Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

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

The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new other than a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

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

« Archives, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193

Toward an unique language policy

There is a proposal to unify the criterion of language policy titled Unique and workable criterion. you can participate in the discussion.

Tor nodes

An ongoing discussion is in progress regarding adjusting the blocking policy in reference to TOR nodes. The discussion is here. Regards, M-ercury at 13:18, January 8, 2008

WP:RFC/U - time to get rid of it?

Moved from archive as it's premature to close this - future datestamp applied to make sure it isn't archived again - Will ^(talk) 17:51, 26 January 2009 (UTC) Moving from WT:RFC...

About two months ago, I listed Requests for user comment for deletion under the premise that it did not work, and it's basically a quagmire of personal attacks and a stepping stone to ArbCom. The consensus in the MFD, including the creator of the process and the MfD's closer, is that it doesn't really work 99.9% of the time, and only exists because there is no other process existent. Just get rid of it and reinstate the Community Sanction Noticeboard, as that actually did do some good. Will ^(talk) 17:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. I personally preferred CSN better than RFC/U. D.M.N. (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I would support CSN provided there was a minimum time for comments (about 7 days). There should also be a maximum time for banning (1 year, same as ArbCom). R. Baley (talk) 18:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

CSN had teeth, RFC/U hardly any. CSN saw discussion and nuance, RFC/U sees ganging up and party-lines half the time. With the same provisos as R. Baley, except I'd prefer six months, it would be good to have it back. Relata refero (talk) 18:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you could merge the two... CSN to me always seemed to arbitrary. Consensus could be declared in an hour or never... that kind of gives power to people who can generate a mob of "me too"s on demand. RFC is very structured but seldom goes anywhere. Is there any realistic way to have CSN but with a more normalized process, to give the accused a change to reply, slow down the mob mentality, and reasonably assess consensus? --W.marsh 18:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Would it need a new name possibly? Also please note than CSN only closed three and a half months ago and consensus might not of changed much since then. Also, a lot of things that "could" of gone there are instead now sent to WP:AN or WP:ANI, meaning they get a lot more traffic and stress put on them. D.M.N. (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

W.marsh, don't you think a minimum one-week period for each sanction discussion would help with the mob of "me-too"s? (Too much evidence has emerged lately of off-wiki co-ordination for us to discount that as a factor.) Relata refero (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

A week sounds reasonable. If it's truly an emergency WP:BLOCK should apply, and if someone's transgressions don't seem blockworthy a week after the fact, then a ban was a bad idea to begin with. I'd also like to look at a waiting period before people start bolding words (ban, don't ban, etc.) maybe 48 hours of pure discussion without people taking definitive stands like in a vote. I think that would lead to better discussion, people tend to feel psychologically committed to a stance once they're locked in to it. --W.marsh 18:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

At Arbcom they've decided to take the ambitious step of waiting (I believe 48 hours, but I can't remember) before voting on the proposed decision page. We could do something similar, discussion can take place for 2 days, but no proposed "remedies" (ban, topic ban, etc.) could be offered until 48 hours after a new complaint had been certified (maybe not "certified," just following the initial complaint --basically enforce 2 days of discussion before any talk of "banning"). R. Baley (talk) 18:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

RFC works when it's used for asking for comments, it does not work when sanctions are sought, but that is not its purpose. The CSN should be brought back and RFC kept and used for its intended purpose. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The Community Sanction Noticeboard had its own problems, though I'm not sure that it needed to be eliminated. Part of the problem is that dispute resolution mechanisms seem to come and go - Mediation went away, and now it's back under a new name, the CSN came and went, ANI seems to alter its mission every so often. I see three main problems with RFC/U: it is not empowered to sanction, it's intended to keep reduce the burden on ANI, and it's a mandatory step before going to ArbCom, which can sanction. The solution I see is to 1) bounce more stuff, both from RFC/U and ANI, to Mediation (wherever it's living right now), 2) have some level of sanction available at RFC/U, which would probably require administrator patrolling, and 3) allow admins to move complicated cases off ANI to RFC/U. Perhaps a name change would be in order - instead of "Request for Comment/User Conduct", it could become "Administrators' Noticeboard: Ongoing Problems" (to distinguish it from AN:Incidents). Making it part of the Administrators' Noticeboard would mean that sanctions would be available and it would be an appropriate preliminary step to ArbCom. It would also reduce the load at ANI, where probably half the volume of discussion is on complicated, drawn-out issues, even though those are fewer than 10% of the actual incidents reported. Community Sanctions would all get moved to AN/OP, also. As part of the AN cluster, AN/OP would be fairly highly visible. Argyriou (talk) 20:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm Opposed to this. Many of our processes suffer from a lynching mentality and RFC is as bad as some of them but it does serve a purpose. I really do not see a return to the votes for lynching that CSN turned into as a viable alternative. If we are replace this process we need some other way to garner community feedback into problematical or disputed editor behaviour and a noticeboard doesn't seem the way forward. Spartaz ^Humbug! 22:22, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Rlevse's and Spartaz's comments. --Iamunknown 00:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Both W.marsh and Spartaz voice important concerns. The CSN was split off from ANI, and then was merged back into ANI after only 8 months. I think ANI, with its high visibility and traffic, is the proper place for most such discussions. The deletion discussion is very instructive as to the potential problems that must be kept in mind. I oppose any page dedicated exclusively to "sanctions," as well as any form of voting for a ban.

Getting back to RFC/U, I think its purpose and its place within the DR process should be better defined. The list of DR options here is rather bewildering, and does not indicate (what I see as) RFC/U's status as a second-tier DR forum for problems that have proven intractable in the first-tier forums. The third tier, of course, is Arbcom.

There is a grave problem when people see DR as a list of hoops that must be jumped through before you can ban someone. Emphasis should be placed on restoring relationships and on helping problematic editors to become better ones. Note that I am not talking about obvious trolls, who should be dealt with easily enough in the first-tier DR forums. To me, the purpose of the first-tier forums is to have one or two experienced editors tell a problematic editor that he/she is behaving problematically and should change. At this point, the case may be obvious enough that a block or ban would be appropriate. The purpose of RFC/U is then for the larger community to communicate that same message. If the problematic behavior continues, then an admin can enact a community ban, and the tougher cases can go to Arbcom. If I am out in left field on this, then tell me so or ignore me. If not, then the DR guidelines should be a lot more clear that this is the case. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 05:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be good if it worked that way, but the practice is less harmonious. The process seems to escalate conflict rather than diminish it. I don't however know how to substitute it. CSN was seen as a kangaroo court, so that too had problems. DGG (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Practice does not need to be harmonious. I'm not so naive as to think that a large fraction of people are actually focused on "restoring relationships" etc. But I'd settle for orderly. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 01:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem I have seen in the few RFC/U's I've seen (as an outsider) is that there is very little in the way of objective evidence. It usually ends up in IDONTLIKEHIM comments, or sometimes people siding with the nominator they like or the defendant they like, or even lining up with the POV they like.

Any complaint, whether it is in an RFC/U or an AN/I or a proposed AN/OP, should have specific charges based on policy or guidelines and specific diffs to support the charge, and diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem. A user who behaves badly should be warned every time the problem is noticed. Just as we warn against vandalism, we should warn about NPA, incivility, etc. (If we had more warning templates, users might issue warnings more often.) If we warned users more often we might see fewer problems. If problems persist, then the warnings will provide the evidence to justify blocks.

AIV is not contentious because there is a visible history of escalating warnings to demonstrate the problem, to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem, and to justify the length of a block. 3RR is not contentious because diffs provide objective evidence of bad behavior. RFC/U, AN/I, CSN almost always are (were) contentious because there is usually no objective evidence to demonstrate the problem and attempts to resolve the problem. I think that RFC/U would be more effective if it required specific charges of violated guidelines, specific diffs to support the charges, and specific diffs to demonstrate attempts to resolve the problem.

I was just about to make these suggestions about specificity over at WT:RFC when I saw the link to this discussion. I might still suggest it over there to try to improve the process while waiting to see if a consensus develops over here to eliminate or replace the process. I'm also thinking of starting a new section over here to suggest that we should issue warnings for bad behavior much more often. I have seen a lot of incivility go unwarned. If we had escalating templates for warnings, editors might use them more often. Sbowers3 (talk) 02:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, RfC on User Conduct should be used to elicit a wider community involvement in the background of the situation instead of the superficial cat-calling that we stumble acrost in article-talk and user-space. I frequently accidentally wander into a vicious debate, simply because I visit a lot of pages. The RfC/U posted to the article-talk, and user-talk of both the RfC presenter and the subject would allow for impartial input. Which should continue for a minimum of three days there. Then, as above mentioned, the subject can be given some breathing room in which to evaluate improvement or at least detachment. After sufficient time, if an editor feels that anti-project editing still exists, then it would be appropriate to escalate to CSN and allow at least 3 further days for responses to be gathered. So my nutshell, RfC/U as a precursor to CSN and a necessary part of DR.Wjhonson (talk) 02:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with ANY system of open community comment on another editors actions, regardless of which Wiki-acronym you attach to it, is that it is always open to sniping and abuse (once someones name shows up there, everyone they ever have pissed off gangs up on them). The question is whether such abuse is willing to be tolerated in order to have a system whereby the community can comment on user behavior. You can't have a system in place that is immune to this kind of abuse, but neither should you throw out the baby with the bathwater... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 06:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I am strongly in favor of the WP:RFC/U system. It isn't good at seeking punishments for past bad behavior, but that's partly because sanctions are preventive, not punitive -- the point is, sanctions should be applied when bad behavior continues, rather than because it existed. RFCs are good for that -- if a user pushes POV, for instance, and it becomes well-established that this is the case in an RFC, and they continue to do it, sanctions can be safely applied. RFCs sometimes get out of control, but that's actually a good thing -- think of it as water in the mountains, it needs to come downhill somewhere. WP:RFC/U is a good way of handling that release of tensions because of the way its rules keep editors from commenting back and forth, which tends to build tension. Plus, they have a good way of adding lots of uninvolved editors to the mix, which distributes the energy. Mangojuice^talk 15:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know what to think. The Wikipedia community hasn't shown itself to be anymore trustworthy than the Wikipedia admins. Both increasing and decreasing admin accountability or things like RFC/U seem counterintuitive. Making it more strict allows people to witch-hunt users and admins they don't like. Making it more lax allows trolls and corrupt admins to do whatever they want. The problem is that so many Wikipedia editors have zero regard for reason. That needs to be addressed first, I think. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

RFC works (as stated above) when it's used for asking for comments on behavioral issues of a user or users, it does not work when used for witch-hunts, lynchings, Public floggings, personal attacks, bitterness, and character assassinations. Since this process does seem to escalate some conflicts rather than diminish them, perhaps modifying the guidelines within the process is needed as opposed to removal. Without RfC/U, the only formal steps in dispute resolution that focuses on editors are AN/I and ArbCom. Conversly AN/I could serve as an appropriate venue and does provide wide community involvement on issues (Apropriatly a modified format would be needed on AN/I to replace RfC/U). Processes exist to have a purpose, I belive this does, but some reform may be needed to improve it.--Hu12 (talk) 13:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

If you thought RFC is terrible, CSN was horrendous. I don't ever want to see anything like that back on wikipedia ever again. But if I do, I shall certainly crucify the inventor using their own process. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I like Argyriou's suggestion of making it AN/Ongoing problems. From the very little experience I have with RFC/U, my impression is that it's essentially a temporary repealing of the NPA policy on both sides. There are votes but no conclusions. After lambasting each other for days, both sides claim victory, and use the archived RfC as a method of ongoing bypassing of NPA by simply providing a convenient link to the RfC.

On second thought, don't call it "Ongoing problems". Self-fulfilling prophecy. Call it AN/Problems. A header at the top of the page can specify what types of problems are postable there. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I've been involved recently in an ongoing controversy regarding a disruptive editor that has gone through an informal RfC on the talk page of the affected article, a discussion on the No Original Research Noticeboard, a formal RfC on the talk page of the affected article, and finally an extended discussion on AN/I. At the end of a month of these discussions there was a clear consensus for a topic ban, but everyone seemed to be uncertain as to how to formally impose the topic ban.

The advantage of CSN (as I understand it) was that there were people who were knowledgeable about the problems and procedures for dealing with disruptive editing. The concerns that led to WP:DE first appeared in WP:Expert Retention and sought to provide a speedy way to deal with such disruption. As it stands now, the lengthy and ineffective procedure of dealing with disruption "operates toward an end of exhausting the patience of productive rules-abiding editors," which is one of the definitions of disruptive editing. From what I've heard, CSN apparently went overboard on instantaneous bans, but the present ineffective model has become part of the problem. I'm not an advocate of any particular solution, but we need to have effective procedures and make them clear to all editors and admins, if we are to deal with disruptive editing, point of view pushing, personal attacks, etc. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

How to guide

I think RFC is a good way to gather evidence and gauge community sentiments. If an RFC/U convinces an editor to cease causing problems, that is a good result. If they continue, a note can be posted at ANI requesting a community remedy, such as an editing restriction or ban, with a link to the RFC/U. If there is no consensus at ANI, the case can go to ArbCom, and again, a link to the RFC/U provides much of the necessary evidence. The processes work when people use them correctly. Jehochman ^Talk 14:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, if we ever want RFCU to ever work, we need more admin intervention - Anittas was indefed a second time in October. The attack he was blocked for was on RFCU for twelve days, but nothing happened until ANI got wind of it. Will ^(talk) 00:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

BLP-Lock: A way to deal with contentious BLP articles

After reviewing the Don Murphy DRV, it's obvious that the community has some differences with regards to BLP articles, Notability, and how to handle things. I tried to come up with a compromise that would ease some folks mind with BLP. I actually brought this up with one of the folks whose article would be covered under this policy, and they were pretty positive with it. It alleviated one of his major problems about having a Wikipedia article about them.

So, without further ado..

User:SirFozzie/BLP-Lock

The basics:

A) The article can be placed under BLP-LOCK by any uninvolved administrator. When an administrator places an article under this policy, they must either refer to an existing OTRS ticket, or submit one, and detail why such action is necessary in that OTRS ticket.

B) If an OTRS volunteer agrees that the article should be placed under BLP-LOCK, the article will be stubbed down to a bare-bones situation (just bare facts, no controversial information), and fully-protected for a period of a MININUM of six months (this can be permanent).

C) During this BLP-LOCK status, the only edits that should be made are those via {{editprotected}} requests that have full-consensus on the talk page. Any information that not reliably sourced should not be added to the article, even with consensus. While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, administrators who handle BLP-LOCK editprotected requests should be fully aware of the BLP policy and judge accordingly.

This is actually fairly close to the Stable Versions idea we've been promised for eons going forward.. It reduces a major part of the reason that folks (here and elsewhere) are upset about BLP: That any "child with a computer" can vandalize it, and then these vandalizations are available in the history forever.. and for folks that don't have people watching/OWNing the article, these vandalizations can persist for a period of time until caught. Instead, the article grows in a more controlled manner.

The reason for thinking that the OTRS ticket is necessary.. I'm not sure this is necessary or a good idea for ALL BLP articles, but if an article needs BLP-LOCK, then it should have above-normal levels of attention paid to it, and OTRS is one way to do that. I know that the problem is that OTRS can be overwhelmed at times, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is on it, and work OTRS/BLP-LOCK if it goes through.

Also, on a strictly personal level of thought.. if a subject complains to WP via OTRS, this should be a standard option (to BLP-LOCK their article) going forward. It's bad enough if a subject needs to email us once if there's problems with their article. We shouldn't have to make then continually monitor their article. 21:14, 21 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by SirFozzie (talk • contribs)

Television schedules in network articles

I removed a primetime schedule table from Seven Network, upon finding opposition to its presence on the article's talk page. But an examination of other television network articles indicates that their use is quite widespread.

Am I missing something here? How is this week's television schedule encyclopedic? WP:NOT suggests that Wikipedia is not an electronic program guide. Whilst it may be useful for people to be able to find the current TV schedule in the article, that is not the point. Five or 10 years down the track, how is what was on TV today going to be important to our treatment of the article's subject, i.e. the television network? - Mark 11:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I campaigned against these schedules about a year ago. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television/Archive 5#Current primetime television schedules. I didn't see any consensus to remove the schedules, so I dropped the matter. You could raise the matter again at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television to see if consensus has changed.-gadfium 18:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

My opinion is they're outside the scope of WP, as per WP:NOT cited above. Secondly, they're not going to be right so their use shouldn't be encouraged. Simply listing the headline shows would avoid this problem completely. --AtD (talk) 07:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I've made the bold move of removing all the schedules from Nine Network, Ten Network, ABC1, ABC2 and SBS TV as Mark has protected Seven Network from IP edits. Even if the decision is reversed, at least it'll stimulate discussion. --AtD (talk) 09:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Support such a move, and I agree fully with AtD. Daniel (talk) 09:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Since the edits have been reverted a few times without any discussion, I thought I'd just highlight that WP:NOT really leaves no room for interpretation on this issue.
"Wikipedia articles are not: Directories, directory entries, electronic program guide, or a resource for conducting business. For example, an article on a radio station generally should not list upcoming events, current promotions, phone numbers, current schedules, etc., although mention of major events, promotions or historically significant programme lists and schedules (such as the annual United States network television schedules) may be acceptable." --AtD (talk) 12:36, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

• Pile on support for enforcing WP:NOT. Guides such as these in WP are plain ridiculous. —Moondyne click! 13:20, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Just removed current schedule from the Nine HD article. I support for the current schedules to be removed. Same should be done to Radio Stations as well?. -- Bidgee (talk) 17:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Under WP:NOT, yes.--AtD (talk) 00:01, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

If were doing this, I demand all schedules taken off, including those of other countries like NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX...

AND also the season schedule changes and program returns.

Wouldn't this mean that the series of articles of United States Network Television Schedule needs to be deleted? I think a general prime time schedule is fine as long as it is updated. It is basically like a current list of shows the network is currently broadcasting. ♪♫Alucard 16♫♪ 23:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Those US schedule articles contain the general prime-time schedules simply for Monday to Friday for those years, not every day of the year. What we had was people coming in every day and updating the "current schedule" section to state exactly what minor changes were made to the schedules for one week from today. This seems to me like exactly what the section in WP:NOT was written to avoid. Hence, it is the being updated part which is the most troublesome. And the articles already have extensive lists of shows the networks broadcast. - Mark 02:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I see Mark, would it be best to remove the prime time schedules from the American networks too? Like on CBS for example. The schedule on the American networks though is just a general schedule and does not take into count specials, etc. Similar to United States Network Television Schedule. Or are they fine to leave in? ♪♫Alucard 16♫♪ 03:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess it depends on how they are used in those articles and how often the American TV networks change their schedules. I suspect their schedules change much less often than Australian networks, hence why they have those decade-by-decade articles of the schedules. - Mark 03:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

In the United States, the primetime schedule of a TV network generally stays the same for the entire ( year-long) season, barring one or two midseason replacements. Is this not the case in, say, Australia? Squidfryerchef (talk) 12:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not support the removal of these pages - the (Australia) Seven, Nine, Ten, 7HD, 9HD and TEN HD schedules are updated regularly by myself anyway! Just leave them as a reference for readers (at least the prime-time schedules). It is not like we have the 24-hour schedules on there anyway. You don't have to take them off anyway, I'll take responsibility for these schedules (Australian) being kept updated if you all want. User:Cpandilo (User talk:Cpandilo) 8:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As I've stated this is a Encyclopedia not a TV guide whether it's 24 hours or not. Check out WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Bidgee (talk) 10:07, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that these Australian channels ought to be handled the way the US networks are in their articles. i.e. No weekly updates, because that brings us way too close to being a program guide. Just the default weekly schedule for the season, no specials, with maybe some blocks blank or marked as "local option". Is this feasible to do with the Australian schedules? Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:17, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I like Squidfryerchef's suggestion. I would support it 137.154.16.30 (talk) 04:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Privacy and Outing

The recent departure of User:Newyorkbrad raises issues of how Wikipedia editors can preserve their privacy, and what (if any) response should be made when editors' personal information is posted off-wiki. Brad has asked that the particulars of his case not be discussed, but there is a general concern as well. This discussion is moved from Newyorkbrad's talk page, although it might be better as a centralized discussion, if someone wants to set it up.

More secrecy, more anonymity

I have already posted, and I will eventually put up for a vote, that your situation should be told at all the Meet-Ups, and that should be severe limits on photography and recording at all Wikimedia events, including Wikimania. I will pursue ways to make the site more anonymous and secret. There are some editors on this site that I think many of us feel deserve to be targeted for their problematic editing styles (or admin decisions). You are clearly not one of them. --David Shankbone 15:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC) --David

People should be warned of the dangers of using their real name as user name and of the consequences of posting personal info on their user page. Also, people should choose a user name they don't use on other sites. Images depicting users should be speedied, possibly by stewards, regardless of what wiki they are on if anyone depicted in them wishes so. Educating people together with severe and non-debatable consequences in case of violations of these restrictions on images would at least be a step in the right direction. EconomicsGuy (talk) 18:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary; with all due respect to the above post, I suggest that "people" should understand that leaders of any organization, such as the one herein, including administrators and arbcom. members, that, in fact, choose to participate in same, and as such, should be willing and able to share their real life identities with the world at large; expect to have their real life world exposed as a matter of transparency and due course. The idea that everyone can and/or should edit as anonymous or pseudonymous, is quite frankly, absurd, and will not work in the real world...within the context of 21st century law and order. It is unfortunate, in my opinion; for Wikipedia, that NYB has chosen to not edit as himself, the real life person. Cheers! 12.35.96.66 (talk) 19:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we have to go beyond that. Let's face it, these people are engaging in criminal harassment - they should be made to pay the consequences. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:48, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

As an editor using real name, and a target of quite a few harassment campaigns, I believe that the only way to deal with it is to oppose anonymity and support disclosure of real name and credentials - combined, of course, with being very harsh on editors who engage in harassment. Editors who reveal their real name should be protected from slander/stalking/etc. no less then subjects of WP:LIVING policy.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Piotrus, many of us elect to use pseudonyms because of threats and harassment that come from off-wiki sources. There is nothing that Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation can do to stop that, particularly if there is no activity involving their sites. They can't indefinitely block or ban people in the real world. There are alternative venues that require verified names and credentials; for some of us, they are not an option. Risker (talk) 22:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm fortunate to be in a situation where I don't need to be concerned that my employer knows about my postings (I'm self-employed now, and worked for a local government previously). And I don't happen to edit articles like sex and others which - for better or worse - are appropriate for Wikipedia, but nevertheless are disapproved of by a significant number of people. I mention this because other editors are not so fortunate. We all have different circumstances. If Wikipedia were to insist on full disclosure of names (and thus to make it easier to identify individual's home address, employer, etc. - particularly for those with less common names) - then there certainly would be fewer constructive editors. And without a major infrastructure to truly verify identities, the trolls and vandals would just make up names - so we wouldn't see any less of that. In short, as much as it would be nice to live in a world where harassment doesn't exist, the reality is that it does, and there are good reasons - for the sake of the project, not just for contributors - why we should not require real name user accounts. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Brad helped me a lot when I was the subject of harrassment with an editor posting details of my birth place, date, etc, and my mother's maiden name and other family details. My somewhat unusual name had helped this editor do this. It was done in an attempt to silence me in some debate ! was having with the user concerned. In these cases, I would favour harsh measures being taken against those doing the harrassment by wikipedia.  DDStretch  (talk) 07:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Guys, can you please explained me what happened? NYB didn't used his real name as user name. What happened? Can anybody explain this to me? Please reply on my talk page or send me an email. Regards, Masterpiece2000 (talk) 08:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I agree with User:David Shankbone. There should be severe limits on photography and recording at all Wikimedia events, including Wikimania. This is a very sad and unfortunate event. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Man oh man do I super not agree with this proposal. Limits on photography and recording at Wikimedia events? What is this, the CIA? It's hard to conjure a suggestion more antithetical to the idea of free, unrestricted information. I've been a victim of off-site harassment via my personal info (thanks Wikipedia Review jerks!), and yeah, it sucks. But you know what? You want to protect your identity? Don't make it known at public events. Barring photography at Wiki events isn't privacy it's secrecy. Ford MF (talk) 22:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

• It is more important that we avoid future Newyorkbrad situations by discussing it here, then it is to have some misguided "Honor Newyorkbrad" removal of legitimate discussion over privacy and anonymity. I think removing references to specifics is one thing, removing discussion about the problem Newyorkbrad faced can only hurt the community. Newyorkbrad is gone. But the Talk page is open to everyone - this is a long-standing community consensus. --David Shankbone 15:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but perhaps a special page should be created for the purpose. Giano (talk) 15:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a legitimate sentiment, Giano, but right now this is the page that has the attention, and the issue is bigger than NYB. We can't get him back...I think referencing the old asshole who did this and the site that gave him a voice to threaten and extort (in a non-legal sense) NYB is wrong - but there are fundamental problems here. The do-nothing Wikimedia Foundation is clearly never going to address them. I just think this is the right forum (for now) to discuss the issues at the heart of this. --David Shankbone 16:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Out of respect for Newyorkbrad we shouldn't be having this debate here. This is a much needed debate and a lot of good ideas are being discussed but this isn't the place. This is his talk page and he makes the rules. If he doesn't want it here we'll need to move the debate somewhere else. EconomicsGuy (talk) 18:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Out of no disrespect to Newyorkbrad, it has never been the case that people get make the rules on their Talk pages. --David Shankbone 19:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Policy is impossible to enforce off-wiki, but this certainly will lend to a hard-line policy that only Wikipedians can post photos of themselves, on this website. Along with all the usual warnings about safety, security, and privacy. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 15:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

We really need to figure out a way to get all the Meet-Ups and Wikimedia events to illustrate the problems with photography and recording. I admit, I originally liked the idea of doing portraits of Wikipedians, and started that at the New York picnic. I've had my head so buried in the content I produce, that I rarely know what is going on around here - both the dangers to the editors, and the mess that has become our BLP situation (that too few of us want to address!). There are two things that each Meet-Up needs to address: The Newyorkbrad example, and the BLP problems. Since I interact with a lot of notable and media people through my content work here, I know what a problem our BLP issue has become. We have too many armchair editors who simply don't care. But the first issue is making sure a Newyorkbrad situation doesn't happen again. --David Shankbone 15:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Should Wikipedians have special rights the rest of the world doesn't have? We go around taking pictures of notable non-Wikipedian people all the time (you've done a huge amount of it, and I've done some too) and posting them. I bring my camera to (non-Wikipedia-related) conventions I attend, such as the Mensa Annual Gathering, in the hopes of getting shots of people who have WP bios who are attendees / presenters / panelists there. *Dan T.* (talk) 12:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict response to Lawrence) I'm not sure that we can create such a policy, based on the current problems regarding policy that you already know about. And what would we do about my user page showing a photo with caption of "me and KillerChihuahua (real name - Clark Kent) swilling some beer at Larry's Place"? Maybe instead anyone could be allowed to request the removal of any reference to themselves, by photo or name, from any page in wikipedia, including other users' userpages would be better. John Carter (talk) 16:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

!!! Thats not how it works. If you post someone's real name or IRL info you already broke rules--you don't remove it WHEN they ask. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 16:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, if name is already excluded, limit it only to photos. I'm thinking in particular of the photo on User:Kirill Lokshin's page and any others which might exist like it. I can't imagine that in this particular case he didn't think to get permission in advance from each individual in that particular instance, but in other instances that might not be the case. John Carter (talk) 16:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

A policy like this is simple. If Shankbone's real name is "Jerry Seinfeld", I'm not allowed to ever utter that on here in reference to him. Why would I be allowed however to post up any photo of Jerry without his explicit permission ahead of time...? Lawrence Cohen § t/e 16:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

There needs to be a way that when people register they are given suggestions. I agree with Lawrence - the sloppiness of wanting to have photos up of each other is what caused this problem (and arguably, it could have been my photo of NYB). What needs to happen is the word should be spread. We have to let other people know that there are people out there who want to hurt them. But it's a two-sided coin. We have to address the BLP problem and stop the anonymous IP editing of BLPs - damn our "open editing" ethos when it comes to people's lives and reputations. We should be better than that. --David Shankbone 16:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I must admit, I've considered going to some local meetups, but one of the things that made me pause and reconsider (even before this happened) was seeing all those photos around. I thought to myself: "Hang on. I don't want to end up in the background, or even foreground, of one of those pictures." I disagree, though, that this talk page is right place to discuss this. I think a link to somewhere else is sufficient. I'm still wondering how the Signpost (and indeed other internal news outlets) will cover this. After a bit of back and forth, Ral has posted this. But I agree, as long as explicit references to details are avoided, the general issues and possible solutions, need to be discussed. Carcharoth (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

We should encourage greater openness not greater secrecy amongst our editors. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:20, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that myself; if you're open about who you are (as I am), then by definition you can't get "outed". *Dan T.* (talk) 02:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we can put a strict policy of anonymity up, nor do I think we should. It is cliche to say, but we can't live in fear on the subject. I think instead of thinking about how we can preserve anonymity, we need to talk about how we can defend privacy. Clearly harassment should not be tolerated, & the level of information transparency makes it difficult for someone to "strike back" at an anonymous source disclosing their personal info. I get that it sucks, but turning Wikipedia into a Black Ops team isn't a realistic option. In fact, that anonymity being exposed has been a boon for the project, like WikiScanner. --mordicai. (talk) 21:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Those who don't learn from history...

You all know how it goes. I have no idea what happened to Newyorkbrad, but I am concerned with three issues.

First: if what happened to him can happen to other editors and has implications for our policies (as the rumor mill indicates), it should be discussed just as Essjay incident was. I gather something bad has happened to Newyorkbrad, my condolences - but the remaining editors have the right to know the situation, so they can prevent it from repeating (to themselves, to others).

Second: the censorship of the very news of this incident (from the AN pages, from the Signpost tip line, and likely other places) is hardly befitting an open community. At the very list those pages should contain a note that "Newyorkbrad incident" should be discussed at a centralized page (ex. here). Continued removal of all references to it looks bad - just as all censorship does, anywhere, anywhen.

Third. Currently, it is evident there is a minority of editors who know what's going on (and who censor the discussions) and the majority who don't and who fuel the rumor mills. This, of course, will not only lead to more speculations about cabal and whatsnot, but will create various theories, on and off wiki discussions, feeding on each other, blowing this incident out of proportions and making Newyorkbrad (in)famous - something I gather he would like to avoid (need I remind you that the best way to increase popularity of something is to try to censor it?). This can still be ended if the censorship stops and an official notice is released, along the lines 'former ArbCom member resigns due to...'. The sooner this happens, the sooner popular interest in this will die down. The later this happens, the larger this wikidramu will grow.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

This is, of course, quite different from the Essjay case. There are no suggestions that Brad misrepresented himself, nor are his on-wiki actions or contributions being questioned. He has decided to retire to protect the privacy of himself and those close to him. If you want to talk in general terms about how to maintain one's privacy, and what the community's response should be (if any) to off-wiki disclosures of identity, then by all means, have a discussion. The particulars of Brad's case do not have to be a part of the discussion, and he has asked that they not be. I suspect he will tell you privately if you email him, but he does not want the particulars of his case to be a focal point of unnecessary and counterproductive wikidrama. Thatcher 19:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(re to Piotrus, edit conflict)I agree with much of this post in its sincerity and articulation, Piotrus, with exception to the use of the word "censorship". I don't believe anyone is being censored in a strict sense. A wikipedian user, albeit a high profile one, has decided to leave for reasons he prefers not to have on Wiki. This is a user request, not censorship. Arguing that "the rumor mills" will continue until the "few that know" tell the "many that don't" what's going on is rather oblique, and rather selfish, and rather inaccurate. I completely and fully respect, (as I'm confident that you do as well) NYB's reasons for leaving, be they whatever they are, in or out of his control. He's gone for the time being, that is terribly unnfortunate. His departure could/should/might/might not lead to some fundamental privacy/security changes. But arguing here that you have some "right" to know what happened under the overused and mis-cited guise of "I'm being censored" is illfounded. I respect your edits, Piotrus. You are an asset to Wikipedia. If/when this situation presents itself to you, your Wikipedian activity, and your explicit wishes to go away quietly, I would expect the same courtesy would be given to you, as you would expect, or perhaps demand. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(and in the interests of disclosure, I have no freekin clue what's going on either.) Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 19:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Someone posted his real name. That's about it. -- Ned Scott 21:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

BLP crossfire, very depressing but IMO we should try to fix the BLP problem. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:46, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

@Ned: Its significantly more than that. Mr.Z-man 01:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

He left after an individual notorious for outing Wikipedia administrators who prefer to remain anonymous determined his identity and employer and made this information public. It is believed that his identity was compromised through a combination of information he had revealed about his location and occupation, and a photo taken at a meetup. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Again, I'll reiterate, whatever happened, however unfortunate, happened. Tis a real shame, and definitely a call for more security for wiki editors, my anonymous self included. It is therefore, not censorship to remove commentary that NYB himself wants to stay off wiki. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

You are drawing conclusions based on the incident but not necessarily the right conclusions. What is tragic is that NYB got caught in the crossfire. The issue we need to address is not greater security and anonymity for our editors, it is how we treat our BLP articles for people who object tot heir articles. Those who militantly oppose a sensible BLP solution are adding to the problem, what I dislike is that NYB never added to the BLP problem. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

As long as Wikipedia remains influential, there will be people who seek to influence and undermine our work, regardless of whether we have BLP solution that you consider sensible. I have examples. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 22:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

yes but its the BLP issues that caused the problem here and NYB was caught in the crossfire not for his attitude to BLP but because he has a reputation, just like those affected by BLP but not like every wikipedian. Trying to encourage anonymity is exacerbating not resolving the fundamental problem. And I don't believe there are issues more important than BLP, and I have plenty of examples. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Trying to blame the BLP problem for the antics of a certain individual is silly. That's not the root issue. If it were not perceived BLP issues, it would be something else entirely. It's the blackmailing and threats that have to stop. Enigma ^message 22:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Well I strongly disagree up to a point. I am here like everyone else because I feel a sense of outrage at what has happened to NYB. But he was targeted because he was notable, which is what various folk feel is happening to them in their BLP articles that they object to. And I think the bad behaviour needs to stop on both sides and we need to find the peace. My approach to wikipedia is largely based on damage limitation and I deplore these attacks on the project. Wikipedia having BLP problems is not an excuse to destroy it but we do need to make the needed changes to our BLP policy. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem here is that those who don't know what happened are (or were) genuinely in the dark (and might genuinely be worried about what has happened, even though they shouldn't be). There should be a way, in order to prevent speculation, to quietly tell them, while not going into details, what the story is (for some people it will be a non-story, for others it will be an important principle - UninvitedCompany probably got closest to explaining things to people who don't know where to look). Those who know at least part of what happened realise that those who are trying to reduce or prevent any drama resulting from this, are not engaging in censorship (though we would do well to remember that different parts of the world have different sensitivities to what they perceive as censorship). The aim is simply trying to respect Newyorkbrad's wishes (as stated at the top of this page).

Although Newyorkbrad made a private choice to retire (something any of us should be free to do at any time with no drama - this is a volunteer project after all), it is natural for people to want to know what happened, and to ask questions of those who do know at least something more than what they themselves know. Faced with a lack of information, people speculate (that is human nature), or, if they are happy to take on trust what others say, decide not to push the matter.

I totally agree with Piotrus that a few short, brief statements, similar to the one Newyorkbrad posted above, may be the best way to contain things and allow people to stick to generalities and avoid the specifics. Stuff like this, however, is not helpful. For what it is worth, I think people are over-interpreting what Newyorkbrad said. What he said was: "I request that no explicit reference be made here or elsewhere to the incidents prompting my departure." It is quite clear that it is the specific (ie. explicit) details of the incidents that he does not want reported. That does not mean that he wanted all discussion, or general and non-specific discussion, of his departure suppressed or redirected here. But this is what has been happening. Ral and others initially removed posts about this at the Signpost tipline page. I then posted this to his talk page, and presumably Ral responded at the tipline page with this: "Clearly we are aware of the story by now. Please do not discuss the item any further here, per his wishes.", under the headline "NYB".

The point I am trying to make is that, although this is much better than talking to people through edit summaries, it is still excessively cryptic. Just a little bit more information would make people aware of what has happened, and still make the point about not discussing things in great detail. Something like: "The Signpost are aware that Newyorkbrad has retired. If you would like to leave him a message, please use his talk page. Please do not discuss the item any further here, per his wishes." Trying to avoid using his name is just silly. The bald fact of his departure is not something that can be avoided, and it can easily be reported as a private decision (which it is) without going into details, and equally the departure and the consequences can be discussed without going into details.

In my opinion, it is the explicit mentioning of the details that Newyorkbrad wanted us to avoid, and I strongly doubt the intention was ever for this request to be interpreted as avoiding general discussion ("should we have a policy on photos") and simple reporting ("an arbitrator has resigned"). The problem is how to stop the latter (general discussion and reporting) becoming the former (specific discussion). Please can those rushing to revert things consider that too much reverting may be unhelpful, and simply guiding people and discussions in the right direction (away from specifics and towards generalities) may be a better option. Carcharoth (talk) 23:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Very well put, Carcharoth. Brad has the right to privacy; per Wikipedia:Right to vanish and simple courtesy of others - although as I suggested it elsewhere, we should have a Wikipedia:Anonymity policy making that clear (currently it is a semi-forgotten essay). I fully support not revealing his identity in our discussions.

Everything else, however, should be discussed, and previous attempts to remove the discussions from AN/Signpost talk pages were nothing but censorship, NOT supported by any of our policies (seriously, this is pure and simple censorship), violating Wikipedia:TALK#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable "do not edit others' comments"). Again, instead of pointing fingers to anybody, I accept it was done under WP:IAR, and would highly support creation/expansion of an existing policy that would clarify what to do in the future similar situation (perhaps we could add something to to mentioned WP:TALK, exceptions allowing removal of comments, although I would strongly opposed sanctioning such censorship as demonstrated by diffs above).

Lastly, as I again have argued before, we should indeed have protection similar to WP:BLP for our editors, anonymous or not. Personally I have chosen long time ago to "preemptively" reveal all of my personal details; I have done nothing on Wiki that I am ashamed off and nobody can blackmail me by revealing anything. The lesson from this incident is, I believe, that believing in protection of anonymity is a folly, and will leave you open to blackmail (I have seen this happen in the past, and I know at least one editor who left after he was threatened that his real identity will be revealed). I understand there are cases when an editor will want to remain anonymous for good reasons (criticizing variously defined authority); but you should never feel that this is safe, and be aware of consequences. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't discuss what happened on wiki - but you can e-mail me

If anyone wants to know the basic information, which is not much and which is freely available on another website, then e-mail me and I will give you a prepared five sentence statement as to the basics of what happened - you can use the e-mail function by clicking on this line. Any request should be made with a statement that you promise to not discuss it on-wiki. I reserve the right to not respond to you without further comment. --David Shankbone 00:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The whole idea that anybody should be satisfied with a "prepared statement" without any public discussion permitted is so pre-Web-2.0... and even pre-Web-1.0... it's "Mid 20th Century Mass Media", the mindset The Cluetrain Manifesto fought against. *Dan T.* (talk) 12:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The idea that every single thing that happens to us has to be discussed in public should never have come to fruition. --David Shankbone 21:38, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The 10 Ways To Not Get Outed

The short unfortunate answer is the only way to stay totally on the "down low" here if you're concerned about it:

1. Don't use your real name.
2. Don't use a name that alludes to your real name.
3. Don't use a username you've used before.
4. If all your usernames all over are variants on something like "SeismicGuy", name yourself "Fluffy Nose" here, if you've never gone by Fluffy Nose before--it should be totally unrelated to you, and new.
5. Use a unique Gmail for your WP activities like Fluffynose@gmail.com. Never mail anyone from this Gmail except via the web-based interface, to conceal your IP address (Gmail does not forward a sender's IP address in the email headers).
6. Don't even enable mail if you're extra nervous--you can live without it.
7. Don't edit any articles related to your job, known activities, or known relationships.
8. Give out nothing about yourself on a personal level; keep the job "on-wiki".
9. Never meet anyone from Wikipedia in real life, over Skype, or anything else that gives them more than what they see "on-wiki".
10. Exclusively edit using proxy-based Internet access, or only edit from public locations/connections, to conceal your IP presence.

Thats the only way to totally, 100% stop outing. The more of these ten ideas you apply, the less likely it is to happen. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What the heck: Wikipedia:How to not get outed on Wikipedia. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:12, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Good ideas. The last one is a little hard, though. Some of the more commonly-used proxies are banned, aren't they? Enigma ^message 23:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Didn't stop some longtime users from being creative in the past. I guess it depends on how private you need to be. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

And there is wikipedia's secure server, as well. John Carter (talk) 23:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

That just protects you from some network type stuff, people watching what you're doing when you connect from say the library or work. It doesn't give you any other privacy or keep your IP out of possible exposure. Good idea, but if someone is hunting you down THAT much to find out who you are on Wikipedia, you've got much bigger problems and probably need a permanent Wikibreak... Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought I remembered seeing somewhere that edits from the secure server were listed under a separate, possibly unique, IP, which is why I mentioned it. I might be wrong, of course. John Carter (talk) 23:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

If so, I bet they sure don't want it advertised that you can beat Checkuser with a secure login on Wikipedia. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course steps 6 and 10 will pretty well preclude you from becoming an Admin. Corvus cornix_talk 23:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

On #6, maybe? Not sure. On #10, not automatically? Clever people can set up something like that on a 1 to 1 basis with no one else using the proxy. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Only if a checkuser notices your use of proxies and decides to ask you a question about it. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Ha.

11. Just because you haven't been outed don't mean people aren't trying. — CharlotteWebb 18:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this way of teaching guidelines, an anonymity how-to, is the right way to deal with the problem. I'm surprised that the list doesn't mention the time and topic dimensions. You have a right to remain anonymous, but this is always a hide-and-seek game. You might be discovered and outed. Just like in cryptography, the more clues you give to your "enemies", the greater their chance to break your code. Seek to minimize your anonymous activity. Your need to stay anonymous might be limited to your contributions on a certain topic, or for a limited time. Perhaps you can sign up with your real name for most of your activities and use a separate sock puppet account for the times you need to be anonymous? You can go to meetups with your real name (after all, you will bring your real face), and not disclose your anonymous disguise. Consider if you really need to combine anonymity with adminship. Don't use your real name account and your disguise during the same hour, since that is a proven way to discover sock puppetry. --LA2 (talk) 00:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Not true. Using two accounts at different times is often used as a reason that a single person is controlling two accounts. On the other hand, if both edit in the same hour, and only in the same hour, they may be sockpuppets as well. And determined people will extrapolate every piece of data to determine if accounts are linked or not (see Mantamoreland RFAR for the best case). So create a list of quirks that one account has that the other does not (use of edit summaries, different types of topics, RV vs. rvv vs. undo vs. rollback). The best way to throw them off is to wake up at 3 a.m. your time and edit with one account, and then edit with the other account at regular hours. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:33, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

The single easiest way is to not edit controversial topics and to not be an admin. People are targeted based on the power that others perceive them to have. After all, it's Brandt's Hive Mind Administration. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

In case anyone thinks that the above comment is an explicity reference to a certain incident, it's not. Hivemind only lists arbitrators, developers, large donators, administrators (current and former). If you're only an editor, and unless you do something extraordinary (I have no idea what that certain editor-only entry did), I'm pretty sure that you won't go on. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the above. Instead of the ten rules above - which may be good for Chinese dissidents - I believe that for most editors, the following two are perfectly acceptable:

1. Use your real name
2. Don't edit anything that you wouldn't want others to find out about

Anonymity leaves you open to blackmail, and encourages behavior that one would not want to have associated with his real life persona (consider that 100% of trolls are anonymous...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

While revealing your real name and everything about you precludes you from being blackmailed by certain people of ill repute (similar to revealing a scandal to the press instead of submitting to threats of disclosure), it's not that great of a strategy for many people. The bottom line is that most people, including myself, do not wish to be harassed in real life for their actions on the Internet. How would this help the administrators who were "outed" and are suffering real life harassment at this very minute? Enigma ^message 16:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Piotrus. While I have no problem with pseudonymity, people probably shouldn't engage in activity which they aren't prepared to have associated with their real identity. Using your real name to begin with keeps you on track in this regard. Being an arbitrator or high-profile administrator is much the same as being an editor of a high-profile magazine or newspaper and people who take these positions should be aware that they might be on the receiving end of public criticism and harassment. They need to take this into account when deciding if they want the job. Unfortunate but true: people need to protect themselves. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Lawrence Cohen. I think Lawrence Cohen has made very good suggestions. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 04:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

In general, I agree with the position that anyone with authority on Wikipedia should not be anonymous. I'm willing to give in on mere admins, but sysop, oversight, and ArbCom levels should be non-anonymous. I'm editing under my own name, I've edited controversial articles, and it's not a problem. --John Nagle (talk) 04:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

One way to never be in the position of being outed at Wikipedia

I think it is imperative to address the issue that is truly at hand here. Officers and directors and administrators of real live organizations around the world must be held accountable for their actions in the real world. Therefore, if someone does not want to be outed, they should not hold themselves up to be part of the said former group at Wikipedia or any entity that, in fact, has as part of it's cause, the explicit presentation of information about real, and in some cases, live people.

Officers of public corporations are seen as transparent and out in the open. That is the law and that is the way it should be at Wikipedia. That is the reason why NYB was put in the position he is in now. Peace. :)83.165.75.248 (talk) 01:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's the law because there is a fiduciary responsibility for officers and directors of publicly-traded organizations. None of that applies here. Please don't quote the law when you don't know it; it makes you look silly. --David Shankbone 21:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not the law and it is not how it should be at Wikipedia. Garion96 (talk) 12:42, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the anon. I've always supported the idea that all admins, ArbCom members and all editors 'in the position of power and responsibility' should post their real name and credentials. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Piotrus, you are just plain wrong. David Shankbone, you are just plain right. End of story. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

So they can be harrassed off-Wiki as soon as they make a decision someon doesn't like? No. This should never be a requirement. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 20:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that anyone in a position of power should be open and honest about who they are. I believe this whether it's on Wikipedia, in a job of work, a political position, or anything else. DuncanHill (talk) 20:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Define "power". --David Shankbone 21:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

We have an article - Power (philosophy). In future, please try using the search box for general knowledge questions, or asking at the reference desks. DuncanHill (talk) 22:23, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

So that article is how you define power? I'm simply supposed to assume that this covers your thoughts when you make broad sweeping generalizations that everyone on the planet who can influence the decisions of other people should be "open and honest" about who they are"? Is the phrase "open and honest" supposed to be obvious, like "fair and balanced"? If I start an anonymous fan blog dedicated to Angela Bassett and other Bassett fans like my blog and want to start posting too, is it then my responsibility, as the blog admin, to be "open and honest" about who I am? Should the anonymous authors of the Federalist papers, upon which American democracy is based, have not been anonymous even though they influenced the thoughts and decisions of many? If these things are so clear-cut to you, let's hear you actually expound upon the words whose definitions, ideas and philosophies are so obvious to you. Please, enlighten us Mr. Hill. --David Shankbone 22:42, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

On-line forum blog type thingy? Yes, whoever controls it should reveal their identity. Federalist Papers? A subject on which I am profoundly ignorant, but off the top of my head yes, you write any kind of manifesto, be honest about who you are. If you are, or seek to be, in a position of power, you should not hide from scrutiny. To expect trust without showing trust in those from whom you seek it is one of the worst of hypocrisies. DuncanHill (talk) 22:54, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

But what if one doesn't expect trust? Then does the duty to be "open and honest" about "who you are" dissipate? If I approach a blog, secret society or website where I know the people are anonymous, do I not have any responsibility for my membership or what I glean from such a blog, society or website? Where is the reader or new member's responsibility? And what does "who you are" mean? Name? Location? Affiliations? Job? Employer? Likes and dislikes? Political organizations? Where do you draw the line with "who you are", Mr. Hill? I've been accused of being both a Republican (on the WR) and a Democrat (on WP). Is it my responsibility to fess up to my leanings? If I am editing the Abortion article, do I need to state my POV as part of "who you are"? Once I have any modicum of influence over another human, once I am no longer at the bottom of the barrel, please tell me what you expect of me to reveal. --David Shankbone 23:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I find the phrasing and the machine-gun delivery of your questions a little hard to follow. Perhaps you could limit them to just two per post? And by the way, many British people find being "mistered" mildly offensive, it's the sort of language a bum-bailiff uses. DuncanHill (talk) 23:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Really? I lived in London and I found the English saw it as a sign of respect. I suppose, Duncan, all this begs the question: why are you participating in a website that is completely antithetical to your value system, and is unlikely to ever change? --David Shankbone 23:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you have a charming accent, that could have greatly affected the way in which your choice of words was received. Wikipedia is not "completely antithetical" to my value system, there are parts of it which I admire greatly, and others which I believe to be in need of radical change. DuncanHill (talk) 23:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

{unindent} But this isn't an arguable difference, such as "Should we or should we not semi-protect all BLP articles?" (we should). Anonymity is a foundational principle of the site. You referred me to the Power article in order for me to glean a sense of what power is - you trust an article that was written anonymously, when you find that concept inherently flawed and "in need of radical change". Should a pro-Democracy blogger in China reveal who he or she is if they are writing democratic manifestos anonymously? --David Shankbone 00:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As a practicing attorney, in the United States, I can tell you that Mr. Shankbone is not correct. At governmental, as well as, on a corporate level, there are very strict laws; rules and guidelines that we must follow if we are going to act as officers of any corporate or governmental entity, albeit new and even more strict laws are on the way. Full disclosure of identities, along with background checks and checks for credentials are the “norm.”

Transparency is not something new, it is simply now enforced. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.88.51.39 (talk) 02:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, David actually did point out exactly that. He also (rightly) pointed out that this has nothing to do with Wikipedia. -- Kesh (talk) 03:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Er...actually, he did not. He implied there is an implicit law...fidiuciary responsibility. Counsel said there are real live laws. Further, this is all about NYB and Wikipedia...it has everything to do with expectations that people here will ultimately be forced to obey real live laws. Laws about privacy and laws about transparency as applied to corporate officers and the people "in charge" here. 70.173.228.203 (talk) 03:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you are making absolutely no sense and User:Kesh correctly interpreted what I said, you did not. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt: since you are saying "people here will ultimately be forced to obey real live laws" can you please link to the law you are referring to? I'd be interested to see you produce that. I've taken Corporate law and Securities regulation, amongst others, and I'd like to see how your own personal legal acumen is coming up with what you are writing. So, please...the floor is yours. I will give you a hint to start with: which state law governing corporations (since, as you know, it *is* state law that governs corporations) would apply to Wikipedia? --David Shankbone 03:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

At best, the actual Wikimedia Foundation personnel are required to adhere to such laws. Volunteers on Wikipedia itself are not. There is no "authority" or legal responsibility to being an admin, ArbCom member or any other on-Wiki position. We're all just users, some of which have a few more bits in their account. That's it. -- Kesh (talk) 04:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Kesh is, of course, right except even the personnel don't have fiduciary responsibility. But I'm interested to see the loosey-goosey legal analysis our IP friends provide. --David Shankbone 04:10, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

← I understand that there might be no legal requirement for Arbitrators to reveal their identities, but let us make a reality check here: an Arbitrator occupies one of the most influential positions in the English Wikipedia, and the English Wikipedia in one of the most visited websites in the world. (I am not saying "one of the top-ten sites" because that would be the entirety of Wikipedia.) Both the influence of the Arbitrators in Wikipedia and the fame of Wikipedia itself are undisputed facts; it is a very small stretch to say that Wikipedia is a globally influential site. Combining these leads to the plausible conclusion that Arbitrators are influential people in one of the world's most influential websites. On-line or not, I think this means that their positions are responsible enough to warrant a certain level of transparency. We might be on-line, but we are not isolated from the real world; the rules of reality work here as well, and editors ought to remember this at all times. Waltham, The Duke of 09:21, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The only transparency that sounds remotely viable to me is if ArbCom members had to give their information to the WikiMedia foundation. That's it. That information should not be publicly available, and the Foundation could screen any complaints with their information. Even this, I'd be resistant to. -- Kesh (talk) 19:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Except ArbCom specifically avoids dealing with content matters, which are all the vast majority of people ever see or care about. Their effect on how non-editors see and use the site and content is indirect at most. Mr.Z-man 23:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Strict enforcement

I am not sure why should attempts to reveal privacy or identity of an editor, against his/her will, be at all a subject to questioning. I have recently been disturbed by absolute disregard to this fact at WP:AE, ArbCom and WP:ANI. Of course, it's unavoidable that someone will try to reveal the identity of the other, intimidating exists everywhere and Wikipedia is not an exclusion. But frankly, unless editor voluntarily provides his identity, saying he is XYZ in real life, then any other attempt is simply a harassment, period. If Wikipedia editor is editing a topic, it should be irrelevant who that person is in real life, because priority here is a topic rather than an author. Any attempt to even question this cannot be interpreted in way other than intimidation and thus must be dealt with strictly. Any editor found of attempting to do so should be restricted without any questioning of how the revealing/false association/harassment/privacy violation, etc. was done, but whether it was voluntary or forced upon a victim. Atabek (talk) 16:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Atabek here. Everyone who outs anyone for any reason should be treated like SlimVirgin treated User:WordBomb. A full site ban, that is not undoable for any reason. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Who will protect the editors?

The unfortunate fact is that Wikipedia's rise to be the #7 website on the Internet has had its downside as well. We may be the subject of acres of news coverage these days, but we're also attracting the attention of some seriously malicious people. We've seen editors being threatened, legally and physically, both on and off-wiki. A number of editors have been subjected to sustained campaigns of harassment by a variety of cranks, trolls and bullies. At its worst the harassment has lasted for years. There are people out there who want to destroy Wikipedia and want to achieve this by personally destroying the individuals who contribute to Wikipedia. This has nothing to do with BLPs - charitably, that's just the spark for the problem, more realistically it's a problem which would have arisen whatever the ostensible "provocation". Nor would fixing the BLP issue or ending anonymity have any impact on resolving the problem, as the worst of the cranks want to destroy Wikipedia outright. They can't be reasoned with or appeased. The more moderate critics could perhaps be placated, but not the ultras.

There really needs to be a tougher response to this. Some of the off-wiki activity that has been directed at Wikipedians over the last year or two has, I think, reached the level of criminal harassment. Is it not about time that the Wikimedia Foundation - or at least someone associated with Wikimedia - took a stand on behalf of the editors? The cranks and bullies need to be shut down, through legal means if necessary: sue them for harassment and libel, tie them up in the courts and make the cost of harassing Wikipedians unacceptably high. The longer the perpetrators of the harassment are allowed to continue with impunity, the worse this problem is likely to get. They want to get to a position where people are too afraid to stand for the ArbCom or serve as administrators. Are we really willing to let things get to that stage? -- ChrisO (talk) 00:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

If someone crosses the line in real life, then the people that should handle that are the police, not the Wikimedia Foundation, which doesn't have any law enforcement powers that I'm aware of. -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but aren't there separate civil and criminal law codes? An incident of harassment may not rise to the level of a criminal offense, but it could potentially be prosecuted in a civil court, which is where support from the Foundation could be used. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but the unfortunate reality is that it is quite possible to drive people away with activity that does not rise to the level of harassment, so I am not sure how effective that would be. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

There is an issue that is, at least indirectly, related to the above discussion, namely the WMF privacy policy and the way in which WMF itself protects the privacy and the identity of its users. About two months ago, in relation to a different incident involving Wikipedia, I made a proposal at the WMF privacy policy page that would require some attempt of notification of WP users by WMF when their identifying info is being sought by third party subpoenas in private lawsuits. That proposal is available at the talk page for the WMF privacy policy.[1] Nsk92 (talk) 03:44, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Who will protect the children?

There is an aspect to anonymity that has been overlooked in this debate, and a blog by an admin elsewhere highlighted the issue.

It is well known that many editors and admins are children. Indeed some children are in more senior positions than admins. We are told that some even work on OTRS, though apparently they should not. WMF has made statements along the lines that they welcome such contributors and have no problem with this. There is no identification policy, and the content is famously uncensored, as David Shankbone can attest with his recent journalistic exploits in the world of athletic porn. Yet the WMF would have children potentially presiding over reviewing unsuitable material.

We know that there are immoral people taking advantage of Wikipedia - whether you conceive of them as vandals or fellow editors. There are people here who see no problem with child abuse, or bestiality - whose interest goes beyond neutral reporting of those issues. There are sites out there which advocate using Wikipedia to promote their causes. These are all things which are not the fault of Wikipedia in itself, but Wikipedia has no means of dealing with this.

So we have anonymous editors who might be children, and we have anonymous editors who might be interested in contacting these people. What we do not have is any rational policy that even considers there might be a problem here. Why is it that Wikipedia is magically immune from the problems that are continually highlighted by every organisation in the world who is concerned about the issues of child protection? Ah, the old rhetorical question: it is not.

Wikipedia is a big chat room. People arrange meet ups. Are you starting to get the idea that there is another anonymity scandal waiting in the wings - only one that if it did happen would destroy the growing reputation of the encyclopaedia.

But how can you protect someone with no means of proving who they are - there is no system, not even a way of hinting.

This is not an issue for the community to decide, it is for the WMF to impose, in my view. They have a duty of care - and probably legal responsibilities too. And here is a thought: any real world organisation that involves children in the UK under the age of 18 require those who are involved to have a Criminal Records Check or at least a check on the Sex Offenders Register. Next time you arrange to go to a Wiki meet up in the UK, are you sure you know who you are meeting up with? Are you under 18 and at risk of putting an adult into a difficult position, or are you over 18 and at risk of being misled into an inappropriate relationship by a minor? These rules protect adults as well as children. Is there a policeman typing away somewhere on Wikipedia, bating a honey-trap for someone nasty, who might misunderstand you. Be glad original research is banned.

But what do you think? (And say if you are under 18). The right answer, by the way, is neither "Children are our best contributors, we cannot exclude them so we need do nothing." nor is it "Oh, too tricky, therefore we need do nothing." nor is it "Wikipedia is not censored, therefore we don't have to give a f...fig." Dogbiscuit (talk) 23:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Please, won't somebody think of the children? --Carnildo (talk) 23:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Erm, so I take it that you think this is a spurious argument and any effects on children are entirely indirect or imagined? It saves bothering about the issue, so that's at least an efficient response. Dogbiscuit (talk) 23:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

No, the answer is WP:NOT#CENSORED. Wikipedia's job is not to play mommy. That's for parents to teach their children about responsibility.--WaltCip (talk) 00:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, WMF have published a version suitable for school use, so the concept is not alien here. Flagged revisions could be used to implement the same thing, without the need for any underlying censorship of the base articles. Producing such a work is not playing mummy, it is being socially responsible. Oh, and it is possible to get things censored when it is appropriate... oversight. Dogbiscuit (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

• From what I understand from your "Please, please, please, won't somebody think of the children!?" sermonizing, the world is a big bad spooky place, where big bad spooky things can happen to children and adults, and how can we devise a series of policies that protect all of us from all the possibilities that could happen in this terrible world? For anyone who has ever been to a meet-up (and photographs can attest to this), it is surprising how there are virtually no people under the age of 18. Dogbiscuit, you all at the Wikipedia Review are famous for sifting through diffs, photos (*ahem*), IP addresses and websites - you mean you have *never* taken the time to look at all the Meet-Up photos to notice that? You all are losing your touch. It's pretty much just us adult nerds. Otherwise, we are not a social networking site, and I think you should focus on places like MySpace and Facebook, where actual problems have existed, and not places like Wikipedia, where your concerns are all theoretical. Or maybe parents should focus on teaching their children independence, safety and responsibility. The subway could get attacked with sarin gas; I'm still going to ride it. A plane could fly into my workplace; I'm still going to be there Monday morning. If a parent doesn't like the content of Wikipedia, the solution is to block it. In America exposing a child to an adult woman's breasts in public would be seen as indecent; the English do that to children every day in Benidorm. It's up to parents to keep their kids off Spanish beaches if that troubles them; same goes for Wikipedia. --David Shankbone 02:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's got the knee jerk reactions out of the way. Perhaps you'll consider what I wrote now. I was pretty careful to point out that this was not about protecting children, it was also about protecting adult users too. I am rather perturbed at the logic that equates not censored with meaning that laws in the real world, that are introduced because of real world concerns have no relevance to Wikipedia. Now, perhaps again you will consider why it is that responsible agencies warn adults and children about the dangers of using sites like FaceBook, and MySpace, who at least pay lip service to the issue, where in Wikipedia the issue is dismissed as some anti-libertarian claptrap. Yes, shit happens all the time, but you don't close your eyes to issues. Try finding a litter bin in a London railway station - they don't have them because of bombs. Go to a bar, they put bouncers on the door. You don't get into an unlicensed taxi cab. There is a difference between letting these issues dominate your lives and being reckless in ignoring them. In your case, you must realise that you might make some arrangement to meet up with a fellow Wikipedian to take their picture, in good faith. When you meet up, you only then discover that they are a child. They then make an unfounded accusation about you. How you view yourself and your moral stance will not be used to support your case, your uncensored photographs would be used to establish that you at least have contacts with the pornography industry. (For the avoidance of doubt, I do not suggest that you are involved, I understand your journalistic detachment, my point is that others deliberately will not). What is your defence: it's all right officer, I'm a Wikipedian? Virtually nobody under 18? That's not nobody. So the solution is to make sure that when you have meetups, that you take reasonable steps to make sure that you are not meeting with minors, or that minors have a responsible adult with them. That is completely different to suggesting that because of small risks you do nothing. After all, the designers of the Twin Towers had actually considered the possibility of a jet flying into them, unfortunately their engineering solution wasn't good enough (no blame attached from me).

My point is that WMF have actually worked against being careful. Jimbo pronounced that identifying an editor who committed illegal sex acts was a bannable offence. Where is the warning on entering this site that some of its content may be unsuitable for all viewers? Please note, I am not saying that the content needs to be changed, but that WMF is riding for a fall if they simply ignore the issues on some libertarian or amoral view of the world. If WMF do not do the basics, someone out there will turn them over for it.

So shit happens. We know that, so we take sensible measures to protect ourselves, without desending into paranoia. It is a trite answer to blame the parents: and one that only someone who has not got teenage children would make. I would love to live in your head in the sands world where all problems are someone else's to deal with, Wikipedia is sooo important that it does not need to consider what goes on in the nasty real world outside. Dogbiscuit (talk) 07:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for those sensible comments DB. I protect my children. All the material that comes in through our broadband is carefully monitored. Wikipedia is not (for the moment). That is because in many cases it is a reasonably good source of information, and in some cases has more than our standard set of reference works. Given it is used so much by children and schools, I would expect a modicum of responsibility. Which indeed it has - can I say how much I get irritated by the cries of 'Wikipedia is not censored'. Of course it is. There is a thin bright line somewhere. I mean, if you go to Zoophilia you don't see Alsatians having full-on sex with women or whatever, you see these tasteful artistic pics from prehistoric times. If you go to Pederasty it's pretty much the same. So, obviously, it is censored. The question is where to draw the line. Many places it is v much in the wrong place. Peter Damian (talk) 09:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

First, the concept of a child being offended by Wikipedia is quite different than a plane flying into a building or a subway bomb, as I'm sure you will agree. Second, children should have been taught at their age by their parents that the Internet is a nasty place. Forcing Wikipedia to make legislation to protect the children will severely limit the content available, and the website will become a laughingstock. We cannot accept any level of blame whatsoever if a pedophile solicits a teenage user on Wikipedia, since the policy of WP:NOT#SOCIAL is quite clear and inherent.

Third, Wikipedia already has a warning. It's an ENCYCLOPEDIA, and I would guarantee you that you would find quite a detailed article on the penis in a hard-bound encyclopedia as well.

"Where all problems are someone else's to deal with" - That is also incorrect. The correct phrasing is "A person should be able to take responsibility for their own actions." Being a young user myself, I learned that quite early on at the age of 14. Charity, by nature, should be an action that is compulsory and voluntary, not forced and mandatory.--WaltCip (talk) 12:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'll pick up on the "take responsibility for their own actions" issue. I know I started in the context of anonymity, but consider that a young person puts lots of personal information up that leaves them open to ridicule (thinking of a particular example which I will not refer to for obvious reasons). My point is that a young person is treated differently in society and by law for the very reason it is recognised that they do not always have good judgement (well, if we adults have not) and so society as a whole, and the law, not just the parents, have a tolerant and forgiving approach. Parents may advise, but we recognise that unless they sit next to them and smoother them, they cannot be responsible for their every action, so we rely on society as a whole to help in that process. Adults get it wrong too, Squeakbox is bothered about information he once posted on his user page. I once was here under my own name, but got rather concerned about the abuse that certain admins were prepared to dish out when they didn't get their own way. A child may be more reckless.

So we recognise that children should take care, and be cared for by their parents, but we also recognise that things do not always work out how they should.

Nowhere have I said that things need to be banned. What I am saying is there are some obvious concerns, yet the WMF have no policy to address those concerns, the basics of a ethical organisation are not there. Any organisation in the UK that has contacts with children would be expected to go through a risk assessment and put things in place to ensure that anything done in the name of the organisation is protected. You may well laugh at this, but did you know that you have to pass a CRB (criminal records bureau) check to be allowed to have a guide dog puppy? One can only speculate as to what incident led to that.

The analogy is only false in that it was thrown out as supporting an argument for entirely ignoring risk. The point is clear, we do not let our lives be dominated my small risks, but if a risk can be identified as real and quantifiable, then we are reckless if we ignore it. People are very bad at assessing risk.

The point for WMF to consider is that actually there are laws in America that say that online services should take steps to identify minors. The WMF have taken a judgement to ignore that or concluded that they have no legal obligation to comply - but what about an ethical obligation? It is clear that there must be some sort of risk to children engaging in this social networking site. The WMF have not taken any action to assess that, it is left to the community to dismiss as an irrelevance, it appears. The response may be that for sound reasons there is nothing they should do, or it might be that someone realises that new members need to be given a clear set of guidelines, or it may be that editors are reminded that when organising meetups due care should be taken, or it might be that minors are only allowed to see the long promised saved versions of articles (which might then have the benefit of allowing Wikipedia to be opened up to more people via schools).

You see, I don't have a lot of faith in people being very good at doing the right thing - they can't even edit an encyclopedia without needing a whole set of rules to do it right, and even then those rules don't work and we have a heap of banned users. So, sure take responsibility for your own actions, but remember that you are then relying on the other person too, so really it is better, in the words of an admin, to "watch each others backs". Dogbiscuit (talk) 14:06, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

• Their parents. --erachima talk 09:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

  So we need to have hysterical debates about protecting poor vulnerable adult editors from the real world who want to hide away and not take responsibility for their actions, but ensuring that other vulnerable people are not harmed is an irrelevance? Dogbiscuit (talk) 14:06, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

From my former experience as a child, I can verify that I thought all the attempts to "shield children" were pretty silly and useless, and I have to say I currently still agree with my younger self's opinion. So if parents wish to monitor their children's thought crime, that should be their own prerogative - "don't tell them how to raise their children". As for real world aspects like children being lured somewhere... again that should be something that parents have the right to instruct their kids on... but why single out children? everyone is at risk from people who might want to harm them - but I will agree that it would benefit Wikipedia to add some warning and disclaimers in the hope that people won't ignore them and on the off-chance that legal action develops.

Your argument can easily backfire... having children with accounts is an excellent reason for anonymity - we would not want people using Wikipedia records to track down the real life identity of little kids? The bottom line is that kind of paranoia that grips some people today about children is the thing that throws out reasonable judgement of risk and trust. I have seen this from both sides now, and it makes perfectly innocent interactions into emergencies, it makes every adult suspect every other adult, and at the extreme leaves children insulated from the real world (which coincidentally makes them more vulnerable to predators).

The correct approach is simple: solely online interaction does not inherently had significant risk - if you as an editor observe any inappropriate behavior or patterns, bring attention to it through the established processes for bringing up bad editor behavior - practically all Wikipedia edits are public - heck, write an antiGroomingBot that tries to detect it. As for real world meetings... the simple fact is that parents are by far in the best position to monitor what their kid is doing... much better then the amorphous blob of editors. Sure, stick a underage warning on the invite... sure, hold meeting in brightly lit public bars where ID get's checked at the door... but beyond being good citizens, how do you propose WP address the issue? Credit card verification like "certain" other sites use? An age test of some sort, where you have answers questions about random well known events from 15 years ago? A big red "no children allowed" sign? And how does knowing the identity of admins play into all f this? --Marcinjeske (talk) 13:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the very thoughtful response. I agree with much of what you said. In fact what triggered this was a comment elsewhere where a Wikipedia admin had suggested that a banned user publicly identifying a Wikipedia admin was "creepy" and inappropriate behaviour because after discovering his identity it was found that the admin was a minor - "older people should not be interacting with younger people." If responding to legal threats is creepy, then isn't it a bit creepy that this social networking site actively encourages disguising your identity to mislead others?

It is not clear to me what the real issues are and what the solutions might be, but it seems that you hit the nail on the head: how do you encourage people to be good citizens? The message I get from David is "Tough, we don't want any good citizens around here, you are on your own." - but I don't really believe that he means it - people get all fuzzy headed when writing an encyclopedia and seem to want things to be different from the real world. Just remember, people here can't even edit articles co-operatively and properly, so don't assume they can do harder things right :) Dogbiscuit (talk) 14:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary "Who will protect the children" break

Quoting Dogbiscuit from above: "In your case, you must realise that you might make some arrangement to meet up with a fellow Wikipedian to take their picture, in good faith. When you meet up, you only then discover that they are a child. They then make an unfounded accusation about you." This reminds me of the Satanic Panic cases from the 1980's. If I go to a Marks & Spencers or a Wal-Mart, how is it any different? If I go anywhere in public where exists the possibility that adults and children may mingle, why am I putting myself at any less risk? Your scenarios are flawed, because they suspend common sense: I don't make arrangements to meet up with Wikipedians one-on-one in private, and I certainly have no reason to start photographing them. If I did, I would use more common sense than your hypothetical allows. Unfortunately, Dogbiscuit, there comes a point where addressing your argument beyond what I already have done becomes silly. For years after 9/11 my 90 year old aunt was afraid to leave her rural Iowa home after dark because of terrorists. I, who live in New York City, tried to assuage her fears, but in the end...all the scary things that can go wrong in the world kept her indoors once the sun went down. You remind me more of my aunt than a rational person. Can a child be molested every time they leave their parent's sight? Yes. They can also be molested by their parents. Can I die every time I step in a slippery bathtub? Yes, but I'm not going to start wearing sneakers to shower. --David Shankbone 14:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The scenarios are not flawed for the very reason that they do not suspend common sense - they point out that children often have not developed that common sense, and the world is littered with examples that show that common sense is not that common. So you have not met up with Wikipedians singly, (I can't recall if your lunch that some people said was inappropriate for other reasons was after someone else had introduced you), good for you, but the point still stands. People seem to think that because the cause is noble, that they can suspend critical faculties. No harm here, we are writing an encyclopedia, nothing to see, move along. It is that last little bit I am trying to tease out. This venture has a veneer of respectability that might allow people to lower their guard and do things that they do not realise are inappropriate, because they think they are writing an encyclopedia, not participating in a multi-player online role-playing game. After all, common sense tells us not to make terrorist threats on school articles, doesn't it? No harm done there.

OK, enough said. I put the issue out there, and the community, it appears, has spoken. Dogbiscuit (talk) 14:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I understand you see Wikipedia as a game, and that's fine. Regarding my post photo shoot lunch with Matt Sanchez, people are free to say whatever they like. Fact is, he's an adult, columnist and former soldier. If it's not clear by now, I don't really care what people think about me - I will do what I want and what I think is right. Common sense tells us not to break the law (such as making terrorist threats,on school articles, molesting children or not paying taxes). But your proposition that Wikipedia should cave into the Nanny state is anathema not only to me, but I think to your brothers and sisters at Wikipedia Review, including those who have pooh-poohed the writings of Amorrow, who have been banned for incivility and for being "trolls". You are arguing against anonymity, and using arguments that would lead to the banning and castigation of more people. I don't think you'll find much support for your arguments here, or on the WR. --David Shankbone 15:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm sorry that the way I've written this has ended up being too personal about you. The point I was making was you met up with someone you thought you knew about, poor example in that he was a public figure apparently. Others may follow your example and believe that they know the person that they are meeting up with is such a well known Wikipedian there is no issue.

What intrigues me is that people feel so threatened by criticism, that they need to exaggerate to defend the point. Cave into the nanny state: never suggested it - I suggested that to ignore the problem entirely is reckless. Your mis-characterisation of WR as like-thinking people (which indeed you acknowledge) and supporter of He Who Must Not Be Named (apologies for taking that out, you should understand why) is inappropriate.

There are a lot of wrong assumptions in your response, you seem to think I am a thoughtless automaton BADSITE attack robot, perhaps? Perhaps I am arguing for anonymity - it is surely not appropriate for children to identify themselves to strangers, I think I would like to see traceability though (the knowledge that you are only anonymous until you abuse the trust of the community - and that is the condition you have signed up to knowingly, not at the whim of an abusive admin).

What I am concerned about though, is the unintended consequences of a dive for deeper and deeper secrecy in response to attacks. Think on this: do the WMF hide behind pseudonyms? They are the most senior figures, arguably the most juicy targets of attackers, yet they do not seem to run into problems. Is one of the problems of anonymity that it is used inappropriately, the outing of a popular and respected member of the community should not actually have been an issue. Irritation, yes, problem, no. I don't think it was, per se, it was some unforeseen consequences that might not have occurred if he had not been secretive about his involvement. As I said on WR, I did change my views on that issue, in part based on the treatment of our friend by one individual - it hadn't dawned on me that someone could be so carelessly vindictive - but also because I understood that having been encouraged into a veil of anonymity, he had put himself in a difficult position of being, if you like, a public figure which conflicted with his employment, and it was that which made his revelation a problem. Dogbiscuit (talk) 15:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't edit my comments. You talk as if you know things that you don't know, and it hurts your arguments. First, you are assuming that NYB left because of some job conflict. You don't know that, nor do I. Second, you are assuming that members of the WMF have not become targets. That is outright not true, and I will decline to go into further detail. Third, you are interpreting my words - I know that the Wikipedia Review is not a single-minded organism and if you read my words carefully you will realize my phrasing doesn't support your inference; however, if members remain silent to other members misdeeds while commenting in those same threads, they are complicit. Unfortunately, those on WR who consistently protest that the WR is not a hivemind fallaciously think that WP *is* a hivemind. As to "ignoring the problem" that is also a fallacy - there is no problem. It's theoretical, this whole adult/child interaction thing. Fifth, let's figure out what you mean by "child" - we don't have many 9 year olds on here, but we do have more than a few sixteen and seventeen year olds editing this on-line encyclopedia (the same ages they can drink in your neck of the woods. Last, if you don't want exaggerated responses, why did you choose an emotive, logically flawed title for the section? You set the tone for the discussion - now you want to circle back ("I wasn't *just* talking about children"; "Don't be so exaggerated" et. al.). It's pretty easy to come on here and muse about saving children from some theoretical problem, propose no solution, and then sit back and cherry pick the arguments you think overstep bounds or misunderstand what you are saying, when you are really saying and proposing nothing. You are simply mentally masturbating. --David Shankbone 17:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

A while back, Giovanni di Stefano claimed he was filing papers against some editors who had contributed negative yet impeccably sourced and true material into his article. He also claimed that he was filing against the WMF. You're living in a dream world if you think that we don't have real problems (i.e, not the hypothetical ones that you suggest) stemming from editor privacy problems. Besides...most of the things you say about children seem to focus on the very young (i.e, most people above the age of 12 are perfectly capable of understanding the GFDL), and we simply don't have that many people around. The youngest person I know of is 13 (the person participates in MfDs regularly and is, I believe, female; I can't recall the username at the moment). Thus far, all you've really done is "OH NOES TEH CHILDRENZZZ!!111!" without really proposing anything or providing any hard evidence that isn't raw speculation. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. OK, taking it bit by bit:

Not going to talk further about NYB for reasons stated on his talk page.

I don't doubt that the WMF have been subject to abuse and whatever. My point is that as they are open about who they are, there is no chance that the secretiveness can be used against them.

If I read your words on the thoughts of WR, one time fellow WR member, it seems that you seek to discredit all those who are members there by association with events that are unacceptable. This is not the time to debate that, simply to note that you have mis-characterised WR, but it is an irrelevance to the topic at hand.

WP as a whole is not a hivemind, after all there are many people here who merrily edit away with out knowledge of the machinations of the political glitterati. However, there is a worrying amount of group think among those who seek to represent The Community. Again, off topic, but the relevant point seems to be that any "not invented here" criticisms are often swiftly rounded up and despatched. An example would be that it has been ridiculously painful to cut through the idea that "building an encyclopedia" is perhaps not of such importance to the future of the world that living people being defamed in articles on a regular basis is somehow unimportant, a debate that I suspect would not be as painful in traditional organisations whose moral and ethical standpoint has evolved in other ways.

You dismiss the threat to children as some theoretical issue, in the same breath as acknowledging adults have been subject to serious harm. I am perplexed that what is acknowledged to be an issue in the world outside Wikipedia can be dismissed as entirely theoretical, but actually that should not stop it being an issue that is dealt with properly if that theory is plausible. To use your Twin Towers analogy once again, the risk of an airliner striking them was once entirely theoretical, yet the designers sought to address the issue. Millennium Bridge (London) is an example of what happens when people do not consider theoretical issues when dealing with novel systems.

I was not sure what point you were making with the drinking analogy. For example, one could argue that using drinking age suggests that the youth in America are considered so irresponsible that they cannot be trusted to drink until 21. I don't think you can draw many inferences from the various ages of permission other than to recognise that there is a consensus (real world term) that young people are different. In simple terms they are not mature, a biological fact that can be readily observed in the field.

You seem to reject the basic concept that young people (if you prefer) are not fully developed and may not have the proper judgement. You cannot simply then blame the parents. The parents of my generation still come from a world where there is an expectation that people try and do the right thing.

You seem to be too wrapped up in who I am and where I post, so I'll spell my concerns out for you again:

• There are predatory users on Wikipedia who can take advantage of the system of anonymity. This is not theoretical.

Wikipedia is not myspace. Where would this taking advantage of occur? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

You say it is not MySpace, but that does not make it true, and does not address the issue that Wikipedia provides a medium of communication that can be taken advantage of. This is simply rebuttal by TLA. Dogbiscuit (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, that does make it true, as it is official policy. Anything not in line with that policy are subject to reversion , PROD or XfD. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not to hook up and get dates. A billboard on a street provides a medium of communication that can be taken advantage. AIM provides a medium of communication that can be taken advantage of. The phone provides a medium of communication that can be taken advantage of. Does AOL censor AIM? Do you have to prove your age to make a telephone call? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

<Smile>There are lots of things that are policy here, that neither means that they are true or that they are successfully implemented. Do you really believe there is no social networking operating as an underlying level of Wikipedia? I've been told that Wikipedia is not a hivemind, so have you considered that just because you are not on the pull, that others might not be on the same way? Have you heard of Wiki-Meetups - how is that not hooking up? Dogbiscuit (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of those before, no. Personally, I don't like them, and I don't really think they belong here, but I don't really see the potential for any kind of abuse there. This is a bunch of (i.e, large number) of established editors getting together; this isn't one guy canvassing the talk pages of every young auser he can find and saying "Hi, I'm looking for a young boy to meet me at Sbarro's at 8 pm. Free candy." or something. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand a bit more about where you are coming from. I think though you are being a little disingenuous with the line of reasoning you have been displaying where you talk as if you believe that this is simply an academic work, not MySpace, and the first thing I saw on your talk page was the equivalent of an MSN chat where you described Wikipedia as a massive multiplayer online game. I didn't realise that I was talking to a fellow Wikipedia Reviewer after all. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Dogbiscuit (talk) 00:19, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• Measures to increase members' anonymity without any system of traceability increases the risk that Wikipedia is abused.

How would it be abused? I don't really see how evidence that protecting editors is going to somehow result in harm to other editors. It seems quite the reverse to me; it lets what happen on Wikipedia stay on Wikipedia. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Why assume that any action done for good reasons cannot be subverted for bad? It seems to be the standard operating procedure around here. Dogbiscuit (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Why assume that any action done for good reasons is subverted for bad? As an aside, what kind of things could they be subverted for? These are all hypothetical arguments. There's no precedent for anything like you suggest actually happening, and you haven't even provided hypothetical examples. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, here is a hypothetical example. Say a user disguises his identity and uses it to subvert an article, and is so successful in disguising his identity he can get other users banned, and when people find the conflict of interest, this depends on knowing their identity, so if you have true and guaranteed anonymity you cannot have a conflict of interest policy. Oh, not hypothetical, it was an arbcom case, silly me, I forgot. And as I pointed out before, the British government seem to think the hypothetical problem of "meeting people" is an issue, so I don't think it is a particularly sensible approach to dismiss it. No precedent? Well, for one, the precedent does not have to be on Wikipedia, two, there are enough documented cases of real life stalking of adults (one which David did not like me removing mention of even though both Wikipedia and Wikipedia Review agree that the correct approach is zero attention) and AN/I seems to have a regular selection of incidents, including death threats against school mates. Now if you go for greater and greater levels of secrecy (e.g. say abandoning IP logging) you might be protecting the good guys, but you also give succour to the bad guys. You know, this is not hard stuff, it's a bit embarrassing to have to suggest that there might be problems with systems that allow people to operate secretly. Dogbiscuit (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

So ... your issue isn't with children anymore? Now we're just talking about people using privileged information to stalk other people. In that case, the obvious solution is to allow privileged access of information to only extremely well-trusted users, or perhaps only to the Office. How does making LESS information available to people result in LESS stalking? To me, it would seem to be the reverse. When and if something bad does happen, just drop the office a thread and explain the situation and appropriate action could be taken. Why doesn't this work? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen the ANI threads about people threatening to bomb schools and cause bodily harm. They're usually reverted between a few seconds and a few minutes and the appropriate authorities are usually notified. A few regexen may be able to prevent such edits from being made, but people could always use leetspeak to get around it, and that's simply dangerous because of the false safety implied by the regex and the lower number of people manually watching pages. Beyond that, there's really no way to prevent edits like that from being made. Somewhere along the line, someone's going to have to click "rollback". Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

You talk about the "British government" like it has done something to address Wikipedia's community aspects, but I'm not aware of any sanctions placed on Wikipedia's traffic in the UK. Could you provide the relevant legislation and any associated case law? The subject of governmental censorship / HTTP packet shaping of Wikipedia's traffic seems like it would have gotten a lot of attention. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• By encouraging people to be deceptive about their identity, Wikipedia is putting both children and adults at risk, whether that be by creating an environment for grooming, by involving minors in activities on the site which are not really appropriate for children.

What activities occur here that aren't appropriate for children? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussions on adult subjects, soft pornography in MediaWiki, discussions on topics on illegal activities where the articles may be NPOV but the talk pages are not.

First, there's no pornography in MediaWiki. The only thing in MediaWiki is a bunch of PHP code and some configuration files. I'm assuming you mean this installation of MediaWiki. Regarding both points, they both stem back to parents teaching their children responsible internet use and what the internet is and isn't for. Beyond a simple statement of "wikipedia isn't censored for the benefit of children", there's no obligation on our part, ethical or otherwise, to do anything at all. It's up to parents to use that information available to them to decide whether or not Wikipedia is appropriate for their children. Of course, regarding the second point, there's nothing wrong with discussing illegal activities; they even do that in school. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Sigh, I, in the words of Clinton, mis-spoke - I meant the Commons. The comment taking a pop at David was his contribution of two men, one doing hand stands whilst the other was, I believe the term is, rimming, though it was a bit complicated and athletic and I am happy to be corrected. This, however, is of course, totally acceptable because it is encyclopedic to document the porn industry. For sure there is no obligation to do the right thing, but in the good old days, it used to be considered the right thing to do, it's sort of, you know, considered to be the mark of civilisation, well it was once. Oh, everyone is welcome to discuss and document illegal activities for the documentation in an encyclopedia, the line is crossed when you advocate. You may not be aware of what gets oversighted for example. I'd say it wasn't a massive problem because the main articles are watched, but it happens and there is nothing to stop it happening but volunteer supervision. Dogbiscuit (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

And volunteer supervision seems to be working. I just took a look at all the drug related articles and talk pages I could find, and I didn't see advocacy in any one of them. I saw a lot of debates on the reliability of sources and a comment by a chemistry student pointing out that a diagram wasn't correct. All perfectly appropriate talk page content. Do you have anything to demonstrate that community supervision isn't working? If so, what would you propose as a solution? Paying people to sit in front of huggle all day and do the same thing that our counter-vandalism unit does? What's the point in doing that when we have people willing to do the exact same work gratis? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you have a problem with the upload rules at Commons, then the place to take that is, surprisingly enough, Commons, not here. It is an entirely separate project; we just use their images. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• If there was a will, a child-friendly on-line view of Wikipedia could be created. Not censored, I don't buy it: the WMF has already shown that it thinks that a Schools Edition needs to be cherry picked. It is illogical to suggest that the same might not apply to the online world. This is not censorship, it is recognising the needs of the audience.

I fear you misunderstand. That is a matter of size considerations and of keeping the cruft and non-academic material out of the copy. It isn't a matter of "OH NOES PROTECT TEH CHILDRENZ!!111!", it's keeping The Simpsons out of academic referentia. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 10:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me quote from [2] here, as you seem to think I am some lone voice making up spurious criticisms and you seek to disparage the argument by suggesting I am acting hysterically. Very silly.

There has been recent public discussion, started by the Education Secretary, on the suitability of Wikipedia for UK schools. Many articles on the live Wikipedia website are of suitable accuracy. This Selection aims to correct the remaining criticisms made of Wikipedia as a school resource:

   * the Selection has been screened
   * the Selection cannot be vandalized
   * children cannot "meet" adults there
   * there are no very explicit articles or content.

But wait, this might still be some ravings of a Wikipedia Review loon. Let's just see what the WMF's endorsement of this project is:

Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, said: "The Wikimedia Foundation aims to encourage the development and distribution of reference content to the public free of charge: this project is an excellent example of free resources being offered to a particular audience which we warmly encourage, and are proud to support."

Now, will you show me the difference between my position and one that the WMF also endorses? Dogbiscuit (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Anyone can fork the project, with or without the endorsement of the Foundation. That's one of the beautiful things about free and open content. If someone wants to go through the effort of creating a censored fork of Wikipedia, fine, they can go right ahead. But there's nothing but hypothetical arguments to suggest that there's more benefit in censoring the main project itself than keeping our content here and freely available to anyone regardless of age. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• Parents cannot be expected to monitor or be aware of their children's every move, indeed that would be unhealthy and inappropriate. Therefore, if children are to use and be encouraged to use Wikipedia, as is happening now, someone needs to consider what aspects of Wikipedia might put children at risk. This might be content, it might be editors. For example, as a minor, you cannot be reasonably expected to understand the implications of GFDL and publishing personal information publicly. It is clear that many adults do not either. As a parent, you can try and explain your concerns, but then children make mistakes, or are deliberately disobedient (usually under the "old fogey, I know best" rule of family engagement). You can stand back and say blame the parents, or you can look and decide if there are things you can do to help parents help their children be involved, to give them a way of being involved where they can understand what they are permitting their children to do. Put another way, life is far to hard and complicated as it is, why should Wikipedia make a parent's life even harder? Dogbiscuit (talk) 20:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

If parents think that their children aren't capable of handling an online encyclopedia, then simply deny them access to it. If they want to force their worldviews on their child (which they can, until they're 18), they have those tools at their disposal. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Anonymity: Other reasons

So far, we have discussed the problem of "outing" an editor causing off-wiki problems. I have had experience with the reverse situation: off-wiki harassment spilling over into Wikipedia.

Off-Wiki, I have had a long-standing feud with a group of trolls on another website. Some of these carried over their vandalism (minor at the time) onto Wikipedia, and I stepped in to stop them. They quickly sussed out my identity, and started a far more intense programme of damage to the Encyclopedia, including extensive vandalism, trolling, identity theft, etc. (See my talk page for details of one such attempt, by following the "suspected sockpuppet" link).

While the system worked well to block these users and revert their damage-- and they've seemed to have dropped their mischief for now-- I think this illustrates another good reason to safeguard anonymity: the risk of off-wiki feuds, quarrels, and harassment spilling over into Wikipedia. In a sense, this is even more serious than the problems debated so far, as the encyclopedia itself is harmed.

Anybody know of similar cases? Rhinoracer (talk) 10:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but I think this is a sound argument. In general, what happens onto the outside world should not be spilling onto Wikipedia's servers except in the form of articles and sources, and the same goes for what happens on Wikipedia's servers spilling onto the outside world. In a safer, more anonymous environment, people will be more likely to contribute to the best of their abilities without fear of reprisal from any off-wiki groups. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 19:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The Perfection of BLPs

I do wonder why people seem to be deliberately obtuse on this issue. The point is that the majority of the population have no concept of what editing Wikipedia entails, and reasonable people would not grasp that there is a social networking site in behind editing Wikipedia articles. Of those that do, most would assume there was an ethical and morally responsible organisation responsible, as opposed to a dysfunctional group left to their own devices, who cannot come to an ethical consensus on what to do on obvious moral issues like BLPs.

We did come to an ethical consensus regarding BLPs. See NPOV, RS, V, and even the specialized BLP. If anything, we're too protective of BLP subjects; see the various deletions of the Brandt article. Again, Wikipedia is not a social networking site. We're here to write an encyclopedia, not to have cybersex or look for dates. The only "social" thing we do is discuss policy, debate deletions, dispute resolution, and discuss sources. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The current "consensus" on BLPs is one that still allows defamatory articles to be held in place against reasoned arguments that demonstrate actual distress to those defamed. How is that ethical? It may have a consistent logic, but that isn't the same thing. Dogbiscuit (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't allow anything that doesn't adhere to a non-neutral point of view or anything that doesn't cite reliable, independent, verifiable sources. In what way do these policies allow libel? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 21:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Who is this "we" you are talking about? I thought Wikipedia was not a hivemind of like-thinking people. Now, do you want to have a long debate on the various international definitions of defamation, which Wikipedia could still be subject to regardless of it being hosted in America? In the UK, even the knowledge that something is true is not necessarily a defence if something is maliciously posted. Funnily enough, over at Wikipedia Review, the suggestion is that if it was not for the problem of Wikipedia having defamatory articles, then Wikipedia Review would not exist as a credible forum for discussing issues. (The above para was part of a post continued below, signed by Dogbiscuit (talk) 22:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC))

"We" is the consensus of editors, although I obviously don't speak for everyone personally. Policies are arrived at by consensus. RS, V, N and BLP were all arrived at via discussion and consensus. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, any time soon, Wikipedia Review will be publishing a pretty damning review of actual prominent BLPs that have contained defamatory information for long periods of time. You don't seem to understand the difference between having a policy (broken or otherwise) and the reality. I can even point to a recent oversight edit which I requested via OTRS which has been done incorrectly so has left the defamatory information in place via the edit summaries. There are numerous people fighting Wiki-wars over maintaining inappropriate information in particular biographies. They claim they are using policy, but by the selective use of arguments, or simply attacking other editors, they manage to maintain inappropriate materials. (The above para was part of a post continued below, signed by Dogbiscuit (talk) 22:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC))

Rather than complaining about the state of certain articles, why don't you improve the articles in question, tag them, or re-submit the OTRS ticket? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Now, what is your view, is it that policy is perfect and all editing is according to policy therefore all biographies are perfect? Or is it that the supervision of articles is so good that any editing not according to policy is corrected in a reasonable time? Or is it that you do not believe there are malicious editors on Wikipedia, that "we" are all models of perfection and integrity? Or are you just guessing that because policy looks sensible to you that it must all work properly and anyone suggesting otherwise is deluded or malicious? Are you aware that long term respected editors have left Wikipedia because they believe that the BLP policy is ethically flawed and they believe politics here is so ossified that they cannot get the issues fixed. Dogbiscuit (talk) 22:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

We have extra policycruft like BLP because people don't follow core policies closely enough. If N, NPOV, RS and V were followed, we wouldn't need BLP at all and they could be treated just like any other article. An article in line with those policies couldn't include unqualified slander or libel and thus couldn't be defamatory. It's really that simple. It's not an issue of changing how Wikipedia works, it's an issue of making sure that editors adhere to how it works. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Ha! As easy as getting editors to adhere to policy. You are an expert rabbit herder I take it :) Dogbiscuit (talk) 00:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I never said it was easy. I'm just saying policy isn't the problem. The problem is the implementation. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 00:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

And for your information, my friend hooked up with 2 chicks he met on here last year. JeanLatore (talk) 23:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

On Inherent Notability

It has recently come to my attention that inherent notability is beginning to spread through Wikipedia. I feel that this is a bad move for the project, for a number of reasons.

1. We end up with lots of short articles. Inherent notability is often the line of defense used by articles with insufficient sources in order to avoid deletion. This leads to lots of 'cite' requests when users are bold in adding information. As the defence is inherent notability either we end up with unsourced statements or stubby articles. Neither is a good place for a reference source.
2. Increasing inherency will spread, from schools to other public places. Arguably, religious buildings are as much a cornerstone of a location as a school. Following this pattern, more objects would fall under inherency. This leads to the total avoidance of the notability, because soon everything falls under an inherency guideline. Obviously, this is a 'thin-end of the wedge' assumption, but it does need to be looked at. At some point, a line has to be drawn in cyberspace.
3. Aside from anything else, do the articles help people or give them necessary information. Wikipedia's goal is often stated to be 'to give everyone access to the sum total of human knowledge'. Now that's an idealistic statement and given a limited period, people don't have time to see the sum total. So my question is: Do these inherent articles serve a goal, beyond bulking Wikipedia.

So, after that, I think it would stupid of me not to suggest my solution: Merge current short articles that are insufficiently sourced into a section in their geographical location. For inherent geographical locations simply move them 'up the chain' so to speak. For people and the such-like, move them to the articles which relate to their issues - artists to the styles that they use and the such-like.

NB: For readability, I tried to think of examples. However, obviously, if I could think of them, chances are they would be notable and as such not be part of the inherent notability.

Obviously, once a section begun to expand, it could be moved into it's own article. IE if a Republican senator gained enough cited sources to be consider to be a significant portion of the page on Republic senators, they would be moved into a new page.

Thanks for your time, Philipwhiuk (talk) 22:28, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

• If you can't find examples, then I have to question whether it's really a problem. Finding examples should be easy; go to a category that's "inherently notable" and look at a few articles until you find one. I believe that "inherent notability" is fine in moderation. A US senator has enough cited sources to be notable; "inherent notability" is there to remind people not to toss the article up on AfD.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:47, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
• As long as you can propose merges, and as long as no-one is a dick about it (i.e. is against a reasonable merge), this would fall under meta:separatism and meta:mergism and can't be solved per se. (I am a hardcore mergist and see the same problems as you, but my whole merging approach and process usually works just fine.) – sgeureka ^t•c 04:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
• Notability is a community standard, and when we say that a class of articles is inherently notable, what we mean is that so many of them have been shown notable that challenging any of the remaining instances would be quite simply a waste of the community's time. For your more specific example of senators, senators as a class are by definition both public figures and more significant than the average professor, and hence all pass WP:BIO. --erachima talk 05:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way of marking user essays as contrary to current best practice? If you can get consensus to mark Wikipedia:Inherent notability like that then that might be one way to forestall inherent notability based arguments. Percy Snoodle (talk) 08:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Considering the essay has a pro and a con, I dont see how it contradicts any practice at all.
2. as for the actual issue, yes, I think consensus is indeed changing on this one, and I hope it will change further. Hair splitting arguments about the notability of over 100 individual articles a day does not contribute much to the encyclopedia. a simple agreement for each topic about what counts as notable and what does not would do much better. Of course, we'd need to compromise, but better a compromise than any one of us may not particularly like than eternal fighting, quibbling, and the resulting lack of consistency.
3. As mentioned below, policies & guidelines are the policies and guidelines we actually apply here, and the formal statements are just codifications of that. If people have formed a consensus to accept arguments based on inherent notability, so they have, and if a guideline statement disagrees it will be properly ignored. Remember, WP:N is not policy. It's a guideline, and intended to be flexible. DGG (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I would hope that if the policy does indeed evolve further into naming classes of things as notable, it should do so with classes of things that are considered notable because they are likely to have sufficient third party reliable sources to enable a good article to be written about them. For example, all state legislators are considered notable as a class. This strikes me as a good idea, because while there are likely to be sources about a state legislator from the 19th century so that a decent article could be written about him or her, many such sources may not be online. Thus, including the class is beneficial because it prevents these articles from being mistakenly deleted.

I do not believe that notability should be based on anything other than the availability of reliable sources to write an article, as then we are getting too close to evaluating the merit or worth of the subject. I'd prefer to see us go closer to having deletion/inclusion criteria be simply based on whether reliable sources are available to write a decent article about a topic. This would require deletionists to abandon the "simply a normal x, doing its job in a normal way" rationale for deletion and inclusionists to abandon their "This is important for reasons x, y and z" rationales. I think the War on Schools (which would almost always meet my preferred criteria) and the prevalence of articles on small-time beauty pageants that survived deletion because they managed to get a few photos in the newspapers show what a narrow hope that is, but I can always dream I suppose. ObiterDicta ( pleadings • errata • appeals ) 18:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

but relying on RSs is what gets the beauty pageants in when they happen to get the publicity! If we have a rule about what level pageant count we don't have to worry about finding special arguments to delete the ones that made no sense. I usually can find sources when I think an article is important if I try hard enough. I could probably do so even when I don't think its important, but of course I think about what's worth working on. And there are people better at it than I, and the result is some pretty absurd articles--just as you say. And I could argue about just which sources count as reliable for what to get whatever result I like, except that if it contradicts common sense people quite rightly would follow common sense about what is important. What belongs in an encyclopedia is the important things we can find sufficiently reliable source to write about. That's V, and I agree with V. But then there's the part about "important". DGG (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Did someone ask for examples?

I have some on my mind... not targeting these specifically, just ones I have run across... and to head of the criticism: no, I do not have anything against the people who care about or live in or near the topics I mention, I am sure they are very nice and hardworking.

• places - there is the sentiment that any place or region, especially if it is defined by a government, is inherently notable, even if there are no reliable sources saying anything beyond that it exists and the usual statistics.
  • census-designated place like Meadow Woods, Florida where the entire article consists of describing census data in prose form. The idea is that if the government needs a name for it, then it must be notable. The problem is that they are effervescent, externally meaningless constructs as they are created only as a convenience to conduct a thorough census: WP:NOT#STATS
    • "The boundaries of such places may be defined in cooperation with local or tribal officials, but are not fixed, and do not affect the status of local government or incorporation; the territories thus defined are strictly statistical entities. CDP boundaries may change from one census to the next to reflect changes in settlement patterns. Further, as statistical entities, the boundaries of the CDP may not correspond with local understanding of the area with the same name."
  • government administrative divisions all over the world like Bilanga Department... there are project to document administrative units for any number of countries, not just with lists of them, but with individual articles for each one entry. The idea being that someday, someone may write something about them, and there will be a page ready.
    • usually, these articles are going to remain empty, or at best become lists of things that happen to be inside the boundaries of the district. It is like Better Know a District but taken to an extreme... there is map (WP:NOT#Atlas?) and a reference to a parent entity... then over time maybe links or short sentences to everything that's notable in the district. Somehow the fact that a government uses the name for administration, and that notable things happen to exist within the boundaries, makes those boundaries notable.
  • towns? villages? rest stops? hamlets? parks? places like Tumalo, Oregon where the contents is a list of businesses. Or Tumalo State Park, where the contents are a description of the location of the park, and are way overshadowed by the giant infobox listing links to other places of equally questionable notability, some with articles, some (thanfully) without, but with red link just begging for article creation. Aguemone?

Yes, there is something to be said about all these places.. in fact, about every place. But should it be said? Especially with names and regions made up by a government, unless it is meaningful enough for third-party sources to talk about it, why document it?

• people and groups
  • Articles for people we currently have little information on, like List of rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Piela
    • now, lists of such people are not necessarily bad... but lists of people with red links suggest that we should create pages for them, and there is also the risk, because names are short and not ambiguated, that accidental linking due to name collisions will lead to misinformation about people.
  • Articles for people whose career caused them to be publicly known, but who we have little to say about, like David Shaw (ice hockey) and Alan Fogarty
  • articles documenting traditional groupings which blur the line between traditional encyclopedic fare and family history, such as the tree of articles growing from List of Jat clans ... sure you get good stuff like Chauhan but a lot of Legha (clan) or like Special:WhatLinksHere/Drall (who knew that an Indian clan Drall settled in the Star Wars universe).
    • how far is this from articles about the Smiths of Hampton, Virginia? I don't know... part of the problem is that many english wikipedia editors shy away because the names seem exotic and they don't want to seem culturally insensitive by telling someone their ancestor is not notable. Sources, if there are any, are invariably in the native languages, which makes verifiability practically impossible, especially on the scale of that which would be need to handle the volume of such entries. And the accidental links... the lack of disambiguation... the shear number of clan and subclan names is almost like a dictionary attack. They are certain to collide with topics and need disambiguation, hatnotes, and lots of editorial wrangling.

• songs like In the Still of the Night (1937 song) or many of the songs on lists like List_of_doo-wop_songs.

For some reason, there are active efforts to catalog every instance of the above that have thrown the very effective rule of WP:N and WP:V out the window. And many editors just don't have the same innate feel for what belongs in an encyclopedia or share the standards of verifiability and notability that wikipedia relis on so much for the rest of article space.--Marcinjeske (talk) 12:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

(to the OP), "inherent notability" isn't beginning to spread throughout the Wikipedia. Those articles on small towns populated with Census data have been there since the early days. If anything, the standards for notability have become stricter over time. Squidfryerchef (talk) 15:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

The idea that certain types of things are inherently notable (inherent notability) is indeed spreading through Wikipedia, as it is being used to justify keeping article... a search like this for 2008 suggests that there about 500 AfD (or similar) debates where some sort of inherency was raised. The same search for 2007 returns only 727 hits... so while I admit that not all the hits necessarily reflect someone raising inherent notability as a defense, it still suggests that after four months of 2008, we have almost as many invocations of inherent notability as for all of last year. This does not even take into account all the articles that do not make it into deletion because some editor claims WP:IN and editors believe them (I can't think of a good search to pinpoint these). Some quoted highlights from the following deletion debates:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tetuan, Zamboanga City - "Keep geography based subjects should have inherent notability", "The reasons cited for the keeps were that all inhabited places are notable and that all political entities are notable." "Keep. A geographical location is notable if it appears on maps" "Geographical and political units are inherently notable."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hopkinsville High School – "Each AfD that ends as a keep, as this one will, adds to the body of evidence of inherent notability of such schools" "there is a clear consensus of WP:Inherent notability for all high schools" "I also did a bit of easy math, and found that it has over 1,000 students. So I added that information to the summary. Big high schools are per se notable."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hawaiian Wikipedia – *"the largest (and probably only) online encyclopedia in the Hawaiian language is arguably inherently notable, even without references"
• Wikipedia:Deletion review/Don Murphy – "the degree of inherent notability [due to the] position"
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Holger Lagerfeldt – "[An editor] argues against having any inherent notability with engineers or producers. That is not WP policy." "What I understand from inherent notability is that when an artist has a top charting record and/or wins an award and becomes famous by virtue of the record's success, his engineer and/or producers benefit and may get an award as well."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Associated Students of Arizona State University – "Also note possible proposal of WikiProject Students' Unions, which is in the WPCouncil at the moment. The supporters of the project believes that all students unions have inherit notability regardless of sufficient coverage using standard WP:ORG."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Operational sex ratio – "she has recognized the inherent notability of that subject" "until it was clarified that WP:PROF gives blanket notability to [Fellow of the Royal Society]."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ireland national schoolboy rugby union team – " Clearly a notable topic, is insane that it needs to be asserted via all these references just to avoid deletion."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Salt Spring Air – "the inherent notability of an airline company" (this is in the closing statement!)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/WWCG-LP – "Regular FCC-licensed stations are inherently notable" "as notable as any other station"

Citations are often made to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Geography and other parts of Common Outcomes as if they were policy or guidelines. Now, none of the above suggests my opinion on any of the specific articles (many could establish notability without anything inherent-like) or the specific editors whose comments I have quoted. I just want to show evidence that the idea that certain subjects are inherently notable is alive and well, and I believe, spreading each time. (At some point we should take this conversation over to WP:Inherent Notability.)--Marcinjeske (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Well regarding villages, settlements, and administrative divisions in general, the reason these things are virtually always kept (the few exceptions are due to a deficiency in the article, such as it being a hoax from end to end) and considered "inherently notable" is that these are the kinds of topics which paper encyclopedias traditionally cover. The same goes for a number of different categories of article, including legislators, professional athletes, and so on. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:55, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• But what do we write about if there are no WP:Reliable Sources on which to base the article? I mean between verifiability and neutral point of view, inherent notability doesn't make sense. Why create an article when there is nothing to write about. Administrative divisions are just that – administrative – they typically have no meaning except as a convenience for administering a region. They do often overlap with meaningful regions that are discussed in sources and are therefore notable.. but just the administrative region? Not all villages and settlements will be notable - by definition, if they are notable, sources will have noted them. Why invent a new concept when following our existing guidelines gets the superior result? Traditional encyclopedias do not slavishly document every settlement or designation a government creates. They, and we, analyze whether there is useful knowledge to relate about the topic. --Marcinjeske (talk) 20:31, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Not all reliable sources speak to notability; a directory or almanac is reliable from the point of verifiability, but is not generally accepted as evidence of notability. That's just one example, but probably the biggest. If this were not the case, there'd be no need for a notability guideline, as WP:V would have it covered. SamBC(talk) 21:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
    • I think we agree... I was merely pointing out that even if you ignore the notability guidelines because they would reject your proposed topic, and instead use "inherent notability", it is almost impossible to follow the verifiability and NPOV policies and still write a meaningful article. You are right, that the WP:Neutral point of view, WP:Verifiability, WP:No original research, WP:What Wikipedia is not, and WP:Biographies of living persons policies imply the WP:Notability guideline... but the importance of the guideline is that it spells out the combined implications of these policies on deciding if a topic should be included. The need for the guideline is due to people creating articles which can't meet the policies - and consensus wanting a simple guideline to help identify those articles. --Marcinjeske (talk) 07:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Rename notability criteria to inclusion criteria

Ok, I'm going to just float a idea here. There has been a contention in determine what topics are "notable". But instead of worrying about notability, why not just rename the "notability criteria" for what they truly are, an "inclusion criteria". By changing the name, you also change the context of the debate and put an end to the debate over notability and is one less point for critics to take issue with Wikipedia. --Farix (Talk) 14:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

While it may seem simply a case of word choice, it might make the concept more quickly grasped by folks external to the project. Things could be less emotional when article subjects are said to not meet the "inclusion criteria" as the objection would about the application of a standard. Currently, when subjects are deemed not "notable" it is frequently taken as a criticism of the subject or a criticism of the opinions those who disagree. --Gwguffey (talk) 16:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Agree with Gwguffey: this would avoid insulting people by telling them something is "not notable" when it is notable according to some definitions, just not sufficiently notable for inclusion. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:14, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I suggested something like this some time ago, to change it to something like "encyclopedic suitability", but "inclusion criteria" is fine as well. I think that would make it much more easily understood and less stinging ("sorry, this subject doesn't meet our inclusion criteria" is a lot easier than "sorry, your favorite band is not notable"). I also think since our definition of notability is different than the common one, we'd have a lot easier time explaining things this way. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:13, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

It does defuse some, though not all, of the emotional rhetoric that typically accompanies debates about notability. Which is why I'm floating this idea. For example, this anon editor who was upset about the deletion of some garage band and pointed to the numerous articles on small towns and cities. It isn't a perfect solution, but I think it is far better than keeping the existing name. --Farix (Talk) 18:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an idea I've been floating. However, I don't think we necessary make the notability guideline an inclusion guideline, but instead create an inclusion guideline which, as one aspect for inclusion, includes the notability guideline. There are articles that we include that are not necessarily notable but that we include as part of good encyclopedic coverage such as some lists (notably, lists of episodes and lists of characters from fiction works). Then, we need to change DEL to reflect that we delete things that are not appropriate for inclusion, which includes articles that are non-notable and that fail to meet any other inclusion guidelines. --MASEM 17:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe Masem has an excellent point here. Inclusion standards are more than notability. For example, if an article doesn't fit the purpose of Wikipedia, it's not suitable for inclusion, even if an argument may be made regarding its notability. Vassyana (talk) 18:19, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree... notability is just one aspect of inclusion/exclusion... so we need an overarching guideline that includes notability as part of it. Blueboar (talk) 22:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I have been thinking along the same lines for the last two weeks, mainly because of WP:Notability (fiction) which argues that even notable fictional elements should not have their own article except for certain circumstances (i.e. containing significant amounts of real-world information). Masem's proposal may also work. – sgeureka ^t•c 09:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, some sort of condensed "inclusion criteria" guideline (similar to the 5 pillars for regular policy) would definitely be an improvement over asking new users to read a bunch of different pages to find out why their page was deleted. Mr.Z-man 20:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't sound like a good choice of wording to me. Wikipedia has several "inclusion criteria" - not just WP:N but WP:NOT, WP:NOR etc. I can see someone writing an article which violates WP:NOT and protesting that "it meets your inclusion criteria, so why are you trying to delete it?" This would only make sense if we merged half a dozen guidelines and policies into one page, which would be seriously impractical. Hut 8.5 19:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the choice of wording is poor, and strongly disagree with any move of WP:N. However, there is an ongoing debate at Wikipedia talk:Notability which is indirectly relevant to the present discussion. The issue there, in my opinion, is how to accommodate the broad notional use of the term "Notability" in content-discussions, not just deletion discussions. There are a number of de facto standards of notability: WP:UNDUE is among them, but also WP:RS to a lesser extent (which is not policy). It would, in my opinion, be a good idea for WP:N to at least attempt to point readers to the proper place. This might help to avoid conflating different policies, as well as to disambiguate between potentially different uses of the term "Notability" in content disputes. silly rabbit (talk) 19:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• On the positive side, this will give us a chance to do things properly and logically, instead of the present absurd situation, where we first say expansively that everything we can talk about is notable, and then start removing immense chunks of it by the drastic negative standards of NOT and the over-rigid interpretations of RS, and have no positive explanation of what ought to be in the encyclopedia. Perhaps in rethinking what we want we will at least be able to see the actual arguments instead of judging abstract criteria by how they will affect our favorite sort of articles or arguements. But beware, our present disagreements will be out in the open, and we will actually have to make explicit compromises, instead of trying to maneuver legalistically. DGG (talk) 02:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• There's no way to describe the set of subjects of Wikipedia articles without abstract criteria, and no way to state those criteria in a way that won't make them "laws" to be legalistically interpreted by some.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Bot flags for admins' alternate accounts to help WP:ACC

Hello, everyone. After discussions at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/WODUPbot and Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Bot flag, I'm looking to demonstrate a consensus for bureaucrats to give the bot flag to an alternate account of any admin for the purpose of helping to create requested accounts. Admins are affected by neither the 6-per-IP-per-day account creation throttle nor the antispoof. While this works well for creating accounts where there is conflict with an unused or barely used account, an account without the sysop flag is required to attempt to create requested accounts first to see if there is a conflict. Unfortunately, non-admins are stopped after creating six accounts. Bot accounts, however, are informed of similar usernames but are not affected by the throttle.

I think that this could work well if restricted to admins as it's not allowing them any permissions that they don't already have with the exception of just one, but of course, if anyone is given the bot flag for this purpose and edits with the account, the flag should be removed, and the admin whacked with a trout or crushed by an elephant. I don't think that admins are trusted with delete, protect, and block, but can't be trusted not to edit with this bot-flagged account. WODUP 18:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

• Well, I've commented on this elsewhere already, but just for the record, I certainly support this. Giving the bot flag to WODUP's alternate account will not allow him to do anything he can't already do with his sysop access. It just lets him do one thing more carefully. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, I think it's the smart thing to do. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, I was just able to create an account from my alternate account while it was blocked with account creation enabled and autoblock disabled. If these bot-flagged accounts were blocked in this manner, that would prevent any accidental editing by forgetting that you're logged in with the flagged account. WODUP 20:25, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

• No problems with this. Stifle (talk) 11:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• I do this all the time with SQLBot (manually). I think I've created nearly 1000 accounts now in this manner. There are no problems with this, that I've encountered in the last 1000 or so that I've done. SQL^{Query me!} 12:30, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• Bot accounts are, in essence, single-purpose (or, at most, more limited than a usual editor) productive accounts. Using an alternate account to create accounts counts as that in my book. Sounds good to me. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• As long as its limited to users who already have a "higher" right than Bot on the main account, it looks like a good thing. MBisanz ^talk 18:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• Ok, as MBisanz AKAF (talk) 13:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• Sounds a good idea to me, as having the bot flag would make you more efficient in helping would-be contributors. There should probably be a list of non-bot bots somewhere, though. – Sadalmelik ☎ 06:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
  • How about Template:ACC bot for the accounts' user pages, which adds them to Category:Wikipedia bot accounts used to create accounts? WODUP 07:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Looks good -- it's enough to group together the bots BAG is not interested in. – Sadalmelik ☎ 06:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Support, as I already have done on WP:BN, for the smae reasons. --ais523 10:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

• Sure. Honestly I don't even see the reason the crats asked for a pool on this, its pretty incosequential they couldve just cut thru the red tape Acer (talk) 17:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Note: The "accountcreator" usergroup was just created to allow an account to do unthrottled account creation without the anti-spoof override. This right van be given out by admins and does not contain all the other rights that bot has that account creators won't need. Mr.Z-man 00:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:When to cite - Guideline or Essay?

The above page has constently swung between Essay and Guideline status. The most recent change being a unilateral change to Guideline - justified by pointing out that "consensus can change". While that justification is true, I think it needs to be demonstrated that consensus has indeed changed. I have, therefor, initiated a compromise position, and marked the page as {{proposed}}. I encourage everyone to review the text and give an opinion. Please comment at: Wikipedia talk:When to cite#Essay or Guideline (again). Thanks Blueboar (talk) 13:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:PLOT

Per discussion on Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not I have removed WP:PLOT from that official policy in an attempt to capture consensus. Hiding T 13:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:XXX

Does Wikipedia consider it's WP:XXX rules to be part of its corporate by-laws and, if not, how are these rules distinct and separate from it's by-laws? --Taxa 14:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, you appear to be making an effort to be legal. Corporate by-laws contend with how a corporation is run--such as when meetings are to be held, and how directors and officers are to be elected, etc.--and not with minutia such as content and policy. In fact, given the legal status of Wikimedia and the content that its users supply to its websites, the foundation would not have any official "by-laws" or policies about content as long as it conforms to the laws of its jurisdiction. Perhaps your question would be better answered if you explain in what context you are asking? --David Shankbone 14:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:XXX's are often sited as if they were law, leaving the user who is accused of violation in need of an attorney to formulate a legal argument in support of his position, in absence of a formal judicial system where his argument can be heard. Instead it seems the accuser can go to a friendly administrator without knowledge of the accused with the result that his access is blocked in sort of an underhanded way. It would seem therefore that since WP:XXX's serve as the basis of such doings similar in concept to a newspaper's manual of operation and since a newspaper's manual of operation is provided for in its corporate by-laws that Wikipedia corporate by-law would in a like manner provide for WP:XXX's and for the judicial system where arguements might be heard by an impartial arbitrator or judge? -- --Taxa (talk) 16:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation that operates the infrastructure has a set of bylaws as well as a number of governing policies. Though those policies are sometimes incorporated into WP: references, most of the WP: materials are created by the community rather than by the Foundation. As a result, they have no specific foundation in corporate law. For the most part, Wikipedia is managed unincorporated self-governing community of volunteers. And yes that can sometimes be unfair or problematic. Dispute resolution, the Administrator's Noticeboard and OTRS provide mechanisms to request assistance if you think something has been handled inappropriately. Dragons flight (talk) 16:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Generally speaking there are three types of WP pages: policy, guideline, and essay. Some WP:XXX pages are policies (such as WP:3RR on the three-revert rule, WP:DR on dispute resolution, etc.), and should generally be followed by everyone. Other pages are guidelines (such as WP:USER on user pages, WP:TALK on talk pages, etc.) which are generally accepted standards that people should follow, however there are common sense and occasional exceptions. The final category of WP pages are essays (such as WP:DTTR which recommends not leaving template messages for regulars, WP:TIGER which talks about dealing with passionate editors and topics, etc.) that offer advice and/or opinions, but you are not obligated to follow. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Dragons flight and Kralizec! for your informative help. -- Taxa (talk) 17:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

userboxes

Is there anything wrong with a user filling his or her user page with every userbox that can be found or that being the only contribution to the Wikipedia that a user makes? -- Taxa (talk) 04:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It's highly discouraged, per user page guidelines and Wikipedia is not MySpace. Since the primary use of userboxes is to identify people who may have knowledge in a particular area to help edit articles, it may be considered slightly disruptive to have userboxes that suggest knowledge that isn't actually there, and someone whose only edits are to their userpage could probably do with a warning, but it's unlikely they'll be blocked on first offence. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Toptomcat is a case in point. What would be the appropriate determination for this user? -- Taxa (talk) 09:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that to stress over how many userboxes a user has on their page is largely pointless; looking around, it's clear this is an attempt to harass Toptomcat, which is massively inappropriate. Leave it alone.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I've seen people who do the same and make no edits outside of their own userspace. Looking through Toptomcat's contribs, it appears he is editing more than just his userpage. I wouldn't worry about it. --Kbdank71 13:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Are we blocking people now for people establishing who they are on their user page before doing any mainstream editing? The editor in question makes edits outside of the userspace, but even if he didn't, it's entirely possible and extremely likely that he's planning on doing it in the future. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 20:50, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I started off with 10 user page edits, followed by ~10 additions to Word Association. Just because someone make ridiculous edits at first doesn't mean that they can't become a useful editor. Paragon12321 (talk) 21:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It was an utter lark, really, something I did when I had far too much time on my hands that amused me and harmed no one. I make constructive edits regularly, and should my userpage somehow become a genuine problem I'll change it. Additionally: thank you for registering, Taxa. -Toptomcat (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Can you have userboxes that display your affinities for illegal activities, such as drugs? JeanLatore (talk) 03:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • If the user is making constructive edits elsewhere I see no reason to care how stupid their page looks, as long as it does not contain attacks against other users. Drugs? Can you be more specific? Most drugs are legal in most jurisdictions, and I doubt any substance is prohibited everywhere (and by that I mean "subject to laws which are actually enforced"). — CharlotteWebb 04:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about baby drugs like cocaine are super illegal as far as I know! And I smoke hella weed as well, which, last time I checked, is still against the law. JeanLatore (talk) 22:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

License incompatibility?

While doing some free image moves to Commons, I noticed that the terms of {{PD-old}} differ between here and Commons. On en Wikipedia, the license terms are equivalent to {{PD-old-100}}, while on Commons, the terms equate to {{PD-old-70}}. This means the terms can be changed when images are transwiki'd. Should we have a bot replace existing usages of {{PD-old}} with {{PD-old-100}}, and then change the {{PD-old}} text to reflect 70 years instead of 100 years? Kelly ^hi! 15:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Monthly update of style and policy pages: April 2008

It was a complicated month, so I hope I've captured, as simply as possible, the substantive changes. Please notify any issues on the talk page. TONY (talk) 16:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Increase autoconfirm

Please see: Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal/Poll (talk)

This is a discussion and poll for whether the requirements for autoconfirmation should be increased. - jc37 20:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Why are "short articles" bad ?

Up above there is a discussion on the contentious topic of "inherent notability". The original author of that thread states one of the problems is: "We end up with lots of short articles." Ignoring the issue of "inherrent notability" (that's a separate debate I do not wish to rehash here) I would like to know on a more basic level, why are "short articles" a bad thing?

I don't know about you but in almost every encyclopedia I have ever seen the majority of the articles are very brief. Yes, WP is "not paper" so we don't have space restrictions ... but that does not mean we MUST create articles that are long.

To assume short articles have little or no value is as erroneous as to assume that long articles are automatically worthy just because much can be said about a given topic. 72.87.158.243 (talk) 21:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Short articles are, in themselves, not bad. Obviously a long article is better as it provides more information but small articles certainly have their merits, that's why there are so many stubs. That's just my two pence (I'm English and hate the word 'cents')...... Dendodge..Talk^Help 22:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

There's traditionally a certain article length that people like Wikipedia articles to be (see e.g. Wikipedia:Article length) - there is such thing as a very short yet complete article on a very narrow topic with little available information, but I haven't run into many of these. 05:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Generally, it's a question of organization. Since we're not paper, we can also organize things into logical groupings, and instead of a ton of short articles, we can have several redirects leading to one coherent, reasonable-length, in-context presentation of those subjects. We can even anchor redirects to a specific section. In traditional paper encyclopedias, such "see also" entries require the reader to find a different page or even perhaps a different volume. Here, the redirect is seamless and automatic. There's also the legitimate question of "What is important enough to give any space to?" If we can only say a sentence or two on a subject, we should have it merged to a parent, if possible, or simply decline to mention it, if not. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's two kinds of short articles. One is an article which should be longer, but no one has bothered to expand it, and the other is one that is destined to have no meaningful content ever, because there are no meaningful references to cite to help write the article. The former is not a problem. The latter is. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 05:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with the anon here. Short articles are fine, and most of the articles in traditional paper encyclopedias are short, but the publisher has still decided that these articles (which we invariably call "stubs" on Wikipedia) are useful to their readers. For an example of a rather short article, Vadsø Airport is a fairly "bare bones" article by Wikipedia standards, and marked as a stub, twice. It contains only six lines of text in the body, along with a destination list, an infobox, and some references. But by paper encyclopedia standards, this is not a bad article really, it is four times more informative than the corresponding article in Store norske leksikon which just gives the location, opening year, runway, and passenger numbers. Their entire article goes over two lines of text. Shorter articles than the stubs we have can be found in paper encyclopedias, so we should not really be too worried. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Are short articles bad? Of course not. Sometimes biographical articles are necessarily short due to a lack of information, are still notable, but are not suitable for merging because, well, they are articles about a person. See these examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Some of those can be expanded, others will forever be short or will rely on only a few sources. Those are only 19th century people. If you go back to the 16th and 17th century, there are plenty of people where snippets of biographical information exists, but it is difficult to decide where to put them in an encyclopedia. You could put footnotes in all the articles the person is mentioned in, giving the biographical information about that person, or you can create a short article that will never be more than a few paragraphs, and link to that from the places where the person is mentioned. Carcharoth (talk) 12:09, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The gist of this discussion is: short articles aren't bad - poorly sourced ones are.-Wafulz (talk) 13:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) has been marked as a guideline

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a guideline. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Preventing sock puppets

There are too many sock puppets on wikipedia simply because it is too easy to register. My suggestion to halt this is to ask for a credit card number in order to verify name and address. That way if some one wants to make a second registration they have to pay a monthly fee or simply not be allowed to register a second ID. The investigation system for removing sock puppets is inefficient and wastes editors time trying to investigate abusers. Libro0 (talk) 22:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That would be a monumentally bad idea. For starters, not everyone has a credit card. In addition, I doubt anyone would be gung-ho about paying to edit a free website. Even if they provided another ID, then we'd have to have a system to check that. Even more inefficient. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

There are many sites that use credit cards to verify ID without making any charges. As I said the encyclopedia would still be free for editors and readers. Most of the people without credit cards are minors that should not be editing without parental consent anyway. I doubt any verification system would be less efficient than the current sock investigation methods. Libro0 (talk) 22:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What a wonderful way to remove the poor, the young, the non-American from Wikipedia. Lousy idea. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You are reading into it a bit too much. My intent was sock puppets only. It was just a suggestion. I am fairly certian that poor people and non-Americans have credit cards. Such as this international student. Libro0 (talk) 22:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Your suggestion was well meant - I was just trying to shew some problems with it - sorry if I was a bit over the top. DuncanHill (talk) 22:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Most of the websites that I've seen that require a credit card number look so shady or unprofessional that I wouldn't trust them with my email address. I don't think any major website that doesn't require you to buy anything would ask for a credit card number simply to verify ID, that's just tacky and a major overreaction to what's really a minor problem (though often blown out of proportion by drama-mongers). Mr.Z-man 22:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I have seen no other suggestions only hostility. I am disappointed. Ok I will retract this then.Libro0 (talk) 22:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I support this idea and think it should be implemented post haste. If you are too irresponsible and paranoid to give a credit card number then you shouldn't be editing anyway. JeanLatore (talk) 23:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

How about if one is too poor? Or of a faith which prohibits usury? DuncanHill (talk) 23:31, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Or from a country where credit cards are hard to come by? (IIRC, this includes most of Europe.) --Carnildo (talk) 23:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That is incorrect, credit cards are available in most of Europe. If we also include debit cards then cards such as Visa Electron is available through most of the world. That said this suggestion still excludes minors and those people that take the view that giving credit card information across the internet is a very bad idea. Taemyr (talk) 14:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

In the US, it's expected that an adult will have at least one credit card. My impression is that this is not true in Europe. --Carnildo (talk) 19:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Or Amish? Kelly ^hi! 00:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Bad idea mainly because it excludes young editors. We have 13-year-old admins who are highly effective, and many young contributors on a variety of topics. Also, it provides little defense against a dedicated sock puppeteer who is likely to have multiple credit cards, or can gain access to lists of credit card numbers. Finally, many users concerned about anonymity or fraud would refuse to register if this measure were in place. Dcoetzee 00:28, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That is a good point but keep in mind they are admins. They are a group I think are allowed to have more than one ID. Although a pinch harsh the responsibility thing is also a good point. When it comes to poverty and religion these do not preclude one from having a card. If you are poor or "place religion here" you do not have to use the card for purchasing things. You can possess one solely for this purpose. Libro0 (talk) 03:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Being poor does preclude having a credit card - they are (in most of Europe at least) not issued willy-nilly to anyone who asks for one. A credit check is made, and ones income & occupation is taken into account. DuncanHill (talk) 09:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This is profoundly unworkable on multiple grounds. It would exclude whole classes of people just in this country. Those who don't want a credit card, those with have bad credit, those who are in bankruptcy, young editors, etc. This pales beside the barrier this would be to the vast areas of the world where credit cards are something only the very few possess. Basically, we want the door open to the 6.6. billion people on the earth, all with the ability to go beyond editing by ips and register. What percentage do you think have credit cards?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You're really serious about this, aren't you? When I first saw this, I figured it was some kind of joke. You really expect users to get a credit card to edit a wiki? Not everyone is as financially well off as you. Most of the credit cards available to someone in my position (i.e, poor college student from a family beneath the $12,000 a year line getting by on loans and scholarships) have mandatory monthly fees. Even if you aren't using these, you still have to pay a monthly fee. In effect, since I sure as hell couldn't afford to use it to buy anything, I'd be paying a monthly Wikipedia editing fee; or at least once before I cancel it and pay the subsequent cancellation fees. You're being really narrow-minded here. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You think I'm rich because I have good credit? Rather I am responsible. I stated that I am just like you- a poor student. FYI my first card was a student mastercard with a fixed $500 limit and no fees. I am sorry you don't know about these types of cards. Libro0 (talk) 16:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I know about them, I just can't get them. Fall quarter, I was all stoked about getting one that you mentioned, marketed specifically for students. I signed up for two such cards and got denied for both of them. Just because you can get credit doesn't mean that the rest of us can. Some of us burned up any credit we had getting loans. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 17:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

When you register you are only registering for the respective language wiki not all the wikis. Keep in mind the use of the credit card is for preventing puppets. If people edit anonymously then they wouldn't need a credit card. Furthermore, if that IP should be home to a vandal then it will be blocked. As long as people don't abuse they can continue to use credit or not. So I still strongly support the idea because it is very workable. No one needs be shut out. Libro0 (talk) 05:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

i'm sorry Libra0 but you appear not to understand how credit cards work. Your proposal would exclude minors, many people on low incomes, many people in the third-world. DuncanHill (talk) 09:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Let's assume that everyone can get a credit card. That's still going to drive away a huge number of people who aren't going to give their credit card number to some website "who isn't going to take any money off of it, no sir, really, you can trust us."--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The 13 year old admins can either "borrow" their parent's credit card (I am sure they do this anyway to buy online stuff anyway), or simply give up being admins. I don't know why some 13 year old thinks he can run this site anyway. Perhaps that's why much of wikipoedia is slanted towards the jejune and picayune. JeanLatore (talk) 15:44, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You say Wikipedia is slanted towards the jejune, and yet you've started articles on pop culture topics? I'm detecting some hypocrisy here. Anyone capable of understanding policy is capable of being an administrator. Age is no barrier to that. Editors are responsible for content, I think that kind of narrow-minded attitude is one of the things that hurts the community the most. Besides, promoting deceit and thievery of your family's property is not part of a free encyclopedia. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an absolutely terrible idea. First, you make the assumption that all users have credit cards, which is a terrible assumption to make. I don't have one because I'm a college student and the only ones I could get would have insane interest rates. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Whilst I believe that the credit card method is completely wrong, the goal is certainly worth pursuing. We can't completely prevent socks, but we can raise their entry bar. Institute a probation period on new users based on the number of non-reverted substantive edits, not just time. If someone has to constructively and nontrivially edit dozens or hundreds of articles to gain credibility for a sock puppet, they'll at least think twice about burning that sock and in the meanwhile they'll have done some good for the project. Far fewer puppetmasters will take the trouble. While new-users, only allow self-reversions and prevent edits to semi-protected articles. How hard would it be? LeadSongDog (talk) 16:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That already happens when users are being examined for sockpuppetry allegations. If you're talking about some kind of hardocded system with a table in the users database with a boolean "This user is probably a sockpuppet because he doesn't have enough edits" or "This user has enough edits to not be a sockpuppet", that just reeks of assuming bad faith; i.e, all users are sockpuppets until proven otherwise. The prevalence of this kind of view is really starting to scare me. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Strong Oppose: I'm 13, my parents will never put their credit card details online and this would force me to give up my account...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 16:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, autoconfirm is the solution that we take to keep new users from editing semi-protected articles. While that also assumes bad faith on the part of new users, I think it's an acceptably harsh solution to the problem considering the problems that we have with BLPs and the like. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 16:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem isn't just "new" user socks, it's the sleeper socks that are registered months before being used. See the recent edit history of World War I for example. Look for the red usernames. Autoconfirm seems a reasonable approach, but anyone could have fifty gmail accounts tomorrow if they wanted them. Even if we limit it to real (connectivity-providing) ISPs it won't always work, as many allow multiple accounts. WP:AGF goes a long way, but GF users are getting pretty frustrated by a lot of this stuff. As in poker, "trust everyone, but cut the cards".LeadSongDog (talk) 18:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a proposal now that would increase autoconfirm to be 7 days and 20 edits. That would essentially kill the sleeper socks, or at least force them to contribute. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 19:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do people think it has to apply to the whole world. Wikis are separated by language. Each one can apply its own methods. Like I said before, registration gets you into one language only. You register separately for another wiki. Besides don't people know that credit cards are protected from fraud nowadays. Libro0 (talk) 16:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't necessarily follow that people believe there are sufficient fraud protections. My mother had a credit card at one point that was used only for emergencies. I showed her how to watch the activity every day, which she did. One day, someone in California used it to buy $250 in electronics. Despite the fact that she did everything that she was supposed to, she was still liable for $50 of the fraud. That was enough to scare her out of having it anymore. Should she be blocked from editing Wikipeda because of that? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 17:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

So people in the third world, or as some have mentioned, even parts of Europe, who don't have access to a credit card can no longer edit the English Wikipedia even if they speak fluent English? That sounds awfully elitist. Or should they move to the US? I don't see what fraud has to do with anything. If the card isn't being charged for anything, what would fraud protection be alerted by? I have a credit card (well, technically a check card, which can work like a credit card) and I've donated to the foundation. But if I needed a credit card to register an account when I did back in 2005? Even if I had one then, I'd still probably be pretty leery of using it. The problem of sockpuppetry is blown far, far out of proportion. If it were a truly widespread problem, I might support this. But the fact is, it isn't. It affects a minority of discussions, generally about controversial topics. Chances are this won't even deter the most dedicated sockpuppeteers. This is like trying to kill a fly with a grenade. Mr.Z-man 04:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This is an extremely bad idea. Apart from the people who haven't got credit cards, or who refuse to register them with a website, there's the question of whether anyone will bother. If you want to add a bit of information to an article on something you're interested in, you can currently do it without creating an account. You might also be prepared to provide a username and password. But very few people will go to the effort of providing sensitive information such as a credit card number, and we will lose thousands of potentially useful contributors. And bear in mind that the problem this is intended to tackle (sockpuppetry) isn't even a particularly serious problem right now. Hut 8.5 17:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

There are multiple reasons why a good faith user would need to create more than one account. For one thing this would cripple Wikipedia:Request an account, unless the users creating new accounts had literally thousands of credit cards available to them (one for each new account they created on behalf of new users). It would also make it extremely difficult for people to create legitimate bot accounts if a unique credit card number were required for each instance of account creation. --VectorPotential Talk 18:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Requiring a credit card would seem to be a cure that is worse than the disease given the issues that it would bring with it. --Gwguffey (talk) 04:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Another thing of concern is what would happen if someone managed an SQL injection on the database that linked users to their cards? The Foundation would be put at serious financial and legal risk. Is such a draconian, risky measure really worth the minor benefits that we would experience as a result of having such a system in place? Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 07:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of...

I am willing to assume that many of the persistent users of wikipedia write and edit articles while high on cannabis. It's just plain downright fun; however the issue is I think we should do a study of the percentage of edits whilst high, and track the quality of said contributions. Not everyone like me is cogent enough to write academic articles while high. JeanLatore (talk) 22:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If nothing else, I would find the results of such a survey quite amusing. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 23:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

That is a good argument in favour of anonymity in editing: "Editor partakes in special scientific research". Waltham, The Duke of 00:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You may be interested in the essay Wikipedia:Editing under the influence. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 05:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

If there isn't a "This user contributes under the influence of THC" userbox, there needs to be. :P Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 00:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Found one. {{User:Vincent de Ruijter/UserBox/Marijuana}} Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Update in privacy policy

Hello,

During the last board meeting, the board approved the following resolution

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will amend its privacy policy to notify, when possible, those members of the community whose personally identifiable data has been sought through, or produced as a result of, civil or criminal legal process, except when such notification is forbidden by state or federal law in the United States of America.

This change of policy was suggested early march by Nsk92, following the Video Professor incident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29/Archive_25#Releasing_IP_addresses_of_registered_users:_the_Video_Professor_incident After I was informed of this request, I added it on the board agenda and asked Mike Godwin to come with an appropriate text.

As a matter of interest, I had asked Mike to review entirely, and to work on a full update of our privacy policy. We should expect a full draft for this summer. However, I felt that this little update could anticipate the brand new summer version.

Thanks

Florence

ooops Anthere (talk) 00:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I know I am missing the point here...

...but there is no signature. Please consider this an effective timestamp. Waltham, The Duke of 00:13, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

In a WP perfect world...

This brief posting is to address the conflict between the WP goal of being a repository of all human knowledge and the need for various inclusion/exclusion policies like notability. For purposes of discussion I ask you to imagine a hypothetical reality where Wikipedia exists in a "perfect world" ... by that I mean one where such problems as

• vandals do not exist
• twits do not want to put myspace cruft here
• WP has unlimited serverspace and bandwidth

In such a world, does there still need to be a notability policy? If so, what else needs to be eliminated to remove the need for WP:N and friends so that WP can more easily achieve its goal?-- Low Sea (talk) 01:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

What needs to be eliminated to remove the need for WP:N? Children. --Golbez (talk) 01:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Amen.--WaltCip (talk) 02:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

the WP goal of being a repository of all human knowledge - there is no such goal. In fact, it is policy that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collector of information. It's an encyclopedia; as such, it presents an overview of important topics.

And as far as hypothetical perfect worlds, I also note that WP:NOT says that Wikipedia is not a social networking site. Discussing "perfect world" scenarios is a bit pointless - there really is a lot of real work that needs to be done. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." - Jimmy Wales [3].

Wikipedia is often presented as a comprehensive collection of all human knowledge, and yes this does conflict with NOT. Dragons flight (talk) 06:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Knowledge is part of the hierarchy made up of data, information and knowledge. Data are raw facts. Information is data with context and perspective. Knowledge is information with guidance for action based upon insight and experience."

— From random website which had a good definition

I think when drafting the aim of Wikipedia, something like this definition was at work. If you want information... you have the entire web, (hundreds of?) acres of libraries, bookstores, office buildings. It is not a sensible goal for Wikipedia to replicate all that... Archive.org and Google are better positioned to do that. So that leaves Wikipedia to describe the important (hence notable) stuff.

But to answer the question... yes, in that world there is still need for notability policy. Why?:

1. To guarantee WP:NPOV, there need to be sufficient independent people who are able to evaluate articles.. but if we include everything... those articles at the less notable end of the spectrum (which currently get excluded) would not have enough editors.
2. Verifiability - in order for an average editor to be able to verify a fact in an article, information about the topic needs to be available widely enough. This is not the case for many less notable things.
3. Limited people... sure you gave us unlimited server space and bandwidth... but the real limitation is people... the maintenance needs of the encyclopedia (linking, category maintenance, copyediting) grow as the amount of text grows.
4. Informing the reader - the assumption is that an encyclopedia provides the reader with useful information about the world around them... if they read the article about a sports team, and all the players get articles, and then all the schools they ever went to get articles, and each place they worked, and then each item on the menu of their favorite restaurant... we have abandoned the responsibility to make the judgement of what is important to mention... the reader has to wade through everything and figure out themselves what is important... they might as well do a Google search. --Marcinjeske (talk) 06:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

policy linking to Wikipedia from commercial product

Hello. I work for a company that has proprietary software that we lease for profit. We want to link to Wikipedia from our help files, to use Wikipedia to supplement our help topics, for example, a discussion of "pi". Is this permitted? If permitted, is there a policy for how the user recognizes that he/she is being offered a link to Wikipedia? For example, must the link be from some sort of Wikipedia logo or can the link merely be directly from the work "pi" in our help file? GeoDancer (talk) 07:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that it is possible to restrict anyone from linking themselves to anything else on the web. That is what makes it a web. What you should not do is use anything from Wikipedia on your website without following the licensing requirements of GFDL. --☑ SamuelWantman 08:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, use of the logo "is subject to the Wikimedia visual identity guidelines and requires permission." so don't do that. I would suggest using a different color for links to Wikipedia if you want them to stand out, but there is no legal or moral obligation for you to do this. — CharlotteWebb 16:19, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

For more information about reuse of material on your website see this FAQ. --☑ SamuelWantman 19:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Policy change - soft redirects

See discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Allow (some) soft redirects to Wiktionary. I propose to allow some WP:Soft redirects to Wiktionary, such as {{wi}}, instead of AfD. --Kubanczyk (talk) 16:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Image content guidelines

Please see Wikipedia:Image content guidelines for an attempt to start a guideline to consolidate and improve our guidelines on image content on Wikipedia. Please discuss at the talk page and help improve this new guideline, which was inspired by recent image discussion controversies. Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Credit Cards/Sockpuppet control, pt. 2

I personally think the above-proposed policy of having users register with their credit cards to buttress their identity is a great one. Let's take it one step further however. Make users register their credit card, and the Wikimedia Foundation can fine them a certain amount for vandalistic edits. That should put a stop to vandalism quick. I'm not saying the fine should be large, like $1.00 or so for each fine. And only blatant vandalism should qualify. The money would go to the foundation, or to charity. I think the future of wikipeida depends on it. JeanLatore (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What about people who do not have a credit card or don't want to play such information on the Internet? --SMP0328. (talk) 01:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

• then those chaps certainly will not be wandalising wikipedia sir. JeanLatore (talk) 01:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... just ... ... ... no. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

considering we allow IP address to edit, this wouldn't work (and no IP addresses will continue to be allowed to edit) I for one would never give my credit card for this Idea and many of your good editors and SysOps are under 18 and probably don't even have one. My position is NO--Pewwer42  Talk  03:03, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Aside from the ridiculousness of the premise altogether, "fining" users over something as subjective as what constitutes vandalism would, I suspect, be remarkably illegal. Resolute 03:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(looks at proposal)

(blinks)

(blinks again) Waltham, The Duke of 05:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

There is consensus that IP contributions should be allowed. This would not only intoduce mandatory registration (against the current ideas), but also wants to limit Wikipedia editorship to people who have access to a credit card. That is not going to make the content better. You then also exclude a lot of people who do have a creditcard, but are not willing to provide Wikipedia with that data.

On top of that this proposal also introduces a lot of (legal) strain on the Wikipedia organisation, that cannot, can never be handled by volunteers as this is about privacy/financially sensitive data. It requires 2 costly operations to be put in place (1) a way to check credit card data whether the card is valid (2) A way to collect, check, and store the credit card data in a way that guarantees it cannot be abused (ie. the peopel with access need to be thrustworthy (hence no volunteers), the data submission system must be completely secure, and the storage area has to be unhackable. This will generate a huge amount of costs for the foundation.

In brief, to reduce the nuisance of vandalism many valuable editors will be excluded and the foundation will be forced to make huge financial cost. Not a good idea at all! Arnoutf (talk) 09:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That gives criminals one more venue to achieve credit card fraud, and the resulting vandalism upswing is not necessarily good for the encyclopedia either. This "proposal" doesn't even pass the laugh test.--WaltCip (talk) 12:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

articles assessements

Hello folks, we are at the beginning of the process assessing articles assessments on the French Wikipedia. I would like to read the discussions that led to the actual system used here. Could anyone point me to the right pages? Thanks. Moez ^talk 02:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Somewhere in WP:1.0 I think. Try Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. The oldest version of that page is here. That links to an earlier discussion, which I think was this one. Also have a look at the archives of Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. The earliest archive there is Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Archive 1 (November 2004). I think the very earliest attempt is here (again, November 2004). User:Maurreen hasn't contributed since December 2006, but User:Walkerma is still active and is probably the best person to ask. I'll drop him a note pointing him here. Carcharoth (talk) 10:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

A brief timeline:

1. The origins of the present system are at WP:Chem, here.
2. This was refined by discussion to this version. We found that the system worked very well for our worklist of a few hundred articles.
3. In 2005 I became interested in the English 1.0 project, which was almost inactive at the time. It had long been agreed that an assessment scheme was needed, and at that time this was the viewpoint. I made this suggestion to use the system that had proved successful in chemistry, and getting WikiProjects to do their own assessments and give us lists of their best articles to use.
4. By late 2005, there were a couple of other schemes in use on other projects: medicine, and {{Anti-warTasks}} (Anti-war).
5. During late 2005-early 2006 a the WP:WVWP group at WP:1.0 contacted all the active WikiProjects asking them to give us names of the B-Class or better articles they thought should be included. We set up a system of manually compiled tables, one for each project. This helped to propagate what (by now) had become the WP1.0 assessment scheme. After WP:GA began in late 2005, we added a new level "GA-Class", but this is still a controversial level, because it is not a WikiProject-based assessment.
6. In April 2006 discussions, we came up with a bot-assisted scheme which is what is used today. Once this became active, the 1.0 assessment scheme became standard across the English Wikipedia.
7. In April 2007, we released a CD (WP:V0.5) of around 2000 articles, using the assessment scheme.
8. In 2007-2008 we have been developing a bot to automatically compile a suitable collection of around 30,000 articles. This uses the article assessment scheme as a key part of the process. The first full set of output is available here, and we are refining the algorithm right now in preparation for release of Version 0.7.

Over the last few years there has been a steady trickle of comments, "We need an extra assessment level between XXXX and YYYY" or "We need to raise the criteria for ZZZZ" etc. The early discussions had only three levels- Good, usable and not usable. It is always possible to add more levels, and you can be sure that even if you have ten levels, people will keep saying that we should refine the levels further. As I explained here, there are many parameters that make up an assessment - some more content-based, and some more style-based. In general, an article assessment focusses more on content when the article is in its early stages, but as the article develops towards Featured Article style issues become more important in the assessment.

If I had to summarise all of those suggestions, I would say that the most common ones are the following:

• Add another level between Start and B. I think this has a lot of merit, and could easily be done. Many Starts are just a little above Stub, whereas some are really quite good. The advantage would be that you could give more refined assessments, but the disadvantage is that you may not have the ability to have hundreds of reviewers properly assess the levels across a diverse set of subject areas. Note that the bot can allow projects to have additional levels that are simply not separated by the bot - for example, the Maths WikiProject has a B+ level.
• Put A equal to or below GA: Currently A is above GA, but this dates from the time when GA was a new system and GAs were very variable in quality. There is a strong case (see this recent debate for doing this, now that GAs are much stronger. One problem is that the GA standard is assessing different things.

I had a 90 minute phone conversation recently with User:Holon, who is a professor of education who conducts research on assessment methods and evaluation. He believes that our current system is very effective as it is, but he is going to help us refine it (for example, by adding more exemplars across different subject areas). He believes that the assessment scheme can have as only many levels as the parameters allow- and with many reviewers, many different topics and many levels of quality, we are even more limited in the level of sophistication. When I assess my students, I am the only assessor for the class, and I have numerical exam scores, etc, so I can give a more precise assessment of a grade. A WP article grade is clearly much rougher. The other thing you need to consider is the purpose of the assessment. For us on en, the purpose is twofold: The WikiProject wants to keep track of which articles need work, and WP:1.0 wants to compile lists of articles suitable for publication. For both of these purposes, I believe the current quality assessment scheme on en is not perfect, but it works well as it is. Walkerma (talk) 16:33, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a very interesting history. Thanks! I followed the initial link, and I noticed one of the things said there was "It is critical that people not take these assessments personally." In my experience, if you have reviewers assessing en masse at speed, then people do take "stub" and "start" assessment personally. Assessing slower with personal interaction between assessor and article writer is nearly always best. The examples of personal affront I have seen from from WP:BIOGRAPHY, a particularly broad area where people can assess articles using checklists, but if they lack specialist knowledge in obscure areas, may get the assessment "wrong". In general, if there is a dispute about an assessment, the time is nearly always better spent on improving the article in question, rather than trying to decide what the assessment should be. Carcharoth (talk) 20:53, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks folks for the answers, particularly the timeline. it is very useful. However, I can't seem to find the collective discussion that led to the current assessment state of the article to be present right under the title of the main page. It is believed to be important for the reader to be directly informed about what the editorial team think the state of advancement of the article is. This came out from a discussion dealing with external critics of WP, where we are sometime attacked on the poor quality of some stub articles. the presence of the assessment right under the title is a good way of saying that we are aware that this particular article is a stub, for example. Moez ^talk 02:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about what you're asking. If you're seeing the assessment right under the article title then you're probably using the special script (by User:Outriggr) that does this - I don't think regular users see this! The "standard" way to see the assessment on en is on the talk page, in the WikiProject banners near the top. The decision to place the assessment on the talk page was part of the April 2006 discussions that I mentioned. If there are other specific discussions you want to know about, there have been lots (the timeline was designed to help you zoom in!) - but I've participated in nearly all of them and I'll try to remember where they occurred. Unfortunately these discussions have taken place on about 10 different pages - and I think this page is yet another one to add to the list! Many are here and in the archive of that page. Please ask, I'll do my best. Walkerma (talk) 04:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I meant to mention earlier, there is a discussion going on because we are about to start rewriting the assessment criteria. At the moment, people are brainstorming ideas, in case we want to change the assessment scheme. The only time we considered seriously making a change to the scheme was in early 2007, when I proposed removing GA from the scale - this was defeated. Walkerma (talk) 04:40, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Doh! I totally forgot that one day, I checked this particular function in my preference, through a gadget (User:Pyrospirit/metadata). That explains it. Thanks for all the info. tata Moez ^talk 05:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Section headings

1. ==Heading==
2. == Heading ==

Which is correct? Help:Section shows the former, but I know of a reputable editor who frequently reformats articles to the latter. Are there any instances where the latter is necessary, or any policy directing us to use the latter, or recommending wholesale edits to articles to change to the latter format? --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think they are the same. The WP software ignores unnecessary spaces. – ukexpat (talk) 20:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The formats are equivalent and can be used interchangeably. There is no need to change headings from one format to another. Sandstein (talk) 21:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the two formats are equivalent. However, I also often change the former to the latter; it makes for clearer and less crowded edit windows. (For the record, I always do that in the course of general copy-editing; I never edit an article just to change the spacing.)

Also, I don't know if it's true (it is probably apocryphal), but I've heard the spaces help 'bots in some way. Waltham, The Duke of 16:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Harassment has been marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Harassment (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has recently been edited to mark it as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 18:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Offensive userbox

What is the best way to deal with a user who has an offensive userbox, in violation of Wikipedia:Userboxes? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Report it to WP:AN/I. So long as it's blatant, that will get it killed real quick. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 01:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Or you could talk to the user about it, let them know that you find it offensive, and see if you can't work out an appropriate re-wording. That's always an option that doesn't require other people to get involved in something that doesn't need other people's attention. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 04:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree; we must try and avoid creating situations where things could so easily be blown out of proportion. Waltham, The Duke of 13:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Or you could try taking a deep breath and walking away from it. If you really want to push the most strict interpretation of Wikipedia:Userboxes, I would delete the clear violation on your user page first.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I know you aren't asking for an opionion on this, but for what it's worth... I figured out the userbox you're referring to, and I don't think it could be regarded as offensive unless you choose to interpret in a way that was clearly not intended, and doesn't make sense to interpret it that way, under the circumstances. I agree with the recommendation that said take a deep breath and walk away. No offense was intended, so that is the best solution. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 14:36, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The condescension toward a subset of WP editors is clear. It's like saying "people who watch NASCAR are f'king morons." -Freekee (talk) 15:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Um, no. It does not explicitly label a group of people at all, especially not as morons. It denigrates a belief system in a way that many supposedly NPOV articles do; does Greek mythology say that "all the believers in the Ancient Greek gods (including the modern ones) are f'king morons"? Because if it does, it clearly violates WP:NPOV. It's not horribly polite, but I don't see it as crossing the line. The hair-trigger complaint is more disruptive than the userbox.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Is this the user box in question? --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This user doesn't believe in myths or superstitions.

What if it were to be changed to say "GODS" rather than "GOD"? God tends to mean a specific diety for most of Western Culture, where Gods are more generic. A simple S might clarify the meaning and reduce the offense. --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

This user doesn't believe in myths or superstitions

or

This user doesn't believe in deities, myths or superstitions

If you look at the users of the graphic, Image:Nomoregod.jpg, and the date of the upload, you will see that the use is widespread and for some time. --Kevin Murray (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The user box just went through the deletion process at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jeff dean/Userboxes/Atheist and was kept. The original author of the userbox seems to have left the project with no contributions for about a year. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:26, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

And while we're on the subject,

SI-0This user thinks the metric system is bureaucratic and inhuman.

, which is on User:Mwalcoff's user page, violates the rules just like this one does. It labels a belief system as "bureaucratic and inhuman", which is surely as bad as labeling one "mythological and superstitious".--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that this is a bit more tongue in cheek. Let's focus on one issue at a time. I don't find etiher offensive, but I can see the issue. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's not that big of a deal and I don't mean to cause a big fuss over it. I just wanted the user to know that his userbox is not really in the Wikipedia spirit of everybody trying to get along and treating each other with respect. How he chooses to deal with it is his decision. But we're simultaneously in a dispute at WP:VP/M over how Wikipedia should deal with a potential concern of users, and I think Celarnor's userbox is indicative of a dismissive, condescending attitude that taints his arguments, IMO. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 16:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Attacking other aspects of a user's contributions while in a contentious situation with them elsewhere may seem a bit disingenuous. Why don't you focus on the issues at WP:VP/M and if you feel strongly make the other issue later. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if that's how it appears; I assure you I was not intending to "muck stir." I simply visited Celanor's userpage with the intention of putting a message on his talk page (regarding the porn discussion) when I saw the userbox in question. I thought the userbox was inappropriate, so I asked here how to deal with it. Since Celanor himself suggested I leave a note on the user's talk page, that's what I did. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 18:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I appologize! I've softenend my comments above; however, it might be a better policy to keep one contentious issue at a time going per editor. No real harm, and perhaps we might get a better graphic for that user-box. I'm not a believer, but I'd not post that box to my page with the current graphic. --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

No apology necessary. Let's just drop the whole thing. I think I can take a userbox. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 20:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Questions regarding interpretations of WP:RS and WP:SPS

We have an ongoing discussion on WP:RSN regarding the RS-ness of the boxofficeindia.com site. I am of the view that it is not RS but some defenders of the site as a RS point to the less than a handful of citings of that site in RSes and are arguing that a source automatically becomes RS once it gets cited (even if only once) in a RS source. Atleast one editor has also opined that it is OK to use the "best sources we have" at hand even if they are not demonstrably RS. I neither see any merit in these arguments nor do I see any evidence of WP:RS and WP:SPS lending credence to these arguments. In fact, imo these arguments go against the very grain of WP:RS. I will be grateful if some eyes from here can take a look at the discussion and weigh in. Thanks. Sarvagnya 21:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)