Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard

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Input requested

Hello. If someone has the time, there is a discussion regarding a sentence reverted, in Talk:Conspiracy theory#Revert. Your insights are welcome. Regards, --Thinker78 (talk) 22:38, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Revamping the header

Here ActivelyDisinterested proposed cutting down on text in the RSN header, which as far as I saw was well received. I propose to go further with that and introduce these changes to other noticeboards as well. I will start from NPOVN. Is there anything we should add/remove further? he new header proposal is editable here.

BilledMammal, Bon courage, Banks Irk, Springee, Selfstudier, Alaexis, Andrevan, WhatamIdoing, A Quest For Knowledge, you are pinged because you participated in those discussions. What do you think of this reduction? Ping other users who frequent NPOVN often if you think this will benefit the discussion. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:51, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm generally supportive of such a change, all the noticeboard headers suffer from bloating and broken formatting on mobile or narrow screens.
The current header is here for comparison.
A couple of notes. The consensus statement comes of a little harsh. Maybe "... based arguments, editors shouldn't bludgeon the discussion.", and the part about WP:NORN and WP:RSN could be separated from the No Forum comment.
The more detailed description of what to post could be moved to an editor note, something the noticeboard doesn't currently have. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:20, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You may want to post notifications of this discussion to the noticeboard itself, just to highlight it to anyone fo wasn't involved in the RSN header discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:30, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I made some copyedits. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I also replaced the original button style with the style used by MediaWiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ActivelyDisinterested, is there anything you would like to add/remove? It appears that nobody cared about that notification. Maybe a sentence that you believe is redundant?
In the meantime I made some changes to the header in FTN, but I couldn't find too much to cut, so it went from 3.2K to 2.9K bytes. I am looking to work on simplifying other headers as well, but it takes a little time. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 17:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a good idea. Years ago, I re-wrote the top of Wikipedia:Closure requests, and you might consider that style for some (definitely not most) headers. The two features I think are important are that there's a lot of text, but it's formatted to almost look like a normal page/article, so it's not as obtrusive as the same volume with a whole lot of colors. The other is that I used small colorful images for both functional (they mark the list items) and sort of "mood setting" purposes. It's a stressful page, so a little element of fun helps. Also (per feedback from many new editors) the unique images keep the page from looking just like all the other pages, and apparently sorting out which oblong gray blur is the right one a significant problem for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's a long and overly wordy header. Modern web design (Wikipedia included) has taught readers to skip over such things to get to the actual content. The problem is now how to try and attract attention to the most crucial information, without them seeing a flood of information and just skipping. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:45, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It has certainly gotten longer during the ~decade since I re-wrote it. There is a Tragedy of the commons problem with writing documentation on wiki: There is always room for my thing, because my thing is always important enough to give people just one more little sentence.
On your broader point, sometimes what's important isn't "the most crucial information". Sometimes what's necessary is to provide an explanation of the whole thing, for the few people who need it. Most editors don't need this header; a few (e.g., people who are figuring out the process for the first time, editors who want to dispute what someone else did) do need the whole thing. Thus it's formatted to look friendly (for the newbies to the page) and written in paragraphs that are easy to skip over if you don't need it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As I said elsewhere it's similar to an issue with articles, overtime good faith addition and clarification get added. Each part still works but overall the article starts to become bloated. The consensus editing of Wikipedia is great for corrections and maintenance, but each edit doesn't take the whole article into account. In the end a rewrite is needed, and doing so for large articles is no easy task. I have a lot of repect for editors who take on such work, it's beyond my abilities. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Without objection, I am pasting the new header to the main page. Feel free to edit it directly or revert my change if you believe it needs further discussion. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 12:33, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:39, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle. — Frostly (talk) 17:49, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the right place to discuss a WP:NOTNEWS issue?

So, I was referred here from an ANI thread which started out as a discussion on the use of external links at 2024 Atlantic hurricane season but also turned attention to how current information is handled for active storms per WP:NOTNEWS and MOS:CURRENT, and led to several templates being nominated for deletion. So now there needs to be a discussion on how to handle information about active storms. One editor suggested having the discussion here as a WP:WEIGHT issue rather than as an RfC on a project talk page. So I'm asking if this noticeboard is the right venue. This doesn't seem like a very active talk page so please ping me if you reply. TornadoLGS (talk) 01:45, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Remember that as a encyclopedia, our goal is to write towards the long term view, so excessive coverage of an active storm is not really useful per NOTNEWS. We can update the article in real time to describe how the storm has been known to process, but we should still be writing thinking about what info remains relevant. It definite is a weight issue to have an excessive focus on the short term. — Masem (t) 03:25, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem: I understand that. The need here is to hash out more definitively what information should or should not be included. So do you think this page would be an appropriate place to have that discussion? TornadoLGS (talk) 19:00, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don’t really see a NPOV issue here. It’s more fundamental than POV… it’s a classic WP:NOT dispute: should Wikipedia be a place where readers go to get updates on active storms (such as the latest weather advisories) … or not? I agree that this needs to be hashed out at a broader community level (not just at the wikiproject level) … but … this page isn’t the right venue. Perhaps WP:VPP? Blueboar (talk) 20:21, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that looks like a better place for it. I knew there had to be an appropriate noticeboard or discussion board somewhere. Than you. TornadoLGS (talk) 20:32, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that looks like it might not be the right place since that seems to be more about discuss changes to policies and guidelines rather than how to go about application of them within articles. Might ask at the help desk. TornadoLGS (talk) 00:58, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Endless Discussions

One of the discussions at the Neutral Point of View Noticeboard is expanding but is not resolving anything, because the editors are largely restating their statements. (I am not saying which one because you can tell which one it is.) I have some questions.

  • 1. Is there a procedure for closing such discussions?
  • 2. Is there a procedure for restarting such discussions?
  • 3. Can the editors be notified that the topic of the article is a contentious topic?

Robert McClenon (talk) 05:15, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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