User talk:DGG

“ I am very gratified to have learned that so many people seem to like me, but even more gratified that they understand and like (or at least tolerate) the work I'm trying to do. ” —  at my RfA

Reminders
Topical Archives:
Deletion reform, Speedies, Notability , IPC, Fiction, User talk:DGG/Archive 0.45 Bilateral relations. WP:Academic things & people, Journals, Sourcing, BLP
General Archives:
2006: Sept-Dec
2007: Jan-Feb, Mar-Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec 
2008: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2009: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

Please post messages at the bottom of the page - I will reply on this page, unless you ask otherwise

ECRI Institute

Thanks so much for getting to us, DGG! I really appreciate it.June 3, 2009 CK~~

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If your article is in danger of deletion, possibly some of the following messages may be of help to you:

• If you can fix the article, I'd advise you to do so very quickly, before it gets nominated for regular deletion
• We're an encyclopedia, not a social networking site. You have to become famous first, then someone will write an article about you. In the meantime, there's lots of things to do here -- so welcome.
• An article must have 3rd party independent reliable published sources, print or online (but not blogs or press releases)
• To use material from your web site, you must release the content under a GFDL license, which permits reuse and modification of the material by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and is not revokable.
• For articles about an organization, see our Organizations FAQ (a wonderful page written by Durova, from whom I learned my approach to people writing articles with COI.

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User:DGG/LG

In December I gave a presentation to librarians in Pittsburgh area. Would you like me to send you my presentation slides? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

After a day of fighting with my email and then Wikimedia, I finally gave up and uploaded a file to rapidshare. At least it works :) Download. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

magazines...and speedy

...and creative works in general cannot be deleted under speedy A7, per WP:CSD In any case, I think Railfan and Railroad might be one of the two leading magazines in its subject. did you check that? Please do not use speedy when not strictly within the specifications.'

Magazines are businesses, not creative works, and therefore fall squarely under {{db-corp}} guidelines -- which also explicitly refer to articles which make no assertion of notability, which this article doesn't. Your vague recollection doesn't qualify either as an assertion of notability nor a reliable source. Please do not wikilawyer about obvious failures of speedy standards and specifications. --Calton | Talk 16:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree it will quite possibly be deleted at afd, unless I or someone finds more material. Relative rank is capable of objective determination via Ulrich's. But as for speedy, WP:CSD: "A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. " if you want to change the rules, discuss it there. I think you will find the consensus is clear about magazines. A book publisher is a company. A book is not. A record distributor is a company. A recording is not. A series of recordings is not. A boxed set of recordings is not. A magazine publisher is a company. A magazine is not. Speedy is not stretchable. What you call wikilawering I call following the rules. " There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." DGG (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Noticeboards, noticeboards, noticeboards!

I think I remember you chiming in when the No Original Research noticeboard was created as it being just an extra page to watch. We've now got the Fringe Theories, Fiction, NOR, and NPOV. I'm wondering if we're not spreading ourselves too thin over too many boards. Any ideas? MBisanz ^talk 03:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

We also have COI, and BLP, and RS, and the duplicative pair (ANB and AN/I), and BONB, and a number of similarly functioning pages, such as WT:SPAM, CP and its family, the various VPs and RfCs, WQA if it survives, the widely ignored RM and PM, and those I dont even know about). And the XfDs, the Ref Desks and the Help Desks, and AIV, 3RR and their relatives. And the talk pages for every policy and guideline prominent and obscure. And user talk pages where interesting stuff tends to be found. I organize what I do with bookmarks: I've got a group I call WPck (wikipedia check), and how far I get down the list of 30 or so 51, now that I've actually counted-- each day is variable--but I've never gotten to the bottom. Some in my opinion in practice tend to serve for POV pushing, such as BLP and FRINGE. (At some I agree more with the trend--like RS, so I don't call it POV pushing)

I forgot the talklists and IRC. I prefer to forget about IRC, and I wish I could really forget about the talklists.

But look at it in a positive way--it's forum shopping which keeps there from being any one WP:LOC.DGG (talk) 04:43, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Def going on my best of list. MBisanz ^talk 17:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion reform study group

Moved to User talk:DGG/Deletion reform -- please continue there. DGG (talk) 05:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Re: User:Jbmurray/Madness

(Copied over from my talk page:) DGG, many thanks for your comment. I'm glad that my text may be useful for the NYC meet. I'd be pleased to have any feedback or reactions that come out of that. And I do now indeed intend to publish a version of the essay somewhere. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A3 to Prod ?

Do you really think it is necessary to {{Prod}} for process? Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 17:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I think it necessary to follow the speedy criteria as written. Anything else leads to chaos Some people will delete appropriately, others not. The purpose of process is to prevent misuse, at the cost of going slightly slower. Of all WP process, I think PROD is the cleverest compromise. DGG (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Flagged articles

Hello again ...

Would you please take a look at User talk:Matthewedwards#Category:Flagged articles, and then add your comments on the cats I have created to compliment the templates?

Happy Editing! — 151.200.237.53 (talk · contribs) _{07:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)}

Category:Flagged editors

Hello again ... {{Flag-editor}} now has an optional assist parameter that makes a friendly offer to help, for those thus inclined, instead of defaulting with making the offer. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 15:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

getting there! I'll check the details later. Next goal, perhaps: making it shorter while still making it friendly. and maybe copyvio should be different --if it's clear it should be db-copyvio, if not, suspected copyvio already has the template "copypaste". DGG (talk) 17:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I realized that, but the point is, "I don't have time to check right now, but it's suspicious, so I'll flag it with this generic tag" ... maybe Some Other Editor will check it out in the mean time, and decide that it's {{Db-copyvio}}-able. :-) — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

For example, Liliam Cuenca González (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) was part of a WP:COI/N and WP:COPYVIO that led to a site being blocked and removed by a bot as WP:LINKSPAM ... it's all the sins in one (unfortunately repeated) case, but it certainly can be improved if editors are aware of the situation ... hence Category:Flagged articles. — 151.200.237.53 (talk) 04:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

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Current project

Your third suggestion: I like. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC) P.S. As this is out of the blue, I am referring to the section on your userpage. "A good faith request by any established editor is sufficient for any administrator, whether or not the deleting administrator, to undelete an article deleted under speedy, except for BLP and copyvio. This should be automatic, and need not involve Deletion Review. it is polite to ask the original administrator first, but not necessary, and, even if s/he refuses, any administrator can undelete it without it being considered wheel warring. The article would normally be immediately sent for AfD. By definition, if an established editor disagrees, it is not uncontroversial and needs community involvement. "

Yes, that's the one. I think it would actually save a lot of drama and free up some wasted time for creators, onlookers & DRV contributors. It might increase the load at AfD, but I'm inclined to think not that much. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 02:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

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WP:Lectures

Hiya David, I see you were scheduled to give a lecture on sourcing in mid-May...did you give the lecture, and is there a "transcript" somewhere, or perhaps you've done an essay on the topic? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 11:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I dont think it has been transcribed yet, but the outline is at User:DGG/LR DGG (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

H.O.P.E. speech

Hey, DGG. This is volt4ire from the NYC meetup. Pharos mentioned that you would be a good person to help (or at least steer me in the right direction) in doing a pro-inclusionist speech. Any suggestions for speakers, arguments, debating-points, etc.? Thanks! volt4ire 02:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

do you think they will want to hear about specific details at Wikipedia? rather, I would aim it at the general roles of web 2.0 information sources, then specialize it to encyclopedias, then us, then to specific problems if people want to hear about them. DGG (talk) 03:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I think volt4ire's original idea was for some sort of inclusionist vs. deletionist "debate", and I had recommended you an an inclusionist (I couldn't think of a New York-area deletionist at that moment). Which is an interesting idea, because of all the inside baseball at Wikipedia, the notability issue seems to attract the most outside interest (several articles in Slate, for example).

Which is not to say that this is necessarily what we should do. But I do imagine at a conference like H.O.P.E., we should avoid basic explanations of web 2.0, and focus somewhat more on the issues that are particular to us.--Pharos (talk) 01:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, see Wikipedia talk:Meetup/NYC#H.O.P.E. Conference panel (maybe we should shift this conversation there).--Pharos (talk) 01:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Fringe

In Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee, you wrote but situations of a single person with a completely far fringe view are dealt with fairly well already. There are cases where a real-world minority- or fringe-view is overrepresented on Wikipedia. There are also cases where a majority- or wikipedia-majority-view silences a minority view or reduces their weight well below their real-world due weight. This can happen by one side outmaneuvering the other into a behavior violation or by simply driving them away from the project in frustration. I don't think there is a good solution, other than to have affected articles watched by people who are informed about the article's subject matter but with no emotional stake in the article. This tends to happen more on articles on political or social topics, where way too many editors have a personal agenda, and on articles about people, places, or groups, where fanboys may succeed in turning the article into a virtual press release. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:07, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

as I said there, I think that dueling by taunting each other into unacceptable actions is not a really rational approach. . Perhaps it survives because the people who have been here a while tend to know just how far they can safely go & some of them have gotten quite good at it. But perhaps also it works because the people who are for good or less good reasons committed to an agenda with a zeal and devotion and purpose which transcend rational argument tend to be rather easy to lose proportion and descend into unacceptable actions. There is nothing wrong with zealotry when one is right, but it has to be pursued elsewhere--those who care more about their cause than objective editing encyclopedia are a danger to the encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, the attempt to deal with it otherwise tend to amount to an appeal to authority, which does not do much better--one can find authorities for almost anything. And so one argues about the relative merits of the authorities. People both in the right and wrong of it (as if w could tell) are equally likely to what to prevent their opponents from making a fair case. What is necessary is a way to determine what objective editing is, and enforce it. My current thoughts are mandatory mediation with enforceable remedies--not by subject experts necessarily, but by people with common sense and proven impartiality.DGG (talk) 03:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

AfD essay

Greetings, David. I have been playing around recently with the idea of writing an essay on an aspect of AfD you might be interested in. The idea behind the essay (stub version here) is that it would be admirable for inclusionists/eventualists who argue that articles could be improved to an acceptable level to take immediate steps in bringing that article up to scratch. Per this comment, I imagine that you are sympathetic to the notion. Would you be interested in collaborating on the essay or throwing around a few ideas on the subject? Sincerely, Skomorokh 11:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope you do not mean "immediate"--I dont see it in your proposal. --it is many times easier to nominate for deletion than to fix. I fix articles at Afd, yes, but i can only do 1 or 2 a week or so properly (I usually do another 2 or 3, but some of those fixes are minimal & dont really meet my standards for a decent article.) In that week, usually 1000 are nominated, of which probably 200 of the deleted ones could be fixed, and perhaps the same number of the ones that get kept need majpr improvements. But Wikipedia is too large to require fixing to save articles--many articles will not be worked on for long periods,--this is very unfortunate, but until we have more people prepared to work on the less widely interesting topics, it will remain the case. One thing we'll need to get them, is to not delete articles that they might be interested in. them. Incomplete articles are inevitable in a wiki like this.

Lets try to generalize this--that people who nominate for deletion must demonstrate they did at least a minimal search, documenting where they looked.

Maybe it should be a how-to, not an exhortation.

Try a longer draft & I'll look in more detail. DGG (talk) 02:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Consistency

BIO has become very nebulous, especially because one can interpret "significant coverage" and NOT NEWS to produce any result whatsoever for many of the articles you have in mind. We need to make up our mind abut what depth of local figures we intend to cover. We need to make up our mind about whether to cover the central figures of human interest stories. And then stick to it, whatever the decision is. You and I would probably disagree on one or both of these in general, I at least would much rather accept almost any stable compromise rather than fight each of them from over-general principles. DGG (talk) 16:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

We'd probably be closer together than you might think. Yes, the community as a whole does need to thrash out local notability-- something that a narrow constructionist can rely on but which would allow some flexibility. Any standard, even one I loathe, would be better than none. As you say, any result is possible the way things are. A dice roll would be less stressful and do as well. This is why I avoid AFD. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 14:09, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Stress

as with any democratic type of process, it works better if the good people stay in. The way I avoid stress is by commenting once or twice, and then not looking back--either my arguments is accepted, or not,and then on to the next. I generally do not look back to see what the result is, or I would get too often angry, or at least disappointed. Not that it's a game for me, but that I can be effective only by keeping detached. DGG (talk) 16:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

CSD vs. AfD

The articles in question don't fall under "local chapters" - that was a slightly different yet related item. The articles concerned consisted of two lines, (name and address), and external link to a page where the name appears in a list of related groups, and/or a link to a dead or non-informative homepage. That does indeed give no indication of importance (no sources), unless something being called "Grand" implies importance (which it shouldn't). I am certain that I had to start 4 AfDs that I really didn't need to because of baseless claims of supposed notability "because of the name" or "because this other thing (which also had no independent sources and thus didn't assert its notability) was important."

I also discovered that some of the articles were informationally wrong, and referred to entirely different groups than what the sources were pointed at. Yet I'm the one supposedly "gaming the system" and with a "personal bias" because I don't think we should have articles that remain unsourced for months at a time with no editorial changes and no reliable sources. MSJapan (talk) 17:31, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

MSJ - the CSD system is not meant for questionable cases, which is what you've been doing. JASpencer (talk) 18:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

If an article is wrong, fix it.

If it is downright vandalism, and the vandalism would be unquestionably clear to anyone even if they knew nothing whatever about the subject, tag it for speedy

If it is downright vandalism, but the vandalism would not be immediately clear to anyone ignorant of the subject ,list it at Prod or AfD

if the article is unsourced, try to source it. The proposal that articles that remain unsourced can be deleted for that reason alone, even at AfD, has been repeatedly and decisively rejected by the community. If you want to challenge it , try the Village Pump. If you nominate for speedy on that reason it is disruptive, because you are deliberately going against established policy and instead following what you think the policy ought to be.

If for a particular article, you think either the facts or the notability is unsourcable, nominated for Prod or AfD. It helps to have a good reason, like the result of a search, because if others can source it, they will probably consider that you have made a careless nomination.

For the minimum requirements to keep an incomplete article, see WP:STUB. Again, by repeated decision of the community , it does not have to be sourced.

It is considered unsuitable and a violation of WP:BITE to nominate within a few minutes after it has been written an incomplete article for not indicating any nobility -- instead place a notability tag. If after a few days it indicates no notability whatever, then place a speedy tag. If it indicated anything that any reasonable person could think might possibly indicate notability, use Prod or AfD--se below for the advantages of doing it that way.

If however, it contains too little content to tell what the subject is even about, it can be nominated for speedy as empty.

The amount of work involved in trying to recover from an improper deletion , or argue about a questionable speedy, is even worse than the tedious mechanism of Afd. Therefore, if you think there will be any opposition, use AfD. It has the additional advantage that the article can be prevented from re-creation. This is especially valuable if someone is deliberately creating bad articles. DGG (talk) 19:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

(This does not imply any view of mine on any of the articles or on the topic. I !vote to delete a lot of things at AfD, and I might well !vote to delete the articles in question. And I do a lot of speedy. We need speedy, and I have no hesitation in using it when it is unquestionable.) But there's no point arguing individual article deletions on personal talk pages. that's what Afd is for. DGG (talk) 20:18, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

yes, I understood that. DGG (talk) 20:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Question as to your comment at JASpencer's talk page... that "If there is any reason to think the article's deletion would be challenged, even for inappropriate reasons, it is necessary to use AfD."... doesn't that negate the entire concept of speedy deletes? Your approach would allow one disruptive editor to "exempt" an entire topic area from speedy deletes... all because he thinks that anything to do with the topic is notable. Blueboar (talk) 21:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I misworded it there, and have corrected it to even for reasons which would not save the article at AfD. Objectiions that are clearly disruptive should of course be ignored, objections based on good faith are another mater entirely. When I encounter disruptive addition of articles I have no hesitation to warn or even block the person involved. But some of the afd criteria are matters of judgment, and if in any reasonable doubt, I prefer the community's judgment to my own. DGG (talk) 22:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you... that does clarify things significantly. Blueboar (talk) 23:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

And thanks, I am always grateful when people point out if I've gotten something wrong, or worded it too broadly. I know I will make mistakes, and I must rely on others to correct them.. DGG (talk) 04:30, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Michael Birawer

We edit conflicted on this speedy delete, saying exactly the same thing (both declining the speedy). Good to know I'm still in line with your thinking every once and a while :-). I'll get in contact with the article creator shortly and see if I can't help him/her out. Keeper ǀ 76 21:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we'd agree with each other 95% of the time, with almost all the others being matters that we both would consider equivocal. Obviously the remaining few are the ones that stick out. All we can really do there is stay polite and let other people judge. If I've pushed you too hard on any of them I apologize, and I certainly never intend to let an argument on one thing carry over onto another. You might be interested in some of my recent comments today at WT:CSD. DGG (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping we agreed more like 99% of the time :-). I read your comments at wt:csd, very well worded. I support them. I personally, with rare exception anyway, have never "speedy deleted" something that was untagged. Probably because I don't do "new page patrol" and rely on others to patrol properly. I wish there was an easy tool to see my ratio of "agree with patroller" versus "remove tag". I think I'm about 1 of 5 that I "decline" for one reason or another, maybe but hopefully not more like 1 of 10 (I spend a lot of time at C:CSD). In the last few months, I think the "speedy taggers" have gotten more careful and less bold, which is a good thing. I attribute it to this: Many "speedy taggers" are doing NPP because they foresee an RFA in their near future. It is well known (and appropriate) that if an editor is sloppy as a speedy tagger, they will be sloppy as a speedy deleter, therefore those taggers with "aspirations" of "finishing the job", which seems to be all of them, are reluctant to tag borderline articles. Encouraging, in an ironic sense. Anyway, I'm not an article builder, never pretended to be one, I'm no good at it. I've asked another editor, who I know to be an excellent article rescuer, to take a look at this specific article that you and I both agree isn't speediable. Seeing as this particular artist lives (purportedly) about 5 miles from my home, I don't quite feel right about doing much more than copyediting myself. Thanks for your input and insight. See you 'round, Keeper ǀ 76 22:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Ecclesiastes 12:12

"the assertion that someone has written a non-self published book book in any subject is a clear assertion of importance" - oh, dear Lord, that makes my heart break just to read! I'm an author, book reviewer, bookseller and long-time member of the National Writers Union; do you have any idea how many new books come out every year, even when you screen out the self-publishers? Most of us harmless Grub Street hacks will never be notable; and certainly most of my one- to three-book friends are not, nor would they assert themselves to be. This concept, if accepted, would open up the gates to endless floods of vanispamcruftisement! I cannot accede to your request. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC) (yes, Dave, I know you're a librarian [weren't you a Wombat at one time?]; but librarians aren't subjected to as much of the petty end of the spectrum as booksellers and reviewers are, and see less of the dross and more of the substance)

I never said it was enough to be notable, just avoid speedy, at least in the case of an apparently significant book, and certainly in this case when supported also by published articles. Speedy is deliberately worded very loosely to permit any good faith assertion of notability to pass and be judged by the community. I agree most of the people who have written a single book wouldn't pass notability, but the point is that this is most of the people -- some would, and no one admin should be able to judge that for the same reason we don't speedy books themselves at afd. someone in the field at least should have the opportunity to check for reviews and citations and library holdings and sport things by recognition that need further checking. As for librarians, we get junk enough but of a different sort. I'm not sure I catch the reference to wombats? I invite you to find a suitable wording for what counts as passing speedy, but in this case, since there was material besides the book, I am probably going to Deletion Review, not to support the article particularly, but to establish that your standard of "indication of importance" is too high. DGG (talk) 18:10, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Obviously we disagree. Ah, well; certainly not the first time! (As to the wombats, that's a Stumpers-L reference.) --Orange Mike | Talk 18:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

DGG - I completely support your position. The point here is not to have an exercise in the use of rhetorics but to operate on the basis of evidence and community feedback to make sure Wikipedia remains true to its purpose of providing useful information written by open and transparent consensus [1]. I'm disappointed to see Orange Mike continue to ignore the feedback from the community. I hope it's not the case for other articles he's been reviewing. Were you able to take the "Deletion Review" action you mentioned?

Alex Omelchenko (talk) 04:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

PSTS Policy & Guidelines Proposal

Since you have been actively involved in past discussion, please review, contribute, or comment on this proposed PSTS Policy & Guidelines--SaraNoon (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

archiving

I no longer remember how it was done but if someone knows or wants to talk to the bot operator, look at what's done for the museums project. In archiving it creates an index which includes topic and which archive it's in. I don't know if it can be done retroactively. TravellingCari 12:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Looking at documentation, though I can change the names of the archives, the indexing is done as it makes the archive. I would have to remerge everything. What happened of course, is that a/I never imagined at the first they would get so large b/I started with topical archives, and this takes more maintenance than Ive actually done, and , of course 3/ there have been some very long postings here, not all by me,some interesting enough that I want to keep visible. Expect slow improvement. till and maybe a new normal system in January 09 DGG (talk) 14:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Indexes, what indexes?
2. At User:MiszaBot/Archive HowTo there is a pointer to User:HBC Archive Indexerbot. I think this is the bot alluded to above by Travellingcari, currently used by WP:MUSEUM. EdJohnston (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Fictional (?) book

One of the good example showing how this project is failing is that instead of trying to find out the truth about the book (as you've tried), involved editors are using it to prove bad faith on part of others (see second para). Sad, isn't it? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

well, all students learn that it's asking for trouble to add refs relying only on listings on the web but without seeing them. But I'm not perfect here myself.  :) DGG (talk) 03:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Back in 2005 and earlier, it was fairly common to see editors misunderstand what the reference section is for and add stuff that now we all know should be under external links of further reading there. Inline cites helped a lot; before I - just like many, many others - used to lump everything under references, whether we used it or not... it's nice to see how our standards of quality improved. If only that improvement would involve civility and good faith... :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

User:TTN

I understand your frustration, but you really need to stop your ad hominem attacks on him on every AfD he does. It doesn't make you look any better than him, and it also makes you as viable as engaging in WP:POINT as much as he is. If you have a clear problem, initiate a request for comment; maybe ArbCom (you probably know there was already a second look at his conduct, in which they decided no action needed to be taken) will take a third look at his conduct or change Wikipedia's policy on AfDs.

I'm not trying to oppose your takes on things or ride you or like that; we have certainly both agreed on some articles from time to time. I also certainly agree that he is a tad heavy on bringing articles to AfD without exercising other options, but there are other venues for that — AfD, I believe, is not one of them. However, fighting fire with fire doesn't help the situation, either. That's all I want to say. Thank you, MuZemike (talk) 23:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

You are probably right that it's overkill, and that I have called sufficient attention to it, and could advantageously use less detail. (My reason for repeating something on every article is that in the past, those articles on which people have not bothered to add keep comments have gotten deleted). Additionally, I have refrained from the temptation to respond with an identical rationale to his identical rationales, and have reworked each one specifically for the particular situation. I havent even given the same !vote -- some keep, some merge, some redirect. One even delete. They are not ad hominem. I consider what he is doing disruptive, and I am talking about that, not him. I have said nothing about motivation except repeating what he has said himself. I am willing to work with him or anyone in effecting merges and other improvements in these articles.

And I thank you for letting me know the bad effect I am apparently having. It's good to have outside critiques. DGG (talk) 23:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion

Articles must establish their notability and verifiability clearly and objectively. If someone is creating an article, it is just as in adequate to write the first paragraph of what may become a ten paragraph article as it is to create an article containing nothing more than the reiteration of its title and then reject claims that the subject is not notable. Editors who cannot or will not create articles with substantiating references from the start must be ready to have these articles deleted, or they should create them as userfied articles. Patrollers of the new articles page cannot be expected to check the HTML of all the nonsense articles they see to verify whether or not references were indeed placed and it is only the lack of a reflist markup that keeps them from being revealed. While your intentions may be excellent, your position is essentially defenseless. I therefore respectfully reject your your comments and ask that you instead direct your efforts at informing new editors that new articles must establish their own merit prior to them figuring out how to use Wikipedia, or they risk speedy deletion of what appears to be nonsense, unverified un-notable refuse, hoaxes and vandalism. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 13:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, articles must establish their notability and verifiability clearly and objectively to be kept, but they merely have to give some indication of it to pass speedy. Please reread WP:CSD and WP:STUB The first policy that you suggest, that an article must have references to be kept at speedy,. has been suggested from time to time, but repeatedly rejected. If you want to propose it, try the WT:CSD page But first read it's very long archives. That an article must be complete or even tenable at the first edit is also not policy, though I do warn people that they would do well not to make too fragmentary a start, because some admins are a little trigger-happy. What I said on your talk page, that it is not appropriate to speedy an in process article the first few minutes of its existence, is standard practice. You are not currently prevented from placing such a tag, but if you do, be aware that I and others will criticize you for it. What I am saying is not my eccentric way of doing things, but standard here. Please read or reread WP:BITE and WP:Deletion Policy.If an article can be improved by normal editing, it is not a candidate for speedy.

However, we do have a way to accomplish the sort of challenge to an article you have in mind. That is the WP:PROD process. You might want to consider it in the cases of patently incomplete articles.

I know you've been here about one year longer than I have, but I don't think what you have been suggesting has ever been the policy. And I notice your top userbox, so I think we might have some common ground after all. We do have common interests. Perhaps we will meet at one of the NYC meetups. DGG (talk) 16:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Your Comments on my Talk Page

Originally, I started deleting comments on my talk page from rude people that disagreed with some of my outspoken positions. Just don't need to keep reading negative nonsense from people that can't take alturnative or unpopular views.

But with respect to AfD comments, I generally don't see the point of repeating what the nominator has written if it is the same as my thoughts on the issue, which is what "as per nom" means. Do you disagree? Which AfD that I've voted on are you interested in? Perhaps I can expand my comments. But again, if my thoughts are the same as the nominator's, what's the point in a word-for-word copy since "as per nom" says the same thing?

prod

"unreferenced" is not a reason for deletion. Unreferenced and unnotable, maybe."tried but could not find any sources for notability" much more convincing--when you say something like that, I'd probably accept your view. But of the 2 you marked unreferenced, one seems to have had a ref . tho not a good one Blaqstarr--I didnt check further, and the other Esa Maldita Costilla, is probably notable given the performers involved. DGG (talk) 07:56, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess our standards differ. Stifle (talk) 08:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Your instincts were right on this one, DGG. I know this is kind of necro-bumping, but better late than never... Chubbles (talk) 21:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2008 October 19#Comparison_of_web_based_file_managers

You raise an excellent point there. I seem to be averaging a DRV on one of my closures every second day (although the majority are being endorsed). The recent phenomenon of DRVs when one isn't satisfied with the result, but dressed up as "certain arguments weren't addressed, so the admin should have closed it my way" is worrisome, not least because a DRV would have been even more certain if the debate had been closed the other way. This is liable to put good admins off closing AFDs because of a perceived stigma in having your decision posted at DRV, especially when users decline to discuss matters with the closer first as the DRV instructions twice require (a matter about which we have repeatedly butted heads). Where can we go from here? Stifle (talk) 13:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I've moved this down, in case you missed it. Stifle (talk) 08:12, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

still working on an adequate response.DGG (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Refining AfD outcomes

Hi. I read your comments at the AfD and DRV of List of Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters. In particular, I noticed your suggestion to alter AfD/DPR. I started a discussion WT:AFD#Merge outcome, based in part on my interpretation of your comments and concerns. Flatscan (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding at the discussion. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

54]] (T C) 12:00, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art

I will be in Brooklyn on 2/7/09. Bearian (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

we should make sure to find each other.DGG (talk) 02:30, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

User:TTN

Since you have had repeated experience with this user's AFDs like, I thought I'd contact you. This user's AFD behavior is appaling especially how he refuses to bundle nominations in the same universe for which he uses identical reasonings. He also continually fails to consider the option to merge or redirect without intervention of deletion and makes no evident efforts to look for sources himself (there's a difference between unverified and unverifiable), instead preferring to force the issue by nominating for AFD (which causes a 5-day deadline for improvement) and which is specifically considered to be improper.

The articles in question might well require care, merging or even deletion, but the way he goes about it is unneccesarily terse and bitey.

I think it's time to launch an RFC. Would you consider helping gather evidence and supporting it? - Mgm|^(talk) 15:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Before you start, you might consider seeing how the RfC/U on Gavin.collins goes first, since different facets of the same issue are involved.DGG (talk) 17:37, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

An offer of help, other inclusionists, and suggestions

Your name came up prominently at Talk:Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia#Prominent inclusionists? I was wondering:

1. How I can help?
2. If there are other inclusionists you can suggest I talk to, or if there are any groups you belong too.
3. Any suggestions about how I can help form policy to be more inclusive.

Thank you, Inclusionist (talk) 00:31, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

the best way of helping attain a better and more inclusive encyclopedia is by finding sources for worthy articles that do not have them, especially those immediately under attack. I see you are already a member of the WP:Article Rescue Squadron. You can also look for articles in areas of interest to you that might be challenged in Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup or at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles. This can be done most effectively after learning carefully the rules for proper sourcing given at WP:Reliable sources and the talk page and noticeboard associated with it. We already have a considerable amount of discussion, and it is practical work that is needed more. It is easier to talk about why articles should be kept, than to do the work to keep them. And when you do participate in Afds, never do so without a good argument that the majority of people will accept; weak arguments are counterproductive. Remember that by any rational standard most of the articles there should indeed be deleted. I find a good way to keep perspective is to a do a little WP:New page patrol, and to see and identify all the junk that really must be kept out of the encyclopedia. If you want to help policy become more inclusive, first think carefully about just what you want to have included and why it would enhance rather than diminish the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 01:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Speedy keep

Hi DGG. You may be surprised to see me championing anything regarding "keep" !votes, but you might find this discussion about this AfD discussion interesting. My conclusion is that WP:Speedy keep might do well to have at least one non-bad faith / non-nominator-generated reason, such as WP:SNOW. Thoughts? Bongomatic 18:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I have elsewhere commented just now [2] that the reason for speedy keep should be a "clearly mistaken nomination": or something of the sort, without implying anything about good faith. Except in extreme circumstances, we can't really judge people's motivations, and they are not necessarily relevant. for example, I readily admit that the motivation of one of my principal opponents in some recent discussions is their good faith and honest and forthright desire to reduce the Wikipedia coverage of fiction, which they in all honesty think excessive. That they are totally wrong and will destroy one of the key positive features of Wikipedia does not affect their good faith.

SNOW is a different matter, and I think we use it altogether too rapidly, because we should give a chance for people to say things that we might not have thought of at first. I think it would be a good idea if almost all afds ran a full 5 days =120 hours.

As for engadget, it closed before I had a chance to comment. I think the nomination was about was wrong as a nomination can be, and showed some inability to understand either the article, or a temporary lapse in understanding our guidelines. I think the nominator sometimes does interpret our guidelins in a way that i would not, but that at most is a persistent error, or non-standard viewpoint. Bad faith in a deletion nomination would be if someone wanted to delete the article of a competitor, or about an organisation that espoused a different ideology, or an article written by an opponent here or in the RW, or to make a POINT irrelevant to the merits of the article, or to do deliberate harm to the encyclopedia, or out of purely reckless vandalism. None of these were present here that i know of. DGG (talk) 20:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to reach a consensus (or at least spark further discussion) at Wikipedia talk:Guide to deletion#Summary up to now. Feel like weighing in? Bongomatic 02:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

A true CSD survey

Well, I've gone through a number of CSD nominations from the past month and found about 40 that I thought might pose interesting questions on how people perform CSD's. Basically, I'm asking people to review the article in question and answering the question, "how would you handle this" with one of four options:

1. Agree with criteria for deletion. 2. Disagree with criteria for deletion, but would delete the article under another criteria. 3. Disagree with the criteria for deletion, but this is a situation where IAR applies. 4. Disagree with speedily deleting the article.

Alexander Dictionary of English Idioms

Alexander Dictionary of English Idioms has been tagged for speedy deletion as promotional. It may have been deleted by the time you read this message. I can't find references for it, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. --Eastmain (talk) 23:11, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think its a minor publication of their language school, unknown otherwise, and accordingly I've speedy deleted it as promotional for the school. DGG (talk) 00:17, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Something else to consider

What do you think about IC 5357 and the half dozen or so stubs like it? Are all galaxies notable - there's likely to be "billions and billions" of them per Carl Sagan - even if we can never write more thant what's in that article - which is basically where to look for the place from the Earth? Are all stars- "billions and billions" of them in each galaxy, most likewise without much more than their location to be said for them? Are all asteroids or other balls of ice and rock out there (or down here)? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:41, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

What do I think? i think we should add the same information for each of the few million others that have been catalogued. Though for convenience, we ought to group them together in articles. The notability=article equation is part of the problem. There are 2 qys: should Wikipedia cover something, and, separately, how should it be arranged. I have, for example, no objection in the least to group episodes together, as long as a reasonable amount of information is included for each, including the actors, timing, and main plot lines from beginning to end. I think we could have coverage on every street in a city; most of them would be in groups. It would be easier to do than to argue about which ones to include.

The real reason to restrict notability is to main the encyclopedia free from promotion and advertising. As this doesn't affect galaxies, we don't have the problem there. the real point is to stop arguing about arrangement and subdivision, and start writing content.

Personally, i think it would be a good idea to build a stub on every possible notable subject, and encourage people to fill them in. Where would I start? every noun and verb in wiktionary, that there is more than one reference for. DGG (talk) 22:02, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This made me chuckle - we worry about both ends of the scale don't we? "are hamlets notable?" at the one and then "are galaxies notable" at the other. :-) --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

request for input

here when you have some time (concerns a proposal to Verifiability policy) Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:32, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

verifiability and context

I appreciate your recent comment - would you mind proposing wording you would find acceptable? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

useful general remark

::if anyone wishes to fight with me, this page is the place; if anyone wishes to fight with someone else, please do it elsewhere. DGG (talk) 19:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The notability problem in a nutshell

Though it remains in the policy, there are now many exceptions to: If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. - quoted from WP:V (There are a number of areas where this is true, but primary among the one that concerns us here is fiction.) There are several ambiguities: the first is the meaning of the plural of sources, for it is accepted and elswhere stated that ones sufficiently reliable third party source is sufficient. Second, there are many cases where it is clear that first party sources such as official documents from government sources are sufficient to show the notability of the agencies concerned. Third, we routinely accept the probability that there will be such sources. Fourth, the sources for writing an article are not in the least limited to third party sources, for the primary source of the work itself is accepted as sufficient and in fact usually the best source for content. Fifth, and crucial here, is the distinction between "topic" and "article"-- a key argument above is whether a spin offarticle on a character is to be judged as a separate article. The sixth is the lack of a requirement that the third party source be substantial. DGG (talk)

and we see how notability is used as an excuse to delete secrets that are merely hard to source like DCEETA. we have the spectacle of people saying that the NYTimes is not reliable, and it's just synthesis. thanks for the kind comments Dogue (talk) 20:32, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

there seems to be a recent trend to be as perverse in nominating as possible. See today's nominations for the chairman of AOL, and.a major dam. I think they may be intended as a POINTy demonstration that common sense is an unreliable criterion, or a proof by example that WPedians can be shown to be lacking in that mental quality. DGG (talk) 23:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

What else? Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 03:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Spreadin the word.....

From this discussion, we get the box on the right - cool eh? Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Good work indeed from the two of you! This is the sort of thing that can make a practical positive difference to the encyclopedia! DGG (talk) 22:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

You are me

Sorry David, but you are apparently me. --David Shankbone 05:01, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

all David's are actually clones; we use disguises to conceal the fact, but they don't work 100%. DGG (talk) 09:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Shankbone is the cabal. --KP Botany (talk) 09:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

the person who does the photos can control the world. DGG (talk) 09:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You're awesome by me! I originally thought the page was about me, but apparently it is about you. Jeez, if you're going to have haters hating on you, at least get your name right! I'm guessing they put as much thought and research into their self-promotion as they did into that Facebook group. --David Shankbone 14:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Prods

You have lost me when you say that "unresolved issues is not a good enough reason to delete". Taking Manhunt (urban game) for example, the issues raised are as follows:

It does not cite any references or sources.

t needs sources or references that appear in third-party publications.
It may contain original research or unverifiable claims.
Its factual accuracy is disputed.
It may need copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling.
It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

Its lead section requires expansion.

In other words, it is an extremely poor article that is almost certainly providing misinformation to the readers. So why keep it? Are you perhaps being pedantic and trying to insist that I duplicate all of the above as the prod reason instead of merely referring to the loud and clear issues that appear immediately below the prod box?

We are supposed to be providing the readers with a credible encyclopaedia, not preserving patent rubbish. --Orrelly Man (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• In the case of the above article the prod wasn't correct as the article had previously had a prod removed, AfD therefore is the only way to go. RMHED. 19:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

As for your question though,since it applies equally to Prod and AfD:
You should not nominate an article for deletion if it can be rescued: see WP:BEFORE and WP:Deletion Policy. It is an excellent idea to remove rubbish, but only if it cannot be improved. The mere failure to have improved an article is not a reason for deletion by itself, no matter how long it has been unimproved. Let's look at those reasons:

1. We do not remove articles for being unsourced. We remove them for being unsourceable. You need to do a proper search. For games of this sort, I think this should include printed books on children's games. Atthe very least before nominating, you should check Google Books.
2. The second reason is just like the one above; it does need them, & the thing to do is to look for them. It's not a reason for deletion unless there are none to be found. (t
3. If the factual accuracy is disputed, then it should be edited, not deleted. The disputes about accuracy should be discussed on the talk page and resolved. It would only be a reason for deletion if you were prepared to show it did not exist at all, or that there was so much dispute that it was impossible to write even a brief article.
4. If copy editing is needed, then it should be done. The need for this is never a reason for deletion.
5. Ditto for general cleanup. If it needs it, do it. This too is never a reason for deletion.
6. If the lead section needs expansion, expand it. This again is never a reason for deletion.

Thus, none of the unresolved issues were a good enough reason for deletion, just as I said. I hope this explanation helps, more than my edit summary did. As a general rule, what we do with poor articles is improve them. What we do with misinformation is correct it, if we can show it incorrect. If you know enough about the game to make these statements, you know enough to help the article. Articles of this sort do tend to attract dubious material, and need proper attention. Then Wikipedia will be a more credible encyclopedia and not provide patent rubbish. I see you are interested in these games, so I look forward to seeing your improvements in this set of articles. DGG (talk) 20:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I can see you mean well but you are being very unrealistic. If the original editor will not make the effort to provide proper sources, why should anyone else? You have to remember that other editors don't have the time to do "proper searches" or expand the lead or edit factual inaccuracies and original research. Quite often, when you find a bad article, it has been created by some redlink userid who has made no other "contributions". Best thing to do is get rid of it or you end up wasting valuable time. If the creator is a genuine editor, he can always come back and recreate it. --Orrelly Man (talk) 21:58, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

why? because of our Deletion policy, as clearest expressed at WP:BEFORE, our need to encourage new contributors, and WP:BITE. It is you who unrealistically expect perfection at the first edit. It is every bit as valuable and necessary to fix articles as contribute new ones. DGG (talk) 22:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: The American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education

and the related Joseph T. Dipiro article: an IP editor commented that one was very similar to content on another website, and a quick google search revealed that they both appear to be copyright violations. I agree that the journal could be made into a good article, but it may be better to start from scratch. I've tagged the articles, but if you could review and do what you feel is right I'd be grateful. Verbal chat 20:31, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

yes, I can rewrite them. DGG (talk) 20:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll help if needed - hopefully tomorrow. Yours, Verbal chat 22:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)(good god I nearly put "xxx" rather than ~~~~ by mistake)

Question from power corrupts

• User_talk:Ikip#no_real-world_notability_established Maybe you could help answer? I know you are considered the intellectual giant on these issues. Ikip (talk) 21:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

AMAB may have convinced you, but he did not convince me., i commented there. DGG (talk) 23:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not convinced, I just respect him writing a long answer to someone elses question on my talk page.

I am thankful that you wrote a long answer too. Thank you. Ikip (talk) 23:39, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Open Access Blog

Is not Open Access News. http://openaccessblog.com/ is a well-meaning but not notable blog. Fences and windows (talk) 23:55, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

New York Public Library classes

Hi David, I've started something at Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library‎. Hopefully this can be a space for us to work out our ideas, and I look forward to your contributions.--Pharos (talk) 16:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Threshold knowledge

I'm not interested. If other users want to keep this kind of article, that's up to them. Presumably you looked at it and made your decision; I looked at it and made mine.

If you look at my talk page, you'll see lots of examples of people moaning about their articles being deleted and lots of other examples of me having a proper discussion with them, restoring articles and helping contributors to improve them. I stand by everything I've said on the subject. Deb (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear DGG, thank you for your input in this case. I hope I was able to proceed through procedures in a level-headed manner. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at User talk:Deb#Threshold knowledge and, if you feel it would be of value, offer a second opinion. Although perhaps nothing more really should be said... Bondegezou (talk) 19:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Good Germans DRV

Hi DGG, Would you be good enough to review my comment (and the rest of) the DRV for Good Germans. The whole situation is one of the crazier things I've run into, and I trust you to give it a fair hearing. Regards, Cgingold (talk) 17:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

yes. an editor first mistakenly converted it to Wiktionary format and now complains it was transwikified. The admin should ideally have spotted it, but I am not sure i would have. DGG (talk) 18:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful (as usual) input in the DRV discussion, DGG. As long as the outcome doesn't bar re-creation of the article, I'll be happy. Cgingold (talk) 00:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

PS - Thanks also for your remarks re adminship on my talk page -- much appreciated. I'll respond there later -- but I am really curious to know how you even spotted that section in the first place, seeing as it's pretty well hidden, nowhere near the bottom of the page. In fact, I had to look in the edit history to figure out why I had one of those orange "new messages" banners! Cgingold (talk) 00:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

seeing your work at DelRev, I checked if you were an admin, & seeing you were not, I considered you might be a good candidate. Before I go ahead with something like that, I read the talk p. history to see if there will be problems. For example, you might have consistently said no to other nominations. BTW, If you click on the "last change" in the banner, you get the history open to the latest change.) DGG (talk) 00:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

True enough - but I've gotten in the habit of clicking on the "my talk" link at the top of the page. Anyway, thanks for the bit of explanation, now I don't have to puzzle over it. :) Cgingold (talk) 04:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Asteroids

Hi, The Great Asteroid Stub debate has started again here, and input from someone with awareness of the administrative problems of swarms of minimal stubs might be helpful. Alai (who carried the aministrative flag previously) seems inactive of late, so I saw your note in Archive 9, and thought you might join in, or perhaps you could alert some others with useful insight? I believe we can provide the essential information in a table format (with thousands of entries, NB), with links out to serious articles. But I hate to trash their creator's (Captain Panda) efforts by mass deletion, beyond what is really necessary to alleviate the problems these stubs actually create. I would really like to bring this discussion to a satisfactory actionable conclusion this time.

Thanks, Wwheaton (talk) 23:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Library types by subject

Category:Library types by subject, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.

I haven't formulated an opinion on this yet, so I'll be interested to see what you have to say. Cgingold (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• Thought you'd like to know, I've made a renaming proposal for this category. Cgingold (talk) 10:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)= Merge discussion at Talk:Tom Tucker (Family Guy) ==

I've opened a merge discussion at the above-mentioned location. Please consider participating if you are interested. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 20:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Mentioned you on AN.

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Request_administrative_assistance_with_whitelist_request_for_Lyrikline.org_page_for_Chirikure_Chirikure The copyright bugaboo is persistent. --Abd (talk) 00:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

commented there. DGG (talk) 05:53, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Boy, did you! Thanks. Beetstra, who had unintentionally derailed the process, made up for it by realizing he'd made a mistake by linking the specific whitelisting to the global and site-total whitelisting issue. I.e., he wanted to deal with the whole site, not a pile of individual whitelisting requests. Understandable. Perhaps there was a method to my madness.

However, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. If I couldn't get one poet link whitelisted, how likely would it be that I could succeed in a site-wide whitelisting. Now, the existing situation may still require some attention here. He whitelisted the English language pages, and I'm not sure that will be sufficient. However, one step at a time! He did, in the end, much more than I'd asked for, and we can clean up details later.

Plus I think I now have a suggested process that will avoid most contention over whitelisting caused by blacklisting admins circling the wagons and routinely confirming their original actions by denying whitelisting requests based on propriety of blacklisting, which is a totally different issue than single-link whitelistings. Because only blacklisters and antispam volunteers routinely watch the blacklist/whitelist pages, however, the issues get linked, quite naturally. It is as if DRV consisted only of a panel of admins who had speedy-deleted articles!

I made almost-specific proposals along these lines on my Talk in response to comment from Beetstra announcing his whitelisting.

Beetstra, while becoming difficult at times, has overall been very helpful, he seems to have recognized that I'm not out to wreck the place, that I'm simply standing up to represent the other side of the equation, that little detail: in the end, it's about content, not about killing all the spam. I believe that we can do both, efficiently, making the anti-spam volunteer's job easier and more efficient. It involves separating the whitelisting process from blacklisting, and establishing a guideline that active blacklist admins (and active volunteers) abstain from denying requests for whitelisting. No harm of one of them accepts such a request, because they are, from my experience, quite unlikely to do so abusively. It's just the denials that sometimes are a problem. It's a product of battlefield mentality that is natural, as you know, when dealing with mountains of spam. WP:WikiProject Spam actually suggests that WP:AGF be set aside in dealing with spam, and I'd say, sure, but that's not complete. Stop spam, intercept it, suspending AGF, on "probable cause." Arrest the linkspam (i.e, blacklist). But then don't have the same people making content decisions on the same links. Use the tools or don't. Don't do both. Normally we talk about, with admin abuse (and I'm making no accusations of impropriety in saying this, admins are following existing practice, usually) involvement in an article and then use of tools. Here there is the use of tools, to protect the project, then content involvement. I.e., an admin then asserts a decline, typically, based on, not clear content criteria, but defense of the original blacklisting. Normally, with content, any editor may assert content that is reasonable (not necessarily acceptable) by making the edit, and it's a problem only if there is clear violation, like vandalism or BLP violation or clear copyvio, there are no rules requiring that all edits be "acceptable." But when it comes to reviewing whitelist requests, suddenly, extremely stringent requirements are set up, and the proposed link must be "necessary." Why? The whitelist doesn't make more work for the linkspam volunteers, as long as there are not a torrent of such, and if the linkspam volunteers pay practically no attention to the whitelist, they simply have less distraction. If an inappropriate link is whitelisted because some spammer pulled the wool over the eyes of a user who closed, it is very, very easy to delete the whitelist regex.

The whitelist page could be mostly managed by non-admin users, who would review whitelist requests, and would routinely approve those which are reasonable edit proposals on the face. Any autoconfirmed user who wants to add a link to a blacklisted site would simply propose it there, perhaps with a link to an article talk page notice about the proposed edit. If an IP or site-owner, etc., wants to ask for a link, fine. On the whitelist talk page. So by the time a whitelist link is approved, there are at least two (and in the presence of contention, three at a minimum) autoconfirmed editors in favor of allowing it. And then implementation can be done by any admin who knows regex, or the blacklist volunteers could be requested to review approvals and add them en masse. (for many links, the regex is pretty simple, and I'm sure there are lots of regular editors who know regex and who would consult.) As I see it, the page could recommend delisting or total-site whitelisting (with global blacklisting), but that request, if it is approved on the whitelist page by other than an acting admin, might go to the blacklist page for review regarding risk of continued linkspam. Before a judge releases the prisoner, the judge might ask the police if there seems to be some immediate and continued danger from the prisoner. --Abd (talk) 18:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that there is a possible pool of volunteers who might watch a whitelisting page if it gives them some responsibility, some level of authority to help others make edits. The risk of damage from a bad decision is small, compared to the torrent of linkspam that exists. If there isn't enough help, a backlog would develop, but, now, it wouldn't be the fault of the blacklist volunteers! It would be up to the community to fix it, or not. --Abd (talk) 18:25, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I look at it from another aspect: the same admins who tend to overdelete spam also tend to overdelete articles. You cannot get a set of rules that will limit the damage, without a very elaborate set of controls. There is great concern at the moment about the existing procedural overhead. The best approach I think is to gently adjust the rules, and attempt to persuade the people. There is no possible rule that will replace general watchfulness and a willingness to speak up. All questionable admin actions should be challenged, and I am not speaking of this issue only. Even people too stubborn to back down after making a mistake on a specific issue can still learn eventually. DGG (talk) 19:19, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Hello

Congratulations on your chess set post, you got it right. I know you are an Admin, but with respect, most people that are Hall Monitors and Admins are more likely to be Essjay types than say a professional person with a real job. Anyway, I will try to return the favour for you some day. Happy editing and my best regards. Green Squares (talk) 16:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but there's a very wide variety between admins, in both quality and background, and I'm not sure how well the two correlate. Some of the admins who tend to support me the most frequently are undergraduates or (I think) high school students. One tends to notice the nastier people more, because nastiness is prominent. I think the general prevalence of it is overrated, and that much of it is due to a few individuals. And they aren't all of them admins,either. DGG (talk) 16:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The hall monitor that deleted the articles states that they can be recreated, but he is refusing to it, do you have the sysop tools to put the incorrectly deleted articles back, or the authority to force the hall monitor to put them back? Green Squares (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Some of the admins who tend to support me the most frequently are undergraduates or (I think) high school students. LOL, a few of us are older :) StarM 02:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, as of my final reading, there is certainly enough support for an "Overturn" yet I do not see the articles going back up?! Thanks Green Squares (talk) 12:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

NAS

I believe I used this utility to convert a CSV list into a wiki table. — BRIAN0918 • 2009-02-26 17:50Z

Hemispherectomy Foundation

Hi DGG- I'm not here to complain, just want to explain my actions. On Hemispherectomy Foundation I removed the proposed deletion tag, based on the fact that I feel it is just as notable as Vitamin C Foundation or Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which have been hanging around for a while and are lacking in quality. I did add another reference source to Hemispherectomy Foundation and do intend to expand it as time allows. Acceptable? Thanks, Paxsimius (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

those other two are dubious as well in their present state & I've marked them. The articles (all 3 or them, actually) must have substantial coverage in 3rd party independent reliable published sources, print or online (but not blogs or press releases, or material based on press releases) to show their importance . Andsome financial data helps also. I'll check back eventually. DGG (talk) 19:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Pretzel

This article existed with a timeline as is reproduced on the talk page. This has been converted to plain text consistent with standard encyclopedia formatting. One editor, and I tend to agree, thinks the timeline was a more useful and accesible format for the information. What do you think? Is there a way to have the cake and eat it too? Have you had any experiences with timelines in the past? Clearly it's not standard formatting, but they can be useful and encyclopedic devices me thinks. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

commented there. DGG (talk) 01:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Eleazar (painter)

Hi, thanks for your opinion and for giving me the chance to recreate my article. Because of the recommendation of Chick Bowen, I want to ask you if it's possible to rewrite my article because I'm not allowed to do it; this is what Chick Bowen said about the recreation: "Recreation permitted, but will have to be a sourced, neutral article. If the subject wishes to proceed with recreation, he is urged to seek help from other editors to ensure that conflict of interest is avoided. It would be much better if someone other than the subject wrote it; perhaps someone commenting below would like to do so?" Thanks again. A greeting from Barcelona, Spain.--Eleazar1954 (talk) 16:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I have re-created the article in my user space as User:DGG/Eleazar (painter). First step is to add specific references to reviews of his shows or specific paintings in published sources-- please do this--you can edit that page. For now, have removed the paragraphs discussing the general features of the oeuvre, but they will appear in the edit view between a <!-- and a --> mark as comments; they must be supported by specific references and rewritten as quotations from those references. The items in the references section must be moved to the places in the text that they support. I recognize you are in a sense uniquely qualified to comment on this--but it can't be written that way. I've also cleaned up a little. See what you can do with references & I will take a look in a few days.. DGG (talk) 22:51, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, many thanks for the re-creation of the article. I think it’s OK. I have add a Curriculum Vitae reference for supporting what the article explains about exhibitions and collections of Eleazar. Finally, I haven’t put any more specific references or reviews because all are write in paper (not Internet references apart from those that you write and the reviews in the Website of the artist). I hope that everything it’s OK for you.Really thanks again and a greeting.--Eleazar1954 (talk) 14:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Jews and Scots

Hi DGG, thanks for your note. I think you do tons of great work, but when I suggested putting you to work I didn't mean on that article, so to speak, since I don't think the title is right. Does that make sense? I think the topic is important, but not in this form. Oh, I see now that it's gone. You know, maybe I should put my money where my mouth is: if I have a moment, I'll see about adding a note (or a paragraph) with those references you found to the Anti-Scottish sentiment article. Thanks again, Drmies (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree the title is not right-- but it's more specific than anti-scottish sentiment--there is a true overlap. I have not yet thought of a better title, or I would have suggested it The material I picked was from the first 20 gbook hits, there seemd to be thousands of others. I wonder what's is the 19th c. novelists.... DGG (talk) 02:57, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I've consulted an expert. The actual best source was already in the article as written: David Daiches, "Two Worlds: an Edinburgh Jewish childhood." Shows how wrong it was for it to be deleted. I rarely use the term political correctness, but it applies here. DGG (talk) 04:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Were you able...

...to read the article? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

thanks for asking, still not yet. I'd appreciate a copy directly.DGG (talk) 09:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Libraries & the Cultural Record

I thought this new article might interest you. Cheers. Thanks for all your help. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Eleazar

Hello, I want to ask you if there has been any problem with the re-creation of the article that you rewrote about Eleazar (painter)User:DGG/Eleazar (painter). In any case, I want you to know that I already did (added) what you said to me. See you,--Eleazar1954 (talk) 15:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Clickety click

DGG, I thought you might have something worthwhile to say about this AfD and also a relevant part of "WP:CREATIVE" (on which see also my comment). -- Hoary (talk) 00:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Heh heh, I'm enjoying this: DGG (ever the inclusionist) tending toward deletion of what's unenthusiastically backed by Hoary (ever the deletionist). Your comment on the meaninglessness of those particular library holdings is spot on: this says less about Powell than it does about the inadequacy of critical thinking behind "WP:CREATIVE". Um, anyway, could you revisit your comment in the AfD? As of a few seconds ago, it needed formatting and other attention. -- Hoary (talk)

I think I've said delete more often than keep today & the last few days. I think that's because fewer articles have been nominated for deletion the last week or so- by and large only the worst stuff is still being nominated, the passable stuff isn't. As for WP:Creative, where it does seem to work is that visual artists in conventional media who have works in the permanent collection of two or more museums does seem to indicate notability. It's easy to delineate things that certainly do indicate certain notability. It's easy to find careers that don't. The question is whether there's a concept of "notable, but not very notable," & what to do with such. DGG (talk) 03:12, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

mediawikiblacklist

I ask you because you're active there--am I correct that any enWP admin can deal with things also? DGG (talk) 05:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, although you need at least some knowledge of regular expressions. Stifle (talk) 09:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Students' Guide

I noticed your involvement with Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library. I've got a draft of what is called the Wikipedia Student's Guide, which isn't a perfect fit for those getting instruction at the library, but might be useful. In any case, if you have any suggestions, they would be welcomed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:40, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

DRV process, restoration and system

Heya, your recreations of DRV pages are a great help for us non-admins helping out in DRV and majorly appreciated. I was wondering, would you back up a proposal for a change to the DRV process to include restoration of the article as deleted to DRVPAGE/PAGENAME instead of mainspace? That would still allow non-admins to see the page while avoiding any confusion or frustration that may arise from the temporary restoration and would keep deleted articles out of mainspace (and thus main search index) until a decision is made to recreate them... For example, the recreation of TurnKey Linux (DRV at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 29) could then be done to Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 29/TurnKey Linux instead of the mainspace location. Obviously recreation would not be mandatory (as this would be difficult to enforce/support without placing further strain on an already low population of admins) and wuld not be possible if the page contained attacks, copyvios or similar but could be requested and serviced exactly the way it works now. Just a thought. [[::User:Usrnme h8er|Usrnme h8er]] (talk · contribs) 14:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I would support any procedure which gets the articles routinely visible during DRV. The proposed one has some disadvantages: The work involved for the admin would be slightly greater in moving it to a sub page, because after the DRV the page would have to be moved back even if deleted, so it can later be found where one would expect it. It will also be a burden on the servers for long pages, as all the links would need to be changed, and then changed back; for pages with a few thousand revisions, the load is significant. But it does have the great merit of keeping it out of mainspace & the index; personally, I dont think it normally does any harm to have it there for 5 days or so, especially if it was originally in mainspace for a long period; however, many people do think this harmful,and the proposal would eliminate their objections,and probably be easier to pass than a plan for routinely using mainspace. We are not the least bit short of administrators: what we are short of is fully active administrators. Too many use it as a trophy, but don't do much of the work. But a script could probably be written do do the move, and the move back. It can't be literally required, because we cannot do this for copyvio and many BLPs, and there's no real point in doing it for obviously meritless reviews. I think it should be required otherwise, just as I think notification of all significant editors should be, and all who commented at the previous XfDs. But there is no reason I can see not to use it boldly as a trial.DGG (talk) 16:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and suggested this change at the end of WT:DRV. [[::User:Usrnme h8er|Usrnme h8er]] (talk · contribs) 08:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Notifying of featured article review of William Monahan

I have nominated William Monahan for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 21:14, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

commented. the problems are quite radical. With the socks gone, we can see some rationality about this. DGG (talk) 22:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

reply from Ched on recent AfD (Supermarket tabloids)

Hey DGG, how you doing today? Regarding your recent comment at this AfD. While many editor would like to see a simple "Keep" or "Delete" !vote on the XfDs, and in theory perhaps it is preferable to stick to one or the other, in practice I've seen many articles go through quite a change throughout the 5 day (soon to be 7 day?) process. Being an administrator, I'm sure you've seen even more bizarre discussions. I'm not sure how you're hoping to differentiate between "Tabloid" and "Supermarket Tabloid", but I don't have a problem with it either way. I do think that the "Supermarket tabloids in the United States" is a bit pretentious in title, but that's just a passing note on my part.

Getting back to my Merge !vote: While you may prefer a cut-and-dried "Keep-or-Delete" situation in XfD, the changes that articles are able to go through during the process does lend some credence to the possibility that suggestive !votes can accomplish some positive input. At this point in time, neither Supermarket tabloids in the United States nor Tabloid are particularly well along in development. The former is not much more than a list and some trivia, but the later could be brought up to C or B class without too much difficulty I would think. I agree that the former should not have been tagged, but I'm not going to comment on specific editors, but rather the articles and items in general. It simply seems to me, that at this particular time and in their current states, it would benefit the wiki to merge the articles, get Tabloid up to snuff, and then if one finds enough RS to split out a notable "in supermarkets" fork, or a "in particular countries/cultures" fork - that's fine. Well, that's just my thoughts on the matter, and all previous comments are simply IMHO. Best of luck with the article(s). — Ched : Yes?  © 06:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I left a note on the AfD that the closing editor is free to consider my !vote in the "Keep" category ;) — Ched : Yes?  © 06:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Commented there—in short, the idea that AfD's are not the place to opine about mergers is contradicted by (extremely longstanding) WP process. Bongomatic 07:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

and pretty nonsensical practice it is too--see below:

how to differentiate a straight keep close from a merge is an unsolved question. Officially, there is no difference, merge is a form of keep, and technically a merge close is a keep, with a recommendation to merge. All this is,as you seem to realize, a little artificial, and there are two separate problems, whether to keep content at all, and how to arrange it. Obviously, we could have a Wikipedia with a few large articles, or we could have one with many short articles, and it would be essentially just the same,except for such matters as the prominence of topics in Google, and the ability to link & organize: we do not have the technical capability at present to link securely to article sections, and we cannot list article sections in categories. I look forward to the time when the contents of Wikipedia will be rewritten as a proper database, with discrete units of data, and the appearance and arrangement of the content adjustable according to the readers preference and needs--technically, this is attainable now. In dividing things up, I think it is a good idea to follow the literature. The existence of a separate book on a subject usually indicates the advisability of a separate article--it's an indication that there is quite a lot to say. That standard journalism texts differentiate them tends to confirm this. I'm not about to expand it, but it seems to me that the contents and purpose of the typical US supermarket tabloid is very different to that of the US news-stand tabloid--one aims at sensationalism mixed with a little human interest, the other at human interest mixed with a little sensationalism and perhaps a little news. The UK tabloid is another type altogether. In terms of writing articles, sometimes separating out a small subject can lead to easier improvement in an article--many editors here do much better with topics of more limited scope. But i do know that 5 or 7 or 10 days is a very short time to expand an article properly if done by cooperative editing--most articles here grow slowly over time. If, however, one person takes it in hand, then I think the best principle is to let an ambitious and competent writer do pretty much whatever organization they want, and submit it to criticism. There are many ways to build good encyclopedia articles. There are also many ways to avoid doing so, among which is disputing too long over the proper merging at AfD. As my favorite author Samuel Johnson said, you may stand there disputing over which leg to put in your breeches first, but meanwhile your breech is bare. DGG (talk) 07:14, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Possibly nonsensical, although if an actual consensus occurs to merge in an AfD it seems as valid a conclusion as if it had occurred anywhere else. In any event, my point was simply that your statement that "AfD is not for merge discussions, in any case" is (possibly valid) opinion, and shouldn't be confused with or stated as policy / established and fully documented practice. Bongomatic 08:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

←OK, I'll be the first to admit that I probably should be contributing to articles, rather than socializing on your talk page. Now comes the "but" part. Several things come to mind here, and I've read and re-read the items of topic. Several items spark my desire to reply; one would be that great quote you mention of Mr. Johnson, wonderful quote; our (US) forefathers did have an enjoyable flair for the language. The other, and more relevant, topic would be my choice of Merge as my !vote on this AfD. I'll admit that I'll most likely never become a prolific contributor to any of the XfD sections, but I do wish to conduct my posts in with proper insight. In fact, it appears that you, (DGG), and I actually share many common intents. Be they the expansion, or organization of material on Wikipedia, or more "real life" related items such as politics. I also have no desire to play "let's gang up on the admin" ;). Now looking back, two statements come to my attention, which indicates that it was wrong for me to post the "Merge" portion of my comments. At the AfD and here, I'm drawn to 2 statements:

1. "AfD is not for merge discussions, in any case." (from the AfD)
2. "...and pretty nonsensical practice it is too--see below:" (from posting above)

That indicated (to me at least) that you felt it was wrong to post "Merge" on the AfD topics. Then I came across this post by you, and now I'm really confused. I do want to understand what is proper, but I often find that actual practice doesn't always see intent in an eye-to-eye fashion. — Ched : Yes?  © 09:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• Full disclosure: It will be very rare that you'll see a "Delete" from me in any of the XfD sections. Short of NPA, NLT, or an article on what somebodies grandmother had for breakfast - I'm all for including any info we can at Wikipedia. ;) — Ched ~ ^(yes?)/_© 12:27, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Essentially, how to handle these is an unsettled question, and there is no consistent practice. This is because of a very basic discontinuity:

AfD is about whether articles should be kept, not what the content of them should be

A merge or a redirect does not actually keep an article, though it may sometimes keeps the content--but not always. What it does depends on what happens after the AfD.

The problem arises because of our focus on articles and notability , rather than on content , appropriate extent and detail of coverage, and "suitable arrangement." I see no solution within the current framework. The first step to a real solution would be to delete WP:N, but this does not have sufficient support yet. The reason is doesn't is because it would force us to decide what we actually wanted to include in Wikipedia--about which there is no agreement, so people prefer to take their chances with ever more complicated rules on sourcing, and the presence of principles such as NOT NEWS. The current policies are such as to permit a plausible argument for keeping or deleting almost anything. One extreme solution is to say that we we should keep in whatever a sufficient number of established Wikipedians want to keep in--but a glance at some of the articles that actually get some support at AfD indicates this might not work too well. The opposite, to keep out whatever enough people want to keep out, gives equally bad results. Why we think that establishing the balance of those who come to a discussion by chance gives better results is not clear to me, except that it has some rough resemblance to popular democracy. It might even give a reasonable result a little more than half the time. (more seriously,i think for those that are actually disputable rather than obvious, the figure might be as high as 66%) . And it might be that having the arguments as a !vote on content would be even more chaotic and inconsistent.

In the meantime, we can only use whatever manner of argument that will give a reasonable solution case by case, under the framework at hand, for how else are we to proceed? I make no claim to perfect consistency. When I participate in AfD I speak as an advocate to get what I think should be done, either for the particular article at hand, or sometimes in hope to influence the decision on future articles also. When I close, which is rare, I try to judge what others think should be reasonably done. There is no way a community as large as this will actually have consistent consensus on details. DGG (talk) 14:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Extinct editors

this must be one of the funniest AfD comments I ever came across! Owen× ☎ 16:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks!DGG (talk) 19:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

well-worded AfD.

Nicely said! tedder (talk) 02:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I might have said keep a year ago in order to establish the principle, but the principle is firmly enough established, that we can be a little flexible in interpreting it. DGG (talk) 02:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I wish we could get WP:SCH to be policy. It would make things like this much easier to deal with. (I thought you'd already commented on that AfD- you haven't) tedder (talk) 03:05, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Well said AfD

Put absolutely perfectly. Incidentally, if you haven't seen it in the morass of my talkpage I replied on the Oo7565 matter. I'm still not sure a ban would be the way to go – I suspect he'd come straight back under another name, and at least this way someone can keep an eye on him. On an unrelated matter, you might want to take a second look at AFD/Brindle family; I've still to find a single reliable source for this article, and every one of the "sources" provided in the AFD is the complete opposite of the article. (The article is about the family being a crime family; not a single source mentions any member of this family ever having been convicted of any crime.) – iridescent 17:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

What's the connection between Alan16 and Oo7565? tedder (talk) 17:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

none that I know of--Iridescent was giving a single comment on 3 separate issues. DGG (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Wealthy fictional characters-- opinion?

List of wealthy fictional characters looks hopeless to me—what do you think? Bongomatic 07:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

add references with quotations from the works, and it wont look so hopeless at all. DGG (talk) 08:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I added an item (no references), but someone else nominated it for deletion— have to say, that upon further reflection, I think it has to go (despite its cuteness). Please add your views at the AfD. Bongomatic 00:02, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

yes, its not a good job, but the topic is a possible one. Some day, if I am never needed at afd, and people accept a compromise at WP:FICT, .... DGG (talk) 00:50, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Happy DGG's Day!

DGG has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as DGG's day! For being one of our more sensible, clueful users, enjoy being the Star of the day, DGG! Cheers, bibliomaniac15 03:36, 25 April 2009 (UTC) If you'd like to show off your awesomeness, you can use this userbox.

It's about time! ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Edwin Osgood Grover

If you have a moment and feel like it, would you mind a look here? I *think* the subject is probably notable but given when he lived, finding sources is a challenge. Some of the scholar results seem to fit, but others seem entirely unrelated. There are also a number of news hits, but they're behind pay gates. Know that they're not required to be publicly accessible to use, I just can't judge content to establish notability from what I can't see -- but thinking that quantity here might get past WP:PROF more so than quality. Thoughts? StarM 00:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

There's enough to tell. The NYT isnt substantial, 51 words, butt he very fact they gave it an article at all is significant. That he then published a long essay in the NYT Bk review is significant. The LA Times article is a signif ref. also. But the most useful general approach is something fairly new: WorldCat identities; best technique is to find a book by him in the regular WorldCat, then click on the author's name.: [3]. Significant author & lecturer. Meets WP:BIO. DGG (talk) 01:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't know about WC IDentities, will have a look at it when I have a few moments. I had a feeling he was probably notable. ThanksStarM 03:16, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It's new, technically still experimental. I love it--the info was always there, but this saves a great deal of work compiling it from the individual book entries. DGG (talk) 03:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Horror film genre-specifc reliable sources

If you have time, I'd appreciate your looking in at Horror film genre-specifc reliable sources and either advise or contribute. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 21:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Contribute new ones I can not, but I suggest that you need an explanation of why you consider each source reliable. possible a sentence or two for each, especially the ones without articles, or perhaps even on the talk p. I made a change to give direct access for the first two as an example. . Revert if you don't like them. I know it violates the usual rule for external links, but this is a special case--the point of a p. like this is to be convenient & it probably won't be in mainspace. . Where are you thinking of putting it, and under what title: I suggest: "Reliable sources for horror films" in WT space, and then I and others could do some similar and then we could have a list -- and of course a category. DGG (talk) 22:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I do much appreciate your looking in. I have just given the page a few more tweaks to gently address ongoing mis-interpretations of WP:RS and WP:NF by well-meaning editors. Or maybe I am simply too liberal (chuckle), but guideline IS guideline. I like your suggested title, as my own is simply a descriptive of the work-in-process. I decided to "source" back to the relevent page of each various site's pages that explains their rationale, editing practices, and editorial staff... rather than having a linkfarm... in order to allow editors wondering about their sources to have a direct link to the page. And pardon my innocence, but what is "WT Space"? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 22:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

at the simple end, I meant WP space -- the pages where guidelines are put as in WP:N. WT was a typo, it does exist, as a functional abbreviation for the WP space talk pages--the abbreviation for the talk page of WP:N, is WT:N. Next, the reference to articles would do for the ones that have articles. At least a word or two must be said about the others, or else you're just asserting they're ok on your say-so. And for the ones that have articles, the articles must indicate why they're not only notable, but reliable sources. My view is that it still helps to have a guide of some sort on the proposed page, not just a listing. DGG (talk) 23:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Just got in from a shoot. Will do as advised and give a brief description of each (not already with wiki articles) and then use the current refs to cite the description and assertion of RS. I want the reader to be able to follow the refs to the same information I have found. And if I find other sources, I will add them as well. Any suggestions for my preliminary sections describing why the article exists? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That's tricker, because this should be crafted as a precedent. Tomorrow. (Question: might be be well to discuss some places that are not good sources?) DGG (talk) 03:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

from a recent deletion review: how to close XfDs

judging consensus is trying to evaluate what the other responsible people there think should be done. One can evaluate arguments, but only to see which ones are not in conformity with policy. I completely disagree one can choose which policy of competing ones applies, or how to interpret policy: both are for the community to decide (or whatever small fraction is paying attention). I do not argue to convince the closer in particular of the merits of my argument, but to convince others who may come and look at the discussion and give an opinion. The closer should follow whatever policy-based argument a clear majority agrees with, unless it's totally irrational. DGG (talk) 02:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sources about journalists

Hi DGG

Calling on you in your capacity as librarian, not admin. Do you know any good places to find information about journalists, rather than articles by them? I have just started a stub article on Michael Theodoulou who is an extremely prolific and I think well-regarded journalist. Any thoughts on how to find citations relevant to an article on him?

Thank you, Bongomatic 06:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

this has always been a problem. It would be much easier --as in almost all professions--to find non-directory information about historical than current figures. There are two fairly comprehensive specialized indexes: Communication and Mass Media Complete from Ebsco and "Communication Abstracts" from Sage, if you can find them. Lacking them, the best is probably the type of general database one finds in a library: (multiple exact titles of each, with different degrees of coverage): Proquest (ABI Inform, Periodical Abstracts) ) or Ebsco (Academic Search, Business Search) or Thompson Gale (Academic ASAP) , or Wilson (Business Periodicals Index , OmniFile). All public libraries have at least a truncated version of one or another, usually available outside the library to residents with a library card. All college libraries have a relatively full version of at least one. Key magazines covering the field include: "American Journalism Review" and "Columbia Journalism Review" There are also a large number of regional newsletter type publications, but almost always everything in them will be of the nature of press releases. General newspaper indexes sometimes work, if you can sort out the articles they themselves have written. DGG (talk) 15:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Managed to get some access but wasn't able to find anything other than by the journalist. Maybe something will turn up eventually. Bongomatic 16:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

if you let me know by email what your library facilities are I can make some more precise suggestions. DGG (talk) 16:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Re: Onyx Pharmaceuticals

Hi DGG,

Thank you so much for the revisions and edits of the Onyx Pharmaceuticals page! I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out with article. I removed the dead links on analyst coverage and instead linked to Onyx's Yahoo!Finance Analyst Coverage page. In addition, I added Onyx's Hoover's profile page under notability.

When you have a chance to look over again, can you let me know if it looks like it is ready to be posted?

Thanks again for your help! - EG
EGagnon7224 (talk) 13:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

you still need to write the basic description of the company. and insert the references for it, and add the appropriate infobox. Please learn how to do it yourself. See our |guide to writing Wikipedia articles and, for further details, the appropriate chapters of [4] , How Wikipedia Works by Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates (also available in print). Factors that count towards notability for a company include gross revenue, number of employees, and date of establishment.--these are expected as part of an article. Get the info, and link to Hoovers etc as the source, I touched up the product part. For the scientific references, you need to find the p. numbers for Cancer Research, and the PMIDs for all three articles. The AP and DJ articles need web links. And do what I said for establishing stable links to changeable pages. Then, make the links to Wikipedia articles for the various enzymes and medical conditions. Yes, I could do all this for you. But it's your article. DGG (talk) 18:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Pirate ships

Hi DGG. Here's an interesting case. Dai Hong Dan is clearly a candidate for deletion as WP:ONEVENT (see all-date Google news archive search—not perfect, but gives you an idea). But it seems that individual ships that were the objects of piracy are somewhat like episodes in a serial. Any thoughts on how to deal with them? Bongomatic 15:20, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

all large ships are notable. This one especially. Even if one doubts the first part of the corollary, being taken over by pirates is sufficiently important, whether in the 16th or the 21st century. The problem article is that yacht they took over. Yachts are not necessarily notable, otherwise. DGG (talk) 16:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. What guideline or logic gives rise to the intrinsic notability of every large ship, regardless of coverage? Bongomatic 22:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

95% consistent practice of AfD for the last 2.5 years, since i first came--and---very soon after--questioned some such articles. I questioned a number of such practices at first, but the longer I'm here, the more impatient I get with AfDs & the more I think that such blanket acceptances are the way to avoid conflict and return to article writing. If it seems reasonable that we should have an article, that's good enough. What we want to keep out is the tabloid fodder and the junk and the spam. Not merely things that people think not quite important enough. DGG (talk) 23:18, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

from an afd

"It was asked above what the inclusion criteria should be for material like this. the answer, is they can be whatever we want them to be. We make the rules, and we can make whatever exceptions are indicated. It's not as if we were working on someone else's project." DGG (talk)

Notability guideline for News Organizations/Publications

Hi, DGG, could you comment here about the proposal of a new notability guideline for news organizations and publications by OlYeller21? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you Once again, thanks for your insightful words DGG. I have to admit that I had to read what you wrote twice to fully grasp what you were saying, because your posting tend to be a little bit deeper and more thoughtful than the average editor.

I admit, I was a little flustered today with your first typically neautral posting on ARS. But then I thought about what you said, and I realized this is exactly what I had been saying all along, that anyone should be welcome to post on any wikiproject (as long as they are not disruptive), you just said it in a more neutral, diplomatic way. Ikip (talk) 01:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Historical notability

". Fifth century people are notable per se just by having their names remembered fourteen centuries later. Even if their actual record is scanty, and you can sum up all that's knowable about them in a single paragraph, print encyclopedias brim with stubs of exactly this type. - " [5]. good comment by Smerdis of Tlön, for reuse as needed. DGG (talk) 04:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

merge/move

why not then do as you suggested, restore it and change the title, and then improve it to better NPOV. I'll look here for a reply. DGG (talk) 16:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought it would be better if the two different histories were merged first, so they could be refactored. That might change the length of the History section which would affect the need for a separate article, especially if the rest of "Open access (publishing)" were cleaned up. But I don't really have time for a major rewrite at the moment. -- Beland (talk) 18:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

if I do it, I;'d have to do it from the separate articles. DGG (talk) 19:34, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

American Engineering Group

Dear Sir,

One of my article about American Engineering Group company is deleted a little while ago. Can you please give me suggestions on how I can make the article more suitable for wikipedia. Please respond.

Thank you very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abraham70 (talk • contribs) 18:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

There are two problems, first the article gives nothing to indicate thatt he company is notable. The standards from this are at WP:CORP. Basically, you need to show that you have references providing substantial coverage about the company from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. You need to show that you are recognized as a leader in the field. Typically, independent substantial reviews of products in professional magazines will help; routine announcements of new products or financial results or executive appointments will not. Having army contracts by itself is not enough--if they are for major products that have been discussed, that might help. Some of your products for them seem the sort that might well have been discussed in news reports if you are a major supplier.

The second problem is the promotional nature of the article: it is mainly a list of products. That belongs on your website, not in an encyclopedia. the basic description of the company also is essentially pr material, with more adjectives than specifics. Figures for turnover and employee numbers help, if they are substantial--they need to be sourced, however & most financial results will not be easily available, since you re not a public company.

I notice also that you have put information about your fuel cells in the article on Proton exchange membrane fuel cell. Thjisneeds to be sourced as well, to third party sources, to show that its significant.

A good guide to what is needed is our FAQ about businesses, & other organisations. DGG (talk) 19:08, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear Sir,

Please go through these links and see if they could serve as possible references. Our Company is also listed in design magazines for various products. http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defense/american-engineering-group-ll-114164234.asp?yr=06 http://www.rubberdivision.org/expos/mini/techprogram.htm http://www.thecityofakron.com/engineering/ http://rubber.org/expos/exhibitors.pdf http://www.edmtodaymagazine.com/Job%20Shop%20Directory.html http://www.americantire.us/Sponsorship/ATC-Sponsors-ITEC-2008.pdf

Please suggest if there is any possibility of getting listed in Wiki. I really appreciate your help.

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abraham70 (talk • contribs) 12:41, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

these are listings. They list that one of your people spoke at a conference, or that you have a contracts. They do not provide any indication that you are important. The one financial figure listed available to me was a very small contract for $40,000. What is needed is that other people publish substantial information about you. if the material in the design magazines is just a list of supplier's, its irrelevant also. If its a discussion of the company or one of its products, then it's relevant. I see from your web site "* 2007 SAE tech award for a unique fuel cell sealing concept featuring the Nanocomposite Double-lip seal.' * 2008 SAE tech award for the Carbon fiber Elastomer Composite Bipolar plate for PEM Fuel Cells."; such awards can be proof of notability, depending on the nature of the award; they might show that the prize committee of a major professional association thought you notable. That's the sort of stuff that belongs in the article (and, if I may give you the advice, more prominently on your web site; were I looking for a fabricator, that's the sort of thing I'd hope to see). There must have been something published in the trade press at the time. Find it. Some of your products are such that they might receive formal product reviews; some of your military products might have been written about in general news reports. That's the sort of material needed also. We also need some information about the business size: employees, gross sales, DGG (talk) 17:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi David,

Attached file contains some of the magazines over where American Engineering Group (AEG) LLC's products are published. Please see if this could meet what you are looking for. Please let me know your suggestions.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/AEG_Published_Articles.pdf

SAE tech Award 2008: http://www.engineering-group.com/AEGCurrentNews/News/download/download.php?id=11

Thank you very much —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abraham70 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi David,

I am waiting for your suggestions and comments.

Thank you very much —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abraham70 (talk • contribs) 17:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Levi's article

Some of the posts over at the AfD for Johnston are rather scary. It seems that people don't understand notability, or even read the one links that they provide. The one event says that if its a really big event, even minor figures can be notable from it. Then someone put forth an idea that the rest of his life isn't notable so it shouldn't be mentioned. Bah, do they not realize that encyclopedias don't have only "notable" information, or most pages would be empty? The fact that so many people have heard about him and there being over 8 months of coverage, scandal, interviews and the rest makes it all rather mind boggling. Ottava Rima (talk) 00:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I managed to get Nicolo Giraud up to GA, and I think the current state of the page validates quite a few of your arguments over the years. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 00:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

people will say anything if they don't like an article In this case, there's the added factor of the reasons why some people of various political persuasions don't want the article--as they cannot admit it, they are forced to use other reasons. DGG (talk) 00:46, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

as for Giraud, magnificent work you did there. People who don't know research sometimes do not realize that for any historical figure connected in any substantial way with a famous person or event, there's a web of connections, and there will always be sources. The art of a librarian is not to do research, but to know (by a skill that is not explicitly teachable) where there is, and is not, likely to be material. But at least people here should understand about knowledge networks. The reason Wikipedia is such a good place to work is that we can build our net on top of the pre-existing ones. DGG (talk) 02:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dear Dad

I'm tempted to say "all MASH episodes are notable," but not sure enough of my ground. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 03:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• • Please don't. They are not that clearly notable enough for individual articles. They are clearly important enough for good substantial sections of combination articles. Even if you think they might possibly be made into adequate separate articles, the present ones are by and large so bad as to not present a good case for defending. Making an encyclopedia is a practical process & takes compromise. Keeping content is a matter of principle--keeping them in separate articles isn't. DGG (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

That's 'bout what I figured. Redirects seem perfectly reasonable to me. Dlohcierekim 03:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Lordship Lane, Haringey

As it was yourself I had a huge argument with about the notability of roads two years ago, can I ask for your opinion of what should be done with Lordship Lane, Haringey? Despite the considerable amount of work that's obviously gone into it, it seems to me to be a patently unviable article. While I know from experience that it is possible to write a valid article on a relatively insignificant road, this really doesn't seem appropriate; the road in question is just a short named section of the longer A109 road, but merging this into the existing stub on the longer road would grossly unbalance it. There are only four notable (by WP standards) institutions on the road (Bruce Castle, Broadwater Farm, Noel Park and Wood Green Animal Shelter), on three of which I wrote the articles, so I'm probably too involved to make any significant pruning or AFD nomination without it being instantly challenged.

Do you have any thoughts on this one? It's a sensitive one; despite it's virtual invisibility, it's obviously someone's pet project about which they feel very protective, and when User:Mattisse tagged it for cleanup in the past they responded quite defensively, so it seems quite likely that any deletion or massive pruning would cause the author to leave in disgust. (I'd be fuming if someone deleted a 50kb article I'd been working on for two years!) Do you think it's better to turn a blind eye to this one, or can you think of any obvious way to rescue it which doesn't involve slash-and-burn removal? – iridescent 15:35, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

fascinating implications in a variety of directions. beautiful though the article is, it needs some basic improvements, like saying which district of Haringey, so I can find it on a modern map (finally did). I think it can be perhaps regarded as an article on a neighborhood, though I am still trying to figure out if it is a significant commercial street. If it is, that justifies it, though obviously not in such detail. That it's part of a major road also doesn't detract--most highways when they go through towns are renamed for that portion Possible combination article: Streets in Haringey? What I want to do right now is to fix up my own neighborhood's article, Boerum Hill, now that I seethe possibilities--it needs work--somewhere along the line, it was missed that most of it is a registered historic district. The availability of Google Street views has some interesting possibilities. For London, I understand there is also [6], though it does have this particular street yet.'

the fascination implications are that now we could do this level of detail anywhere in at least the US and the UK, and I suppose many other countries. Though the US does not have the VCH and the Ordnance Survey, it does have the Sanborn maps with their almost year to year revisions. There's no PD source for them all, though there is for NYC about about 5 year intervals. Then, the question is , why ought we not? Not what in the existing rules says we shouldn't for WP:LOCAL takes care of that, but what we should ideally do. The amount of available detail was not fully comprehended when Wp was founded, and each year i see new things that would make much more possible that anyone would have guess, visionaries though they thought they were. the main problem is that if we did coverage would be very irregular--but so it is anyway. Of course, there's Wikia. Is there a suitable project? If not, should we start one? DGG (talk) 05:59, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding whether it's a notable street, if one uses WP:50k as a general guideline I'd say it's right on the borderline. It's certainly a relatively old street – it's the yellow one running east-west on this map from 1619 marked "Berry Lane", but doesn't seem to have had (or to have) much significance. It runs east-west between two of the major north-south arteries into London Green Lanes and Ermine Street, but doesn't have any particular commercial significance; the big commercial developments are on the north-south roads. I'd say the four places I mention above ([[Noel Park, Wood Green Animal Shelter, Broadwater Farm, Bruce Castle) are the only points of interest (there are also two court buildings which one could probably wring a stub out of, but neither is architecturally distinguished). Personally I think it warrants the level of detail I gave to the individual named sections of A1 road – a comparator I regularly use for "relatively non-notable part of a notable longer highway" articles – but as I said above, this would involve a massive slash-and-burn operation. (The even marginally notable buildings could be kept, but the "Numbers 467 to 483 - Sila Ocakbasi Restaurant, Lordship Lane Internet Cafe, Cross Chemist, Bushey Car Spares, Flower Creations (Florist), Zeming Chinese Takeaway, Posh Pets (Pet Supplies & Dog Grooming Studio), Sinan Kuafor (Ladies Hair Salon)" phone-book style listings would still have to go.

As you know, we have and always will have a problem, in that we're handling 2 million plus articles with rules drawn up for a project with a few thousand articles. My general thinking is still, two years on, the opinion that was forged in the flare-up of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Portland Road and eventually led to the merge-and-redirect into A215 road; that stand-alone articles on marginal-notability topics make the project unmaintainable, and work better as subsections of larger articles in which the assorted sections provide context for each other – and that, since very few people read these articles and those that do are likely to want a lot of detail, the normal arguments against very long articles don't apply. This "enhanced list" approach would, IMO, work as well for any marginal-notability field – discographies of unsuccessful bands, the obscure cricketers who will never expand beyond three line stubs etc – but any attempt to put it into place has (ahem) caused controversy in the past – see the talkpage of Railway stations in Cromer for all the arguments laid out in full. 10,000 active users makes for a lot of inertia.

At some point (probably not until I'm done with the current series on bridges) I might try doing a "massive merge" in one particular topic. Even if it gets reverted, it might at least prompt a debate on how we're going to handle the flood of data we're currently being bombarded with in a more nuanced way than "keep"/"delete". It's a shame WikiProject Integration and Association of Mergist Wikipedians have effectively died, as this kind of initiative is something that's really needed now more than ever. – iridescent 16:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lessie Wei

Yo, is there chance that the article you left on this AfD was supposed to be for another AfD? I may be totally off, just checking. OlYeller^Talktome 15:41, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

oops. As I have been saying, there are too many noms for episodes & its hard to keep track. I've put it where it goes. Thanks.DGG (talk) 15:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Ya, it seems like there's a big toss up over episodes right now. I wish some conclusion could be reached at an inclusion guideline for notability. I feel like half the AfDs out there are for episodes. OlYeller^Talktome 15:47, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

The other half of the AfDs are bilateral relations, and again there's various compromises that those placing the afds prefer not to even consider. There are several good compromise solutions for both, and in each case the large number of afds up there now seems designed to prevent any compromise. . Most mass nominations like this are in my opinion attempts at forcing one's own way, because of the difficulty of responding adequately. . DGG (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Are you really going to make me go through an AfD for an almost improbable search term redirect? And no, I wouldn't "create a section" for one episode characters on a page designed for the more significant characters of the show.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 23:40, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

RfD, not AfD. And see my answer where I see you first raised the question, at WT:Redirect; you were right to ask it there-- a better place than here to have a discussion, if you want some opinions before going to RfD for these Smallville characters. DGG (talk) 02:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Law enforcement stubs

Hello I don't care to contradict you, but Law enforcement in The Gambia was deleted for exactly this reason, a {{db-empty}} and looking over your contributions, I don't think that you got all of the ones that I tagged; others may have been deleted as well. If you need to respond, please do so on my talk. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I do things the way I think correct. It has been known to happen that another admin thinks differently than I about something. In practice, Wikipedia admins get along by not attempting to correct each other every time they disagree. DGG (talk) 04:36, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Law enforcement in ..

(from my message to Kintetsubuffalo)" The series of articles that you have written Law enforcement in Benin (etc) are ll being nominated by another editor as speedy deletion for lack of content-- As reviewing admin, I think they do not quite meet the conditions for speedy deletion, but they really are not adequate as they are, so I have changed them to proposed deletion, giving you 7 days to improve them with some content and references. I suggest at the very least, date of founding and number of staff, for the various services. DGG (talk) 04:19, 19 May 2009 (UTC)"

Sorry, I wrote those two years ago, I don't even know which ones he's nommed and you changed, and if nobody's added content to them in that long, maybe they're not notable. I am in Japan now, so English language source material is nonexistent except for the Internet, and I am pretty sure those orgs don't have websites. Ah well, the people have voted with their keystrokes. Thanks for the heads up. Chris (クリス • フィッチュ) (talk) 12:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I've been thinking it might not be that hard, actually, & I'll give a try. DGG (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

and so it was. Easy actually, once the three multi-vol. encyclopedias on world law enforcement by country were found!! Now to check about the ones that may have gotten deleted, and recover them. DGG (talk) 22:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Pwn

"The article has plenty of room for expansion." Expansion from what sources? Urban Dictionary? Encyclopedia Dramatica? Message boards? Seriously, you'd keep an article on my left big toenail, wouldn't you? :-P Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 23:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

only if you're left-handed. (making the assumption that,as usual, the dominant hand is the dominant foot also). And only the big toe. I do have standards. DGG (talk) 23:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I actually am left handed. Nice to see that you can come up with a humorous answer to a humorous question too. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 00:13, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Re your note

Replied on my talk. EyeSerene^talk 16:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Shameless theft

Hi I have quoted you on my user page. It is attributed, but please remove it if you'd rather it were not there. pablo_hablo. 15:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

thanks for noticing it ! DGG (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

It's been there a while, I've only just got round to confessing! It just seemed to succinctly sum up a way forward away from all the

"You have no standards"
   "Well you would say that because you want to delete everything"
"Inclusionist!"
   "Deletonist!"

rubbish that forms so much of too many talk pages. Mind you, I won't be arguing in favour of articles about 10lb hammer's toes, left, right or hammer any time soon. pablo_hablo. 19:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Blanchardb's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

request for advice

Dear DGG, I would appreciate your advice regarding the handling of an edit war continued by an anonymous user in the article sipgate. The user continues to add/revert material that is unmistakenly against WP policy Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden of evidence. Would you please review this? The article (about a company) itself has problems with notability in fact. Kbrose (talk) 22:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

yes, I'll deal with it. It could even have been called to admin attention earlier. DGG (talk) 22:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Would you also have time to look at PimpMyNumber. Primary author appears as insider (company IP infrastructure uses same DNS names as author), refuses to provide secondary sources to establish notability, and uses same IP network as our anonymous war editor, coincidence? Problems seems to be notability and COI. Thanks. Kbrose (talk) 23:32, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I looked, but it appears NPOV so far; I'll keep watching. DGG (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Drug Coupon

Could you take another look at this one? It was redirected once to coupon by another editor before the user drugzoo added everything back to the article including its one and only reference drugzoo.com at which time I tagged it as promotional only. If nothing else it is a gigantic coatrack on which to hang the link to his or her website. Thank you. Wperdue (talk) 04:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)wperdue

I removed that inappropriate link first thing. It may have been planned as promotional but there is the makings of an article there. DGG (talk) 04:53, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate you taking a look at it in a timely manner. Wperdue (talk) 05:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)wperdue

Kudos, comment & question

Dear David, I salute you for the various ideas expressed, and your sense of integrity. Your experiences from Princeton & Berkeley were also significant credentials to bring to bear. I have a comment about your working group for science and academia. Someone in the group lamented on how to distinguish "men from boys". At least in the science world it's quite easy. Below the obvious Nobel level, the next 2 are well known -- Academicians and Fellows. If WP can include all people on these 2 levels, it'd be quite a complete collection. Of course I'm only speaking about the US situation. I suspect that they have similar pecking order in other countries. Now a question unrelated to the above. When you have a chance, take a look at the discussion page for Deep Ng, and see my proposal to delete. Please advise if it's reasonable, and if so, the next step. Much obliged. --EJohn59 (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

commented there based on general considerations. You do realise it's not the least my subject.DGG (talk) 23:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Your comments are reasonable & helpful--EJohn59 (talk) 04:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)EJohn59

Clarify...

EC at the MfD? Send diff? I'll check. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:06, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah. Found it. Go ahead and switch our comments, since we were both responding to Dc. Keep yours indented and outdent mine. Thanks. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 03:10, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding ECRI Institue, I have listed credible third party references and truly do not know why this keeps getting deleted - can you be more specific as to sections, words, etc.?

CarolKocherecri (talk) 17:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

the only references you have from outside the institute are [7],which does not mention it, and [8] which in a general article contains a quote from someone at the institute. But the article is being deleted as promotional: 3 different admins have now agreed. Most of the article talks about how it all the vice presidents, and the locations of the various buildings. If you can find and post here one reference providing substantial coverage from 3rd party published reliable sources but not press releases, or material derived from press releases, that talks about the work of the institute, I will restore the article and rewrite it for you so it is not promotional. It will take extensive rewriting, not normal editing, and I do not want to do it if it has no chance of being notable. DGG (talk) 17:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

RfC Invitation

Within the past month or so, you appear to have commented on at least one AN/I, RS/N, or BLP/N thread involving the use of the term "Saint Pancake" in the Rachel Corrie article. As of May 24th, 2009, an RfC has been open at Talk:Rachel_Corrie#Request_for_Comments_on_the_inclusion_of_Saint_Pancake for over a week. As editors who have previously commented on at least one aspect of the dispute, your further participation is welcome and encouraged. Jclemens (talk) 23:00, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

ECRI

DGG Thanks for any help you can provide so we can get ECRI Institute on Wikipedia. As a proper reference, here is a report from the Agency for Healthcare and research Quality, listing us in the Bibliography, page 56, #9 https://www.ecri.org/Documents/EPC/Cardiac_Catheterization_in_Freestanding_Clinics.pdf CKKocherecri (talk) 00:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, but you need more than a passing mention, or a listing in a bibliography. You need to find an article or news report that discusses the organization in a substantial way. It does not have to be entirely about you, but it has to present sufficient material that a person can tell that you are important. I think you might be, but it needs to be shown by actual evidence that people in published work discuss the organization, not just mention it. If necessary, I may look myself, though not immediately, but if you keep track of what is written about you, it can facilitate things. I hope you have a library, but at least you must be affiliated with some organization that does: ask a librarian for help. I am one myself, but I can't personally do all the research for all the Wikipedia articles.DGG (talk) 00:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is another - we are part of the World Health Organization - I'll see if I can find a reference there. See below. CKKocherecri (talk) 01:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC) http://www.frsoft.com/pages/InfoPage.aspx?PageID=303

1. you are not part of the WHO, you are listed as an outside collaborating center in a particular project. If that is important, there will be published material discussing it. 2. The references to the Institute must be published' by a responsible source, not just the web page of a company using your product. Responsible sources for the purpose are published business or technical magazines or scientific or technical journals, or major newspapers. They can be online, but they must be independent and not derived from your own press releases. Please look for something usable. Unless it is really definitive, some people here will probably argue you need two of them, so I suggest you look for that. Once I see them, I will try to rewrite the article so it is not primarily promotional. Please do not send me scattered mentions of web pages. DGG (talk) 01:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Notices

Don't worry, the current notices, and the planned ones, concern the development of existing outlines. For example, notices of work that needs to be done to them, and notices to recruit editors to help out on them.

The Transhumanist    01:20, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: Another related thread has popped up at WP:VPR#OoK's expediency. --TT   04:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

seems under control. DGG (talk) 04:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Southbeach Notation

Hi, Thank you for your advice re writing style and use of citations for the Southbeach Notation article, which now has a 'this looks like a news release' tag on it at the moment. I have added a lot more detail, further references, and comparisons to other notations to illustrate the notable differences. Can you confirm if this is now in an appropriate state to have these tags removed? Or is there further work required? Your advice is much appreciated. Mbonline (talk) 20:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

well, 1/you overdid the detail a little. 2/the first paragraph is unclear: what is "situation improvement" ? I don't think it's an English phrase 2a/ much of the rest is unclear also, such as "power of expression is derived from the interpretation of the models made by the people using it." Does it perhaps mean that it's flexible to accommodate different concepts? And what is "perspective alignment in individuals" ? I think I know what you may have in mind, but I'd have to guess. 3/most of the semantics section seems standard concepts, not particular to this scheme 3a/ Ditto for the sections on ".1 Multi-perspective Situational Modelling" and especially "Structured brainstorming" 4./The "Example is a tutorial, and not appropriate content 5/and most important, I continue to see no references at all to show that anyone except the people who developed it think it important. DGG (talk) 20:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. I will attempt to address these points. Regarding 5/, there are references to articles published in bptrends and trizjournal, which are both respected publications. Do these not count as independent authorities saying this is important? If not, what kind of references do you think are necessary? Mbonline (talk) 20:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Re:email

I have replied to your e-mail with an explanation. --Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 20:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of extraordinary diseases and conditions

DGG,

I have an enormous amount of respect for you and have no wish to damage your reputation both personally or as a Wikipedian. I hope you can take my initial response ("Are you having a laugh") as a reaction to you making (IMO) an astonishing mistake rather than perceived incompetence, inexperience or ignorance. Perhaps I misunderstood what you thought the book could be cited for, or perhaps you were "voting" to keep a list that wasn't actually quite the same as the one I believed I was sending to AfD. Indeed, many of the keep "votes" seem to be for a "list of rare diseases", which is quite a different thing. I am genuinely sorry if my response was hurtful. Colin°^Talk 21:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

no problem. I may not have been clear enough in the first place. DGG (talk) 21:04, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep Hope alive!

Hey David. I was wondering if you would be willing to reconsider your delete vote in the case of Connie Bea Hope? At the worst I think a merge (which I have no inclination to support) to the tv station WKRG would seem a better route. I've been finding more sources and putting more pieces of the puzzle together as far as the show and its history go. For example I'm working on a source that includes the show as an early favorite in the channel's history. I think this biography is well worth including, even though it's notability is regional rather than national or international. Thanks for your kind consideration. Oh and I'm working on an article on the program itself now too Woman's World (tv) so we'll see what comes of that. Perhaps a merger may be in order down the road. But the show has had notable guests, so I'm going to see what comes of it. And I also found a source with an archival tape of the show. Thanks for your kind consideration. How was the new Star Trek movie? Have fun. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

my opinion is the same, but I am not the arbiter of what gets into WP. However, I think you'd really be stretching it to try two articles. If the CBH one is kept, merge the show in; if it isnt, merge her into the show. DGG (talk) 22:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Comment

Alright, thanks for the heads up, and I agree with your change.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 05:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cozzen Publications - A7?

I'd personally take "published numerous books globally" as an assertion of importance. Just my 0.02$ though :) --MLauba (talk) 09:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

every publisher does. It means in their case that if you pay extra, they give it at ISBN. Most vanity publishers do it as part of the basic package. DGG (talk) 17:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Maury Markowitz

Since you commented in the Great Clay Belt deletion review, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Maury Markowitz and redirect deletions. Feel free to ignore or remove this if you're not. --NE2 13:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

seems to have been taken care of adequately. Obviously further watching is in order, but I can trust you to do that. DGG (talk) 20:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Not that you need it...

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Every time I post a note on RSN, it is DGG who gives the most informative, thoughtful, helpful and context-providing comments. I believe that this is because he is actually a robot, the perfect machine of editing and reliable-source-noticeboarding, built by genius aliens to help make the world a better place by helping wikipedia not suck. But I have no citation, so please forgive my original research and accept this barnstar in spite of my obvious insanity. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 13:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

ECRI Institute

DGG - as requested, below are more substantial references for you based on the criteria you gave me -- thanks for that. These include a book, peer review/medical journals and newspapter articles. Should I try to put the page up again, or do you want to rewrite using the below - please let me know if there is anything else I need to do.

Rettig, Richard A, et al. (2007). False Hope: Bone Marrow Transplantation for Breast Cancer, 192-195, 204; Oxford University Press, New York, NY, ISBN-13:978-0-19-518776-2.

Stephenson, Joan, PhD, (1995). “Medical Technology Watchdog Plays Unique Role in Quality Assessment”, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 274, No. 13.

Noble, Meridith, MS, et al. (February, 2008). “Long-Term Opioid Therapy for Chronic Noncancer Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Efficacy and Safety”. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Volume 35, No.2.

Treadwell, Jonathan R., PhD, et al. (October, 2006). “A System for Rating the Stability and Strength of Medical Evidence”, BMC Medical Research Methodology.

Treadwell, Jonathan R., PhD, Fang Sun, MD, PhD, and Karen Schoelles, MD, SM (November, 2008). “Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Bariatric Surgery for Pediatric Obesity”, Annals of Surgery, Volume 248, No. 5.

Landro, Laura. “For Patients, a List of Hospital Hazards”, The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2008, page D2, Retrieved May 26, 2009.

Smith, Virginia A., Inquirer Staff Writer, “Confronting Bulimia”, The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 27, 2006, FEATURES MAGAZINE, page E01.

CKKocherecri (talk) 16:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

In practice, it would help to have links. But I am almost certain that most of them are articles merely mentioning the center , or studies where the center played a role, not about the center. The most likely is the JAMA article, & I'll check DGG (talk) 17:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Drv for List of extraordinary diseases and conditions

An AfD for this article, which you participated in, was recently closed as "no consensus." I have request a deletion review here [9].Bali ultimate (talk) 16:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

List of digital library projects

This is just a quick note that the a page you've commented on before List of digital library projects is undergoing discussion over a rewrite at Talk:List_of_digital_library_projects. The rewrite is at [10] Stuartyeates (talk) 20:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure how much it is going to help. I am not even sure that this should not be an exception to not being to some extent a web directory. DGG (talk) 20:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Heads Up

You are mentioned as part of the discussion at WP:ANI#User:DreamGuy and User:174.0.39.30 68.146.162.11 (talk) 23:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

DreamGuy is bitting a newby with a huge assumption of bad faith

I am bring this to your attention as an administrator. DreamGuy's comments to User:Granite thump are, in my opinion, way out of line in his final comments here. For his past acts DreamGuy has been placed on Wikipedia:Editing restrictions and (it says) if he makes any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith, he may be blocked. I personally think he has made a huge assumption of bad faith against User:Granite thump, but I am not an administrator. I trust your judgment. Varbas (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I am far too much involved with DG to get involved in something like this as an administrator. Perhaps though I can offer you the advice, that some challenged articles are worth defending, and some are not. And of those worth defending, only some are worth getting really involved in. If you want to make a stand, pick a good place for it. DGG (talk) 04:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Request_for_clarification:_DreamGuy_2 - See this request for clarification regarding DreamGuy   «l| Ψrometheăn ™|l»  (talk) 15:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andy Wisne (2nd nomination)

Since you are aware of this deletion discussion, asking you for advice about this AfD won't be perceived as canvassing. Do you think Andy Wisne can be saved? The subject passes WP:GNG, but the voters are all voting delete because of the COI and neutrality issues. I'm willing to rewrite this article, but will it be futile? Cunard (talk) 04:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I do not think he's notable. I do not think the college career is important enough; I think the unfortunate accident may make him a subject of temporary newspaper interest, but no more. The movie career hasn't started yet. What else is there? For those who think all division IA players notable, he's notable as that, & that could be emphasized. I think the point is not clear. He probably would not have had a major trophy had he played the season, nor was Notre Dame the champion that year. The question is really one's personal sympathy for him--he might have had it, but as you say, the excesses there backfired. This article shows the problem of the GNG: it does not really settle anything, because one then argues about significant coverage, and whether it was tabloid type human relations only. Try to argue for a non-consensus on the ground of the contamination of the discussion by pathos. DGG (talk) 12:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I agree that he fails WP:ATHLETE and WP:ENTERTAINER, but I disagree that the sources are tabloid-like — they are neutrally-written and are from credible newspapers, including the LA Times. Anyway, the AfD looks like it's going to be closed as no consensus. Best, Cunard (talk) 22:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The longer I'm here, themore I look for significance over human interest. DGG (talk) 23:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

ECRI again

ECRI Institute is a research institute that is very well-respected in the medical community, known for its evidenced-based research on healthcare, health devices and protocols, and patient safety issues. The content on the journal articles are primarily ECRI research (not mere mention.)

Here is the link to our research study in the BMC journal:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/6/52

again you do not understand. What is needed is articles not where you make studies, but where some other group discusses your importance. DGG (talk) 11:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Please check again - False Hope book is good one to check. I can attached an assortment of newspaper articles, but your email doesn't seem to be set up for attachments? CKKocherecri (talk) 12:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC) .Email me from here, and I will reply from my regular account. You list a few pp. in the book. copies of them, perhaps? DGG (talk) 12:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I will email. I am being pressured to get the page up and as I am new in this job, I don't want to disappoint. We were initially very excited to join WIkipedia, but it's becoming more complicated than we thought. Here is a link:

https://www.ecri.org/Press/Pages/In_The_News.aspx

to many, many third party news articles about us (Not written by us, but by Phila Inquirer, Wall Street Journal). If I can have our librarian scan pages from the False Hope book, I will. In the meantime, I am emailing you some copies of articles where our doctors are quoted and interviewed, or where some of our break through research is highlighted, particularly in bulimia and hospital fire safety. I'll try to repost the entry with some of these references (before I get fired.!!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kocherecri (talk • contribs) 16:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

tell them that they have no business pressuring you, because it is not under your control. We are not an advertising medium where the end result depend upon your diligence. What you have said about getting paid on the basis of your success in getting the article in wikipedia is a clear indication that you ought not to have written the article in the first place--see WP:Conflict of Interest Anyone paid to put entries in Wikipedia who is paid by results is inevitably going to be disappointed; we almost always remove such articles. Nor do organizations "join" wikipedia; rather, individuals edit on topics that interest them. Whether or not you have a page, and what it says, does not depend upon you, but upon the community. Once I get the material, and if I think it will support an article, I will do what I can, because I think you might well be notable--but that won't help unless there are sources to show it according to our rules, because I am not the one to decide if the article gets kept, nor is anything kept because someone thinks it is notable. I will work on it in a week or two, not immediately; I have my own priorities. I don't get paid for this, you know--none of us do. I am willing to write the article from scratch, nonetheless, because I think it will help the encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 20:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

sorry, DGG - I was kidding about the being fired - humor doesn't transfer well online. We absolutely are not hoping to be on Wikipedia for business purposes, but we truly believe that we are notable and interesting, and worth folks knowing about. You certainly seem to have a lot to handle. I went back to the content and compared to like organizations (AHRQ and Advisory Board Company.]

I have rewritten the article and removed promotional copy, added the proper references as per directions for citations in Wiki: Your First Article. Can you view my user page and see how it looks now, or can I post it somewhere temporarily for your review? I am unable to repost,obviously. Thanks! CKKocherecri (talk) 03:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I continue to see no sources about the organization, just some reports it has issued; the article still appears mainly promotional. I removed some of the worst of it, unsuitable even for user space. As I have no COI, & as it might be notable, when I have a chance in a week or two I may try to write an article about it. Anyone else without COI is welcome to try , of course, and I certainly would encourage them to do so. End of discussion here, please. DGG (talk) 03:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

ECRI Institute Hi Dave - A strange thing happened today at ECRI. Our forensic scientist and on of our vice presidents received a google alert today as he tracks instances of ECRI Institute on the Web. The Google Alert gave him my most up-to-date User Page from last night, complete with the references you asked for. I had rewritten it to take out all promotional verbage.

I will send you the link because it may help you to see if I am getting closer to being publishable on Wikipedia. He was happy to see we are attempting to have a mention there, as we are truly notable.

I would like to email you the link he received today with all my user page content. He of course if we were in fact on Wikipedia? He saw that we had been deleted and was concerned.

The message he got, with the link to my WIki user page, was:

Google Web Alert for: "ECRI Institute" UserKocherecri Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

ECRI Institute is a nonprofit organization that uses the discipline of applied ... ECRI Institute publishes hazard reports and alerts journals resource ...

I didn't know that my user page could be out there for the public to view in such a way. CKKocherecri (talk) 20:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

If you can view other people's, they can view yours'. What you mean, I suspect, is that you did not know that google indexes it. They do. I don't think they should, and we could prevent it by technical means, but the consensus here so far as been otherwise. DGG (talk) 21:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

• I hope you don't mind me interrupting your conversation, but there is a technique for preventing draft material in your sandbox from being indexed in future (it won't eliminate any existing index/cache/link). Just add the next line to the top of each sandbox page. The second "caution" line aims to reduce liability if someone finds your draft anyway. - Pointillist (talk) 21:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX |visible = yes}}

{{caution|This is not a Wikipedia article. It may contain unverified draft material that is unsupported, incomplete, out of date, biased or simply false. Don't use anything on this page for any purpose. }}

yes, this works, but, Pointillist, this was on the main user page, not a subp. Can one use that? there also.?DGG (talk) 21:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is effective on a User: page. As I understand it, the template expands to __NOINDEX__[[category:Wikipedia noindex pages]]{{#ifeq:yes|yes|This page has been removed from search engines' indexes.}} There are already quite a few users who "__NOINDEX__" on their User page, e.g. Plrk added it to User:Plrk on 8 Sept 08 (this diff), and added "misunderstood genius" two edits later. If __NOINDEX__ had been effective on a User: page, Googling for Plrk "misunderstood genius" would fail. So you have to do your drafting in a "sandbox" sub-page.

There's another point I should have mentioned. My sandbox contains the phrase "Clive Labovitch (1932-1994) was an entrepreneuial British publisher" (note the typo). If you search for that string via google, my sandbox won't be found because I've it tagged with {{NOINDEX}}, but the entire page has been scraped by another site and using this very specific search, complete with typo, does return the copy of the page held on the other site. That's not generally a problem (e.g. in my example if you Google for Clive Labovitch there are many pages of results before you hit the screen-scraped sandbox page) but you should be aware of it. - Pointillist (talk) 22:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we can unfortunately do nothing practical about this. We do not control the way other sites work, nor do we control Google. This is one of the reasons for the immediate deletion of certain material. It doesn't prevent this,but it does minimize the effect. DGG (talk) 21:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

full-out phishing expedition

Please, I need you to be involved. DreamGuy and MuZemike have started a complaint about me, once again, claiming that I am a sockpuppet here. This is the 2nd taime is a week. It looks like a full-out phishing expedition this time. They have also thrown the relative newbie User:Granite thump into their complaint. This is a huge assumption of bad faith. MuZemike and DreamGuy's accusations, the approval of a CheckUser, and no notification to either myself or User:Granite thump, is completely against wikipolicy (as I understand it). You are an admin. It is part of your role to enforce the rules and policy. Is there anything you can do to help control the harassment we are now be subjected to? And also, can you explain to me why the WP:AE review of DreamGuy’s behaviour was so suddenly aborted by User:KillerChihuahua, with no sanctions against DG? That was just strange. If you are not able/willing to get involved, can you point me to someone who is not afraid of DG? Varbas (talk) 00:26, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

• • Kindly send me an email from this page. I need to ask you some questions . Running checkuser is according to the discretion of the checkusers. I remind you again that I will never be able to do anything as an administrator here in anything involving Dream Guy. You must try one of the i admins who has not had run ins with him previously (there still are some). DGG (talk) 00:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not give out my e-mail address. If you have questions to ask of me, then please ask them. Varbas (talk) 01:53, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

then you can hardly expect help from me in something of this sort. You surely are aware of how to set up a throw-away email account. How can I ask you the obvious and necessary questions without possibly prejudicing the case against you? You want me to ask them in public, I'll do it at the AN/I. You chose to come here and ask for help, remember! DGG (talk) 02:01, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Regional vocabularies of American English

As you probably know, following AfD discussion the consensus was to keep and clean up Regional vocabularies of American English. This will require adding references where possible, and removing large amounts of unreferenced material. I have begun this process; your help would be greatly appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 15:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Rugrats characters - Please reconsider!

There's no way Rugrats is of more importance than SpongeBob SquarePants. All of the SpongeBob SquarePants characters' articles have been merged into the list of characters pages. And SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents are also major works. If the decision is not to delete, I will restore articles to individual SpongeBob and Fairly OddParents characters. Marcus2 (talk) 13:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

We may want to try to undelete some other character pages also, and probably expand the content of the sections in many combination articles. The central figure of a show is important enough for an article of its own. For most shows, most other characters are not..DGG (talk) 14:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

ECRI Institute

DGG - Help!! On May 24 on your talk page, you had offered to rewrite the ECRI Institute article. I have provided everything I can to help you in terms of references, and rewrote the page myself on my User page. I don't know what to do next. Is there someone else that can help me? Carol ~~

Kindly email me the text of the JAMA article, which is the only one that might possibly prove notability. It is not available on line that I can determine. DGG (talk) 20:14, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

ECRI Institute

DGG - Happy to scan JAMA article for you - can I add it to your talk page as an attachment somehow, or should I email it to you? THanks for your help. Carol~~

I have emailed you. DGG (talk) 20:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I just scanned and emailed NYTimes and JAMA articles for you. CK~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kocherecri (talk • contribs) 21:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do tonight or tomorrow. DGG (talk) 21:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, David - I really appreciate it and good luck!! June 3, 2009 CK~~

Mediation at WP:FICT

I'm suggesting we ask for mediation to help build teh guidance at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction). What I propose is that a mediator be the only person to edit the project page itself and be the one to guide discussion and discern consensus. I've proposed it at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction)#Mediation. As a past participant in the lengthy debates, I'd appreciate your input and hopefully your agreement. Hiding T 10:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I will support it, if it includes NOT PLOT and all related policies and guidelines, including those on subarticles. Unfortunately, I think it would only succeed in settling the issue if we had binding mediation. DGG (talk) 15:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Mowbray Howard, 6th Earl of Effingham?

Is every little peer notable enough for their own article, even if they don't do anything of note? Maybe my republicanism is showing, but I didn't think that was the case. --Orange Mike | Talk 14:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

"little" peers such as baronets are not. Major peerage , such as earls, usually have been considered to be. For right reasons or wrong, they have usually been important enough for there to be sources. English major peers until very recently have also always been members of the legislature. , which unquestionably counts. DGG (talk) 14:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I see your point. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

According to Hansard's database, he spoke in the the Lords three times: once in 1966, twice in 1967; I assume he must have attended more often than that. I reckon that puts him at least on a par of notability with the typical member of, say, the New Hampshire House of Representatives (all 400 of them). --Orange Mike | Talk 16:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, NH is interesting. The proportion to population is 1:3000. Assuming most members are re-elected once, then 1:300 adults there are notable. As you might expect, my conclusion is to use that ratio worldwide. Given 3 billion living adults, that's 10 million BLPs. If 100 billion is the total number of humans who have ever lived [11] then the number would be higher, but since nowhere near as many lived to be adults or lived as long once they became adults, I'll estimate we should have 100 million articles about people. Maybe half, if NH people are more interesting than the average.

High schools

This is an interesting claim! Please point out to me all the articles on High Schools I have supposedly "repeatedly" nominated? I happen to think that many, if not most High Schools are notable. What I do not accept is arguments about how other schools are notable have any relevance about the notability of the schools under discussion at AfD, here and elsewhere. As a follow up question, if the concept of inherent notability of High Schools was developed through the outcomes of AfDs, how is it any more POINTy of me to use the same medium to point out its absurdity? Why is it now POINTy to consider that WP:N and the use of quality sources and encyclopedic material should apply across the entire encyclopedia?

I am not picking High Schools at random; articles on schools that I have nominated for deletion or commented in support of their deletion (and their have not been that many) have all failed to meet WP:N and the arguments to keep are generally circular reasoning —i.e. schools are kept because they are usualy kept—and only rarely on the merits of the actual article. If High School articles require an exemption from WP:N, then a draft guideline should be developed and consensus for this demonstrated. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I have already modified my statement there. For this particular group of schools, the usual argument does not necessarily hold, & I supplemented it, & removed any comment about other nominations. My apologies for that; this was not the AfD to say it.

But it seems you do hold the position that the practice should in fact be changed. How many afds will it take to convince you that the consensus is otherwise? I've given the argument enough times with respect to schools, so I will say it more generally: for some classes of things it is in practice convenient to adopt conventions & fixed rules, instead of deciding individually. We have to balance the harm from including articles on a few subnotable things & omitting articles on a few barely notable ones on the one hand, with the advantages of having more time and energy for article writing and sourcing rather than debate on the other. This is a big encyclopedia with a lot of topics to cover. There are hundreds of thousands of high schools in the world--over 30,000 in the US alone. There are an even greater number of primary and intermediate schools. Many of each will be unclear about notability, but if argued fully and after a careful and painstaking search, about 80 or 90% of the high schools and about 10 or 20% of the other schools will be shown notable. Rather than debate tens of thousands of articles, it is better to have the simple rule that one class get articles, and the other merges into school districts or localities. There are hundreds of thousands of little towns and villages. We could probably meet the technical requirements for 95% in the developed countries, and elsewhere as sources become available. We could fight about just which 10,000 to omit, or we could just leave them all & work on writing better articles and covering the areas left uncovered. There are as I discussed above hundreds of thousands of state-level politicians. Frankly, I doubt that that more than 80% or so are notable& it might be less-but it isn't worth the effort to remove them. It's better to get whatever verifiable information we do have, and leave the articles for beginners to work on.

It bothers me too when there's an article on something not really worth it--but we have hugh gaps to fill. And, more important, we have tens of thousands of articles with gross puffery and spam and nonsense and error and prejudice, on notable and unnotable alike, and that sort of material is what really harms the encyclopedia. We have work to do. I like debating, and I'd gladly argue with you all night, but there's stuff to write and edit. So back I go to speedy patrol to get rid of the worst of it. DGG (talk) 06:18, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Notability of journalists

Hi DGG

I have a poser for you. The nominator of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Theodoulou correctly pointed out that the stub doesn't really assert "WP:N"-type notability, and is unreferenced. Despite a reasonable effort to find sources (including well beyond the Internet) about the subject, I failed to turn up anything usable. Anything based on the number of articles that he has written can be reasonably considered WP:OR. I don't have a strong argument (or, necessarily, a strong view) that this sort of stub article should be kept—do you have any views?

Regards, Bongomatic 06:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Journalists have been a consistent problem. They are almost never written about, unless they win major awards. And, of course, Google is no great help in sorting out the very few articles about them from the ones that represent their writings. I do not consider counting articles to be OR--we've done this for WP:PROF for year. And you can get citations also, in Google Scholar. DGG (talk) 14:12, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Rescued

I have added a "rescued" tag to show where in AFD debates the rescue effort has begun, previously we have been adding a tag that shows when ARS was notified, but I don't think that is useful since nothing has changed at that point.Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bahamas–Russia relations See here for an example that contrasts the difference in placement. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest modifying it to include major changes by people not in the squadron. We there have no monopoly of the good editors, & it's just as important whoever does it. Additionally, I think it over-advertises the ARS. I urge you to change that template right away or we will be back at TfD.DGG (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

your comment about disruptive editing

Your comment here [12], are you then willing to block people on the basis of this, and do other admins? it's a slippery slope of saying well it's similar to an official rule so it can't be right. it's like saying manslaughter should be punished like murder. LibStar (talk) 09:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

there are many ways of being disruptive. My idea of how to deal with disruption, is informal advice, and then if necessary calling it to the attention of the community, in the hope that others will see it for what it is. I don't block for anything short of downright vandalism. that is either repeated after warning or so drastic as to require immediate action. Formal disciplinary action is a last resort, just like deletion.

as for slippery slopes, what I do not like are precipices: tolerating improper and risky behavior until someone actually falls of the cliff. The point of even blocking is not to punish according to one's sins, but to prevent people from continuing to do things wrong. Thus I restate from the place you referenced,

there are several allied improper behaviors: tag-teaming, where several editors combine to force through changes they would not be able to otherwise because of 3RR; piling on, adding identical votes because someone else has voted, whether or not you have specifically been requested to; meat-puppetry, acting essentially as a proxy for another editor whether by explicit or implicit agreement; and also of course canvassing, whether during an AfD or in preparation for one. All 4 are disruptive. The technicalities are not important, the effect is what we should pay attention to. DGG (talk) 07:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Images at TV

Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2009 June 4 has the MASH images up for deletion and are holding them to a much higher standard than any episode of South Park. They are requiring that image to be mentioned in news sources. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

I've started a little infernal voting thing to get a clearer view of how people stand and if we've got consensus either way. Regards, Ironholds (talk) 04:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are talking about the UK House of Lords? I don't think you should have started yet--I think it needs a good deal wider participation first. I'm reluctant to do canvassing, but the proposal that member of the HoL were never inherently notable as members of a legislature , even before the reform in 1999, is in clear contradiction of historical fact, and an example of recentism run amok. Traditional topics remain notable. If I were to make a joke about that, I could see it as a clear attempt to get me diverted from defending fiction and bilateral relations, in order to tempt me to individually defend each of the thousands of these. WP, the encyclopedia that made not only present, but past aristocracy obsolete by its own fiat. DGG (talk) 04:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

We've advertised it wide and far - if people aren't interested in participating, that's there problem. The rule on legislative members was put there for a reason - notability is built on references, and the idea is that the actions requires for someone to become a member of a national legislative body are important enough that the attention of newspapers, journals, other RSs will be drawn to them. The achievement of getting born, however? Not so much. If these people have done something notable (actually attending would be a good start for many of them) then references will be available. I'm not engaging in recentism; take a look at my created articles and see if I think old things are less important than new things. My FA? About a dead man. My GAs? About several dead men, one of them for over two hundred years, and cases started and operated in by dead men. The rule on members of a legislature inherently passing WP:BIO was put there for a reason. Members of the House of Lords who never took their seats, never showed any interest in politics and in one case died so soon after getting the title that he couldn't have gone to the Lords without a bullet train clash with that reason. Please explain, if you will, how a figure who gained his role in the Lords through the death of his father and no notable achievements of his own and died before he could even physically have attended counts as a politician? He was a member of a house that he never attended, and through no achievement of his own. Ironholds (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

your comments on bilateral AfDs

with regard to your comment, are you seriously suggesting we need 20,000 of these, including the most non notable of non notables like Nauru-Monaco, Tuvalu-Ivory Coast, Bahamas-Liechtenstein? Some of the less notable have been nicely merged. the central test is [[WP:N}}, we don't keep articles for the sake of them, as per WP:NOHARM, you will see in each of these AfDs, people feverishly do google searches to find something that proves notable relations which is what keep voters should do. but plain and simple, if they don't meet WP:N, they shouldn't be on Wikipedia. thanks LibStar (talk) 05:17, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Your comment at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction) - well said

Just saw your comment on 08:51, 29 May 2009 - excellent! Thanks for taking out precious time to deal with this depressing situation, that a number of editors are so keen on purging fiction articles from Wikipedia. I can sure understand and fully respect if they find the fiction articles to be of such minor importance that they opt not read the articles themselves; but why they so persistently insist on deletion, hindering other people in reading the articles, is a mystery. A sincere appreciation of your work. Power.corrupts (talk) 14:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

GHits in an article?

I hate asking a 2nd question like this, but I would have reverted that Wiseman edit on principle. Are you sure about its inclusion? Dougweller (talk) 08:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

it's a hack in place of a proper expansion to show the ones that are pertinent, which are about half. It is however enough to overcome the argument there nobody refers to him, which is a proper use.

I see, but surely all of those authors might have been calling his works rubbish, or supporting him and saying that he proves that aliens built the pyramids. Dougweller (talk) 19:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Right, it needs to be expanded with the actual citations. Anyhow, something which many scholars go to the trouble of citing the work as rubbish is notable. (a much more difficult problem is the fringe theory so weird that scholars simply ignore, and we can find no 3rd party references for). And the sources there show that the citing people cannot be all cranks. DGG (talk) 19:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

ECRI Institute

David - You recommended yesterday that I try again to write my ECRI Institute article with the references you found acceptable. However, when I go to Create an Article, I get a message "Unauthorized" and "This page is currently protected and can be edited or moved only by administrators." As an administrator, can you help me to go back in?

Also, we are referenced on the AHRQ website http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epc/ecriepc.htm. It's a full page about ECRI being an Evidence-Based Practice Center (EPC). AHRQ is actually an article on Wikipedia.

Another good reference to add to JAMA and NYTimes is http://www.the-scientist.com/2008/01/01/s18/2/ Article about ECRI Institute in The Scientist.

I could really use some help with my next steps as I am happy to try again at this, as you recommended. It seems like you are really, really overloaded. Is there any other administrator who might be able to help me? Thanks, DGG 6-16-09 carolKocherecri (talk) 00:15, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

any editor can do this. it does not take an administrator. DGG (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Lockwood's Books

Hello there, David. Thank you so much for helping me fix/edit my article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lockwood_(author). I just learned that you left out the "Green Books" section? My reasons for doing that's because those books (green) are so much different from Lockwood's earlier books on architectural and urban history. Second is, 25 years has passed since the publication of his architectural history book. If this is not acceptable, I think I'll just go re-order the books so the most recent comes first and the oldest book last? Thank you. Jxc5 (talk) 13:32, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I responded on the article talk page. Please remember that anyone can edit an article, not just you and me. When I edit, I do so not an administrator with any special authority, but just an editor of some experience in knowing what will make an article that the community will consider acceptable. DGG (talk) 17:59, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

International Journal of General Systems

Hi DGG,

I have always kept my doubts about your removal of to the journal related scientists on the International Journal of General Systems article. Now I have raised a question about this on the articles talk page (here) and at the WikiProject Academic Journals (here). I would appreciate if your could comment there. Thank you.

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 21:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

my comment is at the Wikiproject. DGG (talk) 18:49, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thanks you. I have refraised my response, putting this rather black and white, in an attempt to get to the bottum of things. I hope you can take an other look... Thank you. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Opinion requested

Could you take a look at Brian D. Beaudreault. I de-PRODed the article because I was unsure if he ould be considered notable or not. He has some news mentions at GNews, but nothing super significant. I couldn't find any AfDs on U.S. military officers to serve as guidance, and thought you might have a better idea.

Thanks, ThaddeusB (talk) 04:58, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

the general practice seems to be that under the rank of major-general, and without very high level decorations, they are not kept unless there is some special reason for notability, such as being in charge of a really major newsworthy special operation, or of some personal distinctiveness. I do not see any of this-- he seems to not have any notability apart from his unit. Agreed, it's a notable unit. For some reason I do not understand, the articles on these MEUs do not contain a list of the successive commanders. By analogy to other organizations, I would have thought it reasonable to add them. Army units of the same size seem to have such lists, eg. 1st Cavalry Regiment (United States) DGG (talk) 05:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to weigh in for a moment, as the editor who prodded the article. In general, the notability requirements for biographies, and specifically military biographies, requires the individual to have some kind of recognition beyond his or her peers (for example, what makes this guy more notable than the 700 or so other Marine Colonels?). I figured it was pretty black and white: no signifcant awards, no significant events associated with him, no especially notable commands, no major contributions to any field. He could be just about any other officer.

I do agree that MEUs are probably the most notable of Marine units. However, I don't think a reference exists that lists the names of past commanders, at least not accessible to the general public. If one were to exist, I'd be happy to edit the articles and add them. Thanks, bahamut0013^words_deeds 05:37, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

that business, notable beyond his peers, does not seem to be to be logical--a 2nd lt. needs to be notable beyond other 2nd lts, and a lt. gen. beyond other lt. gen.? The 2 groups are not comparable. To revert to my own field, it's like saying we judge the notability of asst. professors by comparing them with other assistant professors, and the top 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/10 of them are notable--in reality it's many fewer than that. You've said two different things above; you've compared to the other colonels, and to just officers. If the group is all Marines officers, then certainly only a small percentage of them are Colonels. 5% ? I tend to look at this as selecting the top rank or ranks of the profession, but we surely don't mean full generals only, or just Distinguished Professors. Numerically, it takes 2 factors: , what is the overall group (e.g. officers or career officers), and what percentage do we want of them. Non-numerically, it takes figuring out at what level it corresponds to some meaning of distinguished. I don't like to go by the GNG, because then the factor is how efficient is the publicity apparatus in the field concerned, and what level publication counts as a discriminating reliable source. At least the US military takes care of one problem for us: the availability of reliable copyright-cleared material, text and especially photos. I wish other fields had something like their standard of free published biographic information. DGG (talk) 06:14, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood; the rank comparison was just an example. The term "peers" could be as narrow or as wide as the circumstance requires, though we could alter it, to say, just include MEU commanders or widen it to officers of LtCol or higher. There are a great many officers in the United States military, and they are not all notable, even those in the upper ranks. Given that we can't reasonably have biographies on every single individual or even most individuals, we have to pick and choose whom to have articles on... thus the notability criteria. I think my point was rather that this individual has no more notability than any other average officer; and that if we were to judge him notable, we would be changing the standard of notability to include a huge number of other individuals as well. I understand that the "other articles exist" argument is considered weak by many, but at this time, I don't think it makes much sense to have seemingly random exceptions to the rule. I was in no way stating that rank makes notability, though coincidentally, the higher ranking individuals (such as generals) usually hold a post important enough to make them notable.

Perhaps I can rephrase what I said: ...requires the individual to have some kind of recognition beyond his or her peers, adjusted for the size and importance of that peerage. If you'd like, you can take a look at the demographics and make some statistical analysis (3.55% of officers are colonels, BTW). All for grades of general are lumped together, but I happen to know that the Corps only has four four-star generals currently, all of whom have established notability; on the flip side, there are nearly 40,000 Lance Corporals, and I'd be suprised if more than a dozen have biographies. What makes a private notable above his peers may not make him notable enough for Wikipedia.

I am in agreement with you regarding public sourcing. Like you say, publicity doesn't always equate to notability, and lack of publicity doesn't always equate lack of notability. There is one drawback to using military biographical information in Wikipedia, however, being that any given bio is likely to be a few years out of date, but with the proliferation of internet news services, you can usually find an archive of just about every minor press release on the most obscure military individual. bahamut0013^words_deeds 08:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

We were both giving examples to try to find a way of expressing what we meant. I too do not want to greatly increase the standard for individual bios in general--we have too much filling in to do for the people who qualify--just look at all the earlier Olympic athletes without articles. I am not an inclusionist in that sense, though some people mistakenly think I am. But do you think that we should not recognize the standards of a profession, to the extent that whomever they consider suitably qualified for the highest ranks is notable? (At least in those professions that do have ranks of some sort.) IIs it really coincidental that the people at the highest formal ranks have the most important positions in an hierarchical structure?. Even when someone is promoted for reasons unrelated to competence, aren't they still given a job to correspond to the rank?). It's then a matter of picking a rank above which they are appropriate for inclusion, and saying that below it requires something special. (e.g. for business executives we certainly ought to consider a CEO of a Fortune 500 company notable, but below that, it varies, and we can use other criteria--even including that of extensive publicity, on the basis that if there is enough publicity, a user might look here to get information.)

I'm not happy with the concept of notability being recognition outside one's specific area. (I don't think you mean peers in the sense of those of the same rank.) It depends on what one calls the specific area. Army officers known to people in the Navy? or to those who follow military affairs? or to the general public? If it's the latter, almost no one in the military or academic world or business world is notable--just politicians and actors. Where that concept does work is for local figures--a person has to be known outside their village--one place where I completely agree with the current formal standard. DGG (talk) 16:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the detail opinions DGG & Bahamut0013. I went ahead and nominated the article for deletion with no opinion expressed myself, see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brian_D._Beaudreault. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Recreating an article

I'd like to recreate the Devendra Prabhudesai article. It was a close AfD discussion, to the best of my recollection, and I think the wrong decision was made. But regardless, this June 7 story in the Hindu [13] and this one from April [14] certainly go a long way to establish notability. I already have the article in my userspace, but I don't want to violate GFDL by recreating without the edit history. I hope all is well with you. Take care. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:31, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I replaced your userspace article with the one carrying the history and incorporating your modifications. Next time, please ask to have it done this way in the first place, rather than copy and paste. DGG (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Will do. Roger roger. Thank you very much. As always. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:30, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Happy DGG's Day!

User:DGG has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as DGG's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear DGG! Peace, Rlevse ~ A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Mazel tov! Bearian (talk) 00:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Can I chime in? Gefeliciteerd! Drmies (talk) 02:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Much deserved! --ThaddeusB (talk) 05:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Congrats DCG... Keep up the good work :) -- Tinu Cherian - 09:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Happy your day !!!! Pohick2 (talk) 17:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

inre Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Cheating Scales of Bullamanka

Care to revisit the article and advise? I cannot speak toward the other episodes as they do not all have articles, but I think I made this one a squeeker. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 02:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

good rewrite job, either way. But I have no information about the importance of the series, so it makes it hard to evaluate by the sensible criteria I want to use , Masem's 3-way test: importance of the overall work, importance of the part or element or episode, and sources. . DGG (talk) 04:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

MIT Journal for consideration

Hi, me again. I understand that one of your specialties is on scientific journal. Please take a look at this one http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0022-2526, which ranks very high, and is sponsored by MIT, thus with solid backing. See if you may want to include it in WP. --EJohn59 (talk) 03:18, 25 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn

Sure, just write the article after the pattern of the other journal articles. I'll take a look that you get it right. Let me know when ready. DGG (talk) 03:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Please see draft on my talk page. I saw somewhere about the name change, but cannot find the ref now. Maybe you can help, or I'll write to the editor.--EJohn59 (talk) 18:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn

It's enough to show notability, because of the ISI rank. If you can find the previous editors, add them all. See if they have WP articles yet, and link. DGG (talk) 18:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, David, I put it up. See Studies in Applied Mathematics. It turns out there has been only one Editor since 1969, when the Journal adopted the new name, as confirmed on the MIT Math Dept web site. My friend wrote to them and is still waiting for their response on the Founding Editor in its previous incarnation, ie, MIT J. of Math & Phys.--EJohn59 (talk) 22:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn

now do the proper journal infobox--copy the format from another journal. The journal cover is an acceptable illustration, but add it with the same copyright justification as used for other journal covers. DGG (talk) 23:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

infobox added but sorry I don't know how to add image.--EJohn59 (talk) 20:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)EJohn

A Treasure Trove

First, thanks for your assistence at Catherine Hakim. The author is a friend and he is on his Honeymoon. The threatened speedy delete would have been a dissapointment I'm sure. (While Im a member of the Article Rescue Squad, I do my best to stay out of the fray that surrounds deleting/improving) Second, I plan on "ingesting" your talk pages. What little I have read are lessons on sane wikiediting. Thank you for sharing yourself with us.--Buster7 (talk) 02:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

you might then in particular want to see my topical archives listed at the start of the page, where I have pulled out some discussions of some recurring subjects. I support your approach , that it is more important to improve what is improvable (while deleting the junk) than to argue about them. DGG (talk) 02:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

7528 Huskvarna

The same guy nominated this for speedy after you declined. I declined and cleaned it up, removing blank links (like he could have done rather than tag it, argh). Any way, you may want to keep an eye on it to see if he goes for a third-time's-a-charm approach. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:36, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to draw your attention...

... to WP:SJ, a rather old essay of mine that I decided was ready to move to mainspace.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 20:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

WP space, you mean. I suggest you add some references to the discussions at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Academic Journals the relevant parts of WP:RS, & the great many discussions at WT:RS and the RS and FRINGE noticeboards. . I assume you've seen the key problem areas at pseudoscience, controversies over psychiatric & psychiatric medicines, and ethnic controversies. Do you intend this as a revision of guidelines, or an explanation of them? I'll take a further look in a day or two. DGG (talk) 20:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, WP space.

With contributions only from me and Drmies, it's not ready to be a revision of guidelines. All it can be at this stage is a counterpoint.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Asteroid stubs

I was told:

Please do not re-add speedy deletion tags to articles where they have been removed by a neutral editor as you did with 7528 Huskvarna. If you think the article should be deleted, nominate it at WP:AFD. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

where it will undoubtedly be kept, like the several thousand other such asteroids in Category:Asteroid stubs. DGG (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Before I start the AfD, could someone tell me why a robot was allowed to run amuck and create what appears to be several thousand totally useless articles? Are we letting robots write the encyclopedia now? Does anyone care about these? Does anyone other than robots read these articles? What possible benefit is it to the encyclopedia to clone data that was safely buried in an on-line database and fan it out into inefficient text? Why aren't these merged into the equally useless List of asteroids? What's next, stub aticles for every licence plate going past someone's window? A link to the last AfD nomination for these stubs would be very illuminating. Junk like this I think adversely impacts the credibility of the Wikipedia. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

If I may butt in.. the goal of the project is to provide a free summary of all notable human knowledge. Many things (esp. scientific topics) are notable even if very few people care about them. Not being popular/well-known isn't the same thing as not being notable. In can reasonably be argued that all astrological bodies fit into this automatically notable category. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

1. I was not saying that itwas my opinion that the asteroid stubs should be kept, I was rather telling you on the basis of experience and previous challenges to them that they undoubtedly will be--I would strongly advise you to read the arguments in other discussions both for individual ones and some of the lists. If anything, I think consensus is even stronger for this than in previous discussions. I would give you this advice regardless of my own views on the matter--I try to give the most accurate advice I can based on what I think is likely to happen here. If someone asks me what policy or practice here is , I tell them what it is, not what I want it to be. Anything else would be irresponsible. This is not a robot running amok, which has happened, but a well-considered, well-planned, and accepted project.
2. if you want to know my own views on the matter, I think that all named astronomical objects are important, and should be considered here as notable-- though I admit there may be a problem when it comes to galaxies and individual starts in all of them, especially if the number is in fact infinite. (Even so, there will never be an infinite number with names and identities.) This is an encyclopedia of both the real world and the world of human imagination. The objects of astronomy are basic to the real universe. And a considerable number of people care about them, and have cared about them since the dawn of history & probably before. Even now, astronomy is a major hobby in most countries. Probably 90% of the encyclopedia is of no actual interest to me. And so it will be for any one individual. Our success is as a group project. DGG (talk) 22:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

There's a discussion on this at WT:ASTRO (currently taking up most of the talk page) 76.66.203.200 (talk) 04:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Call for opinion on a neutrality accusation in a human genetics related article

As a fellow member of the WikiProject HGH may I ask for opinions on this accusation?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:06, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia at the Library

Hi David, you can check your email for some recent developments on this. Thanks!--Pharos (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for saving the article about Christopher Martenson from deletion! --Лъчезар (talk) 15:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Dr. Ramesh Prasad Mohapatra

Hi DGG; I don't think I'm hallucinating...the text is an almost exact transcription of the two web sites noted in the speedy deletion nomination. Thanks for your attention, JNW (talk) 03:39, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

sorry, I only saw the first of the two sites. Thanks for correcting me. It's gone now. DGG (talk) 03:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. It's back up again, apparently in identical form... JNW (talk) 03:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I've now protected the article against re-creation under the same name. It might be useful to check the users other contributions, since they seem to be on the same general subject. While we don't want to lose a specialist contributor, if he's adding copyvio, he has to be stopped. DGG (talk) 04:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

DGG/JNW, This content I am adding is not just copy and paste. The web site http://mohapsa.tripod.com/rpmohapatra is the web site developed and maintened by my self. I thought it would be easier for me to add things in stead of writing it again. I am currently adding stuff and put the hangon tag on top so that you guys show enough courtsey till I finish. He was a very notable archaeologist whose contribution is very significant for Orissan Archaeology, Art, Culture and History. I am fully aware of the and believe on copy right violation on Wiki. So definitely I will not add any thing that is in-appropriate.

Trust this will give you enough reason. Thanks in advance for your co-operation.

Please see WP:COPYRIGHT. The easiest way of handling this is to put a license for GFDL and CC-BY 2.0 on the web page. Copyrighht is one of the things where we have to follow the rules. Let me know when you;ve done that, and i will restore the article. DGG (talk) 04:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

DGG can you please let me know how I can put a license for GFDL and CC-BY 2.0 on the web page. Once I got to know how I can do that I will put the request right away.

Appreciate your help on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tikoo s (talk • contribs) 14:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I have already sent an e-mail and placed a licence for GFDL and CC-BY-SA CC-BY 2.0 on my webpage http://mohapsa.tripod.com/rpmohapatra. Can you please restore my page on Dr. Ramesh Prasad Mohapatra at the earliest.

Thanks in advance..--Tikoo s (talk) 15:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

DGG I have been waiting for your action on my article. Please let me know when that can be taken care of.--Tikoo s (talk) 00:36, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

No issue just let me know when you do it!!--Tikoo s (talk) 01:14, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Too long, but you read it anyway

Thank you for your very courteous comment of support at WP:RFC/PAID#Statement by TheGrappler. It's extremely reassuring to find that somebody actually spent the time to read through the "tldr" section, cogitated upon it, and found it worthy of comment (and indeed praise, though for the time I invested in writing it, I would have been pleased even to receive a criticism!). Rather like you, I'm a reasonable person with a studiously considered (but hopefully open-minded) approach to Wikipedia; unfortunately I'm not so good at expressing that approach concisely! I've long admired your tactful and intelligent contributions, so your words were especially appreciated. Regards, TheGrappler (talk) 00:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference New York Update: 3 weeks to go

For those of you who signed up early, Wiki-Conference New York has been confirmed for the weekend of July 25-26 at New York University, and we have Jimmy Wales signed on as a keynote speaker.

There's still plenty of time to join a panel, or to propose a lightning talk or an open space session. Register for the Wiki-Conference here. And sign up here for on-wiki notification. All are invited!
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 03:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability and fiction

Drafted an essay, feel free to tinker. I've announced it at the pump, added it to WP:N, will mention it on the mailing list and ask signpost to mention it. I'll whack it on cent, and then I think I'm out of here for a while. It's too exhausting. Hiding T 10:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I did tinker, as you can see. The main change is to specify clearly that WP:N is a guideline, and the GNG is only one part of it, while IAR is policy. Guidelines already intrinsically not only admit of exception, but are written with the intention of there being exceptions. I'm divided between making it a general statement for all articles , or making it specific to fiction--I may try for a combination. Now, I've long known that I ought to do my own, but for some peculiarity I find it easier to rewrite formal statements than to write them from scratch. So I really thanks you for this. If I have expressed something radically different from what you want to say, just revert, and I will move my version to a separate essay. I would like to add a paragraph of alternatives to deletion such as merging--but here I may perhaps diverge from what you want to say, because I've lately become a mergest for many of these smaller topics. When I do write my own, it will be from the standpoint of inclusion of content, not of articles. DGG (talk) 12:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Tinker to your heart's content. Masem has already been in and tinkered too, but you should feel free to add or remove whatever you want; I'm a fundamental believer in revising rather than reverting. I doubt you'll diverge too far from me, at heart I've always been a mergist with inclusionist leanings, which I think is not too far from your approach to cause us severe problems. I'll doubt I'll make many more edits to the page; consider it yours to do with what you want, even to the extent of ignoring it to finally write up your own thoughts. I'd truly love to see that, and perhaps even tinker with it if the mood catches me. Saying that, I'm feeling burnt out again, so I'll probably relax and recharge. Hiding T 15:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

List of authors ...

DGG. I'm sorry if my "lists are evil" opinion has rubbed you the wrong way. However I fail to see how this list is anything like the non-controversial and readily verified lists the encyclopedia does maintain. A very tiny minority of author/literature lists I can see include the type of politicized components this one does. The ones that do are direct in categorizing authors as part of an identifiable movement -- "ecofeminist" and "feminist" being the obvious examples I can find. This list is in reference to a politicized stance that does not have this amount of definition and is rather purposefully not identified with a movement of any kind -- simply those "opposing cults". What definition of "cult"? Which groups can accurately be included in the category? Is it if fair to imply a general opposition to all groups in the category even if the opposition is to a very specific group? In terms of the last question, if we start making notes about specifics as you suggest then we are consciously engaging in the kind WP:OR I am opposing because we are saying ... well Burroughs was opposed to Scientology but in our view Scientology is a cult hence this is included. Anyway, I hope you are not arguing only with my dumb general opinion about lists. As you correctly point out the AFD is about a specific list. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 18:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I also want to point out that I am going to disengage on the AfD page completely whether or not you respond there. I have a tendency to argue ad infinitum ... one of the many reasons I should just stay retired. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I acknowledged your changes at the AfD page. I recognize that this list is more problematic than most. The 2 articles I checked had sourced quotations for "anti-cult". We necessarily do OR every time we need to give a single defining phrase or characterization, and a great many list and category problems come from this--nationalities, religions, sexuality. But those lists and categories are useful nonetheless, and useful is a valid criterion for a list. (in general I agree that a lot of lame arguments come over just what defining phrase to use--e.g "pseudoscience". In defining anything contentious, in practice we necessarily use OR, because there are almost always multiple definitions available. so it's accepted that one can use OR to discuss and justify what article content should be, & on talk pages. NOR applies only to the content of articles. Even so, we cannot wholly avoid OR in writing such articles, even if we rely entirely on sourced quotations, because there is always the need to select whom to quote. And in discussion we use OR every time we discuss whether references for something are reliable, or give significant coverage. I'm not writing this out as a quarrel, but as an explanation of my view. DGG (talk) 05:27, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes there are a lot of gradations of OR going on all the time all over the encyclopedia and they are clearly necessary to get things done. Clearly we rely on our own abilities to interpret a variety of sources for a variety of reasons. However, as you allude to above, this becomes an issue when dealing with contentious subjects. In terms of the content of this particular list I have been maintaining for years that our most reliable sources are heavily weighted against the utility of the term "cult" when used in this capacity -- out there in culture it is inconsistently used, it is usually a pejorative, it has lost its initial sociological meaning, it is often associated with false and/or exaggerated attributes, etc. Even scholars who would like to rescue the term acknowledge what has become of it over the past few decades. From this perspective it is not a "useful" defining attribute for a list, and the most reliable sources on the topic tell us so. So why do we have a list like this one if it is based on such a shaky and biased category for inclusion? Because editors with an agenda like to WP:COATRACK whatever benefits their POV. "Cult" and NRM related editing here at Wikipedia is some of the worst all around - right up there with nationalist crankery. The unfortunate difference is in the value given to scholarship in these two arenas. "Neutral" editors and administrators supporting the "scholarly" perspective are usually respected as expressing the academic POV in nationalist skirmishes. Also, both real sides of the POV war are seen for what they are. In the NRM arena very little respect is given to anyone who supports a "scholarly" POV. "Cult critics" lump scholars who don't agree with them in with "group members", just as any nationalist would lump scholars who don't agree with them in with their political enemy. The difference is that in the NRM arena no one questions this logic. Two sides emerge (instead of three), and most scholarship ends up on the side of the fence that is most heavily identified with an obvious COI -- the adherent side. In the end it becomes completely impossible for the third voice to mediate a thing. In fact the third voice is hampered by the fact that while two POV sides are identified one is watched with much more suspicion than the other ... and this is the side scholarship is often associated with (the adherent side). In my humble view this arena of editing is perhaps one the most anti-intellectual we have. The encyclopedia should vigilantly defend its credibility against COI editing by NRM group members, but it needs to equally defend itself against their critics. When it doesn't we end up with lists like this one. Note: I am likewise writing this as an explanation of my views ... or at least providing some context for them.PelleSmith (talk) 15:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Journals

Hi David, I'm wondering if there are particular notability criteria that apply to journals, and think you might know the answer, (or at least have a view). I'm concerned about a brewing edit-squabble at Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.  pablo_hablo. 19:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Seduction community

Hi David I was going to update the Seduction Community article with the new things happening within the seduction community but the page is protected due to excessive spamming. I don't know what the situation was with spamming but if you could unprotect it that would be great, though I understand it is necessary to keep the money-grabbing dirty spammers out of Wikipedia. Anyway the content I wanted to add dealt with Johnny Soporno and his radical theories on equality and relationships, and his unusual porn slant which he is introducing into pickup and the general ties to pornography that have been established recently (Hoobie of RSD's porn and pickup hybrid website is an example of this trend). Also Adam Lyons' new theories on social proof and their application to club game, as well as his curious formula for attraction that he has developed. I also wanted to add information about the trend of recording pickups on video and the online culture behind this. There is also the trend of hiring female trainers now pioneered largely by PUATraining. Anyway I hope you consider unprotecting the page, in case you feel it is better to keep it shut I'll have a read up on the {editprotected} thing. Thanks for your time! —Preceding unsigned comment added by DRosin (talk • contribs) 00:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

If there are a few distinct blocks of text, then the thing to do is to put them on the talk page. If there are a number of little changes, then thats not as effective, obviously.

do you have reliable sources for all of these? It would be good to see them on the page there, because, not being part of the community, I can not otherwise tell what is or isn't spam. DGG (talk) 01:08, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Seduction community- added content to talk page for review

I've added some proposed content to the talk page of seduction community like you recommended. I've tried to find good references, it would be interesting to see what you think of the content. Thanks for reading and I happy 4th of July! DRosin (talk) 23:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CiterSquad

Up an running :) Jeepday (talk) 11:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Intelligence (journal)

Given the discussion about the inclusion of Editorial Board members above, you may want to have a look at this article. --Crusio (talk) 21:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

removed, and am addingjustification on the talk p. will watch-list. DGG (talk) 22:03, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Wiki-Conference New York panel

It would also be good if you folks could make some preparations among yourselves about how best to work together on the Quality and Governance panel. I'll be sending you all an e-mail on this soon.--Pharos (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Beloved (novel) characters

While it is of course perfectly allright to remove the prod from Beloved (novel) characters, I think you misunderstood my rationale. You say "if you want a merge propose a merge, not a deletion." But I don't want a merge, I don't think anything in this list of characters needs merging into the main article: the list is completely unnnecessary and cn (and should) go. I may take it to AfD, I haven't decided yet, but I am well aware that if I want a merge, I should not propose the article for deletion. Fram (talk) 06:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Fram, since there was no characters section in the article on the novel at all, and our coverage of novels does generally include a list of characters somewhere, I seem to have assumed that was what you intended, though I see now that you apparently meant that the mentions of the principal characters in the plot section of the main article was sufficient. In this particular case the overall coverage of this famous important novel is defective in most respects. In that article , the plot section is not very clearly written; the theme section needs references; the legacy section needs much additional material on the immense influence of the novel; there is no section on the references to the novel in major later fictional works; there is no section on historical accuracy; there is very insufficient information on the publishing history. All of this belongs, both the fictional and the external aspects. And in this case, where the same characters appear also in a previous play, and a subsequent movie--and in a real life case, I think there could certainly be justified articles on each of the major ones also. As one would expect, t here is quite a lot of criticism available, about 200 books,--some of them devoted entirely to this novel including serious academic works as well as student guides--not counting the equal number of theses [15] and the hundreds of articles. If there ever was a case where expansion of a fictional topic rather than deletion is the way to go, it's here. How we arrange the necessary extended coverage into articles is a less important problem. DGG (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Rescue

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For tirelessly rescuing articles from deletion discussions. Also, for giving me a new outlook on how to view inclusions/deletions. Paranormal Skeptic (talk) 16:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Madhyamvyayoga

What is it? Character from Mahabharata? Play? Is there a different spelling? Cheers, Dlohcierekim 15:00, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Lockwood's

Hi there, David. Can you please take a look at this article again? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lockwood_(author)) I've removed the "News and Media Appearances" section & added more references - as you suggested the last time. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much. Jxc5 (talk) 15:47, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It will stand, with some clean up-- more concise wording, no duplicate internal citations (I added a few suitable one's that you hadn't spoted). I will do it in stages. I notice that there is no reference supporting the following:

1. (most importantly, the phrase "Corporate Sustainability Strategist" -- can you suggest a less jargony one?
2. "consulting services to architectural firms such as Skidmore Owings and Merrill, real estate companies such as the Irvine Company, and international professional services firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers. "
3. "advised clients on corporate sustainability and green real estate" -- the references are just articles he has written.

I am still not certain how to express the articles, and will probably do some sharp trimming there--the choice is between references, and a list. I also marked two statements of being the "first" or "only" work that need actual evidence. DGG (talk) 20:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

My comments

Please note that I have only commented on your perspective having no counterbalance, and that it is reinforced by Casliber, not that there is anything inherently evil in your nomination or malignant about your intentions. I suspect that were I serving on such a committee, you would be eager to see someone more inclusionist on it to balance me out, and would be a bit taken aback if it me and say, Gavin Collins, were sitting on it together.—Kww(talk) 00:07, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course I understand that--but it still bothers me a little when people think this is my main concern, let alone my only concern, as they tend to, ever since it came up as an issue at my RfA. I never thought of inclusion/exclusion as even relevant to what the committee would be talking about. The suggested first topic is BLP, & I know my views here will be considerably at variance to the some of the others. I expect another one will be copyright, and I'd guess here also. There are a lot of other people there besides me and cas & I don't know the inclusionist/exclusionist views of most of them. I wouldn't be happy if the committee consisted only of you & Gavin but I wouldn't feel the same in a group of 30 other random good people?

I sympathise, since I suffer from the same problem. I'm the poster-boy anti-fiction deletionist, and people don't seem to note that I essentially don't edit fiction articles, and rarely comment at their AFDs anymore. Fair or not, it's our cross to bear. If it were the "BLP policy advisory group", I wouldn't have worried about it. It seems to me that the best way to do these things would be to throw together truly ad-hoc groups based on the topic at hand. That way, the composition of each group could be balanced against a particular topic. A balanced group over BLPs may or may not be a balanced group over copyrights.—Kww(talk) 01:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Well,I've noticed that you don't any more & from my point of view, I'd much rather discuss things with you than with some of those currently arguing that position. As for overall balance, someone might do an analysis. I suppose they will, if there ends up being an election. DGG (talk) 01:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

I want to thank you. In the past week, several people had an opportunity to show the true content of their character. Your conduct was an inspiration. When several others were loosing their heads, you conducted yourself with the highest standard of integrity and dignity.Dave (talk) 03:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC) P.S. I'm well aware that among the chaos were some legitimate issues. Rest assured I will do my best to fix them.

Arguing against redirects?

Any idea why all the sudden several editors are taking the unusual stance of insisting fictional characters can't even get redirects? I mean, I am sure it is probably coincidence, but it is rather annoying having to waste my time arguing for redirects. Surely there is strong consensus that these type of redirects are complete appropriate and they cost almost nothing. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think I do know why:

1. They are afraid the articles will be re-created using the existing information
2. They are even afraid that if the article is deleted (to remove the history) and then the redirect created, that something like that will be restored anyway.
3. They no longer even ask for merges, because with a merge it is not permitted to remove the history: there is no such thing as merge, delete history , & redirect, because it violates the terms of the license
4. In a few instances, they may simply want to remove as much information about fiction as possible. I checked the 18th c Éncyclopedie yesterday on this very point, and their article about novels simply mentions the names of a dozen French authors and a few works, without talking about any of them elsewhere. That's the sort of encyclopedia some people want.

Now, I myself would be extremely happy if some genres of fiction had never been devised in the first place, but, astoundingly, in many cases the people wanting to remove material are fans of the series or the work. They apparently feel that they are wasting time with things that aren't worth talking about in general company. DGG (talk) 17:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I just made a question along these lines at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gavilan ElessedilDGG (talk) 17:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Points 1 and 2 are good ones. It is unfair (and a waste of time, ThaddeusB) to rely on people checking their watchlists to find reversions of redirects, which occur all too regularly. There should be a mechanism to prevent this without a new consensus.

Otherwise I give a lengthy explanation of my rational in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lokar which I would like your opinion on, either there or (preferably) here. I like to think that if I am in the wrong, I, like DGG, can see my position evolve. Abductive (talk) 23:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying on Lokar, but I still thing a "redirect" through disambiguation is better than nothing. In any case, Lokar is the exception - normally these character names only have one possible target. In general, a redirect is better than deletion for several reasons:

• Obviously someone was looking for the material or the page would have never been created
• Pointing new editors directly to a place where the content exists encourages them to edit there and/or spend their time on something else rather than recreating material that exists somewhere
  • Yes, redirecting makes it easier for experienced editors to undo the redirect, but experienced editors are far less likely to do so against consensus than a new editor is to recreate against consensus
  • Additionally, have one's first page deleted is probably the #1 way to scare someone off. Better that they not create the worthless page rather than be crushed when it is immediately deleted/nominated for deletion.
• Adding a page to your watch list costs essentially nothing in terms of time or effort. Additionally, if you wanted to insure the page wasn't recreated the blank page after deletion you'd have to watch list the non-existent page or otherwise keep an eye on it.
  • I have merged and/or redirected more than 100 articles in the last couple months and only 2 or 3 were undone by anyone (and none went through AfD prior to my redirect). If people aren't undoing my BOLD redirect, I really don't think people undoing consensus redirects is a serious problem.
• If a particular redirect is becoming a problem, it can always be protected just like any other page
• Redirects cancan't be hit by "Random article" so there is no risk of someone being pointed to one by accident.

• • • That generally makes sense. Three things; I do find that monitoring my watchlist takes time, a few minutes each time, and over many times it adds up. A reversion rate of 1 or 2 percent per month is 12 to 24 percent per year. And, are you sure that redirects are found by Random article? Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Of course monitoring a watch list takes time, but (at least for me) almost none of that time comes from changes to slow moving articles (or redirects). I have ~1000 articles on my list and probably 90% of the changes come from noticeboards and swine flu articles, as all the rest of my list is slow moving articles - in many cases I am probably the only active editor watching.

My results are perhaps not typical but take at Patrick Star. Even this very prominent redirect has only been undone less than once a month on average. If the page was repeatedly deleted (and not protected) rather redirected, I can quite confidently say it would be recreated more than once a month.

Finally, I meant "can't" that was an unfortunate typo. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Now is the end of the world if some fictional character doesn't have a redirect? Of course not, but neither should it bother you or anyone else that a redirect exists. It is just sitting there doing no one any harm and if it is helpful to a few people a year, then that is enough to keep it. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

What do would you guys think if a new popular work of fiction along the lines of Twilight came out, and a user created all the redirects prophylactically? Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I personally would be fine with that as long as the characters are mentioned by name in the target article. The redirect could always be overwritten if needed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You are probably correct. I think this sort of attitude is a real shame. While I personally care very little about fiction, I do think that for a large percentage of our readers fictional topics are of great interest. It would be a great disservice to remove fictional topics altogether and would surely be a net negative for Wikipedia. I know you are a strong advocate for merging fictional topics in the "characters of"/"places of"/etc type article and I am on the same page entirely. If the information can be covered in one article there is no need for 5, 10, or even 20 stubs with little more than a basic character description. At the same time, there is no reason to delete information that is of interest to our readers just because it doesn't need its own article.

I think the majority (or at least plurality) of editors agree that merging is usually best, but there are far too many (on both sides) that simply refuse to compromise and I don't really understand why. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:30, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

and of course in our system such people can prevent consensus indefinitely. The basic problem which affects every topic lies in our not having a mechanism to get reasonably consistent and stable decisions on content. (There are techniques though for handling very large watchlists, by looking for related changes. What is lacking is some way of filtering so only changes above a certain size are listed. ) But I see many changes in the other direction also--stable agreements to keep content, destroyed by someone going in and changing everything to redirects, or removing large amounts of content from a combination article. The main reason I still support keeping many articles intact even if perhaps better combined is to discourage that. We each think the other side is doing the worse, and it doesn't matter, because both are wrong. A first step would be a rule that BRD cannot be used for redirects and merges--that non-obvious ones MUST be discussed first, with full notice, and consensus. I suppose in equity that should apply to splits also.

Thaddus, the reason why people reject compromise is very simple. Rather than get a situation that consistently gives a result they can accept but do not really like, they prefer a situation where they will get what they want some of the time, even if they will lose others. They prefer chaos to a decision that does not satisfy them. I've heard people say as much in AfD in other topics entirely--their reason for deciding case by case instead of precedent , is that they can at least keep a certain percentage of the articles like X in--or out--even if its a random selection. This general way of thinking is characteristic of young children before they learn how to interact in groups in kindergarten. There's a large number of editors here who never learned. DGG (talk) 00:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I would be curious as to what kind of articles tend to suffer was this later deletion of merged material. I personally do a lot of merges, but they are mostly all from 6+ day old PRODs where article being merged is either pretty unlikely to be notable or has very little content (2 sentences or less). I figure it is better to PRESERVE what I can than just let it disappear. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:34, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope I'm not like that. Abductive (talk) 00:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

You might want to check your current argument in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gavilan Elessedil, [16] DGG (talk) 01:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Since nobody looks at the article, and there are only 42 Google hits, and the search bar and the user's brain will take tham to the article on the novel, I would still prefer outright deletion. What if somebody created an article on a village that the characters visited, but it was not important to the plot or an encyclopedic discussion of the work? How about a stew with a unique name that the characters ate once in the novel? Should Wikipedia have an article, disambig or redirect on every named thing in every fictional work? Abductive (talk) 01:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It is very hard to define the concept of "important" to the plot. In literature worth the attention, every place named there, even in passing, is included and discussed in works on the subject. There is always a reason for authors writing what they wrote; in good literature it is worth tracing the reasons--it adds depth to the story--the reader, or at least the careful reader, is much intended to make the associations. There has for example, been very extensive work done with Austen's names for people, places, and houses; similarly with Faulkner, or Joyce, or Hardy. Nothing is too trivial for a good writer. I remind you of the extraordinary care that Tolkien gave to this--he constructed a complete legendary history behind ever single name, and discussed it either in the works themselves, or his notebooks. Or the considerable less complicated but still meaningful names in Rowling.

As a librarian, I have learned to assume nothing about users' brains in searching; if they used them the entire profession would be much less necessary. The goal is to set it up so the users will find directly exactly what they no matter how stupidly they go about it. DGG (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you, but point out that the metric from importance is mention in secondary sources. I've read Tolkien, Rawlings and Brooks, and recall thinking that Brooks was a pale imitation. The paucity of secondary sources on him and his works suggests that his treatment on Wikipedia needs to be scaled back; it seems especially unfair given that minor characters in the Harry Potter series are playing by the rules on their page. Abductive (talk) 03:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with List of Nazi ideologues‎

This thing isn't getting any better. I see today we're going to have a fight over whether to include Charles Darwin. Personally, I think the thing needs to be deleted entirely, since it seems to be an exercise in guilt by association. If we can't manage that (and I suspect we won't) we need to come up with some name that isn't so flatly, uh, wrong, not to mention pejorative. Mangoe (talk) 16:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

There's also Plato. We need rather for sensible people to get rid of the ownership of the article. There at the very least needs to be a change in title, to people whose ideas were used by the nazis. There could be a separate list of actual Nazi Ideologues. I'll start there. DGG (talk) 17:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem seems to be one particular established editor. DGG (talk) 17:29, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

So I see. I've suggested moving the most problematic material over to the section on origins, at the least. Mangoe (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Jxc5's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Optional request for opinion

After dipping my toe in again, I noticed some unfortunate things about what seems to be casual application of the rescue tag, and on clicking through today's AfD discussions I see a pattern which I don't understand: This, this, this, this, and this page subject each appear to be created as autobiographical or self-promotional, and of the group I'd only keep the library as notable. Does the AfD process commonly ignore self-promotion as a factor in keep or delete closes? In only one case of the five was the self-promotional aspect mentioned in the nom. How should this weigh in the closing admin's decision? BusterD (talk) 14:10, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

nothing common in the article history, and 4 promotional articles in one day is under the usual quota--there are many thousands of equally bad ones here. (That's why I regret the effort in fighting over whether to merge character articles and similar obvious things--there is real work that needs doing). The library page is a copyvio,by the way--pages that read like that usually are. They will all 4 probably go, unless the motorcycle art is actually notable. The problem is the use of the rescue tag by different editors as a matter of course when the articles come up for deletion. It should not really be used for lost causes, but it's hard to tell what's a lost cause until we look for references--some amazing rescues have been pulled off, typically where a very bad article is written about something where there are actually references for notability--sometimes excellent references for major notability. Ideally, each article on AfD should get attention, and receive a careful look for the possibility of doing something with it. Ideally every new article should get a careful look for the very likely need of improving it and making a strong article out of it. In fact, all the old articles too should individually get the kind of concentrated attention a potential FA gets, to update and strengthen it. We are approaching 3 million articles. Another 100,000 active careful skilled editors are what we most need. If they each revised one a week, we could reedit the encyclopedia properly in 7 months. Or 5,000 people as active as the best people here, who could devote considerable time to it and do one a day. DGG (talk) 16:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

All this gives me more respect for those of you admins who take on "drinking from the firehose" directly. I feel I just help with splatters. There's only so much one can see without doing RC patrol a bunch. Thanks again for offering your view. I may come back around to this again. BusterD (talk) 03:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

we in turn rely on you and all the other sharp-eyed editor to spot these problems. Do not be reluctant to follow up. Never hesitate about letting someone know if you have doubts about something. DGG (talk) 03:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're not already reading this, I'd appreciate eyes (but please hold your comments). I've been reading some of the previous discussions on this subject, and sampling actual tagged processes, and it's not pretty. I'm going to perform a more formal examination as soon as I figure exactly how I'm going to set it up. BusterD (talk) 03:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Members of the project things in different ways--I'm a member myself. What would be an interesting analysis is the % of time the tagging got the article kept by consensus. If it is very low, taggers are not being selective, or not improving it sufficiently, or there is a prejudice against them. If it is very high, then either they are very successful, or there is a prejudice for articles they work on. I expect something in the range of 30% to 70%, which I think is an acceptable range. What I think the ideal range should be is 60%-80%. Let's see how the evidence matches my guess. DGG (talk) 03:31, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Would you care to suggest a sample size? BusterD (talk) 03:47, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Turns out to be easy, using Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles subpage, which I should have known about but had not recalled, in June out of 416 articles, 279 were saved in some form or other, and 137 were not saved. This is 67%. More than I thought, but at about the minimum level I would consider acceptable. Next question: also can be done by counting, how does this compare with the ones not tagged, or the % before the ARS started? One would expect a higher % of the total afd's articles saved than those not tagged, or there would be no need for the tagging--though there will be articles so obviously a keep that there's no need to tag them. I hope there would be a higher % saved now than there was before the ARS started--but that's hard to differentiate from changing views towards deletion. Harder questions: how many should have been saved, but were closed wrong, how many should not have been kept, but were closed wrong. Obviously everyone will disagree here. However, all these numbers as not as meaningful as they look, because many of the saved were saved by a merge or a redirect: I do not consider a redirect with loss of all content a save, though it is technically. Key question? of the ones not saved, how many should not have been nominated? maybe 10 or 15; if 15 out of 416 were tagged in error, or at least wildly overenthusiastically, that's 3.6% of the total tagged. No wikiprocess really operates with errors much less than 5%. They're doing fine, though more articles are being lost than should have been. Evidence of a few really foolish ARS taggings are the sort of anecdotal evidence that should not say anything about the general process. The main reason I think they should be tagging more carefully that if they did, they might save some more articles overall by concentrating on them. I found at least 10 in there that should be appealed or reintroduced after improvements. DGG (talk) 15:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Event Photographer Society

I think you misunderstood my comments about the Event Photographer Society entry, the page here was not set up to provide a balance, it was the site itself which is now the most authorative site for event photographers in the UK. The American SEP society has approx 1000 members whereas EPS has already gained 300 members in its short existance(population wise a far greater percentage). It is well known amongst event photographers in the UK - it certainly was not the intention to seek publicity here, as was stated you already have similar organisations listed which have no more authorative or informative links. If the short history of the article is examined an ongoing process of editing was being carried out which now can not be finished. I would appreciate the opportunity to finish the article which can then be properly assessed. I would appreciate answers on my account.

EventPS (talk) 17:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

are there references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases? I'll restore the article,place an "under construction" tag on it, which should keep it for a few days, and then you can add them. Be sure to write the article in such as way as to show what the organisation actually has accomplished. If it has sponsored shows, for example, are there published reviews of them? If it has published something, what it? It's not a matter of balance--each group stands or its own merits.

Please do not write it in the future tense: "The Society will function ...." is the sort of wording that tends to be judged as promotional, Similarly, material explaining the benefits to a photographer for joining is also likely to be considered promotional. Similarly, this is not the place to describe the profession in general, or the basic functions of professional societies in general. It;'s about this particular society. And, most important, do not copy material from your web site or other previously published material unless you carry out the full formal procedure of explicitly licensing the rights to the material according to our licensing using the CC-BY-SA and the GNU licenses, as explained in WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:Donating copyrighted materials-- Otherwise, such material must be rewritten. DGG (talk) 22:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Deletion by dated prod template

Am I correct that an article tagged with the {{dated prod|concern = Orphan, no context.}} template will not be deleted by an Admin if there is opposition on the talk page? Yes, I know that an AfD may well follow if the earlier deletion attempt is denied. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

the usual course in objecting to a prod tag is to remove the prod tag, and explain why it has been removed on the talk page. It is possible that if the deletion was objected to on the talk page and the tag not removed, an admin working quickly to clear all the things out that need to be cleared might not have seen it. (This is different from speedy, where the author does not remove the speedy tag, but adds a hangon tag, and explains on the talk page.) Articles deleted merely by prod will normally be restored on request, however--what article is it? You should first ask the admin- he might have a good explanation--or might be able to make clear why the article might not be suitable, and an AfD certain to delete the article. DGG (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The article is one of a set, Samples of Script typefaces and the article is still there, but the seven days have expired. I let that happen without removing the template, mostly to learn the processes involved. I will remove the dated prod template, and see what happens next. I also put the whole article in my sandbox, so I can improve it. There are other articles in the set which have not yet reached the seven days point. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The instructions for PROD specifically tell the deleting admin to check the talk page for objections, but that doesn't always actually happen. It is much simpler just to remove the template if you object to it, using the edit summary to explain why. PRODs can be contested at any time, including after deletion, so removing a tag after 7 days have technically passed is not an issue at all. As an aside, being useful isn't actually a valid reason to keep something. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Now we have other editors saying to improve and de-orphan, and not delete, and in two instances they have started to do improvements. I have done some minor improvements myself. My approach when I first saw the PROD notice was to be patient and seek advice and help from other editors, rather than immediately doing deletion of the PROD, and I believe this has turned out to be a good approach. One editor says there are reasons to say that the article is useful in various contexts. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You are correct that as a matter of strategy, it is sometime best to take the full time allowed to improve the article, and then remove the tag. If you remove it immediately without improving, the person who placed the tag will usually send it to AfD. If you improve it first, and then remove the tag, they may very likely accept the improvements--and if they don't you're much better prepared for an AfD. But don't leave it up to the admin at the end, if you think thee is any reasonable case to be made yourself. Any admin who think they make no errors is probably not being realistic. Don;t trust us too far--if the article has any chance of being acceptable, you have the right to a community opinion. Though "useful" alone is not reason to keep an article, in practice it will sometime help for unconventional articles like these. Remember our basic principle: IAR, if it is necessary to make a better encyclopedia. DGG (talk) 14:33, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both for your contributions to this discussion. I have learned a lot here, and from the editors who have added improvements and have comments on the PROD. One of my objectives was to avoid the kind of unpleasant disputes I have seen elsewhere on Wikipedia, and it is clear for now that I have achieved that objective. An AfD may follow, but the process on the PROD means that other editors have directed some attention to this set of articles. --DThomsen8 (talk) 23:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

DGG, I blame you...

...for ruining my evening, which I spent hypothesizing Repetitive song rather than simply propose List of repetitive songs for deletion and reading a book to my kid.

Need a refresher? Here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of repetitive songs. You mentioned that a real article would be a better than a bad list or deletion, so I decided to give it a shot (thinking also that, if I nominated the list for deletion, you would come by and sink my deletion ship...). I think I'm skating on thin ice, getting a bit close to synthesis (I could easily write this as an essay, but that's for a different forum), but anyway, I gave it a try. Please have a look at User:Drmies/Sandbox; I appreciate any help you can give. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 02:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey, that's a good start: What i suggest is to move the existing article to Repetitive song, and add your material. The existing list will then serve nicely as a section on examples. Alternatively, move your article into mainspace, and merge with a redirect , to maintain the attribution. I'm sure people will find some more of them. I'll take a look also. How did you happen to be looking at 2 year old AfDs? Don't you know AfDs are addictive? 200 AfDs to close today; Close one, and there's 199 AfD's to close today; Close one , and there's 198 to close today; Close one ........ Close them all, and there's 200 AfDs to close tomorrow..... DGG (talk) 02:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, I got to read one chapter from Pluk van de Petteflet after all. I'm going with the second suggestion. How I got to this? Are you sure you want to know? Plain curiosity...some Recent Changes on List of songs based on poems which I looked at...then I was wondering if there was a List of songs based on stories (for Iron Maiden's "Murders in the Rue Morgue")...there isn't, so on to Category:Lists of songs...where I found Repetitive songs whose very existence rubbed me the wrong way so I was going to nominate it for deletion, and I've never nominated something that had already been nominated before (my eye falling accidentally on the subst:afdxx thing) so I look for the history where I see the earlier AfD and your spoilsport-comment which I could not, in good conscience, ignore, and here we are. (Oh, I just read Faulkner's "Barn Burning" and now I want to be a stream of consciousness writer). AfD's are a bit addictive, but the combination of curiosity and Wikipedia is worse. Wikipedia is an enabler. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 04:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability and fiction

Wikipedia:Notability and fiction (shortcut WP:NAF) has been drafted per the general consensus at the recent RFC to which you contributed. You are invited to review the essay and to edit it in an attempt to generate a consensus regarding the issue. Hiding T 10:08, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Any hope for Child & Child?

Hi DGG, thanks for your comments on the recent axe! But I understand what you say... I had had the idea to put on an article for the firm because it does have a lot of involvement in the Belgravia community, is well known in its sphere, and has been in business for over 150 years. If I didn't provide evidence of this, I would like to have another go... if you think it is worth the effort. As regards to notable work, the main business is for the most part conveyancing, which is not court of appeal or high court cases, only jolly big sales/buys of big multi-million pound London houses & mansions. But it has done some important work for important people over the years, and I believe the firm is notable enough to warrant an article. Can you advise at all? I would be grateful for any feedback.

Aileen Roberts

Hey. Thanks for your help. I scoured the net, including the archives of the London and Edinburgh Gazettes which are supposed to include information on honours, etc.,which go back ages, but I couldn't find any specific reference to the "contributions" Roberts made to get a damehood, although I strongly suspect it was for WWI war effort sort of thing. I'll keep looking though. As a DBE the page really should be safe in my opinion, even though it's a tad thin. Yours, Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 02:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

seems safe now. Odd, though, that it wasn't there. DGG (talk) 16:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

German politicians

Once we've gotten the redlinks filled in (hopefully tomorrow, at the rate I've been going), I'll go in and do some of that. Then I've got some New Caledonian politicians to take care of; with what's in the French Wikipedia I should be able to get a stub category created over here fairly soon. (Couldst please reply over on my page? Thankee in advance, kind sor.) --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 02:48, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Will do, and thanks for the help; I've come through rather unmolested, though, so I hope my luck shall hold for the nonce. --User:AlbertHerring ^{Io son l'orecchio e tu la bocca: parla!} 02:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Dastur M. N.

You are right, but I am yet to finish with this article, but I do have to rely on various web pages to create a foundation, I am in process of making this article in line with Wikipedia requirements, ultimately Wikipedia should carry an article on Dr. M. N. Dastur, he played a very important role in Indian steel industry. Maybe within a week this article will become more presentable. Sarvagyana guru (talk) 13:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

1. I have moved it to M. N. Dastur
2. Give a list of his major publications in full bibliographic format
3. Provide specific references for every paragraph there and award. some are in the two Hindu articles, or http://www.dasturco.com/au-mnd.asp but you need to find refs for the others.
4. After the first use, replace his name most of the time with "He", sometimes with just "Dastur", and group the sentences into reasonable paragraphs.
5. Let me know when you're done, & I'll take a look at it. DGG (talk) 20:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

John Fisher School

I noticed on the talk page for this school you said that you thought the deletion of a segment about bullying at the school was correct. This segment has been removed repeatedly. All it says is that there was a report in the local paper about a few ex-pupils who were bullied and picked on and didn't like the atmosphere there. As a pupil there before their time I thought, 'yeh, I know what you mean, it was a horrible atmosphere' though I was never physically bullied by the staff. I can't see for the life of me why that isn't o.k Some said in a previous discussion ' you've got to balance it' but I don't see why. What if no-one can be found who wants to say the atmosphere was great. Then it amounts to this ; 'We choose not to say anything positive, or give positive testimony, but we simultaneously confer upon ourselves the right to censor this article and shut those ex-pupils up. Who cares if they were bullied?' Is that balance - or censorship. The page was protected by enigmaman and the template says ' this protection implies no preference for either version' or something like that , but a cursory look back through the discussion page finds this user calling the deleted passage about bullying ' horrible' etc . In other wotds his claim that the action is disinterested , is sly, is disingenuous, it's a lie . Just my opinion fwiw, it was a lousy school!, a few decent teachers tried though.Sayerslle (talk) 10:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I read that newspaper article, and in my opinion & I think the general opinion here an anecdotal report like that does not justify coverage in an encyclopedia article. In a short article here about a school, the material is grossly disproportionate. I do not thing Enigmaman was wrong to protect the article against it. This is material for a blog. We are disinterested--I do not care the least about the school, one way or the other. Bullying is not uncommon. If there were articles in the national press that the school is notorious for being among the worst in the country in this respect, we might conceivably include a sentence. DGG (talk) 15:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Edits made on Charles Lockwood (author)

(Message re-posted - from my talkpage) Thank you, David. I've fixed the duplicates in internal citations. The phrase "corporate sustainability strategist" is actually a term to provide a "professional label" for Lockwood's work so I've attached one reference coming from an online periodical like Green Business Quarterly to support that, plus one more. Are those acceptable? Kindly check the other references as well for the statements that you advised me to embed some . There were some sections that needed citations I thought I'd just rewrite.Jxc5 (talk) 12:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

We do not provide professional labels, we just distinguish between different people of the same name when necessary. It's Barack Obama, not Barack Obama (politician). We use just a middle initial when possible., e.g. George W. Bush. The rule is "only enough descriptive information that the reader can distinguish between different people with the same name." WP:MOSDAB and " try to limit to a single, recognisable and highly applicable word regarding the person at hand." WP:QUALIFIER. in practice that means we use a general term, not a term attempting to describe the person as accurately as possible--that is for the article. DGG (talk) 17:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Steve Lightfoot

Hi. I saw you deleted the article I wrote about Steve Lightfoot. Would you be kind to provide me with a copy of it, so I can work on it and maybe one day return it to the Wikipedia?

Thank you. Thalweg & Nimbus (talk) 13:59, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Please either activate your email from your preferences page, or go to Special:EmailUser/DGG and email me, and I will send it. DGG (talk) 20:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Please either activate your email from your preferences page, or go to Special:EmailUser/DGG and email me, and I will send it. DGG (talk) 17:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

question about deletion

My article titled 'Marc Bogaerts' was deleted by you 01:59, 4 May 2009 because of copyright infringement of http://www.bogaertsproductions.net. I am the author of the text placed on http://www.bogaertsproductions.net and I wanted to use part of the text in Wikipedia. What do I need to do and what proof would you need from me to be able to use the text I wrote for this website in Wikipedia? Or is that necessary that I write a completely new article? Yourtinkywinky (talk) 15:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

You must explicitly license the rights to the material according to our licensing using the CC-BY-SA and the GNU licenses, as explained in WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:Donating copyrighted materials ; these give everyone in the world an irrevocable license to reuse and alter the material, even for commercial purposes. When you send OTRS the permission, or add the templates, reinsert the article or ask me to do so. It will then need some editing, to remove some promotional wording from the first parts--don't use terms of praise and the like, and aim for conciseness. The text is close enough to acceptable to be worth the trouble of sending the license. You should also consider uploading and licensing a photograph that you have copyright to. There might reasonably be two: one portrait, and one of a particularly noteworthy production. Let me know when ready, & I'll check the article

Thank you so much for quick reply and your offer of help. I read the licence conditions, I thought everything over and I decided to write new text. I will make it more objective according to your remarks. For some reasons the deleted text is also gone from my subpage (my draft)and I would like to use in my new text some of the links I build in while creating the deleted one. Is there a way to get the draft of my deleted article back? Yourtinkywinky (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Please either activate your email from your preferences page, or go to Special:EmailUser/DGG and email me, and I will send it. DGG (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I activated my email. I look forward to hear from you. Yourtinkywinky (talk) 18:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Shrikrushna Keshav Kshirsagar

Article was PRODded; his Worldcat listing - UCB, Wis-Mad etc carry his Marathi language books, so he's likely notable, but nothing I could find in terms of RS resources online, but that's because he died in 1980 and is a non-English writer. Is there something that you might be able to find? -SpacemanSpiff^{Calvin‡Hobbes} 18:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

they should be enough. What you need to do now is add the bibliographic record for each the the books that has a worldCat entry. Mention the one that is an anthology. I think you'll do better finding print sources than I would--you may notice the neither NYPL or Princeton has copies of any of the books--they are both very weak on S. Asia, though Princeton is planning to hire a bibliographer for the area and remedy the situation. DGG (talk) 22:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Will do that. thx -SpacemanSpiff^{Calvin‡Hobbes} 23:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

List of Butterflies of Morocco Deletion

I put some thoughts on the talk page.I could have avoided this by making the list partly alphabetical. The "scientific order" represents a truth without foundation. Many thanks for your forbearance. I should have given this more thought and time. Robert aka Notafly (talk) 20:36, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Since you say you cannot work on it till September, the best thing to do then is to ask for the page to be deleted, and re-enter it at that time. Just place at the top a line reading" "{{db-author}}",. There will be no prejudice when you redo it. DGG (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thats fine I'll do that atb Notafly (talk) 20:56, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

OK I deleted it. DGG (talk) 22:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD

Hi. I know you had some minor concerns about my AfD work, so could you review my recent closures and let me know if I've addressed the issues you noticed? Cheers. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Talk:On the Origin of Species.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

-SusanLesch (talk) 02:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

North Epping murders

Hi, appreciate support for keep regarding Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/North Epping murders. Seeking further support improving article. Thanks Ajayvius (talk) 10:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

you shouldn't canvass, but I was already there. If the article gets deleted, wait for more sources and try again in user space. DGG (talk) 14:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Academic journal

Hi. You've edited Academic journal a few times so I guess it's on your watchlist. Can you have a look at the recent history? A minor edit war has broken out between me and an anon IP SPA. One of us clearly has a bee in his bonnet and I'm starting to wonder who!

As far as I can see he's added well meaning but irrelevant ELs which are also in breach of WP:EL because to get at the content you require registration. On their own the links don't do anything to enhance the article. He won't talk about it even when I shout. I've now reached the 3RR stage so I thought it would be helpful if someone else had a look.

Thanks. andy (talk) 10:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

• Actually, forget this. He's been blocked for 24 hours and I've restored the article. andy (talk) 12:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I saw one of those changes last night, but didn't catch that it was repeated. Glad he;'s been taken care of. I am a few days behind on my watchlist. DGG (talk) 14:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

A bold proposal

In an attempt to turn a divisive RfC into something productive I created a new page. My intention is to dissociate from anything that could be interpreted as a criticism of ArbCom, and just focus on trying to make Wikipedia better. I hope you can look at it and see if you can help make it work: Wikipedia: Areas for Reform Slrubenstein | Talk 15:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

AFD for Welford Street Miracles

There were two AFD nominations of this today, so I merged yours into the earlier one. Mangoe (talk) 17:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith

Hi, the discussion on the talk page of this article is getting unpleasant. Some useful info on the journal was actually added to a section from another article and it is now proposed to merge this article there. I think that the current article, plus the info in American Scientific Affiliation#Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation would make for a rather nice journal article. I do however see a problem in showing the notability of this journal, as all sources currently (especially those in the ASA article) are from the journal itself or rather weak otherwise. All we have at this point is the library coverage data that you provided. Your input will be appreciated. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 19:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

commented there--it's the indexing that does it. But I would not think it a major error if it gets merged. DGG (talk) 04:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Your turn

It's DarlieB again. I'm offwiki for the next six or eight hours. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

he's off wiki for longer. DGG (talk) 04:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of IPod Nano Touch

An article that you have been involved in editing, IPod Nano Touch, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IPod Nano Touch. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Cybercobra (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

your comments

your comments on my nominated AfDs rarely provide examples of actual sources establishing notability yet you continue to deride me for making incorrect nominations. that is not assuming good faith. are you going to say my searches were also faulty for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hungary – New Zealand relations,Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greek-Malaysian relations and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Congolese–Turkish relations and the "closely located" Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bulgaria–Malta relations? your continuing attitude towards an experienced editor like me is noted for future reference. PS you should archive, even when I pressed the end key, my broadband connection still takes a while to load up your talk page. LibStar (talk) 03:59, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

The onus of a deletion in on the person who wants to delete the article. By the time I comment, other people have generally already added enough material. I appreciate you are trying to fulfill WP:BEFORE, but you are not using common sense in doing it. G and GN are very useful when they succeed, but meaningless when they fail. I think you sometimes do very good work building up these bilateral relations articles, but you don't look far enough. I don't expect you to agree with my view that almost all such relations are notable, but you are persistently ignoring the historical aspects even when they;'re as obvious as Turkey-Malta. In those few cases where there's really never going to be enough for an article and there's no reason why there might be, I have agreed with your nominations & I've not said keep, as for those 3. I don't want to say delete unless I personally check, but it did seem very unlikely in those cases). I have no grudge against you, so I do not see why you should have one against me. Coming here & saying right out that you have one seems unusual, but i won't hold it against you. DGG (talk) 04:21, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

thanks for your comments, I must say at times I'm unsure of the intent of your comments. google news is usually the primarily means of getting a feel of third party coverage. google search just yields too much trivial stuff. can you suggest any other ways to verify significant third party coverage to meet WP:GNG? whilst I don't agree with your view on the notability of these, !voting keep for the sake of it and not providing actual evidence of third party non trivial coverage is not very weighty in my opinion. whilst I often don't agree with Richard Norton, at least he makes a genuine effort to demonstrate some third party coverage. LibStar (talk) 04:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

I am pleased to agree than RAN is working on these harder than I am. It's not actually my main interest, since I can only work on a few articles a day, I pick articles to try to source where I have some special technique, or access, or background to find sources. I never say a bald keep. I always give a reason. I try to have it based on policy. If people don't agree with my reason, they won;t vote in accordance with it. If I were personally deciding as a one-person committee what to keep and delete, and was doing it without looking for sources, you'd have a valid complaint. But this is a cooperative effort, and if RAN is there, I know I can depend on him. DGG (talk) 04:36, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

well your point about me being careless is not appreciated, AfDs are for discussion, if consensus shows something is notable, I accept that. if nominations are "faulty" then it will come out in consensus. what I think is more careless is the 1000s of bilateral articles that were created as stubs (not just the banned user) and no effort being made to improve them...so they are left as stubs for 1 or 2 years. rather lazy in my opinion. LibStar (talk) 01:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that we need some way of discussing what should be done with less-than-satisfactory articles in contexts other than threatening deletion. But AfDs are for when deletion is proposed as the solution, and if nomination s are faulty it wastes everyone's time and energy. I agree with you also that many people who write articles are lazy (or even ignorant) about references, but the secondary responsibility for trying to remedy that is everyone's.DGG (talk) 03:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

AfDs are a proposed solution when I nominate because I fail to find adequate sources, I can tell you in most instances I don't nominate bilateral articles because there is evidence of coverage. In some instances, I put a {{notability}} tag on some bilateral articles, in the cases I think are borderline, yet I have never seen any editor attempt to improve an article after adding this tag. you can draw 2 conclusions from this, people can't be bothered improving it or it needs to go to AfD. the problem with these bilaterals is that anyone can make an X and Y article and just leave it there and not risk speedy deletion. LibStar (talk) 05:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Some rewrite Charles Lockwood (author)

Dave, I just thought of rewriting the introductory sentence in Lockwood's bio. Is that more accurate or acceptable? How about the Corporate Sustainability section. I hope I can keep that? Please let me know if there's a need for further modification. Thank you. Jxc5 (talk) 00:58, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Contested prod

Since this stuff is very easily sourceable, are you going to add the sources? --Explodicle (T/C) 13:38, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not personally able to write all of Wikipedia that needs writing, or fix all of it that needs fixing. there are tens of thousands of active Wikipedians here. My primary role here is in keeping possibly rescuable articles around long enough for someone to rescue them. This is the asymmetry between deletion and saving: one person can mark dozens of articles an hour for deletion, but one person can only save a few a day. The community as a whole does the work. The fewer rescuable article people nominate for deletion, the more I will have time to rescue. In this case--a summary table of the population of Connecticut towns, the sources are all in the Census reports, & are almost certainly indicated precisely in each of the articles. You are every bit as capable of doing it as I am. When I read your question I wondered if you had found an article where the sourcing might be more of a challenge than I anticipated. DGG (talk) 17:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Contested prod (MM ZX characters)

You claim that the article is necessary and requires editing. However, I don't see evidence of that fact. All the characters are summarized in the game article, and since the games are not exactly plot heavy, detailed character summaries aren't necessary. Furthermore, I can't find any notable references. What, then, could possibly save the article?--_{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 21:36, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Primary referencing from the work itself meets WP:V for plot related facts.
2. I don't like to use the word "necessary"--the better term is "desirable".
3. There is no characters section in the main article.
4. The short section on plot in the main articles does not actually include all the characters in List of Mega Man ZX characters.
5. There are two games, and this avoids repeating the material in each--and the List article includes the differences between the role of the characters in the two,
6. The article includes real world information about who voiced the characters that is not present in the main article. Information about the Real Humans taking significant roles in notable fiction needs to be included, or the coverage is inadequate.
7. I think the article has about a 50% chance at AfD, & any article that might have a realistic chance of standing there should be deprodded, so the community can decide, not you and me personally. I have no way of imposing my views on the community. DGG (talk) 22:07, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm here

Hi, I'm in NYC and will be at the Keynote with Jimbo, going to the beach later, and WikNYC part of Sunday. Bearian (talk) 03:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Dmitriy Berkovich

An article that you have been involved in editing, Dmitriy Berkovich, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dmitriy Berkovich. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. SyG (talk) 07:29, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Left-wing nationalism

TheFourDeuces is seeking a merger on the basis that it is "dictionary." Your opinion on the deletion discussion seems pertinent. Collect (talk) 22:20, 25 July 2009 (UTC)