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Inconsistent use of the Oxford comma/unclear parenthetical

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The last sentence of "Jurisdiction and legality of content" uses the Oxford comma while the parenthetical in "Not professional advice" appears to omit it. This should be fixed if it's a mistake; if not, someone please tell me what the intended meaning of the parenthetical is. Blippy1998 (talk) 00:21, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  •  Not done as there isn't a specific actionable edit request here. This section can certainly still be used for discussion. Contextually, these appear to be different - with the later being a non-exclusive list of general examples only. — xaosflux Talk 13:58, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The latter may be not be an exhaustive list, but that doesn't mean a serial comma is or isn't warranted.
    I've since read through the rest of the article and found this isn't the only case; there are 6 cases of a list of 3 or more items omitting the serial comma and 4 cases of a list of 3 or more items including the serial comma. While MOS:SERIAL suggests either usage is acceptable on Wikipedia, it also says that "[s]erial commas are more helpful the more complex the material," and that jives with their near-universal usage in legal documents, as well as their broad acceptance by style guides; this makes them more appropriate for this article, which is quasi-legal. More importantly, though, MOS:SERIAL states that "[e]ditors may use either convention so long as each article is internally consistent."
    While obviously this isn't the most important thing ever, for such an important page – particularly since it's a quasi-legal page – we should be as clear as possible, especially in the cases where it is ambiguous. I am not 100% certain, and I imagine other users would be confused, too, whether the parenthetical in the "Not professional advice" section refers to "financial or risk management advice" as one unit or "financial advice" as well as "risk management advice" as two separate units. That ambiguity is a bad look for a page like this, and was basically the impetus for me raising this concern. I strongly suspect it means the latter (two separate types of advice) and simply lacks the serial comma – as the former does not make much sense, particularly with the structure of the rest of the list – but I'm not 100% sure, and it should be made clear.
    Thus, I propose adding the serial comma to all places where it's absent. Alternatively, as a second-best option, we could remove the serial comma from all places it is present.
    Option 1 (preferred)
    • "complete, accurate or reliable information" becomes "complete, accurate, or reliable information"
    • "contributors, sponsors, administrators or anyone else" becomes "contributors, sponsors, administrators, or anyone else"
    • "the owners or users of this site, the owners of the servers upon which it is housed, the individual Wikipedia contributors, any project administrators, sysops or anyone else" becomes "the owners or users of this site, the owners of the servers upon which it is housed, the individual Wikipedia contributors, any project administrators, sysops, or anyone else"
    • "agents, members, organizers or other users" becomes "agents, members, organizers, or other users"
    • "change, edit, modify or remove" becomes "change, edit, modify, or remove"
    • "medical, legal, financial or risk management" becomes "medical, legal, financial, or risk management"
    Option 2 (less-preferred)
    • "changed, vandalized, or altered" becomes "changed, vandalized or altered"
    • "Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights, or similar rights" becomes "Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design rights or similar rights"
    • "mentioned, used, or cited" becomes "mentioned, used or cited"
    • "use, reproduce, or republish" becomes "use, reproduce or republish"
    Blippy1998 (talk) 00:36, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Blippy1998@Xaosflux I've gone and done this. They all seem to fit the bill, and I didn't see any other instances. I'll also note that, nearly one year ago, Oshwah did a couple of other instances. Happy to continue the discussion if anyone feels I've short-circuited. Thanks for the detail, Blippy. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:09, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Amorymeltzer thanks, I had no objection other than the lack of a specific edit ready to go initially. 14:24, 11 January 2023 (UTC) — xaosflux Talk 14:24, 11 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Amorymeltzer @Xaosflux Looks good, thanks! Blippy1998 (talk) 01:50, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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Added a link to foundation:Wikimedia General Disclaimer following some discussion over at meta-wiki. — xaosflux Talk 03:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request (April 6, 2024)

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Please change CC-BY-SA (in both places it appears) to CC BY-SA per the CC style guide (page 11). Thanks! HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 19:58, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:15, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 23 February 2025

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Please fix a typo of Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 Unported License to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Thank you! - Waterard, not water. talk - contribs 22:14, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Izno (talk) 03:24, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 12 June 2025

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Description of suggested change: Just to match with the other pages, which all state their redirects. Diff:

−
+
{{Shortcut|WP:General|WP:5D|WP:GENDIS}}

Wikipedian Talk to me! or not… 21:29, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Except for WP:General which (correctly IMO) is red and doesn't point here. * Pppery * it has begun... 14:30, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 16 June 2025

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Description of suggested change:

Diff:

−
{{Shortcut|WP:5D|WP:GENDIS}}
+
{{Shortcut|WP:GENERAL|WP:5D|WP:GENDIS}}

I meant to write the uppercase version for WP:General…

Wikipedian Talk to me! or not… 10:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Sohom (talk) 13:53, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed changes to disclaimers

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At the village pump, I opened this discussion to solicit input on updating disclaimers.

Your participation is welcome. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 03:00, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Style change

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I've corrected "recently-deceased" to "recently deceased", in keeping what I just learned in my Legal Analysis and Writing class -- phrasal adjectives with -ly don't get hyphens. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 03:37, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would use a hyphen when the bare adjective makes little sense: a legally-owned possession because an owned possession is vacuous. —Antonissimo (talk) 05:01, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
That is the general rule. -ly is an exception. Garner's Modern English Usage says, "When a phrasal adjective begins with an adverb ending in -ly, the convention is to drop the hyphen." CMOS 7.93 likewise says "Compounds formed by an adverb ending in -ly plus an adjective or participle are not hyphenated." AP Stylebook too. This is stuff I learned just this week in law school; I don't even remember why some or another unrelated rabbit hole I was climbing down when I found myself looking at the general disclaimer. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 05:57, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Replace six disclaimer pages with one

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WP:DISCLAIMER now redirects to Category:Wikipedia disclaimers. There are currently six disclaimer pages ("Before"). Should they be replaced with one page, as proposed in the "After" section, and any redirects to the category or these pages go to the "After" version?

Before:

After:

I asked editors at the idea lab to comment about the change, and posted an additional invitation to the talk page of the General disclaimer, but I didn't get much feedback. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 16:46, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Reason

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The reason for the change is that the disclaimer page, which is supposed to be reader-oriented, contains quite a bit of legalese that is not really needed. E.g. None of the contributors, sponsors, administrators, or anyone else connected with Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or for your use of the information contained in or linked from these web pages. or Nothing on Wikipedia.org or of any project of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., should be construed as an attempt to offer or render a legal opinion or otherwise engage in the practice of law.

In the first case, the sentence gives an impression that users are immune from libel laws about content they introduce on Wikipedia, which is not true (Wikipedia does not offer legal immunity). In the second case, the sentence can be rewritten as "Wikipedia does not offer legal advice or engage in the practice of law" without much loss of meaning; projects outside Wikipedia are not of Wikipedia's concern but I included them under the umbrella "we" definition.

I took the plaintext of all disclaimers before and the new version without section titles to see if the readability is improved, and synthetic benchmarks confirm that the text is somewhat easier to read. See table (calculated here; bolded scores are better):

Readability index Before After Which score is better?
Flesch Reading Ease 26.77 41.84 Higher
Gunning fog 18.5 14.5 Lower
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 14.83 11.08 Lower
SMOG 16.3 13.3 Lower
Dale-Chall 10.22 9.55 Lower
Fry 15 15 Lower
Words per sentence 21.37 14.71 Depends, but extremes not welcome

Most of the changes are simplifications of some sentences. On the other hand, I wrote more bullet points for what was the content disclaimer to explain ways in which our processes may not be perfect, which I feel are not appropriately explained in the content disclaimer. The rewritten version provides links to relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines that readers can refer to without needing to open another tab and manually search for supporting text, which they need not necessarily find themselves. Other than that, I kept the text about the same as in the original.

There is less duplication because everything is centralised on one page.

The last section, about "Similar disclaimers", is optional but I believe is also good guidance for the reader.

Not posting this as a move request or MfD due to potential policy implications.

Survey (disclaimers)

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Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Replace six disclaimer pages with one
 – Per protection notice on this page Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 06:57, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (disclaimers)

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The table should certainly score very low on any readability test. What do "higher" and "lower" mean in the "which is better?" column? And how is 15 lower than 15? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:10, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The which is better column refers to whether a higher or lower value for the metric is better. Katzrockso (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see now. Disregard my comment. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:24, 24 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume this is something better suited for lawyers than non-lawyers... Gnomingstuff (talk)

Agreed, my baseline assumption is this is WP:CONEXCEPT. —Rutebega (talk) 23:32, 25 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't appear like WMFOffice or other WMF-linked accounts are significantly involved in the edit history, so it doesn't seem like CONEXCEPT would apply; other points clearly do not apply. This page is protected not because it says DO NOT EDIT WITHOUT WMF APPROVAL but because there's Persistent disruptive editing - seems like this page gets no on-point comments from IPs and new users ever, and a lot of bad edits frequently. Which doesn't say that this page, or any other page, is sacrosanct.
Since it is a reader-facing page, we should prioritize their needs when adjusting its design. If legal/WMF/whatever wants to reach out and preempt certain edits, they can do so right now. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 06:47, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The talk page of Wikipedia talk: General disclaimer states Wikipedia:General disclaimer is indefinitely protected from editing as it is a page that should not be edited significantly for legal or other reasons. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. Katzrockso (talk) 01:08, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I have dropped a notice the first time around, but few bothered to respond, so it's not like I kept people in the dark.
We can move the discussion if the venue is a big deal.
ETA: Moved. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 07:11, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Szmenderowiecki I apologize for giving that impression and being very unclear, I quoted and bolded that not to highlight whether or not it was the right forum to bring up this question, since I don't think it really matters ultimately (WP:NOT BUREAUCRACY), but to point out that a discussion about substantially changing the page is explicitly permissible per the template. Katzrockso (talk) 11:29, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that the indentation was wrong, so I assumed you just started a new subthread in the discussion, and you bolded the fragment which I thought was meant to show that we should hold the discussion on this page. I mean, copypasting takes a minute or two, so that's not a big deal for me. But since you agree with me, it's even better. Anyway, my bad. Szmenderowiecki (talk · contribs) 12:20, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the indentation did end up being wrong, I meant to reply to Rutebega's comment about CONEXEMPT. Katzrockso (talk) 23:43, 26 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]