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This forum is for discussion closers to discuss their evaluation of consensus in preparation for closing specific discussions, such as pending XfD, RM, or RfC closes. Any editor who intends to close a discussion, and has concerns about how consensus in that discussion should be assessed is welcome to initiate a discussion here.

Please note that this is not a place to discuss the merits of the underlying matter. It is solely for discussing whether a consensus can be discerned in a discussion, and how the discussion should be closed on the basis of a finding of consensus, or of an absence of consensus. Editors who are involved in discussions of the merits should generally avoid engaging in extensive discussion of how consensus in those discussions should be interpreted.

This is also not a venue for review of discussions that have already been closed; the appropriate place for such a request will generally be Wikipedia:Move review or Wikipedia:Deletion review. This forum is also not for requests that a discussion be closed; the appropriate place for such a request will generally be Wikipedia:Closure requests.

I'm confident in my read of the consensus here but much less confident in how I've phrased my close. There are very few guidelines on how to write closing summaries so I'm looking for some feedback on my close here. I understand there's quite a bit of leeway in closing summaries, but I'm still concerned my close might be too long (?) or might lack enough detail (?) or might fail to address key points (?). I would very much appreciate a second pair of eyes on this. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 19:27, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

@Freedom4U, thanks for doing this. I glanced over the discussion, which has 199 comments from 40 editors, but I did not read it. Overall, I think you did a good job. I'll start with two small weaknesses, neither of which seem like they would have any effect on the outcome:

It is possible that your summary could be faulted – though I would expect this only from editors who feel they "lost" and are grasping at straws in the hope that WP:Close challenge would let them "win" – for saying that past precedent that has not been codified in an official written rule is less important than the written rules, citing Wikipedia:Consensus can change. However, Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and WP:NOTBURO disagree, with the latter saying "the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice".

It is also possible that your statement that brand-new accounts were discounted could be challenged. That is something the community routinely does, especially in smaller discussions, but it often prefers that to pretend that everyone is equal on wiki.

I particularly like your line that "arguments based on verifiability alone were given less weight over points that considered the weight and context of sources". I think this is a good way to explain the limitations of what amounts to a Wikipedia:Search engine test in this particular case. Context matters a lot in this case, and I agree with you the keyword-based attempts at source analysis were weak on that point.

I'm also glad that you mentioned the vote count, because I feel like that is important to less-experienced (or less-indoctrinated) editors. People who mistrust an analysis on the basis of argument strength can often accept that they have lost the majority vote, so when the two align, it seems like a good idea to mention both.

Again, overall, I think you did a good job with the closing statement, and I hope that will bring some resolution to that article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to do this and for the points brought up here. In the future, how do you think I should address arguments that only point to other articles when closing discussions? My understanding is that the community generally views these sorts of arguments as weak, given simply pointing to other articles doesn't mean there is an official or unofficial consensus (e.g. articles can be changed anytime by anyone, individual contexts are always different, a lack of discussion does not necessarily imply consensus, etc.).

Your second point is also helpful, I think I've misinterpreted a suggestion to discount these users in some cases, to instead be a rule. Although I noticed that there was a discussion about potential sockpuppetry in the last RfC on the article page, there probably wasn't any good reason for me to say that. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 20:46, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there is a single ideal way to handle either of these situations. "Pointing to other articles" can be a case of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS ("He broke the rules, so I should get to break the rules, too") or a demonstration of precedence ("We have a lot of similar articles, and most of them...").

For example, one of the first comments in that RFC is me giving an example of an article about an doctor infamously convicted of murdering multiple patients, followed by an editor saying that having a nursing license is the most important point, so we should follow the example shown in some other articles. Which example should we follow? I don't know; we didn't pursue it. If we had, I might have said that in a third of his six examples, the murderer's status as a nurse was irrelevant, that half of them involved Americans (so a possible AmEng/BrEng difference), a third of them involved men, etc., but I probably would have found the article on Beverley Allitt to be very similar, and therefore its approach worth considering.

OTOH, neither of us attempted to establish that there was a single preferred style in use. If that could be demonstrated, then that should be accepted as a sign of what the community's usual practice is. For example, we can demonstrate that infoboxes are more common now than they used to be, and they are nearly universal for certain subject areas (e.g., athletes, chemicals, species). So if someone said "All the other articles about this exact subject area have infoboxes", then that would be an indication of the community's usual practices, rather than a case of OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.

The Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry problem is easier if someone makes a big stink about possible socks during the discussion. In that situation, I think the main job is to reassure the participants that you have not been hoodwinked. (In particular, I think some editors are gratified when we can reassure them that the possible socks wasted their time, because the result would be the same either way – your line about "Both before and after discounting" is very good for that.) When the facts are ambiguous, I don't know what to advise. I suspect that the answer is that no matter what you do (or don't do), someone will likely think it was the wrong decision. I also suspect that so long as you do something that feels reasonable and proportionate, it will be supported by the rest of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I've now closed two discussions that are rather contentious, and I'd like if someone could look over them really quickly to make sure I'm not making some obvious mistake that a more experienced closer would avoid. Talk:List of U.S. executive branch czars#RFC Proposal: Kamala Harris as "border czar" in the Biden administration and Talk:Imane Khelif/Archive 4#RfC lead. If anyone wants to take a closer look, I have my notes for the list of U.S. czars discussion and my notes for the Imane Khelif discussion. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:56, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien you did a good job and it was not easy to weed though everything. No matter what you did someone is going to be upset or displeased. I did't see anything wildly out of place. Here are some notes from the two for you, these are just my opinion and if I'm wrong about something I welcome feedback on the feedback (we're getting real meta now).

• List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars you made the right call. I'm not really seeing consensus and even if someone leaned towards option 1 it has the same effect as not finding consensus. The more options there are the harder it is to get consensus and I don't have a good way of untangling everything. My only very minor comment would be not to mention votes since that's not how things are decided but given how large the discussion is I see how it makes it a little easier to sort of what was going on.
• Imane Khelif again you made the right call for the two major points that were brought up. I think the "assigned female a birth" took awhile to gain consensus but it showed that consensus does work it just needs time and a willingness to work though the process. I noticed that there were a lot of newer/less experience editors in the discussion which might have explained the discourse a bit. Same note as above about voting, I get why you mentioned it and it's not a big deal. Also the work you put into this with documenting is important and shows you really put a lot of work into it. BLP are sensitive and I am often much more conservative/play it safe when evaluating these types of articles.

Dr vulpes (Talk) 19:59, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I think that mentioning votes can be helpful, particularly in 'no consensus' cases. It can reassure people that a slight majority was duly taken notice of (and perhaps prevent someone from wasting time at Wikipedia:Close review). TBUA, if you end up closing a similar discussion in the future, I prefer describing the votes towards the end of the summary, like you did in the second RFC. That might help less experienced people understand that the arguments are primary, and the votes are confirmatory evidence rather than primary.

Another thing that I think is helpful, if you don't feel like tallying votes is relevant, is to give some idea of the volume of the conversation. There were 96 comments from 35 editors in the second RFC. That's enough that we should consider the matter well and truly Discussed™, even if every editor had a different opinion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I haven't read either of the discussions, but both of your closes are concise, well-structured, and make clear that you are weighing arguments rather than conducting a vote count. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:35, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I am preparing to close this discussion and feel a little outside my experience, so I would be grateful for feedback. It is clear that the community overwhelmingly prefers option A; it is also clear that Buidhe has articulated a serious policy objection that requires careful consideration.

I think there remain difficult questions about whether this work is public domain both in France and the United States despite the relevant Commons discussions. On the French side, it seems unclear that this work meets the criteria necessary to enter the public domain 70 years after publication. The information box asserts that the author is anonymous, but I see no indication of this at the source, and while the identity of the author is unknown today, this is quite distinct from the real requirement: that their identity must never have been disclosed. This is more difficult to establish, and I see no compelling arguments establishing it. On the American side, I am dubious that {{PD-US-alien property}} applies. It is clear that the image in question is a colored version of https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10336769n/f25.item, and while it is plausible that the Vichy government held the copyright to the original photo (though this remains unproven), I doubt the French government colored it, and I suspect that coloring a black and white photograph is sufficiently creative to grant a derivative copyright (although input on this point would be appreciated) which the US government would not have seized.

So I think those considerations are sufficient to, at minimum, establish reasonable doubt as to the public domain status of the work. Buidhe contended that this is sufficient to bar its use, which sounds correct, but much to my surprise, I cannot find a clear articulation anywhere in English Wikipedia policy of an equivalent to Commons' precautionary principle. Am I just missing it? If it isn't there, is it reasonable to say that this is an oversight and we ought, out of proper deference to the law, to behave as though it were policy? Input on these questions and everything else I've expressed is appreciated. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:23, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

You're not missing it; we don't have a matching rule. It doesn't usually matter, because Commons has the rule, which then affects us.

I wonder if you would rather join the conversation instead of writing the closing summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Compassionate727, if you're still working on a closing summary, I think you could write a summary that says something like "Editors prefer X", and if the preferred one happens to be the one for which the copyvio concern was raised, add something like "Obviously, if editors later conclude that X is a copyvio, then we can't use that, and..." (the clear second choice would be Y, or editors will need to have another discussion). You could also add links to the relevant discussions at Commons, briefly note their conclusions, and recommend that anyone who is concerned about the copyright situation follow up on that in some suitable forum. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I have decided to follow your original advice and vote. Given the policy and legal issues, I believe it would have been within my prerogative as a closer to find a consensus against using this image... but I don't really want to deal with the drama that might ensue. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 11:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

This would have been the route I would taken. The editor who created the RFC is now topic banned from infobox discussions so I doubt there's going to be much drama about the close. Nemov (talk) 14:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Had I closed the discussion the way I wanted to, I could legitimately have been accused of supervoting. I don't know that I would've been—that depends on how passionate and procedurally literate the participants are—but... well, sometimes it's better to be humble, take a step back, and let others do things too. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 18:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations on finding a way out of that. I think you're right: there was an above-average risk of drama. This way, you are helping shape the consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

7In theory, Wikipedia discussions (RfCs, XfDs, et cetera) are generally meant to litigate content and process, not reality. But in practice, an RfC (especially one about about what specific language some article should say) often ends up dictating what an article claims to be true or false, e.g. as close as we can get to the project's "official opinion". That is to say, RfCs will conclude that an article must say some factual claim, or it must not say it, or whatever -- implying that it is true or false.

Usually, when some factual issue is determined by RfC, it is some difficult and subjective issue, like whether some movie had "mixed" or "negative" reception, or whether someone is a "writer" or a "commentator", or whether they are "Canadian-British" or "British-Canadian", or some other jibber-jabber where it is virtually impossible for an objective clear-cut determination of whether it's one or the other.

But are people allowed to just consense whatever?

Like, for example, if a RfC at Talk:Jupiter was overwhelmingly (e.g. 50 to 10) in favor of saying in the lead that "Jupiter is the smallest planet in the Solar System" -- what the hell happens then? Must we put this in the lead?

Assume, arguendo, that the RfC went completely by the book: people brought up the sources, and every commenter said something to the effect of "I looked at all the sources but they were unconvincing and unreliable for the claims", and nobody broke any rules in the course of the discussion (apart from this brief insanity they are model editors).

Is there any remedy for this, other than "someone has to wait a few months and start another RfC and hope those 50 people have stopped being insane"? jp×g🗯️ 06:36, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

The answer to the titular question is that there are some limits to consensus (for example, you cannot decide on Article A to do ____, and then announce that this is a consensus for all articles instead of just Article A). There are also varying strengths of consensus (e.g., compare "Let's try that as a baby step in the right direction" is not the same as "This perfect proposal solves practically all our problems"; compare "weak support" vs "strong support"; compare moderate majority with some okay arguments vs unanimous agreement). And so forth.

There's also "just getting it wrong". That happens some times. Every experienced editors has had that experience in a small discussion, and you've got to do a certain amount of learning WP:How to lose and knowing when to pick your battles, because you can't fight them all. Even some well-attended RFCs produce nonsense results on occasion. In other cases, persistence wins the day. It took us several rounds to settle the lead picture for Pregnancy. (If the closing summary is unreasonable, then see WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. But when the discussion itself is unreasonable, then try again another time.)

But to give you the honest-but-scary answer to your second question: Yes. You are exactly right that editors can and do form whatever agreements they want. We've got quite a lot of structural and norms-based protection built into the system (e.g., ignoring comments from socks, downplaying comments that reject fundamental policies...). But in the end, the wiki way is to see what editors agree to have on the page. In practice there isn't an alternative. There is no higher authority you can appeal to. If most editors are wildly wrong, and they can't see how wrong they are, then the page will be wrong for now.

What you can do is have your say in the discussion, and then refuse to WP:VOLUNTEER to participate in the stupid outcome. This last one is more important than you might think. I have seen editors object to something, and then, in an IMO misguided show of cooperativeness and agreeableness, put the objectionable content on the page themselves. You shouldn't do that. The supporters should be forced to take responsibility for that edit, not the opponents. And one of the reasons I say that is because some of those 50 supporters may be drive-by editors who not only don't know what they're talking about, but also wouldn't come back to the article to make it happen. You're not allowed to edit against consensus, but you sure don't have to do their dirty work for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:13, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

As you say, it usually ends up dictating what an article claims to be true or false. Unfortunately, we do need some way of determining that, especially for contentious topics. So yes, generally speaking, an RfC can determine anything.

That said, I think there is a reason we trust administrators to close contentious RfCs. If an RfC is so clearly against the general consensus of the public that it is absurd - as the example you give of an RfC determining Jupiter is the "smallest" planet in the Solar system - we trust administrators to reject (or at least not accept) clearly absurd RfC results. By "clearly absurd" I mean RfC results that do not result from an ecaluation of all available high-quality sources and/or contradict what is generally accepted as truth (by high quality sources).

I understand your point - if the RfC resulted from decent-quality sources and resulted in something that is generally refuted (by other high quality sources), or in other words there is some alternative "reality" that is accepted by some (but not all) high-quality sources - then it should not be accepted. But that's not how Wikipedia works. The second pillar is what matters here. What you or I believe is the truth - regardless of how much we think our view is supported by sources - we are required by the pillar to accept a neutral point of view as to what the sources say. If there are legitimate, reliable sources that espouse a viewpoint contrary to what we (i.e. you or I) believe is the truth... then we cannot legitimately ignore/avoid those sources.

That said, administrators do have the responsibility of ensuring that the !votes in a discussion are "legitimate". For your example of Jupiter being the smallest planet, I can't see any way that the only sources that are reasonable to include would say such a thing. But for sake of argument, let's say that the only links/sources provided did claim that - even if there are other obvious sources that disagree. The closing administrator has the responsibility, per WP:CLOSING, to conduct at least a cursory evaluation of the arguments (and sources) presented, and to decide whether those sources meet the requirements of WP:RS and other guidelines, whether the sources presented and considered in the !votes are a reasonable assessment of the available sources, and whether there were any opposing/contrary sources presented that were ignored - before closing the discussion. If the closing administrator has valid reason to believe that the discussion was incomplete (either because the sources discussed were unreliable, or because other sources were presented that were reliable but contrary), then they can, per policy, relist the discussion (including a personal comment which includes sources they found that should have been, but were not, discussed, if necessary), or alternatively, can simply refuse to close the discussion and make a personal non-closing comment that includes the sources they found that were not discussed prior.

In other words, if a closing administrator believes that the consensus was not "complete", then they have the right to relist the discussion or to comment in the discussion themselves rather than closing it. This should be very rare - in other words, it should only occur in a situation such as you describe - where there is cherry picking of sources, or ignoring of other sources that are easily accessible but not included, to support a specific outcome. But in such cases, I do firmly believe that administrators, per the guideline on consensus (and the following section), have the right and responsibility to not close, but relist (or close as "no change" and recommend a new discussion) a discussion that obviously failed to take into account all pertinent information.

In other words - this isn't an issue because we already trust administrators to actually review the whole discussion (including the actual arguments made) before they close a discussion. And while administrators are not expected to fully review the arguments made, they should be expected to at least ensure that the arguments were complete. In other words, they are expected to ensure that the arguments made are actually supported by the link(s)/source(s) provided in the !votes... and that those links/sources represent at least a decent proportion of the available sources. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 07:17, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there any remedy for this, other than "someone has to wait a few months and start another RfC and hope those 50 people have stopped being insane"? Yes. Common sense. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:27, 27 April 2025 (UTC)