Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• Jump to bottom
• New topic
• All village pumps

"WP:VPP" redirects here. For proposals, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).

The policy section of the village pump is intended for discussions about already-proposed policies and guidelines, as well as changes to existing ones. Discussions often begin on other pages and are subsequently moved or referenced here to ensure greater visibility and broader participation.

• If you wish to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use Village pump (proposals). Alternatively, for drafting with a more focused group, consider starting the discussion on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject, the Manual of Style, or another relevant project page.
• For questions about how to apply existing policies or guidelines, refer to one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.
• If you want to inquire about what the policy is on a specific topic, visit the Help desk or the Teahouse.
• This is not the place to resolve disputes regarding the implementation of policies. For such cases, consult Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.
• For proposals for new or amended speedy deletion criteria, use Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequently rejected or ignored proposals. Discussions are automatically archived after 7 days of inactivity. To keep this page's size accessible, discussions with more than about 100 comments should be split to a separate page.

« Archives, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214

RfC on removing "Gender" from "Categorizing by ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability"

. Should "gender" be removed from the WP:EGRS guideline on "Categorizing by ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability"? Fram (talk) 09:46, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Discussion re RfC on removing "Gender" from "Categorizing by ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability"

The WP:EGRS strongly discourages certain types of categories based on an intersection of some other characteristics with characteristics based on "ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability". However, we have countless categories divided by gender, and at CfD discussions, especially about gender, this guideline proves to be problematic or outdated, and seems to indicate that the rule against categorization by gender is not supported or applied widely enough to be in a guideline. In some cases it even leads to sexist different treatment of men and women. See e.g. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026_May 28#Category:American male rock singers or Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 April 21#Category:Men by role. The times when we removed the category for American male novelists and kept the one for American wome novelists are hopefully far behind us now (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 April 24#Category:American women novelists) Removing it doesn't mean that it suddenly would be always allowed, it would just be treated like any other categorisation, on its own merits but without a prejudice that it probably is wrong. Fram (talk) 10:09, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• Categories. Are the benefits really worth all the strife? I do sometimes wonder.
  Clearly, sex is more of a defining characteristic for an athlete than it is for, say, a chemist. There's a lot of nuance and I think categorizing people by sex and gender is such a minefield that we ought to have some guidance; this is no task for a newbie. I agree that our current guidance is misleading and needs improvement.—S Marshall T/C 11:12, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  While it may be more defining for an athlete, it was (and in too many cases an countries) is defining in nearly every occupation you can imagine, as evidenced by the many studies and books about e.g. "women in ...". For chemistry, just see the long list of books. Fram (talk) 11:25, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  Categories (other than hidden maintenance categories) are one of Wikipedia's most useless, unused features, and should be retired. Levivich (talk) 13:32, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  I use them occasionally as a reader; though I agree they’re significantly less useful here than on Commons, where they’re the only search feature that remotely gets you what you’re looking for. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:48, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  Disagree, as a reader they help you find many topics ~2026-43917-50 (talk) 20:55, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

For another recent poor applications of EGRS, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 July 29#Category:Transgender characters in video games. Fram (talk) 11:27, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Generally support exporting our categories to Wikidata and ditching it in favor of a more flexible Wikidata-based search. But on the specific question, regarding sexist different treatment of men and women and The times when we removed the category for American male novelists and kept the one for American wome novelists are hopefully far behind us now - are they behind us? As EGRS puts it, the whole reason we create some separate categories is because of special encyclopedic interest, because historically there have been fewer e.g. female heads of government, so we have a non-diffusing category to accommodate people who are interested in that smaller subset while a category for the overwhelming majority of cases isn't that helpful. This is not an issue I've paid attention to in some years, but I only remember a small amount of men's rights outrage about this sort of thing. Is the point of the "American novelists" example that it has expanded to categories that aren't actually so lopsided? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:39, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

The categories are less lopsided than they used to be, but the category guideline hasn't followed, and some editors are more strictly following the guidelines than necessary probably. For example, the Category:American male rock singers discussion I linked to. Before this cat was created, we had "American rock singers" and "American women rock singers", with all the women in the gender-specific category, and all men in the "general" one. The only reason given to get rid of the men subcat (without nominating the women subcat) was EGRS. For me, it's not about men's rights (if anything, the result of EGRS is more often sexism against women), but the outdated nature of it (see also the transgender discussion I linked). Removing G from EGRS doesn't mean that we no longer can get rid of gendered categories when such removal would be beneficial, but it won't be the default position and people will have to make a cogent argument instead of just "fails EGRS" or similar. For example, the nom of Category:Montenegrin women medical doctors will still be as valid after G has been removed from EGRS, it's not some attempt to keep all possible gendered categories no matter what. Fram (talk) 15:12, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

I would not necessarily recommend *removing* gender from EGRS, but I would definitely recommend a complete overhaul of the policy. To copy my comment from the talk page:

The guidance here for not having gendered categories unless it is a defining topic seems very poorly followed, and somewhat unclear. For example, there's currently a discussion about the category Category:American male rock singers (which was recently created), versus Category:American rock singers (which only consists of men), versus Category:American women rock singers. The issue is particularly bad because while "American women rock singers" is non-diffusing, almost none of the articles are, leading it to appear as if Wikipedia only considers men to be rock singers.

Moreover, for other genres like Category:American male new wave singers and Category:American women new wave singers, we have for several years had two gender categories, which seems to be explicitly against the guidelines.

I'd suggest that we need clearer guidance here about:

• Should gendered subcategories be diffusing?

  My strong assumption is that they should be non-diffusing, and it's also mentioned in WP:ALLINCLUDED, but it seems like it might also need to be mentioned here as well. In addition, we don't seem to be doing a good job of actually assigning both categories to all articles. For example, the first article in Category:American women rock singers, Sharon Aguilar, is not in Category:American rock singers or any other of its subcategories.

• In what circumstances should we have multiple gender categories?

  There are a handful of examples listed, but it mostly covers the extreme cases (sportsperson categories, heads of government), and does not give helpful guidance for these much more common cases. After all, almost every category could have some amount of historical bias - for example there has been some history of bias against female rock singers, but perhaps not enough to make it a separate category?

• As a general rule, should we use "male" or "female" or "men" or "women"?

  There's a wide variety of usage, and it makes navigation difficult. The predominant case seems to be "male" and "women", but this seems to imply that the "male" category includes boys, while the "women" category does not include girls. In addition, some people might take "male" to include non-binary people who were assigned male at birth, while "women" fairly clearly does not include non-binary people who were assigned female at birth.

• How do we cover non-binary people?

  While this wasn't a large category at the time this guideline was written, there are now quite a few people who identify as non-binary. For example, see Category:American non-binary actors. I don't expect that we need lengthy guidance here, but it's worth mentioning the category at all, rather than only having a binary default.

In conclusion, the current guidance often results in being discriminatory toward women (often treating them as a poor second class of male-by-default "chemists" versus the explicit "female chemist"), it is unclear for many cases, and it doesn't properly account for non-binary people who are an increasingly relevant topic. I don't think we should remove the guidance entirely, since that just makes it so that people need to guess on the correct handling and we'll have a mess of inconsistent categories. Instead, we need to rewrite the guidance to handle these cases properly. Gbear605 (talk) 16:43, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Gbear605. What need is clear guidance, not the no guidance proposed here.

In addition to the non-binary people mentioned above need to account for transgender people.

• I presume that those who transitioned before they became notable should only be categorised according to the gender they transitioned to? If so is stated anywhere?
• What about people who transitioned after they ceased the activity for which they are categorised? e.g. should Caitlyn Jenner be categorised as a male decathlete, a female decathlete, or only as a decathlete?
• What about those who transitioned during their period of activity? e.g. should Elliot Page be categorised as a male actor, a female actor, both or neither?
• If we have categories for only one gender, how do we categorise people who transition to that gender? e.g. if we have categories "Chemists" and "Female chemists" how should we categorise chemists who are trans men? Does it make a difference if they were notable before their transition?
• What about people who are gender fluid?

Note that while most transgender people regard themselves as always having been the gender they transitioned to (e.g. most trans woman regard themselves as always having been female) this is not universally true - some regard themselves has previously being e.g. male and now being e.g. female.

It is probably also worth discussing whether the usual size considerations should apply to gendered subcategories, and if not what alternative guideline should there be? e.g. if we have articles about 600 men who were Foo but only 3 articles about women who were Foo, should we still create two gendered subcategories? Does it matter if there is a possibility of more articles about women who were Foo being written (e.g it might be that there were only ever 603 people who were Foo, and no new people will become Foo)? Does it matter if the gender balance is inverted (i.e. there were 600 women who were Foo and only 3 men)?

I don't know the answer to most of these questions, and this discussion is likely the wrong place to answer them. Thryduulf (talk) 17:17, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Per MOS:GENDERID, people should be referred to as their most recent self-identified gender label. I'd assume that would apply to categories as well. So trans male chemists wouldn't be categorized under Category:Women chemists because they are not women. Shocksingularity (talk) 02:46, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Given the asserted impact on women and transgender people, has WP:WOMEN and WP:LGBTQ+ been involved in discussing this? Davidwbaker (talk) 20:03, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

WP:WOMEN and WP:LGBTQ+ were both notified. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 22:20, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Fram (talk) 08:57, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2026 August 6#Category:Portraits of men for another just closed problematic invocation of EGRS to get rid of gendered categories. Fram (talk) 08:27, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

It's been 20 years since Wikipedia:Category intersection was proposed which would have solved this. I fully expect to die of old age before it will be implemented.  — Hex • talk 21:20, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

• As others have said, this is a perennial unresolved issue in English Wikipedia. I agree with Hex that implementing Wikipedia:Category intersection could resolve this. Some things are different and new now.

For lots of reasons, the world is moving to structured data, and I expect that Wikimedia projects will also. Wikidata currently has technical limitations which prevent it from solving anything for Wikipedia, however, it is totally imaginable that Wikipedia categories someday disappear as they get replaced with fact-checked demographic statements in Wikidata, where they could be much better managed. In Wikidata, it is trivial to search for, for example, people by demographic, region, and occupation, without having to pre-define which demographics are socially allowable to categorize. However, Wikidata does have big ethical challenges in fact-checking categories, and if anyone wants to take fuzzy editorial discussion to Wikidata, it would be very welcome there. Wikipedia also does not fact-check categories, but for reasons including the lack of <ref> tags on Wikipedia categories, many dubious or challenged categories go unnoticed, and in any case it is not possible to quickly fact-check them by the thousand like it is in Wikidata where there is technical infrastructure to apply citations to demographic labels. If anyone wants to help set policy in Wikidata for this, then I expect those rules will eventually propagate.

For anyone who wants to get started, d:Wikidata:WikiProject Personal Pronouns is as good of a place as any. Practically all Wikipedia biographies assign pronouns and it seems easy enough to migrate them, but edge cases arise. The same is true for lots of English Wikipedia demographic labeling, and if we can sort policy for pronouns, then that ought to be an easier case than many others. Could it be possible to translate d:Wikidata:Personal pronouns to race, ethnicity, religion, and the rest? Bluerasberry (talk) 15:16, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: I wouldn't say that creating categories for women and not men is "sexist" or "unfair". Women are already underrepresented on Wikipedia: only 20% of Wikipedia's biographical articles are on women. Additionally, both historically and currently, it is more difficult for women to get into certain fields and careers. I wouldn't oppose male subcats where men comprise less of the parent category than women, but how many cats is that, really? When 90% of bios of people with a certain profession are male, it makes sense that a cat for women in that career would be useful navigationally, but not for men because it is almost the same as the parent. Shocksingularity (talk) 02:42, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

RfC: Merge nominations at MfD

Should editors be allowed to nominate miscellaneous pages for merging at MfD? 09:37, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Survey re merge nominations at MfD

• Yes. There needs to be some sort of venue when talk page discussions don't attract enough editors or more eyes are needed. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:18, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Publicising discussions is the answer to that.

  Publicising uninteresting merge proposals to the small number of MfD regulars is a poor substitute. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:51, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

• No per my comments at the pre-RfC discussion. Don't "fix" what isn't broken - there has been precisely zero evidence that this proposal would remedy anything at all. Regular MfD participants tell us that it would unnecessarily expand the scope of the discussion board and add extra friction.Katzrockso (talk) 20:26, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per extensive comments by me and others at the pre-RFC discussion. The tl;dr is that there is no convincing evidence of a real-world problem here and the proposed solution is not a good "fix" as the structure and function of MFD is fundamentally unsuited merge proposals. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 20:45, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes as PAM was the only formal process for proposing a controversial merge of two projectspace or draftspace pages. With its closure, now we're left with a gaping hole, where the previous formal process for nominating projectspace pages and drafts for merging has been shut down with nothing set up to replace it. There's a reason why AfDs or any other XfDs don't take place in talk pages: as voorts said, those wouldn't attract nearly enough editors. This is especially a problem for non-article pages, which often have very few if almost no watchers. Hell, these discussions hardly attracted any editors at all even before PAM was shut down!
  There's no reason why an editor should be effectively unable to propose a merge just based on the page's namespace. This solution would finally make all XfD venues consistent: currently, MfD is the only venue where a page cannot be nominated for merging. All other "for discussion" venues routinely handle merge nominations for their respective namespaces. The current situation also creates an odd inconsistency: it is possible to formally nominate an article to be merged into a draft, yet there is no corresponding process for formally proposing that a draft be merged into an article, or even into another draft! FaviFake (talk) 22:09, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

  Given that nobody has had any issues with merging pages that would be at MfD since PAM has been closed down how long ago, doesn't that suggest this isn't an issue at all? Katzrockso (talk) 23:02, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody has had a problem yet. But there is a very obvious hole that needs filling, and we should fill it before someone falls into it. Thryduulf (talk) 01:29, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  What's to stop people from doing what was done before: starting a talk page discussion? Katzrockso (talk) 02:35, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  Nothing. This is for situations that require more than a talk page discussion for some reason. Thryduulf (talk) 03:40, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  I don't think there has ever been a situation that requires more than a talk page discussion - we don't have anything beyond talk page discussions. Katzrockso (talk) 13:24, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  We don't have anything beyond talk page discussions precisely because the process for formally proposing a merge of a miscellaneous page was shut down in March of this year. FaviFake (talk) 20:46, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  A MfD discussion is also a talk page discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 23:15, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  Huh? —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:29, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  Do the Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines not apply to pages within the Wikipedia namespace? Katzrockso (talk) 03:00, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  This is getting off track anyways. The point is that the need for an alternative forum to discuss these mergers behind the talk page hasn't been demonstrated. If a consensus doesn't form or more input is needed, what stops editors from using the typical Wikipedia:Dispute resolution processes? Katzrockso (talk) 03:01, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  The fact that the venue for nominating pages in that namespace prohibits merge proposals; that's what stops them. FaviFake (talk) 09:33, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  This does not stop them from using RFCs or Village Pump or WP:3O or WP:DRN or seeking input from a relevant noticeboard or WikiProject. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:40, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  RFCs can't be used for merge proposals. Chess enjoyer (talk) 15:44, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  It would be easier and less disruptive to make a change to allow RFCs for the rare case of project space merge proposals. The table there is inaccurate anyway, or at least incomplete, since AFD is not used for all merge discussions—e.g., project space, templates. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:49, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  I took a stab at fixing the table. If you think project space merges should be handled by rfcs, you might want to bring that up at WT:RFC. Chess enjoyer (talk) 16:01, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Since there is no evidence of a live issue and several other options exist in the event that one of these merge proposals needs more attention, I have no plans to spend time making additional proposals. My point is that other options and venues exist. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:34, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  I notified WT:RFC FaviFake (talk) 16:35, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)

  It would be easier and less disruptive to ... allow RFCs for ... project space merge proposals
  How is that easier and less disruptive than using the existing XfD venue for misc pages? The editor literally just needs to say "merging" in the MfD nomination and that's all that's needed.

  The table there is inaccurate anyway
  You're right, I fixed it! FaviFake (talk) 16:02, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Multiple editors have explained at length:

  1. Why adding this type of discussion will make MFD less efficient/effective;
  2. Why the structure of MFD is not appropriate for project page merge discussions; and
  3. Why talk pages (which can also host RFCs) are better suited for this.

  I doubt it will be helpful to repeat these arguments again. And anyway, there are multiple other venues available to solve a problem which hasn't even been demonstrated to exist. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:32, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  RFCs shouldn't be used as the main process for proposed mergers. However, the RFC process has been used occasionally in the past for particularly complex discussions (e.g., a decision that could involve a merge, but has non-merge components), and it has been used as a supplement for important or contentious merges. For example, if someone revived the idea of merging WP:V and NOR, you can bet that the community would insist that the "proposed merge" be tagged as an RFC, in addition to be listed in WP:CENT and probably a the watchlist notice, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  That should have been considered when the PAM-AfD merger was rammed through without any consideration for downstream consequences, not months after the fact. Nonetheless, that advice was inappropriately changed to say "Deletion discussion venues" without any community input. Katzrockso (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  That should have been considered when the PAM-AfD merger was rammed through without any consideration for downstream consequences
  I fully agree, that's why I and most if not all merge regulars have always opposed the PAM-AfD merge from the start.

  that advice was inappropriately changed to say "Deletion discussion venues" without any community input
  I added a huge {{current discussion}} banner at the top of that section due to this discussion. If one actually opens MfD, merging is still not allowed. You can add a parenthetical like (except MfD) if you want. FaviFake (talk) 18:49, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  I have a slight preference for Chess enjoyer's change but mostly I think this should have waited. Though the table was inaccurate it is not helpful to fiddle with it in the middle of this discussion. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 20:00, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  A completely erroneous table is worse than a slightly erroneous table?

  Feel free to revert my edit of course! But I think the banner should stay. FaviFake (talk) 21:12, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  To bring us back on track, the distinction editors are making is the talk page of the pages that are being considered for merger vs. a separate venue like MFD. If I want to merge 'Wikipedia:Foo' with 'Wikipedia:Bar', the discussion should take place at 'Wikipedia talk:Foo' or 'Wikipedia talk:Bar' and should be prominently linked on the other WP talk page. I agree that other dispute resolution processed should be used when talk page discussions fail. If the discussion just fizzles out with no consensus, editors should also consider dropping it and moving on… —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:39, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

• Yes for consistent with AFD. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes per FaviFake. This is a problem is one of the several that wouldn't exist if the closure of PAM had been done with just a bit more thought, but it does exist and there are only three logical solutions to it. The first is the one proposed here, the second is to undo the closure of PAM and while I have sympathies towards that course of action I don't think it's fair to say quite yet that the merger has failed (and it was also not discussed at all in the preceding discussion so interested editors probably aren't aware of it). The third option is to start a new venue just to handle merges of non-articles, but that would be a lot of overhead for not a lot of benefit relative to MfD. I know the MfD editors have expressed a desire not to have more work, but MfD is not overloaded and nobody is forcing them to contribute to discussions where deletion is not proposed. If it turns out that it actually does cause problems in practice, then the decision can be revisited, but until then it seems at worst to be the least bad option. Thryduulf (talk) 22:55, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes per my prior comment in the pre-RfC discussion, and others. silviaASH (inquire within) 22:59, 13 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes. With all due respect to the MFD regulars, MfD is not a place which requires specialized tools or knowledge to participate. If you don't want to participate in merge discussions at MFD, well, don't participate in merge discussions at MFD. Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 01:42, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes, with the understanding that the result of an MfD could be one of the other possible outcomes of a MfD rather than merge or not merge. CMD (talk) 01:55, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes It would not make much sense if we allowed merges at AfD for regular articles, but did not for miscellaneous pages. In my opinion, bringing merges to AfD has been a large success, and there is no downside with this proposal. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 02:06, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Why? This would further confuse the already confused scope of MFD. The AfD-PM merge has been an utter disaster, why repeat it with another venue? PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:34, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  I've been seeing drastically more participation in merge discussions after the combination, so I am curious what was a "disaster" about it. Before the combination, merge discussions were obscure and unlikely to be seen by most editors unless they were following the article or subject matter in question. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:39, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  Editors with no experience or knowledge of the articles in question opining isn't necessarily a good thing. Katzrockso (talk) 13:20, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  The AfD-PM merge has been an utter disaster. Out of curiosity, can you give some specifics? I don't like the outcome very much because it's created the need for me to do a bunch of emergency updates to gadgets, but other than that, how's it going? –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:54, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  Making it impossible to have any lengthy merge discussions leads to both terrible, ill reasoned merge closures where no one realizes the problem with the target, that you then cannot undo, and on the other hand frequently makes it impossible to merge things where there is a consensus to merge, because AfDs are very brief and you cannot reopen after a keep closure for several months. Previously, you could open a merge discussion after an AfD if there was a no consensus or technical keep close, but now you have to wait upwards of 6+ months after an AfD close to do anything. Hell I once got someone mad at me for reopening a no consensus AfD ten months later. See current clusterfuck at 1993 Philadelphia meeting; whereas before we could have had a reasoned merge discussion, now we cannot.

  There was a reason that merges frequently took a long time and it was because they were hard to do well and are frequently not the right thing to do, so they took time. Now we're just making bad decisions quickly. This will make it so we are making bad decisions quickly at MfD. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:09, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  I am a bit flummoxed that you would prefer the old "AfD for 3 weeks, then spend another 3+ weeks on a merge discussion" over the new method where both are decided at the same time, saving vast amounts of editor time and energy not reiterating the exact same thing a second time. Not to mention starting a merge immediately after an AfD keep could feel impolite and disruptive. In other words, I agree to disagree completely on this stance. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:27, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  The vast majority of AfDs do not extend to 3 weeks and the "problem cases" are always going to take longer and we should be given more time to discuss them as it is fundamentally a content issue that is about content rather than "does the thing meet notability y/n". Notability is a standard to meet, while whether something should or should not be merged frequently depends on the current page; that can change much, much faster than the existence of sources does. Merging PM into AfD is forcing AfD to make content decisions rather than a "should the article exist y/n" binary as was previously. This is terrible. It's not impolite because there were different considerations at AfD than merging; now the merging considerations have been abandoned, e.g. WP:PAGEDECIDE is routinely ignored. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:57, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Yes. Harmless. Aligns MFD with other XFD processes. Useful. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:52, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes per my comments at the prior discussion. This fills a hole, and will make it easier to merge some of the many redundant pages we have in projectspace (which is absolutely something we should be doing to reduce the maintenance burden, but can struggle to do when vested parties are the !voters). Sdkb ^talk 04:52, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes, not because I think there are a huge number of stagnant merge proposals that need a venue right now, but because I don't want future editors hitting a wall when they can't get consensus on the talk page. With PAM gone, we need a place for formal merge discussions of pages not covered by other xfds, and this looks like the easiest way to get one. I'm not worried about expanding mfd's scope; it's already a wastebasket xfd whose scope is everything the others don't cover. I don't see how adding merge proposals to that scope will hurt it. Chess enjoyer (talk) 14:18, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes. Can't hurt, and having a venue for this is better than not having one. I don't think that discussion about the AfD-PAM merger is relevant here; what's done is done unless we have a specific discussion about re-opening PAM or something similar. —Leaf.Sheap ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ (They•Them) 19:30, 14 August 2026 (UTC)
• Is there any reason why we can not have more than one “approved” venue for proposing and discussing mergers? I would have no problem saying that mergers can be proposed and discussed on talk pages AND at MFD (although not both at the same time). Blueboar (talk) 22:12, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  This proposal wouldn't stop editors from discussing merges on the talk page. Chess enjoyer (talk) 22:17, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  If this is approved, I hope any guidance is clear in not only allowing but encouraging talk page discussions. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 22:28, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  That's what they said about the PM-AfD merger and yet the merge police go around moving all the discussions to AfD. Katzrockso (talk) 22:32, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  I thought those are because the ones that started the discussion were trying to use PAM by using merge tags. Chess enjoyer (talk) 22:48, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  Whatever the reason, it would be nice to anticipate the problem and try to get ahead of it for project page mergers. Most if not all of these discussions are best handled on talk pages. If this proposal is approved, MFD should be reserved for cases where another approach has failed and more input is needed. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

  No it shouldn't. It should be reserved for cases where the nominator believes the merge is controversial, just like at AfD. FaviFake (talk) 10:30, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  It should be reserved for cases where the nominator knows the merge is controversial, because it is opposed. Write the guideline in terms of evidence, not an editor’s beliefs. I.e., advice is: Try to fix things yourself before starting a community discussion. Cf WP:SOFIXIT. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:30, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  I agree with FaviFake, the guidance should be the same for all merges regardless of what type of page it is. Thryduulf (talk) 12:17, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  Why is that? Katzrockso (talk) 02:56, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Let me turn the question around: why should MfD have a completely different process and different rules for which pages are eligible for being nominated for merging compared to literally all other XfD processes? FaviFake (talk) 09:32, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Because it has a completely different scope, different editors who regularly participate.

  Lots of things are different - CfD and TfD allow non-admins to close discussions as delete, for example. All the forums have different levels of participation.

  Your question here really highlights the point @Alalch E. has made several times in recent discussions - the urge for symmetry and order just for its own sake. Katzrockso (talk) 15:58, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  +1 The various XFD venues work best by bringing together editors with relevant knowledge and interest regarding the page type and its typical deletion and ATD considerations alongside editors with expertise and experience relevant to the specific page(s) or topic area in the nomination. If editors who are active on a Help page or two related WikiProjects can't agree on a merger then punting it to MFD is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:43, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  To clarify for the 100th time, the "merge police" (a.k.a. yours truly) is only moving to AfD formal PAM discussions, not informal talk page discussions. I have explained this extensively at my talk page. FaviFake (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  What I see in that thread is editors who disagree about what constitutes a formal PAM discussion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:36, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  What do you think constitutes a formal PAM discussion? FaviFake (talk) 22:43, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  I think all of the discussions you listed here were appropriate to start on talk pages and I think this should be encouraged. It sounds like there's a lack of clarity as to the definition of a formal PAM discussion and that at least some editors don't think that using a {{merge}} tag and starting a local discussion on a talk page is equivalent to a PAM (or AFD) listing. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:33, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  How are we supposed to clear the PAM backlog to allow the PAM-AFD merge to continue without removing the {{PAM templates}}? I don't understand this reasoning; there was consensus to wound up PAM, but I shouldn't modify or move the new PAM discussions even if they use the {{PAM templates}}? How are we supposed to shut down the PAM process if editors can just keep using it as before? I'm genuinely confused. FaviFake (talk) 09:30, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  I don't know. The whole thing seems to be quite a mess and a source of ongoing confusion and recurring disputes well beyond project space mergers. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:51, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Well, I'm not confused. If I see a PAM template, I move it to AfD. If i don't see a PAM template, i don't move it. As simple as that. FaviFake (talk) 15:52, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  The PAM process is the Wikipedia:PAM page which has already been marked historical. There's nothing more to do there. Katzrockso (talk) 15:59, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  So, if the page that describes the process is marked historical, editors can simply follow that historical process exactly as written? After there was consensus to shut down that process? FaviFake (talk) 16:07, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  As WhatamIdoing explained on the talk page discussion you linked above, many editors believed that it was listing a discussion at PAM that made something a PAM discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Yeah right. We needed an RfC with hundreds of participants to wound down a single automated list of transclusions. That makes sense. FaviFake (talk) 18:19, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  As WhatamIdoing noted, a lack of shared understanding means the RfC failed. Katzrockso (talk) 18:49, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Also, I don't know if you're misremembering or mischaracterizing, but the automated transclusion step didn't happen until after the RfC started (see here). Previously, you had to manually advertise the discussion at WP:PAM with an edit like this one. That was the step that made a talk page discussion into a PAM merger. Katzrockso (talk) 19:05, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  The transclusion was indeed added during the RfC, but in 2025, the year prior to the RfC, PAM was a list of links to every single open merge discussion, detected based solely on the {{PAM templates}}. So either the RfC was to shut down the list of wikilinks, or it was to shut down the entire process. FaviFake (talk) 19:13, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Sure! But to initiate a review of the closure of an RfC, you need to go to WP:AN, not here. FaviFake (talk) 18:51, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not advocating any review of the closure, so I'm unsure where this is coming from. "Failed" doesn't mean the consensus was derived wrongly. Katzrockso (talk) 19:06, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  Then if consensus was derived correctly what's your point? FaviFake (talk) 19:09, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

  a lack of shared understanding means the RfC failed. I took this to mean:

  • If editors who !voted the same way didn't actually agree on the meaning/scope/impact of their !votes, that is a type of RFC failure.
  • If editors thought they were !voting for one thing and their !vote ended up supporting a different outcome, that is a type of RFC failure.
  • If the closer accurately assessed consensus as written, but editors using the same words actually meant different things, that is a type of RFC failure.

  Unintended consequences, collateral damage, and implementation challenges might also be considered a type of RFC failure. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:59, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

  I agree with Myceteae. Anyone who frequents RFCs will have seen the occasional response that's mislabeled ("Shall we remove this?" "Oppose, because we should remove this!"). Those are usually easy to spot, but there are more complicated situations. If, for example, we have a consensus to ____, but when you start implementing (your idea of) ____, a supporter complains, that can be because you and the supporter have different ideas of what ____ looks like. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:01, 17 August 2026 (UTC)

• Allowed, but not encouraged. No examples have been offered where this would be a better venue. Projectspace merges, eg essays, might be desirable to tidy up “too many essays”, but there is little good reason to set a timeframe for the decision, it is not like the outward facing product is affected. Don’t encourage busywork nominations. Don’t encourage merging of drafts. I suggest that taking a merge to MfD should require that there is a noted objection to the merge being boldly done. MfD should not be used to advertise a merge that no one cares about. Where it is a matter of any importance, eg merging two guidelines, and with any disagreement, it should go to RfC, although maybe this should be a possible outcome of the MfD as opposed to a rule. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:35, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Allowed but put additional BEFORE breaks on with respect to actual sustained disagreement on merge, like insist on failure to fix through normal editing and sustained talk page effort to address or narrow the issues (should, this or that be the merge target, or should there be more than one target, in other words splitting the page, and then deciding on the correct redirect for the title, the narrowed issues on which disagreement remain then can go to MfD in a clearer state (As for other issues mentioned, length of MfD discussion and after the merge, those can also be addressed to ameliorate them but likely need another discussion.). Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:50, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe this kind of restriction is needed. At other venues like TfD, editors are even obligated to use the full process even if the deletion is extremely uncontroversial. You can't require someone to try to boldly merge the pages even if they're convinced that their efforts will be reverted. That just encourages terrible cut-and-paste mergers just so that they can be reverted and the merge can be brought to MfD. It's ridiculous. FaviFake (talk) 15:16, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Normal editing does not encourage "terrible" stuff, unless you believe all editing is terrible. We allow normal editing in moves even though it may cause problems, but we don't assume all normal editing causes problems. Ridiculous is your assumption that it does. Also ridiculous is your claim that I suggested doing so, when "they're convinced that their efforts will be reverted." I did not suggest that at all. Editing against even suspected opposition to a merge is not encouraged, in the least. You talk it out. I'm suggesting, we should list what editors should try to talk about before they arrive at MfD, narrowing issues, discarding alternatives, and process steps. Even if the rule would be you must still have an MfD, the MfD would benefit by that discussion ('Most everyone on the talk page supports merge for these reasons, so . . .'; 'Everyone on the talk agrees on merge but can't agree where'; 'We have a contested merge on the talk page, these are the issues that have been raised; etc.). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:47, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

• No... because it generally makes little sense in too many cases. There is no corresponding process for formally proposing that a draft be merged into an article, or even into another draft!—Any draft can be merged into an article through the normal editing process (a redirect may be left behind in some cases). If anyone objects, that is a matter for article talk or in extreme cases an RfC or another form of dispute resolution (regarding the content in question). MfD does not settle mainspace disagreements. Two drafts can easily be merged. If anyone objects, a draft can be created at a different title (draftspace) or a personal draft can be created (userspace) with one's preferred version. There can be many drafts covering the same potential topic. It would never be appropriate to discuss such things at MfD (attempting to do so would even result in a speedy redirect in certain instances). That aside—shifting content between policy, guideline, information, help, etc. pages should generally be hashed out on the respective talk pages; if more structure is needed for that, well... reopen PAM. Essays are a bit more complicated. Userspace pages should generally be left alone as a whole. When or when not a merge discussion is appropriate at MfD is not easily discerned (apparently). Merge is already a possible outcome at MfD, and anyone (likely seasoned) bringing a good case there (e.g. an information page that is truly redundant to a different help page) would already invite a good discussion (and likely not encounter any resistance). However, encouraging merge discussions there may lead to many poor nominations (such as the inappropriate ones I describe in the first half of my rationale). — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 07:35, 17 August 2026 (UTC)
• No because this sounds more like a solution to a problem that does not exist, with a solution that could cause additional problems. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 17:27, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

  The problem is that, without this, the only venue to propose merges is at talk pages, and merges proposed at talk pages often fail when they ought to succeed because editors feel ownership over a page they created and the costs of having to collaborate with another editor who "owns" a redundant page with the same scope are borne individually whereas the benefits of eliminating redundancy are collective. Having a centralized venue means that it isn't just local editors weighing whether a merge is beneficial but a broader group. Sdkb ^talk 02:23, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  What stops editors from using traditional methods of Wikipedia:Publicizing discussions? Katzrockso (talk) 02:25, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  Having to start a discussion at a talk page and then go through a publicizing/dispute resolution process once it becomes contentious, rather than just being able to start a discussion at a centralized venue directly, introduces another step to the process. The more annoying it is to try to merge redundant pages, the less it's going to happen. And we already don't have enough editors willing to propose merges in projectspace, which has led to the current proliferation of redundant essays. Sdkb ^talk 02:32, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  But many such proposals get no response at all, even for fairly important pages, so going to MFD is more work than dropping a note on the talk page, seeing that nobody replies, and merging the pages. To give an example, in 2011, I tagged Wikipedia:Independent sources and Wikipedia:Third-party sources for merging. In 2012, someone removed the tags because there had been no objection. I actually didn't get around to doing the merge until 2016. Nobody objected. Nobody asserted ownership. Nobody complained. Going through MFD would have added unnecessary work to this process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  In the prior discussion, there was a lot of opposition to routinely bringing essay merge proposals to MFD. The general sentiment seemed to be that they are and should be rare. I don't mean to nitpick but this was a major sticking point early on in the attempt to characterize the scope of the purported problem and proposed solution. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:45, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  I can tell you from my general experience that those rarely work. For example, a WP:3O is not binding, so if two editors disagree strongly it's not going to lead to anything, and the "talk pages of relevant WikiProjects" almost never attract enough editors.

  Your same argument could be used to argue against the institution of any XfD venues. Article redirection discussions, template merging discussions, redirect target discussions... of course they can be publicised, but there's a reason why we have streamlined and centralised processes for these specific types of proposals. FaviFake (talk) 08:14, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  A Wikipedia:Third opinion isn't binding. Neither is an RFC, for that matter. But consensus is binding, no matter where or how you find it, and third opinions and RFCs are both good steps to take in the process of finding consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. As above commentators have noted, in the cases of desired merges on pages without other interested parties contributing to the talk page, the most appropriate response is to merge the page yourself. If the merge is controversial, someone will talk about it, at which point the above problem is solved. This rule change will encourage merging to become further abstracted from mainspace editing, implicitly discourage low-experience/non-hooked-in editors from merging themselves, and lead to a slew of merges that don't really make much sense. I agree very much with Voort's comment that we need an easier way to get folks involved in dormant talk pages (that's a bit less forbidding than existing channels), but I think this will create more problems than it solves. Pudelpointed (talk) 19:20, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

  If the merge is controversial, someone will talk about it, at which point the above problem is solved.
  No it's not! That just means that 1 editor wants to merge the pages an another editor doesn't! They aren't going to magically produce a consensus amongst themselves, and at the same time more people are not going to chime in because the page is obscure and not watchlisted by enough people. That's why we have centralised XfD venues in the first place... FaviFake (talk) 08:18, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  How many of these non-article pages have you proposed for merging recently? It's my experience that the current system works fine. It appears to be yours that it doesn't. So: What have you tried to merge, and what problems have you run into? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  Looking at my history, this is an example of a merge nomination I made that took more than a year to implement. Ridiculously long delays were one of the primary reasons we shut down WP:Proposed article mergers earlier this year and merged it into AfD. But you can't AfD a non-article, which has led to the process hole we're now trying to fill. If we don't, we're likely to end up with the same delays around merges of non-articles. Sdkb ^talk 19:28, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

  It's not clear that speeding it up would have produced a better outcome nor that MFD would have attracted better participation than, say, a Village Pump discussion. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 20:38, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. My summary will be brief to save the closer some time. The reasons previously given (above) to make this change do not seem to outweigh the reasons given against, so far the proposal in not very compelling imho. Cheers. DN (talk) 19:10, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Discussion re merge nominations at MfD

See prior discussion.

• As previously, I think there is a danger of this confusing the scope of MfD. I see little advantages, and possible difficulties with more instructions to have to wade through. -SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:38, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

AfD quorum requirements

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.

Aside from Katzrockso, I'm the only editor in favour of any of these proposals, so I'll go ahead and close it as WP:SNOW. There's a clear consensus against Q1 and Q2 as proposed. However, since some editors in Q2 hinged their argument on the presence of a second deletion !voter, I've started a new section below asking if a soft deletion is appropriate even without a second opinion. FaviFake (talk) 13:02, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

---

Should the deletion policy be amended?

• Q1. Where an article that is ineligible for speedy deletion is nominated at Articles for deletion and receives no "delete" !votes besides that of the nominator, is the closer prohibited from deleting the article as a result of the discussion, regardless of whether the discussion was relisted?
• Q2. Where such a discussion receives fewer than two "delete" !votes (besides that of the nominator) and the closer's decision is to delete, must the closure be a soft deletion, regardless of whether the discussion was relisted?

12:16, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Q1 survey

• No. The nominator is not prohibited and should not be prohibited. In these circumstances, it will often be preferable to relist (if it hasn't been already) and/or neutrally advertise the discussion at an appropriate noticeboard/wikiproject/wherever but often is not always and sometimes it's just not possible to get others interested enough to comment. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. I don't understand why this is being proposed. A soft delete closure can make sense even if speedy deletion is inappropriate.Katzrockso (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  To clarify, if only the nominator suggests to delete something, it is no different than a PROD, which allows deletion with only one editor in favor of deletion. This is the purpose of a soft delete closure, as both a PROD and an soft delete can be reversed at WP:REFUND. Katzrockso (talk) 13:16, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

• No WP:CREEP, and WP:REFUND is easily available for anything soft deleted. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:19, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• Conditional no. While a logical reading of WP:NOQUORUM (specifically the first sentences of the section and of the WP:SOFTDELETE and WP:SOFTMERGE paragraphs) would suggested that this is currently the case, I think this rule is not necessary and should be abolished. However, I would support Q1 iff Q2 didn't pass. If Q2 passes, this means that discussions with no !voters cannot be closed as "hard" delete, so the article can be restored at WP:REFUND. I agree that the process is similar to PROD and an article can be soft-deleted even if it brought to AfD, but I do not want articles to be "hard" deleted just because the proposal was started at AfD and not via other means, such as PROD. FaviFake (talk) 13:56, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No to policy creep. Not seeing a problem here in need of solving. Also the closer is effectively a second delete vote in such cases since they could just as easily have voted Keep or left the discussion open instead of closing. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 14:46, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, definitely not prohibited. It may not be best practice, depending on the article, but a good nom should be acted on. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:59, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. The article should generally be soft deleted, as though it were an unopposed PROD. Dionysodorus (talk) 15:13, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No - Prohibited? That's a word destined for a WP:SNOW. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:30, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No Especially if it's been relisted, there's no problem with doing this, given the very low bar for restoring soft deleted articles. Black Kite (talk) 18:19, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No See above. Unless it is copyvio/gibberish it will be easy to get the article returned to your userspace. Polygnotus (talk) 11:06, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No REFUND in practical terms is essentially an automatic reversal of soft deletion; the only other issue I could possibly imagine this might relate to is bad faith actors at AfD... who, ultimately, never prosper. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:17, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, complication for no benefit. CMD (talk) 12:33, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, the closer is not and should no be prohibited (!) from deleting. I agree with everyone else here. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:13, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

Q2 survey

• No. Discussions with such limited participation should usually be closed as "soft delete" but usually is not always. For example when a nominator provides a strong and detailed rationale for deletion and the sole other commenter also provides an additional strong deletion rationale then there is no benefit to mandating the closure be soft. Closers of deletion discussions currently have, and should retain, discretion about when deletion should be soft and when it should be hard. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes. Regardless of the supposed strength of argument, 2 editors can at most form a very limited WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that certainly cannot meaningfully withstand the good-faith objection of another editor.Katzrockso (talk) 13:09, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No WP:CREEP, and the number of 'votes' is irrelevant. Closers should find consensus for keeping or deleting based on arguments. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:21, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  ​Would you have !voted differently if Q2 said Where the discussion only received comments by fewer than three editors, including the nominator, and the closer found consensus to delete, ...? FaviFake (talk) 13:26, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  No, I don't think this is helpful. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:31, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

• Yes per Katzrockso and OwenX in the original Deletion review discussion. Even if the arguments presented in the nomination (and in the comment by the only other participant) are supported by every possible policy imaginable, just one good-faith request should be sufficient to undelete it after the discussion has ended. Otherwise, the AfD venue could effectively be used enforce a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS without any reasonable way to contest it. ​(And yes, I consider DRV to be absolutely unreasonable if the discussion only had 1 !voter.) FaviFake (talk) 14:30, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No to policy creep. Closing AFDs is already too complicated. If no one cares enough about an article to contest a deletion nomination, then there probably wasn't much content in the article to lose. If sources actually exist that weren't brought up in the deletion discussion, then nothing stops the article from being recreated from scratch using those sources. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 14:46, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No - "good-faith objection" doesn't mean "policy-compliant objection". --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:01, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. In cases where the nominator and another voter think that the article should be deleted, and the closer finds that the arguments presented by these two editors are sufficiently compelling to justify deletion, this should usually be sufficient for a hard deletion, in my opinion. Dionysodorus (talk) 15:13, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No - Just not seeing any good argument for this change. Soft deletions have an almost non-existent bar for requesting undeletion. I don't see any reason to create a rule that effectively invalidates three people's arguments to delete with a simple request. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:30, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  three people's arguments
  Which three people? Q2 does not cover discussions that have three participants in favour of deletion, including the nominator. FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  fewer than two "delete" !votes (besides that of the nominator) - Read as two or fewer. Lowering from 3 to 2 doesn't change it for me, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:17, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

• No, but mainly because if the article is shown to be hopelessly incompatible with our core content policies (verifiability, no original research or synthesis, neutral point of view, copyright, and biographies of living persons), then I would say the closer is obligated to close as a hard delete no matter how few people have participated (see WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS). Otherwise the standard practice at AfD, which I and most other sysops generally follow, is indeed not to close as a hard delete without at least three people (including the nominator) supporting that outcome. I think that practice is a good idea and I'm not opposed to incorporating it into our guidelines in a nuanced way, but I'm not on board with the suggested absolute language (which really would have benefited from some workshopping rather than being rushed into an RfC). Note that I closed the previous DRV but am now obviously taking my closer hat off. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:07, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No We elect admins to make these decisions and we shouldn't be producing spurious rules that stop them doing what they believe is correct. REFUND and DRV exist for a reason. Black Kite (talk) 18:20, 18 August 2026 (UTC)
• No AfD decision making is essentially about quality of discussion, rather than quantity (ie not a vote). In some cases a well explained nomination and a single supporting !vote with added analysis can suffice for deletion - especially when an article breaches fundamental policy. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 10:54, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per Black Kite. Polygnotus (talk) 11:07, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, complication for no benefit. CMD (talk) 12:33, 19 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Closing admins are expected to exercise good judgment and to be well-versed in deletion policies and practices. They need some flexibility to do so. We have options available to review an individual closure or their overall approach. Options also exist to get a deleted article restored, including several which I have not seen mentioned yet: asking a willing administrator for a copy, discussing with the closer on their talk page, and checking web archives and Wikibin. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:20, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quorum requirements for AfD delete closures

Should the deletion policy be amended so that a delete closure at AfD must be a soft deletion if the discussion received no "delete" !votes besides the nominator's and the article is ineligible for speedy deletion (regardless of whether the discussion was relisted)? FaviFake (talk) 13:02, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. In most (perhaps almost all) circumstances it should be a soft deletion, but no benefit will arise from removing admin discretion. Thryduulf (talk) 13:28, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Leave language like must out of the policy. My !vote and reasoning is the same as it was for the first two questions. The issue is not in the minutiae of how many comments, how many relists, etc. The problem is in trying to enshrine a bright line in policy that eliminates flexibility and discretion and fails to distinguish between good and best practices vs. requirements. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:18, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• What part of no is not clear in these discussions? Admin discretion is a thing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:57, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. per Thryduulf. This is a classic "I think this is a good idea therefore it should be a rule that everyone must do this all the time" RFC. There's no clear problem that this would solve. Discretion and boldness are the default and should only be superseded by a rule when there is a very good reason to do so. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 18:01, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• No - Can't see what problem this would solve but can see where it could become a problem if done on extremely niche areas where it effectively flips WP:BURDEN because you now need consensus to remove. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:40, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per my comment above, although closing as hard delete in this situation is almost always inappropriate and would almost always get an overturn !vote from me at DRV. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:53, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

  When would it not be inappropriate though? That's what I'm genuinely trying to understand. We have dozens and dozens of speedy deletion criteria for allowing 2 people to delete an article (one marks it and the other deletes it), and we have PROD for similar cases that don't meet these criteria. Yet a PRODded article literally must be refundable! The process is identical except that the result at one venue is binding and at another venue it is not...

  And if the result is not actually binding, as Myceteae suggested below, then why bother having "soft delete" in the first place? What, we should just have the WP:REFUND crew decide on behalf of the closer whether a discussion they closed had enough participants? Why shouldn't we have due process? Myceteae, in § RfC: Merge nominations at MfD and the previous discussion you repeatedly asked for examples of cases where a policy change would be beneficial. Can I do the same to you here? Is anyone able to come up with concrete examples where an article that does not meet our carefully crafted CSD needs to be brought to DRV just to be restored to mainspace solely because 1 person nominated it and the following week 1 admin deleted it? In this entire discussion, nobody has ever suggested an actual example. FaviFake (talk) 22:28, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

  For me the answer is in the paragraph I quoted above from WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS about core content policies. If the nomination says "this article doesn't quite meet G3/G10/G12 but is still a serious violation of WP:V/WP:BLP/WP:C that has no prospect of being remedied" and the only responses are "Keep, articles about state legislators meet WP:NPOL", "Keep, don't be such a spoilsport", and "Keep per IAR", then once I'd determine[d] that the article violates these content policies, I would absolutely close as hard delete. That doesn't happen very often, but hard delete closures with one person supporting deletion don't happen very often either. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:09, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

  (edit conflict × 2) One possible scenario I thought of is a large batch nomination of similar articles gets deleted by unambiguous consensus. A shortish time later one article that unambiguously fits in that set is overlooked for some reason and gets nominated separately, with a nomination statement referencing both the previous discussion and reasons to delete the single page independent of that. This isn't actually too uncommon at RfD (I don't know about AfD) and although it will usually attract at least one comment supporting the nomination this is guaranteed. Thryduulf (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

  The admins above have provided some examples. The point is that there is room for discretion and flexibility here, and there should be. And we have multiple processes to reverse and review these individual decisions. Tightening the language and defining exact scenarios and criteria for these AFD outcomes will be more of a hinderance than a help. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 19:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No per Thryduulf and Rambling Rambler. Polygnotus (talk) 22:19, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes, although "shall" is possibly a better word than "must". Firm expectations of admin behaviour should be outlined in policy so that changes in protocol are community-supported, rather than done on one admin's whims. Where an inexperienced admin is closing AfDs, it is useful to have a statement of consensus to point to, rather than trying to drum up examples of normal procedure (or having to argue by analogy to PROD, as FaviFake is doing). IAR can happily be applied in the vanishingly rare instances hard deletion is warranted (e.g. if five people have argued on the article talk page it should be deleted but neglected to add their comments to the AfD, or an article that was created for clearly vindictive reasons). I do not view further discretion as appropriate. J947 ‡ ^edits 23:08, 20 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Consensus is not about numbers. Strength of argument matters. A slam dunk obvious delete nomination is a stronger reason to delete than a perfunctory or tentative nomination by a new editor and a per nom by another. Also, admin discretion is important. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:22, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, and quite frankly this sort of very nuanced rulesmaking is premised on the soft/hard deletion distinction being a lot stronger than it actually is. CMD (talk) 00:52, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, per Thryduulf. Dege31 (talk) 20:12, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No There's going to be edge cases where soft deletion isn't appropriate, so stating that it must be a soft deletion is a bad idea. It's the same reason so few policies or guidelines says editors must do something. Even then this fails to consider that consensus isn't about numbers, and creates a level of detail in the rules that isn't really needed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:22, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• No No given that there are enough No's. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 20:49, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (AfD quorum requirements)

See prior discussion.

Note this section was begun before question 3 was asked. Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

• FaviFake, another complexity for your Q2 is where the article had a prior WP:PROD, impeding a Soft Deletion outcome for the AFD. AllyD (talk) 12:48, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  Great catch. In this case, since soft deletion is not available, the closer can relist the discussion or use any of the other various options listed at WP:NOQUORUM. But since it's a very rare case, I think the details can be hammered out if the proposal passes. FaviFake (talk) 13:05, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

These questions can't be answered in the abstract. It depends on various things. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:53, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

What other factors does it depend on? WP:DISCUSSAFD says that AfD differs from CSD because it uses a Swiss Cheese model, which necessarily needs multiple editors. Of course this isn't a guideline, but I've always assumed this is the principle behind AfD's bureaucracy.

Unlike speedy deletion, AfD involves multiple editors to reduce the possibility of an erroneous conclusion being reached by placing "multiple layers of swiss cheese" in the process.

FaviFake (talk) 13:12, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

Comment: I've been thinking for a while that it might be nice to have somewhere to preserve sources that could someday be used to write an article, for cases where the sources aren't currently sufficient or where no one currently has time to write an article. This is especially relevant for TNT deletes for copyvio or WP:LLMPROD. Currently the best option I can see would be dropping potential sources onto the talk page of a Redirect with Possibilities. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 14:46, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

I have seen at least one case where a {{Source assess table}} was saved on its own page. I can't remember if it was a user subpage or where exactly this was preserved. I think we don't want to encourage over use of psuedo-drafts and workspaces for hopeless article prospects but I can definitely see situations where this is valuable. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:22, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

• This is a strangely formatted RFC. The lead question is whether the process should be amended but the two RFC questions seem to be about current practice. Are you asking what we do or what we should do ? Editors seem to be answering one or both, which hopefully the closer can make sense of. I can't help but be reminded of another ongoing discussion about RFC failures where editors casting the same !vote don't mean the same thing… —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 15:09, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  The problem is that current practice itself isn't clear. As I said above, for example, a logical reading of WP:NOQUORUM (specifically the first sentences of the section and of the WP:SOFTDELETE and WP:SOFTMERGE paragraphs) would suggest that at least one delete !vote (besides the nominator's) is necessary for deletion, but this does not seem to reflect current practice, as some admins delete articles even if nobody responded.

  Besides, I don't think participants would !vote for something they disagree with just because they believe it to be current practice, so I don't think this is a real issue. FaviFake (talk) 15:24, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  A logical reading of Discussions can be closed as soft delete after a week of no discussion and do not need to be relisted is that zero comments are necessary. "No discussion" means none, which is substantially less than "at least one delete !vote (besides the nominator's)". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 18 August 2026 (UTC)

  Then why does the first sentence of the section have a parenthetical that excludes AfDs, or why is the WP:SOFTDELETE paragraph different from soft merge in that it requires "minimal participation"? FaviFake (talk) 09:53, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

  I don't know.

  Before trying to interpret this, it would be useful to know what "minimal participation" means to editors. Just the nom sounds pretty "minimal" to me.

  Generally, I think that it would be useful for editors to have current stats on, e.g., the median participation in AFDs. There's no point in saying "a 'few' means the nom plus three" or that " 'minimal' means the nom plus two", if that would make 50% of the AFDs fall under WP:NOQUORUM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

  We also have to consider the rest of the guidance. The next paragraph says: If the nomination has received very few or no comments but appears controversial to the closing administrator, or has been declined for proposed deletion in the past, the discussion may be closed at the closer's discretion and best judgement. One of the common options is closing in favour of the nominator's stated proposal. I don't think the policy intends to say, nor should it updated to say, that admins must soft delete in uncontroversial nominations with minimal participation but get to exercise the full range of discretion in controversial nominations. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 22:56, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

• Alright, the two questions are both less controversial than I thought, but at least they are making the guidelines around deletion more clear. I don't think they should be closed just yet, precisely because I think a consensus is forming (especially around Q2) that goes beyond the original text of the question, which I think should be addressed in the closure of these sections.
  However, since many !voters in the Q2 section are justifying their !vote by saying that two people agreeing to delete and not just one can be considered a strong enough consensus in some cases, should we ask a third question, identical to Q2 but with the words "fewer than two delete !votes" replaced by "no delete !votes" and/or "no participation"? We don't actually have a firm policy on this either, so in theory any admin can "hard-delete" an article based solely on the nomination, even if it doesn't meet any of our carefully-defined CSD. Regardless of whether this matter is controversial, I think it should be discussed: if it's not controversial, it can be added to the policy.
  I agree with Extraordinary Writ that the RfC would've benefited from some workshopping, but I think we can still get something useful out of it! FaviFake (talk) 11:12, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

  I don't think we need another RFC question. Editors are quite opposed to words like prohibited and must. Something that may be a best practice should not become a requirement. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:12, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

  In which cases would an admin closing a commentless AfD as a "hard delete" be acceptable? This can't possibly be uncontroversial. Why should the outcome of those processes be different, if the article doesn't meet any CSD?

• Someone adds {{PROD}} → 7 days pass and nobody removes the template → Article is deleted and anyone is free to restore it.
• Someone nominates an article → 7 days pass with no comments → Article is deleted and cannot be WP:REFUNDED

I can't think of an example where an article that cannot be speedily deleted needs to remain undeleted upon request in these circumstances.​ FaviFake (talk) 14:30, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

I had drafted post I meant to post a while ago on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy asking that question related to when is it appropriate to close a discussion as soft delete vs a hard delete. Katzrockso (talk) 14:43, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

What's "appropriate" is always a very fuzzy question and isn't really what this RfC was trying to accomplish; this is why I used such strong words: I hoped we could set some very basic ground rules for when an article cannot in any way be hard deleted, following the DRV discussion. "Appropriateness" can be, and usually is, determined at DRV case-by-case.

However, I have yet to see an example or a pitch for why such a low bar (the nomination needs to receive at least 1 !vote to be eligible for a hard delete) should not be enshrined into policy. FaviFake (talk) 14:54, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

The questions closers should consider is the quality of the nomination and discussion with low participation, if there were any procedural issues (such as a prior AfD not being noticed, socks, etc.), and whether a relist is more appropriate. And I do think potential closers should consider participating in a discussion with low participation rather than going in with the mindset of desiring to close discussions. - Enos733 (talk) 16:14, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

@FaviFake Are there some examples you can point at of situations in which this rule change would've made the difference? Or is it more abstract? Polygnotus (talk) 23:11, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

* Someone nominates an article → 7 days pass with no comments → Article is deleted and cannot be WP:REFUNDED". I expect admins monitoring WP:REFUND to exercise the same good judgment as AFD closers, and thus both processes need some flexibility. If a REFUND admin sees that an AFD could/should have been soft deleted but the closing admin did not specify that, can't that be factored into the determination of how to respond to the request? I think it should be a factor. Although, again, I wouldn't adopt a policy that says what REFUND admins must do or are prohibited from doing in this scenario. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:53, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

As a refund admin in this situation, I would refer the requestor to the deleter to then consider the restore. If there is a reason to restore and the deleter is unable to do it (or states they do not want to consider it or reject it), I would restore, and on it's lack of merits move to draft. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:49, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the latest "RfC on quorum requirements for AfD delete closures" (question 3), it is possible the proposal is advantageous, but I do not see enough motivation. The deletion review example, which ended with an endorsement, I cannot see as a point in favor. Furthermore, a nomination can be sufficiently strong, and thorough, so that it is clear a rebuttal is not plausible. Dege31 (talk) 22:56, 20 August 2026 (UTC)

​That's not an "example", and Q3 wouldn't even apply to it because more than 1 person supported deletion. FaviFake (talk) 08:12, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• User:FaviFake, your stats for “keep” / “delete” at AfD are small. I think you should engage in more deletion discussions before continuing to attempt to change deletion policy. Good work on merging, but merging is not deletion. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:37, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Engaging at AfD is in no way related to understanding the process. I'm a mergist at heart, so of course I often avoid participating in non-merging discussions. FaviFake (talk) 08:10, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  You don't think there is any relationship between participating in a process and understanding it? —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 20:02, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Not just any process; I specifically mentioned AfD. You can read hundreds of AfD discussions and understand its inner workings without ever commenting. FaviFake (talk) 15:34, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  Might I suggest that in reading hundreds, you pick out the ones you see as illustrating 'the problem'. If people don't see a problem but you do, 'show them', just 'telling them' often does not work out. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:51, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

  That was an hypothetical, I do engage at AfD... FaviFake (talk) 08:14, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

RfC on WP:CREATIVE

Should we remove, or modify, WP:CREATIVE#3, which currently reads:

The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series)

04:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Q1: Removing WP:CREATIVE#3

Should this criteria be removed? 04:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Survey (Removing WP:CREATIVE#3)

• Yes, as first choice. SNG's should be predictive of whether someone has received sufficient coverage to write an article on them. Since very few reviews include coverage of the creator of the work, WP:CREATIVE#3 is not predictive of this, and so is inappropriate as an SNG.
  It also violates the principle of WP:INHERITED; a creator shouldn't be notable just because their work is, any more than a work should be notable just because its creator is. BilledMammal (talk) 04:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  INHERITED says: That is not to say that this is always the case (four of the notability guidelines, for creative professions, books, films and music, do allow for inherited notability in certain circumstances). I don't think that an exception that is explicitly named by that page can be considered a violation of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:08, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

• No, and premature RfC. SNGs are not supposed to be predictive of anything, they are an alternative to the GNG, per WP:N. WP:INHERITED is not a principle or a guideline, it is an explanatory essay, and one that explicitly excludes creators of works. Having multiple notable works is an indicator of significance that someone deserves an article. The result of such a thing would be utterly ludicrous; we could, and would, have people who have dozens of notable works but cannot have any article about them to link their works together or to connect the reader to further information about the author, or their other works. It is grossly unencyclopedic and contrary to established scholarly practice for literary works. Further, information about the work is inherently useful for constructing articles on the authors, separating coverage of what someone does from them is nonsensical; there is no 1 fact we are mandated to have for an article, and per WP:PAGEDECIDE, it is often in fact better to merge less notable works to their creators rather than keep them isolated. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:39, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Removing CREATIVE#3 wouldn't prevent us from having a list article on their works, it would just prevent us from producing a biography from pieced together primary sources. I'm also not convinced that there are creatives with dozens of notable works who would not meet WP:GNG. BilledMammal (talk) 04:41, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, it would, such a list would not be notable if the person would not be. And why would having a list with no detail be better than having a biography with detail? Notability aside, this is proposing that instead of having [x author article] we have only [List of x author's works] with no background detail. Who does this help? Why would we do this? PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:48, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  The list will be notable if the body of work is notable.
  It also helps because it stops us trying to force a biography out of trivial mentions in reviews and primary sources, and because creatives don't need many notable works to be eligible for an article under WP:CREATIVE#3 - they only need one. BilledMammal (talk) 04:52, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  No, it wouldn't be, because where would the sources be to pass WP:NLIST? if we're going to appeal to WP:NOTINHERITED, then that especially.

  "It also helps because it stops us trying to force a biography out of trivial mentions in reviews and primary sources" if the reviews are trivial, that is a problem for work notability, and there is no problem with appropriate use of primary sources. There would also be nothing prohibiting adding the content you object to to a list article; even split off list of works for notable authors include biographical information. This would amount to just forcing us to make all articles on obscure authors be incorrectly named.

  They do need multiple, a "body of work" is not 1 thing. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:56, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  The sources would be the ones discussing the body of work? We also generally keep lists whose purpose is navigational.

  There is a problem with building a biography almost entirely out of primary sources, which is what is required if the reviews don't contain more than passing mentions of the person, as it violates WP:PRIMARY, which says Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.

  A single work is enough to meet WP:CREATIVE#3; The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. BilledMammal (talk) 05:20, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Who says we have those sources? And why would we?

  We wouldn't be basing "the entire article" off of it, we would be basing it off of critical analysis of their works and then augmenting basic facts as allowed by WP:ABOUTSELF.

  A single notable work would be WP:BIO1E except in cases where it is, as WP:CREATIVE says, so "significant or well-known" as to overcome that. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:26, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  If we base it off of analysis of the work, then the article is on their works and not the author. So either the article isn't on the subject is claims to be on, or it violates WP:PRIMARY - either way, its a problem.

  "significant or well-known" is typically interpreted as "notable". However, I'm going to stop responding here; this discussion chain is deep enough already. BilledMammal (talk) 05:38, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  The difference here is that you don't seem to think an author's career is information on the author. Katzrockso (talk) 13:26, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Biographical articles that focus on the author's work do something that lists and bibliographies do not. As I stated over at Clarifying NAUTHOR, these articles are merely lists of works. Creative biographies often include in-depth information about their works, as well as things like awards and honors, which are not found in lists and bibliographies. Author's biographies can also tie in information from primary sources to provide additional context for their work. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 14:51, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  with the exception of NPROF and NCORP, all SNGs are predictive of whether meeting some criteria will likely lead to a non stub quality article that meets the core content policies. Its why the are set up as rebuttal presumption to favor early article creation in the wiki mainspace, but if it turns out that a thorough source search and review doesnt allow for much more to be said, then the SNG's presumption waa wrong and deletion or merging makes sense. Which is why the SNG criteria should be cases we can be assured sources likely exist or will come about because of some clear point of achievement or merit. Masem (t) 17:52, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

• No, after reading the background discussion. I fail to see how reviews discussing somebody's life and career aren't actually discussing the person, just because those reviews focus on, say, a book or a play they have written. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 04:42, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Trying to define a list of somebody's works (presumably, alongside their name and a few explanatory details )as anything other than a rudimentary biography is also splitting hairs, to me -- read any biographical dictionary, and you will find entries that are little more than a few basic facts, followed by a list of somebody's work. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 04:45, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Because these reviews aren't discussing somebody's life or career, they're discussing a work which that person happened to create. To take an example from the previous discussion, Harry is a hugely likeable child, kind but not wet, competitive but always compassionate tells us nothing about the author, but is usable for an article on their work. BilledMammal (talk) 04:50, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  1. Yes of course what the person writes about is a statement about them. If a source summarizes someone's theories, for example, that is about them. If we have a book that discusses a scientist's various theories for 2 dozen pages we wouldn't decide to have an article on [x's theories] and not [x].

  2. Plot only descriptions of works are prohibited by MOS:PLOT so honestly that would help with the work article even less than it would help the author's. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:53, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, this, pretty much. We don't have plot only descriptions of works, we look for reviews that discuss reception, meaning, provide analysis. You know, review the work. And those are inextricably linked to the creator of the work -- because, unlike the use of the passive voice here suggests, it is widely accepted that most works are created deliberately by individuals, not just something they happened to create.

  And if the reviews of Harry Potter series were confined only to the single quoted line, I would likely agree that there's little to prove notability -- but as was pointed out in the discussion, this is a very selective quote as the review was longer than that, and did include biographical detail on Rowling. (Though, admittedly, I fault o see how "Rowling wrote a book about a child character, who XXX reviewer described as "competitive but always compassionate" is unusable and unrelated to the author so as to obviously fail to merit a mention in a biography.)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 04:59, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  1. We're not discussing scientists, we're discussing creatives.

  2. In my opinion, that sentence goes beyond plot summary and into analysis. However, whether it contributes to GNG for the work isn't relevant; the point is that it tells us nothing about the author. (And in reply to GLL, in the previous discussion I agreed that the review as a whole contributed to GNG, but that sentence does not - the point indeed is that many reviews do contribute to GNG, and that we shouldn't rely on the ones that don't) BilledMammal (talk) 05:23, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  1. Why would we treat those differently given the objections you described would apply equally to them? Plenty of nonfiction authors and scientists who write books are covered by this guideline.

  2. I don't agree on that containing analysis, but "the author wrote about a character named Harry Potter who is characterized as xyz" or "the author writes about wizards" or "the author created a fantasy world with wizards", which you could use the review in question to say, is a statement about the author. Taken in isolation, I'd say that actually (theoretically, not like a sentence counts for anything) contributes more to the author's notability than the books, because you can recontextualize that to be more than MOS:PLOT summary, which alone doesn't even count for work notability. PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:30, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  We are discussing scientists, though; WP:NCREATIVE is a nice shortcut, but the section itself applies to authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, bolding own. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 05:31, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Because authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects aren't scientists, who are instead covered by WP:PROF.

  the author wrote about a character named Harry Potter who is characterized as xyz is talking about the work, not the author; it's the character who is characterized, not the author. BilledMammal (talk) 05:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Scientists are frequently authors and editors and any scientist who writes books is covered by this guideline.

  Saying that the author wrote about something is a statement about them. Is a statement that "[x physicist] researched [black holes/quantum gravity/physics idk] and discovered [xyz]" not a statement about the physicist? PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:36, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  All I'm going to say is that I see WP:PROF, not WP:NCREATIVE, as applying to academics, and that as this discussion is already too deep I'm going to stop responding here. BilledMammal (talk) 05:38, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I think that, though it would be nice if we could divide the world into such clean, black and white divisions, in terms of what's practical, those divisions fall apart rather rapidly. An anthropologist or linguist, for example, may easily be notable as an author, first and formost. (Art history is actually somewhere the divisions fall apart very rapidly, if you're looking for an example -- historically, in Western academia, people who studied and wrote on Native American art could be considered a scientist before they were considered an art historian by their peers. Yet they're dealt with under NCREATIVE on Wikipedia, in most cases) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 05:49, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  @BilledMammal, most academics in the humanities are judged by NAUTHOR. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 07:00, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  As a general comment, some editors seem to struggle with the idea that a single source can contribute to notability for more than one subject. If the source is mainly about a book and partly about the author (for example), some editors feel like that source cannot contribute to notability of the author at all (and vice versa). Maybe we need to address this in WP:N directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

  That seems like a good thing to get clarified. I've always operated that way (a source can contribute to notability of multiple entities). ++Lar: t/c 22:20, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

• No per Parakanyaa and GLL above, and per pburka's comment in the previous discussion along with its subsequent replies from LEvalyn, Significa Liberdade and asilvering. In solidarity, nil ^nz 05:22, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• NoA per arguments above.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:14, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No - this does not solve any of the issues from the other thread — Preceding unsigned comment added by Czarking0 (talk • contribs) 06:36, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, per my comment on the earlier thread. This is not some SNG that is an end-run around the GNG - the works in question have to be notable works. This is, effectively, a rule of thumb that allows us to short-cut having to have a whole pile of repetitive WP:PAGEDECIDE discussions. It is much more useful to readers to have a single article on a mildly obscure author that discusses their four notable books than it is to have to go to four individual book articles to find that information. It's also easier for us to maintain. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 06:57, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I've created a sub-question that should allow #3 to continue meeting the purpose you support it for, while preventing the worst of its excesses. BilledMammal (talk) 07:20, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No, and I don’t understand what problem this is even theoretically supposed to address. Moreover, I reject the premise that the SNG is not predictive of a writable article. I’ve never seen an author with multiple notable books for whom a useful bio article could not be written. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 08:10, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I’ll give Deborah D. Rogers as an example of an article that can only exist with this SNG but, I contend, should exist. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 15:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Same with Nghi Vo. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 16:35, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• Yes - The issue is the reliance on reviews of works to establish that this is met. If an author, for instance, has truly created a large and notable body of work, it will usually be the case that the author has been discussed in biographies, but unlike LEvalyn above, I have seen quite a few authors who have reviews and bout whom very little is known. The case in point I raised in another discussion is the self published author Morgan Rice, who has written a lot, probably makes a good wage, but is not covered in secondary sources (although an author interview exists). But authors use pen names. Do we even know this person is really called Morgan rice? I just googled and found I'm not the first person to ask that question. There are plenty of known uses of pseudonyms (Anne Fine is Anne Pilling too and has other pseudonyms). If we go just off reviews and the fact someone published a lot of books, we find ourselves writing pages that are not based on independent reliable secondary sources. If we used GNG/ANYBIO, we would not have this problem. So as per BilledMammal above, the criterion as written is not predictive, and inasmuch as LEvalyn is right that in most cases there are bound to good sources from which a BIO can be written, we can just rely on the sources per GNG/ANYBIO. We don't need this shortcut, that allows us to retain biographies of people who may not even exist. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:09, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Without rehashing the conversation with BilledMammal above, where it would just amount to me repeating myself, addressing this one point: Do we even know this person is really called Morgan rice? Why would that make a difference? Plenty of people notable by GNG go by stage names or pseudonyms. Really, if we had RS that talked about it, while they tried to hide it, we shouldn't even include it, per WP:BLPPRIVACY. PARAKANYAA (talk) 12:15, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  What does this biography of a living person tell us about this person who may or may not be called Morgan Rice? WP:BLPs have to be written from independent secondary sources. If such don't exist, we should not be pretending that an encyclopaedic biography of the person is possible. The guideline is making us breach our own policies. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 12:19, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  That they produce self-published books, are apparently one of the more prolific self-published authors, the critical and commercial response to their body of work? I'm not sure what else I'd want; what other facts are we required to have for an article, besides what the person does? Sure, and reviews are independent secondary sources. PARAKANYAA (talk) 13:02, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  in a biography of the person I'd want much more. The article is, surely, about the person. If the person even exists. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:20, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Your personal requirements don't dictate Wikipedia's and why should they? Katzrockso (talk) 13:27, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  It is not about personal requirement, but about the type of article we are writing. If you want a biography of a living person, the clue is in the name. It should be a biography. Of a person.

  The guideline allows us to keep BLP articles that break our rules. If you want an article that talks about the critical response to the body of self published work that is attributed to Morgan Rice, then write that. Don't pretend it's a biography of Morgan Rice. It is not. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:35, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Notability is a guideline. BLP is a policy. If an article violates the BLP policy, make that argument in a deletion nomination, and hopefully a closer would weight that argument per WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS.

  Obviously not everyone agrees that the articles are breaking the BLP policy. Katzrockso (talk) 15:12, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  If Wikipedia has existed in her lifetime, George Eliot could have had an article even when her personal identity (and biological sex) was unknown. I don't see the problem here. Carwil (talk) 12:25, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  What would it have told us about her? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 12:34, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  That she was a leading and influential writer, her style of writing, her influence, etc. Katzrockso (talk) 13:22, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  See my reply to you above. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 13:36, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  As I stated in the previous conversation, ANYBIO #1 states, The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times. A person can receive significant awards without having biographical information published in reliable, independent sources. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 15:05, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  With LEvalyn is right that in most cases there are bound to good sources from which a BIO can be written, we can just rely on the sources per GNG/ANYBIO you have misunderstood my argument. In most cases there are non-independent sources from which a bio can be written, which do not pass GNG or ANYBIO, but can be used anyway to write a helpful article per WP:ABOUTSELF if their works instead entitle them to an article through the SNG. That is why the SNG is useful and necessary for such articles to exist. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 15:26, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Then our disagreement is broader. I don't believe anyone is entitled to a biographical article if the sources from which a tertiary bibliographic article must be written do not exist. What we end up with is secondary biographies. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 15:45, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No, per asilvering and GreenLipstickLesbian. It's usually possible to produce a useful and encyclopedic article about someone who produced multiple notable works using in-depth secondary sources analysing their body of work, even if the biographical information within that article might be more limited. It's also much better from the reader's perspective to have that information about someone's life and works in a single place rather than being forced to split it across articles about their notable individual works. MCE89 (talk) 13:20, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No unless someone can come up with better edge cases than Morgan Rice. I don't find the "but they might use a pseudonym" argument convincing at all. Either they continue using the pseudonym, in which case that is effectively their identity, or their "real" name is revealed, in which case we move the page or merge it. Gnomingstuff (talk) 13:50, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  They may not be one person at all. As per the link I put for Morgan Rice. We may be hosting biographies for content farms. In the case of people like Anne Fine, we might have multiple biographies for the same person (not there, since we do have biographical details - but in the cases we don't know about). But, in fact, unless we know some biographical details about the people, none of these are biographies at all. We need a guideline that helps us recognise that a policy compliant biography is due. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:11, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I think it’s appropriate that we have articles on, say, Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon, who are not real individuals but collections of ghostwriters. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 15:17, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No per the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Clarifying NAUTHOR. The example I've worked with most recently is Kathleen Jennings (illustrator). The biography is created almost entirely with primary sources accepted by WP:ABOUTSELF. However, Jennings has a large catalog of work and has won multiple notable awards for her collection of work, meeting ANYBIO#1. It would be dishonest of Jennings's career to only include her notable publications on Wikipedia, given that she is notable as an individual. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 15:10, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Oo, adding here that Elena Ferrante is actually a good example. Despite wide-spread fame, Ferrante has kept her identity and biographical information hidden--to the point that part of her article is about how she has kept her identity hidden for over 30 years! Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 16:21, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No I am sympathetic to the argument that this criteria could be tightened (not in the way in proposal 2), but as GreenLipstickLesbian explains above, there is not necessarily a clean or clear division between a review of a work and a discription of the creator. And in general, I do believe that readers want to see biographies of creators of notable works. --Enos733 (talk) 15:35, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  If anything I might tighten (in practice) or consider removing the singular in a significant or well-known work - because our general practice of three reviews to make a work significant or well-known may not be predictive that any or enough biographical information is present in the reviews to warrant an article. Enos733 (talk) 15:46, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  The author that comes to mind here is Harper Lee. In 2012, her article was primarily based on her sole notable work, To Kill a Mockingbird. In this case, we had independent coverage to discuss her as an author. However, she had a single, extremely notable work. In other cases, the question may become, "Do we have an article for the work with an 'About the author' section (if relevant), or do we have an author's biography with their single notable work?" Honestly, either would be fine by me. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 16:02, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I'd support tightening it to say "collective body of work" only because the cases where a single work would be enough are so exceptional that an abundance of sigcov would cover it IMO. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:24, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Fair, I think there are far fewer cases where someone only has one notable work and yet a separate author bio is warranted; when it happens, like with Harper Lee, the sourcing is probably GNG/NBIO material and doesn't need to be covered by the SNG. In most cases I think an 'Author' section on the book article is the better approach, like at Unexpected Destinations. I would be willing to remove the words work or so the requirement is just a significant or well-known collective body of work. Possibly with a footnote stating that those with exactly one notable work, should be covered on that work's article. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 16:26, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I'd vote against that - there are a lot of people where that would cause controversy/confusion as a clash between two notability guidelines if recommending that one work should be covered on the work's article - just in writers see Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind), Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights), Anna Sewell (Black Beauty), and so on Jishara (please ping upon response) (talk) 06:04, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

  People who meet WP:GNG or WP:BASIC do not need to also meet every SNG that might apply to them (People who meet the basic criteria may be considered notable without meeting the additional criteria below). —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:17, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

  I know they're exclusive, but it'll cause confusion if the guideline recommends that those with exactly one notable work should be covered on that work's article - so I oppose the footnote Jishara (please ping upon response) (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

  Is this a problem now? There must be thousands of subjects that meet GNG but would fail one or more SNGs that could be applied to them given their profession or background. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 05:19, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

  For clarity, the confusion IMO at AFD would come with the footnote saying people with one notable work should be covered on that work's article - because it's a SNG not just not being met but explicitly saying you shouldn't do a separate article. Jishara (please ping upon response) (talk) 13:47, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

  Trimming this to ≥2 notable works is sensible. Some biographical information about the creator can reasonably be covered in the article about the single work. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 05:18, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

• No per Gnomingstuff and per the unconvincing case made by the yes votes. The arguments above seem to be conflating notability and verifiability/BLP. If an article has unverifiable information, remove it. If it has poorly-sourced claims about living people that might be defamatory or privacy-violating, remove them. If there's enough left for a stub, great. If not, delete it. IMO this change would result in losing some desirable articles without a corresponding benefit to outweigh that cost. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 16:16, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes. Notability is not inherited, up or down. It is entirely possible for works to be notable but their creator not to be, or vice versa. If the works are notable but the creator is not, create articles about the works, mention the creator in those articles, but do not create a pseudo-"biography" just based upon "They created X and Y and Z and...". To write a biography, we need actual biographical material. If the available source material is about the works, not the creator, then that means the works, but not the creator, are notable. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:32, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  What is "biographical material" if not material about what the person does? What additional information do we need? PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:05, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  The WP:NOTINHERITED part of the WP:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions essay explicitly states that four of the notability guidelines, for creative professions, books, films and music, do allow for inherited notability in certain circumstances. Katzrockso (talk) 21:36, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Recommending practicality here is far more useful than black letter law approaches. It might well be that there is an author with numberous notable texts, but little biographical information, and so what? The "biography" is a list which satisfies NLIST. Case by case approaches guided by, for example, NOPAGE, NLIST and BIO can all serve to determine the best outcome. Goldsztajn (talk) 05:58, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  If we have an author's biography that simply says, "[Name] is an author", followed by a list of their works, then yes, a bibliography or list would make sense. However, even when talking primarily about the works, an author's biography creates a narrative about that person's career and their writing. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 14:21, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. The actual harm here hasn't been shown in any way. I'd be much more convinced if we had a group of articles that would clearly be deleted after this and that were clearly unencyclopedic and harmful to the living person covered, but right now we're discussing a theoretical case, and there have already been a few examples mentioned of cases of encyclopedic good articles that would be removed under this policy. Gbear605 (talk) 17:48, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per PARAKANYAA. Whether or not biographical content sourced to primary and/or non-independent sources is appropriate for the articles for whom there isn't much biographical content in secondary independent sources is a different question as to whether these articles serve an encyclopedic purpose and should exist. Even if we excise all such content, we could retitle them all to "Works published by X author" and they would be encyclopedic articles that should exist based on the reviews of these notable works.Katzrockso (talk) 21:41, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes (although it seems like a lost cause at this point). As it stands, this flies in the face of WP:NOTINHERITED. Take Team Cherry as an example, the game studio behind the wildly successful Hollow Knight and Silksong. Even they're not considered notable enough to have a dedicated article (that may change, but it was at least the case for an extended amount of time). Why should this really be any different? And what the hell even counts as "a significant or well known work"? This is just too vague as it stands, and it's too easy for people to point to this and go "look look! a couple of their books got some reviews! neener neener, notable!". –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 22:34, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  maybe not the greatest example; haven't looked but I wouldn't be surprised if there were significant coverage of Team Cherry now, it's been a long time since 2017 when the article was in bare bones form and subsequently converted to a redirect Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:44, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, the 2017 article seems very similar to an author with exactly one notable book, ie, an author who would not typically pass NCREATIVE and who would be covered on their book's article instead. Now that there are multiple games and a longer history for the company, I'm sure an article could be written; I see several sources on Google Scholar that look like WP:NCORP for Team Cherry. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  A draft on Team Cherry was rejected (not declined, rejected) by AfC in January. 1brianm7 (talk) 21:46, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  We shouldn't derail this discussion too much on one example, but I'll say that surprises me, though when I look closer it seems they are famous for never telling press/researchers anything so although there are some sources like this, this and this which analyze their role in the Australian indie games industry, they do seem to get a lot less detailed coverage than similar studios like House House. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 20:51, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

  Why should this really be any different? The reason WP:NCORP sets a higher bar is to address specific problems with sources in this area, as explained at WP:ORGCRIT. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 06:34, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. NOTINHERITED isn't a policy or a guideline, and I don't think there's any merit to the idea that careers and lives can somehow be teased apart, and that a notable career doesn't contribute to a life's notabality. Even if basic biographical details are missing, articles about notable bodies of work are encyclopedic. pburka (talk) 22:48, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte"? Non, merci. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 23:57, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Incredible that this has gone as far as a rfc without much more discussion. It's a proposal to blow up huge sections of the encyclopedia. Jahaza (talk) 00:55, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

  this has been a pattern with this editor for like 5 years or so, they have now turned their scope to entertainment rather than sports Gnomingstuff (talk) 19:37, 22 August 2026 (UTC)

• No because even in those cases where an encyclopedic article definitely cannot be written about an author, a page with an overview of their work is still useful for navigation. In those cases the author page is just a container to put encyclopedic content about their works, for example as an alternative to having multiple short articles connected by a navbox. (I would support requiring at least two works, since if an author is truly only notable for one work, it's probably meaningless to discuss them apart from that work. I don't see any benefit to rebranding articles about otherwise non-notable authors as "List of works of X", but it'd be a less objectionable compromise than deleting such articles outright.) • jhvx talk edits 12:50, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, because while we profess to have articles for the notable, we should not be settling only for what WP:GNG covers, which is the noted. We have reasonable ways around that in place for scientists and such, where we can track their influence through citation rankings. It is reasonable to also allow some such evaluation in creative realms. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:57, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per Asilvering. It seems like a useful way to help us organize the encyclopedia's coverage of notable topics, and from my initial impression I don't see a compelling case that it is being abused to permit coverage of non-notable topics. Sdkb ^talk 16:12, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No I believe it addresses an important gap in the GNG policy wherein creative works are seen and judged as an extension of the creator themselves, so specifically discussing the creator may not be seen as necessary. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:58, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• No This has nothing to do with "inheriting" any form of notability. Because the subject is the one creating the thing, they are the notability itself, whether talking about a work created or a highly influential theory/body of research produced. They made the thing, they inherited nothing. The notability of the thing belongs to them directly. Silverseren^C 20:20, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes Notability is not inherited, full stop. Let'srun (talk) 21:54, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• Maybe we need to re-write this to explain it better. The important question isn't "Since Alice Author wrote three notable books, can't I have an article about each of the books, plus another one for Alice herself?" The point is more like "Rather than having three separate, standalone (and probably short) articles about each of the books, and then debating whether to have a fourth article about the author, how about we have one merged-up article (which I guess we'll name after the author, since picking just one book title won't work)?" See also all the debates about whether to have an article about Frank Founder and another article about the company he founded: if the reliable sources tend to talk about both, then sticking both the BLP and the founder in the same article isn't "inheriting"; it's just a practical merge result. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 24 August 2026 (UTC)
• No: a creator is notable for what they have created. Their works give us the outline of their biography:

"X is/was a yyy active in [country/continent] in [period]. Their works include... [list of notable and other works]".

Anything more is a bonus. The article may, or may not, grow to include further biographical information as more is learned/published about the creator. PamD 09:23, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

• No: As several above commentators have noted, there are many artists who are of encyclopedic interest because they have produced many notable works yet fail to meet any of the remaining WP:CREATIVE standards, and I see no reason to exclude them. Pudelpointed (talk) 19:13, 24 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Creators are notable for what they have created, just as athletes are notable for their athletic performance. It is nonsensical to throw out the in-depth coverage of those creations (when it exists) just as it would be nonsensical to require athletes to prove notability through sources that avoid discussing their athletic performances. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:22, 25 August 2026 (UTC)
• No This is a weird misreading of WP:INHERITED and, as others have observed, misses the point of why creators are notable: the work they create. Removing this criterion would bias our coverage in favor of creators who are known for scandals instead of for their art. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:58, 25 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. If the work has been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, the creator does satisfy GNG. This proposal implies, for example, that Acts and omissions done by George Washington during his lifetime is a separate topic from George Washington, and that George Washington should only discuss his anatomy. The result would be a proliferation of articles with an unencyclopedic scope and a page name that is unreasonably difficult to search for. James500 (talk) 19:45, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. When a creator has one notable work, the creator redirects to the work. So when a creator has two notable works, we should return it to a redlink? No. It should be a way for someone to navigate to either work, and if the creator happens to have other reliably-sourced information about them, why not throw it in. Functionally, NCREATIVE#3 allows for a specialized type of list reskinned as a biography, and I am okay with that. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:54, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Yes It is overly vague as to what constitutes a "major role" or a "significant work". Even if works are notable and have received reviews, that does not necessarily mean a person involved in its production is notable if there is a lack of coverage of that person. At the least this needs to be tightened up as to what type of creative roles and works it covers – a sole author of bestselling books has a stronger claim to this than one of the countless people involved in a film's production. Reywas92^Talk 02:01, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Q2: Applying WP:CREATIVE#3 only to the creator

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Should WP:CREATIVE#3 be modified to remove or played a major role in co-creating? 07:19, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Survey (Applying WP:CREATIVE#3 only to the creator)

• Yes, as second choice to removing. Much of the arguments against removing WP:CREATIVE#3 is that it is necessary for creatives who are not independently notable but have created a significant body of work. However, this reasoning doesn't apply to individuals who were not the creator; screenwriters, editors, etc etc etc.
  They are also where many of the issues with this guideline originate; a creator of several notable works is likely to meet WP:GNG, but that cannot be said of someone who was merely involve in the creation, even if the meet the nebulously defined "major role". Removing this aspect will go a long way towards addressing the issues with this guideline. BilledMammal (talk) 07:19, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Respectfully, @BilledMammal, given that it's been a few days now, I think this second choice is snowing. Would you object to a close along those lines? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:34, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

• No "Major" is not that nebulously defined to most people, and neither is co-creator. This would exclude books which had two authors, books which had editors, a play which had two authors, all films, all documentaries, from counting towards the notability of their major co-creators. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 07:49, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Also, I feel like I have to note "merely involve[sic] in the creation" would already fail NCREATIVE #3 as written. The guideline does not allow what the RFC creator is worried about. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 08:04, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. Co-creators of major works or major bodies of work are notable. And the "creator" vs. "co-creators" distinction the proposer makes is unwise, especially in the film context in which they are making it. Screenwriters, editors, and production designers all receive more professional recognition (e.g., Oscar nominations) than press, and these kinds of "primary" coverage are plenty of information for us to write encyclopedic articles from. I think the encyclopedia benefits from covering figures like Catherine Martin (designer) when she assembled her body of notable work rather than when say Vogue took an interest in her.--Carwil (talk) 12:12, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. Let's say a graphic novel, for example. We have an author who writes the story and the illustrator. Both should be recognized for their work on the book as co-creators. This is already clear as GLL explains above. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 15:14, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No per my rationale for Q1. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 16:17, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, the others have pointed out many examples where co-creation is the norm and we ought to be able to discuss each major contributor. Passing contributions are already disallowed. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 16:38, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, per above and also because we do not need to codify the auteur myth in our guidelines. If someone is stretching the definition of "major role" that will be obvious. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:48, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No, this would introduce even more confusion into the guideline.Katzrockso (talk) 21:44, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. A co-creator is still a creator. Is Lilly Wachowski less notable because she only co-created The Matrix? pburka (talk) 22:51, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• No WP:UCS. There's a problem with people claiming best boys are co-creators? Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 00:01, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. a co-creator is a creator. Jahaza (talk) 00:53, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No Many creative realms rely substantially on creative teams. To look at the world through the lens of Black comic book characters who ended up in larger media (yes, we each have our lenses): Jack Kirby co-created the Black Panther with Stan Lee, who co-created The Falcon (i.e., the MCU's current Captain America) with Gene Colan, who co-created Blade with Marv Wolfman, who co-created Cyborg with George Perez. If each of these people had done nothing else (which is the case for none of them, admittedly), Stan, Gene, and Marv's co-creator status on multiple works of impact is a clear body of work of importance. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:27, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
• No It would lead to big debates about who the "main creator" of something is. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 07:01, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• No The whole point of that note is that not everything has a singular creator. That's just a factual statement. A book can be written by two or more authors, ect. You don't pick one as the "primary author", that's dumb. Silverseren^C 20:22, 23 August 2026 (UTC)
• No: "played a major role in co-creating" can do its work. PamD 09:28, 24 August 2026 (UTC)
• No. What even is the rationale for this? If they played a major role, they are a creator. This seems less like something well-motivated than a way to increase wikilawyering by carving out exceptions for people who are deemed unworthy of counting as creators. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:24, 25 August 2026 (UTC)
• No What's wrong with being a screenwriter? Or an editor? (It is widely maintained that Star Wars was saved in the editing room...) Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 17:06, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

No - not everything has one singular creator (see just about every film or album ever) and this would therefore result in a lot of unnecessary confusion to change. Jishara (please ping upon response) (talk) 22:03, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

• No. A co-creator is a creator. James500 (talk) 19:47, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion (RfC on WP:CREATIVE)

• @Asilvering, Czarking0, FuzzyMagma, JoelleJay, Ldm1954, LEvalyn, PARAKANYAA, Pburka, Significa liberdade, and Sirfurboy: Notifying editors BilledMammal (talk) 04:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• Previous discussion here BilledMammal (talk) 04:34, 21 August 2026 (UTC)
• Reading the above-linked previous discussion, I do not see any stated examples of articles that have been kept per criterion #3 but should not have been. If it is correct that this criterion is not predictive of coverage -- indeed so non-predictive as to require its removal -- then I would expect there to be examples that would demonstrate that. Could some examples be provided? -- Visviva (talk) 04:51, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  A brief search turned up Ada McQuillan, who meets WP:CREATIVE through her contributions to several early films, but appears to lack any real coverage. I have no doubt many more can be found if I spent more than two minutes on it. BilledMammal (talk) 05:31, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Is a scenario editor in a studio really an NCREATIVE pass, though? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 05:54, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  She was a screenwriter for several movies; I think that is covered by WP:NCREATIVE. If you disagree, then please nominate for WP:AFD. BilledMammal (talk) 05:57, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I think referring to her as a screenwriter is misleading or, possibly, just untrue; scenario editors aren't analogous to modern screenwriters. Their role was more technical, and I don't think you can say she actually created or played a major role in co-creating anything. Ergo, NECREATIVE#3 doesn't apply (at least, in my mind). GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:02, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not convinced, but as I said, if you don't think she is then please test it at WP:AFD. BilledMammal (talk) 06:07, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Can you find me a source actually calling her a screenwriter? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:15, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  According to this, she is credited as a screenwriter. However, this discussion is also getting to deep, so again I'm going to stop here; if you genuinely believe she doesn't meet WP:CREATIVE, then please nominate her at AfD and we will see what the consensus is. Otherwise, she is a good example of the issues with this guideline. BilledMammal (talk) 06:18, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  sorry, I should have been more specific -- something reliable and non-user generated? I don't think we should make statements of fact, or base Wikipedia's descriptors of people, on unreliable sources. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 06:25, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  says Ada and Gladys wrote the screen play. The rest of the sources call both of them scenario editors.. In these sources there is no "screen writer". I believe this was typical of the era. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:20, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Screenwriting in Britain by Ian W. MacDonald from Analysing the Screenplay 2010 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203843383. "The new division of labour provided a route for promising aspirants to

  enter the film industry. Writers could be taken on as Scenario Editor, where

  they read submissions, and formatted stories into scripts as well as writing

  screenplays themselves". Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:37, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  Er, at a quick glance I'm not confident those films are notable, either? In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 07:03, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  As per BilledMammal, take to AFD and let the community decide. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:23, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I don't have any interest in AfDing it, personally, and I'm not going to AfD something without trying to search for sources first. But I find it odd that this article is being used as an example of the problems with the guideline, when it looks like it's a problem with "no one has gotten around to this yet", which doesn't really have anything to do with notability or this SNG. In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 10:14, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

  I am quite troubled that you are only conducting this brief search now. Generally, before proposing solutions to a problem, it is best to establish what the problem is and that it exists. In this case, being able to show that there are articles that pass NCREATIVE, don't pass any other criteria, and shouldn't exist. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 16:33, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

NOT AN RfC: WP:MERGE (MERGEREASON) as a guideline.

Just to be clear, this has had no prior planning and was actually inspired by this comment. Ever since the PAM-AfD merger earlier this year, WP:MERGEREASON has become commonplace at AfD as the foundational question for all merge proposal AfDs. This is good, as it means there is something to base discussion on to form a consensus. The issue I have is purely functional then. MERGE is an WP:INFOPAGE, which itself is not a policy or guideline. In practice, most editors who are active at AfD probably don't care, but we're at point now where the active admins are asking for discussion based on this information page.

The page is mostly instructional, but when WP:DELETE, WP:KEEP and WP:ATD outcomes are considered as PAGs, it makes sense to me, to include MERGE (or just MERGEREASON) under that same umbrella.

(Any editor is free to close this if it is deemed unimportant.) 11WB 💬 01:59, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Merging is a "process" page, and process pages have traditionally had WP:NOTAG. For example, Wikipedia:Requests for comment is a process page that isn't officially a policy or guideline. (I mention that example because it says that you're not required to have a prior discussion before starting an RFC, no matter what rumor may have been passed around.) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion is another process page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

MERGE is already technically "pigeon-holed" as an INFOPAGE. I'm bringing this up here as the MERGEREASON section has gone beyond that to function as a regularly cited (default) guideline at AfD since the merger. 11WB 💬 06:00, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

We do not have a coherent structure that requires pages containing accepted rationales to be tagged in any particular way. This is partly because Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays is subtle and variable, and partly because pages can combine multiple elements, but also partly because how a page was tagged back in the day (when we finally [mostly] quit tagging pages without discussion) was a bit random. We had editors, for example, who believed that nothing should be called a "policy". It doesn't seem to make much difference in the end. WP:BRD has failed multiple WP:PROPOSALS to be declared a policy or guideline, and people still cheerfully cite it. Wikipedia:Five pillars isn't a policy, and yet editors regularly treat it as superseding any actual {{policy}}. The tag at the top of the page isn't the important part. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. If you believe this is unimportant, as I said in my opening post, I don't mind this being closed. I'm not sure whether you are active at AfD, but I would have liked a few more editors to give their opinions on this. I don't particularly believe in the mindset of not bothering at the first hurdle, I acknowledge your opinion, but now I invite others also to leave theirs. 11WB 💬 20:47, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

I'd be hesitant to codify this as a guideline. Merging is less drastic, and more easily reversible, than deletion. The devil is in the details with merges—exactly which content, where it should go in the parent article, and the particular reasons based on the state of the article at a given time. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:57, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Specific sections can be assessed as guidelines. Banners aren't exclusively placed only at the top of such pages. 11WB 💬 22:04, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

It's not the placement on the page but the content itself that gives me pause. What's written at WP:MERGEREASON is sensible but if the goal is to give it more authority, I'm not sure that's necessary or helpful. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 08:39, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

The actual problem with WP:MERGEREASON that's on display at the AFD that was linked is the failure to distinguish when blanking and redirecting is more appropriate than merging. 'Promoting' this to a guideline won't address that problem. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 08:59, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there's harm in discussing it but it's worth noting that WP:PAGEDECIDE and MERGEREASON are fairly similar in semantic content and the former is on a policyguideline page. Alpha3031 (t • c) 22:15, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

As an aside, would there be any support for an RfC to promote Wikipedia:Notability to policy? The fact that it is a mere guideline has bothered me for years. FaviFake (talk) 06:48, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Honestly, no. In this case I would endorse what @WhatamIdoing said above. No one would notice the difference and I personally believe it functions better as a guideline, rather than being enforced as a policy. 11WB 💬 06:54, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

I've heard multiple people argue that WP:N is less important than [insert other policy] just because it's a guideline and not a policy. If we're gonna keep these meaningless labels at least we should apply them consistently. Why do you think it functions better as a guideline when similar pages like WP:NOT or WP:TITLE are policies? It could be argued that WP:N is more important than WP:TITLE. FaviFake (talk) 08:21, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

A policy, from my perspective, is enforced. If we take WP:CIVIL, a policy, this enforces editors to be civil with one another (as they would be expected to anyway). Violating that policy usually results in a sanction. For WP:N, a guideline, this is not the case. An editor is not going to be blocked for authoring a non-notable article. Instead, for intractable cases of authoring non-notable articles, several pages become relevant instead, such as WP:NOTHERE (which is itself an essay backed by policy). This is obviously just my perspective, in reality they are just labels. 11WB 💬 08:36, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

It would be a mistake to think of blocking as the only important enforcement mechanism.

It also doesn't hold up in practice. For example, people violate the WP:PRESERVE policy all day long, and so long as their violations are aligned with common biases in the community, they'll even get praised for it; on the other side, nobody ever violates WP:ELNEVER #2, even though it's "just" a guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I was making a personal observation of function, obviously any guideline or policy breach can result in a sanction. My main point is that policies generally hold the highest authority (with Arbitration and Foundation decisions being the few things that "outrank" them).

This is getting off-topic slightly however. The focus is on MERGE/MERGEREASON specifically. 11WB 💬 06:08, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

No. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 09:09, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Right... thanks for that. I was attempting to explain my perspective on Wikipedia's page label authority, but I suppose not everyone will agree. 11WB 💬 10:07, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

I was responding to FaviFake's question. I do not support an RFC to promote Wikipedia:Notability to a policy. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:33, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Oh. My mistake, apologies. I was slightly taken aback when I read that. There's nothing wrong with saying "no", but without anything else it came across as complete dismissal. I agree with you regardless, an RfC for WP:N isn't necessary. 11WB 💬 00:44, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I had started writing a long rationale but decided to just keep it simple. :) —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 08:15, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

RfC: AI use for generating citations within articles

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/RfC: AI use for generating citations within articles by Graham87. KylieTastic (talk) 16:23, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

This RfC is to ask whether a third exemption for the assistance or generation of citations in articles should be added to the WP:NOLLM guideline or not.

As of right now NOLLM is underdeveloped, which makes sense as the guideline only reached consensus in March of this year. There are specific use cases that AI could assist with, without violating WP:TSI and WP:V, such as the structuring of inline citations.

To provide an example, I asked Google Gemini the following:

"Please provide the code for an inline academic reference on Wikipedia, from this URL. Please include the authors, DOI and other general information that requires inclusion. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10893-x."

After doing a search (presumedly to access the URL), Gemini outputted the following code:

<ref name="Berne2026">{{cite journal |last1=Berne |first1=A. |last2=Wagner |first2=N. |last3=Matsuyama |first3=I. |display-authors=et al. |title=Tidal tomography reveals a thermal anomaly beneath Mars's crustal dichotomy |journal=Nature |volume=656 |pages=848–853 |year=2026 |doi=10.1038/s41586-026-10893-x}}</ref>

I then used the text editor and used the template tool to do the same myself. Bear in mind, I have been editing for a while (and use academic references often), so for me this is second nature (no pun intended). I actually wasn't aware of how to add "et al.", so Gemini actually taught me something new!

As can be seen, Gemini outputted a less complete version without the URL, but it is generally on the way there. New editors may not be aware of NOLLM and believe that using AI to generate a source, with information they've inputted, is acceptable. In this case, Gemini has just taken what I've put in and extracted information directly from the URL. That leaves little to no room for hallucination (and if it managed to, then the AI in that instance would just suck regardless).

I don't believe this specific use case presents enough risk to be prohibited, and could reasonably be included as an exemption. This is why I have opened this RfC today. It has been on my mind for a while, and reasoned that with the ongoing RECALL, and overwhelming clean-up work WP:AINB participants continue to do daily, if this exemption is applied, it could take some of the load off. 11WB 💬 07:51, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

References

Survey (AI citations)

• Oppose, LLMs can be helpful to format references (although there are better ways to prompt than the one above), but this should not be a separate point in NOLLM for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the background code of wikitext, including citation templates, is not strictly article content. More importantly, LLMs can hallucinate in this as they can in anything else. LLMs will sometimes generate fake dois, urls, ISBNs, etc., even for citations which are otherwise valid. These sorts of source information mismatches are one of the signs that indicate LLM use, so leading editors to believe these uses always generate good citations is guiding good-faith editors towards being picked up for unchecked LLM use. CMD (talk) 08:18, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• (summoned by bot) Oppose as unnecessary per CMD. I also share the concerns about hallucinated parameters, which are often seen at AfC for things like ISBNs. There are a number of automated tools that can format citation templates without the need for LLMs, and we should encourage the use of these instead. In solidarity, nil ^nz 08:38, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose LLMs are as likely to hallucinate doing this as any other work. Also this takes more time and effort than using the already available tools who's abilities and limitations are known and understood. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:01, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Bad idea LLMs are not suitable for this task. Polygnotus (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is something I support in theory but oppose in practice. There are too many cases where someone says they "just used AI to format the article" when the article text itself is also clearly AI, and sometimes they end up trickle-truthing out the rest of it ("ok I also used it to polish..."). I don't even think all of them are lying. I think a lot of people genuinely do not understand that "generating citations" and "finding citations" are different things, or that "pages=848–853" didn't just magically appear. I don't think the prompt you provided is similar to what the majority of people are using -- and I don't think most of them would grasp how it isn't similar.

If your concern is the "overwhelming clean-up work," meanwhile, then even stronger oppose, this proposal will make the clean-up work harder because it's just one more exception for people to sealion about. Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:27, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose for all the reasons given in the !votes above (except that I can't see myself supporting it even in theory). If you have the URL, just use the tool that's already in the Visual Editor and check its output manually. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:09, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, my experience of LLMs echoes CMD's. They've got a terrible tendency of making small, hard to spot errors when asked to produce references e.g. giving you the title of one paper and the author list of another. Red Fiona (talk) 18:16, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't think one example of an LLM giving a correct citation should be translated into allowing it sitewide. As already stated above, they can (and already do) hallucinate quite a bit. There's no guarantee that the LLM doesn't just make up parameters or insert hallucinated content into said parameters. Even if they could reliably do one citation, what if someone were to make several citations in a batch? There's no guarantee they would all be good citations and correctly formatted, so human review would be necessary (especially since unchecked LLM-generated content is doubly bad). Aside from my personal dislike of the use of LLM-generated content on Wikipedia as a whole, I just don't get the use to generate something you would have to manually review anyway, just in case it decided to not properly format your citation that one time. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 23:39, 27 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose Even if AI can do some citations correctly, there is a real risk of AI hallucinations, especially when several citations are being generated. A lot of the times, visual editor would work just fine, and if not, filling in the citation manually should only take a few minutes. EaglesFan37 (talk) 07:08, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose. A more convincing lie makes for more work, not less. Tools for generating correct citations automatically have existed for a long time; there is no excuse for instead using a tool that is fundamentally unsuited to the task. In solidarity, Autoinvective (🗨︎ 𓅬) 07:53, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose until they overcome the issue of LLMs hallucinating when they don't know. The example is a easy url to process compared to many and the prompt is more detailed than most would use, so I don't believe is indicative of real use. Until an LLM can admit to not knowing and also prompt users for missing information in requests, such as "What page numbers are you using as a source?", this is a no go for me. KylieTastic (talk) 09:22, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, there's the old adage of hard cases make bad law, but this is apparently one for "easy cases make bad law". Just do it yourself. We've done that for many years now, and we've done fine with that. We do not need chatbots writing articles; we've written millions without them. (By the way, I initially screwed up my link to the article in my comment, but I fixed it, because I'm writing it myself. Write yourself; don't use chatbots.) Yes, I'm sure in some cases, a chatbot can get it right. In others, it will hallucinate or screw up. Write it yourself. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:41, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Advise against LLM-generated citations, but exempt from sanctions Fundamentally, generating citations is a lot more like suggestions for "spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, grammar" than it is content creation, and we should treat it accordingly. If a user gives the LLM a fully formed citation and it returns a properly cited Wikipedia citation, that is largely verifiable; the editor should look over and match the fields, and should not be subject to blocking and other sanctions just because they used an LLM to do so. 11WB is correct that this process is now "second-nature" to a lot of people doing academic work, and we should create a policy that avoids biting people for routine, good-faith actions. However, in my experience, this kind of reformatting is prone to two failure modes: "helpful" hallucinatory additions (e.g., the LLM adds a completely made-up ISBN number) and field mismatches (e.g., the LLM adds an editors field when the template uses editor-last1 etc.). The best thing to do would be to connect editors with software-based tools that can handle these things correctly every time (for most cases, VisualEditor; Zotero plus Wikipedia Citation Template; the tools at Help:Citation tools). But frankly, our documentation is not user-friendly at all and should be dramatically improved.--Carwil (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose. Why would you want to do this when both RefToolbar and Visual Editor have robust tools for turning a DOI into a fully formed citation. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 14:48, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose There are already non-llm tools for this, why should we make an exception for something worse than we already have. —Leaf.Sheap ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ (They•Them) 15:00, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

  Also, writing this into policy would be pointless policy creep, I don't see how it could accomplish anything useful. —Leaf.Sheap ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ (They•Them) 16:12, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

  That isn't how Wikipedia works. The project can't just unilaterally decide to ignore a specific RfC because it could get written down. That logic doesn't work anyway as NOLLM is tiny as far as PAG pages go. This isn't a concern. 11WB 💬 16:25, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

  The concept of policy creep, and the corresponding Wikipedia essay WP:CREEP, is absolutely relevant to a proposal to add an additional carve out to the existing guideline. The fact that the current guideline is concise and allows limited exceptions does not render the 'creep' concerns irrelevant. Some editors understandably see adding more loopholes, exceptions, and special cases as a net negative. You may think the concern is unwarranted or that the benefits of the proposal outweigh the concern but —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:33, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

• Status Quo: as is often the case with these RFCs, one result might feed the sea lions and one result might embolden the newbie-biters. Sometimes it's better to just leave things be and spend your time mentoring newbies or doing cleanup. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 18:08, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose: we have deterministic tools for this and should not muddy the waters on AI use NicheSports (talk) 18:19, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, to my experience this is a bad idea. And also not needed as citoid provides a reasonable good tool. Alexcalamaro (talk) 18:26, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Big meh. Either the citation is completely identical to anything a human could have made, has no errors and would be not possible for anyone to tell it was generated by AI (since the content doesn't have AISIGNS), or it has hallucinations. In the first case, the current prohibition from NOLLM is unenforceable and in the second we don't want hallucinations.Katzrockso (talk) 18:28, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Support I often use the Automatic option of the Cite function of the Visual Editor which generates a citation from a URL, as the OP describes. I don't know the details of the technology behind this but it isn't very good as it often garbles the output, doesn't use my preferred format and sometimes fails completely. Editors should be free to use other software solutions if they work better. As software may use a variety of algorithms and approaches, we should not try to micromanage the details; the key thing is whether it works or not.

Note the background to this is the status quo that we often don't get citations at all because providing them is such a pain. For a fresh example, see Lake Ontario, which is currently in the news and getting lots of traffic. That has been tagged as needing more citations because it has extensive passages without any. But the absurd thing is that the tag required an edit request because the page is fully protected! Wikipedia is suffocated by such constraints and challenges and so some fresh thinking is needed. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:13, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. I have nothing to add, however, the concerns previously mentioned are shared. --I sometimes eat bananas, and you can talk to me here: (talk) 23:51, 28 August 2026 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose, absolutely not. Users should not be permitted to delegate one of the most important parts of an encyclopaedic article to their slop machines. This is not only a bad idea, but it doesn't solve any problems and would just create even more problems. This is also constantly used as an "excuse" by users caught using AI, who then claim to "only use it to format references" or something. Legitamising that idea in NOLLM is an awful idea that would just make an already difficult task even more difficult. We have finally gotten somewhere with our LLM guidelines, lets not start watering it down. ‑‑gurkubondinn 01:21, 29 August 2026 (UTC)
• Provisional support Formatting citations is one of the most irritating parts of wiki editing and while Citoid and friends are great, they can't handle all possible forms citations come in. Hand formatted citations are quite error prone - typos, mistaken parameters, missing parameters etc - and we largely put up with that, so I am not sold on hallucinations as counterargument. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 06:39, 29 August 2026 (UTC)
• Support. We should not encourage people to use LLMs for citations, but we should not penalise them for doing so either. We want citations, and as pointed out generating them in this manner is routine for many people now. Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

  • Support or Status Quo: Unlike prose, citations are either correct or incorrect. It shouldn't matter how an editor produced a correct citation as the encyclopedia is the priority as described in WP:3P. Incorrect citations are disruptive. In the discussions at WP:Nollm, no one has objected to experienced editors fixing or creating templates with chatbots/agents. I expect we'd be able to find some language that reflects the underlying consensus that edits should be judged on their own merits. That said, I think our policy/talk time should be directed at how to slow the stream of slop. Most of the objections here are centered around avoiding any encouragement to slop edits. Maybe we should focus more on the onboarding of new editors or the volume of edits.

  Dw31415 (talk) 13:22, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose, for the reasons given by Nil NZ and Gnomingstuff above. In my comparatively short time participating in AI cleanup here, I have not been convinced that LLMs are reliable for this task. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Suðurhafsljósæta (talk • contribs) 13:19, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (AI citations)

Is there a particular reason this was started on its own separate page, rather than at VPP? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:46, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Decided to follow the bullet point under the second point of WP:RFCOPEN. I assumed high influx based on past RfCs on the topic. 11WB 💬 14:49, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I always think it's best to start at the appropriate page, and then move it off if it grows to big. You get better exposure that way. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:18, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to move it back to the main page. I felt it more appropriate to do it this way as the main page is already quite large and previous RfCs for this topic have received a larger number of comments. 11WB 💬 15:27, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I've boldly done so. I didn't relish the thought of adding this to Wikipedia:Village pump archive § Special discussions, which I sometimes help out with, when there was no need for it to be on its own page. I wonder if this could be closed early per WP:SNOW. It would've been better to propose this as just a straight discussion at the idea lab first. Graham87 (talk) 11:26, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

@Graham87, it's been a day. WP:RFCEND suggests a minimum of 7 days. I expect this to be unsuccessful. This RfC serves a purpose to clarify whether not-strictly article content such as citations are exempt or not from the NOLLM guideline. As for the idea lab, I'm really not one to add extra steps in unnecessarily. 11WB 💬 13:49, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

WP:RFCEND suggests seven days as a typical minimum, but a fuller quote of the surrounding text says: "An RfC should last until enough comment has been received that consensus is reached, or until it is apparent that it won't be. There is no required minimum or maximum duration; typically 7 days is a minimum, and after 30 days the discussion is ripe for closure." The comment subsequent to my last one at 13:40 (UTC) today noted an angle that hadn't previously been considered, so maybe it might be worth having this open for a few more days at the most, but I'll let other editors judge that. The idea lab would most likely have produced much the same feedback without the overhead of an RFC. Graham87 (talk) 15:03, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

I currently put the count at 17o/4s/2n (including myself in the 4 supports). That's just over a quarter that haven't directly opposed. Obviously I'm not saying this should be kept open for a ridiculous amount of time. But I do think pulling the plug after just 24 hours (as you proposed yesterday) would have been extremely premature. AfDs get 7 days minimum, and other consensus building venues get longer. My hope is that something can be added to the guideline to highlight whatever consensus is built here. 11WB 💬 08:12, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Has anyone been sanctioned for this practice? Is this a topic of recurring disputes among editors interpreting and enforcing the current guideline? —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:28, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

Don't know about the former but the latter yes Gnomingstuff (talk) 17:30, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

Are there a lot of cases reported to AINB, or massive cleanup efforts, where this practice is the only AI/LLM usage involved? If so, how are these cases even detected? I would not expect a well formatted, error-free citation to raise any eyebrows unless there is something else going on. I feel like I'm missing a lot of context as to why this is being raised. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 17:37, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

LLMs can have tells with how they format references, and of course the references often turn out to be nonsense which kind of gives it away. I don't think this stuff should be discussed anymore, the list of LLM tells that was created was used to help train LLM to hide those tells. So listing anymore is almost a WP:BEANS situation. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:53, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

OK. I get the BEANS point. I don't actually want an exhaustive list of tells, anyway. Just trying to understand the background on this proposal, which looks to be failing anyway. The RFC statement says if this exemption is applied, it could take some of the load off. But we don't know if there have been any massive cleanup efforts addressing just this practice. If the references are nonsense, which of course happens, that's a problem in and of itself and would presumably be grounds for a warning and further escalation even if some version of this proposal were adopted. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 23:28, 28 August 2026 (UTC)

The idea, as strange as it sounds, was for this to fail, as it clarifies that non-article content (in this case citations) are also subject to the guideline. An oppose or support close is a win in my eyes. 11WB 💬 01:30, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

the list of LLM tells that was created was used to help train LLM to hide those tells.

this was one guy's viral marketing project to promote his startup, it does not deserve the attention it got Gnomingstuff (talk) 04:50, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Transfermarkt should be usable for squad lists etc.

Transfermarkt is currently completely outlawed as a source on Wikipedia, due to it's varying accuracy in terms of player transfer values. This begs the question as to why the ban isn't just for use as a verification for player values or transfer amounts. It's a perfectly accurate source for squad lists etc Edlectro28 (talk) 14:39, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard may be able to help. Certes (talk) 15:19, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! Edlectro28 (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

See: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Transfermarkt should be usable for squad lists etc. for anyone interested. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 20:22, 28 August 2026 (UTC)