Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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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.

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Strategic Planning

The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a year long phase of strategic planning. During this time of planning, members of the community have the opportunity to propose ideas, ask questions, and help to chart the future of the Foundation. In order to create as centralized an area as possible for these discussions, the Strategy Wiki has been launched. This wiki will provide an overview of the strategic planning process and ways to get involved, including just a few questions that everyone can answer. All ideas are welcome, and everyone is invited to participate.

Please take a few moments to check out the strategy wiki. It is being translated into as many languages as possible now; feel free to leave your messages in your native language and we will have them translated (but, in case of any doubt, let us know what language it is, if not english!).

All proposals for the Wikimedia Foundation may be left in any language as well.

Please, take the time to join in this exciting process. The importance of your participation can not be overstated.

--Philippe

(please cross-post widely and forgive those who do)

Automated creation of stubs

Following on from the case of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claus Peter Poppe in which in which hundreds of German stubs were translated and blind copied into English Wikipedia, it seems that the creation of hundreds of stubs using automated tools continues without any regard to whether the topics are notable or not. A new wave of articles created by Ser Amantio di Nicolao, who incidentally, is the same editor (with a new name) who created the German stubs under the name AlbertHerring.

My concern is that the mass creation of articles which do not comply with Wikipedia's content policies is basically undermining the whole Wikipedia project because the editors who operate automated tools are not making any effort to control the quality of their creations. For example, the creation of the article Bulbophyllum abbreviatum goes against the spirit of WP:NOT#DIR; what is happening is that entries from Wikispecies are being transcribed to Wikipedia without any regard for the notability of these article topics.

I am bringing this issue here and to WP:ANI as I beleive that actions of editors sucha as Ser Amantio di Nicolao are undermining Wikipedia. If we don't take a stand against article spammers now, then the situation is going to become unmanageable. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree we need to be careful, and each 'run' needs to be examined before being enacted. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

"Undermining wikipedia". Utter Rubbish. The stubs are referenced, however short and can be reasonably expanded by anybody. We should have articles on these subjects if we are to attain our goals. Please stop this hostility and do something constructive Gavin. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 11:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Really? Every single separate flower needs one? I can see this being just like the debate for places. People claim WP needs every single one, and that since they "can be proven to exist" we should have an article -- even though there may be little to say about them, and that bit can easily go into a well written list. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:14, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

There's already too much of a systematic bias against less academic topics (notability pop culture) that the automatic creation of stubs for topics that are academic needs to be checked. Just because it is a known species or a river or the like doesn't mean it needs an article. It may be better to have these as a list until a more complete article can be created, with redirects certainly created to point to a list to aid in searching. But we can't go and and while we're cutting out fictional characters and television episodes, say that it's ok to add non-notable stubs for all terms scientific. Granted there may be some stub creation that makes complete sense to do, but that should be discussed before it is launched, now that WP is starting to mature. --MASEM (t) 14:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the issue: article creation needs to be conducted within the framework of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, otherwise we are left with thousands of useless stubs on topics without evdidence of notability that fail WP:NOT. There is a duty of care on creators of articles to remain within this framework, otherwise they are just creating lots of unnecessary editorial effort in tagging and cleanup operations. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:59, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect, Blofeld, I think you failed to pick up on an important concept from the last go-around we had with the German politicians. Here again you say "The stubs ... can be reasonably expanded by anybody." This is once again placing an undue burden on somebody else when in reality the editor creating the articles should be the one to expand them. If someone feels the need to create an article but then cannot actually think of anything to say anything about it, perhaps that is a sign that an article is not yet needed on that subject. Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure that statement is even accurate. Anybody can reasonably expand them? These are extraordinarily obscure topics. Can you expand Bulbophyllum trichorhachis? I, for one, cannot. Shereth 16:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

This might be a little off topic, but as I pointed out in the bulk AfD, I have significant issues with the "Autoreviewer" user group and I believe it undermines the efforts of the new page patrol to make sure every article that enters Wikipedia complies with our policies and guidelines. I note that both Ser Amantino and AlbertHerring are Autoreviewers and I think this problem could have been targeted and handled a lot more quickly if there were eyes watching their incoming pages, instead of them getting a free pass. ThemFromSpace 16:26, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the point raised by Themfromspace is highly relevant. The mass creation of stubs which do not provide evidence of notability is undermining the whole of the Wikipedia project; as Themfromspace points out, it is impossible for Wikipedia:New pages patrol to carry out their work, and it is impossible for the various Wikiprojects to carry out their work if stubs are being created on a massive scale that cannot be handled by individual editors. My own concern is twofold, namely

1. the mass creation of articles could be carried out by editors who operate automated tools without exercising any form of quality control;
2. the spamming of articles could be used by editors with an personal agenda that is not congruent with Wikipedia's objectives, by which I mean they are trying to obtain personal aggrandisement, push a point of view, or overwhealm one or more of Wikipedia's content policies and guidelines by creating articles of a particular type or subject matter that contravenes them. In this sense, automated tools in the hands of reckless editors are like Weapons of Mass Destruction.

For instance, if an editor who disagrees with WP:NOT#DIR who wanted to undermine this policy by creating lots of stubs about orchids could transcribe thousands of entries from Wikispecies into Wikipedia to make a WP:POINT on a grand scale. In the example of article Bulbophyllum abbreviatum, I think the trascription of lots of articles about orchids does indeed go against the spirit of WP:NOT#DIR.
I think Shereth is right that there is little chance of all of these articles being sourced, and what we are left with is a mirror of Wikipecies. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:50, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

An interesting point brought up, the autoreviewer bit. If nothing else, the automated creation of articles seems to be quite contrary to the spirit and purpose of the autoreviewer group in general. The assumption is that anyone with "autoreviewer" has already done their due diligence in ensuring the articles they create are sourced, notable, and otherwise meet guidelines. By its very definition, automated creation of articles is not thoroughly reviewed by the creator and should show up on the newpages list. What it boils down to is no account with the "autoreviewer" flag should ever be automatically generating mass quantities of articles. Shereth 17:03, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Shereth: A recent VPR thread here may, or may not, be of interest. –Whitehorse1 17:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The article Bulbophyllum abbreviatum has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bulbophyllum abbreviatum. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Any large-scale semi-/automated article creation task require BRFA

• Proposed. "Large-scale" is up for discussion, but I would say anything more than 25 or 50. I would further suggest that input from the associated WikiProject be sought prior to the task being approved by BAG. –xeno^talk 15:42, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I am on board with the requirement that the rapid creation of any large quantity of articles be subject to approval by BAG, but I cannot support the requirement to get the blessing of the associated WikiProject. Certainly, getting input from said project is useful. WikiProjects should not be granted any kind of special authority over any given class of articles, as they do not WP:OWN them any more than any other editor. Granting them veto power over these kinds of requests is doing just that, however. Their input at BRFA discussions should be treated equally to that of the rest of the participants. Shereth 15:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

You're right - tweaked [1]. My reasoning on this are that if the WikiProject doesn't want them, it's unlikely the wider community will either. –xeno^talk 15:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, this wording I can get behind. Shereth 15:58, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I would support required approval from BAG and oppose the required input from Wikiprojects, of which their quality and level of participation varies from project to project. The approval should only make sure that the articles are sourced to meet BLP policy and that are that they are not copyright violations. Anything more than that seems a little policey. ThemFromSpace 16:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

As a best practice, I think that the input should be at least sought, i.e. with a note at the WikiProject talk page. Whether they respond is another story and I don't think responses should be a requisite, but I think the due diligence should be performed. –xeno^talk 16:34, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I would at least go as far to say that the WPRoject may have a veto vote in all this - but are still not needed for approval. Say if someone wanted to create an article for each Persona in Persona 3 (a video game, which there are about 150 -odd Personas, akin to the idea of Pokemon), the WP:VG will be first to say "no way" per its guidelines. --MASEM (t) 16:41, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Question, how is BAG better suited to approve BLP/editorial issues than the wider community at WP:PUMP, WP:BLP or an active WikiProject? RxS (talk) 16:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

BAG typically won't approve a request unless wider community input was sought (often at one of those venues). So, this proposal is a check/balance to ensure that someone neutral takes a look and makes sure that the task is a good idea and the community is behind it. –xeno^talk 16:43, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hold on... are we talking about bot generated articles? I am not at all happy with that idea. How does this work? Blueboar (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's more like formulaic articles created en masse by a semi-automatic method. Here is a small sample of a recent mass-creation of articles that are currently under discussion at ANI for their utility. Obviously some people object to these which is why I think a BRFA should be a requirement prior to commencing a task of this nature. –xeno^talk 19:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:BOLD. Few good things would happen here if you had to ask for permission first. People also have a disturbing tendency to oppose anything that they don't fully understand. Approval should only be required if manually deleting the article would be very time-consuming. 25-50 articles per day is not a problem. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

  (confused) So you think people should just follow behind these automated creators with mass AFDs? Wouldn't that be time-consuming? –xeno^talk 19:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• Non-notable article should not be mass-created of course, but we don't need a new rule for that. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• 25–50+ articles per day multiplied by how many (semi-)automated creators though? –Whitehorse1 19:26, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• If they do good work, then it's not a problem. If someone makes bad articles, then make that person stop. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• (interject) It's the positiveness of the work which is the focus of current discussion(s). How do you suggest going about that? –Whitehorse1 19:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• Also, making short stubs on notable subjects does not create work for others expanding the articles. The work was already there, and having the stub in place with name, categories, infobox etc. makes it easier. It only creates work if the article should not exist at all. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

BAG approval would be nice but I think we can live without it. I recall the discussion about the bot that would create a couple million articles for every village and town on earth. That went through a trial run but died there. That level of "large-scale" certainly requires community input. I have seen bot-created sets of articles, or possibly human-created articles with a bored person copy/pasting most of the content, in such subjects as asteroids and uninhabited islands. Generally, if one article is good, they are all equally good, and the only concern needs to be whether one article is good. Having someone check a sample article to sign off that it meets inclusion criteria would be all that's necessary. This is not a role for BAG in their standard code-checking role, but it should go through some pair of eyes, and most BAG editors should have some general article-creating experience anyhow (I hope). Chutznik (talk) 19:47, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• I can see no reason why creating articles should have to go through some arbitrary board. If the articles violate policy we already have rules to deal with that, if not, then no rules are needed. --Falcorian ^(talk) 19:58, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• So long as the articles include at least one reference for verifiability, then as long as we are not talking about tens of thousands of articles at a time, I see no need to go through a BRFA or get pre-community approval. People should not have to get consent before creating articles as that turns the burden of proof on it's head. If someone persistently creates articles that do not have any potential, and where there would be a consensus to delete them if created individually at AFD, then that can be treated as disruption and dealt with accordingly. Stubs are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Davewild (talk) 21:07, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

In response to the above few comments, the issue here isn't the creation of stubs. It isn't even the creation of a lot of stubs. It is about the automated (or semi-automated) creation of multiple stubs in a rapid manner. The user in question had been using AWB to create stubs at a rate that sometimes exceeded 1 every 10 seconds over an extended period of time. There is no way anyone can argue that an editor is capable of ensuring every new stub meets inclusion criteria at that rate. I believe the proposal here is designed to create some kind of safeguard against rapid, mass-creation of new articles without having more eyes on the situation before it happens. Shereth 21:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

If you require that step then basically you are turning the deletion policy upside down and requiring consensus for creation instead of for deletion - which I don't think we have ever had and hope we never do. If the articles themselves fail policies then take them to AFD either individually or as a group nomination and see if there is a consensus for deletion - how they are created should not matter. (I also that the user in the case that sparked this has said they would notify relevant wikiprojects first anyway if they do mass-create in the future again) Davewild (talk) 21:34, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Again I think you are missing the point. Nobody is suggesting they get approval to create articles, but that they get approval to use (semi) automated tools to create them. It is no different than requiring a user get permission to write a bot to perform automated edits. That is all. Shereth 21:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

But the issue in the approval will be whether the articles are notable or not, or whether they fail a policy or not. I am opposed to having such a discussion where there has to be consensus in order for someone to use (semi) automated tools to create articles. That turns the burden of no-consensus to be to prevent creation, instead of in an AFD where no consensus defaults to keep - and the burden of consensus in a BRFA is high from what I have seen, a few opponents could easily stop any such creation ever. Davewild (talk) 21:56, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Except that even if someone fails to get community approval for automated creation, they can still do so manually, one by one. I suppose our disconnect here comes about as a result of looking at it through a different lens. The way I see it is as follows. Some editor has, at their disposal, a database with numerous subjects all in a given class. They make a request for permission to use an AWB script to upload every entry in the form of a new article. The purpose of the request is then to determine whether or not the subjects in question are likely to be inclusion-worthy. It is not to determine the notability, individually, of every article. To use the incident that sparked this as an example, the question posed would be : is every species in the genus Bulbophyllum likely to be notable? If so, proceed with the mass upload. If not, upload them manually and make a case-by-case judgement call as to their notability. A ruling that every bulbophyllum is not inherently notable does not mean that the individual species cannot be, and would not be any kind of impedement to adding them. Tl;dr version of the above - we aren't asking people to prove that individual articles are notable, just that entire classes of articles are inherently notable. Shereth 22:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree with this. This seems like just looking for a process that sort-of-fits the situation. Obviously automated creation has to go through BAG, else it should be treated like any other unapproved bot. The issue is with semi-automated creation.

BAG does 2 jobs at BRFA:

1. Evaluate the technical suitability of a bot
2. Guess whether or not there's consensus for it (I say "guess" because 90% of the time, there's almost no comments from outside the bot community on BRFAs)

For a semi-automatic task (human approval for each edit), there's really nothing to do for job 1. So this would basically just be (ab)using BRFA to determine community consensus for something. You can use basically any formal process for that, its just a question of how out-of-scope it is and BRFA just happens to be the least. I would support requiring community consensus for such things, but I don't see the point of putting BAG in change of it. Mr.Z-man 21:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I had been thinking about that actually, as far as whether or not BAG is the correct group for these kinds of discussions. You raise an excellent point, as the issues here are not technical. Perhaps simply requiring the user to post a request somewhere like WP:VPR to get community concensus? Shereth 21:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

imo a bot by any other name still smells the same. The proposal is meant to address creation of formulaic stub (and often sub-stub) articles. The articles often take the form "X is a Y that Z". The person behind the wheel isn't adding anything substantive. It's is a bot, even if there is a human sitting there clicking "save" every 5-10 seconds. The proposal to go through BRFA is meant to provide neutral review of the task and gather community consensus. If the person wishes to gather consensus in some other manner, that's fine, I think my main goal here is to put something in place as a speedbump. –xeno^talk 14:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

A semi-automated process is not "a bot by any other name" in the same way a bicycle isn't the same as a car. As you said, the point is to gather community consensus, any process can do that. BRFA exists to do that AND evaluate the technical aspects of a bot. However, there are few to no technical aspects to consider with such a request. BRFAs tend to get pretty poor community participation unless they're advertised all over the place (and even then, its not a guarantee), so if you really want community consensus, its not the best forum. Mr.Z-man 17:48, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure it is. A semi-automated process is like Fred Flintstone's car. Just because the car is propelled by human feet doesn't mean it's a different vehicle. In any case, the BRFA would also be looking at how the data is extracted from the source, which is a technical aspect that BAG can examine. As to your latter part, that's why I have suggested notice be given to the relevant WikiProject(s). If people don't show up to object at the BRFA, at least the bot-op (or article-creator) can say that he did seek the opinions. –xeno^talk 18:07, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Or we can use a more appropriate venue like an RFC or a VPR thread and actually get community input rather than just trying to. I now no longer understand the reason for your proposal. On one hand, you want to prove a consensus for the creation, on the other, you're choosing a process with some of the least community input on the project and saying that its okay if no one comments, as long as the person goes through the motions. Mr.Z-man 20:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The reason is to have someone go through the due diligence. I chose BRFA because it's the closest fit (based on my view on what semi-automated article creation is - in essence a botting activity). The BAG member would, in theory, ask to see that a VPR, RFC, or thread at the WikiProject on the issue had been made, that consensus exists, and provide the seal of approval. However, given that you are a BAG member and don't like the idea, then I suppose simply a requirement that one of those procedures be engaged prior to starting the activity would do just as well; I still think a BAG stamp on the final product is ideal. –xeno^talk 20:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support. There hasn't even been a reason given yet why the existing Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval is preventing a better Wikipedia from being written. Isn't this process that stops a stub from being written for every zip code or every census tract? I'm not even sure it is correct to call the status quo, namely that Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval, already in effect, a proposal. Is this a quibble over the difference between automated and semi-automated? patsw (talk) 01:25, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
  • As I pointed out above, the only real purpose would be to get community consensus, the rest of the BRFA process would be unused for a semi-automatic process. But almost every process exists to gather consensus for something, it would just be more of an abuse of process to put it through arbcom elections or templates for deletion than BRFA. But a discussion on WP:VPR or an RFC would work just as well. Using BRFA seems to just be a way to have a formal process rubber-stamp it. Mr.Z-man 02:15, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Also commented above, the BRFA would also look at exactly how the data is to be extracted from the external sources. They can also determine whether the task should be run with the bot and/or autoreviewer flags. –xeno^talk 18:15, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support BAG, Oppose wikiproject consent (notify them but don't rely on their judgement). As ThemFromSpace said above, some are popular and reliable, some are nearly dormant or maintained by a single volunteer. Some form "consensus" that runs contrary to what's generally accepted in the rest of wikipedia (example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music enforces self-invented no infoboxes for composers "guideline"). These groups are too narrow and, sometimes, unacceptably biased. NVO (talk) 05:31, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support the requirement for advance permission for mass substub creation. I've undergone that: some fellow's bot perpetrated uninformative, uninteresting and often mistitled articles on over three hundred photographers and since nobody else offered to clear up the mess I did; so we now have hundreds of uninformative, uninteresting but correctly (according to an MOS page with which I profoundly disagree) titled pages. What a waste of my time. I've changed some of these to little articles but resent being a pawn in somebody else's would-be demo of the parable of the broken window. Permission should involve notifying any relevant WikiProject and (as people may be on vacation) waiting at least two weeks for discussion. Meanwhile, thinking humans would be welcome to create intelligent articles designed for thinking humans. -- Hoary (talk) 05:59, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support I'm not a big fan of having a bot/automated process create articles (weather it be one or a million and one). Isn't this project meant to be the sum of all human knowledge? That said, as long as the articles created all meet the notability crieteria (I know that should go without saying...) and they're referenced, I don't see the problem. Taskforces should be setup to focus on the expansion of these articles once they're created, and it should be done in a staggered process. IE create them in batches, stop creation, improve, then continue. Remember, there is no deadline!. It doesn't matter if it takes us the next 10 weeks, or the next 10 years to reach the next millionth article. Lugnuts (talk) 08:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• support some of these projects have been very good, and some have been quite poor. The good ones have sometimes been challenged, and approval beforehand would prevent questions afterwards. The poor ones might be improved by the criticism., or else abandoned. The work involved in some of these projects has been very great, and it would be a good idea to see that it is not wasted--to speak nothing of the work involved in undoing the mistaken ones. Doing such a project, and having it rejected after it has been done for thousands of entries, has caused some excellent editors to leave Wikipedia, whereas with a better process they could have been helped to do it right, and stay, and been a continuing credit to us. BOLD is well and good for indivdual articles, but when done on a large scale has a tendency to really cause problems and conflict. DGG ( talk ) 08:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• If the work has been "very great" then it's not semi-automated or a bot. No one should need permission to add to the encyclopedia otherwise, any admin can take it upon themselves to say that such-and-such seems large-scale and was semi-automated (i.e., that a computer was used) and go off the handle - this is a power-grab for admins. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:08, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support. Per DGG's well thought-out answer. This is the right approach both for good project ideas (shielding from challenge) and bad ones (avoiding wasted effort—and the demoralization of editors we need on the project—and the huge effort of may of undoing damage. ^Bongo_matic 09:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support per DGG. Proposed projects like this will benefit from prior discussion. If the proposal's great, fine. If not, maybe it can be improved, or maybe it'll be rejected, but either way it's better than clearing up a preventable mess which (a) creates substantial unnecessary work and wikidrama and (b) can be very alienating for the editors who thought they were doing a great thing. Rd232 ^talk 15:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. DGG puts it well. So does this fiasco, and others like it. Priyanath ^talk 18:25, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support - The initial creation of the articles may not be the majority of the work. Since large-scale article creation may place demands on the time of other editors, general review should be sought to be sure that the effort is a good use of others' time. EdJohnston (talk) 18:29, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: Isn't this proposal redundant, in the sense that any mass article creation would have to be done by an approved bot anyway? Presumably anyone creating articles at ordinary human speeds can also be dealt with at human speeds. Dcoetzee 18:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

  Some folks are willing to stare at an AWB screen for hours at a time clicking "save". Technically these aren't bots, but it is my position that they should be treated as such, especially if they aren't adding substantive content; i.e. the articles being created are entirely formulaic (X is a Y that Z, with the variables preset). –xeno^talk 18:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

  "Presumably anyone creating articles at ordinary human speeds can also be dealt with at human speeds." The response to that is "no". AWB created articles that are technically 'human' created require one 'edit' to create. Deletions typically require several edits in the form of AfD, prods, templates, discussion, etc., and a request for administrator help to delete the article. Multiply that by 1,000-10,000 and it's obviously much better to get approval first. Priyanath ^talk 19:21, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• I agree, this proposal is redundant Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Assisted_editing_guidelines already covers semi-automated editing. I do not think it is necessary to write this (very specific) rule into WP:BOTPOL. Ruslik_Zero 18:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

  Why not? People aren't following that rule in some cases. An explicit line that semi-automated article creation require BRFA (or some other strong consensus) would be ideal. –xeno^talk 19:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Weak oppose, leaning neutral Enforced through what? If someone doesn't go through bag and creates 100 articles through some process described above, do I block them? Speedy the articles? Send them all to AfD? Also, have we talked with a quorum of BAG members about how this will impact them? I want the BAG to review bot requests on their merits, not act as a gatekeeper looking only for signs that an editor has found consensus elsewhere. Thirdly, I'm not convinced that prior discussion cures all that ails us. Protonk (talk) 19:14, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

  Anticipating this concern, I dropped a note at WT:BRFA a short while ago. –xeno^talk 19:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

  Note that part of our "job" is to determine whether sufficient consensus seems to exist for a bot task (depending on how controversial the task seems and what sort of prior discussion exists, etc.) We even have {{BOTREQ|advertise}} for requesting further community discussion. Anomie⚔ 23:31, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• It seems like every time I hear about a bot creating pages, it's followed swiftly by an angry mob complaining about it -- obviously we have a history of problems in this area. That being the case, it seems reasonable to encourage some more central discussion prior to mass article creation. We already require such discussion prior to starting a bot at all, and treating each mass creation as a new bot task doesn't seem unreasonable. It might be quite helpful to create a new page or section, perhaps a child of BRFA, and otherwise encourage notification of and participation from relevant wikiprojects (and noticeboards, if needed); if nothing else, such discussions would allow for more input and oversight from interested editors. – Luna Santin (talk) 21:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support If a good editor wants to use a semi-automated process to create more than 50 articles in a short period, they would understand that some prior discussion is warranted. Just give the relevant project (say) 48 hours notice, then get a tick from BRFA. The editor should provide a typical sample (perhaps a user subpage), and an estimate of how many articles would be created. Editor should pause (no new automated articles for 48 hours) after creating the first 100. That would give time for discussion if problems are found. This proposal does not influence articles being created in the normal manner. Johnuniq (talk) 00:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support this, pretty much per DGG. Enforcement will happen like usual: if that policy is ignored, people are being notified. If it is deliberately ignored and not non-controversial, it's handled like with any other deliberate ignoring of policy, and the pages might have to be post-approved (mass-AfD, probably). Amalthea 09:31, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
  • See this is my complaint. We have a problem, as a community, with enforcing policies where the infractions result in content being created. Say someone breaks this policy and creates a bunch of stubs which (for the sake of argument) are notable. We are in a bind. Do we delete the content and invite the obvious criticism that we are privileging policy over content? That won't happen. So do we block the editor? That won't happen, mostly because the block won't 'fix' the problem. So we leave them with a sternly worded note. This outcome looks familiar because it is common to all policies where the result of a proscribed action is not necessarily objectionable but the commission may be. Out of process deletions, improper block reviews, etc. I don't know that we need another class of actions like those. Protonk (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
    • It's better than having no guidance at all and letting people just create articles en masse without getting any one else to weigh in on whether or not it is a good idea. For the most part, the cases are limited, and this new policy won't go unnoticed to those who tend to partake in formulaic creation activities. –xeno^talk 20:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support in principle although I would tend to agree with some of the comments above that consider using the BAG to be questionable, I see this as primarily a content decision and think some kind of "Requests for creation" process to establish community consensus on individual cases might be more appropriate. The level of controversy and potential for the actions to be disruptive (if not intentionally) means the unapproved, mass creation of articles in this way could be considered somewhat reckless rather than bold, clearly the community does not support all of these projects and because of their size the clean up process takes more effort and leads to more drama than "manual" article creation. Guest9999 (talk) 10:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

  If BAG decides that they are unsuited to this role, we could create an additional process... but I think the shoe fits. –xeno^talk 14:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support. Should help abate drama, and could encourage cooperation about style/info when they are being created. Quantpole (talk) 14:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support to end the repeated mass-creations of worthless sub-stubs that do nothing but cause extra and unnecessary work for everyone else while doing absolutely nothing to add to the public's knowledge, all so that the creator may boast a higher creation count. Lara 18:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support in principle. I'll leave the specifics up to others, but there are certainly times when mass creation is a net negative, so it would be good to have a system in place to review such additions beforehand. Dekimasuよ! 19:07, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support the general proposal but BAG is not the place to seek consensus. I don't view it as a neutral venue--it seems to beg the question and is more concerned with implementation than questions of "why". I'd also suggest that any highly repetitious editing process (by bot or not) that affects articles in a potentially controversial way, including actions by WP:CiterSquad that involve tagging thousands of articles with {{unreferenced}}, be subject to wide review for consensus. Outriggr (talk) 00:13, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support I'd actually like an outright ban on mass article creation in general. Thought should be put into article creation. Spamming by creating hundreds of worthless stubs at a time is simply not helpful. In the absence of a ban forthcoming, this is better than nothing. Enigma^msg 02:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Having content-free stubs does not help us; in fact removing a redlink, which is otherwise a tempting carrot for a newcomer who might actually know something, and replacing it with a content-free bluelink, actually harms us. Some others above have said it well, including DGG and Lara. What has convinced me was random-paging; it took only two clicks to land on this (which is actually one of the better ones). We already have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of articles that are nothing but a few words. Who is going to expand them? Is this information not better presented in a list, with other similar items, until such time as someone is capable of writing more than a single line of "X is a type of Y" text? Antandrus (talk) 03:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support prior discussion generally, but not necessarily BAG/BRFA. The drama fallout from these mass creations is simply ridiculous; hopefully prior discussion would at least spread it out over time. Flatscan (talk) 03:35, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support - The (semi-)automated creation of content is almost certainly the most controversial use of automation. As such, there needs to be a way to insure community consensus takes place. As BAG already serves this purpose of actual bots, there is no reason to create a second venue. As such, the use of any kind of automation to create articles should go through BAG. However, I do not think WikiProject input should be required - just very strong encouraged. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:44, 20 August 2009 (UTC)Insert non-formatted text here
• Support - BAG seems a good place to check semi automated content proposals as well as bot-created. To those who point out that permission is not needed to create articles, this is more like checking that the proposal to create a set of articles is sound (and an opportunity to check the code!!). And agree that the Wikiproject must be informed and given a chance to input into community comments (I wouldn't support them having any more defined powers), as it is likely to be their members who have to carry out any cleanups. Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:34, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support I think the best terminology would be a "pulse test". If the articles are being created by a human being (with a pulse) at some level, even if they are highly formulaic stubs (I believe I created several stubby articles on Cheers characters back in the day that way, eg) then it's just bold new content that needs to be reviewed like anything else. But if it's bulky, automated content creation it sbould be reviewed like any other automated function on the site. Staxringold _talk^contribs 15:41, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I was bored the other day and starting clicking on "random article" over and over again. I would estimate that 25% of the results I got over the course of 5 minutes were formulaic 1 or 2 line stubs about Uruguayan soccer players, obscure species of orchid, or named crossroads in rural Poland. Frankly I question the entire concept of mass-creating articles, although I'm sure this whole debate has been had several times already or we wouldn't have these bots. I agree with some of the commentary above that it creates a massive burden on "someone else" to perhaps, maybe improve all these articles in some indeterminate future. My two cents. Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 00:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support - I am against mass stubbing in general, and this would slow down inappropriate cluttering of the wiki with these stubs. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:46, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose - If it's a bot, it already needs approval. If it's creating more than 50 articles in a short amount of time, can't we already assume it's a bot? The need for a new policy's redundant. If, on the other hand, a person with a pulse can churn out notable articles at this speed, why should we discourage that. Most of the above concerns reflect concern over either bot edits which already require approval, or notability issues, which are their own problem.
  If we're concerned about cluttering the project then why not remove the deletion speedbumps that continue to be erected. Are there so many people creating an abundance of non-notable articles without bots that communication and blocking (if needed) are inadequate? Shadowjams (talk) 05:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

  There have been a number of incidents that generated a lot of bad blood at noticeboards over creation of sub-stub type articles. Admins (this writer included) have declined to block the people creating these because what they are doing technically breaks no policies. By using their main accounts they are making an end-run around bot policy to do, what is in essence, a bot task. –xeno^talk 13:15, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support as it is got to be better than seeking a user block every time some idiot uses automated tools to spam articles, and its got to be better than having to nominate thousands of useless stubs for deletion. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:40, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. If it is a good idea, it'll be approved. If it is not a good idea, it's a pain to fix. If it is maybe a good idea, do it gradually to test the reaction. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:12, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. In most cases, these mass article creations are for notable topics, but if they lack development, they are no better than having no article, it's better to say "sorry, we have no article yet, can you help us and write one?" than to say "Sure we have an article on Earth, look it contains two words even!". Sometimes the automated article creation have done a very good job; it was an automated procedure that made articles for every city and town in the United States, with a meaningful and informative paragraph on demographics and location, and I cannot imagine anyone would object to a similar procedure for other classes of article where we are missing articles. On the other hand I remember I got rather frustrated with an automated procedure created hundreds of articles on uninhabited islands in the Maldives going "X is an uninhabited island in Y atoll". Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to stubs as such; many articles in paper encyclopedias are after all of stub quality, but the reader should get more out of the article than "X is a Y in Z". In total, I agree with DGG's assessment. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:19, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
• Question I'm getting sort of mixed messages here. Is the purpose here to approve an import that has already gotten consensus elsewhere on Wikipedia or is the purpose that people would have to come here for approval? I'm not really crazy about BAG judging whether a class of articles are fit for inclusion, judging notabilty etc. I'm still not quite sure why BAG is better suited to that purpose than other discussion pages. On the other hand, if the point here is to have people come and say, I have gotten consensus for this at wp:sometalkpage and I'd like to run it, I don't have a huge problem with that. RxS (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

  Yes, that's right. BAG would be looking to see that the appropriate consensus-gathering steps were taken (and also any technical aspects of how the data is being extracted form the external source, whether it should be run with or without a bot and/or autoreviewer flag). –xeno^talk 19:24, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support. Automation is great, but if there's anywhere that human eyes and deliberate thought serve a good purpose, it's content creation. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
• Strongest Support Users should not be able to freely create hundreds of articles, all exactly the same, one sentence long, lacking references and notability. Creating articles on topics is great but don't be a lazy person who can't even make articles with more than "Bulbophyllum ankylochele is a species of orchid in the genus Bulbophyllum." If you are saying there are substantial sources, then add them! NO ONE is going to add information to 1800 stubs on orchids, so if you want to automatically make them, then YOU should take the time to make these USELESS stubs USEFUL. You claim they're notable, but I say prove it; they need more than a single sentence. If that's all you're going to write, then it's better to just link to List of Bulbophyllum species, which actually has taxonomic history! There must be approval for any mass creation of articles. Reywas92^Talk 22:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Large-scale semiautomatic creation should be discussed first, and bad stubs shouldn't be mass-created, as they harm the expansion of the encyclopedia. Good (well-linked-to and interesting) redlinks are more likely to turn into reasonable articles than bad stubs. — Kusma ^talk 10:37, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support, per Reywas. Ironholds (talk) 12:16, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support, per obvious. The operative term here being large-scale. This isn't intended to stop someone from creating a bunch of articles. We already insist that people have permission to do anything else in bulk, so I see no reason why creation should be excluded. 81.111.114.131 (talk) 01:09, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support, surprised this wasn't already policy. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 09:36, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Any mass-creration of articles by a bot needs to be approved just like any other mass action; the non-binding opinion of the WikiProject can only help the BRFA people in making their choice. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:33, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Large scale additions to Wikipedia need community input. This should be a no-brainer. Kaldari (talk) 19:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The same semi-automated tools make it just as easy if not easier to clean up should anything not pass our inclusion criteria. Why are we taking baby steps and freaking out about article creation? This has nothing to do with the rate in which these articles are being created. BAG is for bots, not semi-automated edits. facepalm on you all. -- Ned Scott 09:22, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I also think most of you would be shocked to hear how many articles generated in this fashion are not only kept, but were and still are vital to growing Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 09:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support. If someone wants to create thousands of articles on e.g. Bulbophyllum orchids, then the natural question should be: "Would this information fit just as well into a list (with redirect for individual entries, if necessary)?" If yes, then create the list, and create individual articles as you have the information to make useful articles. In the aforementioned case, the list actually contains more information than the articles, so the individual articles are really just pointless distractions. Lampman (talk) 12:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support per DGG. I have often spent a lot of time clicking on Random article only to be dismayed at the number of completely unreferenced articles with little more than one line of text. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 20:44, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose no indication of what semi-automated means. Lots of species, stars, asteroids, places, long-dead congressmen, federal judges stubs have been done by people who use a template and put in the correct different data for these. In no way are those automated any more than using a computer makes things automated. Is the encyclopedia done? Are all articles written? Are we going to allow inconsistently looking articles to be added by onsies, twosies, but not allow more done? If you read the comments above saying "support" these are about bots, not humans making the edits, so there is some mass confusion or bait and switch going on in this proposal. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

  If there is substantive human input I would say this is not semi-automated. Herein we are talking about formulaic article creation (X is a Y that Z.) –xeno^talk 14:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

  AWB has been mentioned above as a semi-automated tool that permits rapid creation of what one might call sub-sub-stubs. Rd232 ^talk 19:38, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's elitism - Knol logical successor

As in any utopia, Wiki started with Good Intentions to encompass as much knowledge as possible with as few rules as possible. The site has been, and continues, to undergo a metamorphosis into an elite static battleground of editors.

Although there are exhortations to be bold and break rules ... in practice no edit to a page is ever quite good enough, and few pages meet the increasingly picky standards of increasing picky elite editors. Although the claim is that anyone can edit without exhaustive familiarity with the current editorial standards, in practice that is not the case. There is now a very exacting process for submission and approval of new work. One editor even went as far as to say about all the articles folks have interest in, already appear in Wiki. That is the same as the senior Patent Official in the US about a 100 years ago saying there are no further inventions to patent anymore.

Evidence of this can be seen in the increasing bureaucratic rules governing edit wars, the time and efforts devoted to conflict resolution, "consensus", what Wiki "isn't", what is notable, what is significant, etcetera, etcetera. Wiki has gone from acquiring new information to defense of existing information and rejection of new information.

Editors are by nature and practice negative. In lieu of submitting fresh data it is always easier and more satisfying to delete and criticize and find fault. One editor stated that cleaning up an article was more difficult and important than acquisition of new data (aka an article).

I believe the tide has now turned such that no newbie is welcome anymore, and unless an existing Wiki gatekeeper can be absolutely convinced of the notability of an article and that precise editorial standards be followed, forget about it appearing in Wiki. Ever. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the Wiki quality assurance Gestapo is in full control today.

If anyone has any suggestions how to reverse this downward death spiral, please offer them up. Google's Knol seems to be the logical successor to Wiki, where authors lock down their work, are named, and articles compete in usefulness.

I mean, if folks are going have to go through the same effort to see their work in Wiki or Knol, might as well submit to Knol and not have to worry about getting abruptly deleted at the whim of yet another elitist.

Google is so powerful simply because it doesn't screen anything out. Annoying to sort through all the rubbish, but I am also grateful to find what I need even if it means sorting through 20 search pages. And I am keenly aware that one person's rubbish is another person's goldmine.

If anyone here believes utopias are sustainable ... they are not. Wiki can either evolve or end up on the ash heap of every single utopia that has ever been tried. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 15:56, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Who says Wikipedia is utopia? I think you are confused, we are an encyclopedia not a utopia. I think you are misunderstanding about how we work, for example we don't govern edit warring, we prohibit it. The fact is that we have new users contribution to articles every day, it has not slowed down but increased. Chillum 18:09, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

From the opening page ... "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.". That seems a utopian ideal to me. Anyway,although edit warring may be prohibited, there appears to be an entire Wiki page (among others) devoted to it at: "Wikipedia:Edit war". And an evolving process to deal with it. The metric I would be interested in is how much data is rejected versus how much data is accepted. The whole concept of "notability" and use of that reason to reject data is what is most worrisome. There is no compelling reason nowadays to casually reject data, given that there are no universal standards about what is "notable" or not. So I believe as long as the data (aka edit) is on topic and not violating legal requirements, let it be. (To a computer it is just strings of 1's and 0's that get accessed a little or a lot.) So rather than get wrapped up in yet more elitist bureaucracy, focus should be on acquiring more data. This drive towards absolute consistency and perfection is easy and fun to do, but not the main thing. It is the data.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 15:47, 23 August 2009

Anyone being able to edit does NOT mean anyone can put whatever they want. There are guidelines on content for a reason. I still can't figure out why so many people seem to not be able to comprehend that fact. It's like someone yelling "deleting a post is taking away my free speech!" on a private forum. No -- in both cases it's content that people deem IS NOT APPROPRIATE. It's really not a hard concept to understand in my mind. To put it a different way, just because you are physically able to put text into WP, doesn't mean that it has some right to be on WP. Anyone can edit, yes. But they can't just put in everything. Anyone is allowed to walk down the sidewalk, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to pull your pants down and piss. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:16, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

nobody cared last time you ranted about this either. Resolute 18:29, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, you do take Wiki's "be bold" philosphy to heart. Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 15:47, 23 August 2009

How many times do you have to espouse The Greatness of Knol! and The Badness of Wikipedia! before you get labeled as a SPA ... ? — Kralizec! (talk) 20:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Note that besides these rants at the Village Pump, Oracle2universe's only contribs have been some external links to sheet music, several of which have been reverted as inappropriate. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:15, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

• There was a reason I had removed this, y'know. → ROUX ₪ 21:32, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not agree with the editor who first posted this section, but I must protest the archiving of this section. By censoring him, you are feeding his very "point" even though it is a misinformed and misguided one. Let the kook talk and thereby let everyone see how much of an idiot he is. Are we that scared of knol or this lunatic? Remove the archive template or I will.Camelbinky (talk) 05:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't have archived. Unarchived it. -- Taku (talk) 11:46, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Can I be incredibly crass here? Wiki does not have a stable source of funding. It is entirely dependent on one person (Jimmy Wales) and there is no guarantee he or his heirs or backers or whatever won't pull their funding. So as Noble as this overall effort is, without the money it won't continue in the style it is accustomed to. Jimmy Wales has already abruptly dumped Wikia and if a tree limb in Central Park falls on him don't expect anyone to rush in. This project does not make money.

Wiki depends on untrained amateurs for its existence and bureaucracy. My experience with untrained amateurs on Hurricane Katrina relief is that they were more trouble than they were worth. (One person was arrested by the FBI and others were canned when their background checks didn't quite check out.)

So let me be even more blunt and crass here. Until Wiki secures a base of loyal small contributors of money (yes money ... sorry we have to address that annoying issue), it is in a precarious position. The best way to secure these donations is by humoring the donors. Being kind. Catering to some of their idiosyncracies.

A few years ago a person in the office said they had submitted an article to Wiki, and was told it was not notable (or whatever the heck the jargon was back then). He had a hurt puppy dog look on his face, and he contributes a significant part of his income to charity. Everytime you call someone misinformed, misguided, kook, and lunatic ... that is one less person amenable to any appeal by Wiki for a donation.

Every person that complains about a bona fide issue and gets blown off by an amateur editor, is one less donation to Wiki. The cartoon people ... forget about any of them sending Wiki any money. When Wiki has its call for proposals, understand anything that talks about bringing in money is going to get attention of the upper echelons. Talking about formatting articles isn't on their radar screens.

Now if anyone wants to comment on this logical text without the apparently obligatory trashing of the author, chime in. And if you want to call me more names, even better. Wiki is making a steady list of more and more enemies, and a lot of potential article contributors are potential money contributors that you are turning away. As incredibly outrageous as you will think this post is ... the world is not a nice place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.14 (talk) 15:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You're mixing up two points, I believe. First of all, the Wikimedia Foundation will survive Jimbo. Its daily operations have been independent of him for quite some time.
Second, I'm sure you have a point with the lacking communication of an untrained and random group of anti-social volunteers (aka "us", present company excluded of course) with new readers and editors. What's your proposal to solve this though? The standards applied (WP:NOTABILITY among others) can't be shaken in any case, otherwise there isn't much of a project to retain anyway. Amalthea 15:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way, this site is called Wikipedia, not wiki. A wiki is any website using wiki software; there are thousands of them.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 16:39, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You are correct, there are a couple of points here intertwined. I'll defer to your expertise that Wiki will survive beyond Jimmy Wales. My concern would be that without revenue from ads or a broad base of donors ... it is in a risky position. A lot of my original works have been picked up by other web sites that sustain on advertising revenues, so if I went away tomorrow I'm pretty sure the works would continue on. (Greed is a much more reliable predictor of human behavior than altruism.)

My issue with notability is that there is no accepted standard. And what is notable today is often not notable in the future. And what seems unremarkable today can prove crucial in the future. In the print days, editors had to cut, that was just the nature of the technology, and no way around it. There are always limits, but computers have extended the possibilities enormously. My guess is Wiki could handle 30 million articles now and upwards 300 million in the future. The money may not be there but the technology is. Notability is such a nebulous concept that most decisions are just arbitrary anyway and guaranteed to inflame folks.

As you hint, trying to shake human nature is difficult, and in the case of WP:NOTABILITY probably impossible. Wiki's professed ideals (grandiose but inspiring nonetheless) of a comprehensive source of reasonably reliable data that anyone can add to, is simply not being followed. Period. I believe that disconnect of practice from theory is what galls people. If Wiki had said upfront you need prior approval for articles, nothing is guaranteed to appear, etc., etc. folks would understand and not do a slow burn.

So if I ran the circus, I would have every editor read and sign a statement of principles (or the equivalent) that makes it crystal clear nothing gets deleted unless there is a compelling reason. And if the data can possibly be included ... it stays. An editor should stretch the limits within legal requirements.

Second, I would have a very brief training program for editors. Have them write a sample article, another persons makes changes to their article (good, bad, off topic, on topic, vandalism, unkind comments, etc.) and check their reaction to it. Do they accept the data and stretch? Or get ticked anyone touched their work and delete it.

Wiki is going to end up with a lot of seemingly trivial data, and a lot of pages of no interest to anyone but the author for now. That isn't a lot different than reality at a major computer center now. (The acronym is "WORN" ... write once, read never.)

On the other hand Wiki stands by its egalitarian principles, and creates a big pool (we are talking millions here) of potential donors softened up, ego stroked, and easy to tap. And these donors don't have to do much heavy lifting to justify their donation, maybe just some innocuous edits would satisfy their need to contribute.

Three percent (not unreasonable for a charity drive) of 3 million is 90,000 that at $100 per donor (average) is $9 mil a year. Year after year you can hit these folks up and they are already in an automated system. Of course, if you get 30 million articles ... you are talking upwards $100 mil and real money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.14 (talk) 17:35, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyone else want to archive this to end the trolling?--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 17:43, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

NO, archiving only feeds the morons views that Wikipedia stifles debate, which is what the original stupid complaint was. We do not censure based on idiocy of a comment. Ignore them or state the truth to counter their misinformation. As for the misguided idea that we cant survive without Jimbo I agree that there have already been in place for awhile safeguards for that. I doubt it will ever come to where we'll need a wealthy benefactor to jump in.Camelbinky (talk) 22:51, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOTAFORUM, WP:NOT#ESSAY, WP:NOTSOAPBOX. If there is no actual policy proposal here, then Oracle's latest rant is beyond the scope of this forum. He can proselytize all he wants about the virtues of Knol, but how is that relevant to us? If Wikipedia is so broken that Knol is the logical successor, then why is he wasting his, and our, time here? Resolute 14:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it obligatory to include "moron", "idiot", "kook", "troll", and "lunatic" in discussions on this page? Just curious. However I commend Camelbinky for sticking by his principles. And not being afraid to say so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 02:27, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Good G! First some well-mannered wikipedian calls me a troll, then the Oracle Himself (hush ye peasants!) calls me "by nature and practice negative". Doctor, they're everywhere! duck and cover. Sysops: don't you dare archiving this, we might miss some crucial revelations here... NVO (talk) 03:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Well you do have a way with the King's English! Editors exist in the real world to smooth out the rough edges and keep things within available technology and resources ("money"). If Wikipedia (there I spelled it out) has limits (disk space, article #, article length, etcetera) then decisions are made to content and priorities made. The decisions about notability will be arbitrary and capricious but ... tough noogies. Technology limits are technology limits. People understand.

And so now my crucial revelations are now revealed. Wikipedia is text and doesn't handle multimedia well (no indexing system does). My area of expertise (music performance) does not lend itself to writing an article within the rules of Wikipedia ... even the ones I agree with.

If I dumped on the Couperin page guy, I have to apologize. After being called a kook, lunatic, idiot, moron, etc. here I thought by avoiding insults I was well within the general quality of discourse. Obviously I was wrong.

Since Wikipedia doesn't handle multi-media well, most music composer pages have outside links to sheet music, YouTube performances, commercial sites, etc. There is just no other easy way to handle it. There is text about composers, text about pieces, but musicians just want the music and sound file. Period. With as little hassle as possible. Like just one click.

I realize the music community is quite a bit different than the Wikipedia text article writing community (especially now). But if Wikipedia wants to extend their outreach a bit, some rules have to be ... stretched. People here that write more than a plausible # of articles in their area of expertise, like essjay with 16,000, are just copying stuff from the internet, changing enough words to avoid copyright violation, and calling it their own. That isn't in the same ballpark as the world class pages at Wikipedia.

Music (and other multimedia) on the other hand, is quite a bit different ball of wax. Few people (unlike text) can use a music editor or have much training in the area. Copyrights are hotly contested and productivity seems low compared to text writing. And no composer is going to casually give up copyright. (WikiMusic appears to be copyright-violation heaven.)

So if anyone can point me to a place where this can get ironed out without having to personally negotiate and get pre-approval from over a hundred editors that range from "its okay" to "I'm going to blow a nut" ... please let me know. I think I have resolved the only bona fide technical issue that folks could object to, short of satisfying increasing narrow nit-picky rules that spring up like crabgrass. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.14 (talk) 16:33, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You still miss the fact that external links have guidelines. We simply can NOT add every little link to sheet music that someone comes up with, or such lists would end up HUGE. We already do have plenty of links to other sites with similar philosophies as WP, such that the IMSLP (did you try posting your work there? It should accept it fine so long as you agree to the licence), the Choral Public Domain Library, the Mutopia Project, and the Werner Icking Music Archive. People insult you because you make these long rants that really seem to be "omg you Nazis, taking away my rights!", which really isn't helpful in the least. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:30, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

"We simply can NOT add every little link to sheet music ..."

There is a big difference between "can not" and "don't want your stuff". I think unless a page goes over the top with more than 50 outside links, it is not an issue. When a page has NO link to ANY sheet music, your claim is really really reaching for some reason, any reason, to exclude data.

There is really no hardware capacity issue with including a lot of text and outside links in an article. But it may offend an editor that there might, just might be other sources folks are interested in, besides their sum total article.

I'm more than familiar with the music sites you gave, and many more (including ones with significant copyright issues). I didn't bother with them because of their difficulty of use and odd indexing schemes. Besides my stuff is already at 8notes.com (I have one piece on their classical top 20), and a hundred pieces at freescores.com (without my permission). It is a bit difficult going after a person in another country for copyright infringement, and since I'm in it for the fame anyway, don't mind the exposure.

If I seem a little unhappy, it is not with a particular editor's judgement to accept or reject. It is with Wikipedia's grandiose philosphy and come on that anybody can add, edit, and contribute ... and find out it is just not so. Knol says upfront here are the rules, you can get bounced at anytime, and we will likely not tell you why. And your page is locked. Truthful and upfront. Take your chances.

Now if you want to outreach to the music performance community, it is time to go back to basic Wikipedia principles (which at this point is just hype) and dispense with spending ever more effort to find reasons to reject data. Multimedia files get large quickly and Wikipedia is not prepared to handle them (few sites are). Links are the only feasible solution. If an editor is offended that folks want the music and not the article text, that is the way it is in music performance.

Now if you want to ding me about self-aggrandizement, why exactly are you and everyone else at Wikipedia? To be anonymous? To cut stuff simply because there could possibly be an outside chance they may benefit from it (aka fame) is ridiculous. If the data are good and on topic, no Wikipedia user cares, no matter how much Wikipedia bureaucracy gets entirely bent out of shape about it.

Sorry for the length here, but it seems short compared with a whole lot of guidance stuff within Wikipedia. (I haven't seen a rule about length here ... but the day isn't over yet.) And you are welcome to call it a rant ... but it doesn't score any points with professionals and whomever reads this stuff for their research on Wikipedia's strengths and weaknesses.

Don't think that the upper echelon of Wikipedia hasn't closely studied Knol and is worried (anything Google does can be worrisome), and Google didn't spend a lot of time and money studying Wikipedia and its strengths and weaknesses, before launching Knol.

So here is a chance for you to champion opening up Wikipedia through your experience and insider knowledge. Oracle2universe (talk) 19:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Chance declined. I offer two solutions: 1) learn to argue your case such that people come away with even a shred of respect for your arguments. 2) Go away to your Knol heaven and leave us alone but in peace with our shabby broken promises. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:30, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

You are right, and I was wrong to place my opinions on this page. And your advice is excellent! Adieu! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs) 13:56, August 28, 2009 (UTC)

All edits to pages about living people will need approving by a moderator?

• At least 2 British newspaper articles on Wednesday 26 August 2009 say that there is a plan for all edits for all Wikipedia articles about living people to need approval. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/6088833/Wikipedia-ends-unrestricted-editing-of-articles.html . What is happening? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:27, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged revisions. More at Wikipedia:WikiProject Flagged Revisions#Resources --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:33, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

No - as noted on both of those pages, the approved proposal is Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions which is more about passive patrolling than active flagging. The New York Times got this wrong also and ignored my comment to clarify it Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions#New_York_Times_article - sigh. --NealMcB (talk) 05:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Also see the foundation blog post: "Wikimedia blog » Blog Archive » A quick update on Flagged Revisions". Retrieved 2009-08-30. --NealMcB (talk) 05:28, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Newspapers and their readers should remember that we're quite possibly weeks away from a trial of semi and full-prot BLPs. - Jarry1250 ^{[ In the UK? Sign the petition! ]} 10:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What's happening? The media are misunderstanding and exaggerating, as usual. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:11, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What's happening is that there's going to be a limited test deployment of a system derived from Flagged Revisions, implemented on English Wikipedia's BLP identified pages. Personally, my knee jerk reaction is that I don't like the idea, but my only real exposure to flagged revisions is a limited experience with Wikinews and Wikibooks. I'm taking a wait and see attitude, since it's entirely possible that my preconceived notions of what the implementation will look like are entirely incorrect.
— Ω (talk) 01:32, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Some good general advice, in my opinion.
— Ω (talk) 01:29, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

That is already the case now, even if no editor comes out and says so. Effectively the pages are edit locked ... only it is AFTER you edit that you find it out when stuff is deleted. Human nature being what it is, no author ever wants their work touched and finding ever more picky and silly reasons to reject edits ... is how it is done. (Amazing how people rationalize.)

Just take your information (and whatever else looks good on the page), go to Knol, rewrite enough to avoid copyright infringement, and if you work is accepted, figure no one is going to change it.

I'm surprised folks here haven't figured this out yet. I mean, you can be the essjay of Knol! (And remember with all the Wiki stuff under some commons license, it doesn't take too much rewriting to clear copyright issues.)

Jimmy Wales just HAS to be getting tired of the endless hassles his baby creates for him.

I mean, here is an innocuous mainstream media story, talking about a plan and yet another Wiki apologist blows a nut and trashes anyone outside their Wiki sewing circle. Yes, let's strive for as much accuracy in Wiki and immediately assume a professional journalist at the Telegraph is knee-jerk wrong — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oracle2universe (talk • contribs)

Countries

Moved from Talk:Wikipedia

Lately, I've noticed that in different language versions of Wikipedia people have started to become a little rebellious and keep referring to everything as "that's the way eng wikipedia handles things, our wikipedia is different". This seems to be #1 reason to change and remove basic rules of the original wikipedia, to shape it for their pleasing. Is this kind of behavior allowed and encouraged or is it not? --88.115.50.38 (talk) 08:29, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

They're allowed to make whatever rules they want (within reason). I would hope they have better reasons than mere contrarianism but anyway.. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've noticed that whatever Jimmy Wales says about rules and such is automatically challenged in my country's version of Wikipedia, and to be honest it's starting to annoy me. I understand that different language versions kinda must make their own rules but I don't like it when they try to find loopholes in the very basic rules that are the foundation of it all. --88.115.50.38 (talk) 09:50, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

This might be better pursued at the policy discussion forum page. --Cybercobra (talk) 11:16, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you move it there? I dunno how to. Thanks. --88.115.50.38 (talk) 14:18, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

What does this have to do with en.wikipedia? Shouldn't it be discussed on the other-language wikipedias in question, or on meta? Algebraist 11:12, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, since the question is directed to the English Wikipedians (the original Wikipedia), I think this is just the right place. The nature of the question should also be enough to point that out. --88.115.50.38 (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

What policy do you expect enwiki to set to change how other wikis set their policies...? → ROUX ₪ 16:05, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't. Read the original question. --88.115.50.38 (talk) 16:13, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I read the original question. You're asking English Wikipedia what kind of behavior is allowed and/or encourage on other Wikipedias. Because of that (since English Wikipedia doesn't allow or disallow or encourage or discourage policy or guidelines on other Wikipedias), Roux asked what you expect. So, let's say the answer is "yes, it's allowed and encouraged" (or, conversely, "no, it's not allowed or encouraged") -- what do you expect to happen then? -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:51, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't expect anything to happen then. I was just asking a question, and pointing out that to me, this is rather irritating and disrespectful, since this is the very site it all started from. Surely there must be guidelines that each Wikipedia must follow. To me, arguing about what one of the founders of Wikipedia has said and claiming that whatever he said about the policies only applies to the English version is rather childish. If the answer would've been "no, it's not encouraged", I would've expected a conversation about it and possibly an update that mentions such behavior on Wikipedia. But since it is allowed and encouraged I'm not expecting anything. --88.115.50.38 (talk) 10:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty much positive that if one of the other language Wikipedia's decided to overturn one of the Five Pillars for their project, then someone from the office would end up stepping in. Aside from a drastic action such as that though, they're as free to do whatever their local consensus dreams up as we are here. Theoretically, we could all decide that we don't want to have any policies or guidelines other then the five pillars, and that could be put into effect. It'd never happen of course, but there's really nothing to stop it.
— V = I * R (talk) 10:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Verbatim Copy of Public Domain Text

In the Irish Wolfhound article under the history section an editor has added several paragraphs of text from a public domain work, without attribution. What is the Wikipedia policy on this? There is a huge amount of text to format. Should the text be left in, whilst a gradual effort to format it is made, or should it be excised from the article? Matt J ^User|Talk 12:22, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Covered at Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Public domain sources. Text can stay but there should ideally by a citation, should be an an attribution, normally in the references section. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• Verbatim copies raise two issues: copyright and plagiarism. Since public domain sources have no copyright, the only issue is plagiarism -- a deeply unsettled area of policy on WP. To repeat Tagishsimon's comment, we encourage editors not to plagiarize, i.e. to include some citation, e.g. a line at the top of the references section, "This article incorporates verbatim content from XYZ".
• However, the point is often raised that, since plagiarism consists of 1) unfair denial of credit to an author and 2) unfair appropriation of credit by the plagiarizer, the second "prong" is simply not applicable to Wikipedia since it is written anonymously and disclaims the notion that its content is original research; and depending on which "prong" you think is more important, this could undermine the reasons for not plagiarizing on WP. Until I get a good answer to that question, I think people should do whatever suits their consciences -- since, after all, the plagiarizer is not Wikipedia but the individual Wikipedia editor.
• However, I choose to include the citations, because if our policy should ever shift one day to require them, a huge number of my contributions would need to be deleted. (I use a template to associate these sources with talk pages, and aggregate them in a category, and then engage in gross imports -- I've created about 1000 article this way. I want to make some major improvements to this template but I need to learn how to program first). Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 17:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

There's also the question of whether the quotation is appropriate in an encyclopaedia. Peter jackson (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Remember that complete public domain sources can be stored at Wikisource - it is never appropriate to include all of a PD work in WP, though certainly choice elements can be included with the link to the sister site. Still agree that some attribution is needed, regardless. --MASEM (t) 14:03, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The hundreds of articles based entirely on EB1911 or the DNB would argue against your assertion that "it is never appropriate to include all of a PD work in WP". --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

From a standpoint of an encyclopedia, both the EB1911 or DNB make great starting points for articles - but we should appropriately transform that information with newer sources to make them better for WP. (This would be the case where starting stubs or start-class articles with "full works" would be reasonable for our purpose as an encyclopedia, but when WP is "complete" we should not have the full excerpts from those works as part of those articles.) --MASEM (t) 14:13, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help everyone, I have decided to remove the text in question, as it was not formatted correctly, and written in the first person.Matt J ^User|Talk 14:56, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The need for attribution of quoted text persists even absent any rights or duties to the original author. The reader is entitled to know from whose perspective the words came. Plato had different views from Aristotle, though the works of both are firmly in the public domain. If we mask the author, we confuse the reader. Always attribute.LeadSongDog come howl 15:25, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep without prejudice

Could someone explain what an XfD close of "Keep without prejudice" means/implies/entails? OrangeDog (talk • edits) 18:51, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably that the article is kept at this time (probably due to lack of consensus) without prejudice towards a future decision in the opposite direction. You would get a better answer by asking the person who closed the XfD in question. → ROUX ₪ 18:52, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

In law "without prejudice" means it could be brought up again and considered afresh. That is the case with any XFD, really... --Tango (talk) 20:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 20:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's usually used after a delete to indicate that the current article was unacceptable but that the topic is not inherently unencyclopedic. After a keep, it seems a bit redundant. Powers ^T 13:57, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Format for book titles in bibliographies

I notice that many articles have book titles italicized in the bibliographies. This contradicts prevailing print conventions, in which book titles are underlined. Can someone point me to a place where this protocol has been discussed? If it hasn't been, is there any good reason why Wikipedia shouldn't conform with the published academic literature?24.22.141.252 (talk) 10:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Underlining is standard typesetters' code for italics. If you supply them with a typescript with titles underlined, they'll print it with them italic. All the published academic literature I've seen uses italic. Peter jackson (talk) 10:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not underline, since that hints at an anchor for a hyperlink. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles)#Italics is the pertinent guideline. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks, Peter, it all makes complete sense now.24.22.141.252 (talk) 23:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation links to Wiktionary

At the top of the article titled prisoner, I added this:

Inmate redirects here because it is a euphemism for prisoner. Among younger people it has ceased to be a euphemism. For it various senses, see its Wiktionary entry.

Is there a standard form for such notices? Or is Wikipedia forbidden to mention that this word is a euphemism? Michael Hardy (talk) 13:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Inmate may also refer to people in mental health institutions. Jezhotwells (talk) 13:29, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

You actually added this note to Prison (which is indeed the redirect target for Inmate), not Prisoner, which is a disambiguation page primarily listing media, such as the Cher album, with the title Prisoner or similar. This type of note is called a hatnote; they are used for disambiguation and there are several templates for formatting them. A redirect hatnote typically says something like "X redirects here; for the other use of X, see Y" or "for other uses of X, see Y (disambiguation)". However, I don't think any hatnote, including the one you placed, is called for in this case, because it doesn't appear that there are any articles on Wikipedia that discuss any other meaning of the word "inmate." Hatnotes never link to wiktionary, because the purpose of disambiguation is to direct users to content on this encyclopedia; adding them just to say "other meanings of the word exist" is clutter serving little purpose. Propaniac (talk) 14:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

We have templates for linking wiktionary. {{Wiktionary}} Taemyr (talk) 15:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what that has to do with this conversation. Those templates have nothing to do with hatnotes; they're used on disambiguation pages, which, like hatnotes, are only created when they are necessary to disambiguate content on Wikipedia. The wiktionary templates are supplementary to the purpose of a disambiguation page.

(Unless you're not actually responding to my comments, and your intent is to say that the wiktionary template could be used on Prison to link to the dictionary definition of "inmate," instead of using a hatnote. In which case I have no real basis for response because for some reason the template appears to be completely absent of documentation that would prescribe its usage; using it in this case does, however, seem rather random, since I don't think it's normally placed on every single article titled with a term that appears in wiktionary, or with a redirect from such a title.) Propaniac (talk) 16:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Wiktionary-inline}} is what should be used as hatnotes or in body text. People tend to discourage such linking however, for some reason.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 02:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The Wiktionary templates are not limited solely to disambiguation articles, nor were ever meant to be, Propaniac. And, Michael Hardy, such links to Wiktionary should be interwiki links ([[wikt:inmate#English|its Wiktionary entry]], producing "its Wiktionary entry") not external links as you have in the above. Notice, by the way, the specification of the relevant language heading in the link. Uncle G (talk) 13:16, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

A Wiktionary link never belongs at the top of an article. Further, Wikipedia relies on WP:V and WP:RS; wikis are not reliable sources, and their links belong in WP:EL. We don't link to non-reliable sources in Wikipedia articles, by policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Not so - we link to other Wikipedia articles (obviously) and to Wikipedia articles in other languages. There certainly ought to be links to wiktionary from articles, if the wiktionary entry exists and there is no dab page (equivalent to the situation where we have a primary topic and just one other topic for a title). I think we should have a hatnote template for this situation.--Kotniski (talk) 15:17, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Forwikt is my prototype (although it wouldn't work too well for redirected terms).--Kotniski (talk) 15:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

And on the original question, I changed the redirect on "inmate" to point to the more logical Prisoner instead. I don't think there's a need for a second wiktionary link on the prisoner page (I guess if people are given a link to "prisoner" on Wiktionary, they'll be able to navigate to the "inmate" entry fairly easily from that). And the information about it being a euphemism etc. (unless you have some extensive sourced material on that subject) certainly seems to belong in a dictionary rather than an encyclopedia.--Kotniski (talk) 15:52, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Revert trolls should be penalized

A recent study [2] concludes that "We consider this as evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content, especially when the edits come from occasional editors." I'm concerned with the RC patrol's rate of type I errors (i.e., the error of undue skepticism, e.g., a court finding a person guilty of a crime that they did not actually commit). There should be some penalty for "revert trolls", defined as editors that repeatedly revert legitimate, well-sourced statements that eventually make it into the article after lengthy discussion. It's really a pity that such editors keep wasting the time of experienced contributors and driving away potential new contributors. This issue seems to be of concern at large; see, e.g., 1, 2, [3], [4], and the whole Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary. Thanks. 128.138.43.254 (talk) 19:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused...if the edit is legitimate and well-sourced why is it getting reverted in the first place? Sourced info should never be removed unless the source is unreliable, there is a copy-right problem with the info, its libel, or some other legal reason. Is that truly an epidemic? If so I havent seen it happen on any article I work on, I can only think of one time where a sourced statement was reverted and that was in an edit war regarding two contradicting sources. I think a bigger problem are those who put up for AfD articles that are poorly written but are notable, and the problem of facts being deleted from an article rather than just being slapped with a "citation needed" template. Take two seconds to do a web search on ask.com and find a citation yourself instead of removing the info, if the info is removed how does anyone know that a citation is needed for it?Camelbinky (talk) 19:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget WP:WEIGHT. Something might be true, but not necessarily significant to be included in an article. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Camelbinky, the confusion you reported is the very cause of frustration with revert trolls: they seem to be driven by a desire to increase their "revert counts", regardless of whether these are false positives. My suggestion is that such behavior should be discouraged at Wikipedia. Regarding whether it is truly an epidemic, I tried to gather evidence in my original post above; I'm not sure how else to quantify this hypothetical spread of revert trolls. Finally, I agree that unwarranted AfD is a problem, but I'd suggest us to keep the focus here on reverts and not consider deletes. What do you think? On the other hand, I disagree that removing unsourced statements is a problem; after all, if it's easy to find a source supporting the statement, I think it's fair to expect the original contributor to do that. Thanks for your feedback. 128.138.43.254 (talk) 20:36, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Whatever happened to WP:AGF? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 20:55, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that "revert trolls" fail to assume good faith, if that's what you meant; but it's not only that: such editors also don't comply with WP:DONTBITE. Still, I think this issue deserves a separate guideline, because we must prevent the proliferation of type I errors in reverts, as detailed originally above. Do you agree this concern is legitimate? Thanks. 128.138.43.254 (talk) 21:04, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't be ridiculous. You obviously know that I'm talking about your claim that people are reverting solely to get their edit count up, with no proof for your claimed motives. If somebody is removing valid sources, then it should be discussed on the article's Talk page, and if that doesn't work, there's plenty of places where discussions can be had. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 21:09, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Who. Though there may very well be a small minority of editors who do just as IP address claims. I dont really think it is of the magnitude that requires a guideline that basically tells people "use your brain, dont be stupid". We have wp:use common sense for that.Camelbinky (talk) 21:15, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, Camelbinky. You seem to admit the possibility of the existence of the so-called revert trolls. Considering the mechanisms currently available at Wikipedia, how should a contributor proceed (assuming she's willing to invest some time) to neutralize the disruptive behavior of a revert troll? 128.138.43.254 (talk) 21:45, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

There's no reason to be nothing less than friendly here, Who. My only claim is that the RC Patrol inevitably makes errors of type I, and that these should be discouraged, meaning if they become frequent for a given editor (what I call a "revert troll"), that there should be some penalty. It is not hard to interpret the behavior of revert trolls as bullying and arrogance, reason why I think it should be disencouraged. Could you please clarify if you are disagreeing with (i) the importance of the rate of type I errors by the RC patrol or (ii) the need for a guideline discouraging such a behavior. Thanks.

Wikipedia developing leukemia

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack ... may I interject some logic here? Based on what I see here there is an enormous amount of time spent resolving disputes instead of focusing on new data and the talent that produces it. It seems that every issue and dispute is just beaten down by the bureaucrats no matter how far they have to reach to find some "rule" that is in their favor. De facto lock down of pages, vengeance, getting even, sadistic revert editors ... is it any wonder that any newbie looks at this and says WTF? And bye bye?

There are more and more police at Wikipedia ("wikipolice") putting every single change under a microscope and deciding it is not appropriate. Too many police, like when a patient with leukemia has too many white blood cells. (Actually "Wiki-sicherheitdienst" might be a better term for the police here.)

The funny part, is that no one comes to Wikipedia with the expectation that the information is reliable. Just an entry point into the subject. Since the pages can be changed before you access them, there is no guarantee any sentence on a page can be relied upon.

If anyone cares to respond, let me save you some time and you can just append this text to your post: This person is a [kook, lunatic, idiot, moron].

Any questions? Oracle2universe (talk) 00:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

You forgot to include "troll" in your list. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:21, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Rules creep for a non-existant "issue". Clearly of the issues facing wikipedia, the removal of sourced content (particularly removal of sourced content as part of an effort to increase edit count) is less than a gnat. Lets deal with real rabid dogs of BLP issues and WikiDRAHMAZ. -- The Red Pen of Doom 00:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Oracle and TheRedPenofDoom both please keep your comments to actual constructive help that may be of some use to the IP address and his/her issue at hand. IP address, I sympathize with your plight. If someone reverts, change it back, explain in your edit summary, and bring it to their attention on their talk page. Assume good faith. If they show bad faith then bring it to the attention of the proper forum for disciplinary action, contact an admin you trust and ask for advice on what forum is proper and what they think you should do next. If it is serious enough perhaps the admin will take it upon themselves to do something immediate. It never hurts to say "this is my problem, can you tell me what I should do about it?"Camelbinky (talk) 00:44, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

• Well, the easiest complaint to raise is that the data shown in that study don't necessarily lead to the conclusion that the researchers made. They picked one of many causal factors for what is likely a broad polycausal slowdown in growth and just declared that was the likely explanation. Protonk (talk) 01:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Interesting. I would say that such a critique would be WP:OR, and yet, we must be sure that the source is a WP:RS. Perhaps a different study can be found? Irbisgreif (talk) 02:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
    • And I would say I'm not placing my critique in an article, so OR/RS don't really apply. If we are going to trumpet some external study as cause to make some policy change on wiki, then it behooves us to actually make sense of the study itself. If we just read the abstract and say "that fits with my perspective of things", then we are failing. Protonk (talk) 05:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
• I agree that this is a tremendous problem on certain articles on my watchlist - not only do the editors revert very quickly and presumptively, they are adamant in their unwillingness to listen to arguments, and quite rude in their responses to the editors. They generally violate WP:AGF, WP:DICK, and countless other policies that (I believe) are not grounds for action by themselves. I think it would be meaningful to have a 'complaint box' for every user, as well as a 'thanks box', so that it would be easier to find users who are causing problems - right now, as far as I know, it is incredibly difficult to have any of these revert-maniac problems addressed. I even saw someone go on a wikibreak with the message (essentially) "hey guys - revert all changes on music pages until I get back!"... Luminifer (talk) 03:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Addressing the previous post first I believe you are a bit confused. The editor you question about "reverting all changes" on their edit summary also left a post for another editor with the same message which included a :-) smiley face along with the statement. In other words, the statement was an obvious joke. Based on the number of posts asking for help on his/her talk page the person is a very respected editor on Wikipedia with regards to music articles. (he has no shortage of awards given to him as well) The users he addresses in his edit summary are not Wikipedia Administrators who have the ability to do mass reverts. The three people mentioned appear to be veteran editors who share a similar dedication to the topic of music on the project. I think it is very bad faith of you to assume otherwise. On topic, I think recent change patrollers do a very good job at catching a grand share of poor, trivial or damaging edits made to Wikipedia. But many more get through and damage the credibility of the entire encyclopaedia by adding trivial unreferenced content. Or by creating pages for subjects that barely scrape notability. Or just simply vandalising the project. If an editor makes 5000 constructive reverts and then does one revert that was in error. That mistake should be ignored. The old phrase "sometimes you have to break a few eggs" comes into play here. If an editor is running on high speed revert patrol and that editor is good at what they do they should just be allowed to continue. Scaring those sort of editors away by hounding them will just have a long term negative impact on the project. Wikipedia has plenty of forums to complain about the few RC patrollers that are not good at it the task. Wether B (talk) 03:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Offtopic response: I knew it was a joke. It was a tasteless one considering how many people that user has angered, and how it's a joke that's at least somewhat based on truth/conceptions.

Ontopic: RC patrollers, and watchlist patrollers do perform a critical part of wikipedia's work - but they need to perform it right. Your edit summary essentially says "we should not police the police", which is a questionable statement in any situation, I think. Unless I am misunderstanding you, you are suggesting that even if they do some good, their reversions should not be scrutinized, even if they are also alienating new users and/or preventing valuable information from being added to pages. Your phrase there "if..that editor is good at what they do" is exactly what is being discussed here. If they are not good at what they do, what do we do then? A user who is reverting things that should not have been reverted is _not_ necessarily good at what they do... Additionally, who determines whether they are good at what they do? Luminifer (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

== Open or Closed

Dear Camelbinky ... this page IS for policy, and what my comments simply boil down to is whether Wikipedia is going to be "open" or "closed". A VERY high level policy issue. If the SOP (standard operating procedure) for everything you don't like is to tell them to take a hike, petition this or that bureaucracy, go to another group, and essentially beg and grovel to be part of the clique of the day, forget it. If Wikipedia is de facto closed and page locked, well, that really is the standard everywhere else in publishing and folks would understand if that were made the overall policy.

"Don't be afraid to edit — anyone can edit almost any page, and we encourage you to be bold!" - Wikipedia

"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." - Wikipedia

I mean, do you really understand those quotes from Wikipedia? Truly? To the point where we can dispense with calling everyone you personally dislike a troll?

The main thing is the data. It is not an ever increasing thicket of rules, regulations, and bureaucracy that just feeds upon itself to exclude more and more data. There is no computer hardware capacity issue to limit more articles, regardless if the Wiki-Gestapo at the moment think it is significant or not.

At this point all the creative types are being turned off and told to leave Wikipedia, and if they don't pronto, yet another arcane obscure rule is going to be recited to make sure they do.

Tagishsimon said it the best: "... leave us alone but in peace with our shabby broken promises."

That place I can't mention could care less about the articles, as long as they get a lot of page hits and have an advertisement. Quality, format, notability, verifiability, style manual, etc. don't matter in the least. If the internet community finds it useful, so be it and let them decide instead of the wildly capricious editor sewing circles at Wikipedia.

I would be surprised if some Wiki-minion isn't following the comments here and reporting the interesting ones to a higher level. They will find a bona fide contributor called names (I thought that was against Wiki policy), told to take a hike, pounced on, told Wiki isn't this or that, trashed for being bold and breaking rules (exactly what Wiki says in the above quotes), and generally completely despised by the established sewing circles/mutual admiration societies within Wikiland.

A million folks have visited my creative works on the internet (really, I have the ISP logs) and I gave my rationale for handling multi-media (large file sizes).

So what's it going to be? Take a chance, be bold, attract new ideas and creative types? Or continue the death spiral towards stasis?

Any questions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.14 (talk) 12:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards death spiral, actually. Good cardio. :P --King Öomie 13:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I have found that many people who cling to WP:IAR actually only respect HALF of the policy. They are very good at the "ignore all rules" part, but when asked "How does ignoring the rules in this instance improve the encyclopedia?", they generally fail to have any answer. How does your ignoring the rules improve the encyclopedia? -- The Red Pen of Doom 00:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry - who was this directed towards? Re: ignoring what rules? Luminifer (talk) 00:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with articles that are both large and severely unbalanced

I'm wondering how one deals with articles that seem to have a long history of tendentious editing, basically, articles that are lengthy and have a great deal of content, but the article is strongly unbalanced toward a particular point of view or otherwise has undue weight problems. In other words, one editor or a group of editors have basically flooded the article with a large mass of cited content, but clearly leaning (and in some cases, only giving) one point of view on a controversial topic. Three articles I have in mind are Adolescent sexuality in the United States, Feminist views on prostitution, and Prostitution (criminology). It seems in dealing with articles of this kind, one is left with two bad alternatives: 1) start adding balancing content, which in the case of a "flooded" article, may take a great deal of time and effort to get the article to a point where its balanced, or 2) start deleting or paring down content that contributes toward slanting the article, but in the process end up deleting valid, referenced content. I'm not really sure how to deal with articles of this type, but unfortunately, it seems that a kind of "He who gets their soonest with the most 'facts', wins" dynamic can create a winning strategy for POV pushing on Wikipedia. Thoughts? Iamcuriousblue (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this as well, but from a slightly different angle - Diffusion of technology in Canada, Scientific research in Canada, and Innovation, invention, and industrial research in Canada were one article that seems to be broken down into three. Even in their current states, they are massive and are largely all the product of one editor. I don't think he has a POV but who the hell can tell? How we would get started fixing those articles is beyond me. --Cameron Scott (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Wow – these look like highly tendentious personal essays that have been formatted for Wikipedia. It also seems like these might be articles that would be AfD candidates, since whether these are truly encyclopedic subjects is questionable. In the case of the articles I've mentioned, I know the subjects are encyclopedic, and there is enough content to justify a break out from a more general article. However, once the article is broken out, its subject to all manner of content forking. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 22:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conflict has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conflict (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

• I just fixed the link... now to figure out what the heck is going on...
  — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 02:18, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Due to the latest conflict over this guideline, I have fully-protected the page for two weeks. Hopefully that will give everyone time to sort it all out on the talk page. — Kralizec! (talk) 01:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

policy of movie reviews or critiques?

Hello Wikipedians, thanks for all your great work. I'm new to Wikipedia, and interested in the rules defining movie entries and personal opinion.As encylopedia facts should be verified by previous written sources, do I have to find a review of a movie that I agree with to quote? Naturally my point of view regarding any movie is the only one that matters, and all should bow down before me....I realise that opinions of movies are wildly varied. I'm trying to understand the definitive wikipedia view of movie information. I appreciate that maths, science, academic subjects etc must have accepted sources and be written in neutral tones. (This does not exclude a warm and enthusiastic sense of the subject matter).If Wikipedia has a movie that is extremely contentious,who has the final say as to it's social meaning or intent? If the director is the arbitor of meaning, the author of the book the movie is made from might strongly disagree.I realise also that any major stuff ups I enter will be deleted by the more knowledgable. Hoping to avoid the bunfight of subjectivity ,I remain yours sincerely Ern Malleyscrub (talk) 06:46, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

My first suggestion would be to read some of our featured articles on films. Category:FA-Class film articles is where you'll find them. Take a look at how they handle the situation, especially those that have been promoted recently. In general, we try to achieve balance by including representative reviews from respected critics. Powers ^T 13:02, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Time for WP:VICTIM

So in the past week, in the discussion on the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard, 3 separate controversies about naming victims have arisen that can not be solved simply by WP:BLP.

1) Jaycee Lee Dugard is a (alleged) rape victim, and is clearly also an underage rape victim. Her name has been reported in major media publications as such, but clearly not with the victim's consent.

2) Jaycee Lee has two children whose names have been given in major media reports. These children are presumed to also be victims of physical abuse. Reporting these children's names may violate Florida's Crime Victim's Prevention Act of 1995 and other rape shield laws, and in many editors eyes, violates all standards of decency, as evidenced on the talk page. At this point, the children's names are not given in the article.

3) Another previous victim of the accused has appeared on "Larry King Live", giving her name and being interviewed about her rape experience. There is debate about whether to include her name in the article. Her name has been removed at the current time.

All of this together has exposed a need for a policy on victims privacy vs. the need for knowledge dissemination. I propose we think about some proposals.--CastAStone/^{/₵₳$↑₳₴₮ʘ№€} 01:14, 2 September 2009 (UTC)