Template talk:Unencyclopedic

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This template was considered for deletion on 2006 October 7. The result of the discussion was to keep..

If we're going to use templates like this, which are rather contentious, because one person's view of what's encyclopaedic is liable to differ from another's, can we please put on the talk page of the article what concerns us about the article. Grace Note 13:33, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd started a template of my own until I remembered this one, which I've hardly ever seen used (mine is Template:Nonnotable). The "vanity" template is often very misleading (as well as rather aggressive), but I wanted something that might take the place of all the knee-jerk VfDs. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:33, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

It's precisely my concern though, Mel, that this sort of thing is used to avoid debate. Yes, I hate the silly squabbling on VfD too, but I think templates like this are just fuel for the fire. I know that you have the best of intentions but I think you have to consider the following:

1/ The message in them is really addressed to the original editor but all visitors get to read it. Newcomers don't know what you're talking about when it comes to "notability" and many of the established editors here don't like the notion. 2/ It's not a feature of What Wikipedia Is Not, except for in the case of people. Intermittent fighting breaks out on VfD when people say this, that or the other is not notable. 3/Templates such as this are all too easily seen as a backdoor attempt to create new policy.

I think that it would be much preferable to encourage writing to the originating editor, explaining your issue with their article and seeing whether you can agree with them that it doesn't fit the criteria. There is far too little communication on WP and far too much of this tag-slapping. Just my 2c.Grace Note 14:45, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

My own version was meant to be addresed to anyone, not just (or even primarily) the original creator; that's one of the things I didn't like about the "vanity" template. "Nonnotable" is just the name of the template — the problem is spelt out in the actual text:

(Remember that this was just a first stab; it could do with some work.)

I'm mainly thinking of cases where the creator was an anon who creates an article (usually a stub) and leaves, or perhaps continues editing from different IP addresses. Where the creator has an editing account, then I agree with you, of course. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:55, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

But what is "well known enough"? How well known do you want something to be, Mel? What would constitute evidence of being well known enough for you? It differs from person to person. It can never be objective. Someone who is into manga thinks X-ohara Y-ohito is extremely "notable"; me, I have no idea what they're talking about. Templates such as this tend to be used by people summarily, because they don't know what the thing in question is, and they haven't noted it. Yes, I agree that it's difficult when the editor who wrote the article has disappeared and you can't ask them, why did you think he/she/it was worth an article? I do understand the problem. I'm not sure this is the solution. Were there ten million editors, with all pages constantly checked, maybe. But there aren't. So what happens is that someone sees a page they don't get, slaps a template on it, and then two weeks later someone else puts it on VfD. No one bothers to try to find out what the go is and nothing encourages them to.

Maybe we should have a list of "professed interested parties" (I'm avoiding the word "expert") -- people who say "I'm very into manga/I'm very into Chinese pop", who can explain the significance of things in their sphere to interested parties. In that system, if our PIP said no, I don't know it (and I've looked into it and still don't know it), then there should be no problem with a notice that would last for say three weeks giving a countdown to deletion.

I'll be honest with you, Mel. I'm an inclusionist. I believe "all human knowledge" should mean what it says. But I can well see the difficulty in it. Lots of broken articles that no one wants to fix. Lots of bits, not enough proper stuff. I don't go for the "people will hit random page and get rubbish and think poorly of us", because the whole idea is that they are supposed to think "I can get involved and make it better" and, in any case, we're a long way from finished, not to mention that our image is a much less significant thing to me than the encyclopaedia itself, but I do see that the route to my ideal is not necessarily through including everything right now. I think that it would be a wonderful thing properly to sort articles, to merge what needs merging, to make our coverage as consistent as possible and maybe then look to broaden it out. But that's not necessarily served by this approach.Grace Note 23:34, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm an inclusionist-mergist myself (though the ideal of "all human knowledge" is an illusory one at best, so I don't concern myself with that; there is in fact an article on me here, which I don't touch, so I have to be careful what I say — but I don't think that we should be aiming to include an article on everyone in the world); what worries me isn't the presence of the articles — it's that all too often there's not enough there to tell the reader anything very interesting. In theory, that could often mean that speedy deletion was justified; mostly it means a VfD when someone spots it.

I see your points, though. Perhaps the stub system does much of what I want. I'll have to think about it. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:56, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

My two cents: Taking ideas from Template:Deletebecause and Template:Explain significance, here's a suggestion on what it could look like:

In using the template, the editor would have to enter one of the criteria listed on WP:NOT (e.g. "paper encyclopedia", "dictionary", "soapbox", etc.). Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:09, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that your suggestion is very good, and well intentioned, but I still feel that it is better to write the originating editor a note saying this. Your suggestion seems particularly aimed at the originating editor, rather than anyone who stumbles upon the page. Templates are supposed to be informative about the article, rather than means to convey messages. Grace Note 06:04, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

That was only a rough draft, but I can see a way it can be modified to a talk template, using an idea from Template:Nothanks:

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as [[{{{1}}}]], but the topic of this article may be unencyclopedic, because Wikipedia is not a {{{2}}}.

Please review Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand the article, or try to resolve the objections on it discussion page. If no expansion or explanation is provided, this article may be nominated for deletion. Thank you.

Of course, that is also a rough draft. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:24, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Best use of the template

The original idea of the template is to have something which could be called "friendly deletion". If a newbie creates an article which is just outside of offcial CSD policy, but obvious delte on VfD, it would be better to convince the author to reguest deletion himself, which would allow speedy deletion and avoid not so firedly process of VfD. Because majority of such articles are vanities, the template text sould cover the vanity-for-deletion case.

Original intended use of the templete is

1. Leave a note on author's talkapge
   1. be nice
   2. explain Wikipedia anti-vanity policy
   3. propose the author to rethink if the subject is notable
   4. it he comes to the conclusion the subject is not notable enough, advice him to blank the page and leave {{delete}} or {{db|Testing.}}
2. Leave a template on the page
3. If the author follows, the page can be safely speedy deleteded

Possible text fot the author's talk

Hi. Thanks for working on Wikipedia. We're concerned that the page vanitypage may not be on an encyclopedic topic. Please read Wikipedia:Auto-biography and Wikipedia:Vanity page and consider whether vanitypage is a topic of interest for a general encyclopedia. If you decide that it isn't, just blank the page and put the {{delete}} note there. Please note - any Wikipedia user can decide to initiate voting for deletion about the page, which may be lenghty process including various comments about the notability of the subject.

As a contributor, you're welcome to have a personal page on Wikipedia under User:.... and write there anything you want.

You can use Wikipedia:Sandbox for any tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. --sign

or for anons

Hi. Thanks for working on Wikipedia. We're concerned that the page vanitypage may not be on an encyclopedic topic. Please read Wikipedia:Auto-biography and Wikipedia:Vanity page and consider whether vanitypage is a topic of interest for a general encyclopedia. If you decide that it isn't, just blank the page and put the {{delete}} note there. Please note - any Wikipedia user can decide to initiate voting for deletion about the page, which may be lenghty process including various comments about the notability of the subject.

You may consider creating an account on Wikipedia. Among other benefits, as a registered user, you'll will have your own user page.

You can use Wikipedia:Sandbox for any tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. --sign

The templete is necessary for tracking of articles in such process.

--Wikimol 08:18, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, there should be a labelling and categorization for the articles that need this attention such as Template:Unencyclopedic, otherwise it seems like there is a larger risk these articles become lost needles in the Wikihaystack, if the author and other editors of the article just never address the problem placed on their talk... --Mysidia 17:12, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

You say that this template was originally intended as an anti-vanity device. Really? It has never been used like that? Pcb21| Pete 09:11, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Just leave the note, why not? The template isn't needed. You leave the note and you keep the page on your watchlist. Give it a couple of weeks and then VfD it. The template is just inflammatory. The originating editor is highly unlikely actually to see it. We all realise that. Most articles of this type are hit and run. So basically anyone else that comes along is going to think this is something official. It's not. It's just your opinion or whoever slaps this template on. These sort of templates are far too much in use anyway. They are being poked onto all sorts of pages. It's not a catastrophe if we don't delete everything we've never personally heard of. Grace Note 14:52, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Why not? Keeping track of it in watchlist is annoying. If other user sees the template, he knows he doesn't have to visit the autors talk. Without the template it is probable the page would be nominetad on VfD without any attempt of solving it consensualy. The tempate warns accidental visitors the page is not standard wikipedia quality.

the originating editor is highly likely to see it, more likely, tah seeing a message on his talkpage. Most of such articles are created by anons, and signifficant portion of them is on dynamic ips. On the other hand, especially authors of vanities usually visit their articles.

I'm really tired with this sort of debate. If Wikipedia had reasonable policy, the articles suitable for unencyclopedic would be speedy deleted. Unfortunately every attempt to change the policy - usually proposed by the people who spend their time in fruitless effort to keep wikipedia reliable and clean of rubbish - is blocked by people who spend no time on RC patroling, VfD etc. and are just affraid of "accidental deletions". It is really easy to say every deletions should go through some lenghty formal proces, as long as it wastes other's people time. The reality is we have almost none "false postive" deletions. On the other hand we have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of pure crap articles, unsuitable not on for an encyclopedia, but for anything.

And every effort to make deletions go more smoother with less effort of wikipedians will be torpeded by some opposition. Even if the alternative is more consensual and friendlier - "it sounds inflamatory". --18:44, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Objections against the use of this template

I object to the use of this template. It has been nominated for deletion and kept, but that does not mean that it can be freely tagged onto articles (it is generally very hard to delete templates since a consensus is required to do so; but a consensus is also required before adopting a policy). There is certainly no consensus for its use at the present time. My objections are as follows:

This template functionally mirrors Wikipedia:Inclusion dispute, which has been historically rejected as being a way to tag articles without a clear course of action to get rid of the tag.

It does not. The template mirrors lacking speedy deletion cathegory, "blatant vanities, hoaxes and other nonsese". It should be used for articles obviously insight of "What Wikipedia is not", which would be unanimously deleted in VfD. The pourpose of the temple is to avoid VfD.

We have to distinguish here between your intentions, and the actual use of the template. The actual use of the template was that random articles were being tagged as "unencyclopedic" instead of going through the established processes to fix or delete them. These templates then stick because nobody bothers to do anything about them, nor is it clear to the original author what they can do about them because there's no comment on the discussion page. This is not helpful and is exactly the problem we predicted with Wikipedia:Inclusion dispute, and the reason we came to reject that idea.--Eloquence* 20:38, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

One possibility is to add sources or explain, why it is in scope of wikipedia on Talk page. If the author is capable bz at least an attemtp, the template should be removed immediatelz, and that could be done by anyone. The other course of action is nomination VfD. Unenc should not rest on apage longer than several days.

Again, distinguish between your intention and what will actually happen. How will you make sure that the template will not rest on a page for longer than several days? Furthermore, there are existing templates for articles that fall into pretty much any category of actionable objections, e.g. Template:Unsourced and Template:Verify for articles that lack citations. The problem with Template:Unencyclopedic is that it is written in such a way that it can be used even when there are no actionable objections. However, when there are no actionable objection, the only legitimate course of action is to follow the Wikipedia:Deletion policy, either for speedy deletion or regular deletion.--Eloquence* 20:38, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

If it would be more specific it wouldn't be polite. --Wikimol 08:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

The template has been in use for a while. Its use indicates that people use it in places where existing templates would suffice (Cleanup, VfD etc.), or, worse, to try to strengthen their objections against a page by putting multiple tags on it. There does not appear to be a single use case which is not addressed by existing templates.

Yeah, VfD is so easy. I have a suggestion - check Unenc regulary, and what is suitable for deletion, nominate for deletion.

VfD is our established process to delete pages. There are reasons it works the way it does, for example, that it requires a clear reason for deletion. We generally are much more inclusive than paper encyclopedias, and we only delete articles if it is the only possible course of action. It is perfectly fine for a poor quality article to linger for a while until someone edits it. If you can't be bothered to go through the established processes, then please don't do anything at all. Adding random tags to articles without justification which then stick to them for months helps nobody, irritates readers and editors, and clutters up the article space.--Eloquence* 20:38, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

I see there is a group of people who hate templates, but I don't see how do you came to position of speaking for general "readers" and "editors". As an editor, I appreciate I know where to look if I have a mood to read (and possibly fix) some kind of problems... as a reader, I like templates - they say "take this information with even more salt than usually".

VfD are established, neverthelessm, unnecessary and evil in many cases. A newbie creates a vanity about himself - obviously notnotable schoolkid - beacause he doesn't understand such articles are outside of scope of Wikipedia. What happens? In the best case, some reasonable admin speedy deletes it (violating the policy). Other possiblity is to nominate it for VfD. There, the subject (=author) is target of several delete votes and usually also some derrogatory remarks. The author sometimes still doesn't understand what's wrong, so tries to delete the VfD template or vote keep or anything. Will he return to Wikipedia? Sometimes yes, but the firts touch wasn't realy friendly.

Convincing the author to request deletion himself maybe is not established, but would be much better.

It's really tiring. If (IMO) good idea is not "official policy", it's treated as something inferior because not "established". On the other hand, if it would be proposed as an "official policy", many people would object it can be done even without beeing "official", and than, why contribute to instruction creep? Deletions are allready overly complicated. --Wikimol 08:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Policy generally only reflects what people already do and agree with. This is not a good idea in my opinion. Look, if you guys want a page to list articles on that you want to delete but haven't listed on VfD, why don't you make one and publicise it? It will be roundly attacked, but at least it will be upfront.

Yes, it's hard work to do it properly, to communicate actively and to do some research. Some people don't come to WP to put any effort in. I'm astonished when I see people's contribs and all they do is vote on VfD and occasionally put a category on a page. But it's the right way to do things and you have to expect opposition when you won't do things the right way. Grace Note 23:26, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

If you are looking for a nice way to tell a person that their article may be deleted, that way is the user talk page of that person. Tell them about your objections and if they don't react, use of one of the deletion templates.

Nice suggestion, only it doesn't work. While you write to persons talkpage, other wikipediate will initiate VfD.

Then insert a hidden comment at the top of the page: <!-- PLEASE DO NOT NOMINATE FOR VFD - AM TRYING TO RESOLVE THIS WITH THE AUTHOR FIRST -->--Eloquence* 20:38, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

That won't do the tracking job, won't warn readers, won't allow others to do "Unencyclopedic cleanup". Hidden comments are IMO much worse than templates - unstructured untrackable uncleanable mess of something. --Wikimol 08:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Most importantly, Wikipedia has an edit link. That edit link is not just there to add colored boxes to articles, its purpose is to allow you to fix them. Templates like this encourage laziness over active editing and real human-to-human communications.

And why you don't do it yourself? I would be almost inclined to say "fix 10 articles about schoolkids winning a history competition a day and than speak". --Wikimol 19:11, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I fix mistakes as I see them. This template is one of them.--Eloquence* 20:38, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Than take it as tool to bring mistakes to your attention. --Wikimol 08:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

In short, this template is one of many examples of the current template madness that seems to be afflicting so many articles. I have marked it as being a proposed template, as there is clearly no consensus for its use.--Eloquence* 15:57, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with all of that. As a data point, a month or two ago I went through every use of this template (about 40 at that time). In every case there was no need for this vague template. There were a few speedy deletes, a few vfds and some easy cleanup tasks (I could've put cleanup tags, but they're almost as bad as this one, so chose not to and just did the cleanup).

I would suggest anyone going to participate in this discussion to do let's say 5hrs of patrolling Recent Changes. Maybe, you'll discover some things

• it's infeasible to keep track with addtions to wikipedia and solve everything "properly"
• alternatives are
  • let the crap flow unnoticed into history
  • or do some easy "marking" of problems for later, slower, more complicated resolution

Templates are good tool to manage the workflow. On firt sight, anyone can spot possible problems, and direct hem to "proper resolution". Than, in the second phase, the problem can be solved by someone familiar with the topic (or the problem). --Wikimol 19:11, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

• I see precious little evidence that marking of problems gets them cleared up any quicker than if they weren't there. Are there many people systematically working through cleanup tags? Pcb21| Pete 19:41, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

• No, but it seems there are several who slap these templates onto pages, don't message the originating editor and move on. Often these pages could be cleaned up with minimal effort. It's just a lazy way of disapproving of an article. It might be more effort to watch something in a watchlist but sometimes effort is worthwhile. It's active. It's communicative. Worst case, you clean up the English and mark it as a stub. So we have a few pages that are not about "notable" people. Oh well! We'll just file them alongside our articles on Ragrog the fifth son of Bogmor. An encyclopaedia like this is bound to have some things that each one of us thinks is "crap". Like Eloquence, when I find these articles, I fix them up. If they can be merged, I merge them. If they really were worth deleting, I'd VfD them -- the established route to deprecate articles.Grace Note 22:50, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

• And do you see any evidence on the contrary? :-) I can't speak for "editors" en general, but I had done some cleanup based on templates several times - for example going through Unencyclopedic and nominating for VfD what is unresolved. --Wikimol 08:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

• That's precisely what we could do without! One editor goes through slapping tags on articles, then another goes through a week later and VfDs them. The only person the original editor can be said to be communicating with is the editor who does the VfD. No one talks to the originating editor. No one tries to find out who the person or what the thing in the article is. If you look at Zzyzzyx (pardon spelling)'s RfA, you'll see that it's noted that his doing that led to some rather notable people and things' being VfD'd. In my books, cleaning these articles up would involve going to the effort of finding out who or what they are about and making a reasonable judgement about them. Saying, oh, it's had the template for a week, dump it into VfD, as Zzyzzyx suggested, is not right. Grace Note 23:26, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone here seen Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace? cf. {{vanity}} - it's a bit hostile, and should probably do what {{unencyclopedic}} (and {{nonnotable}}) are doing ATM. Alphax ^τεχ 01:23, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, it is a little hostile but it's the kind of thing an editor could write to a new user who wrote a page about themselves. I don't think we'd be having this discussion if editors would restrict themselves to using a slightly toned down version of that template to pursue the ends Wikimol noted. Grace Note 02:42, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusion

My conclusion from the above debate is that Wikimol's intention with this template is good, namely to create a prelude to VfD that is less scary to the newcomer. However, I believe that the current implementation suffers from the problems mentioned above, i.e. that it will be overused, linger without clear procedure for removal, and that its functional use will often overlap with existing tags.

I therefore suggest that this tag should be officially deleted and deprecated. Nevertheless, I believe that Wikimol's concerns should be addressed in another way. One possibility I see is a new template that not so much tags an article as "unencyclopedic", but which makes it clear that an attempt is underway to resolve the issue privately with the author of the article, so that others do not nominate it for deletion. Example wording: "There is currently a user-to-user discussion underway about the inclusion of this article in Wikipedia. Please do not nominate the page for deletion until this attempt to resolve the matter with the original author has reached a conclusion. You can also remove this tag if no conclusion has been reached after 7 days. (TIMESTAMP)" - (The template would have to be called with SUBST: to properly insert the timestamp. Alternatively, the timestamp could be a parameter.)

This way, we make it clearer what the purpose of the template is, implicitly require a user-to-user debate to take place and have a process in place for removing the tag. Such a template would be acceptable at least to me, while this one is not.--Eloquence* 22:06, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Well, if it's deleted it hardly needs to be deprecated. However, I understood that it had already survived a deletion vote; this is beginning to look a little like an attempt to subvert that vote by an informal discussion here. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:52, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Deletion is separate from use. We've already had that discussion.--Eloquence* 04:46, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me to be a poor sort of argument that because four or five editors voted for something on a poorly attended page, no one is allowed to change or adapt that thing, or even to oppose its use. I didn't even know these things existed, let alone vote for their deletion, until I saw them littered all over articles by people who feel they should judge whether things are "important" enough for Wikipedia. As I've pointed out to Uncle G on another page, all these things do is show that there is a difference of opinion. Clearly the originating editor thinks their article was "encyclopaedic". They wrote it as a page in an encyclopaedia. The editor slapping on the tag disagrees. The template expresses that disagreement but frankly, as Eloquence has noted, it would be far more friendly, far more active and, I think, something much more to be encouraged just to drop the originating editor a note. If they don't bother replying to your note, then you can proceed as you like. Grace Note 02:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Template messages/Disputes & "redundancy"

The list of dispute template messages says that this is currently "Unused because of redundancy with other template messages". Other than template:AFD1, what templates are those? I was looking through the list tonight for a template:neologism, that I could use for something, and saw this on the list, wanted to use it. Ended up putting the article on AFD, but... besides the deletion templates, what's this "redundant" with? I'm having trouble thinking of what template that would be. The Literate Engineer 07:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nominating for deletion

I'm thinking of nominating this template for deletion. I think that the most people who use it do so in good faith, but sometimes the template is used maliciously to discredit an article. It is also mistakenly used when the content is unencyclopedic, rather than the topic. If the topic is encyclopedic, the article should be cleaned up instead. Even when done in good faith, the template is often added without comment and it is unclear when it can be removed. Sometimes it is not even removed after the article survives an AfD. If someone truly thinks that the article is unencyclopedic, they should nominate it for speedy deletion, proposed deletion or articles for deletion. Are there any comments? -- Kjkolb 01:41, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unencyclopedic writing?

What template does one use when the subject is acceptable, but the writing itself is unencyclopedic? (Eg, uses first person, contains socratic or rhetorical questions, etc.) I think a template would be useful because it's the sort of thing an uninformed editor can often fix, but sometimes you don't have time to do more than flag it. The template allows editors to easilly track down these flags. Somegeek 13:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Template_messages/Cleanup, there's a few that fit the bill. Шизомби 02:00, 20 September 2006 (UTC)