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I propose removing the provision in Wikipedia:Political endorsements that allows local consensus to overrule our general policy that facts be sourced to independent reliable sources for organizational endorsements. Specifically, I propose striking the following sentence from the guideline: Local consensus can determine whether a specific list requires independent sources or sources connected to the organization itself, such as its website or official social media accounts.
Support per WP:VNOT and WP:DUE, as other editors have pointed out. A social media post or other statement endorsing a candidate is a primary source for the endorsement. It might be verifiable, but that doesn't make it due for inclusion. Inclusion of endorsements should require secondary sources. It should also require independent sources, because, e.g., a list of endorsements published by a campaign might be secondary and verifiable, but it doesn't establish WP:DUE. We should only include endorsements when reliable, secondary, independent sources (like history books and newspaper articles) establish that inclusion of the endorsement is due. Levivich (talk) 00:19, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Comment. This is not meant to be a put-down: from what I know, WP:VNOT necessitates consensus but not necessarily "sources need to be this type", and WP:DUE does not necessitate source secondariness or independence. DUE only needs sources to be "reliable", and WP:RSPRIMARY separates secondariness and reliability by saying "Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources" and even saying primary sources "can be both reliable and useful in certain situations". Needless to say, these issues of VNOT and DUE are quite annoying. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 01:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)(edited 02:47, 30 July 2026 (UTC))Reply
I don't read the current guidance as suggesting an exception to DUE or VNOT. And it doesn't allow for citing a source from the campaign, only sources from the endorsing organization itself. DUE is contextual and can be assessed in a number of ways. For example, only including organizations with blue links to articles would be a reasonable bar to set in national and other high profile races. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:29, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
...and WP:BESTSOURCES if we're going to nitpick over various parts of WP:NPOV (emphasis added): In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, secondary published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. When writing about a topic, basing content on the best respected and most authoritative reliable sources helps to prevent bias, undue weight, and other NPOV issues.
Wikipedia policies aren't laws. They're not well-written. Just because the words "independent" or "secondary" don't appear in the specific section WP:DUE doesn't mean that one can make a determination about what content should be included in an article from non-independent or primary sources. But in case there was any doubt about this, there's the WP:BESTSOURCES section of NPOV.
You can certainly make an argument that that is the case. It is certainly not what is written in the policies and guidelines. I think we should go by what is written in the policies and guidelines, not what words editors wish were in the policies and guidelines.
That section of WP:BESTSOURCES does not have the 20-year consensus you claim below - it was added relatively recently (a few years ago, if I'm remembering right). It's certainly a good thing, but it's a goal to aspire to, not the end-all of every discussion and certainly not a license to excise every non-secondary non-independent source from discussion altogether.
WP:BESTSOURCES, despite your allusion to the other WP:UPPERCASE in WP:NPOV, is the only place in the NPOV policy where the word "independent" is contained. WP:AGEMATTERS has nothing to do with independent sources, so it's curious why it's being cited here.
However, both WP:REPUTABLE and WP:BESTSOURCES say that articles should be based on "reliable, independent, published sources". That is certainly not the same thing as saying that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned. I completely agree with the WP:BESTSOURCES statement that articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources. I do not agree that non-independent sources should be banned, which is probably why that is supported by none of the policies and guidelines you've cited. Katzrockso (talk) 23:58, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's a lot to cover: what I quoted from our PAGs is in fact written in our PAGs. I claim no 20-year consensus below. (There's no plausible way to understand the words "20-year veteran" as referring to the age of consensus rather than the age of an account.) Nobody is trying to excise or ban every non-secondary non-independent source. NPOV isn't the only policy that talks about having independent sources, another example is WP:RS. WP:AGEMATTERS was being cited here because the prior sentence said most recent. Based on ... is certainly not the same thing as saying that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned, so it's a good thing that nobody is arguing that any use of a non-independent source to supplement particular information is not permissible or should be completely banned. I do not agree that non-independent sources should be banned either, and so I'm glad that's not required by any PAGs.
And yet I believe endorsements are the type of content that should be cited to the reliable, independent, secondary sources that our PAGs say articles should be based on.
I don't know why you wrote that long series of fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said, requiring me to write this long correction, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that to me again. Levivich (talk) 00:23, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Policy does not support looking to the "we must look to the highest-quality, most-reliable, most recent, secondary, independent, published sources" to establish what is WP:DUE, not only because these are often contradictory and exclusive. We don't look to sources that don't exist, but evaluate those that actually exist and see which ones are the best to base our articles on (which is different than the inclusionary criteria for particular elements of content). Moreover, the policy that determines whether or not we include things remains WP:WEIGHT and WP:BALANCE, which once again do not mention the independence of sources. I once again think that editors should read the words that in a policy, not the words that they wish were in a policy.
For example, WP:AGEMATTERS explicitly points out that the "most recent" source is certainly not always the most reliable source, so we should not simply look for the "most recent" source, but the WP:BESTSOURCE when evaluated holistically. There are numerous reasons why we might prefer an older source to a newer one. "Most recent" is certainly not a good summarization of WP:AGEMATTERS.
Adding in auxiliary information like endorsements is certainly not the same as writing the bulk of our articles. Indeed, WP:SELFSOURCE states the great majority of any article must be drawn from independent sources. I don't find any conflict whatsoever between WP:RS, WP:NPOV (specifically WP:REPUTABLE and WP:BESTSOURCES) and using a non-independent source to verify an endorsement, because using a source is not the same as basing an article on a source.
The argument presented here is effectively one that non-independent sources should be banned - you present no distinctive argument that wouldn't apply to every single use of a non-independent source. Indeed, there is no particularity to the argument here specific to the context in question - political endorsements. That suggests, or rather proves, that the issue is not specific to political endorsements, but with the use of non-independent sources altogether. Whether or not you take your argument to its logical conclusion is no import to me, you can call it fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said or whatever you like.
If we are talking about fabrications, misinterpretations, strawman arguments, and putting words in my mouth I never said, we can start with this:
what I quoted from our PAGs is in fact written in our PAGs
I never stated or suggested that the quotes you provided were in any way made up. What I suggested was the the accompanying commentary misrepresents existing PAG, which is a charge I still contend is true. Katzrockso (talk) 02:34, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You said It is certainly not what is written in the policies and guidelines, but what I'm saying is in our PAGs, is in our PAGs. I'll show you in a moment. But first my Bernie impression: I am once again asking that you not put words in my mouth. Nobody is calling for banning all non-independent sources. Just because someone thinks non-independent sources shouldn't be used to source political endorsements doesn't mean they think non-independent sources shouldn't be used for anything. You can call that the argument's "logical conclusion," but it's actually a strawman argument: you're arguing against something (a total ban) that nobody is arguing in favor of.
Now, the first sentence of WP:BALANCE, key words bolded:
An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject.
If no independent RS is writing about an endorsement, if the only people writing about an endorsement are the endorser and endorsee (both non-independent), then that is, indisputably, a low proportion of coverage in RS, it's like 1 or 2 sources out of all sources when only non-independent sources are writing about it and no independent sources are writing about it. Because of this low proportion of RS covering the endorsement, it's a "minor aspect" to which we should not give "undue weight."
Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "See also" to an article about those specific views.
If an endorsement is only published by the endorser and/or endorsee (who are non-independent), and no other RS are writing about it (so no independent RS), then it's a "tiny minority" (1 or 2 sources out of all sources) and so that view should not be included at all.
In sum: if the only place an endorsement is published is in non-independent sources, such as a social media post by an endorser, or a campaign website, then that means the endorsement is a tiny proportion of RS, a tiny minority of RS, and therefore the endorsement should not be included, per WP:BALANCE and WP:DUE, even though those sections don't have the word "independent" in them. Levivich (talk) 04:39, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Mildly oppose Just to give some background information to others here, I'd have to imagine that this discussion is coming from the 'discussion' that we had here? I would like to point out that the provision regarding organization endorsements explicitly says that there isn't a consensus regarding sourcing, so I don't exactly agree that local consensus is overruling the rule. I very much do prefer independent sourcing when available, but there are definitely places where it just won't be. If an endorsement isn't mentioned in an independent article, I don't think it inherently means that they aren't notable, especially in elections like state legislatures that do get far less media coverage than national or statewide ones. These types of endorsements are also helpful in things like nonpartisan elections and help readers get a better idea of the candidates that were or did run. I would go along with the rule if the carve-out does get removed, but I do think that it could remove some important information for a lot of elections that just don't get as much media attention as they deserve.ABlitzz (talk) 01:42, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that's helpful. I was about to ask for links to articles that were viewed as including problematic examples and/or to prior discussions about this. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:20, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose on principle. I'm not fond of the way some people increasingly like to claim that every individual fact (that they dislike) in an article has to pass WP:N-level sourcing to be included, rather than using editorial judgement and consensus to determine what is relevant to the topic. As Myceteae noted below, the opening statement of this RFC itself is already erroneously biased in that direction. Anomie⚔14:35, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
What is important to a topic is ultimately determined by reliable and independent sources. Once we as editors start determining that based on primary sources, it's just original research. Cortador (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You're welcome. It's nice when someone appreciates what the policies actually say rather than fictions like "OR requires multiple independent sources, not just reliable ones". Anomie⚔19:09, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Anomie, did you seriously just call our core content policies WP:V and WP:OR "bogus"? That's wild from a 20-year veteran. WP:BESTSOURCES literally says: In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, secondary published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. So arguing that endorsements shouldn't be included unless they're in reliable, independent, secondary published sources is ... very much in line with very old and very widely accepted core Wikipedia policy. I'm not sure how you can characterize that as "bogus." Levivich (talk) 19:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
"Bogus"? "Falsehoods"? Suggesting I'm a troll? In response to people saying "we should have independent sources"? What's with this ridiculously-unwarranted hostility? What the heck has gotten into you today? Levivich (talk) 20:42, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
You can have an article that is WP:Based upon reliable independent sources without every single line in the article being cited to an independent source. It would, in fact, be quite "wild" to suggest that only reliable, independent, secondary sources are permitted by policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
What is the material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable source has ever been published in question here? Katzrockso (talk) 20:55, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose per AnomieX. This is just an extension of the primary sourcing paranoia - WP:DUE says precisely nothing about the independence of a source or whether it is primary, secondary or tertiary. Editors often attribute to particular policies meaning that is contained nowhere within them, and unfortunately DUE is in the club. From the original RfC, the point that I find most pertinent is that newspaper endorsements are organizational endorsements that could be of relevance to our articles, but tend to receive less coverage than other types of endorsements. When mandating secondary, independent sourcing, editors must consider whether these secondary, independent sources will tend to produce a bias in their coverage that will tend to affect our coverage. In this case, I don't think this bar has been met.As for WP:VNOT, this is of tangential relevance to this guideline, as it is silent on the independence of sources or whether they are PTS. Indeed, it simply says that consensus can decide that a verifiable fact does not improve an article. This applies to everything, including content sourced to independent, reliable, secondary sources.Katzrockso (talk) 20:54, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'd be curious if anyone could find even one newspaper endorsement that should be in an article that is not mentioned by any independent source. In practice, the bit we're debating here has nothing to do with newspaper endorsements and everything to do with, say, a barely notable advocacy group that issues two hundred endorsements that nobody reports on but make it into two hundred separate Wikipedia lists. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 21:31, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
When you define "should be in the article" as "has independent sourcing" and then find that every example that should be in the article has independent sourcing, it's hardly surprising. Katzrockso (talk) 21:44, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure how that responds to what I said. To rephrase: what's an example of a newspaper endorsement that was not covered by an independent source? (because there are an awful lot of the other kind, where we cite social media posts of local advocacy groups to add them en masse). —Rhododendritestalk \\ 21:46, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Any newspaper from a small region covering an endorsement from another newspaper from that region is, from a certain POV, not an independent source (given that they're business rivals and whatnot). So I'm going to guess... the vast majority of newspaper endorsements can't be covered by an independent RS? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸22:20, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure I've ever seen the "it's not independent if the subject is a competitor/rival of the source" argument, but certainly haven't seen consensus for that. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 22:53, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
WP:IIS states that an independent source lacks conflicts of interest (i.e., there is no potential for personal, financial, or political gain to be made from the existence of the publication).Katzrockso (talk) 23:11, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is now a tangent. If someone would like to make the case that e.g. we can't use CNN or NBC to report on FOX because they're not independent, or that relationship is somehow radically different at a different geographic scale, that's probably a discussion for another place. I'm happy to be pinged there, but cannot imagine any real consensus for it beyond a "yeah, I sorta guess you could say there's technically a COI, but no that's not a reason to decide they lose their independence". I could be wrong, but again we're getting away from the point here. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Nobody's arguing that strawman; I hope I'm not putting words in Katzrockso's mouth, but I like to think we've been pretty clear than independence is not the be all and end all when it comes to newspapers reporting on each other. (Though the potential COI is something I do take into consideration when I'm sourcing and writing articles; I hope you're not asking me not to?)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸23:24, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The mistake here is thinking that non-independent sources are some "bad" category of sources that we need to completely eschew. They certainly need to be used more carefully, but they aren't supposed to be some verboten evil that needs to be excised from every article, despite the increasing tendency to characterize anything that isn't an SIRS as such.
I don't see how by the definition of independent sources used by Wikipedia, they are independent. If you'd like to propose a change to the WP:IIS essay or WP:ORGIND guideline, I wouldn't be necessarily opposed. For what it's worth, WP:ORGIND also specifies that competitors are not independent;
Independence of the author (or functional independence): the author must be unrelated to the company, organization, or product. Related persons include organization's personnel, owners, investors, (sub)contractors, vendors, distributors, suppliers, other business partners and associates, customers, competitors, sponsors and sponsorees (including astroturfing), and other parties that have something, financially or otherwise, to gain or lose.
I would say that this is probably where I'm at as well. I can see the concerns that people have and are bringing up, but I think that, for the most part, the guidelines are fine as they are currently. ABlitzz (talk) 23:30, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Lists of endorsements seem to be a blatant violation of WP:SOAP which is policy and states that Wikipedia is not a soapbox...or a vehicle for propaganda, advertising, and showcasing. The proposal raises the bar and so is a move in the right direction. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose (Just to be up front, my opposition stems from my opposition to the rigid applications of criteria #2 generally, eventhough I agree with the principles behind it) Endorsements are, by definition exercises of expression of bias, of advocacy of a subjective opinion. Lists are means to comprehensively present relevant factual information in an organized manner for ease of consumption. Lists of endorsements therefore would by definition conflict with various basic WP principles, but their continual existence are tolerated/accepted/even desired by some of us because they comprehensively enumerate relevant factual information in a succinct, organized manner, allowing reader to draw insights and informed assessment. If we accept that premise, then rejecting an undisputed entry that meets criteria 1 & 3 by rigidly enforcing the independent aspect of criteria 2 without any consideration of weighing of other facts (such as the reliability aspect of criteria 2, local context, scale of the contest, substantive relevance or significance of a particular entry to the particular context) is to me quite illogical. 1) Given endorsement is an expression of bias, an unindependent source, such as the endorser themselves, actually is the ultimate reliable source. 2) Existence of independent source is generally an strong indicator of notability but only an reasonably good indicator of relevance. Some inconsequential endorsement get attention because they are unique or interesting or even entertaining, while some clearly consequential endorsement get no little media play because they were expected or boring but nonetheless impactful. For example, endorsements of politicians by celebraties like actors or singers often get covered in the news for their entertainment value, because they are interesting and unusual, but they rarely have meaningful impact on electoral outcome. An endorsement from a former office holder that retired long ago may general little press interest while having huge impact (especially in internal contests like primaries or nomination fights where older voters, and long time party activists are have greater presence.) Ultimately, the purpose of this policy is to ensure entries included in such lists are realiable, notable, relevant and consequential. Exisitence of independent sources would be decent indicators for those things but not conclusive proof, and the absence of independent sources certainly does not conclusively disprove any of those things. If the notability of the endorser, the factual reliability of the endorsement, and its relevance to the the subject election are not in dispute, exclusion would arguably amount to censorship. JacobW2 (talk) 15:10, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
An endorsement from a former office holder that retired long ago may general little press interest while having huge impact (especially in internal contests like primaries or nomination fights where older voters, and long time party activists are have greater presence.) This isn't really germane to this proposal since the current exclusion currently only affects organizational endorsements, not individuals. For what it's worth, I don't think be opposed to a very narrow exception for current (and former) officeholders who represent(/ed) part of the constituency being contested. If anything, the fact that a former elected's endorsement is excluded unless covered by independent media but an endorsement by an organization, however irrelevant, can be included cited to only their website highlights how odd the status quo is. Dcpoliticaljunkie (talk) 19:08, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notability has to do with whether an article should exist for a topic, it has nothing to do with whether content should be included in an article. Katzrockso (talk) 23:54, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - What to do about noteworthy endorsements by media outlets that are covered by the outlet's competitors is an excellent point. (Plus, there's the issue of organizations and independent sources potentially disagreeing that I brought up below.) WP:DUE would apply regardless and seems orthogonal to this issue. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:03, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Still hoping for even one (and preferably more) example of noteworthy endorsements by media outlets that are covered by the outlet's competitors, but this is the last time I'll mention it. It's a big flood gate to leave open for a hypothetical. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 23:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well, largest circulating weekly:) but regardless we have an article about it and I, too, cannot find independent coverage. Thanks for digging up an example. I'm more inclined to support an exception for certain kinds of companies/organizations (like notable media outlets), but still not quite convinced it's in our best interest to include every endorsement by every organization or company, regardless of what they are or how much they're written about. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 00:27, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Who said we have to include every endorsement by every organization or company, with or without independent sources? Anomie⚔01:07, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I completely agree that we shouldn't be including every endorsement by every organization or company. The status quo of guideline doesn't require this, and if that is what happens in practice, I would support any effort to trim non-notable and non-noteworthy organizations. Katzrockso (talk) 03:04, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As the person who has added a lot of the endorsements to the Michigan Senate race's article, which is the article that kind of seems to have started all of this, I'm just wanting to give some of my own thoughts here. There have definitely been a lot of endorsements listed in articles that I haven't added simply because the endorsers don't have a Wikipedia page. If they have a Wikipedia page, I'll usually add them because that's a symbol, in my mind, that they're notable enough to be added. If they have no Wikipedia page, then I'll typically avoid adding them to articles unless there's another reason that would make sense (i.e. a local or House election where a candidate is endorsed by a notable person in the city/district but the endorser doesn't have a Wikipedia page). Personally, my opinion is that if there is a source that follows the guidelines and the endorser is notable enough due to having a page here or some other reason, then there's no reason not to add in the endorsement ABlitzz (talk) 13:06, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can understand the point you're making there, but wouldn't editors be interfering with the neutrality of the page if we're able to just decide who is relevant and who isn't? As long as the endorser has a good source and page, I really don't see a reason why they shouldn't be included. Under your example, it could also show the start of Joe Celebrity getting more involved in the political scene and becoming prominent in both movies and politics. ABlitzz (talk) 15:23, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
By this interpretation, most articles about news orgs would fail notability guidelines since almost other source would be considered a competitor and therefore not independent. This seems to be something to address within that guideline (stipulate that media outlets that are competitors of each other are independent) rather than this one. Dcpoliticaljunkie (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notable news organizations tend to get at least some coverage in journals, books, and other newspapers not operating in the same market; for an example, the Weekend Times, a Malawian tabloid that operated for only about 6 years, is primarily based upon such sources. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸18:10, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In practice, though, I would also like to note that the community treats newspapers and academic journals very differently than commercial organizations in general. (You can argue that a newspaper as an actual isn't technically a corporation, but that's splitting hairs in most cases). WP:NJOURNAL and WP:NNEWS are essays, but they do emphasize impact/influence as a pathway to notability that we'd never allow under a typical application of NCORP. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸18:21, 4 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that we treat articles about publishers differently from articles about other businesses, but I think it's practical of us. Sometimes we need that information as editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose The inclusion/exclusion of a particular endorsement that lacks independent sourcing can always be debated on the article's talk page, just like with any other disputed content. Some1 (talk) 23:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. I'm just not seeing any evidence of an actual problem here that needs solving. At 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan §Endorsements, there are far fewer organizations listed than individuals. As others have noted, celebrity and other "big name" endorsements are prone to garnering at least some media coverage even when their encyclopedic value is questionable. PACs and political organizations, whose endorsements may be less newsworthy, may be a more meaningful reflection of a candidate's ideology and support base. Looking at other articles that were shared at Talk:2026 United States Senate election in Michigan#Organizational endorsements, most have much shorter endorsement lists. Weighting these lists towards celebrities and other individuals is of no value to these articles. The current guidance is in no way an exception to WP:DUE or any other broadly applicable policy or guideline. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:54, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose - current system functions quite well, and WP:DUE doesn't appear to be violated because of it - I don't see a reason to prevent endorsements being sourced to verifiable primary sources. Jishara (talk) 00:53, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support I agree that generally primary sources may be used for a wide variety of information. But this provision is so poorly written, it should go. The first glaring mistake was its mention of largely discredited local consensus, when it could of just used "editors may", but even worse it then suggests that verifiability is all you need for content additions, and that is plainly untrue, see WP:VNOT. No editors at any article can vote to ignore the other content policies, and no guideline can either. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:42, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Just to be clear, I would also oppose a rule that said only secondary sources count. That's not what DUE requires, in every case, we may use primary sources. I think the rule should still go because of its poor wording. Go back to the drawing board, get ride of "local consensus" and make clear the all content policies not just V matter. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. This would create a more stringent sourcing requirement than that of most other content where the concern here isn't the veracity of the endorsements, but whether they are DUE. Jessintime (talk) 15:21, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Cortador, a simple example of when a primary-only viewpoint is needed is when someone is accused of a crime, and they deny it. We rarely have secondary source material for that (that would mean a source that analyzes, evaluates, interprets, etc. their denial, rather than merely repeating the fact that the accused person denied the accusation), and it is the near-universal practice of the community to mention the existence of such denials, even if they have to be sourced to the subject's social media (which is both primary and non-independent). We can't meet the goals of either the BLP policy or the NPOV policy by removing the accused's POV about his innocence from a Wikipedia article just because there isn't a high-quality secondary source. We need a source that is strong enough to support the claim in the article (the usual claim being "He denied the accusations"), but a fairly weak source is strong enough for that.
News articles include responses from accused people all the time. I don't know where you get the idea that this "rarely" happens. Cortador (talk) 08:30, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Cortador, most news articles are primary sources. See WP:PRIMARYNEWS. A typical newspaper article is a:
No, they absolutely are not. You are confusing how e.g. academics use that term with how it is used on Wikipedia, and so is that essay. Cortador (talk) 19:58, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The policy WP:PRIMARY itself says "A primary source is a first-hand account of an event. Primary sources may include newspaper articles...". It specifically calls out breaking news: "For Wikipedia's purposes, breaking news stories are also considered to be primary sources". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support As if RS do not care, why should we (see wp:undue). Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 9 August 2026 (UTC
Oppose - this is a case where one size doesn't fit all. While with US presidential elections and nominations there are always numerous published sources listing endorsements this is often not the case for smaller contests, particularly with the decline of the media. The recent 2026 New Democratic Party leadership election for example was not closely covered by the media until the last few weeks so even though there were prominent endorsements by current and former politicians these were often only reported on the candidate websites and press releases and did not receive "independent" coverage until very late, if at all. This gave an unbalanced and misreprestarive impressio of the relative support candidates had. Major political parties such as the NDP have strict campaign rules and a leadership candidate who falsely claimed endorsements would have been fined or expelled - but even so we had editors insisting these endorsements could not be listed, even though under the circumstances they were reliable (due to the consequences for candidates for making false claims), due to global wikipedia rules. Some sort of flexibility is required and if there are other reasons why a self-reported endorsement can be considered reliable, then that should be sufficient. Wellington Bay (talk) 15:32, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose: many of the others gave good reasoning. Especially for the smaller cases, not every endorsement is going to be covered by a secondary one. I also believe that wikipedia should in general consider being more open to primary sources though that would probably warrant a separate discussion. Also, WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD explicitly states "Primary sources can be reliable, and they can be used. Sometimes, a primary source is even the best possible source", so there should be no good reason to support removing this section. Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:37, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose Media coverage varies wildly depending local market and perceived importance of the position. One size fits all fails when most English-language local print media in Canada is owned by a small number of conglomerates that have eliminated local coverage outside major markets. American markets may get horserace coverage; we're lucky to get any mention of equines. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Our job is not to ignore valid information when no "reliable, independent sources" are available. One could argue that Canadian English-language media has almost no reliable, independent sources left outside a few major urban markets. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 18:15, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Endorsement cruft takes up a huge amount of space on election articles, to the point that 5 of the top 50 longest articles are about state-level elections. Requiring third-party coverage would be a great way to cut down on this. I would even propose going one step further and applying the MOS:CULTURALREFS standard of secondary/tertiary sources that discuss the endorsement in depth, not just a brief mention. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)21:37, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
and because Ballotpedia is an independent source that reports all endorsements for all US elections (both state and national), I don't see any effect of this rule on most of these election-related articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That, and, Texas and California are really big and have a lot of districts. I'm not surprised that their election articles are prone to being very long. These articles vary somewhat in the number of endorsements listed per candidate and in the promotion of individual vs. organizational endorsements but it doesn't appear to me that organizational endorsements are driving this problem—to the extent it is a problem that need solving. Maybe some other approach is needed to trim these articles or maybe the size of these articles is acceptable and unavoidable given the nature of the subjects. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:13, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I compared 2021 2021 California gubernatorial recall election §Endorsements with Ballotpedia's notable endorsements list in the same race, as this is the only true US state-level race in the list of long pages. For the recall question, I count 38 organizational endorsements on our list and 36 on Ballotpedia's. This is not a meaningful difference. Our article contains many more individual endorsements than organizational, despite already requiring a higher standard for independent sourcing. If we look at the section sizes, §Endorsements is up there but the big problem is §Results. Again, this is just a result of having a very large state. I suspect that the table formatting and markup is increasing the bytes but this is an attempt to make a massive amount of data digestible. If the size of this article is truly a concern then some intervention besides removing (at most) two endorsements is needed.
Section sizes in 2021 California gubernatorial recall election
We both responded to your similar sentiments about Ballotpedia below. The only examples of 'problematic' articles provided have been US elections articles. (For the record, I don't find the endorsements sections of these articles especially problematic.) I offered an alternative explanation for why California and Texas elections articles are prone to being so large. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 15:50, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Not all media in every country is created equally. Certain places are going to cover endorsements more than others, and I think that is in of itself biased, as it will result in certain regions having better coverage than others.-- Earl Andrew - talk02:36, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with the notion that listing endorsements is strictly promotional, or that it has no encyclopedic value. It's supposed to tell readers something about the candidate's support base, affiliations, and affinities, and is often relevant to campaign finance. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:32, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Systemic bias is an issue on Wikipedia, but there's not typically consensus to lower standards to the level of "include it because it exists, regardless of whether anyone has judged it worthy of note". —Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:20, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that we wouldn't want to lower standards, but my concern about this problem is:
we're talking about requiring higher standards, not the ordinary ones, and
the point is to deal with lists of endorsements in US, and this proposal will have no effect on lists of endorsements in the US.
A proposal that would address the identified problem would sound something like this:
If there is a reasonably comprehensive list of endorsements at Ballotpedia (or a similar site), then link to that webpage in the Wikipedia:External links. When a comprehensive external list is available, articles should contain only a high-level summary of endorsements in the article, e.g., "The candidate has been endorsed by anti-tax advocacy groups and law enforcement agencies[1]" (when reliable sources directly support such summaries) or information about endorsements that produced significant media attention, e.g., "The Abrasive Activists club announced an unsolicited endorsement and donation, causing the candidate to disclaim the endorsement, return the money, and announce support for raising taxes[1]" or "The candidate was endorsed by the prime minister, and the election result was widely seen as a test of the PM's political influence[1]".
Support. If the endorsement isn't reported on by independent RS, then it's not passing the bar for BALASP (and if the candidacy/election itself has so little sourcing that an endorsement announcement from 1-2 non-independent sources actually is proportionally weighty coverage-wise, then either the subject itself is not notable or there's a pressing case for IAR). By policy, Wikipedia articles about a person, company, or organization are not an extension of their website, press releases, or other social media marketing efforts. Endorsements are inherently promotional, self-serving, and (when sourced from the endorser as an individual person) are SPS with claims about third parties. They should be contextualized, or at the very least noticed, by independent RS.I also don't see how a political campaign shouldn't be held to the same standards as Listings to be avoided include, but are not limited to: business alliances, clients, competitors, employees ... equipment, estates, offices, store locations, contact information, patent filings, products, sponsors, subdivisions and tourist attractions.JoelleJay (talk) 20:13, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
One way that political endorsements differ from these other listings to avoid, as I said elsewhere is that they may tell readers something about the candidate's support base, affiliations, and affinities, and is often relevant to campaign finance. There is some superficial similarity between political endorsements and business business alliances or (corporate) sponsors but there are meaningful differences. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:22, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If an endorsement actually tells readers something meaningful about the candidate, then that especially deserves to be validated as real and attention-worthy by an independent RS and ideally contextualized. What's stopping malicious announcements by bad actors or self-promo ones by businesses hoping to have their name associated with a candidate? JoelleJay (talk) 11:35, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is the kind of case-by-case assessment that can be made on the article talk page. I'm not seeing evidence that this is a real-world problem. Primary sources are almost always reliable for statements about what the source itself says. Effective self promo will, by definition, be picked up elsewhere so this doesn't necessarily address that, anyway. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 14:46, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
These considerations should not be applied case-by-case according to whether editors think an endorsement carries some implicit meaning, they should be the default. JoelleJay (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The part that says coverage should be proportional to how the topic as a whole is covered in RS (so something being citable to only source will almost certainly be proportionally trivial), and also per V Self-published sources may be considered reliable if published by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.[g] Be careful when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources.[1] with note [1] stating Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of the content. Further examples of self-published sources include press releases, the material contained within company websites, advertising campaigns, material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group, self-released music albums, and electoral manifestos:. Press releases, social media, and company websites are SPS and thus considered non-RS by default, but even when they are RS (topic experts) we are still cautioned against using them because if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will likely have published it in independent, reliable sources. ABOUTSELF, being roughly equivalent in reliability to expert SPS, should be interpreted in the same way. JoelleJay (talk) 11:53, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Notwithstanding your contentious interpretations of other parts of the policy, so something being citable to only source will almost certainly be proportionally trivial seems to be false. Why would an endorsement reported by one reliable independent source be a higher WP:PROPORTION of the reliable sources that an endorsement reported by one reliable non-independent source, according to WP:BALASP. I'm not asking about other policies, I'm asking about what BALASP says. It seems to be a common occurrence here to cite policies for things they don't say. Katzrockso (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because an endorsement reported by the endorser and endorsee is less coverage of that endorsement than the endorser's and endorsee's reports plus an independent source?Our policies on acceptable SPS use explicitly discourage including information that is not published in independent RS even when it's by an expert; why would this be treated differently for political endorsements? JoelleJay (talk) 15:06, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Most reports of endorsements are primary sources that merely report what the endorsement itself says. We are often told to treat primary sources that offer no transformative commentary as the same source as the original - why is that any different here?
Joe Schmo endorses Linda Lesson for local office. She announces it on her campaign website.
Local outlet FOX11 publishes a short story that is essentially just the endorsement.
I don't either. A PROPORTION issue would arise if we wrote a lengthy paragraph quoting extensively from a press release and no other sources, especially if this is done to the exclusion of other endorsements in the same race. But I don't see the problem with list entries where the organizational endorsement list is a relatively short part of the article and endorsements for all candidates are subjected to uniform criteria such as only including blue-linked wiki-notable orgs. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 15:31, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The calculus is ≤2 pseudo-RS vs ≤2 pseudo-RS + 1 independent actual RS. Why should the organizational endorsements have a lower requirement for reliability than the individual endorsements? Also we don't limit the endorsers to just blue-linked orgs... JoelleJay (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There isn't any question about reliability here - reliable sources are still required for adding endorsements. Also, we do require that the listed organizations are notable. See WP:Political endorsements, point #1 under organizations. Whether or not they need to be blue linked is something the guideline says can be decided at an article level, but that's a distinction without a difference, as Wikipedia should eventually cover all notable topics. Katzrockso (talk) 17:55, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is a practical difference. Blue-linked is an objective, binary status. This criterion can prevent disputes about entries that some editors argue are "probably notable" or "likely to pass GNG soon" or whatever. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 14:58, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Blue-linked has trinary status: blue article, blue redirect, and red link.
It's also gameable (Oh, you require an article to exist? Okay, here's a three-sentence, two-source stub article). I would not recommend using it as a blanket recommendation. That approach works best when we have very long lists and need an arbitrary way to shorten it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Blue-linked is binary (red or blue). Whether it's a standalone article or a redirect and the quality of the linked article are additional considerations. We could drill down even further on redirects—does it target a list entry that just names the org or a multi-paragraph section describing the org in detail? I'm not suggesting "blue-linked" is a good universal criterion for endorsement lists. Merely disagreeing with Katzrockso's assertion that "notable" and "blue-linked" is a distinction without a difference. To be clear, I mostly disagree with JoelleJay. But if the organizational endorsements list in a particular article is really out of control—something I've yet to see convincing evidence of—both the current wording of WP:ENDORSED and the broadly applicable WP:SELCRIT guidance permit additional requirements at the article level. The tools and guidelines are already in place to manage these endorsement lists. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 18:13, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Well, for one, I would also support a requirement that endorsements have secondary coverage in addition to the current proposal that the coverage be independent. But that's not what's under discussion right now. An independent RS reporting an endorsement verifies that it is considered genuine and noteworthy enough to mention by an RS. It does not involve editors combing through (and validating identities within) social media to hand-curate endorsements themselves and requiring it would preempt editors trying to interpret the equivalents to RECs in non-Anglophone countries and non-American political systems. JoelleJay (talk) 15:36, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we need to have a requirement for independent sources to prevent social media being used as sources. We could simply ban social media as a source, if that were deemed necessary. Katzrockso (talk) 16:44, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The issue isn’t either of those… the issue is whether the specific endorsement in question is meaningful or trivial. The issue WP:VNOT and WP:DUE - not WP:RS. Blueboar (talk) 12:43, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
VNOT is not a license to exclude content, it simply says we don't have to include verifiable content. It's a bludgeon to use against newbies who think that since they have a source it has to be included. This is about creating a higher requirement for adding endorsements than our policy on RS requires - VNOT doesn't mandate anything of the sort. Katzrockso (talk) 13:14, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You invoked the picture of editors scrounging up social media posts to find endorsements and the issues of identity validation. Those are not issues with campaign website endorsements, despite being self-published. What are the issues with self-published sources (generally and not specific to social media posts) in this context? Katzrockso (talk) 13:12, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think that social media was given as an example because social media is one of the few kinds of self-published sources that we (almost) all agree are SPS. If you look at an article like Cass Review (warning: CTOP), there are a number of sources that I'd say are self-published, but which reasonable people could disagree over the application of the WP:SPS rules, such as a white paper from a think tank, open letters from advocacy organizations, and even a Google Doc organized by two professors as part of a larger project. I think the community does sometimes make a distinction between levels of self-publication (in addition to the WP:EXPERTSPS exemption). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. Obviously by WP:PRIMARY we can trust an organization's own attestation of support. And we do not require independent sourcing of trivial material. (For instance, if Joe Biden tweets out "I had a dog named Wooper as a child", we would generally not require anything else to include that in the childhood section of his article.) A requirement of independent coverage for a couple of words in the latter half of an article is overkill. RedSlash03:14, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If Joe Biden's tweet about having a dog in childhood is the only mention of that dog, then it absolutely should not be included in his article because it fails DUE and BALASP. JoelleJay (talk) 11:20, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Having a dog isn't a "viewpoint", so DUE is not very relevant.
BALASP asks editors to use their judgment. If the tweet were the only source for having a childhood dog, we would omit this, because editors do not judge the possession of a childhood dog to ordinarily be basic information for a biography in an encyclopedia; if the tweet were the only source for the names of his parents or his birthdate, we would include it, because editors do judge that information to ordinarily be basic information for a biography in an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because it has an easy, memorably shortcut? Also, because you see someone else use it this way, so you assume they're correct and repeat their usage. To be fair, NPOV's organization was pretty bad for years. We've made some progress with stepwise rearrangements and the occasional clarification, but we've been taking it in baby steps, once or twice a year, to make sure that we're not accidentally breaking anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support: This isn't really about primary vs secondary - its more about whether coverage is WP:DUE. Can we really say that endorsements are due if independent sources can't be bothered to discuss them?Nigel Ish (talk) 20:21, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As I read it, the proposal isn't to do anything but remove the present project guidance. This would just throw it back to general policy. If a better, more subtle, project guidance can then be written and gain assent, that's another discussion to have later. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:22, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
True, but the section heading is ==Proposal to require independent sourcing for all political endorsements==, so I suspect that it will be interpreted as requiring INDY sources, rather than merely removing the sentence and reverting to standard rules (which permit the use of non-INDY sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Any closer should not mangle policy, nor can they change policy, when all that is being proposed is to remove a sentence in a local guideline. All it can mean is the sentence won't be there. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm concerned about all of it. A closer will have to make sense of the actual opinions expressed in the RFC and future editors will have to interpret and implement the RFC outcome. And if participating editors thought they were !voting on something meaningfully different this is likely to lead to more disputes and frustration. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:49, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not that "concerned" because, we often have quite good closers that separate the wheat from the chaff, and any overstep or irrationality in the close is subject to call-out and review. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:38, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
People make confused or confusing statements or arguments regularly, an argument does not change policy nor any guideline. The local guideline is poor, beginning with its use "WP:Local Consensus", as if agreement in a project guideline can override any general policy. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:46, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Do you think that any closure of this discussion that ends with consensus in favor of the change would not immediately be followed by an addition to the guideline requiring independent sourcing for organizational endorsements? Katzrockso (talk) 19:41, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The local guideline may be poor, and the wording of this RFC certainly is—as I and others have pointed out from the beginning—but many editors have (reasonably) interpreted the intent as requiring independent sources and many !votes and comments have been on this basis. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:11, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You can't require anything by removing the sentence. Practically, all these discussions on Wikipedia wander around hither and yon. That's just the way is.
To answer the above question, if anyone else wants to require anything new, they need to get agreement on a new sentence and it needs to align with policy, which this sentence does not. It is bedrock principle that verifiability does not end the issues of whether something should be content. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:01, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
But you can require something by having a discussion in which many editors agree that it should be required, even if the first post does not propose exactly the thing that the discussion formed a consensus for. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This project is not an experiment in anarchy. Write down in guideline how to guide people and conform that guidance with policy, otherwise there is no consensus on it, that's one of the lessons of WP:local consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:13, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is a consensus-based project. It is not a parliamentary system, in which proposals have to be voted on as-is. If someone proposes "X", and the community forms a consensus for "Y", then "Y" is the winner. There is no law that says "Oh, but it can't be "Y", because that wasn't the original wording, and letting editors form a consensus without a formal proposal and a !vote is too chaotic for some people". Indeed, the law of the wiki is the opposite: Whatever the community agreed upon is what the community agreed upon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
This is a consensus based project that formulates its consensus in words that it writes down in policies and guidelines. To the extent it makes people search through random pages for maybe what people thought ten years ago, it is a failing. But now you are demonstrating my earlier observation that these discussions go all hither an thither.Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:17, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I agree that this is a consensus-based project that documents most of its consensus in words that it writes down on policy and guideline (and help and info and essay) pages. However, my point is that when consensus is formed in a discussion, the consensus is not constrained by the OP's first comment. We could have an RFC with a question "Shall we say that this BDP is a rapist?" and end up with a consensus that the image in the infobox needs to be changed. It's true that discussions sometimes go hither and thither, but the fact that a discussion has wandered into unplanned territory does not invalidate any consensus that was formed in that discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
How does this sentence not align with policy? You can certainly disagree with it, but it doesn't say that verifiability is sufficient to include something. Katzrockso (talk) 21:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ah well, even if everyone agreed with you on what it is trying to do (which they don't), it obviously has created confusion due to its poor writing. Again, that means it has no consensus. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As was pointed out in the "BEFORE" at WP:RSN, the framing that the current guidance allows local consensus to overrule our general policy that facts be sourced to independent reliable sources is not quite accurate. A "dependent" primary source is often reliable for a statement made by the source itself, such as an explicit endorsement on an official website or social media account. WP:SELCRIT provides some general guidance but more or less allows for local consensus at the level of individual list articles. All that said, I can imagine these lists getting out of hand. WP:WEIGHT, WP:PROMO, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and other general principles apply to endorsement list articles. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:45, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yup… while a selfpub source can reliably verify an endorsement, WP:VNOT and WP:DUE apply. We need independent reliable sources to demonstrate that the endorsement matters enough for us to mention it. Blueboar (talk) 21:57, 29 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
What happens if an independent source claims Organization A endorsed Candidate B, but Organization A says it isn't an endorsement (and it's not a clear-cut case of either side being wrong)? Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:30, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would think that endorsement lists generally include uncontroversial, uncomplicated entries. Beyond that, this has to be a case by case determination and is not something a general guideline can address. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 16:51, 5 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ballotpedia is a great source for US elections, perhaps, not so much for the rest of the world. This looks like a case of making rules suitable for the US based on US conditions and assuming they should apply worldwide. Wellington Bay (talk) 15:42, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There is an ongoing debate in Canadian politics articles where some editors argue that self-published social media posts or campaign websites are sufficient for inclusion in endorsement lists, regardless of independent coverage. On local talk pages, this frequently leads to attempts to establish a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS for inclusion of these into a "list of endorsements" which closely resembles the tables used in AP2 articles (see 2026 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election#Endorsements for the most recent example of this debate coming up). Requiring independent secondary coverage, even for organizations and at "local" talk pages ensures that Wikipedia endorsement lists reflect encyclopedic WP:WEIGHT. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)18:23, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ordinary discussions about how to best apply/comply with our policies and guidelines are not LOCALCONSENSUS violations. I suggest reading WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, especially the bit that says:
YDesired outcome: A small number of editors arrive at an agreement about how to best apply sitewide policies and guidelines to a given Wikipedia article.
If it is not clear enough that this "Desired outcome" (emphasis in the original) is not a LOCALCONSENSUS, then let me know, and I'll see about clarifying that, possibly by adding a sentence that says "Doing this is not a 'local consensus' and does not violate this policy." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I would opine that some editors are arguing to be allowed to decide that Nrelevant sitewide policies and guidelines should not apply to particular articles, on account of "poor" or "slow" secondary coverage. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)21:19, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
There's no policy or guideline that requires secondary coverage for a small detail, such as whether a candidate was endorsed by an organization. Arguing that primary and/or non-independent sources should be allowed within the confines of the relevant sitewide policies is the opposite of arguing that relevant sitewide policies and guidelines should not apply. The WP:PRIMARY policy says "Primary sources that have been reputably publishedmay be used in Wikipedia". Why are you arguing against the long-standing sitewide policy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If anything, I am arguing that a simple tweet or candidate website is insufficient sourcing for inclusion of endorsements of individuals on Wikipedia per WP:ENDORSE/WP:DUE. If they have not been covered by independent, secondary sources, why would Wikipedia, if Wikipedia's purpose is to be a reflection of what is written in reliable, secondary sources? ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)00:45, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Wikipedia's purpose is to be an encyclopedia that fairly represents all the sources, which sometimes requires including facts that are not written in secondary (=analytical, evaluative, interpretative, etc.) sources.
Note that WP:ENDORSE doesn't even mention WP:SECONDARY sources, much less require them. ENDORSE says editors working on an article can choose to use sources connected to the organization itself, such as its website or official social media accounts for endorsements by organizations.
The arguments in Canadian politics articles centre around individuals, not organizations, which are specifically covered by WP:ENDORSE. I am aware that this specific RfC is in regards to organizations only. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)01:06, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The text on WP:ENDORSE literally says This means endorsements should not be sourced solely to a Tweet or Instagram post by the endorser, endorsee, or an affiliated individual or organization, for example. If my semantics are poor, I apologize, but editors are arguing that a simple tweet or a link to www.JaneDoe2026.ca/my-endorsements should be enough for inclusion of individuals. ―"GraveDragon-X"(hihi)01:22, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's under "2. Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements which have been covered by reliableindependent sources" in ===Endorsements by individuals===
The difference between WP:SECONDARY and WP:INDEPENDENT sources is not mere semantics. It is the difference between a source that analyzes an endorsement ("The ____ endorsement of my esteemed opponent has proved an embarrassment to his campaign; I should be appalled to think that such a deplorable organization approved of my platform") and one that has no vested/financial interest in the outcome (e.g., a news outlet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In fairness, which definition of primary source one uses and how it categorizes news articles is a semantic issue. A mess that's been acknowledged earlier in this discussion. Of course, our house definition is what ultimately matters in assessing the application of P&G. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
True; there's a quite traditional definition that says anything published within a few years of any event is automatically a primary source, which would mean that "must have a secondary source" would mean "cannot be included until the election has been over for several years". But that definition is mostly people writing about pre-modern history, and 'our house definition' does not require that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
And you have resources like this and usage in different disciplines and contexts. Most descriptions I've seen, including ours, will say that newspapers (and by extension, online news articles) can be primary or secondary depending on various factors but the factors differ as do the determinations based on a particular factor. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:38, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
anything published within a few years of any event is certainly the definition I was taught, and it's the one I use for anything pre-2016 or so. (This is a viewpoint which does not make you popular at AFD) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸02:39, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Because it would mean we can't write about anything that happened recently, which I think is a viewpoint that would garner very little support in a community wide discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 02:42, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Only because there is further confusion that reliable = secondary (or tertiary). Even though our P&G don't say that, it's no surprise that this is a source of conflict and confusion. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 02:51, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
If our notability criteria specify secondary sources are required and we say that recent coverage (ie within the last few years) is all primary, then nothing in the last few years is wiki-notable. Katzrockso (talk) 03:11, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
But we already have tons of articles on ongoing infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, elections, upcoming films, etc. built almost entirely on news articles and other sources we define as primary. Maybe some of these are able to scrounge up two or three secondary sources. I agree that GreenLipstickLesbian's definition would be unworkable but there already seems to me to be a disconnect. Anyway, this is increasingly off-topic… —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 03:54, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
And now hopefully you see why even I, a bit of a hardliner of this, have a built in post-2016 exception clause for anything not excessively contentious. (If you can't find a source 5 to 10 years after the event with sigcov and everything, is the event notable? I say no, obviously not, other editor say yes, obviously yes. ) GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸03:55, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Back when the word secondary was first added to WP:N (in 2007), we had a different definition of WP:SECONDARY. When it spread to the explanation of the GNG (you may have noticed that it's not in the GNG sentence itself), the notion of "secondary means secondhand" was very popular. If a house burned down on Monday, and a journalist interviewed an eyewitness for Tuesday morning's paper, then that was "secondary". It's wrong, and we've moved firmly away from that during the last decade, but I think that anyone concerned about secondary sources at AFD should remember that 'secondary' back in the day was a very low bar indeed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:31, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You're right that our guidelines and practices should take a global view. A relatively small number of articles have been provided as examples in this and the other linked discussions to illustrate what exactly the problem is, and all of these have been US elections articles. If we were to adopt the proposed rule and follow the guidance that Ballotpedia is generally reliable, the likely outcome would be that US election articles remain largely unchanged—or expanded, as Ballotpedia likely catalogues endorsements that aren't in some of our articles—while endorsement lists for other countries' elections are trimmed unless there is a similar source that can be used to catalogue endorsements for every either country. Or if we wanted to limit/down-weight Ballotpedia endorsement lists, we'd have to impose an even higher bar that at least two independent sources are required for organizational endorsements. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:30, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Out of curiosity, I looked at Ballotpedia's Abdul El-Sayed page. I count 58 "organizations" under his endorsements in the 2026 senate race. Our article on the senate race lists just 37 in the primary (8 labor unions, 25 organizations, 1 political party, 2 newspapers). —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:35, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I also looked at the size of 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan. The Democratic primary endorsements section is indeed huge. If we require independent sourcing then it would be reasonable to pick Ballotpedia as our standard bearer. Nearly doubling the number or organizational endorsements would only worsen the problem. Size aside, I don't think the article would be improved by including non-notable orgs like Cat Ladies For America. I suppose we could come up with additional criteria to duplicate the output of our current practice. This is an awfully convoluted fix, to the extent there is even a problem here.
Section sizes in 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan
Latest comment: 8 days ago44 comments20 people in discussion
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Should any of the following be added to WP:ITNBLURB:
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, ITN should generally not report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair and Wikipedia has an article surrounding this, consensus at ITN can develop to report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, consensus at ITN can develop to report or indicate this characterization.
If reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair, ITN should generally report or indicate this characterization.
Remove elections from ITN/R as the current formulation too often results in insignificant elections in microstates being posted while elections which are actually important such as the Mayor of NYC, the Scottish government or the Indian state legislative assemblies are denied. The nominal RfC question is badly formed because ITN/R doesn't determine the format of blurbs. The fact that such postings are often contentious is a further reason to have open discussion without any ITN/R constraints which lead some to suppose that elections should be posted in a mechanical, monotonous way. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:10, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for pointing out the flaw in the RFC question (the first person after 24 days of workshopping...). I have reworked it to hopefully resolve the concern. 1brianm7 (talk) 21:06, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Your constant prejudice against the politics of small nations is duly noted. Again. However, the course of action you are calling for does not form part of any of the proposals currently under discussion. GenevieveDEon (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
ITN/R is explicit prejudice − an arbitrary list of supposedly important topics regardless of the actual coverage and facts. My position is that we should judge topics on their merits, not by preconceived prejudice. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:05, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can agree that ITN should be more open to posting sub-national elections; the most recent NYC election was inarguably one of the biggest political news stories in the world last year. But instead of posting it, ITN - as per usual - shot itself in the foot by caring more about strict adherence to its incoherent set of unwritten rules than doing anything resembling what it's supposed to do. But I don't think this would be solved by removing national elections from ITN/R. ITN/R blurbs and RD postings are the only semi-functional parts of ITN precisely because they bypass these debates over what is "significant." We just need to stop making the mistake of acting like anything that's not ITN/R is automatically not blurbworthy at all. That, and nuke ITNSIGNIF, and maybe also replace our whole ITN/C community with different editors who'll be able to form a consensus to fix the broken mess that is ITN, because with every passing year I lose faith that the bunch we have now will ever be able to agree to do that. Vanilla Wizard 💙21:01, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose instruction creep that doesn't appear to be well-justified by prior discussions. This more or less aligns with options 3/4, but I'm not seeing a reason why we need a separate instruction about this that wouldn't simply be subject to regular workshopping of the ITN hook to reflect RS coverage. Even when blatantly unfair, election results tend to be significant (if nothing else, confirming the intended continuity of the ruling regime), protests resulting from rigged elections can also be quite significant, and judging fairness is itself a gradient, not a binary. That having been said, I think that Andrew D's concerns above could perhaps be resolved by adding a clause that ITN should also run blurbs for elections for cities and dependencies with a population in excess of [2 million? 5 million? 10 million?] signed, Rosguilltalk20:21, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose instruction creep. I don't see any evidence that the status quo (option 3) is not working. How a blurb should be worded depends on the circumstances of the individual election and every other option is too rigid to account for this. I don't see any benefit in explicitly stating that consensus may be for or against mentioning how free and fair an election is. Thryduulf (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose either of the options numbered 1, support any of the others, with a preference for option 3 - I think it's misleading to have a policy against mentioning the unfairness of an election if that unfairness is widely reported in reliable independent sources. I'm less concerned with the exact phrasing of the rule, but I do see the concern about instruction creep. With option 4, although I am in favour of its sentiments, there is the risk that the requirement to include such a reference might lead to such stories not being posted at all, because the nature of the reference cannot be agreed. Options 2 and 3 are both close to my understanding of the status quo, and clarify it. I do not think that we should specifically be avoiding posting elections simply because they are unfair - but I do have a preference for mentioning the unfairness. GenevieveDEon (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Remove ITN, first choice. Remove elections from ITN/R, second choice. Follow the sources, third choice. If the sources say it's a "sham" election, say that so-and-so won a "sham election." If they say it's a "rigged" election, ITN should say so-and-so won a "rigged election." If they say it's an "election with widely-reported irregularities," then we should say so-and-so won an "election with widely-reported irregularities." Levivich (talk) 21:25, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It wouldn't really, since all those controversial / sham elections would be nominated under the normal ITN process... Khuft (talk) 18:59, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Generally oppose, free is not a binary, fair is not a binary. Reporting purported election results without going over the same arguments repeatedly seems the purpose of the ITN/R entry, mandating freeness and fairness assessments will not aid with that goal. CMD (talk) 01:31, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose cover all in the same way and don't judge. The reader is not stupid and sees bias. Let's not give them more opportunity to see it.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
If RS say one thing is an election, and another thing is a sham election, and we call both things an "election," we're misleading the reader. If RS say one thing is "X", and another thing is "called 'X' but not actually X," and we call both things "X", we're lying to the reader. On the main page. Dropping "sham" or "rigged" before "election" would be a lie of omission.
"Free" and "fair" aren't just adjectives describing some kinds of elections, they're prerequisites for something to even be an "election." We shouldn't use the word "elect" when the reality is "appoint" (or "self-appoint"), even if government propaganda uses the word "elect." Levivich (talk) 13:26, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can editors opposing any changes mention whether they think the status quo is along the lines of "ITN participants can propose and gain consensus for blurbs that report or indicate an election not being free or fair" or whether it is "Any blurb that mentions an election not being free and fair is procedurally invalid and will be altered by ITN admins to omit it", and whether that extends to the subtle games with wording Masem mentioned below), even if ITN participants supported such a blurb. Anyhow, Support 3>4, oppose 1 and 2; whether an election was a sham is the second-most important thing after the result, on equal significance with the election happening. Support 5 - the fact that a military dictator decided they needed a fancy new title is not inherently significant. 1brianm7 (talk) 14:03, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Can editors opposing any changes mention whether they think the status quo is along the lines of "ITN participants can propose and gain consensus for blurbs that report or indicate an election not being free or fair" or whether it is "Any blurb that mentions an election not being free and fair is procedurally invalid and will be altered by ITN admins to omit it" this is a false dichotomy. Editors can reach a consensus to mention that, but if they haven't then it won't be included in the blurb. If admins are altering blurbs against consensus that's a problem that none of the changes proposed here can solve. Thryduulf (talk) 14:29, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm kinda at a loss here. Admins are doing that (see the discussion I linked in my reply to you above). When asked why, they said that's how it has always been done and to start a discussion at WT:ITN if you want it changed. I did, there was no consensus, so I started this RfC. What should I have done?1brianm7 (talk) 14:47, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
A significant contingent of editors respond to proposals to mention or indicate sham-ness by saying that there is an unwritten rule to never do so. I can't think of a way to prevent that simpler than a written rule saying that it is allowed. 1brianm7 (talk) 15:08, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose change, keep status quo / keep elections in ITN/R – "X is declared the winner of" is just a wordier way of saying "X wins". As mentioned before, the arguments on whether an election is "free or fair" is arbitrary and ITN editors will never agree. If protests are significant enough where they would normally merit a blurb, it would make sense to merge the two blurbs together. If reliable sources are reporting on a specific aspect of an election, such as voter turnout in the 2021 NewCaledonia referendum or the recent HongKong election (in which the pro-China camp, pro-democracy camp, and international media all focused primarily on turnout), then it would also be appropriate to include that in the blurb when also reflected by the targeted article. Nice4What (talk · contribs) ♥14:35, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support this initiative in general; agnostic re exact wordings. I never really agreed with the "consensus" that we should use standardised wording when posting election results (sham or not). Our guidance should be what reputable sources say, and if they tend towards questioning the freedom and fairness of certain elections, we should be free to editorialise accordingly. (And: Keep all elections at ITN/R - not sure why that is even being questioned here as irrelevant to this proposal - the Russian "election" will be nominated anyway when it happens, whether as ITN or as ITN/R) Khuft (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
we should be free to editorialise accordingly No! Absolutely not! The personal opinions of ITN editors should not determine how we describe election results. The last thing we need is editors only using the term "sham elections" for regimes they personally disagree with. Warudo (talk) 15:24, 3 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Follow the sources/target article language above all else. I guess this is an anything except 1 with a preference for 4 !vote? But it really does just depend on what the sources say. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, ITN even less so. It should just be a chain of repetition: ITN should follow what the article says, the article should follow what the sources say, simple as. This should be the only thing that determines whether the language of the blurb can or should suggest that an election is contested, not what us at ITN have to say about it.
As CMD pointed out, it is not possible for us to cleanly and objectively separate "real" elections from "sham" elections because most countries on Earth don't fit neatly into a binary between true democracies and true dictatorships; it's a spectrum and most of the world is somewhere in the middle, and where exactly a country falls on that spectrum will vary from election to election as countries either backslide or democratize over time. This is why it needs to be determined on a case by case basis, based on what the sources say and how much weight article writers assign to those sources, how an election should be described. If the article can say the election was described by international observers as neither free nor fair, then ITN can. If the article can't say it, ITN can't say it. Easy as that, no need to complicate things or debate it at ITN/C. If this is contested, contest it at the article talk page, not ITN/C. The less leeway ITN gives itself, the better. Not just with regard to election blurbs, but all blurb discussions, because this mindset that ITN is somehow separate from the articles it features & gets to act as its own decisionmaking body with minimal objective instructions is really the root of every one of ITN's problems. Oppose removing elections from ITN/R, agree with Khuft that it's not really clear why that's even being discussed.
Oppose. It's not for us to judge elections in such a way; we can note that observers view an election as unfair. Instructions creep, too. 331dot (talk) 20:55, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
To be fair to the nom, the options provided are about how/if we should follow the sources, not leaving it up to us to judge elections ourselves. Noting that observers view an election as unfair is roughly options 2-4, but opposing all of them and forming no consensus here would leave us stuck with the current situation where the editors feel they are allowed to judge elections themselves. ITN doesn't have an instruction creep problem, but I wish it did. It has a "there are no instructions" problem. Vanilla Wizard 💙21:16, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Exactly that we have no instructions. I'd note that about half of the oppose votes are doing so because there is no need to spell out the status quo (one) and another half are doing so because there is no need to spell out the status quo (roughly two or three). 1brianm7 (talk) 21:52, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose / keep status quo Pretty much agree with Nice4What. Readers can always click on the blurb's wikilink to the election page to learn more about the election, including its controversies. If "reliable independent sources generally describe an election as not free and fair", then that would usually be covered in the article's lead. Some1 (talk) 23:24, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
From news style: To "bury the lead" is to begin the article with background information or details of secondary importance to the readers, forcing them to read more deeply into an article than they should have to in order to discover the essential points. - perhaps we should just adopt the format "John Smithis set to continue as president of example.", we wouldn't be deceiving the reader anymore (if they don't click on the link, which most won't) 1brianm7 (talk) 00:52, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose any changes. Any articles we post where they are described as shams should say as much in the articles in question. We don't need to editorialize in the blurbs or in what we post. All election blurbs say anyway are "[person] was elected as [title] of [country]", and that is all that needs being said in most cases. The article is the ideal place for expansion upon the circumstances around the election. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:08, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I think that's the whole issue that is being flagged here... "X was elected" implies a democratic process was adhered to, which isn't the case in sham elections. It is editorialising, but in the opposite direction (if that makes any sense) because it doesn't follow what reputable sources would be saying. Khuft (talk) 10:15, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
"X was elected" implies a democratic process was adhered to I don't think that's true. It implies that an election was held and that that X was declared the winner of that election, but it doesn't imply anything about the nature of the election - after all whether a process is "democratic" or not is neither a binary nor objective, whether the defined process (whatever its nature) was followed is frequently not knowable until days or weeks (at least) afterwards and sometimes contentious. For example whether the 2020 United States presidential election was "democratic" and whether the defined process was followed depends on who you ask - e.g. those who believe Donald Trump's claims, those who believe the Electoral college is not democratic, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose change This proposal seems to rely on a biased view that free and fair elections is the control stage and any departure from it needs to be indicated. In the same way we don't characterise elections as 'free and fair', there's no point to do so if they're 'non-free and unfair'. In any case, the reader can view the article for further details. Democracy is a view, not a universal rule. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support. This isn't AfD. This is literally just "is this newsworthy enough to make the front page of Wikipedia". Putin or Kim Jon Un winning "reelection" by a 90-10 margin once again is just not newsworthy. This is the same reason that a tornado in Kansas won't make ITN unless its death toll is absurd, whereas a similarly powerful tornado in Tokyo would definitely make it regardless of death toll. Man bites dog is news, dog bites man is not. RedSlash03:21, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
An issue that I've raised is that the determination of what is or isn't a sham election, or what is or isn't a free-and-fair election, is not an objective meausure. There are election watchdog groups that will review an election and sometime after the election will assess the free-and-fairness but not in time for ITN's purposes; and even if these groups deem an election to be a sham, their statements should be included with attribution as other similar groups (like SPLC for hate groups), to keep it out of wikivoice. Which leaves us with journalism commentators making that assessment at the time of the election, which we should avoid resting too much weight on even if it seems clear they are correct. ITN's blurbs need to stay factual as they are all in wikivoice - we don't have room for attribution or sourcing like article space has, so trying to force in a claim that an election was a sham or not free-and-fair just doesn't work. We can play subtle games with the wording, de-emphaizing "win" and more "selected" or "named" in the cases of such elections like in Russia, though we should also be consist with that across known free-and-fair elections too. Masem (t) 13:37, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
It is also worth noting that there are times when different observers have different opinions about how free and fair a given election is (although usually only in degree). Thryduulf (talk) 13:58, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The alternative just as problematic - we present an election as-if it were a true election ("Russia elects" or "Putin wins"). "wins" and "elects" have specific implications and invoke particular meaning for a reader, so it is simply not neutrally reporting the facts if in fact we are reporting on a sham election. Instead, we would be misinforming our readers. Katzrockso (talk) 22:09, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
+1 - If there is clearly a dispute over whether an "election" was really an election at all, and there is due weight to note this in an article lead, then presenting the event as an election in Wikivoice with no qualifiers is very much an NPOV vio. NPOV is about giving due weight to relevant perspectives, failing to do this is not neutral. The only sensible solution is to assess the sources and the article content to determine whether there is due weight to present an election as contested. Writing "Vladimir Putin wins the Russian presidential election" with no asterisks as though it were a totally normal and legitimate election is just as much of a WP:WEIGHT vio as "Joe Biden is declared the winner of the United States presidential election amid allegations of fraud"; both unduly promote a WP:FRINGE perspective. Vanilla Wizard 💙23:11, 31 July 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem is whether an election is a sham or not , regardless of how many journalists are commenting on it within the days of that election, is subjective and cannot be said in wikivoice. It falls under NPOV that the claims should be attributed and given context which is fine in the article body, but in the short sentence we have at ITN, we have no room for attribution and context. (This is true for all ITN blurbs, they have to be presented in wikivoice so must be demonstrated fact and not subjective assessments). WEIGHT obviously applies in article space as to put the sham aspect up high in the lede, but obviously outside wikivoice, eg: "Putin wins the Russian president election in what many observers consider as a sham election." but that's language that can't work at ITN. Masem (t) 01:12, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
That's why there are wording formats we can say that do not imply that the election was a fair one without going there, like "X is elected as president in the 2026 Y election." That applies if the election was fair or not, but we should be using that same format for all elections so that we're clearly not putting our finger down on the marker. Masem (t) 01:07, 1 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Don't run any donation banners until the union-busting is completely ended
Latest comment: 2 days ago15 comments7 people in discussion
Dear Wikipedians,
A few weeks ago, I made a proposal regarding the WikiForms tool. The previous discussion mainly focused on tool development, security, and revisions.
I am glad to share that the tool is now fully production-ready and all suggested improvements have been incorporated.
I would like to propose officially recognizing this tool by establishing a dedicated documentation page at Wikipedia:WikiForms. This page will outline the guidelines and usage for the tool, offering a native, privacy-friendly alternative to external services like Google Forms for surveys or data collection within the community.
The tool still appears far from production ready. Nevermind the top of the page saying "banner_message", or the silent failures when publishing a blank form, or the fact that after publishing a form you're still given the ability to edit the form and add questions but clicking the publish button a second time doesn't do anything. My biggest concern is that it still describes itself as being able to "Create powerful data collection forms or secure AI-proctored quizzes" and offers an option for an "Anti-cheat AI proctoring protection subsystem built-in natively" despite you saying in the previous discussion that you were completely removing all AI components. I also fail to see what need this fills for the Wikipedia community that isn't already met by meta:LimeSurvey or meta:SecurePoll. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)22:02, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I actually didn't notice this message not coming and problems with publishing. I will correct them soon.
But I have already said what I mean by anti-cheat. Use a module to prevent cheating in quiz competitions with Ai. (I originally created it for Bangla Wikipedia's WikiScholer competition, which It will be held in 2027) I put AI grading system here only for quizzes so that if descriptive quizzes are held then AI can tell if they are right or wrong.
Also as you said the Wikimedia community has LimeSurvey and meta:SecurePoll. However, not everyone can create forms in these. Also, Google Forms are being used for issuing certificates for various online editathons (eg: Asian Month). As such, Wikipedia needs to have something of its own. Anaf Ibn Shahibul (talk) 01:37, 12 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I still oppose this per the concerns above. The idea is good, and LimeSurvey isn't widely accessible beyond staff members, but the product itself is just too hard to trust currently. meta:LimeSurvey currently states that:
Expanding on an existing trusted service seems like a better avenue than reinventing the wheel, although the worry is that there doesn't seem to be a team by that name anymore. I will try to reach out to relevant WMF staff who might be able to set up a LimeSurvey instance for the community. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 10:40, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Chaotic Enby, @Samwalton9 (WMF) pointed me over here (thanks Sam)! I'm formerly of the Global Data & Insights team, and currently on the Research team; Apologies for not cleaning up that note in a while, will do so shortly. I agree that the WikiForms tool is a neat idea, and that the security concerns of the tool itself are serious ones to consider if the idea is privacy and a way to collect potentially sensitive information.
However, weirdly, the WMF LimeSurvey instance doesn't actually solve the core problem that I'm reading WikiForms is trying to solve, which is a self-hosted form tool that's easily accessible to any user -- per metawiki:LimeSurvey we use the LimeSurvey Cloud instance hosted by LimeSurvey GmBH, as hosting our own would require additional staff with different skills from mine (a humble survey researcher :D) to ensure it's well maintained. The account management and support needed for using LimeSurvey itself is also quite a bit of overhead, as the tool isn't quite intuitive for most people who aren't frequently conducting surveys and we require NDAs for any tool use like this because it's effectively allowing access to a space where lots of potentially sensitive information is being collected (with Qualtrics this was easier as each account has its own space, while with LimeSurvey I think of it a bit more like a wiki with multiple users who have different levels of access for visibility, which means humans having to be very careful about what access is given and to whom). Wikimedia Italy does host its own instance and offers forms for community use -- @Valerio Bozzolan has been an advocate for the use of LimeSurvey (including getting WMF to use it!) and I wonder if he or someone from WMIT better could speak to the potential of what using LimeSurvey without reinventing the wheel and allowing broader access could look like? All the best and thanks to everyone in the discussions for thinking seriously about this! -- TAndic (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks a lot, that makes a lot of sense! The aspect of collecting potentially sensitive information is indeed what worries me the most, LimeSurvey having a cross-user space where the data is stored makes it less practical.I'm still very skeptical of a vibe-coded tool being used to manipulate such data, especially as the updates haven't been especially clear, but it does look like there is a space waiting to be filled. Whether it comes through iterating on that tool with trusted WMF developers (which will require them to familiarize themselves with the AI-generated codebase), adapting the current LimeSurvey instance, or setting up an entirely custom one, I don't know yet. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 13:15, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
About simplicity: the latest version of LimeSurvey 7 has the most intuitive user experience ever reached by the project https://www.limesurvey.org/ which is great and I recommend it, to do not reinvent the wheel. Good to start easy surveys, and easily scale to complete multi-language surveys, and question dependencies, and other optional things which are quickly demanded, as newcomers tend to become expert.
About user roles: LimeSurvey users are easily hardened as you need. In Wikimedia Italy it's normal that every newcomer can only create new surveys, and can only see their own created surveys.
If I had some time and money, I would invest in creating a LimeSurvey with OAuth quick login, so to give "Survey creator" roles to new accounts. And I would massively donate to LimeSurvey. Bozz (talk) 13:46, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Ah, anyway: I just want to say THANK YOU to @Anaf Ibn Shahibul: for such new solution 🥰 Apologies for not telling before.
While I cannot discuss code quality, I'm very happy that the app was developed using the Laravel framework, which is massively known, clean, solid and I love it. And I'm happy that the final product is released under a Free Software license. I'm glad you helped to fight Google Forms. THANK YOU Bozz (talk) 13:51, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks to everyone! Actually, I have been a bit busy for the past few days so I have not been able to reply or correct anything. But now I am back now. I'm basically doing the codes myself, not Vibe-coded, that's for sure. But I'm sorry there are some errors, I will solve them as soon as possible. Besides, I'm not sure about security for now because I'm a user GrinningIodize Helping me with security and he has done many audits. However, if anyone has doubts about security or API, you can see the API doc.
One more thing I want to say here is no where AI is used but I am clarifying the use of AI in grading as below- Consider a quiz competition where there is a descriptive question "What is the name of the capital of Bangladesh". Here someone can answer "Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh" and someone can say just "Dhaka". Statically it is not possible to determine that the two are the same thing.In that case it will be checked with Openrouter to openrouter/free model. But there is limesurvey but still google form is used. This is essentially an alternative to that Google Form. Thank you all so much.
Thanks @Valerio Bozzolan! Going ahead with the FormPolicy/Gate::authorize approach you suggested — it's a good fit and I'm implementing it now. On the other hardening ideas floating around (HMAC signing, Redis-backed rate limiting/blacklisting, canvas fingerprinting, etc.) — I'm holding off on most of those. Given the concerns Ahecht and others raised about the tool already being too complex to audit, I'd rather keep the security model simple and legible than add infrastructure that makes it harder to review. Rate limiting and CSRF/session hardening are already in place; happy to discuss specifics if anyone sees a concrete gap. Anaf Ibn Shahibul (talk) 07:03, 17 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
CentralNotice for September Organized Labour Campaign
I wanted to get a solidarity statement in there, but ran out of characters (guideline says 50 to 70 characters for CentralNotice banner). Open to hear from more creative folks. There is space to say "Support WWU", but that might be too much inside baseball.
I will be generous and acknowledge that any labor-related edit-a-thon is clearly indirect if not direct support for WP:WWUS but I believe it is the right thing and will support whatever brief statement that people find descriptive. The end result will be improved encyclopedic articles that enrich the discussions. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah(talk) 18:39, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that's a good concession for success of the drive.
Did you see the post I was responding too? This question did not come out of no where. Just above, there was a claim that the drive is at least "clearly" an indirect support for some other cause. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:15, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I did. I just wanted to reassure you that despite the motivation of showing solidarity with WWU, the campaign is open to all. Of course, we'll respect NPOV etc. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 19:22, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
As I put below: the aim is V/NPOV/NOR content, which may turn out to (overall) show that unionisation is generally a bad thing. Encouraging participation in this editathon could contribute to WWU US losing the election. Boud (talk) 11:43, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The election will be over in the first days of the drive. So, your argument makes little sense. Any influence on the election would be in August, presumably when the banner is suppose to run. Moreover, the goal of WWU wining or losing the election can play no part in editing decisions. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:10, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Fair point about the timeline, which makes it even less likely that the editathon will bias WMF US employees in their vote, since the newly added content may be unstable until sufficiently many diverse editors have got involved in editing. To people familiar with Wikipedia, unstable articles full of {{refimprove}} and other tags are a hint to read the talk page and check the sources yourself rather than consider the content as consensus-based. Agreed that the goal of WWU win[n]ing or losing the election can play no part in editing decisions; that's uncontroversial as a matter of principle. But some concern has been raised here that in practice, either editing or the effects of the edits might be influenced by, or have an influence on, the NLRB ballot. My point is that if there is an influence by editors despite editors' best intentions, there's no prior reason to be certain which way, if any, that could influence the vote. Some WMF US employees are Wikipedia editors (identified or anonymous), and 1/3 did not sign union cards either the first or second time; they may have some good WP:RS that present arguments against unions, and might add those during August, motivated by the CentralNotice. Getting a mix of editors with a variety of biases tends to produce high-quality articles. Boud (talk) 12:33, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The promotion of bias in the election is in the running of an August banner for a project "edit-a-thon [that] is clearly indirect if not direct support for WWUS" (they are working to win an election in August). So, change to the bias of the editathon, would be what's required. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:49, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Not at this time - While asking editors to help improve articles in a specific topic area is standard practice, we can not ignore the fact that there is currently an ongoing discussion between the WMF and its employees over forming a union. Running an editing campaign “in solidarity” of Organized Labor while this discussion is going on is inappropriate. It would be like running an editing campaign “in solidarity” with a specific political party during a national election. Wait until the WMF employee union issue is resolved… then do a campaign on this topic area. Blueboar (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Not buying that… When the organizers of the campaign are calling for “solidarity” it becomes more than that. It becomes advocacy.
September has lots of causes… it’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Suicide Prevention Month, World Alzheimer’s Awareness Month (just to name a few)… we can focus on those topics instead. Blueboar (talk) 20:04, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's a fair worry, even though I'm not sure when the issue would be resolved (after the vote? after the first negotiations are done?). Just for reference, there is precedent of editing campaigns with a political backdrop to it, in the Ukraine Diplomacy Month, which is, at least to me, clearly in solidarity with the victims of war. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 20:14, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Reliable sources that show in what situations (when, where, why, who, how) unionisation has led to lower salaries or worse conditions are fully on-topic for this editathon. Without already knowing what sources are going to be used and what they say, we cannot predict whether the result of the editathon will be to show, overall, that unionisation is good or bad. I've added a section to encourage adding, especially, scholarly sources that are suspected to be biased pro- or anti-union.This editathon might just as well convince lots of WMF workers that unionisation is, per the evidence, a bad thing, as convince them that it's a good thing. The WMF US workers' votes may be influenced by the encyclopedic evidence, either pro- or anti-unionisation. Boud (talk) 11:32, 9 August 2026 (UTC) (clarify Boud (talk) 11:38, 9 August 2026 (UTC))Reply
Support. Many of our articles about organized labor would benefit from this edit-a-thon. The scope of WikiProject Organized Labour includes both pro-union and anti-union aspects of the topic area, as well as general information about trade unions. The word "solidarity" could be removed from the event page if it is considered a concern, but the existence of other themed months for September (e.g. Childhood Cancer Awareness Month) is not a good reason to forego this event. Feel free to start a separate edit-a-thon about childhood cancer, if you are interested in doing so for that topic. —Newslingertalk21:31, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support a central notice for the campaign, and the having of the campaign. The short suggested text here seems fine to me too. Not sure about using the "trout" logo though, and possibly we should be a little more subtle about the WWU advocacy on the event page. Anomie⚔23:48, 8 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Obligatory oppose against the message of support for WWU. Sending a CentralNotice is fine. Regarding the icon, I think I like the trout best. Like Newslinger said, there's pro-union (labor) and anti-(labor) articles out there - it's a contentious topic. The image of the red* raised fist looks like a revolution took place, and the third image is the WWU logo, which is a non-starter for this endeavor. †I am reminded of a paper glossed in The Atlantic which included an exploration of the rise of the color red during the Russian Revolution. - Embyarby (talk) 02:57, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It's an inside joke. The fact you had to ask the question means that it likely isn't as effective as I thought it would. Also, people seem keen on not displaying WWU solidarity too blatantly, so I'm very happy to just go for the multi-colored people icon, as a single image. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 06:58, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support. More NPOVed, RSed, DUE-weight, crowdsource-edited encyclopedic knowledge on this specific subset of human rights will benefit Wikipedia readers and Wikipedia's reputation as a source of encyclopedic reviews of knowledge, and will likely also help encourage inter-language wiki cross-coordination. Boud (talk) 11:19, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support, while I agree any actual advocacy should be muted, I don't see how anyone could take issue with the current state of the page, it's no different to other edit-a-thons really. The only point of contention I can see is that the most prominent suggested articles are centred around the WMF dispute, rather than the most vital articles about organised labour. I think it should have the latter as the most prominent, with a later subsection on articles related to the WMF dispute.
I also think there should be a pointer to another page (or a section near the end) giving a neutral summary of the recent events and linking to the ongoing discussions. At the moment the discussions are dominated by enwiki editors while others are left out of the loop, the page is about to be MassMessage'd to other wikis and they won't know what's going on based on the current state of the page. Otherwise it's a big support, lots of articles will be improved, which is the reason we're all here anyway Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 16:52, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Support Central Notice without any advocacy for WWU. We should try for improved, NPOV, RSed articles on labour issues. I think getting more people involved on articles relating to this would be beneficial, and we should not directly tie it to WWU's efforts (which I support). Improving the encyclopedia should be what we want for the Central Notice. Abzeronow (talk) 20:07, 9 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose I personally support WWU, but I think it's completely inappropriate to run a banner that advocates for one side, or the other, of any election. Wikipedia wouldn't run a banner supporting any side of a US or foreign Presidential or Parliamentary election.
Point of order - This proposal seems to assume there is consensus in the other thread not to run banners. Consensus here on running this particular banner instead would be contingent upon that. Submitting to CN seems quite premature before that thread closes. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 13:58, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
In terms of submitting to CN: they state they need at least 2 weeks to handle requests, so I submitted at the last possible date to have the banner start a week before the start of the campaign. Not having reread the discussion after opening this one; is the discussion now headed for a consensus? In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 14:16, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
It does not appear related to me. One is about discussing fundraisers or not within context of WWU. This is about promoting an edit-a-thon. Both can happen, neither can happen. They are not interdependent, or else this would have been a single thread. They are thematically related, but not interdependent. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah(talk) 15:14, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Wait, maybe I misunderstood the first sentence. It reads to me that Femke is proposing running this instead of donation banners (alternative to showing our readers a banner related to donations), but maybe it's actually running a banner instead of interfering with donation banners? —Rhododendritestalk \\ 15:29, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Might recommend tweaking As an alternative to showing our readers a banner related to donations in case I'm not the only one who read it that way. —Rhododendritestalk \\ 16:38, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 16 hours ago19 comments8 people in discussion
These days it seems hard to find Wikipedia editors to collaborate on things. My suggestion is that a new discussion page be started, known as the Article board, or alternatively the Collaboration board. It would be a place where users could discuss changes to articles and collaborations on Wikipedia. I've created the page, but listed it as a proposal for now.
I'd like to address that although this is often done on talk pages, or on WikiProjects, they often are not active enough to have much of an effect. The benefit here is that this place would be active and centralized.
What approach do you suggest to make a new location more active than the existing ones? Note the Wikipedia:Articles for improvement initiative has existed for many years (it's currently changing its procedures and will become a section on the main page). The key challenges I see are how to get enough editors to regularly use the new location, and how to connect these regular users to the pages they are interested in. Although I generally think it would be more fruitful to connect users with others that have similar interests (thus re-invigorating WikiProjects), other approaches can of course be tried. isaacl (talk) 16:53, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Isaacl As a major discussion page this would be added to the "Other areas of Wikipedia" list, which can be seen on the Main Page, and linked to from many othetr places. The activity can thus come naturally. That is a secondary concern.
It is less likely to go inactive than the WikiProjects which only have a limited number of interested editors in the first place. This page can coexist with them. Think of it as "WikiProject General". NewAccount7295 (talk) 17:15, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I feel attracting participants is a primary concern, not a secondary one. Without critical mass, there won't be incentive to use the page. To give a new location the best chance for success, I think there should be a plan of how to integrate it into existing workflows. isaacl (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Isaacl This is why we do a test run and see how it works. I've roughly explained a starting point. Link it from the Main Page, the Community portal, and other places as a major page, akin to the Help desk, Teahouse, and Reference desk. Something editors know they can use and something that is known about prominently. NewAccount7295 (talk) 17:34, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sure, I have no issues with trying things out. I'm just concerned that if we don't try to give it the best chance for success and it doesn't do well at first, further tests will be stymied for years by editors citing its first failure (as has happened with the articles for improvement initiative). isaacl (talk) 17:43, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamiIdoing This is not a proposal for WikiProject, but rather a discussion page/noticeboard. I compared it to one since many will draw the similarities in that the discussion places for the WikiProjects are where users go to work with other editors on something specific. The collaboration here isn't as coordinated as a WikiProject.
For example, this is a place someone could go and start a thread about an article they want to create, and are asking if anyone wants to help out with it and discuss it there. NewAccount7295 (talk) 21:28, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Most editors edit articles they are interested in. Often this is a particular subject area or type of editing, such as copyediting. WikiProjects and, in some cases, noticeboards are better suited for this. And there's Wikipedia:Articles for improvement. Of course there are many editors with broad interests and skillsets but I anticipate that attracting and sustaining a critical mass of editors interested in generic "collaboration" or "improvement" with an otherwise infinite scope will be difficult. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I'm Sonja and I lead the product teams who develop the contributor experience at the Foundation. Connection and collaboration is something we're also very interested in -- we even have a team dedicated to this topic:) The Connection team has been investing in the CampaignEvents extension over the last couple of years, and one recent intervention that might be interesting to you is Collaborative Contributions, which allows organizers to track edits towards a goal and set up worklists for participants to collaborate on. We're exploring additional feature improvements for worklists right now and plan to expand the concept to personal worklists as well, so that anyone can create a list of articles they want to work on and invite other volunteers to collaborate with them without having to host a big event or WikiProject. Feedback that has come up from other community members is that they for example would want to get signals about the quality of the article or even leave a note to the next editor. If you have more ideas of feedback, we're happy to hear it! Copying @Udehb-WMF here who could get you invited to future community calls, for example. SPerry-WMF (talk) 21:25, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that sounds great! My only concern is that having personal worklists for select people to help with might encourage the formation of cliques (which makes newbies' experiences worse, factional conflicts etc.), moreso than having 'public' worklists like in the proposal above or at a WikiProject would Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 21:31, 13 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, but as WhatamIdoing said above, the "build it and they may not come" issue has to be resolved first. Unfortunately we do not have a "human magnet" to attract knowledgeable editors regardless of any additional infrastructure. C'est la vie. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 08:51, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Yesterday, all my dreams... I have already stated how that could be resolved (at least partially). Remember, the Article board isn't a WikiProject. It is just a discussion page! It may have those that frequent it, or those that only use it occasionally. NewAccount7295 (talk) 15:37, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I am aware that it is not proposed as a Wiki project. But in the end we are all only speculating about the level of participation. My prediction (and WhatamIdoing's) is different from what you predict. But we can not expect uniform predictions among all users. So only time will tell, given that as the man said: predictions are hard, specially about the future. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 19:50, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Are there any policies or guidelines for notice boards? I found Wikipedia:Noticeboards, which is an information page. It says noticeboards are not good places to recruit more editors to work with you. If you want to edit collaboratively, try posting a message at a relevant WP:WikiProject instead. This isn't binding and shouldn't be taken as me saying you can't do this, just sharing what I've found. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 22:16, 14 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
These days it seems hard to find Wikipedia editors to collaborate on things. This is a problem, and it's a good thing to try to solve. I think the main problem is that there's two sorts of conversions that need to happen. First, you have to convert readers into editors, which is no small feat. Once those readers become editors by starting to copyedit or make small corrections on articles they come across, you then need to funnel those editors from the "front-end" of editing (simply making changes to articles) and into the "back-end" of editing (participating on discussion boards and talk pages, getting involved with wikiprojects, backlog drives, etc etc.)
I think that second step is Wikipedia's million-dollar question. How do you mobilise all the "casual editors" into a workforce capable of tackling larger projects in an organised manner? That, I think, is the bigger problem to try to solve, rather than creating new venues that all those "front-end" editors still won't see. Athanelar (talk) 08:42, 19 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Plus the weird mid-title '(neighborhood)' titles in the other discussion I linked. Practices vary but Neighborhood, City is the most common. This is true even in cases like Syracuse and Birmingham, where the American city is not the primary topic for the city's name, although Springfield, Massachusetts neighborhoods are disambiguated with the state included. I don't know if this list is representative. —Myceteae🍄🟫 (talk) 21:06, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
I can't with a few moments' thought come up with any US place large enough to have seperate neighborhoods where the city name is a common first name. Thinking about elsewhere in the world I come up with Sydney, where disambiguation is handled differently. As this seems to affect just one place I'm sure we can come up with a better way to disambiguate, remembering that this is not a bureaucracy. Phil Bridger (talk) 06:01, 17 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
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.
Proposal: Re-introducing 'ethnicity' to Template:Infobox person with strict data-parity controls
A decade ago, the site-wide consensus to remove biographical parameters like `religion` and `ethnicity` from `Template:Infobox person` successfully mitigated high-frequency vandalism and localized edit warring. However, ten years of downstream data tracking show that this complete removal resulted in an unintended consequence: a critical loss of public-facing structured data. For researchers, historians, and genealogists, the complete absence of a standardized heritage field reduces the utility of Wikipedia’s quick-reference layout, forcing users to comb through long-form prose for basic demographic metadata.
While the 2016 resolution addressed an administrative burden, its execution bypassed an alternative, more constructive solution: creating a strictly regulated, policy-backed parameter rather than an outright deletion. We should correct this data gap. This proposal outlines a compromise to reintroduce the `ethnicity` parameter under strict, non-negotiable editorial guardrails designed specifically to prevent the legacy issues of the pre-2016 era.
Proposed Technical and Policy Guardrails
To prevent a resurgence of identity-tagging or edit warring, the `ethnicity` parameter will only be permitted if it meets three distinct criteria:
Strict Self-Identification or Definitive Genealogic Record: The subject must explicitly self-identify with the ethnic group in reliable sources, or have a direct, universally accepted ancestral record (e.g., parental lineages documented in peer-reviewed biographies).
Direct Relevance to Notability: The ethnicity must be directly tied to why the individual is notable (e.g., a cultural figure, a civil rights leader, an indigenous advocate, or a historian whose work directly stems from that heritage). It may not be used as a routine cataloging tool for individuals whose careers have no structural relationship to their ethnic background.
Wikidata Integration: The field should ideally be pulled directly from, or mapped to, Wikidata property `P172 (ethnic group)`, ensuring that changes must pass through structured tracking rather than raw, unmonitored wikitext inputs.
Support as proposer. The 2016 deletion was an overcorrection. We can preserve both data utility and article stability simultaneously by implementing rigid formatting rules instead of hiding verifiable historical heritage. ~2026-45126-33 (talk) 06:23, 17 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Oppose, we don't need ChatGPT explaining us why an ethnicity parameter would be useful. The rationale provides no concrete evidence about these ten years of downstream data tracking, and some of the arguments are entirely backwards. Wikidata integration usually lead to less monitoring, and certainly doesn't involve any kind of structured tracking. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 13:32, 17 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
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.
Latest comment: 9 hours ago9 comments4 people in discussion
There are currently nearly 77,000 unassessed articles on en-Wiki. Would there be any interest in having a drive to get these assessed. This could be a month-long project, similar to other drives. Would suggest October or November would give enough time to properly organise this. Mjroots (talk) 07:57, 17 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
The problem is that the content assessment system (including what criteria merit which rating) is internal to each Wikiproject. It wouldn't be possible to have a centralised backlog drive for this because people would have to familiarise themselves with the individual rating criteria of whatever Wikiproject was relevant to each article.
It is an admirable thing to undertake, but you'd be better off pushing it on a basis individual to each Wikiproject. Head to some active Wikiprojects and try to encourage their members to organise an internal backlog drive. Athanelar (talk) 08:28, 19 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Athanelar: - I'm not sure I understand. A C class article is a C class article whatever Wikiproject it comes under. Importance varies between WPs, but that is a matter for them. Mjroots (talk) 08:41, 19 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
You're right, it's only some projects that use a separate scale; A few WikiProjects have opted out of the standard quality scale, and use their own criteria tuned for the subject area, such as WikiProject Military history/Assessment. My mistake! Athanelar (talk) 09:53, 19 August 2026 (UTC)Reply
Desired outcome: A small number of editors arrive at an agreement about how to best apply sitewide policies and guidelines to a given Wikipedia article.
