Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

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Requests for Legal Advice

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty as to what constitutes a request for legal advice. Right now I see that the question WP:RD/H#Can you successfully sue an insurance company for breach of contract if they sell you an insurance contract which is contrary to public policy and then refuse to pay up? has been twice hatted, although it clearly is not a request for legal advice (this is clear from the text of the question, not the heading; the requestor wants to discuss insurable interest). Meanwhile, WP:RD/H#Visas eligibility to USA remains unhatted, although it's a clear request for legal advice. And this issue comes up frequently.

"Fundamentally, legal advice involves the interpretation and application of legal principles to guide future conduct or to assess past conduct." In re County of Erie, 473 F.3d 413, 419 (2d Cir. 2007). In other words, a request for legal advice is a question about past or future legal consequences that apply to the requestor, or to someone close to the requestor. Questions about laws, regulations, contracts, or government forms typically would be requests for legal advice, if the question has application to the requesting poster, or to a friend, family member, or controlled company of the requesting poster. On the other hand, general questions about legal principles are not requests for legal advice.

Currently we include the following in the Reference Desk Guidelines: "The reference desk is not a place to seek professional advice on medical or legal matters, nor analyses, diagnoses or solutions to questioners' health or legal problems, and responses that could be construed as such must not be given. However, general medical and legal questions ("What treatments are used for diabetes?", "Which countries recognize common law marriages?") are fine. Questions that ask for medical, legal or other professional advice may be removed and replaced with a message (such as {{RD-deleted}}) pointing to these guidelines. For further information, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice." I would suggest revising this as follows:

• "The reference desk is not a place to seek professional advice on medical or legal matters, and responses that could be construed as such must not be given. Any question that solicits a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a suggested treatment, is a request for medical advice. Any question that solicits guidance on the application of legal principles, laws, regulations, or contracts to the requestor, or to a person or entity with whom the requestor has a personal relationship, is a request for legal advice. However, general medical and legal questions ("What is sleep apnea?", "What is the role of the U.S. President in making laws?") are fine. Questions that ask for medical, legal or other professional advice may be removed and replaced with a message (such as {{RD-deleted}}) pointing to these guidelines. For further information, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice." John M Baker (talk) 17:22, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

The best way to handle requests for legal advice is:

• Get rid of all of the special rules that only apply to the refdesks and which the admins refuse to enforce.
• Apply the standard rules that apply to all talk pages. In particular, apply WP:DISRUPT and especially WP:TPOC.
• Stop complaining about other editors on the refdesk or the refdesk talk pages. Instead, complain on the user's talk page, and if that doesn't work, file a report at WP:ANI.
• Let the administrators do their job.

Note that those reference desk guidelines are exactly what I am talking about when I say "Get rid of all of the special rules that only apply to the refdesks and which the admins refuse to enforce". What we are doing is not working. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:18, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

While there is much I agree with in Guy's comment, the implication is that we should not have guidelines for the Reference Desk and, I assume, should not refuse nondisruptive requests for medical and legal advice. My proposal instead is based on the assumption that we will continue to have guidelines and will continue to refuse requests for medical and legal advice. John M Baker (talk) 22:15, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

My comment is a bit more subtle than that. If indeed a comment (question or answer) is disruptive and you are confident that the community of administrators at WP:ANI will agree that it is disruptive, then ask the person -- on his or her talk page -- not to make such comments. If they do it again, report them at ANI where they will be blocked until they stop. What I am saying is that the "we" in your above comment was a basic error. You personally have the right to refuse requests for medical and legal advice, just as you have the right to not answer any other question, but you have zero ability to block a user or in any other way interfere with them posting whatever they choose to post, with the sole exception being if you can convince an administrator that they are being disruptive and have persisted after being warned. And the administrators have shown on multiple occasions that they have no interest in blocking anyone for not following the reference desk guidelines. I say we get rid of them or reword tham to make it clear that they are advice which anyone is free to ignore. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:55, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

To me, the only reason to say that the current approach isn't working is if Wikipedia is getting sued over Ref Desk answers that provide legal advice. StuRat (talk) 01:19, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

There is obvious editor uncertainty over what is or is not legal advice, and it results in some questions being hatted or otherwise shut down even though they are not requests for legal advice. I would say that is a reason for change. Guy Macon, of course, supports more extensive changes. John M Baker (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't really understand why you dispute the hatting of Futurist110's question if you agree that "request for legal advice is a question about past or future legal consequences that apply to the requestor, or to someone close to the requestor" and "Questions about laws, regulations, contracts, or government forms typically would be requests for legal advice, if the question has application to the requesting poster, or to a friend, family member, or controlled company of the requesting poster". Futurist110 has asked time and time again about how they can get out of paying for any kids they may have if they somehow impregnate a woman probably after having a vasectomy and cutting their balls off. Looking at various legal avenues including the possibility of seeking insurance against being required to pay for their kids, and whether a court may reject such a policy as being contrary to public interest. It's clear that this is what they're referring to, I'm not even sure this is the first time they've asked whether they can sue if their insurance is rejected. It's possible that Futurist110 isn't actually going to have a vasectomy, cut their balls off, get an insurance policy or even have sex with a woman but I think most of us have given up on these borderline questions from Futurist110. Personally I mostly did so once they started talking about cutting their balls off. It seems clear Futurist110 isn't taking much on board since they're still worried about wacky possibilities even after several of us have pointed out there are plenty of things more likely to happen, including stuff which may be a significant financial expense than some of their extreme scenarios. Nil Einne (talk) 09:12, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

The OP may be unaware of the history. If so, he should look at the archive of a recent discussion about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:18, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

P.S. An example of some of Futurist110's borderline legal advice questions which seem to relate back to their issues with having a child, or at least paying for it

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 January 29#Can a court strike down a child support insurance contract on public policy grounds?
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 September 25#Question About Judges and Insurance
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 September 28#Three insurance contract questions
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 September 29#Question About the Offset Rule in Tort Law
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 November 4#Does the 2002 version of the Uniform Parentage Act allow sperm donors to personally be the ones who inseminate women while giving up all of their parental rights and parental responsibilities afterwards?
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 December 17#Question about the Ontario sperm donor law
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 February 3#Is sending one's deceased testicles (as a gift) to someone illegal?
• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 February 5#Is it legal in the U.S. (for you) to harm yourself in front of your child?

This list is probably incomplete since 1) Futurist110 doesn't use the new section option so their questions don't have subject headings when first asked but compiled this by looking through their contrib history for relevant subject headings; 2) I stopped after 1000 results. To be fair some of these seem to be more complaints about how unfair everything is rather than a serious request for legal advice but whatever. Note I didn't include the plenty of examples of borderline requests for medical advice.

Nil Einne (talk) 09:45, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Admittedly I was unfamiliar with Futurist110's posts. Four points:

• With regard to the particular question I referenced, my point was simply that the question, taken by itself, is not a request for legal advice, because it is a broad question about general principles and does not apply them to a particular individual's facts. This conclusion does not change simply because the requestor has initiated other topics that were requests for legal advice.
• It may be that Futurist110 has been abusing the Reference Desk. If so, that may be a separate basis for deleting or hatting questions. My post was not intended to address such situations.
• My point that further guidance is needed is not dependent on whatever confusion may come from this particular editor's posts. I think that there is widespread confusion and lack of understanding with respect to the ban on legal advice.
• Some of the posts above raise the question whether we should have a comprehensive ban on legal advice. Certainly the Reference Desk's ban is more comprehensive than most other message boards. I'm prepared to discuss that, but my original post was only directed to clarifying the meaning of "legal advice." John M Baker (talk) 15:43, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

• "We" cannot have a comprehensive ban on anything. The "Reference Desk's ban" does not exist. Only administrators can do that. Some of us fantasize that non-admins can somehow control the behavior of other users, but it is only a fantasy. The only way to control the behavior of another user on Wikipedia is to [A] politely ask them to stop or [B] get an admin to block them. I really wish that I didn't have to keep repeating this, but as long as I see posts that falsely claim that "we" can have a comprehensive ban on legal advice. I will have to reply that no, "we" can't.

As to the question you want an answer to (the meaning of "legal advice"), that is an unsolvable problem. There will always be some who identify things that are not requests for legal advice as being requests for legal advice. There will always be some who identify things that are requests for legal advice as not being requests for legal advice. That's a big part of why what we are doing isn't working. Why not try it my way as a limited-time experiment?

Here is some legal advice: Don't do crystal meth. It is likely to get you arrested. Don't bother asking a lawyer if crystal meth is illegal. It is. Here is some medical advice: Don't do crystal meth. It will screw up your health. Don't bother asking a doctor if crystal meth is good for you. It isn't. There. I just broke our unenforceable house rules again, and I did it without being disruptive. Is anyone here brave enough to attempt to enforce a "comprehensive ban on legal advice" against me? I didn't think so. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

<Runs to ANI and starts typing furiously> "==Guy Macon giving highly dubious legal/medical advice at Refdesk== Dear admins, user Guy Macon is slandering the good name of crystal meth with..." ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:20, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, John Baker, you are a properly qualified lawyer, so I do rack my brains as to how far we should restrict you from providing answers which would otherwise be "legal advice". But as I myself raised, most of us have specifically given up on answering these sorts of questions from this particular user. The discussion on how to deal with him was very heated, but left us not very enlightened. So much so that I regretted raising the issue. Had it been a general information type question, I would probably not have cried "legal advice!". If you must see the full sordid details, it's in the refdesk talk archive 126 (the most recent one as I write this), but I'm guessing you've read it already. Eliyohub (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Using one's real name along with dispensing professional advice could be an invitation to trouble. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:49, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Fake russian science troll

I've hatted a discussion begun by a long-term troll. Please do not answer questions in broken English with pseudo-technical language. This is a many-years running troll who shows up from time to time. If anyone sees similar discussions started again, please close them down. Thank you. --Jayron32 02:26, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Hat, rather than delete, yes? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:27, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

I personally see no reason why we should prevent anyone who wants from chatting with good ol' Alex. I don't think he's a vandal or troll in the common sense, WP:AGF, etc. I actually wonder if he may be a bot... Anyway, no need to delete in my opinion, hatting gets it out the the way. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:08, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

What would be mock Russian for "hat"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:25, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Slop. μηδείς (talk) 01:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe that it is "please read and obey WP:TPOC"... Oh, wait, I studied Japanese and Chinese, not Russian. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:28, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

The user has been banned from russian wikipedia and his "contributions" should be erased with WP:DENY as the edit summary. In this case I won't erase him, since his BS should be made familiar to the newbies. Next time? No. μηδείς (talk) 17:14, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Correcting Google links

I just want to raise a question what is wrong with correcting Google links, when people have no idea how to properly format links to Google Books. Do you, Baseball Bugs, think that this is more beautiful and appropriate? --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

If someone makes a formatting error, post a correction below it. Or, first go to their talk page and ask them to correct it. Minus the attitude, though. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:47, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I have neither much time nor desire to explain every my smallest technical edit and discuss it on talkpages. Why should I teach everybody how to make proper links? If they don't know, I just correct and let them not to know further on.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Well the simple explaination is that if you don't have time to ask first or at least note what you've done, you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway. Of course posting the link seperately will probably take less time anyway even if you have to add four tildes. Ultimately if you aren't willing to do things correctly, you simply shouldn't get involved. Let someone else deal with it.

Also provided something works, it being pretty is less important than ensuring your not misleadingly modifying a signed post. In this case I believe you have a point that the .ca local domain means it's less likely to work (I admit I never knew that about Google Books until I was testing it before my first reply below and seemed to observe that although testing again now I can't repeat it). But even if that is true, at most that's justification for changing the .ca to .com not for removing the highlighting without making it clear you'd done so based on a guess that the OP didn't want it. Practically, I personally wouldn't have complained if you'd kept the highlighting but otherwise simplified it, but there's always a risk others may want the other stuff in there for some weird intentional reason. And if that ever did happen I won't be coming to your defence.

Ultimately there's a good reason why editing a signed post by someone else without their permission is strongly discouraged except in very limited circumstances of which changing a link isn't generally one of them (unless it's blacklisted or harmful in some way e.g. copyvio, spam, BLPvio, malware rather than simply not functionining as intended). Since the link wasn't enclosed in tags, enclosing it in tags would have been acceptable if it was really so long as to be making something difficult but that's about it.

A functioning version of a non functioning or less functioning link can always be offered as a follow up, I've done it myself with other cases several times on the RD. I'd note if you get into the habit of modifying such stuff without comment you run the risk of doing so when someone has already commented on the problem somewhere and therefore causing even more problems. (Did you actually check the whole thread before doing so this time or were you again just guessing that no one had commented on it? Of course even if you did check the thread, I'm guessing you didn't check this talk page or the OP's talk page.) In other words, it may not just be the OP affected.

P.S. If you think people don't intentionally include local domains you're mistaken. I generally give clean Google books and other links. But I have always intentionally linked to local domains (.co.nz or .nz) for Google Books, Google Search, Blogspot etc. Since it seems you could have a point that local subdomains can cause weird issues with access/copyright on Google Books I'll probably refrain from doing so with Google Books. But I'll continue to do so with other such things and will be quite annoyed if someone changes them. Especially with stuff like Google Search where I do so partially because of the slight possibility the results the person sees might be a bit more like what I saw. Likewise I have sometimes in the past intentionally included a link with safesearch disabled albeit generally noting I did so to avoid any concerns. And where possible, with a defined number of results. Etc. And yes this means when I do include highlighting on Google Books, which isn't very often, it's nearly always intentional.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:42, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I was not speaking about correcting or even twisting other people's words and I was not even going to discuss that, it's a whole different issue. So I've changed the title, for that matter. As for your intentional posting of localized links, be sure a lot of people won't see them, they must manually change .nz (or whatever) to their locale. Only google.com leads automatically to your locale. Practically outside the USA it is problematic to use google.com, Google by some reason enforce your locale. As for your other example, I might agree that in some exceptional situations you may want to be sure people see the search results as you see them, but it is unlikely to happen in here. In any way it would be obvious that that is the case. You presuppose that people routinely post garbage links just because they want that, while they simply do not know what those various obscure parameters mean. I'm not blaming them for their ignorance in any way, but I suppose it's legitimate to correct them.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

You should always take care when "correcting" a signed post that you are not removing something which was intentional. In this particular case it looks to me like you simplified the link so much that you remove the highlighting. It may be the highlighting was an unintentional result of the Google search. It may be it was intentionally left there. The link could be simplified without removing the highlighting but you didn't do that. If in doubt you should always ask first. And if what you are doing will change the reply in any possible way you should at least make clear that you did it but it doesn't look like you either replied to the thread or informed the OP on their talk page. Nil Einne (talk) 01:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

In that particular case as in millions of such cases people simply have no idea that they post url garbage others don't need. If anything was intentional that was unawareness.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem is you have no way to know whether the OP intentionally wanted to highlight that part of the book for whatever reason. You may be able to make a resonable guess based on the context of the conversation, but unless you've actually asked the OP you do not know. And if you had asked the OP first, this would not be an issue. Plenty of times people have thought they knew what the OP wanted to achieve but it turned out they were wrong. I myself have had it before mostly with indenting or locating my posts, although that at least is not technically part of the signed post. And let's not forget the awful mess a few years back when someone thought automagically was a typo and changed to to automatically. I'd note that as far as I can tell, the OP still hasn't commmented anywhere on this because no one really asked them so you still don't know if the OP really didn't want it. Nil Einne (talk) 05:14, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Alright, I will agree with you on that one. Though for you information to get a highlighting one just adds &dq="the+highlighted+text". Nothing else is needed. But such a small accurate and conscious addition is no match for that url garbage people actually have been unconsciously posting million times (not only in Wikipedia).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:36, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Except when someone's edit breaks page formatting, it's not really a requirement that responses (or questions) be beautiful and elegant. In an article that's desirable, but in what is essentially a specialized talk page, it's not a priority. ApLundell (talk) 14:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem also is that such dummy google links work particularly for the user who posted it. People who do not live in .ca (or wherever) won't see it, they must change it manually to their locality. Only .com is safe. Not to mention a lot of simple url garbage which is of no use under any circumstances.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

In future, post a separate correction and sign it yourself. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:10, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

So what's the point then? Leaving the garbage, then posting the correction and signing, why bother at all? I've tweaked Google links hundreds of times, nobody ever objected, to be sure the OP in question hasn't objected either. In future, I think, I'll just ignore such cases or rather I'll stop visiting and editing RD altogether, lest I do something "wrong" again.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:18, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Given your attitude, that might be for the best. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:18, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

• In general, modifying other people's posts is a bad idea, and it should definitely unnerve posters. For example, what if I post a link and some random newcomer changes it to point at a virus-infested site? We ought to pay more attention to avoiding that kind of thing. That said, this particular case may fall under a narrow exception, because the Google search ?ei=.....? field contains a lot of mysterious information, only some of which AFAIK is publicly described (see [1] field 3 and 4). Unless proven otherwise this might include some kind of tracking/outing related data that may become decipherable after some future leak of a relevant encryption password. Even the acknowledged fields - the exact microsecond the link was accessed - provide a path for anyone with access to Google's log of queries to track down the IP address for this particular poster now, next month, or in 1500 years. However: it's not as clear-cut a case as deleting the email addresses listed by some novice posters, and education is still the proper response because short of tracking down and revdeling each and every ei link the only way to prevent people from leaking potentially private data this way is to get them to dress their links themselves. Suggestion: write up an essay explaining your point of view (with WP:ACRONYM) and cite it in a brief stock response. Wnt (talk) 20:17, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Speculation

Will the human population reduce in numbers because of global climate change?

This question was closed as speculative, but I think it would be okay with a slight rewording along the lines of "What are some expert opinions on the question of if...".

It could then be answered by providing links to experts who have speculated as to the answer of the question.

It should be clarified that expert speculation is fine, but user speculation isn't.

It should be assumed that when people ask speculative questions, they are asking what experts think, which is totally acceptable.

With the above question, there are plenty of reliable and notable sources on the matter, so it's a question worth asking.

Benjamin (talk) 03:47, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you have an example or two? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:51, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-human-health Bernie Sanders has said that "climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism". https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/03/more-than-half-a-million-could-die-as-climate-change-impacts-diet-report http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/11/1513797/-Maintaining-the-Status-Quo-on-Climate-Change-Will-Kill-Us http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151215-global-warming-heat-wave-stress-death-climate/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/world/india-heat-wave-explainer/index.html That's just a quick google search. Benjamin (talk) 05:42, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Censors have gotten the upper hand here, and I am thoroughly disgusted

I started to analyze a perfectly reasonable question about whether fake looking breasts could be real. First I get a bunch of attitude from somebody who doesn't answer science questions about how "offensive" it is to say that breasts jiggle. Then I have someone claiming to "close" the discussion without any real policy basis nor any discussion here. (these are visible in the following link) I get more grief on my talk page about how female editors can't possibly be exposed to the same sort of discussion as the male, in the name of sexual enlightenment. I make a reasoned response to all this nonsense, and that's when the chief censor of them all turns up to not merely delete my text, but delete a borderline-interesting suggestion someone else made on my own talk page. And from more sensible editors who simply like to chase the rabbit, follow scientific curiosity wherever it may lead? Nothing. It is that omission that hurts the most, and which makes me wonder if this project has a future. Wnt (talk) 13:56, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Both of those removals you link to are inappropriate. They should have been reverted and the original text allowed to stand. ApLundell (talk) 14:32, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Deleting the refdesk section was, in my opinion, disruptive, but technically allowed according to our special rules that only apply to the refdesks and which the admins refuse to enforce (see my comments below), but deleting the comment on Wnt's talk page was a clear violation of WP:TPOC. I gave the deleting user a warning[2] and will follow up at WP:ANI if I see a pattern of such behavior. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Some people really like to control the behavior of other people. Here on Wikipedia, we should not allow ordinary users to do that. They should be required to ask an administrator -- someone who the community has decided that they trust to control the behavior of other people -- or to make a polite request that the person voluntarily stop the behavior. We do allow ordinary users to do certain things such as reverting obvious vandalism or copyright violations, but always with the understanding that anyone can ask an administrator to review those actions.

What we are doing is not working. What will work is:

1. Get rid of all of the special rules that only apply to the refdesks and which the admins refuse to enforce. The administrators have shown on multiple occasions that they have no interest in blocking anyone for not following the reference desk guidelines. I say we get rid of those guidelines or reword them to make it clear that they are advice which anyone is free to ignore.
2. Apply the standard rules that apply to all talk pages. In particular, apply WP:DISRUPT and especially WP:TPOC the same way those policies are applied everywhere else on Wikipedia.
3. Stop complaining about other editors on the refdesk or the refdesk talk pages. Just stop. Use this page only for discussing how to improve the Reference Desks, and I don't mean "improve the Reference Desks by controlling the behavior of other people".
4. If indeed a comment (question or answer) is disruptive and you are confident that the community of administrators at WP:ANI will agree that it is disruptive, then ask the person -- on his or her talk page -- not to make such comments. If they do it again, report them at ANI where they will be blocked until they stop.
5. Accept the fact that you personally have the right to refuse to respond to a refdesk post, just as you have the right to not answer any other question, but you have zero ability to block a user or in any other way interfere with them posting whatever they choose to post, with the sole exception being if you can convince an administrator that they are being disruptive and have persisted after being warned.

Why can't we just try it my way for a limited-time experiment? Establish a consensus to do as I describe above through an RfC and ask the admins to block anyone who refuses to comply. At the end of the experiment, have a discussion about whether my way is working and whether we should continue or try something else.

Or we can keep having the same damn discussion every few days forever. Your choice, refdesk regulars. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:20, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy to block in a similar case using WP:DISRUPT as rationale. --John (talk) 18:43, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you saying you'd be happy to block someone such as Wnt the next time they make comments such as they did here? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:29, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Block the user making the comment, or block the refdesk regular who deleted it?because our "special rules" say he can? We already have admins blocking the clearly disruptive users. It is the refdesk regulars who delete material that many of us do not see as being disruptive that is the problem. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Good to have your perspective. Anyone who continues a closed discussion started by a disruptive troll-only account after a warning had better look out. Better to discuss here or in user talk first. --John (talk) 20:44, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

@John: The discussion was started by User:Diwipewia. He's asked a few questions here -- I don't see edits like [3] as "disruptive troll-only" contributions. He's not blocked. The "closure" of the discussion mentions nothing about him being a "troll-only account" with his 19 edits, and seemed in response to my comment (since the question sat for some time before then without any controversy). Do you have any idea what you're doing? Wnt (talk) 01:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

First off, that's blatantly untrue. I made it clear in the first two lines that I was closing the discussion per WP:DENY/WP:NOTAFORUM, because the OP's inquiry was probably trolling and was (regardless) clearly asking for aesthetic opinions on the shape of women's breasts, and the discussion (predictably) had already led to clearly WP:DISRUPTIVE comments. And I would have closed the discussion regardless of your involvement. My additional comments regarding the content of your post I added because I felt you needed it pointed out to you that these were inappropriate for this project. And your further comments / sense of persecution here make it clear that I was absolutely correct in that assumption and that you don't see how these kinds of assertions create a hostile environment for women. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Wnt, my closing of that discussion has nothing to do with either an inclination towards censorship, nor puritanical views. It has been pointed out to you on this page (more times than I can begin to count at this point) that Wikipedia is WP:NOTAFORUM for you to engage in any random discussion, speculation or off-the-cuff comment that occurs to you as clever, and that Wikipedia does not guarantee you unqualified free speech. As a matter of explicit policy, we are here to construct an encyclopedia and all other socializing/forum-like discussion is inappropriate. Your boy's club speculation as to how to spot a fake breast using the "jiggle" physics resulting from the clack of a woman's highheels serves no legitimate interest to that purpose and was completely inappropriate to this space. We've all gotten in the habit of tolerating a heavy amount of these little oh-so-clever comments (more than we should have), but that comment was beyond the pall.

You need to try to get your mind around the fact that this is not a social / free discussion space, but a work environment, regardless of the fact that it is staffed by volunteers. You need to start constraining your comments accordingly. As someone who has spent a great proportion of their life in research environments, I can assure that, even if you were a physicists specializing in materials science, if you vocally speculated before your peers as you did in this instance, you'd earn little protection for your public objectification of women's bodies under the rationale that "Well, I think its an interesting topic and its technically one which we can apply the scientific method to!" You would be told what you are being told now: that's hardly the point. You're not here for that kind of speculation (or at least you are not meant to be) and it is utterly inappropriate for a work space. Whether you are capable of seeing why or not, comments like that absolutely do constitute an offensive atmosphere and your personal sense of autonomy / freedom of inquiry are not sufficient to trump project policies regarding inclusion and inappropriate comments. There are a thousand and one forums on the internet for you to engage in those kinds of comments, if you simply must. This is not one of them.

But if you feel so strongly that I have this wrong, from the standpoint of both policy and our community priorities, don't worry: as I said in the close, next time I see a comment of that nature here, I will simply seek administrative oversight of the matter, and an admin (or the community broadly) can decide if this is appropriate behaviour that is consistent with our standards of conduct and the WMF's policies. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:35, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Back in the day when someone posted a colorful or weird question it would be answered factually with references. There was no controversy or drama, it was just answered in a neutral tone and then archived.

The present day obsession with trying to determine whether or not each question was asked by a troll is counterproductive. Even if the OP doesn't care at all about the answer and never even reads it, the answering editor(s) hone their reference finding skills by answering it. These are skills that can then be applied to the wider encyclopedia project.

It's no coincidence that the most active troll-removers are those editors who never bother to reference their answers and more often than not offer an unrelated sarcastic comment or a joke instead. 62.37.237.16 (talk) 08:32, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

• So, once again I have presented a detailed plan for dealing with our problem, once again I have asked "Why can't we just try it my way for a limited-time experiment?", and once again nobody has been willing to provide a serious answer to that question. So we as a community have once again decided to keep having the same damn discussion every few days forever, neither accepting or rejecting -- or even seriously discussing -- my proposed solution. You can now count me among the "I am thoroughly disgusted" camp. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:36, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: Wikipedia is not a "work environment" in the bureaucratic, censorious sense that has become all too common in the U.S. In the sort of environment you're thinking of, a volunteer would have to complete a training course in Recognizing Sexual Harassment before getting a badge to work, and might be required to send away his finger-prints to the F.B.I. before being permitted to tutor a student under the age of 18! This is not a work environment because we are not employees, we are not protected by the Civil Rights act of 1964 nor its Talmudic interpretations, and above all, because Wikipedia disclaims liability for what we say, which is a very different situation from an employer. We have a serious objective here but understand that legally this is no different than any other blog online.

Now you can say that we could adopt "workplace" rules anyway, but why? Is there any one place in the U.S. not subject to these rules that would do so? The fact is, a fear of exaggerated liability has forced the interpretation of non-discrimination too far, and we have a chance to push it back in a sane direction. Whenever an editor is genuinely harassing women, when an editor actively dislikes women or targets them in a way specifically meant to discomfort them, nobody tolerates it anyway, but we don't have to go off the deep end and interpret that to mean that it is too dangerous to let people talk about breasts for any reason. There is no reason to assume that they should object to that discussion any more than male editors mind seeing occasional weird questions about testicles. We can be truer to the spirit of free inquiry and the respect for provocative discussion even than the university patent mills and finishing schools for obedient workers. Wnt (talk) 13:44, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Your plan has a lot of sense to it, but it is hard to believe it will really go anywhere. The lobby against medical (and nominally legal) questions has a lot of pull, and you're proposing to tear down the shack where they keep their beloved guideline. It is also not clear to me how much your plan would end up bringing in random, disruptive admins to implement their notion of a 'cleanup' according to general rules whose application here is not very easy to figure out. I mean, nominally anything here can end up on ANI anyway, and sometimes has, and you say the current local rules don't work, so you'd get rid of them .. in theory your change shouldn't change anything. And if it does, I don't know what. Aside that is from saying not to discuss this stuff here, but I can't imagine it won't be discussed, and is there any better place it would be? As detailed as your idea above is, I still don't really understand it. Wnt (talk) 13:51, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Re: "Aside that is from saying not to discuss this stuff here, but I can't imagine it won't be discussed, and is there any better place it would be?" the answer is "on the user's talk page, then at ANI". Nowhere else on Wikipedia other than user talk pages and noticeboards dedicated to such discussions are comments about user behavior allowed. So why allow them here? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

• The issue of trolling questions is actually pretty simple. Observe:
  • Why does Wikipedia suck? This is a trolling question.
  • Why do some men like to be "pegged"? This may or may not be a trolling question, and assuming it isn't is actually a policy here. Therefore, this is not a trolling question as far as any editor here is concerned, unless and until the OP follows up the first answer with "Well, why do YOU like it so much? kekekekeke" or something that's just as obviously trolling as the first example.

Why this is a perennial issue here is beyond me. I managed to walk into a medical library just a few weeks ago and ask about women "steaming their junk" (using that exact phrase, mind) and got a single quip (a reference to a steam-powered vibrator that used to be used to treat female hysteria) in response, followed by an earnest attempt to help because the librarian understood that life is strange, and sometimes people have strange questions for legitimate reasons. In this case, I was trying to find scholarly articles on what appeared to be a real alt-med practice which has gained some popularity recently for the purpose of finding sources for the WP article I linked. These things happen. So when an editor comes along and asks if it's possible for the results of breast augmentation surgery to appear as natural as real breasts, it behooves us to take then seriously long enough to give a serious answer, even if we offer a few quips along the way. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

It is a perennial issue here because we allow non-administrators to delete other editor's comments in direct violation of WP:TPOC. Forbid that behavior, handle disruption the way it is handled everywhere else on Wikipedia, and the problem disappears. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2017 (UTC)