Forum:Vote: Article TP policy amendment

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The following proposed amendment concerns a clause in the current user conduct policy at FW:UC, specifically the following:

With the proposed amendment, the same clause will be revised to read as (with the addition in bold):

Namely, this would make the policy retroactive, allowing deletion of posts that were made before the addition of the policy (which was added by User:Porter21 at around September 2009).

Relevant discussion on this topic can be found here.

Vote

Poll finished on 10:34 pm October 11, 2013 (UTC). A consensus must be reached by voting before any action is taken. You can vote by placing one of the following lines in the appropriate section: Use # {{yes}} ~~~~ if you support the proposal. Use # {{no}} ~~~~ if you are against the proposal. Use # {{neutral}} ~~~~ if you wish to abstain. Please do not edit other user's votes.

Yes

1. As per my arguments on the discussion page. --Skire (talk) 22:34, October 4, 2013 (UTC)
2. Absolutely. Our policy should affect all TP posts. 69.l25 (talk) 22:47, October 4, 2013 (UTC)
3. Off topic content should have no place on talk pages regardless of creation date. --TwoBearsHigh-Fiving 23:01, October 4, 2013 (UTC)
4. Basically what Ryan said. Paladin117^{>>iff bored;} 23:28, October 4, 2013 (UTC)
5. This will be needed for Fallout 4 when everyone and their families will be throwing themselves at our article talk-pages for information. ^{Some Assembly Required!} 23:31, October 4, 2013 (UTC)
6. Agree with Leon. There will be a need to discuss the articles and not about strategy or somesuch things. Energy X 00:17, October 5, 2013 (UTC)
7. As Energy said, the TP's are for discussing the articles and the format of their content, not strategy. We have forums for a reason. ---bleep196- (talk) 22:38, October 5, 2013 (UTC)
8. Too much garbage on the TPs. A free hand to clear them up is welcome.
   Limmiegirl ^{Talk! ♪}

No

1. - I don't have a good feeling about this. Somehow I think we should leave the old talkpages like they are and only look at talkpage content created when Fallout 4 arrives. If this passes and everyone starts to become delete-happy on old game talkpages, guess who's going to feel the need to doublecheck that. When I see deep red numbers it always stresses me, which I'd rather avoid and spend my time on other things. We can already work with the policy as it is, I don't feel the need to stress out deleting old talkpage content. Jspoel 23:22, October 5, 2013 (UTC)
2. I agree with Jspoel. I like the concept but making it retroactive seems to be unnecessary and tedious. Best to leave the past in the past and focus on applying this in the future. ^{ōrdō āb chao} 20:51, October 8, 2013 (UTC)
3. I was kinda on the fence about this. However, I say let's focus on implementing this in the future. No need to spend time editing old TPs MountHail (talk)

• The above vote has been stricken due to its being cast several hours after closing of the poll. --Skire (talk) 23:03, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

Neutral

1. There are more pressing issues.DarthOrc (talk) 06:28, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Comments

Did we hear more on a page to take the comments on the subject of pages? Agent c (talk) 00:02, October 5, 2013 (UTC)

Besides using the forums, we could enable article comments under Special:WikiFeatures, but I would not support such a move. It seems that for now people will have to keep the general chatter on the forums or in user blogs. --Skire (talk) 00:04, October 5, 2013 (UTC)

I'll be talking more with Wikia about adding on additional article-page tabs after getting some clarification on another subject I've been talking with them about. I'll update when I can. ^{Some Assembly Required!} 00:07, October 5, 2013 (UTC)

I would really want an answer on this first before voting. Rather than legislating a feature that is clearly demanded out of existence, I'd like to find a way to provide it first. Agent c (talk) 19:10, October 5, 2013 (UTC)

Believe me, J, I can fully understand your concerns. Personally, I think cleaning up article TP content would be near the bottom of our priority list, and it won't be something I myself will invest too much time into. This amendment will simply give permission for users to do so, as a component of enforcing the article TP policy. It is not encouraging systematic deletion. --Skire (talk) 00:07, October 6, 2013 (UTC)

Kinda a side note here but could we possibly think about placing a notice of some kind near the top of the talkpages of all the articles reminding users that the talkpages are indeed intended for discussion of the article, and not stories or strategy. We added a notice reminding users to categorize their images, so why not add one to remind them of the proper use of article talkpages? I'm sure Gunny or someone could figure out a way to render it on talkpages, similar to how the welcome template works for user talkpages. --The Old World Relics ^{(talk/blog/contributions)} 02:47, October 7, 2013 (UTC)

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Hmm. Well thank you Gunny for showing me it's a thing already. My next question is why is this not loaded onto talkpages as a default? Or am I daft and it is... --The Old World Relics ^{(talk/blog/contributions)} 03:48, October 7, 2013 (UTC)

Half the time they ignore the Talkpage template anyway when it is already present. I myself don't go actively looking for talk pages to clean, rather I check the contents when someone edits one to see what's there. Great Mara (talk) 21:03, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

Again, this is merely permission, not endorsement. I don't believe many users make it a high-priority task to clean talk pages as of now, and they could do it anyway regardless of this vote's outcome. The difference is that all irrelevant posts will be able to be cleaned up, and not just ones that were made after passing of the article TP policy. --Skire (talk) 00:20, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we are amending the policy by adding that. Create a project if you guys want and do it that way. Once the talk pages are cleaned up having that line in the policy will look kind of silly with the "regardless of their time of posting" line being that it will not apply to anything anymore. I say remove that part of it.--Kingclyde (talk) 05:22, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

The above template, since Relics asked, is not pre-loaded on talk pages. There's probably some fancy way to do that, but my scripting leaves way more to be desired that that would need. Of course, a bot could add that to every existing article talk page in a few hours. We would only need to check new talk pages and add them in the future. This, of course, does not alleviate the problem Mara outlined, nor does it say anything about whether, or how, we should retroactively remove improper comments. The Gunny   19:32, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. The entire point of this all is to make the policy retroactive (since whether or not it was intended to be in the first place is not clear). "Regardless of their time of posting" indicates exactly that. This is a provision, and once the problem is fully resolved (every article TP cleaned), then we can make a simple administrative decision to remove the clause, since it, as Clyde mentioned above, would not make any sense. However, I don't see that day coming any time soon. Article TP clearing will be a gradual process, rather than a quick, systematic one, it seems. --Skire (talk) 00:20, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Result

Well I reckon someone needs to finish this off. The motion passes, but with a

If you find yourself on one with off-topic comments, clean it up, but I'd appreciate it if we didn't go out of our way to purge everything just for the sake of purging it. Make sure the info is completely unrelated to the topic. Remember, back in the day, editors were told to add their strategy comments to the talk page, not the article. So clean these with with a sharp scalpel, not a bludgeon. The Gunny   01:49, October 15, 2013 (UTC)

That's true, I did personally move alot of good helpful strategy and workarounds to the talkpages so please be careful.--Kingclyde (talk) 05:20, October 20, 2013 (UTC)

I hate to rehash an old thread, especially an archived one. But I just want to make it clear that potential bugs are potential page improvements - even if written in a colloquial style. They should not be removed. Thanks you. Agent c (talk) 23:49, January 29, 2014 (UTC)