Forum:CT:Update to the talk page policy

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Update to the talk page policy
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The result of the debate was No consensus. TanDivoInsignia-SenateMurders Anıl Şerifoğlu (talk) 22:31, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello all! I come to you today with a small adjustment to point 2 of the Talk page policy. Currently, point two states "No user may edit another user's comment, except to remove a personal attack or to redact private personal information prior to requesting RevisionDeletion by a bureaucrat or Fandom Staff member. Administrators can remove grossly derogatory content such as slurs." My proposal is that the following be added to this. "Administrators may also edit other user's comments solely to add a pipelink to fix a broken link, where the intended destination is clear such as if a forum page was moved, or to use nowiki tags to delink a page that has been deleted, should not exist, or where the intended link destination is not clear [[Like this]]." By using nowiki tags to delink an unneeded redlink, we leave a clear indication of what was linked, and leave the comment itself fully intact without modification. By using pipelinks to fix things like broken forum links on talk pages, we also leave the original message itself intact. Currently, leaving broken links in these spaces harms us negatively in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and leads to pages such as the WantedPages and WantedFiles pages cluttered with, no exaggeration, thousands of instances of broken links dating back to the earliest days of Wookieepedia. As many of us work to clean up the massive backlog of wanted pages on site, clearing out these unneeded redlinks is an essential step in this process. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 22:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Support

  1. As nominator. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 22:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
  2. TanDivoInsignia-SenateMurders Anıl Şerifoğlu (talk) 22:25, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
  3. Bonzane10 Sabine Starbird (holonet) 22:28, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
  4. SEO and making sure Wookieepedia doesn't have dead links is important. —SnowedLightning (they/them) 22:57, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
  5. If it's clear where a link SHOULD go, those are (to me) reasonable uses for this policy. -- Sulfur (talk) 13:31, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  6. I'm also not that interested in SEO, but I want to do anything we can do eliminate redlinks. VergenceScatter (talk) 17:51, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. I'm personally against this. Though we came to a middle ground on Discord, this is editing words that don't need to be edited, in my opinion. I don't care about SEO. Wook is one of the largest Star Wars wikis and is usually in the top 5 of Google's search results; I don't think pushing us any further up really does anything. Also, this runs the risk of delinking genuine redlinks. It's up to the admin's read on whether something is a valid or invalid redlink, and no one is infallible. For example, if someone linked Toothpick (I TC'd the canon page, to be clear, but let's pretend its page was never made), an admin came across that redlink. If they remove the link and someone later creates the page cause it's boopable, the delinking was invalid. In reverse, if someone restores a TC'd link, the admin should not have delinked that link on a talk page. Also, I don't think this is a goal (0 redlinks) we can achieve, as some places, like TC threads, should retain their redlinks. NBDani TeamFireballLogo-Collider(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 23:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
    • Just because we already are big, doesn't mean we can't improve further. If something has been deleted, then it shouldn't be considered a "wanted page", and links should be removed. Leaving them linked just clogs up a potentially useful page. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 00:58, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  2. Per NBDani --Vitus InfinitusTalk 00:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  3. Per Dani. Not really a fan of outright just removing the redlink in the event something later becomes notable or is restored, and the chance that a genuine redlink is removed Lewisr (talk) 00:37, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  4. Per reasoning below. I support axing links to help SEO, but firmly disagree with admins adding pipelinks to messages that aren't their own, as old messages should serve as an unedited record for historical purposes. Pipelinks are not necessary toward removing links when nowiki can be used.—spookywillowwtalk 01:19, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  5. OOM 224 (he/him) 06:40, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  6. UberSoldat93 ClanMudhornSignet-Redemption (talk) 06:46, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  7. Was trying to think if there was anything I wanted to say, but Dani and Spooky summed up what I wanna say pretty well. I do wanna say that I think this could’ve used a SH to discuss things before bringing it to a CT Fan26 (Talk) 12:50, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  8. Per above and Discord discussions, I don't care that much about SEO and this sort of vote probably should've gone through an SH first. Rsand 30 (talk) 13:37, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  9. Per spooky. LucaRoR Sigil of House Serenno (Talk) 13:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  10. SEO is overrated anyway. We're for readers, not Google. 01miki10 Open comlink 13:59, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  11. Per Miki. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 04:07, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Discuss

  • Inquiring whether it's been considered (since this skipped SH) the differences between nowiki-ing and pipelinking. SEO does matter, but nowiki tags achieve the same end goal of eliminating a redlink from WantedPages as pipelinking does. That said, pipelinking can alter the original intent of what a link was meant to point to if an admin makes that decision for themselves upon first read. For my part, asking whether it's possible for this to be a split vote to vote on most of the proposed wording and then a secondary vote to determine whether to allow admins to only alter using nowiki tags, or alter using both nowiki and pipelinking. I'm quite against admins deciding when to use pipelinks in others' messages, especially when a quick skim can be misconstrued and errors can be made; we'll never know what the original author had intended to link to 100%. I don't mind the links being axed for SEO as a concept, but the way it's done matters.—spookywillowwtalk 23:29, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
    • I personally only pipelink when the original destination was clear, such as a broken forum link that was archived. I'm open to just nowiki tagging them, but for instances such as that it's more harmful. Open to a split vote, but imho if we know what it was meant to link to, we should be able to just fix it. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 00:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
      • That's the thing with it though. Unless codified, what one admin might do is different from what another might do. If it's specified that broken forum links created by moves are pipelinkable, that is a more defined scope. Leaving that door open for each admin's interpretation to edit messages at will leaves somewhat of a gray area. The current wording is very vague and could potentially allow for more changing than those clear cases mentioned [ones created by moves and/or indisputably administrative ones].—spookywillowwtalk 01:09, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
        • I'd like to think we can use some good judgement on this. If we look at a redlink and it states, for example, the forum was moved to X title, we know that was where it was meant to link to. If it isn't clear, the best thing is delink it. Gray area perhaps, but do we really need to dictate in list form what admins are and aren't allowed to fix, with what is effectively just a site maintenance task? I trust any admin fixing a broken link isn't guessing. Supreme Emperor Holocomm 01:15, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
          • The proposal as it stands doesn't specify, either, that the correlation must be "clear." It could, for instance, specify that to pipelink, the trail of what it should link to must be clear; it currently allows for pipelinking in anything, technically. The logic expressed here—none of that has made it into the proposal itself.—spookywillowwtalk 01:18, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Taking some time to read through the discussions here and on Discord, I think there's several different issues that this is covering all of which probably require a fair amount of further discussion. The first of these is if we should pipelink redirects in old talk page messages where possible, which is something that I absolutely think we should be doing. Our objective is to preserve the original message made by the user and part of that is any page they link to for context. If the page gets moved, we should be pipelinking in order to preserve that context, otherwise the original user's point can be entirely lost and readers will have a hard time following what is being talked about in the message. There seems to be some concern about admins just guessing what might be pipelinked, which should be avoided, but isn't really a scenario I've ever come across, whereas there's many many occasions where it can be clearly worked out what was originally linked to based on page histories and so the link accurately restored. Ayrehead02 (talk) 14:07, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
  • The second issue is the nowiki delinking of redlinks, which I have mixed views on given that it covers a pretty wide area of potential scenarios. I do think there's value to removing redlinks for SEO and to clear out maintenance categories, but it isn't really our biggest priority since I don't see any scenario where we reach zero. The biggest priorty for me is whether or not the redlink acts as a valuable flag in whatlinkshere in future. The most important of these are TC'd links, which I think should be left as redlinks in the archived TC pages themselves so that anyone recreating the page in future will be able to immediately see if a relevant TC page exists through whatlinkshere. Cases where the redlink is truly nonsense from vandalism or something like a typo I think are valid to delink, but other stuff that might link to a restore or relevant page in future is more of a grey area, where I'm not really sure the benefits clearly outweigh the potential downsides. Ultimately I think there's a lot more to discuss before we come to any decision on this in terms of working out the community's priorities on message preservation and such. Ayrehead02 (talk) 14:07, 26 May 2023 (UTC)