Wikipedia talk:Perennial proposals

Edit summaries

I find the supposed reasons not to make edit summaries mandatory to be pretty absurd. Are they really supported by a widespread consensus? To comment briefly on them:

1. forcing (or reminding) users to enter edit summaries may annoy them enough they will not save their (possibly constructive) edits.
   • I find this completely implausible. If there is anybody out there at all who would rather throw away their edit than add a brief edit summary explaining what they changed, then I doubt that what they were adding was in any way worthwhile.
2. Forcing users to type something in the edit summary box does not mean that they will provide accurate, honest, or useful edit summaries.
   • True, but if asked to provide an accurate, honest and useful edit summary, what percentage of users will do so? I would be very sure that it would be the overwhelming majority. WP:AGF and all.
3. Manually added edit summaries also suppress the automatic edit summaries.
   • Can't see how this is an argument not to require edit summaries
4. Blank edit summaries are a good way to spot possible vandalism.
   • Blank edit summaries are so common that this is no way at all to spot possible vandalism.

Myself, I see no convincing reason at all for edit summaries to be optional. I find it discourteous and arrogant for anyone to think that they do not need to explain what they are doing (if anyone really thinks that). If you make a change to an article, it is no burden at all to explain what you did. It requires no thought and very little time. So are there some substantial reasons that I have not thought of, that are more convincing than those given, for edit summaries not to be obligatory? 46.208.236.129 (talk) 11:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Automatic Semi-protection of TFA's

I was reading through the page and noticed that the part about automatic protection of TFA's needing an update. I dug and found a RfC that was closed in favor of a trial for semi-protection of TFAs, but then checked the protection logs of a few articles in September and October 2021 (RfC was closed at the end of August 2021) and it seems to never have been implemented by anybody. I thought here was a good place to note its non-implementation. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 20:16, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

IP edit stats are widely outdated

All estimates of IP activity are given as of 2007. An update is warranted. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:24, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Add an entry about "rename blacklist"?

I found at least three failed renaming requests on changing the "blacklist" word, which affects both articles and project pages, any ideas on this topic? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Crisis hotlines

This was boldly added, and I've removed it:

Add prominent links to crisis hotlines on relevant articles

• Proposal: Add a prominent banner or text in the lead to articles such as suicide referring readers to crisis hotlines or other resources.

• Reasons for previous rejection: Proposals along these lines generally start from a position of advocacy or righting great wrongs, calling on us to override Wikipedia:No disclaimers because suicide, mental health, domestic violence, and so on are important social issues, which can lead to slippery slope concerns (e.g. should we have a Surgeon General's warning banner on smoking and cigarettes?), and pointing out that many other sites have given in to this advocacy. Proposals also frequently advocate one nation's resources, while if we were going to do this we'd need an in-house geotargeted service.
  In recent RFCs, the most strongly supported argument against has been the fact that independent research has found that these warnings have little benefit in actually preventing suicides and such, and Wikipedia:No disclaimers should not be overridden for such questionable benefit. Also of note is that the World Health Organization's guidance suggests resources at the end of an article, not at the top; we generally have links to articles about prevention inline and in "See also" sections.

• Partly done: In the 2019 RFC it was decided that a hatnote on the Suicide article stating "For information on prevention, see Suicide prevention." was an acceptable balance between wanting to provide some sort of link to prevention information and the Wikipedia:No disclaimers guideline.

• See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 161#Proposal to add suicidal disclaimer at Suicide, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 192#Suicides, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 212#Suicide hotlines, Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 43#Topic related help resources, Talk:Suicide/crisis hotline link.

I don't think that the community has come to a consensus that this will never happen, partly because it depends on exactly what you're proposing (e.g., automated localized messages vs a carefully selected hatnote vs paragraphs of relevant, encyclopedic content). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:44, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me that we've had several discussions and they've all gone the same way. I intentionally didn't try to claim that "paragraphs of relevant, encyclopedic content" were in the scope of this addition, and noted that "a carefully selected hatnote" was accepted in the 2019 discussion. Anomie⚔ 22:58, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Which means: Sometimes we do want this kind of content, and sometimes we don't. This page is primarily intended for "no, never, and don't bother us with your latest variation on this idea". We haven't reached that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

No, it means you're conflating different things to set up a strawman. What has been rejected is specifically banners or notices at the top of articles, beyond a hatnote to a very clearly related article. Please stop trying to bring in "encyclopedic text within articles" to confuse the issue. Anomie⚔ 10:30, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

In practice, people don't read this list very closely. If you put a headline in like "Add prominent links to crisis hotlines on relevant articles", then many of them will stop there and will conclude that there is a solid community-wide consensus against any sort of prominent link to any crisis hotline in any relevant article.

If you want to say "We reject only banners directly encouraging people to call a specific number, and only when such a banner is placed at the top of the article, but relevant hatnotes are accepted, some creative approaches to article content, such as an image showing the 988 (telephone number) as an illustration are okay, and everything else is still unclear", then you have to really spell that out.

I'm sure you've heard aphorisms like "TLDR is the law of the internet" and "Every click costs readers". One of the realities that we have to deal with is that Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. WP:Policy writing is hard because you have to write pages (including non-policy pages like this one) to defend the wiki against people who don't actually read it, or who don't bother reading more than the section heading. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)