Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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

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

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When should administrators decline to email the source text to deleted material?

Some administrators routinely decline to email the source text of deleted articles to authors citing the English language wikipedia's policy on biographies of living persons.

The wikipedia relies on its volunteer contributors for its content and editing. When contributors draft new editorial content they voluntarily surrender some significant intellectual property rights -- and they retain others.

Contributors are free to re-use editorial content we drafted, anywhere we want. We wrote it. We retain the right to claim authorship if we re-use material we first drafted here.

When contributions are deleted through the wikipedia's processes the contributors are recommended to consider that even though the material was judged not to fit within the english language wikipedia's project scope it may very well fit within the scope of a sibling WMF project. They are asked to consider that the deleted material may well fit within the scope of a non-WMF wiki.

Sometimes the author or authors of an article may be aware that it may soon be deleted -- because they were participating in its {{afd}} and they can see how it is going. In those cases they can look at the revision history, and cut and store those passages they wrote themselves, prior to deletion. If they were the sole author of the article's intellectual content, they can save a copy of the whole thing, for use elsewhere.

Other times however material was subject to speedy deletion, or it was subject to {{prod}} or {{afd}}, where the authors weren't aware the material faced deletion -- because the nominator skipped the important step of leaving them a good faith heads-up. In those cases authors who want access to the material they submitted to the project in good faith have to rely on administrators to get access to their material.

As I noted above some administrators routinely decline to email deleted content back to authors on BLP grounds.

I had an administrator recently decline to email me deleted content. I won't name the article, or the administrator, as I would prefer to have this discussion be about the general principle as to whether there are grounds an administrator can decline to return deleted text to authors.

I will say that in this most recent instance the article was deleted as an expired {{prod}}, not following an {{afd}} or after a claim it met a criteria for speedy deletion.

Is it legitimate for an administrator to call upon the authority of policies, like BLP, that only apply here, when justifying withholding deleted material from its legitimate authors for use elsewhere? We have a principle that the wikipedia is not censored. Policy compliant administrators don't delete material to "censor" it. Policy compliant administrators delete material that isn't in this project's scope, or otherwise doesn't comply with this project's policies, guidelines and long established conventions. So, does an administrator's authority to interpret this project's policies really extend to withholding content so it can't be used elsewhere?

Some administrators might read the arguments I wrote above, and might respond, "I am going to continue to decline to email deleted material from authors. I am going to justify doing so not on censorship grounds, but just because it is extra work, my time is valuable, and I don't see it as part of my job as a closing administrator."

We are all volunteers here -- including our administrators. No one has the right to order us to undertake new tasks, because we are volunteers, and we get to pick and choose our tasks. I do think the rest of the community should expect us to bring tasks we begin to completion. Sometimes we may begin a task only to realize it is going to be more work than we expected, and in those cases I think other contributors are entitled to expect us to nevertheless bring that task to completion or find someone to take over for us. I suggest to closing administrators that responding collegially to the occasional good faith request from contributors to have the source of their deleted contributions made available to them is part of the task of closure. Geo Swan (talk) 13:55, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

In principle, only in case of copyvio. Even there it would likely fall under fair use in the UK, but presumably the text would still be available anyway. There does seem to be a general willingness to email deleted pages, it's only one or two I've seen be awkward about it. Rich Farmbrough, 05:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC).

If an admin has a reasonable belief that deleted material fails to comply with significant English Wikipedia policy, such as COPYVIO or BLP, then they should decline to provide a copy, since they are in effect republishing the material by emailing it from an archive inaccessible to the public. It's not particularly uncollegial to decline IMO, and after all, since articles are based on reliable and verifiable sources, they can be rewritten from those same sources anyway, right? One expectation I could see being applied to closing admins is that they provide the sources the deleted article relied on, i.e. a HTML copy of the References section from a preview pane, and not necessarily by email. Franamax (talk) 05:42, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for your reply. Forgive me paraphrasing you...

... but you seem to be saying transmitting material by email constitutes republishing... We have contributors who are quite knowledgeable about copyright issues. I think they would be very surprised to learn transmittal by email constitutes publishing -- or republishing. Could you please clarify your position at #transmittal by email and the meaning of publishing?

Even if, for the sake of argument, transmittal by email constitutes publishing, do you mean to suggest that returning material to its original author could be in any way described as publishing?

Clarification please, are you disputing that we only release some of our intellectual property rights when we submit material here?

Clarification please, are you disputing that we retain the right to republish the material we personally drafted?

Articles can be redrafted, given the references. But why would we require an author to start from scratch if the author's intention is to submit the material they personally drafted to another wiki, with different policies, where the version that was deleted here would be perfectly acceptable without a rewrite?

Please consider if you really think withholding author's material from them really complies with your definition of collegiality.

Our standards have changed over the years. There are articles that I started, that complied with our standards when they were written, but wouldn't now. Some of these were kept at {{afd}} 5 or 6 years ago, and deleted at more recent 2nd {{afd}}, because references they relied upon were considered WP:RS then, but aren't considered RS here and now. I know, for a certain fact, that there are OTHER non-WMF wikis that would accept those references.

These deleted articles weren't deleted because they were slanderous, but because our standards over references changed.

In practice I would generally not simply port material I originally drafted to submit here, to the wikipedia, and submit it there, without a rewrite. But I would prefer to start from my original draft, and adapt it, rather than go the considerably greater effort of rewriting it from just the reference section.

Finally, with regard to suggestion that "closing admins [only] provide the sources the deleted article relied on, i.e. a HTML copy of the References section from a preview pane, and not necessarily by email." Clarification please, as I find this passage unclear. Do you mean that the references be provided after the WMF markup had been rendered? If so, you seem to be assuming the contents of a {{cite}} template is protected by copyright. Please see #Copyright and cite templates, spelling and punctuation corrections.

As I wrote above we have the principle that wikipedia is not censored. I think that means administrators should delete articles from here solely because they think they don't comply with our current policies. Franamax, clarification please, as you seem to be taking the position wikipedia administrators should withhold the intellectual property from wikipedia authors in order to enforce their interpretation of wikipedia policies over the use of that material outside of the wikipedia. That seems to be your meaning, and if it is I suggest your advice does not comply with WP:CENSORED. It seems to me that wikipedia administrator's authority to control the use of wikipedia contributor's intellectual property should apply only to their use on the wikipedia itself.

Is it possible you have forgotten that contributors haven't signed over all intellectual property rights to their contributions? Is it possible you have forgotten that the original contributors remain the copyright owners of their contributions? Geo Swan (talk) 14:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The only time administrators should definitely say no is in cases of clear copyright violations or obvious libel, because legally (at least in the United States) this sort of text would not be acceptable anywhere. All other times should probably be considered on a case-by-case basis, with a bias towards "yes." That's just my opinion, though. Regardless of the legality of "transmission," sending someone a copy of clearly copied or libelous text implies that text would be acceptable even if published elsewhere, which isn't the case. In that regard, I don't think WP:NOTCENSORED applies here, because while Wikipedia isn't censored, it also operates within the law, and that includes not disseminating copyright violations or libel. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 23:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Admins should not decline to to email the source text to deleted material because they don't feel like it, or don't like the requester. In general, admins should be willing to provide other editors with copies of their own writing, including citations. The alternative is that the editor may use up a lot (2.4 shit-tons, to be precise) of valuable administrator time by contacting more and more of 'em until they get their writing back.--Elvey (talk) 01:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

IPA

This has been discussed in the past, including here, but i've not seen this exact question addressed, so here it is: Is it OK to start having IPA transcriptions for every single WP article, or is there a policy that says otherwise? Sometimes there are quite common-looking names that are pronounced in complex ways, so pronunciation guides across the board would be useful (especially for foreigners, who regularly read the English WP as it's often richer); as well as IPA, we could also have an English-based "for-dummies"-type transcription (eg "Berkeley: BERK-lee"), as well as a link to Forvo sound files. This would be particularly useful with names that have several accepted pronunciations (eg. Lindsay Lohan - whose article currently seems to ignore this fact and only lists one).

I realize this would all look too heavy at the beginning of each article, so these three guides (IPA+"for-dummies"+Forvo) could perhaps be hidden, requiring a mouse click to expand & view. Any thoughts? Thank you. BigSteve (talk) 11:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe english-for dummies type transcriptions is a proposal that keeps coming up but there doesn't seem to be a way to make it work properly. For instance should your BERK-lee really pronounced BAR-klee or BURK-ly, E can have widely different pronunciations in different dialects of English. Dmcq (talk) 14:51, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I think playing a soundtrack is the best other way as well as IPA. The problem there is that people in general don't seem to be able to hear sounds outside of their dialect. For instance I can hear big differences between words which my wife find hard to distinguish and vice versa. When you listen to a foreign person's name as like as not you've completely missed some part of it a native speaker thinks is important. With a soundtrack you still mightn't get how it's pronounced, but at least it is the listener's fault rather than Wiikipedia's for not making it accessible ;-) Dmcq (talk) 15:00, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

If you take a look at a favourite (relatively local) example of mine, Happisburgh, all three can be achieved in a small space. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:12, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant! That's exactly what i was looking for :-) so it's both doable, and accepted on WP! Thanks BigSteve (talk) 08:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if this could go in an infobox.

I don't think I'd include a pronunciation for words that normally appear in English-language dictionaries. If you want to know how to pronounce food, you should look in a dictionary, not here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think I'd go out of my way to put in pronunciation guides for common words, but if somebody wants to put in the effort to add a few thousand guides into various random articles around Wikipedia I don't think there should be a corresponding idiot running around and reverting all of those changes. Not only is life too short to be fighting things like that, but I think it even adds some spit and polish to the project. It would be more like the Geotagging project and other similar projects where somebody can put the time into doing such a thing if they feel inspired and should generally be accepted because it does make for a better Wikipedia. --Robert Horning (talk) 19:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• IPA is as useless as Esperanto. I've met one (1) person in real life who knows it. He was a junior high school English teacher of mine and a wierdo, loosely defined. Newspaper-style pronunciation is ADD-uh-kwet if you really need something pronounced. Ideally there would be sound files for tricky pronunciations. IPA is arcane, esoteric, useless flotsam in a WP lead though. Carrite (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

In this vein, I DARE YOU to poll actual WP users on the question: 10 of 'em, 100 of 'em, 1000 of 'em — any sample size. Vote IPA or Crude Newspaper Pronunciation system. No participation by the ummm, wierdos loosely defined, who spend their lives tweaking MOS... Actual users of WP. Vote would be no less than 9 to 1 in favor of the rational system over goop. Carrite (talk) 21:58, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Copyright and cite templates, spelling and punctuation corrections

When answering a question I raised in #When should administrators decline to email the source text to deleted material? another contributors seemed to be suggesting that the source text to article's references -- the populated {{cite}} templates, and reasonable equivalent, were protected by copyright.

The US Supreme Court ruled, in Feist v. Rural, that "facts" aren't copyrightable. The ruled that copyright protection requires creativity, originality. I don't believe there is any originality in a populated {{cite}} template. I don't believe {{cite}} templates are protected by copyright.

The position that the other contributor seems to have taken is that respect for the copyright of contributors requires withholding the source text to deleted articles but even withholding the source text to references used in those articles.

I have contributed to some non-WMF wikis. I ported some articles I started here to some of them, including the Citizendium and a wiki aimed at providing information on military and political conflicts to US civil servants. When I have done so I looked at the revision history, and start the article there by cutting and pasting the last version where the article's history shows I was the last contributor of intellectual material -- material that qualifies for copyright protection.

1. It has been my interpretation that edits that add categories, add new wiki-links, but don't add new passages to the article, while useful, aren't eligible for copyright protection.
2. It has been my interpretation that edits that are devoted solely to correcting the spelling or punctuation of the article, but don't add new passages, while useful, aren't eligible for copyright protection.
3. It has been my interpretation that edits that merely add or flesh out references, while useful, aren't eligible for copyright protection.

The way I have seen it the three kinds of edit I listed above don't show the creativity necessary to be eligible for copyright under US law. The way I see it, if the initial edits to an article are mainly mine, but also include edits by other contributors, that add categories, or consist solely of minor corrections, or alterations to the meta information, but don't alter what it actually says, I don't have to undo those edits when copying contributions I altered to somewhere else.

The GFDL and CC liscenses we use here allow material to be re-used, but require attributing contributors. It is my interpretation that only contributors whose edits were eligible for copyright protection require attribution if material is copied. Since this other contributor seems to think {{cite}} templates are eligible for copyright I thought I would ask for others' opinions.

Cheers Geo Swan (talk) 05:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Nothing in that diff you linked suggests anything what you are saying about cite templates being copyrighted. --MASEM (t) 05:41, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply.

I think you are agreeing that the contents of {{cite}} templates aren't eligible for copyright.

If I understood the other contributor, they claimed respect for copyright required withholding the actual source text to references from deleted articles:

One expectation I could see being applied to closing admins is that they provide the sources the deleted article relied on, i.e. a HTML copy of the References section from a preview pane.

Note -- they said authors should only be allowed to see the rendered preview pane -- not the source. Why do you think they claimed this restrictions was necessary? Geo Swan (talk) 06:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

My take on that claim is not that the format of the cite templates would be a copyright problem, but simply a matter of workload. The source for references are scattered about the text in most articles with the way our current inline citation system works. Extracting all those would take a lot of time to assure no refs are missed. On the other hand, taking the rendered text in HTML that the reflist template produces, plus any general refs, is an easy copy-and-paste but otherwise has the same information outside of the actual cite template format. Most admins are going to want the easiest route so the copy-paste of the references is an acceptable solution. It is not because of any immediate copyright problems with the citation templates, just the difficulty of doing it. But consider: since the entire article has to be recreated, the actions of recreating the citation templates is trivial if you have the HTML information. --MASEM (t) 15:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for your reply. Yes, I understand there is additional workload involved in emailing a deleted article, or portions thereof.

But, in my experience, administrators who decline to email intellectual property back to the original copyright hold have not said it was too much work -- they justified their refusal on policy grounds. Declining to return intellectual property based on workload and -- declining on an interpretation of BLP or some other wikipedia policy are two very different arguments.

As I wrote in the earlier thread that triggered this one, I am concerned over administrators declining to return copyright holder's intellectual property back to the original authors on policy grounds. We all remain the copyright holder of all our intellectual contributions which pass de minimus. We only released some of our IP rights. The wikipedia is not the copyright holder -- we are. I think wikipedia community's role in deciding how the original copyright holder's intellectual property is used or re-used ends when the copyright holder want to consider re-using it outside the wikipedia, when they want to consider adapting it for re-use on another wiki.

I did address the workload issue in the original thread. Geo Swan (talk) 16:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

There's two ways to view this: one: if you make a major copyvio and attempt to publish it with a new license, that copyright/IP claim does not hold; you do not own the copyright on the original work and thus cannot claim copyright here. So in this case, asking to "return the IP" to the original author is bogus since the work wasn't theirs to start with.

OR

When you submit text to WP, you "irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL" as per the line right under this text box that I'm typing in. That means that IP as soon as you hit submit is no longer yours. There is no way to "return the IP" to you because you've passed the point of no return on hitting the submit button.

Arguably, the citation templates are not copyrightable to start with (they are factual info about sources), and thus that is neither "IP" that can be returned but could be returned if possible. That goes back to the work effort aspect. --MASEM (t) 17:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

With regard to what we have agreed to release, sorry, but I believe you are mistaken. You seem to be saying that clicking the button assigns all our rights to the WMF.

We do release key rights, but not all our rights. Let me quote that whole box.

By clicking the "Save Page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

The second sentence about attribution -- the one you did not quote -- is necessary because contributors retain copyright. We retain the right to have our copyright eligible contributions attributed to us. Wikipedia readers are free to re-use, adapt, rewrite, our work -- provided they acknowledge they are using the copyright work of others, and those others are named. Attribution would not be necessary if we had assigned all our rights to the wikipedia or WMF.

With regard to your theoretical examination of whether someone can request the return of copyright violations... Well, of course no request for copyright violations should be honored, because if the material was a copyright violation we would not have had the rights to use it in the first place, and we would be violating the rights of the legitimate copyright holder by emailing it. But we have a policy of assuming good faith. Are you suggesting we should never email source text of deleted articles that were essentially the work of one contributor -- based on the assumption that material was a copyright violationʔ That does not seem consistent with AGF.

You are absolutely correct that there is some additional time commitment for an adminstrator who agrees to email an deleted article where the intellectual content was essentially the work of a single contributor back to that contributor. Well, this is a cooperative project. We should all consider helping other contributors who have a civil request. My commitment to building the wikipedia is substantial. I don’t want to say exactly -- multiple thousands of hours. I do not remember ever declining to help out another contributor who made a good faith request of me. So should I be embarrassed to make an occasional request that would cost an administrator minutesʔ

When making a request like this I should be prepared to be gracious if an administrator said to me:

Geo Swan, the time I budgeted to deal with your request was not sufficient to confirm your recollection that you were the sole author of all the intellectual content. You made the first dozen edits. Then other contributors made some edits, and you returned and made some more. In the time I budgeted I did a diff that confirmed the first N edits by other contributors were all to the metadata, thus all de minimus, so this is the version as at 200x-yy-zz.

It would probably be possible for a bot to take a conservative approach and figure out at which revision was the last revision where the original contributor made the last edit where they were the sole contributor of intellectual content.

Anyhow, thanks for taking the time to make thoughtful comments. Geo Swan (talk) 19:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not feeling too sympathetic here. The complaint is basically "I didn't think this was important enough to make a backup, but now I think it's important enough for someone else to go out of his way to give me a copy."

You have no more right to insist that a volunteer here give you a copy of an article you wrote than an author has the right to demand that I lend him my copy of his book so he can make a photocopy of it. You're asking for a favor. You are likely to get a more favorable reception is you ask nicely instead of standing on your supposed "rights". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I think you have mischaracterized what I wrote.

I think my requests were polite. I thought I saw a pattern of administrators who declined by requests, based on interpretations of policy that I thought were incorrect. I thought seeking others opinions as to which interpretation of policy was useful and I thought a forum on policy would be the right place to ask these questions. Geo Swan (talk) 19:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know whether your requests were polite or not (as I haven't seen them), but IMO WhatamIdoing is dead on in interpreting your "returning intellectual property to the copyright holder" argument. Anomie⚔ 22:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Well, since I think WhatamIdoing offered rebutals of straw arguments I did not make I do not know whether your agreement with her actually means you disagree with what I actually said.

My main point was that administrators have said they decline to email deleted articles to the original author saying policy prohibits this. I believed they were mistaken about this interpretation of policy, and I thought the policy forum was a good place to seek other opinions.

I believe wikipedia policy only authorizes administrators to try to control how contributions are used on the wikipedia itself.

I would be very interested if you had an opinion on this issue. Geo Swan (talk) 09:37, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that you seem to be implying that there is some sort of obligation for admins to email a user a copy of their deleted edits on request. Regarding the BLP question specifically, Wikipedia:Undeletion policy#Access to deleted pages touches on the issue. Anomie⚔ 15:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for drawing my attention to Wikipedia:Undeletion policy#Access to deleted pages. I agree it merely touches on the policy issues I raised.

Would you agree the most relevant passage was: "Note that these requests are likely to be denied if the content has been deleted on legal grounds (such as defamation or copyright violation), or if no good reason is given for the request"?

Would you agree that the corollary would be that requests for deleted material, where there is no legal issue, and where the requester offered a good reason should not be declined -- on policy grounds.

Administrators who decline for reasons other than policy are a completely different issue. When an administrator declines, and says, "No, I can't be bothered", or reasonable equivalent, I can initiate a request at WP:DRV. But since administrators have declined -- citing policy justifications -- I think it was completely legitimate for me to ask questions about those interpretations of policy I had doubts about, here, in this policy forum.

In your last comment you used the word "problem" to describe my comments. I tried to phrase those questions in a civil, collegial way. I did make a suggestion, which I also tried to phrase in a civil, collegial manner. Honestly? I thought I succeeded. Maybe, by problem, you merely meant you disagreed with my suggestion. But, if by your use of the word "problem" you meant to imply that you saw a genuine lapse from policy in my comments, or something else I should try to avoid, I would appreciate you explaining what you thought lapsed. If that is what you meant I would appreciate you explaining on my talk page, or via email. Geo Swan (talk) 12:17, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Let me be clearer: It doesn't much matter to me what their excuse is for declining your request. They have zero obligation to fulfill your request. In declining your request for this strictly optional favor, I'd be satisfied if they told you that the Moon was in the wrong phase, or if they just said no.

If these pages were important to you, then you should have kept your own copy, so that you would not be dependent on the kindness of grumpy strangers to get the information now. Since you didn't, you are now faced with the difficult task of persuading someone to help you—persuading, as in, convincing them that helping you is a path to happiness and peace and rainbows and cookies and eternal gratitude, not claiming that they have some sort of obligation or duty to do so.

Your problem, in other words, isn't a policy problem. It's a human problem. We are never going to write a policy that requires anyone to give you a REFUND. Consequently, you need to make someone want to give you that page. No amount of policy editing or complaining here is going to have that effect. You need to win friends and influence people, not change a policy page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

See WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Where attribution is not needed. It may be more convenient to provide a full List of authors without filtering for minor contributions. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I was not familiar with that page.

WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Where attribution is not needed offers adding "bare references" as its first example of the kind of copying that does not require attribution. I can see how someone could interpret that as supporting the premise that copying a {{cite}} template with some of its fields populated, in contrast, would require attribution.

I think that would be a mistake. The third example that guideline offers of the kind of copying that does not require attribution are "Simple, non-creative lists of information." I believe populated {{cite}} template are "Simple, non-creative lists of information". Therefore I am going to suggest on Wikipedia talk:Copying within Wikipedia that it should say "references" -- not "bare references". Geo Swan (talk) 20:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't fully remember, but I think that "bare" is directed at the quote parameter, which has some creativity in its selection. Most or all of the other parameters are facts about the referenced work. Flatscan (talk) 04:09, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Hmmm. The person selecting the quoted material, is, bringing judgment to the selection. I would agree that this judgment passes the bar for creative input that qualifies for copyright protections -- except wouldn't the copyright to the quoted material clearly belong to the original author being quoted -- not to the person who chose to place it in the quote field? Geo Swan (talk) 05:06, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

  I have another guess: refs that are added to existing text. You will probably get a better answer at WT:Copying within Wikipedia. Flatscan (talk) 04:10, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Should wikipedia policy recognise its own imperfection.

Apparently this may be an uphill battle, which is understandable given the cultural differences in approaches to justice.

In cases where significant doubts regarding the innocence or guilt of an editor exist in the community, forcing the editor to make admissions of guilt as a prerequisite to unblocking could punish innocent editors, or reward guilty ones in an innocent prisoner's dilemma.

— suggested basic addition to policy

Incidentally please DO feel free to help with the article as I don't like to write articles generally, I just like to make the empty colouring in book or its pages where there is not enough elbow room for the editors who are there. I also managed to shove the article into Wikipedia space first (yes I am a a goof) so the essay space is like right there already, so please go for that as well.

The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or 'Parole Deal', is a detrimental effect of a legal system which does not recognize the possibility that its judgements may be imperfect. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which require the individual to admit guilt, for example as a prerequisite step leading to parole, punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity.

— from the article

Penyulap ☏ 19:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Apropos of what? JJB 19:33, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

First of all, I don't think anyone has ever suggested that Wikipedia isn't perfect. Secondly, you might be interested in this essay, which I think you should expand with some of this content. Equazcion ^(talk) 19:40, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"Innocence" or "guilt" is a strange way to characterize block-worthy offenses, unless we're talking about socking where there might be a question of fact as to whether someone did it. Regardless, community blocks either are or are not supported by consensus. If they are not, then the block should be undone. If the block is supported by consensus, then we can't honestly say there is significant doubt in the community as to whether they engaged in conduct worthy of being blocked, particularly as consensus does not require unanimity. Next, blocks are enacted to prevent further bad conduct and if it is serious enough or persistent enough that we have imposed an indefinite block, we don't want to unblock unless we're confident that the conduct will not repeat. So expecting an editor to acknowledge that their conduct did constitute disruption, or socking, or POV warring, or whatever it happened to be, is not an unreasonable expectation to help ensure that the issue has been resolved. postdlf (talk) 19:44, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

We're aware of the reasons unblock requests are handled this way. It's sound logic and you don't need to defend it. Ideally it would be enough, but if we're not speaking in ideals but practicality, it also has the potential to create the problems illustrated here. See WP:EHP. Equazcion ^(talk) 19:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Equazcion, I have no interest in EHP, pride and integrity have significant differences. It could be argued they are opposites.

I recall seeing an issue outside here on commons, someone was banned because they mentioned that they can sue anyone who uses their images inappropriately. One admin thought it was a legal threat, others said it was a fair statement of attribution licensing, neither side made the suggestion it referred to usage on the project or on the web. The banned editor was asked to take sides in the argument which ensued as a prerequisite to the block being reviewed. Given an artist can be emotional at the best of times, it's not a viable solution.

An initial block needs to stand on it's own, at the time the block is made. If the original block is disputed, then making demands upon the blocked user to help prop up the thinking of the original block to justify it means that unjustified blocks will stand in cases where the banned user is incensed by a perceived or real injustice. Fair enough if someone gives you a punch in the head you may well forgive them, maybe, OR you just may forgo the apology preferring to avoid a reapeat and stay away from that person forever more. Should banned users who avoid wikipedia because they feel wronged be used as proof that the original disputed block was correct ? I punched you in the head, and because you didn't come back for more, I am right. Penyulap ☏ 20:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Semantics. If you read the essay it describes the same issue. Equazcion ^(talk) 21:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The business of asking people to acknowledge their crime has always made me cringe. I'd just look for good behaviour whilst n prison and possibly there might be restrictions on actions afterwards in some cases completely irrespective of whether they acknowledged their crime or not.

Whether or not we are going to apply the concept of guilty or innocent to Wikipedia blocks I think we should similarly take absolutely no notice of whether a blocked user does or does not say they acknowledge the problem causing the block. I see no connection between saying they acknowledge a problem and being willing to do things differently and that actually being the case, I think it is entirely possible that the correlation is negative. Dmcq (talk) 23:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Equazcion, I re-read that essay carefully, and seriously, I can see the elements there, which are covered in manure, Omg that essay sucks, no wonder it will never make it past essay, it shits on integrity, completely denigrates it, puts WAY TOO MUCH intimacy into the equation. Admittedly if anyone else pointed it out I wouldn't have gone searching so hard, but that essay will never describe the problem in an acceptable way when so little is salvageable from it, no to mention the inevitable retentives. Considering just how many can't see the problem, when there clearly are some that completely do, it's cause to write properly from the start.... and the one thing we ABSOLUTELY MUST leave out is pride. Pride and integrity ARE NOT THE SAME THING. OMG. break out the dictionaries people. Penyulap ☏ 09:35, 1 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Apropos of what? From which policy might we currently infer we use forced confessions and duress? Thanks. JJB 11:19, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

See the answer to WP:UNBLOCK#Common questions ' I did something a bit wrong, but how do I get unblocked now?'. Compare the answer with that of 'I've never done anything wrong and I was blocked! Please advise'. Dmcq (talk) 22:45, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I was reading about the approaches that different countries take to child care a while ago, and one of the things called out as a point of difference was how everyday infractions were handled. America was unique among the countries profiled for running a miniature trial and expecting the child to confess his "crime". So a typical event would be a boy hitting another boy, and the teacher (even if she had witnessed the hitting) would pull the two boys aside, prompt the plaintiff to make an accusation, prompt the defendant to explain his side, extract a confession from the defendant, pass judgment, and then sentence the convicted boy (to having to play by himself for a few minutes, for example).

Since having read that, the old "you must confess" advice has always struck me as very American. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I suggest we lose this sentence

One common requirement for unblocking is simply "do you understand that what you did was inappropriate for this site, and confirm that you won't do it again".

Penyulap ☏ 03:50, 3 Jun 2012 (UTC)

• Support, for the reasons I gave above. I don't think this distinguishes between people who will follow the policies and guidelines and those who won't and it annoys people with integrity where the admins have made a genuine mistake or where they have been just picked on e.g. for parity like seems to be often done. Dmcq (talk) 08:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, sort-of... There seem to be some problems with that guide (Wikipedia:Appealing a block, [1]), but they are not going to be corrected by this deletion. The problem is that the possibility of mistake or misunderstanding (on the side of blocking administrator, on the side of the blocked user, or on both sides) hasn't been mentioned. If that possibility was included in some way, the sentence in question would become something like "It is generally helpful to explain what happened and if there are any plans to avoid this situation in the future.". That should avoid the impression that anyone is being forced to lie, while the administrators would still have the ability to look at the explanation and see if it corresponds to reality... After all, "Competence is required." (I wonder if we shouldn't add "Humility is required." and "Obedience is required.")... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 12:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I've put a notification on the talk page there. Dmcq (talk) 14:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
• Support change, not deletion. First, the sentence in context applies to a situation where the blocked user has already admitted "I did something wrong". In that sense the sentence has value; it works to say, "Because you know you did something wrong, simply confirm you won't do it again". OTOH, if it is construed as "all unblocked users must understand they did something inappropriate (unless specifically excepted, e.g., IP block)", it runs afoul of the principle of this thread. (Also, to nitpick, "one common requirement" actually means "one common way of satisfying the requirement": the "necessary/sufficient" conflation.) Accordingly: It is commonly sufficient simply to understand when you do something inappropriate for this site, and to confirm that you won't do it again. The shift from "what" to "when" addresses the innocency concern. But this is not the most ideal phrasing either. JJB 23:53, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Filter out the good and keep in the bad

Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks It's full of more of the same, creating logic locks as explained in The innocent prisoners dilemma Penyulap ☏ 07:20, 11 Jun 2012 (UTC)

WP turning into a sports newspaper

It looks like with the outcome of two recent AfD's (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UFC 145 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2004 Estoril Open) the respective projects and fan bases can muster !votes at AfD's to keep articles on routine sports events, thus turning the encyclopedia into a sports news reporting service. So my question is do we :

• A) change the WP policy to accept that (if that's what we want) or
• B) reinforce policy to say we are not a sports reporting service.

Mtking ^(edits) 20:28, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I guess the question is where do you draw the line? Aren't most UFC types of events pay for view? If so aren't they also television specials and as such also subject to those inclusion guidelines which would probably say they are fine? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

So are quite a number of sports events, that does not necessary make them anything other than routine sports events. Mtking ^(edits) 21:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I've said at WT:Notability (sports) why Wikipedia is no good for what they want and not just because the policies and guidelines are against it. The really should set up a Wikia which concentrates on sports statistics and has stringent conditions on the editors so it can gain a status as a reliable source. I'm wondering about a couple involved in the business whether they are not doing it because they like sports or are just silly but because they like playing games with Wikipedia and causing disruption. Dmcq (talk) 21:03, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

• Mtking has a long history of trying to delete as many UFC articles as possible. He has sour grapes since his latest attempt to get a UFC article deleted failed. UFC 145 clearly passes notability guidelines. As the admin who closed the afd as keep said, it has sources from the NY Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, etc. Mtking tries to get a lot of UFC articles deleted, and when he CANNOT get them deleted, he goes to other areas of Wikipedia to try and get the POLICY changed so that he can get what he wants. It is his modus operandi. Gamezero05 23:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
• Let's be perfectly clear here. The Estoril Open AfD was comprehensively rejected by the wikipedia community. If you take out User:Portillo from the equation (he admits he only voted delete because he was being a "being a trouble maker"), the AfD, which was open for a fortnight, got all of 2 delete votes. Members of Wikiproject:Tennis contributed only a minority of the keep votes, so are not to blame for the AfD failing. Non tennis keep voters still outnumbered the delete voters by 3-1. Sour grapes? I think that's pretty clear. Jevansen (talk) 03:22, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It is not sour grapes, if you re-read what I am asking her you will see that I asked is it time to change policy in light of those outcomes so as to remove any doubt. As for your analysis of the The Estoril Open AfD, I see that you failed to mention the fact that you and four others were canvassed by a member of the project (I know you denied it had any effect on your participation), I also take issue with the analysis of the keep votes, the majority of which were from project members (those judging by user-boxes on their user page or contribute at the project) or from editors canvassed by a member of the project. Mtking ^(edits) 03:56, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Take issue all you want, but I did the numbers and the majority of keep votes were not from WP:Tennis members (PrimeHunter, TheLou75, Secretaria, P.T. Aufrette, Ymblanter and John J. Bulten). I'll concede that TheLou75 has made some edits to Rafael Nadal related articles (and also a disturbing amount of edits at Talk:Human penis size) but he isn't a member of WP:Tennis. Regardless, it's 5-2 at best (non tennis keeps > deletes) so I suspect the AfD would have still failed without "canvassed" users and members of the wikiproject. That's all I'm saying, a pro-tennis wikipedia conspiracy isn't the reason your AfD didn't succeed. Jevansen (talk) 07:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikiprojects cannot override global consensus about notability, as well as other policies (like WP:NOT#STATS). There's no doubt that, for example the annual event of the Estoril Open is notable, but each yearly iteration fails NEVENT, NSPORTSEVENT, and several other policies, the same that are being applied to the MMA article. There is a serious issue if these articles are being kept on dubious claims of notability. --MASEM (t) 03:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

How do you decide what is notable? For example... do you think UFC 145 is notable? It had the light heavyweight championship of the world on it, was covered by major publications such as LA Times, USA Today, New York Post, etc. It was one of the biggest PPV events of the year, and not-to-mention, 360,000 people visited the Wikipedia page the day after the event. For comparison, 380,000 people visited the most recent Super Bowl page the day after the Super Bowl. If that isn't notable, then I don't know what is. One other point I'd like to make. There are different ideas of "notability". Users like Mtking finds things notable that are "unique" in some way. An article can get 2 page views in an entire year, but as long as some smart guys talked about it in scholarly journals, and it is unique, then it is notable. Yet other pages can get 10,000 views PER DAY for years, and even if it is covered by major newspapers, if he feels it has no "enduring notability", then he wants to delete it. Which brings me to my point... what is notable? Isn't notability what we make it? If hardly anybody cares about a subject apart from a few people, then how notable is it really? Notability isn't some inherent force in the universe that is just waiting for humans to find. Notability is what humans make of it. Gamezero05 05:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The type of reporting that UFC 145 currently lists is what's consider "routine", it is "flash in a pan" with no evidence of long-term importance, and is all primary sources - straight data reporting and no context. Page views - and by extension popularity - do not count, unless those facts themselves are of significant discussion. Yes, we can define what notability is, but that is based on the idea that significant coverage in secondary sources - or the likelihood of that in the case of subject-specific guidelines - is what the community has decided. Projects cannot override that. --MASEM (t) 05:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Over at WT:Notability you seem to take a different view - that what the notability guidelines say is just a presumption, whereas what really matters for notability is what concrete decisions are reached in AfD discussions. So if the AfD discussions on these two articles concluded that they should be kept, then those topics are notable, right? Victor Yus (talk) 08:11, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Notability is still presumed - it can be challenged later. In this case, there is recognition there is a problem with articles like these that seem to pass the notability guidelines, but clearly there's something that other editors don't agree with that don't belong. So now this is where everything gets fine tuned on this specific aspect. --MASEM (t) 12:59, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

And the other thing to remember: we are an encyclopedia. We summarize information. We reiterate what is said about events from a 60,000 ft thousand view. UFC is a notable sport; several of the athletes in it are notable. But that doesn't make every event appropriate to include as the summary: the results, yes and how they relate to the bigger picture of UFC in general, but not the specifics of each individual event. Similarly: the state of the US economy and of stock markets like Dow Jones notable, but that doesn't mean the day-to-day market change (which is widely reported, perhaps more so than the UFC events) of appropriate encyclopdic value, unless it was a big dip or the like such as Black Friday. There may be notable UFC events, but my survey of such articles, and of articles like the tennis one, suggest otherwise. I point out how the PGA editors have done it - most of the annual golf events don't have articles, save for the 4 biggest matches (eg like the Masters) which attract extra attention due to their legacy to start with. Understand how to summarize sports coverage is what is lacking in all this. --MASEM (t) 05:59, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Masem. On some days 20% of what goes through my new-pages-patrol are articles about minor soccer players, barely notable event fixtures. Most of these stubs seem to have been auto-added and offer very little in the way of notability or verifiability. I think Wikipedia would best serve these sporting communities by encouraging them to form their own specialist wiki-sites for this kind of content. --Salimfadhley (talk) 08:48, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

And they should also have better editorial control than Wikipedia so people can trust them as a reliable source. Have we got vandals changing odd numbers in various of these pages and how would one know which figure is correct anyway with the lack of good sources. That would mean less maintenance too. For the stuff in Wikipedia you need lots of people looking at it and good sources as it is the encyclopaedia just about anyone might have edited, they could have a trust system for their editors which is something we can't do in Wikipedia where we rely on many eyes instead. Having that system would mean I believe we could refer to them for statistics like we can refer to Citizendum, there would e no point however in duplicating the data. Dmcq (talk) 09:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

This is the big problem with any article that is comprised of mainly statistics. There's simply no effective way to verify pages like Yemen national football team match results. Rather than allow these articles which consist of nothing other than long lists of statistics we should be encouraging shorter articles which explain what the most important results are, and their significance in the subject's history. I'd personally like these list'o'stats articles to go away. --Salimfadhley (talk) 12:04, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Here's an unrelated example of the kind of sports-related low-value content we seem to be accumulating: Archery New Zealand - from what I can tell the sole rationale for the existence of this page is that somebody has already created stubs for other administrative branches of the sport. There seems to be a sort of template-completism going on. This would make sense if the goal of Wikipedia was to catalogue every aspect of every known sport. I'm sure that's not our purpose! --Salimfadhley (talk) 09:05, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Notabilility has nothing to do with importance. It is more a question of "Do RS report about it" and "Do people expect us to provide some information". If I go to a village football match I don't go home afterwards and check if the goaly has a Wikipedia entry. I would if someone on the sidelines said "great that we now have x he used to play in such-and-such-higher league". Then I would want that information available and could expect notability as in such-and-such-higher league there no doubt was plenty of media coverage. Important? not really. On the other hand some boring scientist who found the cure to some obscure cancer might be considered important, but is he notable? Personally I would like to be able to look him up as well, but I doubt there might be sufficiant coverage. Agathoclea (talk) 09:28, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

But is that really Wikipedia's role? I could envisage some other kind of sporting statistics project whose role it is to compile not just an encyclopaedic but complete set of sporting statistics. Such a site would be unlimited by the WP:CRYSTALBALL rule, and could include include school and college leagues and would allow a user to chart the entire career of sports-players from the little league to the professional and back to amateur leagues. I do not think Wikipedia is that site. In the case you gave of the "boring scientist" - it would not be up to us to determine whether he was notable or not. We'd look to the reliable secondary sources. I think we should have the same standards for sports-people as we do for scientists in Wikipedia. --Salimfadhley (talk) 09:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

And as I said above I'd encourage them to use a reputation system so readers were fairly sure that what they read was right. Dmcq (talk) 10:08, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I think we have - the only difference between the boring scientist and the popular sportsperson is that without checking we know that the relevant sources that establish notability exist purely on the popularity of the subject matter. There are thousands of specialist magazines covering that. Agathoclea (talk) 10:24, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• And here is another Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UFC 21. Mtking ^(edits) 10:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't judge these events I have zilch interest in them, but I would hope for some statement at least showing why they are notable. 2004 Estoril Open mentioned above just seems an affront to me in that it was passed at AfD without even an attempt to put notability statement into the lead. Also the citations didn't support the statistics, how would we ever know if they were vandalized? Dmcq (talk) 10:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but you seem to be putting yourself into the same contradictory position at Masem above. On the notability talk page you say that the one true solid test of notability is the result of AfD discussions, not the notability guidelines themselves. Yet here, when you see an AfD discussion whose result goes (in your view) against the guidelines, you feel something is wrong because the guidelines have not been adhered to. What is your actual position? Victor Yus (talk) 11:02, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The guideline seems to be in contradiction with the AfD result. I'm commenting on that, such contradictions are a good basis for changing the guidelines. I'm asking if we wat to change the guideline for notability so we don't have to show notability and if the guideline on verifiability should be changed so statistics can be stuck in with no reliable sources. Isn't that what you want? Dmcq (talk) 12:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's not confuse two separate things here. The main problem that we have had recently is the effort by fans of an invented-for-TV pseudosport to get every last detail of their obsession into Wikipedia in as many different articles as possible, despite the fact that there is very little coverage of this entertainment outside the broadcaster promoting the events and unreliable fan sites. Let's treat these events for what they are, TV episodes, and follow the appropriate guideline. Events in genuine well-established sports, such as tennis, would take place even without TV coverage and receive plenty of independent coverage in mainstream reliable sources, so are a completely different kettle of fish. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:14, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if it is a pseudo-sport, the problem is that observing all these MMA/UFC events has highlighted that there are similar problems with true professional sports events like 2004 Estoril Open. If all we can cover about them is the same type of information that the UFC events are putting forwards - basically statistics and results - then these are no better than the UFC articles even if they are a professional event. This is where the various NSPORTS guidelines fail, because they are too inclusive and yet there seem to be double standards between the professional sports and the pseudo-sports in their application, and still include far more than any other project on WP. --MASEM (t) 12:59, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

What are you talking about "pseudo-sport"? MMA is regulated by state athletic commissions, is covered by all mainstream media and newspapers, and is broadcasted on major TV networks (Fox, Globo Brazil, etc). It is as much of a sport as any other out there. Secondly, it seems that Masem simply does not like sports. Because many of the UFC events contain far more than simply statistics and results. But secondly, statistics and results ARE going to be most of what a sports article is about due to the nature of what sport is. So why are you guys on an anti-sports crusade? And you guys like to bring up that Wikipedia is not a statsbook. So let's take the UFC for example. I can't find almost any UFC stats on Wikipedia except for individual records of fighters. I can't find takedown percentages, striking percentages, punch counters, transitions, takedown defense percentages, etc. Other than results of fights, there really isn't any statistics. Gamezero05 17:10, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

We're trying to summarize sports; we are not a sports almanac but at least can try to include elements of such. We recognize that sports gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in the media, but at the same time, much of that coverage is duplicative and mostly of a primary nature (read: box scores and game summaries for the major league game are reported in papers across the globe); effectively it is the definition of routine coverage. Thus, we have to be aware that if one cannot provide context and commentary on a sporting event, and can only give out stats and standings, the event probably isn't notable, even if current sports guidelines say they are. Thus given all other aspects, it makes sense that we can discuss sport results at the season level, or in the case of continuous events like MMA, as annual summaries, breaking out individual games, competitions, and the like when they are truly notable above and beyond routine coverage. This is normalizing the area of sports with all other fields on WP. --MASEM (t) 22:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I would say you just aren't looking, Phil. I don't care for MMA myself, but one of my local papers covers each UFC event in considerable detail. Truthfully, I see no issue at all with an article for each UFC event. It's no different than articles on each WWE pay-per-view, many of which are GAs. Or season articles for pro-sports teams, many of which are GAs. Or articles on single games that are events, many of which are GAs. The simple fact is, people like Masem have consistently campaigned against these articles on the simple and exclusive argument of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Resolute 17:26, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I fully agree that there are lots of games which should be covered by Wikipedia. But how did 2004 Estoril Open though get through AfD without any indication of notability, practically zilch summary of anything and a whole bunch of statistics that aren't supported by the citations? Dmcq (talk) 17:42, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I would say it passed because the participants of that AFD generally felt that such tennis events are notable. Wikipedia is a work in progress. No, that article is not done. But there is no reason why it can't be expanded. Resolute 17:48, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough I guess, but couldn't people at least add a citation for the statistics? How is anyone supposed to know what's right if somebody changes a 1 to a 2 in those tables? And if there is a good source that supplies those figures why are we duplicating them rather than summarizing? Dmcq (talk) 17:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

@Resolute, I don't agree with how you summarise the "campaign"; for example I would have the same reaction if WikiProject Australian rules football decided to have an article on each and every AFL game, they are are also covered in "considerable detail" in every newspaper and sports section of every news website here, shown on PPV TV overseas. What about WikiProject Football (Soccer) deciding to have an article on every one of the 300+ English league games every year, each of which is shown on pay-tv here and the results of every game make the TV news section here in Australia far more sourcing to chose from than these UFC events. Mtking ^(edits) 20:46, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Apples and oranges. We don't write articles on every tennis match or UFC fight either. We write on the tournament, the event or the season in most cases, with some exceptions made for the especially notable individual matches. e.g.: 2011 Heritage Classic or Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships. Resolute 20:53, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I look at the number of "events" per year for UFC events and compare it to other sports that are centered on individual performance and realize that the folks that maintain the PGA tours (eg: 2011 PGA Tour) have it right. Most of the specific recurring yearly events aren't notable (but the encapsulating article about the collection of yearly events itself its), save for 5-6 major exceptions which are the biggest golf tourneys of the year. The same logic can be applied to UFC/MMA.

The problem become that the UFC/MMA stuff is geared towards individual on individual, not individual against the rest of the players involved. As such, yes, it seems like the smallest iota of information is the individual matches, but to that end, I strongly suggest that the right way to present this information is to focus it from the participant's side, instead of trying to group a series of unconnected matches together and saying that's notable. It's not the way the UFC/MMA people have been thinking about it, but it makes it much more logical (working on the assumption that notability of a MMA fighter is relatively easy to show compared to the match) to present the information that way. The yearly summaries can still be useful as a separate cross-reference for that. --MASEM (t) 23:06, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I would apply the same logic to MMA as we have WWE and professional wrestling. We don't write articles on the individual house shows unless something truly notable occurs (MMA equivalent: UFC shows on broadcast TV/Bellator weekly shows) but there are currently 81 GA class articles on WWE/TNA/WCW pay-per-view events. And I'll tell you right now, I could write a GA class article on UFC 149 if I felt the desire to. So can the MMA folks - and I wish they would realize that doing so is their best defence against the people working to delete their articles. Resolute 14:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) So what if someone was to write an article on each days MLB games, or each week of the NFL season, or each week of the AFL or EPL ? What we have at the moment is a policy (WP:NOTNEWSPAPER) that says we don't cover newsworthy events unless there is some demonstrated enduring notability, we don't cover every reported murder, because the vast majority are not of encyclopaedic note yet most would get coverage in the press both at the time of the crime, at the time of the trial and at any appeal but all of the coverage is routine primary news reports. Take the 2004 Estoril Open, what happened at the event that was of encyclopaedic note ? some professionals were watched doing their job, it was shown on TV, it was reported in the press, so was 13 March 2012 in the Australian House of Representatives or 16 May 2012 in the US House of Representatives. Mtking ^(edits) 23:26, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I told you above that we don't generally do articles on individual matches, and I have no doubt that such articles would be quickly and correctly deleted at AFD. If you are unable to comprehend the difference between an individual game, match or fight and a season, tournament or event, then you are just wasting my time. Resolute 14:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

WP:notability is founded on the fact that suitable coverage is a rough indicator of encyclopedic-type notability. Mathematically this assumes a a relatively constant ratio of suitable coverage to encyclopedic-type notability. When this ratio varies, the wp:notability guidelines don't work quite as well. Nowhere is this more true than with sports, which is extremely coverage-heavy, out of proportion to enclyclopedic-type notability. The coverage itself (and watching/reading it) is itself an immense activity and entertainment, rather being just coverage. Add to that being the one with a very high incidence of fandom, and fans working the AFD and I think that the overall situation has gotten out of whack. One answer is to toughen up the SNG standards. Biting my tongue while I say that because I think that GNG should be refined so that SNG's can be eliminated, and then eliminating SNG's. But that is a very complex project. It will probably require introducing a new metric into the wp:notability equation, the "degree of enclyclopedicness". Trying to handle this aspect only with a separate pass/fail test (via. "What Wikipedia is not") is too hamhanded to accomplish this. But I digress. North8000 (talk) 22:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• Folks, there is nothing wrong with covering notable events. And everything is routine at the end of the day if it happens on a regular basis. The Superbowl is a prime example. As are the Olympics and presentational elections. We cover them even so. If the coverage is there and even mildly sustained, we cover it. As well we should. Hobit (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Even the Super Bowl is "routine". It happens every single year. We all know how much coverage it will get. We're expecting it. According to Mtking, only something like the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction that happened in 2004 would be considered "notable". The Super Bowl itself wouldn't. He takes the notability thing way to far... to the extreme. Gamezero05 16:49, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

<sarcasm>And here I was thinking it was turning into a reality show "news"paper</sarcasm>--ukexpat (talk) 17:54, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Agree on the Superbowl, and also for the other 20,000 sports articles that are next in line with respect to notability. The problem is the other 200,000 sports articles that aren't in that 20,000. North8000 (talk) 20:55, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Abolishment of using WP:BEFORE as an editing restriction

Several times (most recently with User:TenPoundHammer), I've seen editors propose being forced to follow WP:BEFORE as part of a thread involving supposed misuse of AfD or CSD. WP:BEFORE is neither policy nor a guideline and there has never been a consensus to make it as such. Therefore, I propose some sort of disclaimer that forced adherence to this non-policy is a non-starter. Note that this should not be a vote on the merits of WP:BEFORE pbp 13:28, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The instructions in WP:BEFORE related to verifiability and notability (which are the ones that cause most contention) are firmly grounded in deletion policy, where the relevant criteria are "articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed" and "articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline", not "articles which do not currently contain reliable sources" and "articles whose current content fails to meet the relevant notability guideline". Phil Bridger (talk) 13:36, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

• (ec)I'm afraid I don't understand your post or what you hope to accomplish with it if the merits aren't at issue. WP:BEFORE is consensus-supported, the main difference in opinion from case-to-case being how much "due diligence" someone is expected to do if the article's flaws seem pretty self-evidently unfixable on their face. You'll find there's little on Wikipedia that anyone is "forced" to do, but those editors who have nominated something that is easily found to be notable or whatever the issue are rightly criticized, and those who have repeatedly abused AFD by repeatedly making frivolous nominations have been banned from it. BEFORE is certainly in the spirit of WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE, which are policy, and is at minimum good practice and an exercise of good judgment. If you're not questioning those merits, I don't understand why you'd want to make it less likely that editors would be expected to follow it. postdlf (talk) 13:46, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
  • "WP:BEFORE is consensus-supported". That's not exactly true. While there's no consensus to get rid of it, there's no consensus to upgrade it to a policy either. And since it ain't policy, editors can't be required to follow it, and it shouldn't be used as an editing restriction pbp 15:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
    • That strikes me as wikilawyering. Whether it's a policy, guideline, Miss Manners rule of etiquette, or traffic ordinance, it's a good idea and a reasonable expectation that AFDs not be wastes of time for easily researchable issues, and per policy at WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE, not be brought for fixable issues. And we don't fail to do good things just because we're not "required" regardless of whether it's written down somewhere or not. If someone's only reason for not doing something is "you can't make me", they are failing to be a good editor and member of the community. Really that's about the worst attitude someone could have on here. postdlf (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
    • As Phil Bridger has already pointed out, WP:BEFORE is policy. It is currently deletion policy where it has been for some eight years, although it in fact originated in the verifiability policy in 2003. Uncle G (talk) 11:38, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely not. There's been a whole spate of AfD's recently where the good practice of BEFORE have categorically been ignored for favour of quick and dirty AfD's (several of which you were involved in you, Purplebackpack89). Some of those were problematic because the nominator failed to realise that they were AfD'ing an article with a problematic title (and was, in fact notable), or articles which were recently created.

It seems to me that you're trying to get rid of BEFORE, not because it's bad practice, but because it gets in the way of some sort of "kill score" that you hope to attain at AfD. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 13:57, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

This "kill score" allegation is not germain, not proven at all and frankly is a personal attack pbp 15:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

All that BEFORE can be used for is to demonstrate AFDs that should have never been started because of "ease of correction" that BEFORE would highlight. The problem is that proving that BEFORE wasn't done is difficult and I've seen cases where the nominators who normally follow BEFORE and even talk about lack of sources from their google searches are accosted for failing to do BEFORE. Basically, if it is a case of an editor that nominates for AFD often but a great deal are quickly shown to be bad noms because of easy google search hits or the like, then that's a behavioral issue that likely will restrict their participation at AFD, not require them to do BEFORE since again, proving that BEFORE was actually used is impossible. --MASEM (t) 14:26, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Echoing what Masem just said, WP:BEFORE itself is not the problem; it's a great thing to follow when going through the deletion process. However, more of the problem lies when editors use WP:BEFORE to whack nominators over the head with, even if said nominator may have made a good faith effort to follow it. Of course, that in itself is very hard to show physically that one has or has not. --MuZemike 14:31, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

And that's exactly what I want to stop, Mu (and Masem). Inclusionist whack nominators over the head with it as a straw argument. When Hammer, or me, or any other number of editors have made several AfD nominations that are perfectly acceptable policywise but other editors don't like, and then make one AfD nomination of slightly more questionable merit, inclusionist insist they be shackled to the (not a policy or guide) of BEFORE for eternity. That's wrong. Assuming BEFORE is here to stay, but not as policy (and there's never been consensus to make it one), BEFORE shouldn't be used in this manner, and something should be added to BEFORE to reflect that it isn't policy and shouldn't be used that way pbp 15:57, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

How exactly are they being "shackled to BEFORE for eternity"? That sounds like empty rhetoric to me, and I don't know what you're actually trying to describe. postdlf (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that needs modification of some policies or guidelines and not just some encouragement to follow Wikipedia:Assume good faith..? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, this is more of a behavioral argument than a policy problem. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 19:20, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Purplebackpack89, I suggest that you read WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays. The tag at the top of the page is not what makes a page contain sense or be support. WP:BRD is widely supported, but it's "just" an essay. WP:Five pillars is wildly popular, but it has no tag at the top (it is generally considered to be the best essay about policies ever written, without being a policy itself). There's no tag at the top of BEFORE because it's been embedded into the middle of a major procedure page. It needs WP:NOTAG to contain good advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Forget WP:BEFORE for a second—let's look at underlying principles. The touchstone of AfD nominations on the basis of notability (and verifiability) is existence of sufficient reliable sources and certainly the majority of AfD nominations are notability-based. A nomination on the basis of notability is, then, profoundly a discussion on the merits of whether sufficient reliable sources exist. Now comes along a fairly experienced user who nominates a topic at AfD on notability grounds that literally a five second Google Books search would show has scads of sources written about it. They don't bother to do that search. What happens then: the nomination stays open for a week if not snowed, and ten people waste their time on it when it never had any chance of succeeding—never, not maybe, not possibly—it was a nonstarter because the grounds for the nomination did not exist and that lack of merit was child's play to discover. That's irresponsible and an insult to everyone who ultimately participates. We owe some duty to not be complete assholes to our fellow editors. Okay, so say this is the first time this user has done so as far as we can tell. Fine, they deserve a trout slap but let's not make a big deal. Now, how about the user who does this over and over (as does happen)? Now we're talking about numerous man hours wasted. That is disruption. WP:BEFORE is where the obviousness of this is written out (though it it doesn't say it in these terms, nor with the clarity and emphasis it should about the minimum expected—I attempted to fix that some time ago but that's for another discussion). Yes, I have seen WP:BEFORE abused; people who expect a complete survey of sources the nominator may not even be familiar with before nominating, but the principles of every policy/guideline/essay are subject to perversion, which does not invalidate their proper application.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:47, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Me personally I would agree that (regardless of WP:BEFORE) before sticking something in for AfD the nominator should check if there are obvious sources. It just wastes everyone's time otherwise. The better nominations say "A Googgle search turns up nothing but press releases by Foocorp" Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Advice to nominators

I agree with MuZemike, WP:BEFORE is sometimes used to beat nominators over the head with. Therefore, what a nominator should do when he properly follows WP:BEFORE is pick 3 sources from the search results that he suspects that a hyper-inclusionist might try to pass off as supersources and impeach them in his nomination statement. Are they press releases, are they trivial mentions, are they blogs? Say so. Yes there might be some editors !voting "keep" who disagree with the nominator about the quality of the sources but at least the discussion will be about the sources and not the nominator and there will be no doubt that the nominator did indeed follow WP:BEFORE. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Benifits from donation

Hello Everybody, I have given 100 $ donation to Wikipedia and I am proud of it.After all, Wikipedia is my favorite website.I'm using it since 2004.By the way, I was thinking that you people should created something like this.If a person makes a donation more than sufficient amount like 10000$ or something, then his/her user account should be given administrator privileges.Thus, I would say that any active user would be inspired to donate 10000 $ to Wikipedia and Wikipedia will easily make up revenues for expanding.Show what are your thoughts. Regards,14.97.189.216 (talk) 05:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC).

I was thinking you had said 1,000 there for a while, and was thinking if that was a reasonable amount to pay someone to create an admin sock for you given the number of hours required, the labor cost in various countries versus the level of english required and so on, of course, you wouldn't be putting the money into wikipedia to become an admin, they wouldn't accept it and might be a little disgusted with the idea, you'd be giving it to someone else to do the work for you, and no doubt they'd be happy with that arrangement, and wikipedia would be happy as there is no appearance of a conflict of interest, and you'd probably be happy until you found out the job is far from glamorous.

But then I noticed, wait a minute, you said $10,000, well, all I can say to that is email me :) Because I know I'll be really really really happy, not just 'I can't believe it's not butter happy' but fireworks jumping off my chair punching the air happy, tipping over the monitor by accident as I victory dance around the desk, while a cat ran out of the room with a Rarrrroow and I'm too busy being excited to think for a second 'wait, I don't HAVE a cat'.

But seriously $10,000, isn't that overpriced ? Penyulap ☏ 06:49, 6 Jun 2012 (UTC)

what is the going rate for adminship anyone ? Penyulap ☏ 06:52, 6 Jun 2012 (UTC)

These days? two pieces of leather: A belt to the mouth and a boot to the head : ) - jc37 14:08, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Uh, no. Buying adminship is just a bad idea. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Buying admin seems misguided to me. On the other hand, there might be some kind of more harmless badge (something a bit like a barnstar) which could be given to donors. It may already exist. --Salimfadhley (talk) 13:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Buying admin seems indeed misguided. It would force upon the contributor the job of being a administrator. That's like being given a broom and the title "janitor" because you gave $10,000 to a charity. Being a administrator is not a title or a honor; its a responsibility and frankly a loot of work. A much better thing to give would be a barnstar or similar mark of honor. If someone gives time, or they give money, do not both deserve some kind of appreciation? Belorn (talk) 14:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

All donators, get free access to Wikipedia content. Those that donate $10,000 or more get un-metered access. What more could you want? Similar benefits are available for those who donate time instead of money. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 14:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Why on earth would we treat a large donor so poorly as that? We wouldn't have any left! :) Joking aside, being an admin isn't some wonderful thing. It invites a lot of abuse and criticism, and generally very little praise to temper it. Admin candidates have generally been around the block several times, and know what they're signing up for when they put their name in at RfA. Someone who buys their way in might be in for a very rude shock. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:39, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

No, $10,000 is never ever overpriced.Why? Because It's worth all the efforts you make to become a successful candidate at WP:RFA, including but not limited to fighting vandalism, giving a good judgement, making high amount of contribution, spending your time from your busy day, waiting for a long period, being criticized by fellow users, giving reply to all the damn questions at WP:RFA etc.In a nutshell, if a user is a experienced on Wikipedia, than instead of WP:RFA, he should be introduced with a new method of becoming a administrator.On the second point, I must say that becoming an administrator on world's largest encyclopedia that follows an ideal system of management would be an splendid experience.You can get a power and control in your hand via just a click of mouse!So, I am telling you to rethink in your mind about this subject.Also, I am not insisting the price to be such higher.It could be decided later.Keep only two word in mind- 'experienced user' and 'high amount to charity' Regards.(P.S.-I'm the same who started this thread, just my IP address is not static.)14.97.183.183 (talk) 07:41, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

You have different ideas about what adminship than I do. Since becoming an admin, I have found it much more restricting than empowering. I certainly have to parse my words more carefully to avoid a firestorm, I'm expected to tolerate incivility from others while not being able to crack wise back. If I make any mistake, there are dozens of people happy to point it out in multiple venues. Power and control are overrated and overstated, as we admins aren't the leaders of the community, we are its servants. A great many of the best leaders, voices of reason and editors around here are not admins. Being an admin has been a splendid experience in some way but not all, and it isn't ideal management. It is more akin to herding cats. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 10:59, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Hit the nail right on the head for why I wouldn't want to be an admin, it would cramp my style :) I have much more variety and scope of strategies for interacting with morons than I would otherwise. But enough of this Dr Smith Lost in space 'oh the pain, the pain, adminship is such a pain' it does have it's prestige in the eyes of newbies who arrive from other boards thinking it is like the role of a sysop. The main difference in the eyes of a newbie between God and an admin is that God doesn't walk around all day long thinking he' an admin. Sysops are held to account for destroying Bulletin boards and forums, whereas here, nobody cares, it's all good. Penyulap ☏ 07:38, 11 Jun 2012 (UTC)

The idea of making users admins for giving money is akin to appointing some dude for public office just because they gave a million dollars to the President. That's capitalism, and I don't like the idea of capitalism on Wikipedia - or anywhere. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 23:16, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Plutocracy, not Capitalism, fwiw, 113.106. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Ha! the irony, to be the US president, people have to give you the millions of dollars. Penyulap ☏ 07:11, 13 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Council of Wikipedia

Currently, there is no body which coordinates actions and policies on a Wiki-wide level. While the rulings of the Arbitration Committee and its cousin the Mediation Committee may apply to all within the community, these bodies are responsible for adjudicating disputes, not for coordinating improvements to Wikipedia. Therefore, in my essay "The need for coordination," I lay out a proposal for a Council of Wikipedia which will fill this enormous gap and end the disorganized, unicellular way in which Wikipedia is growing. Please comment on the proposal either here or on the talk page of the essay. Wer900 • ^{talk • coordinationconsensus defined} 00:45, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

A WikiProject is—I quote the actual definition—"a group of editors that want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia." So you are proposing a WikiProject, just a regimented, powerful one whose scope is a mash of the existing WP:WikiProject Council, WP:WikiProject Policy and guidelines, and the WMF's Meta. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

When one usually thinks of a WikiProject, its normally a group of editors who come together and discuss improvement to a particular subject, not the entire Wikipedia project. WikiProjects do have some power in deciding the content of each article related to their subject but not enough power to rise above the powers of bodies such as the Arbitration Committee and coordinate Wikipedia as proposed. --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 01:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

One could only believe that WikiProjects were content-oriented if one were unfamiliar with the long list of WikiProjects at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia.

WikiProjects per the official guideline have no more authority than any other group of editors, and rather less than the editors actually working on any given article. If a couple of editors waltzes into the talk page of an article you've been working on and tells you to do everything their way because they're a "WikiProject" and they said so, then you may freely reject their silly and anti-policy demands. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks like this proposal has been shot down (just as it should) on its talk page. However, I would like to use the opportunity to ask the proposer how User:Wer900/Consensus study is going on. It is the report you "almost promised" in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 94#A clear process for determination of consensus, isn't it? I suspect that if you concluded this study, you would have found out that the problems that you want to solve (with this and other proposals) are not the problems that have to be solved...

Oh, and, if you don't mind that much, could you please remove the links to your essays from your signature? They made finding that first link via "What links here" much harder, adding unnecessary noise... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 19:26, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

The proposal has been changed, an updated version can be found here, and it takes into account all of the grievances of the editors who have commented on the original page. Wer900 • ^{talk • coordinationconsensus defined} 01:18, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

OK, I read some of it and have a single piece of advice: it's time to abandon this proposal. I understand that it is fun to think about different "constitutions", but it is clear that those proposals will be completely rejected.

Also, I don't think it is accurate to say "it takes into account all of the grievances of the editors who have commented on the original page", when, for example, the proposal ([2]) still gives great power to Wikiprojects (that are only informal groups of editors where being a "member" is mostly meaningless by itself) - and that was one of the criticisms both here and on the talk page ([3]). It is still not clear what the "Council" will really do ("To promulgate resolutions calling for action on a given area of Wikipedia." - they will write essays? You know, you can also do that now - and, by the way, have done so.). And I suspect that writing down something like "This article of the Charter of the Council of Wikipedia may not be amended through any process." is a bad idea in any constitutional arrangement anywhere. Who knows when some improvements will be necessary?

So, once again, I'd like to ask you to give up on this proposal, mark it as rejected and cancel the RFC. Now it is no longer a fun (and probably useful) game where you invent constitutions and imagine how they would work, but just a waste of time, energy and nerves. It would be far more fruitful if you did some more research on how Wikipedia actually works (like User:Wer900/Consensus study - that's a very good start; unfortunately, you didn't reference it in your proposal). Then you might find real problems with internal order of Wikipedia and propose solutions that will be far more useful. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

WIkipedia has lots of problems. And I wouldn't consider lack of coordination to be one of them. North8000 (talk) 20:58, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

We're all going in different directions, together Penyulap ☏ 03:18, 12 Jun 2012 (UTC)

A universal board would give the illusion of an oligarchy. Bulbapedia (an independent Pokemon encyclopedia that only registered Bulbagarden members can edit) is a prime example of such a system. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 23:09, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm rewriting this proposal within my user space to make it more logical. I've already cut WikiProjects out of the loop and added an Electoral Commission to ensure honesty. - Wer900 (talk | contributions)

Good luck. When you're done with the draft, you might ask for feedback at WT:COUNCIL. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Wer900, what problem would actually be solved by this new bureaucracy? Someguy1221 (talk) 23:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Lists of characters

Throughout my 6 months on Wikipedia one question has boggled my mind since the beginning: What is the rules for lists of characters? Lists such as List of Family Guy characters. But I have also noticed that some of them like List of Toy Story characters have the {{in-universe}} tag on them. Due to the nature of the article, in-universe and its backing guideline should all render each list in need of a rewrite. This confuses readers and new editors as they may start to think that such lists don't meet notability or fail MOS. And I learned this the hard way. Some were bold and I really suggest someone write an essay regarding this. Also, if anyone sees {{in-universe}} on any list of this like, please remove it. Thank you. --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 20:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The short answer: It's fickle.

The longer answer: For a running work of fiction, a collect list of characters is generally acceptable (even in a single work, listing the characters can be a possibility). Whether that needs a separate article for the list is not clear, but generally if you can easily fit the list of characters on the overall article about the work itself without approaching size limits you should do that. When the list grows long, then that can be split out to a separate list.

But, when this happens, that list should (not required, nor is this standardized) show some sense of notability. The list once broken out now needs to be less about the plot, and more about the work or the characters as elements of fiction themselves. Are the characters notable? Did the character cast receive critical attention, etc? Were the creators influenced by anything in creating the characters? One thing that certainly should be avoided is having the character list be retelling of the work's plot (that's the problem with the Bug's Life list above).

Also, remember that in-universe is usually fixable. If a character's story is easy to tell by stepping out of the work, ordering events that make the most sense, instead of trying to follow how the character experiences things, that's doable. --MASEM (t) 20:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

So does that mean if you find a list such as the Bug's Life one, redirect it to force a rewrite, or whatever? --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 13:26, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

You certainly can be bold to make the appropriate redirects or changes, but be aware that some editors who have best intentions may be overprotective of such articles and will revert such changes, at which point you should seek out consensus to resolve. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I see, thank you for the enlightenment! --Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 18:45, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Two confusing pages

• Wikipedia:The logic behind Wikipedia policy
• Wikipedia:Why NPOV?

These pages are virtually identical. I redirected the page, and my edit was reverted as unconstructive (see next edit). I spoke with the editor who reverted my redirect, who retracted the warning, however, had advised me to initiate a discussion before redirecting such a page. Please provide input on what you believe should be done from here. Thank you. 70.248.176.149 (talk) 23:26, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

It's ironic that the user who reverted you has a userbox that says WARNING: This user is capable of completely screwing up using Huggle. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:57, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

This is a perfectly straightforward case. These are two copies of essentially the same page, created by the same author with within a short time. Having two copies is not only pointless, but also potentially confusing, and redirecting one of them was the most reasonable thing to do. As far as I can see, the only reason given for reverting the redirect is that "essays need to be discussed before majorly changed", but I cannot see any reasonable way of seeing this as a major change. If anyone has any rational reason for preferring to have two copies of the same page then please explain; otherwise, it is much more helpful to keep the redirect, and so I shall restore it for now. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Content forks aren't good anywhere on Wikipedia. Nyttend (talk) 03:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

A New Pages-like Patrol for Non-free Media

An issue we are struggling at WT:NFC is appropriate education of users using non-free media. It is very possible for an editor that has otherwise never used images to insert non-free inappropriately without being aware they are wrong.

New Page Patrol does watch for new files but the only checks they make there are to valid a copyright license (including free licenses) are there, and some idea of a source for the image. There are several additional checks that would need to be done for a non-free media to assure that they meet NFC policy. Some of these are done in batch analysis of non-free media files via automated tools to find when certain expectations aren't there but not all of NFC can be done by automated processes.

I am looking at some type of process that is like New Page Patrol but specifically targets non-free media, and only adding it to the queue for patrol after a day or so as to give editors a chance to spiffy up what is needed. Once on the queue, any editor can review the image use for the core expectations of a non-free rationale. When there are clear problems, the images should be tagged with the appropriate templates and users warned. A 4000x4000px image for a CD cover? Tag it "non-free reduce"; image used in a page otherwise not listed in its rationale? Tag it. However, at this stage, the quality of the rationale should not be judged to a great degree, giving the benefit of doubt to the uploader/user. For example, if a screenshot of a TV episode is used as the identifying image for that episode, with a basic rationale "this image identifies the episode", but mainly involving talking heads of live actors and otherwise something we'd normally not allow as non-free after review, this patrol should not make that evaluation, though I certainly can see caution tags alerting the user that a stronger rationale is preferred to avoid any potential deletion in the future. Patrolers are not required to fix any problems but they can do so if they want, though if this is done, the uploader should be notified of what they should do in the future.

This patrol cannot delete images but should remove the clearly offending ones from appropriate pages with appropriate messages to what the problems are. Most of the tags we have to warn about bad non-frees end up going to admin categories for deletion after 7 days if these aren't resolved; the cautionary tags are simply that, and no further admin action is expected at that point.

There is probably some bot automation needed for this as well as additional lists/categories/etc. I'm seeing if there's significant interest in this or ideas for it to move forward on. --MASEM (t) 15:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

The newcomer's manual

I came across this purely by accident when looking up Manchester's WikiProject. Had this page been launched properly I think it could have been a really useful tool for newbies. Is there anyone who would be willing to restart it? Otherwise what should be done about it? Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 20:32, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Per MOS, this should really be called WP:Newcomer's manual or WP:Newcomer's guide. Our impersonators at Uncyclopedia call theirs simply "Beginner's Guide" and incorrectly have it in the mainspace. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 21:18, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

There we go, I've changed the title of the discussion. Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 21:26, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposal re.: Wording change needed to stop forbidding copying of properly licensed free content

We need to stop telling editors to not do something we want them to do!

This MediaWiki message, found at the bottom of each of the zillion edit pages our editors use, needs changing! :

• Please do not copy and paste from copyrighted websites – only public domain resources can be copied without permission. (it's crossed out to ensure people don't confuse the extant text with the proposed text)

However, it's often perfectly fine to copy and paste content from copyrighted websites: Nearly all of our own websites' content is copyrighted. Much essential Wikipedia content comes from copyrighted websites that license their copyrighted work. The CC-BY-SA 3.0 License itself was copied from the copyrighted website http://creativecommons.org! The improper instruction of the first half of the sentence, "Please do not copy and paste from copyrighted websites" is not rectified by the second half. Inthis discussion in a less-trafficked forum, several alternatives were considered.

So, I now propose we go with the following (Credit to Richardguk for coming up with this revision and listing some pros and cons.)

• Do not copy and paste from other websites unless permitted by Wikipedia copyright policy.

Argument

Advantages: brief, comprehensive. "Please" is unnecessary when warning people not to break the law.

Disadvantages: unspecific, no reference to copy-pasting from sources other than websites, no explanation of public domain and other exemptions. But anyone relying on public domain exemptions can reasonably be expected to have enough diligence to check the detailed rules.

For the sake of brevity, the text is deliberately ambiguous about who must have "permitted". This is intended to combine the notion of the source site permitting copying and the notion of Wikipedia policy permitting pasting.

"Copyrighted websites" is changed to "other webites" because many casual users don't know that nearly all websites are copyrighted, but they are so it is safer and simpler to cover everywhere – except Wikipedia itself.

The important thing here is to firmly deter potential abusers, briefly guide casual users, and usefully steer diligent users.

Thoughts? Let's get this fixed! --Elvey (talk) 01:10, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Discussion (less cruft)

• Agree about avoiding to frame the issue as "public domain" vs. "copyrighted", which is somewhat misleading. But I'm not quite happy about the proposed alternative either – we need something very simple, something that gets just the central message across to the clueless user, and without the reader having to first follow a link to the extremely confusing WP:Copyrights page. For the purpose of simplicity, I would think that even a slight amount of oversimplification is a reasonable price to pay. Perhaps something along the lines of "Do not copy text from elsewhere, unless it has been released under a free license". Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:35, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks and Kudos for the support and suggestion! (That's the best kind of feedback one can get!) A problem with your suggestion is that PD work is not licensed at all, so it has not "been released under a free license". --Elvey (talk) 21:00, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

• Support any such improvement as anyone's mentioned so far; the "public domain" vs. "copyrighted" dichotomy is legally wrong and so misleading as to be worse than pointless. I've long detested it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:08, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Elvey (talk) 21:00, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

• Copying straight from external websites is against policy as far as I'm aware anyway. We don't copy information, we re-write it into our articles and source the material accordingly. This is why I Oppose. MrLittleIrish ^(talk) © 19:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

You're mistaken. There are many good Wikipedia articles that started out as a copy of an entry in another 'free' encyclopedia.--Elvey (talk) 21:00, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

• Support per Nyttend. We routinely copy from EB1911 or the DNB, for example, and AFAIK the policy is that we attribute to avoid plagiarism, not that we do not copy.--Tagishsimon (talk) 19:46, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks like rough consensus is forming for this. If no unresolved objections within a few days, would an admin please make it so? --Elvey (talk) 01:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Not sure that we are clear on which statement we are discussing. In any case, it should probably be run by the WMF counsel to be sure we're doing something legally sensible. Meanwhile, I note that below the edit window, I read

Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable.
By clicking the "Save Page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

That wording seems pretty much on the mark. It doesn't introduce red herrings about websites vs other sources. It doesn't confuse copying copyrighted content with violating that copyright. It remains silent on copying public domain content. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:00, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Using the same wording as the edit page is a more sound proposition. It avoids ambiguity and is legally accurate. isfutile:P (talk) 13:44, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

The above comments by LeadSongDog and isfutile (AKA Tonyinman AKA Tony Inman) indicate they are confused and need to reread the first sentence of this section. The proposal is about other wording that is also on the edit page that is legally INACCURATE and needs fixing. We are telling users to not do that which we routinely and appropriately do, as Tagishsimon notes, above. --Elvey (talk) 01:10, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Current consensus on PR editing?

Is there any collected consensus on PR editing or is it all still a lot of shouting?

I ask because next Wednesday I will be the Wikipedian at an episode of the CIPR TV webcast. (A past episode.) Basically a podcast with a camera. I have my own opinions, but I'll be there to say something reasonably representative of what the community actually thinks. So is there any place to get a feel for that?

They're also interested in this document, which is a how-not-to-foul-up guide put together by WMUK. But of course that's descriptive and not normative. - David Gerard (talk) 13:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

No. It's all shouting. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)