Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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WikiData Orphan Articles

Hi everyone,

I am conducting research (for my Masters) on content-gaps related to orphan articles. I am doing my best with Wikidata, but I cannot seem to find the appropriate attribute or combination of attributes that would let me extract orphan articles.

For context: An orphan article is one that has no other articles referencing to it. (Wikipedia:Orphan)

Does anyone have any pointers?

So far, I am using following two lines of SPARQL to narrow down orphan articles, but when I check the resulting list of articles, any given article does have links when I look under What Links Here.

?article schema:about ?item .

?item wikibase:sitelinks ?linkcount .

FILTER (?linkcount = 0) MNSanchez (talk) 15:14, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is either Category:All_orphaned_articles or randomincategory.toolforge.org/All_orphaned_articles?site=en.wikipedia.org helpful to you? Peaceray (talk) 15:31, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peaceray! Thank you for the super quick response. I did look into this for the English Wikipedia. However, I need to extract the orphans from different languages. Spanish, for example does not use the categories for their orphans.

I have so far found a very inefficient way to do it... And I am hoping to get some help from the community to optimize this! (I posted it on Request A Query). If you have any advice. I would be very grateful. MNSanchez (talk) 14:04, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@MNSanchez to add to the comment above, you can't do this through Wikidata - that does not have any information about article to article links on individual wikis. Using "wikibase:sitelinks" will get you the number of links on Wikidata to individual language versions of that article (and any Wikidata item with sitelinks=0 would this presumably have no linked Wikipedia article)

You can get access to the individual wiki's link tables using Quarry - see eg this query for orphaned talkpages on mediawiki.org - but it might be more practical to identify them here as pages in Category:Orphaned articles, which is fairly up to date. Andrew Gray (talk) 09:13, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Andrew!

I actually did find a way to do it through Wikidata using the mwapi API in SPARQL. It works, but it is very slow and times out, which I am hoping to resolve with the help of the community (See here).

I am curious about Quarry. I will have to play around with it to get familiar with it because I have been spending all my energy into the SPARQL query I mentioned earlier. If you have any advice either regarding how to get started with Quarry or about the SPARQL query, I would appreciate it a lot!

Thank you! MNSanchez (talk) 14:09, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh interesting! Yes, I had forgotten the magic of invoking the API within a query. I think for this particular use case it will be impractical - just too many articles involved if you're needing to look at "all women". I'll follow up over there. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:37, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Israel Palestine articles have a sourcing problem

I feel like I/P articles have a very big issue of an excessive use of problematic sources, especially on less popular I/P articles. Usually these articles are either minor incidents from the ongoing Gaza war where the only reporting that is readily available is from problematic sources. The most common problematic sources are Al Jazeera English which is listen the Perennial sources page as biased on I/P and Middle East Eye which is 75% owned by the "former director for the Hamas-controlled Al-Quds TV" according to its Wikipedia Page. I could go ahead and try to change on of these articles but theres too many for me to get through, I feel like something more systematic and top down is needed. Denninithan (talk) 23:45, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You should probably get consensus before mass removing a generally reliable source. Perhaps others may disagree that the use of this source is a problem. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:37, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Where would I even go to get consensus on something like that, I haven't really spent much time on the policies side of wikipedia usually I just write stuff. Denninithan (talk) 01:53, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it is about a particular use of a source, the article talk page is the place. If it is about then general use of a source, it is WP:RSN. However, before you start a section on a source at RSN you should read the previous discussions about those sources at RSN and also look at their entry in WP:RSP. If you don't have more to offer than was already discussed, you might consider whether restarting the same discussion again with the same evidence has a chance of a different outcome. Zero^talk 03:07, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are there Israeli sources that you think may have the "excessive use" and "problematic" features from the ongoing Gaza war? I ask because the reporting environment in Israel is quite difficult right now in terms of reporting restrictions. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:06, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's important to remember that it's officially okay for sources to be biased (WP:RSBIASED). The goal is for Wikipedia editors to behave in an unbiased way, so that the result is an article in which Wikipedia editors have fairly and proportionately presented the views of all the reliable sources – including biased reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:33, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 - Call for Candidates

More languages • Please help translate to other languages.

Hello all,

The call for candidates for the 2025 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees selection is now open from June 17, 2025 – July 2, 2025 at 11:59 UTC [1]. The Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia Foundation's work, and each Trustee serves a three-year term [2]. This is a volunteer position.

This year, the Wikimedia community will vote in late August through September 2025 to fill two (2) seats on the Foundation Board. Could you – or someone you know – be a good fit to join the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees? [3]

Learn more about what it takes to stand for these leadership positions and how to submit your candidacy on this Meta-wiki page or encourage someone else to run in this year's election.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair of the Elections Committee

On behalf of the Elections Committee and Governance Committee

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Call_for_candidates

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Bylaws#(B)_Term.

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Resources_for_candidates

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:43, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

During the last round, I wrote m: User:WhatamIdoing/Board candidates to describe my view of what's needed and often missing in Board candidates. Specifically, editors from this community tend to look at the board as "How do I get an admin from the English Wikipedia elected?" IMO we need to be thinking more like "How do I get someone who can read a balance sheet elected?" Being able to run WP:AWB does not make you suited to working on a committee, or to allocating a US$175,000,000 budget. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Paid editors question

If I suspect that certain editors are undisclosed paid editors, what is the best way to handle that without causing undue drama? Nosferattus (talk) 16:20, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure § Reporting undisclosed paid editors and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Conflict of interest reports for steps to take. isaacl (talk) 16:56, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Percentage of edits (yearly and total) made by members of each user group

Is there a way to compile this info from the existing statistics? I am curious about the proportion of edits from each group (anonymous, autoconfirmed, extended confirmed, etc.) CVDX (talk) 23:10, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@CVDX, I suggest that you ask at Wikipedia:Request a query, and then put the answer in Wikipedia:Wikipedians (and/or other pages) so other editors will be able to find the answer later. You might need to make a few more decisions (e.g., whether you want to check only the article space, what about bots, what about AWB/Twinkle/scripts, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia? is another page that might be appropriate for your results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The analytics team maintains a denormalized dataset which I think has what you need to do this, although you'll probably need their help to set up the appropriate Hadoop job. I'd start by getting in touch with them via their contact page RoySmith (talk) 00:14, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. It looks like they have an easy way of figuring out what groups a user was in at a given time, which is difficult to do from the live database replicas for a single user and entirely impractical to do in bulk. —Cryptic 01:34, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a document on editor retention in function of account age

I'm 90% it was the product of a WMF project. IIRC: It was shaped like a triangle of squares, colored from green to red. One of the axises was the year/month of account creation; the other was, for a given date, the probability that the account was still active. I came past it around march of this year, but I can't find it anymore. Does that ring a bell to anyone? Thanks, — Alien 3
3 3 17:07, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it https://retention.toolforge.org/enwiki? I previously put a link to it under Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention § Resources so I could find it again. isaacl (talk) 17:39, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks you very much. That's exactly what I was looking for. :) — Alien 3
3 3 18:58, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Follow up discussion on ITN

In the recent RfC on the fate of ITN, the closers suggested a follow up RfC in 6 months (July 2025) as to whether ITN should be abolished. I am starting a discussion now so that we can take a look at what, if anything, has changed within the last 6 months. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:28, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notified: [[Wikipedia talk:In the news]]. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:29, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My perspective is the same it's always been - I'm an impassioned "no" on getting rid of ITN or making the changes that have generally been suggested for the section. In fact, I actually think much better about the state of ITN lately. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:05, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That prior discussion (from 6months ago), is the usual result when there are seemingly odd decisions at ITN about what to post or not post that come up every once in a while. Since then, while there's been a few couple similar incidents, I'm not seeing anything that suggests that there needs to be any change here. That prior argument on abolishing ITN is just one of those knee-jerk reactions that I don't think really still has legs now. ITN is not perfect, by any means, but the step to abolish it is just too far. Masem (t) 19:07, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still opposed to "abolishing" ITN. As an editor who occasionally checks the main page (with From today's featured article and In the news being the only two sections that I read or skim over) and who isn't involved with the behind-the-scenes stuff of ITN, ITN seems pretty much the same as it did six months ago. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Some1 (talk) 19:41, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. You'll have to remind me what the arguments for abolishing it are. If it's because it's toxic, well I'd rather do something to fix the toxicity than scrap a major part of the main page. It's also a good funnel for getting new editors involved, such as when I got an ITN in 2010: User talk:Novem Linguae/Archive 1#ITN: 2010 cargo plane bomb plot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:01, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ITN should be canned as it is still quite dysfunctional. Just look at its current state – it's got nothing about the Iran-Israel conflict even though this is all over the news. Instead, it's leading on a hockey game that happened days ago. This pathetic productivity arises because of poor attendance. There was just one nomination today and that has had zero responses. That's because it's another sporting event that few are interested in. Yesterday there was just a single RD nomination and that only got one response and so hasn't been actioned. The day before that there were zero nominations.
You have to go back four days to find a nomination that's getting any attention. That's about the hot topic of Iran-Israel but seems stuck too. The latest comment plaintively asks, "what's taking so long?"
So, the big problem is that ITN's process just doesn't work. Every other main page section posts new content every day, regular as clockwork. ITN is supposed to be the most topical and timely but it isn't. This is not a fundamental difficulty because the Portal:Current events posts lots of fresh news content every day. The problem is that ITN has dysfunctional processes which prevent it getting things done. It has had years to reform but the incumbents with power are in denial. It should therefore be deprecated so that alternatives can be tried.
Andrew🐉(talk) 20:12, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1) news of major significance does not happen every single day, and 2) quality is still a requirement which is what holds up most nominations that are otherwise agreed on. Neither of those can be changed (the first we can't control, and the second is a requirement of the main page) Masem (t) 23:14, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The US strikes on Iran are today's major news. Portal:Current events posted the article American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites about an hour after they happened. ITN has a nomination which doesn't seem to be arriving at a clear conclusion or paying any attention to quality. Ice hockey is the ITN lead for another day. Andrew🐉(talk) 06:20, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a newspaper, and since there's a requirement for quality for a featured article link, we're not going to rush a breaking story until there's consensus to post. (and fwiw, the last events in Iran did get posted about 12 hr after its nomination) If just want to push out breaking news stories, go to Wikinews which is built for that purpose. Masem (t) 12:56, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A bit of patience goes a long way. Both the American strikes on Iran, as well as the Israel-Iran Ongoing link are now live. What more do you want? Reaching consensus takes its time and sometimes quality issues prevent a quick posting. Khuft (talk) 13:47, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, being an internet encyclopedia that is editable by anyone at any time leads to us having articles on current events as they happen. And as such people like coming here to find them. I'm not convinced that this process should be removed from the main page. I am also OK with it "lagging behind" major news outlets -- we aren't journalists presenting breaking news. We simply are sharing newly minted encyclopedia articles about recent events, not a live feed of what is happening minute by minute. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 02:34, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I asked above if anything had changed in the last 6 months given the calls for reform in the last RfC. I didn't intend to start an RfC now and I don't think bolded !votes are helpful at this point. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:49, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I attend ITN regularly and haven't noticed any significant structural change in the last six months. The news during this period has been dominated by the Trump administration's "flooding the zone". ITN has posted very little of it as there are many ITN regulars who seem averse to US news. Andrew🐉(talk) 06:25, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest starting an RfC now (if you plan to initiate one in the near future), because this discussion is starting to devolve into a general complaint thread about ITN. Some1 (talk) 12:56, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure where you see that... there are currently two users complaining about ITN, with all the others thinking it's fine. Khuft (talk) 14:40, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. It also hasn't been six months yet (and I'm also not inclined to start the RfC exactly at 6 months since that would be in the middle of the summer). I'm starting this discussion now so that editors can present evidence and maybe we can come to some sort of assessment of what's happening at ITN and figure out if there are ways to fix things without the nuclear option. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:07, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, ITN still uses editor's feelings to decide what's "significant", providing readers with incredibly visible content that's unbalanced in a way we try to prevent elsewhere on the project. It still encourages the creation of articles about random news stories themselves as opposed to updating articles about notable subjects. And it still occupies space that could be used to showcase higher quality content or a panel that recruits new editors directly. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:47, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No need to re-hash that old discussion, or to launch an RfC. Some people will never be happy with ITN. But I'm with User:Masem and User:DarkSide830 on this. ITN has been running pretty smoothly, recently. Khuft (talk) 13:51, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not asking to rehash the old discussion. I'm asking for a 6 month update. Masem, DarkSide, etc. have their views, but characterizing the previous critiques of ITN as annoyance with seemingly odd decisions and knee-jerk reactions is quite dismissive. The issue here is that a large plurality of editors found ITN to be operating outside of the usual rules of consensus, so much so that the closers noted that there was no consensus to even keep ITN around. You can all continue to say ITN is doing fine, but I think honest reflection on what the rest of the community has said about ITN would be more valuable. If that's not possible from the ITN regulars, we may very well be on the path to abolishing ITN. voorts (talk/contributions) 15:09, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Except that this is what has happened for as long as I've been contributing at ITNC; something does or doesn't get posted, someone yells the system is broken, and while a few times this has let to meaningful change (the RD system, where any notable death is automatically considered for the RD line), most of the time its just ends up that it works by consensus, and at times consensus can be fallible, and then life goes on. Masem (t) 15:33, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I know a couple of editors are enthusiastic about getting rid of ITN, but is that what the millions of casual readers want? For the "community" to get rid of ITN? The main page receives ~5 mil page views daily[1]; it would be great if the WMF could conduct a survey to gather feedback/insight from casual (non-editing) readers on what they would like to see on the main page. Their input on this is, IMO, far more valuable than that of editors. (And I can't help but think that the vast majority of these casual readers have no issues with having ITN on the main page or with ITN itself.) We should also keep in mind that what we, as editors, want or don't want on the main page may not necessarily align with the preferences of casual readers. Some1 (talk) 16:26, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A survey would be interesting, and I suspect that ITN would see a decent amount of support just because it's the status quo. But if a survey were to happen, I'd also want to see whether readers think it's representative of the most relevant news in the world, what types of things it covers too much, and what they feel it doesn't cover enough. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 16:40, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I highly doubt readers want a newsfeed curated based on vibes where the only news that's shown are accidents/storm deaths, wars, elections, and random awards and sporting events. Even if they did, readers can't help with the way that ITN operates, which is what most editors take issue with. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:21, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"the way ITN operates"--That's a separate issue from "abolishing" or getting rid of ITN altogether. Editors can always propose ideas for improvement on the WP:ITN talk page (or here at the Village Pump, too). Some1 (talk) 17:36, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please see the RfC I linked to above. There were proposals for changing the ITN rules. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:00, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know, I participated in that RfC (my !vote was only regarding the "abolishment" of ITN; I didn't have opinions on the other two proposals as I don't participate in the behind-the-scenes stuff of ITN). Am I sympathetic to the editors who suggested those ideas and then had to see those proposals fail? Sure. But there must be more ideas to improve how ITN operates beyond those two proposals, right? Some1 (talk) 18:17, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any suggestions? What would you like to see change at ITN? voorts (talk/contributions) 20:10, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good questions to ask those who have complaints about or want to get rid of ITN (neither of which applies to me); but I'm actually curious now in hearing suggestions from those who do feel this way and what ideas/changes they have in mind (changes that don't involve simply removing ITN, please). Is there anything specific you'd like to see changed at ITN, Voorts? (asking because I see that you'd !voted to abolish ITN at the RfC) Some1 (talk) 22:00, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Articles posted on ITN should be required to follow GNG (which requires secondary sources, not just breaking news) and editors' subjective opinions on importance should be subject to WP:DISCARD when determining consensus. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:47, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think consensus is measured differently at ITN? I have faith in the Admins that regularly rule and post that, in general, they apply the rules in the same way as they do on other parts of the site. (I would also point out that in the vast majority of cases consensus is pretty obvious. It's the handful of controversial cases that end up ruffling feathers elsewhere.) Khuft (talk) 23:14, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you trying to convince me that subjective analysis of "significance" isn't used when determining consensus at ITN? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:46, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Every ITN item is posted (or not) based on editors' subjective opinions on importance; there'd be nothing to judge if they were discarded. (example comment from an admin on how ITN operates) Even the ITNR items have such a status through a consensus of editors' subjective opinions on importance at the ITN talk page. Most of the posted events with stand-alone articles likely satisfy GNG at some point, but it's usually impossible for the requisite secondary coverage to emerge so soon after it occurs. Left guide (talk) 00:32, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then either find a way to determine posting based on sourcing or article quality, or abolish ITN. And delete any articles about events that haven't already received requisite secondary coverage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 01:21, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So here we are, re-hashing the same discussion we had last time. Please refer to my comments then. Seems like a waste of my time to "present evidence and maybe we can come to some sort of assessment of what's happening at ITN and figure out if there are ways to fix things without the nuclear option" when the Inquisition has already made up its mind. Khuft (talk) 17:46, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fair. I'd be happy to discuss what's been happening at ITN for the past 6 months. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:12, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That 5 million figure for the main page is a complex artifact which doesn't represent ITN's actual readership. I often check the readership stats for topics in the news and my experience is that an ITN posting attracts about 10,000 readers/day. Most casual readers won't even know that ITN exists as the bulk of the traffic for topics in the news is driven by search engines such as Google. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:46, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No section of the main page is meant to drive views. It is meant to highlight quality work that might be of interest to readers that start at the main page, so that will mean featured articles will likely see increased traffic from the main page, but its silly to pretend that readers go to the main page and then try to navigate without any searching to find a topic of interest they actually want. So we should absolutely not care about the impact on pageviews due to an item being features in ITN. Masem (t) 17:58, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I reject the premise entirely. There is no single type of reader. Trying to say that readers collectively behave a certain way, or that they do or don't want something, will almost always give an unhelpful result. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 18:05, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have come to believe ITN should function more like RD with much less room to keep something out based on a super-notability judgement, with the main driver being article quality. I'm not exactly sure how that would work, but we shouldn't fear posting something that isn't top level headline news around the world. It is very toxic which is partially why I'm not there as much as I used to be. 331dot (talk) 18:12, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]