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

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Editing Sri Lankan Election 2024 page

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This is not a concrete, actionable proposal. The content edit was already made and information on how to discuss content improvements has been provided. — xaosflux Talk 20:35, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion 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.

Could someone edit this page to show that AKD won. Idk how to edit elections Irindu10 (talk) 15:22, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it has already been done. In the future, it is better to ask this on the article's talk page (here, Talk:2024 Sri Lankan presidential election), as it is more likely to be seen by editors more knowledgeable on this specific topic. This page here is for more wide-ranging proposals, rather than to request specific edits. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 02:30, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Request for check user is meant to be for request for permission

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This is not a concrete, actionable proposal. Information on the topic has been provided. — xaosflux Talk 20:33, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion 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.

OK 132.147.192.240 (talk) 02:21, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser is inactive, and has been replaced by Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. Also, while the names might be confusing, it isn't a request for permission, as it wasn't to request to become CheckUser, but rather to request assistance from a CheckUser in a specific situation. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 02:25, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Requests for checkuser access are handled by the Arbitration Committee, see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight for details. It's worth noting here though that it is one of the most restricted rights on the project (for good reason) and cannot (by both policy and technical restriction) be granted to IP editors. Thryduulf (talk) 02:34, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bring dark mode reporting on-wiki.

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

Survey (dark mode reporting)

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Following the response from WMF, I think it's a good idea for a survey to check if we want to proceed further. @Xaosflux, FeRDNYC, SCP-2000, Isaacl, Phil Bridger, WhatamIdoing, and Thryduulf: and any other people, please state your position briefly:

Implementation

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Okay, the consensus is the people fixing dark mode issues can decide the location, and FeRDNYC has also expressed the current issues with the current system. Dark mode issues are ultimately usually a local problem, and WMF has also said this is technically possible. We would need to do a few things:

  1. Import the MediaWiki page to enwiki with the options "Copy all the revisions for this page" and "Assign edits to local users where the named user exists locally" (this is important for archiving later).
  2. Use User:ClueBot III archiving (User:lowercase sigmabot III relies on signatures which won't work out)
  3. Repoint MediaWiki:Vector-night-mode-issue-reporting-notice-url and make MediaWiki:Vector-night-mode-issue-reporting-preload-content include signatures
  4. Archive the MediaWiki enwiki page.

I think we can start working on this. —Matrix(!) ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 08:57, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine doing the transwiki import for this when ready, but I'm not seeing a consensus in the discussion above yet. The "assign local" part is not needed; I doubt anyone at mwwiki will care about that page, we're not going to delete anything there but can just slap a cross-wiki redirect on it. So what next? Someone that hasn't !voted on this above should eventually close this discussion with a result. For the xmlimport part, feel free to ping me at that time. — xaosflux Talk 11:43, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. I'll wait for consensus to develop (I just got impatient since no once was participating). —Matrix(!) ping onewhen replying {user - talk? - uselesscontributions} 11:49, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sortition for elevated permissions

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

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

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

Research and benefits and cautions

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

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

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

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

I have trouble imagining us (i.e., those of us who have achieved a measure of power and control in the current system) being willing to give up control over permissions, no matter how slight this might be.
That said, I think that both Test 1 and Test 2 would be worthwhile experiments, and I specifically suggest considering selecting candidates for Test 2 from among those who are nearly EXTCONF anyway (e.g., they have the time but they're short 100–200 edits, or they have the edits, but they're short 1–2 months).
In terms of the size of the experiment, that really ought to be determined by a Power (statistics) analysis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even if there's an element of power and status to them, the vast majority of what people with advanced permissions do is just drudgery. It seems really unlikely to me that somebody randomly assigned NPP or even admin is actually going to want to use them. And one of the main functions of the perm system is to reduce the attack surface these rights offer by only giving them to people motivated enough to ask for it.
Also, yes AfC and NPP are backlogged, but 'reviewing the reviewers' is also work and there are very few admins doing it. This would massively increase that workload - who's going to pick up the slack? – Joe (talk) 17:58, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine that an editor who receives a note saying something like "You've been given this permission temporarily. Please read up and use it if you want" might use it a few times, at least to try it out. If they have a positive experience, they might request to the perm later through the usual channels.
Giving a perm only to those motivated enough to ask means that a higher percentage of the requesters is improperly motivated. Undeclared paid editors will be more motivated to ask for the permission than an ordinary volunteer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am quite a fan of sortition for filling real-world positions, both where it is used in many countries (mainly for selecting juries) and for some other positions. A few thoughts on its applicability to Wikipedia:
  1. I doubt that many people would devote much time to the task, because they have to earn a living, and paying the people selected would cause many other issues.
  2. Many people would try out their new permissions, but most would drop out.
  3. There need to be clear success/failure criteria. Too many things are tried here, then clearly fail, but continue to be used because of the sunken cost fallacy (I know this is controversial, but I would class draft space as being one of these).
I'm sure I could come up with loads more points, both for and against, but I have to go now. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:49, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clear criteria are highly desirable. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that a single metric works (e.g., we don't want to lose these randomly selected editors and we don't want WP:UGLY articles in the mainspace), and it's entirely possible that doing the jobs correctly would result in the selected editors quitting. For example:
  • Existing AFC promotions have a very low rate of deletion at AFD. (I believe that the normal rate is about 75%.) Given that they're supposed to promote articles that are likely (i.e., 51%, not 90%) to survive AFD, this means that they are underpromoting and overrestricting.
  • If the new AFC people collectively promote articles that get deleted only 40% of the time, that's a sign that they're doing it correctly (still underpromoting, actually), even though theirs are getting deleted more often than older AFC folks. Thie AFD metric would show success.
  • But: if each AFD, or the run up to those AFDs, comes with recriminations and complaints about how they're being too "lenient", then the yelled-at editors might quit. The editor-retention metric would show failure.
If we get mixed results, what should we do? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the new AFC people collectively promote articles that get deleted only 40% of the time, that's a sign that they're doing it correctly (still underpromoting, actually)
Not necessarily. If they promote articles with a chance to survive AfD above 50%, and we assume they are uniformly distributed in probability, the average promoted article would have 75% of chance to survive AfD, or in other words get deleted 25% of the time. If they get deleted 40% of the time, there might be a level of overpromotion going on. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(I love people who can math.)
I think it depends on your underlying assumptions about the distribution. If you have 10 articles, each with a 51% chance of surviving AFD, and you promote them all, and all 10 get sent to AFD, then you'd expect five to get deleted – and they were all still correct promotions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That definitely depends on our hypotheses about the distribution, indeed. If the 10 articles range from 51%, 56%, ... up to 96%, then you'd have a lower expectation of deleted articles (2.65 if I mathed correctly). But there's also a hidden assumption in here, in that an article with 96% chances of surviving an AfD will probably not be sent there to begin with, meaning the deletion rate of articles being sent at AfD will naturally be higher than the total deletion rate.
All in all, it would be interesting to have more statistics about both the deletion chance of AfC articles at AfD, and how much AfC articles are underrepresented at AfD to begin with. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:18, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion stats are difficult to measure retrospectively. It might be something that we need to study prospectively. There's also the complication of experience: people submitting articles through AFC are not going to have the same deletion rate as people like you and me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also while it's tempting to consider, if this experiment is successful, a radical future proposed sortition of admins, akin to the admin-for-a-day proposed in 2012, but per WMF this is not legally doable, the prohibitive priveliges being rollback and deleted material. That doesn't necessarily have to prevent it; the WMF doesn't set an actual bar for the community review. Therefore, we could have a much lower-pressure, lower-stakes community review of every editor who meets a certain threshold of edits and age to determine eligibility for one day obtaining those rights via sortation, with the sole focus being "is this person likely to abuse rollback or access to deleted material?" (which would almost always lean towards acceptance, since it is automatic, done for everyone, and doesn't directly grant adminship.) Only arguments and rationales specifically related to that question would be allowed and considered by closers when closing such discussions, not general discussions of whether they'd make a good admin in other ways; and they wouldn't require bcrat closures or anything. This would then allow admin status to be granted to those editors via sortition because they'd previously passed a community review on the aspects the WMF cares about. --Aquillion (talk) 19:12, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    the prohibitive priveliges being rollback and. Rollback doesn't seem very dangerous. I doubt wmf would put their foot down about handing out that one too easily. Agree that wmf would object to handing out view deleted though for legal reasons. This has been well discussed before. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think that the WMF cares about Wikipedia:Rollback (which doesn't even get used much, because Twinkle and other scripts can mimic the same effect). The legal problem is viewdeleted. They have consistently said that they want proof that the community trusts the people who have that particular right (e.g., we trust them not to restore copyvios or re-post uploaded revenge porn to another site). The process of community vetting can change, but there must be a community vetting process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:43, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (e.g., we trust them not to restore copyvios or re-post uploaded revenge porn to another site). I've never heard that. WMF's stated reason for viewdeleted being sensitive is that they want to be able to say in court that when something is deleted, it is well and truly deleted, and that only vetted individuals will have access to it, rather than it being easily accessible. The vibe I'm getting is to make sure BLP, libel and defamation, etc. stays deleted and that they can argue it is truly deleted in court. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:40, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If someone is restoring the inappropriate here or posting it on other websites, then that's not "staying deleted", and nobody could argue that it is, even around the dinner table. We need to be able to trust that admins won't do that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RfC on In the news criteria

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

Redesigning shackles and other icons

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Re-instating this proposal, I want to make the icons look more clear and sleek; I will eventually add on more to the icons (such as good articles, audio articles, etc.) I also want to add region-based letter shackles, so for example 拡 (拡張, Kakuchō) would be the Japanese extended-protection icon, same with 満 (満杯, Manpai) for full-protection.

Wikipedia new icons request. (Available to all)

by 2I3I3 (talk) 16:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty strong oppose trying to run a geolocation script on every load to try to make dynamic labels here. If anything (which I also don't like) labels should follow user interface language. — xaosflux Talk 17:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the differences, I was just suggesting (because I don't really speak any other language you could propose a specific version) Also, I will later add the letters on the shackles.
by 2I3I3 (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
and icons* 2I3I3 (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose making the primary (only) differentiation be color, as that gives out less information then the current scheme and is useless for those without color viewing abilities. — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Xaosflux on this one. Furthermore, the two issues of the old icon scheme (color and "realistic" shading that doesn't look great on small icons), which were the reasons for the change to begin with, are present on this one too.
Regarding the region-based symbols, it would make more sense to display them based on the language edition, and, since each language edition already sets its own standards for this stuff, there isn't much more we can do. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:13, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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