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RfC on WP:GEOLAND and local history

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Should the WP:GEOLAND guideline be deprecated in favor of WP:GNG? बिनोद थारू (talk) 00:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

In light of multiple recent AfDs including Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Red Bank, California, the closer of those AfDs User:Liz suggested to start a RfC regarding how exactly the WP:GEOLAND guidelines applies to small rural locations like Red Bank, California. WP:GEOLAND as it stands presumes notability for localities: 1) which are or were inhabited, 2) have some form of legal recognition. In such contentious AfDs, some people suggest that minor places meet WP:GEOLAND with their post offices, fire stations, and one-room schools, and are therefore notable. Other people say that such places do not meet the more well-known guideline WP:N. This can be true as the sources are often scarce, primary, not reliable, etc. But as worded, WP:GEOLAND grants them presumed notability regardless. Also for small localities, the indiscriminate collection of data clause of WP:NOT may apply systematically (though it has not been mentioned much in those AfDs). Another point of discussion is that WP:GEOLAND's "legal recognition" clause not being clear. Does a post office count as legal recognition? Either way, to resolve those common issues, I think that good questions to ask are:

• 1) Should the WP:GEOLAND guideline be deprecated in favor of WP:GNG?
• 2) What counts as "legal recognition"?
• 3) Establish a more exhaustive list of settlement types that should and should not be covered by WP:GEOLAND (eg. rural districts, ranches, railroad-siding-turned-settlements)?

बिनोद थारू (talk) 23:53, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

• No, per countless previous discussions. Suggest a more-nuanced question. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

ETA. I have just listed this at WP:CENT, but if we're going to go round this (yet) again, it needs proper notification of relevant wikiprojects. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I notify Wikiproject history. बिनोद थारू (talk) 03:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I won't immediately jump on a yes or no train, but I will say I think this is not well thought out. WP:NSPORTS2022 was workshopped for a while before the RfC even launched, and any RfC on deprecating GEOLAND will certainly be on that scale. Curbon7 (talk) 03:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  It is a small guideline (chiefly If once inhabited and legal recognition, then presumed notability) so I wouldn't imagine it requires a big thought out introduction. I tried to mention all of the talking points in those recent AfDs which led to this RfC (most of which I participated). बिनोद थारू (talk) 03:15, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  It's a small guideline in that it is only a few sentences, but that is a very superficial reading as this would carry implications for hundreds of thousands of articles, hence why in my view it should be thought out before launch (WP:VPIL?) rather than jumping in gung-ho to avoid it becoming a trainwreck. Curbon7 (talk) 03:24, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with your point. I wanted to know if it is possible to get assistance to close this discussion properly for me or someone else to develop the proposal elsewhere. बिनोद थारू (talk) 03:35, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

• With this closed, I just want to comment that some of the confusion here is over what we mean when we talk about “Presumed” notability. Far too many editors think this word is the same as inherent or automatic notability… and it isn’t. We chose the word Presumed intentionally… because a presumption ISN’T the same as inherance.

Presumed notability simply means that we give the topic the benefit of the doubt. We assume that sources should exist (and thus the topic should pass GNG), so we should do a thorough WP:BEFORE search for sources before we nominate it for deletion. However (and this is important), if after a thorough search we still don’t find anything, we know that our initial assumption was incorrect, and we can absolutely nominate it for deletion.

A presumption of notability is an assessment of likelihood, not a statement of certainty. Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

OK Blueboar, but where does it say any of this? I am not aware of any such definition of presumed notability and, yes, at AFD it is often interpreted as meaning it should have automatic notability. After a decade+ of it being interpreted that way repeatedly at AFD with no push-back from closers that I have ever seen, I don't know how anyone can confidently state "no, that's not what it means, it means something way weaker than that, it just means that you have to do a WP:BEFORE, which is something that you should do anyway".

Maybe what we actually need here is an RFC on what "presumed notability" actually means? FOARP (talk) 12:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Do we really need to define the English word “presumed”? Blueboar (talk) 12:39, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Apparently yes. The alternative is AFD continuing to give weight to votes that don’t bother to do anything more than point to an SNG. FOARP (talk) 06:16, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I have not participated in many AfDs so I'm not familiar with how it is interpreted there, but WP:NOTABILITY is in line with Blueboar's interpretation: ""Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article...topics which pass an SNG are presumed to merit an article, though articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found, or if the topic is not suitable for an encyclopedia." CMD (talk) 12:30, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I’m not disputing this. I’m saying closers need to stop giving “keep, it passes ” !votes weight at AFD. FOARP (talk) 06:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

See also the discussion started by FOARP at Misplaced Pages talk:Notability#What does "presumed notable" actually mean? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Utterly badly sourced business articles

I observed somewhere over a decade ago how Articles for deletion was often approaching People, bands, and businesses for deletion. This is still true today. I wonder whether we can relieve some of the pressure on the AFD process, and on volunteers, with a modification of policy.

Consider the likes of Industrial Fasteners Institute (AfD discussion) It has stood for 12 years (and a few hours!) with its only source ever being the business's own WWW site. Or there's Imagine Sports (AfD discussion) which has stood for 16 years with two "official web site"s and an "official blog".

Should we encourage a presumption of deletion, or perhaps greater use of the proposed deletion process, for articles on business where they cite no other sources than the business's own direct publications? We have the proposed deletion of biographies of living people process for biographies with no independent reliable sources, perhaps we need a similar mechanism for utterly badly sourced business articles, where we demand at least something other than company self-published histories and "about" pages.

(I'd agree with the deletion of business articles sourced to nothing other that the business's own publications, and press releases in other publications; but I think that that's another discussion. And similarly, I notice that people are addressing the undisclosed paid editing through other means. That's another discussion, too. It's the plethora of business articles that are basically vehicles for company website links that I think that we could address.)

Thoughts?

Uncle G (talk) 11:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• I'd agree. But it should apply to all articles about anything. Which is better, a badly-sourced article that might or might not be accurate but nobody cares enough to source it, or no article? Does WP:BURDEN not apply to article creation as much as to its content? Maybe we need a WP:NOEXCEPTIONS policy. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
  • Many of the older ones are actually fine, they originated in the days when sourcing was optional but derived from respectable sources such as other encyclopedias. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
    • That claim is currently not verifiable, and the longer the cites stagnate the less tenable it becomes. Again, I draw your attention to WP:BURDEN. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
      • As I've said in various fora of late, if we all just referenced articles instead of wasting breath discussing how to delete them the encyclopedia would be a great deal better served. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:03, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Undersourced businesses are already prod staples, I don't think any more encouragement is needed, and there's a big difference between non-profit societies/organisations and for-profit companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I disagree. WP:N and WP:V apply equally to all subjects. RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

After the recent changes to WP:NCORP, the standards for for-profit companies are higher than for non-profit bodies such as academic societies – which just have to be national/international in scope & meet GNG – rather than having to meet the new elevated standards for companies. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• "nobody cares enough to source it" includes those trying to delete it, in many cases. The "BURDEN" is WP:BEFORE. A lack of sources in an article does not mean there are a lack of sources. Misplaced Pages itself is not a reliable source for determining if a topic is notable. Many editors don't look beyond Misplaced Pages. This is a common problem at AfD. -- GreenC 15:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • That sword cuts both ways. Many editors have not gone beyond corporate promotional blurbs when creating articles, and not only is this a problem at AFC this is a worse problem in the encyclopaedia. Vehicles for corporate WWW site links like International Labmate Ltd (AfD discussion), which had even more external links to the company's various WWW sites in its older versions than it has now, are littered throughout the encyclopaedia. Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

That company won The King's Awards for Enterprise, the UK's highest business award, in 1996. It could actually be notable if one knew the right places to look for coverage. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:07, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The most slam-dunk case is articles on businesses. If the above example one went to AFD, it would be an easy fail or if there is advocate for the article they will need to quickly find and add GNG sources. But for those years nobody even questioned it. Sports articles are a lot tougher. Since in sports, coverage itself a form of entertainment (rather than the typical criteria to receive coverage) and has lots of fan clubs in Misplaced Pages, and whoever takes it to AFD will get beat up for not first searching for the missing sources. Edge case bands always end up as edge cases because there is a lot of edge case coverage situations. (interviews etc.) Finally, the typical mechanics of the Misplaced Pages system are that WP:Ver is a way to remove content and not directly a criteria for existence of an article. Theoretically, if GNG sources exist that aren't in the article it can be kept. So if it's a sports article with no substantive sources from a place when the media is non-english in a different character set, it's arguable that you need to have someone fluent in the language/character set to search to show no suitable coverage in order to delete it. Bottom line, I don't think that anything that speeds up the simplest cases is going to do much. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• This is why I asked specfically about businesses, and about a specifically identifiable set of business articles, at that. This isn't setting out to solve the world's problems, just to address one thing to see whether there's a way to make things incrementally better. And I think that there's a good case to be made that if we already apply the just one reliable independent source criterion to biographies, we can apply it to businesses. Indeed, we already do that and more to business articles at AFC.

  So maybe we should close this hole in our standards and require that as a simple uniform minimum across the article namespace too: at least one reliable independent source in the article for a business. We decide that we don't host external linkfarms for corporate WWW sites for 15 years like, say, Forsythe Technology or Nisco Invest.

  Uncle G (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

• Nowadays, these wouldn't make it through our excellent if overloaded NPP process. The community might be minded to enact WP:CSD#X4: article about a business, enterprise, or product that was started before 2020 and has never had an independent source?—S Marshall T/C 17:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
  • If we can't get consensus to speedy new articles like this, then we're unlikely to find it for deleting old ones. —Cryptic 18:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  CSD is really not appropriate, because Misplaced Pages:Deletion is not cleanup, and therefore there is the potential for it to be legitimately contested. PROD should be sufficient.

  That said, I took a look at Industrial Fasteners Institute, mentioned at the top of the thread, and I have two overall thoughts:

  1. Wow, that industry is way more complex and interesting than I'd ever have imagined, and
  2. I couldn't find any sources (e.g., in Google News) that contain more than two consecutive sentences about the organization itself, though https://www.google.com/books/edition/Magazine_of_Standards/8Cw9AAAAYAAJ looks promising, if anyone can track it down.

  I can find sources for European Industrial Fasteners Institute (EIFI), which started a trade dispute a little while ago, but not as much about the (US) IFI. But I suspect them of being a case of WP:ITSIMPORTANT in the real world (like: they're actually important, if you care about things like whether a plane is likely to spontaneously disassemble itself while you're inside), and I'd suggest a "merge" (of this one stub plus a half-dozen similar organizations for whom a stub hasn't been created) to a List of fastener industry organizations or Fastener industry, rather than deletion.

  I was reminded recently that it's our official policy that more information (NB: information, not separate articles) is better than less. If we make a recommendation, I would like to see us recommend something that results in more knowledge. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I too looked at the fasteners article and was intrigued. Agree merging would be more useful than deletion.

Unless we want to purge almost all content on companies, a new speedy tag is not the way to go. I don't see why standard prod is not effective for old articles where the creator has retired? Are people mass-removing the prods? (I try to check the prod list from time to time but mostly tend to leave the businesses alone, as it is not an area in which I edit.) Espresso Addict (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

In 1976, the IFI instituted a proceeding over import relief for U.S. fastener manufacturers with the International Trade Comission.. It's also necessary to search under its pre-1949 name "The American Institute of Bolt, Nut and Rivet Manufacturers". There's more out there than people seem to have found so far. Jahaza (talk) 04:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Can we get a list generated of company articles for which the only external link on the page is the company website? BD2412 T 04:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I imagine that would be tricky as it's not always going to be easy for a bot to identify that given only the article title. A list of articles about companies (presumably identified by presence in a category) that include external links to only a single domain would I guess be easier. There will be false positives in that list (e.g. when the only citations are to the same newspaper), but I suspect it will also be worth examining those articles for issues. There will also be false negatives (e.g. if an article cites megacorp.com and megacorpinternational.co.uk), and no such query will be able to identify when the article cites only regurgitated press releases and similar, however as long as these limitations are understood and presence or absence from the list is not treated as evidence of anything in itself I think the list would still have value. Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

If any article is longstanding but as poorly sourced as you state, I'd at least give them the benefit of a cursory search for RS, then prod it. Misplaced Pages won't be specially harmed if an ultimately notable business gets removed, as if it's truly notable, it will come back as a new article (or restored deleted article) with proper cites. But as someone who has seen plenty of this kind of junk, my emotional center says to "Prod away!". Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} 19:06, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm doubtful that it's an entirely harmless action (what if someone's looking for that information during the interregnum?), and I'm even more doubtful that it will somehow come back as a new article with more sources.

As a side note, one of the distinctions drawn in the academic literature into whether users trust websites is between "trusting" and "finding useful". A Misplaced Pages article can be very useful to a reader ("Oh, I thought the account I was just assigned was an agribusiness customer, but it looks like they have a lot more business interests than I thought...") even when they don't really trust it ("...so I should probably check in with the previous account rep before I call them"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Since Misplaced Pages is not a business directory, the lack of an article for a likely non-notable (or barely notable at best) enterprise will be harmless within reason. There's Google and the yellow pages and what-not to cover the rest. We don't have to host it. There's myriad notable subjects we're still missing so I won't lose sleep over prodded business articles. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} 04:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Who says that a poorly sourced article is "likely non-notable (or barely notable at best)"?

I believe that sending readers off to other sites (e.g., with worse privacy policies, or which might be secretly paid advertisements) is not harmless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

If something has been prodded, the prodder is supposed to have done a cursory search to see if there's hope for a subject being notable. Per AGF, I assume this happens most of the time. Also, the Misplaced Pages does not exist for being a web searcher's soft landing. I'm not buying into the scope creep. We're just an encyclopedia. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} 04:14, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

• I totally side with encourage a presumption of deletion, not only when the only sources are directly related to the topic but also with articles that are loaded with obscure sources that seem purposely dredged-up to prevent deletion on what would otherwise be a totally non-notable topic. This seems to be a common hallmark of paid-editing. Just, in general, I wish we would be more strict with notability, especially for business-related topics, including questioning if sources are actually notable (eg, WP:CONTEXTMATTERS). Also despite WP:SOURCEACCESS some things like trade publications available only to a limited audience, etc., simply shouldn't count as reliable sources as they weren't generally available to the public as per WP:PUBLISHED. Ultimately, despite all the policy stuff, it needs to boil down to asking ourselves, "Hey, has somebody purposely scraped the bottom of the barrel to get this article to pass our notability standards?" If so, I think we should err on the side of deleting it; otherwise, we just accumulate promotional cruft. Historically, I think we've tended to side with keeping anything that is referenced with too little weight put on the quality of the references. We need a cultural shift that tighten the hatches. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:33, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
• Do the whole bold Oppose. Nobody seems to have explained why Prod isn't enough for me to get behind this. I'd also argue it's a strawman argument, there isn't actually a problem beyond I don't like it that these article are in wikipedia. If they exist and have existed a long time it indicates they are doing something right and that consensus is to keep, as that's how consensus forms and works. If we need to change the rules to exclude them, what does that say about us? And how does it come to define Misplaced Pages? Don't we have enough articles that require copyediting to be worried about this, the top of my watchlist indicates a drive there? Wouldn't our efforts be better directed there than here? A look at Misplaced Pages:Backlog tells me over 400,000 articles need more refences. Could we better pressed finding them? I do wonder why I give my valuable time to this project, creating and salvaging, when so many people want to destroy that work. Sometimes I decide I no longer want to because of the negativity. Does that make Misplaced Pages better? Or should we strive towards consensus. Should we say we're at an even keel as things stand, the guidelines are balanced, in harmony, we know how to use them to achieve the goal, let's kill the backlogs then regroup on discussions such as these if merited? Hiding T 19:57, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Spongebob Squarepants is now freely licensed!

Wait, really?

Well.. At least Commons seems to think so. Sites like Flickr and YouTube allow their users to set the license for their uploads, offering the option to release one's content with a free license. Which is really awesome! I use it myself. (but I do it on purpose)

For some reason, several major entertainment companies are also doing this or used to. For example Nickelodeon, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, Disney (to be precise, DisneyChannelIsrael) and Microsoft. For short clips of live action series this could be defensible: creating a spin-off from live action footage would be difficult and it doesn't print well on mugs and t-shirts. And a free license might encourage people to make memes using screenshots of that, which is free publicity. But according to at least three Wikimedia Commons administrators (one of them is a crat and CU even!) I can make my own Spongebob webcomic spinoff! (title idea: "Squidward motorboats Bikini Top") I can start selling t-shirts and lunchboxes with Spongebob Squarepants and Squidward now! (as long as I provide attribution. I'll print that on the bottom of the lunchbox) Imma be RICH!!

Shall we get back to earth now? In videos that include non-live action characters from companies whose business model is to sell licenses, that CC-BY license is an accident. Why these clips are freely licensed? Maybe some SEO idiot determined it makes the YouTube algorithm 0.1% happier. Maybe an intern thought that any creative work needs to be marked as "creative commons". Maybe it's a bug in some upload script. Who cares?

Here are the important questions:
1. Is this license enforceable? If I do start selling Spongebob-branded lunchboxes and scuba gear, will this license hold up in court? My best guess? Yes and no, because it'll never go to trial. Nickelodeon would start with a simple cease and desist. If I'd ignore that, they would make me settle, no matter the cost. It's irrelevant how solid of a case they might be able to build - even a 1% chance they would lose would be FAR to costly. They would rather give me a free license to sell my lunchboxes and a million dollars cash to sweeten the deal. Nobody wants that to go to trial. Literally nobody, because it would be bad for free culture as well. If Nickelodeon wins, it may undermine the validity of Creative Commons licenses. If Nickelodeon loses, the stock price for at least Nickelodeon and Disney will take a nosedive and the headlines will read "Misplaced Pages stole Spongebob". Does that sound like good publicity? Even the monkey selfie had some negative impact in that regard, but in that case the precedent it would've set otherwise was an unacceptable risk. Now imagine the negative impact of the monkey selfie, times a billion.

2. Do these files endanger our re-users? Well, yeah, I think they do..

If Commons is declaring Spongebob to be freely licensed and two clicks away from declaring a few dozen Disney characters to be freely licensed (Big Hero 6, Ducktales 2017, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Milo Murphy's Law).. We can't tell Commons what to do. "Freely licensed" images of characters that are owned by multinationals based solely on the license setting on Flickr or YouTube is silly. It might be up to us to not allow them to be embedded here to protect re-users. How we would technically achieve that, or how we would word such policy? I don't know yet. Or we need to find another solution.

Or we go to war with with Disney and Nickelodeon.

• Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Yann
• c:Commons:Village pump/Copyright#CC-BY license on YouTube videos by Disney Channel Israel
• c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hogwarts Legacy
• c:Commons:Undeletion requests/Archive/2023-10#A few files from CC-licensed Nickelodeon videos
• c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files found with "Disney Channel Canada" (old discussion I may have borrowed some arguments from..)
• Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests (revision 824251709)
• Commons:Undeletion requests/Current requests (revision 824251709)
• c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by D. Benjamin Miller#Files uploaded by D. Benjamin Miller (talk · contribs) 2

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:55, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Ask George Romero if he ever got Night of the Living Dead back out of the public domain after it was accidentally released in cinemas for a few years without a copyright licence.... (Ironically you would need to raise him as a zombie to ask, but there we go.) Historically even accidental copyright releases are held to that. So commons wouldnt be incorrect in saying *for the moment* that anything released on a free licence is *free*. Because there is a lot of previous cases that absolutely support that. Of course the other side is, dont mess with the mouse. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:11, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Only in death, true, true, Debbie Does Dallas is also public domain. But those are older US cases of failing to include a copyright notice, which was literally required by law at the time. A Creative Commons license on Flickr or YouTube is uncharted territory, and I honestly doubt it'll generally hold up unless the companies were clearly aware of what they did. If they put out a press release to say "we're releasing a bunch of stuff with a free license!", sure, but that's not the case. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:44, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

As to how we could technically achieve it, MediaWiki:Bad image list. Or we could go fully nuclear and overwrite the files locally with blank images and protect, so you can't get to the images on the en.wikipedia.org domain at all. —Cryptic 18:18, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Note: the latter requires the reupload-shared right which only administrators have. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:13, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

You need to be an admin to protect them, too. Or edit the mediawiki namespace, for that matter. —Cryptic 09:54, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

While I agree the liberal interpretation of Commons rules means we can host these, it's worth having a more in depth discussion for the sake of our re-users. That discussion shouldn't be here, though; it should be on Commons, which is where they're hosted. — Rhododendrites \\ 21:15, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Rhododendrites, that'd be ideal, but that discussion so far is what resulted in the undeletion of Spongebob. And I generally avoid Commons as it seems to be bad for my health.
It's not without precedent to locally disallow some images from Commons. For example, files with {{c:Template:PD-US-no notice}} are not allowed in articles on the German Misplaced Pages. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 09:49, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Commons has almost certainly screwed up, and the WMF lawyers should probably check in. We had a very similar situation where some subsidiaries of Ubisoft uploaded some gameplay trailers for their games and the like with permissive licensing turned on, but it was investigated, and of course it was just a mistake of the uploaders and not really releasing all this into the public domain (see c:Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Attribution-Ubisoft 3, which redirected the template to Copyvio). Some random social media consultant getting paid 30K a year clicking the wrong settings on a YouTube upload doesn't mean it's actually free, in the same way that getting a clerk at the convenience store to give you permission to use the store's name & logo yourself doesn't mean much. In the deeply unlikely situation of SpongeBob being released under a permissive license, it needs to come from, like, the general counsel of Nickolodeon, not from NickRewind's YouTube guy. (And hell, even if the video is really freely licensed, that doesn't mean everything in it is - if I take a freely licensed photograph with SpongeBob in the background, that doesn't free SpongeBob.) SnowFire (talk) 06:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

That linked discussion does not seem all that similar to me. Yes, there were a few people arguing that a signed and notarized statement from the executive board would be required for a valid license release. But ultimately the decision there turned on whether the somewhat vague discussion of terms reflected a license that was sufficiently free or not, particularly with respect to one point where the company representative stated that they were reserving the right to "revoke" the license grant with respect to any particular use they didn't like. In this case there's no ambiguity on that point as the release here is explicitly CC-BY. Anomie⚔ 14:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I picked the wrong discussion to link to. The Ubisoft thing was weird but I'm not sure on the details (see c:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 19#Finally an answer from Ubisoft, a long time ago, although apparently this went through multiple rounds since this is much earlier than the discussion I linked to). I was thinking of Bandai Namco, which had gameplay trailers on YouTube under an explicitly permissive license, even to properties they didn't own, and people were creating still images from them, so a very similar case. See Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 122#Tales of Zestiria issue, c:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 72#Licensing of Bandai videos probably invalid, and c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Videos by Bandai Namco from a quick search. And yeah, in the case of Bandai Namco, it was just some intern who clicked the wrong button, not an actual release into creative commons. Per above, even if that was not the case, there needs to be some sort of semi-free tag that says "this video as a whole is creative commons, but that doesn't mean every single still image is kosher if the video shows something copyrighted" (the Trademarked tag?). SnowFire (talk) 15:34, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

SnowFire, {{De minimis}}? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:08, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Why? That's not how CC licensing works – with the exception of ND licenses (not used here), which don't allow derivatives, the license does of course also apply to shorter excerpts, stills, and details of stills. "Elements in this image are protected by copyright" would only be the case if these elements belong to a different rightsholder who didn't allow their relicensing, but of this we have no evidence here. Gawaon (talk) 17:20, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

@Gawaon: That isn't really accurate, though. This is the most obvious with "freedom of panorama" issues. It is totally fine to release into the public domain a picture of, say, someone in the kitchen under cc-by. If you crop it to just the part of the image that's the Coca-Cola can, sorry, Coke's images aren't suddenly CC now. It would be ridiculous if a video that involved random SpongeBob stills from some random fan or other party didn't mysteriously release SpongeBob himself into CC, but the same exact video if released by a Nickelodeon affiliate was assumed to do so because the top-level of Nick owns SpongeBob. SnowFire (talk) 20:14, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but if Coca-Cola releases Coke can images under CC, then that Coke can images are CC-licensed. And that's what's really the case here, right? We're talking about a release by the rightsholder (in so far as we can tell), not by some random third person who doesn't have the rights to SpongeBob in the first place and so cannot give them away. Gawaon (talk) 20:47, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

@Gawaon: The whole point is that the rightsholder almost certainly did not release this into the public domain a free license, by basic common sense. It's just a clerical error. I've cited two cases above where there was believed to be a surprising, major release into CC and it turned out it was just a mistake in video settings. It is incredibly unlikely this was intended to be a stealth release into the public domain a free license. Are you arguing that, if you found yourself mysteriously teleported into a conversation with Nick's general counsel, they'd say that yes, they really meant to release SpongeBob? Or is the claim that it doesn't matter what the counsel says, if one social media intern says otherwise it's too late no take backs? SnowFire (talk) 23:00, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

As JohnCWiesenthal pointed out farther below, NickRewind has been publishing CC-licensed videos for years, so a clerical error seems unlikely. If it was an error, they would have noticed it long ago. And CC is not "the public domain" – some rights (such as attribution) still apply. Gawaon (talk) 23:17, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't find that one terribly useful either. The question about whether Bandai Namco actually had the rights to release various pieces of content as CC-BY in the first place seems a good one (but not relevant here), but appears to have not gone anywhere. Instead an "a signed and notarized statement from the executive board would be required" type attitude won out. Anomie⚔ 14:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

(de-indent) @Gawaon: I'm very familiar with the difference, was just speaking generally and the difference isn't that important here. The CC setting being there for years just means that... the setting has been wrong for years, no different than finding a Wkipedia article that's been wrong for years, which happens all the time. Or that the release was strictly the video parts like interviews and not the brief flashes of copyrighted characters. Okay, so you're saying that Nickolodeon really actually intended to release SpongeBob into CC? That if you called up the Nick CEO and counsel they'd agree with "yes, that's the plan, anyone can go make SpongeBob derivative stuff, go nuts"? That's the question very specifically I'm raising and you're not answering: do you really think that this was truly intentional at the highest levels of the company? Like, if you had to place money on a bet, say? (Because if we don't have that level of intentionality, it shouldn't be on Commons.) SnowFire (talk) 00:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

> Because if we don't have that level of intentionality, it shouldn't be on Commons.

As you note, this is really a Commons debate, and not a Misplaced Pages one (and so should be had there).

Anyway, this is a dangerous and unworkable standard. The principle is to raise the standard of evidence for a valid license — and in practice open the door for license revocation, which CC licenses are specifically designed to avoid. A license grant does not need to be "truly intentional at the highest level of the company" in order to be valid. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 08:24, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

No, you cannot use characters from SpongeBob SquarePants on your own merchandise, because they are protected by trademark law. The same goes for Mickey Mouse even after he goes into the public domain next year.

NickRewind has released its videos under the CC BY license since September 12, 2020. Disney Channel Israel has done similar even earlier since November 27, 2018. It's highly unlikely that this was an unconscious decision on their part considering that they've done this for years.

In my opinion, the {{Trademark}} template should be added to the file descriptions of these videos and derived audio excerpts, video clips and screenshots per c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Hogwarts Legacy. --JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 15:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

CC BY specifically grants a license for adaptations. Disney can only protect Mickey Mouse with a trademark because they haven't also granted everyone under the sun a license to do what they like with him. This is a very different thing from simply going into public domain because the copyright term expired. MrOllie (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we (or Commons) have much to worry about licensing issues here. Nickelodeon is very likely the rightsholder of that series (as it's produced for them), so if one of their official Youtube channels applies a CC license to that stuff, that should be valid. A licensing decision can't be "undone" later, even if the rightsholder should later feel regret (of which we see no signs here, as far as I can tell). Gawaon (talk) 17:14, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

JohnCWiesenthal, Applying a CC license to your trademarks and logos could even result in a loss of your trademark rights altogether.
The same goes for Mickey Mouse even after he goes into the public domain next year.
Well it'll be interesting to see what will happen exactly. Did you really think Disney wasted loads of money on the Mickey Mouse Protection Act to protect Steamboat effing Willie if trademarks were guaranteed to be sufficient? I kinda think that if I created a webcomic with a mouse based on the looks of Mickey in Steamboat Willie and I don't call that character Mickey Mouse (maybe.. Lickey Louse), I just might be in the clear. Why on earth anyone would even want to do this is another question, that version of Mickey isn't particularly appealing. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the first Mickey Mouse cartoons will enter the public domain in the US on January 1, though that's neither here nor there. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 18:06, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Unlike the Ubisoft case, the terms of the license here are not unclear. CC-BY 3.0 is a perfectly acceptable license — that much isn't in dispute. The assertion isn't that the form of license is bad, but that it wasn't validly applied to the content. There are, as far as I can tell, two main grounds on which this would be argued:

1. The person who purported to release the content wasn't the copyright holder and so had no legal authority to do so.
2. A large corporation couldn't have meant it!

Case 1 is fairly common — it's what's behind all examples of Flickr laundering, for instance. If I interviewed Tom Kenny, that would be perfectly fine, and I could CC-license my pictures or video of him, but if, during my interview, I showed some copyrighted pictures whose rights belong to someone else (and which aren't covered by a free license), then those pictures wouldn't be freely licensed, of course, even though my video of Tom Kenny would be. Arguably, some of these cases might involve channels not in fact operated under authority of the copyright holder, where the channel operator has surpassed the terms of the license.

As far as we understand, the Nick Rewind channel isn't such an example — which takes us to Case 2. It's a channel which is operated by Nickelodeon. Some of the videos on the channel are CC-marked (and some aren't). The CC-BY 3.0 license is free and irrevocable — if it's validly been granted, then it can't be taken back. The fact that CC-BY 3.0 is explicitly marked on these videos put out on Nickelodeon's official channel would be strongly in the reuser's favor in a lawsuit. I know that some large corporations are reputedly abusive about copyright, but if they themselves give explicit permission (which is what CC-BY is), and it is verifiably their channel (it is), then they cannot sue you on the theory that this didn't count. They are, after all, responsible for their representations of the license status they attach to their work.

As others have mentioned, this really has to do with what media are acceptable on Commons. If you don't want to get involved in discussions on Commons, OK. But Commons and Misplaced Pages are both WMF, so if it's really about legalities, then the question is the same whether here or on Commons.

In any case, banning certain Commons images from enwiki is a terrible idea (especially on the basis of such a shaky rule as given above). The German Misplaced Pages's basis for doing so is that they only accept images that are PD in DACH countries (even though Misplaced Pages is hosted in the US). Whether or not that should be their policy is a question for the editors there, but it at least has a fair principle behind it and applies to general classes of file. The principle here is far more dubious, not based on a legal distinction (only on the assumption that you cannot win over the community on Commons, rather than different rules being applicable) and hard to maintain (as it would apply to individual files). D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and it seems absurd and backwards to say that files allowed on Commons (due to CC-BY licensing) should be disallowed on Misplaced Pages in an instance where they are actually equivalent to a claimed fair use file on Misplaced Pages. The basis of our decisions isn't whether or not a lawsuit would occur — we are actually more principled than that; other sites regularly reuse images with impunity and virtually never get sued (and WP:NFCC is stricter than what fair use would allow). The purely hypothetical lawsuits you gave involve people making scandalous derivative works. Even putting aside whether or not such suits would happen and what the results would be, that discussion certainly belongs on Commons (which is a repository for reusers) and not Misplaced Pages. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 18:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and it seems absurd and backwards to say that files allowed on Commons (due to CC-BY licensing) should be disallowed on Misplaced Pages in an instance where they are actually equivalent to a claimed fair use file on Misplaced Pages.

Exactly. Yann's uploads of clips from Bunk'd, Raven's Home and Secrets of Sulphur Springs were actually removed from those pages for no given reason, twice.

Like, why should those clips be allowed on the French Misplaced Pages but not here? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 20:58, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

As far as we understand, the Nick Rewind channel isn't such an example. Are we sure? Does the Nick Rewind channel hold the copyright to Spongebob Squarepants? Nick Rewind may be able to eventually trace it's corporate ownership up to Viacom International Inc., same as Spongebob, but that doesn't mean that Nick Rewind is the rightsholder. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems fairly irrelevant at this point. Legal has contacted Nickelodeon for clarification, so we can simply stand by and wait what will happen. Gawaon (talk) 23:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Just blacklist all Commons files that are claimed to be free images. We are not responsible for Commons screwups. Black Kite (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

It can also be argued that the CC license only applies to the clips themselves and not the overall work. For example, Warner Music New Zealand uploaded excerpts from the Dua Lipa songs "Be the One", "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)", "IDGAF", "Hotter than Hell" and "New Rules" to YouTube under the CC license (see File:Dua Lipa samples from 5 songs.webm).

Does this mean that all songs on her eponymous debut album are free to use by anyone? No, the license in theory should apply only to those five excerpts. --JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 18:52, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Of course any license only applies to the works that were released under it. That much is not in dispute. Gawaon (talk) 19:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Has anyone tried contacting Nickelodeon/Disney's legal department to see what they think? Galobtter (talk) 23:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm with D. Benjamin Miller on this one. A free work is a free work, CC licences are irrevocable, and it's not our job to audit the internal procedures of media companies. I don't think protecting our reüsers from frivolous litigation is a good argument, either, as that in this case would mean promoting intellectual property even beyond what the IP owners claim. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 15:52, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: this is the best village pump initial post I have ever seen. 10/10, no notes.I have emailed Legal with a request they share their perspective on this issue. I personally think it is highly unlikely whoever clicked the "CC BY" button on YouTube had the legal authority to do so, but I would love to be wrong. HouseBlaster 03:20, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

HouseBlaster, glad you liked it! Legal most probably won't respond, and they might be slightly annoyed you contacted them as this might give them "actual knowledge". I considered posting this on Jimbo's talk page, maybe I should have just done it, I don't know, maybe consider it if this kind of thing happens again. What I had drafted was a section titled "Spongebob Squarepants Spongebob Squarepants" with something like "Hey Jimbo, there's discussion on WP:VPP that, to be honest, we don't really need specifically your opinion on. So this thread is kinda pointless, I realize that. Unrelated fun fact: when Legal is made aware of copyright issues, that knowledge may legally require them to act, which can possibly annoy them. Also unrelated fun fact: you are not expected nor have a legal obligation to read the nonsense random users write on your talk page. Good day sir."
Also! Legal won't take Spongebob down because there's a legitimate fair use defense. No, there's no fair use template on Commons, but that doesn't matter legally. Templates are opinions, not legal statements. Quotes from Jrogers (WMF): "I do think the BP Helios logo is creative enough for copyright protection" ""That said, I think the 1 o'clock image is hosted as a fair use". (in reference to a file hosted on Commons with a PD-textlogo template) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:04, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

While the original videos may be marked in a free license, it is obviously clear that the free license suddenly doesn't translate to make all content of the videos free. We have had this issue with Voice of America videos before, which generally are released under a free license but include photos and short videos that are clearly not free.

Also, the recent copyright office ruling related to the character of Sherlock Holmes being distinct from the stories that feature him also applies (and as many people will likely discover next year when Steamboat Willie falls into the public domain) It is 100% clear that Spongebob is a copyrighted character well into the latter half of this century; the appearance in a freely-licensed video does not magically make it free. Masem (t) 04:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Unlike Voice of America which occasionally uses licensed clips from sources such as the Associated Press, NickRewind's Nickelodeon clips should not be considered as "licensed" as NickRewind is owned by Nickelodeon. Also, some of NickRewind's CC-BY videos, such as episode clips, consist purely of material from previous series. --JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 05:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

JohnCWiesenthal, there's no guarantee the license setting was even a conscious act. If the license setting is the result of a software bug, an intern who doesn't know what they're doing or a rogue employee, that's most probably (I have no knowledge of this having ever been litigated) not enforceable. If it were enforceable, random interns would be operating under a risk that's uninsurable.
Even if it were fully intentional, the IP should be legally isolated to prevent rogue copyright transfers or permissive licensing without signatures from higher-ups and/or lawyers. Within the company, higher-ups can probably sublicense the IP to Nick's subsidiaries, but that sublicense wouldn't itself be sublicensable and may carry additional restrictions.
The only legal effect a social media copyright setting might have is that Nickelodeon will have a harder time suing people who use it for damages. That doesn't mean the license will hold up (you'd still have to take your use down or obtain an actual license), and it's far from guaranteed. One may need to plead insanity 🤪 to convince the judge they really believed this license to be legit. To be clear, I'm not saying you are insane, I'm only suggesting someone who starts printing Spongebob lunchboxes and manages to become the defendant in a criminal case may need to claim legal insanity to be found not guilty. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 07:52, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Don't forget that there are still trademarks involved here too. Everybody can use all of Misplaced Pages's content and even set up their own wikiclone, but they aren't allowed to name that wikiclone "Misplaced Pages" – that's a trademark issue, and our trademarks are not free. Similarly everybody is now allowed to print that Spongebob image at the top of this thread on a T-shirt or lunchbox and sell it – and I am confident that they would get away with that in court, if they should be challenged – but that doesn't mean they have the right to advertise it as Spongebob Squarepants merchandise. For that they would still need to get additional permission from Nick's legal department, which they very likely wouldn't get. Gawaon (talk) 09:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Note to self: do not hire Gawaon as a lawyer.
"Creative Commons does not recommend using a CC license on a logo or trademark. Applying a CC license to your trademarks and logos could even result in a loss of your trademark rights altogether."
Yes, Wikimedia did this. The puzzle globe is Creative Commons and protected by trademarks, which isn't strictly ideal, but Wikimedia had an incentive to do this, and the puzzle globe isn't a commercial product. At least not the way Spongebob is for Nickelodeon. Also, the puzzle globe was IIRC made by users, not WMF staff, and those users didn't own the trademark. So their Creative Commons licensing doesn't dilute the trademark. You won't (or shouldn't) see a Misplaced Pages wordmark with Creative Commons license from the foundation. That would be PD-ineligible/PD-text. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:26, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Creative Commons licenses don't deal with trademark in any way. You can verify this by reading the text of a CC license, or, in fact, that of the page to which you link: "Yes, you may offer material under a Creative Commons license that includes a trademark indicating the source of the work without affecting rights in the trademark, because trademark rights are not licensed by the CC licenses. However, applying the CC license may create an implied license to use the trademark in connection with the licensed material, although not in ways that require permission under trademark law." D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 20:14, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

While you've presented a wonderfully baroque scheme which you say we must presume exists, the implied facts here are quite different from those on the ground.

If we were discussing a license tag that was removed after ten minutes on a single video, then perhaps your theory would be more justifiable. In this case, we are talking about a license tag applied to most videos for multiple years, on a channel that is verifably owned by the copyright holder. Nickelodeon, through this channel, distributes the videos under this explicit public license. While it could at any time cease to do so (though this wouldn't affect the validity of the license for existing recipients and further downstream recipients), it never has.

Reliance on the notices attached to those videos can hardly be the province of the insane. The level of skepticism demanded here is considerably higher than that of a reasonable person, and I'm fairly sure that a court would agree. Allowing for a corporation to attach a license to its copyrighted content for years and then act as though it never did would be disastrous as a matter of public policy. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 20:52, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Masem: Also, the recent copyright office ruling related to the character of Sherlock Holmes being distinct from the stories that feature him Can you provide a link? Is this something more recent than Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd.? Anomie⚔ 13:08, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

My bad, that case is what I was thinking of and its repercussions (eg the Enola Holmes films for exampke) Masem (t) 14:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 != public domain, to be clear.

As for Sherlock Holmes: yes, that comparison is relevant. But the cases are a bit reversed from one another. In the Sherlock Holmes case, the vast majority of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were in the public domain, while a few were still in copyright at that time. The Arthur Conan Doyle heirs were arguing that Sherlock was only truly complete once all the stories were finished, and that thus any use of the character would infeinge on the last stories that completed his development. This was (sensibly) rejected.

The SpongeBob case involves a relatively small amount of material from the original series, and that material is under license, rather than being in the public domain (although I'll grant that the license is fairly liberal). The vast majority of SpongeBob content would have to be avoided as a basis for an adaptation on the grounds that it isn't licensed.

More broadly, this all ties into an issue often elided in discussions of copyright in characters, which is the relationship between copyright in works of authorship and in constituent elements, including characters developed in those works. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 20:29, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, all such SpongeBob uploads need to be immediately speedy-deleted as copyright violations and such uploaders trout-slapped. (I've noticed that the person who uploaded the SpongeBob image above, for example, has used a similar rationale to upload a video containing iCarly's theme song, which is currently undergoing a deletion discussion, as well as an image of the Annoying Orange.) You don't get to silently put SpongeBob under a free license after years of taking down YouTube Poops based on SpongeBob episodes, despite them having a very strong fair use argument. Also note that Google's explanation of the license, visible under every YouTube upload licensed as CC-BY, does not mention commercial use, nor does YouTube, unlike Flickr, allow the use of CC licenses other than CC-BY. I'm also unsure as to what Stephen Hillenburg's estate makes of this...

That said, does anyone know where I can find contact information for Nickelodeon or Paramount's legal department? I think contacting them might be the best way out of this mess. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 21:44, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

You do realize that these videos have been CC-licensed by NickRewind's own official Youtube channel, right? Gawaon (talk) 22:05, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

You and D. Benjamin Miller keep repeating this as if it isn't already understood. Again, it does not matter if a random clerk paid 30K a year at Big MegaCompanyX signs a document saying that the company's IP is free to use, or that they accept all financial liability for some Corporate Scandal, or that the company will contribute a million dollars to the WMF. Something that surprising and far-reaching needs to come with confirmation from higher up the chain, say a press release from Nickolodeon announcing they're releasing SpongeBob into Creative Commons. If this wasn't true, that any random disgruntled employee on their last day could just randomly donate all the IPs owned by the company into the public domain, no take-backs. Also, this would never get in front of a judge, but if it somehow did, judges are not, like, robots. They assess the full circumstances. That judge is going to ask "did you really think SpongeBob was intentionally released under a permissive license, and the notification of this was a setting on a YouTube video? And that you didn't need to check with Nickelodeon to make sure?" If your answer is "yes", then the judge is going to get mad at you.

Anyway there's a very simple way forward: get confirmation from Nick on whether everything is CC (deeply unlikely), the video-as-a-whole is CC but not the brief copyrighted stills (in the same way as a home video with SpongeBob in the background doesn't mysteriously release him into the public domain), or the whole creative commons video setting was wrong. If the people who want to keep the images can't be bothered to do that, the extracted images should be deleted. SnowFire (talk) 22:33, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but it looks to be little more than a default setting that some barnacle head set years ago and no one ever caught or paid attention to. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 22:48, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

So that deletion request closed as keep. Ugh. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 01:27, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

You don't get to silently put SpongeBob under a free license after years of taking down YouTube Poops based on SpongeBob episodes, despite them having a very strong fair use argument.

— @Brainulator9:

People have been saying the same about music from the Beatles for years, only for them to upload their entire discography all at once on June 17, 2018.

What I'm saying is that there can be instances of even the most unlikely license holders turning on a dime like this. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 01:50, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Upload them where? And under what license? The samples on the Beatles article are all marked non-free. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 02:16, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I never said anything about a different license. I'm just noting that the Beatles' core catalog, The Beatles Anthology albums, 1, 1962–1966, 1967–1970 and Love – among others – were all uploaded to YouTube on that date simultaneously, after years of their music effectively being banned from YouTube. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 02:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

That's still an apples to oranges comparison. The Beatles did not license their music as CC-BY when they uploaded their music to YouTube. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 03:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

My point is that what can be considered the status quo (the takedowns of Viacom clips and Beatles excerpts) can change in an instant. Just because something has always been the case doesn't necessarily mean that it will remain as such. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 03:52, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

However, a CC license is not just a "status quo", but a legally binding instrument, on which the rightsholder cannot have second thoughts – certainly not after years. This is getting fairly ridiculous. Legal has contacted Nickolodeon, let's see if and when they hear back from then. Until then there is nothing more to do or discuss in this regard. Gawaon (talk) 07:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

This is a long read but honestly there's more smoke than fire here... Its not our problem and while I respect the high minded hypotheticals its not an issue until its an issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Strong agree. Zero reason to think any litigation will arise. Mach61 (talk) 03:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

But see c:COM:PCP, which does not allow us to keep files on the basis that we can get away with it. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 22:27, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, if you find a bear in your backyard, do you say "it's not an issue until it's an issue" or call animal control? Do you insist we must wait for some poor soul to actually get sued into bankruptcy?
Mach61, the only way you can make that argument is if you believe nobody will be stupid enough to commercially exploit this "license" because they understand it won't hold up in court. In that case, why accept images without a valid license to be embedded on Misplaced Pages in the first place? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:26, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Apparently you don't live in an area with bears... If I called animal control and told them a bear was in my backyard they would ask whether it was causing damage or being a threat to people... If the answer to both was no they would ask me not to call again until the answer was yes. If I continued to call animal control every time I found a bear in my backyard I would eventually be charged with a misdemeanor for abusing 911. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Fine, let's say our concern is solely for the "little guy", not "corporate asshats." Consider the following scenario. A different image is uploaded to Commons under a free license, but in truth, it's been Flickr-washed in a non-obvious way, and was really copyrighted. The innocent citizen who used that image in good faith for their book or whatever is given a scary demand letter by a corporate lawyer asking for big money. Our hapless reuser talks to his own lawyer about the odds if the case somehow went to trial. His lawyer says that his case may look better if trusting Commons licenses is seen as rational and an unavoidable, innocent mistake. The corporate lawyers' job is to show that trusting Commons licenses is stupid. What's exhibit A that a Commons license claim is worthless? That a blatant copyright infringement was hosted and explicitly given a thumbs-up by the Commons administrators. Now our little guy's case is worse, and he may have to settle on worse terms than if otherwise. SnowFire (talk) 22:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The words "in an non-obvious way" are doing a lot of work here, to the point where this principle would require us to discard basically all material posted online. After all, who's to say that Bob really took the photos he uploaded as his own work on Flickr, and that they weren't actually taken by his buddy Jeff and uploaded without Jeff's permission? Followed to its logical conclusion, this would require us to reject virtually every image that was not in the public domain due to term expiration or released by a governmental body.

And this is not a trusting-Commons scenario. After all, we link back to an original source, which is Nick's YouTube channel, which has a "verified" badge on YouTube and where you'll find the license that Commons indicates. The question is whether or not the user can trust that a verified Nickelodeon channel on YouTube's license tag is actually valid, not whether or not all Commons tags are necessarily always right. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

You didn't understand the scenario I described. I'm talking about some unknown, really-copyrighted other image (i.e. not SpongeBob) hosted in good faith (of which I guarantee there are at least some of such images on Commons because it's impossible to be perfect with a free upload form for users). We can't preemptively discard these cases even if we wanted to because it's not even clear that the licenses are wrong. Our hypothetical image - call it image C - looks like it's free use, but we don't know that it's really copyrighted in this scenario until the copyright holder sends the demand letter off, which is a thing that can and does happen. If it looks like Commons takes copyright infringement seriously, then things look better for innocents trusting it then if it looks like Commons is run by people who confuse wishes with legal reality.

Going back to SpongeBob and if it's really copyrighted, did you read Alexis Jazz's initial post? Do you think you personally are ready to take the plunge and go legally sell some SpongeBob-themed merchandise without talking with Nickelodeon first? If not, why are you willing to tell others that they can do so? (And if you do genuinely well and truly believe that the YT license setting means that the doors have been opened and you can go get rich selling SpongeBob merch, please, please talk with a lawyer first.) SnowFire (talk) 23:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not really relevant, because the user is not expected to trust Commons. Anyone whose argument in court is that the license must be valid because it was listed that was on Commons is foolish, because the argument that the license was given on what Nickelodeon publicly identifies as one of its official YouTube channels is much stronger.

I'm not interested in selling merchandise. If I were, I'd be more interested in the trademark implications, not the copyright ones. Actually, that is an interesting legal question — the trademarkability of characters and their likenesses — but that's a different matter.

If you're asking me whether or not I think the CC copyright license is valid, I'll still say yes. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 00:13, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I can't comment on Nickelodeon's enforcement policy but, in general, I would not attempt to exploit a borderline-protected image even if a loophole permitted it. If I did, I would expect the owner's lawyers to pursue the matter until my life savings had been drained into my lawyers' coffers, at which point I'd lose the case, guilty or not. In practice, litigation can be determined by who is better funded rather than who is right, and rights holders' pockets are generally much deeper than mine. This seems particularly true for cases brought in the U.S. As you have probably guessed by now, I am not a lawyer. Certes (talk) 09:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

This type of thinking (at least, before WMF legal was brought in) is what made the National Portrait Galley and the monkey selfie bigger issues than they needed to be for WP. We must as editors be proactive on removing questionable copyright problems until cleared by WMF that they will vouch for them. Masem (t) 15:27, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The difference between you and I is that apparently I don't consider those big issues, those were extremely minor issues. Why do we need to waste editor time to satisfy corporate asshats when we pay perfectly good lawyers to do that? The downside here is so small as to basically not exist, worst case scenario we have to fundraise a few million. I'm happy to waste editor time on something we know is an issue, but not because some editor legal eagle did some OR and thinks we might be in jeopardy. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:44, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

It may be worth mentioning that both of those cases involved mainly questions of law, not of fact. In the NPG case, the question is really (to some extent) one of UK law, but (even beyond that) whether or not the (US-based) WMF would decide to apply US law rather than deal with UK law (since Corel is unambiguous). The monkey selfie case, too, was really just a matter of law (whether or not a monkey's selfie can have authorship for copyright purposes). Here, we are dealing with much more of a question of fact (whether or not the license was granted by the actual copyright holder) than one of law, although the question of what might constitute such a grant is to some extent one of law.

And, importantly, in both those cases there was no problem and the content was in the public domain. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:41, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I am concerned about the imprecision in some of the comments here. It appears that Nickelodeon has licensed this a small number of specific images. That is not equivalent to releasing the copyrights on the characters as a whole or the entire series. The entire SpongeBob SquarePants (franchise) is not "a work" in terms of copyright law. AIUI each of the two images at the top of this thread would qualify as "a work". You can license one work without licensing all of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Then what exactly does that make any of NickRewind's other uploads where they post various clips of past Nickelodeon shows like iCarly and Victorious? If the CC-BY license is correct, I could very much bundle them all onto a DVD and sell those. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 03:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm primarily concerned with the gap between "These specific, individual works are freely licensed" and "All of Spongebob Squarepants is now freely licensed". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, if it matters, the clip they were extracted from contains many more bits of footage as well as voiced lines. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes. But not everything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Houseblaster, if you or anyone else wants to force WMF Legal to look at this, upload https://imgur.com/a/ekW9o7g to any Wikimedia project and draw WMF Legal's attention to it. As it's an inaccurate depiction, Legal can't ignore it as fair use. Drawing attention might be difficult, ideally Paramount would DMCA it, but "actual knowledge" can be achieved in other ways. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:30, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The fact that this isn't how Squidward looks like in SpongeBob doesn't make it not fair use. It would almost certainly have little to no bearing on any fair use analysis. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 22:56, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

D. Benjamin Miller, an accurate depiction can be used for critical commentary and identification. A three-headed Squidward is fanfic, and not original/innovative enough to apply for fair use as a parody. See c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:BP logos where Legal clearly differentiated between accurate and inaccurate depictions of the logo. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

That's just not how fair use works, though. Fair use is not a list of enumerated exceptions, but a method of holistic analysis. (Enumerated exceptions are what you'd find in some other countries' equivalent laws, but the US fair use doctrine does not use them. The Copyright Act gives "criticism" and "comment" as examples of purposes for which a copyrighted work may be used.)

The actual determination of whether or not a use is fair under US law is based on the four-factor test. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 11:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Legally correct but irrelevant. In a lawsuit three-headed Squidward may be considered fair use - probably mostly because I'm not commercially exploiting him and the lack of effect on the original work's value. But WMF Legal seems to be more careful in this regard as they took down the inaccurate BP logo but left the accurate logos up. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 12:15, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I think there may be some confusion over the procedures and reasoning here.

BP sent a DMCA takedown for the inaccurate logo (but not for the accurate logos). As a result of the takedown notice, Legal was required to remove the requested file (subject to counternotice), but was not required to remove any others.

Legal expressed the opinion that the logo (accurate or inaccurate) was probably above TOO.

It happens that Commons doesn't allow content on fair use grounds (as a community rule). Legal explicitly said they don't enforce that — only the community does. Since they had not received a takedown request for that file and they believed it would not be an unlawful use to keep it up, Legal didn't remove it. The community users decided to remove those files separately.

(As an aside, although Josve05a says in that DR discussion that the DMCA notice was a determination that the BP logo was above TOO, this isn't quite true. The DMCA takedown of course implies this claim, and Legal found it reasonably likely to hold up, but nobody involved here can make a definitive determination.) D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 12:49, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

As a reminder, please everyone in this conversation, WP:AGF and WP:APR. (Oinkers42) (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I have just found another company-owned international subsidiary YouTube channel uploading clips of TV series under the CC-BY license: Cartoon Network India. This YouTube account for the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned Indian TV channel has been using the CC license on many of its videos since April 23, 2019. This could potentially put excerpts from series such as Ben 10 (2016), The Powerpuff Girls (2016), Teen Titans Go!, The Tom and Jerry Show and We Bare Bears into question.

Should we discuss this YouTube channel as well? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 07:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and it's probably the same deal; some intern giving a broader license than was intended. This is especially worse since this is run by a foreign branch, with probably little oversight from the domestic portions of CN. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 00:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

So Cartoon Network India started April 23, 2019. DisneyChannelIsrael started with on November 27, 2018. It seems NickRewind started with Calling All Nick Kids ⏪ It's TIME to REWIND | NickRewind on March 19, 2019. This all suggests a software bug or Creative Commons default setting. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 18:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Not to mention that Nicktoons uploaded some videos from March 27, 2019 to November 21, 2020 under a CC license. Nick Music also uploaded two videos under that license: one on July 2, 2020 and another on April 27, 2021.

It isn't just Nicktoons, Nick Music and NickRewind though. From March 22 to November 30, 2018, MSNBC released some of its videos under the CC-BY license, and a screenshot from one is used in the infobox for the Rachel Maddow article. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 01:31, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz Something else I've found that should be brought up is that Disney Junior Israel has also been uploading under the CC-BY license since December 2, 2018. With this information, I think it would be more difficult to prove that this license decision is unintentional. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 23:41, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

For Disney Channel Israel, I guess the subtitles/dubs can be interpreted somewhat as "digital watermarks," as either one can distinguish them from the original works:

• For dubbed videos, the video itself and any derived screenshots should be okay to use, but any audio must be in Hebrew and not any other language, including English.
• For subtitled videos, the audio is kept in English and should be okay to use. However, any included subtitles must be retained in the video and any derived screenshots as the versions without subtitles are not under the CC-BY license.

Do you guys concur with my interpretation? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 05:50, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd also like to note that we don't actually know who owns the rights to SpongeBob Squarepants the character, show or any other aspect. It could be the estate of Stephen Hillenburg, United Plankton Pictures, or some entity in the enormous octopus that is the Paramount conglomerate. If the YouTube channel is owned/operated by one subsidiary of Paramount/Nickelodeon Group and the rights are held by another subsidiary and licensed to the channel operators, then they didn't actually release it under CC-BY because they can't release something they don't own. The Wordsmith 03:24, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi, Alexis Jazz and others above have mixed up several things above (I would have liked to be informed when you talk about me.).

First, it is not that because a video is under a free license that all its content can be used freely. The characters in such videos may still be under a copyright if at least one previous work is not free. We still delete files on Commons because the content is not free, even when the support itself is free (e.g. c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Bugs Bunny, c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Popeye, c:Category:Warner Bros. characters deletion requests, etc. Some may have been forgotten.). So you certainly can't sell T-shirts and mugs with the content of these videos.

Second, all these works are still under a trademark. So even if the video content is free, you can't use it to compete with these companies on their business.

Third, it is really stupid and arrogant to think that these companies and their employees don't know what they do, specially on legal matters. They have a huge legal department, which probably decided that a free license will help their marketing campaigns. Never underestimate someone when they do something unexpected. I did write to these companies inquiring about the validity of their free license, but I only got a mail saying that my question was forwarded to their legal department. Yann (talk) 22:22, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

But I wanted to sell a DVD based on iCarly clips, I could do that without violating copyright or trademark laws? -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 22:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Probably not without violating trademark laws. IMO we can use extracts from these videos for illustrating Wikimedia projects, but I won't do more than that without a steel-armor for legal issues. But IANAL.

As someone says above, a warning in the description of these files might be a good idea. You are welcome to help. Yann (talk) 23:01, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Would {{c:Trademarked}} be sufficient for said warning, or should the warning template be more specific? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 02:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I wonder how much Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. plays into this. In that case, it was ruled that you can't use trademark law in order to target plagiarism without turning it into copyright law. So I imagine selling DVDs of, say, iCarly clips, would fall closer to copyright law (unless you made it seem like Nickelodeon or whoever supported the production and manufacturing of the DVDs themselves - that is, the physical item, not its contents). -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 04:47, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it is a tricky borderline. Responding to JohnCWiesenthal, we probably need a warning about derivative works. IMO the restriction is similar to freedom of panorama issues. The whole file is under a free license, but extracting some specific parts may come into breaking copyright laws. We also have had this issue for court cases (PDF files) which include copyright works as fair use. We can't extract these items under the pretext that the whole work is free of copyright. Yann (talk) 10:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Don't we already have {{c:De minimis}} for this purpose? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 17:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Partially, though I don't think images of SpongeBob in a video about SpongeBob would count as being merely incidental according to c:COM:DM#Guidelines. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

I meant that The whole file is under a free license, but extracting some specific parts may come into breaking copyright laws. sounds like c:COM:DM in general. So, I would think that a warning template for these purposes may be based on {{c:De minimis}}. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 02:27, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

I preface my comment by stating that I am not a lawyer. I intend on providing a perspective to resolve this issue using pragmatic statements of fact and a foundation for further perspectives. It is my understanding, then, that the scope of employment for uploading the content does not consider the inclusion of material that has not been sublicensed, invalidating the Creative Commons licenses in the content referenced by Alexis Jazz, furthered by the absence of elucidated definitions of copyrighted material by the referenced parties. The Wikimedia Foundation legal department must seek further guidance from the referenced parties and, in order to assure conservative practicality with respect to the licensors, the copyrighted material must be deleted.

The basis for whether or not copyrighted content may be freely used once referenced in a medium that permits free distribution is a determining factor in this discussion, but not the solitary determinative. It is within Misplaced Pages's interest to use content that is available within the public domain or that which the copyright holder grants use to the general public as a licensee. For the purposes of this discussion, the public domain is irrelevant. With regards to the concerned parties, the videos in question have been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, a permissible license under Wikimedia Commons. Copyright is assumed for original characters and derivatives under the Berne Convention; trademark, as referenced in Alexis Jazz's imaginative first question, concerns commercial use and is insignificant to a broader understanding of the situation.

The Creative Commons Attribution license assumes the most permissive and irrevocable position to licensees, an assurance that may serve paramount to a commercial entity. Walt Disney Television, for instance, licensed a July 2016 photograph of Paul Manafort under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Walt Disney Television's photograph of Manafort, thus, cannot be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as the prohibition of derivatives conflicts with free distribution. It is within the corporate interest to protect the commercial and derivative use of a work. The licensor is expected to knowingly apply the proper license and must be given the assumption of intent, irrespective of true intent.

The content in this discussion contains copyrighted content that has not knowingly been released under a free distribution license or within the public domain, necessitating the representation of a licensor or an explicit sublicense, the latter having not been achieved. Having read the legal basis behind the Creative Commons Attribution license, the individual who uploaded the referenced content cannot represent the licensor, as said individual had no involvement in the creation or licensing of the subcontent, regardless of the intention of the applied license. The judgement I hold would apply to all material referenced by Alexis Jazz. I previously upheld the belief that the Hogwarts Legacy trailer is able to be freely used and distributed; the trailer includes content that is the copyright of Warner Bros., including the logo of the game, and cannot be considered material eligible for the Creative Commons licenses. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 21:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

In regards to the last sentence, are you saying you changed your mind since that deletion request? -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 21:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The last sentence seems oxymoronic. You first say that the trailer is able to be freely used and distributed, but then say that it cannot be considered material eligible for the Creative Commons licenses. What do you mean by this? JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 03:07, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Reply to HouseBlaster's email from WMF Legal

Hi, I'm BChoo (WMF) (talk · contribs). I thought I would paste my reply to the email from HouseBlaster here as well:

Thank you for writing to the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Department, and for your summary of the situation. We are now looking into this. To start, one thing we will try to do is reach out to Nickelodeon with a question about their CC licensed content on YouTube. Given the time of year, I don't expect we will hear back right away. I've read the thread on VPP; I will post this reply there as well. Since we are prioritizing other legal matters, I can't promise regular updates or responsiveness on-wiki about this in the near term.

BChoo (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

BChoo, thanks, I hadn't quite expected a public notice like this, I appreciate it.
If you could drop Disney a mail as well for their DisneyChannelIsrael channel that would be great. I'd do it myself, but (if I could get in touch at all) they'd get stuck in their script when I can't give them a Disney+ account name and refuse to reboot my phone.. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

One thought I have: I'm sure it's very much in their interest to try and claim they're still in copyright (though, that said, trademark is probably a big defense here). In some ways, if Misplaced Pages isn't all-in on it, this is how we encourage the creation of bad law that overturns a host of other public domain works. Adam Cuerden _{Has about 8.7% of all FPs.} 21:20, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Public domain works? This phrasing sounds like when Warner Music Group had "Happy Birthday to You" under copyright for 122 years. JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 21:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

A reminder that a CC licensed work can include copyrighted portions under fair use allowances, but that doesn't magically convert the copyrighted portions to CC. There is supposed to be appropriate mention of the copyright origin of the fair use segments as part of the CC work, but even absent that, CC doesn't have this magical conversion in place. See . --Masem (t) 02:32, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

It's also worth remembering, though, that if a copyright holder releases something under a non-revocable license like CC, they can't just take it back. It's like loss of the secrecy of a trade secret; once the cat is out of the bag, it is out.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Wanted: a WP:LAWRS

I think that is it generally agreed that WP:MEDRS has been a success in keeping frivolous and questionable medical assertions out of the encyclopedia. As an attorney approaching two decades in practice, I can not tell you how many times I have seen mainstream media outlets reporting on legal matters from what I would call a Hollywood understanding of how the law works, rather than a practical legal understanding. This extends to understanding the burdens (or absence of burdens) for filing a civil claim or a criminal charge, the legal insignificance of "dramatic" witness testimony, and the importance of technicalities on which cases sometimes hinge. There needs to be an extra level of vetting for legal reporting to ensure that the sources used to support legal claims are not only reliable sources in terms of their editorial policies, but are also competent in their comprehension of the law. BD2412 T 23:55, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

There is already WP:RSLAW, which is an essay (like WP:SCIRS and others but not MEDRS). It seems pretty thorough, however it is almost exclusively focused on US law, practice, style, and RS. If you look at any topic dealing with ongoing wars for example, international law or various foreign jurisdictions get brought up all the time, which is entirely different and inevitably gets garbage sourcing in articles.

One could even have a more general RS overview about sourcing technical factual subject matter that could then be applied a bit more liberally across the board. (Just because RSLAW is US-only doesn't mean their guidance about sourcing isn't relevant to a situation when a British newspaper posts some dubious statement about how their law works -- the chorus is too often "an RS is an RS" and "it's just an essay".) SamuelRiv (talk) 01:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

There's also WP:HISTRS, which I think serves as a cautionary tale. They wanted to have use the best, most scholarly sources for everything, defining "history" very broadly and declaring that any subject that any historian ever wrote about was now a history subject and should only be sourced to scholarly works written by historians. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

The other side of the coin is that there are a lot of people who want to try to draw out the implications of a case from the court filings, including the decision (less a problem) and filing and amicus briefs (far more a problem). We should not try to get so far in to the weeds of writing about legal cases that requires using these sources save for what they say plain as face (such as reporting the holding and concurrences/dissents from the front matter of a SCOTUS case), and instead rely on third-party judgements as to what parts to highlight to a wider audience. Masem (t) 02:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Both LAWRS and a HISTRS policies would be awesome. Limiting history to historical scholarship is kind of a no-brainer. Law is tougher, though -- it's not as simple as limiting sources to scholarship because of current events -- but that's all the more reason to have guidance. Levivich (talk) 04:04, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Just because there's current events doesn't mean we should quote a non-expert assessment of how the law works, especially if it's patent nonsense, as is frequently happening now in our current event articles. Information from an otherwise-reliable news outlet that says such-and-such is a war crime is useless for WP unless it is doing so quoting an expert or by an expert reporter. (In some cases such quotes are implicit, as in they were interviewing such an expert elsewhere in the same article and then making a technical statement of fact later -- this is commonly seen in newspaper science reporting, for example.) This should be uncontroversial. SamuelRiv (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

A lot of current events legal cases simply don't have any reliable sources other than news media. Levivich (talk) 16:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

A non-specialist journalist can be an RS for what is factually happening. They are not an RS for interpreting technical knowledge into those events. So if a NYT beat reporter writes

"A man was arrested for biting a dog on 5th Avenue yesterday. Biting a dog is illegal under statutes prohibiting cruelty to animals. The prosecutor said they will instead pursue charges of jaywalking."

Sentence 1 is reliably sourced, while sentence 2 is not, because the reporter and editor typically have no expertise (that is claimed in this scenario) to be able to assess the law in that way. (Law is complicated -- it may not actually be cruelty to animals for the man to bite a dog because of some later legislation, or some obscure precedent.) Sentence 3 may be factual, but the word "instead" is linked to the reporter's claim in sentence 2, so it'd be problematic to quote. However, if the reporter was not just some beat journalist but was instead the NYT SCOTUS/legal correspondent, then sentence 2 and 3 would indeed be reliably sourced. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I have seen a fair number of cases where an article subject has been, for example, subject to a civil (but not criminal) proceeding for something like an FTC or SEC violation, had all but one count dismissed (or been found liable on only one count), and been reported on like they were convicted of a serious crime when all they got was a small fine for a technical breach. I have also seen plenty of reporting of dramatic civil case filings that went nowhere. I think we need to be particularly careful with how these are presented in BLPs. Literally anyone can file a lawsuit alleging a wrong and seeking, let's say eleventy-billion dollars in damages. That doesn't mean that the claim would withstand the scrutiny of anyone having any a modicum of knowledge of how the law works. BD2412 T 19:53, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

That points to a fact that if we do make a LAWRS, BLP is going to be a significant part of that, particularly BLPCRIME. Even if several media sources claim something prior to any conviction or sentencing, we need to take particular care to frame it or even if it is necessary to include. While BLP doesn't apply to companies or the like, the same principles should still be taken into account, too. Masem (t) 01:43, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how BLPCRIME would be require anything more than a passing reference to some general technical RS essay. There are verifiable biographical facts that a news outlet may report -- "he got arrested and charged with x crime" -- and there are technical evaluations that can only be made by qualified people -- "what is asserted in the indictment can be considered y which is a crime". It's the same BLP guideline as always. The main point of an LAWRS essay, as is the main point MEDRS, SCIRS, HISTRS, etc, is that most of the time even factual connections that seem obvious must have expert sources, because this stuff is usually more complicated than it looks. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a far deeper issue than BLPCRIME, though. I have seen plenty of articles where civil litigation was blown vastly out of proportion. Literally anyone can file a civil claim against literally anyone else, and can claim whatever they want in the complaint. Throughout civil litigation there are picayune rulings on the admissibility of pieces or evidence or minor points of law, with the parties jockeying to claim that any ruling won is a significant event. BD2412 T 22:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand yet what the proposed approach to Literally anyone can file a civil claim against literally anyone else is. Regardless of the legal merits of a given case, filing is an event that happened, it's in the public record, and if meets notability, then it meets notability. If the concern is that a media outlet may take an accusation presented in a filing and report the accusation as a fact, then I totally get that, yet I'm not sure that any media source that already meets WP:RS would do that, because they need to limit their own exposure. Is there a recent example of an article taking a claim in a filing and presenting it as a fact that we can look at? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 22:47, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

SamuelRiv, I beg to disagree. Identifying living people who have only been accused of crime (but not yet found guilty) is a widespread problem on Misplaced Pages, with many editors claiming that "because some reliable sources do it, we can do it, too". Some esp. American editors don't seem to grasp that such an identification is outright illegal in many non-US legal systems (e.g., in most of Europe). I've been battling this attitude first in Murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German, more recently in Killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume. It gives no pleasure to be seen arguing, seemingly, on behalf of a likely criminal. I would therefore consider having an extended, detailed guideline as incredibly helpful. — kashmīrī  22:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Levivich, I disagree that Limiting history to historical scholarship is kind of a no-brainer. We don't need any sort of serious scholarship behind statements like "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States" or "The United Kingdom declared war on Germany in 1939, two days after the invasion of Poland". These are undisputed, simple facts; a school textbook for 12 year olds should be more than sufficient for being sure that we've got those right.

We also don't need to limit our sources exclusively to scholarly publication by historians, as has been argued by proponents of HISTRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The difference is that MEDRS is universal, its the same for every person. When it comes to medicine we're all under the same jurisdiction per say because we're all human. There is no universality in law, especially at the level which you appear to want to pursue this. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:57, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

This is an important point but I'd say it's exactly the sort of thing that a LAWRS should explain. For example, just as WP:MEDORG explains the differences between different medical organizations, a WP:LAWJURIS could explain that there exist different legal jurisdictions and levels of courts (internationally and domestically). Similarly, in the same way that WP:MEDASSESS explains the difference between different kinds of medical papers, a WP:LAWASSESS could explain the difference between legal treatises, law review articles, lower court decisions vs. high court opinions, even with a section akin to WP:MEDPOP called WP:LAWPOP addressing the popular press and its Hollywood understanding of the law, and the difference between legal journalism and popular journalism. Levivich (talk) 04:31, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes you would need all of that and by the time you were done you would have a 400k byte behemoth (and likely a large number of country specific pages). You would also have created a scholarly work of significant merit, nobody to my knowledge has ever attempted a truly comprehensive overview of the entire global legal landscape... The stumbling block for most is customary law and antiquated idiosyncrasy (for example colonial laws still being in force long after the end of colonialism and the abandonment of such laws by the colonizer) which prevents the sort of claims you can make about the body in law that you can make about medicine. In medicine there is truth, in law there is not. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I said explain that there exist different legal jurisdictions, not enumerate them all :-) Levivich (talk) 20:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• This is special pleading. Mass media sources such as journalism are obviously weak with any technical topic. But that's a general issue and so applies across all such topics – engineering, chemistry, linguistics, economics and so on. It's not clear why law should be picked out for a special policy.

Medicine seems to get special attention because bad advice can be life-threatening. But the same might be said of our coverage of military tactics, adventure sports, exploration, religion and so on. But everything on Misplaced Pages is subject to the same legal disclaimer,

WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY

Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate, or reliable information. If you need specific advice (for example, medical, legal, financial, or risk management), please seek a professional who is licensed or knowledgeable in that area.

In particular,

WIKIPEDIA DOES NOT GIVE LEGAL OPINIONS

Misplaced Pages contains articles on many legal topics; however, no warranty whatsoever is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained in an article touching on legal matters is true, correct, or precise.

Nothing on Misplaced Pages.org or of any project of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a legal opinion...

But a problem with these disclaimers is that they are hidden in the fine print at the foot of every page. If you dress up a topic with impressive professional sources and make it seem to be credible and comprehensive then you're passing off by making it appear that Misplaced Pages is high quality and reliable, when it isn't and can't be.

Andrew🐉(talk) 20:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I think you should review your last sentence in particular, because it contradicts the entire concept of an encyclopedia (or expository writing in general). SamuelRiv (talk) 20:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

No, you need to go read the disclaimers which are at the foot of this and every other page. See also Misplaced Pages is not a reliable source. Its lack of reliability is fundamental. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing a draft to see how this would be handled differently from our existing policies. Mostly because I think the topic is fundamentally distinct from MEDRS and HISTRS in that (I believe) those guidelines were created to exclude sources widely and consistently recognized as unreliable, such as those claiming that Coca-Cola can cure cancer or that the pyramids were built by space dolphins. I'm not sure that the field of law has quite the same problem. Yes, there are sensational articles and dumb Hollywood representations, but I know that these issues exist for any field— ask me how many times the field of commercial aviation is routinely mangled in such— which is why we already don't cite action movies or certain tabloids as reliable sources. By way of example, today I ran across this article about a recent US Supreme Court ruling in a "popular" newspaper; are there any issues in that article which indicate that ordinary journalism which already meets WP:RS cannot handle the task of accurately reporting on topics of law? Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there are sensational articles and dumb Hollywood representations, but I know that these issues exist for any field— ask me how many times the field of commercial aviation is routinely mangled in such— which is why we already don't cite action movies or certain tabloids as reliable sources. The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is relevant here. We all notice the places where general-audience media gets the technical details of our own areas of expertise wrong, and conclude "ah-ha! what wikipedia needs is more guidance on how to find reliable sources about widget manufacturing!" when in fact what wikipedia needs is for people to be more careful about source use in all fields. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

As I note in my previous examples, and you will see if you look at any articles on ongoing wars, an otherwise reliable source like the Guardian will publish something like "Country A uses X weapon. Using X weapon is a war crime under IHL per Geneva Convention IV." Unless that reporter is quality a RS on international law or is themselves a RS on law then that kind of statement cannot be cited in an article. However, such citations are seen all over articles on ongoing wars.

The reason for having subject-matter RS essays is because editors will time and again say "An RS is an RS." Even here, several commenters seem convinced that law is not sufficiently complex or nuanced (or, alternatively, it is too nuanced and nebulous?) to warrant such special consideration. This is why such essays are needed. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd call that "legal journalism" not "popular journalism." More broadly, I don't think the problem arises much for Supreme Court opinions -- they're always covered by legal journalism (such as that NYT article) -- but rather for lower court decisions, especially ongoing litigation. Levivich (talk) 18:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Also there's basically a working draft already in existence at WP:RSLAW, which makes most of the main points (albeit descriptive rather than prescriptive, as it's an essay). Levivich (talk) 18:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. I was happy to see that it has an important scoping principle right up front ("This essay is about sources that attempt mainly to state the law itself, and not about sources that attempt mainly to state the effects or impacts of the law") that goes a long way to allieviating my personal concerns about any future guidelines being unnecessarily complicated or restrictive. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• I've been thinking about this, and I've come to the view that for an encyclopaedist, law is generally an easier topic to write about than medicine. With legal topics, you can draw on published laws and published judgments, in which judges explain what the law is and give reasons for their decisions. (Diseases aren't so helpful.) I would say that a judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in the relevant country. And because it comes from a judge, it's necessarily neutral and unbiased. (Pharmaceutical firms' statements about their products aren't so helpful.)With that in mind, I'd certainly agree that a LAWRS would be helpful, but I don't feel it needs all the force and rigour we associate with MEDRS.—S Marshall T/C 09:45, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  You've described maybe (a guess) 10% of what law is, and maybe 2% of the sourcing about law on WP. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  So we can trust North Korean judges? Its an interesting argument, but you clearly haven't thought all that much about this if you are still operating under the impression that every judge in the world is necessarily neutral and unbiased. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  As I said: A North Korean judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in North Korea.—S Marshall T/C 17:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  With legal topics, you can draw on published laws and published judgments, in which judges explain what the law is and give reasons for their decisions ... I would say that a judgment that hasn't been overturned by a higher court or subsequent law, is a 100% reliable statement of what the law is in the relevant country. No! This is exactly the kind of misconception that LAWRS could clear up. Published laws and published judgments are primary sources for "what the law is" (at least in common law jurisdictions), and a judgment that hasn't been overturned is not a reliable statement of what the law is... there are all sorts of reasons why not, depending on what country you're in. I've run across this exact misconception before -- an editor who did not know what a circuit split was wrote an article based on a particular circuit court decision as if that decision -- because it hadn't been overturned by the US Supreme Court -- applied nationwide, when in fact, it did not. I'd say this is the exact kind of misconception that people have about the law that results in errors in articles. One thing I'd want LAWRS to say is: do not cite directly to court opinions for statements of the law, instead use secondary sources (like law treatises, law review articles, and legal--not popular--journalism). (Which is what WP:RSLAW already says). Levivich (talk) 18:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  In the US, each state has its own laws and its own courts. Even in the Federal courts, it is common for judges in different districts to issue different opinions. Only if and when the supreme court passes judgement is there a RS for the US law on those issues. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  Judges are expected to be neutral and unbiased, but in the US at least, there exists the occasional judge who operates as an overt partisan hack. Per WP:BLP (BLP adjacent?), I'm not providing examples. :) Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} 20:22, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

• A judge's ruling is, most of the time, going to be a WP:PRIMARY source. A high-quality primary source, but still a primary source, with all the caveats that come with that. In particular, legal language can be fairly obtuse to a casual reader, an even experts can disagree on precisely what some precedent means; so discussing the law in any practical sense beyond a bare-minimum quote is going to require a secondary source, and for highly-controversial issues even a direct primary quote might raise WP:OR / WP:SYNTH concerns if it's used in a way that implies something that may not be directly obvious from the source itself. That said, I'm not sure we need something like MEDRS simply because, most of the time, the risk of harm is lower. There may be a few cases where a reader might get themselves in trouble by relying on Misplaced Pages for legal advice, but the vast majority of our legal-related articles are at a more abstract level than most readers are likely to involve themselves in anyway. --Aquillion (talk) 02:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

The problem with that is that what is and isn't a medical article and is under the scope of the medical sourcing restrictions is much narrower than what this would apply to. This hypothetical page is going to help the relatively few articles we have that are on purely law related constructs, but would not help at all (or would actively hinder) articles that are largely on people or events (which is what you point out) and would make sourcing for many articles impossible. I genuinely can't see what we could use as sources for the stuff you're talking about. Can we only say someone has been accused of a crime if it's published in a law textbook? There really is no way to rectify this without original research. There is no law equivalent of the kinds of sources medical pages would have.

And, as said above, medical consensus is consistent worldwide, while laws vary widely by country and subdivisions, and terms can mean completely contradictory things in different places.

The problem here is, Misplaced Pages reflects the press, and the press is often wrong about many things. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment: I'm not sure a LAWRS is needed, but, as others have noted, I think it should definitely be clarified that statutory text or a judicial opinion is a primary source for legal writing, whereas law review articles and commentary on those decisions are secondary sources. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
• I like the idea of elevating RSLAW to a guideline, but I think that significant preparatory work needs to happen first. The page is a bit barebones, and law sourcing is not a light subject. I think it will be a challenge to condense what is really needs to be a full legal education into a guideline, but I think we could definitely do a better job than we currently do. If I have some time this month I'll try my hand at improving it. I think the page needs a discussion of international law (a tricky subject, separate from the law of individual countries), a paragraph/pointer to how Bluebook citation works, and some experts in the law of other countries to weigh in on how other countries might face unique issues. I also think a policy RfC might need to happen to clear up what seems to be the core issue here: when can an original decision be cited? I.e., is it a primary source? If so, when can it be used? How are we to treat secondary sources, which are rather varied in the law and have widely varying trustworthiness? I'm glad this discussion has been opened; I think there are a lot of sub-issues to be solved here first. CaptainEek ⚓ 21:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  This has caused me to find Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/U.S. legal citations/Bluebook, which seems to have been forgotten about. But I think it might also be time to re-raise the issue of how Misplaced Pages deals with Bluebook citations. I've seen inconsistent use of Bluebook citations, and with no formal guidance on the subject, most users are probably not sure how to proceed. CaptainEek ⚓ 21:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Correction, there is formal guidance at Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Legal, but its almost so insufficient as to be useless to anyone who doesn't own a copy of the Bluebook. CaptainEek ⚓ 21:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Different national jurisdictions tend to have a preferred style (which is what something like the BlueBook recommends to follow), and then there's a legal citation style for MLA, Chicago (not the open-access MaroonBook), Harvard, etc. For Misplaced Pages will we want, by necessity, source/reporter-agnostic citations, which is what many US jurisdictions have begun recommending or requiring (but some have notably not, or by law cannot). BlueBook is not an option -- among many reasons, their MOS is copyright.

  I have review notes of all this stuff from last summer when I was organizing a bunch of our legal citation templates and getting a CS1 extension coded. That said, citation styles are completely irrelevant to this discussion -- we're discussing RS for matters of law, not legal citations. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:59, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Of course Bluebook is an option. Editors can use any citation style they want, including styles whose official description is behind a paywall. See also Category:Bluebook style citation templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I recently brought a case article to FA, Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.. In § Decision, I cited secondary sources for each of the key holdings of the court's decision with additional citations to the pages of the court decision. In my view, if I had just cited the decision and wrote out my own interpretation of what the holding was, that would have been OR. I think in general, interpreting a court case is OR because litigants routinely argue over the meaning of a court's holding or attempt to distinguish them from other cases, and appellate courts routinely clarify their earlier holdings or resolve ambiguities. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:58, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  This seems to be the general problem with law – that it requires interpretation of natural language and this is often not precise or certain. But if interpreting the language of statutes and decisions is OR, then interpreting the language of secondary sources would be OR too. At some point, you just have to accept that texts mean what they say. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Here's some language from the US Constitution: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." My question for you (and anyone else who wants to play): is Congress allowed to make a law that abridges free speech or the press? (By the way, this is not some matter of interpretation of language, but rather facts long established in US law.) SamuelRiv (talk) 23:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  The US Congress and state legislators regularly pass laws which are then found to be unconstitutional – here's a long list of them. US law is like Misplaced Pages policy – fuzzy and political. See WP:NOTLAW, WP:IAR, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  By "can" I clearly meant "allowed to" under the Constitution. I don't know why you're linking WP meta pages here -- that response in itself should begin to indicate to you that you may be completely missing the point. SamuelRiv (talk) 11:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Sameul, I'm unsure what your point is here. Instead of asking editors to answer a rhetorical question, just say what you want to say. As to voort's comment, I think they have a good point: many legal sources require interpretation, i.e. quality secondary sources such as journal articles. I like the strategy of citing both to the original case and a secondary source; that's also a good approach in some historical articles where you might cite both a contemporary source, and then a modern source which interprets that source. CaptainEek ⚓ 00:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  It's a concrete question with a real answer. It's a good way to illustrate why a lot of what has been argued in this thread is a bit absurd. As to your comment, this is already standard for how one cites any sources: case law is primary, so you cite a secondary source that reviews the primary, using any internal citation format, such as "SecondarySource, citing PrimarySource." This is not what the RSLAW essay is about. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  If your point is that interpretation of the free speech and press clause is not as simple as interpreting the language of the Constitution as written, then I agree with you.

  To respond to @Andrew Davidson's point, I think there's a distinction between interpreting a legal decision or a statute and reporting what a secondary source said, because I might read a decision or statute one way, but that reading may not comport with how RSes have interpreted those. For example, criminal law 1.01 might say "a person is guilty of x when they do y", but the courts may have interpreted that to mean "a person is guilty of x when the prosecution proves elements a, b, and c", even if 1.01 doesn't explicitly say that. Moreover, I might read the court decision interpreting 1.01 differently than the majority of RSes, or if I weren't a lawyer, I might misunderstand what that decision means entirely (for example, the word "reasonable" in law can have a very different meaning than how a layperson would understand it). It would be OR to advance my reading of the court decision interpreting 1.01 in a Misplaced Pages article, just with citations to the court decision and 1.01, rather than citing to available secondary sources summarizing those things. Indeed, we wouldn't even have an article on 1.01 or the court decision unless there were secondary sources establishing their notability, so why wouldn't we prefer using those rather than letting any editor on Misplaced Pages interpret those primary sources however they read them? voorts (talk/contributions) 00:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• A proposal: Given that there is some interest in this idea, but that it likely wouldn't gain any traction until there's a full-fledged proposal in place for a new guideline, I recommend that we close this thread for now and move conversation over to the RSLAW talk page, with notification to WP:LAW, and try fixing that up. I'm willing to work with CaptainEek and whoever else wants to join. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:56, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • @Voorts: I am amenable to that solution. I do want to be clear that my concern is not primarily with reporting on SCOTUS cases and federal statutes, but with sensationalized reporting on legal issues of ordinary BLP subjects. BD2412 T 13:24, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

    @BD2412 I agree that sensationalized law reporting is bad. But I'm not quite sure if that solution is distinct from "don't use bad sources" in the first place. Unless we're saying that lay reporting shouldn't be used for legal sources at all? Are you suggesting that any legal claim require citation to a journal, just as any medical claim requires a citation to a journal? I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but I think it might be harder to implement than MEDRS. CaptainEek ⚓ 20:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

    The complementary set of "lay reporting" isn't limited to academic journals -- that's absurd. Many times in this thread we've given examples of acceptable RS for law. For example, every major newspaper has a well-trained law/court correspondent, just like a (very few) news outlets have qualified science or data reporters. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  I agree and have added the page to my watchlist. Levivich (talk) 19:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Even if we have bright flashing disclaimers covering most of the page a significant number of people are going to take Misplaced Pages's word as gospel. After all many people believe what is written some drunken bozo on an Internet forum. This fact was recognised by the writers of WP:MEDRS and, because medical advice is often a matter of life and death, stricter rules have been applied for sourcing in this subject area. I'm sure that people can come up with some cases where legal advice is a matter of life and death, but it is rarely the case. Important, yes, but not that important. I don't consider the law to be enough of an exception to warrant a stricter guideline for sourcing than is generally the case. Of course essays can be written about sourcing in any subject area, and are often helpful. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Urgency may be as valid as importance here. If a reader with a medical emergency discovers from Misplaced Pages that the recommended treatment is to stick beans up their nose, bad things may happen quickly before someone with a clue can intervene. If we give the reader poor legal advice, there is usually (though not always) time to seek a second opinion from a competent lawyer before acting on it. Certes (talk) 11:48, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I am not sure I understand a problem that needs to be solved (except for an expansion of WP:BLPCRIME to address civil litigation beyond WP:DUE). Reporting of any subject (not just law) could be excellent, adequate, or even misleading. We should always strive to find better sourcing, but I think we should err in most subjects towards inclusion and let the normal process of BRD work. (I strongly agree that WP:MEDRS is the exception to our normal principles). --Enos733 (talk) 22:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
  • BLP is the place where guardrails are most sorely needed, but there are plenty of articles on non-BLP entities that suffer from the same problems in portrayal of legal information. BD2412 T 04:04, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  My feelings are similar to Enos. It would be helpful to have examples where sourcing has been the cause of problems. In my (limited) experience reading through Misplaced Pages’s legal topics, the main problem seems to be that our coverage is lacking; my impression is that we just have fewer people with adequate legal expertise, so it’s just a question of man-hours.

  It may be worth considering areas differently—statutory law; criminal case law; civil case law; legal rules and principles; popular criminal trials—of course that last one seems to be easier to cover for the same reason that a new civil construction project is easier to cover than the novel engineering techniques that underlie it: there is just more coverage in digestible RSes when the public interest is there. The problem of bad mainstream coverage raised at the top seems a niche one, and I’m not sure how far a LAWRS would go to solving it. People who want to write about true crime topics are not the same people who want to cover legal topics.

  As I think about it, digestibility just might be the biggest hurdle. I also think good coverage of law subjects is going to be harder than coverage of equivalent(?) med subjects. It’s just easier to write plainly about things that are subject to scientific inquiry, or generally statements of fact. (It feels somehow connected to the is–ought dichotomy…) And this will affect both the level of sourcing out there, as well as the average ability for editors to cover the topic here. — HTGS (talk) 01:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  One potential example is Rupperswil murder case, where the sources confused the not-at-all identical meanings of "child" and "minor" under Swiss criminal law. And questionable discussion of whether the perp could get paroled at some point. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  Several law articles cite only to the court decision in summarizing its holding and more broadly lack citation to law reviews or other scholarly sources. See, for example, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which was just listed at GAR. In § Implications for theories of executive power, the only source cited is a Glenn Greenwald article. Although that's arguably an RS since Greenwald used to be a reliable legal commentator, no article would pass GA today without citation to several law review articles on that section's topic and others. Likewise, the sections of the article describing the Court's holding cite only to the decision itself, which, as I have noted above, is basically OR. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  Then it sounds like our current policies cover it. That GAR appears (correctly) doomed without the need for any additional regulation. Most of the discussion here seems to be around OR concerns, so maybe the right thing to do is include legal decisions as examples of primary sources in WP:PRIMARY. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

  I think the point is that it would be useful to have some sort of guideline since it's hard for someone who isn't a lawyer to write about law topics without knowing where to begin their research. For example, I could see a good faith editor trying to write about a legal case while only citing to newspaper articles and without looking into the legal scholarship for more appropriate sourcing. It would be helpful if one could point those editors to an effective guide for doing legal research. That said, I'm not sure this needs to be elevated to the level of guideline; it might be appropriate as an explanatory essay, for example. In any event, I think some of us have agreed to start working on the essay to clean it up, so I think it's premature to determine what could happen in the end. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:43, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Just improve WP:RSLAW to be less US-centric. If you think something like that should eventually become a guideline, then draft a version in a sandbox that is carefully rewritten in guideline-appropriate language and with a clear eye to not producing conflicts with other WP:P&G pages, then propose that version be made into a guideline and the old essay replaced. Good luck; most such efforts do not succeed, because after 20+ years we pretty much already have all the P&G we need. PS: I have redirected WP:LAWRS to the same target as WP:RSLAW since that's where it obviously should have already been going.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:26, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

RfC to limit the inclusion of the deadname of deceased transgender or non-binary persons

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Should the following be added to MOS:DEADNAME?

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their former name (birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in their main biographical article only if the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person.

For pre-RFC discussions on this proposal, see:

1. Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Deadnames of the deceased – yet again
2. Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#Proposal to split MOS:GENDERID from Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Biography
3. Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2023 archive#WP:BOLD restrictions on the use of deceased transgender or non-binary persons birth name or former name

This text was added boldly by different editors, originally in July and again in October, but was removed in December. 18:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I have split this long discussion to its own page, because (a) it's only been open a few days, and we've already got 85 comments from 46 people here and (b) due to the number of large discussions, this Village Pump page is currently almost half a million bytes long, which is much longer than some people can effectively read and participate in. The new location for this RFC is Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Names of deceased trans people. Please join the discussion over there. Thanks for your understanding, WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

May a degrading slogan be displayed on a flag?

File:Ansarullah Flag Vector.svg is used in a number of articles as a "Houthi flag". One example: Riyadh Agreement#International reactions. As far as I can tell, it is not a flag, and IMO it is repugnant to display this slogan in Misplaced Pages indiscriminately due to its content. If there were to be a flag, perhaps the one displayed in Supreme Political Council could be used instead. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:46, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is WP:NOTCENSORED. Your opinion amounts to comic book style political censorship of the kind we just don't do. So no. Hard no. Note that the Saudi flag also has an offensive slogan on it, are we to discontinue its use as well? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:54, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipiedia is also not for WP:THINGSMADEUPONEDAY, so despite your sneering contempt, the question of whether this is an actual flag or is just something someone installed on Misplaced Pages is worth looking into. Doing a Google Image search on "Ansarullah Flag" finds nothing similar, so one could understand not feeling it's a flag... and it's not as the term is normally used.

If you do an Image search on the term as it is described in its file (Houthi Ansarullah "Al-Sarkha" banner), one does find a few picture examples, but only one in which it seems to be being used as a "flag" (and there it is described as a picture of a slogan rather than as a flag); more commonly, its shown as a banner or poster. Whether it is the best choice for a flag image to represent a group is a fair question. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:45, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

The version you see here with their slogan on the white background is their flag, the slogan itself is just the words written on it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:19, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Source? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The image we are discussing here is literally their slogan written on a white flag... Did you think that it was on a blank background? Did you think that it was just a coincidence that they were all the same? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay, so you don't have a source, but you assume it's their flag. If I write "E pluribus unum" on a white piece of fabric, does that make it the flag of the United States? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I've bern following the Houthi movement for longer than I've been editing wikipedia. You're asking for a citation that the sky is blue which can be surprisingly hard to find... All I can really show you is it being used, typically its called the "Houthi banner" (the difference between a banner and a flag is immaterial for wiki purposes, it only matters to sexologists) such as this 2014 Reuters piece "At a People’s Committee checkpoint bedecked with a Houthi banner in Sanaa's Bier Abu Shamla district" This CNN piece "Fighters loyal to the Saudi-backed government point rifles toward a Houthi banner on the outskirts of Hodeidah.". Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

You may mean 'vexillologists' not 'sexologists', but I suppose sexologists may also care about flags and banners.-gadfium 03:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Both can likely tell you why your flag is at half mast Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems to be a notable image/sign/slogan often used at protests, per Slogan of the Houthi movement. But I can't see anything official indicating that it is the flag that leaders of the Houthi movement have chosen to represent them as a group. If it isn't an official flag, it shouldn't be used as on on Misplaced Pages. The Wordsmith 01:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Besides for the fact that its the flag that the leaders of the Houthi movement use to represent them as a group? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not especially familiar with the Houthi movement nor can I read Arabic, but I'm not sure these photos are sufficient. I'm fairly sure that in order to call somethign the flag of this movement, we'd need to have third party reliable sources saying so. In a pinch, I'd even say a primary source like a website/statement of the movement leaders or spokespeople would be enough. I'm sure it can be difficult for movements like this, but we need verifiablility if we want to give some kind of official standing to symbols associated with a group. The Wordsmith 02:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Nobody has proposed that we call something the flag of this movement unless I'm missing something. What we are discussing is whether it can be used to represent them. We don't actually *need* even a single source to do that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:NONSOVEREIGN: if a flag is felt to be necessary, it should be that of the sovereign state (e.g. the United States of America or Canada) and not that of a subnational entity, even if that entity is sometimes considered a "nation" or "country" in its own right. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

And then note where it says that many editors disagree and not to try to enforce it universally? Seems like poorly written MOS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Take a gander at War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) for how we normally treat these sorts of groups... AKA we use their self-declared flag, whether it be for the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, or the ISAF. Or try Belligerents in the Syrian civil war for a bewildering number of flags/banners of things other than sovereign states. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:56, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

• Offensive slogans are not uncommon on flags. To give an example from US history, both the First navy jack and the Gadsden Flag contain the slogan “Don’t tread on me”. This could be seen as offensive and anti-government. Yet the slogan is part of the flag nevertheless. Blueboar (talk) 23:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

  If you think something being anti-government makes it offensive, I'd say you deserve to be offended. --Trovatore (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If it is appropriate to display the flag of this movement in any particular article then it should be displayed as is. I dont think that the example given above is a good one, as I don't see why any flags should be displayed. I wouldn't say that the Saudi flag is anywhere near as offensive as the Houthi one. As a confirmed atheist I do not agree with its slogan, but it does not call for anyone's death. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

The example use would seem inappropriate under MOS:ICONDECORATION, as it doesn't add information, given that the country or group being represented is immediately named. (And because it's a banner and thus vertical in nature, reducing it to that height makes it unrecognizable, which is not so true of horizontally-oriented flags.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:05, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Flag-icons seem to be used in some other "International reactions" sections of articles on major events when that section is a simple bullet-list rather than paragraphs or subsections. DMacks (talk) 00:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If we can verify that this is indeed an official Houthi flag, then it should go in the article. We display the flag of Nazi Germany in their article and I can't imagine a more offensive flag than that one. Loki (talk) 00:29, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Except Houthi is not a nation, it's a political group. So if this is its flag, that might be appropriate on Houthi movement, but it makes it less appropriate when we are talking about the jurisdiction represented (Saada Governorate), much as if we were talking about something the Biden administration was doing, the proper symbol would not be the Democratic donkey, but the flag of the United States. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes... And when a political group takes power in a nation and makes their symbols the national ones thats what happens... Whether its the Houthi movement or the National Socialist movement. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:22, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

And again, I ask for source. It's really not that wild a thing to ask for. Can you find me a reliable third-party source that this is the flag for the jurisdiction? -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:47, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I can not, the Houthis don't get that level of coverage where we would have significant coverage of the history of their flag... At least from non-primary sources. I think you'll actually have trouble with that for many jurisdictions. Also note that Saada Governorate =/= Houthis. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

NatGertler makes a good point: if we can't WP:V that this flag/banner/thing actually formally represents the organization who is speaking in this "reaction", then it doesn't belong on WP. If the group speaking is a government or at least whatever organization is nominally in charge, then that's what should be used. It's not POV to use a verified representation of the group. DMacks (talk) 02:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

We have lots of articles showing quasi-official flags. Black Lives Matter, Ku Klux Klan, Rainbow flag (LGBT), Kach (political party), Symbionese Liberation Army, Principality of Sealand, Rastafari. It's a rather vague concept. RoySmith (talk) 02:50, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but in an article that's about the group, the unofficial flag is generally one of the example items used to illustrate the group. That is different when it's used in other articles, where it serves as more of a stand-in for the group. For example, the flag that's used in the Black Lives Matter article is only used to represent the movement as a symbol in one other article -- an infobox in Proud Boys -- and that use is questionable. This despite the fact that we have about 50 articles that link to the Black Lives Matter page (not counting hundreds more that have it linked in a template.) I'm not sure anyone's saying this banner cannot be on the page Houthi movement -- but even there, there is not the claim that it is their "flag", just a display of their slogan. --Nat Gertler (talk) 06:44, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Actually, if you go to Proud Boys now, you won't even find the BLM flag there. I just removed it for reasons utterly unrelated to its flagness, officialness, or the proper use of icons; it was part of an item which should not have been there. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If we are using a flag to represent a group in this way (not just as an illustration in the article about them, but as an icon used across other articles), it should be unambiguously well-attested as an official symbol of that group in multiple reliable third-party sources. Otherwise, it places us in a non-neutral position of promoting a symbol rather than just recognizing others' use of it. If a flag isn't widely used in secondary sources, it won't be effective as a recognizable symbol anyway.--Trystan (talk) 06:12, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Whether it is an "official" symbol or not is irrelevant. What matters is whether it is commonly used in reliable sources (which may be primary or secondary) to represent the group/place/country/etc in question in contexts where flags of other groups/places/countries are used, the group/place/country/etc do not verifiably object to its use in such contexts, and that there is no other symbol that is unambiguously used more often in the same contexts. Thryduulf (talk) 10:50, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

To correct some misunderstandings expressed above: a) The Houthi flag can be easily found in reliable sources, for example being mentioned in the following articles: "Their flag proudly proclaims their slogan: 'God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, and Victory for Islam.'", "Their flag, which in Arabic says, 'death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews,' is routinely presented triumphantly without issue", "Houthi Banner on a Wall in Sana’a, Yemen, January 2015: 'God is great … Death to America … Death to Israel … Curses on the Jews … Victory to Islam.'", "The flag reads: 'Allah is the greatest. Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam'". And b), the Houthis use the flag all the time, for example during public protests (see example here), and on military equipment (Here the flag is put on a Houthi jet fighter). In one image here, you can see the flag on media released by the Houthis relating to the current Red Sea campaign. The flag is commonly used by the Houthis in civil, governmental, and military contexts, and thus should be used to represent them. Applodion (talk) 18:59, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems like that answers the question of whether or not it has recognition as their flag. The only remaining question is whether it is too offensive to be used, which correctly doesn't seem to be getting any traction here per WP:NOTCENSORED. The Wordsmith 20:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I would distinguish pictures depicting Houthi use of the banner from use of it by third parties to represent the Houthi movement (with a large majority of Misplaced Pages's uses being the latter). Based on the sources provided so far, it seems like the only two bodies actively using the flag as a symbol to represent the Houthis are the Houthis themselves and Misplaced Pages. I agree the offensiveness is irrelevant, but we shouldn't be cutting new ground in this regard.--Trystan (talk) 20:37, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Are there examples of other symbols used to depict the Houthi movement that present alternatives? VQuakr (talk) 20:51, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

If there are no symbols widely used by third-party sources to depict a group, the alternative would be for us not to use one.--Trystan (talk) 20:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

But we have such a symbol, you've rejected the wide use by third-party sources in favor of a declaration that it needs to be "bodies" which use the symbol. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

In this particular case I don't know that the "third party" bit is terribly important. If an org uses a flag to identify themselves, to the extent of slapping it (as mentioned above) on the side of their fighter jets, that seems like strong evidence that it is a symbol that can be used to represent the organization. An affirmative rebuttal of "no, this third party uses this other symbol to identify them instead" is certainly not the only counter-argument to that, but it is a potentially valid one. VQuakr (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

...strong evidence that it is a symbol that can be used to represent the organization... Presumably, the Houthis want their banner to be widely disseminated and associated with them. If our sources aren't already doing that, I think it is non-neutral for us to lead the way. ...you've rejected the wide use by third-party sources... I haven't seen any use by third party sources, only pictures depicting the Houthis themselves using it. That is qualitatively different to the way Misplaced Pages has turned it into an icon used across many articles.--Trystan (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

We rarely cite encyclopedias in our articles. Why would we expect RSs to use icons in the way established within Misplaced Pages? That's not a neutrality issue, it's a style issue. Treating one org differently than any other by omitting their flag is non-neutral. VQuakr (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

News media use flags as graphical symbols all the time, and are therefore a good barometer of which symbols are well-established, and which symbols where our adoption would amount to novel promotion. One of the first considerations of any style issue is whether it supports the neutral presentation of information.--Trystan (talk) 22:33, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The Jpost source is an opinion piece, as is the MEI one ("the views expressed in this piece are his own.") The Small Wars Journal cite is a photo caption, which we sometimes treat as equivalent to a headline, and the phrasing of which indicates that this is a Houthi banner rather than the, The Critical Threats source (again a photo caption) recognizes an item in the photo as a flag, but not specifically the Houthi flag. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:55, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

As I said, one can easily find more sources than the ones listed above. For instance, the book Yemen Endures: Civil War, Saudi Adventurism and the Future of Arabia (p. 180, published by Oxford University Press) also discusses that the Houthis used banners adorned with their slogan from their earliest days. The Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016 (p. 244) also talks about their flag, stating that "the organization's philosophy is summarised with blinding clarity by their flag, which consists of five statements in Arabic " before describing the Houthi flag. Yemen's Road to War: Yemeni Struggle in the Middle East also details the Houthi flag in Section 1.9.2. I could mention more examples. Applodion (talk) 23:13, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The first one doesn't quite make the statement we're looking for. The second one does, but its Amazon listing says it's published by Troubador, which is a self-publishing service, so I'm left with the question of whether Neville Teller is suffiiciently an expert for a WP:SPS, a question I won't claim to have an answer to. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 23:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Both the first and the third book talk about the Houthi flag, so I'm unsure why those aren't yet "the statement we're looking for". As you liked the second book's quote, however, I assume you mean a phrase like "... the organization's philosophy is summarised...". I found another source with a very similar framing: Political Musings: Turmoil in the Middle East (Chapter 3) states "The group has very clear objectives, which are spelt out on their flag in five statements, the first and the last in green colour - 'God is Great; Death to America; Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews; Victory to Islam'". This source is published by Vij Books which appear to be a reputable Indian publisher. Applodion (talk) 00:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm just going by your description; "the Houthis used banners adorned with their slogan from their earliest days"; nations and groups have used many things adorned with slogans that aren't their official jurisdictional flags -- military flags, Keep Calm and Carry On posters, etc. Something being a flag or banner they displayed is not the same as being "the flag of". -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:22, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

What I can find for Vij books at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard is just this one example of a book being considered, and it was judged not reliable in that situation. -- Nat Gertler (talk) Nat Gertler (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Ok, let's try some more examples. This pdf of an article from Bloomsbury Collections states "The omnipresent flag decorating the machinery of the Houthis' quasi-military wing renders the sarkha emblazoned with words and colors that emulate the Iranian post-Islamic revolution flag (Figure 11.1)" . In Chapter 1 of The Huthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf, it is emphasized that " the movement's slogan or 'shout' (sarkha), which appears on its flag ". This article by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung states "After all, the slogan printed on their flag is already reminiscent of the 1979 revolution and expresses the general aims of the militia: 'Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Victory to Islam!'" Applodion (talk) 02:46, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• I think we may be missing the forest for the trees here. Before we discuss whether this flag icon is appropriate for use in the article, I think we need to ask whether ANY flag icons belong in the article. See WP:ICON which lays out when and how we should use flag icons. Blueboar (talk) 22:02, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, we're responding to a rather narrow question about racist slogans in flags. Where the flag should be used is a different discussion one that doesn't seem to make sense to me to be discussing here unless a change in policy is being considered. VQuakr (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  The VP(P) isn’t just for discussing changes to policy (in fact, that is best done on the talk page of the policy itself)… it is also for discussing how policy should be applied. What I am asking is how/whether WP:ICON applies? Blueboar (talk) 22:39, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

  Looking at the first few pages its listed as used on, it largely isn't. It mostly appears next to the Houthi name on, say, a list of belligerents in a war or a list of bodies that use a given weapon. That is appropriate if the icon is later used in the piece. For example, 2023 Israel–Hamas war has a list of involved parties, each with an icon.... which is useful because there's lists of individuals and units and the Israeli flag is used to mark which individuals and which units are Israeli. But there are no Houthi individuals or units listed, so the icon does not serve as a key, merely a decoration. (This isn't 100% the case -- on 2023 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, the key is used.) We can argue whether if we have key icons for some groups, we should have them for all groups whether or not they are used. But in a place like the list of operators of the 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3), every group is given a flag in a purely decorative way, which is against WP:ICON.

  I should note that while this banner makes a lousy icon (its vertical format means that it's displayed at half the size of horizontal flags and it fades into gray infobox backgrounds), when used as an icon the text is unreadable (well, it always is to me, but at that size, to anyone.) This at least alleviates concerns that in these examples, the image is being inserted primarily to spread the message of its text.

  Overall, this becomes more a reflection that flag icon use on Misplaced Pages and what our guidelines call for are not in accord. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:40, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well... The conflict is also that the guideline is internally inconsistent... One part of the MOS appears to say only use the flags of sovereign states and another part says you can use any subnational flag you please as long as there is direct relevance. (MOS:FLAGRELEVANCE) seems to accurately reflect what we actually do in practice:

"Subnational flags (regions, cities, etc.) should generally be used only when directly relevant to the article. Such flags are rarely recognizable by the general public, detracting from any shorthand utility they might have, and are rarely closely related to the subject of the article. For instance, the flag of Tampa, Florida, is appropriately used on the Tampa article. However, the Tampa flag should generally not be used on articles about residents of Tampa: it would not be informative, and it would be unnecessarily visually distracting."

Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:20, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

One thing you'll run into is "everyone else gets a flag" situations, like at 76_mm_divisional_gun_M1942_(ZiS-3)#Operators, where there are two dozen entries, all but two being nations. Now in that particular case, no one should have a flag as it is not being used as a key. (The problem with relying on these keys can be seen in 2023 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, where there are keys for political and substate entities in addition to nations... but three of the entities are using , making the keying useless.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Less helpful, but not useless (it would only be useless if they were *all* the same). Overuse is absolutely an issue, but I'm not convinced that any use = overuse. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

• As a general matter, the answer to the question is obviously "yes", per WP:NOTCENSORED. However, in this particular case – which has nothing at all to do with offensiveness but with verifiability – there appears to be insufficient evidence this is a real banner/flag used by the Houthi militants. Its use as a symbol for Mohammed al-Houthi in particular at Riyadh Agreement#International reactions is clearly inappropriate. Its use at Houthi movement seems to be dubious; there's some hint of sourcing above, some of it unreliable, some less so but not necessarily sufficient. At least in the case of Mohammed al-Houthi in that table of Riyadh Agreement politicians, it should be replaced with the flag found at General People's Congress (Yemen), or perhaps the one at Supreme Political Council; they are actual flags adopted by the Houthi movement and better sourced, and he actually represents those political bodies.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:19, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

But in that context al-Houthi was not representing the General People's Congress, they were representing the pro-Houthi faction of the General People's Congress. So presenting him as the representative of the party and not a faction within the party would be clearly inappropriate (as well as nonsensical). If any flag is appropriate its the Houthi one, but perhaps no flag at all is appropriate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:52, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:PGCHANGE and clarification of "widespread consensus" (may alter WP:CONSENSUS as well)

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Currently, WP:PGCHANGE says this: After some time, if there are no objections to the change and/or if a widespread consensus for your change or implementation is reached through discussion, you can then edit policy and guideline pages describing the practice to reflect the new situation.

Should WP:PGCHANGE include an explanation, or else clarify the meaning of "widespread consensus" to mean the following:

For the purpose of this policy, "widespread consensus for the change" means that the discussion about substantive changes to a policy or guideline must be advertised sitewide to the entire community (such as through a request for comment and/or by posting at centralized discussion) and, after being so advertised, would reach consensus for the change.

It need not be the exact wording, but this would be the intended meaning. The possibility to edit policies and guidelines if there are no objections to these changes will stay. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Background

A recent discussion about WP:ARTICLESIZE (a guideline) was closed as "consensus to change". But there were a few editors over there who opined that in WP:PGCHANGE (the policy about changing policies and guidelines), "widespread consensus" means that the discussion must be sufficiently advertised (preferably sitewide, as in with an RfC) and there be consensus. VQuakr went on to say that in a discussion about changing policy or a guideline, even a unanimous discussion with ~15 editors would mean little if it only remained known to those who cared about the guideline and did not appear as an RfC or similar.

I then asked DfD to help me out, and the one editor (Isaacl) who answered didn't say whether this was what the policy said but suggested that personally they would prefer to read it as asking for sitewide advertisement. Other editors (the majority of those people) wanted to avoid an RfC as it would be a drain on the community.

To be clear, I do not mean this discussion to overturn that closure (I don't have a horse in that race), but I do want to hear opinions on whether changing policies and guidelines is appropriate without an RfC, given the doubts that have appeared in interpreting that policy. I do not wish to comment about that discussion so as not to appear favouring either side of that discussion. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose - I don't think the additional text works in the broader context of the section. A change can be made if no one objects. A single objection shouldn't neccessarily trigger the need for a site-wide RFC. Often the consensus can become clear through ordinary, widespread discussion, without the bureaucratic overhead of an RFC. There are some changes that should be put to such an RFC, but they shouldn't be mandatory in all cases that aren’t strictly unanimous.--Trystan (talk) 15:25, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose as needless bureaucracy. A WikiProject talk page isn’t a valid place go get consensus, but a policy talk page obviously is Mach61 (talk) 18:28, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
• Reword. I think something is needed, but perhaps not this precise wording. What's really necessary is some sort of link to WP:CONLEVEL and an indication that you need a consensus commiserate to the level of the change you are making - minor tweaks don't require widely-advertised consensus, and sometimes may not require affirmative consensus at all if they're slight wording tweaks and nobody objects, whereas if your change would fundimentially alter the functioning of core policy then it needs consensus on a level appropriate for that massive impact. Currently, at least at a glance, the page doesn't mention that at all; there needs to be at least one link to CONLEVEL somewhere on the page, since understanding that policy is essential for any major policy change. (Especially see the second paragraph of CONLEVEL, which is central here.) --Aquillion (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  I'm ready to hear your proposal Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

  A few months ago, Aquillion said that "an RFC on an article talk page is by default local, and any conclusions it reaches are local; that is the heart and soul of WP:CONLEVEL".

  This is neither consistent with what CONLEVEL says (it gives an example of an unadvertised, non-RFC discussion between a self-selected group of editors on a WikiProject's talk page that they claim overrides the views of editors on hundreds or thousands of articles) nor with how RFCs (the primary mechanism for advertising a discussion to the wider community, with the goal of getting comments from uninvolved editors) are understood by the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose at least in something like that form, per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:CREEP and WP:EDITING and the intent of WP:P&G (particularly WP:PGCHANGE) in the first place. That said, I agree with Aquillion that the section should include a cross-reference to WP:CONLEVEL. If some suggestion to do an RfC or something is included, it should not refer to WP:CENT which is for high-profile things needing massive amounts of editorial attention and which are likely to affect a bazillion articles (or editors thereof). CENT is absolutely not for minor clarification or loophole-closure tweaks to P&G material. The more appropriate venue for "advertising" a discussion about something like that is WP:VPPOL itself. Editors who care to be involved in the formation of our P&G pages already watch this page, but the entire editorial pool do not need CENT browbeating about what is usually maintenance trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

  About a year ago, on the talk page of one of the core policies (NPOV?), an editor stated that (in their opinion) every single edit to a policy page needed prior discussion, if not an RFC. We pointed the editor to the history page to review the edits made during the last month or so, and asked them how many of those they would revert. The answer was "none". I don't think most editors understand how many changes produce no real change in meaning – a link here, a grammar tweak there, but no substantive changes. Few of us make substantive changes without prior discussion, and even fewer of us make those edits without the change being reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per Trystan. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 19:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose I guess, I tend to agree and want to support but consensus works by being a consensus, not declaring it to exist. If enough people don't like the change when it is made, you enter into Bold revert discuss, don't you, because the consensus wasn't as strong as first thought or has changed since you thought you had it defined. So, hmmm, sitting on the fence getting splinters maybe? Hiding T 20:02, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

@Szmenderowiecki: thanks for the well-thought out content above and the ping. I would say that the meaning of "widespread" varies depending on the scope of the impact of the proposed change. In the specific case of the article size discussion that prompted this, the group was discussing subsequent changes to other policies and believed that those changes would be subject to the consensus they had there. For the impact of the change they were proposing, their consensus was not widespread. I think we agree, though, that most changes to PAG do not need sitewide advertisement. The proposed change above effectively just kicks the can of when to advertise from the definition of "widespread" to the definition of "substantive". Ultimately, a judgement call will need to be made, and given that groupthink is more or less inherent in a collaborative environment, the reminder that a small team of editors (however internally aligned) shouldn't be making sitewide decisions in a vacuum will be met with occasional resistance. I'm not sure that's a problem that can be mitigated with a tweak to policy. VQuakr (talk) 16:53, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

The "substantive change" thing is already in the policy. Before making substantive changes to policy and guideline pages, it is sometimes useful to try to establish a reasonable exception to the existing practice. Maybe this will be an issue sometime later but we can assume that typos, grammar, markup and general changes to wording that do not change the meaning of policy or guideline are non-substantive changes. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:20, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the proposed change to the text is the best approach. Often changes face objections by someone who raises no specific concerns other than suggesting that a request for comments discussion be held, which can lead to the degree of impact being exaggerated and thus deadlocking minor changes from proceeding. In the referenced discussion, I said that in my view, the affected community of editors should be given the chance to discuss and influence the proposed change. This may not require a site-wide advertising of the proposal. It will depend on the scope of the guidance and the proposed change in question. isaacl (talk) 18:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep. Going through this right now with a bit of policy cleanup, which is being stonewalled by someone resistant to change (even basic grammar correction) simply for the sake of being resistant to change, as far as I can tell.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:21, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I guess WP:NOTAVOTE would apply in that case. If the best they can argue is that their gut feeling is wrong or that I just want to resist all change, then I think we can safely disregard this. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Since I closed the discussion referenced above, I guess I'll just note that of course I think matching a proposed change to an appropriate quorum will always be a balancing act. Those affected by a change should have the opportunity to share their thoughts about it. In this case, a table listed "rules of thumb" in two (intended-to-be) equivalent measures – word count and kb of prose. A discussion at the guideline's talk page concluded the second measure (kb of prose size) should be removed as potentially confusing and unneeded. How broad a discussion is needed for such a change? The guideline's meaning is unchanged, it's just now expressed in one way rather than two. Even if WP:PGCHANGE read as proposed above, I likely would have closed the discussion the same way, considering this to not be a "substantive change", and expecting no particular controversy. Ajpolino (talk) 03:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Been a part of that discussion, and it does seem to be stonewalled also by a single party. I think their argument amounts to a (rather impassioned and stubborn) disagreement that the change is non-substantive. They seem to feel that the change, while perhaps not altering the actual end-result size/length limits, will in some way strongly affect at least some subset of users' understanding of how to arrive at it, their sense of what it means in reality, or something to this effect. I don't agree with the position, for reasons given over at that discussion, but it doesn't seem entirely out of left-field.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Second-round RfC on titles of TV season articles

Please see Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (television)#Follow-up RfC on TV season article titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:54, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Disclosing anti-government actions by notable people

I'm not sure how concerning it may be, but amid modern tightening of screws by certain governments and regimes: do we have some policy or advisory that handles the disclosure of anti-government actions by wikinotable people considering potential government punishments in that regard and usage of Misplaced Pages as a searchlight for government retaliation? While it's probably ok to mention, e.g., wikinotable people who signed anti-government open letters and petitions, I don't know if some relevant regulation exists (similar to Voices under Threat for editors). Brandmeister 20:37, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Since we are a tertiary source, wouldn't the source material already be available to the governments? Wehwalt (talk) 21:12, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, we should only be including such information after it's been reported on in reliable sources. At that point, the cat's out of the bag. If someone is trying to insert primary sources with such information, then yes, it should be removed and perhaps even be oversighted depending on the information. But I feel like our existing policies already cover that. Silverseren 21:15, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I would say that our BLP policies cover accusing someone of anti-governmental activities without it being well-sourced. Leaving aside opinions as to the government. No government's happy about actions against it, so we would avoid such things unless well-sourced. Wehwalt (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:DUE is relevant here - not every single statement or action over a person's life is appropriate to be covered in an article, and over-stressing undue details (whether anti-government or some other unpopular opinion - for example opinions on gender politics and the like) could cause problems for subjects (not necessarily directly from governments).Nigel Ish (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

It would be a mistake to categorize anti-government opinion as universally unpopular. You will find many places where such an opinions is the popular opinion. For example when polled almost every single American holds some opinion that could be characterized as anti-government. Heck in the US its currently popular for elected members of the government to hold anti-government opinions. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:46, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The sorts of places where you need to worry about that sort of thing are generally not the places which need to go on wiki to build a dossier on a dissident. Also government and regime mean the same thing in this context. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we tend to want to do the "dossier on a dissident" but we really only should include incidents considered anti-government that are reported by multiple RS as to avoid singular source inputs. Masem (t) 00:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, upon further thought the cat out of the bag came to mind, RS and WP:DUE aside of course. Brandmeister 09:19, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Aren't multiple RS always required for that sort of stuff when its BLP? And if its not BLP I fail to see the issue. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:41, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Finishing the ABOUTSELF ← SELFSOURCE ← BLPSELFPUB merge

Please see: Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability#Re-drafted merge 3.

For a while now, we've been talking about how to merge WP:SELFSOURCE (in WP:RS) and WP:BLPSELFPUB in (WP:BLP) to WP:ABOUTSELF (in WP:V), since they're all three nearly-identical WP:POLICYFORKs of the same material. This has kind of stalled out over the holidays, and some additional input and "energy to get it done" would be helpful.

I think we've hammered out the desirable merged version as to which variants of which clauses to use from the three slightly divergent versions (favoring pre-existing policy language over guideline language when the difference is substantive, but favoring the more concise guideline language when it's simply a matter of how to express the same point). The sticking points, to the extent there are any, seem to be whether or not to do some grammar cleanup on the opening sentence, and whether to include a clarification reading "Author includes an organizational one, not just an individual.", to address recurrent confusion about that.

There was also a suggestion that the footnote from the BLP version (about self-published denials of wrongdoing) could be shortened to remove one of its statements, but this would be a substantive, not just merge-and-copyedit, change to the policy material. So I've suggested that be punted for later discussion. Same with regard to a question about whether the rule's point no. 5, "the article is not based primarily on such sources", is applicable to certain kinds of things, which I've also suggested reserving for later discussion, since substantive change proposals should be examined separately from non-substantive cleanup.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:17, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Over-capitalization of NFL Draft

In you look at sources, "draft" is overwhelmingly lowercase in most relevant sports contexts, including NFL (see , ). Yet it's hard to get away from the capitaized "Draft" on wikipedia due to the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines (at least, the was my impression in past discussions). Is there anything to be done about that? I recently moved a bunch of "List of ** in the NFL Draft" articles to lowercase draft, as that context is one of the most overwhelmingly clear in stats, but before I got most of them done they all got reverted. Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas? Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I've contacted WP:NFL about this discussion. GoodDay (talk) 05:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

• Note The last related move discussion was closed in May 2023 at Talk:2024 NFL Draft § Requested move 27 April 2023—Bagumba (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for finding that clear lack of consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@BeanieFan11:, in reverting my moves to the "in the NFL Draft" articles, you wrote the current consensus is that the main draft article is spelled with an uppercase "D" - that should be reflected here. Can you share where you find that consensus? Dicklyon (talk) 05:53, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Until National Football League Draft is moved to National Football League draft, any instance of "NFL Draft" should have a capital D, particularly in article names. That's the only reasonable and consistent interpretation of Misplaced Pages:Article titles for this case. Everything hinges on how we name main article. Jweiss11 (talk) 06:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

A gaggle of editors from the American football wikiproject will stonewall any attempt to move any of these articles; RM process has too few uninvolved participants to overrule their false-consensus. The article title "National Football League Draft" is demonstrably inappropriate per WP:COMMONNAME (and WP:CONCISE) policy, and also fails WP:NCCAPS and MOS:SPORTCAPS and etc. It should be at NFL draft, which is actually the common name by a wide margin – with d not D. Of the four renditions "National Football League Draft", "National Football League draft", "NFL Draft", and "NFL draft", the "National Football League Draft" one is the least frequent and "NFL draft" by far the most. (And that's without even doing anything to filter out title-case appearance in names of works and chapters/sections; i.e., the capitalized forms are being significantly over-represented in these search results.) The long version is barely attested in published material. But this means nothing if no one one but football fans who love capitalizing everything to do with football weighs in on the question. (Which shouldn't be a question in the first place. Dicklyon's moves should not have been reverted, because they comply with the policies and guidelines and the over-capitalization has no leg to stand on (it's unadulterated WP:ILIKEIT).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect you'd get the same resistance in an RM at the NHL Entry Draft page, fwiw. Editors can't force other editors to agree to what they want. Thus they can't force such changes, if enough editor oppose. GoodDay (talk) 12:13, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Question, but this only applies to National Football League draft, correct? The 2024 NFL Draft and all other years should still be considered proper nouns as they are specific events. ~ Dissident93 18:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

No. They are specific events, or processes, but not proper names unless maybe in the context of the TV show or something (e.g. "I got tickets for 2024 NFL Draft", or "ESPN got rights to broadcast 2024 NFL Draft", perhaps). Stats show lowercase dominant draft, same as in other sports. Dicklyon (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, we should be consistent with the capitalization used at the primary article that these other articles are based off, which is currently at National Football League Draft. Until that article is moved, which there is not consensus to do based off past discussions, we are essentially in limbo and should be consistent, otherwise it'll devolve into edit warring. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

We definitely have a WP:CONLEVEL failure happening here, where a WP:FALSECONSENSUS of people devoted to a topic area are defying site-wide guidelines that apply to all topics, to get an over-capitalization result in their pet subject (against both MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS, as well as WP:NCCAPS, and WP:COMMONNAME policy), all on the basis of a specialized-style fallacy, namely that various American-football-specific sources like to capitalize just about everything to do with football, while general-audience sources provably do not do this. Statistics this stark do not lie. We have a problem that WP:RM, a process nearly no one pays any attention to, is regularly overrun by topic-specific editors after one of them alerts the related wikiproject, and the results end up being a predictable pile-on that ignores the large stack of guidelines and at least one policy, to just suit the preferences of the topical wikiproject participants; meanwhile few RM closers have the gumption to just discount their anti-WP:P&G and anti-source arguments and close in favor of the lower-cases moves, because the headcount majority crying for upper-case is apt to make WP:MRV noise about it and otherwise cause a bunch of drama. The RM process is palpably failing for cases like this; it is being outright WP:GAMED.

I'm skeptical that this can be settled any other way than with a broadly advertised RfC, tedious as style RfCs may be. If football fans are convinced they have on their hands some kind of demonstrable exception that just must be made to site-wide capitalization rules, then they are welcome to try to prove that to the community's satisfaction. This sort of thing has come up before many times (common names of species, capitalization of breeds and cultivars, etc.) that have festered sometimes for years, with a lot of editorial strife and disruption in sporadic, uncentralized debates, and were not resolved until broadly RfCed (here or at WT:MOS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect there'd be resistance as well from WP:HOCKEY, concerning pages related to the NHL Entry Draft, too. BTW the Major League Baseball draft page, was moved to its current form without an RM & with little input. GoodDay (talk) 12:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The NHL Entry Draft stats are a good example of what happens when over-capitalization in Misplaced Pages influences the real world. It's not too late to fix it, as it's still not nearly consistently capped in sources, esp. independent sources. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: You should either officially propose a move of National Football League Draft or accept that editors will (and should) try to be consistent with the capitalization used at that article. Otherwise this is, frankly, a waste of everyone's time. We'd just end up rehashing the exact same discussion happening here. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:54, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem with RM, mentioned above, makes it hard to get to a consensus in such cases. Maybe an RFC? Dicklyon (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

You could go the route of an RFC, but I don't really think there will be consensus on this issue either way. I suppose I'm asking what the goal of starting this discussion is. Are you planning to craft an RfC based on this discussion? Hey man im josh (talk) 03:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm seeking ideas; I had asked: "Is another RFC the way to go? Other ideas?". RFC was one idea supported. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm not convinced there is an issue of overcapitalization, given that many editors are trying to be consistent with the main draft article. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

This is turning entrely circular. We've been over this already: the main article is capitalized, against WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS and other considerations, because a handful of "give us capitals or else" football fans want it that way, and will en masse blockade any RM that tries to change it, producing a FALSECONSENSUS against guidelines applying to a "magically special" wikiproject. The problem is not that the main article says what it does, the problem is that RM is easily and badly gamable by a wikiproject who want a "pet" variance from guidelines that apply to every other subject, which is prevent that or any other related article from changing names, without wider community input that cannot be gamed by half-a-dozen people from a particular wikiproject.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Your best bet is to neutrally summarize all the pro and con arguments and counter arguments, and place them right after the brief opening RFC statement. Too often people are !voting without knowing all the factors, which is difficult when bits and pieces are scattered in other people's !votes. At least give those people who want to be informed a clear overview. MOS, esp. capitalization, can be quite nuanced. Some !voters that only see "NFL Draft" in their everyday sources, honestly don't know there are other options or why. —Bagumba (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone can point out a pro-capitalization argument, I'd like to see it so I can include it. About the only thing we heard before was a multiply-repeated claim to trademark status, but that was pretty thoroughly debunked, I felt, with the only found "NFL Draft" trademark being for clothing items, like caps and tee shirts, not for the player selection meeting. Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that the NFL uses a capitalization for the term, but I'm not able to dig into it at the moment. For what it's worth, I personally don't really care either way, but I do advocate for consistency with the main article. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I imagine some !voters only see "NFL Draft" on ESPN, NFL.com—and even many (most?) newspapers—and just write off that non-NFL fans aren't following the NFL expert sources. —Bagumba (talk) 02:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If people are only watching ESPN, they'll see it pretty much always lowercase, and we wouldn't have this problem. On NFL.com, usually uppercase (but they sometimes forget to tell their headline writers, like here and here. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

You're right about ESPN. Try CBSSport.com, which seems to regularly cap. (And I might be wrong re: the extent of newspapers)—Bagumba (talk) 03:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If you can't get consensus for a move, then there's no consensus for a move. It's a tautological statement, but it's also the core fact of it all. Not enough people agree with you. So what, move on and don't dwell on it. Also, can we not have presumptive and biased discussion headers like calling it "over-capitalization" when the point is to discuss if it is properly capitalized. oknazevad (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, we disagree there. It's clearly over-capitalized, with respect to our guidance and sources. The question is just what to do. Probably a central RFC makes more sense than an RM at the article(s), to get a more balanced participation. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I think in order for you to get a 'green light' on the changes you're proposing? you'd first have to have an RM at National Football League Draft, with the result being - change to National Football League draft. GoodDay (talk) 02:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:NCCORP revision discussion needs further input

Please see Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (companies)#Use of comma and abbreviation of Incorporated - a discussion (with some proposed revisions) to resolve apparent conflict between this page (with a {{Guideline}} tag on it but little community input) and various other guidelines and policies, including aspects of MOS:TM and MOS:INSTITUTIONS, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, WP:DAB, and the WP:OFFICIALNAME supplement, as well as the interplay between WP:RS and WP:ABOUTSELF. The short version is that NCCORP says to defer to "the company's own preference" on article naming (and in-text usage) matters such as whether to include a corporation-type designator, whether to abbreviate it, whether to include a comma before it, etc.; instead of deferring to predominant usage in secondary sources.

There has been significant discussion already, but it has stalled out completely over the holidays, and needs further input for resolution. Also some related discussion at a pair of back-to-back RMs at Talk:Mars Inc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:41, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Asking Advice About Giving Advice About Contentious Topic Protection

If another editor asks me for advice about their disagreement with the extended-confirmed protection of an article, where should I tell them to go to discuss the protection? I will explain the origin of this inquiry, but I am not asking specific advice about the case in point, but about all similar cases. A case request was made at DRN by a relatively new editor. The filing party had added some information to a biography of a living person. Their edits were then reverted by another editor, and the article was then placed under Palestine-Israel restrictions, including extended=confirmed protection. As a result, the new editor couldn't edit the article, and wanted the protection reviewed or appealed. I am not asking for advice about the specific article or its content dispute, because I think that the protecting admin was right. But what advice should I give in the future if another editor wants to ask about partial protection of an article because of a contentious topic? I could tell them to request unprotection at requests for protection, but that would just shift the question off to the admins at RFPP. I could say to discuss with the protecting administrator.

So where should an editor go to ask about protection of an article as a contentious topic? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:07, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think you can say you think the protection is right (and explain why) and to discuss with the protecting admin, and failing that the editor can appeal the protection as per Misplaced Pages:Contentious topics#Appeals and amendments. Galobtter (talk) 02:10, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, even if the protection was removed, the new editor still can't make edits relating to Palestine-Israel. Galobtter (talk) 02:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

User:Galobtter - Thank you for providing the information on appeals. I did explain that the protection was right.

I assume that you mean that the user still is not allowed to make Palestine-Israel edits. Protecting the page also protects the user from making the edits that they are forbidden from making. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding a policy bias against articles without sources

Currently, there are over 114,000 articles on Misplaced Pages that contain no citations or sources, making it one of the largest clean up categories on the site. WP:WikiProject Unreferenced articles has been one of the main WikiProjects attempting to dig through this giant haystack in order to give as many articles proper sources. Unfortunately, a main obstacle to cleanup has been how stringent deletion policy is. If you WP:PROD an article, it takes a week to delete, which is fine, and can be reversed by anyone. The issue is that many of these articles are unsourced stubs with no indicated notability, an article that me and others would agree to be a uncontroversial deletion via WP:PROD. Many of these PROD's are contested and then must go through the possibly month long review process VIA WP:AFD. The conclusion to this process usually is delete, but I believe that a criterion should be proposed that biases an article in favor of deletion, which is not having any sources. If this is written into the WP:DELETE policy, then I believe that editors like me will have a much easier time combing through the massive garbage dump that are unsourced articles. Tooncool64 (talk) 06:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't our current policy effectively do that? Editors arguing for notability are already required to provide or attest to the existence of sources which support notability. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 07:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

True, but this is more directed at solidifying a valid reason for deletion, or a secondary reason, an article lacking sources, such that a PROD could say "Article fails WP:NGEO and WP:NOSOURCE", and be viewed as uncontroversial. Tooncool64 (talk) 07:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I think to some extent PROD will always be controversial. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. I proposed deletion for this article but the tag was reverted. The reason was supposedly that other elections later on are notable, but regardless, the problem is many of the earlier articles are unsourced and redundant, and many just redirect to the nominated Emperors' pages. Yr Enw (talk) 07:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Its not a great reason, but its nice that they gave a reason at all (none is actually required to remove a PROD). The next step would be opening a talk page discussion on notability, hopefully the editor who removed the PROD is willing to work with you to find sources and if not will be willing to support a move towards AFD. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 08:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I did talk page them, but they never responded. I get the need for collab, but often it can just become unintentional filibustering Yr Enw (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What if the concepts of WP:BLPPROD were expanded to non-BLPs without any sources? At a minimum, a deprod could be required add one reliable source.—Bagumba (talk) 08:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This might be the best option. I wasn't even aware of the WP:BLPROD policy myself, but having a similar policy apply to unsourced articles would allow for both one, editors to more quickly sift through unsourced articles, and two, editors who want to do specialized research to find obscure sources for articles that are proposed via this hypothetical process. If no sources can truly be found, reliable or otherwise, then it would be an uncontroversial deletion that would be able to avoid the lengthy WP:AFD process. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:43, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant. 100% support this.—S Marshall T/C 08:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Also support this. JoelleJay (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Support this idea myself as well. Let'srun (talk) 15:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, I don't. AfD exists for a reason: inclusion criteria are based on whether sources exist, and whether it's possible to write an article on a subject. They aren't based on whether Bill has time tomorrow afternoon to go get an interlibrary loan and then drive out to pick up eighteen books and spend the entire evening going through to frantically reference 53 articles before the guillotine falls. AfD lasts seven days. If an AfD is relisted because of lack of participation, it means that there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess the article. If there isn't enough volunteer effort available to properly assess an article...there isn't enough volunteer effort available to come to a firm conclusion that the topic is non-notable. jp×g🗯️ 09:39, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If someone wants to re-create the article in the future with sources, then more power to them. It would be a soft-delete, allowing an editor to re-create the page. Tens of thousands of these articles have no reason to exist, no content, no usability for information. Like I said previously, Misplaced Pages is not meant for collecting items that exist. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's not meant to be a shoot-em-up game either -- the fact that deleting articles causes an enjoyable sensation on the back of the neck isn't a reason to do it. There are plenty of reasons why stubs exist. They're written by someone who had access to some information, or maybe to a lot of information, but who for whatever reason wrote a very short article; for the vast majority of them, it's completely possible to write something longer. If it's not, and the article is such a turd it needs to be wholly extirpated from the project, we have AfD, which sees approximately fifty nominations per day, with a turnover of somewhere around a week. In fact, we also have draftification, PRODs and speedy deletion -- that makes four separate processes by which stuff can be taken out of mainspace if it's bad. Why do we need another? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Bagumba, a proposal to establish the system you describe recently failed at an RfC a few months ago (Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 207#Request for comment: Unreferenced PROD). Curbon7 (talk) 08:54, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I can completely understand why many people where against this in the way it was worded. If an unsourced PROD were to exist, it would need to have at the very least a 7 day time limit, like current WP:PROD. The major reason I am in favor of something like this is because I believe, at the very least in 2024, articles on Misplaced Pages need to have sources, even if it is just one. No article would pass WP:AFC without sources attached. Tooncool64 (talk) 08:59, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that one out. After a quick glance, it seems it involved a new tagging process that people objected to, as opposed to just expanding a known process, PROD. The proposal just waved at a link, and some likely thought TLDR or made some wrong assumptions, and rejected for that reason. Not saying this would necessarily pass, but an improved presentation and concise pitch could go a long way. —Bagumba (talk) 09:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This is close to becoming a perennial proposal. Policy is the way it is a foundational principle of this project is that imperfect content is an opportunity for collaboration, not something that needs to be expunged. If you instead choose to look at articles that fellow volunteers have taken the time to write as a "garbage dump" and deletion as the preferred way of dealing with them, then of course you're going to meet friction. – Joe (talk) 09:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

My rhetoric might be harsh, but unfortunately, many of these unsourced articles are tens of thousands of one sentenced geography stubs, that may or may not even meet WP:NGEO, or tens of thousands of unsourced "Topic in Year" articles. If you are looking at these articles as part of a maintenance category, which they are, then you are forced to realize that many of these are not worth keeping, if for the very fact that they are unusable for information. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

So what? Here are some "one sentenced geography stubs", generated as single-sentence stubs from a database: Chain Island, Tinsley Island, Bull Island (California), Kimball Island, Joice Island, Island No. 2, Russ Island, Atlas Tract, Empire Tract, Brewer Island, Fox Island (Detroit River), Spud Island, Hog Island (San Joaquin County), Fordson Island, Tule Island, Headreach Island, Stony Island (Michigan), Aramburu Island, Bradford Island, Van Sickle Island, Powder House Island. You will notice these are twenty GAs and a Featured Article, all of which were written from said stubs -- the "garbage dump" of which you speak. The issue is that writing things requires effort and skill: the solution is not to spend all day sitting around coming up with new ways to delete stuff. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's amazing how much hard work and care went into those articles! If an editor in the future wants to re-create an article that was deleted via this hypothetical process, it wouldn't be difficult. We do not need to hoard unsourced articles currently for the possibility in the future that they may be found to be notable. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes it will: our hypothetical editor will have to notice that something's a redlink (from where?), look through the deletion log, ask the deleting admin for a WP:REFUND, wait on a response, and then get it restored to their userspace or draftspace. This is a rather long and complicated process that, generally, only power users are able to do. What concrete benefit is brought by forcing them to go through this? jp×g🗯️ 10:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Or they can just...create the article themselves without going through REFUND... The difference between expanding and de novo creating a 1-sentence stub is like, the one minute it takes to create a 1-sentence stub... An admin could literally paste the entire REFUND of the text in an edit summary, it's not like we're talking about valuable starting material here. JoelleJay (talk) 18:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Clearly at least one person disagreed with you about that, or the articles wouldn't exist. – Joe (talk) 10:01, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the standards for creating articles was much lower back in the day. Tooncool64 (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem in that regard is that the way PROD is set up collaboration is "encouraged, but not required." Why not require collaboration as a requirement of challenging a PROD? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:17, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The fallback collaboration option is a formal AfD. PROD offers some rare opportunites for lightweight deletions if nobody is looking or people agree and don't contest, but a WP:REFUND is typically possible. —Bagumba (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

TBH I think the ideal collaboration option is actually in between the two... A talk page discussion should be able to settle the issue the vast majority of the time... If the challenger was required to open a talk page section with their rationale (preferably in the form of sources) I think that would go a long way towards facilitating collaboration without the wounded feelings that jumping to AfD can cause. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 09:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Could not agree more. Tooncool64 (talk) 09:36, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I consider PROD a failed experiment at this point. The grey zone between CSD and AfD is just too narrow to support an extra process, and the awkward process (add a template, wait a week, keep checking back in case it's removed and you need to turn it into an AfD) makes it useless for anybody who's patrolling articles en masse. – Joe (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love to see some statistics on PROD... What percentage get challenged... What percentage of those go to AfD... What percentage of those survive AfD... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: what do you think of the notability tag? Also in the grey zone? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that nominating an article for prod takes a few seconds, and editors often nominate many in a short space of time. Finding a source will often take hours or more, and needs to be specific to the article in question. They are not symmetrical operations. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The creator of the article can take as long as they need to find sources, years even. There is no need to create the article in mains space to work on it, it can be done in draft or namespace . Horse Eye's Back (talk) 10:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Requiring a source be added to dePROD an unsourced article would be ideal. JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 Mccapra (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

oppose incredibly strongly. Merge and redirect them if you can't source them rather than run them through afd. Deletion isn't clean up. If the merger is undone, build consensus for the merge. Job done. There's no deadline. We don't need to constantly revise the rules to do the work, we just need to use the rules we've got to make Misplaced Pages better and coach the editors around us on the way to use the tools. Merge. Redirect. Build consensus that that's the right approach. Hiding T 22:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Haven't we discussed this recently? The existing procedures (prod, then AfD if challenged) are adequate for removing nonnotable unsourced material. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• I think this is a bad idea for the reasons I've explained above. jp×g🗯️ 09:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This proposal is not compatible with WP:NEXIST or WP:ATD. The topic of an unsourced article is often notable. The content of unsourced articles is often accurate and verifiable. In fact, the content of unsourced articles is often WP:BLUE. James500 (talk) 11:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  “The content is often WP:Blue”… really? prove it! 😉 Blueboar (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• So your suggestion is to merge unsourced material elsewhere...? JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC on capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc.

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Misplaced Pages style and naming When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Should it be capitalized "Draft", or lowercase "draft", in article text and titles? With what exceptions, if any? 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC) Dicklyon (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Survey II

• Follow what the main page is titled, which (at least for the moment) is National Football League Draft. -- GoodDay (talk) 03:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I think the question is as much "what is the proper case for that main page?" So why should that page have capital "Draft"? —Bagumba (talk) 06:47, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I can't go along with 'lowercase' usage, as long as the main page is uppercased. GoodDay (talk) 17:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  Nobody is suggesting that. Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I know what's being suggested & I'll oppose it, as long as the main page is capitalized. Get NFL Draft moved to NFL draft & let the rest trickle down to all the related pages. GoodDay (talk) 17:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  This RfC includes the potential renaming of the page National Football League Draft. What is your opinion on that page's title? —Bagumba (talk) 18:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  I'll leave others to decide on whether that page should be moved or not. Concerning American football, the last time I proposed anything at WP:NFL, the proposal was 'figuratively' shot down. GoodDay (talk) 18:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Lowercase draft in article text and titles except where it's an obvious trademark (e.g. "He wore his trademarked NFL Draft tee shirt."), or where it's in a reference title that has it capped. Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Dicklyon's proposal is commendable, and his ngram surveys below win the day. GoodDay, what a main page uses has nothing to do with the question, in my view. Tony (talk) 04:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Lower case in titles and text, with the notable exception of where it is being used as part of a title of a broadcast or published piece (i.e., "Juanita Sportsexpert was the host of ESPN's NFL Draft 2037", "Manaheim Duffer wrote The NFL Draft: Secrets Behind the Selections.") -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Forum issue

• Inappropriate forum shopping There was no consensus at the last requested move, which was held at the actual article talk page, which is the right place for this discussion. This is not an RFC to determine a Misplaced Pages policy, the purpose of this page. This is not the right place for this. This is forum shopping plain and simple. oknazevad (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  This RfC is not the norm. However, I think an exception is reasonable if it helps to break the continued "no consensus" regarding the NFL and its draft. —Bagumba (talk) 06:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Wrong forum. RM is the proper process for this; presumably the creator of this RfC understood this, or he wouldn't have initiated the last discussion as an RM in the first place. Not liking his chances of success at RM, though, because of "the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines", he asked village pump for advice on how to find a friendlier forum (#Over-capitalization of NFL Draft), the direct result of which is this RfC. This comes after having performed a series of undiscussed moves, , , , , , , , , , , , , (reverted afterward), despite knowing the precise issue was controversial when discussed less than a year ago, in violation of Misplaced Pages:Requested moves#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves. Centralized discussion isn't for something as parochial as capitalization of one word in one subtopic of one sport in one country. Imagine if every unsuccessful RM did this, unhappy that they didn't get the audience they hoped. Start another RM if you want. You might even be right. Sincerely. Adumbrativus (talk) 07:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Bad forum Even the proposer admits that this is here because "football-fan editors" at the last RM won't approve the move. This strikes me as pretty clearly forum shopping. I did see any indication there that the editors who participated are "football-fan editors", whatever those are. This has been brought up repeatedly by the same editor for years, and the answer to it is not to go in search of a friendlier forum. This is not an appeal court for failed RMs, the answer is a discussion and, if necessary, a further RM at the same forum. To the extent a vote is necessary, I vote for the current capitalization.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Forum-shopping seems to be what this is, to me. This user has proposed on numerous occasions to make this change, when rejected, for years, has repeatedly attempted to make the change to little-viewed pages to get it to pass by, and is now trying at a different forum to get this changed because "there's too many football fans at the normal routes to discuss this. I want it to be at a forum with non-experts because they're easier to convince to support me." I feel he should just WP:DROPTHESTICK. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Forum-shopping Agree with BeanieFan11. WP:DROPTHESTICK. Nemov (talk) 21:27, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion II

• Some recent history – It's a bit complicated; maybe I'll go further back later. Most sports settled on lowercase many years ago, but the NFL editors are a notable holdout. The most recent RM discussion at Talk:2024 NFL Draft#Requested move 27 April 2023 closed as "no consensus", with a few editors claiming that NFL Draft is a registered trademark, and others pointing out that that trademark (registered in 2019) is only registered as a marking on clothing items (e.g. hats and tee shirts) and that the player selection meeting does not have a trademarked name. Editors in favor of lowercase pointed out the overwhelming majority lowercase use of "draft" in sources (while one editor claimed, citing another who didn't, that "The vast majority of reliable sources capitalize the 'D' in draft"). Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

  Regarding trademarks, MOS:TRADEMARK reads:

  When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner.

  Moreover, the trademarks for NFL Draft are unrelated to the actual event written about on WP: one trademark is applicable only for clothing, the other is for a specific drawing (which includes a shield, football, stars, and the words). This is in contrast to valid WP capitalization for trademarks, like the Super Bowl game's trademarks for the word itself in entertainment events and broadcasting and teleommunications. —Bagumba (talk) 09:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Some usage stats from books and magazines
  • NFL Draft variations
  • National Football League Draft variations

  Note the overwhelming majority lowercase "draft" in books and magazines. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Article titles potentially affected (besides the already mentioned National Football League Draft):
  • About 400 articles and redirects with "NFL Draft" in title – Look them over for patterns or exceptions if you wish. Dicklyon (talk) 04:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Keep it uppercase based on being a proper name and based on the NFL using this capitalization as well. Basically for all the same reasons we can't just move every article with "Final" in it's title to "final".

I'll chime in on this more tomorrow, but there's a long history of this request by Dicklyon. It comes up every couple of years and, I believe, when I was looking the other day it even goes back as far as 10 years. In all that time there's never been a consensus to downcase the name. After all this time, and the failed requested moves, I think it's time to let it be. Additionally, if you choose not to, I hope that people do not falsely claim that it's a WikiProject cabal stopping the articles from being down cased. There are members of the project on both sides of the matter. Hey man im josh (talk) 05:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Except it isn't based on a proper name. All involved were using the lower case for many, many years. It's a descriptive term. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

The lead of Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (capitalization) cautions:

Outside Misplaced Pages, and within certain specific fields (such as medicine), the usage of all-capital terms may be a proper way to feature new or important items. However these cases are typically examples of buzzwords, which by capitalization are (improperly) given special emphasis.

The lead of Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Capital letters states:

Misplaced Pages relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Misplaced Pages.

The NFL, not being independent, should not be a factor in this determination. —Bagumba (talk) 08:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

There's also never been a consensus that Misplaced Pages should capitalize Draft, even while most reliable sources use lowercase. That's why I opened the discussion above about what's a good process for trying to get to a consensus. The idea of an RFC was supported there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• To avoid further 'discussion' in the survey section. I will change my position on this topic - only if/when National Football League Draft is moved to National Football League draft. GoodDay (talk) 18:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
• Some older history – The main article was moved in April 2005, without discussion, from NFL draft to NFL Draft, after being stable at lowercase for about a year since creation; the lead was changed from draft to Draft at that time, too. Interestingly, lowercase was even more prevalent in sources at that time, and this change in WP may have influenced an uptick in capitalization in books in the years that followed; see graph. Still, lowecase dominates. Dicklyon (talk) 20:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, as noted before Major League Baseball Draft was moved to Major League Baseball draft, without an RM & very little input. GoodDay (talk) 20:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages village pump
• Misplaced Pages requests for comment