Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.

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

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Is 4,046.8564224 an acceptable number format?

Should the Manual of Style (dates and numbers) recognize 4,046.8564224 as an acceptable number format, and not accept 4046.8564224? Notice the former uses commas and gaps as digit separators in the same number, while the latter only uses gaps. The consensus formed will influence how number formatting templates will be coded. Please discuss at WT:MOSNUM#RfC: Acceptable number format?

Feh. Stifle (talk) 09:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Lists of people within articles

I am writing specifically with regard to lists of notable people from [insert location] that are part of a broader article. I feel strongly that someone's birth having occurred in a particular location (generally a city or regional hospital) is not only non-notable, but the birth location likely did not have as profound an influence on one's life as the municipalities in which one grew up / achieved notability / currently resides. This is not to say that this information doesn't belong in the article about the individual, but that it does not belong in an article about the municipality (or in some cases schools, as in so-and-so went to this high school). Certain individuals were born in one place, grew up in another, and went on to live in several other places only to be buried somewhere else. That's a lot of articles they could be included in. Such sections are generally more prevalent in less populous areas. For example, one doesn't see an article about Hollywood CA listing all the celebs that work/live there, nor is there such a section for notables born in New York City.

Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Lists_of_people doesn't appear to provide guidelines as to what qualifies an individual to be notable in association with a particular location, only whether the individual is notable enough for general list inclusion. Someone who spent no more than 2-3 days as a baby in a delivery ward of a city's hospital is just as eligible for inclusion as someone who lived there all his/her life.

Additionally, lists of people seem to contribute very little to an article about a municipality, in that it doesn't describe the municipality (the article's topic). For example, to list Martin Luther King Jr as being born somewhere provides very little content and context, whereas writing a paragraph about how Martin Luther King Jr impacted a community that he was active in provides a lot more context not only about the individual, but also about the place.

In summary, I'm seeking a guideline/policy enhancement for lists of people that more stringently defines just who can be included in the context of a municipal article (or the like), and what qualifies them to be notable in association with said municipality.
--JBC3 (talk) 00:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Example of the sort of thing? Stravinsky was successively a Russian, French & American citizen, lived for years in Switzerland, & asked to be buried in venice. Peter jackson (talk) 11:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Five Six examples:

• Scarsdale, New York#Notable people
• Nassau County, new York#Famous natives or residents
• Massapequa, New York#Famous residents
• Yonkers, New York#Notable Yonkers Residents
• Bedford (town), New York#Notable people.2C past and present
• Watertown (city), New York#Notable residents

--JBC3 (talk) 08:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)--JBC3 (talk) 08:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

While large cities must "tighten up" on standards, it seems silly to have restrictions for small(er) places. Nearly every document on Henry Leland, developer of the Cadillac and Lincoln, will mention that he was from tiny Barton, Vermont. His ancestors were likely from there or regionally for a long time. This was his culture. It was important.

And where did (for example) a writer draw his ideas? From his childhood? From his adult residence? How does one decide?

Having said that, how can New York City allow any less than (say) Lieutenant Generals, in its list of military officers? Way too high a standard for a smaller place.

The worst cases are bands and sports figures for which there seem to be no standard whatever. One editor may want to kick Dwight Eisenhower out of Abilene since he left there at 18. And leave 10 rock bands that nobody every heard of, and twenty sports figures! (No. I haven't checked, but let's just assume! If not Abilene, someplace else will do. It's real common). So a secondary problem is trying to evaluate weight of contribution. Student7 (talk) 20:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

By "tighten up on standards" I suppose you mean "enforce guidelines and policies"? Are you suggesting that it is "silly" to enforce guidelines and policies in all articles equally? --JBC3 (talk) 21:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The original poster brought up an issue that I'd like to comment on: "to list Martin Luther King Jr as being born somewhere provides very little content and context, whereas writing a paragraph about how Martin Luther King Jr impacted a community that he was active in provides a lot more context not only about the individual, but also about the place." The reason why there is more emphasis on the first (where someone is born) than the second (her/his impact) is that the first is a falsifiable fact, whereas the second is a judgment which risks being deleted as original research. It's been like that since I started, & no one has made an effort to remedy this disproportionate emphasis on a systematic basis. (Probably because to do this requires a lot of research that does not lend itself to a programmatic approach.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

All the more reason to write policy or guidelines that removes these lists all together. Don't you agree? --JBC3 (talk) 15:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I would agree with this wholeheartedly. I am sure there are some cases when it's important to state that such and such person is from such and such place in an article about that place, but most of the time all we see is mundane listcraft. I would suggest to approach this problem the same way we approach the "see also" section—mentions of people listed in the "notable residents/natives" section should be incorporated into the main article. When that is not possible/feasible, the person should not be mentioned at all. Thoughts?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:11, June 26, 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that that is a better approach than the one currently in place, I think ultimately we would still run into the same problem. Instead of listcraft, we could have an article with two or three lines about individuals who was merely born in Somewhere City placed in the history or culture section, even though the individual may never have lived there. Isn't it enough to mention in the individual's own article that he/she was born somewhere? I don't see how it's necessary at all in the article about the place. --JBC3 (talk) 15:20, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not actually what I had in mind. If an individual was born in some Crummytown, USA but never lived there, removing the sentence which merely states the fact of birth should be easy. Facts that have no impact on the subject of the article should not be listed in those articles and can be removed on those grounds. Consider this (contrived but illustrative) example: if we know that Grand Poobaa of Government Bailouts Commission was born and lived in Sometown for a week, grew up in Someothertown, never set his foot in Sometown again all his life but actively lobbied for Someothertown's crabbing industry, then incorporating a mention in the article about Someothertown would be easy enough. His mention in the article about Sometown, on the other hand, would add no value to the article whatsoever, and can be removed (we can design the guideline amendment to explicitly spell that out).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:32, June 26, 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you. Perhaps it would be helpful to incorporate WP:Coatrack into existing policy? --JBC3 (talk) 21:15, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think Student7's point, above is a reasonable one. For many (most) smaller and even mid-sized communities, "who came from here" is a very important part of their local identity--for some, it may be the only thing other than their bare existence that's really "notable" (in the dictionary sense, and sometimes in the Wikipedia sense as well) about the town. Some may consider these lists trivial, but I don't. To take his example, not only is Barton, Vermont a notable part of Henry Leland's history, but Henry Leland is a notable part of Barton's. And as llywrch points out, this is verifiable, sourceable, black-and-white data, while evaluating whose upbringing was relevant and whose wasn't is often difficult. The case of the person born somewhere they didn't actually live is a special case, and I don't necessarily disagree with deleting these from the lists, but in general I find these lists valuable as an organizational tool for biographical information, and (at least if you're someone who likes local history) they're often interesting as well.--Arxiloxos (talk) 17:14, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

How do you feel about the lists in the six examples given above? Do you feel any of those are valuable? --JBC3 (talk) 19:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I whole-heartedly agree with what I believe is the consensus that seems to be forming- that instead of lists a section (or subsection of the history section) be made for notable people and written in prose, and include only those in which the person and the community actually interacted in a meaningful and notable way. Correct me if I have taken a mistaken view on what most people seem to be agreeing on. I have actually been struggling for some time on incorporating a notable person prose section into New York's Capital District article. I was considering something along the lines of- "Many individuals of notability have lived or worked in the Capital District and their experiences here have shaped their careers. Some artists have used the region as inspiration or have drawn streetscapes and scenary, such as Grandma Moses and Norman Rockwell. Many authors from the region wrote about the communities they lived in such asTrevanian, William Kennedy, Herman Melville, and James Fenimore Cooper. Many sports figures have gotten their start in this region, such as Phil Jackson and Mike Tyson." This small snippet illustrating a very basic format of what I am thinking of doing could easily be incorporated into other sections instead of a separate "notable person" section. The info on famous artists could be incorporated into the culture section, notable sports people could be incorporated into the sports section, and so on but I was not sure if having them grouped together in a section would be preferred to having them scattered in different sections where they may be a distraction from the core of the particular section's content. I am a strong believer that people who are famous and have roots in a community must be mentioned, they are as important to an identity as the brick-and-mortar structures that they write or paint or grow up playing basketball in. So, I will end this on a question- should I have a separate prose section for notable people together or just include each notable person in the sections that cover what they notable for?Camelbinky (talk) 00:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I think that, in order to convey any type of meaning, information about notable individuals would have to be given in prose rather than as a list. Regardless of where in the article it is presented, I think the things to bear in mind are that the content should both enhance the understanding of the place, and do so without using the article as a coat rack. To answer your question, I think the information would probably be better presented in its own section, but if incorporating into other sections improves the article's flow I have no issue with that. If we were to change the policy/guidelines, should all such lists (or perhaps just a diff of them) be moved to the talk page with a notice about the change, or handled differently? --JBC3 (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) How do you handle Gary, Indiana? It's all over the news as being the "hometown of Michael Jackson." It could be said that Jackson didn't have a profound impact on Gary, since during the bulk of his career, he did not live there. I also know of many communities in South Dakota highlight themselves as hometown of such and such U.S. Senator. Murdo, South Dakota has a sign outside of town stating it's home to Senator John Thune, even though Thune is primarily known for playing high school basketball there, went to college out of state, and currently resides in Sioux Falls. Lawrence Welk was from Strasburg, North Dakota and that community makes a pretty big deal out of his being born there. I don't think Welk and Strasburg interacted "in a meaningful and notable way." So, I think we need a more structured guideline. Warren Christopher was born in Scranton, North Dakota. Willy Mays grew up in Grand Forks and Fargo. All three are recipients of the North Dakota Roughrider Award. We cannot say that being born in a community is inherently non-notable anymore than we can say such a fact is inherently notable. We should give deference to the relevant state or city wikiproject to determine how they view the issue, and also take into consideration other factors, such as how the community itself treats the individual. For example, the existance of some formal recognition of the person by the community, such as the the Welk Homestead Historical Site in Strasburg.DCmacnut<> 02:53, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree about deferring to WikiProjects. They have not been effective thus far in regulating these lists, probably because there is insufficient content guidelines and policy to fall back on. I suppose I can agree that being born in a particular place shouldn't be an automatic disqualifier, but I still insist there is a need to provide clear and verifiable evidence that knowing about the individual enhances one's understanding of the place, and that without specific context describing how the place is/was impacted by the individual, one cannot sufficiently know anything about the individual, ergo cannot receive the benefit of the individual's inclusion in the article. --JBC3 (talk) 03:21, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with a bit of what Dcmacnut said and quite a bit of what JBC3 said, so maybe here is a synthesis that addresses the good of both. Simply being born in a place is not enough for an inclusion as many small towns, villages, etc rely on one regional hospital and the place of birth may not have any meaning. However, many cities, towns, etc for booster-tourism reasons use, for the lack of a better word, propaganda showing their even slim connections to famous people (George Washington Slept Here signs are the most common version of this). The larger a city is the less likely it is that this type of boosterism is either done or even needed to be done therefore is less likely to be an issue. For the cases of where a person was born or lived only a short while- if the city itself is not promoting the connection then its not an issue and does not merit an inclusion to the article. If the city, town, etc is promoting the connection with signs, mentioning it on the website, tourist info, historical sites, etc then it becomes notable regardless of any meaningful connection between the city and the person. So even though while the person lived there they may not have been impacted by the community adn the community did not get any benefit from having the person there, the city is today using the connection for its benefit and promoting the connection, making it in my eyes notable and verifiable and an after the fact connection between the two. To use examples from the region that JBC3 and I work on- Rachel Ray was born in Glens Falls, but to my best knowledge she was not influenced by the city nor does the city give any special recognition to her birth there nor does she, conclusion- do not include her in the city article, her start as a local celebrity on Channel 6 is played up in the media and in booster material for the region, therefore including her in an article on the Capital Region would be more meaningful as this is where she was discovered and started many of the material that she would later use on her national television shows and books. The other example is Pat Riley the NBA coach, he went to school in Schenectady, he was a star athlete in three sports in the city (was on the Sch. Little League team that won the world championship, was a football star, and was a star on the basketball team), even when he was a head coach in the NBA he would come back to Schenectady with his professional team and have practice in Schenectady on the off-season, he has returned for many rewards bestowed on him by the city and the school district, the high school named its gym after him (though it iss a different HS building than the one he played in), conclusion- big and continuing impact between the city and the individual, important for the article. Those are two examples from the extreme ends, somewhere in between we must arbitrarily draw the line and say- that kind of connection is not enough, while that connection is strong enough. I agree with JBC3 that in this case the individual wikiprojects are not the right place for that decision, a policy or guideline needs to be written deciding this issue. If different wikiprojects have different criteria then in individual articles arguments will start saying "well in wikiproject x this is allowed, we need to change to their criteria" for no other reason than that editor knows that criteria will allow him to do what he wants and his wikiproject doesnt. Chaos will ensue, cities will metaphorically burn, and the whole fabric of space-time will rupture and we'll all die! Maybe.Camelbinky (talk) 21:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Camelbinky, I guess I can agree that if a municipality is promoting a connection to an individual in any citable way, then it is notable enough to include in an article regardless of any meaningful connection between the city and the person. Barring any new suggestions, concerns, roadblocks, or reconsiderations of previous concerns, I was hoping to draft the changes in the next day or two so we can work on wording itself. --JBC3 (talk) 01:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that fits the point I was trying to make. If a connection between an individual and a town they were born in or resided can be established and cited through reliable sources, it should be included regardless of any subjective reasoning that the connection is "meaningful." Those sources should go beyond a simple list of statistics or a birth certificate. I think the person listed should be notable in their own right. Too often, I see people adding non-notable residents to articles. If the person is extremely notable, their place of birth/hometown will be widely reported (a la Michael Jackson) and likely would meet the reliable source standard for inclusion in the municipality article.DCmacnut<> 02:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Draft #1

Above please find a first and very rough draft of the proposed guideline changes based on our discussion above. This would be inserted into WP:Notability (people) in place of the current Lists of people section. I have tried to look back and incorporate everyone's thoughts and concerns while accounting for existing policy. Please share your thoughts on this draft, and let me know if I missed something, where I was way off base, where I am right on, etc. --JBC3 (talk) 18:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• We don't need a rule.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 19:09, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's really not a constructive response. Either you believe there is no problem, or you believe there is a problem, have a different opinion about how to fix it, but don't want to contribute. Seeing as how you bothered to respond at all, I'm guessing you have some thoughts, so please share them. --JBC3 (talk) 03:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• It's not a constructive response, it's a defensive one. We already have too many rules, and we have a serious problem with TLDR: not enough people read them. And I think the people whose behaviour you're trying to control with this, won't read it, or will ignore it; so it only inconveniences the rest of us.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 07:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• I heartily endorse this initiative! This species of connective trivia is an embarrassment to Wikipedia. Suggestions for the draft:

1. "limited to providing such context" lacks a clear antecedent. "limited to their role in the context of the article's subject" might be clearer.
2. Rather than "a notable relationship to the subject," how about "a significant influence on the subject" instead? Two reasons: (a) It makes a cleaner break from the old mindset of drawing connections and puts the focus squarely on writing about the subject. (b) Reliable sources for a significant (in the context of the subject) influence should be adequate. Something significant to a big city would surely meet WP:N, but that may be setting the bar too high for smaller ones.
3. Similarly, "substantive relationship an individual has to the subject" could be recast as "substantive influence of the person on the subject." I don't think "influence" is too strong, for it covers everything from transformative impact on a community's history to small-town-boy-makes-good boosterism, where the latter is verifiably substantive.
4. On the other hand, I am a little uncomfortable using "Someplace City boasts or promotes itself" as the only example. Not that I think the bar should be raised, but a single example invites people to interpret it as typical rather than minimal. Just a thought.

I hope this proposal gains traction. Some links to other guidelines or policies might help give it legs, but I don't have specific suggestions at this time. ~ Ningauble (talk) 21:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal. To answer the question posed by JBC3, I think the six example articles are improved by the inclusion of the "notable residents" lists. This is information that some readers would find interesting, and those that don't can easily skip over the section. JamesMLane t c 08:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• I disagree with this proposal. For starters, notable alumni are in many cases a very important aspect of a school, indicating the place in history it has, the quality of its education, the type of public it gets (for e.g. schols with loads of royalty) and so on. I wrote Institut Saint-Luc: the list of comics artists that are alumni of this school is an illustration of the impact the comics division has had. I also explains this in the text, but the list is a good indication as well. What a discography or bibliography or filmography is for an artist, is the list of alumni for a school.

For villages, the link is less clear. But e.g. a city like Antwerp was for a while one of the major art centres of Europe, and this is reflected in List of people from Antwerp. The link between Antwerp and many of these people is not conicidental: when you live in a city or region where some form of art is prominent, there is a much bigger chance of you becoming such an artist as well. See also List of people from Nashville, Tennessee and the section on musicians and so on. Of course these list, and many others, could do with more context, more explanation: but to change this into prose without any list would not be feasible or helpful. Birtplace (and places where people spend a significant amount of time) ar considered notable, and the chance of having two otherwise unrelated people with the same birthplace is often noted by reliable sources. E.g. that Karl Malden and Michael Jackson both were from Gary, Indiana is noticed in many sources like the Times[1]. People visit the birthplace of famous persons, cities build their tourism around their famous inhabitants: this is a central aspect of towns and cities, no matter if they have any merit in what became of the inhabitant or not. It is an important aspect of the image of a city. Fram (talk) 09:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose per reasoning of fellow opposers. This smacks of WP:CREEP and the lists are often (though of course not always) interesting/useful. Unnecessary policymaking. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per reasons mentioned by my fellow opposers. Wikipedia is extremely good at collecting and organizing facts; it is not good at engaging in open-ended analysis of issues like "degree of influence". I have found these sorts of lists, in particular, to be among the more useful (and interesting) types of factual collections that you can find on Wikipedia, and it would not improve the encyclopedia to start demolishing them.--Arxiloxos (talk) 18:36, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with the intent of this proposal. I've looked at the six examples, and I personally don't see how the lists contribute to the article itself. Firstly, they're lists, and would be better off, in my opinion, as prose. I'm not sure if any sources in the articles actually agrees with the lists, but I think any "Notable residents of..." sections should be plentiful of inline citations, which the lists I looked at didn't have a lot of. I very weakly agree with any tourist promotion of "So-and-so lived here!", when the community wasn't affected by the person living there. It is verifable evidence that the person did live there, after all. --I dream of horses (talk) 19:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• Although I can see where it's coming from in some cases, I agree with other opposers. Also, I find alumni quite interesting (=> encyclopedic). - Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 19:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• I'd like to take some time and address some misconceptions held by the "opposers". First- whether or not this proposal becomes a guideline or policy (or added to an existing one which seems likely) the fact of the matter is that by consensus- lists of trivia are already not acceptable notable people are trivia. Any argument stating "the lists are good" is already disregarding the standards for our articles that lists of "things" are not to be placed in an article, except for specific small exemptions. An argument based on a prose-written section of notable people is a good thing is understandable, and the difference between that and the proposed policy is that the above policy has stricter criteria for inclusion. Can we all agree that prose is the preferred way and not a list and that the differences between our viewpoints is the criteria of inclusion for a person in the article? If so then we have come a long way and can work on just that aspect instead of arguing over lists that are already discouraged. Another misconception- concept of creep. This is not creep as it is codification of existing consensus among the community of users who work on settlements (for the lack of a better word for cities, towns, etc). This issue has already been settled among those of us in the settlement article working community, there is no creep, there is no NEW rule to "learn" or read about. Newbies and those that violate it are already corrected and now there will be a place to direct them of the policy where they CAN read about it and become a better editor. We should never shy away from codifying an existing consensus because "people wont find it nor read it", they'll be directed to it soon enough and I have the good faith belief that people who edit Wikipedia do want to learn our standards and do want to read things. If they were ignorant and illiterate I dont think they would (or could) contribute in the first place. The statement that editors wouldnt read the policy implies they have an intentional want of ignorance, that they are illiterate, lazy, or anarchist. While I have dealt with quite a few contributors are intentionally ignorant I have yet to meet one that is illiterate, most are the opposite of lazy as contributing to Wikipedia takes some hard work, and well- anarchists, while I respect their goals (or lack of them as the case may be) they have no place in policy considerations. In conclusion I reject any arguments based on wp:creep or "lists are good" on face value of simply being not accurate representations of the facts or legitimate debating points. Please restate in a proper debating format any complaints based on facts. Oh, and this isnt a vote, while your opinions matter and are considered and respected, stating "oppose" as if this was a vote and can kill this proposal is ridiculous and means nothing and only lends to your side being ignored. Debate on the facts of the matter and on legitimate concerns regarding the policy, those that simply state "Oppose per blah blah blah" are bobbleheads and are not trying to get across legitimate concerns, change the proposal for the better, or learn something new that may change their minds. A debate is an open forum for those with open minds. Now please say something that makes me say "you have a point and I'll reconsider my position".Camelbinky (talk) 21:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

opposite of BITE?

is there a guideline or essay that is essentially the opposite of WP:BITE? Something that editors, particularly new ones, can be pointed to to calm a discussion down and remind them that this is a collaborative encyclopedia and they need to be open to others editing their articles. Something that's a step down from WP:OWN?--RadioFan (talk) 11:32, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe WP:AGF or WP:CIV? As for essays, I'd say Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot. Regards SoWhy 11:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

"they need to be open to others editing their articles" - but they're not "their" articles. They're just articles. Disembrangler (talk) 20:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

In this case of ownership issues, does the text at WP:OWN help? -- llywrch (talk) 23:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Even established users get touchy about "outsiders" suddenly showing up at their articles and messing with things they dont know anything about, all in good faith, but still messing things up because they dont know the intricacies of what the article is about and the consensus' that have been made concerning what is appropriate for the article or not. When a newbie gets to the point of creating his/her first article and then other more established users start being critical of mistakes, in good faith attempting to help and teach the newbie, it can get frustrating for them, especially since established users can be condescending and not all that helpful when they demand changes without teaching how to do them or why they should be done. With that said, I must point out to disembrangler that this notion that some, like him/her, have that no one should use the term "their article" or "my article" is asinine. I have many articles that are "mine" in that I created the article, a verifiable fact, or that I am the main contributor of the vast majority of the information in the article, another verifiable fact. I do not ever claim that I own the article or that others may not contribute, in fact I often work on articles that I wish MORE would discover and help out on. Many in Wikipedia feel the same way about THEIR particular articles as well. If I refer to an article as MINE it is not to the exclusion of it being called "mine" in a sentence by someone else who thinks of it as theirs as much as I do. I have seen many users go around and make stupid comments for unneeded "fixes" or changes to articles that they dont know anything about the subject. Inenvitably when a main contributor balks at the change they are accused of "ownership". How about this for a solution?- be polite first of all when helping or recommending a change or pointing out a flaw, suggest solutions, offer to teach the steps on how to do the change since often something is done wrongly because the user doesnt know HOW to do it the correct way and simply telling them to change it to the correct way does no good except to frustrate them, point them to the specific wikipedia guideline/policy dealing with the point you are making and more importantly describe it in a common-sense down-to-earth manner perhaps using an analogy or a past example of this use in another article instead of just saying "do it per wp:xyz" no one wants rules quoted to them or having to read a rulebook to get the point you are making. We dont need the opposite of BITE to legitimize harrassing newbies or established users, which is what the opposite of BITE would end up being used for. Any user who felt that another user wasnt be helpful or constructive would instantly be accused of being uncooperative and of ownership of an article simply due to not wanting to make the suggested change.Camelbinky (talk) 00:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Cite and special cite

Why does Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia show Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia underlined for the MLA style but the syntax generated from Special:Cite shows it italicized? -- penubag  (talk) 11:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Underlining was by long-standing tradition the way to instruct printers to use italics. I expect that has something to do with this, though in this computer age it seems rather irrelevant. Peter jackson (talk) 14:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Should we fix it?-- penubag  (talk) 19:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

No. The MLA style manual itself uses underscores in its illustrative examples, and we should obviously be following that. Even though most people nowadays use word processors that can produce italic text, there are still typewriter users out there. Deor (talk) 01:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

But we should show users what is "correct" not something that is not. The users with typewriters can use their own decision whether or not to use underlines. It is really confusing for students that see conflicting results. -- penubag  (talk) 09:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

When we discuss citing articles according to certain style manuals, we should obviously follow the instructions given in those manuals. The MLA manual uses underscoring for titles, so that's what's "correct" in MLA style. If anything, it's the output of Special:Cite that ought to be changed; but note the sentence "Please remember to check your manual of style, standards guide or instructor's guidelines for the exact syntax to suit your needs" in the "Bibliographic details" section on all pages it generates. Deor (talk) 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Why are Wikipedia's PD guidelines different from Commons', and should it be changed?

Works which are public domain in the US can be uploaded as free images to Wikipedia, but not to Wikimedia Commons (where the image needs to be PD in both the US and the image's country of origin if different). Why is there this discrepancy? Shouldn't the Wikimedia Foundation determine what is considered free/PD for all of their sites, rather than having such differences? Because of these policies, many images can be hosted as free images on Wikipedia but not on Wikimedia Commons. This is very confusing and I see no real reason for it.

Therefore, I propose that either A) Wikipedia change its copyright policies about this issue to be in line with Commons', or B) Commons change its copyright policies to match Wikipedia's. This latter would certainly be the easier of the two, but I would prefer the first one since Commons' policies respects the copyright of the image's original creator more than Wikipedia's current policies. Although legally the copyright in the country of origin might not matter, it seems unfair to the image creator for such a huge, free information resource to be distributing such images as "public domain" across the world. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 17:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Many WMF projects require freedom under local laws associated with the language's main audience. This aids in reuse within that target population and helps avoid problems where people living in that region might be at risk of violating their country's local laws. The rule at Commons (which needs to support many different projects) is a way of respecting that. I don't see that ever changing. I have no strong opinion on whether Wikipedia should adopt a similar rule. Dragons flight (talk) 18:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed that Commons' rule is accurate; that's why I'm mainly saying that Wikipedia's may want to be changed because right now it doesn't make any sense. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a sticky one. I see where you are coming from, but I also see a certain twisted logic in the current policies. Does this case actually come up very often? Maybe it's not really something to worry about. Is this primarily an issue with a certain country? Gigs (talk) 02:49, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it comes up a lot. Many images can't be moved to Commons because of this, which just seems... well... wrong. Things shouldn't be accepted as free here but not at another site which uses the same definition of freedom. For one Big List of images which this applies to, see Category:Images in the public domain in the United States. That's right... almost 25,000. I know that changing policy would require a lot of retagging to fair use and deletion, but right now the policies just don't seem to make any sense, and it also feels (to me) like these images violate their creator's copyright since they are PD here but not in their country of origin, even if legally this is possible. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 03:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. (a) Why should other countries matter? (b) There are about 200 countries in the World. Is it both reasonable and practical for English Wikipedia to track the copyright status of images in all those countries? (c) How about "fair use"? Do you want to abolish it as well? Many countries do not have such a concept in their copyright laws. Ruslik_Zero 09:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia also allows fair use images; these can never be moved to Commons. For arguments' sake, consider a photo A taken by a known German photographer and published in 1918. Let's assume the photographer died in 1980. This photo went out of German copyright in 1928 according to an obsolete law. (Photos got publication + 10 years.) But it stayed copyrighted in Portugal, which is why when European copyright laws were harmonised, it suddenly was copyrighted again in Germany, until 2050! In the US it's in the public domain since it was published before 1923. Now suppose there is a photo B taken by an unknown German photographer in the same year, which shows the same motif in a way that is equivalent for all intents and purposes.

If A did not exist, we might be able to use B in the English Wikipedia under a fair use rationale. But since A does exist, there is a free alternative for every purpose other than discussing the photo B itself. The free alternative invalidates any fair use claim. No problem, since we can, in fact, use A instead of B. It's not clear how your proposal would effect this example, but both possibilities seem absurd:

• We can use neither A nor B, leaving us with no adequate illustration.
• We can use A, an image that is in the public domain in the US, under a fair use rationale that makes no sense in the most significant country where the image is still copyrighted.

Images in Wikipedia and Commons have completely different purposes. In Wikipedia the purpose is illustration of our articles. Commons is a repository of such images for various uses. Hans Adler 12:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

There are several reasons, the main ones being that 1) a large proportion of people with Internet connections can read English at a sufficiently functional level and may browse English Wikipedia from time to time, and 2) English Wikipedia is the biggest among all the Wikipedias, and thus a lot of content simply can only be found here. Wikipedia should be open to all (or as many as possible) people who speak English, not just those from countries whose native tongue happens to be English. SharkD (talk) 15:18, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Suggest a random sampling or careful survey is undertaken of such categories of images (e.g. the 25,000-image category mentioned). One thing I would be interested in is how many would actually be deleted and how many would be eligible for fair-use due to not being replaceable, or being historic, and hence possibly eligible for non-free use (a different thing to fair-use). If only a small number would be deleted, then this is just paperwork, swapping a PD tag for a non-free use tag. My view is that it is better to keep these images separate from the non-free use images (which should be minimised). I also think many of the pictures in question (particularly the old black-and-white ones) are unlikely to ever be challenged, and many will fall into the public domain (relatively) soon anyway (unless copyright laws are changed again). I've often asked what efforts are being made, or will be made, to recover deleted images that are now (or will be at some future point) public domain-by-age. Not many people seem interested in that. The presumption is that the images will be uploaded again at that future point, but I'd like to be sure of that. Carcharoth (talk) 09:37, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The rules aren't WP:BROKEn, so no need to try to fix them. The rights to use legally use images shouldn't be given up to standardize upon the most restrictive legal rights of all the countries we serve, but we equally can't force some small foreign language Wikipedia version to follow US rules. That's why we do things this way and I don't see any reason to change. DreamGuy (talk) 17:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If we do change the rules the right way to do it IMO would be to make Commons more accepting of PD-US material rather than enwiki less accepting. We recently moved a bit in that direction by accepting PD-Art images over at Commons, regardless of local law. Haukur (talk) 17:35, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing text from a policy page and then transcluding

Please see WT:BLP#Can we put back the material that was removed?. It would be nice to get some resolution with this. - Dank (push to talk) 18:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC) material now reinstated

It's getting harder to attract attention to potential problems on content, deletion and enforcement policy pages by making a post on WP:VPP, and some of the experienced editors aren't paying as much attention as they used to ... and some other editors who "lost" previous battles have noticed this, and are back at work. This is not necessarily a bad thing ... but just recently, it's started to look to me like more attention needs to be paid to the Updates than is being paid, people are missing some changes that used to be very hard-fought battles.

It's also getting harder for me to say anything on policy talk pages while maintaining the necessary distance and objectivity that WP:Update requires, so as of now, I'm not going to make reversions on the policy pages or add comments on these talk pages, I'll just keep recording the changes as accurately as I can. The one exception, which I mention at the link above, is that I'm not going to add pages to WP:Update that were added to one of the policy cats without any consensus. In this case, some of the material was moved away from WP:BLP to a new page, and the new page is transcluded back to BLP. This strategy was employed on several of the style guidelines pages for several months, and consensus was that it didn't work very well. Moving stuff to a different page means that people are even less likely to keep track of changes, especially since the text is no longer visible in the history of the main page. If someone doesn't restore the material by the end of the month, I'll just say in the Update that the material is now gone; there hasn't been any discussion that I've seen supporting the creation of the new subpage. material now reinstated - Dank (push to talk) 18:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Can I just register my appreciation for the hard work that goes WP:UPDATE? I agree that WP:VPP has recently had a tendency to become a little bogged down in the trivial. There is so much policy to cover now; you might want to have a word with Drilnoth about publicising discussions in the Signpost if you thought that that might help. Vis-a-vis subpages, I can't remember seeing the previous uses in action, so I couldn't really comment.- Jarry1250 ^{[ humourous – discuss ]} 19:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

The Signpost lists everything that shows up at WP:CENT, including the RFCs. I don't think we need an RFC on the subject of "Can one editor create a new policy page and move stuff from the current policy pages onto that page?" ... we just need someone to revert it, and I've already reverted it once. material now reinstated For the other issues, I'm not going to make the call which ones are important enough to merit an RFC. In a way, the lack of activity on policy pages is both a natural cycle and a tribute ... people think that policy pages are well-behaved enough that they don't need close watching, and that has been my assessment too, things have been much more stable and calm over the last year than previously; the pages have matured. But now people have figured out that they can just walk up to some of these pages and make their favorite changes, and the changes aren't likely to get reverted, so a bit more vigilance is needed. Btw ... thanks! - Dank (push to talk) 20:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

(Dank beat me here, with the strikes above.) As a matter of security, my common response to finding two sections that are/were identical is to put them in one basket, and watch that basket! But nobody else really seems to remember how to <onlyinclude> subpages, even though that's in the software.... Therefore, to avoid textual drift, put all our eggs in one basket, and watch that basket at WP:BLP#Categories! I'll see what I can do about the parallel language at WP:GRS#Sexuality, too.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Naming alleged victims of child sexual abuse

I notice that Wikipedia names the alleged victim in both of Michael Jackson's child-molestation cases. Has there ever been a discussion as to whether this is appropriate? The First Amendment gives media the right to name alleged sexual-abuse victims, but it is the general policy of the American media not to name them unless they choose to go public with their names. The argument is that naming sexual-assault victims increases the likelihood that other victims will not come forward to report a crime, fearing their name will be splashed all over the papers. There is a good deal of debate in journalism circles about whether to publish the names of adults who accuse people of rape. But in this case, it's a double whammy -- we're not just talking about alleged sexual-assault victims but alleged child victims. We should really consider whether it's in the best interest of society to use their names just because we can. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 03:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

We aren't using the names just because we can, and in our decision to use them, we should think about whether it's in the best interest of the encyclopedia. In this case, with the information so widely available from reliable sources outside of this encyclopedia, not mentioning the detail in the article would be an obvious oversight on our part. Sancho 17:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

There's certainly an ethical issue here. Not only do we have to think about any other victims that may or may not exist, but we have to think the alleged perpetrators' family, and consider the question "If somebody is found innocent of a crime in court, do we have to talk about it very much?" --I dream of horses (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Citizendium_Porting

I recently posted a message at the misc board (Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Wikipedia:WikiProject Citizendium Porting). It is about a Wikiproject dealing with importing content from Citizenium to WP. I'm not sure whether my post is at the right place, so I invite everybody who is interested to discuss the matter at the linked thread. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Capitalisation of minor words in band names

I know there are clear guidelines about not capitalising the initial letters of conjunctions, prepositions and so on in album titles, but I can't find any similar guidelines covering band names. Most pages for bands (e.g. Noah and the Whale) seem to follow the same format, but is there an official policy somewhere that I just haven't been able to find? If not, should one be written? ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 22:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Ideally, use what the band uses in their promotional material. On some small time bands, I have seen inconsistent caps. Try to figure out what is more "official". This is one case where self-published sources are fine, and even preferred, I'd say. Gigs (talk) 14:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no. WP:MOSTM. We are supposed to look at the various ways the name is covered in mainstream media and then choose the format with the least degree of extraneous formatting. The use of fancy capitalization and symbols is a way to make the band's name call attention to itself, and using that in Wikipedia would give the band undue attention (a POV problem). Dragons flight (talk) 16:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about conjunctions and prepositions, not extraordinary formatting. WP:UCN says we should generally defer to the "most common" proper name. My advice was given in that light, and shouldn't be taken to mean that we should use LeEt SpeEAk just because a band does. I guess the question really is, "Should we treat band names more like proper names, or more like trademarks?" Gigs (talk) 19:31, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I've inadvertently opened a can of worms! I was really only talking about bands with names along the lines of "X and the Y", rather than anything more complicated (or, depending upon one's view, pretentious). The question initially arose because I was editing pages relating to a relatively new band, Florence and the Machine: their printed artwork, official Youtube page and Myspace are currently a bit haphazard about the middle two words and the discussion came up on their talk page about which should be the main WP page and which should be redirects. I think the three of us agree on this, so I'm going to propose on the talk page that we should stay with "Florence and the Machine" as the main page.

Thank you for pointing me towards the MoS "trademarks" page - I hadn't thought of looking there. Regards to both of you ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 21:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Civility/Poll

I have placed a (long overdue) poll at Wikipedia:Civility/Poll on how the community stands on civility - mainly on how it is currently applied and enforced. Does teh community feel it is too strict, too lenient, or about right? And should we treat a user's own talk page any differently to elsewhere? Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Recommendation of Subject Pages: Make Detailed Information Accessible through Structured Introduction of Basics

Summary: Create subject pages which present information in a structured way so people can access information in a logical manner. Currently people unfamiliar with a topic will digress endlessly in defining terms they don't understand from page to page.

(If you are a serious person please skip the irrelevant details of the following first paragraph. In fact, the last two paragraphs are self explanatory.)

Dear Wikipedia,

I very much like your website and am currently working at creating an inhale-able or edible form of your website so I can learn information faster. Although I have had no success yet and have all sorts of health problems due to trying to encode information into 2-butoxyethanol molecules, I have reached another conclusion. This conclusion is a result of a problem I have had with the conventional reading process as presented by the summary. Let me explain:

Since I am not very well educated, while reading articles I often do not know what the terms within the article I am reading mean. This causes me to digress endlessly. For example, I may be interested in learning about alkaloids (to encode wikipedia information with a lipid substance). To understand an alkaloid I need to know what a secondary metabolic path is. When I click on that page I end up clicking on metabolism. To understand metabolism I click on science, etc. By the time I understand anything at all I forget what I was trying to learn to begin with.

My suggestion is that Wikipedia would serve best as encyclopedia as a structured encyclopedia. This could be accomplished in many ways. One way would be to allow editors to create their own subject pages. This would include a Subject Title, an introduction into the subject, the fundamentals of the subject, and would list existing and relevant wikipedia pages in a chosen order. An expert on immunology could start a subject on this topic, give an introduction by explaining how cells fight off diseases in the body, suggest that there are differences between B and T cells and Macrophages and what the difference between viruses and bacteria is. By making these fundamental distinctions, creating a structure and context in which all the elements of disease and the immune system come into play in a meaningful way, and noting similarities and differences between how the body fights viruses and bacteria infections, the links to existing pages become much more accessible.

This differs from current policy by emphasis on how a page of information on a subject is structured, namely making sure information on a single page follows a logical order from fundamental or simple concepts to detailed concepts. Information becomes more complicated the more you learn. In this way attempting to learn details is precarious like an upside down pyramid where the very many details on the top are dependent on relatively few basic ideas which the reader cannot necessarily find but are highly important. If one wants to learn some of the many complicated details on the top, one needs to know the base ideas at the bottom. The relevant base ideas are not explicit nor implicit in any given paper on detail however. In providing context and structure for learning details, Wikipedia subject pages would be essential in and instrumental to realizing the goal of an encyclopedia: making knowledge accessible to everyone.— Preceding unsigned comment added by InterestingUtencilProposalManNumber9 (talk • contribs) 10:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There is a project dedicated to just this. Further information can be found here. Take a look at Outline of immunology and see if it delivers what you are looking for. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Censorship at David Rohde

So, apparently Wikipedia is not censored except when and how Jimbo says it's censored. Do I have that about right? Mark Shaw (talk) 17:18, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Background reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?_r=2&ref=business –xeno^talk 17:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yup. See WP:IAR. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

especially this part: "some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia. But the idea of a pure openness ... is a naïve one."

Wikipedia is "censored" when Jimbo Wales thinks there are excellent reasons for it. Most people would agree that Jimbo is very sane, and most sane people would agree the reasons, in this case, were excellent. --dab (𒁳) 17:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

To expand a little bit: I don't have all that much of a problem with this, particularly in this particular case. But the policy itself should be rewritten to cover corner cases like this. Mark Shaw (talk) 17:27, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Policy does not need to be rewritten to cover cases that come up once every other year or so. That's what WP:IAR is for. Mr.Z-man 17:35, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, we've moved beyond the days of granting unlimited power to Jimbo. In the absence of a resolution from the Board of Trustees, ArbCom, the Foundation, and the other Trustees could overrule him. In principle other Wikipedians could as well via the consensus mechanism (though in practice disputes with Jimbo tend to go to ArbCom). But to make a long story short, this isn't something that could have been kept quiet unless the other Wikipedians who were aware of it also agreed with doing so. Dragons flight (talk) 17:29, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this kind of things should be decided by Jimbo alone, but as Dragons flight said, he wasn't the only one who agreed with keeping this quiet. It seems to me that the idea that we as a powerful medium of information should wield that power in a responsible fashion (I think that's one of the reasons behind WP:BLP) was applied here in a reasonable way, and that's a good policy, even if not written down anywhere. It is in my opinion not covered by WP:IAR, as the "censorship" here decreased the value of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, for a purpose that many people found reasonable. Kusma (talk) 17:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

the arbcom overruling Jimbo? Oh dear, that would be rather like the Ship of Fools overruling Erasumus of Rotterdam. Way to go, democracy! --dab (𒁳) 08:56, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Curious, how far does our (apparent) obligation to prevent harm stretch? For example, would it apply to censoring images from an article on a projective psychological test because it could corrupt potential future tests the reader would take, tests that could detect and prevent suicide? –xeno^talk 17:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• That line, based as it likely is on a blurry mix of consensus, argumentum ad Jimbonem, and common sense, is probably so fuzzy that defining it will prove impossible. However, my own take is that if such a line does exist, this case clearly falls on the "try to save a living breathing human being" side. Also, Jimbo seems to note in the Times article that if there had been truly reliable sources, his position might have become untenable. You don't have that problem at Rorschach test. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I doubt Wikipedia will do this for other victims of Kidnapping, and I am well aware we have not done so in the past. This was a pure cave to the disreputable behavior of the NYT - they were compromising their duty as a news agency (they would have reported any other run-of-the-mill kidnapping of an American Citizen, especially a civilian) That Jimbo further defames at least one reliable source (Pajhwok Afghan News) is just icing. Some of our articles are actually killing people, every day (Homeopathy, which is innefective for treating anything, but try to find that in our article) - yet Jimbo does nothing to fix that. No, we're complicit in the coverup, which I guess is fine, but we should at least admit we'll cover things up when important or powerful people ask us to. Hipocrite (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I've never seen an article kill anyone before. I'm sure you have reliable sources for this? Or are you attempting to invent a moral panic not unlike how heavy metal music led otherwise perfect, A+ students who had nothing bad in their lives to commit suicide? Resolute 22:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like Jimbo, or one of the other insiders who collaborated to strike this information, to offer a serious explanation as to why Pajhwok and adnkronos shouldn't be regarded as WP:RS. Geo Swan (talk) 05:21, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If you look at the Homeopathy article, it states clearly: "Claims of homeopathy's efficacy beyond the placebo effect are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence." I would recommend that people who believe that holding back vital information about physical people publish names and addresses of their relatives, so they can be hunted down and killed by terrorists. Knowingly endangering someone's life is most likely a crime in most jurisdictions, for very good reasons. 213.39.224.86 (talk) 22:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Let me add to my prior post. Are you willing to die, right now, to fight what you consider censorship? If so, fine. But you have no issues with endangering innocent people's lives who cannot voluntarily take the decision themselves. Even if the article about homeopathy claimed that homeopathy could heal things, it would not directly threaten the life of someone. If you are stupid enough to bet your life on homeopathy, fine. But don't blame Wikipedia. You have a brain, the article gives you enough information to start thinking about it. But knowingly posting material that might endanger someone's life under the guise of "The truth" or "Everybody has a right to know" or "information must be free" disqualifies the author from membership in the human race. This is philosophy on such a basic level that I wonder why we even have to have this discussion. Grow up. 213.39.224.86 (talk) 22:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Telling people to 'grow up' is a sign that the person needs to grow up themselves...but anyway, it seems to me at a quick glace at all this that perhaps this was not really censorship and more so a WP:BLP issue -- truth doesn't matter so much as what reliable sources say, and if any RSes DID say, then it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place now would it have been? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• See below. Geo Swan (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

IMHO any censorship that lasts more than a day or two should be done by a person or committee invested with that power, and that person or committee should be accountable, directly or indirectly, to the community. We already have WP:OFFICE with explicitly authority to take actions when legally necessary to protect the foundation, which is likely not the case here. I'm not sure if its explicit or implicit, but WP:ARBCOM is probably the closest thing we have to a committee that can impose special interpretations of WP:BLP binding on the whole community. Both of those groups are accountable to the community: Those with the power to make OFFICE actions are accountable to the trustees, who are in turn elected. ARBCOM members are de facto elected, providing accountability. In either case, this would've been much better if it had been "the WP Office" or "Arbcom" doing the censoring and not one man. Of course, once the need for censorship is over, all cards should be put on the table as soon as it is safe to do so. This will allow the community to discuss the action and either endorse it by consensus, repudiate it by consensus, or take no action either by consensus or due to lack of one. Individual trustees and arbcom members may be "held accountable," if that is the right word, should they stand for re-election. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with the censorship in this case, but only because it's of limited duration, and the negotiators are actively calling for this. In a timeless reference work, excluding information for the duration of a single diplomatic engagement is nothing. Jimbo should not and does not have the power to exclude this information on his own authority; but consensus is backing him up in this case, and I think ArbCom and/or the Board would support him as well if it came to that. We have long had cases where certain information is removed because it is not valuable enough to the reader to justify its risk to the subject - such as, say, the personal cellphone number of a celebrity. Dcoetzee 00:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, sice now blackout every kidnapping. I suggest to censore articles about drugs, that will probably save lives too. 89.61.138.136 (talk) 00:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I think a big issue here is the implication of favoritism. The NYT story gives the implication that Jimbo kept the information off of Wikipedia at the request of the NYT. There have been similar kidnappings in the past, and in all likelihood there will be in the future. What happens then? Will we self-censor then too, or is this a one-off special favor to the NYT? If it is a one-off, are we then saying that David Rohde's life is worth more than the future kidnapping victims? If it is not, what policy are we applying to effect the self-censorship? I don't think Ignore All Rules applies as-is, as that explicitly mentions that the ignoring of the rules is for the purpose of improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and there isn't yet a (written) consensus that self-censorship is "improving" Wikipedia. (It may improve how you view yourself as a moral and ethical being, but does it improve Wikipedia as an encyclopedia?) If there is a consensus that self-censorship is justified, what is the extent to which it *is* justified? Where do we draw the line? Which information do people have a right to know, and what information must we withhold "for their own good"? And who gets to judge this? Homeopathy was given above, but there are better examples: Locations of military bases, plans for atomic bombs, security procedures, etc. A government (US or non-US) may have information classified for "national security reasons" that leaks in such a fashion that Wikipedia is not legally prohibited from publishing it. In what situations, if any, do we have an ethical responsibility to self-censor to protect the welfare of the general public, or of some third party? Who gets to decide this: Jimbo? Wikimedia foundation staff? Arbcom? The non-legally binding determinations of the government? The New York Times? There are other situations where newspapers routinely omit details to protect people, like rape victims' names or the names of child offenders. Is Wikipedia ethically required to similarly self-censor in those cases? Given that the discussion so far has been lacking in reference to pre-existing policies, I take it we don't have any which explicitly cover this sort of situation. We should take the opportunity to create some, as this sort of situation will happen again, and random, ad hoc treatment will do nothing but engender bitterness, resentment and paranoia.

I'm also somewhat concerned by the tone in which Jimbo's actions are portrayed in the NYT article. “We were really helped .. that it hadn’t appeared in ... a reliable source. ... I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.” makes it sound like even if there was a reliable source, he would have performed the same actions anyway. (e.g. saying "would have had a hard time" as opposed to "we wouldn't have done it then".) "Knowing that his own actions on Wikipedia draw attention, Mr. Wales turned to an administrator," makes it sound like he did a deliberate end-run around policy. I can't tell if this is due to actual "damn the rules" thinking on Jimbo's part or poor phrasing/context on the part of the NYT article, but the issue is worth clarifying, at the very least to help quell conspiratorial rumors. -- 128.104.112.62 (talk) 00:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If it helps any, people might wish to read the article now that I've almost completely rewritten it from scratch - see David S. Rohde. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Would it be that hard in the future to just lock these things and say WP:OFFICE? Because regardless of the intent (which was noble, obviously), we end up with the same "old boys club" and behind the scenes manipulation that has given us a black eye before. How many other admin actions have been taken on behalf of Mr. Wales? How can we ever know? I guess we are forced to trust Jimbo when he says that this sort of thing is exceedingly rare and only for "good" purposes...but that is fairly unappetizing. In the future, just sysop a foundation employee, protect the page, leave a remark that it was protected as an office action and be done with it. It's not like someone couldn't have looked in the logs of the page to discover what was being left out. Protonk (talk) 01:41, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a mountain out of a molehill. Blind adherance to an ideal in the face of a unique case is just silly. This sort of thing does not mean that Jimbo is acting arbitrarily to censor Wikipedia; what we have here is a sui generis situation that requires a sui generis solution. Sometimes Jimbo will have to make decisions which are for the good of the 'pedia even if they go against the principles of the 'pedia. This is one of those rare cases. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 01:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not asking for blind adherence to an ideal. What we have here is a textbook case of an OFFICE action where instead we (or more specifically, he) decided to send an email and make an end run around things. I don't think the result was bad. Unlike the dispute over wp censoring and protecting an article for a convicted british citizen because the scottish police made strange claims, the result was proper given the stakes. The times and jimbo had reason to believe that publicizing David's plight would bring him harm and they acted. Good. Jimbo chose to act in a pretty unnecessary and arbitrary manner. Bad. Again, the content being kept out is fine, the method to keep it out was not. In the future, these things should just be done through the office without any sleight of hand (obviously it doesn't need a flashing light saying it has been protected, a mention in the history is sufficient). Protonk (talk) 02:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

First, office actions would only draw attention thus the entire effort would be useless. Second, it shouldn't have been an office action because ... it wasn't an office action. I don't think that can be made much clearer. If the office needed to step in, surely they would have. Third, I wish people would stop complaining about Jimmy who really didn't do anything in this situation, contrary to the NYT article who made him out as a "leader" of sorts. I heavily reviewed a request that was received via our email ticket system and I acted on it in a way that I felt was appropriate. It is really quite simple. We (as in OTRS agents) respond to sensitive queries on a daily basis (though I'll admit none are quite like this one). So if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. All of the speculation here and elsewhere is becoming sadly comical. - Rjd0060 (talk) 13:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

What if Mr. Rohde had died? More than that, what if he had died and reliable sources had mentioned that more public awareness might have helped? Have you thought about how appropriate your admin action would have been? Maybe you should recognize that, when you decided to follow the suppression request, you took sides. You had no objective backing to your actions. Bias towards good intentions is still bias. --Dfonseca (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

What's so unique, or sui generis to use your term, about this example of an editor censoring information based on the perceived potential for the information's release to cause or enable harm? It seems to me that this sort of thing is one of the more common, if defining, questions that journalistic and encyclopedic sources have to tackle.

Personally speaking, while I don't disagree per se with the decision of Wikipedia's Benevolent dictatorship, both the manner in which it was reached and carried out leave a very bad taste in my mouth. A policy that approaches the issue rationally and defines guidelines and expectations consistent with Wikipedia's mission and ethical imperative is possible. The deletion of legitimately sourced annotations with false claims about their veracity is worthy of condemnation, not praise. 65.189.152.19 (talk) 21:01, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm displeased that there is still the official claim that "Wikipedia is not censored". It was obvious to me after the previous case of removing photos from the autofellatio article that a commitment to non-censorship was indeed lacking. This case merely reinforces that conclusion. I really think the claim should stop being made as it just creates confusion. For example, there was lots of brouhaha over images of Muhammad. Some were saying that the inclusion of the images would endanger people, as, indeed, people were being killed and injured because of reactions to other publications of such images. Many newspapers did indeed self-censor on this issue, accepting that reasoning. These calls for censorship were answered with "Wikipedia IS NOT CENSORED!" Now, the censorship of Wikipedia is justified with exactly what those calling for the censorship of the Muhammad images said: "Life itself was in danger!" How will such contradictions continue to be maintained? --Atethnekos (talk) 02:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd rather not try to justify this case (not interested in a long, tiring debate), but your comparison is unfair. Any violence over the Muhammad article not being censored (none of which has happened) would be directed at the people publishing it; ie. Wikipedia and/or the Wikipedians pushing for it. Any violence over this information being published would be directed at someone else. Apples and oranges. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If that were true, then why was "violence aimed at European embassies" as Tony Blair is said to claim in this article? Also in that article is says the "first deaths in the Muhammad cartoon protests" were people who "died in Mihtarlam, eastern Afghanistan, after police exchanged fire with mobs attacking a police station". Were those two people publishers of the cartoons? Was the police station which was attacked involved in the publication? This article] too raises interesting questions for your interpretation. For example, it claims all that a US military base was attacked as part of the reaction to the publications, even though the US had nothing to do with it. Why would the article make that claim when you claim that any such violence would be directed at the publishers? It seems to me either you are wrong or the articles are. --Atethnekos (talk) 02:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Good point. There was violence targeted extremely roughly at just about everything with hardly any involvement in the publication. However, most of that was some sort of generalized outrage at nations permitting such free speech; I can't see Wikipedia's contribution adding anything to that at the time it was being discussed here. But like I said, you do have a point. I don't know. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The arguments in support of this decision, citing such arguments as opponents are constructing mountains out of molehills and/or "grow up" are misrepresenting the point to be made in opposition to this editorial decision. The arguments against this decision are based on the philosophical ramifications of the issue at hand whie those supporting the endevour are arguing from an emotional frame work of the exact scenario. The reason the philosophical argument works is that it does not matter who or why this happened, only the bare information of man had notable incident is all that counts. Citing the exact details and then applying emotive reactions lead to logical fallacies. The reason this was a poor decision is because it sets an informational dangerous precedent in that while wikipedia has long had issues with deciding what is WP:NOTNEWS in regards to missing white girl syndrome and the news media we have a case of an inversion - a notable individual goes missing and a concentrated effort is done by the same media who fall over themselbves to report on "non-notable" abductees to hide it. The situation also illustrates an incredible deficit of wikipedia's design that may need investigation in the future - wikipedia's reliance on media and what happens if that same media decides to not report something that it knows to be notable. The previously argued in this thread points regarding the horrible double standard of reporting on every soldier or civilian abducted in the middle East and then immediately turtling when the abductee is a journalist who the news wishes to keep quiet is especially worrying. –– Lid^(Talk) 03:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

We are moral beings with not just a capability, but a responsibility, to make judgments about what is best and to weigh various and sometimes competing principles and virtues. Non-censorship is a noble cause, so is life, and we value them both. It is not always clear when or how we can always apply these values to achieve the greater good. We just have to do our best. In this case, a decision was made to violate a principle, and it worked out well. Consider that good results were also achieved when Martin Luther King decided to violate the principle of obeying the law. Good results were achieved George Washington et al. violated their principle loyalty to their king. That doesn't mean everyone should discard loyalty or lawfulness, such behavior would lead to chaos and destruction. Knowing how to balance objectives to achieve greater good and serve God's purposes is a form of wisdom, and is not easily achieved. In this case, I think Mr. Wales and the editors who helped did right. Readin (talk) 03:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If you imagine that kidnappers in Afghanistan are checking Wikipedia to determine how valuable their victims are, then the article should have been speedy deleted. The bad guys already knew he was kidnapped. Now everyone involved in the news blackout is patting themselves on the back for saving this guy's life, when the truth is that they didn't do squat for him. Kauffner (talk) 04:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Well done to all involved. It's hard to see anything wrong with doing something like this which helps to protect peoples' lives, and I hope it sets a precedent. Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the criterion is whether there is danger to specific individuals, not just general categories of people. All sorts of things cause the latter. Eg news reports of events in the Middle East & terrorism cause violence against Jews & Muslims. Gandhi's preaching of non-violent resistance caused riots in India & he was imprisoned for sedition as a consequence. Jack Straw's criticism of veils caused violence against Muslims. &c. Does anyone suggest these things be banned?

On the other hand, there was an interesting case in America which went to the Supreme Court, I think. An anti-abortion group published on the internet a list of names & addresses of doctors involved in abortions. That was all. They didn't advocate violence. Nevertheless, the Court ruled that this was an exception to freedom of speech because of the obvious danger to specific individuals, at least one such doctor already having been assassinated. Peter jackson (talk) 09:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• I just read this story from a Melbourne Newspaper, the Herald Sun[2]

  The article was simply embargoed until Rohde was safe. It happens in journalism, marketing and PR all the time- why should Wikipedia (as a perfect example of Web2.0 and New Media) be any different? The New York Times simply asked Jim Wales to lock the article until such time as Rohde was safe.

  There have been several examples of stories being embargoed for reasons of safety. Prince Harry's tour of duty in Afghanistan one example. The British press agreed to the blackout and was successful until it was leaked by The Drudge Report, whereupon the prince was withdrawn from theatre for his safety and that of his fellow soldiers. [3]). Only in the last few days, Australian Deputy Prime Minister's visited troops in Iraq. Her intinerary was reported by The Age in contravention of press convention to not to do so. They recently published an apology and retraction when reports of Gillard's trip were made public before she arrived, [4])

  My general point is that journalists and newspapers have ethical practice on such matters. Journalists and communications professionals study these matters in ethics courses during their tertiary study. Its time for us as Wikipedia contributors to acknowledge that we are New Media journalists and that isn't just about being right or being right first. We make Wikipedia the influential source that it is, but we need to do so ethically and responsibly otherwise we're no better than the likes of Drudge or Perez Hilton.

  On a slightly different note, I think we also need to be careful about the assertion of free speech. I'd wager the legislation around free speech, privacy and defamation varies from country to country, and I'd suggest its up to each wikipedian to understand their own legal context.

  Paul Roberton

  Paul Roberton (talk) 10:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

  • We aren't journalists. We are encyclopaedists. Contrary to a few ill-informed reports, this is still the encyclopaedia, and the newspaper, where the actual citizen journalists hang out, is still over there. It's most definitely not time to acknowledge that we are journalists, "New Media" or otherwise. We are and always have been encyclopaedists, and remain so. So our standards, that we aim to adhere to, are good practices for encyclopaedists. Uncle G (talk) 19:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • By that argument we should follow the lead of most other encyclopedias and not discuss any events that aren't already years old. Dragons flight (talk) 19:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
      • No. By this argument we adhere to the good practices that we have as encyclopaedists, and don't pretend, or become misled by the statements of others who are ill-informed, that we are journalists. Uncle G (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
        • I'm ill-informed? Would you care to edit the previous post and add the words "In my opinion" to your last statement please? Feel free to express an opinion, but please don't express your opinion as fact.Paul. Paul Roberton (talk) 17:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
          • Actually, I was referring to the people who led you to believe that we were journalists, whoever they were. There are a few ill-informed commentators out there. However: This is an encyclopaedia. It is not a newspaper or a journal. We are, by definition, encyclopaedists. This is not a matter of opinion. Uncle G (talk) 23:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Interpolation of the above remarks has confused the context of the following, which was a response to Paul's last remark. Peter jackson (talk) 09:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

(out of sequence in edit conflict; response to immediately preceding remarks, which the next posting isn't) Of course it varies. Some countries don't have free speech at all. Some countries have privacy laws, others don't. England (not sure about Scotland) has in theory a very strict libel law, where it's up to the publisher to provide justification rather than the plaintiff to prove the reverse, and belief in the truth of the statements is not a defence. In practice this is largely cancelled by the fact that you have to be pretty rich to sue for libel. The US Supreme Court has banned gagging orders except in blatant cases of national security, but they're common in Britain & elsewhere. &c &c

What I'm not clear about is how this affects Wikipedia. It's based in Florida but supplied to most of the world. Does it have to abide by everybody's laws? This may be particularly relevant to copyright, where the European Union has a longer period than (practically) everyone else, while the US often seems to have shorter ones. Peter jackson (talk) 11:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The High Court of Australia ruled (7-0) in Gutnik v Dow Jones( Full text of judgment here) that a defamation could be tried in the country where the most damage was done to the reputation, rather than where the action took place so the location of the server really doesn't matter much. In other matters, there's very limited free speech in Australia. Its not legislated for, and limited only to political commentary, and very little in terms of protection from invasion of personal privacy ( Australian privacy laws extend only to the management of personal information).

That's horrific. Presumably it could be enforced against Dow because Dow wants to continue doing business in Australia. Would US authorities aid a plaintiff in collecting such a judgment? I certainly hope not, and as far as I know the Wikimedia foundation has no assets in Australia. --Trovatore (talk) 17:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Back to the case at hand though. My personal belief is the principle of "Anyone can contribute" goes to community development and "not censored" relates to issues of offensive content and that Wales acted appropriately under what can only be described as force majeure.

Paul Roberton.

Paul Roberton (talk) 12:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

People are contributing their CC encyclopaedic work to a site ruled in an undemocratic fashion. All that BDFL, the accompanying vanity and censorship issues, is deeply incompatible with the principles of open publishing and fair resolution of NPOV issues. There is nothing charming or particularly positive about the fact that whoever founded the encyclopaedic project gets to make truth/censorship decisions ad nauseam. This has become apparent time and again as frustration with the admin/editorial resolution of conflicts around contentious issues has grown, where vested interest make best use of the internal political mechanisms of a semi-autocratic structure. I shall be looking forward to a truly democratic fork of this project. Pnd (talk) 10:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow. This "I'll gladly sacrifice X strangers" attitude is depressing.HavocXphere (talk) 13:03, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I am very frightened by this censorship. If something this (relatively) unimportant can be kept hidden for so long, we obviously cannot trust that it won't happen again. It may even be happening right now, and we wouldn't know about it. All it takes is that someone convince a single individual (Jimbo). Thus we cannot trust Wikipedia, or, by extension, Wikinews, to give us an impartial, uncensored world view. I call on everyone to abandon these projects in favor of something uncontrollable, perhaps distributed. 83.250.203.177 (talk) 14:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• That's the problem of breaking a rule: the standard of information disappears with it. The idea that it was a sui generis situation does not stand: a rule is simply a rule, and anything that it says is forbidden is just forbidden. Or else : who will decide when we face a sui generis situation ? On what ground ? And with what sort of accountability ? And I'd like to have a proper official statement by Jimbo and the sysops that took part in this action: they have to justify to the community what they did. We shouldn't have to read the NYT to know about it. Gede (talk) 15:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • You already have a statement, by one of the only 2 administrators that exercised xyr administrator tools on the article, stating exactly what xe did it in response to. It was written above, about 2 hours before you wrote your comment. Uncle G (talk) 19:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Human life is put at risk every day by reporting, is it not? Does Wikipedia have a policy of not reporting information that may put someone's life at risk? If so, who evaluates that risk? What standards do they apply, if any? Is there a process to appeal decisions or correct mistakes? Reporting on the acts of a dictatorial government, for example, could reasonably be argued to put the lives of the regime members at risk. Should we sanitize Wikipedia of all that information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.103.251 (talk) 15:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• This is nonsense. Wikipedia did the right thing. I can't believe people are actually complaining. 67.184.14.87 (talk) 15:21, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Now that you've stated your opinion, would you care to take a crack at answering any of the questions I asked? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.103.251 (talk) 17:38, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Relatively unimportant? This could well be a defining moment for Wikipedia, either way. Jim Wales was asked, on behalf of the community he created, to help in a serious matter.
  • Life is not lived in absolutes governed by WP:whatever. Don't dare sit in the comfort of your living rooms, dens and lounges tapping away on your notebooks and judge Wales, righteously bemoaning the death of Wikipedia's integrity because he chose to help (potentially) preserve life at the expense of wikipedia policy. What makes this moaning and gnashing of teeth even worse is that fact it's done with anonymity. If you feel so strongly about it, use your real names.
    • Life may not be governed by Wikipedia policy, but if Wikipedia isn't, then what does govern it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.103.251 (talk • contribs) 17:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• My name is Paul Roberton and I'm perfectly happy with what Jim Wales did. I'd have done the same thing in his position. If you don't like what Wales did, or feel that you can no longer trust Wikipedia try Citizendium instead. There's the door. [5]
  Paul Roberton Paul Roberton (talk) 15:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • My name is irrelevant, and I'm not perfectly happy with what Jim Wales did. I don't know what I'd have done in his position, as I do not know the particular circumstances of his position, though a can of worms certainly seems to have been opened by Wikipedia's leadership violating it's own policies and standards. Thanks for showing me the door, but I believe I'll stick around and continue to ask the questions you'd evidently rather ignore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.103.251 (talk • contribs) 17:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll apologise unconditionally and unreservedly for my terseness and lack of civility. Its been 12hours since I made that post and in the cold hard light of day, it was unnecessary. I'm extremely passionate about this topic and will continue to give Jim Wales and decision makers my full throated support.

Paul Roberton Paul Roberton (talk) 02:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

But were the references really all to unreliable sources?

Jimbo Wales has been quoted, in the MSM, as saying that the good faith wikipedia contributors who were not made privy to covert plan to IAR and suppress this material were not referencing WP:RS. WP:AGF -- perhaps Jimbo's involvement with the supression was early, and the references which easily passed WP:RS hadn't been supplied.

I went back, and checked, to see what sources they referenced. Some of the sources those good faith contributors cited weren't WP:RS, but at least three publications they cited were publications I have had no reservations citing before. In particular, the English language service of Al Jazeera is extremely reliable. I have probably referenced their articles well over one hundred times over the last four years, and I have never regretted it -- never come to think afterwards -- "that Al Jazeera article steered me wrong." Geo Swan (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not whether it's right or wrong, it's how we play the game...

I think a large amount of hot air and ad hominems are being thrown about above regarding if the actions taken on the David Rohde article were "right" or "wrong". I think that's the wrong discussion to have. The actions have been taken, the event is over, and I don't think that anyone is arguing against including the kidnapping info in the David Rhode page from now on.

I think a better question is how this event has exposed potential weaknesses in the Wikipedia process. Contrary to assertions above, this is not a one-off, sui generis event. Over 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, with dozens more in Afganistan. And that doesn't include other kidnapping events around the world (like the Maersk Alabama). Or other cases where reasonable arguments can be made that information hiding might protect the well-being of some third party (e.g. where you normally have media blackouts: head of state travel schedules, rape victims' and child criminals' names, etc.). If we argue that information hiding was justified in the Rhode case, what is the policy about information hiding in other cases? How do we make that determination? Where's the line, or if there isn't a clear line, who's the line judge? Which cases get action, and to what extent does the action occur? "When inclusion of material on Wikipedia may pose a credible threat to human life, such material shall be removed from Wikipedia, until such time as there is no longer a threat. The Wikimedia Foundation staff, in consultation with its lawyers, will be the final arbiter of such cases." may be an acceptable policy, but Wikipedia should have a policy, and it should be at least nominally accepted by the Wikipedia community. Without a clear policy, we have the case we have now, where David Rohde is somehow special enough to warrant a blackout, but the other 300+ hostages somehow aren't. The arbitrariness and secrecy with which this action was taken does nothing but engender resentment and suspicion ("Jimmy Wales and some friends use their administrator powers to suppress information on Wikipedia, even though there isn't any clear policy to do so" - you can see how this sounds a lot like a cabal).

Make a clear policy for these general situations ("Party X will probably be harmed in way Y by inclusion of information on Wikipedia") and get a consensus for it from the general Wikipedia. -- 128.104.112.62 (talk) 17:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Can't we just treat this as a special situation? I can see a policy of "thou-shalt-not-harm" being generalized and thus abused to suppress truthful information - see the incidents underlying the Giovanni Di Stefano article, or even suicide methods. If such policy must be passed, it should be passed with extreme discretion, and made clear that very few incidents, if at all, justify removal of encyclopedic content.--WaltCip (talk) 18:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• For what it is worth, I suggest the number of kidnapped individuals from Afghanistan is not dozens, but more like hundreds, because, as Lawrence Wilkerson has written, the Bush cabinet knew that a large number of the Guantanamo captives were innocent bystanders. I suggest the Guantanamo captives who were innocent bystanders were also kidnap victims, by any reasonable definition of kidnapping. Geo Swan (talk) 18:55, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• Concur with the original poster that the arbitrary and secretive way in which this censorship was conducted reflects poorly on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.22.103.251 (talk) 19:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• ("Jimmy Wales and some friends use their administrator powers to suppress information on Wikipedia, even though there isn't any clear policy to do so" - you can see how this sounds a lot like a cabal). — The problem is that it is quite clearly contradicted both by the administrator concerned, writing at the top of this very discussion, and the protection log of the article itself, which explicitly lists an OTRS ticket. So what it really sounds like is people reacting based not upon the actual facts at hand, but upon (by now) fifth- or sixth-hand descriptions of those facts. The shame of it is that whilst this is to be expected of people in a pub somewhere who are discussing events based upon vague memories of a NYT article recounted to them by a friend, we at Wikipedia should at least be capable of reading a protection log, and of reading OTRS. We should generally be displaying more Clue than to repeat statements like the above. We're Wikipedia editors. We should have Clue enough to read the MediaWiki logs and learn who the people who actually exercised the administrator tools were, and what prompted them to use those tools. Article protection logs are not, after all, secret. They aren't even particularly mysterious. Uncle G (talk) 19:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm actually an exceptional protection log reader. Could you provide a justification, not to the OTRS ticket protection, but to the protection with the summary of "Excessive vandalism", and the one with the summary of "", and the one with the summary of "", and the one with the summary of ""? We'll ignore the fact that the OTRS ticket protection also states "unsourced/poorly sourced," which has been pretty well disproven at this point. Hipocrite (talk) 19:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • You're clearly not an exceptional protection log reader, or even a good one, given that here you are asking someone other than the person who actually performed the actions that you're asking about. A good log reader should, as I said, have enough Clue to correctly determine who the people who actually exercised the administrator tools were, and thus ask the right people. An exceptional protection log reader would have a particularly high level of MediaWiki log reading Clue — enough, I'm sure, to deduce when a protection expiry time is being changed, from the expiry time figures that are explicitly given in the log, even if the edit summary doesn't duplicate that information. Uncle G (talk) 05:01, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Here is the log. I don't understand it. User:Uncle G, is it your intention to mock those of us who can't read that log and intuit the reason behind it? And doesn't reading OTRS tickets requires the reader be previously authorized? Is it your intention to suggest that those of us who aren't authorized to read this ticket are not entitled to an explanation of the reasoning behind the suppression? Geo Swan (talk) 21:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • My intention is to point out exactly what I actually wrote: that we should have Clue enough to read the MediaWiki logs and learn who the people who actually exercised the administrator tools were, and what prompted them to use those tools. There's been a shortage of Clue here, with most discussion based upon news reports and conjecture, and including vague and garbled ideas of what happened and who did what; when the actual specific and detailed facts are right before us in the logs. It took this being pointed by me for you, or indeed anyone other than one of the two administrators concerned, to even write the letters "OTRS" in this discussion at all. Uncle G (talk) 05:01, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler's kidnapping was reported both in WP and the NY Times, so it seems that some news trumps the risk to lives, and other lives trump journalism's duty to report the news. For us mere readers of WP and the NYT, reliability of both organizations as a reliable source of news is compromised. For the sake of credibility, the protected page banner should probably have another version that states a page is temporarily being protected at the request of an outside source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.140.66.30 (talk) 20:35, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. It has never aimed to be a news source. If you want the project that aims to be exactly that, you'll find it over there, where it has been for several years. Uncle G (talk) 05:01, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to call for a formal explanation of the wikipedia's compliance with this blackout request

The account of Rohde's kidnapping has been cut and pasted into Kidnapping of David Rohde. That article doesn't really explain why the NYTimes wanted a blackout beyond quoting:

"From the early days of this ordeal, the prevailing view among David’s family, experts in kidnapping cases, officials of several government and others we consulted was that going public could increase the danger. We decided to respect that advice..."

I think the article on the kidnapping would really benefit from a better explanation of the reasoning behind the blackout than "experts told us so".

I think the NYTimes should have offered those wikipedia insiders a better explanation than that. And, now that the incident is over, the explanation that caused several key policies to be ignored should be fully and clearly laid out for the rest of the community. Geo Swan (talk) 18:55, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Rjd0060 wrote above, about 5 hours before you wrote that, that if you want to know anything else, you should ask. So instead of "calling for an explanation" and making a grand palaver here, go to User talk:Rjd0060, and simply ask. Politely, of course. Uncle G (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • In my humble opinion, you are dead wrong. We should not have to ask in a situation like this. Both the admins and Jimmy Wales should have explained their actions on their own initiative! Their actions go against one of the cornerstones of Wikipedia, so an explanation seems reasonable, no? Mcools (talk) 20:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I think I have explained myself quite well. Do you have a particular question? To be clear, if there's something you want to know, please ask, don't speculate.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Probably not worth asking, but well worth reading me getting slammed by the WMF council, an ex-arb and a current-arb for daring to ask for information about the OTRS ticket. Hipocrite (talk) 20:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• User:Rjd0060 may have written an invitation for those with questions to contact him. It is buried in the middle of a long discussion. It is not the first sentence of his comment. And he doesn't say: "I am one of those who took this responsibility." So, let me politely suggest you forgive me for over-looking it.

• Having said that, I am with Mcools on this one. In such a high profile instance, where the decision of the administrator, or small group of administrators, has been discussed in the MSM, the explanation absolutely must go in a more public place than someone's talk page.

• So, Rjd0060, how did you and whoever shared in this decision with you, decide on the credibility of the reasoning behind the NYTimes request?

• I just checked the revision history of David S. Rodhe. One of Rjd0060's edit summaries directs readers to OTRS Ticket:2008111310026387. Now that Rodhe is safe is there any reason this ticket can't be published?

• If one of the administrators at the NYTimes had approached me, in November, and said: "Geo, you are a prolific contributor to the wikipedia. One of our reporters in Afghanistan was taken hostage there. We are very concerned for him, and have asked other publications to join us in a covert blackout of of this news. Do you think the wikipedia could also be brought on board to observe this blackout?" I would have told them something like:

  "Sorry, other publications like yours all have a hierarchical authority pyramid, with a small group of senior decision makers, who can reach a decision, and impose it on all their subordinates. But the wikipedia depends on the efforts of a large number of volunteers. I don't believe the wikipedia has a small group of decision makers who have the authority to impose a secret publication ban on everyone else."

So, was I wrong? If I was wrong, am I also wrong to think open and transparent decision making requires a full and public disclosure of how this decision was made? Geo Swan (talk) 21:41, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

You would be right about that, but that would - in my opinion - not be the end of it. You might say then "It sounds like lives might be in danger, and this matter needs to be handled with great delicacy. I will honor the trust you have placed in me by asking, and I will not go public. It is possible that in some circumstances, if the sourcing is weak for example, or if you somehow manage to keep it out of the press generally, that it won't appear in Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales and the Foundation office may be able to lend some assistance. In other circumstances, the story is going to break all over, and there would be nothing we could do to help." This would be a very accurate and helpful answer for someone in this situation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Geo Swan, unfortunately, you would be wrong. For example, see WP:OFFICE. I will write something longer below. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• According to Hipocrite's user page he got hold of a copy of the OTRS ticket, and subsequently retired from Wikipedia, stating "Get a copy of OTRS Ticket:2008111310026387 and you'll retire also." What happened here? Mcools (talk) 21:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• As it turns out, the ticket was from Jimbo Wales. More on Hipocrite's user page. Mcools (talk) 21:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I have some questions, Jimbo

Do you have a particular question? To be clear, if there's something you want to know, please ask, don't speculate.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 00:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I have some questions:

• #1 Why did you use a meatpuppet to perform the action rather than WP:Office ?
• #2 Would you please list any other articles that have received or are receiving this treatment?
• #3 Would you handle this differently in the future and/or are you planning on taking any action to address user concerns?

The problem with this sort of suppression is that we have no idea what else is being swept under the rug. It would help me a lot if you could come clean about any other similar actions and plans for future actions. Otherwise, It is just me and my imagination, which is probably worse than the truth.128.97.68.15 (talk) 21:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I second these questions and add another two:

• #4 Is Wikipedia (i.e. you and the admins you control) willing to take similar actions even when it's not a journalist's life at stake whose editor is powerful enough to make a media blackout?
• #5 What about other articles that may be considered "life-threatheing" in different ways... such as informations about drugs, and so on...? Are we using a double-standard?

I'll be happy to get an answer from you, Mr. Wales. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.217.15.245 (talk) 14:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Wales' GoodReasonedCensorship(R) for WP:"LifeAtStake"(tm)

A little update on the matter (I'm still waiting for the answers, Mr. Wales...): so it turned out that there wasn't a LIFE at stake, it was a matter of MONEY. And that was known from the beginning, as the so-called NYT counterterrorism experts never believed that Rohde's life was at stake. That brings the whole censorship incident up to a very disgraceful and discreditable level... So sad... (Still waiting, Mr. Wales, still waiting...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.217.15.245 (talk) 09:34, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Wikipedia:News suppression

Regarding the recent discussion, I have made a draft proposal at Wikipedia:News suppression.

The purpose is to codify that Jimbo and other administrators did the right thing keeping the kidnapping of David Rohde out of his Wikipedia article. It also aims to define when something should be kept out of Wikipedia, even if it is covered in a few reliable sources. There can be no absolute rules for these situations, but some basic principles.

Some would say that we need no rule for this as we have IAR. However, Wikipedia:Ignore all rules is about ignoring rules when they prevent you from improving the encyclopedia. The reason to suppress the news of David Rohde's kidnapping is not mainly to improve Wikipedia, but to protect Rohde.

It is still a draft, comments are welcome. --Apoc2400 (talk) 17:40, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

How about a draft for more democracy & accountability, less BDFL, and less admins? Proper guidelines on freedom of expression on the platform would be great as well. in proper journalism, there is no such thing as "protecting lives", whatever the agenda may or may not be. It's about getting the truth out. Pnd (talk) 18:45, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a democracy, and there is no right to free speech here. We are not journalists creating a news source, this is an encyclopedia, a work of reference. FWIW, I think the the actions of Jimbo and the admins involved were entirely appropriate. – ukexpat (talk) 20:56, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

It may not be a democracy, but it's supposedly not censored either? There is certainly a journalistic element to the compilation of encyclopaedic information related to current events. In fact this issue is precisely related to the self-censorship of the journalistic community in the US. N.B: Linking to WP:NOTJOURNALISM will not make this go away. Creative commons content is in the public domain, and contributed by a very large number of users in good faith, and often without knowing that the current underlying administrative entity resembles a primeval tribe with a chieftain and a few goons. More democracy and accountability in the power structure (and by that I do not mean polls as in the article you cited) may prevent unilateral decision-making on censorship or the biased "NPOV" as is the case with many contentious issues. Pnd (talk) 09:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Good lord, this has gotten out of hand

Look, I don't really care that an article was protected out of the good faith believe that it would stop harm from coming to a human being. I'm GLAD that Mr. Rohde was rescued and that nothing untoward came from this. I have NO PROBLEM with the foundation being approached by an organization in good faith making a similar request again. Just please, please, PLEASE don't do it in the same manner that has brought scrutiny and shame to the 'pedia before. We have enough conspiracies (and reasonable allegations) around a "cabal" of editors who communicate in secret, take orders from jimbo and don't acknowledge it. All we have to do in the future is just sysop a foundation employee, protect the article and leave a note in the history that it was protected for office reasons. This avoids the subterfuge (totally unnecessary, btw, though I understand why jimbo wouldn't want to protect it), avoids the implication of dealing under the table and offers a simple solution to any problem like this in the future. If we aren't willing at least to demand that from jimbo/wmf, then we have become pretty supine.

As for the rest of the complaints...don't bother. there is no right to free speech here (and there shouldn't be). This wasn't some act of rank censorship which needs to be railed about for weeks. We don't need yet another policy page on the subject (which everyone will ignore in the future). We just need a promise from Jimbo and the WMF that this encyclopedia will be treated like the multi-million dollar non-profit that it is, not some fiefdom. Please just give some thought to responding to situations like this in an expeditious but circumscribed fashion. Protonk (talk) 07:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

A lot of people bumping into trees here without seeing the forest. Those who want to do their business in secrecy will in fact be ruthlessly exposed by those who understand that free and open communication is the greater value. Even if this had been about one man's life (which it never was), secrecy and censorship would have been by far the greater harm. Shame on those who think of themselves as editors, if they actually desire to make secrets. It won't work. This is but part of the larger internet, where they now stand exposed and censured by all. 68.178.59.178 (talk) 15:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• I don't really need a speech about freedom of communication or information on the internet. Protonk (talk) 18:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think some people DO need a lecture or speech about so-called "freedom" of communication or information on the internet. First off, there isnt such a thing. Even in the US freedom of speech refers to the right of the people to speak out without fear of censorship by the GOVERNMENT (and until shortly after the Civil War the First Amendment did not apply to state governments which DID routinely and legally circumscribe the rights of its people), the Constitution does NOT give people the right to speak without fear of censorship by other PEOPLE. This is a website run by the Foundation, not the federal government, and if it wants to censor information it has that right. Plus this is a multinational forum, and as Iran, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and other non-"free" countries remind us every day censorship online is a fact of life. Go to the PRC and try looking up Tianenmen Square on English language Wikipedia.Camelbinky (talk) 22:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it is not well known

Perhaps it is not well known that Wikipedia does, in exceptional circumstances, remove content from articles, or protect them so that content cannot be added. However, this has been a standard but rare practice for at least several years now. I view it as part of the underlying pragmatism of WP. Moreover, the well-documented WP:OFFICE procedure was invented for exactly this sort of purpose, and it is an unwritten but well-known fact that WP:OTRS is also used to quietly resolve issues where a drawn-out discussion onwiki is not desirable. I would guess that WP:OFFICE was not used in this instance because it would draw unwanted light to the page, but an OTRS ticket number was eventually placed in the protection log. This is, again, a reflection of the pragmatic approach to difficult situations that has traditionally been employed on WP. Those who favor rigid idealism in any area of WP are likely to find themselves disappointed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I accept that the wikipedia should take exceptional steps in truly exceptional circumstance. But you seem to be asserting something about the David Rodhe blackout many other participants in this discussion have claimed -- that complying with the NYTimes request helped preserve Rodhe's life. I see no evidence of this. I don't see any place where the NYTimes has offered an explanation as to how the blackout would have helped preserve Rodhe's life, if it had been universally observed. And I don't see any explanation as to how the blackout helped preserve Rodhe's life given that the blackout was not universally observed.

When people have a friend, colleague, relative who has been kidnapped, they are going to be disraught, emotional. They may make deeply heartfelt requests for information to be suppressed. When a someone is in a desperate situation their loved ones will try any desperate measure.

• Laetrile? Sure why not -- when conventional medical science has failed?
• Gonna lose your house because you have missed too many mortgage payments? Why not blow all your remaining cash on lottery tickets?
• Desperately worried that the USA will suffer another 9-11 scale attack? Why not start torturing all your captives, on the off-chance that if there a followup attack planned that torture will root out the info needed to counter it.

We have to evaluate whether the requests we receive are credible. Sometimes they are not. Ten months ago I got an apparently heartfelt, but nonsensical, criticism left on my talk page:

Geoswan is a contributor on Wikepedia whose main emphasis is to endanger members of the United States military and their families by plastering their names and images on the web when they work in highly volatile situations in the War on Terror.

I offered my response here. IMO requests to suppress information have to be subjected to a credibility test.

I would not have complied with the NYTimes blackout request because it was not a credible request, not as it stood. From the information made public, so far, the request seems like one based on a desperate emotional need to simply be doing something. Geo Swan (talk) 20:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it seems more like a need to not do something. SharkD (talk) 01:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Carl could you please expand on what you mean by: "...quietly resolve issues where a drawn-out discussion onwiki is not desirable."

Carl, I just checked WP:OFFICE -- I was not previously aware of it. The first paragraph says:

"These are removals of questionable or illegal Wikimedia content following complaints.

• But the material removed here was not "illegal".
• I don't think it is accurate to regard the NYTimes blackout request as a "complaint".
• I am not comfortable describing the material removed as "questionable".

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 20:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I was not offering any judgment on the case at hand, only pointing out that we do, in fact, have several systems set up to allow information to be quietly removed from articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

RFC:Role of Jimmy Wales in the English Wikipedia

An RFC has been launched by five co-proposers to determine community support for:

• establishing ArbCom elections as a direct expression of the community's will rather than as merely "advisory" to Mr Wales as now;
• establishing the elections as bringing the number of arbitrators to a total of 17 at the start of each year (no default size has previously been set), with a normal term of two years for new arbitrators;^[A]
• relying for appeals solely on ArbCom's well-established procedure for that purpose, which renders unnecessary Mr Wales's theoretical power to modify ArbCom's remedies and enforcement actions, and his role as court of appeal for ArbCom decisions.

All users are invited to inspect the proposal and to make their views known at the RFC. Tony (talk) 18:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia will nonetheless remain a private corporation under the direction of a Board elected pursuant to a publicly filed charter. It doesn't seem to me to be legally possible to upend that short of starting a competing wiki-modeled website. bd2412 T 05:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation is such a private corporation. Wikipedia is a community run project hosted by the WMF. Sure, we can't legally force the WMF to allow us to change the system, but we don't need to. They won't object unless there are legal concerns. --Tango (talk) 06:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

To go further: the WMF actively avoids getting involved in the running of the wikipedia projects, under the legal theory that they are less liable for what we do if they serve only as a sort of hosting provider. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't know how to deal with bureaucracy

Correct me if I'm wrong, if something is subjective (not objective), then trying to make a guide or policy governing it is bureaucracy. I've been dealing with a guide that is designed to look like policy and couldn't be any more vague. The policy WP:BURO seems to prohibit this, but is not clear on how to deal with it. The few users who have agreed with me, seem to be outnumbered by the advocates who expanded the guide to the point of WP:CREEP. I've put out RFCs but they get closed too soon. The advocates for the guide are avoiding discussion by removing tags before the disputes are resolved and WP:POLLING as if they just want to run the clock out while they outnumber. It seems that it's mostly people who are admitting bias against the admitted perceived problem that are heavily involved in protecting the guide. It's hard to get a neutral yet critical examination of the guide. Which forum do I use to put this bureaucracy on trial by neutral users and administrators? Oicumayberight (talk) 20:31, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Where can the particular situation you are referring to be found? It may help to know this.Camelbinky (talk) 21:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I was avoiding mentioning the specific situation because I didn't want to be accused of forum shopping. But since you asked, the bureaucracy of the WP:MOSICON has been ongoing since it was expanded[6] to include all icons (like generic small images or clipart) last October August as noted in archive 5. Since then, several unresolved discussions have been archived. Oicumayberight (talk) 22:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Deprodding as vandalism?

I just observed that {{prod}} includes the following statement about deprodding: "If this template is removed from the article and the removal was not vandalism, then do not replace it." Aside from the note on WP:CONTESTED that one may restore a PROD that's been replaced with a speedy tag, I've never before heard any way in which we could legitimately restore a prod tag. If you go down the AFD logs, you'll see plenty of discussions in which it is noted that the prod was removed without comment by some random person. Of course, removing a useful template is generally considered vandalism, so as this specifically isn't considered vandalism, what is? Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the intent behind the statement was to cover obvious vandalistic (is that even a real word?) edits, such as a random drive-by deprodding by an account that is engaged in other such vandalism. When an editor who is otherwise in good standing removes a prod template from an article - even one in which they seem otherwise disinterested - I can't see ever labeling it as vandalism. There may be some utility in requiring a rationale when removing a prod template and allowing it to be re-inserted when it is removed without explanation, but I do not think such a notion will gain much traction. It is probably safe to say that, except in the limited case of actions by an obvious vandal, this particular "option" won't be used. Shereth 21:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The only case of 'prod vandalism' I can recall is where someone was simply removing all prods on all articles that he could. That was pretty blatant. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If someone blanks the page (or the lead section, or just deletes the first few lines), or replaces it with "poop", or some stupidity like that, that would also be a deprodding due to vandalism. Anomie⚔ 21:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

As above, plus reverting edits that happen to include prod removal by banned or block-evading editors. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:21, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wirtland: our logo

Are other websites permitted to use our logo for any reason other than being informative, etc., as we use companies' logos? http://www.wirtland.com is currently displaying our logo in the top left corner of its front page. This website has been associating itself somewhat with Wikipedia: some of its members wrote an article about it that was taken to AFD, ending with no consensus, and now the article has been tagged as a copyvio of their website. In short — it seems to be violating the Wikimedia Foundation's trademarked Wikipedia logo. Please note that, while I voted to delete at AFD, I'm not trying to use this as an excuse for deletion (otherwise I, as an admin, would have already deleted it as a copyvio); I'm simply posting here because I don't know where else to report a WMF trademark violation. Nyttend (talk) 01:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• Email info-en@wikimedia.org with the details and they will forward it on to the Foundation's legal people. --Tango (talk) 06:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I thought everything on Wikipedia was supposed to be available for free distribution. Is the logo an exception? Peter jackson (talk) 09:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Yes, see the warning template at the top of Commons:Category:Wikipedia logos. Nyttend (talk) 11:57, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Some Wikipedia content is not free content. We aim, rightly, for that to be as little as possible. Because of a tension between the desire on the part of the Foundation to preserve the "branding" of WMF projects and the need to keep to what the law requires for ensuring trademark status, and the mission to provide free content, the logos for the various Foundation projects are in a particular limbo. For more information, see logo and the proposed logo and trademark policy and uses of logo derivatives guideline. Uncle G (talk) 14:08, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
      • The "puzzle globe" logo is definitely a registered trademark, there is nothing "in limbo" about that. To preserve their registered status they have to be enforced and action taken against infringement. And yes, IAAL! – ukexpat (talk) 01:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
        • The "fair-use" of logos very much depends on context. We legitimately have a Sony logo in our related article. If we were to put that logo on our Main Page we'd be in a world of legal pain very quickly.Manning (talk) 06:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
        • … but you aren't a lexicographer or a linguist. "limbo" has a perfectly ordinary meaning of an in-between state. And there is, as mentioned, a very particular in-between state in which these images exist. For starters, they are the only exceptions to the Commons prohibition of non-free content. Uncle G (talk) 13:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
          • Maybe I should have been more clear in my statement above: The legal status of the "puzzle globe" as a trademark is not in limbo, it is a registered trademark and for that status to be preserved infringement has to be speedily dealt with. Note that this is not the same as its copyright status. – ukexpat (talk) 14:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
            • Maybe you should re-read the discussion. It was nowhere said here by anyone that the trademark status was in limbo. Uncle G (talk) 15:16, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability and fiction

An essay has been drafted per the consensus at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Notability and fiction. Hiding T 10:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Removal of permission for OTRS activity on enwiki per ArbCom decision

Please see here. Cenarium (talk) 01:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Reporting of celebrity death hoaxes

In light of the ridiculous number of death hoaxes we've dealt with in the past week, I've commenced a draft policy about the reporting of these hoaxes on a user page. Please feel free to review and make comment. User:Manning Bartlett/Wikipedia:Deathhoax policy draft. Manning (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

What death hoaxes?--WaltCip (talk) 14:13, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

This is unnecessary - there is no reason to treat a "celebrity death hoax" any different than a standard WP:HOAX. Shereth 14:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Notice: Examiner.com is a blog, not a reliable source

Examiner.com is a blog. Generally speaking, it is not a reliable source. Examiner.com can only be used as a self-published source if the author is an established expert on the topic whose work in the relevent field has been published by a reliable third-party publication. Even then, caution should be exercised. For more information, please see the following discussions on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard:

• examiner.com = paid blogging, no editorial oversight (archived)
• Examiner.com
• Request to reopen discussion on examiner.com

The relevent policies and guidelines are:

• Verifiability
• Reliable sources

A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Let me just second this. I've been seeing an increase in examiner.com links recently, and a lot of them are problematic, either because they're off-topic links to a pay-per-impression site, or because they misrepresent Examiner.com as reliable. In general, we should be avoiding them. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

What is proposed we do with the 500+ articles that currently link there? Greg Tyler ^{(t • c)} 18:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The ones I checked at random all had multiple references, so just removing the Examiner link wouldn't make them completely unsourced, though it might require finding new sources. I'd personally prefer to see examiner.com blacklisted the way Associated Content is - it's not quite as much of a problem, but similar. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:19, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

It's actually even worse than that. Currently, we have 1,306 links[7] and that number is growing on a daily basis. We've been discussing what to do about the situation at the WP:RSN. Here's a direct link to the discussion thread. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:28, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Links to essays in policy pages

I think that links to someone's essays in a policy page inadmissible. A policy is a careful work of consensus of many editors. An essay is a personal opinion, not necessarily agreeable by many. If it contains useful parts, please move them into a policy or a guideline, or a FAQ, which are, unlike essays, under the heavy scrutiny of many. There are thousands of essays in wikipedia on each and every rule, and putting some of them into a policy is bad precedent. Inclusion someone's is violation of WP:NPOV and consensus-building. Novices may wrongly think that an essay is also part of policy. I know that in the past wikipedia was lax in its rules in many respects; inclusion of essays is one of the relicts wikipedia must get rid of. - Altenmann >t 17:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• I would agree that links to personal essays on policy pages should be avoided... especially the ones that are controversial. Any examples that aren't controversial and that a strong consensus of editors think deserve to be linked to on policy pages should go through the process of getting promoted to guidelines anyway. DreamGuy (talk) 17:52, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
• That is not and never has been the standard. 'See also' links are deliberately held to a very low standard - anything useful to a potential reader is fair game to add as a link.
  Furthermore, you are drawing a false distinction between "policy/guideline" and "essay". Many of our best pages were written long before Wikipedia began bothering with such artificial distinctions. Even today, pages frequently drift from one category to another rather fluidly.
  That particular essay is a repost of a page that was create many years ago, "promoted" to Meta, merged, rewritten and referenced widely. It succinctly expresses a point of view more commonly referred to as eventualism. While there are often disagreements about how or to what degree to apply that principle, I have never heard anyone call it "controversial".
  Now, if you had argued that the link was unnecessary or inappropriate because of it's content, tone or quality, I would consider those arguments. But removing it merely because the page carries an arbitrary "essay" tag instead of something else is not a sufficient reason to remove the link. The decision to do so is completely out of keeping with our practice and precedent on dozens of other policy pages throughout the project. Rossami (talk) 18:11, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • "Deliberately a very low standard" is bad, bad idea for policy pages. written long before - my point exactly. "frequently drift" - exactly my suggestion: to formalize anything of value; don't make people confused. "our practice" - if you look back for 3-4 years, you'll be amazed how our practice changed towards better, clearer and stronger rules (despite their apparent proliferation in multitudes some grumble about). - Altenmann >t 18:17, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • "Nobody called controversial" - is is an essay, for God's sake. It is someone's opinion. Everybody is entitled to one. But personal opinions are not supposed to be promoted in such a central place as a wikipedia policy. - Altenmann >t 18:25, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
• I respectfully disagree. Established essays in the see also section are totally okay as a source for further opinions on the matter. The only disclaimer required is the giant banner at the top that says "this is not policy." Dcoetzee 18:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • And why would someone's personal opinion count? If it says something improtant, suggest it for the policy, get a consensual approval, and improve the overall "legal body" of wikipedia. - Altenmann >t 00:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• I'm with Dcoetzee. Established essays are fine to link from policies. Part of the consensus determination of what goes on a policy page is which other pages to link. Some essays carry full weight, but are not reclassified as policies or guidelines for various reasons. There is still great virtue in discouraging a lawyerly notion that these categories mean so much. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • "Some essays carry full weight" -- this is major danger: only consensus-built policies must have full weight; personal opinions shouldn't. - Altenmann >t 00:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Essays are built with consensus, --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A very limited one. You don't see much talk & work in them, compared to policies. And the reason is simple: an essay is some "extra", non-critical, unbalanced musing to put forth a certain point of view. - Altenmann >t 04:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Linking essays in the see also section makes sense to me... as long as they aren't really super controversial or anything, they can often provide clarification which can help make policy clearer or can just voice opinions on the policy, so that users can look at it in a few different ways. Linking them within the policy text itself, rather than a see also section or navbox, seems like a Bad Idea though except for the few very well-established essays... WP:SNOW, WP:DENY, WP:BEANS, and WP:ATA spring to mind. They could possibly be linked in relevant locations with a "see also" dablink at the top of the section in policy that they're related to. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 18:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • You didn't address my major point: why can't we move everything useful into FAQs and guidelines, which are written by consensus, rather than someone's personal opinion? - Altenmann >t 00:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Because the vast majority of project-space (but, obviously, not user-space) essays are written by consensus over time as more users read them and add to them. FAQs are just a klunky for of handling it... FAQs are harder to read for one thing, IMO. Anyway, it really just boils down to personal opinion. My opinion is that essays should be kept as is and linked in see also sections when appropriate, yours is different... I think that its really just a preference based on personal tastes, and neither of us will convince the other that their view is better because neither view is better. They're just different. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 01:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• I see no reason not to link relevant essays in the See Also section of a policy or guideline. Just because they may not have the full force of a guideline does not mean they are not useful to the reader, and that's all the See Also section is for. I don't think confusion on the part of a reader is going to be a problem, thanks to the big ESSAY disclaimer at the top of all essays. Powers ^T 20:04, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • You have no reason, but I have and explained them, and you didn't prove that I am wrong. - Altenmann >t 00:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Simply asserting that does not make it true. How is anyone supposed to "prove" a matter of opinion? Powers ^T 00:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• If essays were never linked to policy or guidelines, then how are new users to learn the various interpretations of the policy or guideline? How are candidates for modifications, enhancements, or changes to be publicized? Links to well-written essays that represent a non-fringe view should be encouraged, not discouraged. Jclemens (talk) 22:12, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
  • In other words yoo are saying that wikipedia policies and guidelines suck... Why don't you then take a useful essay and turn it into a guideline? - Altenmann >t 00:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Because there are too many people playing stupid wikipolitics and wiki-nomic to make that a viable plan. It is often much more useful to just put on an {{essay}} tag. People who understand how the system works can then at least find what the real consensus is on a topic *somewhere* --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, I know this. But this is only natural. Different people have different inclinations: some like to write good articles; others like to rake huge wikicounts to brag about; still others like policywriting, yet others juust love to block a vandal or two... Amazingly such a mess of different opinions and attitudes creates something useful. But again, the whole civilization is one big inhomogeneous mess; still some claim there is progress happening...- Altenmann >t 04:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Queen Victoria; famous for being Not Amused.

• In case no one told you yet, the whole policy/guideline/essay system of tags is a massive kluge. Those "mere essays" , are not all merely personal opinion, but instead are consensus positions of sometimes considerable portions of the community; some of which hold the strength of policy, (did we mention kludge? yes we did!). Some essays eventually get a policy tag, some essays don't. I am Not Amused to see people trying to downgrade and marginalize pages that document ((significant) segments of the) actual grassroots community consensus. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:18, 3 July 2009 (UTC) I'm not normally this angry... but sometimes strongly worded positions help :-)
  • Please avoid patronizing tone. (Did anyone write any essays on this subject yet?) Instead of being angry, please explain me why cannot consensus be placed into FAQ and gudeline, which is, again, unlike most essays, will be further scrutinized and improved? In this way the "a massive kluge" will be slowly dissolving. - Altenmann >t 00:24, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, essays ARE further scrutinized and improved by multiple editors (example). FAQs are a fairly new phenomenon. Essays are Wikipedia namespace pages that have a template posted at the top. Guidelines are essays that happen to have a different template posted at the top. Policies are guidelines with yet another different template posted at the top.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 00:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC) Sorry about the tone of voice. I was trying for a Victoria effect. :-/

Yes, and user pages are the pages with the title started with "user:". Now you are trivializing, colleague. As to "silence and consensus" essay, you guys better work on wikipedia:Consensus page, which has been under explosive discussion/editing for a couple of the recent months. - Altenmann >t 00:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Very good. You are beginning to understand. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC) check the contributions log for both pages :-)

(out) I dont think an outright ban on essays in policy pages makes sense. Essays can provide important information on how policies / guidelines can be interpreted and applied and how one policy interacts with and informs another policy/guideline. If a new essay or one that clearly does not have a large community consensus is listed within a policy page in a way that suggests it has more community support than it does - it should be removed, or edited until it does reflect consensus- but I see nothing inherrently incompatible about links from See Also. They need to be judged independantly and in context. -- The Red Pen of Doom 01:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

"Essays can provide important information" - essays can provide an opinion for those who don't want to take part in writing a clean-cut policy: it takes big nerve to add a sentence into a policy page. In an essay one writes ad libitum without much opposition. IN essay is most often edited by people of the same inclination. It is inconceivable that, say, an "inclusionist" essay had much input from a "deletionist". Several years ago I tried to edit some essay to add some balance, but got quickly reverted with the tone "don't mess with my essay: it is my point of view; write your own essay if you want to say something". - Altenmann >t 04:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

"If a new essay or one that clearly does not have a large community consensus is listed within a policy page in a way that suggests it has more community support than it does - it should be removed, or edited until it does reflect consensus- " <- can and should be addressed individually without the need for overall ban. -- The Red Pen of Doom 09:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are quoting, please five a link to thesource, if not, please explain the intention of highlighting of the phrase. - Altenmann >t 17:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The point of highlighting it is that you appeared to completely ignore it in your response, acting as if any "essay" tagged page with no commuity support could be legitimately linked in a policy article unless we completely banned linking essays in policy pages, and that is simply not true. -- The Red Pen of Doom 17:34, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... Opinions, parables and anecdotes should not be linked/piped directly from the body text of an endorsed policy or guideline, but I don't oppose to piling them in "see also" bin. If the reader has reached that part of policy, he/she must be qualified enough to recognize essays as such. Yes, "see also" has very low inclusion standard, so be it. (P.S. Altenmann: I suspect that you actually place the policies themselves on a level higher than they hold.) NVO (talk) 04:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you are right in your suspicions. But again, my suggestion was about improving the policies by getting the best from the essays. If nobody else really cares, I rest my case. - Altenmann >t 17:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Technical experiment

I started this talk after I deleted a link to Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built from Wikipedia:Deletion policy and was reverted.

Now, please tell me:

1. what basic idea underlines underlies this (a very nice, I must say) essay
2. Why it cannot be uttered somewnere in numerous (I counted over a dozen and stopped) policies and guidelines about deletion?

- Altenmann >t 00:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

You are asking in the wrong place. Your change has been reverted, so the change did not have consensus. To really find out why, you should ask on Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy, or contact the reverter on their own user talk page.

The idea behind the essay should be clearly worded in the essay. Please participate in the consensus process by updating the essay if it is not clear enough.

Finally, you should also be really careful about experimenting on actual policy pages!

--Kim Bruning (talk) 00:48, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello Altemann. It seems your post is a form of devil's advocacy as you are asking why we shouldn't place this in many places when you are the one who reverted it. I like that attitude. We build all manner of pages in Wikipedia by the consensus editing model. Some essays have the weight of consensus and some do not. An essay like, for example, WP:BEANS has such weight behind it because of massive usage, edits to the page itself, and so on. By contrast, this essay has no consensus from any source I can see. It is simply one of the thousands of essays that are extant. It has been edited by a grand total of eighteen people, and it has been cited on-wiki about 2 times total (at least according to our crappy search engine) (WP:BEANS, by contrast, gets 236 hits. So you ask why it should no be placed, willy-nilly, in the "dozens" of policy pages it could be? Because, I can find 50 other essays related to deletion without any gravitas, barely used, edited or cited, and place those indiscriminately in a see also section. I do want to raise one more issue from your post.

If you take nothing else from reading the responses to your post, you should take that the word you meant to use is underlies, and in another commonly used (and commonly abused) form, it is underlying (not underlining). Once you read this post, I suspect you will never make this mistake again, and I will have struck once again to rid the world of a grammar abomination (one person at a time). Now, I will don my cape, and be off, free once again to search out with my wagging finger sense, some good person toiling away at their keyboard, little suspecting that I am lurking, ready to pounce on them should they write "supposably" or "irregardless" or "maybe" when it is an event that may be happening (note that I do have a kryptonite, and I probably shouldn't reveal it, but I have to go into hibernation for about one month to remove the taint whenever anyone says "it's all good" within earshot.--162.83.162.35 (talk) 02:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Spelling it correctly might help. --Izno (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Tito Jackson policy

I've never seen this template before.

Usually there's just a lock symbol. What's going on?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:17, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

That's the default appearance of {{Pp-protected}} (on a semiprotected page). Often the parameter 'small=yes' is used, which suppresses everything but the lock symbol. Algebraist 21:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

User warning templates

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately; the icons/images in user warning templates ({{uw-vandalism3}}, {{uw-3rr}}, etc) are highly unnecessary, and rather unprofessional. As such I propose they be removed. Not sure whether or not this has been discussed before, though. Thoughts? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It does seem rather pointless having a pretty picture. Majorly talk 17:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Providing a danger sign (red triangle) may attract more attention to the message. As these are intended to be last warnings such an additional emphasis seems relevant to me. Arnoutf (talk) 18:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

It breaks the text up more, so multiple warnings are more distinct. This, I feel, makes people more likely to read them. A block of text made of several warnings is less likely to be read properly by the user involved. That said, I also believe they're a bit garish and unprofessional. Really, I'm happy either way. Greg Tyler ^{(t • c)} 18:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that the people on the receiving end are more likely to be drawn to and therefore actually read the notice when it comes with an icon as opposed to mere text. I support keeping the icons something that will more likely have the effect that we are looking for when placing the warnings - if we dont want the warnings to be read, why bother with warnings at all?-- The Red Pen of Doom 18:31, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Majorly puts it well, though—they're nothing more than "pretty pictures". I don't see how they make the vandal more likely to read and obey the warning. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 18:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Who say's they're a malicious vandal? The addition of an image makes it easier to see multiple warnings (and what "level" they are - info/warning/final warning) both for the recipient and for others to see the user's history and what further action may be appropriate. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 20:35, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Even if they're not a malicious vandal, it's quite disrespectful to stick a big in-your-face red stop sign at them. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and doing so to drivers is the height of rudeness. The purpose of such a sign is to grab someone's attention and convey that they really need to stop, whatever their motives might be. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 22:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Rude? Seriously? To get an L3 warning, we are dealing with an editor who has either made enough poor edits to already have multiple warning templates, or they posted something that is a particularly obvious violation of the rules (and, almost certainly, common sense). At the L3/L4 level of warnings, the point is not to direct the precious little snowflake in the right direction, but to warn a user of the consequences if they persist in their actions. If the images help get the point across, then they serve the intended function. Resolute 23:47, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Why should we even concern ourselves with "respecting" vandals? Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 04:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe they do anything to get the point across. The point isn't to say "You've been a bad boy, you get the level 3 stop sign now". It's just extremely unprofessional IMO. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 00:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, most of the editors who are "playing around" stop at a L3 or L4 warning, and I would be willing to bet the image helps reinforce the severity of the message. The trolls wont care either way, so who gives a damn how professional we look to them? Resolute 02:59, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

←See Wikipedia:The_motivation_of_a_vandal (linked from WP:VAN) and WP:DFTT. Big flashy warning signs are exactly what vandals crave, they're insulting to good-faith editors, and all those IP talk pages with a long string of flashy warnings and no clear evidence (to the vandals) that anything was done make us look silly. I think we can find a way to label for easy reading and break up the text (objections raised above) with some kind of simple, color-coded icons that don't feed the vandals. - Dank (push to talk) 00:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

If the L3 warning icon is not helpful, or worse harmful, then replace it with an helpful icon. However, I believe it would be a mistake to not have any L3 warning icon. Simply having the warning text won't distinguish it from previous warnings; it will appear to be merely an addendum to the previous warning. SMP0328. (talk) 01:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a good thing the images we use are not big and flashing, then. If lack of enforcement is the problem, perhaps that should be looked at instead. Anomie⚔ 13:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

A picture is worth a thousand words, and nothing says "you need to STOP right now" better than those pictures. Plus it helps to distinguish different warnings from one another, instead of leaving a wall of text after multiple warnings. Grandmasterka 04:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Makes it much easier to see how many times, and how severely, a user has been warned. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Global policy?

I'm now covering Category:Wikipedia conduct policy and Category:Wikipedia legal policy at WP:Update, which covers every subcat of CAT:POL except for one, Category:Wikipedia global policy. There are 52 pages in CAT:POL and 40 pages of global policy, almost all of them overlapping. Is there something that makes global policy pages special or ties them together? Could we do without the category? It would be nice to cover all the policy subcats at WP:LOP and WP:Update, but I'm just not seeing the point. - Dank (push to talk) 04:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Non alphabetical wikipedias, Japanese, Chinese etc..

I've noticed something a bit odd and was wondering if someone could help.

Chinese wikipedia is zh.wikipedia.org, which makes sense (Zhong), but the Japanese wikipedia is ja.wikipedia.org. Shouldn't it be ni.wikipedia.org?82.24.251.231 (talk) 16:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Not according to ISO 639-1. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:42, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Cheers for clearing that up :) bloody ISOs....