Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines
The following discussions are requested to have community-wide attention: You can sign up to receive a user talk page invitation to participate in discussions of interest to you, see Wikipedia:Feedback request service
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
The Manual of Style varies in levels of consensus. In Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article_titles_and_capitalisation_2 it was alleged for some parts of MOS:
some of those guidelines have fewer watchers than my talk page, and are largely written by parties to this case(see discussion). Meanwhile, CONLEVELS states:Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.
I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that while some parts of MOS are the result of consensus with significant participation, there may be other parts that are indeed
consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time.Also of note are the proposals by L235 that did not make principles for that case. Specifically,
Policies and guidelines have a combination of prescriptive and descriptive characteristics. Policies and guidelines document community consensus as to
"standards [that] all users should normally follow"(Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines), giving them some degree of prescriptive force. Simultaneously, policies and guidelines seek to describe"behaviors practiced by most editors"(Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines), and change with community practice, giving them a descriptive quality. Naturally, disagreements regarding the extent of a policy's consensus or prescriptive effect arise from this combination, and the text of a policy can sometimes diverge from or lag behind community consensus. These disagreements, like all disputes on Wikipedia, should be resolved by discussion and consensus.Does MOS necessarily indicate community consensus on a wider scale? In other words, should closers examine the specific text for level of consensus before using it to overrule a (potentially larger) group of editors? Good day—RetroCosmos talk 01:45, 26 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion
I've been following this discussion for a while, and seeing how someone was reported to ANI for not notifying page creators, I think it's time for an RfC
- Option 1: Page creators must be notified when their article gets tagged for speedy deletion.
- Option 2: Page creators must be notified when their article gets tagged for speedy deletion, excepting obvious vandalism, attack pages, or pages otherwise created in bad faith.
- Option 3: Page creators should be notified at the discretion of the nominator.
(this is my first RfC so please let me know if I'm doing something wrong.) Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 02:32, 23 August 2025 (UTC)
Talk:2025 Midtown Manhattan shooting
Should the names of the perpetrator and victims be in boldface? 14:37, 21 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes
Should we omit
|instrument=Vocalsif we include "singer" in|occupations=, and the subject is not primarily known for any other instrument (e.g. use
{{Infobox musical artist
|occupations=Singer
}}instead of
{{Infobox musical artist
|occupations=Singer
|instrument=Vocals
}})? Thedarkknightli (talk) 23:45, 19 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
We had an RFC earlier this year around how to handle LLM/AI generated comments. That resulted in WP:HATGPT after further discussion at WT:TPG. Recently, an editor started a requested move using LLM generated content. I ran that content through two different AI/LLM detection utilities: GPT Zero says "highly confident", and 100% AI generated; Quillbot stated 72% of the text was likely AI generated.
Should HATGPT be expanded to allow for the closure of discussions seeking community input (RFC/VPR/CENT/RFAR/AFD/RM/TFD/RFD/FFD/etc) that are started utilizing content that registers as being majority written by AI?
I was tempted to just start an RFC on this, but if there's alternate proposals or an existing WP:PAG that already covers this, I'm all ears. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 00:38, 12 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
I am an AMPOL editor and I often see articles with party affiliation assumed in the infobox. For instance, Adriana Kugler's infobox states that she is a Democrat, but no inline citation is provided. On the other hand, Todd Blanche does provide a citation for having registered as a Republican. I am questioning the purpose of this parameter for individuals who are not directly associated with politics—in other words, their profession does not pertain to being a politician or political consultant. "If relevant" in the {{Infobox person}} documentation is rather vague. The misuse of this parameter warrants some action. The rationale for removing the party affiliation parameter is similar to the RfC over the religion parameter. As was stated then, "This would be consistent with our treatment of sexual orientation and various other things we don't include in infoboxes that are matters which may be nuanced, complex, and frequently controversial. The availability of a parameter encourages editors to fill it, whether they have consensus to do so or not, regardless of instructions in template documentation to gain consensus first; new and anon IP editors generally do not read documentation, they simply see a "missing" parameter at article B that they saw at article A and add it." elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 16:38, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stations
Should the historical proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations) be replaced with a short updated naming convention guideline that links to the established more detailed region-specific station naming conventions and describes their points of commonality? Tomiĉo (talk) 22:20, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation
This question is about the terminology to be used when a draft is not accepted but may be reworked or improved and resubmitted. This action is currently referred to in the AFC Helper script and at the messages provided to the author as being Declined. There has been discussion at the Village Pump at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Declined_vs_rejected_at_AfC. Should the terminology for the three possible actions by a reviewer be:
- A - Accepted, Declined, and Rejected? (The present options)
- B - Accepted, Not Accepted, and Rejected? (The rough consensus at VPM)
- C - Something else, please specify.
Robert McClenon (talk) 18:37, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion
Should the following criterion be added to G15? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:44, 4 August 2025 (UTC)