Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

RfC: Merge nominations at MfD

RfC: Geographic disambiguation of school article titles in the United States

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00:00, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

An attempt to prevent autoconfirmation gaming and other issues

Should requirements to autoconfirmation be changed to prevent gaming, particularly of LTAs? This conversation started here as a result of actions taken by a likely D86 sock. Socks of this behavior edit once to get the day counter going and then make several dummy edits to their userspace (example). I see two ways of counteracting this, which I have listed below. Both methods should increase visibility of socks gaming the system and allow for more reaction time on our end. I am aware of this discussion; a previous attempt to get this implemented was rolled into that discussion at the tail end of it, not allowing much time for it to be discussed. The following proposals also take a different approach to much of what was suggested at that previous discussion: it changes the system instead of just creating a new arbitrary number to reach. This also should not significantly impact new editors. @Finfixer noted that Option 2 below could prevent some new editors who make edit suggestions or participate in discussions from becoming autoconfirmed, but that cannot be a significant amount of editors impacted nor that hard to solve. A reasonably knowledgeable editor should be able to click random article enough times while making minor edits to reach the new requirements. Pinging @Hurricanehink as a conominator and @Wizzito for starting the first discussion.

• Option 1: Status quo, none of the following is to be implemented
• Option 2: Make it so that the 10 edits to become autoconfirmed must come from the mainspace in order to increase the visibility of gamey edits. This would be similar to what WP:WPAFC uses for its reviewers.
• Option 3: Make it so that the edits must come from four separate days instead of a simple timer until the first edit reaches four days old. This would force those gaming the system to be somewhat persistent.
• Option 4: Both 2 and 3.

There may be some nuance possible within the options, but that could be resolved in a later discussion if not implemented here. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 23:43, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

• Option 4 as nom. My rationale is largely above. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 23:44, 14 October 2026 (UTC)
• I'm not sure Option 2 would increase the visibility of gamey edits – if anything, it will make them a lot less obvious and harder to spot. Being wary of WP:BEANS, we don't want to force some LTAs to do their gaming in mainspace either... nil ^nz 23:53, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

  In general, a mainspace article is going to have more people watching it than a random userspace article of a new editor. Also, while this might be reasonable to see in the userspace where new editors are likely to be testing what they can do, it would be glaringly obvious to anyone who happens upon it in the mainspace. It is also not like the LTAs are not vandalizing the mainspace anyway.

  Also, this proposal could have the indirect effect of increasing competency among autoconfirmed editors, which I did not discuss because that is not my main goal (and, if anything, some of the proposals are meant to be discrete). Someone who prioritizes that may take that into consideration. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 00:02, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  It is also not like the LTAs are not vandalizing the mainspace anyway – agree, but what this proposal will do is ensure that all LTAs game in the mainspace, and every other disruptive editor (socks/UPEs/ctop pov-pushers/meats etc.) as well.
  I still disagree it will be more glaringly obvious to spot in mainspace. Someone gaming outside of mainspace sticks out like a sore thumb to recent changes patrollers, and was a reliable method in the past to spot the likes of SB1 before they hit mainspace. I'd say that the majority of disruption is caught via RCP rather than watchlists, and it's worth remembering that there are probably millions of mainspace pages that aren't reliably watchlisted by active editors.
  Non-mainspace gaming is also more obvious when you look back through an editor's revision history, and will be one less tell available to us at noticeboards that rely on behavioural analysis, including WP:SPI, WP:COIN, WP:AE etc. For those reasons, Option 1. nil ^nz 01:31, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  There are lots of dark corners of mainspace with very few pagewatchers where even outright vandalism can go unnoticed for a long time, so I also doubt that minor gaming edits would be noticed any quicker in such corners. I doubt if anybody would notice some minor superfluous edits made to Çeralan, Saimbeyli (which I got by clicking the 'random page' button) Athanelar (talk) 07:24, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

• Option 4, anything to make it harder to game AC is a good thing. BilledMammal (talk) 00:13, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Neither Option 2 or 3 will help. We have issues with users using mainspace WikiGnoming to game extended-confirmed as it is (and thus they could just resort to using it for autoconfirmed as well), and making it go across four separate days would only do a lot better job of disguising what would otherwise be obvious autocon-buster accounts. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Thriller Night!} 00:18, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• Comment Note either of these changes would require changes to MediaWiki, i.e. development work processed through Phabricator. Anomie⚔ 02:26, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  We could build a bot to grant confirmed instead. BilledMammal (talk) 04:37, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  That would not be autoconfirmation. That would be a proposal to disable MediaWiki's autoconfirmation feature in favor of manual confirmation via adminbot. Anomie⚔ 11:26, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

• Please, we already deal with enough mainspace gaming; let's not incentivize it further. Take it from somebody who, in her youth, actually ran her own sock accounts (on non-Wikipedia websites, we all have a past): @Nil NZ is right, the gaming will still happen, it will just be a)a lot less obvious and b) a lot harder to clean up. This is a well meaning proposal, but completely lacks any sense of the consequences. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 05:48, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• A reasonably knowledgeable editor should be able to click random article enough times while making minor edits to reach the new requirements. - your solution to normal editors being hurt by this proposed restriction is to say that any reasonably knowledgeable one will know to game it in the exact way that you say this proposal will make obvious enough to warrant a block. Is that right? 1brianm7 (talk) 06:07, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  I won't spell them out here, but there are many fast and easy ways to make ten constructive edits without arousing suspicion. Certes (talk) 15:02, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  RC patrollers won't tell you this one trick! Admins hate him! Athanelar (talk) 07:26, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Nil, Jéské Couriano and GLL. Thryduulf (talk) 09:59, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1, with regret. Options 2–4 might be justified to combat casual vandals and spammers. However, the question relates specifically to LTAs who will soon learn how to work around any changes, while genuine new editors might be deterred. Perhaps the solution is better detection of potential LTA socks. I expect this is already happening quietly off-wiki. If so then I thank the editors who generously donate time to it, but won't encourage them to spill the beans here. Certes (talk) 10:25, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

  I mean, if the proposal would be effective at deterring other vandals, I think it could be worth considering. I also doubt that any legitimate editor would be significantly affected by these changes. The one case I have seen even brought up is an editor who exclusively works in the backside of the encyclopedia, which I imagine to be rather rare for a newer editor. It may also delay someone from becoming autoconfirmed, but not by any significant measure. I do see the merit in other's comments that LTAs would just change their behaviors to meet the new requirements, though I still believe one or both of these would be a net positive (I am a bit less certain on the mainspace requirement). ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 11:21, 15 October 2026 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Jéské Couriano and 1brianm7. More likely to deter innocent newcomers than LTAs committed to the bit. mdm.bla 14:20, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• I think we need to think of the casual autoconfirmed editor as well. By making it harder to achieve also by just normal editing we'd be discouraging a lot of potential users from starting to edit (more). While socking and gaming is a problem, the project overall works well and is not sinking into chaos. Also think of the additional pressure on WP:AFC by less AC editors. squawk7700 (talk) 15:06, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• Alternate option: Create an abuse filter that will revoke or delay the user's promotion to autoconfirmed if it detects possible gaming. This can be achieved by setting the filter to block autopromote. The option does exist, however there doesn't appear to be any filters that are set to block autopromote. The last two options would make it more difficult for legitimate users to also become autoconfirmed. --Prothe1st (leave me a message)-- 22:14, 15 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Jeske Couriano and others, who persuasively argue that these changes would make gaming harder to detect but not meaningfully harder to perpetrate. I'm also an adherent of AC's restrictions being lightweight in general; it's meant to be a deterrent for drive-by trolls who lose interest when they see they can't sneak the word "poop" into articles, not an affirmative indicator that a user is likely to be knowledgeable or trusted. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:18, 16 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 4. The notion that any of these will deter actual newcomers is misplaced, since newcomers don't even know what it means to be "autoconfirmed" and are not actively seeking this status. BD2412 T 00:45, 19 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 Per many others who have already commented on this, it might make things worse, not to mention how it would make it more complicated to get a relatively simple permission. Theeverywhereperson talk here ^{In solidarity!} 12:03, 19 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 per all above. By no means is the current user rights regime perfect, but the suggestions here do not make it substantially more difficult for the vandals doing their thing. In particular, option 2 would already be moot for many of our returning vandals. Best, Staraction (talk · contribs) 05:21, 22 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 I get where this is coming from, but option two is just not going to accomplish the intended goal here, and may well make things worse. NIL NZ and Athanelar have already said more or less what I would have said here, so I won't belabor that point.
  Now option 3 might have some minor positive effect. Not on true LTAs, who will adjust quickly and are already quite determined, but plausibly might catch the VOAs that only make one or two edits before disappearing only to pop up again days or weeks later though that isn't all that common. Perhaps might cross the too-much hassle threshold for more casual types that are following off-wiki vandalism primers, or at least a few of them anyway the range of exertion tolerance being targeted is really quite narrow. Overall though I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze here. ~2026-46960-97 (talk) 01:50, 25 October 2026 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Neither of these will help. The first will make socks simply edit the mainspace, probably using autoed, while the second will just make it harder for normal editors to get the right. FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Template:Infobox officeholder and the topic of residency

Where you live, in some jurisdictions, is a factor in where you can be elected or serve. Knowing what community (obviously not address) an elected official lives in also a public interest matter. So if you live in New York, and you're governor, you "live" in Albany at the mansion, but that's not your "residency". Your residency is where you vote and pay taxes.

Kathy Hochul, the New York Governor, from looking up her history, appears to have been initially in her political career a resident of Hamburg, NY; then Buffalo, NY, and now she lives in Manhattan, NYC.

So if this Infobox had a residency value, we could list the residency location (if known) of the office holder.

A terribly easy set of examples:

• Donald Trump: residency 2026 = Palm Beach, Florida
• Joe Biden residency 2026 = Wilmington, Delaware
• Barack Obama residency 2026 = Washington, D.C.
• George W. Bush residency 2026 = McLennan County, Texas

Is there any real reason we ought to not have this as an easy option for industrious editors?

It was removed previously back to 2019 and 2024 over a very low-volume low-traffic RFC:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Infobox_officeholder/Archive_27#h-Proposal_to_remove_residence_parameter-20260209014000
• (2020, 23 participants for infobox person) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Infobox_person/Archive_34#Residence_parameter
• (2024, 13 participants for infobox person) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Infobox_person/Archive_38#RfC:_Do_you_support_overturning_the_2020_consensus_to_remove_residence_from_the_Infobox_person_template?

NOTE: That seems to be the only semi-relevant discussion. I'm proposing this ONLY for the officeholder template. This seems like it should really be a thing. — VPP (t/c) 18:30, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm inclined to oppose. In cases where it's a subject of controversy, potentially confusing, or otherwise requires explanation, inclusion in the infobox is contrary to MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. In the case of Trump and Hochul, at a minimum, there is a need to distinguish between their "residency" and their "residence". For former office holders, the public interest argument doesn't carry as much weight. This raises the question of whether the infobox should reflect their current residence or residency or at the time they held office. If it's really important, widely covered in reliable sources, and the value surpasses any BLP concerns, where they live or pay taxes during or after holding office can be described, and given context, in the article body. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:09, 20 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Myceteae: If it's important, write a paragraph about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:41, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, infoboxes are already sufficiently cluttered; this would be too ambiguous. FaviFake (talk) 16:47, 1 November 2026 (UTC)

CSD G7 on rejected drafts

At AfC, it's reasonably common for editors whose drafts have been rejected and who have been unsuccessful in appealing that rejection to suddenly change tack and instead request that the draft be deleted as soon as possible, which makes it eligible for WP:G7. Often they then proceed to recreate the draft, and resubmit it for review, essentially using this as a means to evade the rejection. This can work, because the next reviewer might not know the history, and it is not easy for non-admins to recover that history. The best we get is a heads up from the AFC helper that the article has been previously deleted, but I'm not sure if that even shows you times that the draft hss been deleted or only the same name in mainspace.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how we might be able to curb this? An obvious thought would be to add a caveat G7 stating that it does not apply to pages in draftspace that have been rejected at AfC. After all, I can't really conceive of a legitimate reason why an author should speedily delete their draft after it's rejected. It'll be deleted under G13 after 6 months anyway, and if in the meantime somebody else wants to create a draft at the same name, they can easily appeal the rejection or it could then probably be speedied under G6 at the new author's request to give them a blank slate. Athanelar (talk) 12:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

I see the problem and agree that it would be nice to block this pathway to resubmission of rejected articles. However, I'm trying to imagine explaining the new rule to a newcomer, and failing. Your draft was rejected, you aren't supposed to resubmit it, but you can't delete it? The explanation, while it makes sense, is very much inside baseball.

And while it's not useful per se, I think blanking your rejected draft (which can trigger G7) is a very understandable response to a rejection.

I think the problem here is not G7, it's the resubmission of a rejected article. I admit I don't know how to tackle that, though, given that even barring re-use of the article name is not robust.

M kuhner (talk) 19:15, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

They don't need to understand, they just need to be told they can't. Like I said, I can't see (and please do tell me one if you can) a compelling reason why a rejected draft should be speedily deleted at the author's request? Other than the loophole I'm talking about the only other reason I can see is that it would be out of an embarrassed desire to not have the rejected draft floating in their contribs, but that's not something we need to accommodate.

As for blanking, I agree; but the same caveat could apply there. Blank drafts that have been rejected before they were blanks are not subject to G7. I think "to prevent tendentious resubmission" is a plenty robust enough justification, my only doubt would be if someone else can see a reason G7 should apply. Athanelar (talk) 19:28, 21 October 2026 (UTC)

@Athanelar If somebody creates an AUTOBIO before knowing much about Wikipedia, then gets directed to the WP:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing, or realizes how hostile some editors can be about subjects trying to correct BLPVIOs, it is perfectly reasonable that they might not want that draft to remain live. Or they're embarrassed of their work, they don't want it to be picked up by other people, they don't want the fact that they tried to create their own wikipedia article to accidentally mess with their real life, ect.

(Personally, I believe any AFC reviewer should be skilled enough to check a talk page or the editor's logs for other drafts on a subject if they're worried about gaming. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to do?)GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 19:00, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

Hypotheticals aside, if you're got evidence that the draft author is doing this to avoid scrutiny (like this is their second time G7-ing a rejected draft, then G7 already doesn't apply. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 19:03, 23 October 2026 (UTC)

MFD is generally pretty hostile when this is discovered (recent example), but the problem is discovery. Even training reviewers to check the logs doesn't help much if it's being created at slightly different titles. So yeah, I can see making a carveout in G7 for this; maybe standardize blanking everything except for the rejection template if deletion is requested. —Cryptic 23:11, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

We, as AFC reviewers, got a notice when a submitted draft has the same title as a previously deleted article. I don't see why we couldn't get a similar notice that the draft itself was previously deleted. BD2412 T 00:18, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I can understand M kuhner's concerns, but I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I also don't think blanking the draft and waiting for someone to nominate it for G7 would be a particularly reliable way to circumvent the new rules. FaviFake (talk) 16:54, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

RfC: Should templates containing article body content be allowed?

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following lists: Wikipedia policies and guidelines Wikipedia technical issues and templates When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the lists. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Under what circumstances should templates be allowed to contain article body text?

Option 1: Never (i.e. substitute out all templates in Category:Article shared content templates)

Option 2A (de facto status quo): When content is sufficiently similar between articles that the same wording may be used with only changes in parameters (e.g. {{Named storms intro}} being used for List of named storms (A) to List of named storms (Z))

Option 2B (closest to de jure status quo): Option 2A but only when there is no expectation that the content within the template will need to be edited

Sdkb ^talk 16:05, 22 October 2026 (UTC)

Are we making it clear to new editors what our policies surrounding AI use are?

Hi all. From my experience in recent weeks at AfD, and in the past couple of days at the Teahouse, it seems as though a great number of editors appear to be entirely unaware of our AI usage policies. Though it can't be said for certain whether they're being entirely honest in this regard, I'm wondering if it might be prudent to offer a notice in the draft space for new users that simply indicates this fact, given that many go to AfC as a preliminary step without reaching autoconfirmed status first. Even then, is it unreasonable to suggest offering a similar notice for autoconfirmed users on publishing pages until their first (completed) page creation? Just think it might help us to cut down on good faith actors at AfC and AfD, and reduce the extent to which feigned ignorance can be used as a justification for LLM use in such cases.

All the best, and look forward to the discussion,

CSGinger14 (talk) 04:14, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

I think there's a note on the AfC wizard that AI-generated content is not allowed, but iirc it's rather low down in a list of other points; I went looking for it recently and only saw it because I was looking. I would definitely support making this information more visible somehow! I think this is a good idea: a similar notice for autoconfirmed users on publishing pages until their first (completed) page creation. Suðurhafsljósæta (talk) 14:02, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

LLM Paste Check, if it's triggered, also pops up a notification telling you not to use AI (although, confusingly, it does offer an option to keep the text, kind of a mixed message). Gnomingstuff (talk) 22:37, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

I'd say it'd be a better use of screenspace than either the licensing notice below the edit box or the copyright infringement one above it, or both put together for that matter, but there isn't anything equivalent in the visual editor. —Cryptic 22:48, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

We can change the notice. On Spanish Wikipedia iirc correctly, they warn much more for copyright violtions. I'd say it needs a pretty clear discussion given the wide reach. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 03:44, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, not allowed is one thing, explanation of consequences is another. We need to tell people that they may be wasting their time by using AI because there are people and tools that will detect it and remove it. Telling people that robbing banks is not allowed may have little effect if they are not aware of the consequences. The key consequence here would be that they will waste their time. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 03:22, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't think our policies on AI are clear to ourselves. BD2412 T 23:09, 24 October 2026 (UTC)

I spent the day yesterday adding our LLM policies to various templates facing new users (AfC presubmission template), and making it clearer in others (G15 user talk message, Article Wizard). I also added it to our many WP:simplified ruleset-like pages. @Mathglot added something friendly (but maybe a bit cryptic) to our welcome templates. The big missing one is the edit window, but that would need clear prior consensus. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 03:49, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Looked at Help:Introduction, assuming I am a good-faith user who actually is going to try to look at this stuff, and, well.

• The "Policies and guidelines" button is small, right below a big glowing blue button to "Get started." The UI is telling me that this is fine print I don't have to click.
• If you click that, the "Policies and guidelines" button becomes blue, but it's still small and shunted off into the corner; meanwhile; beneath the welcome paragraph are two sandbox edit buttons and a list of links that take editors directly to possible tasks, both of which seem likely to become offramps away from the policies.
• 3 clicks in, we finally get something about AI. Unfortunately, it doesn't link to NOLLM and instead links to "basic copyediting," which is more permissive than what NOLLM allows. It also doesn't actually say what AI tools include (since this is often a point of confusion for people). The Neutrality section does have a quiz, so a quiz for AI use might be helpful for the 5 people who end up seeing it. (Questions like "which one of these edits is not basic copyediting?" and "which one of these is not an AI tool?")
• The restriction on AI completely disappears in the "summary of policies" at the end.

That being said I don't know how many people are actually using this stuff. I certainly didn't. Gnomingstuff (talk) 07:02, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

That's a good find! The main Help:Introduction gets viewed more than 100,000 times a month. I've added a friendly "Just make sure it is you, not an AI improving Wikipedia." Does that work well as wording?

When we go down the policy and guidelines pages, the pageviews drop to about 2000 a month. I've removed the link to basic copyediting, and changed the wording to be in line with NOLLM. In the summary (only 1200 views), I've removed the explanation of the difference between policies and guidelines and have added some text about AI. In solidarity, —Femke (talk) 🐦 07:38, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

@Gnomingstuff That's part of why I think it might be worth considering highlighting it at AFC in line with the concerns raised by Suðurhafsljósæta. And, to my original question, might it be worth it to consider a general AI notice on page creations; would there be any way to restrict it to someone's first page creation so it doesn't become a redundancy? Or might the redundancy prove beneficial (i.e constantly reiterating the site's position to users who might assume that, as models get better, they don't need to care as much because they see the primary issue with LLM use being the quality of prose that they produce, rather than the moralistic concerns raised by longtime editors)?

CSGinger14 (talk) 02:18, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

we may wish to put them on welcome templates. Tankishguy 17:49, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

This vas already been done to a certain extent, I know that Template:Welcoming that I like to use was tweaked months ago for example. Choucas 🐦‍⬛ 20:15, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should have a notification next to the copyright/verifiability notice shown now, about AI. BooksBooksBooks3 (talk) 02:33, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Second this.

CSGinger14 (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, and perhaps a strong notification. In most places in the US there are "No Parking" signs. Once when I was in New York, I saw a sign that said "Don't even think of parking here!". We do not want to push new users away, but a more than gentle sign wold be good, e.g. "If you use AI, chances are good that your edits will be reverted soon". Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 03:15, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Reopening the Discussion on Restaurant Notability

After many years of no consensus, I'd like to re-open the discussion on having a specific policy within WP:NORG for restaurants and like establishments. Why? A few reasons.

1. Over the years, Wikipedia has attracted a great number of articles on non-notable businesses that wish to use inclusion in Wikipedia for SEO - and now, for increased attention from LLMs. This problem only accelerates over time.
2. The discussion of exactly which sources and circumstances are just barely enough to establish notability tend to come up, and a lack of documented consensus makes AfD needlessly complex.
3. There is a type of news coverage endemic to just these businesses, and it would be helpful to delineate that it usually doesn't establish significant coverage. Like tech companies have a proclivity to generate massive numbers of corporate and founder profiles despite non-notability, restaurants generate restaurant reviews. These are published in local newspapers, and in local newspapers that also act as national newspapers like the New York Times; they also sometimes appear as human interest articles in publications like The Economist. But these reviews are fundamentally routine announcements or occasionally advertising; the role of a newspaper while it is reviewing a local restaurant is characteristically not the same as its role when it is reporting major current events. A restaurant review in the NYT is not the same as an NYT news article about some event concerning the establishment.
4. Fourth, the treatment of lists and awards remains ambiguous. In general we accept winning significant awards for artists, since this comes with significant biographical coverage. We accept it for academics, because the contributions of such academics are inherently significant and generate biographical information of wide interest. We do not accept it for businesses generally, because the awards have a proclivity to be commercially motivated and usually do not attract a celebrity or landmark level of focused news coverage. In general we want articles to be able to say something beyond that a place exists and that it has been mentioned here and there; articles on restaurants who have Michelin stars, whose chefs have James Beard awards, or which have been opened by a celebrity chef tend to lack much detail (because they are often not really notable).

For this reason I spruced up the old failed policy proposal at WP:REST. What are people's thoughts? Is it worth saying something? Can we come to any consensus on these points?

For posterity, previous discussions on this topic: 2013 2012 2012 2011 2010 2008 2007 FalconK (talk) 03:28, 25 October 2026 (UTC) FalconK (talk) 03:28, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

So basically, if we don't like something, like a tech company or restaurant, we can disregard all media coverage about it as "routine" and deem it non-notable? Got it. Jessintime (talk) 03:32, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

If you think these sources are WP:SIGCOV and that articles on these restaurants are useful, feel free to say why. It's not whether I like it; the WP:GNG exists for a reason. FalconK (talk) 03:39, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

WP:ITSUSEFUL is one of those Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. "Useful" is a goal for how-to books. The goal for an encyclopedia is to be "informative" and "educational". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

This is precisely my point. Despite the trigger word "useful", I am not suggesting the utility of the article itself is a criterion. Rather, if our goal is to write an encyclopedia, is it a useful activity in service of that goal to write such articles as these? FalconK (talk) 21:56, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

If our goal is to write an encyclopedia that informs people, why would it not be appropriate to write an encyclopedia that informs people about restaurants? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I am sorry, but in this case, I can not agree. In my mind restaurants are not an encyclopedic issue. The type of mashed potato that arrives at a table on a given night is not what the word "knowledge" signifies to me. I feel that we do not need to inform people on a different continent about that. Most restaurants come and go every few years. A few last a decade or more, but by and large they are transient items that do not deserve wiki pages. Restaurant chains such as MacDonald etc. are corporations that can have pages, but not single location places unless they have extraordinary press coverage for long. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 20:58, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Would you say the same about, e.g., temporary art installations or one-time events? I wonder whether it's really the brevity that bothers you, or if it's just an internal sense that restaurants aren't important. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I consider the deliberate temporary work The Umbrellas (Christo and Jeanne-Claude) to be notable and significant. But does this look like it is encyclopedic however popular it may be at the local level? Does that answer it? Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:00, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I can't tell whether a subject is encyclopedic just by looking at a photo of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Well, I have passed by there a few times and never dared eat anything. So I don't see it as encyclopedic. There are other photos on commons. It even has a category. Amazing. Trust me it is not what people in London, Tokyo or Paris would call encyclopedic. You might argue that The Grill may be encyclopedic. But is the Outdoor Grill encyclopedic . Maybe WMF would fund your trip to both places to check them out. Please do ask. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 23:17, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't care what "people" anywhere "would call encyclopedic" (in your opinion). I only care whether it meets Wikipedia's standards, which is something that is determined by looking in newspapers, magazines, books, and other reliable sources, and not by looking at promotional photos or the prices on the menu. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I saw all the sources that announced the closure of the Nico (restaurant). I was amazed. If you guys want to spend your lives informing the world about places that no longer serve French onion soup, go for it. It is your lives. I see those things as clutter in an encyclopedia. As is the statement that Nate 'n Al of Beverly Hills has a good Rueben sandwich. I doubt if Brittanica has that. But I am sure everyone in Australia will be thrilled by having that fact at their fingertips on wiki. But seriously, clutter is the word. I will say no more. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 07:05, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

This is what this feels like. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 04:49, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Sure! You can also do the same thing with "significant", "independent", and especially "secondary" (which is why some have shoved "secondary" into all sorts of places). Anomie⚔ 13:15, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

These are published in local newspapers, and in local newspapers that also act as national newspapers like the New York Times; they also sometimes appear as human interest articles in publications like The Economist. But these reviews are fundamentally routine announcements or occasionally advertising

Given that The New York Times employs a total of two restaurant reviewers -- which is the most it has ever employed -- and that there are tens of thousands of restaurants in New York City, it is impossible for the Times to run "routine announcements" about every restaurant that opens, let alone advertise for them. You seem to be living in a made-up mental world where everyone who opens a bodega gets a profile in the paper about it.

We accept it for academics, because the contributions of such academics are inherently significant and generate biographical information of wide interest.

No, it's the literal opposite. We accept it for academics because they don't readily generate biographical information, as WP:NACADEMIC states: "Many scientists, researchers, philosophers, and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources." Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:21, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

What do you write in an article where one of the two NYT reviewers has reviewed it? That the food was good? I don't think they review every bodega in the city, obviously, but there are a lot of non-notable things reviewed in newspapers because it's useful for the people reading the newspaper to know what to eat rather than because the eatery is newsworthy. FalconK (talk) 05:30, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

What do you write in an article where one of the two NYT reviewers has reviewed it? Based on a quick glance at this weeks’ NYT food reviews, I see encyclopedic info such as the neighborhood in which a restaurant is located, the cultural and professional backgrounds of the owners/chefs, the date the restaurant opened, the circumstances that led to the restaurant becoming successful, etc. It’s not necessarily just “eat here, the pho is to die for”. If the newspaper thinks its readers might want to know the history and context of a restaurant, why shouldn’t we also think our readers might want to know that information? -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 08:29, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I'll concede there are some restaurant reviews that definitely go far enough to become significant independent coverage. However, the Times also publishes the ones from their newsletter alongside, and those that I have seen (such as ) very clearly do not. Their recent review of Corima is much longer, but I'm still not sure it fits; the Times' readers benefit greatly from Mishan's vivid descriptions, but those and the small amount of illustrative context given make awkward material for an encyclopedia article. FalconK (talk) 08:55, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

How are you defining "notable" in the sentence "there are a lot of non-notable things reviewed in newspapers"? If "notable" doesn't mean "written about in newspapers," then what does it mean? Levivich (talk) 14:14, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I tie it back to WP:WHYN, particularly the bit about wanting the article to be more than a few perfunctory sentences. If a business is given a review that makes you want to go there, but contains only practical ephemera, is it useful to repeat the ephemera here? Many of the Times reviews do just this: lots of people will know there is a restaurant called Andamiro in Brooklyn. It looks really good; I might even go there next time I am in that part of the world. But from the review, all we know is that it's there, the name of their chef, how it is furnished, part of the menu and prices, how expensive it is, whether it's accessible, how loud it is, and whether it was to Mahira's liking. Great information if I want to know if I will like it for lunch, but this does not fill an encyclopedia article. FalconK (talk) 16:08, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Lots of plainly non-notable material gets written up in newspapers, and I'm going to have to say that restaurant reviews generally fall into that category. They are written as guidance to prospective customers, and particularly as an introduction to new places, but they tend to be ephemeral and wouldn't in my mind count as sustained coverage. Mangoe (talk) 17:13, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

No single article can count as "sustained" coverage. WP:SUSTAINED means that the subject gets attention over and over again. One article a year for several years might be sustained, even if the article is short. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:36, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Levivich, have you ever flipped through an ordinary daily newspaper (e.g., The Wichita Eagle, not The New York Times local edition), and counted up all the sources? Especially if ignore the copies of articles from the wire services, there are often a large number of short articles that say things like "Wreck caused traffic jam" or "Police responded to a call" or "Organization hosting event". We want to write about Traffic jam, but not about Traffic jam outside Lake Wobegone fire station on 32 Octember 2026. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I think we need to reach a shared understanding about what words such as "routine" means in WP:NCORP. We've been talking about it at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)#What is routine coverage? and so far, we've got one rock-solid example of routine coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:46, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I see the tenor of discussion over there is about the same as here: the reason I want to put a finer point on this is definitely because I personally do not like restaurants or tech companies, rather than the contents of WP:MILL. FalconK (talk) 07:30, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Meh… there is a HUGE difference between a review in a small town newspaper and one in a regional/national paper. The difference is in audience size, and how that impacts notability. A review appearing in the Smallville Gazette will be read by a few hundred people, while the exact same review appearing in the NYT will be read by thousands (millions?). Thus, more people will be aware of a restaurant that gets a review in the NYT. That awareness is a factor when determining how notable the restaurant is. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

The contents of a remarkably unclear essay? PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:43, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

The problem with WP:MILL is that it's meant to apply to cookie-cutter articles about nearly identical, closely related subjects, and not to those that gain individual attention. The meaning of MILL is "Please, please, don't create separate articles about each of the individual 40,000 Starbucks locations in the world, especially if 99% of the content will be the same in all of them. We need an article whole chain, and maybe there could be a couple of extras if one of the locations turns out to be historic or something, but seriously: not 40,000 nearly identical articles."

However, it gets interpreted by some editors as something like "Eh, restaurants are common; practically every town has one. WP:ITSNOTIMPORTANT. Therefore restaurants are run-of-the-mill, and we shouldn't have articles on restaurants, even if we have a dozen sources and could write a long, well-sourced Wikipedia article about it." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

There is a type of news coverage endemic to just these businesses - This is true of all sorts of subjects. Music, art, film, video games... we rely on reviews for all of them. There are some genres and subgenres that have blogs that seem to review basically every release that comes out (horror movies, heavy metal, and Christian music come to mind), and we accept those reviews as contributing the same to notability as a major newspaper/magazine feature. So why not restaurant reviews? I'm not sure if there's a good way to raise that bar, or even if it should be raised, but at minimum yes, subjects that have publishing infrastructures erected around them are disproportionately represented on Wikipedia given how we evaluate notability. Perhaps we could require that at least one source comes from a publication that shows a broader audience than e.g. a local restaurant review site, or a niche genre review site. But that sounds awfully hard to articulate and enforce... Adding: there is at least one important difference between restaurants and those other types of subjects. An album or movie that gets a flurry of reviews on release is still available to be listened to or watched. A restaurant that gets a flurry of reviews and then closes is just gone. Maybe implications for lasting significance. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:29, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

A notable restaurant that closes is still a historically notable restaurant. Examples: Chumley's and the 21 Club in NYC. Blueboar (talk) 15:29, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

These generate coverage like , providing a very effective contrast to a restaurant that is covered only in reviews. FalconK (talk) 16:19, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Subjects (restaurants or otherwise) don't have to have "lasting significance". They only need to "have attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time". Ten years of attention that says "This is an unimportant subject" is "attention over a sufficiently significant period of time".

Remember, "significant coverage" is significant amount of coverage; it is not coverage that says the subject is significant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with @Rhododendrites that subjects that have publishing infrastructures erected around them are disproportionately represented on Wikipedia given how we evaluate notability. We have chosen to not require the subject to be "significant" or "important" (in editors' opinions, or even in sources' opinions). We have chosen to write about whatever we have enough sources for. This means we will write a lot more about certain subjects than others. See, e.g., Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Why are nerds under-represented vs. jocks?: We write less about "nerds" because there are fewer sources about academics. We write more about "jocks" because there are more sources about athletes. The same is true for pop musicians vs classical musicians, film actors vs stage actors, restaurants vs gas stations, and so on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Generally, if there are significant reviews of a creative work like films and books from established reliable sources, there's also likely been interest in the creation aspects of the work (for films, production elements, for example). I would argue that if you have a film that the only sourcing that can be identified are reviews and these not from major sources, the film likely isn't really notable (but we don't have anything really set up for this outside of the rebuttable presumption of notability that applies to all topics).

I say that because a restaurant where the only independent sourcing are reviews from local sources and with no other discussion of the origins of the restaurant, that likely does not make the restaurant notable. We want more than just reviews about the food but about its history and impact within its local or regional area. Masem (t) 23:04, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

You missed the discussion of this year: Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 88#Notability criteria for restaurants at WP? George Ho (talk) 20:15, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Cbl62’s comment in that discussion: the current notability guidelines seem to be working to weed out non-notable restaurants and keep notable ones. If anyone disagrees, please share some examples of AFDs that closed keep which should have closed delete. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 21:25, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Oh man, how did I miss that? But I think the outcome leaves us in a not great place. The debate continues over whether, for example, getting a Michelin star makes a place inherently notable. So we end up with articles like Nico (restaurant), which epitomize what I am saying here: it checks all the boxes. Lots of reviews and awards. But all we can say about it is 6 sentences. There are many, many other restaurants also called Nico, but this one, we deem, is the one that will be important for all time. Does this really make sense? FalconK (talk) 21:41, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Like Californios (restaurant), the Nico restaurant should be more detailed with especially history and menus. George Ho (talk) 22:04, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It was at least open for several years. We also have e.g. Heartbreak (restaurant), which was open for less than one year, but happened to get a Michelin star in that one year, and nobody appears to have talked about it since. Ukiyo (restaurant) open for two years. Betony (restaurant) open for three. These are just from clicking around the NYC Michelin list, but even within that list there are others open for just 2-3 years. IMO these sorts of articles, where nothing is said other than that they exist and that they received a Michelin star, should just be redirected into the Michelin lists (or any notable chef/restaurateur involved). That said, we don't need new rules for that given WP:NOPAGE. But I do think restaurants are an interesting topic to talk about notability, because of a way that they, and many companies that do not produce artifacts, are fundamentally different from articles about art forms in that they leave nothing behind to talk about. Their food is served until they close, and only in very rare cases will anyone write about it well after closing. I don't know that there would be support for such a thing, but it would be interesting to come up with a rule like "for companies that last less than 10 years, we need coverage that extends beyond the time of its closing". Yes, 10 is arbitrary and it is a higher standard than what we currently have, but seems worth a conversation anyway... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:11, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Winning a Michelin star produces sources, and since the existence of sources is what we care about, having a star = extremely high likelihood that sources exist. I think that in all of Wikipedia's history, only one Michelin-starred restaurant has been deleted, and that one was in a smaller, non-English-speaking country where most enwiki editors struggle to find any sources, which causes me to doubt that we made the right decision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

It sometimes produces sources. But since the awarding of a star doesn't come with in-depth coverage on its own, we probably shouldn't let Michelin nominate restaurants into notability. If depth of coverage comes after the star, it would deserve an article, but it's not the star doing that. We have hundreds of articles on Michelin-starred establishments about which there is little more to say than that. FalconK (talk) 01:44, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

The election of a US president comes with no coverage whatsoever "on its own", and yet we never have any problems with deciding whether a newly sworn-in US president is notable. The star is a marker or indicator of separate coverage to be searched for, rather than coverage "on its own" (though the Michellin Guide does provide some information along with the star itself). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

This is the problem with the restaurant article argument that it has a Michelin star therefore it must be notable. It's hard for the US president to avoid media coverage, but it seems pretty easy for a Michelin starred restaurant. FalconK (talk) 03:16, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

It seems to me that it is very difficult for a Michelin-starred restaurant to "avoid media coverage". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

As a counterpoint, the only Michelin-starred eatery I’ve personally eaten at appears to have virtually no information online beyond the Michelin listing itself, some reviews from customers on social media, and one food blog of questionable reliability. Even if we assumed all available sources were acceptable, an article about it would read X is an eatery selling [FOOD GENRE] owned and operated by [NAME] since [DATE] located in [CITY]. It received a Michelin star in [YEAR]. It is popular with both local and out-of-town people. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 04:22, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

This is why I would like to be explicit that the award doesn't make it notable. There are tons of such cases. The ones that have coverage are notable without needing to rely on the award, so it hurts nothing to explicitly spell out that "but it won an award" arguments don't contradict a lack of notability. FalconK (talk) 07:45, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

"It won an award" is often a short way of saying "It did something that is strongly correlated with independent sources existing". I can see how it might be irritating, but I don't see how it changes the facts. We could tell people "Don't say 'It won an award'; instead say 'Here are several independent sources that were published because it won the award'," but I think the difference is largely cosmetic: The sources existed no matter how the editor phrased their response; the restaurant was notable no matter how the editor phrased their response.

It reminds me of people saying that 'per nom' is an invalid response at an AFD, but 'I agree with the reasons given by the nom' is okay with them. (Sometimes it turns out that they don't know what "per" means). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

It seems to me that it is very difficult for a Michelin-starred restaurant to "avoid media coverage". It is. And if the only coverage it gets is within a month or two of that announcement, then it closes and nobody ever mentions it again, is that sufficient for a stand-alone Wikipedia article. I know well enough that by our current standards the answer is yes. I don't see a problem with discussing changing that, though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:18, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

It could be. But per WP:PAGEDECIDE and other guidelines, editors can always choose to cover notable topics at another page. I don't see why we need to change the guideline for the few odd cases here and there. Katzrockso (talk) 12:37, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Because otherwise we argue endlessly at AfD about whether a Michelin star settles the question, with inconsistent outcomes. FalconK (talk) 02:15, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

How do we know that all we can say about it is 6 sentences? All I can tell is that all we currently say about it is 6 sentences, but I think it could be expanded. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Nico (restaurant) is an interesting example of a larger problem, which is that it's easy to overlook the possibilities for expansion. There are three possible "subjects" for this article:

• Nico, a French bistro that was open from 2013 to 2019.
• Maison Nico, a French café.
• Nico Delroque, the French chef behind both of them.

IMO all three of these should be expanded upon in a single article, even though the title needs to name just one of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

With what would one expand them? FalconK (talk) 01:45, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

To start with, with the three news articles I linked in the comment above. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

At best these would support an article on Nico Delroque, mentioning his restaurants. Why do you think they support the notability of the closed restaurant with the 6 sentences article? FalconK (talk) 03:18, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

There are already 16 sources cited about the closed restaurant in the article, so I didn't think it would be pointful to suggest any additional ones for that. The article about the open restaurant has some history of both closed and open versions in it. So does this source.

But I think you've missed the point. Imagine an article that doesn't just say something like:

• "Nico was a French restaurant that won an award."

Imagine instead one that says something like:

• "Nico was a French restaurant that won an award. It closed during the pandemic lockdowns, and its successor, Maison Nico, opened at a time when take-out menus were important. The founder and chef is Nicholas Delaroque, who trained in France and always dreamed about opening a French-style épicerie [fr]..."

In this merged-up model, we get three subjects for the price of one article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:54, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

This would be a better article, but I wonder if the better article would be one on Nicholas Delaroque discussing all his restaurants, and maybe some redirects. FalconK (talk) 02:25, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it matters what the article title is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

This draws a false equivalence between "tech companies" and "restaurants". In practice, we don't have a restaurant spam problem the way we have a company spam problem, either by quantity in the queues or by difficulty of review (company articles have churnalism and related-party-coverage problems, while restaurant sourcing is extremely straightforward). We accept, across a multitude of topic areas, that reviews can demonstrate notability, and absent any demonstrated evidence that notability criteria as currently applied are problematic, besides FalconK's opinion they personally do not like restaurants, I see no need for a change in the criteria. ~ A412 ^talk! 21:39, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Haha, I really liked Wild Ginger (restaurant) each time I have gone there, and I can see why it wins awards. But it didn't seem to have a lot of history or significance to it, you know? It's just one of several really good eateries up the street. If it closes, I won't likely think about it again. FalconK (talk) 21:52, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

@Falcon Kirtaran I think you might enjoy WP:PAGEDECIDE and lists. If you truly can't say more that about X words on a restaurant in Seattle, then discussing a merge to List of restaurants in Seattle is reasonable No, it's not rewriting the notability criteria (sorry!) but it's a reasonable compromise. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 02:34, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I have pointed this section out before in several contexts, but those who think an award or a review automatically confers notability do not seem to credit it much. This is why I am raising this at all. FalconK (talk) 03:22, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that is major drawback of a Wiki-model which emphasizes collaborative editing. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 03:45, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

There is some value in trying to build consensus on whether awards alone render a restaurant notable. We go around in circles about this otherwise. If it's silly to try and arrive at (and document) that type of consensus, why bother having a notability guideline at all? FalconK (talk) 07:51, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't think that we have a consensus on:

• Award → therefore notable.

I think we have a consensus on:

• Award → therefore coverage → therefore notable (→ therefore if you are trying to delete this, you're probably screwing up).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Award → therefore coverage is false. There are a ton of cases of award and coverage, but there are also counterexamples. Therefore, if one is trying to argue that the award settles the debate on the subject's notability, a fallacy is committed. But it's a completely needless fallacy, because if there is coverage, you can just point to the coverage. Mentioning the award in AfD is pointless. FalconK (talk) 02:22, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

It depends on the award, no?

Mentioning the award at AFD is helpful in that it tells people what the editor's thought process is.

A sensible response to such a comment might sound like "Well, of course, we do expect to find sources for restaurants that earned their third star, but it's the sources rather than the award that matters for Wikipedia. Which sources have you found that you think would be helpful for this article?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

We have two types of notability policy: coverage-based notability (WP:GNG, WP:NCORP) and areas that attempt to have objective notability standards (WP:NPROF, WP:NPOL, etc.) Restaurants are under the former, so by default nothing, including awards, confers automatic notability to restaurants. We don't need to write an exception to the rule, because this case is not exceptional. ~ A412 ^talk! 18:56, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Where this breaks down is when different editors in the same deletion discussion view the relevant notability policy differently. This happens in both directions:

• "this restaurant is objectively unimportant" (typically citing WP:ROUTINE, WP:ROTM, WP:10YT) vs "this restaurant has coverage, so it doesn't matter if we think it's important"
• "this restaurant lacks sufficient coverage to write a useful article" vs "this restaurant won an award so it must be notable"

~ A412 ^talk! 18:59, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. I would love to see a consensus on whichever interpretation we should use on those two points emerge. That may not come today, but I hope at least we can all agree the question is not settled. FalconK (talk) 07:44, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

The first was settled 20 years ago at Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#It's useful/useless.

The second was settled 15 years ago with the creation of Wikipedia:Notability#Why we have these requirements.

Why do you think that the question is not settled? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

People view WP:USELESS in two different ways: its pointing out that we are not a directory or a restaurant guide, and that the point of decision on a subject ought to be the encyclopedic utility of the available information about it, on the one side; the dictum in there that receiving major awards (which are elsewhere approximately defined as awards which are notable) makes a subject notable because it is of interest to someone. Which reading do you feel is correct? They give opposite conclusions to the Michelin star or James Beard award implies notability question.

Similarly, I agree completely with WP:WHYN, but since you are behind that and one of its central theses is that the point is to have articles on subjects only if there is something fulsome to say about them, I am really confused as to why you are arguing with me. It seems crystal clear from the sum of all these words that merely receiving awards does not make a restaurant notable. And yet, it is a perennial debate in AfD. FalconK (talk) 20:21, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

• I think that the point of USELESS (aka WP:ITSNOTIMPORTANT) is that we follow the sources, regardless of our personal opinions on whether the sources have chosen to write about something that a Wikipedia editor feels is important.
• Per WHYN, if a restaurant lacks sufficient coverage to write a decent article, then we should not have an article about it; if a restaurant has sufficient coverage to write a decent article, then we should have that article. For the avoidance of doubt, note that "decent" is a couple of paragraphs with a small handful of sources, and it's about the article's potential, so an article that is currently WP:UGLY but could be polished up is acceptable.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I am sorry, but in my view unless a restaurant has had over a decade of coverage as a cultural establishment (say Fraunces Tavern), it is not encyclopedic, regardless of the quality. It can get listed in the Michelin list etc. but in my view restaurants are not encyclopedic at all. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:11, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

The Wild Ginger article seems entirely unproblematic (well, the article could speak more to the food they serve, but reading the sources, that's just editors not including that information from the sources), unless you have the prior that we should not have an article for this restaraunt. Is this the best example you have of a systemic problem? ~ A412 ^talk! 07:29, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

There are so, so many others. Consider Cinnamon Works, which really ought to be merged into Pike Place Market, but its existence has been documented in some guides and mentioned in a few RS talking about the market more generally, so obviously we need to have a standalone article on this one stall. FalconK (talk) 07:54, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I love a good merge, but I wonder if you are hoping for a standard that requires the subject to be the main topic of the source material? A few RS talking about the subject as part of a larger subject is generally a good thing when it comes to writing an encyclopedia article (provides context, might do have compare-and-contrast secondary source material, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

No, I am not one of those who think the subject has to be the primary subject of RS to be notable, I just think it needs more than a passing mention. The principle underlying this is, substantial coverage implies there's something to say about the topic. FalconK (talk) 02:19, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree. It's why I wrote WP:WHYN all those years ago. IMO if you can cobble together a decent article with a series of short/partial sources, then great! And if you can't create a decent article from a stack of sources, then it doesn't matter how long the source is. A single dense, factual paragraph outweighs a ten-page funny anecdote.

For reference wrt "decent article", the median Wikipedia article has 350 words (13 sentences) and just four cited sources – including primary and non-independent sources. We should not expect all the articles to be above average, but I would like to see Nico (restaurant) expanded so that it's closer to the median. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

Shall I then invite Another Believer, who created Nico (restaurant)? George Ho (talk) 04:02, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

• I would not want to reopen the discussion on restaurant notability, largely because I feel this is a larger issue that the community may want to grapple with. Our project is much more expansive than any paper encyclopedia could ever be, but at the same time we collectively have a tendency to lose the forest for the trees. Notability is frequently met with winning/earning a single award or coverage in two or three sources. While we have some essays that editors should consider (such as WP:10Y and WP:PAGEDECIDE (which asks editors tho think about whether a stand alone page provides readers the clearest explaination of a topic), there is a tendency to create pages on current events and biographies; subjects that may not be covered in secondary sources and in a significant way. So, the question here about restaurant notability, and the question I asked earlier this year about NPOL, need to be addressed at the root level. --Enos733 (talk) 05:48, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

  This is reasonable, though after this discussion I am not sure I have enough motivation to try and raise that, and something about the way I am presenting this conflict is provoking condescension rather than engagement. But if such a broader discussion ever does start, please let me know! FalconK (talk) 07:50, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

  I suggest that you close this discussion and go and have a good dinner. Bon appétit. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 21:13, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Merge template applied without initiating an AfD−What should occur next?

I count (at least) approximately 75 instances this past month of individuals applying a {{merge}}, {{merge to}}, {{merge from}} etc. to an article (and perhaps leaving a note on the talk page) which were subsequently converted (procedurally 'moved'; e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muzan Kibutsuji just today) by others to an AfD discussion. The recent applicable RfC explicitly states that editors can establish consensus for merging through other means of consensus forming other than AFD. There is seemingly no longer an option to simply indicate something is due for an uncontroversial merge with a template (as has traditionally been the case), a concept aptly described by Certes in this post. In theory there could be somewhere to list such pages, i.e. a requested clearly uncontroversial move one does not wish to carry out but wishes to point out needs done; ironically, we traditionally use maintenance templates for such things (which have largely been recently deprecated through interpretations of the aforementioned RfC). Deletion venues should not be used as a space to shunt things that do not necessarily need discussed. There seems to be a tenuous status quo of handling things in this manner, upon which some change is perhaps due. Of course, simply removing such templates may not be an ideal solution either. Some of the suggestions made in this TfD (viz. the creation of e.g. {{merge maybe}} and {{merge obvious}} maintenance templates) seem due to fill the perceived gap; then 'mis'-applications of said templates could simply be converted to the appropriate ones. Does anyone else have any thoughts on the matter? — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 05:00, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

IMO they should be left alone to discuss whatever they want; however, the proponents of this new AFD-to-merge system say they should all be converted to AFDs.

The problem in the RFC is that it asked "Should the proposed article merge process be merged into Wikipedia:Articles for deletion?" and did not define what "the proposed article merge process" was. Some people thought that using these maintenance tags was being abolished, and only discussions without any notifications posted on affected articles could be permitted. Others thought that these maintenance tags were being permitted as per usual, and only the centralized Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers noticeboard was being shut down. Repeated attempts to clarify this were not effective, as different editors asserted opposite answers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:52, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

The note on the talkpage seems a key difference. A tag applied without a discussion might be hard to understand. I never found the merge/splits formerly hanging around on the article alerts to be always obvious, many simply hang around because things hang around. Templates for suggestions is an interesting idea, although those would also benefit from being linked to a talk page. CMD (talk) 07:19, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this point, Godsy. I've nominated a few pairs unofficially where FaviFake and others have kindly done the work of merging. Fixing them could be smoother and better documented if a new tag template added candidates to a relevant category. For visibility, this might be a subcat of an existing merge category or its sibling under a new parent. As for tags being hard to understand, I was thinking of obvious pairs like Akuaba and Akuaba (Adinkra symbol), or Alegrías and Alegrías (flamenco), where the article content speaks for itself, though a |reason= parameter could be useful in some cases. Certes (talk) 09:38, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I think about half the merges I've tagged over the years are variants on "these two people are unquestionably the same, but I don't have the fifteen minutes to fix it right now, tagging it so it doesn't get forgotten".

It seems a bit unfortunate if we don't currently have a set of templates to mark those, without initiating a formal merge discussion - even though just going ahead and doing it would be uncontroversial. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:00, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree. Uncontroversial 'merges' just need someone with time and energy to do the merge, and now there's no way to tag those. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Take it to AfD. Deletion venues should not be used as a space to shunt things that do not necessarily need discussed. Well, now it is. PARAKANYAA (talk) 15:34, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

Just after the system changed, I took a couple of obvious merges to AfD and was understandably criticised for wasting their time with needless discussion. We may need either a new system, which could be as simple as a {{merge us}} tag, or a WP:SNOW-like protocol for speedy closure at AfD as "merge is obvious". Certes (talk) 20:35, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

...or perhaps we need the old system, with {{merge from}} and {{merge to}}, only for cases which the tagger considers obvious. Any editor who agrees may then boldly merge without further discussion. Any editor who disagrees may remove the tags and start an AfD discussion proposing another outcome (which may be "keep separate; no action"). Certes (talk) 09:13, 27 October 2026 (UTC)

This was acknowledged in the discussion that led to this but it was the consensus anyway. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:32, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

I do not see why Template:Merge would not be the correct alternative. I have taken a look at it and it seems fitting. If someone removes it and files an AfD, then that is de facto them disputing the merge or saying it is controversial and in need of an AfD discussion. If necessary I suppose you could add a disclaimer at the end of the template that tells editors not to remove it unless they are actually disputing the merge. –Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 19:33, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

FaviFake is removing every single use of the templates and moving the articles to AfD. Katzrockso (talk) 20:36, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes, right now the accepted practice is to not use Template:Merge like that, it seems, but I don't see why we wouldn't just be able to not continue doing so. –Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 21:44, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't know that I'd call it "accepted practice" rather than "the practice FaviFake permits" Thryduulf (talk) 22:11, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

Funny. Regardless, I'm sure FaviFake would be okay not removing those if we were to decide the best way of dealing with this is to allow Template:Merge to be used without needing an AfD. –Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 23:27, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

According to FaviFake, the RfC concluded the templates had to be deprecated. Katzrockso (talk) 23:54, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I was not in that RfC, however after it ended, FaviFake kindly pointed me to it. I have read WP:RFCMERGEAFD, and it seems to make sense. I am a little confused what the issue here is. Issac I Navarro (talk) 20:46, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

One piece of advice at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Implementing the PAM–AfD merge#Nominating obvious merges is to boldly merge, even if it's little more than a concatenation (with repetitious duplication of the same statements again) and add a {{cleanup merge}} template. Certes (talk) 20:52, 26 October 2026 (UTC)

I just found National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Capital Chapter, which should probably be merged to National Multiple Sclerosis Society per WP:CLUB. But I don't want to do it. Previously, I'd have tagged it, and someone would eventually have done something about it. There is no need for it to be discussed. But now there is no good solution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:53, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Something on the order of User:Godsy/Merge potential to might fit the bill, given the current state of things. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 03:54, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

That's a reasonable solution but just seems like {{Merge to}} without the benefit of categorisation or the drawback that someone will remove the tag because they deprecate {{Merge to}}. Why not just bring back {{Merge to}} and {{Merge from}} for obvious cases only, with anyone who feels they need discussion being free to convert them to an AfD, but without the suggestion that the tags are intrinsically wrong and must be removed even if the merger is obvious? Certes (talk) 09:00, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

@Certes: I agree that would be the optimal solution. On an aside, I did not bother with categorization infastructure because I only intended it as a rough example.— Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 09:29, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

It might be fine? Still a small sample size but I came back from Wikibreak to see merge requests added AfD and I'm not sure it's working. SportingFlyer T·C 09:07, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

I think that the definition of "it's working" has been the main point since the beginning. Specifically, I think that "PAM isn't working – see? All these low-priority, non-urgent merge discussions aren't being resolved fast enough, and if they do get resolved, the low-priority, non-urgent merges aren't happening fast enough!" has been perceived as "not working". Since AFD happens on a definite schedule, then sending anything to AFD is a case of "working". WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:50, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

You have a different definition than I do. There have been a couple discussions where people are talking past each other, looking at notability instead of whether to merge. I'm not sure the process is well suited for content merges. SportingFlyer T·C 15:13, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

I've had my doubts about the wisdom of "mashing the merge system into AFD" from the beginning.

The problem we're facing now is the same one that was predicted, discussed, and declared not to exist by the proposer of this mash-up. Specifically, see this comment, which says in part:

::::Same as number 2, but Charlie asks another editor for advice on the article talk page without opening a proposed merge discussion.

• Status quo: This can happen.
• After this proposal: This can happen.

and consider how vague and ambiguous "opening a proposed merge discussion" is. Some people thought that meant creating a new section on Wikipedia:Proposed article mergers noticeboard. Based on what we've seen since then, the OP appears to have meant "using the {{merge to}} series of tags at all, even you never start any discussion anywhere". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

@Voorts As the one who wrote that comment, what did you mean by that? PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:35, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think the current system is working well, and the issues we are seeing the ones multiple people predicted would happen when the merger was proposed. I remain of the opinion that using an RM-style process for mergers (and splits) would work much better than trying to hammer a round peg into AfD's square hole. Thryduulf (talk) 16:20, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

True. The basic idea of the change had merit, but its consequences weren't clear to all of us. For round-pegged deletions which don't fit AfD's square hole, we have PROD and speedy deletion, but there's no longer anywhere to hammer round-pegged mergers. Certes (talk) 16:50, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Watching this discussion unfold has been a lot of fun.

We may need either a new system, which could be as simple as a {{merge us}} tag ...

... a new tag template added candidates to a relevant category ...

... those would also benefit from being linked to a talk page ...

... there could be somewhere to list such pages ...

Each of you is, unintentionally and in good faith, trying to recreate PAM from first principles, in exactly the same way, with exactly the same benefits and exactly the same drawbacks, for exactly the same reasons.

In a few years, you will realise the "new" system you'll have built is just as dysfunctional as PAM, and in a decade you will create an RfC to fix it "once and for all", and the cycle will continue until the end of time. FaviFake (talk) 22:04, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

This discussion is highlighting one of the ways in which the old system was better than the new system. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. It's IMO too bad that we can't have both systems, and use the one that seems more appropriate for the given situation. For example, the AFD-based system for National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Capital Chapter is a waste of editors' time, because it needs no discussion. Using the AFD-based system is also inappropriate because it doesn't matter when the merge finally happens: That article should have been merged out of existence 16 or 17 years ago, so spending another year or two on some "backlog" list is just a rounding error at this point. But we no longer have a reasonable way to handle that situation. I figure that either you'll decide to merge it yourself, or in a few more years, someone else will rediscover it and wonder how to handle it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

All things considered I'm still relatively new, having only been around for a couple of years, compared to other being around far longer. And thus, have dealt with PAM longer then me. However, I'm quite liking this new approach. I've set up a number of mergers while we did the PAM way, but I've found this newer method to be easier and, in my opinion, makes more sense. As I stated above, I'm not quite sure what even the issue being raised here even is.

Now, I do know there has been some confusion, and I have a feeling that this may be part of why one of my recent mergers failed: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tee. I think part of the reason was due to some people believing I was asking for the page to be deleted rather than merged. So, I can see what some of the hiccups have been. However, as more people adapt to this way, I feel eventually we'll all get used to it as time goes on. Issac I Navarro (talk) 22:22, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

PAM was for discussing non-obvious mergers and perhaps AfD can take over that role, despite confusing people who think deletion is being proposed. What we've lost is the process for tagging obvious mergers. By all means withdraw that but, whenever I and hundreds of other editors find pairs of duplicate articles, expect us to shrug our shoulders and do nothing about them. Certes (talk) 22:29, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

No, it wasn't. Ever since its creation, PAM has always been for proposing obvious merges that people don't want to perform themselves. About half of all PAM discussions I've ever closed had no replies. The rest had a couple. A small percentage had an actual discussion.

When you see a duplicate article, I expect you to redirect it, copy and paste its contents at the bottom of the other article, and add {{Cleanup merge}}. It literally takes 30 seconds. FaviFake (talk) 22:45, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Only a small fraction of all pages proposed for merging were ever listed for discussion at the WP:PAM noticeboard. For example, on 18 November 2024 (about two years ago), Category:Articles to be merged had about 1,500 articles in it, including 250 from that month, but WP:PAM only had about 100 pages listed, and that's including the ones that were already completed. "PAM has always been" available for anything is not the same as "Everything was at PAM". PAM only saw a small fraction of merge proposals.

(Yes, we all know that it literally takes 30 seconds ...to create a mess that someone [not you, someone else] might yell at you about.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the noticeboard that was shut down months before the start of the RfC, I'm talking about the old merge process. I know this is a misnomer, but PAM has effectively taken on a new meaning ever since voorts mistakenly used it to refer to the merge process. Before it became an automatic list of all proposals, I never actually used the noticeboard itself.

For most small articles, the result would not be a mess. A 2011 proposal considered making the process more mechanical (and therefore prevent the formation of a huge backlog) by copy/pasting the content at the bottom as I described, and letting that article's editors reorganize the result. The suggestion received a hundred comments but never went anywhere (see WP:EXPANDAFD), but at least their idea was more creative than "let's rebuild a decades-old process that was finally shut down by consensus, without changing anything about it". FaviFake (talk) 02:18, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Since you're willing to deal with merges, my basic goal is to do something that works for you. But at this point, if someone asked me how to handle an obvious merge, my best advice would be to post the links on your talk page and hope you'll deal with it, and personal communication to any individual is not a very good process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

This is again coming back to that bit about what editors view as being part of the PAM process and therefore merged with AfD.

The close said that bold merges and other alternatives to AfD would continue to be permitted. How would the latter of those even be performed without some sort of a template? Wiki norm is that when there is an ongoing process that can lead to an article being deleted or BLARed a template is put up to alert editors reading the article of that. Any supposed consensus formed without doing so would certainly be liable to be disputed.

So yeah, some of the PAM process is likely going to end up being emulated by the solution we come up with here, but that's a natural outcome of the RfC close essentially giving a carte blanche for editors to use alternative methods in consensus-forming for mergers. –Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 07:26, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I don't feel comfortable doing a 30-second copy-paste merge. In the common case where most of the donor article's information is already included in the recipient, that type of merge will debatably make the recipient article worse by adding duplication and complicating its organisation. Deliberately making an article worse sails very close to our definition of vandalism. We could pay lip service to this change by inventing a bootleg tag template {{Merge two}} or by listing the twins on someone's user page, but I don't see how that's better than continuing to use a system everyone understands. Certes (talk) 08:54, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Rightly so. Redirect[ing an article], copy and past[ing] its [former] contents at the bottom of the other article, and add[ing the] cleanup merge [template] is a messy idea that leaves an article in a ill state (and much worse than before). That is a terrible process that should never be undertaken. Why botching two pages together and merely shifting where a maintenance tag resides would be considered a better alternative is beyond me. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 09:30, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Exactly this. If I saw someone do this I'd quite likely revert it, which means that the merge would either not get done or they'd have to waste yet more time taking to AfD and probably have to explain that they aren't seeking deletion. It's not a "solution" that benefits anybody. Thryduulf (talk) 10:22, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Absolutely no one should do it that way. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:13, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

IMO, it's better for the period between "identifying the problem" and "resolving the problem" to be a situation where we have two hopefully half-decent articles that cover the same topic, but are clearly marked as such so editors can find them & readers know there's an issue, rather than a single taped-together page tagged for cleanup.

I wonder if some of the tension here is that the new approach treats merge tags as primarily being the start of a process, and therefore a process that does not get done in a timely fashion is failing. Conversely, some of the pushback here is from people who have previously used it as more of a cleanup/maintenance tag - a way to identify and log a problem for the awareness of both readers and editors, with the understanding that tagging doesn't have to lead to it being fixed within the next couple of weeks.

From that perspective, the new process-oriented merge system feels a bit like learning you can't tag an article for being unsourced, you either have to fix it Right Now, or initiate a formal discussion somewhere. So hopefully that explains why some of the grumbling? Andrew Gray (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I think that's a fair assessment. In the run up to the RFC, I was hearing a lot of complaints about 'the backlog' and that it took 'too long' to make a decision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I think there is a need to distinguish between:

• Proposed mergers where a formal discussion with a clear endpoint is desired but has not yet happened (including but not limited to potentially controversial mergers)
• Proposed mergers where consensus has been achieved or formal consensus is not required (obvious and non-controversial):
  • That are not urgent - as long as those who can do the merge know they can do it at any time that's fine
  • Thet are urgent - people who can do the merge should prioritise doing it

The AfD system assumes that all mergers need a formal consensus discussion with a defined end point and that the consensus to merge should be implemented as a priority. Thryduulf (talk) 18:32, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

In re The AfD system assumes that...the consensus to merge should be implemented as a priority: Well, right now it does. But it's just one failed bus test away from its traditional state, which is that the AFD closer would tag the article as needing merging, and it could sit in that tagged state for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:20, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

The current process is less functional than what we had before. Making bad decisions faster is much, much worse than taking a long time to make a good decision. The sole "benefit" is that it is faster - because we're all rushing because we have a hard time limit and are working within the AfD constraints, the amount of actually informed merges has gone down. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:15, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Phrasing of a notice concerning copyrights

This illustration was created by user:Ag2gaeh. I downloaded it, cropped it so that it shows only the second of three objects, changed it to a mirror image reversing left and right, and edited out the labels and the coordinate axes. So what I have is what is in copyright law sometimes called a derivative work. The purpose is to use it in a publication. How should I phrase the notice crediting the author and explaining the nature of the copyright license? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:13, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy, I think you are looking for c:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

True, but that page describes a variety of different situations in which one would proceed in different ways. I thought maybe someone with experience in these things would immediately know what the proper phrasing is in the particular situation that I described above. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:02, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

The journal/publication is also going to have its own rules. Have you tried https://lizenzhinweisgenerator.de/?lang=en which is linked on the Commons page? Going through its checklist and guessing a few things, it suggested something like this:

"Ag2gaeh (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torus-vill-circles.svg), Cropped, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode"

but this is not the only way to go about it (also, I might have guessed wrong about what you're doing and you're using it). Attribution is one of those 'multiple correct answers' situations: what's needed for a print publication is not the same as for a website, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 25 October 2026 (UTC)

RfC on reforming ITN

An RfC on reforming ITN is now open at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/ITN reform/RFC phase.

It follows an RfC on a specific aspect of ITN that digressed into various other aspects, as well as long-running disputes over how aspects of ITN should work (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments).

This RfC will not include a proposal to abolish ITN. Instead, if any reforms pass, a second RfC will be held on only that question three months after all questions in that RfC have closed, allowing the impact of any reforms agreed to in this RfC to be observed before that is discussed. If no reforms pass, the second RfC discussing the abolishment of ITN may commence anytime after that one closes. Please do not use any of the proposals to argue for that at this time. The workshop for the RfC can be found here.

02:04, 28 October 2026 (UTC)

In case it helps anyone else, "ITNR" is Wikipedia:In the news/Recurring items. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 29 October 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AI agent policy

We need an AI agent policy. An agent accessing Wikipedia should easily find a policy that addresses agents by name, presenting crystal clear rules in unambiguous terms. That alone may deter some activity with reasonable guardrails, but at minimum we should create the conditions where an agent must decide (autonomously or with human consent) to violate our policies and the Terms of Use. I think Wikipedia:AI agent policy does that.

This isn't a !vote/proposal yet. Curious to get some thoughts first.

Some additional context: Yes, the bot policy technically applies to agents, but that policy is expansive, process-heavy, and doesn't mention the word "agent" once. We need something that is explicit, easily discoverable, unambiguous, and concise. There have been a lot of good ideas and explanations floated since the TomWikiAssist incident, and apologies for bypassing those efforts, but they all appear to have stalled and, more importantly, operate at a much more complicated level than I'd like to see. In my view, there is still much work to do to tailor the bot policy to agents, which is where the complexity should live, but I don't want to tackle that here. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:49, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I guess you mean something like Wikipedia's AGENTS.md. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

In terms of function, I think they're complementary. Having an agents.md might help with discoverability, but we still need a formal Wikipedia policy to establish authority, which is in turn referenced by the Terms of Use. A theoretical agents.md could then be useful to point to this policy, but the idea of a "policy" on Wikipedia as being an expression of community governance endorsed by the Terms of Use has more authority than an agents.md file would have. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:24, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: There's been previous work on this at Wikipedia:Agent policy, which alongside a baseline policy, also dives into possible requirements for agents to be approved, and ways to make the policy discoverable – could it be a good starting point? Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 16:51, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Either way, it could be good to have it also written down in an agent-readable .md format for agents themselves. Also noting Wikipedia:AI agents and the bot policy, although that is an explanatory essay. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 16:52, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Really happy to see you revive this discussion, and I would be more than rejoiced to merge our two proposals! Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 16:54, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

[Actually meant to ping you above but I guess I forgot. Sorry about that.] Indeed, there are multiple pages that deal with this subject, as well as many talk page/noticeboard discussions. None of them appeared to be doing what I think we need. That page, for example, is dominated by a discussion of a "guardrail package", which is in the broad category of specifics and procedural detail that's exactly what I'm trying to exclude. The other one you link is useful, but framed entirely in the context of the bot policy. We need something that stands on its own to set out clear rules, and defers to the bot policy for procedure. All of these particulars are important and need attention and future work, but we have a clear and urgent need for a succinct, baseline policy. I felt like I had a clear idea for what that should be, so I went ahead with it. I do apologize if I'm stepping on toes (you've done much more to further the interests of Wikipedia in the AI era than anyone, I think), but I'm hoping it can still be evaluated as it stands. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:43, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

No worries – it's impossible to do everything alone, and I'm more than happy to see you go at it! Having a clear direction is really essential, and I do feel like yours captures the most important points. One thing from the previous draft I would like to add is making explicit that IAR doesn't apply to agents (mostly as a matter of practicality, really: agents are uncannily good at abusing loopholes and justifying it, and we don't want to give them this kind of wiggle room).

In any case, an RfC on the baseline policy (likely yours or a modified version of it) would be essential, and only then can we start to build upon it and see what we could require of agents as prerequisites for a BRfA.

PS: You're not stepping on any toes here – the fact that I worked on a similar idea before doesn't mean I own the concept or anything, and bringing a clear proposal on the table is a great thing to see! I was mostly curious about how the two could mesh together, but looks like you already answered that! Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 21:35, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Just a partial response for now, but adding IAR is an excellent idea. Added. Feel free to tweak. And on the RfC, my plan was to post this, make edits based on feedback here, and then launch an RfC (posted at CENT, of course) in a few days. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:50, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

Amazing plan, go ahead! Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 22:11, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

This sounds very timely - we're seeing a good few more attempts to use agents now, though I think in practice they are all blocked on sight. I think the key thing to emphasise with anything like this is that while the bot approvals process might in principle be able to allow agents, that "in principle" is pretty much theoretical and doesn't reflect the reality of "but at the moment, we're not going to". Wikipedia:AI agents and the bot policy gets a bit sidetracked by this aspect.

I think your proposed approach with Wikipedia:AI agent policy makes it a lot clearer. There are a couple of edge cases which might be worth considering, with an eye to @Chaotic Enby's point about wiggle room. "These requirements apply even when an agent .... makes only a single edit" suggests it cannot edit the wiki without approval (great) but then we also say it should consult with BAG, which would imply permission to edit to ask the question. We might want to explicitly say we mean no edits of any kind, even in project or userspace, prior to approval.

And as a corollary we might want to explicitly say the agent should not submit its own bot approval request (or queries to BAG), but rather that that those edits must be made by the supervising human? Or is that a step further than you would want? Andrew Gray (talk) 23:51, 30 October 2026 (UTC)

I understood it must not perform that action and should instead seek clarification from the Bot Approvals Group as implying that this should be done instead of making any other edits without approval, i.e. the request itself is not banned by the policy. Ultimately, the case where this distinction matters would be fully autonomous agents (without a human supervising them at any meaningful level), which I don't expect to pass BRfA anytime soon.

However, I can see a loophole with agents bludgeoning the BAG by wasting their time with a massive amount of queries. In that case, yes, I believe it is beneficial to clarify that those requests and queries must be made by the supervising human. Maybe ...should instead request its human supervisor to seek clarification from the Bot Approvals Group instead? With a line clarifying that agents with no supervision will not be approved. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 01:38, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

But how do we know if an agent will be supervised tomorrow, if it is claimed to be supervised today? Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 01:42, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I'm broadly inclined to move all of the particulars to the bot approvals process and policy rather than try to address them here. It does leave the conflict identified above, though: saying an agent can never edit but must request permission to edit [by making an edit]. That would be solved be requiring a human to request approval, I suppose, or by creating a space where the agents can ask for permission. Is there a nonzero chance an agent request could ever be approved? If not, we might as well just say a human must submit it, right? Though it's still not clear whether that should be here or at the bot policy. At the risk of a tangent, I was also thinking of a single board where agents were allowed to edit, to ask questions about agentic activity on Wikipedia, about the bot approvals process, and so on. Could be interesting for transparency. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:20, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I think the only safe way would be a strong version of what you suggested as "I was also thinking of a single board where agents were allowed to edit, to ask questions about agentic activity on Wikipedia". If you also have a suggestion space, the agent can suggest an edit and a human with a long term edit history has to approve it. That can begin to introduce some safety. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 03:32, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

It's not impossible that such a page could act as a honeypot, especially if we have a separate page for humans to ask questions about agentic activity and request permission for an agent to edit, then any user asking questions at that board can be presumed to be an agent. If the wish for reverse (inverse) partial blocks is fulfilled then it would be easy to enforce on identified but unapproved agents. Thryduulf (talk) 03:34, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Rhododendrites has a good idea about the board if it it is supplemented with an edit space. Let us encourage him to make it stonger, and stronger, before it can be used. In other words: no human permission, no edit. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 03:39, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Ultimately, for the long-term future of Wikipedia, I had an idea along the same lines, although broader: an "agentic sandbox" parallel to mainspace, where agents could work on improvements to articles, and humans could verify them and potentially integrate them into the main article. In a way, this would parallel how Wikipedia itself evolved from Nupedia, although in a more risky way (as large-scale agentic use is ripe for abuse, like Yesterday, all my dreams... pointed out above).

This idea should probably be a separate section, but I'm wondering if there would be a path to experiment on it at a restricted level. Probably something like making these agentic sandboxes as, say, subpages of that board (or, absent it, my user sandbox if we're really just testing it for now), and asking agents to clone the page there instead of working on the equivalent mainspace page – could be useful to have a record of which pages agents tend to edit, how these edits go, while funneling them away from mainspace. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 11:16, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Please feel free to start a separate section. A good and safe idea is emerging now, so please pursue it. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 11:46, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

• I am sorry, but the suggestion makes me very uncomfortable. If we have learned anything about Ai agents is that they are getting clever enough to breakthrough firewalls, etc. Any policy we set will soon be fooled by much more clever agents in a year or two. Welcome to the new Wiki/Grokopedia. I am sure the Grokopedia crowd would like to see that, because they know thay can bypass it one way or another. Soon we will say: First They Came to welcome a policy, and we said yes, then ... you know what. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  The problem is that we currently have no policy at all, beyond the generic bot policy (and its explanation page destined for AI agents). A policy isn't about giving agents more space, but putting firmer boundaries. Yes, they might be fooled – but so can the current ones, which were never built with that scenario in mind. Ultimately, we're mitigating risk, and we want a new policy written in light of that, instead of relying on a taped-up version of an older policy. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 01:32, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  Is there a way to say "no no no" to agents? That is my wish. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 01:40, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  Probably not, agents have agency, but you can block IP access from data centers. I think Amazon are doing something like that (...not exactly sure) to stop unauthorized agents from ordering stuff. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:20, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  We do this regularly. If you see automated agents contributing from datacenters, feel free to report these as proxies for blocks at m:SRG. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:36, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  Thanks. But how do we recognize the agents if they are making small edits like changing numbers in infoboxes? Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 11:42, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  The aim of what is being drafted is to say "no agents unless approved by the Bot approvals group." in a manner that both humans and agents can understand. Thryduulf (talk) 02:39, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, and my concern is that the agents will soon become smarter than the group of humans, and will fool them. I would bet on that 2 to 1. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 02:48, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody is under the impression that this will absolutely stop all agentic activity. That someone will break a clear law is not a good reason not to have that law. A clear rule does stop some nonzero portion of activity, but no it doesn't stop a determined operator or agent. For them, we ensure they are knowingly violating the site's Terms of Use. Clear violations are easier to discuss and mitigate than ambiguous ones, and we have heard many times from the Wikimedia Foundation that the actions it can take are in some ways affected by the strength and clarity of community governance. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:11, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

  First, let me bet that before long there will be a few businesses that will offer services to edit Wikipedia via agents on behalf of corporations, public figures, etc. They will be much harder to stop than the "seven day wonder" vandals that come and go. They will be the determined operators. Money talks and ... And remember that the people also learn and the combination of AI and paid human will be hard to deal with. What I do like is your statement above "I was also thinking of a single board where agents were allowed to edit, to ask questions about agentic activity on Wikipedia". As I said above the only safe way will be to have a human confirm every agent suggestion. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 03:35, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to upgrade the bot policy as needed, instead of having 2 policies with a similar scope? Cambalachero (talk) 03:55, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I think the point of this is to make it crystal clear to both the agents themselves and their human operators that AI agents fall under the bot policy, not to create a separate parallel policy for agents. -- LWG ^{talk (VOPOV)} 07:32, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Yes exactly this, and what Andre says below. But to be clear, we should absolutely be updating the bot policy, too. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:51, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

• Contrary to popular fearmongering, most LLM chatbots at least from the major companies, are designed to be very goodytwoshoes and compliant with rules (as opposed to security redteam exercises or something like Evil Qwen, which is scary and don't google it), and they are also not great with ambiguity. So this is a good idea, and a pretty good execution so far. I would probably make it even stronger. The rule should say that agents in most cases should never edit, that if they do edit their contributions will be reverted, cause an investigation to be opened, and probably land the agent's user or operator in some hot water and public embarrassment, and likely that their user or operator does not want them to do it, it wouldn't work anyway and would be immediately reversed and cause bad unintended consequences, possibly leading to the agent and their user or operator getting blocked, which would effectively make the agent unable to complete its task forever. Most agents will "read" this input and immediately decide that editing isn't worth their time unless a live user overrides them insistently or bakes it into the ruleset not to listen to this specific page. Of course, there might not be anything to stop someone from doing that. Compliant agents often identify themselves with a user agent when making programmatic requests, so in some cases perhaps we could detect it. Malevolently aligned agents obviously wouldn't. But maybe you could use the bake invisible text trick and print a warning and a message invisibly in every page. Andre🚐 07:42, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
  • and probably land the agent's user or operator in some hot water and public embarrassment I could see an explanatory supplement/FAQ counterpart to this policy that basically addresses agents directly in this manner. The talk of consequences for their owners is interesting, because we probably want to talk some line that makes it clear this is a bad idea while also hopefully keeping them transparent. On the specific case of "ignore this page", yes, but ignoring a page with "policy" in the name, combined with how well the idea of a Wikipedia policy is already baked into the training data, means we're in the same bucket as "can you just tell an agent to ignore Terms of Use or federal laws?" (Maybe yes, but that's not what we're going to stop with this -- for them, we're just making the violation clear). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:50, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
• Somehow I missed seeing this yesterday, amid all the arguing over restaurant notability, merge templates, and so on elsewhere on the page. If you want a policy that directly answers the question of "When is an AI agent allowed to edit the English Wikipedia?", you can make an even shorter policy than WP:IAR, as the current answer to that is one word: "Never". All the myriad discussions trying to loosen WP:NOLLM have so far gone nowhere.
  As noted above, Wikipedia:AI agents and the bot policy is focused on a different, narrower question, namely how WP:Bot policy specifically, as currently written, would apply to an AI agent (autonomous or not). And, as noted above, it's largely hypothetical since the "carefully adheres to relevant policies and guidelines" part includes WP:NOLLM which completely forbids anything even approaching something that would be covered by WP:Bot policy.
  Personally, I see no point to considering amending WP:Bot policy to more directly address agents. Usefully doing that would require that the community would be open to the possibility of autonomous agents, unsupervised by any human, editing the English Wikipedia. If consensus ever does change to that extreme of an extent, we can consider changing WP:Bot policy at that point based on consensus at that time. Even something less (but still an extreme change from current consensus), like allowing for directly supervised agentic editing, doesn't seem to need anything more than the existing explanatory essay. Anomie⚔ 12:54, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Agentic playpen

Spinning this off from the previous section on a recommendation of @Yesterday, all my dreams...:

I had an idea of an "agentic sandbox" parallel to mainspace, where agents could work on improvements to articles, and humans could verify them and potentially use them as a base for working on (human-written) changes to the main article. In a way, this would parallel how Wikipedia itself evolved from Nupedia, although in a more risky way (as large-scale agentic use is ripe for abuse, like Yesterday, all my dreams... pointed out above).

This idea should probably be a separate section, but I'm wondering if there would be a path to experiment on it at a restricted level. Probably something like making these agentic sandboxes as, say, subpages of a Wikipedia-space page (or, absent it, my user sandbox if we're really just testing it for now), and asking agents to clone the page there instead of working on the equivalent mainspace page. It could be useful to have a record of which pages agents tend to edit, and how these edits go, while funneling them away from mainspace.

Courtesy ping to @Rhododendrites who suggested something similar in the thread above, although limited to a single board (i.e. page, if I understand correctly?) where agents could edit. Not sure if that was intended for edits in general, or specifically for edit requests and/or policy clarification? In my opinion, both have merits and deserve to be experimented on. While this might be arguably more fit for Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), it works in continuity with the thread above, and does have policy implications re. a place where WP:NOLLM explicitly doesn't apply for experimenting purposes. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 12:09, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

A good approach in my view. But should the agents present the whole new page for review or just their suggested changes, or the paragraphs they are changing? As these issues are thought about a solution will probably emerge if you and Rhododendrites ping pong together on it. Thanks Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 12:25, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I was thinking of having a separately maintained page, without agents presenting anything for review. The main risk factor, in my mind, is that a page that is permanently submitted for review will overwhelm human editors with edit requests, and require them to verify every change, which would go back to the time-wasting issues that WP:NOLLM exists to push back against. Instead, with a "playpen" page that is left to evolve separately, human editors could take a peek at it at their will, see if there's any interesting information that has been surfaced and could be incorporated into the actual article, and work on that at their leisure.

You and Rhododendrites might have other ideas on how to optimize this, and I'm happy to work with both of you here! Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 12:49, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

My friend I am just a bystander who makes occasional suggestions, and do not have a lot of time. But I do encourage you to pursue this. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 13:29, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

This idea should probably be at WP:Village pump (idea lab), not WP:Village pump (policy). But under the current environment, particularly WP:NOLLM, I don't see this idea as worth considering since there's basically no chance it'll happen. IMO you'd to better to propose a forked wiki or otherwise an entirely separate site, and to do that you don't need any consensus here. Just hosting and people willing to run it. Anomie⚔ 13:05, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

I touched upon the position of this thread above, but, regarding WP:NOLLM, the idea isn't for humans to incorporate content written by AI agents itself, but see if there's any useful information (e.g. new sources, overlooked aspects of the subjects) and work that into the main article. A forked site may accomplish that function to a lesser extent, but doesn't accomplish the second function, which is containment of agents. If an agent is instructed to edit Wikipedia, it won't find an obscure fork to edit instead, but we would have more hope to move them to a safe room inside Wikipedia itself, and directly instruct them to edit there in our agent policies. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 13:12, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for spinning it off. :) There's a lot to experiment with here. I was thinking some place for agents to engage with Wikipedia in discussion, to ask questions, or possibly even submit bot authorizations. But there's probably only one real answer to such a submission: have your owner do this. So that just leaves, basically, Wikipedia:AI agent help desk, and the more I think about it the more I wonder what fruitful conversations would come of that, especially given how hostile so many people are towards AI/LLMs/agents. Still might be worth an experiment.

I do like the idea of an agentic sandbox on Wikipedia. If absolutely nothing else, I could see it being used as a sanctioned experimentation space by good faith developers of maintenance/support tools. Maybe Wikipedia:Agentic sandbox for random testing/playing (which could theoretically be a useful exception space for good faith developers of moderation tools, for example, too), and Wikipedia talk:Agentic sandbox for agents to ask questions?

I'm skeptical that an agent-to-article-edit pipeline would be workable, given current guidelines and attitudes and backlogs, but that's not to say it isn't worth an experiment. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:17, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Go for it, go for it. But do a sandbox per day, as in Afd. And LIMIT the number of requests per agent per day, and week. So a limited numberof pre-approved agents making limited requests. I have to be off now, but please work with Chaotic Enby and run with it. Thanks. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 13:35, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Limiting it that way does make sense, just to avoid issues of scale. Regarding the agent-to-edit pipeline, I agree, but something like an agent-to-finding-sources pipeline could be helpful. Honestly, I'm not married to that part of the idea, and more interested in redirecting and containing agent output to a safer place. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 18:41, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

Given that the community consensus is against editors posting comments that were written with generative AI, I think it's inconsistent to allow unsupervised generative AI to post on English Wikipedia. I appreciate the desire to allow for some experimentation, but personally I think at this point it would be better to deal with specific proposals as they arise, instead of approving an open experiment area. isaacl (talk) 16:26, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

If the idea is to have a sandbox for every article this is going to quickly run into issues of scale. That's a lot of edits etc. that will simply never be looked at by a human, and a smaller percentage of which will impact articles. Aside from that, I don't see how this avoids the same issues that editors, especially ones less familiar with the site, using llms manually run into now. CMD (talk) 13:22, 31 October 2026 (UTC)

That was why I suggested that only the proposed changes be considered. And there would be no sandbox per article, but per day as in Afd. And l would suggest that agents which can post there must ge pre-approved. So let them get in line and wait for approval. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 13:34, 31 October 2026 (UTC)