Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-05-29/Discussion report

Discussion report

Portals, April Fools, admin activity requirements and more

This Discussion Report covers conversations that were closed or archived from April 1, 2022 to May 29, 2022.

Using non-free biographical images of persons immediately after death?

George Ho asked on March 9th if using a non-free biographical image of a person immediately after (or upon) the said person's death (date) is acceptable, unacceptable, or neither. The result was a consensus that it is technically acceptable per policy, with some important caveats. There should be a respect for commercial opportunities, which in some cases may mean the immediate use of a non-free image post-death is not appropriate. There remains a consensus that free images are preferred over non-free ones, and that regardless of the time period elapsed after death a serious effort should be made to find free images before deciding to use non-free ones.

Outing policy in mainspace

Mhawk10 started a discussion on March 15th that asks: when both the username and real name of a Wikipedia editor are widely reported by reliable sources, to what extent should Wikipedia prohibit articles in the mainspace from stating that such a person edits under that account name? Editors brought up policies such as WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:DUEWEIGHT, but the discussion has now been archived without a formal closure.

Changing portal links on the Main Page

On 15 March Sdkb and JBchrch proposed removing the portal links from the Main Page, adding a mention of portals in the "Other areas of Wikipedia" section, and adding the language switcher to where the portal links formerly were. Barkeep49 closed the discussion on 14 April, finding consensus to remove the portal links and add a mention to the other areas section, and finding a weak consensus to add the language switcher. Barkeep also noted procedural objections with the neutrality of the RfC, but they found insufficient reason to not honor the proposal.^[1]

Increasing administrator activity requirements

Worm That Turned proposed on 17 March to increase the administrator activity requirements. An administrator that has made neither edits nor administrative actions for at least a 12 months period OR has made fewer than 100 edits over a 60-month period (coming into force 1 January 2023) may be desysopped for inactivity. Consensus to implement this proposal was found by Slywriter on April 13. In a follow-up RfC, Worm That Turned suggested that the same change be made to the bureaucrat activity requirements. The discussion was closed on April 22 by Wugapodes with consensus to change.^[1]

Time to stop April Fools' Day joke edits on Wikipedia?

On April 2nd Bduke made a request for comment about ending Wikipedia's tradition of April Fools' Day jokes. After a gaggle of input in just two days, the discussion was closed with no consensus.^[1]

Using samples in song articles

A discussion about using a non-free sample for purposes of identification in an article about a song was started on April 11th by George Ho. It received a decent amount of support, but was not formally closed and is now archived.

Necessity of RfCs to make policy changes

On April 20th, Barkeep49 eloquently posed the question of what our policy is regarding changing policies; specifically, is a formal request for comment required? This discussion was not closed, but led to some valuable observations and conclusions before being archived. Most editors agreed that consensus and discussion are required for policy changes, but that doesn't necessarily have to be in the form of a request for comment.^[1]