Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)

I think we need some unofficial clerks for Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). The two main tasks (IMO) would be:

• Notice when the section heading claims it's an RFC, but it isn't actually a Wikipedia:Requests for comment, because the OP never added the {{rfc}} template, and either change the section heading or encourage the OP to get it properly listed.
• Notice when a predictably large discussion is being started, and gently encourage them to have that discussion on a separate, dedicated page. (The goal is to keep the village pump pages short enough that people can actually use them, which definitely means a page size shorter than 500K, is probably under 250K, and might be as small as 100K. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#SIZESPLIT but for Village pumps, where we're trying to hash out a goal size.)

Does anyone else see these problems, and would anyone like to help out with the work? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with #2; part of the reason we have discussions at the village pump is to get broad participation, and holding the discussions on a separate page inhibits that. Yes, the pages can become more difficult to use, but I think the negative impacts of that is less than the negative impacts of reduced participation. BilledMammal (talk) 23:56, 21 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Sounds like you might have a faster device and/or internet connection than me! I find heavyweight discussion pages very difficult to deal with. None of a page can be read in the mobile interface until the entire thing loads into memory, since all the subsections start out collapsed. If a discussion gets over about 100k, I'll just read it in diff mode if I'm tryna follow it.

I think the slight downtick in participation that may be (data, anyone?) associated with holding it on a dedicated subpage with just a link on the VP itself, is probably an acceptable tradeoff for keeping the pages' resource footprint on the lighter side. Folly Mox (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I'm doubtful that there's any decrease in participation. About two-thirds of Wikipedia:Times that 100 Wikipedians supported a policy change was on dedicated subpages (and only one was at a village pump). All but one thing at Wikipedia:Times that 200 Wikipedians supported a policy change and everything at Wikipedia:Times that 300 or more Wikipedians supported something was on a dedicated subpage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

One good clerky action would be to keep a regularly updated section at the main VP page pointing to the subpage. The updates could be as simple as "discussion is ongoing". It might encourage further participation and notify watchlisters. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Splitting improves watchlists, allowing us to tell easily whether a contribution summarised as "/* Discussion */ Reply" is on a subtopic of interest. Of course, the main pump would keep a short section containing a static wikilink to the subpage. Certes (talk) 09:57, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Splitting is useful, the size of the paid admin proposal was starting to break the page. But I don't think discussions need to be moved to a subpage straight away, let them start and be moved once they get to a certain size. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

IG as said above, size can be an issue - We can start putting size limits where we keep pages to <some limit to be decided later> size here, and a discussion that exceeds it is moved to another page, with a copy of the opening comment and a link to the rest of the discussion. That way, particiants get the gist of what was proposed, and can easily go participate. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:14, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I often read on a mobile device and connection; I just use the desktop site. Even with Vector2022, it's far better than Minerva in terms of usability and in term of responsiveness. BilledMammal (talk) 04:34, 25 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I've split off a long discussion to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Emoji redirects. That brought the page down to just above a quarter million bytes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I noticed today that several inactive threads were not auto-archived. I don't know why that is but one-click seems to work just fine and I've used it to archive some stale discussions. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 21:43, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Per User_talk:Σ#General_archiving_not_occurring, I think it might be a general problem with Special:Contributions/Lowercase_sigmabot_III and/or some settings in it. Someone in that thread pinged @The Earwig: as someone who might know what to do Soni (talk) 23:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the notice. I've kicked it again and added a workaround in case this issue happens again. — The Earwig (talk) 04:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Regarding this post that editors seem to feel is misplaced, would it be advisable to have the instructions at the top include a point along the lines of "issues that affect only a single article do not belong here"? Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 19:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that the list is already of the size that it won't be read by many people. Could you suggest some bullet points to remove to make way for this one? And I note that it's just one editor, rather than "editors", but I happen to agree so I suppose the plural is correct now. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Very fair. Proposed speedy deletion criteria seems like an infrequent enough thing it could probably be removed (it's also something that is more likely to be done by at least moderately experienced editors, who will ideally know better than to use the pump for it). Ditto for new wikis. Proposed new articles could be wrapped into the single-article bullet point as a specific example (it's something more likely to be done by newcomers, so probably worth spelling out). (I was including my own unstated agreement when I made it plural, so that's now three of us.) Sdkb ^talk 20:55, 8 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Archive bot wasn't archiving my old multi-part thread even though the latest date on it was Sep 16, 2024.

I noticed the archive bot was missing some parts. I added the parts. I did not change the number of days (9d), or the archive size (300K). See diff.

See:

• User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo#Example 2: Incremental archives
• User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo#Parameters explained

Wait a day or two to see if archiving starts working again on its own.

If it starts working again, then remember these settings (change the counter as needed):

{{User:MiszaBot/config
| algo = old(9d)
| archive = Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive %(counter)d
| counter = 214
| maxarchivesize = 300K
| archiveheader = {{Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive header}} 
| minthreadstoarchive = 1
| minthreadsleft = 5
}}

--Timeshifter (talk) 15:35, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

It worked! Multi-part thread has just been archived. See diff. That was fast. It was a couple weeks overdue for archiving.

So the missing bot parts mattered. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Looking at the bot's documentation, it probably wasn't archiving because the default for minthreadstoarchive is 2 and minthreadsleft is 5. We'd have needed at least one more section created to be able to archive 2 and still leave 5. We might also have had to wait for a second thread to be ready to archive. Your edit changed minthreadstoarchive to 1, allowing your thread to be archived while still leaving 5 on the page. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

The bot archived 2 discussions on Sept 29, 2024. That was 13 days after the last post on Sept 16, 2024 in my multi-part thread that was just archived. So something else may be going on. I see you are a bot coder. Maybe you can figure it out.

The bot archived 3 discussions in Sept 26, 2024. So it can do 3 at a time. Or maybe it can only do a maximum amount of kilobytes at a time. Especially if it has to start a new archive. A good reason to change the default to minthreadstoarchive = 1.

By the way, the defaults are different in the 2 sections I linked. I picked the defaults I preferred from the 2 sections. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:55, 3 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

On September 29, it archived 2, leaving 5 to satisfy minthreadsleft. I also note your large thread contained a DNAU for September 21 from Special:Diff/1245780731, which would have been used as the last-"comment" date rather than September 16. The two archived were older than September 21, which is why they went.

I don't know if the bot has a maximum limit, but that's not relevant to anything that happened here. If you look at the bot's contribs, recently it archived 33 discussions in one edit (after someone set up archiving on the page).

User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo#Example 2: Incremental archives isn't showing defaults, it's showing an example config. But I don't care about minthreadstoarchive being 2 or 1. I just wanted to clarify that it was the changed setting rather than "missing bot parts" that "fixed" the archiving. Keep an eye on the New Page: Snakes Of Egypt section now, it's 11 days old now but still won't be archived until a new level-2 section is created due to minthreadsleft being 5. Anomie⚔ 11:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks. I see now. Also, the {{DNAU}} made things more difficult for me to understand. I see that the "defaults" listed in the table in the section linked below really are defaults, not just suggestions. So when a parameter is "missing" on a Village Pump page, it still works. Using the defaults in the table:

• User:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo#Parameters explained.

I hope we keep minthreadstoarchive = 1 on the Village Pump so that threads are archived sooner rather than later. I think the Village Pump page works better for all, the faster it loads. And when threads that have reached a natural end are archived sooner. Rather then being possibly restarted much later when the past participants may no longer be paying attention.

For others reading this, here is what was being used before:

{{User:MiszaBot/config
|archiveheader = {{Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive header}} 
|maxarchivesize = 300K
|counter = 214
|algo = old(9d)
|archive = Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive %(counter)d
}}

All I did was add:

| minthreadstoarchive = 1
| minthreadsleft = 5

--Timeshifter (talk) 18:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)Reply