Talk:Should Wikipedia essays be moved out of Wikipedia namespace?

@Dan Polansky: The official policy has flaws but it wouldn't be terrible if it were enforced uniformly and honestly. Part of the problem with having so many pseudo-policies is that it allows wikipedia to advertise itself in one way and behave in another. These essays are often cited as if they were policy. Some of them aren't even compatible with the official policy. Consider this part from w:WP:NPA, which is official policy: "[...] but some types of comments are never acceptable: [...] Comparing editors to Nazis, terrorists, dictators, or other infamous persons.". Yet w:WP:NONAZIS is frequently used to do just that. I'm sure some on the receiving end deserve their block, but in any case "nazi" is a defamatory label of judgement. Clear cut violation of unambiguous official policy, yet on the talk page it's endorsed by a list of users, many of which are sysops or have other privileges, though I didn't go through the whole list. An admin or sysop should not and need not cite such an essay. Just as bad if not worse, w:WP:NOTHERE is often used as a perfunctory catch-all instead of citing a specific part of the official policy. These are both easily abused. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:22, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

These pseudo-policy articles wouldn't be regularly cited by sysops/admins if the administration didn't fully condone the practice. I've entertained the idea of starting an RfC on meta about it. Pointing out such hypocrisies doesn't usually endear one to sysops and admins (much less the signatories I mentioned above, some of whom seem especially vindictive toward anyone who explodes their half-baked rhetoric and frequent realizations of Godwin's law) but it's still the right thing to do. Again, I'm sure most (but not all) of the users who are blocked on grounds of NOTHERE or NONAZIS well deserved it, but I'm equally confident that those who deserved it had violated some official policy as well. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 14:20, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd even prefer they change that part of WP:NPA to say "it is, however, fine to call someone a nazi if you feel the situation warrants it" and make WP:NONAZIS and WP:NOTHERE official policy, rather than treating official policy as if it were nothing more than marketing material while enforcing a different set of rules that they don't fully own up to. That would at least be honest, albeit stupid. It would also undermine the moral alibi of those who call people they disagree with "nazis" while still acting like they're taking the high road and not just mudslinging. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 17:48, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

One last note, or perhaps a question: what does moving them out of mainspace have to do with anything? The problem is that they're applied as policy, sometimes even in contravention of actual policy. Their particular location seems immaterial. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 21:50, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

About the last note: there is quite a difference between referring e.g. to Wikipedia:BLUDGEON and User:Joe/BLUDGEON, isn't there?

Sure enough, the convenient shortcuts to mere essays should ideally be deleted, or else, formal consensus should ideally be established that these mere "essays" are actually approved as essays and fit for purpose (which many of them are not). The problem is not with the word "essay"; the problem is with there being a huge number of pages that claim to be unvetted and yet are used as policies, stating countless absurdities, contradictions, etc. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:01, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair point. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 12:51, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: You know Dan, I think an easier way to address this is to require each admin, sysop, etc. to at least cite the offending diff and whatever part of the official policy it violates. They should already be required to do this. If you think about it, it's entirely bizarre that a user can be blocked, even blocked for life, without the policy/rules ever being cited and without any offending diff ever being cited. I can't see how this wouldn't encourage abuse. (For example, just look how sloppy they are on my metawiki talk page. I had been blocked for a month. [1] I really didn't do anything wrong here. If you look at the RfD I was participating in, my 'offense' was apparently going off topic. They don't cite the conversation because it clearly was on-topic and they'd look like thugs. Read the appeal and look at the "off topic" conversation in question (which I cite, along with official policy.) It would take just a few seconds for the admin/sysop to include this information. Imagine if police could get away with acting like this. Actually we don't have to imagine. History provides plenty of examples, and they're quite ugly. Also, users should generally not be locked out of their talk page unless their talk page edits violate the TOS or are really bad. This will help encourage a public appeal process. From what I've seen and experienced, public appeals on talk pages are rarely successful, particularly if one argues they should not have been blocked in the first place. The Unblock Ticket Request System is a user's only recourse after they have been blocked from their talk page and the process does not occur in public. I can only imagine most of these are rejected and locked without any serious consideration of the appeal (if they aren't ignored entirely). Sure, admins/sysops can blow off a talk page appeal, or reject it out of hand. My Wiktionary appeal has been ignored for months. (The blocking sysop TheKnightWho, (whose name I'm sorely tempted to finish with any number of choice phrases and words) and also to a lesser extent -sche, were badly abusive and outright sabotaged one of my entries. Read the appeal if you're interested. I also wrote an essay [2] about the sabotaged entry, in order to have a proper definition of the term and explain why some of the existing definitions are useless/nonsensical) Yet at least talk page appeals are public. If the user's appeal isn't dealt with fairly, then at least it can be cited as an example of admin misconduct or whatever the term is. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 22:02, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

PS, requiring the blocking sysop to cite diff(s) and relevant policy, both in the block log summary and the recipients talk page (most importantly the block log), is partly also for the sake of observers. Having this info on record allows an observer to quickly and easily make an assessment. It would be much more obvious when a sysop/admin is abusing or otherwise misusing their tools. It would also make it possible to collect data in aggregate and use NLP techniques and statistics. Otherwise it can be quite inconvenient for an uninvolved user (or researcher, or journalist) to determine what rule was broken and where for a given block, and practically impossible to gather a large sample of this information. It's as if the rules are virtually designed to enable admin abuse. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 03:00, 10 May 2024 (UTC)