Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Deprecate future use of general references?

Wikipedia:Requested articles is pretty inactive these days. Should we do something about it, and if so, what? See also this relevant discussion. Cheers, GoldRomean (talk) 22:46, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could launch an RFC at WP:VPPR with question "What should we do with WP:RA?" and options A do nothing, B mark historical and revert new entries, C delete everything. Or could WP:MFD the entire thing.

I have concerns about WP:RA being a black hole that tricks newbies and attracts spam. To help combat this, in 2021 I changed Wikipedia:Requested articles/Header to recommend making a draft (via the article wizard) instead of requesting an article at WP:RA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:50, 29 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProjects have their own lists which I suspect are more active, although this is highly variable and full of black holes as well. CMD (talk) 00:32, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On 'spam', see a tangential discussion on seeking page protection for one of the RA subpages. The discussion did not lead to implementing protection.

IMO the project is a useful addition to WP when/if used 'properly', and WikiProject-specific request pages just decentralize. However its probably fair to say the pages are only used by a few hundred users per year, as compared to the millions elsewhere; so may unfortunately be more trouble than its worth to upkeep. Tule-hog (talk) 03:12, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Wouldn't wikiproject-specific pages just have the exact same problems, with the additional issue of making discovery more challenging? -- Avocado (talk) 21:12, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Someone correct me) but my guess is though that WikiProject-specific lists are made by participants, rather than people looking to advertise, so there's more evidence of notablity. GoldRomean (talk) 19:14, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A look at the page history of requested bios [1], for example, shows occasional additions, and mostly a lot of cleanup efforts. Does any smarter or more experienced editor than me know how to get some stats or info for when most of the requests were made? A lot of them seem very old. GoldRomean (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can try to whip up something with my basic Python knowledge. No guarantees though. Ca ^{talk to me!} 14:15, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My fairly recent experience looking through RA for something to write about was one of being utterly overwhelmed by the number of options even in any one subpage (and under any given heading on some of the most populous subpages), and not having a clue how to begin narrowing the field.

I wouldn't totally object to shutting it down entirely, but on the flip side, maybe something could be done to make it more useful. For instance, applying a template to every (or every new) entry with links to search various places for reliable sources about the topic. -- Avocado (talk) 21:11, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first step to triaging any entry at WP:RA is to determine notability. This means doing google searches and other investigations to determine if there's enough sourcing for the article to pass WP:GNG, or just knowing enough of our WP:SNGs to be able to spot if it passes an SNG. Notability is hard and takes a lot of experience to judge accurately.

A thought occurs to me. I wonder how many of the entries at WP:RA aren't even notable. There's probably a lot of red herrings and rabbit holes there. For example, how many of the companies at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies/A-E pass WP:NCORP? I have my suspicions that it's not very many. The one time I tried to write an article about a company on one of these lists, it got sent to AFD and deleted: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lidya (company). I was quite confused as a new user, but on the flip side, it did motivate me to go to WP:NPPSCHOOL and figure out how notability works. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:41, 30 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that an initial screening is key to make the list of requested articles into one that is high-yield, and thus useful for interested editors to go through. (Linking it up to corresponding active wikiprojects would be another important aspect, but of course there aren't many of those.) But this needs willing people to do it regularly, and I'm not sure there's a sustainable way to ensure it gets done. There's already a lot of work to patrol the actual articles and edits that are made. isaacl (talk) 04:57, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could require each new entry at WP:RA to have either WP:THREE sources or evidence of meeting a SNG, and have a "triage" zone where they are placed until a volunteer checks the sources? That might mean more work, but would likely reduce the load at RA by a lot, and make it easier to write the articles themselves in the future. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:07, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RA is a ghost town. I don't think there's anyone available to enforce a rule like this on its 333 subpages. We do try to do some quality control on the businesses and companies subpages via pending changes protection, but that's just 5 subpages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:35, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the only reasonable way to go at it would be "mark everything as in triage" (or, more drastically, "throw everything away") and start filtering new entries with sources. Although that is still a lot of effort for a project that has brought comparatively little benefits. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:37, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's worth it. We'd just end up with three URLs for a spammy suggestion (because the WP:UPE followed the directions) and removing a solidly notable suggestion because the innocent newbie didn't follow the directions.

At least with Wikipedia:Requested articles/Medicine (I'm not familiar with very many of the lists), the suggestions are sometimes good candidates for redirects or list entries. Relatively few are obviously bad suggestions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:23, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing it's probably because the majority of company/bios are people looking for self-promo whilst a larger amount of, say, medicine requests, are SME's thinking "hey this topic is pretty important in my field why isn't there an article on it". GoldRomean (talk) 18:42, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or people wanting information because someone they know is sick. I don't exactly miss the Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool (2010–2014), but we got comments that suggest people turn to Wikipedia to get quick answers.

The basic scenario is: someone texts you "We're at the hospital. They think the baby has Scaryitis". You want to know whether your response should be "What a relief" or "I'm so sorry", and you don't want to slog through a lot of details. So when we don't have anything, or when it doesn't provide information about the prognosis, people aren't getting what they want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, I guess in general just when people see we're missing content on a topic (which probably should be the way RA is intended to be used). GoldRomean (talk) 01:47, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Me and @Bearian (mostly him) have tried to maintain the crime/law one and revert/remove non notable entries, though it still needs more. As far as I am aware every other one is a ghost town. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I mean having a group of people who "maintain" the pages is nice, extending that to more pages to keep them in a decent state wouldn't be a bad idea, but to retrospectively remove all non notable entries is a mammoth task that I don't really think is possible. If we were to PCP all the pages and then make sure that these requests went through a proper review beforehand I do think that's a way to enforce some rules if we were to make them. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 06:50, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What does everyone think about an RfC with, say, Option 1: Do nothing/Option 2: Restart, and mark the original as historical or delete/Option 3: Mark historical or delete it all, with more discussions for specific details based on the result (ex. if Option 2, how do we make sure this mess doesn't happen again?) GoldRomean (talk) 23:40, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any need for any of this. As much of a mess of any part of the site is where people submit article ideas - AfC is much worse. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:07, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if this is known already, but sources generated by AI sometimes have the access-date parameter set to the model's knowledge cutoff date. For example, this search query finds articles that contain sources with the access date set to October 1, 2023, which corresponds to GPT-4o's knowledge cutoff date. I think this warrants a deeper investigation; perhaps we can create editfilters tagging this behavior. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 16:17, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that could be very useful EarthDude (talk) 17:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On a quick glance, it looks like some of the results in the query are legitimate, but it only took about 6 minutes to find one clear case of AI-written, low-quality content, so I suspect there are more. -- LWG ^talk 18:05, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An edit filter would be great though, IMO, since I don't think there's a reason editors beyond October 2023 would add that. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:12, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are some legitimate cases when someone might do this, the most common one being xwiki translations. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 18:14, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Other cases where I've added access dates other than today's date include:

• When I've copied a source from another article or another place in the same article (e.g. merging or moving information from one article to another). In this case I will usually use the original access date.
• When I'm viewing a source on an archive rather than live. Normally I will use the date of the archive but occasionally it will be the date the source was added to the article.
• When I've written an article over several days the date will be the date I accessed that source, which might differ from the date I add that part to Wikipedia (usually only by a few days). For example at List of lakes of Yukon you'll find that the access dates range from 8-11 August despite all being added on the 11th.

In some cases, reference formatting changes may be detected as access dates in the past being added. Thryduulf (talk) 21:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't archival dates supposed to be in |archive-date=? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but when I access a source via an archive rather than directly I will set the access-date and archive-date parameters to be the same. Thryduulf (talk) 06:51, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Still, that's rare enough that a tag would be good. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:34, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This RecentChanges filter also catches a lot of LLM additions. These "Newcomer tasks" seem to draw really low quality edits even if it weren't for that. 🧙‍♀️ Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 20:48, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that we should implement the number of views/edits an article has had whether it's recent or all-time views/edits to the front of the Wikipedia page rather than having to go into page info to see the views/edits. My preference is to put the views in over the edits but am willing to be convinced otherwise. YouTube and many other websites have something similar to this. I also think we could put that date the Wikipedia article was created on the bottom similar to where we put when the page was last edited. I'm opening up a discussion here since I want to figure out something the Wikipedia community can agree on. I look forward to hearing your thoughts below. Interstellarity (talk) 21:28, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think those counts warrant any prominence. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:53, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's the sort of feature that people could do with a userscript if they want to. I agree there's no need for it by default. -- LWG ^talk 00:07, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think prominently featuring how many views an article gets a la YouTube is a good idea. It would encourage sensationalism and a click-baity style that Wikipedia tries to avoid, unlike the entire rest of the internet.

As for the number of edits, I think there is more potential benefit to featuring that on the main article page. An article with few edits could be interpreted as having gotten less attention and collaboration, therefore being likely to have problems, while an article with many edits could indicate an edit war. I think that's worth considering.

Regarding putting when the page was first created as well as when it was last edited at the bottom, I think that is an excellent idea. It would help people know if an article was created before widespread LLM usage or not, and if it was created before our own articles were scraped and recycled creating a massive and largely underestimated problem with circular referencing. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 00:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that on the mobile interface, the time of last edit (and the user who made the edit) are displayed by default at the bottom of each article. -- LWG ^talk 00:51, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There’s a similar thing in the desktop interface as well: This page was last edited on 8 July 2025, at 00:51 (UTC). 2001:8003:B15F:8000:8860:131D:AE7B:4EC5 (talk) 11:59, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit count and date of creation may be misinterpreted. There is not a direct a link between either and quality, but readers do not know this. CMD (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I follow this. Is this something different than the XTools gadget available under preferences on the desktop i.e. XTools: dynamically show statistics about a page's history under the page heading

e.g. Ball shows 2,246 revisions since 2001-07-12 (+17 hours), 1,271 editors, 190 watchers, 10,035 pageviews (30 days), created by: 66.57.42.xxx🐣 · See full page statistics <- a link to XTools

Is the question whether this should be enabled for everyone by default, or is it about the mobile app etc.? Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:29, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a question on it being enabled by default on both mobile and desktop. Interstellarity (talk) 21:17, 8 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anybody who wants it can enable it very simply under preferences — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Youtube leaves this info visible because it helps to know if a video is popular. Wikipedia articles do not need to do that. Cambalachero (talk) 01:33, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dont see logic and purpose behind this, why would the Wikipedia, an encyclopedia, the place of knowledge and articles, would need likes and views metric? I beleive that Wikipedia is not social media. P.S. Some user, including me, can see the page info directly below the title Sys64 message this user 09:35, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"I want to figure out something the Wikipedia community can agree on." Seems like the community has already agreed on not having these things. How long an article has been around or how many times it has been edited has no intrinsic relationship to how factual and well-written it is. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:21, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I kinda like this idea. Maybe just making the " This page was last edited on" more visible and at the top of the page instead of lost in the footer is good to start. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 17:04, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dislike the idea of a view-count. It would just encourage a certain sort of person to pursue wikipedian clickbait to see if they can get "their" article more viewed than anyone else's. But a created-on and last-edited date is a good idea, because it can help a reader assess whether the article is up-to-date, and in what view-point it was first written. My only proviso is that a lot of edits are basically meaningless from the point of view of information-value. Drive-by category-merchants, insertion of templates, gnoming typo correction, and bot curational edits should be ignored. On the plus side, Gnomes have the honesty to admit that their edit isn't a big endorsement of the article's up-to-dateness, and bots can probably be set up to mark their edit as minor. Elemimele (talk) 12:02, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. It's not a popularity contest. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 14:49, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Partially as an accessibility feature and mostly as an overall addition to articles regarding albums, I feel it could potentially be useful to add image descriptions to the initial picture of the album cover underneath it. The way I see it, a description would give a brief overview of the album cover’s chosen image similar to an image ID, source of image/photographer/artist and note significance as to why that image was picked. For example, regarding Porter Robinson’s Nurture:

“ Album cover of Nurture. The cover depicts Robinson lying facedown in a field of yellow and white wildflowers. Robinson chose this particular picture due to its bold nature, regarding it as “un-ignorable”.”

[Note: I have not edited Wikipedia before. I am sorry if this is a topic that’s been debated before.] Waffled.on.pancakes (talk) 03:50, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be suggesting a combination of alt text and a caption. In the article you link, the image already has alt text "A blonde male, Porter Robinson, laying in a field of grass and flowers." Whether a caption is appropriate, or the information should be covered somewhere else in the article, is a matter for the article's talk page. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 12 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can do this. Most album article use the {{Infobox album}} template and it supports the |alt= parameter. The alt text is for accessibility and often shows up as a hovertext. I've added alt text for a number of albums, e.g., the article for Beneath the Remains. A fun game I like to play is to see is how accurately image generator AI comes to producing the album cover based on my description. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:05, 15 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Namely, women's football. Articles about players and teams are taken to AfD due to "lack of reliable sources" because the sources are unrecognisable or not popular enough. That isn't a problem with the sources themselves, as we have no reason to believe they aren't reporting factual information, but a problem with the general popularity of women's football. If we dismiss sources because they are not "well-known" then we are in danger of erasing a lot of encylopaedic content that is of interest to readers. These alternative notability guidelines would also apply to publications that write about women's football. I used football as an example, but this would extend to women's basketball and other sports that aren't very popular. I don't think it would be necessary for Olympic sports because those competitions and sportsmen get a lot of coverage from the mainstream press.

Also, these alternative (supplemental?) notability guidelines would not be a slippery slope to include all sorts of FRINGE content, but would be limited to women's sports (or a particular sport). Starting small with a targeted topic would ensure that FRINGE topics don't slip through the cracks. TurboSuperA+_(connect) 08:54, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given the community time that went into bringing Wikipedia:Notability (sports) in line with standard notability guidelines, I do not suspect there will be significant enthusiasm to begin to recreate exceptions. Sources are a different matter, not directly subject to notability guidelines. Sources are not usually dismissed because they are unpopular, this would somewhat eliminate most sources used. If a source is being treated as unreliable when it should be considered reliable, please raise this at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. CMD (talk) 09:27, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You know what? I just might! TurboSuperA+_(connect) 09:28, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you do… give us specifics. Choose a few (two or three) sources that you think are the most reliable for covering women’s football… so we can examine and discuss those. Blueboar (talk) 20:45, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#impetusfootball.org. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 20:50, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! There's a discussion at the Commons VP proposing the introduction of a new desk for editors to request that volunteers reach out to media rightsholders to request specific media works be released under Wikimedia-compatible licenses. This is an idea pretty specifically tied to Wikipedia (as requests will be mostly in the interest of adding media to Wikipedia articles), so I am posting here to get more Wikipedian eyes on it. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:32, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of the 7 WP:RECALL petitions so far, at least three have some concerns at least adjacent to WP:INACTIVITY - Master Jay, Gimmetrow and Night Gyr (ongoing).

Currently admins are desysopped procedurally if they haven't made any edits/admin actions for 1 year OR have made less than 100 edits in 5 years. According to WP:RESTORATION, adminship is generally restored at WP:BN unless there were 2 years without edits OR 5 years since last tool usage.

Clearly, many editors believe we need to update WP:INACTIVITY but there has been no RFCs attempted on how.

This is a preliminary RFC to ask two main questions -

• Q1: Do the thresholds for procedural desysoppings ( WP:INACTIVITY ) need changing? If yes, to what?
• Q2: On return from inactivity, when do they generally get the tools back? ( WP:RESTORATION )

I'm hoping this narrows solutions down sufficiently that a future yes/no proposal can gauge consensus later.

Soni (talk) 16:53, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural comment. This is an RFCBEFORE but it has the {{rfc}} header template. Should it be removed? LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 17:02, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the correction. Somehow I had misparsed RFCBefore all these years. I think it's best described as a "preliminary RFC" than RFCBefore, and should retain the RFC tag. This discussion will likely involve wide community input, even if I'm not presenting multiple options for !voting. Soni (talk) 17:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Then it's not an RfC. That's not how RfCs work. It's a terrible idea to do an RfC at this stage without work shopping anything. There's no rush and adding an RfC tag, which ultimately will lead to a demand for a closure, is more of a waste of time at this point. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am fairly confident I have seen multiple RFCs over the years that are effectively "Let's workshop here". Therefore I believe an RFC tag is appropriate, but I may be mistaken. I have no strong feelings on an RFC tag either way, the main intent is just to ask the "Do the thresholds need changing" question. Soni (talk) 17:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well if half of the editors say "yes increase" and the others say "yes decrease", all with equally valid arguments, twe'll have gotten precisely nowhere. It's alwaus better to have concrete proposals to !vote on IMO. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:18, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. I think that if we find the community evenly divided on increase vs decrease, that the reasonable conclusion is that we're doing things just about right.

The bigger risk is a multi-way split (e.g., change rules to X, change rules to not-X, change rules to X+Y, change rules to not-Y...). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think there is a trend of being very bureaucratic about how a request for comments discussion should proceed. Yes, it's true: requests for comments are time-consuming. But so are discussions amongst a select group of people all in agreement about a certain direction, which fails to take into account broader concerns when a larger group of people are involved. We shouldn't force all discussions into one progression. Sometimes it's better to get broad input at a preliminary stage to stake out the scope of further discussion. isaacl (talk) 18:21, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. And FTR, at last check, we've been running only two new RFCs per day (it was usually three new RFCs each day ~pre-pandemic). So we probably have some capacity for the occasional "unnecessary" or "premature" RFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Soni, thank you for stepping up and starting a discussion on this (many people have lobbied for a discussion but nobody's actually carried it out). I don't have an answer to Q2 (I don't neccesarily think an RfA should be needed, though), but the minumum edit threshold for procedural desysopings definitely needs upped, although I need to see other's opinions before forming my own on what the exact number should be. — ^EF⁵ 17:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

many people have lobbied for a discussion but nobody's actually carried it out See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 203#Admin inactivity rules workshopping from two months ago. Anomie⚔ 11:47, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That proposal was mainly centred around WP:GAMING and WP:RECALL, neither of which are the emphasis of this discussion. I do not plan to use this discussion to inform what changes, if any, RECALL should take. I do want us to get a better idea on what we want our procedural policies on desysopping to look like.

So far we have a promising idea from User:Patar knight that can probably be workshopped further. Reduce the edit count criterion altogether, and focus on how to effectively use just admin tool usage. It probably needs proper wording from someone who understands this well. Soni (talk) 12:34, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that discussion was focused on GAMING. ^EF⁵ 12:50, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to me that all three things were being discussed there. The second bullet in the initial post specifically targeted WP:INACTIVITY. You also brought in WP:RECALL from the start, and gaming has also been mentioned here (although without links to WP:GAMING yet). Anomie⚔ 13:00, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that discussion led nowhere because it was not focused enough. Which is why this one mainly focuses on WP:INACTIVITY. RECALL was mentioned primarily to explain the initial context, but I very much plan for this workshopping to be centred, above all, around what our activity standards and expectations should be. Soni (talk) 13:17, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, while we both support some kind of tool usage requirement, it was Levivich who suggested removing the edit count altogether while I merely suggested a possible system for doing so. Personally, I think requiring admins to have community involvement beyond just using the tools is a good thing and would keep the edit activity requirements, which had broad community support at WP:ADMINACTIVITY2022. For exact numbers, it would probably be useful to have stats similar to what Worm That Turned did for the 2022 RFC at User:Worm That Turned/Admin activity to see what has changed since 2022, with perhaps an additional query for how back 5/10 logged admin actions go back. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

After going through the discussion I think 150 edits (#2) and fewer than five admin actions yearly (#1) would be a good compromise for Q1. ~150 yearly edits shouldn't be hard if they are active. 5 admin actions would show that admins still use, and have a need, for the toolset (although whether five admin actions is "having a need" is debatable). I also like Patar knight's idea below of using a sort of yearly "resume" of admin actions so admins can prove they are still active. — ^EF⁵ 14:46, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Other than some editors kvetching about the "unfairness" of desysops of some admins who haven't used their tools for several years, is anyone else calling for change? To those editors, I say: get over it. Being an admin is a privilege, not a right, and if you don't use it, you should lose it. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:10, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Voorts, I think that what's missing – and what I think you might be able to supply – from these conversations is a description of the practical benefits to Wikipedia when we remove the tools from inactive admins.

  Imagine that an admin reliably makes one edit per month. In five years, that will be 60 edits, and they'll fail the five-year rule. This is the rule we've set, and I'm okay with it, but how does Wikipedia benefit from having one fewer person who could take an admin action?

  I think an agreed-upon idea about the benefits would help us match our rules to our goals. If we say, "Look, the principle is that completely abandoned accounts are at risk for getting hacked, and low-activity accounts are corrosive to community spirit because they make some non-admins jealous (even though very few of them would admit to that very human emotion)", then we should be able to get this settled a little more firmly. But if we don't identify (or can't agree upon) a purpose for the WP:INACTIVITY rules, then I don't think these conversations will ever stop. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Many many many editors have already supplied rationales for inactivity rules, including the security one you cited and that those admins quickly become out of touch with community norms. The burden of persuasion here is on editors who want to change policy, not those who are fine with the status quo. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:32, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I've seen the security one, and it makes sense to me. I've seen the "out of touch" one (e.g., in this discussion).

  But – are those the real reasons? Because humans often begin with "Ugh, no!" or "Obviously yes", and then later seek out rational-sounding reasons to make them look smart when they're really just dressing up their intuitive or irrational response.

  I'm not trying to persuade anyone that the policy needs to be changed (or kept the same). I'm trying to figure out whether the policy achieves our goals.

  Consider the idea of "admins aren't out of touch with community norms". Is that best measured as "doesn't surprise people by taking admin actions that don't match the formal, written rules"? If so, then inactive admins are fine, because they're taking no actions, and therefore no actions that disagree with the written rules. Maybe it means "if taking an action, makes the same decision as 90% of other admins would". If so, we need to get rid of some active – and IMO some of our best – admins, but most inactive admins are fine. Maybe it means "Is a person who is familiar and active, because emotionally if I have to be rejected by my community, it needs to be done by someone whom I can respect and who feels like they're really part of the community, instead of someone who feels like an outsider or an unknown person". In that case, we might want higher activity levels, or at least to tell admins to avoid emotionally laden or socially fraught admin actions (e.g., blocking "the regulars") until they've been highly active again for months.

  But without an idea of what that phrase means to people, and whether that's their genuine reason or just the one that's socially acceptable for public consumption, it's impossible to know whether what we have works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• The recalls listed above as relating to inactivity were all closely tied to accountability (or lack of) in different ways. Procedural inactivity desysoppings are set at a very low bar deliberately, being technical and explicit, and adjusting the bar (even if it is merited for other reasons) would for the purposes of the diffuse concept of community discussion likely shift the grey area to whatever the new technical bar is. A change in requirements would further catch lower-activity admins who are engaged with the community, which is not something that I've seen expressed as desirable by any editor in discussions surrounding these Recalls. The recalls are not the best place to base a new discussion on inactivity from, as many of the suggestions that WP:INACTIVITY be updated were coming from those in opposition to these Recalls as something others may want to do, and so themselves don't represent belief that INACTIVITY needs changing/updating. CMD (talk) 17:16, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• All I know for sure is that this gives weight to the idea that ADMINRECALL may need to eventually raise the signature threshold if it's going to be used as a place to get around community created activity guidelines, that's simply not what that venue was created for. I'm not advocating for any of those who lost the tools to keep them, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when we're using recall for a purpose I'd argue it wasn't intended for. Also noting that the Master Jay case was about more than their activity. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I do not necessarily disagree with any of those points, just that this discussion is specifically to judge whether the activity thresholds currently are sufficient or not. What precisely should RECALL change, is a separate question. Either we believe the current procedural thresholds are strong enough, or we'll raise/lower it accordingly. Soni (talk) 17:47, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  used as a place to get around community created activity guidelines I think that's an unfair assessment of what's occurred in these cases. The inactivity policy is one thing. Making a token edit once in a while to keep the user right and then going back into dormancy is another. You could increase the length of time or change the requirements, but they'll always be game-able. Also, all of those petitions were swiftly completed. Increasing the signature requirement would have a negligible effect IMO. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:01, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  the Master Jay case was about more than their activity As was Gimmetrow, whose single (and last ever) admin action to avoid being ineligible to automatically get the bit back after their incoming 100/5 inactivity desysop was to block a vandalism only account that used an anti-LGBTQ slur for 3 hours, which is far outside community norms. They later failed to response to a query that mentioned that block and their inactivity on their talk page, which led to the recall. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 19:57, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  (To clarify: The part about "far outside community norms" is that the block was only for three hours; it was later extended to an indef by someone familiar with the particular WP:LTA.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If we are re-litigating this: The edit in question (admin-only) added the text Fucķing [r slur] to a mainspace article, and told an LGBTQ editor to fuck off [anti-LGBTQ slur] in the edit summary. I don't blame anyone for not knowing it was an LTA. But ignoring everything else, that one edit is indef-able many times over. They intentionally placed the three hour block to allow time to look at other edits, as if you need more evidence to indefinitely block an account. (I very much hope the search was not for mitigating evidence; what would possibly make that acceptable?) All in all, I'd call that "far outside community norms". HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 00:12, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• In response to Q1, I'd propose a revision to Criterion 1 of Inactivity and change Has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period to Has made no administrative actions for at least a 24-month period. Thoughts? Iggy pop goes the weasel (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When you edit this page, the edit notice says:

This Village Pump is for developing ideas, not for consensus polling. Rather than merely stating support or opposition to an idea, try to be creative and positive. If possible, suggest a better variation of the idea, or a better solution to the problem identified.

That has not been done here. In addition to this, not enough background has been provided via links to previous discussions (where some of the changes being proposed above were rejected and arguments provided for why it was a bad idea). When was the most recent RfC on this issue? 1 year ago? 5 years ago? Having said that, I agree with CMD who said:

Procedural inactivity desysoppings are set at a very low bar deliberately, being technical and explicit, and adjusting the bar (even if it is merited for other reasons) would for the purposes of the diffuse concept of community discussion likely shift the grey area to whatever the new technical bar is.

I disagree with CMD in the last part of what he says here:

A change in requirements would further catch lower-activity admins who are engaged with the community, which is not something that I've seen expressed as desirable by any editor in discussions surrounding these Recalls.

In my view, some editors really do want to cut a big swathe through admins and get rid of the inactive ones. There is demonstrable opposition to that, but recall (unfortunately) allows for persistent drip-drip actions against individual admins. Over and above that, in my view, what needs changing is the dynamic between WP:INACTIVITY and WP:ADMINACCT (admin accountability). Simply remove the ability of people to demand that admins respond to people who come to their talk page to complain about their activity levels. Let INACTIVITY deal with activity levels, and let ADMINACCT deal with responses to actual admin actions. I am sure that a properly phrased wording could separate these two concepts so that they don't conflict any more (arguably, they don't conflict at the moment, but clearly some people need it spelling out). On a personal level, as someone who has been more active and engaged with the community than I have been in years (though that activity will likely tail off, as I will (need to!) be very busy with other matters again soon), I would like to see INACTIVITY remain stable. I will also repeat what I have said elsewhere. Try and make this a positive thing about retaining inactive admins rather than fiddling with the paperwork.

That said: Q1: No change (current thresholds are fine). Q2: No need to change the current provisions of WP:RESTORATION. Carcharoth (talk) 18:03, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• If you believe there is a faction of editors that want to cut a big swathe through admins, please provide evidence. Recall has generated a lot of hypothetical concerns, but as for the "persistent drip-drip actions", the supposed persistency has resulted in just 3 (and it is likely one third of those won't even be certified). CMD (talk) 02:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• (edit conflict) @Soni: Please don't hold policy RfCs in VPI. As it says at Wikipedia:Village pump, Idea lab is where we incubate new ideas before formally proposing them; and as the editnotice also states, this Village Pump is for developing ideas, not for consensus polling. Basically, draft up an RfC here, open it up for amendments, then once people agree that it's ready to put to the broader community, transfer it to WP:VPP observing WP:RFCST. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah today's been a bad day for reading comprehension for me, my apologies. I think the simplest solution is for this discussion to be moved to WP:VPP, but I will let others actually make these changes. Soni (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Right, activity level doesn't have anything to do with ADMINACCT. If someone comes to an admin's talk page asking what their favorite color is, does the admin have to explain that too? ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 18:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm confused: Is this an RfCBefore discussion or a big RfC discussion? Aaron Liu (talk) 18:10, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I stated in a previous discussion, I feel the community wants its admins to have some ongoing connection with the community, and uses recent edits as a metric to determine this. However, I also previously stated that the community has desired to balance the volunteer nature of the role against this, and to allow for healthy breaks in activity. Thus if there is a consensus to change the activity thresholds, I think the best way to avoid increasingly fractal discussion on how much activity is enough is to shift the emphasis to one of security: remove administrative privileges with a much smaller inactivity threshold (such as on the order of a few months) to limit security concerns, but make it very easy to restore on request (as it is now, but perhaps with tweaks to make it even simpler, particularly for those who have recently been active). If someone has concerns about admin accountability, or with ongoing familiarity of community norms, they should make a case based on specific evidence, not just levels of activity.

Regarding accountability during hiatuses: I don't think the admin role should be one that locks editors into perpetually being active on Wikipedia. I think it's reasonable for questions to be answered upon a return to activity. If administrative privileges are removed based on a short period of inactivity due to security concerns, then there is only a limited time when issues of misuse of privileges may occur. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• As I see it, the primary reason to (at least temporarily) de-sys-op admins who have been inactive is that the policies, guidelines and procedures they are supposed to be familiar with may have been amended while they were away. Thus they will be prone to making mistakes. They will need time to get up to speed on these changes. That said… once they are “up to speed”, there should be a quick and easy way to re-sys-op them. Blueboar (talk) 18:37, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Though I understand this point of view, I do think that part of trusting an editor sufficiently to grant them administrative privileges is to trust them to reacquaint themselves with community norms as needed. Some admins with lengthy absences have commented in these recent discussions about their returns. Perhaps we need to do more to impress this upon all administrators. isaacl (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am doubtful of this "policies might have changed" rationale. After all, we see highly active admins (and non-admins) who are apparently unfamiliar with the rules they're enforcing. Admins, being more experienced editors, tend to have a good grasp of the long-term community POV on something (e.g., science is good and altmed is bad), but they don't actually track the drip-drip-drip of changes to policies and procedures with any more assiduity that anyone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Since the format is a bit unclear, it is best to workshop what we really want to ask here before moving on to a full RfC at WP:VPP. One aspect I've seen brought up during recall petitions is the question of how WP:ADMINACCT applies to low activity admins, and that is something that should be discussed in an RfC on activity thresholds. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:24, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Why wouldn't it still apply? If you are an admin and you do something using your tools, you need to answer for it. If you use your tools once every few years as a token edit, then go dormant again, and someone questions you on it and you aren't either watching your watch page or decide not to answer, those are both conscious choices. Why is giving a break to people who haven't been a part of our community in any meaningful ways for years so pressing? voorts (talk/contributions) 19:34, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not saying it shouldn't apply, and, to the contrary, I do think that it should apply in full to any admin actions. However, I've often seen it brought up (and criticized) as an argument in recall petitions, and I was surprised it wasn't discussed here. Since we're still in the workshopping phase, I figured it would warrant a mention. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:38, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The key question to me is should administrators be able to take a complete break from Wikipedia? If the community consensus is yes, then it's reasonable for them not to respond to questions during their break. If no, then I think that administrative privileges should be removed based on a relatively short threshold of inactivity, since that matches community expectations (no administrative privileges for someone taking a break), with an easy restoration of privileges upon request. isaacl (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Is the story here something like "If Alice Admin usually only makes one edit a month, and she deletes an article today, then she might not check her User_talk: page for another month, which would violate the ADMINACCT requirement to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Roughly, although the cases brought up in recall petitions usually focused on specific issues about which admins didn't respond, rather than the possibility that they might not due to their activity level. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:46, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  In the past, I'm pretty sure that we had a rule saying that if an admin knew that they weren't going to be available for a few days (e.g., the day before leaving on a trip), they shouldn't take any admin actions, or if they did, they should try to leave a note to help other admins with appeals ("Any admin: It's okay to overturn this without talking to me first"). I wonder if that rule still exists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  At the risk of sounding like Captain Barbossa, I don't recall it being a "rule." I think it was more of a guideline or suggestion. Joyous! Noise! 23:22, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for starting this discussion, Soni. I'd support just dropping the edits part of the inactivity requirement (100 edits in 5 years) altogether, and instead just require the admin actions part (1 in a year... but not necessarily just logged actions). I think that change, alone (dropping the edits requirement, but not changing the admin action requirement, at least at this time), ought to be put to an RFC. If that's approved by the community, we can skip a long discussion about how many edits are enough edits. If it's approved, the community can later decide to increase the admin actions requirement if 1/year turns out not to be enough for whatever reason. Levivich (talk) 20:10, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that non-logged actions can be very difficult to measure. Closing a TBAN proposal at ANI is pretty clearly a non-logged action that we can check for, but what about, say, looking at deleted edits to identify patterns of abuse? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 20:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If there's no logged action in a year, the admin could be prompted to edit some new subpage of Wikipedia:Inactive administrators to provide an example of edits that show use of the tools, perhaps with a short explanation if necessary, for bureaucrats to assess. If say an admin says they looked at deleted edits in the context of abuse, it's not unreasonable to require them to point to an edit in which they comment on the user being investigated/discussed or a revert of that user. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 21:05, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Actually a great idea, and it would also help with WP:ADMINACCT! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:13, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, great idea. The automatic inactivity notice that's already posted on admins' talk pages could be modified to say something like "if this notice is in error and you have made an admin action within the past year, please post at [link]". Crats can review that page before the switch is thrown. I bet this would be a very, very rare occurrence and result in very little additional work. Levivich (talk) 21:21, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, we could do with having some additional work. Useight (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be fine with just a "1 logged admin action per year" requirement. Keep it simple. Levivich (talk) 19:13, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a pretty good idea Iggy pop goes the weasel (talk) 21:29, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd sign up for that idea. Buffs (talk) 23:16, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This feels much more in spirit of admin accountability without too much emphasis on arbitrary thresholds. I definitely prefer this as a lighter weight "Adminship is easy to remove and restore" than any alternatives. Soni (talk) 04:18, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have never found non-logged actions can be very difficult to measure to be a strong argument. If we have a user making so few administrative actions that they can only point to edits exercising administrative authority requiring the use of non-edit user rights to retain their tools (our current inactivity rules not being particularly onerous), it remains pretty questionable to me that they should need the full kit. Izno (talk) 22:35, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that if we ask for admin actions, we should ask for logged ones (perhaps including editing protected pages). Admins using the tools in a hidden but beneficial way without ever doing anything logged are probably a myth and not worth making the process more complicated, even by a tiny bit. —Kusma (talk) 07:12, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the initiative. However, I think it's not a well-formed question for Q1. Q2 is fine as it's a yes/no question. I would recommend an RfC along those lines, but give some new thresholds like:

1. Change the thresholds
   1. Desysop at 1 year with no edits/admin actions or 100 edits in 5 years (0/1, 100/5)
   2. Desysop at 0/1, 50/2
   3. Current thresholds or 0 admin actions in 2 years or 10 in 5 years
2. No change

• etc

Set up some sort of threshold to assess from. Admins can make the assessment regarding whether people want a change and roughly where that consensus lies. 90% of the people could choose something in 1. showing there is significant desire for a change or conversely 60% of the people could choose option 2 and, regardless of the debate within the options under 1, no change should occur. Buffs (talk) 20:47, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Before we can have a reasonable discussion about whether we should increase the activity requirements, we need to have some clear comments/proposals, etc detailing why they should be changed that clearly set out what the problem that changing the requirements is intended to solve, what is the evidence that this is actually a problem, and how changing the activity requirements will solve that problem. I don't recall seeing any of that in the recent discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 21:01, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. For example, @Levivich has an interesting idea. It makes intuitive sense to me (if you're not using the tools, you don't need the tools). But what problem does this solve? Is the problem it solves the same as the (social/emotional) problem that the community has with inactive admins? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:INACTIVITY should be amended to make it clear that the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law (just like with all other Wikipedia procedures), and that rights gaming is applicable to retaining admin rights. Admins should have the tools if the community supports them having the tools and they should not have the tools if the community does not support them having the tools. Right now, the barometer for whether the community supports tool-possession is RfA or AELECT. If someone can pass those, there is consensus for them to have the tools. If they cannot pass those, there is not consensus for them to have the tools. The problem here is that the tools are seen as a permanent entitlement of status rather than a tool for service, and that not being an admin is some kind of downgrade or lower class. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:41, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Also noting that there are some comments here without bullet points or indents, which is messing up the formatting of the discussion. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:41, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's reasonable to use a new paragraph for comments that aren't a direct reply to a previous comment. isaacl (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

rights gaming is applicable to retaining admin rights is something I do not think has consensus, but if we want to make that part of some question it seems reasonable.

We set a number deliberately. If we want to change that number to some number that we actually believe indicates real activity, we should (and I would personally welcome an adjustment to the numbers, but ~consensus gathering activity~). Taking potshots at admins who aren't here all the time isn't the way to do that. NB that I don't think all three of the admins above even fall into the category of "sent to admin recall solely because of inactivity", and I think we see the results of that with how quickly (or slowly) the admins have reached 25 signatures at recall.

Another approach to stopping what is perceived as gaming is to remove the "next month you're being desysoped" messages. Those are likely to be the primary cause of the once-a-year / couple-a-month edits. If people really want to keep their tools, they can do their own homework.

An appropriate change the opposite direction might be to forbid admin recall solely on the basis of inactivity directly in WP:RECALL. There's got to be something more than "the hard rule you've been provided for keeping your hat is the hard rule you're meeting". Our default position should be to trust administrators, because they earned that trust via RFA.

But I'm sure all of this was all argued in the last RFA review mess that has now spawned this growing pain. Izno (talk) 22:58, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Soni, I think it would be useful at the top of this discussion to have links to previous RFCs and discussions we have had on this subject. We don't need to reinvent the wheel and I think this discussion would benefit from seeing ideas that have already been proposed in the past that didn't pass a vote. We are not starting from scratch here, we've gone through other RFCs on this matter. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:10, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Liz Do you have a list of such RFCs and discussions you think should be listed? Soni (talk) 04:02, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There's the two RFCs in the footnotes from WP:INACTIVITY. There's some failed RFCs here in 2019 [2] and 2015 [3] from what I recall. Not sure if there were other RFCs here in the archives, elsewhere, or other discussions. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 05:18, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There was another attempt at "workshopping" just two months ago at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 203#Admin inactivity rules workshopping. Anomie⚔ 12:02, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• For Q1: In my opinion, yes. Change criterion #1 from: Has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12-month period to Has not made any logged administrative actions for at least a 12-month period. Change criterion #2 from: Has made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period to Has made fewer than 100 edits over a 30-month period. Some1 (talk) 22:56, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Q1: no. Q2: whenever. Think of this, instead, as being in a volunteer organization in a leadership role. If you've put in the time to be trusted as a "lead" in something, typically speaking, you've been filtered for sanity and dedication to doing the right thing. There are obviously exceptions (and sociopaths exist in any org). But you're not going to make someone re-prove themselves from the ground up if they step away for a year or two. Life freaking happens.
  Sure, you'll expect that they get back up to speed with current procedures, but that's something that "leads" are already used to doing, and know if they make a mistake, they apologize and fix it. That said, you probably should be cautious when someone comes back from absence; "trust but verify," because egos are a thing. And that could (and should) factor in. But the amount of assuming-bad-faith from some of the commenters here is incredible. When someone steps away from the project, it's not someone "cheating" on the project. It's someone doing something else to help the world. Or perhaps getting their crap together in real life. Or perhaps landing a new job. Or having a baby. Or just a really long bout of depression. Anything other than, "Well, they forgot everything about how to Wikipedia. Now we have to assume they're an idiot that can't be trusted." That's just not generally how people work. That's not how volunteer-driven orgs work. In fact the ones I work with now specifically carve out at least a year of inactivity before you're truly considered inactive.
  And just like in volunteer organizations, if someone's inactive, the assumption is that anyone can undo their actions. And I get where people are coming from: the faceless immediatism of the internet creates a bias toward seeing other editors as faceless while expecting of them the same immediatism. Giving into that fosters a situation where, eventually, only those truly dedicated to being an admin will be admins, and that should scare the living daylights out of anyone who pays attention to business or politics in the real world.
  --slakr^\ talk / 06:51, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Slakr, I hadn't thought of comparing it to real-world/face-to-face volunteer work before, but I think you're entirely right. Orgs that depend on volunteers don't treat those who come back after a break like they are ignorant, untrustworthy or like they have been unfaithful to the group. A return to activity is really treated as a situation that should be celebrated. You make sure their old friends know. You introduce them to the new folks. You brief them on any important changes and if there's something that might sound like any sort of reflection on them, you explain ("Oh, we got a new accounting firm, and they insist that two people always be present when the mail is opened. It's a bit of a pain, but they said that they always recommend it after discovering a thief stealing checks from one of their other clients..."). You don't treat them like they need to prove themselves again, unless you actually want them to quit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• • As someone who has both volunteered and managed volunteers, I cannot think of many meatspace volunteering positions where you have the power to kick out other volunteers and tear up their work, and where those exist they generally don't get handed to people who have just returned to the organisation after a long absence. In my experience working with volunteers, that would be an absolutely terrible idea. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:01, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Slakr: Thank you, this is a good way to think about returning admins. But we do see a huge amount of bad faith displayed towards admins returning from inactivity and asking for the bit back. There is strong feeling in parts of the community that they should prove themselves first. I think those parts of the community have got it wrong and that their attitude is making it harder for people to volunteer to do admin work again, but I don't think we can just ignore them. See the NaomiAmethyst resysop discussion we had a few months ago. Perhaps it would be easier to have formal criteria for resysopping (but we'd still need a way to deal with the people who consider meeting the formal criteria to be WP:GAMING). —Kusma (talk) 13:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Q1, maybe?, Q2, no, outside of a clause for recall for WP:GAMING As a person who has spent a fair bit of time working in security (simply out of the principle of least privilege), I'm always for make the desysop window tighter but allow for restoration with some activity. That being said, I'm not going to strongly advocate for desysopping faster since I do recognize that folks do take extended vacay, and often drop away from time to time. I think our priority there should be to build robust pathways for folks to reintegrate back into the admin corp, something that we severely lack at the moment. I don't necessarily think our WP:RESTORATION policy is bad, but I would advocate for enshrining recalling for WP:GAMING into the admin activity metrics, purely since I see it as a "I will follow the letter of the law, not the spirit" activity that Wikipedians just should not engage in. Sohom (talk) 18:14, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Someone suggested that we should have an updated version of User:Worm That Turned/Admin activity for 2025, to get an idea of how many admins would currently be hit by "Last admin action" rule, among other things. Is there someone who can generate such a table relatively easily? I don't know what kind of querying will allow that. Soni (talk) 23:48, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it was @Patar knight who suggested it. I re-ran my old scripts and added a bit. User:Worm That Turned/Adminship term length/new for anyone who wants the data. Worm^TT(talk) 10:41, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh and just noting - ~100 of our admins haven't made 50 edits in the past 2 years, ~200 haven't made 50 edits in the past year, and ~250 admins haven't taken any admin action (defined as appearing in delete / protect / block) in the past year... we have about 850 admins. Worm^TT(talk) 11:11, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for these stats, but I think there is an error. Looking at my entry, it states my most recent admin action was 2025-06-25, 5 actions go back to 2025-06-25 but 10 actions go back to 2025-07-15. The relevant dates should be 2025-07-16, 2025-06-25 and 2025-06-17 respectively. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Putting the data in a spreadsheet, there doesn't appear to be a problem with the edits but there are 548 entries where the most recent action is older than the 5th and/or 10th most recent and/or the 5th most recent action is older than the 10th most recent. Thryduulf (talk) 12:53, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Thryduulf I'll have a look Worm^TT(talk) 12:57, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf, I see the bug, will regenerate. Though I will say I get slightly different dates for you, as 5 events in this log go back to 2025-07-04, and ten between the three logs go back to 2025-06-25... so those will be the numbers that should come out the other end. Give me a few mins. Worm^TT(talk) 13:16, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully all correct now :) Worm^TT(talk) 13:59, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that's way less activity than I imagined. I'm now thinking like 100 edits and 10 admin actions per year. The people who have the power to sanction me need to be at least as active as I am. The idea that I'm at constant risk of being sanctioned by people who make less than 50 edits a year is upsetting. Levivich (talk) 14:33, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But you aren't at constant risk of being sanctioned by people who make less than 50 edits a year. Sure, there are lots of people who have the technical ability to sanction you, but if they have less than 50 edits a year, they do not have the social standing to block you and make it stick; if they wrongly block you they are probably going to be desysopped. Your claim The people who have the power to sanction me need to be at least as active as I am is also obviously nonsensical. In practice, you are far more likely to be blocked by an active power user than by a near-inactive one. —Kusma (talk) 14:56, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Vital articles has been around for ~16 years now. Every month, there is a huge volume of discussions, across several subpages over whether X article should be a level 5 vital article, a level 4 vital article, if a person is better sorted as in psychology or politics... I stopped counting how many words have been expended over the last month at 3 tomats, without even making it out of level 5 discussions.

Is it time to say—we've got it close enough. Whatever small benefit an article gets from being rated the correct amount of "vital" is minimal, subjective, and the article it is replacing will generally be an edge case anyway that we probably want to prioritize to a similar extent (the 9,000th most vital vs 11,000th). That benefit certainly doesn't justify the volume of discussion. 16 years in, we are far into diminishing returns.

As some articles may become more "vital"" over time, e.g. Elon Musk or ChatGPT, there may be some value in periodically check in. One option I mention in the subject line is to have reassessments open for one month or so a year. Other options may be better. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 05:26, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the volunteers who are engaged in that process feel like it is a reasonable use of their time, then why not let them? They're not bothering anyone else with their activity. People who think that it's pointless can just ignore it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:32, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to this, the nature of the vital articles project is that people who aren't interested in other aspects of Wikipedia contribute. If participation is forced to be limited, there's not going to be an uptick in content creation or AfD participation. They'll just leave. (Also, the lowest, most active, level of the project is a very, very long way from being as stable and nebulous as the top three or four levels. Talking in the realm of decades.) J947 ‡ ^edits 09:49, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's possibly not a good thing to have a project running mostly independently of actual content work, especially as it creates a guide to content development priority (and this guide is used sometimes, for example in WP:The Core Contest). Seasonality may not work or be useful for other reasons, but it's strange that there were one or two sockfarms and a great deal of LOUTSOCKING in the vital articles discussions, discussions which go on to affect ~50,000 talkpages. CMD (talk) 12:18, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially, our goal is actually to write an encyclopedia, which seems trite to say. I genuinely believe that editor time is our most valuable resource. I don't buy the claim that editing time isn't, at least in part, a zero sum game, where reductions in editing in one area will increase editing in other areas. And even if as J947 says we won't gain any new editing in other areas, it will stop being a honeypot for new editors who would otherwise contribute more substantively. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 22:34, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose: per Whatamidoing. Not harming anyone for the project to be open. Would you close anything else simply because the discussion ran several tomats? _pbp 13:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This is the Idea Lab, which is not a place to vote on any proposals, but a place to discuss and refine ideas. —Kusma (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This idea shouldn't go any further. I'm sick and tired of proposals to limit or disband the VA project. There's never been any consensus to limit or disband it, why beat a dead horse? _pbp 18:53, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  When was the last time it was brought up? Levivich (talk) 19:07, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Purplebackpack89 I don't intend to disrespect VA, I just would like to have a discussion of what completion could look like for the project. I did check the VP archives, and there wasn't much discussion (except for this silly proposal) and nothing of the type I'm proposing here. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 22:45, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting concept to have only periods of vital article stuff, but it might be best to just leave it to the status quo. I think a seasonality would only enforce a status quo that doesn't need to be enforced. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 19:44, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

People make nominations as they occur to them. This is not a seasonal thing. A seasonal nomination process would cause us to forget many of the nominations that we came across. Additionally, some nominations take 4 or 5 months to resolve.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:17, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some nominations will be lost, but it's important not to let perfect be the enemy of good. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 22:38, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that time spent making proposals to the vital articles list is not proportionally useful to Wikipedia at this point. Compared to something like editing articles, this is true. However, Wikipedia is all volunteer work, and I don't think that if VA were to be closed for some period of the year, the people discussing at it would instead start editing for a proportional amount of time; that's definitely more involved. ALittleClass (talk) 02:46, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ALittleClass Looking at the above, the idea appears dead on arrival. Purely for my own interest, if you wouldn't mind answering: I see proposals like this crash every so often when proponents speculate that editors will react to something in a good way, and opponents speculate that editors will react to something in a bad way. So long as we are kind of guessing which way it will go, the best outcome always seems to me to test it, through a trial in the least destructive manner. For instance, close VA for a minimal amount of time (2 weeks, a month) and see if the regulars activity picks up in other areas. Is that approach attractive to you? Is there anything that would make that approach attractive to you? Perhaps this would be more appropriate discussed on your user talk page. Thanks, Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 04:44, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To offer my perspective on this: Despite being a fairly active participant in discussions (and also one that sought to improve the articles) for a good while there, I'm now trying to distance myself from vital articles outside of occasional proposals or votes. If proposals were limited to only happening at a specific time of year, I would feel even less inclined to be involved. λ NegativeMP1 04:00, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Spinning thoughts here, there is some potential merit to a rotating area of focus. Stick a proposal a week into some central area so the small number of regulars can get it done one way or another. Things linger because 50,000 articles is so incredibly diffuse that there isn't enough participation to meet even the low standards of approval/rejection. CMD (talk) 05:23, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So far, LUGSTUBS 1 is 1896-1912 Olympians, and LUGSTUBS 2 is a bunch of Cricketeers. LUGSTUBS 3 is something often mentioned in a ton of discussions, but never fully proposed. I experimented with a little bit of @BilledMammal's Quarry queries for a LUGSTUBS Mini dedicated to 1928 Summer and Winter, but my knowledge of coding is very limited. Quarry records however do show that Billed has been developing some Lugstub proposals.

I wanted to kind of officially (for lack of a better term) centralize discussions on where a third Lugstubs RFC should target, and after noticing @Oaktree b suggested a mass draftification of Olympians based on how often they make it to AFD, I think we should consider centering it on there. I think that the five year countdown is sufficient for draftspace, maybe even three years if there is enough community consensus momentum, and using a similar quota to the LUGSTUBS 1 criteria, that being Never won an Olympic medal, Referenced only to Olympedia or Sports Reference, and No significant contributions from editors other than Lugnuts. I think that moving on to the 1920s and 1930s is a good place to start evaluating for a potential query. For the sake of consensus, future Lugstubs proposals might best be grouped into groups of about two decades worth of Olympic Games. I think that draftification is best, but require a re-move back to the mainspace come with at least one additional example of SIGCOV, unless the page is being turned into a redirect. I think that there should be a highlight on redirection as well since that does seem to be a popular alternative for many, but install the caveat that de-redirecting include some SIGCOV be added. Open to hearing other feedback as well - that's why I'm putting this in the idea lab first without a VPPR.

Feel free to ping anybody you may also think as well would be interested in keeping an eye on this or have some input. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 18:54, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Given that your attempts to "target" these "non-notable Olympians" is seeing speedy keep after speedy keep after keep after keep, I don't think a "LUGSTUBS 3" is appropriate or necessary. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:50, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  OTOH, if people are still irritated about how the LUGSTUBS2 proponents refused to do anything except complain about how the other volunteers didn't drop everything and do what they were told, or by these failed AFDs, then a LUGSTUBS3 might result in quite the opposite conclusion. I doubt that it would reverse the NOLYMPICS decisions, but it might result in a WP:NODEADLINE grandfathering rule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Keep in mind that BilledMammel, who organized the queries from LUGSTUBS and LUGSTUBS2 has been on a wiki-break for almost a year, and if he was still here I think that the process resulting from LUGSTUBS2 would've been much smoother and quicker. Even so, I think both LUGSTUBS and LUGSTUBS2 have been net-benefits to the project. In addition, just because you opposed these proposals doesn't mean they wren't beneficial to the project. Grandfathering is a terrible idea (and also against policy) considering there are WP:BLP1E and others issues with many of the LUGSTUBS still in mainspace, and I seriously doubt a proposal to do so would lead anywhere considering WP:NODEADLINE is just a essay. I do think that it is a bit premature to organize a RFC without getting more consensus but I'm quite skeptical of using WikiProjects as a solution when it comes to this stuff, seeing as in general they will have the bias of thinking all (or the vast majority) of the content in their topic area is notable. Let'srun (talk) 00:28, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I was not previously aware of Mammal being on wiki break. Thanks for the notification! InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 01:05, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Let'srun, I'm not hoping for a grandfather outcome. I'm warning that if we push too hard or too fast, we might end up with one. One of the community's historical responses to somebody demanding that other volunteers do work that the demanders are refusing to do themselves is to declare that nobody ever has to do that work.

  (Also: A lot of our advice is "just an essay". Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays is not always important.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If I recall LUGSTUBS2, it was I who was demanded to do work, and I've not seen evidence the demander actually used the work like they stated they intended to. If LUBSTUBS2 had simply played out, there would have been very little work anyone needed to do. CMD (talk) 15:16, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• InvadingInvader, the editors who cleaned up LUGSTUBS2 have repeatedly said that if someone would please just drop small-ish lists on the WikiProject's talk page, they'd be happy to clean them up. So I wonder why, given this fact, you are still talking about a long WP:BUREAUCRATIC process that, in practice, will look a lot like this:
  1. another pre-RFC discussion (because we have talked about exactly this at least twice in the last couple of months, right?)
  2. a month-long RFC
  3. waiting for someone at Wikipedia:Closure requests to write a summary
  4. probably a Wikipedia:Close challenge
  5. nothing happening for months because nobody does the simple, practical thing that actually helps and has been repeatedly requested (i.e., making a few lists of articles that should be prioritized for review), because actually doing what's needed is Somebody else's problem and I'm not willing to do anything except vote that those other lazy WP:VOLUNTEERS do what I think should be done and then complain when they didn't do it fast enough to suit me
  6. complaining that "they" didn't do it fast enough to suit me
  7. somebody (but not me, because I'm not helpful, supportive, or collaborative) actually doing the thing that's needed
  8. the pages finally get reviewed and process (by those other lazy WP:VOLUNTEERS, not by me, of course)
• as opposed to a quicker, simpler process that you could do yourself, right now, which is:
  1. Make a list of a few dozen (related) articles that you believe need to be reviewed.
  2. Post it on a relevant WikiProject's talk page and nicely ask the editors there to deal with it.
  3. Repeat as needed, until you no longer believe any sports-related articles require reviewing.
• I really think you should give a lot more thought to trying out this faster and easier process, because I think that it will be a lot more functional and effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If you decide to have another big RFC, though, I suggest you offer these suggested votes:

  1. Support in practice – I'm willing and able to put hours of my own time into editing articles to make this happen. (Expect to be contacted by organizers if the proposal succeeds.)
  2. Support in theory – It'd be nice if somebody else did this work, but realistically speaking, I won't do any of the work myself.
  3. Oppose (for any reason)

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:28, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I might actually try that. Thanks for the idea! I'll take a look at it. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 20:33, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If you get stuck, feel free to drop by my talk page. I can't do much with Quarry queries (though you can always Wikipedia:Request a query from people who can), but I'm willing to help you sort out a process for making and distributing lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I wouldn't be opposed to something like that (I assume you're referring to suggestion that starts Make a list of...) – if you come up with something like, 50 articles and say "try to find sourcing or they'll be taken to AFD in [this number of] weeks", I could live with that, as long as the list is of Olympians from a country I am good at researching. In other words, that would be for the United States, Canada, Hungary, Romania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (to a lesser extent, Guam, Switzerland, Australia and Iceland). There's also a few editors I have in mind that are excellent at researching Olympians for Norway, China / Hong Kong / Taiwan, and Egypt, respectively, although I'm not sure how interested they would be in doing something like that. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:31, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I see no reason to complicate this. If a RFC were to be organized, leave the options open to simply support or oppose. The organizer of the RfC should have determined an implementation plan (including contacting other users for assistance) should the proposal succeed beforehand, and as such there is no WP:BURDEN on any volunteer. Let'srun (talk) 00:33, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  BURDEN says that any editor can demand that a person adding a fact also add one (1) inline citation for that fact. It doesn't say anything about the problems of human nature, such as complaining that other people haven't yet the thing that you want done, but that you don't want done badly enough to do it yourself, and that you didn't determine an implementation plan or identify any volunteers for either before or during the RFC. "Splitting" the support votes would help the organizer develop that implementation plan. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That plan can be determined in the pre-RfC process, which will allow for a much easier implementation process if the proposal achieves consensus. It is inappropriate to create any type of split which will simply be weaponized by users who wish to keep the mass-created articles, such as yourself. Let'srun (talk) 04:08, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]