User talk:WhatamIdoing

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I have been working on this article Gender-critical feminism by country, which I split off from Gender-critical feminism. I have barely finished writing about more than a few countries and have been working on compiling research and literature from a number of other countries, but the article has already reached 5,000 words [1]. I'm not particularly familiar with how splits/spinoffs are supposed to work. Pragmatically I would want to split this article into 3: gender-critical feminism in Asia, gender-critical feminism in Europe, gender-critical feminism in the Americas. But there isn't really significant coverage in independent reliable sources™ about "gender-critical feminism in Asia", there's sources about gender-critical feminism in Japan, China and South Korea, separately.

I guess I'm wondering if the best way to go about a split would be to create those 3 articles (in Asia, in Europe, in the Americas) or if there's a better way to split. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I was just hoping you might have some insight given your knowledge of these debates. Katzrockso (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, grouping by broad geography is usually okay. You might wait until someone complains about the length, though, as another approach would be to split out only the longest sections (e.g., to un-redirect Gender-critical feminism in the United Kingdom) and have only a short summary in the main article.

This book seems to have at least a little information about specific countries and might be (slightly) useful to you.

Having glanced only briefly at the article, a sentence you copied from Gender-critical feminism caught my eye: "They reject transgender and non-binary identities". I was under the impression that at least some GCFs accept the existence of gender identities, but believe that internal identity is less salient than external factors. See, e.g.,

"It is likely that not every gender-critical feminist supports the gender essentialist position or believes that trans women should be excluded from single-sex spaces and sport...Gender critical feminists situation their oppression as a direct result of their sex.  In other words, the 'physical, economic and social consequences of being born and living with a female body...While I have much to disagree with in gender critical narratives, I do, like Finn Mackay, concede that gender critical views have (like trans rights activists or 'TRA' views) been 'frequently misinterpreted and simplified'.)"[2]

That sentence sounds to me like it is more likely to contribute to that oversimplifcation than would be ideal, and particularly in an article about global differences, perhaps its lead should be more open to potential differences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:23, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't planning on splitting until it really becomes a problem, but I will have to split at some point because my computer will not open articles that are particularly large, even if nobody complains. Like if I were to try to edit Donald Trump, there would be no hope. I was just worried about rigid thinkers, as you like to put it, that say "there are no SIRS that cover gender-critical feminism in Asia, so it's not notable".

I just copied the lead from Gender-critical feminism, yes. While there are a few GCFs that don't reject gender identity, I contend that it is a general characteristic of GCF to deride/reject 'gender identity'. I have developed a lot of the non-Anglosphere content on the article and I haven't found any examples of GCF that don't oppose the concept of gender identity; the 'moderate' GCF is largely a British academic thing (and these moderate GCFs that are reaching out these theoretical olive branches are typically rooted in a completely different type of feminism than radical feminists). Insofar as most GCFs interrogate the concept of gender identity (which I have been a queer theorist skeptic of for years, so I'm not wedded to the concept at all), acknowledgement of it is usually limited and it is treated as vacuous, ephemeral, etc.

IMO British gender-critical feminists have a unique context that there is a large contingent of them that derive their positions not from radical feminism, but from a more liberal/conservative feminism. Like Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, etc none of them have any meaningful connection to traditions of radical feminism. These are the groups that say "well, we recognize gender identity exists but merely believe that sex should remain supreme in matters of law". Globally, radical feminism is by far the main strain of anti-trans/gender-critical feminism: in East Asia, it's largely based on South Korean radical feminism (same in Turkey). France is unique due to its history of feminism, but there is a strain of materialist feminism (that one can interpret as a type of radical feminism) and a more conservative femonationalism, but neither are supportive of gender identity.

There's also the issue that highlighting these academics is focusing on the "ivory tower". The larger gender-critical feminist movement itself does not hold the same positions as the so-called moderates in academia - they're truly a minority. Even acquiescing to basic respect by using trans people's pronouns has gotten Kathleen Stock in hot water. Katzrockso (talk) 09:28, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we have different ideas about what it means to "reject" a concept. Do, e.g., the South Korean GCFs believe that they don't have a gender identity as (cis) women?

(Fussing over someone's use of pronouns is at least internally consistent: if someone believed that sex was more important than gender identity and also that pronouns were meant to indicate the more important thing, then of course they'd use pronouns matching the body instead of the mind. The non-anti-trans POV is exactly the opposite: gender identity is more important than sex, and pronouns are meant to indicate the more important thing, so use pronouns that match the mind instead of the body.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From my understanding, yes. IME, most radical feminists argue that 'gender identity' is repackaged sex stereotypes, gender roles, etc. There has been a social movement among the gender-critical crowd to self-identify as "gender free" because they are rejecting the concept of gender identity. Where do you think "gender ideology" comes from?

Sheila Jeffreys:

I don’t have a gender. I’ve no intention of having a gender. I don’t do masculinity which is the behavior of male dominance, and I don’t do femininity which is the behavior of female subordination, women’s subordination. I hope to engage in human behavior and I hope at some point in the future everybody will be able to do that too, but gender I definitely do not have.

Jane Clare Jones develops a similar critique in some of her work (god having to go back and reread her sloppy trash is just tiring), calling it 'gender identity essentialism'.

The non-anti-trans POV is exactly the opposite: gender identity is more important than sex, and pronouns are meant to indicate the more important thing, so use pronouns that match the mind instead of the body. I don't believe in a concept of 'gender identity' as a meaningful socially salient concept or believe in such a mind-body dualism to stake pronouns that "match the mind", yet I am 'non-anti-trans' and an advocate for the use of requested pronouns. Katzrockso (talk) 19:56, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed that "gender ideology", to the extent that a single definition could be said to exist, referred primarily to disagreement with the belief that self-perceived gender identity is more important than reproductive biology, rather than the belief that gender and/or gender identity doesn't exist. I suppose that could be construed as a sort of essentialism on both sides: one says the essential thing that makes me a woman is my internal, self-perceived identity; the other says the essential thing that makes me a woman is my female reproductive system.

I suppose that "repackaged sex stereotypes, gender roles, etc." is the gender-critical answer to how one knows which gender one self-perceives as being correct or relevant for oneself: I feel more affinity for this set of stereotypes and roles; therefore I have this gender identity.

(Please do not re-read any sloppy trash on my behalf.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fundamentally, "gender ideology" as defined and described by these groups is a strawman or caricature of what people actually believe. It's hard to detangle all the various uses of "gender ideology", because it's a phantasmal concept employed by the conservative sector of the anti-gender movement and gender-critical feminists alike.

Yet, what is actually meant by ‘gender ideology’ (along with anti-feminist uses of terms such as ‘genderism’ and ‘gender theory’) has not been clearly defined: as Elżbieta Korolczuk and Agnieszka Graff (2018, p. 799) argue, ‘these terms have become empty signifiers, flexible synonyms for demoralization, abortion, non-normative sexuality, and sex confusion’. This makes them an effective tool in conjuring a moral panic around the breakdown of conventional notions of sex/gender, as evidenced for example in the increasing visibility of the trans liberation movement

From Pearce et al 2020 [3].

I definitely agree that the lead of Gender-critical feminism needs a rewrite, though. Not sure how to tackle that. Katzrockso (talk) 05:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While looking for more sources on gender-critical feminism to work on obtaining more global perspectives, I found this review of Holly Lawford-Smith's book 'Gender-Critical Feminism' by E. Díaz-León [4] [it's available in TWL in the EBSCO catalog]. It states:

These are the conception of gender as identity, on the one hand, and the conception of gender as social norms and expectations, on the other (x–xi). One of her main aims is to offer arguments for the conception of gender as social norms and expectations and against the conception of gender as identity

This is how I understand the gender-critical feminist project. As I may have alluded to above, I am not unsympathetic to a critique of 'gender as identity', indeed I have long been a student of Judith Butler's strain of thinking about 'gender', which doesn't so simply define gender in terms of identity or identity claims, but we can hardly deny that the gender-critical feminism movement is not 'gender-critical' and indeed 'critical' of the conceptualization of gender as identity. This is what I take "rejecting gender identity" to mean, not to deny that trans people or even others may claim to have gender identities, but to reject the political signification of gender identity altogether, that is to deflate it to something inconsequential, lacking validity, etc*. And as I noted above, this often goes as far as to deny the existence of 'gender identity' altogether, often conflating it with 'sexist stereotypes'. Most academic gender-critical feminist philosophers I keep track of have shared Catholic philosopher Tomas Bogardus' critique of gender identity.

[* Of course, as you noted above, there is some diversity of thought within academic GCF, where some 'gender-critical' feminists may not entirely deny any political valence of what they conceptualize as gender identity, like Kathleen Stock who purports to hold some moderate position, but the general trend of both popular and academic GCF is indeed to deny any meaningful representability of gender identity in political discourse]

I hope that makes sense! Katzrockso (talk) 07:13, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

> the lead of Gender-critical feminism needs a rewrite, though. Not sure how to tackle that

That's easy: With grace and patience. The nearest wikijargon term for patience is probably m:eventualism.

> a critique of 'gender as identity'

Presumably this is 'gender as internal identity'. Wouldn't a pre-Renaissance person have thought your True™ identity was the one imposed upon you by your community? You're a baker because your father was a baker, and it doesn't really matter whether you feel any affinity for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, historically identity has been interpellated. I think you can understand the naive concept of an internal gender identity (I don't think "gender as internal identity" is an analytic view that many or really any feminist philosophers who are trans-inclusive hold - the rest of the Díaz-León review makes this clear) as building upon Enlightenment ideas of individuality (Locke, Kant, etc) or maybe even a more existentialist founding (de Beauvoir). Katzrockso (talk) 08:01, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for your earlier claim that 'gender identity' is itself a form of essentialism, that may be reflected in the popular monikers and LGBT worksheets spread around, but within academia, most trans-inclusive feminist philosophy isn't wedded to the rational, coherent 'true' self. Judith Butler has been extremely influential for feminist and trans theory and movements worldwide (I was just reading particularly how influential they were for Turkish feminism in particular), and Butler explicitly rejects the notion of a pre-given essence, but rather highlights the fact that the 'self' is already produced socially. When understood in a Butlerian sense, a claim to gender identity is not a claim of an essential self, but in terms of performativity and contingency, or more broadly the contestation of social norms that determine intelligibility. Katzrockso (talk) 08:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[Tangent] I read a few years ago something about the role of performativity in AMAB people. The contrast being highlighted was that one has to do something to "become a man", whereas for AFABs, the source said it's the opposite: one simply "is", because society says so, no matter what one does or doesn't do. The author saw parallels between AMABs either "becoming a man" or "becoming a trans woman" that did not align with the nothing that turns an AFAB into a cis woman. I don't remember whether trans men or non-binary people were discussed. I think the author favored coming of age rituals for AMABs, as a way of reducing anxiety (and therefore both mental health risks and antisocial behavior) about whether or not one had actually achieved manhood yet.

[Reply] I wonder how much of this academic POV is represented in the lead of articles like Gender. I would expect it to be very difficult to remove the "popular monikers and LGBT worksheets" POV from the lead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In relation to Draft:Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Weather events, can you explain or link the process to getting consensus on the guideline? Thanks, ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of particular note, when the RFC is started (assuming that is what needs to be done), can editors take up issue with specific aspects of the proposed guideline and get that changed, or is it an all or nothing situation? ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 21:03, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All of the above.

Some people will say that they'd like ____ to change, but support overall. Others will say that ____ is wrong, which proves to them that the whole thing is bad, so they oppose, even if ____ is something that would be easy to change. Consequently it's best to have the proposed page in very good condition first. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

story · music · places

Look, today's image, - she "portrayed" herself with her husband at the end of the table, - would have been good for Thanksgiving ;) - Thank you for reasonable comments and questions in an RfC. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:12, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But what happened last time? Any survivors? Polygnotus (talk) 05:49, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is this in reference to using Wikipedia as a comparator for research on website content? It works out about like you'd expect: some things are better, and some things are worse. For facts, we've got research saying that (e.g.,) Wikipedia's medical content is mostly correct and more extensive than a medical school textbook, but of course it's not perfect (nor are textbooks, unfortunately). For politics, researchers seem satisfied to use Wikipedia as a more or less neutral baseline, so it's handy to say that X is more right-wing or more leftist or whatever. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:10, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Stopped by your profile, and saw how many essays you've written that I've read/referenced in the past. Some that that jump out that have been particuarlly helpful are WP:USESPS, WP:BMI, and WP:NOTMEDNEWS. Thought you deserved recognition. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 06:29, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the kind words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:03, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you don't mind me jumping into this discussion, having not been involved in the main discussion. You highlight Merriam-Webster's definition which pretty much answers the confusion of who is/isn't a "catholic", a member of a Catholic church, especially Roman Catholic. So yes members of The Roman Catholic Church are commonly referred to as "Catholics" in every day parlance, but they are not the only Catholics (a member of a Catholic church). A prominent example separated from the RadTrads is that of the Eastern Catholic churches, which are formerly sections of ancient churches which broke with their ancient church and moved into communion with the Roman Catholic Church, these churches continue to follow many of their rites outside of the core necessities of the communion, such as using the Eastern rite instead of the Roman rite of the Roman Catholic Church. (Though the Roman Catholic Church does in fact view members of the Eastern Catholic Churches as "Catholics").

Another example we can look to, which is more similar to the RadTrads are the various Sedevacantists who broadly don't recognise the Pope anymore after a specific date (most occurring due to Vatican II), and so do not meet the requirements of being viewed as "Catholic" according to the Roman Catholic Church, but bar that recognition continue all other rituals, rites, and customs of Roman Catholicism, including churches and structures that refer to themselves as "Catholic" in the "Roman Catholic" sense. So these individuals meet Merriam-Webster's definition of being Catholics, just not especially Roman Catholic.

RadTrads vary in orientation, as being a particular flavour of Traditionalist Catholicism (TradCath) some may be Sedevacantists, but there are plenty of TradCaths who recognise the pope while still disagreeing with Vatican II and so observe Pre-Vatican II customs and work within the Church to reverse Vatican II, thus some RadTrads fall into this categorisation, where they do recognise the Pope and partake in Roman Catholic communion but are virulently anti-Vatican II. Now, of course, as you have come across in the article on TradCath, it does state that certain groups are not viewed as being members of the Roman Catholic Church, but these are the specific groups that don't recognise the pope, not all TradCaths. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:14, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. It was interesting to read. I think my question is: At what point does a group stop being Catholic, no matter what they say? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is a question that I don't really have an answer for, I tend to go by them choosing to no longer identify themselves as capital-C Catholic, as while I understand this does have issues, at such a point, from historical examples, such churches will have also moved away from certain religious aspects that are viewed as identifiers of "Catholics/Catholicism", such as complete transubstantiation, the 'necessity' of works, adherence to the Pope/Papacy, veneration of saints, etc. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 22:15, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's my understanding too. It all started with one Catholic church, aka the Roman Catholic Church (improperly a redirect). Now it tries to reserve a patent on the name "catholic", but that's BS, and Wikipedia should not allow the Pope and Roman church to dictate our content on the topic. "Catholic Church" should be the overarching term, with the Roman Catholics the largest undergroup. Note the redirects for the links. At Catholic Church, we find this BS: "The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church" -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:34, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with self-identification is that it doesn't necessarily represent anything 'real'. If the label is the only thing that matters, then the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster could rename itself as "The Catholic Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster", and this definition would call them "a Catholic church".

This reminds me of what @Katzrockso was telling me a little higher on the page about the belief in a coherent internal identity not really holding up under scrutiny. Probably it's not Wikipedia's business to decide who's really a Catholic and who's really not, but it probably is our job to report what others say, and I doubt that "Oh, sure, just believe whatever's painted on the sign" is where the scholarly POV stands. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The scholarly POV will depend on which discipline we look at, as theologians will generally have a much stricter definition than religious studies scholars, and then there will be differences between definitions that try to distil a fundamental core. As, picking from a prior mentioned example, veneration of saints can be viewed as a very Roman Catholic thing and can be used a distinguishing metric between Catholicism and many Protestant denominations, but from the Catholic view such veneration isn't that big a thing, whereas from outside the Catholic view you can hear phrasing referring to Catholicism as a "cult of saints", and this is different to actual Saint's cults that have occurred throughout history.

But all such minutiae being said, as Wikipedia should, we would go on a case by case basis on what the scholarship says on particular groups. So, while the Roman Catholic Church may say Sedevacantists are not Catholics, if the published literature refers to them as Catholic, the encyclopedia follows suit. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 09:06, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we have to follow the sources. Are the rejected groups usually described with a capital C ("Catholics", not "catholics")? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @WhatamIdoing, I'm just reaching out to see if you might be able to give your thoughts at Talk:Clouding of consciousness, as I'm having some difficulty deciding how to move forward given the massive breadth of material at my disposal, and the relative open-endedness of the meaning of 'brain fog' in relation to (as much as in comparison to) 'clouding of consciousness'. If you know of any other editors who might be interested in assisting with the page, I'd greatly appreciate your reaching out to them, or advising me on how to go about doing so myself. You'll see my commentary there, as well as a great number of suggestion flags on the page itself; I hope you'll appreciate the additions that have already been made thus far. I hope you're well, and will look forward to your response. I might suggest looking back through the page history since September to see what's changed, as I've tripled the original character count since then. All the best, and thanks in advance - CSGinger14 (talk) 04:49, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is bad. We already have an insane number of pointless RfCs that waste huge amounts of editor time. Unilaterally deciding you like them is not enough to change the system like that. I like boldness but only when its a good idea. Polygnotus (talk) 02:17, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can start a meta-RfC where we both present our views side by side? If that turns out to be necessary after a discussion of course. Polygnotus (talk) 02:19, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What's the basis for your assertion that there are "an insane number" of RFCs?

Do you know how many RFCs are happening each month? Do you know how that compares to five years ago? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds weird, but in some cases you don't really have to keep detailed stats for years to make an assertion; you can just trust that your senses tell you the truth.

RfCs are a sledgehammer. For some jobs you need a sledgehammer. For others... not so much. Using the appropriate tool for the job is easy: you start small and scale up when it doesn't work. Polygnotus (talk) 04:35, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In some cases you can trust your senses. In this case, the number of RFCs started each month has declined by 33% since five years ago. Therefore, we don't have "an insane number" of RFCs. We might have less personal patience with new editors, but the problem is not the number of RFCs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wait that causal link is incorrect. What if 5 years ago there was an even insaner deluge? Polygnotus (talk) 16:31, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't. And the community isn't struggling to respond to them; we have more respondents than we used to, though some of us IMO are showing less grace than we used to. I've been thinking about proposing official discouragement of "Bad RFC" !votes (not a ban, just a 'maybe consider possibly not doing that very much'). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well I don't have the statistics. Do you? I just see a bunch of nonsensical RfCs that are a waste of time and do not meet the requirements. Because there is no preceding discussion the actual RfC question is usually not the right one. And often the wording is non-neutral or a false dilemma is presented.

I think the people who point out that an RfC is bad are doing the work the RfC starter should've done, but didn't. I have never seen someone falsely claim that an RFC was a BADRFC or that it didn't meet RFCBEFORE.

Why do you think RfCs that people consider to be bad should be allowed to continue? Can you give any examples of good RfCs where people !voted badrfc incorrectly?

I've been thinking about proposing official discouragement Then can we have some statistics about how many valid RfCs you believe are incorrectly closed? If this is a serious problem it must be easy to list 20 examples, otherwise official guidance would just be instruction creep. Polygnotus (talk) 17:18, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• See the penultimate question in the FAQ at the top of Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment.
• The requirements for an RFC are: put the rfc tag in a discussion, don't write wildly non-neutral questions, and don't screw up the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All page formatting (through length, tables, or other methods).
• What is even the meaning of a "false" or "incorrect" !vote for "Bad RFC"? Those !votes don't have a single meaning. Let's talk about this at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment instead of here.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• So you also don't have the statistics.
• And follow RFCBEFORE and avoid BADRFC
• That is impolite, I asked you Maybe we can start a meta-RfC where we both present our views side by side? If that turns out to be necessary after a discussion of course. and instead you illustrate the problem by violating both BADRFC and BEFORERFC, if it was an RFC.

So perhaps you should revert yourself, or collapse your comment, and then we can have a normal conversation. Then when we actually understand eachothers point of view we can present our views to the community which can then make an informed decision. We may even find common ground. Polygnotus (talk) 21:24, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• If you look at the very first words of the FAQ, you will find a direct link to the raw data. I counted them up, and I assume you can do the same.
• RFCBEFORE isn't required, and WP:BADRFC isn't a thing. RFCBEFORE says If you are considering an RfC to resolve a dispute between editors, you should try first to resolve your issues other ways. Try discussing the matter with any other parties on the related talk page. That's "should" in the RFC 2119 sense, as in "there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item", as in "not must".
• I think I already understand you: You are unhappy with the quality of the questions you see in RFCs, and you think that adding some procedural requirements will improve the average quality.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:57, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I counted them up, and I assume you can do the same C'mon, we don't have to speak on that level do we? Yes, I can count. We may disagree, but that does not mean I am too dumb to be able to count.
• RFCBEFORE isn't required That is your view, yet people have closed bad rfcs a bunch of times citing it, and a majority^{[citation needed]} of the community thinks it is and should be. WP:BADRFC isn't a thing. because you had it deleted because you disagree with it. Note that this is the naming standard, look for redirect that are called WP:BAD and you'll find its not the only one. That's "should" in the RFC 2119 sense we already talked about that, humans do not follow RFC 2119 and you are well aware of that.
• I think I already understand you A very bad assumption to make. you think that adding some procedural requirements I didn't propose adding requirements so you clearly do not understand my POV.

Polygnotus (talk) 23:02, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Humans" may not follow RFC 2119, but when I'm writing pages such as WP:RFC, I do. The word in RFCBEFORE is should because that's the correct balance between encouragement and requirement.

I suggest that you look at the prior discussions, such as Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Archive 21#If RFCbefore is needed before starting a RFC, would it help if policy explicitly required RFC openers to add a link to the RFCbefore along with the RFC statement? and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Archive 20#WP:RFCBEFORE often ignored and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Archive 20#Malformed RFCs: what’s the process for dealing with them? and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Archive 20#Previous discussion. None of them concluded that RFCBEFORE is mandatory, and a proposal to change that should to a must failed.

(If you don't want to count the RFCs yourself, then I posted a summary last year.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:25, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing But the audience who reads that page does not know of that RFC. I know that you know exactly what MUST and SHOULD mean, in the context of that RfC. But we have a very diverse community.

Some Wikipedians are not native speakers (like me). Some Wikipedians are not computer nerds (for reasons beyond my understanding).

When talking PaGs (and essays and information pages and whatever) the writers intentions are irrelevant; how the readers interpret the text is. Polygnotus (talk) 23:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The audience that reads that page does not know what RFC 2119 says. They need to know that the ordinary dictionary definition of should is different from the ordinary dictionary definition of must. People who are not native English speakers should be pleased to learn that I do not write the word should (indicating that something is recommended but not required) when something is actually required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:15, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing I think the art of precise interpretation of text is kinda lost on the newer generations. Tiktok is not good for the brain imo.

So one part is people not being able to parse text, and another is people reading what they want the text to say, which sometimes is not the same as what the text actually says.

I think we agree on this bit. Polygnotus (talk) 08:18, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And thanks for the links. I can't read them right now but I will soonish. Polygnotus (talk) 23:45, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is not about requiring RFCBEFORE, it is about requiring the inclusion of a link to preceding discussions in the RfC opening statement.

The second link is about making WP:RFCBEFORE more prominent. The other is a more specific concern that a particular RFC is going to end up with the "wrong" result, whereas if the rest of the community hadn't been invited to join the conversation, then the "right" answer could have prevailed. sounds like an assumption of bad faith to me, so consider yourself trouted.

The third one is someone asking what the process is of dealing with malformed RfCs. Someone you might be familiar with wrote: it looks like the immediate problem was solved by removing the tag. So it sounds like you are saying that closing the RfC is a good idea.

The last one is someone saying they would like stronger wording to emphasize that people need to follow RFCBEFORE. This is something we often see; the community wants RFCBEFORE to be more strictly enforced and your view that it is no reason to close an RfC is in the minority.

a proposal to change that should to a must failed No it didn't, you were the only one who responded and it fizzled out because it was on a page with few watchers.

I don't think I fully understand your reasoning for defending RfCs.

If you just like their ability to attract the attention of more editors then we can achieve the same thing with other WP:DR procedures.

The reason I am no fan of RfCs is their inherent flaws, we could also explore options to reduce those. For example, people often write a biased opening statement where they misrepresent what happened and use a strawman (not always intentional, sometimes people just don't understand the other party's POV). And then just below that they get to post the first !vote which is often also a wall of text. Sometimes they even ping some people who they think will agree. When someone with a different viewpoint comes along they have to go against the tide and they have a clear disadvantage (you and I read everything, but a lot of people just skim). One way to partially solve that problem would be to have 2 parties present their POV side by side (difficult on mobile tho). Polygnotus (talk) 06:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• The first one is about whether RFCBEFORE is mandatory. The OP asked "If RFCbefore is needed before starting a RFC, would it help if policy explicitly required RFC openers to add a link to the RFCbefore" and was told that RFCBEFORE is not required, and therefore we did not require a link to prove that prior discussions happened. It is therefore relevant as evidence that there is no consensus to require RFCBEFORE discussions.
• The second one says "WP:RFCBEFORE often ignored" and complains that "RFCs are frequently started after no discussion, or extremely minimal discussion" and that the question was prompted because "a RFC suddenly appeared on a matter which had not even been discussed". There is nobody in that discussion saying that RFCBEFORE is mandatory, which is evidence that there is no consensus to require RFCBEFORE discussions.
• The third one says "There was no current or recent discussion (the last one was May), so this fails RFCBEFORE", and the reply is "RFCBEFORE isn't absolutely mandatory anyway". The tag was removed for non-RFCBEFORE reasons. This one is important because it is evidence of editors claiming RFCBEFORE even when the person claiming no RFCBEFORE discussions admits that there were, in fact, prior discussions (see "recent discussion (the last one was May)"). It therefore provides evidence that making RFCBEFORE be "mandatory" would be abused.
• The fourth is a proposal to change the RFCBEFORE text to say "Editors must thoroughly discuss a matter on a talk page before initiating an RfC" (bolding in the original), and it utterly failed to gain support. If my opposition were actually "in the minority", then you would be able to name multiple supporters of that proposal – but as you already know, you'll find none in that discussion. Not one single editor spoke up in favor of that proposal. And despite your assertion, that talk page is on 1,583 watchlists. Dozens of editors look at it each month; it has averaged 700 page views per month for the last year. WT:RFC is not some obscure corner where nobody is paying attention.

If you're not a fan of RFCs, then please take your name off the Wikipedia:Feedback request service and stop participating in them (unless you happen to see one that you actually want to participate in). WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:31, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. Like I stated before, I don't actually think there can be no exceptions to RFCBEFORE, and I don't actually think we should force all people to follow it in all cases. You keep arguing as if I believe things I don't, which is confusing.
2. There is nobody in that discussion saying that RFCBEFORE is mandatory, which is evidence that there is no consensus to require RFCBEFORE discussions. That doesn't follow, but again this is irrelevant.
3. The tag was removed for non-RFCBEFORE reasons ...It therefore provides evidence that making RFCBEFORE be "mandatory" would be abused. So what I am saying is that there are valid reasons other than not following RFCBEFORE to close an RfC. And yes, any rule or "rule" will be abused. It is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations.
4. But that would be a proposal I disagree with, because I believe there are cases in which it is valid to close an RfC for not having a preceding discussion, but I also believe there are cases in which it is not valid to do that. So that shows that people agree with me?

If you're not a fan of RFCs, then please take your name off the Wikipedia:Feedback request service and stop participating in them Why? I am not a railfan but I do ride the train sometimes. Polygnotus (talk) 08:51, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. You say that now, but when you edited the page in the middle of a dispute over you closing an RFC at Talk:Canada, you included no exceptions or limitations. Additionally, you have objected saying that we don't force people to follow it in all cases. If you actually believe what you claim here, then why don't you put your now-belief back on to the WP:RFC page?
2. People had an opportunity to say it was required, and they didn't. That is relevant.
3. Oh, yes, there are many valid reasons other than not following RFCBEFORE to end an RFC – though that's not what you put in WP:RFC back in July, and not related to what you removed from WP:RFCBEFORE recently.
4. There are no cases in which it is valid for someone (other than the OP; the OP can end an RFC whenever they want, for any reason or none) to end an RFC exclusively because of the absence of a preceding discussion. There are cases in which it is valid to end an RFC because the RFC is a mess, and in such cases we may have a suspicion that an RFCBEFORE discussion would have prevented the mess, but in those cases the RFC should be ended because it is a mess – not because of the absence of an RFCBEFORE discussion. If we believe a discussion should use a non-RFC form, then the correct thing to do is to suggest to the OP that they voluntarily withdraw the RFC themselves, and try a different/better/quicker approach.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:19, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh man I can't even find the comments I am supposed to reply to any more in all this text.

1. Debating me would be far easier if I would have a bunch of immutable and very extreme opinions. Sometimes people who debate me think I do, but sadly I live in a grey world. I am very jealous of those freedom fighters who know everything and are able to judge all people and actions (but I also think they should be jailed). Still, being certain of stuff would be nice in a quantum universe. Note that I added it as one of the reasons that a discussion may be closed, to reflect reality; I didn't say this must always or must never happen, or only with these limitations or exceptions. That sounds more policy pagey to me, and less information pagey. If you actually believe what you claim here, then why don't you put your now-belief back on to the WP:RFC page? Not sure I follow. I fundamentally believe in IAR, except when I am bored.
2. Maybe.
3. I don't think this sentence makes sense.
4. There are no cases in which it is valid for someone (other than the OP; the OP can end an RFC whenever they want, for any reason or none) to end an RFC exclusively because of the absence of a preceding discussion. You keep repeating that claim but I don't really agree with that, sorry. In some cases having an RfC without preceding discussion is just a waste of time and in my opinion it would be fine to simply close the RfC and ask some people for opinions in a freeform discussion.

If we believe a discussion should use a non-RFC form, then the correct thing to do is to suggest to the OP that they voluntarily withdraw the RFC themselves Decent chance that will be interpreted by the RfC starter the way you appear to do: "oh they are just worried they will 'lose'". So to me that doesn't sound like a great idea. Polygnotus (talk) 09:47, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you understand that an RFC is really not supposed to be a vote, and that you can have a freeform discussion even while the RFC tag stays on the section? You don't need to close the RfC before you can ask some people for opinions in a freeform discussion. You can just leave the RFC tag alone and proceed straight to asking for opinions and having an ordinary discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that is kinda my point. We seem to mostly agree despite our very different approach.

I agree that RfC is really not supposed to be a vote. But in practice this is the way it is treated unfortunately.

And you probably need more than one person to turn an ongoing RfC into a normal discussion if a bunch of people have already !voted election-style.

I think the consensus from a free-form discussion, wherein there is less framing and there is no limited list of options to pick, is much stronger.

I think that if we must have RfCs (which I do think have a place, in limited circumstances, for example when the question is something simple like "Should X be promoted to policy?") then people should be able to add their own options for example. Polygnotus (talk) 02:52, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2025_March_1#Wikipedia:BADRFC was a bad decision, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AllPages?from=BAD&to=&namespace=4

What should've happened is that the page was improved, not that the redirect was deleted. Polygnotus (talk) 06:46, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine why you think that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a valid argument. I suggested deleting or repointing a new and potentially confusing shortcut. Other editors (NB: not just me) decided that deletion was preferable. Only the person who created the redirect wanted to keep it. This isn't the typical characteristics of a bad decision at RFD. But if you really think it was a bad decision, then you should first ask the admin who deleted it, and if he doesn't agree to undelete it, then you can appeal the decision at Wikipedia:Deletion review. And if you don't think that would change the decision, then maybe it wasn't a "bad decision" after all. Maybe it was just "a decision you personally dislike". WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:35, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But its not an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument, so I am unsure why you bring that up.

I know of the existence of deletion reviews. Polygnotus (talk) 08:43, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're telling me that WP:BADRFC shouldn't have been deleted because there are other, unrelated shortcuts that begin with WP:BAD. That's an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:20, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, I said that this was a naming convention.

OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is about if other stuff exists; it is not about if other stuff uses the same naming convention.

Following a naming conventions makes life easier. Polygnotus (talk) 09:23, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A naming convention is also stuff that exists, and we have no naming convention that says a section focused on alternatives to a process should be called WP:BADPROCESS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, but the reason OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a bad argument is because of the fact that it points to the existence of other articles as proof that this article also deserves to exist.

Pointing to a naming convention to say that something has an appropriate name is fundamentally different of course.

And it is easy to remember "oh arguments against/problems with can be found when I type WP:BADWHATEVER", or at least easier than if there was no naming convention. Polygnotus (talk) 02:56, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you do me a favour and not add ^{[citation needed]} in my comments? Thanks. You do realize I am the inventor of the far superior ^{[Trust me bro]} right? Use that one if you must. Polygnotus (talk) 08:25, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Use it yourself, if you want. I suggest not asserting that the majority prefers something when you can't find a single discussion in which the majority has said anything like that, and I've already given you multiple discussions in which the majority didn't say that, or even said the opposite. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:36, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've already given you multiple discussions in which the majority didn't say that, or even said the opposite. Pretty sure I have read the links you posted, but I haven't seen that. Polygnotus (talk) 08:41, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do have some ideas on how to attract people to discussions on low traffic talkpages with few watchers btw.

If we do this, WikiProjects become useful.

The next step would be to have a bot that generates a page that lists discussions on talkpages within the topic area of the WikiProject, chronologically. If it posts the lists in my userspace I don't even need a botflag and it can be transcluded on the WikiProjects pages. It could add some basic stats like the amount of participants in the discussion. Polygnotus (talk) 16:10, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:A WikiProject is a group of people. The main problem with most "WikiProjects" is that there are no/too few people there to respond to anything. We have something on the order of 2,000 WikiProjects. If we want them to be active, IMO the first step is to merge until we only have a couple hundred. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:31, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Active_WikiProjects lists 652, and you probably aren't surprised that most aren't actually active. User:Polygnotus/inactivewikiprojects Polygnotus (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The semi-active, inactive, and defunct ones are the ones that need to be merged up. I haven't looked at in detail, but my overall impression is that we need more than 200, but probably less than 500. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure I follow sorry. What is the point of merging something that is inactive or defunct? I thought you were talking about merging the ones that are (somewhat) active. Polygnotus (talk) 17:13, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To increase the likelihood that if you're working on the article Example, there will be a WikiProject banner tag at the top of Talk:Example that will lead you to a place where you can realistically get a question answered.

For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject First aid is long since dead, and should be redirected to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Emergency medicine and EMS task force. (We would have years ago, except it wasn't quite dead at the time, and one lone editor objected.) Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicine should probably become a task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine, with the talk page redirected to the group's main talk page. There's no point in posting something to WT:ALTMED right now; the "Number of page watchers who visited in the last 30 days" is just two, and one of those is me. Experienced editors already know that if you've got a problem in an AltMed article, then WT:MED and WP:FTN are the places to go. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But the problem is that that would require starting a bunch of new WikiProjects.

And in some cases people who are interested in a subtopic would also be interested in the overarching topic, but sometimes (often?) that is not the case.

And I don't really see a way for one person to start a bunch of WikiProjects and decide that whoever is part of wikiprojects that cover subtopics should now forcibly be moved to the overarching wikiproject.

Someone who is interested in, lets say Albania (e.g. because they live there) is not necessarily interested in WikiProject Balkans.

To make matters even worse you'd also have to redirect all sub-wikiprojects to the overarching one, which people will certainly not appreciate. Polygnotus (talk) 21:16, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm talking about merging WikiProjects, not creating new ones. WikiProject-Long-Dead-History and WikiProject-Defunct-History get merged into Wikipedia:WikiProject History. We started with three, and we end up with one. So far, the people who have been doing this work have never thought it helpful to create a new one.
• In the case of the awkward subtopic (Does WikiProject History of science belong to WikiProject History, or WikiProject Science?), we propose merging it as a WP:TASKFORCE.
• We don't force anyone to merge. We make a proposal, wait for responses, and abandon it if there are any objections. There's a guideline for how to handle this.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well I am happy to (try to) help with any proposal, but I worry that people will object (despite the merger possibly resulting in a more viable project). Polygnotus (talk) 23:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that only two WikiProjects have ever objected (probably due more to careful selection of long-dead groups than anything else), but all we do in such cases is say "No problem, we won't do it" and go away at the earliest hint of opposition. Since WikiProjects are groups of people (rather than subject areas), there's nothing to be gained by trying to force a merger. You can't make volunteers work together just because you think "WikiProject Tulips" and "WikiProject Lilies" ought to be friends. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In my limited experience, WikiProjects are often dominated by one or two or three users who sometimes try to put some rules on the WikiProject page (bit like an SNG). If you merge 2 WikiProjects into one, these people might fear losing their ability to set the rules.

Looking at the allegedly active wikiprojects:

Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography / Wikipedia:WikiProject United Kingdom

Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy / Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects

Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year / Wikipedia:WikiProject Years

Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways / Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads / Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Streets

Wikipedia:WikiProject Stations / Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways

Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity / Wikipedia:WikiProject Catholicism / Wikipedia:WikiProject Eastern Orthodoxy / Wikipedia:WikiProject Oriental Orthodoxy / Wikipedia:WikiProject Reformed Christianity

Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports / Wikipedia:WikiProject Athletics

Wikipedia:WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing / Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One / Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorsport

Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycle racing / Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorcycling

Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals / Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology / Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals / Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds / Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes / Wikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles / Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods / Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects / Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders

Another idea would be to use something like the Dewey Decimal System, where you create them in advance, not on demand. Another idea would to automatically invite people, or even to just automatically put them in a WikiProject, based on their contributions (using something like User:Polygnotus/PAWS/cat2users which filters out gnomes). I'm talking about merging WikiProjects, not creating new ones. I am not so sure an overarching WikiProject exists in all cases. I can imagine there are situations where there is a gap. Polygnotus (talk) 07:13, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You really should discuss these ideas at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council (which, despite the name, is a noticeboard for people trying to support WikiProjects). WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:39, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I was kinda hoping to use your brain and maybe collaborate with you on a proposal. As you can see some of these are just quick ideas, and others are more developed.

If I am the enemy because of an incredibly minor and unimportant disagreement about a few words in an information page then we can just delete Wikipedia and move on with our lives; nothing will get done if people have to agree 100% before collaborating.

If you 100% agree with me then your opinion is worthless to me. Polygnotus (talk) 09:07, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You should post them at WT:COUNCIL because other editors have brains, too. The regulars there don't expect perfection in proposals, and a couple of them may be interested. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:25, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merging is your idea, maybe you should present that one.

You wrote We started with three, and we end up with one. So far, the people who have been doing this work have never thought it helpful to create a new one. Who are those people? Maybe they have ideas. Polygnotus (talk) 13:02, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you could actually look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council?

I'm not pointing you to a random page. This is the page that has been discussing these kinds of ideas for years now. I don't need to present my idea about merging WikiProjects there, because it wasn't my idea originally, and because we are way beyond the stage of "ideas". This is an established process.

Go glance briefly through Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide (an official, community-supported sitewide guideline), and then read Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Merging WikiProjects, which I wrote last year when we were working on standardizing some of the technical steps in the process. Then post your ideas at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council. It's possible that some of your specific groupings might inspire someone to start a merge process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have made a few edits, but I never got very interested in WikiProjects because they, to me, seemed vestigial.

So to me, all that is new, including the existence of a WikiProject Council.

But you did give me inspiration for a userscript that lists subpages of the current page. Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 03:01, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe your initial question about how to explain the non-mandatory nature of WP:RFCBEFORE should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment instead of here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think RFCBEFORE is non-mandatory, or should be.

If you want to make it non-mandatory you could start a conversation there. But since it is a bad idea we can probably talk about it first and then if you still think it should be made non-mandatory then we can have a wider discussion there. Polygnotus (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RFCBEFORE is already non-mandatory because it has always been non-mandatory, and if you want to change that, you have to get consensus for the change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, as discussed previously, the holy texts say what one wants to read. You made a bold move to introduce a new rule, and got reverted. Polygnotus (talk) 21:07, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, I made a frustrated move to write what the rule actually is, and has always been, in language clear enough that it couldn't be mistaken by people trying to shut down an RFC over the fear that they're going to lose, and got reverted by you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:28, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I am sorry if I added to your frustration. But I am trying to do the right thing here.

And I don't really participate in RfCs often and I try not to see Wikipedia in terms of losing and winning. I have seen people shut down RfCs not because they were afraid of 'losing', but to save everyone some time. Or because a RFC statement was incredibly far from neutral. Or because the RfC had become irrelevant at the third response. I was kinda surprised by the first example you gave over here because to me that is a perfect example of what we don't want. We don't want to give COI editors the ability to waste even more of everyones time by repeatedly asking the other parent which is a force multiplier because it allows them to waste the time of a whole bunch of people. Having them randomly ping 20 people would also not be allowed. Them being told 'no' and moving on is exactly what should happen. We both know examples of people who will happily start 8 RfCs a week if they think it would help them achieve their goals. Polygnotus (talk) 23:32, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

IMO RFCs are "won" when a consensus is formed, and "lost" when the dispute is not resolved.

Having COI editors and POV pushers use the RFC process is not wasting people's time. It is often saving people's time in the long run, because an RFC that says "No, you absolutely may not put that garbage in our article" is evidence of a consensus that will be durable over time. Every time the UPE or POV pusher comes back to say "but can't we put just a little bit of this garbage in here?", they'll get smacked with that RFC. Them moving on after being told 'no' is exactly what isn't happening, and that's why we have their RFCs. They do generally move on after an RFC – and when they don't do so voluntarily, we'll make them.

Also, it's a lot more likely to be 10 editors than 20 responding, and nobody's starting 8 RFCs a week any longer, because that's (gently) against the rules now. I think we only had to ban one or two editors to get that message across to would-be frequent flyers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:45, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having COI editors and POV pushers use the RFC process is not wasting people's time. It is often saving people's time in the long run, because an RFC that says "No, you absolutely may not put that garbage in our article" is evidence of a consensus that will be durable over time. Interesting thought, but I don't think I fully agree with that. Especially since it is more likely that there is 1 POV pusher than 10, and CONSENSUSCANCHANGE.

Every time the UPE or POV pusher comes back to say "but can't we put just a little bit of this garbage in here?", they'll get smacked with that RFC. I agree it is possible that this happens, but I can't recall ever seeing that.

They do generally move on after an RFC – and when they don't do so voluntarily, we'll make them. Hm, in my experience POV pushers (baddies) don't really give a shit that a large majority disagrees with them. They and only they know the true Truth with the capital T.

Also, it's a lot more likely to be 10 editors than 20 responding, and nobody's starting 8 RFCs a week any longer, because that's (gently) against the rules now. I think we only had to ban one or two editors to get that message across to would-be frequent flyers. I don't know the stats but I'll trust you on that. I have seen a bunch of RfCs that are... not great but if you are saying the quantity reduces then I hope that the quality will also improve. Polygnotus (talk) 08:56, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at this, it looks like your experience was something like:: "I want to solicit feedback but no one is responding, I couldn't edit further without that feedback and there was no 'dispute' so using Dispute Resolution is weird".

I understand the frustration this might cause, but I do think there are quite a few avenues you could've used. The advice given by InfiniteNexus is sound, and there is also stuff like Discord and IRC and the talkpage of someone who has a brain.

But it feels like this personal experience may have been the inspiration behind this push to make the RfC the ultimate unstoppable weapon of Wiki-destruction, and I don't think that that is a good idea.

The situation you were in was pretty rare, and there were multiple solutions other than an RfC. And no one is gonna close it if you start an RfC asking for some opinions

The type of RfCs that should be closed are (in a very large majority of cases, but not always) started by inexperienced people or POVpushers who disagree with the consensus.

I have the personal experience of dealing with RfCs that are not written neutrally, do not ask the right question, have zero preceding discussion, et cetera, (and I have never been on the other side) which is why I approach this very differently.

Your idea of removing the requirements and people's ability to close bad RfCs appears to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, since no one told you to follow RFCBEFORE and no one closed your RfC as far as I can see. I asked for statistics about how many valid RfCs you believe are incorrectly closed and received none. I also asked Can you give any examples of good RfCs where people !voted badrfc incorrectly? and of the 5 links you provided none were closed and none !voted incorrectly (although you free to disagree with their opinion of course).

If someone dares close an RfC you started just ping me and I'll happily re-open it. I am also fine with adding "RfCs started by WhatamIdoing may not be closed by non-admins" to the PaGs.

I think the goal of writing PaGs/essays/rules is to not have to explain the same thing over and over again to new editors. So someone who writes them is kinda immune, you know? Polygnotus (talk) 10:32, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did manage to find an RfC you started wherein 2 people said it was a bad RfC.

Talk:Black_Irish_(folklore)/Archive_2#Differentiating_between_the_real_people_and_the_false_origin_story

In that case, the wording of the RfC could indeed be better (I would frame it in terms of article scope, not myth vs reality: Should this article be about the people described by this term or about the alleged origin story)

You are of course correct that the fact that the origin story is false does not mean that the people don't exist. And I don't think that the RfC was so bad it unfairly influenced the result. But of course identity is a sensitive topic. Polygnotus (talk) 13:39, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You still haven't figured out the depth and breadth of my experience with RFCs yet, have you? I've started a couple dozen RFCs (the median is zero, by a lot; the median of those who have ever started any RFC is one, also by a lot). I've helped other editors draft dozens of RFCs. I've posted hundreds of comments in RFCs. I've probably looked at a couple thousand RFCs. There are few editors who have contributed more to Wikipedia:Requests for comment or its subpages since Wikipedia started having RFCs, and none that have posted more often to Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment.

And in the face of all of my experience, you pull out one example from 2016, and another from almost two years ago, and speculate on whether those two – out of hundreds or thousands of RFCs – shaped my opinion, and whether I might worry that someone might dare to close an RFC that I opened. No, that's not likely to happen, and if it does, I'm confident that I can handle it without your assistance.

I've got no problem with ending RFCs. I do it myself on occasion, and I don't remember anyone ever reverting me (or if they did, it didn't stick). I have two separate concerns:

• Writing a rule (which you did) that editors can end an RFC over an alleged RFCBEFORE failure. Let me be clear about this: If an editor wants to end an RFC, they need to give a different excuse for ending it. "Ugh, what a terrible mess" is an acceptable reason to end an RFC (assuming that it actually is a terrible mess and the editor isn't already identified as part of the opposition. If the latter is relevant, then they should get someone else [e.g., me] to end the RFC for them and say that it's a terrible mess). "You didn't follow RFCBEFORE" is an invalid excuse for ending an RFC. Editors should not give that excuse when they end an RFC. They should give a different excuse. This is not complicated:
  If you repeat false rumors about RFCBEFORE being mandatory → I'm not happy.
  Change the words in the edit summary/comment to not mention RFCBEFORE → I'm happy.
• Editors !voting "Bad RFC" when they need to be !voting "Oppose". Posting a !vote of "Bad RFC" doesn't mean the editor is trying to end the RFC. It often means they are unhappy and worried about the result.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:08, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't sit around for weeks (months?) reading your 19 years of contributions on Wikipedia.

speculate on whether those two – out of hundreds or thousands of RFCs – shaped my opinion No, I used Wikipedias horrible search system to find RfCs that contained your name and the string "badrfc" or "bad rfc". The Black Irish one was the only one I could find where I can imagine you disagreeing with the persons who wrote that. And, like I said, in that case I don't think the RfC should've been closed, and it wasn't.

I've got no problem with ending RFCs. Great. We agree that closing RfCs can be a good idea.

• Like I said, I have seen an RfC where after like 2 or 3 comments the need for the RfC was completely gone, and it was clear that the question was irrelevant. So in that case I would think closing for not following RFCBEFORE would make sense. I am not proposing closing all RfCs with that reason all the time.
• Posting a !vote of "Bad RFC" doesn't mean the editor is trying to end the RFC. It often means they are unhappy and worried about the result. Agreed, obviously. And you can be worried about the result in a good-faith way (not just "the majority might !vote against my wishes").

Polygnotus (talk) 09:14, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the need for an RFC is resolved after two or three comments, then you should invite the OP to pull the rfc tag. In such cases, you don't say "because of not following RFCBEFORE". You say "because consensus has been reached" or "because your question seems to have been answered".

See WP:RFCEND: "The question may be withdrawn by the poster (e.g., if the community's response became obvious very quickly)" and "Please remove the {{rfc}} tag when the dispute has been resolved, or when discussion has ended." That second sentence is even underlined in the original.

BTW, if you plan to do this in the future, you should also read the FAQ about leaving RFCs open for at least a week – unless you're clearly losing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:32, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no losing and winning.

If the need for an RFC is resolved after two or three comments, then you should invite the OP to pull the rfc tag. This was what I would describe as a baddie, who knew the whole Truth.

People who know the Truth are very unlikely to listen to us dumb people who don't even know or believe in the Truth they hold so dear.

But yes, in an ideal world that is what would've happened. Polygnotus (talk) 09:35, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted myself. I don't agree but I get easily bored. Polygnotus (talk) 15:45, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WAID, I thought of our recent exchange at WP:RS while editing this page. I'm editing Neapolitan ragù at the moment, and I am citing an English-language source from 2004 to say the dish is typically made for Sunday lunch. On the Italian wiki, however, Google Translate tells me "Originally, it was a Sunday dish [but today] Neapolitan ragù is a typically festive dish". The page gets ~100 views a day, and has said this, pretty much in the lead, for at least 15 years. I don't plan on citing it, and I'll have a look to see if newspapers etc in Italian are reporting the same thing, but it amused me that I could have such difficulty justifying not citing Wikipedia. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 22:36, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy that the article mentions "gravy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hiya. I just wanted to say that the Bad RfC discussion seemed like a little bit of a pile on. I don’t know what I’m trying to say exactly… Just hope it’s not too stressful and more importantly, that hoping I didn’t add to the stress. Dw31415 (talk) 22:21, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some Wikipedians, including me, are verbose, so mere size isn't always a good proxy of stress, especially if one of the editors seems to react better to detailed and comprehensive replies rather than a quick handwave at the general idea. Your comments did not add to my stress.

I think that discussion has identified several areas of confusion, particularly:

• What's "an RFCBEFORE discussion" mean? It's supposed to mean that someone attempted an ordinary discussion on the talk page, but I think some editors believe that it means you're supposed to have a discussion that workshops the RFC question itself. (The reason I think this is because someone saying "Is this actually something we should put in this article?" would not prevent that person from then opening a completely biased RFC question.)
• Some editors want to be able to forcibly stop other people's RFCs. Who is allowed to do that, and under what circumstances? (The answer is all the usual rules, such as the ones we'd use for hatting or blanking someone else's talk page comment.)

I don't think we can address those right now, but perhaps in the future. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did you see Poly reverted his revert? Just making sure that didn't get lost in the many threads. Dw31415 (talk) 01:56, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thank you, I did see that today. I appreciate you taking the time to make sure it didn't get lost. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, hat-tip for "You know what would be really the best, lowest-drama thing to do here?" Dw31415 (talk) 02:21, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly confident I've spoken with you multiple times before. Do you recognize me? Wikieditor662 (talk) 22:25, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to this, we crossed paths at User talk:Larry Sanger/Nine Theses. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that tool would literally help me with so many things. And I cannot believe we met a total of 40 times! Thank you! How did you find that tool? Wikieditor662 (talk) 00:27, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most tools spread by word of mouth, but big ones like that are announced at the Village pumps when they're created. If you're curious about scripts and tools, then you can look at m:User:WhatamIdoing/global.js to see some of the ones I use regularly, across all the wikis. You can make a global Javascript page at Meta-Wiki (create that at m:User:Wikieditor662/global.js) or the same things work locally here (create Special:MyPage/common.js). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate it a lot! On another note, what are your thoughts on Wikipedia in general, if you don't mind me asking? Do you think it has any problems? Wikieditor662 (talk) 01:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

However many articles there are, there are at least that many problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's funny! (Or maybe kind of sad). I'm working on a project designed to combat this. Would you be interested in joining? Wikieditor662 (talk) 04:48, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, but thank you for the invitation.

Have you looked into other groups that have a similar interest, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a fundamental difference between these two: the one you showed me is about entertainment, or more importantly, that editors are enjoying Wikipedia. What I'm working on, however, is more about treatment, and protecting people's rights. Wikieditor662 (talk) 05:24, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they have a different way of putting it, but people don't enjoy Wikipedia when they're treated badly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, let me think about it some more (or discuss with others), and I'll get back to you when I can. Thanks! Wikieditor662 (talk) 05:32, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You may also wish to think about what you mean by "protecting people's rights". We used to say that your rights on wiki are the WP:Right to fork and the WP:Right to leave. Other, real-world rights (e.g., right to publish whatever you want) do not apply (because Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and Wikipedia:You don't own Wikipedia – though that page is about quite a different subject). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:36, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, and I appreciate your advice. I should have been more specific, you're absolutely correct. I was referring to the specific rights you have on Wikipedia. Wikieditor662 (talk) 05:40, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

AFAICT the specific rights (in the human rights sense, rather than the user groups sense) that a person has on the English Wikipedia are:

• the right to have your username associated with your contributions in what CC-BY-SA calls a reasonable manner,
• the right to fork, and
• the right to leave.

That is the end of the list.

There is, for example, no right to procedural fairness, no right to have disruption excused when it is caused by a disability, no right to have your side of the story taken seriously, no right to share your opinions, no right to get unblocked or unbanned (even if you meet previously specified conditions), no right to have another editor advocate for or explain your side, no right to have policies and guidelines enforced according to the letter of the law, etc. Several of our rules exist for the purpose of telling editors that they might reasonably have expected to have the right to _____, but they don't (e.g., WP:OWN, WP:NOTLAW, WP:NOTFORUM...).

When you are thinking about what you mean by "protecting people's rights", you should probably think hard about whether those rights actually exist here at the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's more. To name a few examples, you have the right to be treated with civility, to not be harassed, to not be met with personal attacks, to a clean start, to not be met with edit warring, to an RfC, among other things (with exceptions of course). If you're referring to rules that specifically have the word "right" then you'd be correct, but other rights can be inferred through the other rules. Wikieditor662 (talk) 20:51, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think these are rights. I think these are aspirational hopes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I suppose those are just linguistic differences. Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:25, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but the English Wikipedia has a larger than typical proportion of editors for whom pedantry and literal readings come naturally, so you may want to think about how you describe your goals. "Supporting the community's policies and common sense" will probably be better received than "supporting editors' rights (against other editors)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I updated the lead for the project proposal.

Some (if not many) changes will be needed before proposing it as a Wikiproject to ensure it's not overlapping too much with any other current ones. Do you have any other suggestions for it? Wikieditor662 (talk) 03:07, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. There's a little advice at WP:REVIVE that may be useful to you. Even though it's framed as a way to revive an old group, some of it is similar to what needs to be done to set up a new one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, for your information, as you were involved in the previous discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists or the RfC on consensus of WP:DESTNOT at WT:NOT, I wanted to let you know that the discussed broader RfC has been opened at WP:VPP#RfC - The inclusion of destination lists in Airport articles. If you wish to contribute, please feel free. Many thanks! Danners430 _{tweaks made} 20:46, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• WhatamIdoing has just closed this discussion after copying it to a separate page. This was confusing for me as I am subscribed to this discussion. It appeared that the discussion had been closed but all its content was gone and there was no clear explanation of what was happening. A fuller explanation was provided in another RfC, explaining that this was being done for size reasons. Such explanations should please be repeated in each case as editors may be subscribed to some but not others.

Note that I am now using subscription notifications as a way of following such long discussions. The notifications show the updates being made and I then decide whether or not to drill down on the new detail. The issue of subscriptions should be considered and allowed for when spinning off or forking. It appears that I am now subscribed to the split discussion page but I'm not sure how that happens technically.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:08, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have to say, I’m very much against forking as it will reduce traffic to the RfC as it’s no longer on the VPP main page. Given it was also done without any kind of discussion, @WhatamIdoing I request this is reverted. Danners430 _{tweaks made} 08:17, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The same thing was done to the LLM RfC. In that case, WhatamIdoing said, This page was almost a million bytes long, so these long discussions need to be split off. The actual numbers were:

Village Pump (Policy) = 974K

LLM/AI generated proposals? = 180K (archived)

RfC: Replace text of Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models = 150K (split)

RfC - The inclusion of destination lists in Airport articles = 181K (split)

I suppose this happens often so there may be a guideline. But see Wikipedia_talk:Talk_page_guidelines#RFC:_Recommended_maximum_talk_page_size which has removed the suggested figure of 75K as a threshold.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:38, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson, I didn't close the discussion; it's open at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Destination lists in airport articles. (I did box up the former location.) If you are [subscribe]d to the discussion, you are now subscribed to both locations.

Additionally, @Danners430, I reset the RFC id to keep Legobot happy, so you just won a fresh round of Wikipedia:Feedback request service notifications (to the new location), plus people on mobile devices will actually be able to participate, which isn't the case for many editors when a page is approaching a million bytes (or even half a million).

See also Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 2#Looking for some unofficial clerks WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, despite already having !voted in the RfC, I got another notification on my talk page to opine on the RfC. Katzrockso (talk) 19:03, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you did close the discussion that I was subscribed to. Here's the notification I got which said so. To avoid such confusion, please use a more appropriate template such as {{Moved discussion to}}. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:31, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I find that it's more effective to box up the 'wrong location' so that people will not fork the discussion. (I normally leave the section heading and the first comment alone, to make it easier for people to find the discussion they were looking for, especially for someone searching the archives in the future.)

The discussion is still open, no matter what automated message you received. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I hope I haven't messed up anything by moving the page to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Airport destination lists 2, inspired by checking Wikipedia:Village pump archive. If I have, feel free to revert me. Graham87 (talk) 07:43, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like I did, but I figured it out. I should've read the documentation at {{RFC}} beforehand. It seems like that's provoked yet another round of feedback requests ... Graham87 (talk) 11:28, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That may irritate some multiply-notified people, but if it brings in some new participants, then maybe we'll have a better chance of reaching a consensus in that discussion. I would particularly like the result there to be firm, because we've got a follow-on RFC that depends on having an answer to that question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 29 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know that you're one of the coolest people on here? (In my arrogant opinion.) I looked up Menstrual magnification, and it seems that the effects are more so perimenstrual. You can argue that the whole cycle has an effect on some people's health conditions, but I think perimenstrual is more encompassing (in a good way) for this potential article.

I believe Systemic issue would be a better name for an article than Systemic problem, but let me know your reasoning and you will probably convince me, as I am a novice on WP.

Concerning Neurotype: this is a needed article, in my view. I should like to help it come to fruition, but it is a daunting project. I don't quite understand your point of whether it's a single trait or the combination of an individual's traits. In my view, there are two mainly recognized neurotypes, so if you have bipolar and/OR ADHD and/OR autism, you are neurodivergent. ^[1].

The Rumpelstiltskin effect also sounds wildly interesting and I should like to contribute to a potential article on the subject, if possible.

{u|LeastConcern}{Talk} 11:55, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would be happy to have you start any of these articles. If you've not written an article before, then start at Special:MyPage/sandbox. Try reading a few similar articles and then finding reliable sources. If you can get six sentences (the first should be a definition or statement of what it is, written in your own words) and three refs on the page, you'll be off to a good start.

On the individual subjects:

• Premenstrual syndrome, as defined by researchers, is a set of symptoms that absolutely must include at least one emotional symptom (e.g., irritability), and that absolutely must not be present during the pre-ovulatory part of the cycle. PMS as represented in pop culture is a dramatic emotional symptom. PMS according to non-specialists who need to find an ICD code and move on to the next patient is any symptom ever that the patient claims is related to her menstrual cycle in any way (including, e.g., Mittelschmerz). The thing with Menstrual magnification is that it's not PMS or PMDD (e.g., it does not need to have an emotional, psychological, or psychiatric component; it is not restricted to the premenstrual phase), and it is always an exacerbation of a year-round medical condition (e.g., patient always has lupus/asthma/bipolar, and the lupus/asthma/bipolar symptoms are consistently worse at a predictable point in the menstrual cycle).
• For systemic problem, my reasoning is that issue is a euphemism for problem. But if there are actual non-problematic issues, then the broader issue would probably be the better word choice.
• The word neurotype (currently redirects to Neurodiversity) gets used in several different ways (examples: [5][6][7]). But what I meant is whether, in the context of neurodiversity, we should write about it as a binary classification (e.g., he's neurodivergent, and she's neurotypical) vs whether it should be considered as a descriptive system (e.g., his neurotype is autism+intellectual disability; her neurotype is autism+anxiety; their neurotype is typical...).
• I think that the Rumpelstiltskin effect will be particularly interesting and potentially valuable to adults who are seeking an autism or ADHD diagnosis. As a practical (rather than encyclopedic) matter, there seems to be a common experience of struggle for decades, get a diagnosis – relief, euphoria, it wasn't my fault! – and then one of two paths. The more functional path is "Ugh, but I still have to struggle through all this stuff. Knowing that I have ADHD doesn't really make it any easier to do the things I was struggling with, like paying these bills on time". The other is "Nope, can't do it, so giving up! It's just not reasonable for anyone to expect me to take care of myself and fulfill my responsibilities. If those bills are going to get paid on time, someone else will have to do it!"
  Although I've only seen this in the context of ADHD and similar psychiatric conditions, the process of seeking a diagnosis is the same in many other conditions, and anecdotally, when the diagnosis is not curable or meaningfully treatable, the result seems to be the same: years of "I just want a diagnosis. If only I knew what was making me feel so miserable, that would be enough for me", followed soon after diagnosis by unhappiness that the problem can't be fixed.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research graphical timeline has been nominated for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:11, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since the previous discussion, because of my poor judgement at grouping together unrelated sources, was a mess and was archived with no outcome, I've started a fresh, targeted, discussion about FR24. Pinging you because you were in the old discussion :-) Danners430 _{tweaks made} 14:41, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello WhatamIdoing, I noticed your comment on the Nikola Tesla Talk Page here, but your edit here removing the phrase you defended. I’m confused as to whether this was by mistake or a consensus was reached? It seems the IP addresses pushing to remove the phrases are one in the same person. So not exactly consensus. And you seemed suspicious of them as well stating that they were looking to remove “all mentions of Croatia in the article” and that they had “given up” so I assume you are not in favor of their aim of removal from theinfobox? Cheers OyMosby (talk) 03:08, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@OyMosby, see Talk:Nikola Tesla/Nationality and ethnicity/Archive 18#Infobox (now in...). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Huh… Weird that this was on a different talk page from the main article’s talk page. Either way, so you no longer agree with your defense of the use of “Modern Day X” in the infobox on October 26? Or was that for general use and not the infobox? It seems the subsequent discussions after that previous discussion in early October didn’t end with a final decision. Personally I don’t see the issue as articles dealing with territories from a century ago tend to describe the modern day present location for reader context. Also this doesn’t appears to be an RfC or any vote. But was closed as one?OyMosby (talk) 05:34, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe two things:

1. There is nothing wrong with "modern-day X" constructions.
2. There was a rough consensus to remove "now in Croatia" from the infobox (only).

There is no conflict between these two views. It is possible to support including "present-day Croatia" in (for example) the first sentence of Nikola Tesla#Childhood and also oppose having that same fact repeated in the infobox. Support for including it somewhere in the article does not mean support for including it in all possible locations on the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My original question was if your entry was about the infobox specifically or just general. So it was for general use not infobox specific. Answered. Got it. Cheers! OyMosby (talk) 05:52, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(It wasn't an RFC. It was, however, listed at Wikipedia:Closure requests. If you look at Wikipedia:Closure requests, you will see that non-RFCs are also eligible for closing summaries by uninvolved editors upon request.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:50, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, well still learning all the ins and outs of Wikipedia. I don’t follow the closure request page but now will. I was watching the discussion under the “Should Croatia be removed entirely” thread that preceded the Infobox thread that is on a different talk page for some reason. I would have participated if I knew it was going on and catalogued for consensus. Will keep in mind for the future to be active. Thanks! OyMosby (talk) 05:55, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My impression is that there are so many requests to add/remove Croatia from that article that they've created a separate talk page for it. It would be ideal if the page were watched by editors who don't actually care what the result is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:12, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Was the latter in reference to me? I meant watching the closure request page as I didn’t know consensus was being sought at the time is all. I agree that it would be preferable that neutral editors such as yourself monitored it but obviously that’s a massive time sink and not nearly enough editors are around to do such a thing. Also the initial infobox discussion likely would have never occurred if only editors with no opinion on the topic were watching. I personally didn’t bother putting my 2 cents into the later thread upon seeing it as it felt like a waste of time given the dramatic arguments the devolve on the main talk page, as typical on Ex Yugoslavia related articles. I think even admins lack the energy and feel reluctant to intervene. Anyways thanks for clarifying all that had transpired. I should have first spoken to you before reverting your edit. But with all the vandalism and edit warring on the page, I assumed the worst wrongly. Cheers. OyMosby (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a noticeboard or other talk page that where editors can ask about whether a particular source is a primary or secondary source for a particular statement? This is in relation to the conversation at Talk:Monsanto (this part in particular [8], for transparency), which has been unnecessarily long. Rather than unproductively go back and forth on a specific issue I'd rather bring a specific question to a noticeboard/talk page and see what other editors think. Katzrockso (talk) 23:25, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, there's no separate noticeboard. I'll go look at the discussion and see if I can help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:33, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I could very well be wrong (which I should have more openly acknowledged in many of my comments there), which is why I wanted to bring it to the attention of uninvolved editors. Katzrockso (talk) 02:31, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On a cynical day, I might say that after more than a decade of people getting PSTS classifications wrong, I assume that everyone's wrong until proven otherwise. You were correct this time.

One thing you might consider is whether that classification actually matters in the instant case. It sounds to me like the question is whether to name/shame the surviving author in that article, and that's a decision that needs to be made with editorial judgment. You're unlikely to find a source that says "Wikipedia ought to do this". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that is the primary question at stake, but secondarily there are motivations for including this information in the article. I think there is the idea that the retraction can be explained away by the fact the the surviving author didn't satisfactorily reply to the concerns and that if he had replied, the paper would still be Legitimate Science™ that was unfairly maligned (or something along those lines). My worry is thus two-fold: 1) there is little reason to include the name of the surviving author in the text and 2) the inclusion of this information only has the effect of implying that the retraction is of some lesser meaning/less reflective of the fundamental issues with regards to authorial independence. In reviewing many past discussions on multiple talk pages (as I did not just jump into the discussion having no idea the history of the page), I have seen editors claim that this paper was definitely 'not ghostwritten' or that claiming as such is a FRINGE idea.

As for the classification, I think it's important here because we are trying to establish how we are discussing (in the article's text) the proximate/ultimate causes of the paper being retracted. Ultimate cause is obviously the ghostwriting/appearance thereof [even the most skeptical editor would have to agree that the emails provide the appearance of the paper have been ghostwritten]. Proximately, Kaurov and Oreskes writing a letter-to-the-editor was one of the causes of the retraction. The sources are clear in attributing the retraction to the fact that it was ghostwritten (this claim is made unattributed and as a matter of fact by all the newspaper articles, as well as the academic sources). My argument is that the proposed text (following a lack of response by Gary M. Williams, the last surviving author of the paper) was engaging in WP:SYNTHESIS of the primary source. Katzrockso (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like getting no response being interpreted on the one side as an implicit admission of guilt, and by the other as not blaming the author for being retired/on vacation/sick/busy/whatever?

When I read through the evidence of guilt, the thing that mostly occurs to me is that CEOs don't always have the fullest understanding of what actually happens. Communication can be challenging over a (social) distance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying it's admission of guilt, he's really old at this point and if I were him I wouldn't bother responding either. Katzrockso (talk) 21:34, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, a few days/weeks ago we've discussed a project I've been working on, and you told me it was too similar to Wikiproject retention. However, I'm thinking of making this wikiproject be about articles, whereas WP:retention is about users. Do you think that would make the distinction good enough to become a wikiproject? Thanks! Wikieditor662 (talk) 17:28, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikieditor662,

Wikipedia:A WikiProject is a group of people. What matters most for starting a WikiProject is assembling a group of people. If you can assemble a group whose interest is helping Wikipedia by clicking Special:Random every day, or by producing photos of unicorns, or by leaving barnstars for promising newcomers, then that's fine.

What's not fine is saying "Look! Here I am, all by myself with no group of editors, and I am a WikiProject!" It does not matter what your subject area is. What matters is the people you are working with.

The reason I suggested that you look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention is because it may be easier to join/expand/take over an existing group than to assemble a new group.

To explain how I evaluate WikiProject proposals, let me tell you two stories. First, the success:

• Editor: Hey, Alice and Bob and Chris and David and Frank and Geo and I want a WikiProject.
• Me: Seven editors. Three of you have thousands of edits, and five of you have accounts older than a year. This sounds great. Let us know if you run into problems with the templates or categories.
• Editor: Don't you need to know what the subject area is?
• Me: That's not technically necessary, since one of our little-known rules is that separate groups are allowed to have overlapping and even identical scopes. That said, if you want to share that, I might be able to make some time-saving suggestions.

Now the failure:

• Editor: I want to start a WikiProject.
• Me: You and which other six to ten editors?
• Editor: My WikiProject is going to be about ChatGPT.
• Me: Wikipedia:A WikiProject is a group of people. Who else is in your group?
• Editor: What if my WikiProject is about LLMs more broadly?
• Me: WikiProjects are people. WikiProjects are not subject areas. Where are your other editors?
• Editor: I could change the subject area to be AI in general.
• Me: No WikiProject until you can give me the names of at least six editors. Editors, not articles.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Very funny! But is it actually like that, that if you have at least 7 members that you don't even need to explain what your project is about, and that it can overlap with other projects? Wikieditor662 (talk) 19:59, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other editors will probably want to know what your subject area, and if it's a very close match to another group, you'll get people asking you to merge. Wikipedia:WikiProject First aid and Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Emergency medicine and EMS task force have very similar scopes. They both exist (for now) because the last editor remaining at WikiProject First aid didn't want to be part of WikiProject Medicine. That's okay.

Non-identical overlapping scopes are normal. Proper subsets are very common (e.g., everything that Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red does is also tagged by Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography; everything that Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history does is also tagged by Wikipedia:WikiProject History). The "scope" is what the group chooses to do. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a volunteer service, so you can't force them to do what they don't want to do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And if they ask me to merge, and I say no, will we still be granted the project? Not that I hope it comes to this, but I'm just curious. Wikieditor662 (talk) 23:41, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We have rules against forcing groups to merge (mostly because it doesn't work – it's like asking kids who always sit at different tables in the lunch room to all sit somewhere else). We can't, however, prevent people from endlessly suggesting to one or both groups that the two groups combine.

I think that if you said "We want to do exactly what this other group does, only we want to do it without them and using our own name", then people would want to know more. (Are the two groups rivals? Should we expect drama in articles, with the groups working at cross purposes?) But in principle any group that has a sensible reason for wanting to set up pages/templates/categories is welcome to do so – as long as they're a group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2026!

Hello WhatamIdoing, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2026. Happy editing, Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:46, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply] Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:46, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2026!

Hello WhatamIdoing, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2026. Happy editing, sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:03, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply] Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:03, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for the Christmas wishes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @WhatamIdoing. I've left a comment on your recent discussion. I haven't read the entire discussion as it is very long, I would have appreciated a ping as you did list my recent RfC as being labelled as 'bad'. I've been ill however and am still recovering, so I likely wouldn't have had the energy to participate anyway. I think I understand the point of the discussion, that being whether to mandate WP:RFCBEFORE or not. I don't like the use of the word 'bad' as it comes across as assuming bad faith on the part of the editor who started the discussion. I will ping @FOARP here as well. I get that it may only intend to say the RfC wasn't well prepared, but to label RfCs with such a word I feel goes against WP:AGF. This was not enjoyable for me, I dislike confrontation and I really feel this could have been addressed in a better way than how it was. @FOARP is an administrator, so I am not going to challenge them, however I feel that a change in how things are phrased would be really beneficial to the RfC process. 11WB (talk) 16:17, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You have completely misunderstood that other conversation. I have explained your mistake on the other page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I say this respectfully but the general topic is not something I have any interest in whatsoever. I simply take issue with editors commenting "Bad RfC" as a !vote on RfCs they consider as such. This goes against what WP:RFCRESPOND advises:

'If you feel an RfC is improperly worded, ask the originator to improve the wording, or add an alternative unbiased statement immediately below the RfC question (after the rfc tag). You can also ask for help or a second opinion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment. Do not end an RfC just because you think the wording is biased. An rfc tag generally remains on the page until removed by Legobot or the originator. An RfC can be ended only when the criteria at Ending RfCs are met.'

@FOARP did not do this.

I'll reiterate this here, but as they are an administrator, it would be extremely inappropriate for me to have challenged @FOARP on this. I simply made the decision to move the comment to the discussion section instead. 11WB (talk) 18:33, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your talk page isn't the place to address this specific issue, so I'm going to refrain from continuing this here. I only posted here to notify you of my comment on your discussion. If @FOARP feels they should respond, I invite them to do so at my talk page in a non-heated manner. I want to make clear here I don't have a personal issue with anyone specifically, I simply feel the words we use are impactful and could be phrased differently. 11WB (talk) 18:44, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is appropriate for editors to challenge administrators when we think they screwed up. We call that "accountability", which means we expect them to "give an account" (an explanation) for their actions. Often, giving an account will explain why they weren't actually screwing up, or at least convince us that they might not have been screwing up. This may not feel culturally comfortable for some editors, but it is accepted and even encouraged at the English Wikipedia. FOARP is not the kind of person who will feel shamed or threatened by someone saying that they want more information about why he acted the way he did. I'm sure that he could give a perfectly good answer, and I'm sure that he didn't think you were a bad-faith editor.

I agree with you that "Bad RFC" votes are becoming problematic. I agree that RFCRESPOND discourages such responses (though I think it's not explicit enough for some editors to make the connection, even assuming that they read RFCRESPOND before responding, which is highly unlikely). On the other hand, we actually do get some RFCs that are extremely confused and really are "bad RFCs", just like you might say that you had a "bad meal" if you accidentally burned the food, or that you had to clean up a "bad mess" if you accidentally spilled paint on the floor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This makes sense, and it appears we agree then. I apologise for charging in with a comment that wasn't directly relevant to the topic. I admit, and I have said this elsewhere, the RfC I started did not have thorough planning. I don't think @FOARP messed up, I only take issue with how they addressed their concerns with the RfC. I've only been editing for less than a year, so to challenge an administrator at this time would be ill-advised, especially if I were to be incorrect. RFCRESPOND is an information page, so I don't know if that makes it a guideline or just information. The way you have described it however seems to suggest it isn't an enforceable rule. 11WB (talk) 18:57, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The whole Wikipedia:Requests for comment attempts to document reality. Parts of it are enforced by bot. Other parts are enforced by suggestions and hints. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:21, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

About a year ago, a newbie GoldRomean recieved a very kind invitation from you to join WikiProject Medicine. It probably took you all of a minute to send, but it was a big factor in convincing me to stay on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, I never did get much involved with WP:MED—maybe sometime in the future!—but anyhow, thanks for all you do, continue to remember the newbies, and wishing a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year to you and yours!

GoldRomean (talk) 18:31, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Happy holidays - I noticed that you were active on the COI page and I was wondering if you would be interested in taking a look at my COI page - It's relatively simple and hopefully will be very quick to do. I'm rather new to wikipedia, so please let me know if this is not allowed! Thank you!!

Talk:Gunjan Bagla Tulip-hydrangea (talk) 17:00, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't imagine why you think I'm "active on the COI page".

I have looked at your request, and I wouldn't accept it. I'd want to shorten it to a single sentence. I've fixed a couple of little formatting details and will leave it for someone else. Maybe they'll like it better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:06, 28 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies - I saw your name on a COI thread and mistakenly assumed you handled them regularly. Thanks for the feedback! I've shortened the request and adjusted the tone to be more neutral. I'll wait for another editor to review it. Tulip-hydrangea (talk) 23:28, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 30 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 13:42, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In complete agreement with "articles must be accurate" but do we have that written down in a guideline or policy somewhere? (Wikipedia:Accuracy and Wikipedia:Verifiable but not false are essays.) I need to bookmark it because I keep getting into arguments about this when sources are wrong. (eg. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian rules football#Verifiability vs Truth) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:39, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Hawkeye7, the clearest statement might be in the lead of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Your general point about accessibility for disabled individuals in the ANI thread is one of the foremost factors that has caused concern and frustration for me this last year as I have watched the community stumble from one clumsy over-correction to another in a ham-fisted attempt to create a buttress against AI (but with an ungainly and untenable longterm strategy with far too many knock-on effects) over this last year. I don't know about an article, but there could surely be more community discussion about the ablest (and I don't use that term often, but if ever there was an occasion for it...) implications of our so-far very monolithic and un-nuanced response to the unprecedented challenges and dangers of AI. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 08:10, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm particularly worried about it in conversations, because I think it's reasonable to say that AI-generated content (at this point in time) is basically inferior and should be politely but firmly discouraged in the mainspace. It's less tenable to say that you don't want knowledgeable people to tell us where articles have problems if they can't easily write the explanation in English, or – in a community where written language skill is taken as evidence of intelligence – that they need to look "stupid" or "sloppy", and therefore to have their ideas ignored, rejected, or ridiculed. For example, if someone with severe dyslexia wants to suggest making Dyslexia more accessible to people who have dyslexia, then our response should sound a lot closer to "You're right. That article kind of sucks. We should use a simpler writing style in this article" than to "How dare you use AI!"

I've started wondering today whether a Five whys approach might uncover some information that we're missing. We've got some anti-AI purists (AI is immoral as a matter of their personal values, and there's no reasoning with that), but I suspect that we have other editors who would prefer to take a more nuanced or empathetic approach, except that something is so bad right now that they are ready to burn everything to the ground to solve the bad problem. Only – which problem is driving that reaction? If we knew what it is, we might be able to find alternatives. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:57, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Your "How dare you use AI!" comment reminds that Wikipedia's default method of argumentation and derailment tactic is tone policing. Apparently in ignorance that the rest of the civilised world think it a bad thing that bad people do for nefarious purposes. I believe there's a modestly successful internet encyclopaedia with an article on the topic. So there's no excuse. -- Colin°^Talk 11:26, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

People do what's easy. Tone policing is often easier than evaluating substantive claims. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I've opened a discussion at the village pump/proposal on the matter on which we had discussed at the idea lab. --Friniate ✉ 14:24, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

story · music · places

happy new year! - inviting you to check out "my" story (fun listen today, full of surprises), music (and memory), and places (pictured by me: the latest uploads) any day! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:25, 10 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've been meaning to stop by to say how much I appreciate how supportive, informative, and patient you've been with me this last year. Thank you. With lots of good wishes for the new year, FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:33, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the kind words. I'm always happy when I see your name in my watchlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How nice of you to say, I'm glad that's the case. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:41, 12 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Surely, anyone who is approved to use AWB on the wiki, should be approved to use AI on the Wiki. Alternatively, there could be a alternate list of users who are premitted to use AI on the Wiki.

Anyway, I think that some uses should have official approval to use AI on the Wiki, and this shouid be verifiable on a maintained list, like the list for AWB users. This might change in time, but I think it is right for now.

I guess the trouble is that unskilled use of AI has given AI a bad reputation on the Wiki. Few users are aware that some uses can use AI expertly. Snowman (talk) 13:47, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Snowmanradio, it feels like it's been a while since I saw your name. I hope you're doing well.

@S Marshall and @Chaotic Enby have been developing a proposal around article translation in which the idea of a user right authorizing machine translation has come up. (Many machine translation tools use some form of LLM underneath the hood.) I remember another, more general proposal for a generic "trusted AI user" user right, but I can't find it right now.

Since you compare it to AWB, I suspect you're thinking about gnoming actions or changes that could be done via regex or bot (e.g., converting a list to a table), only it might be faster to do it with via an LLM, especially for those of us who can't really code. Those changes rarely irritate people, probably because they can't tell the difference between an LLM that rejiggers wikitext and an editor typing them by hand.

I believe the main concern about LLM use is about using LLMs to post new/different words, especially whole articles. You might be interested in Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Mass creation and User talk:Sarefo/Archive 1#AI content? and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive375#Revoking autopatrolled right from Sarefo for undisclosed LLM-generated articles as a case study for what can (and did) go wrong even within a fairly simple subject area. We finally got a simple, two-sentence guideline, Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models, adopted around article creation (basically: don't do it). As soon as it was adopted, multiple editors started proposals to replace those two sentences with very long sets of rules, explanations of why it's Very Bad™, and so forth. We don't have any similar rules (yet) about article expansion or copyediting.

We also have adopted rules against (over)using AI on talk pages (WP:AITALK) and against using it for most images (WP:AIIMAGE), though like the AWB-type edits, if people don't think you're using AI, they won't complain about AI (and even if you're not, they might – a particular problem for many English language learners and autistic people, as their normal/human writing style has more in common with LLM output than (e.g.) mine, leading to false accusations [9][10][11]). But that hasn't stopped editors from proposing lengthy expansions of these two rules. you can read one such proposal at User:Athanelar/Don't use LLMs to talk for you. It's 2400 words long right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to meet you here agian. I have stayed away from the Wiki while I have have been busy, but I occassionaly inadvertantly get interested again. Most of AWB is code based; nevertheless, uses can make a lot of mistakes rapidly. My analagy between LLM and AWB is about trusting users to use these tools correctly. To be honest, I think that a lot of users do not have intuition of what an AI LLM can do, when used optimally. I have startred an interesting discussion about AI on the WB:Birds talk page. Snowman (talk) 19:33, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think editors agree with you that users (even users whom we would trust in other circumstances) don't have a good sense of what an AI tool can do. In particular, they seem to feel like most AI users are lacking a clear sense of how AI tools are most likely to screw up, and that makes it less likely that an otherwise competent user would identify and fix such problems before posting them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hello WhatamIdoing! The thread you created at the Teahouse, Terry Yorath, has been archived because there was no discussion for a few days. You can still read the archived discussion. If you have follow-up questions, please create a new thread. See also the help page about the archival process. The archival was done by lowercase sigmabot III, and this notification was delivered by KiranBOT, both automated accounts. You can opt out of future notifications by placing {{bots|deny=KiranBOT}} on top of the current page (your user talk page). —KiranBOT (talk) 03:05, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @WhatamIdoing, I’ll understand if you’re no longer interested in the old RfC data, but if you are, please do take a look: Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment#c-Dw31415-20260114025200-Dw31415-20260109144200. Thanks! Dw31415 (talk) 12:15, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WhatAmIDoing, based on your discussion of “that” and “which” on your page, you might find this duscussion on the MOS Talk page of interest: “Should ‘that’ be deprecated on Wikipedia?” Title was a bit tongue in cheek, of course.

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

glad you appreciated my addition to the BLP notice board. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 21:55, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm always interested in this point of grammar. Thanks for the note. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there,

I'm leaving this message because you contributed to the recent RfC regarding the inclusion of airport destination lists. As promised, now that that RfC has closed, I've initiated a further discussion about the sourcing standards to be applied to these lists.

If you wish to contribute to the discussion, please do so at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Airport destination lists - sourcing requirements.

Cheers! Danners430 _{tweaks made} 15:47, 19 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There is an RfC that you may be interested in per your prior comments on the topic at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § RfC: Merging merge discussions with AfD. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:04, 19 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]