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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What is an SPS?

I think I'm beginning to see the problem. You think that the NYTimes is not an SPS, right? Paradoctor (talk) 16:37, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I think if the source is clearly an SPS, then an example like say WS's example would not hold weight at all ("Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer"; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources). If Joe is a living person, then whether or not Mary is a reliable SPS, we simply cannot use the source. But in case the source is an NY Times article written by a journalist, then we could use the source. Now, we come to the point that's been argued for a long time. If a reliable SPS makes a statement (about an organisation) that is exceptional/controversial in its claim, then one should clearly attribute that statement to the reliable SPS rather than just treating it like a normal reliable source. :) ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 11:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

So how do I distinguish an SPS from a non-SPS? In case you wonder: I'm serious. Paradoctor (talk) 11:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to provide a better example so there's no BLP confusion in the mix, let's assume Joe says "Bach was the greatest composer ever." WeisheitSuchen (talk) 12:46, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't help me distinguishing between SPS and non-SPS, I'm afraid. Paradoctor (talk) 13:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

My apologies; I was just trying to provide a better example for Wifione so the BLP issue isn't part of the question. I wasn't really attempting to answer your question. However, I will: My answer to how you tell whether it's an SPS or not is through consensus. Does the publisher or owner of a newspaper writing an editorial count as a SPS? What about a staff-owned newspaper? These are questions for consensus, either on an article talk page or WP:RSN. I'm not trying to cop out of answering; I'm trying to acknowledge that we can't make a hard and fast "bright line" rule that will work for every circumstance. We have to leave the opportunity for process and consensus to do what they do. Wifione, what do you think? How do you tell the difference? WeisheitSuchen (talk) 17:52, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

In general, the way the policy currently defines it. (Might I suggest that the change that I am suggesting in this whole discussion is not particularly related to how sps is defined, but how controversial statements made by sps are attributed). ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 05:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

In that case, the NYTimes is an SPS. The only criterion mentioned is (after a trivial abstraction): The author of the content is the one paying for publication. The NYT fits the bill. Paradoctor (talk) 10:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps not. When a journalist of NYT writes an article and prints it after an editorial review, the publication (which is not owned by the journalist) prints the news item. Therefore, NYTimes might not at all be an sps. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 07:34, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Then again, who is paying the journalist to create the content? Paradoctor (talk) 10:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually you're looking at it from top down. Look at it in reverse. As long as an employee (journalist) is writing the article, it becomes clear that her/his article would be published in a source that is not owned by her/him and would be subject to more editorial scrutiny than would be an article of a journalist who herself/himself owns the newspaper. The one step of difference between ownership-operational management, in this case, is what defines the critical difference between sps and non-sps. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 15:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's invoke Godwin for a good cause. Assume a Nazi newspaper publishes something. They will of course exert editorial control. Would you say such a publication is reliable non-SPS? If not, then "editorial scrutiny" is not a sufficient criterion to establish reliability. So what is it that makes the difference? Paradoctor (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies always are made for the general cases and not the exceptions. (For example, ip-blocks are made in general on vandals, knowing very well that there would be cases when non vandals get caught as collateral damage). For exceptions, like the Nazi case you mention, talk page discussions, the RS noticeboard, and consensus are the critical factors (in the same way as the ip-block exempt is provided on a case by case basis). ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 03:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

What makes the Nazi newspaper an exception? How can I distinguish it from a reliable source? It can't be my (or your, or anyone's) personal opinion about the editorial policy. It isn't the mere existence of editorial control. What are the objective criteria that allow me to rule the NY Times ok, and the NS Times not? Paradoctor (talk) 04:27, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

In specifics, to answer your question, in case a reasonable editorial review process is in place, then a source is considered reliable. When considering an RS, one would have to consider many issues, specifically the source, the author, the article in question. What is a reliable source is an issue already answered by our project pages. SPS policy is different. It simply means what I have told before. In general, SPS should be considered unreliable with extremely limited exceptions. Your view about the Nazi newspaper, when you mention that they will influence editorial control, skews the argument to considering it unreliable. I repeat, consensus is the most important concept one should follow on a case by case basis. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 03:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

"In general, SPS should be considered unreliable": That makes "SPS" a technical criterion in the context of applying WP:RS. No problem with that. The question I'm asking is "how do I know it when I see it?" If we agree to consider the Nazi newspaper an SPS and the NY Times not, then there must be some objective criterion. It's not editorial control. So what is it? If there really is no difference, we have to judge their reliability equal. Paradoctor (talk) 17:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

If a writer has a piece published in newspaper that someone else edits and publishes, that is not a self-published source, even if the newspaper is run by Nazis. That does not mean that the Nazi newspaper is necessarily a reliable source, much less equal in reliability to a widely respected mainstream newspaper. There are other ways to be unreliable besides being self-published. Trying to redefine all fringe publications as "self-published" is trying to make the SPS policy do too much. --RL0919 (talk) 18:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not "trying to redefine", I am asking for clarification of an unclear concept used in Wikipedia policy.

Can't speak for Wifione, but I could live with not considering NS Times an SPS. But your clarification has a problem: What if the publisher pays "someone else" to create the content to be published? How does that differ from the creator paying the publisher? Are publishers (i. e. people with copiers) inherently more reliable than creators (i. e. people with pens)? If not, I don't see why we should be treating those cases differently. Paradoctor (talk) 18:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The difference is that the NYT pays its staffers to produce certain general types of content, not just for specific content dictated to them by the publisher. In the case of a vanity press, the author goes to the publisher with specific content and says, essentially, "I will pay you if you publish this specific content." Newspaper publishers don't typically hire writers just to take dictation of stories that have already been predetermined. Instead, the writer gets assignments (with varying levels of specificity) from an editor, who reviews the result and perhaps modifies it, but does not predefine the content for the author. And typically the publisher is someone else still, who often has little direct input into content. Now, with a small publication you could potentially have an editor who is also the publisher, and perhaps writing his own stories or so thoroughly rewriting staff articles that they might as well be his. In that case, I'd say yes, that is the equivalent of self-publishing. But larger-scale publications don't work like that. --RL0919 (talk) 22:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

How do you know that publishers take no interest in the content they publish? Is that what NYT says? What if NST says the same? For commercial publications, we have to assume "commercial bias", i. e. the universal conflict between vendor and buyer: get as much as you can for as little as you can get away with. Accuracy is expensive. So far, I have not seen verifiable evidence that the NYT is any less biased than the Nazis. (I know, I'll be going to a bad place for that one. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 02:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wifione, I agree with you that consensus is the most important concept. Consensus, after all, it what helps us determine together whether we think an editorial review process is "reasonable" or not; that isn't an objective criteria like Paradoctor requested. If consensus is able to help us decide what is or is not a RS for specific situations, isn't consensus sufficient to help us decide how a SPS should be cited in a specific situation? For example, if a question is raised on a talk page or at WP:RSN about whether a particular SPS is reliable for a selected statement, isn't consensus enough to handle that? I don't see why determining the reliability of SPS is "different" than consensus for any other RS. Yes, the standards are different, especially for WP:BLP, but shouldn't consensus be the tool for determining how to apply the standards? WeisheitSuchen (talk) 15:22, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The reliability of an SPS, yes, consensus at a particular forum does help in determining that as the same has not been decided by policy/guideline. But how the SPS should be used cannot be decided by consensus within a particular forum if the policy/guideline formed by the overall community goes against the consensus being formed in that particular forum, however strong that consensus in that particular forum might be. ▒ ♪ ♫ Wifione ♫ ♪ ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łeave Ξ мessage♣} 13:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Why can't how an SPS be used be decided by consensus? Deciding the reliability of a source by consensus also involves determining how it should be used; the separation you're trying to make doesn't make sense. A source (SPS or not) isn't reliable for all statements at all times. How it's used in the article is a critical piece of the puzzle. This is why I'm opposed to your proposed policy change. I think it should remain as it is now: consensus lets us decide both whether a source is reliable and how to use it appropriately. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 17:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

How does this have anything whatsoever to do with policy? Why not take this to the WP:Reliable sources noticeboard? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

This discussion started in December at WP:RSN, but moved here when Wifione suggested this change to the SPS policy. It's hard to tell that now that this part of the discussion has been separated from the original policy suggestion. But the question of "what is an SPS" is fundamental to understanding the implications of Wifione's proposed policy change for how SPS are handled.

Essentially, the proposed change would make it so when a SPS is used, normal inline citations & references are not sufficient. The only acceptable way to use an SPS would be to attribute it with the author's name in the text. In other words, you couldn't say "Joe said 'Mozart is the greatest composer ever.'" <ref name"Mary's blog"/> You could only say "In an interview with Mary, Joe said "Mozart is the greatest composer ever."<ref name"Mary's blog"/>. I'm opposing the proposed change because I don't think we need a bright line rule and can leave it to consensus--partly because it isn't always clear what an SPS is. Wifione, as you can see above, does not believe how sources are used should be determined by consensus. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 17:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

If it's a quote, then it should be clearly labeled whether its an SPS or not.陣内_Jinnai 20:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Glad to, as soon as I know how to spot them. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 20:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

By "clearly labeled," do you mean in the reference/citation (i.e., "Mary's blog") or in the article text? If we use a citation template with full source information, is that "clearly labeled"? (This, of course, assumes that we can all agree on what makes a SPS--which we can't, but let's pretend.) WeisheitSuchen (talk) 23:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

A request for consistent application of NPOV and BLP

I've recently run across a problem on talk-pages with about four or five editors who insist that BLP/NPOV prohibits the use of the sources in the left-hand column. Now, I realize that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an excuse, but it's hard for me to look at the sources used in BLPs in the right-hand column and understand why WP:BLP prohibits the use of the sources in the left-hand column--especially since some of the articles in the right-hand column are even starred as "featured articles" as the epitome of Wikipedia standards.

In my mind, NPOV requires the inclusion of notable points of view about the subject: that would include all of the sources in the left-hand column, and most of the sources in the right-hand column. BLP just requires fastidious observation of NPOV to avoid COATRACK, and the requirement of strong sources for potentially libelous claims; it doesn't require censorship of anything negative said about a living person--certainly that's the way it's observed in the articles in the right-hand column, but BLP was used as a rationale for eliminating notable points of view that were critical of the subjects in the left-hand column.

I can understand (though I would disagree with) prohibiting the sources in both columns; I can see permitting the sources in both columns; if pressed to make a decision, I would permit the sources in the left column, and prohibit a handful of the sources in the right-hand column; but what I cannot for the life of me understand is the status quo.

Were the editors on Bill Moyers and Nina Totenberg wrong, or is there a failure to enforce WP:BLP on pages of the more politically unpopular? I could just remove the sources in the right-hand column, but I'd surely get accused of violating WP:POINT. So I'd like to get consensus. Can someone help me understand what the rules are here, so I don't cross the line mistakenly again? Many thanks.

Judged unacceptable source in liberal BLPs and repeatedly deleted and accusing me of being WP:TEDIOUS	Seemingly acceptable source in center-right BLPs (incomplete list of examples)
L. Brent Bozell III (head of Media Research Center, conservative media analysis group) in Nina Totenberg (liberal NPR analyst): source was critical of purported liberal bias	Media Matters for America (liberal media analysis group) in Rush Limbaugh (conservative talk-show host) Media Matters for America in Ann Coulter (conservative author) Media Matters for America in John Stossel (libertarian journalist) Media Matters for America in Anne Applebaum (center-right author) Media Matters for America in Stephen F. Hayes (conservative journalist) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (liberal media analysis group) in Rush Limbaugh Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in Clarence Thomas (conservative Supreme Court justice) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in John Stossel Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in George Will (conservative columnist) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in Christina Hoff Sommers (conservative academic) Eric Alterman (liberal media critic) in Bill Kristol (conservative journalist) Eric Alterman in Elliott Abrams (Reagan-administration attorney)
Washington Post column by Charles Krauthammer (Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist) in Bill Moyers (liberal PBS journalist): source singled out Moyers's rhetoric as basis for notable neologism Bush Derangement Syndrome	Bill Moyers in Karl Rove (conservative politician) George Monbiot blog post in George Will Adam Cohen op-ed in Clarence Thomas Neva Chonin (who?) in L. Brent Bozell III Roger Axtell ("an expert on body language") in Antonin Scalia (conservative Supreme Court justice) Timothy Noah's "Chris DeMuth, Hack Extraordinare" in Christopher DeMuth (conservative academic) Timothy Noah in Sarah Palin Andrew Sullivan blog post in Sarah Palin Scott Horton and Glenn Greenwald podcast in Sarah Palin
Weekly Standard (2d-largest American conservative magazine) report by Stephen F. Hayes in Bill Moyers; source (along with the Philadelphia Inquirer) examined conflict-of-interest issues in Moyers's reporting	The Nation (left-of-Democratic Party magazine) in Ron Paul (libertarian politician) The Nation in Bernard Lewis (academic) The Nation in Daniel Pipes The Nation in Bill Kristol (conservative journalist, EIC of Weekly Standard) The Nation in Elliott Abrams Scott Horton blog post in Bill Kristol South Florida Gay News in Arthur A. Goldberg (anti-gay activist and felon)
David Limbaugh (best-selling conservative author) in Bill Moyers; source (essentially parroting Krauthammer, supra) criticized Moyers's rhetoric	Al Franken (liberal author) in Rush Limbaugh Al Franken in Dennis Hopper Al Franken in Bill O'Reilly (political commentator) Keith Olbermann in David Addington (Bush administration attorney) Maureen Dowd (liberal NY Times columnist) in Antonin Scalia Maureen Dowd in John McCain

COI Disclosure: I worked for the McCain-Palin campaign for two months, and volunteered for McCain before that; Chris DeMuth was once my boss; I was a lawyer for Palin in 2008 and for the Weekly Standard in 1997; Scalia and Thomas turned me down for a clerkship, but I have friends who clerked for each of them; a former co-worker was a research assistant for Franken; I've met Kristol and Krauthammer; Applebaum and I once worked for the same employer, though I never met her; Sommers and I once worked for the same employer, and we've dined together; I sat next to Stossel at a lunch, and was on a panel with him another time; Coulter used to work for a friend; a friend works for Palin's PAC; Totenberg interviewed a partner I worked for in 2003, and I declined his suggestion that I also talk to her about the brief I wrote; Sullivan sometimes blogs from a coffeehouse I frequent; Greenwald has blogged negatively about me; Sullivan has blogged neutrally about me; I subscribed to the Weekly Standard, the Nation, the Washington Post, and FAIR's newsletter at one time or another. It's a small world here in DC.

THF (talk) 05:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Well, the thing that jumps out at me here is the idea of using opinion writers to diagnose psychiatric conditions (even if they are made-up ones). Seems like a pretty serious BLP problem. Guettarda (talk) 05:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

But it is a notable fact that Person A's comments led to notable Person B creating a notable term. Nobody claims (yet, anyway) that the Bush Derangement Syndrome article violates BLP; if the term violates BLP in one article, then it's verboten in all. BLPs are any articles that refer to living people, not just articles that have living people in the title. THF (talk) 06:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I also fail to see how the humorless epithet "hack" is any less violative of BLP than the humorous "Bush Derangement Syndrome." THF (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Because it's problematic to accuse someone of having a mental condition, even a poorly-defined one. I can't wrap my mind around how that could possibly be acceptable. We don't repeat unfounded accusations of mental illness. Guettarda (talk) 07:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

For one thing, no one reasonable thinks that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is actually a mental condition (even if Krauthammer has psychological training). You still haven't responded to my argument: if the very term Bush Derangement Syndrome violates BLP, why does the article exist? THF (talk) 07:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

You're missing my point. We have articles about all sorts of things. We have articles about things like schizophrenia and depression, but we can't say someone suffers from one of these conditions on the say-so of a newspaper columnist. Quite frankly, it would be problematic even to quote a qualified psychiatrist if they were simply speculating. Guettarda (talk) 07:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

First, even accepting the questionable premise that "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a medical condition rather than a joke, notwithstanding the fact that the BDS article clearly states otherwise, the proposed text does not say "X suffers from BDS" or even "Y says X suffers from BDS" but the indisputable fact that "CK created the term BDS in response to statements made by Moyers." (Statements, which I might add, already make up five paragraphs in the Moyers article, including a POV quote from an entirely insignificant book that the speech was "inspiring.") If BDS is sufficiently notable to have its own article, and the Moyers speech to which CK is responding is sufficiently notable enough to be in the Moyers article, how is it the case that notable commentary from a notable columnist about a notable speech that resulted in a notable neologism violates BLP?

Second, if you are going to say that a joke about a medical condition still violates BLP, it doesn't change that Al Franken's non-medical diagnosis of Rush Limbaugh as an "idiot" is in that BLP, without any evidence that Franken is qualified to judge a mental state with legal implications. We are presumably okay with the existence of this article, notwithstanding the BLP implications, because it's understood to be a joke. I fail to see how BLP permits at least a dozen articles to repeat Franken's joke about Limbaugh, but does not permit Krauthammer's joke about Moyers to be repeated. Again: where is the consistency? THF (talk) 08:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Your argument fails when you try to equate calling someone an "idiot" (not used in its old-fashioned medical meaning anywhere in the world today) with the term "Bush derangement syndrome", which most definitely does contain medical terms and implies real mental disease. ► RATEL ◄ 11:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

First, you've ignored that I didn't make one argument, I made two, and you ignored the first one. As for the second one, please find me one example of someone using "Bush Derangement Syndrome" to "imply real mental disease." The wiki article on the subject certainly never comes close to asserting that it is anything of the sort. The sort of lexicographical hoops you're jumping through to distinguish what is very self-evidently a joke from equivalent jokes in other BLPs is not unlike claiming someone can't be called an anti-Semite because they only hate Jews, and not all Semites. Everywhere else, we trust readers to understand what words mean. THF (talk) 12:42, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course there are people who take it to mean a real mental disease! Take this for example (one of many): Question: And we all know where Chris Matthews works, right? Answer from Bernard Goldberg: (Laughs) That’s right. By the way, I was asked by Bill O’Reilly a week ago, “Do you think it’s a mental disease or do you think it’s business?” He was actually talking about the general Bush-hating. I immediately said, “It’s a mental disorder, because don’t underestimate the power of insanity. ‘Bush-derangement syndrome’ is for real.” [1] So please, your argument is totally baseless. ► RATEL ◄ 15:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion 2

Also, I think it is very difficult to judge the validity of your complaint based solely on this table. What we all want are sources that are authoritative for the purposes of the reference. We don't want secondary sources when we have a primary source, either. There may be invalid uses in the right-hand column; but I don't see how that can be used to justify the sources in the left-hand column. Are your sources witnesses, or commentators? Are they commenting themselves, or repeating other's coments? Also, you are interacting with different editors on the various articles, too, so there will not be identical responses to your edits. I would seek a discussion in the appropriate Wiki project for the articles. Your comments seem directed at the American liberal/right divide; I'm not American, but from what I've seen, using the terms liberal and conservative can be used as insults. The use of the word liberal especially in the phrase 'liberal bias'; so there could be objections on that basis too. Someone can be liberal; but stating that that person has a liberal bias may be beyond what a particular source can show. This whole argument of course can apply from the other point of view; sources have to be able to show the point; the source should illustrate and not be biased itself. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 06:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The phrase "Bozell says that X has a bias as demonstrated by her reporting on Y" is indistinguishable from the article that says "Franken says Z distorts the facts to serve his own political biases"--with the exception that Bozell holds himself out (and is treated by reliable sources) as an expert on media bias, while Franken was a comedy writer. THF (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

No comment about which opinion writers are allowed to comment on each other, or which of these comments are Wikipedia-worthy, but I agree that using FAIR or Media Matters for America in the manner of a neutral source on conservative pundits' BLPs is a big problem (likewise for, say, Focus on the Family on left-leaning or irreligious pundits' BLPs). The real problem, though, is that on many political topics our current format emphasizes "responses" in the name of neutrality (e.g., "...which Group That Doesn't Like Things has criticized as being exactly the sort of thing that they don't like", etc. ,etc.), and the responses tend to get the last word because they are responses. I've more or less come around to the position that neutrality requires stating political positions baldly, without responses or criticism, and just linking to some article that treats all sides of the issue in full. — Gavia immer (talk) 13:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Media Matters is not a reliable source. I can't believe that wasn't established long ago. Maybe we should do an RfC and propose deleting it across the encyclopedia whenever it is used to establish a fact in an article. Even their quotes are unreliable. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

JohnWBarber, you're quite right. I don't thik it can be cured, though. The preponderance of Wikipedia editors, and the overwhelming majority of admins, are liberal/leftist, antd their idea of "NPOV" is well to the left of center. We're just going to have to resign ourselves to Wikipedia being considered to be a source as biased as, say, the New York Times. I just hope we can keep it from becoming as thoroughly discredied as Media Matters and DailyKos: a compendium of left-wing spin and conservative-bashing. I long ago gave up on any attempt to reform the hatchet-job bio pages on climate scientists who dissent from AGW orthodoxy ( clear violations of this bio:livingpersons policy): the unlamented WilliamConnolley may be gone but his acolytes are still in charge. Solicitr (talk) 17:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

If you think WP bias can't be stopped, then you have to decide whether it's better to try to reduce it as much as you can, or alternatively let it get so bad that, you hope, it will become totally discredited & its bias will no longer matter. Peter jackson (talk) 15:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Solicitr, could you please support your claims about editors and articles with evidence? Looking around here, I see the exact opposite of what you claim. Featured articles like Ronald Reagan were written by conservatives and take a center, right of center perspective. If you have any evidence of featured articles tinged with left-wing spin, I would like to see it, otherwise I will assume you are projecting. You sound like you are lamenting the fact that Wikipedia isn't more like Conservapedia, which for all intents and purposes has become a parody of itself. There isn't a serious scholar or rational person that takes Conservapedia seriously. Viriditas (talk) 05:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Please drop the insulting Conservapedia strawman; no one here is proposing Wikipedia be more like Conservapedia. The proposal is that Wikipedia live up to its own standards.

• Global warming finds room to cite left-wing politicians and articles criticizing skeptics, but does not cite any skeptics themselves. The article also omits any mention of CO2/$GNP statistics, which biases it towards its conclusion that the US is a worse offender than China when the reverse is true. The article does not distinguish between skeptics of the science and skeptics of the economics, making opponents of radical climate-change policies seem like know-nothings. It also POV-characterizes the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute with the pejorative and incorrect "business-centered."

• Ronald Reagan has repetitive mentions of the International Court of Justice ruling on Nicaragua without any sourcing to or discussion of the US's position on the issue. It mentions convictions in Iran-Contra without mentioning how many of those were overturned, or mentioning the controversy over criminalizing policy differences. The far-left Mark Weisbrot is cited without qualification as saying that Reagan's policies were a failure. There's a lengthy UNDUE violation about the time Reagan chose to be sworn in when assuming the governorship.

And that's just in a quick non-systematic glance at the featured articles; I could no doubt find more problems if I studied the articles longer. (The only reason the Reagan article is as good as it is is because most of the bias has been forked off into side-articles.) For the vast majority of articles that haven't risen to FA status, the bias is even worse. THF (talk) 06:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The strawman here is the "left-wing bias" canard that always crops up as a red herring. Eric Alterman already explained it: "The conservatives in the newspapers, television, talk radio, and the Republican party are lying about liberal bias and repeating the same lies long enough that they've taken on a patina of truth. Further, the perception of such a bias has cowed many media outlets into presenting more conservative opinions to counterbalance a bias, which does not, in fact, exist." Same is true on Wikipedia. As for your lack of evidence about editors, I suggest you get to work analyzing Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits and more importantly, Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. I don't have to even look because I already know the outcome, as it is the same in most computing environments: Center to right of center, leaning libertarian. Left-wing bias on Wikipedia is a myth, just as it is in meatspace. As for the conservatively written, glorified whitewash of a hagiography known as Ronald Reagan, I'm not even going to go there, as you already destroyed your own argument by defending POV forking. Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Where did I defend POV forking? I merely made the empirical observation that most of the subarticles about Reagan aren't nearly as unbiased as the biased feature article. You asked for evidence of bias: there is plenty at the top of this section; you asked for evidence of bias in featured articles, and your response is WP:IDHT and to cite someone who claims there's no such thing as liberal bias, which is it's own self-refutation. Do you think it's acceptable for a featured article to poison the well when discussing an organization by falsely representing its alignment? THF (talk) 11:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Separately, I note that Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RFC_on_Media_watchdog_groups would not exist without the presence of liberal bias on Wikipedia: if there weren't any bias, there would not be a problem of the same editors adding references to Naderite-left FAIR while deleting references to the mainstream-conservative MRC, because such obvious POV-pushing would be dealt with by means other than an RFC. (Certainly a right-wing editor with that pattern on global-warming articles who so blatantly disregarded NPOV would be blocked very quickly.) And I've never seen a liberal editor be personally attacked for their politics the way conservative editors are: witness your own uncivil "Conservapedia" sneer just two paragraphs ago. THF (talk) 11:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

So, "liberal bias" is like pornography? You know it when you see it? Viriditas (talk) 11:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for a response that demonstrates my point about civility quite nicely. THF (talk) 11:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Where's the liberal bias? You can't show any because 1) the primary editors to Wikipedia are not liberals and 2) the majority of featured articles are written from the center to center right, not from the left or towards the left. Editors who are constantly screeching about political bias are usually the ones guilty of the deed. It's like that study of homophobes that found they were actually more attracted to members of the same sex, or like the guy who farts in a small room and blames it on the dog. Viriditas (talk) 12:06, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Again, plenty of evidence has been provided showing liberal bias, and you've chosen to hurl multiple insults instead of addressing any of that evidence -- all at the same time providing more evidence of how little respect center-right points of view are treated on Wikipedia. You can have the WP:LASTWORD if you're going to continue to uncivilly insult instead of address the evidence. THF (talk) 12:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Please pay close attention: 1) Solicitr claims that most editors and admins are "liberal/leftist" and that Wikipedia is biased towards the left of center 2) I ask for evidence 3) None is provided 4) I observe that the cry of "liberal bias" is unfounded, and that most editors and admins per the computing demographic, are actually libertarian to conservative. I also observe that featured article writers and their associated articles are generally center to right of center. Are we on the same page? Viriditas (talk) 12:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Further discussion taking place at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RFC_on_Media_watchdog_groups. THF (talk) 04:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Notability: why?

(this discussion began in The Notability of High Schools)

(sorry for the drift) I never understood why something calling itself an encyclopedia needs notability criteria. Though I'm sure there have been raised many good, rational arguments against this point of view. Paradoctor (talk) 11:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

If there are no criteria for inclusion, then ANYTHING goes. Do you think any encyclopedia should have an entry on yourself, for example, or me, or that neighbor four doors down, across the street whose name you can't recall? How about your car? Someone's pets? Etc. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 16:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Provided there are supporting WP:RS, why should that be a problem?

• "whose name you can't recall": That only means neither you nor me would have any interest in creating or maintaining such an article. I'm pretty sure that is true for the vast majority of articles in any encyclopedia, let alone a behemoth like Wikipedia. In fact, you couldn't even read all articles in your lifetime.
• "your car": See above.
• "pets": That means you want to AfD Socks, All Ball, Hodge, Humphrey, Smudge, Scarlett, Tama, Trim and Wilberforce, don't you?

To reiterate: Where's the problem? Paradoctor (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree. I've never understood what Collectonian and most others are so concerned about. That being said, that some "notability" (loosely defined, mostly related to fame, despite that being specifically disclaimed) is required has become a well worn standard among many. It's become such a part of the background here that I doubt that many who are sympathetic to this point of view, such as myself, would seriously consider trying to deprecate it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware that it's popular. What I'm trying to figure out is why? I willing to consider the possibility that I'm inclusionist because I'm ignorant. But so far, my impression of the arguments for notability is "only the important stuff", by whatever yardstick is handy. For an encyclopedia, notability can at best be a compromise forced by limited resources. I'd like to know about the horrible things that would happen if WP:N was AfD'ed. Paradoctor (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

In many cases, notability is used to restrict or delete content. I'm not sure why people are more interested in deleting content than adding it. WP:RS and WP:V are all that's really needed to judge inclusion. RxS (talk) 20:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

A defense

• OK, a defence of notability as a standard. Inclusionists want everything verifiable in reliable sources to be included (some extreme inclusionists don't even want to be restricted to what reliable sources say). Imagine the result: rather than being a summary of noteworthy topics, Wikipedia becomes a mirror of the internet and the press, with no discrimination. Every local news report gets its own article, every sports match, every self-published book with a press release, etc. The problem is that Wikipedia becomes a compendium of trivia and self-publicity, even more than it already is. An encyclopedia does not serve to record all information ever, and Wikipedia is not the only outlet for information in existence. Fences&Windows 22:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

  eh, you're just setting up a false dichotomy though, and seemingly basing your entire argument on that. Aside from an emotional assumption, what evidence do you have that Wikipedia would become "a mirror of the internet"? What does that mean exactly, anyway? To take it to a real extreme, if we actually took away the ability to delete articles, is it your position that Wikipedia would become useless? I think that Paradoctor is hitting the heart of the matter here in asking "where's the actual problem?"
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, I think that without notability large parts of Wikipedia would become completely unmanageable, full of trivia and self-publicity. It would be like Google Knol (not something we want to emulate). Don't cherry pick my worst argument to refute ("mirror of the internet" was hyperbole): if we only have WP:V and WP:RS, every topic covered in at least one news article, book or scholarly article could have its own article. That wouldn't be an encyclopedia, it would be a mess. You want this? Fences&Windows 00:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  See, this gets to the heart of where this ideology looses me. Do you see yourself as some sort of "guardian of Wikipedia", or something? Perhaps yourself and others are running around exposing yourselves to more problematic articles then I am or something, I don't know for sure, but I don't see anything even remotely approaching a real problem (even when I do random article copy editing). I'm just not sure where this idea, which seems to be something like "I must approve your editing", is coming from (and it probably doesn't help that I have no clue why Knol is being mentioned, especially since AFAIK that's the way that Knol operates). It seems to me that many of you who espouse this "notability is the most important content guideline" idea are over-involved in testoterone filled "enforcement" tasks here, rather then actually building article content. It is interesting to note that most those people who hold that sort of view end up nominating and approving each other to be "admins" as well. Y'all have pushed the pendulum to far towards policy enforcement recently.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  That's very well said. I see people running around defending the old idea of what an encyclopedia is, calling the alternatives ill defined terms like "mess" etc...but never explicitly identify what the actual problem is. Like I said above, reliable sources and verifiability is all that's needed to control content, but many editors are more interested in writing rules than writing content and want to enforce that on the rest of the group. RxS (talk) 04:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  "Many of you who espouse this "notability is the most important content guideline" idea are over-involved in testoterone filled "enforcement" tasks here, rather then actually building article content." Nonsense. I've started ten of articles and significantly expanded hundreds. I've deprodded over two hundred articles and I've probably argued for keeping hundreds of articles at AfD. You have set up a false dichotomy of "content builders" and "gatekeepers". Believing in notability does not make one a deletionist. Of course we have to approve each others' editing, it's a collaborative project aiming to achieve a quality product, not a playpen or a walled garden. Anyone care to address my specific issue, which is that all things ever covered once in a reliable source could have their own article without notability being used as a guide? I think that notability is a good thing as it forces editors not to be lazy, we have to actually find multiple reliable sources that discuss the topic rather than relying on the first Google News hit or primary sources. Many who don't like notability are either promoting something (including fandom) or are just bad at finding sources. I don't think that writing a neutral, quality article is possible in the absence of significant coverage in multiple reliable sources, as without this you're relying on single sources (bad for reasons of bias and incompleteness) and primary sources (probably presenting a biased view of the subject). As for policy enforcers being admins, it's one of the things admins are meant to do so you may be putting the cart before the horse. If you want a diversity of editors as admins, nominate some. Fences&Windows 14:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

"Wikipedia would become completely unmanageable" ... "a mess": That looks like a serious concern. But what do you mean by that? Wikipedia has no management to begin with. Sounds a bit like arguments against democracy. (Relax, /me is AGFer ;)

"notability is a good thing as it forces" ... "multiple reliable sources": Umm, You seem to be conflating two policies here. I'm every bit as interested in WP:V as you are, but if you feel that WP:N is necessary to uphold WP:V, that is an argument for upgrading WP:V, rather than a justification for WP:N.

"Many who don't like notability": Neither do they like WP:V or WP:RS. That's basically the same argument as above, you wish to use WP:N as a tool to enforce other policies.

"without this you're relying on single sources": Again, this has nothing to do with notability. If you say that a single reliable source is not sufficient to satisfy WP:V, then let's add that to WP:V. Paradoctor (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Too limiting

My 2 cents is that WP:N is fundamentally too limiting in many cases. I think there are things many people care about where the coverage is in depth but primary (say TV show episodes or Pokemon) where there is plenty of material and interest in the topic by our readers. That said, I generally favor and support WP:N because it's a fairly objective standard and that's darn useful. Otherwise we get too far into debates with people who think covering TV shows (for example) at all is "trivia" and not worthy of coverage here and we end up spending all our time arguing rather than just most :-). I'd love to see something better, but I've no idea what that would be. Hobit (talk) 06:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely necessary

WP:N is absolutely necessary. While it's true that Wikipedia is not paper, and so we are not limited by physical space concerns, it is fallacious to proceed to saying that we have unlimited resources. We do not. We, the editors of Wikipedia, are not a limitless resource. A metric of notability serves to help us keep the encyclopedia to a size manageable by the population editing it. The exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines would produce an unmanageable mess, and would only serve to harm the reputation, and ultimately the usefulness, of the encyclopedia. Powers ^T 13:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

"exponential increase in size precipitated by a revocation of the notability guidelines": Please forgive me for finding that amusing. Where were you a few years ago? ;)

Actually, removing WP:N could improve our editor base. How many potential editors waste their time at Wikia? And who knows, maybe some of those SPAs grow into fine, upstanding model Wikipedians? If the stats are to be trusted, only one in 10000 accounts becomes an active editor right now, so our strength lies in numbers.

"fallacious" ... "saying that we have unlimited resources": Dunno about that. There is WP:PERFORMANCE, and considering the way IT is developing, technology will not be the limiting factor for the foreseeable future. And as argued above, WP:N may be be a liability to our growth and well-being.

"unmanageable mess": Some facts or reasonable speculations would be nice here. Both F&W and you talk about a "mess", but I don't see how it would be different from the current state. Paradoctor (talk) 22:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

As I thought I made clear, I wasn't speaking of technical limitations when I said that we don't have unlimited resources. I'm well aware of how quickly technology is advancing and that it is not a limiting factor. I apologize if that wasn't clear. As to your last point, widening the project's scope without a concomitant increase in editorial activity would necessarily result in lower-quality content. I suppose it's possible that some of the new content would be contributed by new regular editors, but it seems far more likely that the content will be contributed in large part by drive-by users who just want to say their piece but have no interest in maintaining or developing the content they add. Powers ^T 14:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

"I apologize": Please don't, if I followed your lead, I'd soon have to disembowel myself in order to satisfy propriety standards. Seriously, I'll gladly presume that any typos of yours are really brainos of mine.

"widening the project's scope without a concomitant increase in editorial activity": I argued above that broadening the project scope would possibly lead to an increase.

"no interest in maintaining or developing": That's the edit pattern of the vast majority of contributors. And yet, they make a substantial contribution overall.

"far more likely": I hope you have a good argument for that, because I'd love to pick it to pieces. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 21:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

As you note, that's the edit pattern currently common; there's no reason to think it'd change. And we're barely hanging on as it is now; to add more drive-by users would risk overwhelming the rest of us. Or so it seems to me. Powers ^T 22:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll refrain from characterizing yourself and those who also hold your stated opinion here (I'm sure that you've heard it before anyway, but it involves control), but I happen to think that "being overwhelmed by drive by editors" would be one of the best things to happen to Wikipedia in a while. Beware insularity.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• sigh* I don't think it's being a control freak to want to avoid diluting the mission of this project. We can't be all things to all people. There's a reason one of our five pillars is "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia". Achieving that goal requires a clear definition of scope. If we overreach when defining that scope, we risk infringing on other projects, increasing the enormity of our task (possibly by several orders of magnitude), and for what real gain? At any rate, just because I disagree with you on the impact such a change in scope would have is no reason to start casting aspersions on my motivations. Powers ^T 13:13, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

"infringing": ?!? Are there cyber-fiefdoms I'm not aware of?

"orders of magnitude": Why is that worrysome? Nobody will sue us if we don't meet some imagined deadline, and so far there is no reason to believe that we couldn't meet it if it existed. We don't have completion criteria telling us when to stop. Who says we should not have 3 billion pages? If we have articles about extinct snail species never existing outside a few acres of beach, we can also have a history of the house I grew up in.

"real gain": More free knowledge, more contributors.

"casting aspersions": I'm on to you. You probably want to singlehandedly improve Wikipedia. I think you don't even shy away from making useful edits to helpless articles, don't you? ;) Paradoctor (talk) 20:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hurts more then helps

I agree completely that WP:N hurts us more than it helps us. Honestly, back when we had an article on every single Pokemon, did that actually hurt us? Are we better off now? The people saying that Wikipedia will become a "mess" with WP:N are forgetting a few things. First off, what's it to you if someone creates an article on a topic that you don't think is notable? It's not your job to singlehandedly maintain the quality of this encyclopedia. And it's not your job to stand between this encyclopedia and the legions of roving My Little Pony fans out there either. If you don't like an article, and if you don't think that it meets your subjective notion of "notability," then ignore it and get to work building content somewhere else. Disc space isn't the issue, so what is? I have never seen a good explanation of this.

If you drive off Mr. My Little Pony and he goes to Wikia and spends the rest of his days writing oodles of high-quality content about My Little Pony, who has been hurt and who has benefited? I really just don't see how notability is a positive influence on our encyclopedia.

Also, something tells me that a WP:N-free Wikipedia would not be immediately inundated with 1950s weather data, because in such an encyclopedia you not only have to have V and RS, but you have to have the crucial factor of someone caring enough to take the time to put it up. And if someone cares enough to post something, and someone else cares enough to look it up, why shouldn't the two be able to enjoy that information? If people can't find what they are looking for here, they'll go look somewhere else, but if we have people lining up at the door the provide those seekers with what they are after, it makes sense to let them provide it.

Of course, I don't really think that this little discussion here will actually succeed in knocking out one of Wikipedia core content guideline's, but it sure was nice to come here and vent. ; ) --Cerebellum (talk) 04:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Very well said. That embodies my own feelings perfectly.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Trust

Actually, while Wikipedia is "not paper" (as opposed to some other encyclopedias), it does have a limitation that other encyclopedias don't. Editors of other encyclopedias can generally be trusted (to know what they are writing about etc.), but the editors of Wikipedia (again - generally) cannot... That's what leads to all the policies and guidelines about verifiability, sources etc. And they lead to notability. For if there are no independent sources that discuss the subject, we are going to end up with a "mess" - an article that is "just" non-neutral (a likely result of having sources representing only one side), an article that looks like an advertisement (a likely result if all sources are advertisements), an article that contains "original research" (which is not unlikely to result in falsehoods - and they are probably the worst kind of "mess")... Other encyclopedias might trust their editors to do some "original research", but, unfortunately, we cannot... And that's why (unfortunately) we can only write articles about subjects that "are notable" (are discussed in appropriate sources)... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 22:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I generally agree, but that's why we have Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and similar. Stretching that general idea to the point of creating and espousing what is embodied in Wikipedia:Notability is what I personally think is going to far. Also, despite what the actual document may or may not say, I think that it's worthwhile to look at the actual use of Wikipedia:Notability. Despite any and all denials to the contrary, you'd have to be blind in order to not see that it's actually used as a club in order to beat mostly newer editors up, in many instances. It's not reasonable to expect us to completely divorce intent from actual implementation in cases like this.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

"other encyclopedias can generally be trusted": When was the last time you have compared two encyclopedias? If one isn't derived from the other, chances are you'll find clear contradictions. Besides, why trust when you can verify? It seems to work here.

'if there are no independent sources that discuss the subject, we are going to end up with a "mess"': This confuses notability and verifiability. If there is no way to verify the content of an article, we don't need to appeal to notablity criteria, WP:V already does the job. If the content can be verified, where's the problem? Paradoctor (talk) 00:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Er, it's not "other encyclopedias can generally be trusted", but "editors of other encyclopedias can generally be trusted". That is, it is more reasonable to trust an editor of Britannica than an editor of Wikipedia. If it doesn't seem obvious, consider who is more likely to vandalise the encyclopedia: a random editor of Britannica, or a random editor of Wikipedia?

And about "This confuses notability and verifiability." - well, it's not like notability (as defined by WP:N) has nothing to do with verifiability. That's the whole idea. "The subject is notable." is essentially defined as "We can write an article about the subject without violating our policies and guidelines about verifiability, neutral point of view etc.". And "If the content can be verified, where's the problem?" - well, if none of this content comes from independent sources (which is probably the main difference between "verifiability" and "notability" - technically, content coming from the subject itself is also "verifiable"), we will only be able to give one point of view (or resort to original research). But could it be that we actually agree on the matter and you just doubt that the word "notability" is suitable to describe the concept in question? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

A couple of points. First, Verifiability is more then simply "it exists". I'd suggest reviewing Wikipedia:Verifiability, because it does actually say that independent sources are our requirement. Also, of less importance, I don't fault yourself or anyone else for actually trusting the editors of other encyclopedias, just as I don't fault people for trusting the authors of books or even most Wikipedia editors. Just because it's more difficult to criticize editor/authors, and that such criticisms are less public, doesn't mean that they don't exist. Personally, I don't trust the editors at Britannica or anywhere else further then I could throw them, but that's me.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

(Ω) "that's me": Not just you. Thanks for commenting ahead of me, I wouldn't have been nearly as restrained as you. ;)

(MP) "editors": Sure, but the thing that we trust them with are the articles, not their reliablity in paying back money we lend them, right?

(MP) '"The subject is notable." is essentially defined as "We can write an article about the subject without violating our policies': If that was true, WP:N could be reformulated as: "Stick to the other policies". I don't think we need a policy for that. Thanks for making my point. ^_^ Paradoctor (talk) 01:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess I should have worded it better... Of course, "Editors of other encyclopedias can generally be trusted (to know what they are writing about etc.), but the editors of Wikipedia (again - generally) cannot..." did use hyperbole. It's just that other encyclopedias can find an "expert" with some credentials, ask him to write an article and hope that "the expert will know what to write", while we can't do that (as we cannot check those credentials) and thus have to make our policies "non-expert-proof". Of course, it doesn't mean that the "expert" always writes a better article than "non-experts". For example, User:Renata3#Just how accurate Britannica is? (permanent link - [2]) does show examples of errors in Britannica that Wikipedia doesn't make.

And as for "Stick to the other policies"... Well, maybe it's closer to "Don't waste time writing an article that will inevitably violate other policies anyway"... It should be rather obvious, but maybe this clarification does help someone..? And, as someone already noted, "Wikipedia is not paper" (I guess it doesn't become paper when we consider clarifications of policies and guidelines?)... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 22:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

"we cannot check those credentials": Really? How do Britannica editors check credentials? I think they gather verifiable information on the prospective contributor, and use it to decide. Which is the same thing we do with our sources, only we're not under pressure to sell our product.

"this clarification does help someone": Maybe, but we don't mark explanations of other policies as policies themselves. We clarify the other policies.

What I'm missing from you is an explanation of what essential ingredient WP:N contains that's not already covered by our other policies. I see nothing, and that's the reason this entire thread exists. Paradoctor (talk) 16:42, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

But WP:RS is not WP:N. In fact, WP:RS is not even WP:V

I'm seeing a conflation of "notability" (which actually is a synonym for the interest taken by "interesting" or "official" people), with "source reliability" which actually has to do with something entirely different, which is truth. There is a huge amount of reliable-source information out there which is likely to be true, but which isn't interesting and thus not notable. Like mundane weather reports from mundane places, decades ago. Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952? Unless there's some interesting historical event at that time and place it bears on, the answer is: nobody. The same for high school goings on from the same day, even if they made it into some Fische record of some (now disappeared) newspaper. They're like the weather. The routine weather reports from local places are examples of stuff that is WP:RS but not WP:N. Thus, WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above. These two things, N and RS, are two different things, and it takes both to be really worthy of inclusion. Of course, that said, the problem is in defining N in some other way that has nothing to do with RS, and I've had my say about that. It ends up being a game where celebrities identify celebrity, and they themselves are identified the same way. Soon you can be famous for being famous, ala Warhol.

Perhaps the nastiest example of such conflict comes in the area of BLP, where RS is defined in terms of "likely to be true," but then "likely to be true" is defined as "having come from a source identified as reliable." This gets to the epistemological problem of when we admit that our list of standard V sources (you can look them up) are not RS sources (likely to be TRUE), because some things aren't as likely to be reliable as our memories, which aren't available to anybody. So WP:V is not WP:RS, either. For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. Especially when a statement I myself made is the source for the information in the "RS" source, which got it from ME, second-hand! And yet, in a deletion fight, the WP:V claim would be taken over mine, even though it came from me originally, and was garbled. Go figure. This is a prime example of what may be called the "celebritization of truth." The idea being that something is more likely to be true, if some "notable" or celebrated person or source claims it, than if an "ordinary person" (like you or me) claims it. Say what? That's an incredibly stupid idea, indeed ridiculous idea on the very face of it, but it's written right into WP's policies. They make no exception for BLP, in part because of a foolish consistancy which is the hobgoblin of little minds. SBHarris 19:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of logical fallacies which are apparent to me, here. The first is Who cares that someplace that often gets cloudy skies, had cloudy skies on March 9, 1952?, which makes the galling and presumptuous judgment that you somehow know the information that all of our readers might want or need to see. This seems to be the core idea under which the "notability warriors" operate, that they are somehow more knowledgeable then the rest of us. Is it then any wonder that the various XFD areas are often turned into a battleground?

And then there's For example, I myself am the leading expert on my own life, and if I disagree with something that gets into print about me, from somebody who met me for a few hours, I'm more likely to be right than the "source" is, if we disagree. This is certainly true in day to day life, but there's a fundamental problem with it's use here on Wikipedia. How do I know who you are? Even if you do something to connect your Wikipedia identity with your real life identity, how can we verify that anything said through your account actually comes from you? Unless and until some legal means of generally establishing identity is created and adopted for the Internet (yea, right, that'll happen...) then this is just a generally untenable line of thinking to pursue. If there really is untruthful information out there, then some publication will be willing to print it, at which point we can and should cite that.

All of that being said, I do agree that our self-referential verifiability, reliable sources, and notability policies and guidelines are a problem. I think that comes from the fact that there are (obviously) different ideological ways to look at this whole subject. I have no idea how to really address the issue though, or if it's even possible to address it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

"isn't interesting and thus not notable": But where is the problem in having uninteresting articles? The vast majority of the current articles are not interesting to you in any meaningful way, so that doesn't seem to be a good exclusion criterion. Wikipedia does not need to sell itself. You're under no obligation to work on stuff you're not interested in. So where's the problem?

"WP:RS does NOT and should not define WP:N, but that bad idea is something I'm seeing proposed above." Umm, I did not make any proposal. Right here and now, my interest is in learning why people think that notability is important. Paradoctor (talk) 21:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

We know that Verifiability=/=truth, but you're going to have to live with it while editing Wikipedia. If you can't verify an objection to published material, how are the rest of us supposed to trust in the objection?

As for us basing our articles on what is "notable", i.e. what is given significant coverage in multiple, independent, secondary reliable sources, on what other basis should we make our decisions on inclusion? Your assertion that reliable sources=celebrity sources isn't true, scholarly sources are in plentiful use on Wikipedia.

Your point about trivia is covered in WP:UNDUE, and seems to be a straw man as I don't think that many editors would want to detail the weather on a random day five decades ago in an article. Wouldn't WP:NOTNEWS be a reason to exclude listing all the weather reports ever for a town in Weather of X? Whether to include information about the weather or high school events in a particular article (if they can be verified) is an editorial judgement. If the information is pretty trivial, we'll likely not include it. It is already well established that Wikipedia is not for listing every verifiable fact, see WP:NOT. But the weather on the day of a major event (like a space shuttle disaster) might be worth including. Fences&Windows 21:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

This is confusing to me. What exactly is the difference between WP:Verifiability, WP:Reliable Sources, and WP:Indiscriminate? They seem redundant or at least largely overlapping. I think I understand the difference between them and notability, though - this can be demonstrated through examples. There are plenty of newspaper articles, books, photos, video, and other reliable media concerning construction projects, weather, business openings or closings, car crashes, murders, and weddings of random people dating back hundreds of years, but they may not be notable (or no longer notable, even if they were 50 years ago). To me, it seems that things may be notable for one group of people (like everyone in a small town within a certain time period, but nobody else), but it would not satisfy our criteria unless it was notable for a larger community (how big? notable to a small town of 300 is too small, but if 2 newspapers and a mayoral announcement of a city of 5000 covered it, that would probably be notable?) and there was coverage beyond a few months (WP:NTEMP). But I still am not convinced of the need for the notability requirement, though the notability essays make for good reading. Also, in practice, in my experience with AfD discussions, notability is satisfied by having a certain number of verifiable, reliable sources in the article, usually about 5. I understand that there may be more theory behind it, but pragmatically this is how the system appears to work. It's like a simple equation: 2 or 3 big newspapers coverage (or 10 prominent online sources) equals notable - admins probably don't have time to ponder things like the impact of an article's topic. -kslays (talk • contribs) 23:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

"No longer notable, even if they were 50 years ago". No, "notability is not temporary" means that notable topics are always notable. Read WP:NTEMP again. WP:V is about the fact that we need to verify facts using sources, WP:RS is about how to find reliable sources, and WP:INDISCRIMINATE means that we don't include everything we can verify: all very separate. Fences&Windows 00:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I see, thanks for the pithy distinction. So, per WP:NTEMP, if something was notable in 1952, it is still notable, regardless of whether it would be interesting to anyone today. That leaves the matter of how big the population of people who care(d) has to be, and the functional distinction of notability from having a minimum number of sources during AfD discussions. -kslays (talk • contribs) 01:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This conversation is fabulous. It would help if we could see some statistics, i.e. a list of articles that have been deleted on the grounds that they lack notability -- does such a thing exist?

I'm going to venture that it's mostly rock bands, books, restaurants, bios of struggling professionals, startup companies ... in other words, self-promoters. I have always felt that Notability embodied Wikipedia's (admirable) hostility to greed; it means, "We have to be convinced that this article will help OTHER PEOPLE more than it helps YOU", but we can't really say that. Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 11:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

That would be all AfD and PROD deletions, and the CSDs that deal with notability. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Not to answer your question, but there are some old deletion stats here: User:Emijrp/Statistics#Most deleted ever, User:Emijrp/Deleting, Wikipedia:AFD 100 days. Deletion archives here: Wikipedia:Archived deletion discussions. Common outcomes gives a qualitative description rather than quantitative: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. For light relief, see Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles. Fences&Windows 15:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

(Andrew Gradman) "self-promoters": If the information is verifiable, where is the problem? We don't judge edits by the motives of the editor, we judge them by their value to the article. Wikipedia does not participate in advertising, and I'm probably one of the greatest fans of that. But on the other hand, we don't censor facts just because someone might stand to profit from them. Paradoctor (talk) 23:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Field-specific guidelines

I believe that the points above all easily explain why some concept and baseline for notability is necessary - while not paper, we're not an indiscriminate collection of verifiable information.

That said, understanding that notability as it is treated today as one swing of the pendulum of self-correction on WP is probably a bit too heavy-handed but also a bit too unfocused. I think most editors know how to use notability, but it is clear that most of this inclusist vs deletionist war that's been going on is due to a vicious circle of events that typically start with a heated argument at AFD and lead to ranges of articles being contested. This is often fueled by disagreement for what is appropriate coverage of certain fields relative to other fields (a fact often joked at by the press, which fuels the battles further) - I know one of the biggest is concepts from fictional works (characters, etc.) which some believe are important to be covered but rarely can be covered by secondary sources, thus making the present WP:GNG statement difficult to work with. But this is also true for schools, sports figures, etc.

It is not that notability isn't a bad idea, nor one to be abandoned, but we need to remind people that we a combination of an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac - to that end, we should be asking ourselves, first and foremost, what is it that we want to cover, and not the negative of what we don't want to cover. Given any field, we should be able to say "Ok, topics that satisfy these conditions from this field that demonstrate notability within that field should be included", and list out specific criteria that avoid subjection assessments. This may not be possible for some fields, but I think most fields can provide a good swath at appropriate topics that, with reasonable assurance, would be part of the encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. To that end, we already have the various sub-notability guidelines (SNGs) that provide that. Failing the SNG then drops you to our next goalline, the general notability guideline, which says that a topic that shows notability via secondary sources should be included. Mind you, many topics that would meet the field-specific guidelines likely would meet the GNG, but this should not be taken as a sign that the GNG is more important. The GNG is the fallback position of a topic doesn't meet its field's guidelines or if the field lacks any guidelines or falls outside of any known field. When viewed like this, this can significant help discussions at AFDs where notability is in play, because we're not talking about the presence of sources but the appropriateness of the topic for WP: if it is notable in the specific field but lacks sources, we should be more open to keeping it than deletion.

The problem we stuck with is this impression - when you read through policies and guidelines and AFDs - that the only good encyclopedic article is one that has third-party, secondary sources. Granted - verification and avoidance of original research and bias are all important, and third-party, secondary sources are a strong way to get there. But that's satisfying the "encyclopedia" part of WP's mission - gazetteers and almanac are works that tend to just cite facts and not attempt analysis or the like. Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission. That's not to say that we open the door to thousands of articles by allowing primary, first-person accounts as the only sourcing metric, and that's why, again, the field-specific guidelines of what is actually notable should come into play - there may be some topics within a field that should be included even if the sourcing is otherwise not as strong as one that is provided through secondary sources. Failing the field, then the lack of secondary sources will mean the topic fails the GNG, and we likely would not have a separate article on it.

We still need to make sure that field specific guidelines for inclusion are not overly inclusive compared to others. For example, if a guideline says that a one-time cameo fictional character always gets an article, while we exclude an amateur that plays one time at the Olympics through an athlete-field guideline or a single mom-and-pop business through a business-field guideline, we've got a problem. These field guidelines cannot be developed in a vacuum and should be challenged if they are overly inclusive - or overly exclusive too. We also need to realize that not every topic easily shuffles into established fields, or that new fields may become more obvious over time as we work towards this. We still have the GNG for those.

Basically, the "tl;dr" version of the above is simply that we should be asking ourselves, "what do we want to include in WP" instead of always playing the negative "This doesn't belong in WP". We want to assure ourselves we are covering all topics within individual fields well enough to meet the mission of WP, and being overly reliant on the GNG is harmful. (An argument I've had to point out several times is that while the property of having significant coverage is usually the result of something being wikt:notable, it is not true that having significant coverage is what makes something wikt:notable. There is a small but significant gap between GNG-based notable topics and dictionary-definition-based notable topics. We need to find out how to fill that gap, and field-specific guidelines are one way to do so.) --MASEM (t) 16:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This has some merit. But it might be hard to do in practice. That is, a list of included fields could be too long. Maurreen (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A complete switch to this approach is not something to be done overnight. But the framework is there, in how the existing SNGs (like WP:BIO, WP:BK, and WP:MUSIC already are written towards this idea. It would be a gradual change. The only immediate switch is applying to all editors the general understanding that the GNG needs to be treated as the fallback for notability, not the first barrier. --MASEM (t) 17:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense.

In one of the sub-guidelines, I don't remember which one, is something like "has made a major, lasting, contribution to his field." I think that is a good guideline in general.

The question then would become, "When is a field to small?" But that could be addressed gradually and organically, as you suggest, such as by adding sets of sub-guidelines. Each set of sub-guidelines could be addressed specifically. Maurreen (talk) 18:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:CREEP to me. I dunno; I always felt our ultimate goal was well-researched articles regardless of the field. Fundamentally, I see Wikipedia as the biggest literature review in existence. Nifboy (talk) 00:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Finally someone with brains. (Ok, I'm gushing ;) Paradoctor (talk) 00:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Technically it is not creep as the framework is in place, though yes, as more field-specific guidelines are added, that increases the size, but I don't see that changing the general ways things are done. And while I do agree with you about WP being a literature review, that itself can be conducted, with care, in the absence of secondary sources which is why the GNG should fallback over topic-inclusion guidelines if it is a topic we decide we want to cover. --MASEM (t) 00:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm still not reading you right. I see "in the absence of secondary sources" and read it as "in the absence of anything resembling a decent article at all." Then again, I'm most active in a project with a big list of things not to do because GameFAQs, TV Tropes, Wikia et al do them better (see WP:VGSCOPE); those sites are not constrained by things like WP:OR. What Wikipedia does better than any other place on the web is source compilation and summary. The notability guideline emphasizes that, and I like playing to our strengths. Nifboy (talk) 01:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

That point of view is starting from the possibly flawed opinion that secondary sources are necessary in a good article. I will content that it is likely difficult, working from non-secondary sources, to make an article as strong as one that is backed by that, but that it is not impossible. The reason I consider this possibly flawed is that what we consider an "encyclopedic" article is so disputed to know if this is consensus or not. I propose that being more open about topics but still alert to indiscriminate incluse, what we include will tell us better what we expect of "encyclopedic" articles. --MASEM (t) 04:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

You probably could make a good article, but I don't think it would be a Wikipedia article, if that distinction is at all meaningful. Nifboy (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

If we were just an encyclopedia, yes, I argue for what you're saying, but the fact we're more than just an encyclopedia means that we may have articles that don't fit the pattern of an encyclopedia but nevertheless part of what we considered to be covered. --MASEM (t) 05:48, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We are? And here I thought Wikipedia was just one of many different knowledge bases on the internet, willing to let other projects pick up subject matters where we're weak, typically due to our policies. Nifboy (talk) 06:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We're an encylopedia that anyone can edit, but we're still just an encylopedia. People forgetting this is possibly the single-most cause of drama and conflict here. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I do agree that where a MediaWiki sister project exists or has the possibility of existing, we should consider moving non-encyclopedic material to there. I also agree we are to be summarizing knowledge, not simply reiterating it, and pointed to reliable sources outside of the Foundation should be encouraged, but that's after we've summarized the topic here. I also point to the difficulty that many editors have resolving the first pillar in what "encyclopedia" means when we have elements of more datum-driven works like almanacs and gazetteers as elements of WP as well. This, in part, is the problem of notability, is that it is a way to drive home one's own opinion of "encyclopedic", when I doubt anyone can say exactly where the consensus stands on what "encyclopedic" quality really is. The bounds of that opinion are likely much narrower than they were 4-5 years ago before notability, but it is still a very fuzzy line and one that we need to be careful of.

That said, even if we take a stronger concept of what we expect a good WP article to be (a point I contend against, but will assume for this discussion), I would still assert that field-specific inclusion guidelines are needed. There are likely topics we want to include because they are in fields that are core to human knowledge, but due to difficulty in getting sources (due to rarity, age, cost, etc.) may not easily be expanded in the short term. It is better to put out the article with what limited verified information we have and hope that anons and other readers can expand it before those sources can get added, than to have no article at all. Eventually we hope that article gets to this "encyclopedic" quality, but there is no need to have it off the bat. That's the benefit of being a continuous work in progress with community additions. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that Masem is trying to adapt the inclusion guidelines so cater for poorly sourced articles, but no amount of rule changing can make up for poor content. The idea that Not every article on WP needs third-party secondary sources to meet WP's mission is essentially a rejection of inclusion based on good sourcing in favour of questionalble sources. However, Masem forgets that secondary sources are needed as evidence of notability and enable articles to meet Wikipedia's content policies.
The problem with field-specific guidelines is deciding what will be the basis for incluision? There are only two choices available: notability or subjective importance. It seems to me that Masem is proposing the latter, based on the idea that a topic gets its own article if it can "prove" its coverage is of "encyclopedic" quality, but what he really means is that topics can have their own articles based on editorial opinion not veriable evidence of notability.
Masem's proposal for field-specific guidelines amount to little more than special pleading for badly sourced articles that fail WP:NOT. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:06, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Since what is wikt:notable is determined by the subjective measures of mankind, subjective definitions that gain consensus to define field-specific inclusion guidelines seems perfectly acceptable to define those topics, by nature of being an encyclopedia, gazetteer, and almanac, that we absolutely must cover regardless if there is in-depth, secondary sources or not. --MASEM (t) 14:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Except wikt:notable has not really ever been the standard of inclusion. It's been Wikipedia:Verifiability + Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which Wikipedia:Notability essentially defines the minimum standard for: A single source is not NPOV, it's just one POV. Therefore, we want enough sources to write a half-decent article. The term "notable" is just a word we've appropriated for our own uses, because it's about as close to the concept as we can get without making up words. We do this all the time: Daniel Brandt's article got deleted after 14 attempts for WP:BLP concerns, even though we didn't have a name for BLP yet, much less a policy. Nifboy (talk) 15:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

It is possible that a single source - likely tertiary in nature - can be neutral. But this isn't about single sources or the like. This is about understanding that we have two issues in conflict: what we should be including as an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac work, and what type of sourcing do we expect at bare minimum an article to show. There is a large fraction of editors (I wouldn't necessary say "majority" necessarily based on past RFCs) that use WP:N to connect these two points. This is not that WP:N is bad - when we get to topics that are not traditionally covered by printed encyclopedias/etc., and thus where we don't know exactly how we should cover something, WP:N provides a good way to make sure the topic can be fairly covered on WP. But, WP:N is a bridge between the two issues and only spans so much. That's why there are people that insist WP:N is rubbish because it is used in a overly-enforced manner to demand sources without considering the first part of this issue, what WP should be covering in the first place. Mind you, this is not diminishing anything about sourcing requirements per WP:V and the need to avoid bias and synthesis in writing articles. This is: if we as editors under consensus expect that people will turn to WP to learn about certain topics from specific fields, we should damn well have some article about it, even if it is basic factual information.

I'm aware this statement is tricky: I know there's been arguments in the past that readers come all the time to learn about fictional characters from WP (judged by view counts) and that deleting these "harms" WP. Which is why it is important to understand that these critical field-specific topics are ones that have global consensus. Maybe the global consensus is that we should have an article on every fictional characters for our readers (I doubt it, just an example). We can't know that under we get over this stigma that WP:N and sourcing is the first barrier for inclusion and in actuality should be the fallback consideration for inclusion after we've tested a topic against field-specific guidelines. I would still argue that knowing the general population of editors that global consensus on field-specific inclusion guidelines will nearly always lead to an topic that can be secondary-sourced, but that needs to be considered a happy circumstance of determining what we should be covering as a combination encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. --MASEM (t) 16:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Turning people away because Wikipedia isn't what they think we are/should be is not something new, especially in fiction. I don't know if you were around when webcomics were this huge issue (circa '05) because 99% of their articles were close to what is now CSD criteria. That's just how the field is; there's very little criticism or analysis that goes on outside each individual comics' forums. We spent a freaking long time and an ArbComm case trying to draft inclusion criteria that got in all the webcomics we wanted; it didn't help that the whole thing was kicked off when Websnark (the closest thing to a webcomics "expert") suggested a very lenient inclusion criteria based on archive size. We went over WP:ALEXA and all that other nonsense. It wasn't until something very similar to WP:N came along that I personally realized, "Hey, this is actually rooted in policy! I like it!". Nifboy (talk) 16:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect what Masem is actually proposing when he talks about an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac is a comprehensive directory of fictional elements, that would encompass characters and episodes from films, TV shows, comics and other forms of fiction in which backstory is a significant component of a fictional work. In some ways this might be a good idea (it would certainly appeal to fans of fictional charcters for instance), and like a TV guide, a detailed description of every character and episode would be used as reference source by the readership. This is approach used by TV guides or forums such as TV Tome, but there is example is of questionable relevance to Wikipedia.
The one big sticking point with this approach and that is there is not much you can write about a fictional character or a TV episode that is anything but plot summary.
Starting with WP:NOT#PLOT, it is the general consensus that plot summary on its own is not encyclopedic coverage, i.e. plot summary is more immersive than it is informative. It is also the consensus that too great an emphasis on plot summary (particularly fictography) results in an over-reliance on a perspective that is in universe and should be avoided in accordance with WP:WAF. There is also the consensus on Wikipedia that articles should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability and giving undue weight to elements of fiction, rather than the works themselves.
On the one hand, I can see where Masem is coming from, but on the other I do not like the implications, for what he is proposing is effectively a watering down of policies and guidelines that have widespread support. I don't honestly know how our opposing prespectives can be reconciled. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec)That's a good example of what field-specific guidelines should not do, and agree with the end result, in this particular case since it is not true that identifying web comics is a core part of being an encyclopedia/gazetteer/almanac. However, this is one case. The cases that we do have today, namely things like every village/town, or every professional sports player, are the ones that call to mind of where there is a need to understand field-specific inclusion guidelines and what these should and should not do. In my opinion, we're in part a gazetteer, so it makes sense to have an article on every village, even if the only source is a government census that identifies the name, location, and that X people live there; on the other hand, while I can argue every sports team and respective seasons should be outlines (as part of an almanac), every individual player is not necessary a topic we should be covering per any part of the mission. But that's my opinion. The point though is that we would need global consensus to determine these and make sure that one field does not try to stack out a larger piece of their field than we've limited other fields to; again, I think most would agree that the present allowance on WP:ATHLETE for any professional athlete of any sport to have an article is much much looser than any other WP:BIO-related allowance.

Realistically, our first shot at any field-specific guidelines need to be short, simple "all-or-nothing" statements; eg: I would doubt anyone would be against assured inclusion of every single country in the world, every single known chemical element, every single President of the US, and so forth. Now, I know that in these examples, every single case likely can be met through normal WP:N standards as well (if they aren't already present and accounted for), but this exercise is for understanding what "field-specific inclusion" guidelines should be bounded by. If we go to biology, for example, is there a certain taxonomic rank where every known classification in that is considered appropriate for inclusion? Given the simple points above for other areas, maybe its not the case that every species should be included, but maybe at least every genus or family. Again, simple, all-or-nothing classifications as a starting point would help this approach and avoid what you've described happened with webcomics. Heck, I'd argue at the initial pass, most contemporary topics would not have such field-specific guidelines until we understand how best to use them (leaving the current SNGs in place until such a time has been determined). --MASEM (t) 17:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

And to Gavin, there is a possibly that there could be fiction-based field specific guidelines, but certainly not as an immediate result, nor would I even suspect that such field-specific guidelines would result in ones for every character or every episode (as there's no easy way I can see an "all-or-nothing" inclusion standard that doesn't add a lot of nuances to assure meeting it). Now, you may be speaking the other aspect, which is, once a topic is included, what is appropriate coverage for it, but that's is completely separate from this discourse. This is simply realizing that there are topics that, through global consensus, need to be in the work regardless of sourcing or meeting notability guidelines, and providing high-level field-specific guidelines for those will help the work out in the long run. --MASEM (t) 17:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I can see what Masem is trying to do, but there is just no framework of policies or guidelines to support this approach. All the content policies generally require reliable secondary sources to demonstrate that article content can meet Wikipedia's standards for encyclopedic coverage, and are they are the source of external validation used to settle editorial disputes. Even if he were to create special guidelines, there would be no content polices to support them, and as I have mentioned regarding fictional topics, they would probably conflict with existing policy. I don't see a way to make his proposal work, because of content polices just don't work if you make lots of exceptions to the existing rules. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 18:59, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

No content policy require the presence of secondary sources to justify the presence of an article; verification yes, but this can be through primary or tertiary third-party sources. Now one can of course argue if a topic isn't shown to be notable it should be deleted, but what is notable or what we want to include is what we as the collective group of editors can decide. Which is why if we decide that we allow specific types of topics due to field-specific guidelines to be included because they are part of the core knowledge WP should be coverage, pressing for their deletion because they lack sourcing is inappropriate. But this is important: we have to be set that field-specific guidelines are appropriate to describe what topics we want to cover; if we try to use field-specific guidelines that do not have global consensus, we'll be seeing topics at AFD all the time that may have been included from these. This is why I'm saying that its doubtful that implementing field-specific will, at least initially and until well established, allow for a fiction-relation inclusion guideline because we don't know what these guidelines for core topics of key academic interest would even look like to start with; I would dare not attempt to start this process with an area as heavily contested as fiction. But I don't rule out the possibly that if you set in place field-specific topics for several other academic areas and make sure they work for a long-enough period of time, that eventually we could establish one for fiction.

The problem you're having, Gavin, is putting the "requirement" of sourcing before anything else. Sourcing is important, but WP is based on common sense and good faith editing; good in-depth sourcing is only required for highly contentious statements and for avoidance of editor-claimed synthesis. If someone put forth an article on a topic that has encyclopedic value due to its academic nature (falling into a proposed field-specific inclusion guideline), but no one could easily provide in-depth sources on it due to limitations on achieving those sources, should we delete it? In our present attitude and environment, there would be editors that clearly would AFD that article citing "no secondary sources, fails WP:N", but that's the wrong attitude. We want to have these fundamental articles that fall into classes we have determined to be core to WP to be visible, inviting readers that do have that knowledge to add to it. Using field-specific guidelines would allow retention of that article and allow it to be improved over time without concerns of deletion. --MASEM (t)

"good in-depth sourcing is only required for highly contentious statements": You mean, there are uncontested statements in Wikipedia?!? Paradoctor (talk) 19:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:LAME is proof that any statement can be "highly contentious". Nifboy (talk) 23:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I can see where Masem is coming from, in the sense that most fictional elements are pretty harmless, so as long as they are not the subject of "highly contentious statements", in which case then any editorial disputes can be resolved by "common sense and good faith editing". This might be true 95% of the time, so Masem has a valid point.
However, despite the fact fiction is one of the less controversial subject areas in Wikipedia, compared with say religion or politics, its not a controversy free zone. Fiction has always been written to reflect real world controversies and tensions, often with real-world implications, such as the Lady Chatterley's Lover legal case. Although our views about "public decency" have moved on, there are still topics that are taboo today. If we want to write articles about these topics, we still need content policies to defend our right to create articles, and defend them, if need be, against arbitrary deletion proposals. I agree with Masem that I often put the content polcy anything else, but it precisely these policies that provide us with freedom to write about what ever we choose.
Even without controversial topics, I have to to agree with Nifboy that editorial disuputes are all too common. It only takes two editors to start a dispute, and issues such as original research (e.g. Kender) or content forks (e.g. Terminator (character) vs. Terminator (character concept)) won't ever go away. If field-specific guidelines conflict with content policy, then they will be a source of conflict, rather than building block of consensus. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:46, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• There's a nice paradox in the above reams of WP:TLDR. Those who maintain that there should be strict standards of inclusion which forbid personal essays on subjects of choice, nevertheless go on and on endlessly in talk pages like this. And all their maundering, repetitive, stream-of-consciousness thoughts will be preserved here for all eternity. In centuries to come, there will be terabytes of this stuff. But the actual encyclopedia will still be unfinished. For example, it seems that the real issue is creative control. But notice that our article on the subject is poor. The equivalent policy page, WP:OWN, on the other hand, is better. The players here want to be directors rather than spear carriers and so it goes ... Colonel Warden (talk) 21:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I have to stop you there. Who are "Those who maintain " and where have they "personal essays on subjects of choice"? I say now you are making this up. Cite your sources or forever hold your peace. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll talk about fiction related articles because it's a good example and, to be honest, the majority of all the squabbling that goes on is about fiction related articles. To my mind, sources are required to address two basic questions regarding Wikipedia articles. Is it true? And why should anyone care? All reliable sources can address the first question, but only reliable secondary ones can answer the other question. That is the main reason why articles on elements of fiction are frowned upon if they only cite the work itself as a source- the question of why anybody should care has not been addressed. And don't think it's not an important question; Wikipedia has been mocked, and its reputation as a serious scholarly resource undermined, for its undue fannish obsession with minute details of popular culture.

There is another, and also very good, reason to insist on independent sources. When an editor writes an article based solely on the work of fiction it is extremely difficult to determine where their reporting of the primary source crosses the line into inappropriate interpretation, speculation or editorializing, or where they place undue weight on one element or another. And it is also true that such articles tend to be very badly written, consist mostly of plot summary without balanced discussion, and can be difficult for subsequent editors to work on. Independent sources mitigate all of these factors.

Masem pointed out that it can sometimes happen that a worthy topic might come along, where everyone can see it's important but by some fluke the sources don't exist or are extraordinarily hard to get at. This is true. It happens. But it does not happen very often, and it's for cases like this that the old motto ignore all rules should be applied. By all means break the rules when it's obviously the right thing to do. We should not generate a set of blanket exemptions to catch the occasional freakishly sourceless worthy topic- because we'll catch so much crap along with it as to make the whole thing more trouble than it's worth. This is especially true in coverage of fiction because the exemptions will inevitably be misused, often deliberately. I would like to make it clear that I don't want to generalize because I know there are a lot of good-faith editors doing a lot of good work in that area, but the sad fact is that when spurious, misleading and irrelevant sourcing happens it's almost always when someone tries to defend a fiction-related article from AfD. Take away or lessen the requirement for independent sourcing and the problem will just get worse. Reyk _YO! 10:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Unequality shown in the enforcement of 3rr

There is at least one academic study of wikipedia which has stated that Wikipedia rules are unevenly enforced, but these conclusions appear only based on general observation.

1. Does anyone know if there are other academic studies which discuss the idea that wikipedia rules are regularly unequally enforced?
2. I think the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring noticeboard would be the most likely page to study.

Okip 12:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

• Most likely, least valid. They could just as well study Dear Abby's mailbox. NVO (talk) 13:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
• I would jolly well hope they are being unequally enforced. We're trying to make a good encyclopedia, not to play games by some set of consistently applied rules.--Kotniski (talk) 14:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(Akk, formatting craziness here) Why do you need an academic study to see in a place with a large group enforcing the rules, some people will do things different than others? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The rules are designed to be enforced unequally. It would be nonsensical to treat experienced users in the same way as a user who has been here for less than a week. We have WP:IAR and most rules give very non-specific "enforcement" provisions specifically so enforcement can be tailored to the situation. Moreover, the people doing the enforcement are volunteers, nobody watches everything and nobody is required to act. Mr.Z-man 17:16, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

• Its a well known fact that all admins are content hating vandals who like nothing better then to torment content contributors with unfair arbitary blocks so I can't see the point of a proper study myself. And more seriously, AN3 stopped being consistant when WMC was defrocked because we now have so many different admins working there. Its impossible to be fair and consistent without being officious and block happy. That's why I stopped working that board. ((you can choose for yourself whether being officious or block happy was the thing I had problems with)) Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  lol... You're probably correct about that noticeboard needing an admin or two (preferably a couple) to "adopt" it. Being somewhat reliant on one or two people tends to at least create consistency due to the fact that there are only one or two interpretations being expressed. I actually think that sort of thing is the largest policy related issue that we have here, in that there are too many "cooks in the kitchen", so to speak. If we had fewer, yet more active, administrators then we could at least get to know their foibles and interpretations. That's the way that most online communities end up working, although it's not really intentional, most simply don't create so many moderators (and before anyone says anything, yes, I'm fully aware of the fact that Wikipedia admins are supposedly not "moderators").
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:47, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

• That would be my experience. Wikipedia is more and more about cliques backing each other up than it is anything else. Artw (talk) 19:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
• *groan* Why in the world would you cite IAR in a discussion such as this? What's with this recent compulsion to bring that up at any opportunity available?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  Because we like to pretend that IAR actually happens among experienced editors. Angryapathy (talk) 19:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  Uh, because its relevant. Did you read my comment, or just see "IAR" and reflexively respond? Mr.Z-man 20:21, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  I wouldn't have commented if I hadn't actually read your statement. Your own defensiveness on this admittedly very minor issue speaks volumes.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  As does your willingness to change the subject of a discussion about enforcement of 3RR into something about your dislike of IAR. Mr.Z-man 20:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  Where in the world do you get that I dislike IAR? O_o
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:48, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Okip, re your question about studies re WP enforcement, some quick googling turned up this; also this, this, this, etc. which may be of interest. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Our rules are written in such a way as to make a casual reader believe that our rules are enforced equally. Okip 03:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's a problem. Calling them "rules" in the first place is probably the biggest mistake (although as far as I can remember it's only 3RR that's actually called a rule).--Kotniski (talk) 07:39, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

This is not really related to academic studies on Wikipedia, but just on the general topic of 3RR application...I used to volunteer at the 3RR noticeboard more often but I quit partially because of the whining people gave me about "uneven application of the rules" (which, in practice, generally means "application of the rules in a way I don't like so I'm going to go complain to administrators about it"). I wrote a rant about it here. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

using deletion discussions to add user experience rather than risk contributor motivation

It is a pitty to look at the information and motivation losses incured in quest of relevance and verifiability. Do not understand me wrong: relevant an encyclopedia should truly be. You have the great chance to grow to be something more than relevant without destroying relevance for those who want it.

THis leads me to my question (A), some reasoning, and some proposal for implementation (B)

(A) Wouldn't it be wise to let users filter how relevant they want their wikipedia to be and to take deletion discussion results as a mere relevance score?

(B) I imagine that users chose both the language and what I would call the desired credibility level. The base to calculate the credibility are the voting results of deletion discussions. Below a minority threshold articles continue to be deleted. Articles that were never (or haven't been for a very long time) subject to a deletion discussion have top marks. They are the core encyclopedia. Articles with small deletion margins and high error probabilities are what matters to me. They often are well written, informative and unique to Wikipedia. They have the greatest potential to add strife among contributors. I am an user and I don't find this kind of stuff anywhere else with a fingertip and I'm sad if it is lost some days/month later or marked for speedy deletion. However, I understand perfectly that these articles are not encyclopedia like in the pure sense. But then: Who -if not Wikipedia with its unique base of writers- publishes this kind of stuff between encyclopedia and hot knowledge at the edge of societal and technical progress? And how - if not by such measures that may not fit perfectly to the original aim of Wikipedia- do you preserve your base of contributors and their motivation? I think the discussion on "what fits into an encyclopedia?" could add value if only you frame and use it the right way. And if articles are categorized you do not in any way damage your original aim -being an encyclopedia- but you ensure that you continue to have a proper base of writers. Moreover, you ensure that I continue to have fun using wikipedia.

Stehe (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by "filter their Wikipedia"? Woogee (talk) 05:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the gist of it is that he wants to replace article deletion with a system of scoring for relevance. Articles that would otherwise be deleted would instead be demoted, so people could choose to view either the unfiltered Wikipedia, complete with all the crap, or a filtered one that has everything less the content that would have been deleted. The Wordsmith^Communicate 05:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Ew, God no! Woogee (talk) 05:18, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I concur, it would be a terrible idea. The Wordsmith^Communicate 05:21, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Stehe can always try Wikinfo, which has no notability requirement & virtually no deletion. Peter jackson (talk) 15:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It happened once. Remember all the "consensus" on sighted revisions, flagged revisions, revised revisions, no unchecked contents for unregs etc.? Buried and forgotten. There's never enough volunteers. Even the most populous and active wikiprojects cannot sort their mess. At best we may discuss the ways to cull fifty or forty unreferenced biographies. NVO (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

"Mark all edits as minor by default"- should we even have this?

This is an option in preferences. Since it's usually a bad, drama inducing idea to mark edits that are not minor as being such, and since nobody ever got yelled at for not marking an edit is minor, I think it may be in WPs best interest to eliminate this option from the preferences menu. It seems to cause more problems than it solves. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree. There are people who go around making almost all minor edits, and I can see that it might be a slight convenience for them, but there are also editors that go around marking almost all their edits minor whether they are or not, and I wonder if it's because they have that option on without having considered it well. --Trovatore (talk) 21:00, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Also tend to agree. Even allowing it seems to run counter to WP:MINOR, which indicates that fewer, nor greater, edits done are actually minor in nature. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 21:02, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree barring hearing a good reason on why it's there in the first place. Confuses the new editors who like to play around with their settings, causing tension. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Before we do anything, I'd like to hear from people who use this feature: When do you use it? Is it important to you? If so, what if we helped you find a substitute? (I don't know much about computers, but I hope we could develop a substitute that involves editing one's CSS or JS pages.) Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 21:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. It's very useful. Marking an edit as minor indicates a necessary though low significance change. Any observer can ignore such edits to their taste. Some time back, I dealt with a reasonably-sized cluster of articles within a category that all needed similar changes. It was partly related to ISBNs I think. I didn't want to add each one to my watchlist, and all the changes were minor. Anyway, through that preference option I was able to turn off auto-watchlist edited articles plus mark all edits as minor by default, for the duration of that exercise. Once done, I switched my prefs back to their usual. –Whitehorse1 21:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Personally, I feel marking an edit as minor is specifically a vandal's tool. The only way you can be sure no bad edits are slipping through is to check all of them. This is especially important of low traffic pages with only a few people watching them. I feel the goals intended by this option could just as easily be accomplished by a short edit summary such as "spelling". I do not always feel the need to check edits from established editors with edit summaries like that. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 01:53, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree: I treat any edit as non-minor until I see it is. Mish (talk) 02:08, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment: Not enough data here to say whether the harm of the option exceeds the usefulness or not. It doesn't stop vandals (high-volume vandals don't have to worry about checking a box - they use scripts), but it might stop confused newbies. On the other hand, confused newbies usually fix their options when you explain the problem to them - so why worry? Dcoetzee 11:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

A fair question to ask is: is there an epidemic of people who have "mark all edits as minor" abusing this? Is there any WQA/ANI-type reports of users that do this? The intent suggested makes sense, but I think it's making a presumption that all editors engage in a combination of editing tasks to article content; I believe there are probably less-active editors that do rather simple (and truly "minor edits") changes to articles to help things along. --MASEM (t) 14:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a complete list, but this thread Wikipedia:ANI#Looks_like_vandalism._Second_opinion_needed was what prompted me to think about this, and it's not the first time I've seen this cause trouble. I wouldn't say it's an "epidemic" but it is a recurring issue at ANI and on user talk pages. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I Support removing the gadget. As far as I can tell, what Whitehorse1 is talking about is completely unrelated.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:59, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I can't understand how what I talked about could be unrelated? In my comment I said I found it useful, mentioned the advantage of marking a change minor in general, gave an example of a situation I'd experienced where having a mark-as-default option would be helpful, and how I'd used it. –Whitehorse1 02:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I just don't understand what you were really talking about, above. Marking edits as minor has nothing to do with adding pages to your watchlist. (there is an option to make edits marked as "minor" invisible on your watchlist, but that has nothing to do with adding pages to your watchlist.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:47, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have, I agree. I probably wrote it poorly. What I was trying to put across when I mentioned watchlisting, was that this was a bundle of related articles I'd be unlikely to edit again and which I was only editing to fix a common issue each one of them had. (Generally, I edit articles that interest me and therefore want to watchlist them so I can easily reach them again.) In going through the bundle making the edits, the minor-as-default option meant there was no need to check minor-edit or uncheck add-to-watchlist each time. I was comparing one prefs option's usefulness to another's.

As you say, users can make edits marked minor not visible on their watchlist, plus the recent changes page. The edits themselves I'd chosen to mark minor because, well, the recent change patrollers really don't need to have to scroll by a page of my ISBN changes (or whatever) nor other users have their watchlist suddenly filled by the changes. –Whitehorse1 03:26, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, that's a bit more clear, thank you. The problem that I see there is that you're talking about three different gadgets/options, as far as I can tell. There is an option to add pages that you edit to your watchlist, there is another gadget to hide "minor" edits by default, and there is a third to mark all edits minor by default. The number of people using variations of those three options must be wild, but I'd bet that the number of people using none of them outweighs even those using any single one. The point being, I see the logic behind what you're saying, but this option (or any set of options currently available, for that matter) will not accomplish what you expect it to for the vast majority of users. I seriously doubt that NPP/recent change patrollers ever use "hide minor edits" regardless, since the whole point of those patrols is to examine all edits.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, I think my talking about what/when I add to my own watchlist wasn't effective. It sort of made sense to me at the time, but now I see it just confuses the matter. I've struck out that part, in my original comment at least. Thanks. I've never used the second gadget myself, though occasionally toggle the similar link on my watchlist page. Looking at the preferences now, there're separate hide "minor" edit options for both recent changes and own watchlist pages. Hmm. Maybe the first one's more useful on small wikis, I don't know. The Recent change patrollers' settings probably isn't the best example. A better use case example might be the Related changes link some WikiProjects use to generate a changelog of their articles, such as this; toggling minor edits to filter out rollbacked reverts or bulk maintenance edits and the like. –Whitehorse1 06:15, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose The tool can be useful when doing a large number of menial edits without having tools like AWB to help. For example, cleaning up a large number of double redirects or templates. For things like that, having one fewer click to do makes a big difference. People can enable the gadget for just the time that they're doing that series of edits, and then un-enable it again. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  I've gotta ask though, why do you need to, or why should you, mark such edits as "minor"?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:30, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Because they're superficial (presumably)? --Cybercobra (talk) 02:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  How does that help you though? Suppose you didn't manually or by default mark your edits as minor. The only people that's going to affect are people that have specified on their watchlist to not be told about "minor" edits. The only difference is the number of people that ever become aware of it. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 03:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, that's the whole reason minor edits exist. When I mark an edit as minor it doesn't do anything for me, but I'm trying to throw a bone to people for whom it might matter. This doesn't have to be a selfish project. From the responses to my !vote, it looks more like you guys are trying to say we shouldn't have minor edits at all, rather than just wanting to get rid of this one tool. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:46, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  I am, and by extension this tool. I suppose I don't understand why people would ever want to ignore minor edits. Why even have a page watchlisted if you're going to make it that easy for editors to slip something by you? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 03:53, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Personally, I use the "minor" flag occasionally myself, to indicate minor spelling corrections to my own posts/additions. In my personal estimation, the minor flag should never be used when editing other people's contributions, but that's me. That right there sums up the whole issue with the flag actually, that there's absolutely no meaning to it. What's worse is that, even if we were to come up with some actual definition of what constitutes a "minor edit", since it's impossible to change edit summaries it would be impossible to enforce any restrictions on it (again, making it a meaningless "flag"). Having the gadget/option available just makes a bad situation that much worse, in my view.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:03, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Well, if you guys think minor edits are bad and should be done away with, then that is the discussion you should be having (perhaps on Help talk:Minor edit instead of here). Trying to disguise one issue as another by making this ostensibly about a tool is not really a good way to go about it. And from what I can tell there is not yet any community consensus that minor edits are a bad thing, so there's no reason that this tool is inherently a bad thing. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:25, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  I freely admit to my somewhat biased viewpoint here, but that doesn't really change the fact that I support the idea that the "mark all edits as minor" option is a bad idea. They may be closely related subjects (they both center on the minor edit flag, at least), but their definitely not the same topic. We're realistically not going to get the minor edit flag removed, so even asking for that would just be silly. Rather then tilting at windmills though, removing the "mark all as minor" option at least minimizes the damage. I understand the minor utility that yourself and Whitehorse1 see in properly using the option, but it ignores the overwhelming (as far as I can tell, at least) misuse which it sees, and that's why I support removing it. The simple fact that the option causes fights is enough for me to support it's removal, when balanced against the very minor utility it affords to those who may occasionally properly use it.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 09:13, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Let's pretend you like the television series Doctor Who. It doesn't matter if you truly do or not, let's pretend. Because you like the show you have all the episode-set articles watchlisted, or at least a healthy bunch of them. You probably intend to work on them sometimes, or just enjoy further improving or reviewing other edits on them.

  One day, a user makes a minor change to one. It's an improvement in its own small way, yet far from earth shattering. Then they make a similar change to another of the episode-set articles, and another, then another. They seem to be working through each one, or at least those before its 2005 relaunch, maybe from this list?

  Although they might include other small fixes in each edit—whitespace, the odd typo, for the most part the edits are that same minor change. Your interest in and possibly fondness for the show means each one shows up in your watchlist. And, since there's in the region of 150 of the articles, it takes up a lot of space there!

  You might've been interested by the first edit enough to take a look at the diff. Maybe even the second. By the tenth time, not so much. But you're on your watchlist page. At the top, near the 'go' button you have links to hide your own edits, anon or all logged-in users, and bots. None of those help much with your suddenly-cluttered watchlist page. It's a fair amount of articles, but at 150ish hardly bot level; the edits're probably a onetime thing as well. This one day though, you're in luck. The user apparently endeavors to be less about 'the I and the me', more about 'the us and the we': they've marked all the edits minor. That means you're able to click the link at the top to hide minor edits, and they disappear. You can see other edits to those articles easily, staying up to date with them, as well as to unrelated articles more clearly, now that you've switched off the watchlist flood. –Whitehorse1 04:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  How many pages from the same topic do you have on your watchlist? How many edits have you ever seen on your watchlist from the same editor? Assuming that an editor just happens to edit every single page from this group, the number of edits from the same editor cluttering up your watchlist is exactly equal to the number of pages from the same topic. I don't think that number would be huge. Additionally, the only thing a watchlist is good for is telling that a page has been altered since you last looked at it. If you're taking responsibility for the article and you want to make sure that no bad edits are slipping through, you don't use the dif link from the watchlist. You have to look at the page's history. From this view it is a trivial matter to ignore edits from established editors with a low probability of being "bad." Minor edits are not hidden on the page's history. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 06:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Most people just don't, and won't, use the minor edit option for those edits, though. I could argue that their not "minor" at all, anyway. Like I said above, there's no standard for what is or isn't a "minor edit", and any attempt to create one is a fool's errand anyway since edit summaries are non-editable. What you're describing here is a fundamental problem with watchlists, which would benefit from some developer time, imagination, and work, but I don't see how that addresses the problems with intentional misuse of the "mark all edits as minor" option.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 09:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

  Err, there is a rule for what is minor in WP:MINOR: "typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearrangement of text without modification of content". In practice I, and probably all of us, use the history rather than looking at the watchlist diff, but the idea behind minor is sound and screening noise and content changes is something that needs to be done. If we could trust that minor edits were being screened out responsibly (as defined above), these could be dropped from the watchlist for some people. It would be nice to implement some standard diff tags in addition to minor, such as "add reference", "remove references", "tone", "unsourced content", ect. Also, these should be editable - if someone wrongly tags an edit as minor, the database should be correctable. "Corrected" in itself could be a diff tag. II | (t - c) 10:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Azure, the people who abuse the "minor" tag to "put something by" other editors need to be disciplined. Admins should be able to revoke the privilege. Fact is, there are lots of people who have pages watchlisted but are not religiously checking all edits. The minor edit helps them ignore noise, which is always a good thing. I don't know whether the preference needs to be taken out, but minor has an objective definition per WP:MINOR: "typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearrangement of text without modification of content". I don't know whether the option preference needs to be taken out, but the minor rule does need to be enforced. II | (t - c) 10:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment: I think it could be allowed for bots (with approval) if their tasks really are to do minor edits.陣内_Jinnai 23:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I stopped checking bot edits awhile ago. Another thing, the only reason anyone ever catches a bad faith editor marking non-minor edits as minor is because people are checking the minor edits. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 01:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comfortable with removal In theory it's useful to distinguish major and minor edits, or self-correction to existing edits where nothing substantial is being added. In practice all edits need scrutiny and minor edits cannot be skipped or treated as "less significant" without checking them anyway. Because use of "minor" varies so widely, one cannot ever assume that minor edits are indeed insignificant or trivial. That said, if there was a way for standard semi-automated tools (spellcheckers, link fixers etc) to tag their edits as "automated task" I'd endorse that, because those edits really are mostly ignorable. (Sadly even this is questionable, we'd probably see vandals tagging their edits this way to reduce the chances of being noticed.) Overall a nice conceptual idea in page history, but unsure if it "pays its way". FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

About publicity

Hi. I have a question. Can the users put publicity in Wikipedia? I tell this because i think that a lot of userboxes contains the promotion of a thing. For example, this user prefer Wii over Playstation 3 and X Box 360, or This user drinks Coca Cola. I think taht, in a encyclopedia, this typo of dates are irrelevant: you can need a userbot to say taht you write spanish, but you needn't a userbox to say taht you drink cocacola, also, say "I prefer Wii over.." is a type of promotios about Wii.--HHH Pedrigree (talk) 15:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Userpages aren't articles, so the same standards do not apply. Personally I feel these types of userboxes (and in fact any userbox not related to what you do on Wikipedia) are a pointless waste of space, but apparently there a lot of users who enjoy posting every tiny detail of their personal likes and dislikes and think that someone actually cares if they like to eat pizza or whatever. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:41, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

There is a content guideline as to what userpages can have at Wikipedia:User page, but userboxes are an accepted norm and practice on wikipedia.Smallman12q (talk) 00:05, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

When we deal with so "abstract" discussions (which are not about article content, or our relation with the "real world"), the best way to measure the correct answer is with pragmatism: "Which is the potencial benefit of this?" vs. "Which are the likely side consequences?". The side consequence is a very long discussion, users getting upset about the whole thing or protesting the "abuse" when such deletions are performed, etc. And the benefits... which real and tangible benefits can be achieved?

Even more, you are from Wikipedia in Spanish, aren't you? There was a big discussion recently at that project when an admin decided to "be bold" and delete most userboxes of the type "This user watches Smallville" or "This user uses Mozilla Firefox". The discussion was whenever they could be following the policies of spam or user pages, or not. Without going to the abstract discussion, ask a better question: beyond the point of following rules because there are rules, how was the project actually benefited by such development? MBelgrano (talk) 00:53, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

The project benefits in a very important way -- it allows people to add harmless info about themselves rather than scaring potential contributors away. It really DOESN'T hurt anything for someone to claim they like Zelda or macaroni or the color blue on their user page; hell, rules against it might as well just be saying that no one should have a user page at all. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I understand that the first user is proposing deletion of such userboxes, as performed at the Spanish wikipedia, and asks if there is support for that. When I question which benefits can be obtained, is which benefits can be obtained from deletion of the userboxes, not from the existence of such userboxes. MBelgrano (talk) 01:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No need to revisit the Userbox Wars here on En. Suffice to say, userboxes serve a legitimate purpose in community building, which creates personal connections among editors, increasing investment and participation, ultimately generating more encyclopedic content. So no, we should not delete them. Dcoetzee 13:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:DICTIONARY needs tweaking?

Thou, Gay, Dude, Craic, Humbug are all articles about words (Thou is a Featured Article) but WP:NAD prohibits this. It can be argued that the articles go beyond a simple dictionary definition but WP:NAD states:

Note that dictionary and encyclopedia articles do not differ simply on grounds of length. A full dictionary article (as opposed to a stub dictionary article, which is simply where Wiktionary articles start from) or encyclopedic dictionary entry would contain illustrative quotations for each listed meaning; etymologies; translations; inflections; links to related and derived terms; links to synonyms, antonyms, and homophones; a pronunciation guide in various dialects, including links to sound files; and usage notes; and can be very long indeed.

Should WP:DICTIONARY be tweaked to allow these types of articles? If so, how? If not, should these articles be removed? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:22, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The particular policy you quote has been there since as far back as I could check, it was present in 2002, about 8 years ago.

You're subtly incorrect: dude is about a person that has always lived in city, not the term. Thou is about a grammatical construct. Craic is another word for fun and needs to be merged. Humbug just means nonsense. gay just means homosexual.- Wolfkeeper 17:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The wikipedia is not a dictionary; articles are not supposed to be about words or terms. Unlike a dictionary, encyclopedia articles are translatable into a foreign language, because the article is not about the term in the title, they're about one thing the title refers to. When you have articles on English terms, that usually no longer applies, it would be a translation of an English article, not an article properly in the language.- Wolfkeeper 17:32, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you're splitting hairs. Thou is about the term, grammar is one part of the article. Dude is defining itself "as about a person that has always lived in city". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

If the article Gay were just "An adjective meaning homosexual," then that would be a clear dictionary definition and should be removed. However, it's not. It's got extensive historical usage of the term. More importantly, it provides enough reliable sources that it meets the core policy of Verifiability. It would also make the Homosexuality article excessively large if it were included, so it needs to be split out somewhere.

In a general sense, I think there's a slippery slope to say that any article with usage information is a dictionary definition and should be purged. While "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" is a good starting point for deal with stub articles, but it's not an absolute. When an article contains historical perspective or other encyclopedic information about the term beyond mere usage instructions, and when the article brings in secondary sources to support the discussion, then whatever you want to call it, it's worth having an encyclopedia article on. —C.Fred (talk) 18:08, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, adjectives- the wikipedia doesn't have those either; everything is a verb or noun or noun phrase.

There's no blanket ban on usage information in an article; although a complete article would probably have to include associated terminology usage of every language.- Wolfkeeper 18:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

But the point of a (general) encyclopedia is that it's not a linguistic work. The English wikipedia is not about English, it's written in English. It has articles on English, but not down to individual words. When you have an article that contains multiple definitions of the title, with usage, history of usage (of the title); that's always a linguistic article, and in practice, it's always a dictionary entry (albeit often a long one).- Wolfkeeper 18:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think that articles about words are only articles about English words? We have articles on words from all kinds of languages. See, for example, Banlieue, Guanxi, Chinese word for "crisis". rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:13, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think that Banlieue is about the word, as opposed to a city outskirts? The article was just badly written; so I rewrote the intro to be more clearly encyclopedic. Guanxi doesn't claim to be about the word anyway; it's a type of relationship. I'm not sure about chinese word for crisis this may well be non encyclopedic, but I haven't looked into it carefully, it seems to be simply about the usage and interpretation of the word, which is soundly into dictionary territory.- Wolfkeeper 04:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I reverted you. You are in no position to be going around making controversial changes in the name of your ill-conceived crusade when almost nobody else at this project agrees with your strange interpretation of the guideline.

For what it's worth, Tsar is another good example of a foreign-language term that is clearly notable (the use of this term in United States politics caused some small ballyhoo last year). rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You do not have the right to insert lies about me in the subject line of edits. I am *highly* offended by your ignorant and highly inaccurate slander of calling me a POV warrior. A POV warrior is somebody who deliberately slants an article; who violates NPOV. This is completely inaccurate. You are way out of line here.- Wolfkeeper 05:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Apologies for the term "POV warrior", which in retrospect was not what I was trying to get across. Perhaps "policy warrior" would have been better. But I think you get the picture already. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It's really mostly to do with article scope; when you define the scope to be a word or term, then right there, it's not encyclopedic, it's immediately limited to linguistics; and you can see that here, this article isn't really anything to do with being gay/homosexual, it's just a word for that. The word is part of being homosexual; that's where the content needs to go (and also reference the dictionary).- Wolfkeeper 18:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we do include articles on terms, and words, when the topic has sufficient scope for an encyclopedic treatment. Per WP:Five pillars, Wikipedia "incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias". As in, linguistic encyclopedias, and encyclopedic dictionaries. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper has been told dozens of times that he is interpreting the policy and proper course of action incorrectly, by admins from here and Wiktionary (eg here, and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics#Prithee for the tip of the iceberg). He has also been steadily rewriting parts of WP:NAD WP:NOT to suit his own narrow interpretation for at least a year. He has said here: "All I know is there's only two kinds of discussion I get into in the Wikipedia; one's I win, and one's I haven't won yet; because I don't get into discussions where I'm not on the wikipedia's side. Currently pending discussions I haven't prevailed on: 0. I never give up; and I'm not kidding." Discussions with him about this just go in circles. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, this is a bad faith character assassination by Quiddity which he trots out pretty regularly. I have actually been involved in quite a number of AFDs of articles, many of which have indeed been deleted; my batting average is about 50%. Getting the policies actually applied to articles that have been around for a long time is never very easy.- Wolfkeeper 19:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

And I have definitely not rewritten WP:NAD. WP:NAD has actually always pretty much said the same thing. Unless Quiddity can come up with an edit where I have done so; I demand he retract this false and malicious accusation.- Wolfkeeper 19:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Whoops, I meant parts of NOT, eg [3], [4], [5]. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I just bought it into line with the actual policy as best I could. These are supposed to be summary-style breakouts. They're supposed to be the same.- Wolfkeeper 04:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

So can we make this explicitly clear in WP:NAD? Something like "This excludes articles whose contents may be about a term but have historical perspective or other encyclopedic information about the term beyond mere usage instructions" (I'm stealing some of C.Fred's wording here). --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

No, because that would be practically every term in the English language, they all have history.- Wolfkeeper 20:05, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

That's a false slippery-slope argument. Only a few words have potential for an encyclopedic treatment. If it were just the etymology of a word, without the potential for expansion, that would indeed be an item unsuitable for here. But articles like Voseo, Prithee, Fuck, Thou, Moonie (Unification Church), etc etc etc are encyclopedic in scope. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Voseo isn't a word article anyway, it's not about usage of the word Voseo nor does it claim to be; it's about Voseo. Moonie isn't encyclopedic it's just about usage; and it's a start-class article. Thou is more of a legacy grammar thing than a word. Fuck, well, yes that's a word article but I would imagine that WP:IAR kicks in on that one as far as any AFD is concerned.- Wolfkeeper 04:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Dictionaries are about terms, not things. Encyclopedia's are about things not terms. You see the difference?- Wolfkeeper 20:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

fuck and prithee shows the community does not make as clear a distinction as you do. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:16, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

All Fuck and prithee show is that the community like the word fuck and prithee; and even prithee has only been tested at AFD once, and was by no means a slam dunk (the vote was about 4 to 6 or something). If you actually look at the number of word articles in the wikipedia there are incredibly few.- Wolfkeeper 20:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

It shows the community can distinguish between articles which are dictionary definitions and articles which have encyclopedic merit. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:47, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Nah. In any case the proposed change does not address that in any way, so you're basically admitting the change would be pointless.- Wolfkeeper 21:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

The change does directly address this: "but have historical perspective or other encyclopedic information". It would prevent some edit-warring over move to Wiktionary tags - not useless at all. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:19, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Nearly all words have some kind of a historical perspective. And note that whether something is encyclopedic or not is not about length; so any historical perspective would make any word eligible. That dog doesn't hunt.- Wolfkeeper 04:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

NeilN and Wolfkeeper are misunderstanding the point of WP:NAD and the content of the articles they're citing. Words that are notable, have attracted attention and controversy, and even have books published on them, such as Nigger, Fuck, and Gay, already meet the general notability guideline on their own merit. The articles about them are not dictionary definitions, they are encyclopedic articles about notable entity. A notable entity can be a person, a mountain, a film, a mathematical formula, etc...a notable entity can also be a word.

Wolfkeeper's comments claiming that people support the inclusion of such articles just because they're "naughty", made both here and at Talk:Gay, suggest that this editor is a little bit fanatical and isn't bothering to listen to the actual arguments being put forth by others. I see no constructive changes coming out of this discussion. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Sigh, no; point of fact, notability is only a guideline, something can be entirely notable and utterly unsuitable to be in the Wikipedia because it violates any one WP:ISNOT.- Wolfkeeper 04:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

For the amount of time you spend quoting WP:NOT#DIC (and its counter part WP:NAD), you have conveniently not noticed one of the key phrases in it: In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject. Or do you think that should be removed? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

That "Wikiepdia is not a dictionary" is User:Wolfkeeper's only reason for being here is easily apparent by a quick glance through his contributions. I don't know, or particularly care about, the particulars here, but this is hardly the first such conflict that he's been involved in (if not outright created).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No, he's not a single-purpose account, there are some other edits in there. He may have a bad argument here, he may even be a bad editor in general (if his lengthy block log is any indication), but there's no need to call him an SPA. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 02:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, when the preponderance of edits have to do with seeking out and AFD'ing articles, all using DICDEF as the defining reason (or any other single reasoning), that classifies as a SPA account in my book. The presence of "some other edits" hardly helps (especially when their largely made for exactly the purpose of avoiding the SPA label). That's my opinion, at least. *shrug*
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Afaik, he primarily edits engineering topics, with good content additions and patrols. (With occasional disproportionate rudeness, but generally positive). However, he does also spend a lot of energy in a non-consensus effort to delete content and articles that he believes violate WP:NOTDIC. Some of the stubs really do need deletion, but he seems to believe all articles on words need to be deleted. I'm currently attributing it to, to quote an unrelated sociological paper, "a particular mind-set among engineers that disdains ambiguity and compromise." He doesn't seem to be able to agree that some words have the potential for encyclopedic treatment, despite copious examples. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:22, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I've only ever run across him in relation to WP:NOTDICT subjects, so maybe that colors my view. That being said... I'm an engineer myself (chemical, if anyone cares), and I can certainly deal with ambiguity and compromise... but, knowing some of my fellow colleges as I do, I can understand your meaning (I tend to stay away from Wikipedia's Engineering articles though, since the lack of details would drive me crazy...). It's not that important to me anyway, despite any possible appearances to the contrary here, and this isn't WQA or an RFC/U, so...
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting point Rjanag (and one I wish I made when I got my head bitten off). Do you think there's any value in clarifying WP:NAD? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I think the guideline is already clear enough...other than Wolfkeeper, I don't know of anyone who's had any trouble understanding it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 05:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Given the fragmentation of this discussion over several places now, I want to express my view here now that the word gay has a special significance in that it was deliberately chosen and given a new definition by a part of society which used it as a simple but powerful unifying tool. Sadly, that usage has now led to a further usage as a derogatory adjective, but it's all because it was made to represent a lot more than the simple evolution of a word could ever do. It's not "just a word" HiLo48 (talk) 02:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, this is about the word "gay", is it? What's up with all of the recent battling over homosexuality? Two RFC's in fairly quick succession, an admin going completely over the edge due to perceived "BLP issues" (for the second time!), and now Wolfkeeper looking to delete something to do with "Gay"? is there a campaign underway here, or something?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Gay (word) does seem to be a legitimately problematic content-fork - because - they were discussing splitting the article gay into a few parts at Talk:Gay#New_proposal in October, which is when the content got duplicated. They appear to have duplicated part of the content, without removing the original (or it got reverted, or something). No controversy (not homophobic, at least). If anyone is trying to delete the article Gay itself, (which a talkpage thread at Talk:Gay#Structural problem with article suggests might be potentially in the offing), then that would be cause for concern. But it isn't likely to gain traction, as nobody agrees with him. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:22, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's just bad timing then, but the appearance of some sort of organized campaign is easy enough to perceive, if you're aware of RFC's, AN/I, and the VP. *shrug*
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I would strongly support modifying WP:NAD to more clearly indicate that a highly restrictive interpretation such as Wolfkeeper's is not supported by community consensus. older ≠ wiser 14:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:NAD and WP:NOT#DIC are already quite clear on this. Other than Wolfkeeper, I don't know of anyone who has a hard time understanding this, and I don't think we need to keep bending over backwards to modify simple guidelines for the most extreme of fringe cases. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

There are a couple of editors who specifically agree with Wolfkeeper's black&white interpretation; the only example I can think of offhand is here. Perhaps Wolfkeeper can prompt any others who feel the same way to chime in here, and try to explain their point of view.

There are also frequent !votes at AfD misusing/misunderstanding "WP:NOTDIC". See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prithee, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pissing contest, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/-logy, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Voseo for a few examples.

I think it would be very helpful to refine the NOTDIC policy's wording, to make it clearer. I don't have any specific suggestions though, and people have argued interminably over past attempts. -- Quiddity (talk) 02:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected; I had no idea there were so many people on this project who don't understand WP:NAD. The 'Voseo AfD looks pretty SNOWy and the 'delete' votes were mostly from problem editors, but some of the other AfDs had numerous delete votes from established editors. I guess perhaps a clarification in this guideline is in order. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Voseo was actually a misunderstanding, at the time the AFD was called the article superficially read like a foreign word that had been sucked into the Wikipedia, whereas it is actually a technical grammatical construct. I rewrote the intro and I think most people would agree that it's clearer now. - Wolfkeeper 06:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

But the really crucial thing that you are failing to understand is that NAD is absolutely not a guideline, in fact it's the first policy in WP:ISNOT after 'The Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia', and it's very old, and incredibly fundamental.- Wolfkeeper 06:08, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

And, like most things on Wikipedia, can be modified if the community wants it modified. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Especially considering most besides Wolfkeeper don't think the clarification would actually be a substantive change. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You know what? I don't claim to be telepathic and be able to know what 'most' people do or do not think; but apparently you do. Congrats on that. But it's been my experience that when push comes to shove policy modifications of anything but the most trivial sort are very difficult.- Wolfkeeper 01:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Wolfkeeper, it is a policy. One which doesn't say what you seem to believe it says. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

(By the way, there's no need to misrepresent the extent of your contributions to an article. I would certainly not call this "rewriting the intro".) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar denied! I'm all broken up.- Wolfkeeper 01:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this might be solved once and for all by just synchronizing WP:NAD with Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As pointed out above the latter specifically says that "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject..." Clearly in certain cases an indicidual word merits encyclopedic treatment.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:08, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Policies are things you should only normally follow anyway. In which case we don't need to specify 'in some cases...'; policies are not expected to be 100% binding, just most of the time; ultimately it's what ever goes down in AFDs that counts.- Wolfkeeper 22:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

So will you stop tagging articles like Gay as a dicdef and edit-warring to keep the tag on? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Semi-Automated Edit Flag

Different tools on the site, line Twinkle, Friendly, Huggle, or AutoWikiBrowser, all leave a little tag in the edit summary. (TW) or (HG), for example. These are not fully-automated edits, that is to say, without any human interaction. (That would be a bot.) There are "assisted" or semi-automated edits, which make the changes only after a human has eye-balled the change and approved it.

Which gets to my question: If I were to write a script or use a program to semi-automate my edits, do I have to list/flag such usage in the edit summary? --Avicennasis 04:59, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No, you don't. Any such restriction would largely be unenforceable, regardless, since it would be impossible to tell for sure if someone is using automated assistance in all but the most obvious cases. Things like twinkle, huggle, and AWB leave their cute little notes as (egotistical, in my opinion) SPAM to promote the script/tool, is all.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Well aside from promotion, those notes make it possible to determine whether the edit was semi-automated or not.Smallman12q (talk) 12:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Ditto Smallman. It could save a lot of stress down the line. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 22:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of archive link

When creating a citation, such as for {{cite news}} should archiveurl's be included if the original link is still active?Smallman12q (talk) 12:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes. How will we WebCite it once it's broken? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

blogs v. "interactive column"

Blogs are not allowed as sources in wikipedia. From WP:RS: self-published media—whether books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, personal pages on social networking sites, Internet forum postings, or tweets—are largely not acceptable.
But newspapers host blogs by their writers, and newspapers are generally WP:RS. From WP:RS: Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control.
Question: Is there a distinction between blogs by newspapers which cannot be used as sources in wikipedia, and interactive newspaper columns which can?
e.g. this lede.blog by nyt.com is alleged to be a blog not an "interactive column", and not a legitimate source for wikipedia in this dispute from Abdolmalek_Rigi talk page:

:Sorry, what you're quoting does not apply to the blog you used, what you cited is not an "interactive column", it's a blog, and it's not clear if it has any editorial supervision or not. In any case, "may be acceptable as sources" is not good enough when dealing with controversial claims and topics. It is Wikipedia's policy that exceptional claims require exceptional sources, and no blog is an exceptional source. --Kurdo777 (talk) 21:24, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
--BoogaLouie (talk) 20:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems clear enough. The interaction should not include readers but "may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professional".

I think the default is that any such blogs are not reliable, except for very special situations (ie hosted by a newspaper and written by professional authors) that need to be argued on a case by case basis. Arnoutf (talk) 20:32, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

So its acceptable if the writers are professional journalists? or "such blogs are not reliable, except for very special situations"? What are "such blogs"? newspaper blogs? "need to be argued on a case by case basis" - does that mean they are not allowed if another editor disagrees with its use?

throw me a bone here please.--BoogaLouie (talk) 20:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

My interpretation was that if we know where a piece of writing comes from and the source is reliable and/or notable, and otherwise policy compliant, it doesn't matter what the official label of the source is. I've seen people use blogs written by notable people. I don't see that it's a good enough reason to reject a source just because it is labelled a blog. I think the blogs we should be rejecting are blogs that could be written by anyone. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 01:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The New York Times news blog is generally going to be a reliable source, it is written by professional journalists. Fences&Windows 02:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wait, do the news blogs have the same "reputation for fact checking" as the NYT itself? I think attributed notable blogs are only usable for opinions, not facts. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 06:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a couple of points here, AzureFury. (a) Newspapers don't "fact-check" to the extent that is commonly believed on Wikipedia - yes, editors may query dubious or unlikely facts, or very rarely actually check a fact at the extreme end of that spectrum. But they simply don't routinely check every fact in the way that the likes of Newsweek used to. In this respect writers' blogs are not so different from what goes into the formal publication. (b) Having said that, there is a kind of self-imposed regulation on blogs by staff writers of reliable newspapers. If a journalist at the NYT, for example, consistently lies on his blog, sooner or later it's going to come to the attention of his managers, and it's not going to help his career. So, absent reasons to the contrary, I'd consider the blog of a staff journalist at a reliable source just as reliable as their work in the publication. Guest blogs are a whole different issue and may well only be reliable as to the author's opinion. Barnabypage (talk) 00:28, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds logical, but good luck trying to get consensus with a deletionist. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 08:51, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, WP policy isn't as logical as that. It uses the same definition of RS for opinions as for facts. I.e., an opinion is supposed to be mentioned only if it appears in a source with a reputation for fact checking. Doesn't make much sense. I was told that the definition was originally drafted by WMF's legal advisors for BLP & then mindlessly applied to everything.

The main exception seems to be that, in the article about the author, their statements can be cited as their views directly from such sources. Peter jackson (talk) 10:46, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS says this, "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." In other words blogs by notable people are usable as sources for their opinions in articles besides those about the author. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 11:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

That's right, but, as it says, only for opinions. The effect is much the same as if you had different RS criteria for facts & opinions, as would be sensible, but it's formulated in an odd way. The basic criterion is given as if it applied equally to both, but then SPS is added as a sort of afterthought. Peter jackson (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

1. FYI, I expect that the intended distinction largely has to do with vetting. That is, the difference for our purposes between any given blog and a blog on a newspaper site by a newspaper employee is that the newspaper employee had to have some amount of screening before being hired. And that employee is subject to being fired, losing the blog, etc., if the work is not up to par. With Joe Schmoe's blog, we often can't tell if Joe Schmoe is even the real name.
2. That being said, blogs on newspaper sites (and some other stuff on newspaper sites) usually do not get the same level of editing as the material in the actual paper. Blogs often get no editing. (I am a newspaper journalist.) Maurreen (talk) 09:06, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia

Is it OK to point vandals to Uncyclopedia? Many vandals do humorous but destructive edits to WP. Uncyclopedia seems to welcome such edits. I'm wondering if we could, besides giving them a warning, tell them about Uncyclopedia when they vandalize. I've never seen a vandal use the sandbox which they are told to use. But uncyclopedia seems like a place that they will have more fun editing (as they won't be reverted). The problems with this proposal are:

• Potential good editors may be lost
• Its kinda unethical to make our problem someone else's (even though uncyclopedia will welcome their edits)

Can someone tell me if it is an aberration of policy? Thx. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 03:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Referring vandals elsewhere is not a good idea since that would only encourage a belief that it really is funny to add "poop", or to otherwise damage an article, and it would let them know that their edits are being noticed. Just revert and give one of the standard warnings that are well crafted for compatibility with WP:DENY. Johnuniq (talk) 06:30, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia is not a graffiti wall for childish vandals either. There's a reason they have How To Be Funny And Not Just Stupid. On the other hand, redirecting talented writers of entertaining hoaxes there might be a great idea. Dcoetzee 09:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thats what I meant. Multiple times I see vandals who do funny edits (I know I shouldn't consider them funny, but I'm human...). I was thinking of telling them that their edits here would be of no use as they would be immediately reverted, but they might find scope there. They will most probably go there. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 09:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I made a template for subst'ing on the talk pages of such users: {{User:Manishearth/divert}}. Please tell me what you think of it (Improve it if necessary, I made it in a hurry). Thx, ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It looks excellent. I am going to use it. Hans Adler 10:10, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Just remember that it should be subst'ed and signed. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps, analogously, other people could be referred to Wikinfo, where there are no rules of NOR, RS, NPOV, FT, notability, or a lot of WP:NOT. Peter jackson (talk) 10:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Thats a good idea for people who are sincerely adding info, but don't know WP's rules. The problem with that is that we lose valuable contributors. It's better to educate them. The uncyclopedia proposal was for funny vandals who don't really want to contribute. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 10:53, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It's understandable that WP wouldn't want to lose out to the competition, but it really does depend what people want to contribute. You can't order people to refrain from original research. You can only tell them this isn't the place for it. Similarly if people want to do fringe theories, non-notable topics &c. Peter jackson (talk) 12:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I'll create the template...ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 12:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Here it is: User:Manishearth/wikinfo. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 12:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks useful. Peter jackson (talk) 15:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikinfo is hilariously bad. I had a poke around and found some excellent examples of where their policies lead, see Criticism of criticism of intelligent design, Adolf Hitler Campbell, Criticism of MariusM (an attack page on a ro.wikipedia and en.wikipedia user), and Criticisms of Monica Goodling, which exists in the absence of a positive bio and contains this gem: "She is noted for applying the fascist values of Christian fundamentalism in her work for the Justice Department and the White House", referenced to "the personal opinion of Fred Bauder." We can point people to Wikinfo as an example of the dire mess that results from a lack of WP:OR, WP:V, WP:CFORK, WP:BLP1E, WP:N and WP:NPOV. Fences&Windows 16:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course there's a lot of rubbish there. But then there's a lot of rubbish here too. It's the dire mess that results from a lack of enforcement of WP:OR, WP:V, WP:CFORK, WP:BLP1E, WP:N and WP:NPOV. Especially NPOV. There are numerous articles dominated by propagandists for various political & religious factions, & WP has no effective procedure for dealing with this.

The idea on Wikinfo is to allow virtually any POV to be expressed. At the top of the article it will say See also, linking to other POVs. Each side can put whatever evidence & arguments they want in their articles, & readers can decide for themselves. That doesn't always happen here. A POV with little support among editors working on an article, however much it has among reliable sources, is liable to be suppressed. Appeals to the community to resolve disputes tend to elicit little response (on either side). Peter jackson (talk) 11:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The attack page you mention has now been deleted, perhaps as a result of your comment. BLP rules do apply on WI. They have to, for legal reasons. Peter jackson (talk) 11:37, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

"Perhaps as a result of your comment". Don't be so shy Peter, you're an admin there. While Wikipedia might have somke dreadful pages, most of those fall outside policy. On Wikinfo, dreadful pages are dreadful by the design of the policies (and most of the site is an abandoned ghost-town version of Wikipedia from 2003). I have no objection to the template, but I'm certainly never going to use Wikinfo as an editor or reader. If the founder, Fred Bauder, labels a politician as a 'fascist' according to his personal opinion and that's A-OK, that's a fundamental flaw. Fences&Windows 00:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm an admin there. I didn't ask to be. One day Fred just decided to make me one. I haven't used the powers much. In particular, I didn't delete that page. I don't know who did.

"design of the policies" Well, this depends on how much of a conspiracy theorist you are. Are WP policies not enforced because all the propagandists got together to block attempts to change the system? Or for some other reason? If so, what? Peter jackson (talk) 10:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's something interesting from policy (WP:DR):

[heading] Last resort: Arbitration [text] If you have taken all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute, and the dispute is not over the content of an article, you can request Arbitration.

So the policy itself is admitting, in italics, that, for content disputes, "If you have taken all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute", there is no last resort. In effect, WP hasn't got a resolution procedure for content disputes. "fundamental flaw"? Peter jackson (talk) 15:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:DR means that we don't have an editor-in-chief or any senior editorial body to rule on content, and that ArbCom is for behaviour only. In practice an RfC is the "last resort" for content disputes. If after consensus is clear one party refuses to accept the decision and edits contrary to consensus, that is a behavioural problem and can lead to AN/I or ArbCom. Editors make editorial decisions by discussion on talk pages, RfCs, XfDs, etc., while admins and ArbCom enforce our policies - which includes accepting that you're not always right and playing nice. So no fundamental flaw. Fences&Windows 18:54, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

That's the theory, but in practice many RfCs elicit little or no response, leaving things unresolved. This, as I said, is effectively admitted there. Peter jackson (talk) 11:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

The above comment is based on my own experience, backed up by others'. In addition, I have it on hearsay (Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Enforcement) that admin often won't enforce consensus anyway. Peter jackson (talk) 16:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

Apparently AWB and SmackBot both tend to add {{DEFAULTSORT}} tags to everything they can. This is not only redundant in most cases, it "enshrines" incorrect sorting for many pages that need sortkeys but haven't gotten them yet, like those starting with years (e.g., 1982 in home video) or ordinal numbers (e.g., 66th Academy Awards -- although note that this one actually has a correct sortkey on it). I propose a policy that {{DEFAULTSORT}} tags not be "automatically" (or "semi-automatically") added to articles that begin with numbers. Or, better yet, limit such activity to specific kinds of articles, like people and articles with titles starting with grammatical articles ("the", etc.) -- which are pretty much the only kinds of articles that actually need special sorting in the first place. - dcljr (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful to have figures for the positive versus false positive rates for either of the sources of defaultsort, and in the absence of these, it is a little hard to know what to make of this proposal. (Or these proposals, since you don't seem to be sure what you actually want.) In other news, I don't buy into your notion of enshrinement. The sorting is not made worse by defaultsort, and arguably the fix is easier in that defaultsort is already in place and merely needs its argument changing. Looked at orthogonally, is wikipedia really improved by adding more layers of tedious and possibly tendentious regulation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagishsimon (talk • contribs) 01:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

And is it improved by tedious and unnecessarily complex bits of wikicode? I don't see any reason for bots or anyone else to add DEFAULTSORTs automatically; it should only be added by a human who has actually assessed that the proposed default sort key is the right one (otherwise identifying a default is not only pointless, but potentially misleading as well).--Kotniski (talk) 07:36, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

What is the correct defaultsort for 1982 in home video? You could just bring the subhect to AWB's attention first. This is easily fixable. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with "redundant" DEFAULTSORTs (those identical to the article title) is, they're only "harmless" until the page gets retitled, in which case they become a nuisance; presumably, though, a well chosen DEFAULTSORT would be more likely to remain appropriate after a page move.

As for prevalence, based on my recent activities in various awards-show categories (Tonys, Grammys, Golden Globes, etc., adding sortkeys and DEFAULTSORTs to the articles about the annual broadcasts/events), I've found that redundant DEFAULTSORTs are prevalent enough to be worrisome. There are a ton of articles that begin with a number, of course, and I'd wager that the vast majority of them should be sorted into most categories by something other than that number. For example, the correct DEFAULTSORT for 1982 in home video would be {{DEFAULTSORT:Home video 1982}}, since only in Category:Years in home video would the year be significant enough to sort by. As another example, 1st Air Army might be sorted as {{DEFAULTSORT:First Air Army}} or maybe something like {{DEFAULTSORT:Air Army 0001}} (I don't know, since I'm not familiar with such military articles.) The point is, it takes humans to make these kinds of decisions; they should not be done automatically.

If AWB is adding redundant DEFAULTSORTs by default as claimed by this user, then the prevalence will only increase over time; and the more it's done, the more people will copy it, thinking it's "the way things are done". That's why I proposed here that we should put a policy up somewhere that says, no, it should not be done. (Since posting my original comment, I've found the following somewhat ironic advice at Wikipedia:Categorization#Sort keys: "Default sort keys are sometimes defined even where they do not seem necessary – when they are the same as the page name, for example – in order to prevent other editors or automated tools from trying to infer a different default.")

I brought the matter up here because SmackBot apparently gets the behavior from AWB, so who knows how many other bots/scripts/helpers/whatever are doing it, too. I don't use any of them, so I don't know exactly how it's being implemented. I'll post about this at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser (or a subpage), SmackBot's owner, and/or Wikipedia talk:Categorization... - dcljr (talk) 23:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

What is the mistake exactly in the diff given above? I think it's correct. Am I wrong? PS I informed AWB's developers on the subject. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:34, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (railway incidents) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Notability (railway incidents) (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, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

And then reverted back to a proposal. There's still discussion to be had. All interested in guidelines in this area are welcome to join the discussion. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Flagged Revisions poll by Jimbo Wales

Please visit and comment at User talk:Jimbo Wales/poll. Fram (talk) 12:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

That needs to go on the centralised discussion list. DuncanHill (talk) 10:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The irony being Jimbo seems to have specifically requested the opposite: "Please just leave it here rather than turning it into a formal RfC or request" --Cybercobra (talk) 10:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

It was added to CENT two minutes after my note here[6], i.e. almost a full day before you posted that it needed to go there. Fram (talk) 11:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Any user is entitled to have a poll in userspace. The authority, statistical accuracy, or impact of the poll is, naturally, a matter of interpretation.--Scott Mac (Doc) 10:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

And at least 3 of us have pointed out that it's not at all clear exactly what the poll's about. Peter jackson (talk) 11:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

How is it not clear? He explicitly states:

whether we should ask the Foundation to simply turn on flagged revs in the form that the Germans use it

... is the question of the poll. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

And yet he doesn't want it publicized? Woogee (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

There's no clear explanation given in any clearly pointed to place of just what the German form is. Peter jackson (talk) 10:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

That 200 pollers +1 are going to flag 3,212,248 articles :), have fun Mion (talk) 01:19, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:CHILD policy proposal

This was proposed as a policy once back in 2006, from what I understand, but was defeated. The version that failed to achieve consensus was significantly different from the current version, and had called for blocking of any user account found to be in use by a child. I feel that since then, based on seeing its advice invoked on many occasions, that the contents of the current version have become standard practice. Also see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy, where the original version was rejected, but the principles in the current version of the page were upheld.

Since the role of policy is to document accepted practices, I feel the page should be labeled as such. In summary, the main points of the page seem to be:

• Self-identifying minors editing in good faith are generally required to limit the amount of personal information they reveal on-wiki, and their revelations may get oversighted otherwise.
• Self-identifying minors who disrupt Wikipedia and are thought to be adults posing as children, projecting a provocative persona and/or deliberately revealing personal information, may be banned on a case-by-case basis.

Let me know if you support this proposal, or if not, what changes (if any) you'd suggest to better suit this being a policy. Thanks. Equazcion ^(talk) 05:32, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

• I strongly support this proposal. Personally, I wish it extended to cover COPPA laws (non-profit, I know) but there ya go - Alison ^❤ 07:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
• I too support this. Also, While I agree that having something that covered Children's Online Privacy Protection Act laws would be nice, we must also understand that it only applies persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction and thus really isn't practical for Wikipedia as a whole. Tiptoety ^talk 08:02, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • There's an argument to be made, Tip, that because WMF and our servers, etc are largely US-based, that it applies. However, COPPA generally only applies to for-profit organizations. Still, some sort of voluntary compliance would be the right thing to do, y'know ... - Alison ^❤ 09:16, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
• I don't understand the purpose of this proposal. The policy recommends that each situation mentioned be taken on a "case by case basis," soooo what's the point of having the policy? Of course we block disruptive editors. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 08:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • What prompted me to propose this was this ANI posting, where someone made the "just an essay" argument. Enforcers of these practices often end up having to explain their rationale and the history of the issue that way since there's no actual policy label yet on any page detailing it. It would be nice to be able to simply point to a policy when someone questions the practice. We pretty much already do this as a matter of course, so the policy label is justified either way. Equazcion ^(talk) 08:10, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)
• "Are thought" and "appear" in a ban policy? And who are "children", exactly? Could you be more specific? NVO (talk) 08:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Don't take my summary above as the actual policy proposal; read the page (WP:CHILD) instead. I didn't write it, I'm just proposing that it become policy. I did however write WP:FAQ/Contributing#Is there a minimum age requirement to contribute or register? a long time ago (October 2007), which approximates the age of a minor at under 16, and that seems to have stuck. I'd be alright with inserting a specific age into this policy, I suppose, but I don't really think it's necessary. It's not law; it's Wikipedia policy. The specifics can be left up to the discretion of those handling a particular case. Equazcion ^(talk) 08:24, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)
• Very strong oppose as completely unnecessary and likely detrimental policy. There are two parts to this proposal - blocking disruptive users who are or appear to be children, and oversighting personal information about users who are or who appear to be children. Regarding the first part, disruptive users already can be (and are) blocked, regardless of how old the disruptive user is or what the manner of their disruption is. Codifying something like this will lead to wikilawyering and some users (well intentioned or otherwise) debating whether a particular user is too old to fall under this policy or whether their behaviour is intended to be sexual provocative or whether it is actually sexually provocative. Regarding the second part, oversighting is explicitly and rightly limited to a very select group of users and all uses of it must be in accordance with the WP:OVERSIGHT policy, which lists 5 cases in which it is acceptable. It would appear that what is proposed here is already permitted by case 1, but if it isn't then any changes or extension to when oversight is permissible must be made by consensual modification of the oversight policy, not by other policies dotted around the place. Thryduulf (talk) 12:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Thryduulf has exactly the right idea here. Wikipedia:Oversight already permits "Removal of non-public personal information" - do you really want a policy that just says "do what you're already doing, but if it's a child then it's even! more! important!" As for the rest of it, the idea seems to be a very poor attempt at preventing sexual solicitation of children on Wikipedia by codifying the response to a particular tactic. But not only is this type of activity very infrequent (I've never seen it happen), but there's nothing in this policy objective enough to determine what constitutes "a sexually tinged persona." Moreover, this response is likely to affect more users who actually are minors than adults imitating them. I'm not saying there's not some kind of problem here, but a poorly-specified, overbroad response inspired by moral panic will do more harm than good. Dcoetzee 13:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Actually, "Do what you always do, but in this circumstance it's super important" sounds like the crux of WP:BLP as well, enacting a zero-tolerance policy on various rules that already exist. --King Öomie 15:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

• Doesn't do anything - the proposal recaps a bunch of stuff that's well stated elsewhere (users can edit anonymously, disclosure of personal info discouraged, immature/disruptive users may be blocked/banned, etc) and concludes that 1/ disruptive users may be banned and 2/ non-disruptive users who post personal information should be warned and personal information by or about minors may be oversighted (which is already a stated norm). People who present as minors tend to be scrutinized anyway; disruptive users tend to be removed and in any case personal information is removed, strongly so for minors. If they don't present as minors then there's no way to tell.

  If this is aiming to document or highlight a norm, the norms are amply documented and adding this page would be "surface dressing" (the norms it discusses already exist elsewhere). If this is aiming to change a norm it's unlikely to do so and a full RFC on editing by minors would be more appropriate. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

  • To Thryduulf: The disruption being described isn't one that would be readily apparent from other policies. This page defines a different kind of disruption -- someone identifying as a child, acting as in a provocative way, disclosing off-wiki sources of personal information, etc.
  • To him and everyone else: I've described above what the motivation behind my proposal of this is, and it has nothing to do with moral panic. The idea here isn't to be prescriptive, but descriptive of what's already done. I realize of course that the definition of "policy" has become skewed towards including the former, so any attempt at proposing one is seen as a suspected attempt to change practice, but that's not what this is, at least as far as my intentions go. "Doesn't do anything"? You betcha'. It does nothing in the way of changing anything. It just serves to describe what we already do so that people can hopefully understand it. If people are afraid that this would change practice, I'd be open to making changes that remove any implied change of practice, or perhaps making it a guideline instead of a policy, if people would be more comfortable with that.
  • To FT2: As I've said above, more or less, the policies affecting children are currently sufficiently spread out as to require some significant explanation when people ask about how to handle the situation, or ask why we're doing what we do in these situations. Pointing to this page doesn't usually help because it's "just an essay". That's what I'd like to change. Equazcion ^(talk) 14:45, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

In that case its wording can be a lot simpler:

"Wikipedia allows anyone capable of doing so appropriately to edit, whether as an IP address, under a pseudonym for anonymity (encouraged), or under almost any other name they choose. Anyone of any age can edit Wikipedia, however users who are disruptive or incapable of editing an encyclopedia will usually be removed. Posting of personal information is discouraged and users who self-disclose as minors will usually have such information removed by Oversight as soon as it is noticed. There is a zero tolerance policy of pedophilia-related advocacy or other inappropriate interaction attempts by editors. In cases of concern over solicitation please contact the Arbitration Committee; to remove personal disclosures please request oversight, and for users whose self-representations or other conduct are a concern please request administrator assistance."

"Other pages cover handling of harassment and threats of harm (including self-harm). Inappropriate user page content can be removed or the entire page discussed for deletion, pages that attack people can be deleted on the spot, and users who attack others can be warned, blocked or banned."

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd reword the "pedophilia" bit as it might be misunderstood to include content or content discussions. Something like "predatory behavior" maybe. The intolerance of actual pedophilia advocacy on Wikipedia doesn't really have anything to do with how children are treated, just how adults talking about children in a certain manner are treated, which seems outside the scope of this potential policy. Your wording also lacks the description of a more or less unique type of disruption that's stated in the current page text. I'm going to start a draft subpage so we can try to work something out easier. I'll post a link soon. Equazcion ^(talk) 15:22, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

In principle, make it a "useful information and resources" page. A page of that kind doesn't need to be a policy, it just needs to tell people what's available elsewhere and the norms that they can rely on. If it's proposed to change any norm, then that would be different. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:32, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I've posted Wikipedia:Child/draft as a possible simpler-language replacement, if people are more comfortable with it. It's an amalgamation of your words and the current page. Feel free to tweak. Equazcion ^(talk) 15:50, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

• Support by default as it ad oculos makes no practical difference, but simply draws together a few established policies (disruptive editing, NOTMYSPACE and oversight among them), and their relation to children, on one page. ╟─TreasuryTag►prorogation─╢ 15:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Doesn't solve any problems that aren't already solved. Creep should be avoided. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't see this as being a creep concern, because aside from defining a unique form of disruption (self-identifying minors being sexually provocative), it doesn't impose any new specifics. Creep is more about adding extraneous detail, like if there were already a policy on how to deal with children, and then we created another one on how to deal with children who create too many non-notable articles. This page moves in the opposite direction, toward the general, showing how other more specific policies affect children as a whole. Maybe that's just my rationalization centers acting up, though. Equazcion ^(talk) 20:32, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

• Okay if rewritten as an essay. If this "policy" is rewritten as an essay that describes the history of the issues, points to existing policies, and does not recommend any specific action, then I would support it. Comparisons to BLP are specious - BLP involves the quality of our content and our legal liability for libel. We are not legally responsible for the safety of children on Wikipedia, and need to balance their safety with the need to protect active content contributors from bans and blocks based on false accusations and unfounded fears. Dcoetzee 20:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
• reply to comments upthread. "The disruption being described isn't one that would be readily apparent from other policies. This page defines a different kind of disruption -- someone identifying as a child, acting as in a provocative way, disclosing off-wiki sources of personal information, etc." I still don't see how this is anything other than policy creep -
  • Self-identifying as a child is not, in and of itself, disruptive
  • Someone acting in a provacative way is either doing so disruptively (in which case appropriate action to the disruption is taken) or their provative behaviour is not disruptive (in which case there is no problem, but advice is often given anyway). This applies regardless of the age of the person acting provocatively.
  • People disclosing off-wiki sources of information are either doing so disruptively (in which case appropriate action to the disruption is taken), if they are not they are counselled about and overmuch personal information (or links to such) is already removed per WP:OVERSIGHT. If they are misusing userspace WP:USER covers this as well.
  • Adults identifying as minors either act disruptively (in which case appropriate action to the disruption is taken) or they do not (in which case there is no problem).
• disruptive users identifying as children and acting provocatively are exceedingly rare - after extensive research I am aware of exactly one instance in 9 years (that which spawned the original, rejected, policy proposal). That one case was adequately dealt with by the policies in place at the time - policies that still exit now and will still work as well as they did that time. Wikipedia is not a social networking site, and anyone using it as such is blocked for disruption - regardless of their age. Thryduulf (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
• Regarding Wikipedia:Child/draft - remove the non-bulleted part of the "Response" section, call the whole thing and essay and note that it is simply stating the facts as they are and I'll be perfectly happy. Thryduulf (talk) 21:24, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Self-identifying as a child is not, in and of itself, disruptive -- Who said it was?

As for the rest of your points: There's a lower threshold for considering these things as disruptions, such as sexual behavior (but also including reference to off-wiki social sites et al), that can be considered disruptive if it's coming from a child. If an adult makes a playful implied reference to oral sex it's not generally seen as a disruption. If someone who has announced that they're 10 years old did the same, it would be taken differently. The problem isn't necessarily that an actual kid said something like that, but that accounts engaging in that combination of self-identification and a sexually-tinged persona are often not children at all, but are baiting (for any number of reasons), and it's a disruption, as Arbcom pointed out. It of course needs to be determined on a case by case basis, but on the whole it's something worth pointing out to the community. Equazcion ^(talk) 21:37, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: The biggest issue I see with the draft policy is that it seems to treat children and teenagers as the same, when they are not. If it is intended to include everyone who is still a minor the same, then the name of the policy should change to include teenagers/adolescents too. If it is just for children, then some clarity as to what ages the policy applies to. You certainly would not treat people under the age of 13 the same as those in the 13 and older category. Atom (talk) 23:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Wow, this is much more difficult that I'd imagined. I figured this would be a slam-dunk. Okay... specific ages don't matter in my mind, as they never have mattered much in the past. There's a gray age line. What matters more is the ratio of immature or provocative behavior to the degree of youth claimed by the user account. We've been practicing this for years, despite it having been an essay all this time (forget about my draft version if you don't like it). I'm just proposing changing the essay tag to a policy tag, since this page details what we always do in every applicable situation, rather than the opinion of one or a few editors. Equazcion ^(talk) 23:35, 4 Mar 2010 (UTC)
    • As others have said, this simply doesn't happen frequently enough to write policy about. It's happened maybe once. Infrequent situations can be dealt with adequately on a case-by-case basis. Making something policy requires a lot of careful writing to avoid collateral damage and edge cases, and this policy is poorly thought out and full of vague terminology. Maybe you could make a policy out of it, but I don't think it's worth the effort. More useful would be a case study of past cases that we could draw on for precedent and informed decision making. Dcoetzee 00:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
      • I was really more interested in the oversighting of good-faith minors' personal info. That's happened a lot. The other part seemed obvious too, and is already in the page, so I figured why not include it. Frankly I'm not sure what people are afraid the current wording would result in, but if it does get taken the wrong way it can always be edited, the same way we continually revise all policies. The careful writing doesn't need to come before the policy tag necessarily, and even so, the focus here should be more on whether the concept has consensus rather than the specific wording found in the current revision. Regarding the concepts themselves in that way, I'm not sure what is so controversial: We delete and oversight personally identifiable info posted by kids, and we have cause to consider banning those who identify as kids but portray a sexual persona. What is the problem? Equazcion ^(talk) 00:49, 5 Mar 2010 (UTC)
        • I agree with oversighting of personal info of minors (which is already sanctioned by oversight policy and practiced, making this part quite redundant but not actively harmful). The trouble with banning people who "identify as kids but portray a sexual persona" is the potential for widely varying interpretation of these terms. If someone identifies as 16 and has a userbox saying they're homosexual, does that count? If they make edits to the article Penis does that count? If they get angry and tell another user to "blow me" does that count? These would be really stupid reasons for a user (who probably is actually 16) to be banned without so much as a talk page warning. An overbroad policy too often provides an excuse for trigger-happy admins to ignore common sense. Dcoetzee 01:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

'NA-importance articles' categories

I can understand why WikiProjects choose to categorize pages within their purview as being of 'High-importance' or 'Low-importance' to them, but what is the purpose of categorizing pages as being of 'NA-importance'. 'NA-importance articles' categories, of which there are currently more than 1,200, are essentially dumping grounds for pages that are not articles or lists (i.e., categories, files, templates, redirects, disambiguation pages, project pages, and portal pages), but I can't understand why they are categorized. So, in this context, I would like to pose two questions:

1. Is it possible to tweak WikiProject banners so that an importance category is not automatically generated for these types of pages?
2. If it is possible, then should we do away with the 'NA-importance' assessment class?

Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

• Notification posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council. (diff) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Articles that aren't tagged with a recognizable rating get dumped in the "Unknown importance" categories. This includes everything from newly tagged/unassessed articles to articles with typos in the assessment parameters. NA-class allows us to mark pages with, essentially, "I do not plan to assign an importance rating", which moves the pages out of the "I still need to assign an importance rating to this page".

I do a lot of the assessment work for WP:MED, and I would be very unhappy if the ~150 articles awaiting importance assessment were mixed in with the ~1,500 pages that should not receive a top/high/mid/low assessment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

My proposal would not affect any of the subcategories of Category:Unknown-importance articles; rather, it would involve disabling the 'importance' parameter for those classes of pages ("Category", "Template", Portal", and so on) which do not require an importance rating.

In the case of WP:MED, Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles and the article talk pages it contains would be unaffected; Category:NA-importance medicine articles, which consists almost entirely of category, file, and template talk pages, would be the only grouping affected. (By the way, only ~200 unknown-importance pages for a project as large as WP:MED is quite impressive!) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 08:22, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it is preferable for all pages to have an importance because then the "total" is correct, for example in the following template:

WikiProject India Articles by importance ()

Top	High	Mid	Low	NA	???	Total
304	2,990	12,047	181,452	55,373	8,007	260,173

I really can't think of any advantage in disabling the NA-importance. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:51, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Even if it is disabled, the problem pointed would remain: there would be no clear way to notice when the assesment is missing because of the article being unassesed, and when it is intended to be that way. Even if not at the "unknown importance", both ones would be mixed toguether. MBelgrano (talk) 14:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

If the page has a class rating identifying it as an article or list ("Stub", "B", "List", and so on), or if it has no class rating at all, then the standard "This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale" message would be displayed and the page would be placed in the appropriate Unknown-importance articles category until: (1) someone adds a class rating identifying the page as being something other than an article or a list, thereby removing the need for an importance assessment, or (2) if the page is an article or list, someone adds an importance assessment. The only situation wherein mixing might occur is if a non-redirect and non-disambiguation article or list was intentionally left unassessed, but I can think of no reason for that to happen. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm with MSGJ here - this proposed solution hasn't presented a legitimate problem to be solved. –xeno^talk 15:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

There is no problem as such, but rather an inquiry regarding the utility of 'NA-importance articles' categories. Martin, could not the total be obtained using {{Articles by Quality}}, and are there other templates where a discrepancy in the number of pages by importance rating would cause an issue? Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Special:BookSources

I propose either fixing or removing the Macau link. It seems to be broken. Kayau Voting IS evil 11:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Wait - I thought this was proposals. Sorry. Proposals starts with P so I put 2 and 2 together and made 5. Kayau Voting IS evil 12:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

"The consensus will never change" propaganda pushing method

I've noticed that in the past 4 years it has begun a norm in wikipedia to tell to users "it has been discussed, stop discussing it". But this is completely undemocratic and ultimately a propaganda machine method since as time goes by, gradually, but surely, this "consensus" becomes dated. What is most disgusting, is that such methods of pushing bias and POV are even seen in the most tiny of articles. e.g. here: Talk:PIIGS#Racist.3F This is a very tiny article of a) very few editors b) even a very new topic and people still try to push to users "stop discussing it, it has reached". --Leladax (talk) 04:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Consensus will not change when the same arguments are being made. I've been involved in one of these repeated debates actually at Star Wars kid. I think we have a similar situation on this very page with the WP:Perennial proposals. It's hard enough to work through a contentious issue. But it is extremely frustrating when a previously uninvolved editor resumes the debate months later, making the same arguments and drawing in all the previous editors. I think pointing to past debates, or simply stating "this has been discussed" serves a purpose. If you've ever been in a heated debate you can understand the shortness of the response when someone tries to revive it. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 04:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that if the same arguments keep getting brought up, then no consensus was ever reached in the first place. So why are you surprised that the fights keep recurring? That's just politics: people who feel cheated will periodically express their frustration about it, and will do so indefinitely until they have a reason to stop feeling frustrated.

Fact of the matter is that very few decisions on wikipedia are actually consensus-driven; consensus here is a pleasant fiction. Most decisions are casual agreements between editors who never really disagreed with each other much in the first place - they are only 'consensual' in the limited sense that the people who bother to care about the article don't disagree. Many others are policy-driven "We can't do that" choices, which are simply authoritative and have little to do with consensus (except in a negative sense). The remainder - those that happen on contentious articles - are almost invariably decided by sheer petulance: whoever can hold out long enough to get the opponents to wander off in frustration (or worse, can frustrate others intentionally in the hopes of getting them blocked) wins. Decision-by-petulance, however, isn't even remotely akin to consensus, and such decisions will always be questioned by new editors and old editors alike, and whenever they are questioned the people who were historically petulant about the issue will return full of vim and vigor to be petulant all over again. It's actually kind of funny to watch. and honestly, people are exporting the technique from contentious pages to non-contentious pages, and it will continue to expand across wikipedia because it's a good technique. It works, people get in the habit of using it, and there's no reason not to use it, so...

Sorry, but pointing people to old debates is never going to resolve a damned thing and it's never going to stop the the complaints from recurring, not unless the old debate actually managed to resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction. If it never reached consensus it never reached consensus, and trying to tell people it did is only going to tick them off. --Ludwigs2 05:09, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It's unreasonable to expect that good faith disputes will always end in a unanimous decision. In the Star Wars Kid example I mentioned, the vote ended up bein 12 against inclusion of the kid's name and 3 for inclusion (this time around) and thus the name was excluded. I don't think it's fair to say that 12 editors are being "petulant" to direct new editors to the 4 previous debates that each produced the same result. I didn't say that pointing to previous debates was an ideal solution, just that it served a purpose. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 05:38, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I largely agree with Ludwigs2. The Wikipedia:Perennial proposals are either evidence of perennially poor explanation of guidelines etc. or evidence that the guidelines etc. are perennially unsatisfactory. For example WP:MOS has several sections that were created were quickly by a handful of people and with no wider comment (e.g. no WP:RFC). Some guidelines etc. have now become empires, whose main function is to preserve and extend the influency of the functionaries. --Philcha (talk) 05:58, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I think I'm missing the wiki-politics experience to understand that, so... What? AzureFury (talk | contribs) 06:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Azure, there are two issues here that need to be distinguished. first is the inevitability that there will always be new editors who need to be brought up to speed on given issues. The Star Wars Kid thing is a good example of that - new people will come along and want to know the kid's name, they will neglect to read the FAQ, and they will need to be pointed to it. There's nothing to do about that. In these cases, fortunately, the vast majority of people who get pointed to the FAQ will read it, and get it, and drop the issue, and the few who don't will have more bluster than bite to their arguments. On the other hand, there are cases where a particular side of a dispute has been shut down for whatever reason - look at Intelligent Design or Global warming for examples. It doesn't matter in these cases what past arguments or FAQs say, because the past arguments make no attempt to to be reasonable, and no one on either side will treat them as though they are

It's really easy to see: wherever editors listen to each other, problems go away; wherever they don't, problems persist. unfortunately, there are a lot of advantages to not listening that make it an attractive approach. --Ludwigs2 06:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to be involved in either the BLP or CDA debates would you? It seems like everyone on Wikipedia is really stressed out ever since this all started. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 07:52, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

No, neither. My problems arise because (a) I work on offbeat articles (pseudoscience, paranormal, esoteric religious stuff, and etc) where many of the core editors on all sides are irrationally combative, and (b) I occasionally pick up RfCs where I have specific knowledge (science, politics, religion, sociology) where tempers tend to run high. If you want to see some of the experiences I've had, let me know and I'll send you an email (email rather than talk page, because otherwise you risk getting long angry rants from editors telling you what a jerk I am, and how I've misrepresented the situations). --Ludwigs2 16:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Leladax, that article was kept in a deletion debate last month. A single editor saying "this is racist" shouldn't suddenly lead us to delete an article that has been kept by a clear consensus (unanimous with the exception of the nominator). Do you now see the value of reading past debates, and why it is frustrating when new contributors bring up debates that have already been flogged to death? Fences&Windows 14:49, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Spaced disjunctive en dashes – request for comments

There's a new request for comments on the Manual of Style talk page about whether spaces should be required around disjunctive endashes when a disjunct contains spaces. For example, currently the Manual of Style requires the spaces around the second dash in the phrase:

"Franco-German and Japanese – South Korean relations after World War II"

and the proposal is to omit those spaces. It's been suggested that this RfC be advertised more widely, so I'm mentioning it here. Further comments are welcome. Eubulides (talk) 16:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)