Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.

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

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As a high school teacher I have been lenient with students using Wikipedia. The Neil Tyson edits have me concerned.

To be honest I'm not a big fan of my students using Wikipedia for research. But after reading about the scrubbing of facts as to what things Neil Tyson as actually said, I'm considering banning Wikipedia sources entirely.

The whole point of research it to create a solid, defensible, position. Now, my students cannot honestly say that data is apparently "whole", and thus cannot be defended at all.

So for now, in my class anyway, no more Wikipedia in the bibliography until this policy is cleared up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:C:AB00:E3D:3DD4:AD30:7D76:9029 (talk) 14:55, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi there. You'll be hard pressed to find someone here who thinks your students should be citing Wikipedia! Even Wikipedia doesn't think Wikipedia is a reliable source. Instead, encourage your students to use the references cited in a Wikipedia article as the source of their information. Sam Walton (talk) 15:00, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually, that's just an essay. That's not Wikipedia speaking... StAnselm (talk) 20:44, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Well they should not be relying on Wikipedia, in the opinion of many, including me. Using it for background research is often quite helpful, however. It would be good for students to learn to question Wikipedia as with anything, then further research, question, question, dig further, etc.Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

• Actually, now that I've worked out who Neil Tyson is, and what we are talking about, the extremely lengthy discussion of the matter on the talk page is a pretty good case study in the issues surrounding covering such a controversy, if a bit long and complicated for high school students. Is it really true that "the whole point of research is to create a solid, defensible, position"? Hmmm. Johnbod (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Come on. Help us all. Who the hell is Neil Tyson. What did he do? And so what? (That link is to a massive slab of text. Educate those of us from a different part of the world.) HiLo48 (talk) 19:11, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

He apparently said something about Dubya, but c'mon, who hasn't? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:00, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Ah, so he is alleged to have misrepresented Dubya. Yeah, well, people misrepresent me on Wikipedia Talk pages all the time, especially when they are losing a debate to me, and there's never any consequence for them. HiLo48 (talk) 00:22, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

We also have Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:51, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

@IP. What you should be doing is teaching students that Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for research but is not in and of itself a source that should be cited in their final presentations. Carrite (talk) 18:55, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an excellent source for sources. HiLo48 (talk) 19:11, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Wikipedia, a tertiary source, should never be cited directly. The sources used on the articles should be cited instead. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 07:44, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

I think that, with the vastly increased amount of attention people seem to pay to various types of "credit" nowadays, at some point we're going to see teachers demand that students not merely list their sources, but also somehow acknowledge what sources they got the sources from - i.e. to cite all the searches performed, on which engines, etc. There is a peripheral encroachment of the political concept (which I vehemently oppose) of database copyright; copying Wikipedia's list of sources verbatim in order might be a regular copyright issue but copying even a chunk might eventually end up under that rigamorale if we don't fight it. But the right reason to consider such a move is one of ascertainment bias -- in other words, if Wikipedia POV-pushers have slanted the article and taken out most of what one side has to say (which nowadays, some highly placed administrators have begun to treat as their civic duty!), then the student's paper is going to reek of this inherited slant.

Wikipedia may validly be cited either for that purpose, or if an outside body has reviewed and passed a specific revision (this is under discussion at WP:MED currently, I think). But in every case the student who references Wikipedia should cite a specific revision (with "oldid=" in the URL) rather than the ever-changing topmost version. Wnt (talk) 14:21, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Assuming good faith that you are a teacher and not someone trolling us, you are absolutely correct in barring Wikipedia as a source. As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is not a reliable source. In fact, we even have a policy against using sources which cite Wikipedia (see WP:CIRCULAR). So, I absolutely agree with your decision, regardless of how the content dispute at Neil deGrasse Tyson plays out. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

The OP should be referred to Wikipedia:Education program. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:00, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

• If your concerned about a source covering the whole story, then Wikipedia is certainly inadequate. For various reasons material on Wikipedia may not be covered, and in general if you want students to get a big picture then looking up many sources should be required. Also user generated content from wikis are in general not reliable sources, but the reason we outright ban information from Wikipedia to be cited is to avoid circular citing; reliability always depends on context and in some cases even user-generated content from wikis is allowed on Wikipedia to be cited. Information on Wikipedia can(and should) always have superior sources which can be used as references, and if a student cites Wikipedia then they should be prepared to defend why they did so. An example I can think of where it would be appropriate to cite Wikipedia is in the case of an obscure topic where the only sources covering the topic are behind paywalls and inaccessible to students. It is inappropriate and dishonest to cite a source for information if you can't read the source yourself, and in such circumstances you should cite Wikipedia as citing the source for that information with the understanding that Wikipedia's representation of the information from that source may be dubious.AioftheStorm (talk) 15:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

• Like AQFK above, I'm a little suspicious that a real teacher posted the above. Years ago when I was in school (admittedly roughly contemporaneous with the end of the Middle Ages & after they stopped teaching Latin in high school) we were repeatedly told Do not cite encyclopedias in your research papers -- with that kind of emphasis. Part of the reason was that the teachers wanted us to learn how to do research & maybe evaluate sources on our own. The rest of the reason was that all encyclopedias are notoriously inaccurate -- even the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica. Yes, an encyclopedia is good for looking up facts like the capital of Paraguay & how many bushels of corn were harvested in 1965, & if it features signed articles then those articles might provide a useful, if dated & opinionated, introduction to the subject. (Although you run the risk that the article has been abridged or radically pruned to make room for more trendy articles.) But if you want to truly know a subject, you don't limit your research to an article in an encyclopedia -- although it would be nice if we could accept that no encyclopedia will ever contain all of human knowledge, but it can serve as a good introduction & starting place for further research into various topics. -- llywrch (talk) 17:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I've cited specialist encyclopedias on Wikipedia, but AFAIK not generalist ones (not even Britannica) WhisperToMe (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Nothing to see here. OP is a nontroversy pusher. --NE2 09:35, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to elevate Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles to guideline status.

Following a spate of discussions relating to consistency in article titles, I have condensed our common practices regarding title consistency into a set of explanations that I believe covers the major issues arising in this area. I do not believe that anything I have said on this page is novel, but that it merely restates in one place our existing practices and determinations regarding consistency in article titles. Of course, constructive suggestions for improvement are always appreciated. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:35, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

What objective do you see being achieved in upgrading the essay to a guideline? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

My objective is that if editors find themselves in discussions like the one I had at Talk:Mikhaylovsky (surname)‎#Requested move, they can point to the this description of common practice without drawing a response that the essay is just one editor's opinion (not that this happened in the discussion at issue, but there I had nothing to point to directly addressing the dispute, despite the uniformity of the titling practice). In a sense, in essay is just someone's opinion which can be considered or ignored if the reader feels like it; a guideline is a reflection of the preferences of the community. Since I have made a diligent effort to draw up a set of examples that reflect community preferences for choosing titles in various situations, I would like the status of the page to reflect that it does so. bd2412 T 19:28, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Speaking in no small part as a person with whom bd2412 had a discussion/disagreement in the Talk:Mikhaylovsky (surname)‎#Requested move RM, I, too, think upgrading this essay to a guideline would be a good idea. If that discussion is of any indication, and drawing on my own experiences in this area, the essay documents the existing consensus fairly accurately and thus has my full support.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 23, 2014; 19:46 (UTC)

The essay currently states that it supplements Wikipedia:Article titles - which is policy. I'd have thought that the appropriate response to an "it's only an essay" argument would be to see what the policy says, and then discuss the merits of the particular case - which is what the essay seems to advocate anyway. If the essay does merit upgrading to a guideline, it will need doing so via a formal process, rather than a discussion here (unless I've misunderstood Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines) - you'll need to start a RfC at Wikipedia talk:Consistency in article titles, and announce it in the appropriate places. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:52, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I thought this was the appropriate place. Oh well. bd2412 T 20:25, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Note: I will initiate an RfC within the next few days. I would like to give a little more opportunity for comment on the page itself. Regarding the suggestion that editors "see what the policy says", the problem is that the policy only says to be consistent, without offering further guidance on what that means. This essay, hopefully soon to be a guideline, summarizes what that means to the community based on the wealth of talk page discussions that have been on the topic. bd2412 T 20:43, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

WP:PROPOSAL doesn't actually require you to have an RFC at the page itself (or to do anything in particular), but that is the most common process, and it may be the most convenient (since everyone who is already interested the page is likely to have it watchlisted). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Isn't that likely to have an inherent bias, though? I don't have any proof, but my guess would be that "people already interested in a page" are more likely to agree with it than the average Wikipedian. --Trovatore (talk) 21:56, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Being "interested" in a proposal may also mean that an editor is firmly against it. What it does often boil down to in practice, sadly, is that editors with strong and polar opposite views are often drawn to such proceedings, instead of a wider and more moderate community. But that is a common and already well-known problem with any Wikipedia proposals. Around here there are so many useless mega-long threads discussing the value of adding/removing a comma or arguing about metaphysical benefits of a "primary topic" that rational proposals which actually have practical applications and make a difference often get thrown under the train of indifference as well, leaving only a handful of hardcore fans duking it out.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 24, 2014; 18:10 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles is a great effort. Intending constructive criticism, I've been trying to find any unrealised problems. I recommend proceeding through a 30 day RfC before tagging as a {{guideline}}. I definitely agree with Trovatore above. Similar pages on other naming criteria remain desirable, but this is a great step. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:11, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• If not to be a guideline, it can be a policy supplement linked from the policy. I see it is currently tagged with {{Supplement}}. In principle, policy supplementing essays should not be tagged as such unless linked from the policy page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:46, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• Would keep it an essay — some useful thoughts, but should not supersede (or come to a comparable level as) checks and balances in the specific guidelines, e.g. WP:NCPDAB, WP:MUSICSERIES. Such guidelines are sometimes updated, e.g. WP:NCPDAB, months of discussions over a few words, and WP:MUSICSERIES more recent complete overhaul. Don't think when rewriting such guidelines it would be a great help to have a "competing" view in a consistency guideline. E.g. this exception to WP:CONPRIME: "A particular example of this is Johann Sebastian Bach and his many composing namesakes. Conventionally J. S. Bach's compositions would be the primary topic in any genre, i.e. without disambiguator (Brandenburg Concertos) if not needed, and disambiguated or serialized by BWV number (Missa, BWV 232a) or (Bach) parenthical disambiguator (Orchestral suites (Bach)). Only descriptive titles (including category names) would usually give the full name for any composer after "by" (List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Category:Compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach). For the other Bachs, if parenthical disambiguation by name of the composer is needed: add the initials (with periods and spaces) in the parenthesis: Trio Sonata for Two Flutes (W. F. Bach) — Sonata in G major for two flutes and basso continuo, BWV 1039." --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
  • After the additional explanations given below, which didn't convince me as explained, also seeing this discussion, showing how difficult it is to get a grasp of all what is already in the guidelines consistency-wise (we really don't need more of that), I say with even more conviction: Keep it an essay --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
• Would keep as an essay WP:TITLE plus the various specific guidelines is quite enough, we don't need a guideline that competes with the specific ones or tries to put itself above them. See also Wikipedia:Consistency which is inactive for good reasons, it would have just caused too many problems and conflicts with articles being independent. Dmcq (talk) 09:55, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
  • @ Francis Schonken and Dmcq, you both seem to be concerned that the proposed guideline would be competing with project specific guidelines. The intention of the proposal is to reflect common practices already in use in the encyclopedia, but it also notes at several points that there are topic specific guidelines for many fields (for example, noting that persons with titles of nobility are presented differently from human names generally). I would also reiterate that the proposed guidelines do not create anything new or inventive; they merely collect in one place various determinations that have been made regarding the general application of consistency. Would it help if it was more clearly stated in the proposal that topic-specific guidelines override these general practices, and that editors should refer to project-specific guidelines? Of course, not all projects address consistency in titling in their guidelines, and not all topics fall neatly into one topic - I don't imagine that anyone objects to providing guidance where there is no applicable project-related guidance. Cheers! bd2412 T 13:31, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
    1. Don't get me wrong, I like essays, wrote a few myself, for example this one I'm quite proud of
    2. Either the page has something specific, guidance not found elsewhere, or its value is rather illustrative w.r.t. approved guidance (e.g. giving an overview and examples). For me it would need to be demonstrated it has enough specificity so that editors should know about it when they're tackling an issue for which all other guidance combined wouldn't have the appropriate guidance, and secondly, it has to be demonstrated that tackling an issue according to this guidance, and to whatever other guidance, would not result in different results. An explicit "other NC's take precedence" declaration would take care of the second point (but that would be so when it remained an essay too). The first point — why would it be necessary for editors to familiarize themselves with this guidance? — is still open to me.
    3. The general point is also: there are so many guidelines, what a workload to get to know them all... Fresh editors might get frightened for less... what would be the upside for saying to a fellow editor: this is a guideline you shouldn't miss? Can you explain in a few words where its force lies (which would not be the current content of its nutshell, as that much is already clear from WP:AT)?
    4. Again, giving summaries of other guidelines and giving examples is good and helpful, but most of all I see an essay you can be proud of. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:19, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
    5. To make it a bit more practical, as an example, where would you expect the proposed guidance to make a difference in this consistency-related discussion? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:10, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

    The proposed guideline collects common practices not only from topic-specific guidelines, but from the results of move requests and other discussions where no topical guidance was available, but where there has repeatedly been a strong consensus in favor of maintaining consistency. The problem with referencing topic-specific guidelines is that they are topic-specific. Here's what I mean - we have articles on Economy of Hawaii, Economy of Ohio, Economy of Vermont, and so on. There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics that gives some guidance on how these articles should be laid out, but says nothing about titles. We can't turn to the guidance offered in Wikipedia:WikiProject Music or Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology to decide how these articles should be titles. There is no guidance that says we can't have articles titled Economy of Hawaii, Ohioan economy, and Vermont economic profile. It may seem like common sense that if 48 out of 50 states have articles titled "Economy of..." then the last two should be titled that way also, but there is no rule in the encyclopedia that clearly says this, only a large number of move requests and other discussions where similar discrepancies have been resolved this way. Similarly, although Florida is a primary topic and Florida (disambiguation) lists other places called "Florida" (which have there own economies), there is no rule that an article titled Economy of Florida should be about the economy of Florida rather than the economy of Florida, Chile. There is no guideline that says that we can title an article Georgia in the American Civil War rather than Georgia (U.S. state) in the American Civil War, there is only a discussion where it was decided that this kind of move was common sense.

    As for the specific consistency-related discussion to which you refer, that is precisely within the purview of the relevant WikiProject, which says "[w]hen a track is not strictly a song (in other words a composition without lyrics, or an instrumental that is not a cover of a song), disambiguation should be done using "(composition)" or "(instrumental)". This seems to distinguish "(instrumental)" from "(song)", so if there is still confusion about there being overlap, it is the project's guideline that should be fixed. The proposed general guideline would suggest that the use of disambiguators should be consistent, so you would need to see if there are other instances where two works of the same name are distinguished by one being disambiguated with "(song)" and the other with "(instrumental)", which would indicate that this is either a common practice, or a bigger problem that needs to be addressed in the topic-specific guidelines. bd2412 T 17:35, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

    For Economy of Hawaii and the others in that sentence, see WP:NCCST#Guideline. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:00, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

    Even if the "Foo of" status is used consistently, we could still have one group of articles with titles like Economy of Hawaii and another with titles like Economics of Ohio. If "Foo" and "Bar" mean the same thing, and there is no WP:ENGVAR issue, then articles should consistently be titled "Foo of Place" or "Bar of Place", but not a mix of the two (or all titled "Foo of Place" with a single article title "Bar of Place", and a defender of that title arguing that there's no policy or guideline requiring that it be changed). Of course, even if this goes from essay to guideline, we will still have editors who like their inconsistent titles saying, "it's only a guideline".

    Re. specific consistency-related discussion: you seem to have missed my argument in that discussion to extend consistency across the somewhat illusive classical/popular music border: both types of music are treated in the same guideline (WP:NCM), separately, leading to inconsistency between the two genres. The discussion is about an issue fellow editors apparently can't get worked out for the popular music genre. The suggestion I made: apply what we'd do if it were a classical composition. Problem solved. And, relevant to the discussion here, more consistency. But, indeed, the proposed guidance wouldn't seem to have any effect there. In other words, no specificity proven, at least not enough for this to go beyond essay level. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:35, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

    • Francis Schonken, I am not claiming "ownership" of this proposed guideline; if you feel that it can be improved in any particular please do improve it. However, I don't think it is invalid because it does not resolve a problem distinctly under the purview of a particular project. Cheers! bd2412 T 11:51, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

      • Tx for the invitation. A bit too busy here now however (trying to find a solution to a consistency issue...) --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:22, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

  I see it as unnecessary mission creep. Any extra instruction has to have a very good reason for its existence - otherwise its very existence degrades the rest by simply being there occupying volume. I know it's not too practical but I'd like an impetus in government so every time they passed one law they had to make a real effort to remove another. I can't see one I'd like to remove to pt this in instead. Dmcq (talk) 23:58, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

  The instruction exists whether this is a guideline or not; it merely takes a more arduous and roundabout process to inform people about it. It's like the story of the monkeys who get doused with cold water whenever they try to grab the banana hanging there as bait. When a new monkey comes in and tries to get the banana, he gets beaten by the other monkeys for it without knowing why. Eventually there are only new monkeys in there, and all they know is that if an even newer monkey tries to get the banana, he gets beaten for it. Rather than having unwritten rules that are only acknowledged when someone tries to move a page to an arcane title, we can offer guidance. This makes no new rules, it merely explains what the common practices are, and why it makes sense to have those practices. bd2412 T 00:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

• Keep as an essay. It is very new and very few editors have contributed to it. If in a years time talk pages frequently link to it then the question of whether it should become a naming convention can be revisited. Also note the section Wikipedia:Article titles#Proposed naming conventions and guidelines. -- PBS (talk) 17:55, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

  Actually, the 'last straw' that lead me to start this essay was a discussion on the Wikipedia:Article titles talk page, where I have already outlined the parameters that have become the current essay. Please do feel free to improve the proposal if you think that it is lacking, particularly if it is missing anything about common practices that we use to maintain title consistency. bd2412 T 18:40, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• Great idea, but keep as an essay for now. The current content of this page is excessive for a guideline; lots of space is occupied by discussing exceptions, and guidelines of this sort really need to be concise. We desperately need to start enforcing this kind of thing against harmful RMs put forward against naming conventions, but promoting the current page would produce more confusion. Nyttend (talk) 15:20, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

African-American Categories

What criteria determines whether or not a person is placed into categories such as "African-American singers" or "African-American actors"? The reason I'm inquiring is because numerous times on Wikipedia I have come across a person who is biracial or multiracial and is being placed into one of these categories. Frequently these persons do not even appear African-American (which in the U.S. is basically a synonym for black) e.g. Derek Jeter, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, and numerous others who have a similar "ethnic mixed" appearance. How do we even know these people identify as "African-American"? Also if there are no sources saying they do, then why are they automatically being placed into these specific racial categories? 2604:2000:7FC0:1:E8D7:5FA9:D5A4:AD1 (talk) 22:48, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Can someone please help out with this question, thank you. 2604:2000:7FC0:1:E8D7:5FA9:D5A4:AD1 (talk) 10:48, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is at Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality. The most important principles are scrupulously reliable sources, and self-identification. If you have a clearly reliable source where, for example, Derek Jeter refers to himself as African-American; that is usually what is required. Idle speculation by any source is generally not sufficient to use at Wikipedia, however. We usually need a clear statement by the person themselves. The second principle is relevant to their biography, which is trickier to make a case for. For a person like Jackie Robinson, his ethnicity is a large part of his biography, so including it seems relevant. For other famous people, it may not be a major part of their biography, so it may not be worth bringing up. --Jayron32 12:13, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Whistleblower complaints

I want to petition Wikipedia to make special consideration for whistleblowing sections with slightly less restrictive guidelines. Whistleblowing is an important part of our democracy, but increasingly challenging to accomplish in an organized and effective way with an increasingly populous and information stuffed society. Having regular Wikipedia whistleblower complaint sections with different, not absent, standards should mean that Wikipedia can preserve the integrity of it's entries and still provide this valuable social service. Though Wikipedia does not have the goal to be controversial, silencing this controversy seems to be inconsistent with it's goals of informing the people. I think Wikipedia is in a rare position to give very special and valuable information to the community.

For my whistleblower issues I have gone through the normally designated employer and government grievance processes and found that investigators, instead of investigating, consistently advocate for the employer and/or fail to complete investigations. My allegations appeared very serious to your volunteer editor, but are treated dismissively by many of the investigative and enforcement agents; this investigative corruption enables indefinite other corruption. While you might understandably be skeptical of my allegations I am sure you have seen stories in the news about investigative and enforcement agencies not doing their job and you must have realized that it is at least plausibly true. Wikipedia becomes a very valuable resource because other clicktivism avenues do not give the opportunity for the community to add confirming information and fall flat if there is no initial popular interest. Wikipedia is well established and would allow for slow builds of allegations and evidence. I know that other people witnessed the same misbehaviors with my employer, , but right now those complaints are all staying inside individuals' heads or floating around on message boards and in living rooms, never building into an organized piece of information that could be used as a tool. Imagine the tool that could be formed by people having direct personal experience and insider access to employment practices normally only viewed through disorganized gossip?

Still maintain standards for these whistleblower sections: whistleblowers present their complaints only as plausible allegations, keep those allegations in properly identified sections, post only allegations stemming from direct personal experience accompanied by whatever confirming evidence is available. May we please have this avenue to give and receive information about the employers of the world? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Watchtower25 (talk • contribs) 01:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the issue of verifiability is pretty well covered on your talk page. Content without a reliable published source is not acceptable. --  Gadget850 ^talk 01:39, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Watchtower25, as has already been explained to you,[1] everything on Wikipedia must be supported by verifiable and reliable sources. See Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought and Wikipedia is not a soapbox. You are certainly free to suggest that we change these policies (and this is the right place for doing that) but you need a far better reason than you have provided above.

Might I suggest the National Whistleblowers Center at http://www.whistleblowers.org/ as a better place to air your story? --Guy Macon (talk) 11:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

I hope you don't actually have to go through something like what I am going through to realize what an important and unique resource Wikipedia can provide. I do not want to damage the integrity of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia because I very much value it in that capacity, but I maintain that these sections or maybe special pages could be kept without damaging that integrity. And if you were going through what I am going through, I think you would easily see how important that compromise is.

Going to whistleblowers.org does not help because I have never heard of whistleblowers.org and popular awareness is very important for this to work. Even if whistleblowers.org were well known they have no way for the people to pool information for a common goal. One of the several investigations I filed for was with the EEOC, the federal government's complaint processing agency. The EEOC was ridiculously receptive to my employer's pretense and would not allow me to disprove the validity of that pretense because to them one person is not worth the cost of prosecuting the matter. In other words I lost that battle because I was alone. It seems many people have similar problems with the employer, but they quit the job and keep their complaints to themselves, or vent on a message board that never gets outside exposure. Employees do not believe the fiscal cost and stress of pursuing this corruption is worth it and so far they are turning out to be right. But because of Wikipedia's broad usage, people can discover things they didn't know they were looking for, like whistleblower complaints. If someone sees that I have filed a case for something they are having trouble with then they may feel empowered or inspired to file also. The EEOC and all such agencies take thousands of complaints annually. They won't notice when two people have matching complaints, but if I saw that other person's case # on Wikipedia I could call my investigator and inform them of the matching complaint and I wouldn't be the only one anymore.

I don't need advice on where and how to whistleblow. I have filed with every proper agency: the employers grievance office, the state's grievance office, the federal grievance office, and finally in court. All have been corrupt and dismissive. It's easy for them to be. The employer's office refused to investigate. Later they were compelled to investigate and when they couldn't reach a person I made accusations against they denied any wrongdoing on her behalf. The state agency accepted this ridiculous internal investigation. The feds started an investigation, but stopped as soon as they received a pretense and would not allow me to counter the pretense, seriously would not even hear the arguments and said the decision was final no matter what I said. The court ruled that I don't get a trial because according to the court the employer did a better job of proving their side, even though this is an illegal decision for a court to make without a trial.

It is easy for an agency to dismiss complaints without investigation or to conduct an empty investigation and insure that one side wins. It's was easy for the judge to illegally dismiss my case without trial. (But I am filing appeals now). It is imperative that people be able to pool information and have a more informed basis for challenging things like this. Whistleblower webpages cannot achieve this. The message boards already involved in this kind of thing are not achieving this. Wikipedia probably can.

How about separate whistleblower pages linked to the main pages, where contributors must at least post case #'s, but don't need full factual verification? This would prevent lots of random complaining though it would also cut out some people who never got a case number for their legitimate complaint because it was refused for investigation.Watchtower25 (talk) 15:46, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

No. Find another soapbox. Wikipedia is never going to change from being an encyclopedia to being a whistleblower website, and no Wikipedia page will ever be allowed that "doesn't need full factual verification." --Guy Macon (talk) 19:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

It is important to remember that Wikipedia is not the only wiki on the Internet, just the most well known. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is very much not an appropriate place for publishing whistleblower materials. Not only would such material be unverifiable, and thus violate one of our core content rules, but we also have no mechanisms to protect the identity of a whistleblower. There are other sites and other wikis that may provide what you are looking for. WikiLeaks (which has no connection to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation) may have what you need. Or you might also consider going to the press, as some large news organizations have secure online dropboxes for whistleblowing purposes. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a news organization. We only provide information that has been written by others in existing sources. Novusuna ^talk 22:05, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

OTRS

After a lengthy discussion here: [2] concerning the role of OTRS agents, and in particular how potentially WP:COI edits are approached, DGG offered the following summary:

"MrBill3 asked me to comment--so, to expand a little on what I said yesterday at Wikipedia talk:Volunteer Response Team:

I don't think we are finished until the policy statements at WP:Volunteer Response Team and elsewhere have been revised. Even if they were intended properly, they make much greater g=claims of privileged editing than supported by the fundamental policy of the nature of WP as a user-contributed encyclopedia. Several issues have been confused:

(1) The actual quality of the edits that gave rise to this discussion. In general , I support the edits. They did mostly serve to remove a rather blatant bias. Whether they went to far in the opposite direction is for the article talk page.

(2) The attempt to use OTRS authority in making the edits. This was totally unnecessary and inappropriate. They used no confidential information. There was nothing there that could not and should not have been openly addressed. If agreement could not be reached on the article talk page, then the further ordinary on-wiki steps were available.

(3) As an OTRS agent, I've seen the communication there that gave rise to the edit. It is a COI communication from a paid public relations agent, and, as is often the case even with justified complaints, claims altogether too much, and should not have been taken at face value. To do so implies a non-critical approach and an unawareness of the actual situation. The job of OTRS is to filter and mediate complaints, not necessarily to resolve them. Sometimes a necessary edit is so obvious it can be made without prior negotiation. This was not one such an instance.

(4) In a situation like this, I consider it to have been poor practice within the existing parameters of OTRS to proceed immediately from such a complaint to make an edit--the better course would first to have discussed the problem with the complainant, to clarify what would and would not be possible within WP editing policy. After that, in a case such as this , the ORTS agent would have had the choice between making what they consider the appropriate edit, while saying they were doing it on the basis of an outside request (we must indicate when we edit on behalf of another) but not claiming any special authority other than that of trying to assist a situation, or of referring the complainant to the article talk page for discussion, or of posting appropriate portions or paraphrases of the hopefully revised complaint there themselves, explaining what they were doing. The OTRS agent was illegitimately attempting to bypass normal editing is correct--even if the edits were desirable.

(5) This situation was not unique: other OTRS agents have done similarly. They should not be doing it in such situations. They have in disputed situations like this no special powers whatsoever, and an attempt to claim it is an attempt to claim super-editor, a privilege that does not exist in WP. (There is a privilege to suppress material or to block vested in every administrator but subject to the review of every other administrator and discussion on-wiki, and in some cases supervision by arbcom; and the right of WP:LEGAL or the oversight team to make a suppression or a block that cannot be reversed by an admin or ANI in the usual way, but which there is an existing review mechanism).

(6) The unique ability of an OTRS agent is the access to private information. Nothing further.

(7) Problems from this will continue to arise. The OTRS policy pages must be revised to indicate that all changes other than those that are specifically stated to be based on private information are subject entirely to the normal editorial processes. Complaints about OTRS agents overstepping their authority or making errors should probably normally be handled within OTRS by an appropriate procedure , but there remains a right of anyone to deal with them directly on-wiki as for any other actions or any other editor. The current special dispute resolution procedure is only indicated for ones that are specifically stated to be based on confidential but verified communications,and it must be so indicated.

(8) Assurances that this is all being dealt will will be justified when they have been dealt with. The responsibility for training and supervising OTRS is the joint responsibility of the Foundation and the community. The Foundation does have the responsibility to grant or withhold OTRS access, as for everything requiring access to identifying information; I assume that they would not refuse an on-wiki request that such access be removed, but the community does retain the power to block anyone. Legitimate power in a complex organization is based on a systems of balancing and overlapping authority."

It was generally agreed subsequently that discussion should continue elsewhere.

A suggested opening point for discussion was:

"We need a section with two subsections which clearly describe the delimitations of the OTRS system. There should be two lists (not prose):

A. What OTRS volunteers can do for you

1. If you don't understand the editing process or Wikipedia policies and need help assistance , they can give you pointers advice. They will tell you dispassionately and honestly what can and cannot be properly done at Wikipedia.
2. They will attempt to address any privacy concerns you may have, and assist in protecting your privacy to the extent permissible.
3. If you feel that you or your organization have been libeled or treated unfairly, they will see if anything needs to be done and can be done. They will follow the normal manner of dealing with information covered by our Biographies of living persons (BLP) policy.
4. They will ask you to provide any reliable sources which can be used to back up and justify any changes. Your word alone is what we call "original research" and cannot be used to justify changing any content.
5. They will advise warn you about not making legal threats or personal attacks, and advise you that getting too aggressive, whether here at Wikipedia or in the real world, can create a Streisand effect. Tread lightly and be patient.
6. In some cases they may choose to make or suggest edits for you , but will usually advise you how to request them or make them yourselves. If they do make or suggest edits, they will identify that they are doing it on the basis of a request.
7. or More suggestions.....

B. What OTRS volunteers will not do for you

1. Volunteers have no more rights than any other Wikipedia editor, so they cannot be used to strong arm over-ride the reasoned opposition of other editors. They cannot force other editors to do anything, and they will discuss the matter with other editors. This is a process of give and take, and patience is required. Many situations are best solved by compromise
2. The OTRS system is not a means to circumvent normal Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Volunteers will use the normal collaborative editing processes while dealing with your request.
3. Volunteers will not violate any policies for you. If what you disclose or what they see for themselves leads them to conclude that policies have been violated, they will try to correct the situation.
4. You may have a conflict of interest (COI), and thus your concerns will be dealt with in the same manner as anyone else who has a COI. Volunteers will not automatically take your side: they will not insert advertising; and will never force your preferred version of content into an article, nor will they and will not delete negative content which is properly sourced and of appropriate weight.
5. More suggestions.....

That section (possibly as a template) should be placed on at least these two places:

• Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team
• OTRS

Please feel free to suggest other points and alternate wordings. -- Brangifer (talk) 16:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC)"

Since the feeling at ANI was that discussion would benefit from wider community input, I'm opening this discussion here. I'll leave it to other editors to decide how this should proceed, although the feeling at ANI seemed to lean towards this being a widely advertised RFC. Begoon ^talk 00:45, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I've made a few strike-outs , and added some substitutions or additions in italics. They're based upon what I understand to be the best current practices, and to address the concerns that people are likely to have. I myself deal with only a limited range of situations, so there are undoubtedly other things to include. DGG ( talk ) 05:42, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Those are definitely improvements. Thanks! -- Brangifer (talk) 06:09, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I support these proposed changes. The version as modified by DGG seems quite clear and this provides needed clarity on important policy. - - MrBill3 (talk) 07:21, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi BullRangifer, I just stumbled upon this discussion as it was mentioned on the OTRS team's IRC channel and thought that maybe I can give an outsider's perspective to the issue; feel free to ignore :), it's just that I've been involved in similar discussions on other Wikis in the past. I think the points you make in that list are mostly perfectly valid; thanks for that! I just feel that it's not addressed at the right people. Speaking with my OTRS volunteer hat on, let me say that we already have huge difficulty explaining people even which address to send their request to (I'm sure DGG can confirm that). So I'm a bit concerned that overwhelming them with ever more information makes all these things even worse. From my impression, most people who write to the info address just don't understand how Wikipedia works -- either they do not know where they should put their question or they deliberately want to save time and just write an email. They may have questions, they may have suggestions, they may have concerns. If you give them such a long list of do's and dont's before they send their email, that will just add to the confusion. And it doesn't really fit the friendly environment we're trying to create: Imagine you want to help Wikipedia and suggest a change to an article, but don't know how Wikipedia works. We should be happy that you drop us an email about that! In my opinion it's a bad idea to give you the email address only accompanied by a huge list of "BUT"s; if I were a newbie, I'd have the impression that someone is trying whatever they can to distract people from sending emails -- and that, in my opinion, is certainly not the environment we want.
I think the people you should address this to are the OTRS agents. (The very fact that you're considering this a policy is quite indicative of that: We don't want to set policies for the general public that would like to send us an email, do we?) Agents must be able to process requests in accordance with Wikipedia policies. If a request cannot be fulfilled because that would be in conflict with Wikipedia policy, you'd expect the agent to communicate that to the requestor. For me, the right approach is to tell the agents what to do and not to do, rather then tell the public what to ask and not to ask -- people should feel free to ask us anything really. So what about re-wording your suggestion in this spirit and thinking about a good way to make all info-en agents aware of it? Wouldn't that be a better way to achieve your (completely understandable) goal of avoiding problematic "OTRS edits" in future (or at least one without downsides)? Cheers, — Pajz (talk) 12:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pajz. Thanks so much for your comments and insights. To start with, I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. What's above Begoon's comment was moved by Begoon here from ANI, where a discussion has been running for some time. We thought a different venue might be appropriate, possibly an RfC (which hasn't happened yet), and he thought that this might be a good place, so I said "go for it". Maybe it's a good place, maybe not, but there is no intention to actually create some new policy. What we need is wider input, and input from OTRS volunteers is very welcome.

We just need a basic list on those two places listed above which makes it clear what OTRS is for and what it's not for. That's all. It's just as much for Wikipedia editors and OTRS volunteers, as it is for the public, maybe more so. We've got to stop these occurrences where misuse of OTRS causes problems. The discussions we've been having have shown that the assurances from a couple OTRS administrators(?) that "we're dealing with this internally" have been rejected as insufficient. We (editors and others) need to have it spelled out very clearly in list form, so if you have any suggestions for tweaks, they would be very welcome. Some of the problems which get mentioned are more for the frequent requests from COI parties who wish to misuse Wikipedia. They may not realize that that is what they are doing, but that's what's happening, and sometimes OTRS volunteers have unwittingly acquiesced and it has caused problems. Those people/organizations need to be disavowed of that possibility. Maybe it could be worded more gently. Please help with that. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I wasn't sure of the best "pump" to put this on, but based on the opening post above I don't think we are finished until the policy statements at WP:Volunteer Response Team and elsewhere have been revised., I figured this might be the place. I was assuming that once we'd agreed on the proposed wording, that would be the time to reframe it into a clear RFC question, and add an RFC tag etc. Begoon ^talk 16:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

It was my intention in writing what I did to propose policy; I agree that it is more a policy addressed to the OTRS agents (and the wikipedians) than to the general public. To the extent it's worded as being addressed to the general public, what I had in mind was a statement that the OTRS agents can use to explain to the people who write to them, explaining their expectations and limitations. But the phrasing can easily be altered, by being written in the third person, not the second. I'll do it later today. Where I suggest it would go is on the Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team page.

I think it needs to be complemented by a complete and radical revision of the policy for how to challenge an OTRS edit at Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team section 4.1, to indicate that the proper place to complain about an OTRS edit not based on confidential information is on the talk page of the article, and the existing method there is a backup for special circumstances where that would be unsatisfactory. I'm going to propose a wording here also for use there.

I think this is better developed at a common area, not a specialized talk page, but it doesn't matter all that much, as long as it's done in one place. Adopting it probably would need a RfC, unless by some chance there is general agreement.

I did not plan to get involved in this. I am not among the most active OTRS agents. Until very recently, I worked only on complaints regarding schools and colleges, where I could use my particular experience. But as I have over the last year or so been increasingly working on-wiki with COI editors,I came to realize that here too I had experience with our practices I could use there. As I've been observing the work of other agents, I see a great range in approach, from the inappropriate use of merely the official templated responses (it would be good to have these stock responses public on-wiki for general criticism--there's nothing confidential about them) to an overly activist approach. I've talked with some of the most active OTRS agents whom I most respect, and they have each developed their own balance here, a little different but pretty much in agreement--as would be hoped for and expected. I base my work on what I see of theirs. I am also aware of the great temptation for anyone working with COI editors or correspondents to adopt a non-neutral POV, which can equally likely be hostility to anything they suggest, or the complete adoption of their outside POV. (Generalizing further, there is no such thing as a truly neutral editor on any thing controversial--no one can look at a controversy without internally taking sides. One can avoid expressing the POV by relying on technicalities, but one can not be neutral if it is necessary to balance the issues. As a consequence, many of our rules focus on technicalities, as do legal or quasi-legal codes generally. The results are often pretty inappropriate. But the only way to keep erratic decisions in check is to have some rules, and some manner of applying and enforcing them. )

Normally, I think the operation of the enWP should be as autonomous as we can handle. OTRS (and oversight and of course Legal) is to some extent an exception,because it deals with matters that the Foundation must ultimately take responsibility for. They need to be involved in this too. It's a coincidence that the particular matter giving rise to this has been noticed a the same time the WMF is also taking action. They have sometimes had a critical role in doing things that for some reason or other are stalemated or avoided on the enWP, and it is therefore good that we are not altogether autonomous. DGG ( talk ) 16:45, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Brangifer, thanks for your reply. The point where our opinions seem to differ is when it comes to discouraging people/organizations from making such inquries. I think this is the wrong approach. You are talking about a very small subset of tickets we receive, namely article complaints that contain requests for highly controversial edits on Wikipedia. I'm saying that putting such a huge list of instructions on a central help page tends to discourage members of the far larger group of other people from emailing OTRS (last year, info-en volunteers dealt with about 30,000 tickets). It's like adding a huge disclaimer to the Teahouse ("Questions that volunteers will answer, what they will tell you, and what volunteers won't do" -- would you really feel as comfortable asking your newbie question after reading this [or even answer it]? I wouldn't.). On the other hand, most people with controversial requests have no clue (and don't care at all) whether something violates Wikipedia policy or not. They are angry and just want us to comply with their requests (from my impression, the majority of these is along the lines of "The article is about me, so it's my decision what should be there"). Would a large "What OTRS volunteers can(not) do for you" list stop them from emailing us? That seems far-fetched.
I think one also needs to see that these matters are extremely clear policy-wise. Everybody editing enwiki is subject to enwiki policies. There is no basis for the assumption that OTRS volunteers stand above enwiki policies. So whatever you're putting on that page to discourage illegitimate edits, it's nothing new, it just serves to clarify something that is obvious from the existing policies (WP:Volunteer response team also has a reminder: "Team members must abide by the policies and guidelines of the individual wikis when carrying out tasks on those wikis related to requests received via the OTRS system"). If you see that your policies have been violated, I think the proper reaction is a) to hold the user accountable who violated the policies (no matter if it's an anonymous editor or an OTRS volunteer), and, if you deem it necessary, b) turn to the OTRS admins and point them to the user's behavior. Of course, the OTRS admins have no say over what the Wikipedia community should do (it's not a substitute for on-wiki deliberations), but they will exert additional pressure on a problematic user to make sure this won't happen again. (It stands to reason that someone who consistently violates Wikipedia policy should not have access to OTRS.)
So if your view is that "We've got to stop these occurrences where misuse of OTRS causes problems" (that's mine as well), it would make sense to me to remind(!) OTRS people that they are bound by project policies -- that's nothing new, after all. And this could indeed be done in the form of "dos and don'ts". I'd be happy to help drafting such a list (the result could be a note that is then distributed to all info-en volunteers), but I fail to see the point of this particular approach, namely overloading the OTRS information pages on Wikipedia with information that's actually intended for OTRS volunteers (and that is also not needed for taking action against misbehaving agents because the rules are already there). We need to look for ways to make sure that people abide by the rules. Just my two cents, not sure we can find common ground on this :). — Pajz (talk) 18:50, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I think a clear, prominent and explicit policy stating that when driven/suggested/inspired/suggested by a party with a COI an edit by an OTRS team member MUST be disclosed as a COI edit on the talk page of the article edited. I think this is fundamental to preserving the integrity of English Wikipedia and to maintaining a good faith relationship with the OTRS team among the community. Vague indications that policy must be followed do not seem to have resulted in actually following the COI guideline in editing by the OTRS team. - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:14, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. This seems to be at the heart of some of the problems we keep witnessing. Edits made by OTRS volunteers are by nature COI edits, and are thus proxy/meat puppetry for people/organizations who naturally will tend to pull content away from NPOV. That some OTRS volunteers don't understand this is very alarming. The way to stop this is to make it very explicit, in writing, for all to see. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:31, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

We need to exempt obvious vandalism from this. I for one don't want to have to spend time explaining on a talk page that I've reverted vandalism because of an OTRS report by the subject of the article - obvious vandalism should be reverted no matter who reports it or who. I'm happy with the rest of this and I've always realised that when editing because of an OTRS report I still need to follow guidelines and policies. Dougweller (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely. The point isn't to impose extra requirements on OTRS edits, rather to emphasise that such edits are no different to regular edits, and carry no more authority. The concern is allusion to "authority" where none exists. On the odd occasion there's a genuine privacy issue preventing open discussion, that could easily be transparently explained. There seem to have been too many recent incidents where "OTRS edit - Secret Squirrel - I know important stuff you don't, so don't revert my very important action without consulting me" has been inappropriately invoked. I think that's what this seeks to address. Begoon ^talk 15:34, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. That's the gist of the issue here. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:50, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the issue of assertion of authority was limited (perhaps to one or two editors) and believe, despite some opacity and hand waving, that this concern is being handled by OTRS admin. In my opinion the remaining issue is the need for clarity that OTRS team member edits must adhere to PAG, in particular COI. I think policy is clear that vandalism, BLP issues and privacy concerns are priority edits that can be made expeditiously and forcefully by any editor (and assistance from WP admins sought as needed, including privately) and don't necessarily require talk page discussion.

The issue of COI driven editing is what I see as an extremely important remaining concern. I think edits (outside those mentioned above) that are based on input from a party with a COI should be disclosed as such on talk. I think this is policy and there has been and continues to be a pattern of not following this policy by OTRS team members. This should be addressed through clear, prominent written policy in the OTRS pages that the COI guideline applies and must be followed.

To propose an example that may illustrate a grey area and draw input; if a COI editor (not OTRS agent) were to remove unsourced content from an article, wouldn't policy require that that editor disclose their COI when making the edit? What about an OTRS team member acting based on correspondence from a COI party? In my interpretation of policy both instances would require disclosure of COI. - - MrBill3 (talk) 02:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Is saying a fact is trivial as basis for exclusion a POV edit?

Say for example a dispute between editors occurs where one says a fact is trivial and should be excluded, and the other says it is not and should be included. And say, for the sake of example, it's a close call and it is not blatantly obvious whether it is trivia or not.

Are not those judgments of triviality or non-triviality points of view? And are those editors, by advocating or opposing inclusion based on their subjective opinion of whether it is trivial or not, thus pushing their POV and making POV edits? Marteau (talk) 10:16, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

What arguments are they making? For example, if they are arguing from sourced evidence (or lack of, or unsuitability of the source) then they are deducing their conclusion (and most importantly others can evaluate their arguments), but if they present statements that others cannot evaluate (the prototypical "I like") it's of little use. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

From sourced evidence. In the process of determining if a fact has enough weight to not be considered trivia, a dividing line must be drawn. The process of determining where to draw that line and whether a specific example falls over or under that line has to be considered an individual editor's opinion (aka "point of view"). Does Wikipedia policy really posit that the triviality of a thing can be determined objectively, and does not require subjective opinions (aka points of view)? Marteau (talk) 11:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Generally Wikipedia posits that triviality, like other content decisions should be evaluated by the strength of the sources and the treatment in them, not by bare editor opinion. So, for example, if there are several high quality sources that discuss the matter in depth in relation to the subject, one has a better case to actually show others (and the world) it is due (a caveat is that the context and material matters, see eg WP:BLP). Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:10, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Pushing a nontroversy is POV editing. --NE2 10:43, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

"Pushing"... of course. But documenting that a "nontroversy" (aka a "manufactured controversy") did in fact occur and did then have effects which then did become notable down the line and reported by reliable sources is a different matter. Just because the genesis of a thing was corrupt does not mean that mention of the products of and results of that corruption and the events that followed should be squelched. Marteau (talk) 11:01, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Anytime there is a discussion about whether something belongs in an a article the editors on either side are pushing their POV. The whole blowup about Chelsea vs Bradley Manning, each side was pushing their POV. Everything would be so simple if it was cut and dried as to what belongs in an article, but it is not. Everyone has their POV, sometimes it is simple to determine if something belongs other times, hard. As long as the article remains neutral, that is what matters. GB fan 10:57, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

That was my understanding, and it seemed obvious to me, although not documented. All I could find was "POV baaaaad". It would be nice if I could find a guideline, essay or policy that says that. Marteau (talk) 11:03, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Offhand no. But it really depends on what content is in dispute. —Farix (t | c) 11:21, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, this is a pure content dispute, not a policy issue. In my opinion, Marteau should go to Wikipedia:Dispute resolution requests and select an appropriate venue for resolving the dispute. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Speaking in general terms, it is no more a "POV edit" than the original edit that added such material. If you want opinions on a specific example, please present it here, or as Guy Macon suggests, at a dispute resolution noticeboard. Resolute 19:33, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for your input. I sought only advice on policy itself for a reason, because it was that which I was wanting to know, and was not seeking input on a specific case here. But for anyone who is interested, the case that caused me to wonder about these policies is Neil deGrasse Tyson's misquoting George W. Bush . Fair warning: the dispute is heated, and the talk page is immense, and the "triviality" issue is just one of many, many issues being discussed there. Marteau (talk) 02:34, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Is close paraphrasing acceptable?

I recently attempted to add some material to WP:PLAGARISM, to reflect the prevailing position of academia that close paraphrasing is in fact a form of plagiarism. However, Flyer22 reverted my changes. I also attempted to improve the essay, Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing, but that too was reverted, first by Flyer22 and then by Dr.K. While there are many other points I want to add, the most important is this:

N Close paraphrasing with a well-placed citation and in-text attribution, but without quotation marks enclosing the author's distinctive words or phrases

• Closely paraphrasing a cited source with in-line attribution, but appropriating verbatim words or phrases that are creative or distinct without enclosing them in quotation marks is a form of plagiarism.

• Paraphrasing is defined as an expression of source material that uses different words than the author. When appropriating verbatim text fragments, all distinctive words or phrases must be enclosed in quotation marks.

I feel that my contributions are absolutely in keeping with the advice offered by major colleges and universities, but I'm not sure that the guideline, as currently written, represents the position of the academic world regarding close paraphrasing and plagiarism:

• Per Wikilegal/Close Paraphrasing, Question: "Is close paraphrasing of a copyrighted work a copyright infringement?" Answer: "Yes. Among other rights, copyright law grants a copyright owner exclusive control over any unauthorized copying of the copyrighted work.[1] Paraphrasing may be construed as copying if it is 'substantially similar' to the copyrighted material. Such paraphrasing infringes on one of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner."

I respect Flyer22's decision to revert, and I accept that changing a core content policy requires a broader community involvement. However, I would like our guideline to accurately reflect that close paraphrasing is plagiarism, not an acceptable form of lesser paraphrasing that passes in featured articles as brilliant prose. I look forward to everyone's input. Rationalobserver (talk) 18:03, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Add the WP:RfC tag to the above post so that you can actually get comments from the wider Wikipedia community, or I will. And for others, here is a fuller discussion that Rationalobserver and I had at my talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and I just now realized that you brought this to Wikipedia:Village pump, as I suggested (I didn't immediately notice because I clicked on the ping via WP:Echo and assumed you were commenting at the WP:Plagiarism talk page), so a WP:RfC might not be needed. Flyer22 (talk) 18:08, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

And take note that I also reverted Rationalobserver at the WP:Intext-attribution section of the WP:Citing sources guideline; I told him clearly at my talk page, among other things, "We don't automatically base Wikipedia policies and guidelines on what academia states, and certainly not on what a lone Wikipedia editor believes is the consensus among academics (no matter if that Wikipedia editor is an expert or not an expert). ... I don't believe that use of a single 'distinctive' word, for example, should automatically be called plagiarism simply because the copyrighted source has used that same 'distinctive' word. Not generally anyway. And neither has the Wikipedia community generally felt that way, which is why it has stated for some time now that close paraphrasing is sometimes unavoidable and that WP:Intext-attribution without quotes can be fine when using minor phrasing from a source. I'm not stating that I'm disagreeing with all of your views on plagiarism or WP:Plagiarism; I'm simply stating that I'm not in complete agreement with you, and that this should be discussed among the wider Wikipedia community. I don't think that it's a matter that should only involve you and me or a few editors." Flyer22 (talk) 18:17, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'll note at the WP:Plagiarism talk page, the WP:Close paraphrasing talk page, the WP:Copyright violation talk page and the WP:Citing sources talk page that this discussion is taking place. As can be seen above, Rationalobserver has started a WP:RfC on this matter. Flyer22 (talk) 19:14, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I alerted the aforementioned pages, as seen here, here, here and here. And Rationalobserver followed suit, alerting more pages, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. He might alert more, but, if he does, those will go without being noted by me here. Flyer22 (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Rationalobserver, you have the wrong Dr.K. linked above, so that needs fixing; he will obviously be pinged via WP:Echo with this post by me, however. Flyer22 (talk) 20:26, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Off-topic discussion

Thank you Flyer for the ping. I have to note that it would be helpful if Rationalobserver further clarified that I reverted him/her due to the fact that s/he was changing the page at the same time as they were quoting it at an FA review. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC) Dr.K, you have that wrong. I never quoted the close paraphrasing essay at FAC. The only thing I quoted was WP:PLAGIARISM, and I only quoted that which was already there before I made any changes, which was: "Note: even with in-text attribution, distinctive words or phrases may require quotation marks." Rationalobserver (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2014 (UTC) @Rationalobserver: You opened a section titled Dan56 and close paraphrasing on the 29th of September and then went to change the WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASING page. These are the facts. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC) Right, and I never denied either of those points, but above you said: "I reverted him/her due to the fact that s/he was changing the page at the same time as they were quoting it at an FA review", but I never quoted that essay anywhere, so you have your "facts" confused. Rationalobserver (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2014 (UTC) @Rationalobserver: Opening a section titled Dan56 and close paraphrasing is quoting "close paraphrasing" by name. No confusion on my part. If you actually "quoted" or not part of the essay, I did not check, but I didn't have to. The fact remains you cannot change essays at the same time as you are using their concepts in arguments. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:58, 1 October 2014 (UTC) Okay, I have already agreed in principle that doing so was a bad idea. What do you want, an apology? You reverted several hours of my work, and there is no need to compound that insult by dragging this up here, as it's decidedly off-topic. Do you have an opinion on this issue, or do you just want to bother me? Rationalobserver (talk) 21:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC) So when I reply to your comments which suggested I was confused attempting in good faith to clarify the issues involved you reply with personal attacks that "I want to bother you" or that "I want an apology". I think it is high time you consulted the no-personal comments policy and WP:AGF. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 21:17, 1 October 2014 (UTC) Look, I agreed with Flyer22 that it was a bad idea to edit that page during a dispute, and there is no need to digress here. Sorry for the snarky comments, but IMO, you are beating a dead horse. I get it, you reverted my edits not because you think the content was inaccurate, but out of principle that because I used the phrase close paraphrasing during an FA review that I ought not edit that essay during the review. I understand, can we move on now? Rationalobserver (talk) 21:23, 1 October 2014 (UTC) Your replies have some snarky comment or other. Please don't do that. I am not beating anything, you are trying to "beat" my arguments. My arguments were not "off-topic" because you quoted my reversion without mentioning its reason, which was not the same as Flyer22's. I think the context of my reversion is important. You can move on, obviously, I never held you up. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 21:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Arb break

It's my belief that the bit that says, "close paraphrasing is sometimes unavoidable", pertains only to generic, uncreative expressions of common knowledge; e.g., George Washington was the first US president. This is not meant to apply to creative writing, such as: George Washington was a powerful leader who made astute observations regarding the administration of a nation. To say that close paraphrasing is "acceptable and even unavoidable" means that sometimes the content cannot be accurately paraphrased because it lacks creativity. This should never have been applied to creative expressions that certainly can be paraphrased. Further, "acceptable and even unavoidable" has been Wikilawyered into a get out of jail free card for any editors incapable or unwilling to make the effort to present a proper paraphrase. I would also like to point out that, as far as I can tell, there is no definition of what proper paraphrasing is, only a half-hearted essay that at once recommends avoiding close paraphrases while also apparently excusing them. I.e., why is there an essay on close paraphrasing but not fair paraphrasing? Rationalobserver (talk) 18:26, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Avoiding plagiarism currently contains these suggestions:

Y No quotation marks, in-text attribution

• Indirect speech—copying a source's words without quotation marks; this also requires in-text attribution and an inline citation. For example:

• John Smith wrote in The Times that Cottage Cheese for Beginners was the most boring book he had ever read.

• Note: even with in-text attribution, distinctive words or phrases may require quotation marks.

Y Close paraphrasing and in-text attribution

• Close paraphrasing: Sometimes close paraphrasing is appropriate or even unavoidable. Add in-text attribution so that the reader knows you are relying on someone else's words or flow of thought.

• John Smith wrote in The Times that Cottage Cheese for Beginners was a really boring read.

It's odd to me that the note applies to No quotation marks, in-text attribution, but not Close paraphrasing and in-text attribution, as their working definitions seem to be essentially the same. I also assert that there is no such thing as appropriate "copying" outside quotation marks, except when dealing with free material or material that lacks creative expression. Rationalobserver (talk) 18:39, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

• Even if the work is in the public domain, attribution is necessary. However, we are completely free to copy lengthy public domain materials and use them as we wish. The attribution requirement is internal, not mandated by copyright law. bd2412 T 20:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree, but this RfC pertains specifically to closely paraphrased non-free sources. Rationalobserver (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

(WP:THREAD) From my WWW search for plagiarism paraphrasing, I found many results, including the following.

• Avoiding Plagiarism: Quoting and Paraphrasing

I do not wish to delve into the details of this discussion, but I recommend that participants examine this search result and other search results.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:46, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree 100% with the source that you have provided above. In fact, it states my position rather eloquently. Rationalobserver (talk) 20:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

copyright requires distinctive words and these are rather uncommon in factual writing (as opposed to poetry or fiction or clever first hand accounts). To show a violation you have to prove that the originating source in fact used clearly distinctive language for the very first time and did not take anything from published sources. That can be hard to do. Rjensen (talk) 20:59, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that in order to qualify for copyright protection one must prove that their work didn't take anything from someone else? As in, "prove the source material isn't also plagiarized, or you can't call a close paraphrase of it plagiarism"? If I copied from Steven Ambrose, it would not matter if he had in fact stolen that material. You can absolutely plagiarize a plagiarism. Also, distinctive does not imply uncommon; e.g., George Washington was a magnificent leader. The word magnificent is distinctive here, and it does not matter if it's a common or uncommon word. Rationalobserver (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Rjensen, per this comment: "copyright requires distinctive words and these are rather uncommon in factual writing", I have to call foul, because distinctive words are encountered regularly by editors who contribute to articles about art, movies, music, film, etcetera. I.e., summarizing any topic that justifies critical reception will involve dealing with distinctive words and phrases. In fact, many historians are pretty creative as well. Rationalobserver (talk) 21:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Rjensen, I think Feist v. Rural is relevant here: "To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author.... Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.///. To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be.... Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works, so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying." (See [3], citations omitted.) There is no requirement to show that you are using distinctive language for the very first time to establish copyright. Most non-fiction easily qualifies for copyright protection due to the extremely low requirement for creativity, even if they closely resemble other works. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:43, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I think that this conversation is becoming confused.

1. Lets keep the issue to "close paraphrasing" to the paraphrasing copyright works.
2. Both close paraphrasing and quotations can be a breach of copyright it depends on the amount of text copied. So neither is a cure-all.

-- PBS (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I personally am against close paraphrasing on Wikipedia because it is not the bright-line that enclosing something as a quotation is. I hold this position for two reasons.

1. With a quote another editor can judge if the amount of text is likely to breach copyright even if that other editor does not have access to the original source. With close paraphrasing, unless one has access to the source it is much more difficult to tell. In the past editors have left the project because it turns out that what they thought was acceptable [paraphrasing/summary of a single source] turned out to be a breach of copyright.
2. The use of close paraphrasing is misleading for the reader of the text being paraphrased. Using an example I have used before (here): "Sir Robert Armstrong said he told the truth" is a summary of "Sir Robert Armstrong said he was 'economical with the truth'", close paraphrasing can easily misrepresent what was in the original source. For experienced word-smiths this is not a problem but Wikipedia has may editors who are not experienced word-smiths and so I think that as editorial advise close paraphrasing ought to be discouraged and summaries and quotes used in its place.

-- PBS (talk) 21:16, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Those are some fine points, PBS, and I agree with you. The weird thing is, the essay already sort of discourages close paraphrasing: "This page in a nutshell: Summarize in your own words, instead of closely paraphrasing. Closely paraphrased material that infringes on the copyright of its source material should be rewritten or deleted to avoid infringement, and to ensure that it complies with Wikipedia policy." Also, WP:PLAGIARISM already includes this note: "even with in-text attribution, distinctive words or phrases may require quotation marks", but I cannot understand why this would not apply to close paraphrasing, or why the guideline implies that one can quote without using quotation marks ("copying a source's words without quotation marks"), which is something that I have never seen described as acceptable, except when dealing with free material or material that lacks creative expression. I do not see any justification for implying that editors can copy/quote creative non-free material without using quotation marks. Plagiarism of copyrighted works is illegal, so I am rather aghast that any Wikipedians think that a local consensus can trump what Wikilegal decrees. Rationalobserver (talk) 21:35, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

First, I think that apt phrases should be in quotation marks. But there's a difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Plagiarism is a social construct; copyright is a legal one. One may plagiarize without infringing copyright (if the taking is not substantial, for instance), and one may infringe copyright without plagiarism (attribution does not substitute for permission). I think it's really important to keep the concepts straight and separated. :) When it comes to copyright, our rules are far more rigid and defined by WP:C, WP:NFC and wmf:Terms of Use. When it comes to plagiarism that does not also infringe copyright, we are free to adopt and set our own standards, though if we throw away the ones used in the wider world, it's not likely to reflect well on us. I learned in helping to get the plagiarism guideline in place to begin with that there is legitimate room for disagreement on what plagiarism standards should apply to us. Some feel that as an encyclopedia, there is no expectation of originality on Wikipedia and that the plagiarism standards of academia are not the best fit. I've chosen to focus mostly on copyright. All that said, the guideline is not supposed to suggest that you can copy verbatim text from copyrighted sources without quotation marks; if it does, it is at deviance with policy: "Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author, and specifically indicated as direct quotations via quotation marks, <blockquote>, or a similar method." Currently, Wikipedia does allow you to copy from free and copy-left sources without quotation marks, although to avoid plagiarism we are supposed to acknowledge this taking. It is well within the current guideline, though, to have an article that freely mingles copying from public domain sources (including distinctive phrases) with material crafted on Wikipedia and with only a note on the bottom to indicate that some of the content is taken verbatim. Not sure if that helps at all. Oh, just one final point: Wikilegal doesn't decree for us, it only offers information. :) The disclaimer on those pages is critical. And I'm proud of Wikipedia in saying that we prohibited close paraphrasing of copyrighted content long before it was written! :D --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

That's an impressive response, thanks. Can we count on you to help guide this process? I'm sure we could correct any inconsistencies with policy, and the final result would be agreeable to most. RE: "we prohibited close paraphrasing of copyrighted content long before [Wikilegal] was written!", I'm not sure the guidelines are in agreement, as this is given as an acceptable way to avoid plagiarism:

Y Close paraphrasing and in-text attribution

• Close paraphrasing: Sometimes close paraphrasing is appropriate or even unavoidable. Add in-text attribution so that the reader knows you are relying on someone else's words or flow of thought.

• John Smith wrote in The Times that Cottage Cheese for Beginners was a really boring read.

It's not a theoretical concern, as this has recently been used to justify multiple close paraphrases. I am especially surprised by, "copying a source's words without quotation marks", which is only true of free or uncreative material, but this simple clarification has not yet been made. Am I wrong to say that this guideline currently suggests that "close paraphrasing" and "copying a source's words without quotation marks" are the same thing? Rationalobserver (talk) 01:07, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

But Wikipedia:Plagiarism doesn't solely apply to copyrighted text. With regards to copyrighted source material, Wikipedia:Plagiarism#Respecting copyright says (links omitted):

Regardless of plagiarism concerns, works under copyright that are not available under a compatible free license must comply with the copyright policy and the non-free content guideline. This means they cannot be extensively copied into Wikipedia articles. Limited amounts of text can be quoted or closely paraphrased from nonfree sources if such text is clearly indicated in the article as being the words of someone else; this can be accomplished by providing an in-text attribution, and quotation marks or block quotations as appropriate, followed by an inline citation.

WP:C and WP:NFC are both clear that verbatim content taken from non-free sources must be in the form of quotation. Limited close paraphrasing may be permissible with in-text attribution (I'm okay with the example above), but it has never been permitted extensively. The copyright policy says, "it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:17, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I think I see what you mean. Those other policies trump anything stated here, explicitly or implicitly. I think the disagreement I have with Flyer22 is that they seem to suggest that this concept only applies to phrases of multiple words and never to isolated words, but I contend that sometimes the isolated words are in fact the essence of the author's creative expression, which is what is being protected in the first place. Though freely I admit that I know nothing of the relevant laws. Rationalobserver (talk) 01:27, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the discussion of plagiarism is all mixed up. Plagiarism always involves a real person falsely obtaining real benefits for originality when it is not original. In the real world benefits are given students and speakers who sign their real name to material they write. Is any editor awarded real benefits for Wikipedia entries? I think not--in schools for example Wikipedia use is strongly frowned upon. If there is any "benefit" then I can't see how anonymous editors can pass it along to the benefit of any real person. Rjensen (talk) 01:35, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Rationalobserver, I'm no longer interested in participating in this discussion. That's why I'm going about my business, not participating in it. But I do have it on my WP:Watchlist, so there is no need to ping me to it. I did not state that "this concept only applies to phrases of multiple words and never to isolated words." I stated, "I mentioned distinctive at the WP:Plagiarism talk page and asked just how are we supposed to define that (consistently define it, at that). So I'm clear on the 'it's not every word' aspect." and "I asked you a legitimate question about applying the 'distinctive' rationale to a word, as opposed to a phrase, on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia guidelines have supported the 'distinctive phrase' aspect. And whether you want to admit it or not, or believe it or not, having Wikipedia come down on this matter regarding a lone word needs thorough discussion and input from a significant number of Wikipedia editors. I doubt that the reason that your 'distinctive word' aspect was not already there at the aforementioned pages is because Wikipedia has never had a Wikipedia editor who understands plagiarism as well as you do work on those pages."

In short, I stated that what you are trying to enforce -- consistently defining what is a distinctive word and stating that we have to put that perceived distinctive word in quotation marks because it's from a copyrighted source -- is difficult to enforce. And others above, especially Rjensen, are in agreement with that. In some cases, will putting that perceived distinctive word in quotation marks be justified? Perhaps. But because what is a distinctive word can be prone to debate, far more so than phrases that are clearly distinct from whatever sources, and because Wikipedia allows limited WP:Close paraphrasing (whether with WP:Intext-attribution or otherwise), I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of cases involving a "distinctive word" will not require quotation marks unless it's a matter where substantial WP:Close paraphrasing has ensued. But in a case where substantial WP:Close paraphrasing has ensued, the article needs cleanup in that regard anyway. Flyer22 (talk) 01:47, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Rationalobserver, policy trumps. The essay carries a tag that acknowledges this. The guideline doesn't, but it's set out at WP:RULES, specifically at WP:POLCON. :) As a general principle, US law (which governs Wikipedia) doesn't much care if you use quotation marks. Some countries have strong emphasis on moral rights; the US does not. Because findings of copyright infringement are always going to be subjective, though, I'm sure some cases have hinged on acknowledgement. Anyway, to the basics - policy requires that verbatim copying from non-free sources be marked in quotation marks. Whether that goes down to the word level is, I think, going to be a very sensitive matter, and I agree with Flyer22 that this would require some pretty heavy community support. :) While IANAL, I have done stuff with text-based copyright for a very long time, and I am aware of nothing that makes this a legal matter. It's simply a question of interpreting plagiarism, and Rjensen above illustrates exactly the kind of good faith disagreement about the standards of plagiarism that should apply that I was talking about. (A read through the archives at Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism is instructive!) The definition of what is sufficiently distinctive to merit quotation marks would probably be difficult to reach. Is misapplied, we could wind up with articles full of scare quotes, which is quite another issue. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:28, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

There are two issues here: plagiarism and copyright. I am not a lawyer, nor am I sufficiently versed in policy here. But copyright would apply for wholesale lifting of content. I am not an unskilled wordsmith by WP standards, but I find it hard to not include some distinctive phrases from the source. I try to apply in-text attribution for that, but do not always manage to do so. As far as I understand, this does not fall under copyright. I looked at this, and the "patchwork paraphrase" standard is really tough, which even allows for in-text attribution. I am not sure I would always pass that standard, and I doubt many WP articles would do either. Kingsindian ♝♚ 12:01, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

As an example of what I'm talking about, see my recent addition in the section here. It is based mostly on one source, and paraphrased mostly. I added an in-text attribution to the source earlier in the article, but I didn't do it here, though there are some distinctive phrases used. I find many such passages throughout WP. Kingsindian ♝♚ 12:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Kingsindian, that is a common misunderstanding, but it is not correct that copyright applies only to wholesale lifting of content. Under the U.S. law that governs us, copyright infringement can happen even if you do not use any of the language of your source, if you appropriate other creative elements. Close paraphrasing of your sources, unfortunately, creates a derivative work that can easily rise to the level of copyright infringement. Please see m:Wikilegal/Close Paraphrasing, which is a document that was prepared on request of the English language Wikipedia by the legal department of the Wikimedia Foundation. While their attorneys cannot advise community on legal matters, it reflects their research on the issue at the time. On English language Wikipedia, our copyright policy forbids following your sources too closely. Good-faith content additions that unfortunately follow their sources are routinely reported and cleaned at the copyright problems board and, where necessary, through contributor copyright investigations. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:18, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

@Moonriddengirl: I agree and accept that copyright does not just apply to wholesale lifting of content. That sentence was unfortunately a stray sentence I meant to delete but forgot. The issue is to what extent close paraphrasing acceptable? And when does close paraphrasing become copyright infringement? By the standards of the link I gave before, even if I had given in-text attribution to the source in the article, it would probably still qualify as close paraphrasing or "patchwork paraphrase". I am confident that most of my edits would pass the standard listed in the link, but I doubt that all would, like the example I gave. Kingsindian ♝♚ 12:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Since this is slightly off topic for the question of whether we should put words in quotation marks, let me join you in this at your talk page. :) I'll be right there. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Arb break 2

Because much of this discussion hinges on whether distinct words ought to be enclosed in quotation marks, I've written the following example to demonstrate what I mean.

Source material:

John Smith was coal miner, and by all accounts he was a prodigious worker, but his peers also described him as obtuse and unwilling to commit to even the smallest compromise.

Fair paraphrase: Scholars have praised John Smith's work ethic, while noting his reputation for driving a hard bargain.

Close paraphrase: Scholars have described John Smith's work history as prodigious and his personality as obtuse.

Fair paraphrase with quotation marks enclosing distinctive words or phrases: Scholars have described John Smith's work history as "prodigious" and his personality as "obtuse".

In this example one is required to place the distinctive words in quotation marks, otherwise it's plagiarism, and there is no such exemption because the isolated words are not part of a longer text string. The author's original creative expression relies heavily on these two words, hence the requirement to place them in quotation marks when appropriating them. Further, if an editor merely replaced these two words with synonyms they would still be guilty of plagiarism:

Scholars have described John Smith's work history as colossal and his personality as uncomprehending.

The emphasis on the difficulty in determining what is distinctive, and using that issue as an excuse to allow close paraphrasing is misguided. If one cannot identify the distinctive words from a piece of source material then one does not have the necessary paraphrasing skills. It's really that simple, and I think anyone who wants to set the bar lower so as to allow for close paraphrasing is hedging their bets in the wrong direction. Also, editors are already attempting to identify distinctive words and phrases when they paraphrase, or they are all plagiarizing, so I fail to see how this increases the difficulty of fair paraphrasing. I.e., if an editor cannot identify the distinctive words from source material then they have no business paraphrasing, and they should find another way to contribute to Wikipedia, because their contributions are unethical. A piece of source material is only legitimately exempt from paraphrasing when it's generic, not when it's so creative that it defies summary, which in that case would require quotation marks. This is not complicated: fair paraphrasing is expressing a source with your own words, so whenever you use the same words as the author, they either need to be generic or enclosed in quotes, regardless of the number of consecutive words appropriated from the source material. This is undoubtedly the position of academia, the only thing we should be concerned with here is whether or not we want an academic standard, or a standard that essentially excuses unethical editing. Rationalobserver (talk) 16:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Rationalobserver, I personally do not believe those two words are distinctive enough to mandate quotation marks. They're perfectly ordinary English words and while they may reflect the vocabulary of the author they reflect the opinions of apparently a broad swathe of people (not necessarily scholars, fwiw). I would use quotation marks if we had something like the first example here and possibly would with the second:

Fake source	Paraphrase
John Smith could perhaps best be described as obtigious - that is, while he was a prodigious worker by all accounts, his peers described him as obtuse and unwilling to commit to even the smallest compromise.	Described as "obtigious" by biographer Fred Jones for his combination of prodigious labor and obtuse personality, Smith....
I knew John Smith all his life. We worked together in the mine. It's true what they say - the man could work coal. But for all that, he was stupid.	Interviewed in local papers, one of Smith's fellow miner's agreed with the assessment that Smith was skilled, but added that he was "stupid".

In the first instance, "obtigious" is a truly distinctive word. In the second instance, the word is not distinctive in itself, but putting it in quotation marks conforms to WP:NFC, as it is attributing a point of view. In the description above, we don't actually know whose words "obtuse" and "prodigious" are - fictitious biographer Jones? Or the "all accounts" and "peers" he is quoting?

Figuring out which words would merit quotation is going to be very, very subjective and individualized, and if we add guidance on this that is unclear, we're going to wind up with words in quotation marks that do not need to be. For instance, looking at one of the examples you give of Academia above ([4]) (many of them do not offer examples of paraphrase done right - this is the first I found that did), I see the reuse of individual words from the source in the proper paraphrase example:

Putative source

Proper paraphrase

So in Romeo and Juliet, understandably in view of its early date, we cannot find that tragedy has fully emerged from the moral drama and the romantic comedy that dominated in the public theaters of Shakespeare's earliest time. Here he attempted an amalgam of romantic comedy and the tragic idea, along with the assertion of a moral lesson which is given the final emphasis—although the force of that lesson is switched from the lovers to their parents. But tragedy is necessarily at odds with the moral: it is concerned with a permanent anguishing situation, not with one that can either be put right or be instrumental in teaching the survivors to do better.

In his essay, "The Moral Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," Clifford Leech suggests that there is more to Romeo and Juliet than simply a gloom-and-doom tragedy of two people destined to die for their illicit love. According to Leech, Romeo and Juliet is part romantic comedy, part tragedy, part morality tale in which the moral lesson is learned at the end. But this moral lesson comes with a twist: Since the lovers are dead, their parents experience the consequences of their actions (20). (bolding added to demonstrate precisely copied terms, but only on first use of this term)

I think "prodigious" and "obtuse" are both undistinctive terms; you disagree. Others might agree with you or with me. Harvard thinks "tragedy", "romantic comedy" and "moral lesson" are undistinctive terms. I think they're right, but there may be some who disagree with that as well...and we could wind up with a lot of good faith contributors approaching such commonplace language with an overabundance of timidity. If any example were added to the guideline, I think it would need to be a clear and generally agreed upon use, because the risk of articles littered with quotation marks around single words that are not distinctive seems to me quite high. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:05, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

With all due respect, Moonriddengirl, IMO, this entire response is misinformed, and you can't seem to get past the misconception that the sources are referring only to odd or extremely obscure words, they absolutely aren't. This is primarily about important words in context, not a word that might seem strange even in isolation. In my above example, the original author's creative expression relied heavily upon those two words, and that's what makes them distinctive to that particular sentence. This is not about words that are distinctive to the entire linguistic world. Rationalobserver (talk) 23:56, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

the risk of articles littered with quotation marks around single words that are not distinctive seems to me quite high. Isn't the risk of leaving plagiarisms greater? Regardless, the right solution here is to encourage fair paraphrasing and strongly discourage close paraphrasing, not complete inaction out of fear that a bunch of isolated words in quotes could be bad for Wikipedia. Anyone who identifies a problem with too many isolated words in quotes could paraphrase them and eliminate the need for single words in quotes. Isn't that what an encyclopedia ought to do? Rationalobserver (talk) 23:26, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

The Universtiy of Idaho says, "Cite, Reference or Document your sources: Whenever you quote verbatim two or more words in a row, or even a single word or label that's distinctive ... Words you take verbatim from another person need to be put in quotation marks, even if you take only two or three words; it's not enough simply to cite." This might support your position that it generally needs to be two or more words before quotation marks are required, but they leave a contingency for single words as well. IMO, "tragedy" and "romantic comedy" are technical terms or jargon, so they would never require quotes. One could argue that "moral lesson" is a bit cliché', but my point above is not that "prodigious" and "obtuse" are always distinctive, but that their use in that example represents the author's creative expression, so they should be enclosed because they are distinctive to that material, not necessarily that that would appear distinctive in all examples, such as the ones you gave above. Rationalobserver (talk) 16:05, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

What's really got me confused is the fact that the policy already contains this: "Note: even with in-text attribution, distinctive words or phrases may require quotation marks." Can you explain how "copying a source's words without quotation marks" justifies this note but "Sometimes close paraphrasing is appropriate or even unavoidable" does not? I.e., the policy already says that distinctive words or phrases ought to be enclosed in quotation marks, so why would this not apply to close paraphrasing? Why is close paraphrasing, which many sources describe as plagiarism, exempt from this note? Rationalobserver (talk) 16:29, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding single word plagiarism:

• According to Wabash College: "All words that come directly from a source must be indicated by quotation marks (or, in the case of a long block quote, other clear formatting). This includes short phrases or even single words, not just whole sentences."

• According to Bemidji State: "you should always directly quote any single words or phrases that are distinctive to your source."

• According to Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences: "You have not taken any words from any other piece of writing-published, unpublished, or online-without putting quotation marks around such words and indicating their source. This pledge pertains to phrases as well as whole sentences, and even to significant single words, such as those that express opinion or judgment."

There are many more examples, but I won't bother listing them just yet, as I think this demonstrates that the concept of single words as distinctive is not my own. I also want to reiterate that distinctive does not mean unusual or uncommon. In terms of plagiarism, distinctive refers to words which stand out in the source material, or as Dedman says, "significant single words, such as those that express opinion or judgment". I.e., they need not be distinctive in their own right if they stand out as distinctive within the source material. "Prodigious" was distinctive in that example, and that's what we use to gauge the necessity of using quotation marks. Few if any words would be deemed distinctive if the entire known world of writing is invoked. Rationalobserver (talk) 20:34, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the following sources support my position that the way in which a word is used as an element of the author's creative expression helps determine whether it's distinctive, versus assuming that distinction is solely a function of the word itself.

• According to Portland State University: "Quotation marks are required for even a single word, however, if it is especially colorful or represents the original writer's judgment."
• According to Palgrave: "Even a single word, if it is distinctive to your author's argument. You must use quotation marks and cite the source."
• According to the University of Melbourne: "Use quotation marks for even a single word if the original author used it in a special or central way."
• According to Bates College: "Whenever you use exact words from a source, you must enclose them in quotation marks (or use a block if the quotation is lengthy) and provide a full citation. Even a single word or brief phrase, if it's distinctive, should go in quotation marks."
• According to the University of North Carolina: "Partial Quotation: In some cases, you may want to use only part of a sentence you found in a source—perhaps just a phrase or even a single word. As with a full quotation, you must place the exact words you borrow within quotation marks."

I.e., this isn't only about strange or unusual words, but rather ordinary words that carry a bulk of the sentence's creativity; e.g., "any single words or phrases that are distinctive to your source", "even to significant single words, such as those that express opinion or judgment", "especially colorful or represents the original writer's judgment", "if it is distinctive to your author's argument", or "if the original author used it in a special or central way". Rationalobserver (talk) 23:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid you lost me at "this entire response is misinformed". At that point, Rationalobserver, my interest in taking part in this conversation pretty much disappeared. :/ Especially when the next bit - "you can't seem to get past the misconception that the sources are referring only to odd or extremely obscure words" - suggests perhaps you didn't even read my note (unless you think I believe "stupid" is an odd or extremely obscure word, given that I offer it as a potential example for quotation marks). Anyway, I've got a lot of other things calling for my attention, so I'm going to get to it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:32, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Moonriddengirl, I'm truly sorry if I offended you, but I guess you lost me, as your position that "prodigious" and "obtuse" are not distinctive enough in that context is just plain wrong, and I assumed you were implying that those words are never distinctive in any context. If the example was John Smith was born in Detroit in 1915, where he prodigiously worked for the auto industry. Prodigiously certainly does need to be in quotes if appropriated directly from source material into a "paraphrase", which I put in scare quotes because there really is no such thing as a proper paraphrase that appropriates creative expression using the same words. I'm sorry if that was rude, but I honestly felt like you were missing the point here, and it's a little frustrating to hear that the way I've checked for plagiarism for 25 years is incorrect when I know that it isn't. To me, this: Figuring out which words would merit quotation is going to be very, very subjective and individualized and this: I personally do not believe those two words are distinctive enough to mandate quotation marks. They're perfectly ordinary English words made me think that you do not understand what I'm saying at all. It's not subjective, it's quite basic, IMO. Every creative sentence contains a word or two that carry a bulk of the creative expression, and those words need to be in quotations marks if directly appropriated. This isn't nearly as complicated as your above response implies. Will you at least answer the question I've asked several times pertaining to: "Note: even with in-text attribution, distinctive words or phrases may require quotation marks." Why does this not apply to close paraphrasing? Rationalobserver (talk) 16:50, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Rationalobserver, do stop altering the Wikipedia:Plagiarism guideline to this or anything like it when three editors above so far (myself, Rjensen and Moonriddengirl) have clearly spoken out against it. I'm not sure how Dr.K. feels on the matter. You have yet to convince us that words that are "distinctive to the source material require quotation marks in addition to in-text attribution." And we have given good reasons why this bit should not be a guideline or a policy. You not finding those reasons good does not mean that "nobody has offered any explanation why [your] note is inappropriate advice regarding close paraphrasing." I told you that others would not agree with your view on this matter and that what you are trying to enforce would be difficult to enforce, and I explained why; so have others. We (you and I) have taken this matter to the wider Wikipedia community, and the few who have participated in this discussion have not endorsed your proposals. It's time that you accept that WP:Consensus is against you on this, and that the guideline should not be changed to the "distinctive word" view you want included unless there is WP:Consensus for it. Furthermore, Moonriddengirl is what many (myself included) consider the foremost expert on copyright and plagiarism matters on Wikipedia; when she speaks of these matters, it is better that people listen to her than ignore or disregard what she is stating. And it is certainly better that people don't insult her. Flyer22 (talk) 23:53, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with all of Flyer22's points. I think that if Rationalobserver wishes to pursue this further, s/he should open an RfC at the appropriate talkpage or go to DRN. In the absence of positive consensus, edit-warring is simply not a solution. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 00:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Flyer22. I would also point out that the made-up quote is VERY badly paraphrased. John Smith was coal miner, and by all accounts he was a prodigious worker, but his peers also described him as obtuse and unwilling to commit to even the smallest compromise. Fair paraphrase: "Scholars have praised John Smith's work ethic, while noting his reputation for driving a hard bargain." In the paraphrase the word "scholars" is totally wrong; "praised" is totally wrong. and "hard bargain" is wrong, while "obtuse" gets lost. It turns out to be hard to paraphrase and keep the original meaning! Rjensen (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I admit that my examples are poor: I wrote them without much thought, but the substance of my argument is on point, even if three or four Wikipedian's disagree at least three others agreed with me. I don't doubt Moonriddengirl's expertise regarding copyright, but she recently admitted that "I honestly do not involve myself a whole lot in plagiarism". Rationalobserver (talk) 16:45, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Rationalobserver is wrong IMO too, and should stop editing against consensus. IMO, close paraphrasing with a well-placed citation and in-text attribution, is usually acceptable even without quotation marks enclosing the author's distinctive words or phrases. I think Moonriddengirl) has carefully provided clear reasons for this. We do not and should not have a policy (or guideline) that makes close paraphrasing (alone, where there's no copyvio) a blockable offense.--{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 17:24, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Excluding CSD-g7 as a valid criterion once an AFD has commenced

I propose that we change our deletion policy at Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Process interaction where it currently says: "Pages that meet the criteria for speedy deletion can be deleted regardless of other circumstances. If a page on a deletion debate is speedied, the debate is closed." so that it instead says: "With the exception of CSD-g7, (by request or page blanking), pages that meet the criteria for speedy deletion can be deleted regardless of other circumstances. If a page on a deletion debate is speedied, the debate is closed."

I suggest this change because Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#You may edit the article during the discussion currently says: "You must not blank the article (unless it is a copyright infringement)." while {{Article for deletion}} which sets atop the article being discussed says: "Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, ..., until the discussion is closed." (boldface text is represented as it appears in the instruction).

By the above instructions, I had always believed "author blanking" would not result in deletion. I was surprised when I recently observed one closed this way. I agreed with what I believed was our policy, and disagree with author blanking as a criterion to speedy close a deletion discussion. In my opinion it too easily allows for gaming of our AFD process.

If CSD-g7 prevails as a means to speedy close a discussion, I think that at minimum the instructions at WP:EDITATAFD and {{Article for deletion}} should be clarified as to their actual intent for stipulating that the page "must not be blanked". Thank you for considering this proposal.—John Cline (talk) 04:04, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• Question- what would be the purpose of the author gaming the system by blanking the article while it's at AfD? What would the author gain by that? Reyk _YO! 04:59, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

In this particular example every reference to coi editing as well as inflammatory talk page allegations have been removed from observation and I have serious reservations that the new user who recreated the page is a different user as is being said. It also invalidates CSD-g4 which is why the article could be recreated in the same day. Rather than taxing one's ability to AGF, I think it's better to eliminate the potential. Thank you for asking this insightful question.—John Cline (talk) 05:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

What a muddle. IIUC, the idea is that the article's creator has blanked-and-recreated the article to remove unflattering commentary from the talk page, and possibly to force a new AFD on the new incarnation. I wonder if, instead of restricting G7, it might be better to expand G4 to cover this unusual case. Or maybe it's not necessary to do anything since, to my knowledge, this is the first time this issue has come up. The nearest thing I've seen is editors moving or merging articles to sabotage running AfDs that were heading for a delete consensus. Those editors got blocked for disruption and the AfDs were allowed to run their course. Maybe that's all that's necessary here. I'm not sure that expanding legislation (we already have reams and reams of it) is the way to go. Reyk _YO! 05:35, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you have correctly discerned this muddle. It has also left experienced editors at odds with each other as this thread demonstrates. If this really is the first time such a thing has occurred, I still assert that the instructions about blanking the page require amended clarification. For example they could perhaps say: Except for the page creator seeking deletion by CSD-g7, the page must not be blanked.

I also feel that the interpretation of a substantial contributor fails to acknowledge many contributions. For example each contributor at the discussion who gave of their time to research the articles notability have contributed something to that page. In this example the emerging consensus was to merge and redirect, a consensus reflecting the accumulated hours of each participant's endeavor, yet it is treated as no contribution at all when the one person has the ability to be declared the only substantial contributor.

I gave several hours myself, creating redirects, tagging erroneous redirects for deletion, ensuring deletion of the erroneous upload to Commons and uploading the image to Wikipedia with a fair use rationale. Then, after reviewing sources, uncovering new sources and preparing to !vote, I find the page deleted by the blanking of one called the only substantial contributor. It is a recipe that leaves a lingering bad taste in my opinion.—John Cline (talk) 06:13, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• I believe we should always allow G7 requests, even if the article is at AFD. The cornerstone of G7 is that it allows article creators the ability to self-correct when they recognize they have done something wrong; we shouldn't force an article to remain, and invalidate G7, merely because an AFD was started. That has the effect of forcing the article creator to listen to everyone's criticism of them, and that's not treating them with dignity. Instead, we should CLEARLY allow G7 requests during AFDs to allow people to correct their own mistakes at any time. My understanding is the "you must not blank the page" stipulation during AFDs was added because of some people, who were arguing for deletion, would use bad-faith means to make an article more attractive to be deleted, or were using blanking as a fait accompli move to pre-empt discussion in their own favor. However, the use of G7 by the author CLEARLY doesn't match that rationale, and we should insert or modify language here that makes it clear that clear G7 requests are to be honored, including author-blankings during the AFD process. The problem is only with blankings of the article by those other than the author, especially when such moves are used to gain an upper hand in the debate unfairly. --Jayron32 15:11, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• I think John Cline gets it right. Once an article is at AfD, it is in the hands of the community, so it's not anymore an issue of the original author alone. I general I don't like G7, but I can see its point if it is to revert a quick mistake. But when people pile up opinions and discuss on an article, then it's not anymore an individual problem, but it is something that has to be dealt by consensus. What if all !votes were to keep the article, for example, with good reason? Should the author have a "supervote" in this case? Also, I completely disagree with the notion that giving criticism is "not treating them with dignity". Since when fair criticism on an article's compliance with our policies means the author is not treated without dignity? Are we talking seriously?--cyclopia^speak! 15:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, it isn't treating someone with dignity when they say "OK folks, I totally understand, let me undo my mistake" and you return with "No, fuck you, you stay here for the week and take your beating like a man!" That's what these AFDs can become if we don't allow G7 to take precedence. Yes, I can conceive of sui generis cases where the community decides to keep the article over the creator's G7 request, but those G7 requests can be undone if a discussion appears to be heading that way. As a matter of course, however, those situations would be rare enough to deal with on a case by case basis, where written policy matters is dealing with the vast majority of situations, where there is going to be a general consensus to delete the article. If the author of the article reads the first five or six !votes for deletion, begins to understand the policy, and concedes to delete the article per G7, we should allow that. It would be a rare situation where an author would request G7 in the face of a large number of KEEP votes, and in those cases, I would expect the closing admins to be able to use good judgement and deal with the situation as you describe. We don't make policy to deal with the rare-one off event in the face of doing the wrong thing in the more common event. That's bass-ackwards. --Jayron32 16:00, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

  • It is to treat someone with dignity when this one is guaranteed the same process and respect of anyone else. The point is that, per WP:OWN, articles are not of the creator, once an article is on WP it is of WP. G7 acts as a quick form of courtesy to reverse mistakes, but not for else. For everything else, we have consensus here, where all users are equal and can fairly offer their opinion. Calling such a process "beating" is ridicolous. And here we are in an "else" situation, since fixing a quick mistake is not what the original request was for, apparently. If it is a snow delete, then the article will be deleted anyway. If not, we see what happens. But the discussion should not be closed prematurely.--cyclopia^speak! 16:55, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

    • Hard cases make bad policy, we don't write rules to deal with the odd case which annoys us, we write rules to reflect best practices. When the unique case comes along, we deal with the unique case on its own terms (that is uniquely) and don't create the rules to apply to the vast majority of situations only because some weird situation came up this one time. I think you misinterpreted what I said, however. See, when I said "Yes, I can conceive of sui generis cases where the community decides to keep the article over the creator's G7 request, but those G7 requests can be undone if a discussion appears to be heading that way. As a matter of course, however, those situations would be rare enough to deal with on a case by case basis, where written policy matters is dealing with the vast majority of situations, where there is going to be a general consensus to delete the article." what I meant by that was "Yes, I can conceive of sui generis cases where the community decides to keep the article over the creator's G7 request, but those G7 requests can be undone if a discussion appears to be heading that way. As a matter of course, however, those situations would be rare enough to deal with on a case by case basis, where written policy matters is dealing with the vast majority of situations, where there is going to be a general consensus to delete the article." The policy as written should reflect best practices in dealing with most situations, and should not have been written to stop that one time where someone did that one weird thing we didn't anticipate and dammit, we're going to make sure that never happens again. Writing policy from the mindset of a single, recent situation we got alarmed at is a bad idea. --Jayron32 19:06, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Jayron32 you've made some good points and I don't entirely disagree with your premise. I do however think there is a disconnect between a well articulated request, and the blanking of a page. The cornerstone of G7, which I hold, is that the request must be proffered in good faith. While this can be effectively ascertained in the verbiage of a request, a page blanking leaves its measure to the prowess of one's imagination. It is hard to interpret an editor who retires their account, babbles recantations of everything they once held true, and blanks every page they ever created, as good faith actions. While a page blanking can be interpreted as a request under G7, under what circumstances should it be rejected if not ones like these? This is why I feel that blanking alone should not suffice as a request in good faith once an AFD has commenced. And the instructions as currently written seem to support this approach.—John Cline (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

On the contrary, unless there is specific evidence that the OP is actually up to shenanigans, nearly all page blankings amount to G7 requests. The entire CSD process is arcane enough that the vast majority of casual users would never even know of its existence, and would not even know how to apply a CSD tag to an article, much less what G7 even means. That's why the page blanking aspect of G7 exists: When a user blanks a page they have created, the reasonable interpretation is that they want to delete the article, but don't know how deletion works. Does that mean all such blankings are good faith attempts to delete the article? No, but when they are not, we're perfectly capable of dealing with them as they arise. We don't need to create policy that makes it harder for good faith editors to do what is right, merely to catch the occasional shenanigans. We caught this guy didn't we? He didn't fool us, did he? Did the lack of policy to say "you can't do that" either stop him from disrupting, or tie our hands in dealing with him? No. So why write policy that cripples good-faith use of G7 merely to address a situation we're perfectly capable of dealing without said policy... --Jayron32 23:49, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

While I again, primarily agree, I will not acquiesce your conclusion that this somehow "cripples good-faith use of G7". My proposal merely asks that we disallow G7 blanking once an AFD has commenced, or clarify the instruction that "You must not blank the article (unless it is a copyright infringement)." The only thing thereby crippled is the thriving ambiguity borne by this prominent contradiction.—John Cline (talk) 03:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• In my opinion, G7 should always be allowed, provided that no editor opposes. If an article is at AfD, I think that a request for G7 should be accepted, ~provided that no one has placed a "keep" vote in the AfD discussion. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
• G7 could always be allowed but I don't see why deletion is always the result at AfD. It can be that people say 'it's not there yet, let's userify it and let them work on it a bit'. Besides, there's time where an article is saved at AfD after a number of days even because new editors swarm in to improve it. The seven days isn't always a terrible option. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
• Note about speedy deletion - just a reminder, speedy deletion should only be used in cases where there is no controversy whatsoever about deletion. An articles for deletion discussion is, by its mere existence, a controversy. Since author-request (G7) is a lower priority deletion, an author's request to delete a page under a deletion discussion should almost always be denied. If the user was getting the page deleted to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing, it also should be denied, which is why admins need to check before they delete. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
• In my opinion, if an article is tagged with any deletion template, and the author blanks the page, the immediate reaction should not be to delete the page. (Though if the deletion template happens to be a speedy, it may make sense to delete the page based on the original criteria anyways.) Perhaps they mistakenly think that this is the correct way to contest the deletion, and instead we should revert the blanking and post a note on their talk page asking if they really want the page deleted. If they blank the page again, then we delete it. Note that this does not affect explicit requests to delete one's own page; these can always be handled immediately as their intentions are clear. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:11, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
• I encountered this exact scenario (an editor gaming AfD with repeated blanking during AfD/G7 deletion/article recreation) this week for the first time. Nevertheless, if there are no "keep" votes at AfD, this seems like more of a situational awareness and IAR block or salt situation than one that drives the need for policy changes. VQuakr (talk) 03:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• I saw this particular case. It is perfectly clear that the editor was trying to game the system, by having the article deleted and then re-creating it via a sockpuppet, thereby trying to put the existing history out of sight. John Cline is perfectly right. However, I don't think that changing the deletion policy as John suggests would be helpful. It is always a good idea to be very cautious about changing policy on the basis of one incident. Such attempts to game the system via author-requested deletion are rare, while good-faith "OK, I accept that I was wrong, so let's just get the thing deleted without spending further time on it" are more common. It would not help to make a change that would make things worse far more often than it would make things better. Attempting to make a more elaborate rule that tries to cover each possibility would be even worse: it would serve only to make the policy more complex and confusing (especially to inexperienced editors) than it already is, and in any case, it wouldn't work, because sooner or later someone would come up with another way to get round it, or another situation which we failed to anticipate. It is far better to keep things simple, and treat any exceptional cases individually, using common sense. It is worth mentioning that in this case the deletion has been reverted, the article has been taken back to AfD, and the disruptive editor has been indefinitely blocked, so even without the proposed policy change, the attempt to game the system has been thwarted. We can manage perfectly well without the change. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Alternative solution

Here's a slightly different solution: If an article's author requests G7 for an article while it's at AfD, the AfD is to be closed immediately (pretend that its week is up and it's already been relisted twice). If the author !voted in the AfD for any option except delete, their !vote is to be discounted during the close. If consensus is to delete, then delete the article with the AfD as the reason. Otherwise, delete the article with G7 as the reason. This fixes the ability to "dodge" an AfD heading for delete without impacting a user's ability to request deletion in true good faith. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:36, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

If an article is deleted when a discussion is in progress the discussion must always be listed in the deletion summary, while the G7 can be omitted. Also, if anyone voted anything but delete, including the page creator, do not delete under G7, period. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Personally, if I speedily delete an article (whether for G7 or any other reason) while it's at AfD, I normally include the speedy deletion criterion in my closure reason at AfD, and then delete the article referring to the AfD in the deletion log. Anyone who wants to know more than that it was deleted at AfD can then look at the AfD discussion and see both the speedy deletion criterion and the other reasons advanced in the discussion, whereas if the deletion log just gave the speedy deletion criterion, most people would never know there had been other reasons proposed. It is pretty well impossible for this to lead to any conflict, because if the AfD looks as though there is any reasonable likelihood of a "keep" decision, the article should not be speedily deleted: the AfD should be allowed to run its course. That includes G7 deletion, because if there is a consensus at a community discussion that the article is worth keeping, the opinion of the creator of the article does not over-ride that consensus: the creator of an article does not own it. (One exception is if it is found that the article is a blatant copyright infringement, which was not known by the editors of the AfD, but obviously that is irrelevant to G7 deletion requests.) The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 09:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

For clarification

This proposal asked for one of two things: either disallow G7 once an AfD has commenced, or to clarify the instructions. The emerging consensus is strongly in favor to allow G7; the remaining question simply asks: "should we clarify the blanking instructions or not?". If consensus is for "yes", a talk page discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion can determine the exact prose. If consensus is "no", my part is done with everything remaining as it is.

• What does the following mean? and who made the above statement? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:12, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I had added this. I've stricken it and apologize for any confusion it caused.—John Cline (talk) 01:01, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I think my question must have made it harder to see the signature link! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:36, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

;Editors who endorse yes:

• As proposed.—John Cline (talk) 08:15, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Editors who endorse no:

What to do when "reliable sources" publish crappy information?

It happens. Sometimes "reliable sources" (i.e. established newspapers or tv channels) publish information clearly sourced from blogs or social media about controversial issues. Not a new phenomenon either. MaxBrowne (talk) 12:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

The first line of defense is that nothing goes into an article unless someone wants to put it there, and anything can come out if no one objects. So this should only be a problem if it isn't clear-to-everyone that it's crap, or if you're dealing with bad faith editors. If you do have a problem situation then more details would probably be needed. Alsee (talk) 18:55, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

The theory, as I understand, is we accept a source as a reliable source if they have a process for fact checking. It is not our responsibility to ensure that the process is used correctly in every instance. However if a reliable source find submission information in a blog or other source which would not normally be considered reliable, we presume that they go through their fact checking before republishing it and therefore can accept the information once published by the reliable source.

This is obvious nonsense, as Orwell and many others can attest, but what's the alternative? If the reliable source publishes bogus information, presumably another reliable source will publish a different version and we will then follow our guidelines for such situations. --S Philbrick(Talk) 20:07, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

And, of course, there's a hierarchy of reliabbility. If newspapers disagree with peer-reviewed studies, then that's pretty much it for the newspaper information. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

If you know some sources are crap, then give the true statement, and reference it with a reliable and true source. It will be even better if you can find another reliable source that says that the newspapers are wrong, and then you can include a denial of the misconception in the article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:15, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

This is a constant issue in writing the American lighthouse articles, and we're often forced to pick and choose between authorities. For my part the key thing is to leave an explanation on the talk page justifying the decision. Mangoe (talk) 12:58, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Being published in a reliable source (ie Verifiability) does not guarantee inclusion. For one thing, even the best sources can contain errors. That's why we should check to see what multiple sources say. Furthermore, the fact that a reliable source mentions some bit of information does not mean we are required mention it. We always have the option to omit information from our articles. If something is asserted in only one single source, there is a good chance that it does not rise to the level of being mentioned in Wikipedia. If, on the other hand, multiple sources mention it, that is an equally good indication that it should be mentioned in Wikipedia (and increases the likelihood that the information is accurate). Blueboar (talk) 14:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

There is an essay on the subject Wikipedia:Verifiable but not false. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:48, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Terminal Event Management

I think something like this (Wikipedia:Terminal Event Management Policy) should be implemented as a serious policy. There are several practical problems with what's at the link, but the concept is actually good. Wikipedia is a valuable repository of technical, scientific, and cultural knowledge that would be invaluable to the preservation of humanity and the rebuilding of civilization. The chief problem with the link contents is that in such a situation, most editors would be trying to reach safety, care for their families, or be otherwise engaged, and would be unable to print and preserve articles. One solution would be to assign specific volunteers to the duty of rapidly caching and printing as much material as possible in the event of imminent disaster. Wikipedia is too valuable to do any less. Robert (talk) 17:52, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Does this guideline or essay exist?

I have what could be a rather basic question for someone who is familiar with established guidelines and/or essays on Wikipedia: I'm trying to find out if a guideline idea that I have already exists. The basic premise is this:

"For sections on an article that have several incoming redirects, take care prior to renaming the section. In most cases, to avoid breaking the section links, it is best to not rename the section. If the section must be renamed, please check the "What links here" tool for incoming section redirects and update every redirect that directs to the section you renamed in order to prevent broken section links."

Does any policy or essay exists that states something of this nature? Steel1943 (talk) 23:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is in the manual of style guideline, see Wp:Section headings, near the bottom. - Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 23:40, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 18:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Notice of RfC at WT:BP

There is a discussion, Should a "High content contributor" subsection be added to "When blocking may not be used", at WT:BP for Wikipedians interested in the WP blocking policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lightbreather (talk • contribs) 18:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• For those who like participating in this kind of thing, the thread exists, but note that I've removed the RFC tag. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:19, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

No links in talk page subheaders

Hi all,

this change is being discussed at Template talk:Talk header. It is suggested that links in talk page headers should no longer be allowed. Since this would mean a policy change any input in this discussion is welcome.

Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 21:56, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Idea: Apply WP:BLP level rules to all articles.

As everyone is well aware, articles about or referring to living persons must be written in adherence to strict policies, especially in regards to compliance with U.S. law, Wikipedia's core policies and the exclusion of any defamatory material. However, such strict interpretations of policies only apply to articles about living or recently deceased persons. Given their extraordinary nature, I feel that these rules should apply to all articles. By that, I specifically refer to things around the lines of this:

All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be explicitly attributed to a reliable, published source, which is usually done with an inline citation. Contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.

And the like. Our article on libel says that not only statements about persons can be libellous, but statements about a "business, product, group, government, religion, or nation." Stricter use and enforcement of our core policies on a global basis would help improve the overall quality of Wikipedia, and discourage the incorporation of content that is controversial and disruptive. ViperSnake151  Talk  22:46, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood the reasoning behind WP:BLP policy - it isn't there to prevent libel, it is there to protect individuals from questionable content that falls short of libel. Nothing in Wikipedia policy permits libellous content, regardless of who or what it refers to - any contributor is obliged to comply with applicable law (both U.S. law concerning the server, and the laws of their local jurisdiction), and would be obliged to do so regardless of what Wikipedia policy says. And as for your proposal to extend BLP-like policies beyond their existing scope, this has been discussed previously on multiple occasions, with little evidence for any significant support. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:22, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

ViperSnake, that is going way too far and would pretty much eliminate much of our content, which is from RS. Our RS policy is good enough. AndyTheGrump is right.

An interesting point (and I'm not suggesting we change any policies, least of all BLP) is that republication of libel is legal in the USA. The original publisher can be sued, but those who republish (IOW RS and Wikipedia editors) cannot be sued, at least not successfully. You can read about the decision, which is covered in this article: Barrett v. Rosenthal. I'm not advocating republishing libel as if it was true (ethical and moral people shouldn't do that), but we can use RS to document the content of the libel when RS cover the matter. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:15, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:BRD as essay

As far as I can tell, there is pretty wide agreement that WP:BRD is a good thing, that things work a lot smoother when it's followed by all parties. Why, then, is it defined as only essay? When someone deviates from BRD in a contentious situation, and someone else calls him on it citing BRD, and he says, "Well, that's only an essay", what are the appropriate response and reaction to that? Do we have to go to talk just to establish consensus that BRD is to be followed? ‑‑Mandruss (talk) 15:51, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Notice of RfC on proposed deletion of copyright template Free--PublicOnFacebook

When users upload files, they have to tag their uploads with a template called a copyright tag. Please come comment on whether the free content copyright license tag {{Free--PublicOnFacebook}} is valid, per our policies, or if the tag and all the uploaded files that rely on it should be deleted. It's intended for use on local copies of free content from facebook. It's argued that a poster may not know that when content is posted using the "Public" setting of Facebook, it's thereby licensed as free content, because the legal Terms of Use of facebook say: "When you publish content or information using the Public setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture)." and "By "use" we mean use, run, copy, publicly perform or display, distribute, modify, translate, and create derivative works of." so the license may not be valid. When facebook users grant a license to work they don't have the right to grant by misusing facebook in this way, it is they who are liable, not someone who relies on that license, whether that's me, facebook, wikipedia or any other reuser of what is (based on the facts available to the reusers) freely-licensed content. Should we delete the template because it can be misapplied in this way?

Discussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 September 28, for those who like participating in this kind of thing. User:Moonriddengirl? --{{U|Elvey}} ^(t•c) 17:41, 6 October 2014 (UTC)