I am actively relieved when I encounter an edit history full of link adding, because the damage done is small by comparison. And yet for some reason it is THE ONE thing that gets immediate action. Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah exactly, the links are the by far least problematic 'newcomer task' and doesn't do any real damage. It's the other tasks that need to be removed, not this one. ‑‑gurkubondinn15:42, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Keep the tool: let's try this with the new settings. Most of the added links are good, we need the extra retention, and it's easy to revert, especially now with the new settings. With the further development of the tool as promised we might get rid of further errors in the task. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 06:51, 7 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm for keeping the tool. Tune up, if you can figure out a tune up. We have no tasks, where users won't make mistakes (all experience levels). Editing requires some boldness and more editing requires some confidence gained in editing: we want/need editors. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago5 comments4 people in discussion
Dear Wikipedians,
A few weeks ago, I made a proposal regarding the WikiForms tool. The previous discussion mainly focused on tool development, security, and revisions.
I am glad to share that the tool is now fully production-ready and all suggested improvements have been incorporated.
I would like to propose officially recognizing this tool by establishing a dedicated documentation page at Wikipedia:WikiForms. This page will outline the guidelines and usage for the tool, offering a native, privacy-friendly alternative to external services like Google Forms for surveys or data collection within the community.
The tool still appears far from production ready. Nevermind the top of the page saying "banner_message", or the silent failures when publishing a blank form, or the fact that after publishing a form you're still given the ability to edit the form and add questions but clicking the publish button a second time doesn't do anything. My biggest concern is that it still describes itself as being able to "Create powerful data collection forms or secure AI-proctored quizzes" and offers an option for an "Anti-cheat AI proctoring protection subsystem built-in natively" despite you saying in the previous discussion that you were completely removing all AI components. I also fail to see what need this fills for the Wikipedia community that isn't already met by meta:LimeSurvey or meta:SecurePoll. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)22:02, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I actually didn't notice this message not coming and problems with publishing. I will correct them soon.
But I have already said what I mean by anti-cheat. Use a module to prevent cheating in quiz competitions with Ai. (I originally created it for Bangla Wikipedia's WikiScholer competition, which It will be held in 2027) I put AI grading system here only for quizzes so that if descriptive quizzes are held then AI can tell if they are right or wrong.
Also as you said the Wikimedia community has LimeSurvey and meta:SecurePoll. However, not everyone can create forms in these. Also, Google Forms are being used for issuing certificates for various online editathons (eg: Asian Month). As such, Wikipedia needs to have something of its own. Anaf Ibn Shahibul (talk) 01:37, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion
"Quazer Beast" was one of Wikipedia's earlier bits of vandalism, deleted in 2006. I have no issue with the original intent of the Wikipedia:Society for the Preservation of the Quazer Beast page, a jokey "preservation" of an early bit of vandalism, but the page has since effectively been hijacked by another, since-banned user who drifted it massively off-topic and diluted the original use of the page.
Said user was Dronebogus(talk·contribs), who started editing the page in November 2021 and made literally hundreds more edits between then and March 2024. Their edits consisted of adding links to other animal-related hoaxes such as Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Salvadorian Magpie, and even this paywalled link to a skepticism newsletter which has nothing to do with Wikipedia. It's clear Dronebogus was using this as a WP:NOTHERE violation, creating a Wikipedia game. GREEKMYTHOLOGY123(talk·contribs) has also participated a few times, adding in more random links to hoax articles.
Dronebogus also made a WP:NOTHERE violation at Wikipedia:True facts about Wikipe-tan, which was deleted in May for being nonsense. I should also note that the page had only about 10 edits between 2013 and the time Dronebogus effectively hijacked it in 2021, suggesting there was little reason for its original purpose to be overridden like this. I don't think Greek Mythology is acting in bad faith, but they are still following in Dronebogus' footsteps and steering the page further from what it used to be.
Given the page has drifted massively off-topic largely by a user who is now banned, my proposal is this: would it be acceptable to revert the page to this edit from 2019, the last before Dronebogus touched it? Ten Pound Hammer (they/them) • (What did I screw up now?)17:43, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I wanted to get a solidarity statement in there, but ran out of characters (guideline says 50 to 70 characters for CentralNotice banner). Open to hear from more creative folks. There is space to say "Support WWU", but that might be too much inside baseball.
I will be generous and acknowledge that any labor-related edit-a-thon is clearly indirect if not direct support for WP:WWUS but I believe it is the right thing and will support whatever brief statement that people find descriptive. The end result will be improved encyclopedic articles that enrich the discussions. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah(talk) 18:39, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that's a good concession for success of the drive.
Did you see the post I was responding too? This question did not come out of no where. Just above, there was a claim that the drive is at least "clearly" an indirect support for some other cause. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:15, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I did. I just wanted to reassure you that despite the motivation of showing solidarity with WWU, the campaign is open to all. Of course, we'll respect NPOV etc. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 19:22, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As I put below: the aim is V/NPOV/NOR content, which may turn out to (overall) show that unionisation is generally a bad thing. Encouraging participation in this editathon could contribute to WWU US losing the election. Boud (talk) 11:43, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The election will be over in the first days of the drive. So, your argument makes little sense. Any influence on the election would be in August, presumably when the banner is suppose to run. Moreover, the goal of WWU wining or losing the election can play no part in editing decisions. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:10, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Fair point about the timeline, which makes it even less likely that the editathon will bias WMF US employees in their vote, since the newly added content may be unstable until sufficiently many diverse editors have got involved in editing. To people familiar with Wikipedia, unstable articles full of {{refimprove}} and other tags are a hint to read the talk page and check the sources yourself rather than consider the content as consensus-based. Agreed that the goal of WWU win[n]ing or losing the election can play no part in editing decisions; that's uncontroversial as a matter of principle. But some concern has been raised here that in practice, either editing or the effects of the edits might be influenced by, or have an influence on, the NLRB ballot. My point is that if there is an influence by editors despite editors' best intentions, there's no prior reason to be certain which way, if any, that could influence the vote. Some WMF US employees are Wikipedia editors (identified or anonymous), and 1/3 did not sign union cards either the first or second time; they may have some good WP:RS that present arguments against unions, and might add those during August, motivated by the CentralNotice. Getting a mix of editors with a variety of biases tends to produce high-quality articles. Boud (talk) 12:33, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The promotion of bias in the election is in the running of an August banner for a project "edit-a-thon [that] is clearly indirect if not direct support for WWUS" (they are working to win an election in August). So, change to the bias of the editathon, would be what's required. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:49, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Not at this time - While asking editors to help improve articles in a specific topic area is standard practice, we can not ignore the fact that there is currently an ongoing discussion between the WMF and its employees over forming a union. Running an editing campaign “in solidarity” of Organized Labor while this discussion is going on is inappropriate. It would be like running an editing campaign “in solidarity” with a specific political party during a national election. Wait until the WMF employee union issue is resolved… then do a campaign on this topic area. Blueboar (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Not buying that… When the organizers of the campaign are calling for “solidarity” it becomes more than that. It becomes advocacy.
September has lots of causes… it’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Suicide Prevention Month, World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month (just to name a few)… we can focus on those topics instead. Blueboar (talk) 20:04, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's a fair worry, even though I'm not sure when the issue would be resolved (after the vote? after the first negotiations are done?). Just for reference, there is precedent of editing campaigns with a political backdrop to it, in the Ukraine Diplomacy Month, which is, at least to me, clearly in solidarity with the victims of war. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 20:14, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Reliable sources that show in what situations (when, where, why, who, how) unionisation has led to lower salaries or worse conditions are fully on-topic for this editathon. Without already knowing what sources are going to be used and what they say, we cannot predict whether the result of the editathon will be to show, overall, that unionisation is good or bad. I've added a section to encourage adding, especially, scholarly sources that are suspected to be biased pro- or anti-union.This editathon might just as well convince lots of WMF workers that unionisation is, per the evidence, a bad thing, as convince them that it's a good thing. The WMF US workers' votes may be influenced by the encyclopedic evidence, either pro- or anti-unionisation. Boud (talk) 11:32, 9 August 2026 (UTC) (clarify Boud (talk) 11:38, 9 August 2026 (UTC))Reply
Support. Many of our articles about organized labor would benefit from this edit-a-thon. The scope of WikiProject Organized Labour includes both pro-union and anti-union aspects of the topic area, as well as general information about trade unions. The word "solidarity" could be removed from the event page if it is considered a concern, but the existence of other themed months for September (e.g. Childhood Cancer Awareness Month) is not a good reason to forego this event. Feel free to start a separate edit-a-thon about childhood cancer, if you are interested in doing so for that topic. —Newslingertalk21:31, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support a central notice for the campaign, and the having of the campaign. The short suggested text here seems fine to me too. Not sure about using the "trout" logo though, and possibly we should be a little more subtle about the WWU advocacy on the event page. Anomie⚔23:48, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Obligatory oppose against the message of support for WWU. Sending a CentralNotice is fine. Regarding the icon, I think I like the trout best. Like Newslinger said, there's pro-union (labor) and anti-(labor) articles out there - it's a contentious topic. The image of the red* raised fist looks like a revolution took place, and the third image is the WWU logo, which is a non-starter for this endeavor. †I am reminded of a paper glossed in The Atlantic which included an exploration of the rise of the color red during the Russian Revolution. - Embyarby (talk) 02:57, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's an inside joke. The fact you had to ask the question means that it likely isn't as effective as I thought it would. Also, people seem keen on not displaying WWU solidarity too blatantly, so I'm very happy to just go for the multi-colored people icon, as a single image. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 06:58, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support. More NPOVed, RSed, DUE-weight, crowdsource-edited encyclopedic knowledge on this specific subset of human rights will benefit Wikipedia readers and Wikipedia's reputation as a source of encyclopedic reviews of knowledge, and will likely also help encourage inter-language wiki cross-coordination. Boud (talk) 11:19, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support, while I agree any actual advocacy should be muted, I don't see how anyone could take issue with the current state of the page, it's no different to other edit-a-thons really. The only point of contention I can see is that the most prominent suggested articles are centred around the WMF dispute, rather than the most vital articles about organised labour. I think it should have the latter as the most prominent, with a later subsection on articles related to the WMF dispute.
I also think there should be a pointer to another page (or a section near the end) giving a neutral summary of the recent events and linking to the ongoing discussions. At the moment the discussions are dominated by enwiki editors while others are left out of the loop, the page is about to be MassMessage'd to other wikis and they won't know what's going on based on the current state of the page. Otherwise it's a big support, lots of articles will be improved, which is the reason we're all here anyway Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 16:52, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Central Notice without any advocacy for WWU. We should try for improved, NPOV, RSed articles on labour issues. I think getting more people involved on articles relating to this would be beneficial, and we should not directly tie it to WWU's efforts (which I support). Improving the encyclopedia should be what we want for the Central Notice. Abzeronow (talk) 20:07, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Would anyone be opposed to a bot that notifies you when someone translates an article you made?
I think that would be fantastic! In general I also wished that “first edit author” did not have exclusive API benefits but that anyone could subscribe to watch for such translation alerts even if they did not create a specific article ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah(talk) 18:03, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would caution that just because a new article was created in another language Wikipedia about the same topic doesn't meant that it was translated. Currently, to see associated Wikidata changes for a page you are watching, you can enable Preferences→ Watchlist→ Advanced options→ Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist. This will let you see when someone adds a new language version to the corresponding Wikidata item. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In my experience, past the initial creation of properties, there aren't many updates at all, which makes sense for most topics, as their properties are stable. The most frequent changes are adding links to new articles in different language Wikipedias. isaacl (talk) 09:10, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I developed a quick proof of concept that if this gets consensus could have ready to go, still would need to work out whether it's opt in or out and the mechanism for others subscribing. Balance3641 (talk) 19:34, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Since this has been raised both here and in the original BOTREQ post, is there some way this would distinguish between translations vs. new articles created from scratch on another wiki? —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That information isn't recorded on Wikidata, as far as I know. It's after all not a property of the thing itself, but of a specific article version in a language Wikipedia. I think if we start storing items about the written articles themselves, they're going to get confused with the items about the underlying things. isaacl (talk) 21:36, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I didn't think so but wanted clarification/confirmation. It's not clear how this proposal would even work, then, as this proposal is predicated on translations being a distinct characteristic that is consistently and uniquely coded or documented. Turning on/creating new alerts for all Wikidata changes or just for new language versions of a page would seem to be a viable approach that would capture these but would also produce a great many alerts that are not actually translations from the en-wiki article. Those might still be of interest to the creator and any other editor interested in a particular article. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:56, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
A properly attributed translation should link to the enwiki article in an edit summary (which I believe the content translation tools do automatically), so it may be possible to look for new Wikidata entries and then check the article history. ScalarFactor (talk) 22:22, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Based on the discussion linked in the original post, the original poster doesn't seem too concerned about trying to limit notifications to just translations. Personally, I'm happy with the existing Wikidata changes mechanism that I mentioned earlier. But if any new bot-based notification is opt-in, and someone wants to maintain the bot, more power to them. isaacl (talk) 02:39, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
What if the mechanism is that 100% tagged translations are alerted with opt-out and there is opt-in for pages created on different language wikis? Balance3641 (talk) 05:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
No, I dont think the distinction is important, any article created by you that later has content about it in another language is bound to share atleast some content with a good enwiki article, as they both cover the same topic. Also some authors only partially translate an article, and dont do the whole thing.
I would find some sort of notification of this (this being perhaps a newly added interwiki link on wikidata) useful. If it notifies of a translation, that is nice to see. However, if it is a separate creation, or even a translation with additions, it may contain additional sources or ideas that could be worth looking through to improve articles here. CMD (talk) 07:19, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I just rerolled random words until there was one I was happy with, am planning to do some more stuff with it so it didn't make sense to call it something like SomeoneTranslatedAnArticleYouWroteBotBalance3641🍃(talk · contribs)15:22, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As mentioned, personally I don't support enabling it by default to notify all users. This duplicates notifications for those who are already watching associated Wikidata changes, and increases the messaging on English Wikipedia to approximate the rate of article creation across all other language Wikipedias. Specifically regarding the message, I don't like "your page" as it runs counter to the collaborative nature of Wikipedia. isaacl (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Please sell off this f*****g site to a billionaire
Latest comment: 1 day ago15 comments12 people in discussion
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.
11 August: Wikipedia still can't be sold
We're sorry we've made several attempts to reach you. It's Tuesday, 11 August, and Wikipedia is seeing fewer readers this year so your visit means a lot. If everyone reading this gave £2.75 today, we'd hit our goal quickly. Most readers don't donate; only 2% do. Wikipedia is run by a nonprofit, not by a billionaire. So if Wikipedia has given you £2.75 worth of knowledge, please give. Any contribution helps, whether it's £2.75 or £25.
As soon as I moved into a new country I started getting this annoying notice constantly. Never got it before. But now I do and I hate it and think Wikipedia would be much better off if it was sold to a big corporation with deep pockets instead of having to constantly beg for money as a non-profit. This site isn't that expensive to run.
I therefore propose dissolving Wikimedia Foundation and selling off Wikipedia to a big corporation that doesn't rely on begging and donations. This does not need to be run by a non-profit and the quality of this website would be much better if it wasn't a non-profit. ~2026-44227-94 (talk) 18:30, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Speedy oppose. WP:VPR is for ideas that are at least somewhat ready to be implemented. You don't actually have a plan, do you? The WMF has problems, but they will only be amplified if we sell the site off to Big Tech. If this even has a semblance of passing, that means you should've already called your favorite billionaire and got the ball rolling. Sorry for the strongly worded comment, but that's the truth. In solidarity, Brynn Who Likes Editing|talk w/ me!21:08, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
All true. Although the WMF unfortunately owns Wikipedia's trade marks and domains, the content is released under a free licence with copies legitimately held on many other sites. It is unlikely that many regular and experienced editors would continue to contribute under commercial ownership. Our departure might have little effect on day one but, without updates, the encyclopedia could lose both educational and financial value very quickly. Certes (talk) 23:22, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do we have measurable/quantifiable data on the harm that the donation banners do (e.g. the number of readers who don't come back because they've had a donation banner shoved in their face too often)? We obviously want a balancing act where we get WMF enough funding to keep the lights on via the lawyers and tech people, and have a genuine cushion for turbulent times but not so many banners that we drive away our readership and defeat the whole point. Right now it feels like the WMFs focus has been on maximizing revenue, and not on raising enough to survive while minimally alienating readers. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:37, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, the proposal is clearly sarcastic/unserious, but the frustration behind it is not. I think that editors have a blind spot to just how aggressive the banners can be because we don't see them when logged in. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:39, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Latest comment: 1 hour ago13 comments6 people in discussion
These days it seems hard to find Wikipedia editors to collaborate on things. My suggestion is that a new discussion page be started, known as the Article board, or alternatively the Collaboration board. It would be a place where users could discuss changes to articles and collaborations on Wikipedia. I've created the page, but listed it as a proposal for now.
I'd like to address that although this is often done on talk pages, or on WikiProjects, they often are not active enough to have much of an effect. The benefit here is that this place would be active and centralized.
What approach do you suggest to make a new location more active than the existing ones? Note the Wikipedia:Articles for improvement initiative has existed for many years (it's currently changing its procedures and will become a section on the main page). The key challenges I see are how to get enough editors to regularly use the new location, and how to connect these regular users to the pages they are interested in. Although I generally think it would be more fruitful to connect users with others that have similar interests (thus re-invigorating WikiProjects), other approaches can of course be tried. isaacl (talk) 16:53, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Isaacl As a major discussion page this would be added to the "Other areas of Wikipedia" list, which can be seen on the Main Page, and linked to from many othetr places. The activity can thus come naturally. That is a secondary concern.
It is less likely to go inactive than the WikiProjects which only have a limited number of interested editors in the first place. This page can coexist with them. Think of it as "WikiProject General". NewAccount7295 (talk) 17:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I feel attracting participants is a primary concern, not a secondary one. Without critical mass, there won't be incentive to use the page. To give a new location the best chance for success, I think there should be a plan of how to integrate it into existing workflows. isaacl (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Isaacl This is why we do a test run and see how it works. I've roughly explained a starting point. Link it from the Main Page, the Community portal, and other places as a major page, akin to the Help desk, Teahouse, and Reference desk. Something editors know they can use and something that is known about prominently. NewAccount7295 (talk) 17:34, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sure, I have no issues with trying things out. I'm just concerned that if we don't try to give it the best chance for success and it doesn't do well at first, further tests will be stymied for years by editors citing its first failure (as has happened with the articles for improvement initiative). isaacl (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamiIdoing This is not a proposal for WikiProject, but rather a discussion page/noticeboard. I compared it to one since many will draw the similarities in that the discussion places for the WikiProjects are where users go to work with other editors on something specific. The collaboration here isn't as coordinated as a WikiProject.
For example, this is a place someone could go and start a thread about an article they want to create, and are asking if anyone wants to help out with it and discuss it there. NewAccount7295 (talk) 21:28, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Most editors edit articles they are interested in. Often this is a particular subject area or type of editing, such as copyediting. WikiProjects and, in some cases, noticeboards are better suited for this. And there's Wikipedia:Articles for improvement. Of course there are many editors with broad interests and skillsets but I anticipate that attracting and sustaining a critical mass of editors interested in generic "collaboration" or "improvement" with an otherwise infinite scope will be difficult. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I'm Sonja and I lead the product teams who develop the contributor experience at the Foundation. Connection and collaboration is something we're also very interested in -- we even have a team dedicated to this topic:) The Connection team has been investing in the CampaignEvents extension over the last couple of years, and one recent intervention that might be interesting to you is Collaborative Contributions, which allows organizers to track edits towards a goal and set up worklists for participants to collaborate on. We're exploring additional feature improvements for worklists right now and plan to expand the concept to personal worklists as well, so that anyone can create a list of articles they want to work on and invite other volunteers to collaborate with them without having to host a big event or WikiProject. Feedback that has come up from other community members is that they for example would want to get signals about the quality of the article or even leave a note to the next editor. If you have more ideas of feedback, we're happy to hear it! Copying @Udehb-WMF here who could get you invited to future community calls, for example. SPerry-WMF (talk) 21:25, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that sounds great! My only concern is that having personal worklists for select people to help with might encourage the formation of cliques (which makes newbies' experiences worse, factional conflicts etc.), moreso than having 'public' worklists like in the proposal above or at a WikiProject would Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 21:31, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Should we disallow opening parallel RM and AfD discussions?
Desired outcome: A small number of editors arrive at an agreement about how to best apply sitewide policies and guidelines to a given Wikipedia article.
Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist. This will let you see when someone adds a new language version to the corresponding Wikidata item. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 9 August 2026 (UTC)
