Wikipedia talk:Refactoring talk pages

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Should archive pages be refactored? Your input is welcome.

Contents

[edit] Refactoring rules

A couple of important points for you to keep in mind, Adraeus, from Wikipedia:Refactoring talk pages:

  • "Try to avoid refactoring when a conversation is still going on. This can cause additional confusion, and may not be liked by those involved in the discussion.
  • "Do not try to refactor a discussion where you have a strong point of view. The summarised version needs to reflect the original meaning, and this may be obscured by your own biases."

Gene Nygaard 12:17, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm aware. I don't agree with either point. Firstly, if an ongoing conversation is being driven off-topic for any reason, the discussion should be refactored to re-orient the participants. Secondly, the second point should read "do not refactor a discussion with your point of view" rather than "don't even try it, you can't be trusted, yadda, yadda, yadda". Wikipedia:Assume good faith. That directly contradicts the second point. Should we tell prospective and new editors, "Do not try to add or edit an article because your biases may affect the result?" No. This is a wiki. As such, anyone can edit it. Adraeus 19:35, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Note that I did not post anything on this talk page before this. Adraeus copied this start of the discussion from Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate/Alternatives, with no explanation here that he had done so, giving the misleading impression that I had started a discussion here. On that talk page he was violating both of those rules, refactoring arguments in which he was involved and raising questions on his paraphrase of previous statements while removing the original statements still under active discussion. Further discussion of this has taken place there. After copying the above to this talk page, he suggested on that talk page that we should probably move the discussion here, not even having the decency to point out that he had in fact already done so. Gene Nygaard 20:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Refactoring Article Pages

I got here via a link from Wikipedia:Editing_policy, which mentioned refactoring in the context of article pages, not talk pages. This article deals exclusively with refactoring talk pages. There should either:

  • Be information here on refactoring in general, not just talk pages
  • Be a separete page (perhaps Wikipedia:Refactoring or Wikipedia:Article Refactoring), that deals with that subject; or
  • Refactoring should not refer in WP to anything but talk pages.

If I have missed the text dealing with refactoring articles, please let me know. Thanks. Kiaparowits 20:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

i was looking for that too. would be very handy. ah well.. --MilkMiruku 22:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template question

I just found this page today, so forgive me if it's already been discussed, but shouldn't it have a template at the top like "Wikipedia guideline"? Or is it still being debated? Elonka 19:03, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Overhaul May - June 2006

I've just overhauled the whole article. I pruned a good deal of repetition and reworded a majority of the rest. I removed contradictory advice from the talk page guidelines (such as suggesting that talk pages be reorganized in non-chronological order). I also made the tone more formal.

I hope that this edit is agreeable to the community. Please provide feedback. --DanDanRevolution 05:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

My editing is still in progress. -DanDanRevolution 18:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Turns out a bunch of my content is already, more appropriately, covered by Refactoring#Refactoring_other_text. I'll rework this article to deal specifically with the issue it is meant to cover (rather than being an overview of refactoring in general). -DanDanRevolution 20:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I suppose I'm done for now... I think it's best that we rename refactoring to editing, because the more examples I see the more I feel "refactoring" without losing original intent is impossible... (I'll put up a straw poll sometime) --DanDanRevolution 02:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit instead.... (proposal)

Please see /Edit_instead. Thank you. -DanDanRevolution 04:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refactoring rude comments

Sometimes, editors violate WP:No Personal Attacks. I was wondering what community consensus was regarding refactoring such edits so that they still get the point across, but more politely (with, of course, a note that they were modified). I believe it may be helpful, under some circumstances, such as an angry editor with a legitimate complaint who may be new and won't state their complaint politely. It could possibly avoid a revert war resulting from simply removing their comments. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 01:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that comments should be left intact, even disparaging ones. An edit war requires two participants and in my view it is helpful to understand (and preserve) the wording of complaints in understanding the mind-set of the complainer. His violation of No Personal Attacks is not the concern of refactoring: I believe we should refactor as rarely as possible. (Though, I concede that I haven't had much practical experience of this sort on WP yet... perhaps someone can point me towards a reason that this is truly helpful to those of us that do follow the WP guidelines.) --DanDanRevolution 02:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
For an example, see User_talk:Tawkerbot2#Malfunction_on_Comparison_of_open_source_operating_systems. If you look in the edit history (rather deeply, as it's a high-volume page), you will see an edit war involving rude comments from a multi-IP person (65.94.59.238/65.94.101.206/etc). It should be somewhat obvious from the edit summaries. It starts here. Only one of the anon's comments was modified (and is labelled as such) - the rest were removed. The original, unmodified version of the modified comment can be found here. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 13:15, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
In such a case, I would still say let the original text stand for itself. There doesn't seem to be a reason to change it. I could have read your anon. user's offensive commentary and it wouldn't incite me to deragatory words against him in reply... so why shouldn't I see the text as he wrote it? His intention should be clear, and changing the form masks his tone. (My opinion is just that refactoring damages the original intent and should be avoided when possible. So when it doesn't seem to bring about a benefit to future readers, I would say we shouldn't mess with others' words.) --DanDanRevolution 14:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
If you don't think that rude comments should be messed with, then I assume you would probably consider removing them entirely to be even worse (which was what happened to the rest of the anon's comments)? How then do you think WP:NPA should be enforced? Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 20:21, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
It's my opinion that WP:NPA and other such guidelines need to be enforced only on the article namespace. The talk space doesn't need to be protected, or edited. --DanDanRevolution 00:59, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
People make personal attacks in the article namespace? Maybe we should move this conversation to Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks.... Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 01:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, people make such attacks on pages about individuals... especially controversial ones, like George W. Bush. I think it's useful here - maybe a link or a copy of this text? --DanDanRevolution 02:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. So how do you think editors should respond to rude comments on talk pages? Or should they just be ignored? A link... maintaining concurrent version of a conversation in two places is too hard. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 02:28, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
My conception of talk pages are just that they are a free ground. They are pages where we get to discuss articles, and our creation of them. If someone posts something outside the scope - it aught to get removed... if someone posts on topic but breaks a rule in the process, we should assume good faith and inform them of our policies/guidelines. Talk pages need not be perfect. --DanDanRevolution 04:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'm half-convinced. I guess won't do it if the rude comments are ever directed at me, but it still seems like a good solution for an edit war where one person wants their comments there, and the other person/people want to remove the comments entirely. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 14:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, an edit war is the fault of two individuals. Each person should see past the negative comments of the other, it is each person's responsibility to behave well. Taking away or changing comments changes the perceived intent of the authors, and so strikes me as undesirable. --DanDanRevolution 15:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC) (PS: I'm not trying to force you to my side, just having a conversation.)
Yes, but trying to resolve an edit war requires compromising, and not siding to strongly with one side or the other (though, being human, we are likely to). Rather than denounce both sides, why not try to recognize the valid points both sides have, admonish gently and minimally, and try to encourage them to meet on middle grounds (or at the very least talk about it civilly)? Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 15:44, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring is a great idea, the way to do it here is to leave the comments intact, and create an echo version that is refactored. This is a very good and useful way to deal with things, esp when you have to teach noobs coming from a combat culture how to communicate. (Or, as it is, Admins who are ignorant of the rules of logic, same problem.) Prometheuspan 22:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

While perhaps unhelpful in resolving a disupte, I don't blame people who choose to remove personal attacks outright. Perhaps they simply don't want to deal with it, or fail to understand that the negative comments reflect badly on the person who made them, rather than the person they are about. How would you feel about a refactored version with a link to the original in the page history? (That would remove the personal attack from the page, satisfying the person/people who wanted it deleted, while at the same time allowing people to compare the refactored version to the original easily, and hopefully make the person who made the comment happy.) Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 00:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that's an ideal solution. Providing a link to the page history satisfies everyone. --DanDanRevolution 03:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
An interesting version; simply linking to the history. Thats as good a total solution as any. I hadn't thought of that. I'm still getting used to the way the program works. Still, in serious cases that makes more sense, but refactoring is a great tool for a lot of very different situations. By the way, anybody wanna practice refactoring on my jimbo

talk page article? lol. Refactoring is an underused tactic around here, but we should be careful not to generate straw man arguments. Thats the biggest difficulty in refactoring. Prometheuspan 18:38, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the best way to handle personal attacks is to remove the most offensive part of the comment, and replace it with a link to the page history. Where this gets sticky though, is in cases where one person perceived something as a personal attack, and another perceives it as a valid opinion (i.e., "You did it wrong." "That's a silly argument."). But in cases of clear name-calling or threats, I think there's a pretty solid case for allowing the refactoring. --Elonka 20:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, if there isn't anything you can take out (to make the comment less offensive) without also removing the basic message (regardless of whether or not the message counts as "valid"), then refactoring wouldn't help, which to me makes the whole thing self-limitting. The ultimate goal, of course, is to calm down excessive arguments between editors while remaining true to what was actually said (or meant). Thus, edit warring over a comment refaction would be counter-productive, so I think anyone refactoring a rude comment should focus on promoting peace and respect between editors more than following a set of guidelines to the letter. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 22:10, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refactoring signatures

Since last year the size of the average signature has expanded greatly and many contain hundreds of characters of formatting. Thus in refactoring for readability/editability it may be appropriate to remove many kilobytes of unnecessary formatting, etc, from signatures. I have therefore altered the advice on refactoring discussion entries [1]:

Before:

f a discussion has become lengthy in such a way that it obscures meaning and hinders further discussion, an editor is encouraged to summarize it in such a way as to preserve all significant detail. It is the editor's responsibility to ensure credit is given to those who posted the original commentary. (Wherever possible an editor should use the original signatures of all of the parties involved.)

After:

If a discussion has become lengthy in such a way that it obscures meaning and hinders further discussion, an editor is encouraged to summarize it in such a way as to preserve all significant detail. It is the editor's responsibility to ensure credit is given to those who posted the original commentary. (Wherever possible an editor should retain the original usernames and timestamps of the parties involved in signed comments, though it may be appropriate to remove obtrusive formatting.)

Strictly speaking this belongs under the next section, "prune". Perhaps the page needs to be refactored! :) --Tony Sidaway 12:32, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It is a common practice to use Template:unsigned or Template:unsigned2 to give credit to editors who do not sign their comments. While uncontroversial (as these templates acknowledge that the comment was originally unsigned), it should probably be mentioned. Though I'm not sure which section it should be put it, it should probably go with the other comment on editing signatures. Armedblowfish (talk|contribs) 23:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prune

From the article page:

Following Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate.

Where on the Wikipedia's talk page guidelines, an editor is encouraged to remove any content that is not appropriate? --Philip Baird Shearer 17:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This whole policy

And who gets to decide what is superfluous, for example. I say, "Ychhh" to this policy, mainly on account of, that is exactly what it is. It is controlling, made for those who would usurp the integrity of an encyclopedia, and downright infuriating to, (I would venture), anyone with objections to it. Shannonduck talk 21:29, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. Do you think it should be common sense, or do you disagree with the general idea of the policy? Armedblowfish (talk|mail|contribs) 11:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems simple to me, if you refactor, you should leave a link to the diff to what you changed. If consensus finds your refactoring out of order they can revert. The problems seem to be solved by existing WP policies. HighInBC 14:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status

Is this a guideline, essay, proposed guideline or what? AndrewRT - Talk 16:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- what is this? A policy? I assume its a guideline... but nothing it said. MrMacMan 00:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Still waiting. MrMacMan Talk 19:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
How-to page. It tells you how to refactor, plain and simple. >Radiant< 15:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Specifically, it tells you how to refactor a Talk Page. Other types of pages might benefit from different methods of refactoring. Petershank (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assumption of good faith

I have added a paragraph on "Refactoring should only be done when there is an assumption of good faith by editors who have contributed to the talk page. ..." I think this is necessary because on heated discussions any attempt at refactoring is likely to be seen as non NPOV editing even if the editor doing the editing is really trying hard to do a fair summary of the issues. In cases like this heated arguments and edit wars about the content of the article page do not need to be replicate on the talk page! So another editor object to refactoring of the talk page then the editor performing the refactoring should abort the process. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inserting headings subheadings or paragraph titles

I inserted a new subsection into the article explaining a very conservative form of refactoring that I experimented with success in two talk page sections (here and here) and in my user talk page. In the latter page, I used it in combination with the insertion of an introduction and a summary (see summarize).

This is, by no means, a much more conservative form of refactoring than summarizing, and I believe that in some cases it is preferable to summarizing.

Moreover, it can be also applied to ongoing discussions (see the text I inserted into the article). It may be used to make a discussion more appealing for the readers and to attract the attention of new contributors on interesting points that might otherwise remain unseen. Paolo.dL 08:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the latest paragraph insertion in my user talk page was the only circumstance in which one of the contributors did not appreciate my mild refactoring (see this section). His unexpectedly resentful reaction taught me that any refactoring, even the mildest and most respectful, should be always accompanied not only by a request of feedback to the author(s) of the refactored text, but also by a warning for all the readers such as this:

[I refactored the following section by adding paragraph titles. Paolo.dL 08:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)]

This warning grants due respect for the authors of the refactored text, which otherwise may be regarded by the readers as the authors of the titles as well. This is perceived as unpleasant by the authors, expecially (but not only) when the titles do not reflect exactly the original meaning of their contributions. For the same reason, headings, subheadings and titles should be written with maximum respect for the meaning of the text they refer to, and should be compiled by using, if possible, only the author's own words.

This warning becomes useless and can be removed only when the authors of the refactored text approve the changes. Notice that even a refactoring performed with care and in good faith may inadvertently distort the exact meaning of a contribution, and warning the readers that the titles were not inserted by the author of the text is always necessary, unless the author approves the titles. Paolo.dL 08:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)