Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not

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WT:NOT

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59: 30 days

The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Please review policy editing recommendations before making any substantive change to this page. Always remember to keep cool when editing, and don't panic.

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

This page has been mentioned by a media organization:

Dewey, Caitlin (November 5, 2015). "The most fascinating Wikipedia articles you haven't read". Washington Post.

Topic: Galleries (November 2005–January 2006)
Topic: Newspaper Articles (May–July 2007)
Topic: Unencyclopedic (2003)
Topic: Trivia (July–October 2007)

"WP:NOTFANDOM" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect WP:NOTFANDOM to this page has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 November 22 § WP:NOTFANDOM until a consensus is reached. 67.209.128.85 (talk) 16:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mention of summary style in nutshell

The nutshell summary says "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a summary-style reference work that does not aim to contain all the information, data or expression known on every subject." Wikipedia:Summary style is about splitting out subtopics into separate articles and the relation between these child articles and their parent article. I don't see its relevance here. The nutshell summary seems to have in mind something more like WP:OR, in it's guidance on summarizing existing sources and its claim that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. I'm inclined to remove the wikilink and possibly rewrite this statement entirely. Thoughts? Daask (talk) 11:17, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't agree that that particular part of the nutshell is intending to refer to OR - it's more that not every fact warrants inclusion. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:39, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we remove the "And finally" section?

it has no place in wikipedia and it shouldn't even exist in the first place 37.210.71.142 (talk) 12:35, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

makes no sense to remove. It's a catchall that NOT cannot enumerate everything WP is not. Masem (t) 13:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

its just unfunny jokes if you checked it out, humorous essays shouldn't be part of main policies 37.210.71.142 (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about removing the whole "And finally" section, since it has been on this page for at least a decade now (though I don't think anything of value will be lost if the section does get removed). But I agree that policy pages shouldn't link to "humorous" essays or essays that haven't been thoroughly vetted by the community, so I've removed the links from that section. Some1 (talk) 00:22, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of a requested redirect from Wikipedia:Misuse of Wikipedia to here

The redirect request can be found on Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects#Redirect request: Wikipedia:Misuse of Wikipedia. 67.209.128.136 (talk) 03:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comments: in cases of a large numbers of religious celebrations in a religious calendar (e.g., feast day of saints), can they all be listed in a non-list WP article?

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An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following lists:

Religion and philosophy
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This RfC concerns the WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:NOTGUIDE policies.

Presently, there are numerous WP articles of religious calendars that list the full list of celebrations, feast day of saints, etc., without those articles being WP:Stand-alone lists.

The pages concerned, from what I have found, are: Tridentine calendar, General Roman Calendar, General Roman Calendar of 1954, General Roman Calendar of 1960, Institutional and societal calendars of the Roman Rite, National calendars of the Roman Rite, Personal jurisdiction calendars of the Roman Rite, Calendar of saints (Lutheran), Calendar of saints (Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil), Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Australia), Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada), Calendar of saints (Church in Wales), Calendar of saints (Scottish Episcopal Church), Calendar of saints (Armenian Apostolic Church), Calendar of saints (Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui) (and previously Mysterii Paschalis).

My question for which I request comments is: is putting these long lists of religious feasts in those articles a violation of WP:NOTDIRECTORY or WP:NOTGUIDE, and if it so happens that they are a violation then what should be done with these lists? Veverve (talk) 18:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. In my opinion, this isn't a significant problem. It looks to me (I haven't checked every page listed) like the pages are about encyclopedic topics that are reliably sourced. They are not unreasonable when viewed as embedded lists, as opposed to standalone list pages. As long as there is also paragraph-based text that is sufficiently sourced to establish notability, and to provide a context for the information that is listed, that takes those pages out of the realm of stuff that is simply an indiscriminate list of information of unclear encyclopedic relevance. I see that some of them have only a very brief lead section, and are tagged for needing improvements; these are the most problematic, but they can likely be fixed by further editing. (Those should either be revised into actual list pages, or be revised with more context in the form of paragraph text.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can't really see a problem. They are certainly list-like, and could be converted to lists, but what's the gain? I don't see either policy being breached. Johnbod (talk) 04:35, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are functionally lists based on their current content. They don't have to have "List" in the title. Adumbrativus (talk) 07:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Addition to WP:NOTDICTIONARY

I propose to add the following bullet (4) to the WP:NOTDICTIONARY entry:

Wikipedia is not a multilingual dictionary. Articles should not include lists of translations of the topic into multiple languages, whether the topic is an object (apple = French pomme), a concept (wisdom = French sagesse), a culinary dish, or a proverb (You can't have your cake and eat it = French Vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre). If there is something encyclopedic to say about the different versions, such as etymology, then of course the name in other languages is relevant. Variants of the meaning should not be grouped by language, but by meaning. If a culinary preparation has no common name in English (e.g. kashk), then it is reasonable to include the variant names in the lead.

Discussion? --Macrakis (talk) 19:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To some extent this seems to stand in contradiction to Wikipedia:Gazetteer, which would suggest that we should list the names for places in languages significant to that place as a gazetteer would be expected to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a contradiction with WP:Gazetteer, which is about what places to mention. But MOS:ALTNAME is relevant for placenames. It says that we should include "significant alternative names", although that isn't elaborated on there (I think it is somewhere else, though). The significant names certainly include the name of a place in its own language (Deutschland), the name of the place under significant previous rulers (the Ottoman Turkish names for most places in Greece and the Balkans), and the name of the place in the languages of large populations which have lived there in the past (e.g. the South Slavic and Judeo-Spanish names of Thessaloniki). On the other hand, we don't include the German names for Poland (Polen) or Greece (Griechenland) despite Germany's occupation (and partial annexation in the case of Poland) of those countries during WWII.

In any case, those policies are about placenames. For other topics, other approaches make more sense. For example, the Beef_Stroganoff#Around_the_world section mentions local names along with the local variants in Brazil etc. In the Straw that broke the camel's back, article, we say (I admit that I wrote this): "The image of the last drop is also found in many other languages", leaving the exact words to the sources in the several footnotes. This contrasts with You can't have your cake and eat it, where User:Drmies removed -- correctly in my view -- a long list of translations or equivalents of the expression (many without sources). --Macrakis (talk) 21:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any examples showing how this change would have a practical effect? I presume the aim is to limit text appearing in an article? Or is to limit what articles should exist? There can't be a policy that lists every bad idea. Johnuniq (talk) 01:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]