Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.

« Archives, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196

Asking in the right place

I recently came across a series of articles, with a number of issues. There are 17 articles of which perhaps 3 seem to have enough notability to be worth keeping, the others look like Adverts or have been put in by an acting agency to promote their clients. There is a core of 11 editors (some IP, Some User Name) working on these articles - at least 2 have clear COI on some of the articles and are clearly closely connected with others. About 7 of these users are IP's and some of these IP's look quite similar in posting style to the users with COI raising questions of Sockpuppeting.

So 3 issues Notability, COI, sock puppeting - where should I be raising questions about these articles?

So far I've asked a neutral editor who did some tidying on one of the articles to take a look with no response. I've also asked the notability noticeboard to take a look with no response. I want to leave either AFD or ANI as last resorts once I have opinions from other editors that this needs to be escalated to those levels.

I'm raising it here because there doesn't seem to be any central policy about where something like this should be discussed or handled and I'm wondering if there is somewhere I've missed or if there isn't should we have somewhere like this? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that this needs to be dealt with through different procedures. The three problems are not inherently related to each other (i.e. you can easily have one without the others), so no location for the combination of them exists. For the notability, the easiest way is to start with one or two AfDs, to check if they are truly not notable (if they are speedy delete candidates, A7, so much the better). Once it has been established that they are creating articles on non notable subjects, they can be warned to be more careful: if they really persist, we have a behavioural problem and further action can be needed.

For the COI, you can contact the WP:COIN noticeboard. This is in the end probably the least of the three problems, although it means thta the articles need extra checking for WP:NPOV problems.

Finally, if you have strong indications that there are socks active, a WP:SPI is the best way of getting this resolved. But this is also the place where youwill need the most evidence for your case.

Once it becomes clear that some of these three problems are truly problematic (recurring, confirmed by other users, ...), further action can be taken, and then generally all those problems are tackled together. But then we are moving into RfC, AN, and finally perhaps arbcom territory, which is of course all way premature now. Fram (talk) 13:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I am aware that, The problem I have is that those processes are significantly bureaucratic and require a considerable investment of time and work. I'm not sure if I have that time to spare, so I feel there should be somewhere I can reasonably raise my concerns either to draw feedback from other editors to encourage me that that investment of time and work would be worthwhile - or to pass the concern onto another editor (or group of editors) who are skilled bureaucrats or simply have more time and effort to invest in dealing with the issue. I believed that the notability noticeboard was the most likely place to achieve this but as the concern ended up being archived without any editor response clearly it was not. Something like Rfc feels appropriate, but these processes (Rfc, AN, ArbCom) are set up to deal with disagreements between editors rather than to discuss the concerns an editor may have with an article or articles.

As for leaving them a note, some of these articles were created 3-4 years ago and not all of the accounts are still active (with other accounts and IP's taking over hence the concern of sockpuppetry.)

BTW since posting above I've just discovered two new articles, two new accounts editing solely within these articles and several new IP's - this is a growing concern. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, no replies, does that mean that there is nowhere to discuss these concerns, and that there should be nowhere? Not all editors are in a position or willing to carry out an AFD just to get feedback on the status of an article. To me an AFD is a statement of intent "I intend to delete this article" but I don't intend to delete it - I want to get feedback on whether it should be considered for deletion or not and no-one seems to be willing to do that. Taking aside the COI and Sockpuppet problems, the foremost problem is that as they stand almost all of these articles lack notability yet even the notability noticeboard couldn't give me feedback on whether any of these articles did or did not have a grain of notability. At the moment I have to feel that taking this to AN would be a more rewarding process than AfD. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:05, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Which articles?   — Jeff G.  ツ 15:45, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't post the list from my phone, but check the notability noticeboard archive Wikipedia:Notability/Noticeboard/Archive0#Widespread_Notability_issue most of them are there but I have found others since. The subject matter is british comedy/acting though there are crossovers such as an American film. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:24, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

To the above list, you can add Dan Antopolski - possibly some notability but the article is purely a list of achievements many (perhaps most?) of which have little notability. Neil Edmond, and Tim_Plester - some notability but the article is again full of non notable achievements; and there are probably still others waiting to be unearthed by cross referencing editors who have worked on these articles with other articles. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Old people

There's quite a debate at this AfD about the notability of people for simply being 100 years old. This is quite a conversation, and it could have implications beyond this one article. Personally, it is my belief that these people are not notable, no redirect should be created, and that their name on some list (List of centenarians in France) should suffice, if that list article should exist at all. The most recent comment, Being the oldest person in a country does not guarantee notability. This is one of many trivial entries here that relate to human longevity that ought to get the axe. It is pure trivia and the obsession of a group of hobbyists, but there is nothing encyclopedic about it, makes me realize that this really may be a list of trivia, and maybe there's no justification for this information at all.

Anyway, I'm here simply to point out that AfD; I think it's worth getting more eyes on it, since it may have ramifications to general policy about this type of article. — Timneu22 · talk 22:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The claim being made in the AfD is actually of notability for being 110 years old, which is still very rare, not 100, which is now pretty commonplace. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:41, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Being rare is no guarantee of being noticed and the subject of significant coverage. Seems a classic case of "topics that if no significant coverage exists we shouldn't either." FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the claim made in the AfD is that he is the oldest living European, which obviously is even rarer ;) It would be good to get lots of informed opinion on whether or not that makes him notable, because this AfD will potentially affect quite a lot of other open policy issues. Thparkth (talk) 12:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, holding the title of oldest person in a given country is notable enough to get one's name into a list (maybe with a few sentences in a comments column), but not notable enough to get one's own article. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:25, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Could these same arguments be applied to members of royal families? How does being born into a 'Royal Family' make a person notable when they have done nothing what so ever in regards to benefiting mankind? Leveni12 Nov 2010 —Preceding undated comment added 23:31, 11 November 2010 (UTC).

Being born into a royal family usually identifies you as one of the legitimate successors (of a relatively small group) to the title of "head of state", something that is most certainly notable. If/when Prince William has a child, that child being 4th in line to the British Monarchy is certainly notability at its most obvious, as certainly there will be numerous media articles about that topic which will be considered reliable sources of information and even secondary sources of information.

I don't see any sort of special notability category here or anything beyond the BLP guidelines being applied even for somebody over 100 or 110 years of age. If there are numerous stories about somebody being the only surviving veteran of World War I (all of the people in this list have articles BTW), that is certainly notable. It is a non-issue. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Since there is enought place in wikipedia I think the lists should stay as long as they are well sourced. They might seem, or even be, trivial, but it is nevertheless information that might be usefull to someone at some time. If it is imaginable that someone would need information for a serious investigation, it should be possible for that person to start the investigation in Wikipedia and to continue it through the sources found on the site. --DRHastings 12:12, 15 November (GMT)

Speedy userfication

I've been thinking about designing a process for speedy userfication as an alternative to speedy deletion. I do a lot of New Page Patrolling, and I've spoken to another New Page Patroller about this idea. Many articles that get speedily deleted are obviously never going to become articles; however, I've come across some instances where a subject has the potential to become a decent article, but also does not belong in mainspace yet because there are serious flaws. I'm thinking about something like a new article about an album/single that will eventually be released, but without enough reliable sources at the time of creation, an article about something that appears non-notable, but doesn't fit A7 (something like SS Richmond P. Hobson when I first came across it last night), or an article that is on the cusp of A7, but might stand a chance if it was built up a little more. See User:Riotbr/WeMusic as an example I came across; the article was initially deleted from mainspace (I tagged it), but before it was deleted the user said there was a newspaper article that, when he found it, might get it past A7. I suggested the user contact an admin to get it userfied so he could add the ref in without feeling under the gun. He ended up getting it userfied; however, most of the time I never get a response when I suggest userfication.

With a speedy userfication process, it would have saved the article from getting deleted in the first place so it didn't have to be restored in userspace, it would have given the user time to find the newspaper article without worrying about his article disappearing, and it would certainly have seemed less adversarial. With this speedy userfication process, we can kill several birds with one stone. First and foremost, it's a less ham-fisted way to treat new users who've just made their first article (often their first edit) in good faith, especially when that article might eventually become something useful. It should give the impression that we're trying to work with them, instead of summarily deleting the content they worked on, which may make it seem like we're working against them. It allows users to work on the content without worrying about getting tags slapped all over it, and without the difficulty of building and maintaining a new article in mainspace. In addition to CSD, if it's written up right, it should lessen the number of PRODs because subjects that don't fit A7 can be candidates for userfication until they can be worked into something that asserts notability. I'd also suggest that there be a note saying that the person who tags and/or does userfy it is strongly encouraged to help out with said article. If people like this idea, I'll start working on more definitive text, but I wanted to put some feelers out to see what people would think of it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Point of clarification— when referring to subjects on the cusp of A7, speedy userfication would not apply to unsourced BLPs, which should still be BLPPRODded and deleted as usual. If, however, a BLP is tagged as an A7, and a source is found before the article is deleted, then it could become a candidate for speedy userfication under this criteria. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Love it all. Might I suggest that a nice TWINKLE implementation of this is:

• Moves the article
• Tags the main namespace article (now a redirect) with R2 and a reason (speedily userfied).
• Tags the userspace article as a userspace draft.
• Informs the article's creator

I think that's all. Something like this is really needed, especially to avoid WP:BITE and to give users a chance on articles that currently have problems but where the topic may be notable. SemEval recently fell into this category; I went with AfD, where many people said "it's notable!" even though the article didn't say so, and it was so poorly unwikified that it was hard to read. That article would have been speedily userfied if such a mechanism existed. — Timneu22 · talk 17:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support but no need for a new policy, just note it as an alternative at CSD: "If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, list the article at articles for deletion or speedy userfy the page with a {{userspace draft}} tag." One amendment to Timneu22's summary - it should also tag as a userspace draft. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
• Tentative support: I am in favor of the concept but I am saying "tentative" simply because of similar discussions (see CSD G13:Stale incubated article for example) and currently there is no real definition or agreement on how to define "indefinitely", "long-term archival" or "Short term hosting" in various guidelines and polices in regards to material of this type. Currently Wikipedia:Userfication says content inappropriate for the mainspace should not be kept indefinitely in user space. I will fully support this as long as when something is "speedied" to userspace there is a clearly defined time limit. (Wikipedia:Article Incubator, for example, says Incubation is temporary (usually about 3 months)...). Soundvisions1 (talk) 19:46, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

  Yeah, that would be something we'd work out; I just wanted to get a sense of what people thought of the idea before getting into the gory details. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

  Note here that the 3 months limit is something very recently added and doesn't have a whole bunch of consensus, other than that there is a limit. I understand why it was put in, but I don't necessarily agree with that time limit as being a hard limit. --Robert Horning (talk) 22:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

• Generally Oppose... but with qualifications. An article that is likely to go through AfD hell but would otherwise qualify for the incubator, I would generally support moving to the incubator instead of doing the AfD. It is a judgment call but I see this being heavily abused by those who get annoyed by new user contributions. Remember, the quality of the article nor the current lack of sources actually in the article at the moment of its creation ought to be the criteria, but rather the ability to potentially get sources ought to be the criteria. I am upset that there are some people on Wikipedia who seemingly insist upon an article coming into creation in featured article quality status, which should not be the criteria for article development. I also think that most article problems are best solved in the main namespace, not in the user namespace. Perhaps the one additional criteria to look at in terms of if something ought to go to the incubator as opposed to pure userfication is to look at how many participants are involved: If multiple contributors are adding content or participating on the talk page, it really ought to be in the incubator instead of selecting one of the users. If an article is a borderline situation, you really shouldn't be doing a speedy delete nomination anyway, and it should be going to an AfD. Suggesting to the user and those involved in developing the article (and sometimes there is a pretty large group involved too) that it ought to go to the incubator as a way to bypass the AfD process, with the agreement of those involved may be a better way to go. This takes time, and I realize that. If you are being lazy and don't want to work with those involved, I would suggest making it an AfD with the recommendation to consider the incubator as an option instead. That can be done even when proposing an AfD. --Robert Horning (talk) 22:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
• On the fence I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to work. Would it be something the user would have to ask for or would it be done by default? Most admins are willing to userfy if the user asks for it, and I am completely in favor of making this option more high-profile, but I do not like the idea of just doing it even if the user does not ask for it. The reason is that I suspect that in many cases they will not do the follow up and we will have just created another page to run through MFD six months later. If they ask, and the article was not created in bad faith, we should already be doing this. How can we make this option more obvious to the article's creator? Perhaps an addition to the CSD notification templates (of course exempting the ones for attack, nonsense , and copyvios) seems a good start. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  I'd think that you would want the user to ask for userfication, but new users don't know about it. Adding it onto the current templates would be a good way to test this, and maybe we can see where it goes from there; raising the profile of userfication will definitely help, and I've met several users who said they would have asked for me to userfy their article if they had known about it. As to preventing MfD from becoming overloaded with this sort of thing, I can think of a couple ways. First off, as I said above, the user doing the userfication should be strongly encouraged to follow up on it themselves and/or notify someone who knows the subject, either by contacting an individual user or dropping a note at the relevant Wikiproject, which I don't think is too much to ask. Secondly, I know there's the G13 debate going on over at WT:CSD, and we might do something like that; we can give an article several months (I'd say 6-9) after a user's last edit. Of course, if another user wanted to take it over, that could be arranged too. If someone has an alternative, I'm all for it. And even if this doesn't go through, I also think Timneu22's idea of tacking userfication onto Twinkle is good, because that'll make it a lot easier if someone asks us to userfy instead of delete something. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  Or another idea I just thought of; we could have something like WikiProject Deletition sorting for notes on what articles have been userfied. The person doing the userfication can add a note to the relevant topic; that way, people watching it can see what's being userfied, and possibly work with the user to get it ready for mainspace. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:18, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  Some sort of tracking system (manual list, categories, bot) is a good idea. I would even suggest that one be developed and used on existing userspace drafts independent of this speedy userfication proposal. Flatscan (talk) 05:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose -- Timneu22 gives SemEval as an example above, when that was a fairly clear case of notability-in-its-obscure-field. There was no reason to userfy that, and lots of reason to leave it visible where people will have incentive to fix its problems. That's not likely to happen in someone's userspace -- especially when the original editor didn't have the wikiknowledge to create it cleanly in the first place. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  However, it would have prevented the ensuing fiasco. If it had been done the way I'm thinking, it would have been userfied, and someone (in this case, Timneu22) would have left a note at WikiProject Linguistics (which he did) so someone over there could have worked with the user. That would have taken the drama out of the whole process, and would have made it feel a lot more welcoming to the new user. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  Thinking this over, I believe this to be a particularly strong argument for userfication or moving to the incubator as opposed to doing an AfD. Telling a new user that the article isn't quite ready for prime time yet is a much more gentle way to avoid WP:BITE. Slapping on a bunch of tags saying that the article sucks wind and needs some serious work before it is of feature article quality is pretty much a no-brainer in terms of a brand new article. Telling a new user that there is a "protected sandbox" where they can work on an article that may need some special attention isn't nearly as threatening. In fact, I can see a group getting organized that does nothing but help new users in terms of trying to improve the quality of relatively new articles. A page move is certainly much easier to do than delete/undelete, and it is something that new users at least perceive they can have some significant input on in terms of what is happening. It also keeps the whole process out in the open rather than something done by a "secret cabal". --Robert Horning (talk) 16:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose for BLPs. Having unsourced BLPs is userspace is an absolutely horrible idea, because then it becomes nearly impossible to track (while still being listed on Google). People post all sorts of libel and assorted unsourced controversial statements in userspace drafts, and it is difficult to root it all out. For that reason alone, this is a terrible idea. I actually have a standing policy of refusing to userfy BLPs (upon request, I do email them a copy of the article to work on offline, though). The Wordsmith^Communicate 03:21, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  In case I didn't make this clear enough, this process would not apply to things like G1, G3, G5, G10, G11, or G12 candidates, nor would it apply to unsourced BLPs or articles that will clearly never make it to mainspace. I'm talking more about the borderline cases; see the example I gave at User:Riotbr/WeMusic. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  You specifically mentioned A7 in your post above. A large percentage of A7 speedies are unsourced biographies of living people, so I assumed it would apply to that. If it doesn't, perhaps that should be clarified. 04:20, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  Point of clarification added above. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

This may of may not fully relate but take a look at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 December 31. The whole thing became somewhat of a huge CF because a user kept creating their own BLP in mainspace over the course of a year and at one point there had been at least 7 versions of it at in mainspace (Not all at once I don't think). At some point versions were userfied in a few different places (September 18, 2008 to User:Spartaz/Musician and again at a DRV to User:Bill Blake990/Matt Lee(guitar player) on December 31, 2008) and that, in itself became an issue. Along the way there was Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Guitaro99. I think a huge part of this was the fact the users articles kept being deleted and different people kept doing it until about December 30, 2008 when Matt Lee (musician) (deleted at least 5 times) got to Matt Lee(guitar player), which was userfied, and Matt Lee (Deleted at least 9 times) all seemed to click, at least in my mind, and I did a lot more research. One of the question at a DRV was "Do any of the deleted versions contain substantial support for notability that is not found in the 2 userfied versions?" That may be an extreme example but just for the sake of "what if..." - What if, the very first time the article was "deleted" (I think as Matt Lee on August 29, 2007?) it had been userfied via a high(er) profile criteria to be worked on. First I think over the course of a year it would have been a lot easier to track changes and compare. As for if the drama and sockpuppetry would have still happened, I don't know - but from what I remember a huge part of it was the user felt severely bitten by the repeated deletions and that caused them to create all sorts of accounts and make various versions and than accusations about Wikipedia admins "having something to hide". I also think by that time it really didn't matter to most if the article was valid or not because of everything else. Soundvisions1 (talk) 05:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• Previous discussion: WP:Requests for comment/userfication, preceded by WT:Twinkle/Archive 17#Adding userfication to Twinkle and WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 53#Easier/better userfication (all late 2009). Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  I posted notifications of this discussion at WT:Article Incubator#Speedy userfication and WT:Userfication#Speedy userfication. Flatscan (talk) 05:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I had forgotten about that. The final "stop" at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/userfication shows fairly clear support for the Compromise section. What happened after that? Soundvisions1 (talk) 05:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure. My guess is that no one filed the Twinkle request. Flatscan (talk) 05:30, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support and Oppose As long as stale drafts in userspace have to go through a full MfD process, I don't feel comfortable expanding the number of userfied articles too much. We will be creating deletion discussions on what otherwise would have been deleted through PROD or CSD, but by virtue of being moved to userspace suddenly becomes immune to prod and most CSD reasons. I support in the sense that you can already do this. There's no rule against pre-emptive userfication, and you don't need to be an admin to do it, since the cross namespace redirect can be speedied. Gigs (talk) 21:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

  If a time limit were imposed (i.e. 6-9 months after a user's last edit, a userfied article would become a speedy candidate), would that change your view? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, but I and others have barked up that tree before, and while there has been some support for the idea, it's always failed to get consensus. Gigs (talk) 00:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - Why would we do this if the user doesn't actually want it? That's basically just asking for articles to pile up in userspace. The majority of userfied articles are never improved, they just sit around in userspace forever. Mr.Z-man 03:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

  It'd be something the user would ask for; I think that more users would ask for it if they knew about it, but our system as it is now only mentions userfication in passing. This would greatly streamline the process. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

  Your initial comment about rarely getting a response when you suggest userfication suggested otherwise. Any article can be userfied, I don't see why we need a new process unless it would be applying it in cases when it wouldn't normally be considered. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that most userfied articles are never improved and end up creating more work later. Mr.Z-man 06:40, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

  I was referring to the fact that a lot of users never return after their article is tagged; if we userfy something instead of wholesale deleting it, I suspect new users are less likely to feel bitten and have a higher chance of staying. I get what you're saying about userfied articles not generally improving, but if we can set a time limit like I've said above (probably 6-9 months after an editor's last edit), we should be able to avoid overloading MfD. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:50, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

-

• Oppose mainly on the basis that the existing variety of processes is already excessively complicated. There might be virtues in alternative procedures, but I suggest we try to concentrate on devising those that would replace present ones, not add to them. DGG ( talk ) 03:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
• Vague support as I think that somewhere up-front in the deletion process should be a clear and simple option for new editors (which is almost certainly the case for shaky new artcles) to userfy their work when appropriate, so not just an invitation to keep garbage in their userspace. I once tried to figure out how to do a magic button that would let a newbie click it and pull back from the confusing morass of mainspace deletion. If in the judgement of a NPP'er an article is salvageable but clearly not ready for prime time, we should be making clear that userfication is an option, and providing a painless method for them to do that. Franamax (talk) 23:13, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per Mr.Z-man. PeterSymonds (talk) 10:19, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Editing on articles where one posts a strong "anti" banner

Why post a strong anti banner on one's own User Page and then claim no POV on the subject? Bridgettttttte_babble^poop 02:40, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Uh, could you be more specific? It's not at all clear what you are talking about. If you are speaking of a specific user, asking them directly is a place to start. Also, this is a page for discussing Wikipedia policies, not specific pages or users. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki consistency policy in the age of the global village pump

I would like to see some type of policy that would:

• Require a minimal level of checking or coordination between different languages in Wikipedia.
• Enforce checks across these Wikipedias.

Two examples are provided by Supercomputing in China and Diocesan Museum (Cortona). The first issue, as illustrated by Supercomputing in China is that there was a puppet user:Watthehell33 who did a few things on that page, I noticed it and he was blocked. But there was no policy or any bot to check what he had done on the article in Chinese Wikipedia. I think there should be an "inter-administrator communication protocol" that facilitates the sending of messages from administrators in Wikipedia to those in Chinese Wikipedia so puppets can be blocked in the global village. As is, the Chinese article created by user:Watthehell33 is still sitting there. There should be an "inter-wiki notice board" that would have alerted admins in Chinese Wikipedia and guidelines for using that. And multi-lingual administrators can facilitate that.

As a second issue, it would also be good to have some type of encouragement policy to keep these types of articles in harmony. As is, one language can have a lot of content and few references, the other can have less content and more references, as in the museum articles. I tried to keep the English version of the museum article in line with the Italian version, but some type of "general request board" for maintaining harmony between the different languages will be useful, so someone else will manage that too, once I got bored with it. In short: let me propose the WP:Global village pump if there is none. History2007 (talk) 19:19, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The huge problem here is that each Wikipedia has it's own policies. Something that might be perfectly within the limits of policy on the Japanese Wikipedia might not be permitted here, and vice versa. Also, given the sheer volume of articles this is practically impossible. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but unfortunately it is an unworkable idea. However, you could always create the "global coordination wiki" and give it a shot. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, each country used to have their own phone system, etc. But the global village eventually arrived. An easy way to start will be an "interwiki admin message system" just for 5 Wikipedias. The admins manage the policies on the separate Wikipedias. But the formal message "Please check this page" gets translated by itself, using a simple template. I guess it can start with just 7 to 10 messages. That way the admin who blocked user:Watthehell33 could select to leave a message on the English/Chinese board by just clicking a button, without speaking Chinese. Then that Chinese page would be checked using Chinese policies if a Chinese admin feels like doing that. Remember that the internet started just between 3 islands. My guess, 7 years from now it will be there. Let the games start, we will eventually get it after the idea simmers for 3 years. History2007 (talk) 01:25, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

This was supposedly the purpose of the embassy concept, where inter-wiki issues could be resolved. There was even some sort of fanciful notion of a "congress of Wikis" that was to have some sort of official representation within the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation. That proposal pretty much died in committee and never was seriously pursued by anybody in terms of actually putting anything together, particularly because representation on that "congress" was heavily in dispute with sister projects (Wikibooks, Wikisource, etc.) demanding equal representation and trying to decide if larger wikis (de, en, ru, etc.) would get any kind of proportional representation over smaller wikis, even smaller Wikipedias like the Tongan or Zulu Wikipedias. In theory, this congress was to set "global" policies and resolve issues like the content relicensing issue from GFDL to CC-by-SA. You can dig up some details about this proposal on Meta, but like I said, it went nowhere fast in part because of infighting on the basic concepts and a feeling that the WMF board of trustees pretty much does most of what this congress would have been doing anyway. I disagree and obviously there are some issue needing resolving between projects where we shouldn't have to "run to Jimbo" for resolution.

This isn't a new notion and it has been something with plenty of ideas for resolution in the past. The problem here is leadership and getting somebody with enough clout or internal stamina to get something to happen. My guess, in 7 years time it will be still more of the same unless somebody steps forward to make a change. The idea has been simmering for at least 4 years already. I gave it a shot back elsewhen, so it is up to somebody else to take the ball and run with it. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:09, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, they wanted a United Nations of Wikipedias. But I want a messageboard, with no common policy etc. Just a way of sending messages that get translated. But it maybe that you are right and it will die in committee, unless it just gets implemented as a set of scripts that get used on existing ANI-type boards, so one can set up 10 messages in Enlish, 10 in Chinese that Amins can just use/copy/paste on the existing ANIs.Then we see if it gets used. The real question, of course, is whether any admins on any Wikipedia even want to bother to do this. My main goal for this, of course, was to eventually see coordination that would lead to content from one Wikipedia work its way into another, and that will require some coordination. History2007 (talk) 20:50, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

You could look at meta:Wikimedia Embassy for some assistance. For myself, I think this is a hugely underutilized resource, but something that has been around since nearly the foundation of multi-lingual Wikipedias in the first place and ought to be a way even to coordinate between sister projects. It didn't always work out, and unfortunately not even all of the English Wikimedia projects are involved. This is a message board setup to work between languages. There are some other similar projects for inter-wiki communication as well on Meta, but it will take some digging around there to find them. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:09, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be looking for Wikipedia:translation, or possibly m:global blocks and locks. Or perhaps simply the English Wikipedia user talk page of an administrator in the Chinese Wikipedia. Uncle G (talk) 02:05, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

RfC on the relationship between the sourcing policies and guidelines

Input would be appreciated at an RfC to ask whether the sourcing guidelines (such as CITE, IRS, MEDRS) should make clear that the core content polices take priority by saying something like: "In the event of inconsistencies between this page and the policies, the policies take priority, and this guideline should be amended accordingly." Please see the RfC here at IRS. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 23:42, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Maintenance tags

We have now a steady stream of distressed article subjects emailing OTRS about maintenance tags on biographies. There is a note at WP:PEREN about moving the tags to talk pages, and that has been consistently rejected. I would like to make an alternative proposal.

It would be relatively straightforward to add a parameter to maintenance tags that showed them by default in a collapsed state with generic and hopefully innocuous text along the lines of "Wikipedia needs to improve this article" and perhaps also a comment in the body of the expanded tag (especially in notability-related ones that this is a reflection of the quality of the article not necessarily the subject.

My markup-fu is weak today so I can't readily make a demo or mockup but I hope the proposal is clear from my description. The aim would be to leave policy and practice essentially unchanged, but allow individual editors and especially those watching BLPs to reduce the impact of "this article is crap and it's about someone of no significance and we may well nuke it" type boxes. Guy (Help!) 13:24, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

If you go back to the early days, I always preferred Angela's style to the massive bombast of the boxed templates. You can see the discussion that went into the templates. I suspect we'd get far fewer complaints if the current article templates weren't so horribly ugly and prominent. --TS 13:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea in general. Many tags have nothing to do with the subject of the article (things like "BLPsources" and the like), and removing the actual template text from the page does nothing for the subject of the article, while obscuring the issues for the readers. If you cold rephrase the proposal to b targeted at a specific list of tags, I may be persuaded, but a replacement of all maintenance tags with some generic text seems like a serious step backwards. Fram (talk) 13:39, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

If there's a solution I'm not sure this is it. If sourcing is missing or the tone is poor, then part of our ability to fix it comes from passing readers and occasional IP editors who may make edits, and our readers need to know we consider the article is at risk of being significantly substandard. Having a large notice may not be the most elegant way in all cases but it's unambiguous and unmissable, and ensures readers are aware that we're aware which is critical (ie "looks like our quality control has noticed the issue").

By contrast, some issues such as XFD are much more internal facing and not displaying those to non-editing readers may not lose so much. Even so IP users make valid contributions to XFD and other debates too, and may track/notice/respond to tags on pages.

I think improvement would comes from shortening and rationalizing maintenance templates, but not from hiding them or making them vague in the process. This is how I'd do it:

Proposal -

I would group templateable issues like this -- "matters that affect reader reliance" (broadly speaking) (sources, COI, limited scope or topic coverage, NPOV, V, etc), "matters affecting readability and style" (tone, style, perspective, markup, cleanup, etc), "matters affecting inclusion/deletion of topic" (notability, NOT, etc), and so on. Then at most one template for each of a brief generic nature, with all specific concerns of that type in a "details" box like we already do for {{multiple issues}}, and also links for information on fixing them:

reliance -

An editor feels that this article may have issues affecting how much reliance should be placed on it as written. You can help fix these issues or contribute insights.

view details of the concerns | relevant policies | add useful evidence | join the discussion.

tone/style -

An editor feels that this article may have an inappropriate tone or style for an encyclopedia and needs rewriting or fixing. You can help improve the article or contribute insights.

view details of the concerns | relevant policies | join the discussion.

inclusion/deletion -

An editor feels that this page may not meet Wikipedia's criteria for articles, and may need to be removed. A discussion is in progress which anyone can view or join.

view details of the concerns | relevant policies | add useful evidence | join the discussion.

That would be one approach I'd suggest instead. "Best of both worlds" and more helpful to readers than either of full detail tl;dr templates and brief "something's up" notices. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the relevant guideline to change for the above proposal is WP:AMBOX. I suggest you start a discussion there. Tijfo098 (talk) 18:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

What are the natures of the distress? We cannot really take reasonable action based upon our random guesses as to what the problem is. For all we know, it could be that people don't like being called "U.S. politician stubs", and FT2 et al. are on completely the wrong track. This discussion isn't really meaningful without specifics. How many people are complaining that they are being labelled as unclean and in need of cleaning, for example? Uncle G (talk) 17:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I was about to ask the same question - what exactly is it that is upsetting BLP subjects emailing OTRS? Rd232 ^talk 18:11, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what they are saying there, but a notice above one's bio at a site with this wide exposure saying that "The notability of this article's subject is in question" would upset most people. A person's colleagues are likely to tease the person about it for years. The very placement of the tag violates WP:BLP, actually, and should be forbidden on BLPa on that basis. Concealing it as FT2 suggests would be a good first step--at least the violation of "do no harm" will not be quite as obvious. DGG ( talk ) 00:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I haven't checked how much this is an issue. Sometimes a concern by a user prompts a general rethink of the best way to handle something, and that's the case here. I think even if we didn't get complaints, reworking how tags are handled as above would be an improvement. Note the aim is not to "conceal", it's to summarize "at a glance" the kind of issue a reader needs to be aware of and what the reader needs to know, so it's seen and noticed, rather than providing a stack of larger templates like we do now. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 03:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

We may make a different tag for notability of BLP, avoiding the use of the word "notable". We may say that it is questioned whenever the encyclopedia shold include an entry about this specific subject, or something like that. But I guess the most likely answer is that this would complicate maintenance for little gain MBelgrano (talk) 02:19, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to do it--but, , looking at your suggestion, we could do better yet and avoid the complications: we might change the wording on all the tags--after all, what we mean here by notability is pretty much a local term of art and nobody outside seems to understand it. We could still call the names of the tags the same--it would just affect the tag wording. The change would take about 5 minutes if we did it that way, and didn't have to sort them out as BLP or whatever. DGG ( talk ) 03:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree about the jargon-nature of "notability" of Wikipedia. "May not meet the Wikipedia guidelines for a separate article." seems less insulting. Tijfo098 (talk) 18:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Or "An editor is unsure whether Wikipedia should have an article about this person." Getting away from wikijargon like "Notable" might help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I like where this is going; a carefully worded tag for BLP notability will help. I've had people privately begging me to take down their bio because they were going to be speaking at a conference and their bio had a nasty tag on it. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

• What were the tags, though? Cleanup? Copyediting? Lack of references? Inline citations? Wikification? Sections? Missing introduction?

  This does raise an interesting question: If subjects aren't getting that these tags are about the article and are the faults of the article writers, then perhaps readers in general are not. Part of the point is to encourage readers to join in and fix the article. It's worth studying, if anyone can come up with a methodoogy, whether in general people aren't realizing that tags are requests to edit and fix, not an article rating system that is intended to apply indefinitely.

  It's interesting to note that the earliest revisions of {{cleanup}} used to instruct one to remove the notice when the work had been done. Now that relates to something that occurs visibly, on-wiki: The people who say "I've cleaned the article up. When does someone come along and remove the tag?". It's not a farfetched assumption for them to think that they have to wait for someone else's approval. FT2's suggestions above are, I submit, a step yet further away from that, if anything. They look entirely perpetual.

  For {{subst:afd1}} we have an answer to that question: "A volunteer will come along at the end of seven days.". Similarly for {{subst:prod}} and our other deletion notices. But for cleanup, rather than deletion, the situation is a lot woollier, both in what we currently have and in the direction that FT2 is suggesting.

  It's worth observing how little Wikipedia:Cleanup has evolved from its original roots as compared to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Uncle G (talk) 02:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

"It's not a farfetched assumption for them to think that they have to wait for someone else's approval." I've seen a fair number of articles where the issue had been fixed, sometimes for years, but the tag was still on the article. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

However, it's not outlandish to assume the opposite as well: a not-so-flattering biography with a dispute tag sometimes appears more acceptable to the subject than one without a tag. I'm not OTRS, so I only have circumstantial evidence for this hypothesis, like the edit history of this biography. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:21, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

AFD is a fixed term situation - it's being discussed for deletion and will be decided in a given time. That's different to a cleanup concern which can last indefinitely. (There isn't yet a consensus that perceived issues must be fixed in a given time to the satisfaction of all). So the question is, how do we notify users of a possible open-ended concern that may or may not be valid or under discussion or deadlocked for months or (in some cases) years, in such a way they don't misunderstand the extent of the issues. It's in that context I see the original question. If current cleanup tags may be over complicated or over detailed as seen by some, then proposals to simplify them and give just the basics may be useful. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:26, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Templates such as {{Weasel}} are also concerning as they can be misinterpreted. See Victim of "IBM advocates" criticizes Wikipedia in the April 12, 2010 Signpost. Having this many tags on a BLP article [1] is never a good idea and it is also never a good sign when OTRS has to get involved. [2] [3] Seeing these types of issues raised causes me to wonder just how many more go unreported and unresolved? At the very least, single word templates such as {{Weasel}} should probably be renamed (and Twinkle updated) to "Weasel words" or perhaps even better, "Vague phrasing", etc. --Tothwolf (talk) 19:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, though, there seems to be a fair consensus out there that the subject in that case is essentially a crank with an agenda. That is a rather specific case and I would not want us to overdo deference to people trying to use Wikipedia to downplay controversy about their eccentric viewpoints. Guy (Help!) 20:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

As far as consensus for that goes, that in and of itself is a can of worms and something which I'd not want to debate from either pov. The subject of that article did seem to be genuinely confused as to the meaning of the {{Weasel}} maintenance template. In following the link from the Signpost coverage, he really seems grateful towards User:Stifle for removing the Weasel tag from his bio. Black states: "On that page a link was made to a cartoon of a weasel, this apparently as an official Wikipedia policy, with a special “weasel” label." What he was apparently referring to, is the image shown at Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words, which itself is directly linked from {{Weasel}}. Should we really even be including images such as File:Weasel words.svg in any pages directly linked from maintenance templates such as {{Weasel}}? (From the looks of it, this has also been copied from the English Wikipedia to many of the other language Wikipedias.) The {{Weasel}} template itself had a history of problems with inappropriate images prior to it being fully protected in 2008 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] (a sample from the last 5 years). While I don't think it would be possible (nor desirable) protect and/or monitor each and every single page directly linked from these templates to prevent the insertion of such images, this still really is a potential problem area that we should be looking at. --Tothwolf (talk) 00:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

It is also quite debatable whether he was truly confused or merely pretended to be confused so he could write in his Cutting Edge News article that Wikipedia labeled him a "weasel American Jew" [10]. Tijfo098 (talk) 11:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• The answer to how much of a problem it is. I am seeing several examples per week, just one of several tens of OTRS volunteers, of biography subjects specifically raising the issue of distress caused by these tags. I suspect that many, possibly most people never really work out how to contact OTRS. It is as big a deal as any other WP:BLP problem; the scale may or may not be huge, but it gives us a challenge to show some class rather than giving internal administrative concerns precedence over the feelings of individuals who very often did not ask for an article in the first place. Guy (Help!) 20:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Spanish Wikipedia, Rebelion.org., Richard Stallman, and so forth

Donate for the Spanish-language Wikipedia?

Personally, I have not got any reason to want Spanish-language Wikipedia goes on.

Unluckly, I registered with the Spanish-language Wikipedia in 2008, just before the Rebelion.org were blacklisted; a real act of censorship, as reported by the software freedom activist Richard Stallman. Me and many people were banned and offended by the administrators. No point of all my posts were scrupulously polite. No point of requesting for ban revision, more offense were suffered from.

It is incredible ... by now, my requests to remove personal data (the banned nick, with name and surname) have been ignored, despite of a the clear Spanish legislation.

Well ... three years later Rebelion.org is still blacklisted, me and many people are still banned and any post asking for revising this issue is deleted.

Donate for the Spanish-language Wikipedia? I wish a resounding failure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juanpablosoto (talk • contribs) 23:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Please, I need support this post is being repeatly deleted in the Spanish-language Wikipedia. Could anybody stop such a behaviour?, What could I do? Juanpablosoto (talk) 23:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

It is incredible ... now, the English page for Rebelion.org has been just edited to remove any reference of the blacklist and the Stallman's report. Indeed, as Richard Stallman reported: “There’s a problem here, a real problem”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/a-war-of-words-over-wikipedias-spanish-version/?hpw

Juanpablosoto (talk) 00:20, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

There's not anything we can do about the Spanish Wikipedia here. You should consider posting on Meta. Also, donations support all projects, which help many people - don't wish for their failure. Dcoetzee 00:22, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I may point that Ecemaml, the user that just edited the article here, is the user who requested the block of Rebelion in wikipedia in Spanish in the first place, so editing articles about the real-world controversy generated about it can be understood as a conflict of interest MBelgrano (talk) 00:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

MBelgrano, I have to point out for clarity and a general audience - I'm sure you're already aware, having looked at the article history - that Ecemaml made an edit to soften the wording of a section, and that I subsequently removed that section completely. I don't know Ecemaml from Adam, I have never had anything of substance to do with the Spanish Wikipedia, and I would have removed that section with either version of the altered language in it, since it was (to put it very nicely) useless navel-gazing self-reference of no substantial import beyond Wikipedian politics. We should never use the encyclopedia as a tool to advocate unimportant political factions of unimportant Wikipedia disputes, no matter how strongly we feel about the matter, and I will always remove such nonsense when I see it, with no regard to who "the good guys" are supposed to be. For all I know Ecemaml is the author of all the ills that afflict the world today, but it would be silly to talk about sanctioning him for an edit that would never have made any difference.

Meanwhile, I'm looking into the question of whether Rebelion.org is even objectively notable at all apart from the internecine drama. Merely being noticed by Richard Stallman does not make it so. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

My mistake, the one I was talking about was Kordas, not Ecemaml, I remove my comment MBelgrano (talk) 01:33, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Trick 'r treat. Ask for money, give no toleration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.126.240.2 (talk) 15:33, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Spin-off Rebelion.org. MediaWiki fork

The English page for Rebelion.org has been edited to remove any reference of its blacklist and the Stallman's report. This is the removed paragraph, tagged as "navel-gazzing":

In 2008, Rebelión.org was included in the Spanish-language Wikipedia spam blacklist. Rebelion.org accused the Spanish-language wikipedia of banning them, allegedly charging some administrators of right-wing bias, since other Spanish sites, with similar content but from right-wing perspectives, were not banned. The software freedom activist Richard Stallman complained about this decision. Presently, Rebelion.org is still blacklisted.

Navel-gazzing? ... seemingly some Wikipedia's administrators use offense too easily. Against this one-click aggression I have to use the tricky Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution procedure, ... meanwhile info remains missing. Balanced, isn't it?

However, ... objective of this post is another one. Objective is to trigger a reflection regarding of the Richard Stallman's report: "There's a problem here, a real problem". Imho, this Wikipedia's problem is content administration; no point in how much elaborated are policies, some senior administrators will find the way.

What could be the solution? Indeed, could Wikipedia work with no content administration? Likely the free software movement could help us.

A modified wiki software (likely a MediaWiki fork) could render contents according to user's preferences. Users could create and/or sign in groups to tune what content bias is displayed for them. Anonymous readers would get contents backed by a majority of groups. With this approach there is not a sole content, there could be many contents with different weigth or support from the users' groups. Less administrators, more users. Less elite, more people.

Experienced-software people know such an approach is feasible (GPL has got no frontiers, see Bitcoin). Such a MediaWiki fork (or new feature) could help Wikipedia.

Hopefully, community feel this post as a severe but constructive criticism. I hope so.

Juanpablosoto (talk) 11:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Me, I prefer my information to be from the reality-based community. A fair percentage of this community have one or other ideology that I loathe. But if they're reality-based, I can get along with them. So your suggestion for Mediawiki sounds all wrong to me.

Is the article on rebelion.org censored? No, or anyway, not as you suggest. See my comments on its talk page.

Is Spanish Wikipedia censored, does it have a right-wing bias, or, more simply, does it suck? I have an open mind on this, but I agree with the comment above that English Wikipedia isn't the place to discuss it. -- Hoary (talk) 11:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't say as I understand your post entirely, but a few things. Wikipedia does not have any "content administrators" but only administrators. Neither the user who first changed your addition as inaccurate, nor the second user who removed this material as "naval-gazing" are, in fact, administrators. It sounds like what you want to create is a Wikipedia where users could click on different bias version filters to view different versions of the article from different spins. I shudder at the thought.--68.160.245.89 (talk) 11:44, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikinfo works on the principle of having parallel articles with different perspectives, with "See also" at the top. Peter jackson (talk) 11:54, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

@Peter ... thanks for your point about Wikinfo.org. I do not know it, I wish them the best and will try to collaborate. Existence of Wikinfo.org shows the reality of problem pointed by Stallman, i.e. the subject of this post.

I have selected the Bitcoin example because it shows two concepts. On the one hand, how elitism can be avoided at the roots. On the other hand, how people are able to manage dynamically (quite) complex environments. In our context, the second one means allowing users/readers to dynamically select and see their content bias, similarly as people select its newspapers or TV channels to catch the *reality*.

Indeed, Bitcoin is an amazing web3 GPL application. This approach would mean, first at all, to boost social perform of Wikipedia. But also, to reduce risk against predators: i.e. governments, corporations and something with enough resources to watch and lead selected items. Paranoic ... not that much.

@68.160.245.89 ... If the user who removed info as "navel-gazing" is not, in fact, administrator ... what means?, could I undo its action?, could it redo it? ... well, I don't do it, I don't want to risk getting me banned. Then, ... Rebelion.org will go on blacklisted in the Spanish Wikipedia and polished in the English one.

Would be somebody so kind as to restore the English article of Rebelion.org?

Juanpablosoto (talk) 17:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Administrators are not the same thing at the Spanish wikipedia and here. There, administrators are allowed to do basically anything, citing the "use common sense" policy as a justification, and by getting the trust of the community they are trusted that they won't misuse the buttons. And the blocking system does not allow any non-admin user to opine about someone else's block or discuss them, discussions at the administrators noticeboards are off-limits for them (if, for example, an admin blocks someone for some arbitrary reason and a dozens of non-admin users say it was wrong, their comments are simply dismissed citing WP:NOT#FORUM).

Fortunately, none of those weird things apply here. If you have a strong reason to believe that someone is pushing a point of view at some article, feel free to fix it, discuss it, or even report the user or the article if problems continue. Perhaps you will be found to be rigth, perhaps the other user will, but as long as you can provide plausible reasons for the things you say or do, and manage the dispute in calmed ways, you don't have to fear any block. MBelgrano (talk) 20:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Streamlining the look of cleanup tags

User:MuZemike/Cleanup proposal → I actually started this last year, but now since we have been having some recent discussion on cleanup tags (including the above thread on "Maintenance tags"), I thought I would bring forward my proposal to at least "streamline" the tags somewhat. This would make the tags simpler to follow, easier to read, and possibly not look as menacing as many contend. Any thoughts/comments on this are welcome. –MuZemike 02:08, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't they say "article"s rather than "page"s? --Cybercobra (talk) 04:17, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

My reasoning is that "page" is easier to say than "article", even though "article" may be more descriptive. –MuZemike 04:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

"Page" is more generic; we are trying to keep people conscious at all times that these are encyclopedia articles they are editing, not just MySpace pages or something. --Orange Mike | Talk 05:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, that's fair. My goal is trying to strive for simplicity, but I realize we need to balance that with concise descriptiveness. –MuZemike 08:42, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Very simple and clean. Can you mock up how you would handle it when multiple of these apply, as well? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

FPC "voting period"

Surely it is not right that the standard FPC template refers to a "voting period" ? ╟─TreasuryTag►cabinet─╢ 17:19, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Afd and 'Original Research'

The article Greek love has been nominated for Afd. The debate indicates some confusion about Original Research as grounds for deletion. Hopefully some people here can clarify the issues for us there. The debate is an important one and more voices are welcome. Thanks. McZeus (talk) 22:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Original research is grounds for deletion. What else do you need to know? --TS 23:05, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know how to explain that without seeming to promote my own arguement and I think that might be improper canvassing. People need to look at the arguments being made in the debate. There is certainly a difference of opinion and some guidance would be appreciated. Feel free to vote but even just a comment might help. McZeus (talk) 23:36, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Cleanstart, RFA and Arb elections

As a result of some discussions at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2010#Disclosure_of_former_and_alternate_accounts I've formulated a possible amendment to CleanStart at Wikipedia_talk:Clean_start#Replace_Strongly_recommended_with_must?. ϢereSpielChequers 21:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)