The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.
"THis looks like an attempt to turn a guideline into a hard-and-fast rule via instruction creep; we do not need hard and fast character counts in a guildeline. I oppose this whole thing; it's a guideline. [sic]"
User:SlimVirgin wanted editors to be able to argue on a case-by-case basis rather than in reference to rules:
'I would like to see people argue, "This lead is too long because it contains this, and this, and this, and these are not key issues. I don't want to see anyone argue, "This lead is too long because it's 1,000 characters over the guideline limit."'
"common grammar school education (at least, when there was such a thing) use to say that a paragraph was 5 to 10 sentences. As such, no article should really have over 40 sentences in their lead."
What does no consensus mean for potentially non-free content?
While User:Rspeer put the case for keeping such content in the face of no consensus:
"The proposal to take an action based on the lack of consensus -- something which goes against the entire idea of how consensus works -- gives considerable weight to anyone who is willing to destroy consensus. It gives no weight whatsoever to the policy, because the only way that Wikipedia policies work is through a consensus of editors on what they say and what they mean. You would create the opposite situation, where the way to make things happen would be to disagree. That is insane."
"That isn't what the policy behind it says. Policy makes it clear that there should be a clear consensus to use NFC in a given context, and the onus is very much on those seeking to use it to justify it. The process should reflect this. Articles, templates, etc. are all entirely free content, hence this doesn't apply, so we ask for a clear consensus to delete. For non-free content at FFD, the process must ask for a clear consensus to keep the image, otherwise the NFCC are rendered toothless. It would also make administrators think more carefully about closing contentious discussions, rather than simply closing them for the sake of it."
Navigation templates
Due to usability and accessibility concerns, User:Cacycle has been working on improvements to {{Navbox}} at User:Cacycle/navbox demo. Most of the discussion regarding the changes has focussed on the positioning of an arrow meant to indicate the ability to show or hide information. Cacycle noted that:
"When using a wide window on a higher-res screen the show/hide buttons would be out of the context of the text or title."
More feedback regarding the changes is welcome, although there are currently compatibility issues with some versions of Internet Explorer at the present time:
"just figured out that MS-IE 8 in MS-IE 7 mode does not support :before and therefore does not display the arrows"
Polling
A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.
A discussion on whether polling is a satisfactory method for gauging or helping to find consensus was initiated on the Wikien-L mailing list. Tony Sidaway questioned the use of polls, noting that "ban discussions on WP:AN [are] being turned into polls, and attempts to undo this are resisted by people who apparently believe they're following Wikipedia policy."[1] Tony Sidaway is possibly referring to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#GoRight community ban, in which the page was re-factored a number of times. User:SirFozzie tried to calm the issue down by stating "The next person who adds or removes other people's postings in this section will be blocked." User:Tony Sidaway reminded editors they should "try to avoid turning this discussion into a vote. This isn't new policy and since most of the people using this page should be aware that voting is harmful to consensus there really shouldn't be any surprise about the edits I made." To which SirFozzie replied "Have no problem with you SAYING that, Tony. I do have a problem with you unilaterally removing many posters comments because you disagree with them."
Deletion round-up
Your writer has trawled the deletion debates opened and closed in the last week and presents these debates for your edification. Either they generated larger than average response, centred on policy in an illuminating way, or otherwise just jumped out as of interest. Feel free to suggest interesting deletion debates for future editions here.
The deletion debate on Suspect guest house, Jalalabad has been re-listed for another week as no consensus was reached as to its notability. The re-listing admin did not clarify why re-listing was preferred over a "no consensus" close
The deletion debate regarding Zenisha Moktan has been re-listed three times now, having been open since 10 August and attracting four participants. Opinion is still split
Michael Jackson finds his way into a deletion debate on Methods of falling asleep, as the nominator states that the article's prod tag had been removed "as this could have saved Michael Jackson's life"
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