Several prominent templates have made waves this week in appearances at Templates for Discussion, setting the process abuzz with activity. On January 30, {{Persondata}} was put up for discussion by Fram. The template keeps a hidden set of metadata on biographical articles on Wikipedia, and has over 947,000 uses as of press, making it one of the most heavily used templates on Wikipedia and one of the few to have its own WikiProject designated to its use. Fram points out three things: that despite its widespread use its only application so far has been DBpedia (and dubiously at that), that there is little reason that the template should be on the article page as opposed to the talk page (as it displays no content), and that it lacks a gender category. As of writing, there is much discussion of its implementation and implications.
On February 1, TenPoundHammer nominated {{Cleanup}} for deletion, listing six reasons: its use as drive-by-tagging; the rare use of the rationale parameter; the false dichotomy of usefulness for new editors; its vagueness; its similarity to the deprecated {{Expand}}; and the existence of more specific templates for such purposes. Used on more than 27,000 pages, the template is a major part of the cleanup process, and has gone through three previous TfDs, one by HJ Mitchell and two by TenPoundHammer; as of press, 39 editors have supported keeping it, narrowly outnumbered by 41 in favour of its deletion. Similarly, on the same date Mkativerata nominated {{Lead too short}} for deletion, citing that "this template is an absurd example of wikipedia [sic] annoying its readers...issues with the length of a lead can be raised on an article's talk page, where they can be discussed by editors without annoying our readers." The template is used more than 4,600 times, and at the time of writing the verdict stands at 57 "keeps" and just under 25 "deletes".
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- I just think you guys should try to be true neutral in your writing and not insult any of the sides. SilverserenC 03:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh, but "allegations of ArbCom impropriety" sounds so sexy! Isn't that what sells newspapers? Impropriety, indeed-- I wanted to know "what did they know, and when did they know it" (on the parts that didn't add up, largely because we were getting conflicting stories out of various authoritative parties-- which doesn't mean "impropriety"). My questions went beyond the issue of Rlevse, but apparently in The New and Improved Wikipedia, questions=allegations. We see it at ANI, at DYK discussions, and now in ... tada ... The Signpost. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Author response Hi. This is my first (half-) article for Signpost. Thanks for the feedback. There was very little editorial manipulation of my original text as can be seen in this diff. So there is no "they", there is only "me". I stand by the article. I based the sentence on the following: and In my opinion SG and R654 were pretty strongly asserting there and elsewhere that ArbCom had improperly concealed information. Funnily enough, though obviously I was aiming for NPOV text, I was worried that it was a bit too critical of ArbCom :-) --Surturz (talk) 04:26, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]For the record, I think most of the arbs do a fine job under severe circumstances. That someone may have goofed along the way here, or that not everything was out on the table and understood (probably still isn't) is not the same as "alleging impropriety", and if you wrote an article like that here, your entry would be reverted as original research. Why can't the folks writing here adhere to the same principles that the Project adheres to. Oh, I forgot ... some version of leadership here has made editorializing the new trend. They call it journalism. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]