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Proposal to revisit param type severity scale to encompass ToU violations
There is an implicit severity scale in the description of Ambox param type, which is expressed primarily by the left border color, with red as the highest severity, and secondarily by the default image icon, and in one case, by background color. But I believe that the typing fails to take into account one of the most severe type of article issue, namely violation of Wikipedia's terms of use, and this should be corrected. Possibly this can be corrected solely by changes to the doc page, in how it specifies the purpose and values of param type, but more likely it will require an additional param value. I am proposing a modification to add support for this (extract in the style of the Ambox doc page for param type):
Currently, the top two (most severe) type values are |type=speedy and |type=delete and generate the red border and so on, but are restricted to deletion issues by dint of their names and of the doc explaining them. However, there is another category of issue that imho is of top severity, but that is not a deletion issue and that are not currently handled by the template (at any level of severity), namely, violations of the ToU, or at least, violations of portions of the ToU involving legal implications unrelated to content, such as WP:COPYRIGHTS (ToU §7). In this case, deletion does not solve the problem, nor is there any particular reason to delete the page, as long as the issue is speedily dealt with by compliance with the Terms, which at English Wikipedia is described at WP:RIA.
The best approach in a missing-attribution situation is just to provide it, but it is not always clear where content comes from, or the user may not have the permissions or the skills to do so. For the latter case, we have two templates (that I know of) to deal with it: {{copypaste}} (with red border/type=speedy), and {{Unattributed translation}} (orange border, type=content). In neither case is the type value accurate, because the first has nothing to do with speedy (or any) page deletion, and the second has nothing to do with content. Both are related to ToU violations in the area of COPYRIGHT, and this type of violation must be corrected, per the ToU, and may not be overruled by consensus, nor by Pillar Five (IAR), or by anything else. Nor is deletion appropriate; copying relevant material from sister projects is encouraged, and marking it speedy or delete would be entirely the wrong resolution.
The existing delete and speedy values are not adequate for the purpose, consequently, we need a new Ambox type imho, to flag cases of missing or incorrect attribution, perhaps |type=terms, and possibly a new border and background color as indicated above.
A test version is available in the Ambox sandbox and supporting module files. View and compare the look and feel in context of the other Ambox types at {{Ambox/sandbox/doc#type}}. You can use the sandbox version to generate different versions of existing templates, for example, here is how one template would look in the new style:
This section may have been copied and pasted from another location, possibly in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy. Please review the source and remedy this by editing this article to remove any non-free copyrighted content and attributing free content correctly, or flagging the content for deletion. Please be sure that the supposed source of the copyright violation is not itself a Wikipedia mirror.(December 2024)
The tests look like an improvement to me. Thanks for including the archive.org link, which shows the side stripes in gray instead of the desired colors. Since this request is so new, I will leave this open for a day or two for other template editors to examine or implement. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:19, 11 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Andddd I'd also guess the importants may impact mobile hacking at how amboxes are presented. IOW this is a bad change. Izno (talk) 03:37, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
