Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss existing and proposed policies.

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Getting rid of fair use

I'm seeing this issue come up over and over again. Most wikipedias prohibit fair use. Although I can see legit reasons to include some truly fair use images on en, I've observed that in practice it just leads to a whole lot of problems. A lot of people are claiming fair use for any image that they want to include, regardless of the legitimacy of the claim. A lot of people are spending time arguing over what is/is not fair use. I'm beginning to think that it's really just not worth it and it's greatly reducing the freeness of the english wikipedia. I know that a lot of people will object to depreciating fair use on wikipedia, but I also know that I've heard a lot of people voicing similar concerns to mine. How can we move towards putting this bad idea behind us? Matt 00:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for it, with one exception: when the image itself is the subject of an article, such as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. --Carnildo 03:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If we remove all fair use images, we'll leave a great many articles with no illustrations (perhaps permanently):

• Almost all articles dealing with modern art. This includes basically all movies, TV shows, paintings and other graphic arts, etc.
• Almost all articles dealing with fictional subjects.
• Many articles dealing with aspects of modern history not witnessed by US government photographers. Note that this would probably include all situations where the exact copyright status is unclear (e.g. Nazi photographs).
• And various others.

Aggressively pushing for free content is very good, of course; but let's not forget that we also want to be an encyclopedia, and one that can be competitive with commercial ones. Decimating our image libraries isn't really going to help in this regard. —Kirill Lokshin 05:02, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not convinced that the "baby" in this case is all that valuable. We might end up with articles without illustration, so what? It would be interesting to see what percent of EB's articles include illustration (I don't know the answer to this). EB's article on Salvador Dalí (from what I can see from [1]) has no images. To say that we need "fair use" to compete with non-free publishers seems to me to be an argument for why a free encyclopedia can't be done. But de.wikipedia.org is doing it, and by most measures has been more succesful than en (unless you measure an encyclopedia by the number of pokemon articles). Matt 17:50, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

EB gets less than 1% of Wikipedia's hits so it is really rather insignificant as a competitor. We are competing with the whole (very well illustrated) www. Osomec 16:40, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

There is so much abuse of the "fair use" that we need a stronger wording that currently exist to discourage uploaders. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 04:44, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

NO! Getting rid of Fair Use will cripple Wikipedia. The IP laws are already restrictive enough, I don't see any reason not to take advantage of the little freedom we are given under law. We should encourage replacing Fair Use images where possible, but there are many instances where it is NOT possible ever (such as articles on video games and movies), where Fair Use is absolutely essential for a good article. Loom91 15:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

It is possible ever -- when the copyrights expire. Wikipedia would survive. It would also be more free, and more reproducable outside the US, both of which are healthy aims. Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 15:28, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyrights only expire theoretically—no copyright has expired during the lifetime of Wikipedia. Passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998 (and its international counterparts), and the failure of legal challenge to it, virtually guarantees that another extension effort will occur before 2019 (the next time that copyrights might expire). Making policy decisions based on the assumption that copyrights will eventually expire seems overly credulous. I think we have to assume that nothing presently copyrighted will ever transfer into the public domain. --TreyHarris 16:31, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there's some intermediate choices. We could establish an arbitrary limit, like one-per-article (with some sort of special procedure for granting exceptions). Right now, there's no incentive to make free images, because so many articles are already crammed-full of non-free ones, which are usually "prettier" than the free ones. --Rob 15:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree getting stricter on fair use is a decent idea. i disagree with arbitary limits though. Screenshots and suchlike are essential to proper critical commentry on software products.

As for copyrights expiring yes that will happen eventually but for many things probablly not in our lifetimes. ALSO if we get rid of non-free images now then we still won't have them when thier copyrights expire unless someone else archived them! Plugwash 16:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd propose allowing fair use images only when the following conditions are all satisfied A) it is a genuine fair use claim; no legal problems for Wikipedia; B) there is a compelling argument that the image is necessary to illustrate the article, and C) there is a compelling argument that a free alternative is either impossible to obtain, or it is highly unlikely that we could ever obtain one through reasonable means (however you define that!) — Matt Crypto 23:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not use fair use where it is permisible, and there is no more open alternative? Why not take advantage of rights that are given under existing copyright law? Aggressive deletion of useful images for copyright-panic reasons only impoverishes us. For great justice. 20:12, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to keep fair use until technology makes long range digital camera a reality. --Masssiveego 01:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

What is "long range digital camera"??? Arniep 12:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

My main concern regarding this, although I oppose it as per Kirill Lokshin, is what it would do to the books included in Wikipedia. Right now, the WikiProject Novels template is to use an infobox on the page of articles relating to novels, and these infoboxes include a picture of the cover of the first edition of the novel. I am concerned regarding the complications the elimination of fair use would cause for this project. While getting stricter is a decent idea, anything that would eliminate illustrations from articles, book covers from articles on books, and other such truly legitimate, fair uses would, indeed, be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Users do not have the right to upload whatever they feel like, but the concept of fair use is an extremely important one. Abhorsen327 03:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to restrict Fair Use images beyond what the law will allow. There is no compelling argument in Matt's original post beyond "it's not worth the hassle". If this hassles anyone, I urge you to go do something else. There are tons of articles to write and proof and merge. Concentrate on something out of the modern era and you won't run up against as many image copyright problems.

Matt goes on to say "We might end up with articles without illustration, so what?". Can Matt or anyone else make a case that an encyclopedia should be just words?? Images are not only snazzy, pretty, and make a fine looking article, but are absolutely essential for understanding some subjects (e.g. Modern Art). Period.

It is suicide to drop Fair Use images because "they aren't worth it". Sheesh Madman 20:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

What about a preference tab for which class of licenses for images you want? Then someone wanting to browse for material not legal in their jurisdiction could just not see the ones they don't want. For great justice. 04:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

keep the fair use. It's a legal issue and the law is on our side. Giving up our rights does not help us--or any one else. Fair use is essential to every reference work. Rjensen 05:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a fair use right. Fair use is only a defense against copyright infringement. Almost no use is 'fair' until it is challenged in court and upheld as such. There is nothing that prevents content owners/distributors from taking away your supposed rights. DRM does precisely this when it restricts you from copying a song onto your iPod (the court-established fair use of 'space shifting'). It is precisely this legal ambiguity which is such a bane to the goal of creating a FREE encyclopedia. Anyone seeking to freely use en content has to weigh the costs of verifying the free status of such content. As Lessig points out in Free Culture, independently produced movies sometimes have to edit out scenes featuring use that would clearly be considered 'fair'. When they sign a distribution deal, the movie's creators are required to enumerate EVERY shot that could conceivably constitute any kind of copyright infringement risk. They are then forced to buy copyright insurance, in case claims were ever brought against the movie. In this case, the very risk that content MIGHT not constitute fair use renders it completely unusable. Audiodude 04:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

we give up fair use and Wiki is dead. Indeed, all reference works are dead. Giving up fair use means outsideres control what we are allowed to say about them. It is the oldest and most prized right regarding reference books and the courts have (nearly) always upheld us. The advantages of forfeiture? close to zero. Rjensen 05:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

While I think we should retain fair use here, if I'm not mistaken, some of the other wikis don't allow fair use and are working just fine. For example (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) the Italian wiki doesn't allow fair use images. There isn't any need for hyperbole. JoshuaZ 05:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct. Most foreign language wikis attempt to conform both to the laws of the US (where the servers live), and the laws of the most prominent country or countries speaking that language, so that wiki content can be easily reused there. Most countries outside the US don't have a fair use provision; instead, many European countries rely on the more stringent notion of fair dealing. Also, I think some wikis may, like Commons, allow neither fair use nor fair dealing, so that only truly copyright free content is allowed. Dragons flight 05:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the bottomline of this discussion is that we should exercise tight control over the fair use claims (such as only allowing a fixed set of fair use templates, screenshots, Nazis, etc., with strict patrolling for misplaced templates) and attempt to minimize the fair use images used. Maybe it should be policy that if there is a free/copyleft image and a fair use image both illustrating the same subject, we will discard the unfree image even if it is of superior quality. We should aim at having articles that would still be good if they were stripped of nonfree images (for example for the purpose of a derivative product, future "purist" fork, WP 1.0 on CD, etc.) dab (ᛏ) 13:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I just think there are way too many supposedly 'fair use' images that are used for strictly illustrative (rather than critical, comparative, or instructional) purpose, ESPECIALLY on articles discussing aspects of popular culture or media. I would go so far as to say that a copyrighted album cover is unnecessary (and in fact detrimental for the legal ambiguities it introduces), unless of course there is something notable about the cover art which is discussed in the article Audiodude 19:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Retaining the fair-use limits is non-negotiable as removing that limitation has the potential to disrupt future derivative projects and in contradiction with the GFDL. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 00:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Fair use is an absolute must. Kill it off and you kill off Wikipedia. We should be living within the law, not making up our own rules that are more restrictive than the law. That makes no sense whatsoever. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 14:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshen and rjensen are absolutely right. Furthermore, if there is really a great need for a Wikipedia compatible with the laws of every country in the world, then maybe an automatic script can be used to generate a Wikipedia Censored Version specifically for those applications. Just strip out every image with a Fair Use tag. While you're at it, you can strip out troubling usages of terms like "Tiananmen" and "Jesus", and so on... Doesn't it make more sense to start with a Wikipedia that can be dumbed down on command than one which would have to become the object of a brand new US-Wiki-Fairuse project to spruce it back up again? Also, if people lie about whether content is "fair use", they could lie about whether it was "public domain". The industry has gotten everything it's asked for, including a power to send 48-hour DMCA take-down notices whenever they want - so isn't that level of blind obedience from Wikipedia sufficient? Mike Serfas 05:18, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

(arriving late to the conversation) Unfortunately, while I enjoy the images on Wikipedia, I sometimes think they're more trouble than they are worth. Note, as just one example, the edit war over the lead image at Wonder Woman that occurred recently. A similar case of musical images occurred at Audrey Hepburn. Then you have people using Wiki-webspace as their own personal storage site for images. But on top of it all there is also the fact that there are so many restrictions on Fair Use that it is making it very difficult to find images of anything that fits the criteria. For example, I am presently involved in an edit war (not really - I won't go to 3RR with it) at an article about a minor model. The issue - the fact that the illustration for the article is an example of her work -- a magazine cover. To remove the magazine cover pretty much removes any need for there to be an image on the page. Yet the image tag for magazine covers has been revised at some point recently to say that magazine covers can only be used when discussing the magazine, not the subject matter of the cover (or its photographer, for that matter). And I've already informed the user wanting to delete the magazine cover that he'll need to delete a bunch more in [[Category:American models]]. (He subsequently replied that this is indeed his plan - to remove all magazine images from Wikipedia that aren't specifically used in articles about said magazines. This upset me enough that I was about to put forward a policy suggestion to remove images in toto from Wikipedia. It just slows down things anyway -- think of the bandwidth this place would save if we went to all-text. And everyone in the copyright police would be happy ... sorry for sounding sarcastic, but we editors put in a lot of time and effort to find images that make this place worth using as a resource, with no intention of making monetary gain of any of them, and all we get for our trouble is people saying "sorry, you can't use it." To heck with it. I'm tempted to take down every image I've uploaded to this place. 23skidoo 04:07, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Magazinecover has been in its current version since 02:30, 31 January 2006. There is no need to go all text under any conditions. We have many GFDL and PD images.Geni 04:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

arriving very late - I believe it is aquestion if it is for documentation purpose, or if it is really underminig a commercial service. Pictures of public available objects, in low resolution, are not very protectionworthy. Someone can take a picture of the eiffel tower easily. Nike sneakers (sorry) are in virtually 1000's of shops. Copyright restrictions are most likley there to sharply prohibit defacing usage (this is not scientific/documentary). This is my opinion of fair usage (not to take it literally). I am sourcing lots of things personally, i do not mind about things which are anyway provided for no charge, but might get unavailable at some point of time. However i know this is not allowed officially, even prohibited. I do include a visible tag of news agencies, in a way their representants would never do. In 70 years, these files become PD probably. Some things like egyptology are not meant to be a commercial stream, i believe sourcing from this is fair use in a meaning of sense. PD allows defacing etc., fair use does not. Check latest gas prices (political remark). See fansites/BBS (they source a lot of copyrighted data, this is tolerated, unwritten rules apply) - User:Akidd_dublin 8 may 2006

• I believe it would both help keep the community running well by limiting our interaction with laws that the community has proven to not understand very well and help us produce an encyclopedia with genuinely free content to eliminate our use of fair use, either with a grandfather clause or without. --Improv 17:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

  I agree with Kirill Lokshin. However, the two new CSDs for fair use images do constitute a tightening of the rules. If you take out fair use altogether, people will still keep uploading images, they'll just tag them as {{NoRightsReserved}} or some other tag that'll keep the bots off them; there are so few people on new upload patrol that it's trivially easy to bypass most restrictions anyway.

  Just a couple of other comments: fair use is definitely being unfairly abused at the moment. The most egregiously bad category is Category:Fair use magazine covers, followed closely by Category:Screenshots of web pages. Magazine covers can only be used under fair use in an illustration of or critical commentary on the magazine, not the person on the cover. Web screenshots, similar, except replace "the magazine" with "that website".

  Overall, we don't need tighter fair use policies, we need to enforce the policies we have. Stifle (talk) 08:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

  • It is NOT true that fair use of magazine covers requires a commentary of the magazine. In history articles they are used to demonstrate the importance of the person (as TIME person of the week). That is fair use. Rjensen 10:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we should keep fair use. A lot of movie posters, etc. can't be replaced by non-fair use images (I'm 99.9% sure on that). --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Use of American v. British/Commonwealth English

A vast majority of native English speakers speak American, not British (or Commonwealth) English. For this reason, to the extent that spelling is to be standardized or when a dispute arises, it makes sense to use American English.

I note American English is much more widely used on the Internet. A Google search for color gets 1,370 million hits, colour gets 231M. Standardize gets 26 million, standardise gets 2.3 million. Favorite gets 1.2B, favourite gets 275M. In general the American spelling is at least five times more used than the British spelling. It isn't even close!

I bring this up because in the dispute between using the American and British spellings for aluminum for the title of the entry, the British varient won out. I think this was a mistake.

I general, I think the best guide when it comes to a question of spelling is usage, and the American spelling of a word will virtually always be the most used. So I propose either a policy that explicitly defers to the dominant dialect of English (American English) or a policy based on usage. Kitteneatkitten 23:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Peace and harmony is best maintained, by deliberately avoiding a standard, and going by the "leave it be philosophy". Most articles apply entirely or mainly to one particular country, and that country's usage prevails. Elsewhere, whatever standard was used when the article was created, should be stuck with. --Rob 00:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

The general consensus on this is that either is acceptable so long as the style of writing remains consistent. However, aluminium is listed as the standardized form of the word with the American version as an acceptable variant. Using the first spelling is technically correct. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 00:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, I don't buy the argument about the "vast majority". Did you figure in India? Numbers on the Internet are skewed towards richer countries, of course. --Stephan Schulz 00:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Uh… did you even read what he posted? If it's skewed to the "rich countries" then that should be enough. By the way, if all of the native English speakers in India used the internet, then it would STILL be skewed to American spellings. 67.6% (or so) native English speakers come from America. So, your point is incorrect. R'son-W 07:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

India does not use English as its official language, and its inhabitants are not considered native English speakers. If they were, however, you can take your sorry >300 million Americans and put them up against the billion Indians who'd be using BrE, throw in every other BrE-native country (the ones you've handily included to make up 1\3 of native English users in the world), and start recounting those percentages. Then we could start counting other countries in which English is a secondary language, and check out which form is preferred there. Suddenly, you'll see AmE is at a somewhat less imposing figure, 25% would propably still be a high estimate, but you get the point. --TVPR 17:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

And if I may ask, what exactly did you mean by "If it's skewed to the "rich countries" then that should be enough."?--TVPR 17:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The general consensus is that articles about people/subjects that would be English use the English spelling, and people/subjects that would be American take the American spelling. Other articles stay with what they start as. We explicitly don't favor one over the other as this is an international project and it would be difficult and ethnocentric, to say the least, to enforce American spellings. Also, I don't think that a Google search can validate the greater usage of American English: certainly in Europe, Africa, and Asia, British English is more common. Snoutwood (tóg) 02:09, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Indians do not speak English as their native language, and only a small minority of Indians speak English at all (and they are generally rich enough to afford Internet access.) Yet American spellings still dominate the Internet by better than a five to one ratio. Also, in many countries those who learn ESL learn American English, such as Mexico and Vietnam.

English is "an official" language of India, one of several. It is very important in government and commerce. English is an official language in many former British Empire countries, which at one time accounted for 25% of the world's population, for what it is worth.--Michael Johnson 05:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Regarding aluminum, who exactly decided that the British spelling is the "standard?" IUPAC might be the best group to decide how to spell new elements, but I don't see how they can decide the standard form of an old word like aluminum. Once again, in searching the Internet we find the American spelling is far more common than the British. There is no standard spelling, but there is the more used one, and that is the American spelling. Kitteneatkitten 00:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Read the page. Aluminium was the original spelling. The use of aluminium is technically correct in this instance. I happen to think that spelling and general pronounciation is weird, but this is not my decision. Aluminium is the correct spelling to use. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 01:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Historical usages are irrelevant. The original spelling of color was color, honor honor, and so forth for that kind of word (o/ou); the original spelling of -ize was -ize (or actually -ιζειν -izein); and for that matter, the original spelling of wheat was hwæte. Currently, some people spell the name of the thirteenth element aluminum, some aluminium. And anyway, the actual original name was alumium, followed by aluminum, and only after that aluminium, according to our article, so your facts are off as well.

At any rate, in response to the proposal: pragmatically, we're going to piss a lot of contributors off by snubbing their spelling habits, and the fact that there are more Americans than Brits just means that more American spellings will be put into articles to start with, and due to the policy of not changing them we'll have your one-to-five ratio or whatever. So I don't view this as much of a problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Simetrical, you are wrong when you say that the original spelling of the word "color" was without the "u". In fact, it was the (American) Noah Webster who started spelling the word without the "u", in a bid to simplify the language's orthography. As for the debate, as someone who was born using AmEng, but spent a long time in countries that use BrEng, I am used to both, though I have standardized on AmEng. I say that as long as you are consistent in usage throughout the article, either British English ("the Queen's English") or American English is fine. Let's not make this an opportunity for casting aspersions at the colonials or the colonizers (or "colonisers", if you prefer), or of asserting some mistaken form of superiority (regarding whether or not Indians are native English speakers, for instance). -- Jalabi99 15:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

In actual fact, the word was frequently spelt "color" in Britain long before Webster. There was no standard spelling at this time and words were spelt in many different ways. As an archivist, I have seen many British documents dating from the 18th and 19th centuries spelling this and similar words without the u. -- Necrothesp 16:34, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The word was originally spelled <COLOR> in Latin. It then shifted to colour in early French, with the long O becoming spelled <ou>. English adopted the French spelling, having received the word from the Normans. Then, a few centuries back, some people on both sides of the pond started spelling it without the u again (to the extent that there was standard spelling then at all), hearkening back to the old Latin form. By what amounts to dumb luck, one spelling became standard in America, another in Britain (as well as a number of its other colonies/former colonies and, to a large extent, the rest of the world). Essentially the same happened with -ise/-ize.

This is all from my recollection of the OED entry, by the way. I could look it up again if you really care. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a perpetual battle, but Wikipedia uses aluminium because this is the IUPAC spelling, accepted for reference works in the English language. We use the spelling sulfur for the same reason: one apiece to each side of the Atlantic!, although editors should please create the necessary redirects... "redirects are cheap" Physchim62 (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Aluminium is a more consistent spelling; there are many elements ending in -ium, from helium to plutonium. - Runcorn 19:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

And? Using program all the time is more consistent than using program to refer to computer programs and programme to refer to other program(me)s; shall we purge programme from Wikipedia? For that matter, thru is more consistent with English spelling than through, so shall we purge the latter? While I sympathize with those promoting greater consistency in language, even to the point of being a cut spelling fan, Wikipedia is not a soapbox for linguistic prescriptivism.

Physchim does bring up a good point, though. If we agree, as a policy, to follow IUPAC spellings, I'd be all behind that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:36, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Can't agree there. 'Program' may have derived etymologically from 'programme', but it's a distinct meaning and can be regarded as a different word. Runcorn 19:43, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure, but they're pronounced the same, so surely better to spell them the same? That's if we want consistency in spelling. It's inconsistent to use different spellings for the same pronunciation. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

There's an amusing essay by Mark Twain about that... — Saxifrage ✎ 10:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Until those silly brits come to realize the futility of their efforts against the Gorilla US spelling campaign and adopt the clearly superior American english, Wikipedia will have to stick by our accepted practice of using both, but being consistent within a given article. Raul654 05:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a policy to delete comments like this and replace them with links to a page that says "this has been fought about forever, and we've already made up our minds about it." — Omegatron 05:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Is calling British people "silly brits" permissible within Wikipedia rules? Don't forget that people in many other countries generally use British rather than American "english" (sic) Runcorn 14:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Given that the "silly world" uses International English, which is based on British English, and Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopaedia, not an American one, if any language was to become the dominant one on WP it would have to be IE/BE. But as Americans constantly change spelling and dating all over the place to their minority version, WP has had to allow variants based on two rules; language relevant to the article topic and consistency. I'm afraid Raul's conviction that American English is "clearly superior" is only shared by Americans. Much of the rest of the world, tongue-in-cheek, dismiss AE as "illiterate English" or "lazy English" where people can't be bothered to use all the letters! lol. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 15:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The link that Raul provided was to a humour page on meta, and he's a Wikipedia Bureaucrat, who knows policy backwards. I think it'd be a good assumption to make that he was joking. Werdna_Tc@bCmLt 15:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I suspect you'll find that the majority of non-Americans here isn't quite so great as you'd think. While I do expect we are a minority, a) I would guess we're at least around a third of English-Wikipedians and b) I don't think anyone actually can say what the real number is with any useful degree of certainty, particularly if you count readers rather than just editors. And in any case, several prominent dialects of English (such as Canadian English, Australian English, and Philippine English) are somewhere in between American and British, so it's not reasonable to count them as completely on the Brit side. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

OMGSTFU Language. Changes. There are many many variants of the English language and none is superior to or "more correct" than the others. Get over it. We've been through this a million times and people keep bringing it up again. The whole topic is just an incivility magnet and waste of time. Here is our policy. People who suggest various standardizations or forks or complex technical workarounds should just be directed there and the discussion halted. It can certainly be tweaked and cleaned up, but is there any chance that the fundamental idea behind this policy will ever be changed? I don't see any... — Omegatron 16:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Amen. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be difficult for me to agree more with Omegatron. Admittedly, I'm enough of a nitpicker that one some level it kind of bothers me to see "program" in one article and "programme" in another, but honestly, as long as it's spelled consistently one way within the same article, I really don't care. I don't think it's particularly important, especially when compared to the other, more important spelling problems Wikipedia faces on a daily basis. Generally, I think the current policy does the job pretty well. I'm sure it can be improved on, just like anything else, but in that case I'd like to see proposals for specific improvements instead of generic and draconian "everyone must spell everything in <one national strain of English>" pronouncements -- they only serve to annoy people and, in some of them, fires up feelings of national pride that make them more than willing to settle the difference between "color" and "colour" with sharp implements in some kind of a Thunderdomian "two spellings enter, one spelling leaves" battle to the death. Frankly, I think we can do without that crap, because it's tiresome and causes bad blood and, perhaps most importantly, doesn't actually improve Wikipedia at all. I mean, at least the endless arguing about whether notability should be a part of the criteria for inclusion has a huge potential impact on Wikipedia's content... -- Captain Disdain 13:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

American spelling is on the internet, because the internet is an American invention, and is still Americentric. Therefore American type spelling wil get more hits. As for articles, contributors should use English spelling for English articles, and American spelling for American articles. If you see incorrect spelling, say harbour, in an American article, then change it. Wallie 22:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Wallie's hit it on the head. Quite right.--Runcorn 22:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you meant Captain Disdain and Omegatron hit it. Having said that, I go with whoever first wrote the article. If its in American English I'll write like that, if its English² I'll write like that. - FrancisTyers 22:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

As a side point. I believe aluminium is also the most widely used form in other languages. (at the very least, Dutch, German and even FRENCH, come to mind). - The DJ 15:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Metric versus American/Imperial measurements

See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#SI/Imperial measurements --Philip Baird Shearer 22:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Since this language's version of Wikipedia is the only to cover a country which does not use SI measurements (and in fact, a supermajority of native english speakers do not), it should be the policy of Wikipedia for all articles to include both metric and American units in all pages where measurements are used. If there is a page lacking in this, it should be noted by a template. R'son-W 07:14, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to very reluctantly agree. As horrible as the customary units are, Wikipedia can't change popular usage. On the other hand, I think that there are large categories of articles that do not need customary units (even if this proposal were implemented), such as those in astronomy. Ardric47 07:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with people adding adding a conversion, but I don't want a new template, as it would just be needless clutter. People wishing to add conversions, can easily do so themselves. I don't want to see hundreds (even thousands) of pages tagged with a new template. --Rob 07:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify what I said above, I'm agreeing with the policy to include both units, not to have a template. Ardric47 07:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Since when did the US not use metric units? What is habitual and what is actual policy are two different things entirely, and the US government deisgnated the SI system as the preferred one 18 full years ago. Further, go right ahead and tell me the speed of light in feet per second. We all know it moves at 300.000km/s, meaning 300.000.000m/s, meaning 300.000.000.000mm/s. Now, equally swiftly, without a calculator, tell me what this is in miles/sec, yards/sec, feet/sec and finally, let's not forget the smallest (and my, how accurate it is too) unit available; inches/sec. To put some more emphasis on the great accuracy of the CUs, how many inches is an average sinarapan? Over a span of 3 unit denominators, it's 12,5mm, 1,25 cm, and 0,125m. How many inches, feet and yards is this? My points are; 1: If you want to trawl all Wikipedia articles for occurances of units not provided in customary units, go right ahead. However, the sheer volume of Wikipedia, and the complete lack of logic in finding the lesser unit of what you currently have, means you've got a nice life's work cut out for you. Enjoy. 2: In an encyclopedia, accuracy - not the habits and quirks of one user group (which by the way happens to claim majority (which is equally false, as you clearly know, and that cleverly adjusting your statistics to show native English-speakers won't change the fact that most of the world still uses BrE, having been, as it were, under British rule or influence for longer than the US has been a country.)) - should be priority. --TVPR 08:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The term "American units" is a misnomer. Most British people still use them in everyday usage as well, despite Britain being "officially" (and generally reluctantly) metric. And many things in the UK, including our roadsigns, are still officially in imperial units (it's actually illegal to use only metric units on roadsigns), so let's not have any false claims that it's only the United States that uses these units. -- Necrothesp 09:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Britan use US customary units? I realize they're similar, if not identical, but still. Starting 3 years from now, any product marked with non-SI units will be banned from import into the EU. That ought to help. --TVPR 09:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The one thing Britain is is confused. I measure distance in mm, cm, m and mile... However, back to the point - Britain is very much a metric country, imperial units have not been taught at school for decades. The mile and pint really are the last remaining official uses...

Imperial units are taught in British schools, including conversions between metric and imperial. I know because I have taught it, and it is still on the National Curriculum. Captainj 21:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

However the Imperial units in Britain are different to "American units". Our pint isn't your pint (20 vs 16 fl oz), our gallon isn't yours, our ton isn't yours... Get the point? If not take a read of Comparison of the Imperial and U.S. customary systems/wangi 09:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Britain, as I said, is officially metric. But in practice it is not, even for those (like myself) who were taught metric units at school, but wouldn't dream of using them unless forced (the only people I've ever heard using metric measurements in day-to-day life have been scientists). Those who claim otherwise are usually evangelical (and rather delusional) metric fans who don't want to accept that their beloved system isn't popular. Also note that Imperial measurements of length, area and basic weight (the ounce and pound) are identical to the American. My main point, however, was not to claim that British and American systems were identical (although some parts of it are), but to counter the arguments that the United States is the only country that retains non-metric measurements. -- Necrothesp 10:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I guess It's personal/generation issue. I'd just like to make it known we're not all imperial unit monkeys ;) As for being evangelical or delusional, I personally couldn't care - I'd measure my height in feet and inches; my weigth in kilos; the distance to my house in miles; the size of a room to the nearest unit (e.g. 8ft x 6m); liquids in litres, unless I'm drinking a pint; and when shopping metric... /wangi 10:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm British. I accept that my beloved metric system (?) isn't popular in Britain. I think in the metric system. If I add some figures to an article, I'm not going to bother with non-metric units. If somebody wants to add a non-metric "translation", that won't bother me. If on the other hand somebody wants to give priority to his or her beloved antique metrology, thereby relegating my own beloved metrology to parentheses, I shall get annoyed. But of course I mustn't show my annoyance, must I? -- Hoary 11:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm always amused when people describe the Imperial system as an antique while favouring a system developed in the 18th century! -- Necrothesp 11:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Point taken. Me, I'm amused when the more antique mishmash is referred to as the "Imperial system". But then I reflect that there's some truth to it, as we're all under pax (?) Americana these days. -- Hoary 12:54, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Blah, common sense should prevail. We don't need Imperial units (or US Standard for that matter) in all articles, anything science related should be in SI, anything else should be in whatever people decide on the page. I'm 22 and from the UK, and I still use feet/inches, pints, stone etc. The decision of what to include should be worked out on article talk pages, but I would strongly object to a blanket policy of having Imperial or US Standard in parentheses. - FrancisTyers 22:49, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Units should be dealt with on the WikiProject level. A universal policy could never account for all the idiosyncracies you get in specialized fields. Melchoir 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think all articles should use metric. The English WP is available to billions of English speakers around the world, often speaking English as a second language. SI is international - that is its point. If people would like to add their own local units too (particularly when referring to local issues), I won't mind that. Stephen B Streater 12:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

How about:

Where the original form of a measurement is known it should be specified first with conversions in brackets. Where the original form is not known and there are no other overriding considerations (e.g. local conventions in local articles) metric should be placed first with the conversions in brackets. Ambiguous units like the ton and the gallon should be avoided where possible and when they are included they should always be clarified.

-- Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Plugwash 13:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

All articles should use both metric and American units (in the case of ambiguous units such as gallons, clearly designated as being American if you can't use a more commonly-used non-SI unit). This provides maximum information with minimum clutter. Many of our readers are not familiar enough with the metric system to understand units given only in metric, and many (probably most) are not familiar enough with American units to understand units given only in American units. What governments say is completely irrelevant; it's our readers that we're here to serve.

As for specialized fields, Wikipedia serves a general audience, not just specialists. Even if American physicists always use the metric system for physics, other Americans/Brits/Canadians/etc. (almost no former British colonies are fully converted to SI) will also want to read and understand the article.

The only exception to this rule is when the units involved are so ridiculously beyond what we use in everyday life that normal units are insufficient or the differences are negligible; our readers don't need to be told that 1.41679 × 10³² K equals 2.55022 × 10³² °F, or that 130 light years equals 7.6427 × 10¹⁴ miles—nothing is gained in comprehensibility from that. But the density of mercury, that's something that should be in both metric and American/imperial units. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Two points. I reinforce the plea that if a unit like the pint (which differs between the US and other countries) is used, it should be explained which is meant, ideally with a conversion into the other sort. And there is often more than one metric unit. The density of mercury is about 13.6 grammes (grams?) per cubic centimetre in cgs units and 13,600 kilogrammes per cubic metre in SI units; probably, most people would prefer the former, although scientists usually use SI. The official unit astronomers use to measure distances to stars is the parsec, although common usage prefers the light year; neither is strictly an SI unit. Runcorn 19:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd love to use American or Imperial units but they get so complex once you get beyond basic stuff - working with measurements trying to work out if they are eights or twelths, long or short tons, and how many pints to the quart anyway? Not to mention fathams and furlongs, bushels and chains. But I'm an adult, and most of the time I've got a fair idea what people are talking about. If I want to know what the exact converion is, I'll pull out the calculator. I can cope with whatever anyone writes. One point though. English is the international language with probably more ESL speakers than native speakers. And SI is the international system of measurement. --Michael Johnson 14:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the preceding discussion is well meaning, but short on facts. When people say things like "most of our readers" I wonder where the numbers are to back up these claims. Note that we have guidelines on this topic at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Scientific style and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement which say sometimes SI units are mandatory and that conversions should not be removed. If you want to add conversions to articles, I suggest adding them as you find them or organizing a wikiproject to do so. -- cmh 15:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Just two points to add: all packaged goods in Britain are labelled in metric, although loose goods can be ordered in Imperial. I drink pints of beer but buy milk in litres, I think in Fahrenheit, but everybody else I know thinks in Celsius. Secondly, as Michal Johnson implies, Wiki En probably has a large ESL readership. In fact judging by many of the contributions, Wiki En is frequently written by non-native speakers (look at any article concerning a non-English speaking country). Recipe books can manage multiple measurements, why limit Wiki En to one continent?

The presumption that SI units are not widely used in the USA really applies to the household. Many industries have converted to SI, especially industries engaged in international trade. On the other hand, there is one area of high technology where inches are in common use, computer printers, with terms such as dots per inch and pixels per inch. Gerry Ashton 21:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The Bad image list

Is currently being used to censor images, mostly of human penises, on the pretext of preventing vandalism of user pages. Currently, any user can add an image to the list; this is being done in some cases without discussion and without notification, and against consensus on the relevant article pages about the images. A user has proposed a simple change whereby images could be tagged for use only in articles, preventing them from being placed on user pages. This is a tidy solution that prevents both vandalism and censorship. I strongly object to the current system and its name. Exploding Boy 19:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

If this be so, then this is a misuse of the list by prudish Mediawikiens. I agree with the solution proffered. --Knucmo2 19:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

But it's not so. There are plenty of images of human penises that aren't on this list. Perhaps there is another explanation. Nandesuka 20:25, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Technically, my proposal was to make a class of images that had a list of pages they could be used in attached to them, but Exploding Boy's interpretation of it seems like an idea that would be more database and cpu friendly. It would however not prevent penis vandalism to normal articles.

Both ideas are better than the BIL in my opinion, as the BIL is being used to censor WP while claiming to protect it. --Nnp 22:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

"Penis vandalism" heheheh. Exploding Boy 07:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I've written a MediaWiki patch that implement something essentially equivalent to Nnp's proposal: see bugzilla:5985. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:55, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent. Will wikipedia start using it? --Nnp 09:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Self-referential content

Trying to draw comments to Wikipedia talk:Avoid self-references#Self-referential content

---

Is there any rule about content that refers to itself? Not referring to Wikipedia, but referring to itself. I think it's inappropriate, as it could lead to confusion, could be "broken" by other editors who don't understand the example, etc. Examples of typography, code, and so on should be explicit and separate from the text of the article. Some examples:

• Justification (typesetting) The following paragraph is justified.
• Literate programming "This whole article is, in fact, a simple program that can be run using the example literate interpreter on the interpreter page."
• Interpreter (computing) "There is a program to try with this interpreter, on the Literate programming article. If you want to do so you must save the interpreter as INTERP.BAS and then save the Literate programming article as TESTPROG.TXT in the same folder."
• Dash "In North American usage—and also in old British usage—an em dash is never surrounded by spaces. In contrast, the modern practice in many other parts of the English-speaking world and in journalistic style is to separate the dash from its surrounding words when used parenthetically, by using spaces — or hair spaces (U+200A). Some writers eschew the use of the em dash – instead, they replace it with the shorter en dash – which is then also surrounded by spaces or hair spaces; this "space, en dash, space" sequence is also the predominant style in German typography."
• Quotation mark 'Curved and straight quotes are also sometimes referred to as “smart quotes” and "dumb quotes" respectively;' — Omegatron 23:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Generally, these are permitted. Rule of thumb is, would this make sense if excerpted and printed in a book? The interpreter one is a bit dodgy, making specific assumptions about how the article will save, but the rest seem more or less okay to me. Deco 13:32, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't like them at all. Examples should be set apart from the text, not integrated right into it. — Omegatron 22:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Association Links - Advice Please

Hi all.

Could someone please advise. I have been helping to edit the entry for 'private detective' which is very bare at the minute and has a minimum of useful information. To external links, I have added a professional investigators' association several times now, as it would obviously be a good place to get further information. However, this keeps being deleted with messages to me such as "Wikipedia is not a link farm nor does it promote individual associations". Could someone please clarify this for me? I have noted that many pages (for example, on doctors, vets and graphologists) carry links to respective associations. Why would professional investigators be any different? I am very new to Wikipedia, so any advice would be much appreciated. Blaise Joshua 15:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is at Wikipedia:External links. Looking at the link you added, I suspect whoever deleted it thought it was a link promoting an external commercial site (links to avoid, #3). If this site is indeed a professional organization like the American Medical Association (links that should be added, #1) and not a commercial site that obtains revenue from visitors, feel free to add the link again. Tou might want to add a note to the article's talk page as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:08, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I think I may have been one of the deleting editors. My impression of the site was that it was a paid inclusion directory (PI yellow pages) and not the PI association. I'll check it out again. --Nnp 07:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well... I'm not sure really. It would be great if someone in the know (a PI?) could tell us if it's a notable org. or a profit thingy, though I guess that is a little optimistic.. --Nnp 08:11, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I am a professional investigator, hence my interest in the page. I haven't added any associations that are profit-making businesses. Blaise Joshua 08:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, if there's a body with the status of a professional association you should be able to link to it. Runcorn 18:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

reservasion in educational admision based on caste

do you beleive in caste sysetm !! this is the basic question and if so , do you not beleive in global community

we as humen being are same

only economic conditions may requoire help and assistance for thre upliftment we can not keep reserved seat only on grouds of caste basis

doing so will hamper the rights of other deserving people -- <anon>

Err, ok? In what context is this? Kim Bruning 20:42, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't see what impact this has on Wikipedia policy. Runcorn 18:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Notability (Game mods)

With the burgeoning amount of minor game mods that are having articles created, prodded, deprodded, and AFDd with increasing regularity, might it be a good idea to create a notability section on game mods? Certainly there are some mods, like Counter-Strike, that are indisputably notable, but these seem to be a minority. Stifle (talk) 21:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I say just lump them into a single "List of (game name) mods" and be done with it. That way, the article is instantly helpful and doesn't have to worry about the non-notability because it's generalized (at least in most cases). – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 21:40, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I tend to think that we should tweak Wikipedia:Notability (people) if it doesn't adequately cover for these. Is there a particular argument being put forward that needs to be addressed? -- cmh 00:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Nothing other than the fact that it only takes a day or two worth of programming to create most of these mods, many of which are played by only a couple hundred people, but their creators say "OMG this is great we need a Wikipedia article on this". I might make some sort of common sense thing and tag it as an essay later, but my measure theory exam is later today and that takes precedence. Stifle (talk) 08:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

My view of notability is the same as always. There's no reason to delete perfectly verifiable information and alienate would-be contributors when we could just make sure it either cites its sources or gets slapped with {{verify}} and let it sit on the servers, with anyone interested better-informed and anyone uninterested totally unaffected. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, putting {{verify}} on is only effective if someone chases it up and eventually moves for deletion if it's not verified. That doesn't always happen! We also have to watch for adverts and vanity articles. Runcorn 18:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

{{verify}} has more than one purpose. One is to inform readers that this content is of dubious validity, so that they won't hold its poor quality against us. Another is, of course, to encourage people to actually add to the article. Even if the latter doesn't work, the former still ensures that Wikipedia's credibility isn't significantly harmed by keeping the article.

As for adverts and vanity articles, well, as long as they're encyclopedic . . . —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

User boxes episode 12,000 - a better solution

Hi all, I really go crazy of the depressing flood of user boxes this Wikipedia has been undergoing last year. I am a strong proponent of deleting all of hem, perhaps except for the language skill templates, the location templates and the WikiProject boxes, that's it. However, I have a more fundamental solution for the user boxes problem: discard the user page namespace. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it is not intented for vanity. However this rule does not seem to apply for user pages - they are sometimes expended to sheer home pages or web logs. We should put an end to this. What I envision is a non-wiki page, comparable to "my preferences", where you can enter your real name (optional, of course!), your nationality/location, your profession, your expertise, your language skills and your home page (if you have one). Single login should automatically generate interwiki links. That really is enough. This topic borders to being better fitted for the technical village pump, btw.
Are there any people that agree with me? Here an example of what such a page might look like (all names are fictional!):

User:HaikuReader

Real name: George F. Williams

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Profession: Student

Expertise: Canadian history, songbirds

Language skills: en-N, fr-2, de-1

Homepage: http://www.readmyhaikus.net (just a silly example!)

Looks quite trimmed. Personally it would feel like a liberation to me! Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 21:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I know a lot of users that use their page for reference (as in, useful wikilinks, to-be-made articles, statements of personal Wikipedia philosophy, and so forth), not to mention as a sandbox for works-in-progress. It would seem unfortunate to remove all of them. Ziggurat 22:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This actually seems like a much worse solution... userpages have a purpose that helps the encyclopedia, restricting them to raw information that's largely irrelevant is not the way to go. Sorry.--Sean Black ^(talk) 22:06, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a terrible idea. The problem is that some users work on the philosophy that biases shouldn't be displayed, fearing division, the idea that people will act out the biases on their user pages, etc. On the other extreme, you have people like me who highly recommends biases are openly declared instead of hidden. This way editors can acknowledge their biases as they edit, and allow everyone to clearly recognize and negotiate their differences. In an ethnography class, I was even instructed to write down biases before conducting an interview, so that I could accomodate for them, rather than pretending they don't exist. No one on Wikipedia has a "neutral point of view", and I find it dangerous for users to pretend that they do. Not to say I'd actually suggest forcing all users to list their own biases, but the idea of forcefully censoring this information raises a red flag with me. Sarge Baldy 23:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above users - this idea would not be a satisfactory solution in any way. Looking at my userpage, you will find that I keep it relatively functional and with few frills, as you suggest, yet I treasure the ability to keep things somewhat personalised, and I think community interaction and statement of character on a userpage is a large part of the Wikipedia community. Being Wikipedia editors does not prevent us from also being humans, and if we remove the human aspect from Wikipedia, we might as well just create bots to make articles and abandon Wikipedia to the bots altogether. —Cuiviénen^T|C, Monday, 15 May 2006 @ 00:38 UTC

Ok, thanks for your comments. Actually, my proposal is a little bit exaggerated - it was a statement rather than something I'd really try to get achieved. I wanted to make clear than user pages are a means of communication, not an end in themselves. Especially the huge flood of user box templates disturbs me. I hope we can agree at least on that (I mean that user pages aren't an end themselves)? Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 12:23, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it feasible to have pages only visible to the logged-in users, where they can list articles in progress or have a personal sandbox? That's already the case for personal watchlists. Runcorn 18:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

here's an idea. While it is useful to have google etc. crawl article talkpages, there should really be no reason for readers to even see user namespace. We've had all sorts of privacy issues with user pages before, and issues with radical agendas (nationalist, racist, what have you) pushed in user page essays. So I think the idea of making user namespace visible to logged-in users only should be thrown about a little bit more. Also, while there will always be personal sandboxes reflecting the maturity of the respective editors, a solution could be to prohibit template transclusion in user namespace: People are free to have puerile stuff on their userpages, but the problem with userboxes is that the puerility is spilled all over (the non-user) template namespace. This must stop. At the very least, create a User_Template: namespace for the things. dab (ᛏ) 10:11, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

wikilinks to years

Over the past week, I've become really annoyed when all year references are wikilinked. If the article's subject is mentioned in the year, that's obviously fine. But I don't see the point in linking all years... any thoughts? RyanEberhart 23:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Me too. You might want to look at Wikipedia:Only_make_links_that_are_relevant_to_the_context and the attached talk page. Nandesuka 23:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll make changes based on that policy when I see them, although that's a ton of work RyanEberhart 02:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Try not to get too annoyed, Ryan. Up until a couple of months ago, it was policy to link dates. :-) -Freekee 03:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I was not aware of the previous policy... I thought everyone was just deviating from the style guide. Apologies. RyanEberhart 03:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

S'okay. It was annoying. :-) I change them whenever I'm editing an article, but I don't go out of my way. -Freekee 03:27, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I wish the date formatting feature recognized all dates; not just linked ones. Then we wouldn't need that silly policy in the first place. I've asked in the relevant places, but it might help to get some more people asking for it. — Omegatron 05:55, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

For those not in the know, is the relevant place. But in response to Ryan, please be sure that you're only killing year links that are not accompanied by months. 14 January 1988 must be left alone for date-rendering preferences to work correctly. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

If it's a biography and you don't have the exact date of birth, should you link the year, like John Smith ([[1885]]-[[1958]])? Runcorn 19:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No, it's unnecessary. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Address

Hi. I am looking for some reference of whether we can put home address,e-mail address,phone number or not. Where can I look for related policy? Thanks. borgx ^(talk) 03:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

If you mean within an article, see WP:NOT, "phonebook entries" and "directory entries". Ziggurat 03:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

If you mean your own contact info on your own user page, that's fine. If you mean another user's contact info anywhere whatsoever without their consent, then very much not fine, except as covered by the next point. If you mean adding to an article the contact info of the subject of the article, then that would probably be useful to add somewhere (I suppose "External links" is the best place, although for anything other than a website or e-mail it would be distinctly odd). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

If it's on their web page, fine (though you can just link their web page). If it's given in some standard work of reference like Who's Who, I can't see how anyone could object. Runcorn 19:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Change of RfC policy

There is a proposed change to RfC policy [2] which you may be interested in taking a look at. Under the current wording, someone who has written an outside view cannot endorse any other view in the RfC. In practice, no one pays any attention to this at all, and so a removal of this restriction has been proposed. JoshuaZ 16:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

It is quite true that no one pays attention to it, but if people did it would make RfC's more understandable because people who are strongly advocating kind of say the same sorts of things twice. First in the section where they put an "outside view" and then in subsectional replies where they endorse other views. It tends to chop up an RfC into chatter, rather than clean presentations. Terryeo 07:46, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

If someone puts in an "outside view", can they just sign another section without saying anything? Runcorn 19:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It is logical, in that if the editor is writing in another section, their view is no longer outside. Midgley 22:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

seperate topic based wiki/do it inside wikipedia

there needs to be a wiki-collection of music related stuff. there are a lot of tab wikis and lyric wikis, and are there any sheet music ones? but the point is they should all be together. then again, should they just be inside wikipedia. do song lyrics and such have a place on wikipedias pages?

Lyrics are copyrighted and therefore posting of them is a copyright violation, something Wikipedia strongly frowns on. User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Surely not all lyrics are copyright; if they author has been dead long enough, they're public domain. I could post everything by say Sir Arthur Sullivan. However, I would regard that as unencyclopaedic. Runcorn 19:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Very true. But if they're copyrighted, then they should go on Wikisource. User:Zoe|^(talk) 01:47, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

A public domain lyrics and music (tab and sheet) collection sounds like a terrific Wikisource project - in the long-term, perhaps a separate Wikimusic site. There's lots of eligible music - the majority of the folk and classical canons, for a start - which could be included, and free software like GNU Lilypond to prepare it with. I'd be up for it - provided that there isn't a similar open-content project already running which it would be more profitable to join up with. TSP 01:59, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Stronger enforcement of WP:FICT by RC patrollers

Lately, a few users have been adding large numbers of new articles on minor components of popular fan subjects. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Form V: Shien / Djem So, where a fan did a bulk import (from the Star Wars wiki) of articles on Star Wars laser sword fighting techniques. If someone actually starts the AfD process, as I did here, there seems to be consensus that such detailed fan material shouldn't be in Wikipedia. That's consistent with WP:FICT policy.

There are another forty (40) minor Star Wars articles from the same user, Silver Sonic Shadow (talk · contribs). Then we have Jerkov (talk · contribs), who has added about twenty articles on fictitious minor creatures from The World of Kong, a collateral book for the King Kong movie. And that's just today.

What's the consensus on dealing with bulk fancruft? Merging is hard work, adding a "mergeto" tag usually has no effect, AfD creates work for others, and "prod" usually gets deleted by the article author.

I'd suggest as policy that editors should not remove a "prod" from an article they recently created. If a second editor removes a "prod", then at least two people agree the article should be kept. If there's further dispute, there's always AfD. But right now, "prod" has become ineffective. --John Nagle 17:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The "article" up for AFD that you've linked to above quite simply isn't an article because its content lacks even a single real-world reference (a problem not cured by the "sources" listed at the bottom). The content is instead itself fiction (and arguably a copyright infringement) rather than about fiction. Any article that fails to describe fiction in terms of how it was constructed by a work of fiction should be deleted. This should separate out the more significant fictional subjects (those actually playing a role in books, movies, etc.) from those that only exist in the form of fictional encyclopedia articles in fan supplements. Postdlf 18:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Eh? The article is about a work of fiction, isn't it? That is, it's about an aspect of the Star Wars universe, which is fictitious. Of course, I'm assuming that the article isn't just lies, but then, I'm also assuming that about any other article whose existence I haven't personally verified. Or am I totally hallucinating or something? Doesn't the article assert that it's about an aspect of the canonical Star Wars world? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

agree with postdlf. there should be a speedy deletion category Template:Db-fancruft or Template:Nn-fiction. For articles dealing with fictional subjects, characters, objects, or locations, significance outside the "fictional universe" must be established and discussed, together with its process of authorship. The focus of the article should remain on discussing the subject as fiction within the context of "our" universe, not on establishing it as a "real" topic in a fictional universe; otherwise, the article may be better placed in one of the many fictional-universe specific wikis. Zzzzz 18:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I also think we're running into serious copyright problems with the World of Kong entries; creating separate "articles" for every creature described in the book just copies the very substance of the book's fiction and directly competes with it in the marketplace. There's no fair use argument here for such widespread copying, and no argument that we are documenting facts rather than expression. The article on the book itself is fine, and maybe one or two animals described sparsely to give a sense of the content, but unless the creatures have appeared in more than just that book, they should not have separate articles (or be merged into the book article). Postdlf 18:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the copyright issues are troubling with respect to the specific case of World of Kong. Star Wars probably less so, at least with regard to the stuff that's not in whatever encyclopedias I'm sure they've put out. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, will someone else please initiate the appropriate "prod" and AfD activity? I have to go do some real work now. Thanks. --John Nagle 18:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd also support a CSD criteria for fancruft, making any "article" deletable on sight that is written as fiction rather than about fiction. This would be a close cousin to CSD A1, as those written as fiction lack real-world context. Notability might work if we treat it like CSD A7, so that an article on a fictional subject that doesn't identify that it came from a sufficiently notable work of fiction (in other words, doesn't put forth information as to why it's important) could be speedy deletable. This would have to be more specific than a general reference to fictional world like "Star Wars"; if the author can't at least note what novel, video game, or film a character came from, they're obviously just copying a fan site or fan reference guide. Postdlf 18:32, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made a proposal to this effect on the CSD talk page; please comment there. Postdlf 18:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I've also posted the issue of whether articles about fictional subjects that only exist as articles in fictional encyclopedias are necessarily copyright infringements on Wikipedia talk:Copyrights. Postdlf 23:01, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I (as always) am against deletion of verifiable articles describing even the most trivial minutiae of a fictional universe. Rather than writing roughly the fourth summary of my reasons today, I'll link you to User:Simetrical#Notability to start with and save myself the trouble. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The servers can handle huge numbers of articles, but the RC patrollers, stub sorters, categorizers, fact checkers, and cleanup editors who make Wikipedia more than a blog are falling behind as the cruft accumulates. That's the real cost of all the fan articles on obscure subjects. It's not the disk space. --John Nagle 05:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me? Stop equating writing articles about fictional characters with vandalism. Your language implies that those who want to contribute articles about fictional characters and the like as a force to be reckoned with, a group of malcontents to be stopped. We have more than enough people who don't understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, why are you being actively hostile toward those who want to contribute content but don't necessarily understand our inclusion guidelines? That's absolutely innaproriate and I won't stand for it under any circumstances.--Sean Black (talk) 06:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Image:Bellatrix Lestrange.jpg

Please see Image:Bellatrix Lestrange.jpg. Doesn't a "fan drawing" fall under Original Research? User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Not if it's based off of Helen McCrory (photo), the actress who will play Bellatrix in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. ~MDD4696 22:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Then it should be sourced. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be original research if it was being used as a source for something, but simply being used for illustrative purposes it seems fine.--Sean Black (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

If it's too close a copy of a photo, is it a copyvio? Runcorn 19:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would then be a derivative work and you would need fair use arguments. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:29, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Imposing signature restrictions

I've proposed imposing signature restrictions over at WP:SIG. In particular, I would like to see if there is consensus to prohibit images from signatures and to set a maximum character/byte size. Please comment! ~MDD4696 23:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

• I'd vote for that. I don't mind having talk and contrib links in a signature, but all the other rubbish is just distracting from the purpose. To the list of things that Wikipedia is not should be added "Wikipedia is not Myspace/Friendster/etc.". If folks put half as much effort into their articles as they did to their self-expression artifacts, Wikipedia would be better. Fnarf999 23:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

<shrugs> I guess people feel more strongly about themselves (and more secure in their knowledge about themselves) than about anything else. J. Finkelstein 23:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Within limits, it's harmless fun. Very few signatures are really awful. Runcorn 20:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts on an expansion of speedy keeps

It doesn't appear like anyone's watching Wikipedia:Speedy keep, but I'm proposing an addition to the policy and would like to see some thoughts to build consensus at the talk page. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 00:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Governmental Reform

It's time to overhaul wikigovernment: please see my userpage for a discussion. ShootJar 01:21, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

By "wiki" do you mean Wikipedia? There is no government at Wikipedia, therefore there is nothing to overhaul. User:Zoe|^(talk) 01:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

There are authority structures, like the ArbCom and the hierarchy of admins, bureaucrats, etc. If that's not a government, what is? Runcorn 20:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Edge hippies

What is the policy on talkpages for closed AfD nominations? I put in a speedy delete for this (which was reverted), since there's no explicable reason why this talkpage exists (and it's not really going in any useful direction either). Any help would be appreciated, thanks. --→Buchanan-Hermit™..Talk to Big Brother 05:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course it makes sense to keep it. If someone wants to recreate the main page, he has a chance to see how people came to the decision to remove it in the first place. I agree that the one in question is rather pointless, but it's less work to keep all of them around than to discuss each one individually (an AfD for an AfD talk page? We'll never finish ;-). Disk space is cheap...--Stephan Schulz 06:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Alright then. I consulted with RadioKirk (another admin) about this as well and he was puzzled why it exists. Just thought I'd put the question out there. Thanks. --→Buchanan-Hermit™..Talk to Big Brother 07:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, that was a fun AfD; lots and lots of sockpuppets being used by someone who couldn't keep track of them all--one would say "Edge hippies suck!" and then the same one would say "Edge hippies rule!" But anyway, the talk page seems to fall under WP:CSD#G3, so I wouldn't really see any problem with deleting it; however, I don't see who it's really hurting to keep it. If anything, it gives perspective about the state of mind of the article's creator, should anyone ever want to review the deletion. I'd say to go ahead and keep it as it is--though if there were a slew of similar talk pages, I would then say delete. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:02, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Nobody's ever going to see it, except those of us who read Village Pump and find this discussion! Runcorn 20:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Question on policy

Question, is it permissable to delete ones talk page in order to clean it up as opposed to archiving. Any help would be greatly appreciated. --Anon

• By delete, I assume you simply mean blanking as opposed to archiving (true deletes are reserved to admins)? --Improv 13:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

• It should be noted that editors working from 'anonymous' IP addresses rather than registered user accounts are much more limited in the maintenance that they are permitted to do on the IP-associated talk pages. Because such talk pages may be shared and are not permanently linked to a specific account, only admins (and the automated maintenance scripts) should ever be removing content from those pages. Users with registered accounts can archive their talk pages by blanking them (some do), however it is considered very bad form to delete discussions in progress or recent user conduct warnings. (Deleting warnings can be seen as trying to conceal bad behaviour, and deleting discussions in progress or good-faith questions tends to escalate conflicts and is just plain rude.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, I do mean blanking. I have a registered account. And for example, when I've read a comment or answered a question, can I simply edit out the question or comment when I've addressed it? --Anon // Further clarification, you ask me a question, I answer, wait a week, and erase it from the page. --Anon

Yes; in general, that should be fine—though if you've encountered objections to your practice, then you might want to provide us with more details. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

when biased?

When does the description of a political party's platform or program or the description of its declaration of principles construe bias? Is there a wikipedia policy or guideline in describing the ideology of political parties? Thanks! Intangible 20:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe that when you are writing about a political party and/or its platform, you can not just copy the main points of the program, but you have to "paint the entire picture". You have to talk about the pros and cons, about the consequences, about history (and future), you also have to include information on the image people have about that party, certainly if this image differs from the image the party is trying to construe.

You can't write a good Wikipedia article if you can't include criticisms about that party.

FYI, Intangible and I are both working on the Vlaams Belang article. We've had some discussions on the talk page of that article. --LucVerhelst 22:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a bit dodgy. You can and should quote what the party says - that's sourced. You can equally quote what others say about the party. But to discuss the pros and cons, etc., without having a source is a violation of No Original Research. Runcorn 20:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

New policy proposal: No factions of belief

I would like to ask you to comment on Wikipedia:No factions of belief, a new proposal to prevent Wikipedia from being split into factions of people who hold particular beliefs on certain issues, while allowing limited expressions of personal belief, and encouraging groups dedicated to working on shared interests (e.g. WikiProjects).--Eloquence* 04:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Adding prod marked as minor

Why are additions of Template:prod supposed to be marked as minor edits? Ardric47 04:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Er, they're not. Editors who mark such edits as minor should be reminded – politely – that PRODing and article is not a minor edit, and that adding the PROD template should be accompanied by an appropriate edit summary.

What may have happened is that an editor had the 'mark all edits minor by default' setting set in his or her preferences; such editors sometimes forget to uncheck the box when they make the occasional non-minor edit. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to mention the person by name, but this particular editor has a statement on his/her user page that suggests that it is being done on purpose. Ardric47 05:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Though I'd normally agree with being neutral about accusations, it doesn't help if we can't get some idea of the editor's intentions. If they're really doing it on purpose, as you say their userpage suggests, you should give the editor's name so others can confirm such behavior. In any case, prod should never be a minor edit. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 05:19, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, ok, it's User:TheProject, who has some WikiResolutions that make it look like someone else (or maybe some out-of-the way guideline page?) said that prods should be minor edits. Ardric47 05:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Though he seems to think a lot of things should be minor, it doesn't seem like a purposeful mistake. He likely just thinks that such things should be minor. A simple correction if he does it again should suffice. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 05:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Personal websites, original research

How do we deal with editors who produce esseys, put them on personal websites and then have their "buddies" use those as references in articles? At Volunteer_Ministers, in the Reference section appears an original reseach, created by a Wikipedia editor who has administrator status. That link is: personal website and has Chris Owen (User:ChrisO's) essey which is his own opinion and research on a subject. User:ChrisO actively edits the articles in Dianetics and Scientology, his buddies put his essey into the Scientology Volunteer Ministers article. Is it reasonable that a wikipedia editor have his buddies include links to his original research ? My comments on that discussion page have produced no results.Terryeo 09:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

In general, personal websites are not classed as reliable sources, so can't be used as references WP:RS#Personal_websites_as_secondary_sources is the guidelines you're looking for. However, if there is disagreement about the validity of a source, the Resolving disputes policy is where to go. Regards, MartinRe 09:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Terryeo here has been attempting to use the claim of "personal websites" to justify the removal of all references to Operation Clambake, a famous Web site critical of Scientology, from Wikipedia. The actual issue here is that "personal" web sites such as www.xenu.net (Operation Clambake) host large amounts of professionally published material about Scientology -- court documents, newspaper and magazine articles, TV broadcasts, personal testimonies (used as evidence in court cases), documentation of authenticity of scientific research (and criticism) of Scientology, and much much more -- most of which is well-documented, verified, and used as primary sources in Wikipedia articles about Scientology. But, because this information is hosted on xenu.net and other "personal websites," Terryeo wants to use this as an excuse not to provide any references to this material at all on Wikipedia. There have been a number of attempts to resolve disputes involving Terryeo. The latest one can be seen at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Terryeo. --Modemac 01:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Modemac, I appriciate that you follow me around and give fair warning to everyone, I appriciate the attention. However, it does not actually reply to my question that I state, you see? "Quality of sources" is especially important in controversial areas and has been a driving force of difficulty. I'm seeking answers and not arguement. Have a nice day. Terryeo 05:19, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The quality of the site is far beyond the minimum required standard for Wikipedia. There is little or no veracity to the claim that it is a "personal" website. You should stop trying to question its quality simply because it is critical of your religion. Instead, as InShanee has suggested to you, you should bring up some equally verifiable sources that contradict it. Far as I've seen, you've yet to do so. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 05:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

You are suggesting that Karen Spaink's "I write, therefore I am", her personal website is not a personal website? I don't understand, she states that it is her personal website. I mean, I'm perfectly willing to discuss any of those issue you raise. You've raised:

• Terryeo is questioning the quality of Karen Spaink's website.

  but I am not questioning its quality. I am stating that it is a personal website.

• Terryeo should find contradictory sources.

  But of what use is it to contradict a personal opinion that is not published and therefore is not going to be used on Wikipedia (unless the New York Times or a recognized publishing house publishes it).

• Terryeo should follow Inshaneee's suggestion.

  Well, I'm not really sure what exact suggestion you mean, but if you spell it out, I'll reply to you about it.

• Terryeo has not brought up contradictory sources.

  Well, you're right on that one. Its not my style to push "my source" against "your source" or "my word" against "your word". Its my style to observe a personal website is a personal website, no matter what its quality. And in observing said website, to follow WP:RS which tells us not to use such a website as a secondary source of information. I'm really uncertain by what reasoning you can look at Karen's website and conclude that the quality of her site is so high that it is no longer a personal website. That confuses me because the elements which make a personal website one's own are ownership of material, that the information on it is one's own opinion, and so on. The quality of that information has nothing at all to do with whether the site is personal or not personal. What is your reasoning on that? Terryeo 07:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I meant that Clambake site. Should have been more specific. http://www.spaink.net/ seems like a blog and a less credible source of information, though this is only from a first glance. As for InShaneee's comment, it's in the blocked for "trolling" section of your talk page, near the end. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

If the request for arbitration has already failed, an incident report including the above statement would be your best bet. Simple banning for disruption is the next step. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 01:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Reading over the RfA, he shoudn't even be editing Scientology-related articles. Scratch that, he isn't. His comments on talk pages seem to be civil enough for now. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 02:01, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Whenever possible, citations should give full bibliographic information to the orignal source, such as "Newsweek magazine, Smarch 1, 1990, mirrored at xenu.net" or "Bridge Publications v. Jones, California superior court docket number 1234567, mirrored at xenu.net." This will make it clear that the original source meets WP:RS and will provide a bibliographic record in case xenu.net ever goes down and/or in case someone wants to make a trip to the library (remember those?) to verify the document. It is my opinion that using active url links alone as references is generally not a good idea, for various reasons including the ones I just mentioned. There should always be a full bibliographic citation somewhere, and the new reference method makes it easy to do this. Thatcher131 05:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

That would add considerably to the quality of links to "mirrored" or "repository" information. A reader would always have the opportunity to investigate such information himself. Terryeo 08:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Editors

Even though I know I'm not yet eligible (is that misspelled?), I was wondering what the basic requirements are to become an editor? AK-17 13:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you mean "administrator". Right ? --LucVerhelst 14:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The basic requirements for being an editor are intelligence, good looks, an incredible personality, patience, diplomacy, a wide knowledge of the world and a basic grasp of English. A sense of humour helps too. Stephen B Streater 17:26, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

And if you have all that to become an editor here, Miss America tryouts are down the street. SchmuckyTheCat 20:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Is that all ? I think I'll have to go for administrator, then.--LucVerhelst 21:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Possibly the place to begin reading toward understanding what Wikipedia expects from its editors is: Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial. The rules for editing are few, NPOV is the single non-negotiable one. Terryeo 05:15, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Along with WP:NOR, WP:V, most of WP:C, WP:OFFICE, and probably some others. :P —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget WP:3RR! Runcorn 20:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Copyrighted US government portraits claimed as PD

I am involved in a dispute at Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_images#Wikipedia:_Possibly_unfree_images.2FUS_government_portraits regarding the copyright status of official potraits commissioned by the U.S. government. Since this could lead to the deletion or "fair use" tagging of these images, some more input here is really needed here.

I listed Image:Rbreich.jpg as a PUI because the painter, Richard Whitney, does not seem to be a U.S. federal government employee and claims the portrait was commissioned. According to 17 U.S.C. §101 "A 'work of the United States Government' is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties." If Richard Whitney was not employed by the DoL with the assigned duty of painting an official portrait, then I do not believe the image can be claimed to be public domain. Commissioned works and works for hire can still be copyrighted.

Some with the legal expertise or insight should comment here. If I am held to be right, then a great number of images clearly not created by a federal employee or officer will have to be de-tagged as PD.--Jiang 19:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

You're correct, I agree that the painting is not PD. I've posted my rationale on the relevant PUI page. Postdlf 20:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer so you should take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I'm going to respectfully disagree. If a painting is commisioned by an organization, and they pay for that painting, then they own it along with all of the rights. In this case the US gov owns the painting and it's associated copyrights. Again, that's just how it seems to me. If a lawyer comes in and says I'm wrong, I'm sure I am. --Bachrach44 00:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. The US federal government can hold copyrights. It's only works created by a government employee that are in the public domain. --Carnildo 01:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Multiple links to the same material

The Zakir Naik article, about an Islamic evangelist from Mumbai, seems to have settled down somewhat. The antagonists have basically accepted a division of the material into Naik's views, Naik-supporter views, and Naik-critic views. However, I am still at loggerheads with one editor who (IMHO) feels that the article is a great opportunity for dawa, Islamic evangelism, and that duplicate links to Naik's websites, video-taped lectures, and e-books should be scattered throughout the article.

I am trying to keep all such links in a sub-section of the external links section and moreover, trying to eliminate links to material that is already accessible through higher-level links. That is, if Naik's website has links to two e-books, I don't think we need to link the website AND then add separate links for each e-book.

Wallah96, the other editor, strongly disagrees, and keeps restoring duplicate links (once in the links section, once in the article) and multiple lower-level links. My admittedly jaundiced perception is that he believes the more links there are, the more likely it is that a random reader will click on one of them and be converted.

I would love to be able to cite our links policy and say, "Look, you aren't supposed to do that," but our links policy is silent on the issue of link multiplication. What are the view here on making "Do not multiply links without necessity" an official policy, and how would I go about rewriting the policy and getting a consensus behind the rewrite? Zora 22:54, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

External links within an artacle are sources(WP:CITE), otherwise they go in a separate section (WP:EL). Also, only one link should be given to a site, otherwise, it is linkspam (WP:SPAM). Circeus 23:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia being used to hype a student film

The article in question is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crime Fiction which seems to be linked (judging by this blog, bottom of page) with hoaxing on Wikipedia connected to the minor actor Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rikki_Lee_Travolta claiming he was being considered for James Bond and that he wrote a book Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/My Fractured Life both of which involved inserting false information on this actor and book to a large number of Wikipedia articles. In this article [3] it states that the film was directed by Will Slocombe of the award-winning student film “Stoke Mechanics”, but Google shows no evidence that any such film existed or received any award. An interview on the local Chicago website the Chicagoist [4] reveals they actively hyped the film: "Were there any worries about posting up so many stories about conflicts on the set? Will: No. If Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Gangs of New York, and Citizen Kane are any indication, breathless stories about actor-infighting (and insleeping), directorial egomania, and suit skepticism all sell newspapers, which in turn sell movies.". Should we have articles on unreleased obscure movies? Doesn't it encourage exactly this sort of manipulation? Arniep 01:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

• My understanding is there's a fairly strict criteria regarding film articles, especially for unreleased films. If Travolta was a noted actor, or there was something otherwise notable about this unreleased film, or if it was scheduled to be released by a studio and can be verified, then maybe ... but if it's just an obscure student film it probably wouldn't meet the notability bar. I noticed the frequent attempts to add Travolta to the Bond articles, and I had my doubts that it was legit. 23skidoo 01:16, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

They catalogue all their hyping on this blog [5], [6], the Bond thing was clearly fake, just trying to get the film's name in the press:

"According to a source in the Screen Actors Guild, ponytailed actor Rikki Lee Travolta of the well known entertainment family was ushered from the Chicago set of 'Crime Fiction' and flown to London for a closed door screentest for what is only being described as 'a franchise action role.". Arniep 02:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Merging in spite of a failed AFD and in spite of objection

One editor i.e. user:Jossi at Talk:Prem Rawat argues that an article Past teachings of Prem Rawat can be merged with Prem Rawat in spite of 1) a failed AFD on the article Past teachings of Prem Rawat with the outcome "keep" and 2) an objection to the merge at talk:Prem Rawat. I think that Jossi's proposed procedure is wrong: I argue that the article cannot be merged unless it has been agreed on in yet another AFD on Past teachings of Prem Rawat. Who is right? Andries 08:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletion is the only "final" outcome from an XfD. Anything else has no life beyond the close of the debate because it doesn't require special powers to perform a merge of whatever. For example, articles can be re-nominated rapidly after a close of keep... there's no "safe zone" and the keep results isn't binding. Similarly, the results of "merge" or "redirect" don't have any actual weight as to the eventual outcome of the article. One reason is that XfD participants may be blow-ins, not people who actually do the care and feeding of the article. They may all say "merge" because there isn't enough information for something to stand on its own, and lo and behold someone comes along after and builds the article up into something well-sourced that doesn't need to be merged. What usually happens thought is that at least a few of the people from the XfD "stick" to the article, and go on thinking the same thening they though before. So it's not the close that's important, it's the consensus of the editors working on the article. Did that help? - brenneman^{L} 08:16, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

crime

The Wikipedia does not support the action of no criminal, much less protects the same. It's correct. what's this: Wikipedia:No legal threats? --Eduardo Corrêa 08:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

What's the punishment will be the people fight will be its rights? I don't know, but it's one big news for any journal or TV. "Its rights are only been valid outside the wikipedia!" --Eduardo Corrêa 08:31, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by that? – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 08:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Using book publisher's cover notes, film distributors plot notes

A number of articles on books and films consist partly or mainly of notes provided by the publisher/distributor. For example, The Reckoning contains unattributed text probably (I'm guessing) provided by the film distributor for publicity, see [7][8][9][10]. Articles on books often contain text taken from the cover of the paperback edition. What is the policy on these matters? does the text stay in as useful, or is it pitched out as copyviol, plagiarism, unattributed, or what? Mr Stephen 10:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

My non-admin experience is that anything printed on the container is copyrighted material, including blurbs, and any content on imdb except for user comments is also copyrighted. Anybody check on that? Her Pegship 17:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Pegship is correct (except that user comments on IMDB are also copyrighted; all creative works of any length fixed in a tangible form are subject to automatic copyright, with a few narrow exceptions). Any such articles are certainly copyright violations if the quote is unattributed, maybe okay if it's an attributed quote of promotional material (not IMDB or other commentaries). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Right-o. I'll leave that particular article as it is for a while in case anyone wants to add anything. Thanks. Mr Stephen 23:44, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

the future of wikipedia (from the viewpoint of Yy-bo)

• this contribution constructively relates to my questions/ideas about wikipedia policies (WP:EL,WP:NOR,WP:NPOV (especially user pages), and new policies).

Now, if people search for something, they find a wikipedia entry at the 1st position most likely. Good for wikipedia. However, this implies obligation to improve wikipedia in way towards what people are expecting from the internet.
What about a wikipedia 2.0, not to bother about my worries with policies (WP:EL), which must be fulfilled literally. At other places, we (not further explained) do not have this need. There are articles which do need more external links. Probably it is possible to argue, wikipedia would prejudice/filter/comment internet search action. There are numerous informations on the internet, which are not really encyclopedic (WP:NOR, WP:NPOV), but people are searching for them. People like me (who created a few good pages) should have the opportunity to include them into an article (Aztec Calendar). It does not make sense to directly extend the article with this data. It is not advert/advert supported.

If you do not understand this, or if you mind my language skills, then consider the 3rd world. They search the net, and the 1st thing they see is a wikipedia article. My idea is it to make a (better) wikipedia 2.0, instead of criticizing its weak points, or to go into the various evidences of "articles in need". Never change a running system. But i do not think so. I believe wikipedia is a prototype, too much based on paper format (and color scheme). It would be a research piece to research about bad white. This suits for paper prints, but not for the internet. This means (you can derive it yourself), people are doing the wrong thing. Black on white=wrong, it actually hurts the eyes. Just one aspect, to enable people to customize the display colors. Much more, much more. I hope you get the idea about wikipedia 2.0; wikipedia 1.0 is just a prototype. It looks more helpful than to criticize it, or to abandon it, because wikipedia indeed supports a few topics, which oterwise do not have much room for internet publication. Encyclopedic means, if the Encyclopedia Brittania is going top include it in the future? If an editor (supported by admin friends) believes it important? If it has been printed somewhere? If it is useful for people? If lot's of people are talking about it? I do not exactly know.

• I believe this contribution (which is not full of grammar mistakes) figures a much better way than to file more mediation cabal. I sought psychologic councelling, and as a result of it, i am not going to read the result of the cabal, not right now, if ever. My argumentation was clear to read. I do have in mind to try about a personality test for new editors, with randomized questions, and a few sections to fill in with float text. This is presented after a certain number of edits, kbytes etc. Not to brand new editors, which always do get a chance to edit from scratch. This gets accredited on the user page (by permanent banner).
• I have lots of plans, but my time for wikipedia has become spare. I had to defend my language usage. I have improved my spelling mistakes, and comment behaviour, especially within my new user account. I am still believing in wikipedia, i do keep 30 mbyte technical articles (offline). However it is not abhorrent to me to seek other sources, and to question wikipedia as it appears towards the internet. The public can make demands towards wikipedia. I am not the public, but a programmer with psychologic knowledge.

If you make replies, then please about any of your wikipedia 2.0 (previously, color schemes have been suggested/discussed elsewhere). I do not have the time to go into it) Yy-bo 12:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but I really have no idea what you're talking about above. If you want to read Wikipedia in different display colors, there is a way to set a personal stylesheet for it (I haven't done this myself, so I'm not sure of the exact details of how to do it). *Dan T.* 12:41, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
  • There is a limited number of display choices on the "Skin" tab in your user preferences. As for his main point, Wikipedia is not Google. I'm not going to touch the suggestion of psychological testing of editors. \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 16:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
• Am I to understand that your main points of contention with Wikipeda are:

• That you are not allowed to add external links indiscriminately and en masse.
• That editors focus too much on "articles in need" and not enough on extending Wikipedia's function as a search engine.
• That there are too many policies on Wikipedia.
• That operating on a consensus basis is not useful to something like Wikipedia.

and that your solution to these problems is to create a Wikipedia 2.0 that remedies these problems, as well as screens editors psychologically (presumedly so that they will not question your English skills)?

Yy-bo, I am honestly trying to understand your point of view, but your prose was very difficult to make sense of. It appears that by ignoring your mediation case, you continue to believe that your problems here are systemic rather than simply the fact that no one can understand your English. Aguerriero (talk) 21:22, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Where to begin? Black on white is not in any way hard on the eyes. You read books, don't you? They're black on white. Second, Wikipedia is not Google. We do not need tons of external links. Third, your grammar is still verging on horrible. You need to accept this. Ignoring the results of your mediation attempt will not help. These suggestions will likely never be implemented because they detract from the encyclopedia. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 21:31, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It is not really helpful in my mind to criticize someone's grammar. I think you know what he is getting at, and that is the main thing, is it not? Thank you. Wallie 09:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Enabling rel="nofollow" outside the main namespace

I have posted a proposal for this at Wikipedia talk:Spam#Proposal: Enable rel="nofollow" outside the main namespace. Please comment there. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Disclaimer templates

There is a discussion going about a specific template that was made to warn people that the page contains nudity Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_May_11#Template:Nudity_warning. I think it should be brough here as well as this involves a very basic change in the (unofficial?) policy untill now, and could brings us at the slippery slope of many content warning disclaimers. Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 15:16, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not censored. --Runcorn 22:26, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I give up. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Format of the word "ebook"

Can we come to consensus on the standard punctuation and capitalization of this? In the Oxford English Dictionary, the only use of the letter "e" as a prefix meaning "electronic" is for "email", all lower case. Knowing the OED, and knowing that we don't capitalize Book (or Tape or Download or any other adjective or noun as a generic format), I am nearly positive that the standard spelling is, or will eventually be, ebook (not e-book, eBook, or Ebook, except as forced by Wikipedia title limitations <g>). Can we work this into the naming conventions somewhere? I have posted this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (books) as well. It came up during a recent CfD discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pegship (talk • contribs)

• I fully support "ebook" (and "email"), and would be happy to see a firm policy in favor of these. However, I doubt very much there's any chance of consensus on this. The wretched "e-mail" appears to have won market share, but this and other conflicting spellings are not any more likely to be finally settled, by the OED or anyone, than "aluminum" vs. "aluminium". I think it's going to be like most other conventions on Wikipedia, user's choice. Do you know what the current statistical distribution of "ebook", "e-book", "eBook" and "Ebook" is, across all articles? \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 18:13, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

A simple search turns up 450 articles on the English Wikipedia which use "e-book", 867 which use "ebook". I'm unable to break it down by type case; anyone got a tool for this? Her Pegship 04:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This one also gives a sample: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere/EBook&limit=500&from=0 (that is: after I cleaned out the wikipedia:double redirects)

Note that Wikipedia tries not to be self-referential about such issues, a bot would change all occurences of a term to another variant in a swiff. The criteria is occurences outside wikipedia. When the main "trusted" dictionaries (OED, Webster's,...) contain no information or contradict, all non-marginal occurences are usually accepted. Note that making deductions from *other* dictionary entries would constitute original research, also not used as the basis for what happens in wikipedia's main namespace.

Anyway, I changed the start of the EBook article to "An eBook (also: e-book, ebook) is an [...]" --Francis Schonken 07:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I do hope we don't end up with "eBook" - that's a monstrosity.--Runcorn 22:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not normative. --Francis Schonken 06:22, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to limit who can edit policies

Following banned user Zephram Stark's attempt to rewrite WP:SOCK using two sockpuppet accounts, there is a proposal to limit the editing of policy pages either to admins, or to editors with six months editing experience and 1,000 edits to articles. Please vote and comment at Wikipedia:Editing policy pages. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

shocked... the proposer of this new policy/guideline is an admin for I don't know how long, has largely over 1000 edits, is a wikipedian for some years and is very active on guideline & policy pages, but apparently has never read or refuses to apply Wikipedia:How to create policy. That guideline is clear that one shouldn't jump to a vote in order to create guidelines or policies.

The new proposal is in its early stages (barely a few hours after starting up the proposal page), and a vote is already launched...

I propose that wikipedians that don't stay in line with Wikipedia:How to create policy, should not be permitted to edit guidelines and policies. Or in other words, let's promote Wikipedia:How to create policy from guideline to policy.

Further, I must say, I think admins are often too soft on disruptive behaviour on guideline/policy pages,

1. I don't know about the Zephram Stark case, but why was CheckUser not run earlier on this person?
2. We've got a user (passing the criteria now proposed for being allowed to modify policy/guidelines) actively WP:POINT-ing and revert-warring on Wikipedia:content forking for the last two days... Why wasn't this user taken out yet? The WP:POINT guideline and 3RR would have warranted admin action...
3. Why did the Lumiere/Etincelle disruption on the core content policy pages last so long? OK with the new proposal, it would have taken that person a bit longer before (s)he could start being disruptive on these policy pages - but with current guidance/policies this user could've been taken out sooner too.

So maybe this new proposal is rather about admins dodging their responsibilities (because they can't agree on how to end the wheel-war phenomenon, and so are a bit paralysed when they need to take action that wouldn't be "popular").

PS, sorry: I have no idea who were the admins assisting in keeping the guideline OK w.r.t. the second example above. Kudos to them, I hope I didn't step on any sore toes with the examples I gave above. --Francis Schonken 20:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why this would be needed, admins have been known to edit war with each other on policy pages too (just look at the history of WP:CSD for example), either an edit makes sense and has consensus in wich case it doesn't matter wether an admin or an anon made it, or the edit has no consensus and will be reverted wether it was made by an admin or not. Substantial changes (in the sense of the meaning, moving a comma can in sertain cases be a substantial change) to policy should not be made without consensus, it should not matter who makes the change. If there is a problem with "bad" edits staying on policy pages for a long time we need to watch those pages more closely, that's all. --Sherool (talk) 20:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Note also that, as explained on the talk page of the proposal, most of Zephram's attempted rewrite was done by an admin through social engineering. It wasn't caught because hardly anyone was watching. --Philosophus ^T 23:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The philosophy should be to free people, not to limit them. I fear that as time goes on there will be more and more admin and less and less contributing. That would be a pity. Wallie 22:07, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Why can't I start a new article?

I have been active in Wik for a number of months and have started a number of articles. To-day, I wanted to enter an article on Manierre Dawson. Two times when I tried to do that, I was told I could suggest an article, but the 'you can write an article' was in red and struck through. A third time, I wasn't even given this option, being simply told that there were no hits. I thought the new policy on new articles only applied to unregistered and very new users. Kdammers 05:01, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I made the Manierre Dawson article just now. Had no trouble. Please edit it so it's not quickly deleted. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 05:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Too late. Try creating it again. Should work. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 05:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

It worked now. Thanx. Kdammers 05:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

No problem. Those Recent Changes patrollers are fast. The article I made was deleted a few seconds after I made it. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

So what happened, exactly? I've never had problems creating articles... --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Deletionism facing (Judaism) articles

Hi, I have just placed the following on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism, it touches on a broad range of issues. Thank you. IZAK 09:44, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Shalom to everyone: There is presently a very serious phenomenon on Wikipedia that effects all articles. Let's call it "The New Deletionism". There are editors on Wikipedia who want to cut back the number of "low quality" articles EVEN IF THEY ARE ABOUT NOTABLE TOPICS AND SUBJECTS by skipping the normal procedures of placing {{cleanup}} or {{cite}} tags on the articles' pages and instead wish to skip that process altogether and nominate the articles for a vote for deletion (VfD). This can be done by any editor, even one not familiar with the subject. The implication/s for all articles related to Jews, Judaism, and Israel are very serious because many of these articles are of a specilaized nature that may or may not be poorly written yet have important connections to the general subjects of Jews, Judaism, and Israel, as any expert in that subject would know.

Two recent examples will illustrate this problem:

1) See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zichron Kedoshim, Congregation where a notable Orthodox synagogue was deleted from Wikipedia. The nominator gave as his reason: "Scarce material available on Google, nor any evidence in those results of notability nor any notable size." Very few people voted and only one person objected correctly that: "I've visited this synagogue, know members, and know that it is a well established institution" which was ignored and the article was deleted. (I was unaware of the vote).

2) See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Berel Wein where the nominator sought to delete the article about Rabbi Berel Wein because: "It looks like a vanity project to me. While he does come up with many Google hits, they are all commercial in nature. The article is poorly written and reads like a commercial to me." In the course of a strong debate the nominator defended his METHOD: "... what better way to do that than put it on an AfD where people who might know more about the subject might actually see it and comment rather than slapping a {{NPOV}} and {{cleanup}} template on and waiting for someone to perhaps come across it." But what if no-one noticed it in time and it would have gone the same way as "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim"? Fortunately, people noticed it, no-one agreed with the nominator and the article was kept.

As we all know Googling for/about a subject can determine its fate as an article, but this too is not always a clear-cut solution. Thus for example, in the first case, the nominator saw almost nothing about "Congregation Zichron Kedoshim" on Google (and assumed it was unimportant) whereas in the second case the nominator admitted that Berel Wein "does come up with many Google hits" but dismissed them as "all commercial in nature". So in one case too few Google hits was the rationale for wanting to delete it and in the other it was too many hits (which were dismissed as "too commercial" and interpreted as insignificant), all depending on the nominators' POV of course.

This problem is compounded because when nominators don't know Hebrew or know nothing about Judaism and its rituals then they are at a loss, they don't know variant transliterated spellings, and compounding the problem even more Google may not have any good material or sources on many subjects important to Jewish, Judaic, and Israeli subjects. Often Judaica stores may be cluttering up the search with their tactics to sell products or non-Jewish sites decide to link up to Biblical topics that appear "Jewish" but are actually missionary sites luring people into misinformation about the Torah and the Tanakh, so while Googling may yield lots of hits they may mostly be Christian-oriented and even be hostile to the Judaic perspective.

Therefore, all editors and contributors are requested to be aware of any such attempts to delete articles that have a genuine connection to any aspect of Jews, Judaism and Israel, and to notify other editors.

Please, most importantly, place alerts here in particular so that other editors can be notified.

Thank you for all your help and awareness. IZAK 08:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

how is this related to Judaism in particular? Pending evidence to the contrarly, these are simply uninformed deletions for lack of proper references in the stubs deleted, without any sort of political agenda. Just recreate with proper references, and your article will be safe. dab (ᛏ) 09:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I think articles for deletion in general is a mess. Sometimes we get (legal) threats over it, I gather. Even the international press occaisionally catches a whiff of it. But as it stands, not even Jimbo Wales dares to delete it. (Ed Poor did try, and lost all his privs. :-/ ) Kim Bruning 10:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, Ed was de-adminned for deleting the criticism of his deletion of VFD. Deleting VFD itself was audacious enough that he got away with it. --Carnildo 03:26, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Technically, that's why he lost his bureaucrat status.¹ He was de-adminned for his conduct in a mostly unrelated situation involving FuelWagon (talk · contribs).²--Sean Black 04:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

You make it sound like there's a mass deletion (dozens of articles) which faces only judaism articles. Please don't make Wikipedia the scene of conspicarcies. CG 17:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles on individual Christian churches/congregations get deleted regularly, because they aren't considered notable unless they reach a certain size or do something to distinguish themselves from every other church within their denomination. Synagogues (or Judaism-related topics generally) aren't being singled out. From the deleted history, this particular one did not have any information of substance beyond an explanation of its name. You could always try WP:DRV, but I can't see that succeeding here. Postdlf 17:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing improper has been done here. Sending articles straight to articles for deletion is completely legitimate. If it wasn't vast amounts of articles would never get dealt with. Calsicol 18:16, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

If you are concerned that certain AfDs aren't getting the proper attention, can I suggest you create a Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting-type list and have people monitor what's going on in AfD? Many of these lists are inactive, but some (like Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/New Zealand) are active and really help keep track of what's going on. Regards, Ziggurat 19:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

For the first page, I feel I must argue in favor of deletion. Only 124 Google hits? Of course, I highly doubt that the user's vote was simply ignored. It's just that the deletion "votes" had much better arguments (show, don't tell) than the keep "vote". --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia violating GFDL?

When editing articles, we "agree to license our contributions under the GFDL." Now the GFDL allows free redistribution and modification, as long as the original authors are credited. These credits are done via the page history, where the usernames of contributors are noted, with a link to the users' pages, where they can, if they so wish, identify themselves with their real names. Thus, as long as the entire database is being distributed, there is certainly no violation of the licence.

Now, I noted that you can download stripped versions of the database, containing only the current versions of the articles. This appears to be a violation of the GFDL, since there is no way to link texts to their copyright owners if the full page history is not provided. To the best of my knowledge, contributors do not yield their copyright to Wikimedia, with Wikimedia in turn publishing the material under the GFDL (in which case a single "from Wikipedia" credit would suffice); rather, they publish their contribution under the GFDL, allowing Wikimedia and anyone else to host it with proper attribution. All Wikipedia mirrors that do not also mirror page histories are of course also in violation of the GFDL if I am correct, but it strikes me as particularly questionable if even Wikimedia itself offers GFDL-violating database dumps for download. dab (ᛏ) 09:53, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Yikes. I think database dumps should be looked into more closely in general, right now they're not that great. Don't forget that our dev team is chronically overworked though. They won't like this. ^^;; Kim Bruning 10:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I can't look at the dumps right now, but in my understanding providing the full content of all the revisions isn't necessary - providing a list of everyone who contributed is. Whether the "current-only" dump contains such a list for every article I don't know, but if it doesn't that should be added. -- grm_wnr Esc 11:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to have some sort of "authorship" algorithm that determines the main authors of the current version (discounting minor edits and reverted contributions), the articles could then with an "authors" tab, or even with a small footer, listing the main authors, if possible sorted by the amount of text contributed. I know this is not trivial, and should maybe be tweakable. But we could then request that mirrors provide this list of authors. As it is, most mirrors just have "from Wikipedia" (if even that), which clearly isn't sufficient. If you just list everybody who ever touched the article, the actual authors will be indistinguishable from vandals, people who reverted the vandals, and spellchecking or disambiguation edits. Clearly, correcting a typo is not a copyrighteable feat, and consequently the corrected version doesn't qualify as a derivative product. Whatever you distribute, it has to be clear who wrote the actual article; otherwise, you could just as well list the entire 1 million userbase of Wikipedia with every article, which would certainly mean that the actual authors are listed somewhere, but that would hardly constitute proper attribution. dab (ᛏ) 15:24, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this certainly neeeds to be looked into by someone higher up the WikiMedia foodchain. Although everyone probably understands the why of the database downloads, there definetly seems to be a potential legal problem here - The DJ 16:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Not blocking logged in users in blocked IP ranges

Earlier today, SlimVirgin (talk · contribs) applied some large IP blocks to deal with a persistent vandal:

1. 06:20, 19 May 2006 SlimVirgin blocked "71.141.1.0/24 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Amorrow)
2. 06:14, 19 May 2006 SlimVirgin blocked "71.139.176.0/24 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Amorrow)
3. 04:27, 19 May 2006 SlimVirgin blocked "71.141.3.0/24 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Amorrow)
4. 02:09, 19 May 2006 SlimVirgin blocked "71.141.17.0/24 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Amorrow)
5. 02:02, 19 May 2006 SlimVirgin blocked "71.139.186.0/24 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 24 hours (Amorrow)

Those are AT&T DSL pool addresses, 1280 of them. This knocks out Wikipedia access for a sizable fraction of AT&T DSL users in Silicon Valley, even those logged in. That's overkill. Requesting a new IP address lease won't work when the block is that big; the new address will be blocked, too. I'd suggest that big-block IP address blocks be discussed first on the administrator's notice board. Those always have collateral damage, and should not be done without some admin consensus.

What's really needed is to finish the implementation of Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal, which was accepted but doesn't work yet. Is there a completion date on that? --John Nagle 20:49, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

New Criterion for speedy deletion of ridiculous vanity

At dead-end we get a large number of articles like ZSBoS, which contain adverts, whether added by a well-meaning inclusionist or a conniving exploiter, of such patent inappropriateness that it seems highly roundabout to go through the whole rigmarole of AfD, or even Prod, to get rid of them. For example, the cited example reads:

Zonko's Store Branch of Services.com

Welcome, to Zonko's Store Branch of Services Server Edition! or ZSBoS SE! We work with computers such as Windows XP, Mac OS X and even the Windows 95, 98 and 2000 editions. We work with Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, Laptops, desktops, palm devices, iPods and hardware.

If you have any computer difficulties pelase e-mail erc1995@yahoo.com. You may feel free to leave messages in the "Discussion" tab of this page. (emphasis added)

As far as I can see, this is not covered under any speedy deletion criteria, but i think it should be. This editor is clearly using wikipedia for apparently commercial purposes, in a cynical and blatant way. I propose some kind of Template:Db-vanity rule. Since every speedy deletion has to be taken care of by an admin, any bad faith or questionable speedy nominations would still be sent to AfD or whatever, but a criterion of this nature would help speed up the wikipurging process no end. Jdcooper 02:01, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, this one is covered by the existing #7 under Articles (see WP:CSD). -- Rick Block (talk) 04:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

We've got a perfectly good deletion criteria that covers this: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules. --Carnildo 04:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 states "An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject", are we allowed to include other types of article in this category? Because if so then there's no problem, but its a slippery slope to bad faith nominations to start twisting CSD ambiguities to include whatever articles we want. Also, re:Ignore all rules, what do you mean? Jdcooper 11:39, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd sooner support broadening A7 to include "organization or company" as well as "group of people" (although, pedantically, a company IS a group of people, it's not the intent) than to use IAR to delete them. That way lies divisiveness. So I do support changing A7 as suggested. ++Lar: t/c 12:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll support you. A7 does not appear to allow me to delete spam or adverts about a company. Thought it can be streched at times. This means I'm using prod for some of these or leaving the article on speedy for someone else to decide if the article meets speedy criteria. Vegaswikian 22:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

A7 shouldn't cover companies. Why not just stub it and prod it, or send it to AfD and be done with it? --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 01:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Because a large number of these are not worth wasting AfD's time and effort on. I'm not talking companies of dubious notability, I'm talking bona fide spam. Jdcooper 02:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Why shouldn't A7 be allowed to cover companies? -Freekee 02:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Pages like that are routinely speedied as crap. We probably don't need an extra CSD for them. --Tony Sidaway 02:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thats fine, but which CSD does it "crap" fall under? Jdcooper 12:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The policy change that was approved in December 2005 was: "In short, my proposal is to expand CSD A7 to include non-notable groups of people as well as individuals. This would apply to bands, clubs, organizations, couples, families, and any other collections of individuals that do not assert their importance or significance." (my highlighting) [11] CSD really should apply to organizations, because that was the wording that was voted on and approved. So why doesn't the current wording reflect this? Because of edits like this. GeorgeStepanek\^talk 05:12, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Usability in Help: namespace

See usability-related discussion initiated at Help talk:Footnotes#The bigger picture: use of "H:", "Phh", "Ph" and other related templates in Help namespace --Francis Schonken 12:42, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirects from User Pages to Article Namespace

Is it ever appropriate for a user page to redirect to an article? Ardric47 22:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirect, no. Link, okay. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

What should I do if I see a user page with such a redirect. Automatically convert it to a link? Ask the user? Ardric47 03:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Have you found one? I'd like to see one! --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

There are dozens, maybe more. For example: User:Workshare, User:Darthlozza, User talk:Corinaalbu, User:CharlesBennett... Ardric47 04:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Offensive comments in afd discussions

I find this edit upsetting and offensive [12], (instead of voting delete, to vote "kill" on an article about a member of the ISM who was shot by the IDF). Is there any policy or guideline that would prevent users making edits such as this as I feel such comments can only add a feeling of hostility to the project which should not be what we want here. Arniep 01:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Get over it. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

As Zoe said, forget about it; you don't have the right to freedom from offense. Negotiate the objective facts of the situation. Reason is the most effective way to quell emotional responses from others. --Knucmo2 13:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I'm still not happy. There should be a no tolerance policy to these sort of veiled threats, to whichever or whatever group of people they refer to. Arniep 16:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you're looking for a generic "play nice, don't be an asshead" policy, sure, there is one. If you're looking for one that specifically says that people should be nice when voicing their desire to delete articles, I don't think such a policy exists (and I don't think one is required, for that matter).

That said, you may also want to consider assuming good faith, and in any case, no policy prevents anyone from making an edit, though a policy may dictate that certain edits have consequences. Personally, I'd recommend talking about it with the person in question -- if only to ensure that he really was rude on purpose, as opposed to just choosing his words poorly but without malice, for example -- before making a bigger issue out of it. (Then again, in all honesty, I don't find the comment in question particularly offensive. That may just be me.) -- Captain Disdain 03:43, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The comment was perhaps ill-chosen, but I very much doubt there was any malice behind it. Kill is ubiquitously used to mean "get rid of". I wouldn't worry about it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I find it hard to assume good faith when I can find no instance where Humus Sapiens has used that phrase in any other afd discussions. I would ask for all people to please keep their religious/national bigotry out of Wikipedia. There is a real problem with people who are on opposing sides of various conflicts either ganging up to vote on "the enemies" in afd or cfd discussions or adding partisan information to articles and claiming it must be added to "balance POV". The main problems lie in these areas: Jewish-Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland conflict, Turkish-Kurdish conflict, Albanian-Serbian conflict. I'm sure there are others but these are the ones that have caught my attention. Arniep 08:56, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay. Even if we assume that he was not making a joke or choosing his words poorly or just otherwise shooting off his mouth, and was actually out to offend -- all of which strike me as fairly strong assumptions to make without actually checking with him to see what his actual intentions were -- what would you like to do about it? -- Captain Disdain 09:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I am sure they must have been aware of the possible interpretation of the word "kill" in a discussion about a person who was "almost" killed by the IDF. As I said above it is just another example of someone using bigoted language in discussion of article which is on "the other side" of whatever conflict it happens to be. Arniep 09:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. And as I said, I don't find that interpretation particularly offensive -- not unless I know that there's an intentional effort on his part to offend or to celebrate or wish for the death of another human being for political or other reasons. Have you taken this issue up with him? Do you know what his intentions are? If you do, great, then you have something to go on. If you're just making an assumption, then frankly, I think you're on the wrong track. In any case, I repeat: what would you like to do about it? If you feel he has violated policy, you can of course always take it to mediation, but frankly, if you don't even talk to the guy first and determine his actual intentions or give him the chance to apologize (particularly if it was not his intention to offend), that's not really your best choice. I don't think anyone here can provide you with a solution any better than that. I mean, if you just want to vent about it, that's okay too, but it isn't going to solve your problem. -- Captain Disdain 10:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, what interpretation don't you find offensive? Arniep 16:06, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't find the use of the word "kill" offensive in the context of deleting an article that is about someone getting injured or killed unless I know for sure that the word is being used with malice. But that's me; again, your mileage may vary. In any case, that's neither here nor there; we can argue about whether it's offensive or not, but that's completely irrelevant, because it won't do anything to solve your problem. So I'm just going to ask you again: What would you like to do (or see done) about this incident? If you just want to register your displeasure, consider it registered and noted. It's done. If that's not enough, do something about it -- as far as I know, you haven't even talked to the guy about this. It's entirely possible that he's not even aware that what he said is being talked about (which, to be honest, doesn't really strike me as very cool). I again suggest you either take it up with him (and if that fails, go to mediation or otherwise try and work it out) or let the matter drop.

(And on a somewhat related note, your "veiled threats against people" statement above doesn't really convince me. If you are suggesting that the guy is seriously (if indirectly) proposing that Phil Reiss or other members of the ISM should be killed, I don't see it, and unless you know for a fact that it's what he wants -- y'know, by, say, taking the time to talk to him and making sure you haven't misunderstood him -- I think it's foolish to claim that he does.) -- Captain Disdain 18:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll have to live with the particular instance and others of word-usage. However I'd pick up that the description "minor" "non-lifethreatening" was very inaccurate. (COntemplate for a moment something hitting your head hard enough that you bleed inside, and commonly require a hole being made in your skull to depressurise it - minor? Mortality is not small.). Participants in that afd were invited to consider teh article with a misleading description of the magnitude of the injury. "Rubber" bullets are not supposed to hit people's heads, and if they do they have probably been fired negligently or deliberately to do so. Midgley 16:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll have to blunt. Many articles relating to Palestinians or people or organizations seen to be supporters of the Palestinians are in danger of not being neutral because many of the contributors to these articles hold a very pro Israel POV (the nominator of this article is Jewish and five of the delete votes at least were from Jewish users). Of course it is to be expected when you have one people in conflict with another that this kind of thing will happen with a worldwide audience, a similar thing was seen in the deletion discussion on Category:Kurdistan where many of the votes to delete were clearly from Turkish users. Unfortunately at the moment that there don't seem to be many members of the Wikipedia community working to stop these articles straying into favouring an Israeli point of view rather than being neutral which is sad in my opinion. Arniep 19:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

And what does that have to do with this comment at that AFD? Do you have a point?--Sean Black 19:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It is directly related, yes. My point should be clear from the above. Arniep 19:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you have a choice between taking this one-word comment as a good-faith (but perhaps poorly phrased) way of saying "delete." versus a deliberately offensive attempt to fan the flames, and you're choosing the latter course because it fits your account of POV-by-consensus on Wikipedia. You may have a point worth debating, but tying it to this particular AfD isn't a persuasive way to do that. · rodii · 01:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The editor chose to use that word when they have never used it in an afd discussion before. It is absolutely impossible that they would just have suddenly started to use that word instead of delete starting with that afd discussion without being aware of the significance of using it on that discussion. And yes the word is not really that important as you say, although I do believe it is a violation of WP:CIVIL. Perhaps also we should consider general veiled threats to a group as a violation of WP:NPA, for example if a person voted kill on an afd discussion on a homosexual person, and there was evidence that they were homophobic, although it would not be a personal attack on anyone in particular I think it should be a blockable offense. Arniep 02:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

"Absolutely impossible"! I think not. I think you overstate the significance, but in any case, if you think this user has committed some serious violation of policy, take it to WP:AN/I; why are you posting on the Village Pump? Other people have told you they think you're overreacting, but you aren't inclined to accept that advice, so what do you want to happen? A mob? · rodii · 03:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

You bring the torches, I'll bring the pitchforks. PARTY!  RasputinAXP  c 03:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Let me make sure I understand you. Are you suggesting that because of this single incident (in which there is no confirmation of the editor's motivations and in which, as far as I know, no one has even informed the editor about this ongoing conversation (and really, allow me to be blunt here, because clearly subtlety isn't working: before you continue making these accusations behind his back, which I find distasteful at best, please find out if he actually meant it the way you insist he did), it would be appropriate to block the editor? -- Captain Disdain 03:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I am not saying it is all about this single incident at all. As I said above it is just an ongoing pattern of behaviour of users on one side of a conflict "ganging up" on articles that are on the "other side". I don't really know how we can deal with that in such an open system, except by maybe informing the wider community that this is going on. If we do nothing, it will mean that Wikipedia will not be considered to be a neutral source of information on some very significant issues. Arniep 15:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Morale Issue

I put a discussion on the Admin/Incident page. It is probably better here. My problem is that two people get into edit wars over content. This degrades into name calling. If one is an admin, or has a good friend who is an admin, he/she pulls rank, and virtually says, the article is this way, end of story. If the other person debates this, it becomes typically personal, and the admin will start the name calling, eg, troll vandal etc. If the other person responds, and especially breaks a rule, the admin can ban that person. Does anyone else notice this? Does anyone have solution or a way forward? Thank you. Wallie 08:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Obviously all cases are different, but if you feel that there has been a conspicuous misuse of power by an admin, or indeed misconduct by any user, the place to raise the issue would be Wikipedia:Requests for comment. However I would suggest that you attempt to resolve to situation amicably between yourselves before jumping straight in with an RfC, although this is unfortunately not always possible. Rje 11:29, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I would expect an admin who used blocks/bans solely to get his/her own way in an edit dispute to be desysopped, and I believe most admins would concur.

That said, if a user is harming the encyclopaedia then it may well be the duty of an admin to block them, at least for a short time. I'm a strong believer that blocks should be protective rather than punitive (i.e. they should be used to protect Wikipedia rather than to punish 'breaking a rule'), but I certainly think most blocks carried out by admins are justified.

In either case, as Rje says above, this is what the dispute resolution process is for -- but we would much prefer it if disagreements were sorted out amicably between users behaving in a friendly and adult fashion. --Nick Boalch 11:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, do you have any actual examples of the behaviour you describe above? I can think of no examples off the top of my head of admins engaging in edit-warring and personal attacks of the kind you describe. --Nick Boalch 11:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

PS: Don't you mean it to be a "moral" issue? --Knucmo2 13:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

nope. Morale, as this can lower it. Thanks. Wallie 17:01, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

No. I do not act in this way. I believe in alerting the community to something that is happening. In this way, people who are doing this sort of thing may change direction. I think it already happening. It is also more effective, if a third party gets involved and says to the admin to stop it. As far as disputes between users is concerned, this is a dispute between a user and his/her admin (ie boss), not one between equals. Naturally if the user mentioned is an admin, the admin would probably not react favorably, as most people do not like criticism, and such an admin is very unlikely to be a humble person. Wallie 17:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Erm. Being an admin is no big deal on Wikipedia. An admin is certainly not any user's boss. In a content discussion, both are indeed equal (other considerations aside), and if the admin in question does not recognize that, he or she will be reminded about it rather fast. In particular, admins are forbidden from using admin powers in conflicts they are directly involved with. --Stephan Schulz 17:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a tall tale that is used to lull people into accepting admin power. Admins are a pain in the butt and we shouldn't have them. Honbicot 10:46, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll ask again, just to be sure: do you have any actual examples of the edit-warring and personal attacks you complain of actually happening? 'I think it's already happening' isn't good enough. If it's happening, show us where, and we'll take action against it. If it's not happening, then this discussion is about solving a non-existent problem and we can all move on. --Nick Boalch 18:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorising redirects

If something that has a name, but is not notable enough for an article, is made into a redirect to the best place to find something on that subject, is it OK to categorise the redirect? Two current examples are Gorcrows and Merlock Mountains. Both are redirects to the relevant article, but have been categorised to appear in Category:Middle-earth races and Category:Mountains of Middle-earth respectively.

So is it OK in general to categorise redirects? I don't recall seeing this done anywhere, but I couldn't find anything about this at Help:Redirect. I've also asked this question at WP:Help Desk. Carcharoth 12:50, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I see absolutely no point in categorising redirects. They're not articles, so they don't need categories. This would just fill cats with endless redirects to the same article. -- Necrothesp 12:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Have you not heard of administrative categories? Also, please note that I am distinguishing between redirects that are variations in spelling and redirects that direct you from a named thing without an article to the place where it is mentioned (be that a list or a proper article). Please look at the examples I provided more closely. This would also help solve some problems of categorisation, for example rationing is currently a collection of stubs masquerading as an article. It could be broken up into stubs, which can then be categorised separately, OR, redirects for the individual aspects of rationing could point at the rationing article, and the redirects could be categorised accordingly. Carcharoth 13:13, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have looked at the examples you provided and I see no merit whatsoever in categorising something that is mentioned so fleetingly. Cats are simply there to direct people to articles that may interest them. What is the point of suggesting there's an article about something when there isn't one? -- Necrothesp 20:38, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, the examples I provided may not be good examples of notability, but what about categorising the Panthera leo redirect in Category:Panthera along with all the other Panthera species? That way, people browsing the category system could either browse the common names or the genus? Carcharoth 22:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

In addition, this would allow categories to be fully populated. Rather than having a "list article" for the full list, and only articles in the category, everything could be in the category. Carcharoth 13:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I see significant value in being able to categorize a redirect in cases where the category applies only to the redirected term. For example, if a municipality like a village had disincorporated or became a part of another municipality, it is not unreasonable for the defunct village to redirect to the new municipality, but the category for defunct villages would apply only to the redirect -- it would make no sense to apply that category to the new municipality. older ≠ wiser 13:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I use this when there is not enough material for an article on two things that have there own name and are part of a larger article. This way each item will wind up in the correct categories and we don't need stubs or AfDs for weak articles. The trick is to not repeat the categories in the main article. Vegaswikian 18:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Please also see the discussion below, on scientific and common names. Rather fortuitously, maybe by some strange synchronicity, the one discussion concerns the other one as well! Carcharoth 20:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Having categorized a few redirects myself, I think it is a useful tool for alternate names and for divisions of a main article that are to stubby to warrant their own article. For instance, block vertebrae and butterfly vertebrae redirect to congenital vertebral anomaly, but their respective names are more likely to be what someone is looking for. --Joelmills 21:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Good. I wanted to find out whether other people do categorise redirects, so that is very helpful. But my main point is that this is possible so why do the guidelines not mention it??? Help:Redirect says nothing about this. This seems to be a silly oversight, as there must (surely) be some way of keeping track of redirects (and I don't mean by using "What links here"). Carcharoth 22:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes#Disadvantages of categories, 8th point. Maybe not the place where you'd go looking for that, but as a matter of fact there is a guideline that mentions the issue. One of the reasons why there's so few coverage of the possibility to categorize redirects is probably that there appears to be still a not completely solved bug (Bugzilla No. 927 - I picked that up at Wikipedia:Categorization#Redirects) --Francis Schonken 22:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

PS, also Wikipedia:Redirect mentions that all template tags that can be used on redirect pages include categorization. From there it would be possible to deduce that redirects can be categorized. --Francis Schonken 22:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think categorising some redirects in article categories is useful (alternate names etc., of course misspellings should only be categorised as misspellings). An interesting example of how redirect categorisation can be useful is at de:Kategorie:Ort in Polen (dt.), a category filled mostly with redirects of the German names of Polish cities to their Polish names (most article titles use the Polish name, with very few exceptions like Danzig). The Polish names are categorised in de:Kategorie:Ort in Polen. We could similarly have categories for diseases or anatomic features that are by their common names and by their Latin names, one of them on the redirect, one on the article. It would require some thought to come up with a good system, of course. Kusma (討論) 22:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The Use of Scientific Names over Common Names

As an amateur herpetologist and former snake keeper, I recently took an interest in writing articles on the many different species of vipers (see Viperidae). I really only started doing this in earnest back in April this year. The very first problem I recognized, was that there was no common structure to tie all of the existing articles together. For example, sometimes only a subspecies was described, but not the species, the genus or the subfamily to which it belongs. This is not very orderly -- chaotic even -- and a waste if the descriptions in such articles cover characteristics common to an entire family. Wikipedia obviously has a lot more growing to do, so I think it would be in the best interest of everyone to prevent this kind of disorder from getting out of hand before the number of articles on biological organisms becomes too great.

The most obvious structure to apply here is systematics: the science of taxonomy and binomial nomenclature. More than a million species of animals and half a million species of plants and microorganisms have been described by science and I'm sure that it is everyone's hope and wish that we will eventually see Wikipedia articles dedicated to each and every one of them. However, it is obvious to myself and others that the current policy of using common names over scientific names for page titles whenever possible (the consensus for which I hear has only been more or less agreed upon) is simply not good enough to achieve this end. What we need is a standard for naming articles on biological organisms that is predictable, promotes structure and prevents the propagation of errors. The best way to achieve this is with scientific names: not common names with a needless array of redirects and disambiguation pages.

Except in the case of birds, where the American Ornithologists' Union has established official common names for each species, there are often many different common names. Snakes are a good example. Take Sistrurus catenatus: if this page were to be changed to a common name, should it be massasauga, or eastern massasauga, or ground rattler, or swamp rattler, or even Michigan rattler? Those are all recognized common names for this species, particularly in the United States, but naming Wikipedia's page for it should not be reduced to a popularity contest. There is one perfectly valid name for this species, recognized the world over, and that is its scientific name: Sistrurus catenatus. Only then can there be no doubt regarding the subject of the article.

Another thing I've noticed about Wikipedia, is that only the article names get indexed, as opposed to redirects and entries in disambiguation pages. This is hardly surprising, but if ten years from now we have 100,000 articles on biological organisms -- most with common names -- this will make the indexes pretty much useless. How can you be sure how many Trimeresurus articles there are if they're scattered all across the index? There are currently 43 different species and subspecies, yet if the standard was to use only scientific names for each page, they would all be found under the T and line up neatly under the entry for Trimeresurus.

Let's take a further look at this with some current indexing examples.

• Birds: I'm sure there are many more bird articles than this, but it seems as if the bird folks just don't care much for indexing.

  Responding to this point in particular: According to Wikipedia's categorization guidelines, there should be few if any articles in Category:Birds — articles should be in the narrowest applicable subcategory. Thus, a bird article should be placed directly in Category:Birds only if it didn't fit into any of the existing subcategories (and if so, that might be a good reason to start a new subcategory). Similarly, we don't list sharks in Category:Fish, nor vipers in any of Category:Snakes, Category:Reptiles, Category:Chordates or even Category:Animals. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Eagles: Looks like there are more eagle articles than bird articles. However, the species and genera are mixed up so you can't tell which ones are more closely related. I've only managed to find this information on the Eagle page, where the list of species is grouped according to their generic (scientific) names.
• Sharks: There's more here, but once again, they're all mixed up. Even if you know your sharks, it's hard to see immediately if there are articles present for all the members of any particular genus.
• Vipers: Indexing done properly. All the Sistrurus species are under the S and all the Trimeresurus species are under the T. This way, even if the list is 100 times as long, it's still easy to find all the articles for a certain genus and see which ones are missing.

Looking again at that Eagle page, it reminds me of how common names do not encourage any structure when writing articles on biological organisms. There are many genera of eagles listed there, yet it seems the authors have spent most of their time producing articles only for the individual species. It would have been far more efficient to tackle the families, subfamilies and genera first. Those are the places to describe the defining characteristics of each in order to avoid having to repeat them in each of the species articles. A single eagle article to describe a number of genera is not specific enough. If all of the species are going to be described anyway, the more structured approach is also the best way to show people the differences between the various eagle genera.

Recently, one Wikipedian argued that things should be left as they are, because for a "normal" person to look for "gaboon viper" and end up with Bitis gabonica would be too jarring an experience. I say that if systematics is the best way for Wikipedia to self-organize, then why shouldn't we encourage people to follow and learn? We can still use common names as redirects, in disambiguation pages, and even make liberal use of them if necessary in the actual articles; that way, people will still know what they are about. But just as long as we emphasize the importance and use of scientific names for organizing those articles. I also believe that this is a good way to attract more interest from graduate students, professionals and other more knowledgeable individuals who would then be more willing to write articles for us. Which is what we want, right?

It is said that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. As opposed to common names, binomial nomenclature is the best way to illustrate how the different species are related because of the way they evolved. Those names are a reflection of our current understanding of how life evolved on the planet. If Wikipedia is still around in some form or another 100 or even 1000 years from now, our generation will not be remembered as much for the articles that we wrote, as for the structure and organization that we imposed upon them at this early stage, which in turn allowed it all to grow properly and thrive.

In case you're interested, I've argued before in favor of scientific names over common names on my user:talk page and on the Tree of Life page. At one point it was suggested to me that this was the proper place for me to state my case. I hope so, as well as that reason will eventually win the day concerning this issue. --Jwinius 19:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is to use titles which are the most commonly known to the average reader, not to the scientific community. Should we call blackbirds turdus? Who's going to know that? Call it by the common name and redirect the scientific name. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, it should be noted that, as long as the appropriate redirects are in place, one can get a pretty good listing of a genus via, f.ex., Special:Prefixindex/Sorex. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Another way, of course, would be to categorise the redirects. See discussion above. If you categorised all the Sorex redirects in Category:Sorex, you would have your index. Carcharoth 19:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

About the "Special:Prefixindex" comment - I've seen people linking to that kind of things from main article. I agree it is a very useful tool, but have refrained from similar linking from main article namespace, because the "Special" namespace seems to be self-referential. Having said that, there should be a way to make such browsing tools as "Special:Prefixindex" available to the reader. And the results of such discussions should be added to some guidelines document so people don't have to perennially have these discussions. Carcharoth 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely that both common names and scientific names should be listed in the category system, but in separate areas. Thus people would be able to choose the option to browse by common name, or by genus name. One way to do this is to categorise redirects, but really any method would be OK as long as people retain the option to browse either way. We should not force people to browse only one way. Can someone please pass these ideas over to the people working on biological articles. Carcharoth 20:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course, it is very important that common names be mentioned in the articles, but except for very well-known ones (for example, dog, potato, or bird; or even black mamba), I think that the titles should be scientific names. How many people know what a northern red anemone is, anyway? In many cases, there are multiple common names, and choosing one of them creates a POV. Sometimes, a common name refers to different species, creating confusion (see my experiences with vendace). Ardric47 20:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

(after massive edit conflict) If there's no widely-accepted common name (as seemingly is the case in your Sistrurus catenatus example), the only sensible location is at the scientific name. Something like blackbird, Zoe's counterexample, should probably stay where it is. If you would like it to be possible to browse by taxonomy, I suggest you categorize scientific names, including redirects—add Turdus merula to Category:Genus Turdus, then add that category to Category:Family Turdidae, and that to Category:Order Passiformes, that to Category:Class Aves, that to Category:Phylum Chordata, and that to Category:Kingdom Animalia. Do that for every single taxonomically-named article and redirect, and you're set. Of course, it'll be a big job, but that's what Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life is for. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The categories don't normally include the rank: Category:Passeriformes, etc. exist already. Ardric47 20:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ownership of images

If I give my sister my camera to take a picture, then I do the downloading from the camera to my PC, and then upload it to Wikipedia, am I the "creator" of the image, or is my sister, who pushed the button? Does my sister have to give permission for release, or is it my prerogative? User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:37, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

If you said "can you take this picture for me", and she said "yes", then she has taken the picture for you, not for herself. Hence you have the copyright. Morally, you could, and should credit her. She gets the credit for taking the picture, but you have the copyright and can release the picture. Also, you have the picture, not her. Ownership being 99% of the law and all that. Carcharoth 20:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Your sister is the one who decided exactly when to take the shot, from what angle, of what, etc. In other words, she was the one who was responsible for all the creativity in creating the image, and creativity is what copyright protects. Your role involved no creativity and therefore is not copyrightable. All copyright belongs to your sister, and she would have to give permission (or else, if she's under eighteen, your parents/legal guardians might have to, I think, depending on jurisdiction; but Wikipedia has tended to ignore that, since it makes life very complicated).

Copyrights made for hire are owned by the one who does the hiring (17 USC § 201(b)). If the work was not made for hire, the one who created it is the copyright holder, irrespective of motive (17 USC § 201(a)). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

So if I give her a dollar to take the picture, I'm the copyright holder?  :) User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so, unless she "expressly agree[s] in a written instrument signed by [both of you] that the work shall be considered a work made for hire" (17 USC § 101). She needs to actually be employed by you, not just contracted. You could always buy the copyright off her later, though. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:23, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Just lie and say you took it. Arniep 20:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Gaaa. I just think I'll take my pictures myself.  :) User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that a large part of the "creativity" in taking a picture is deciding what to take a picture of. From the sound of it, Zoe asked her sister to specifically take a picture of something. In that scenario, the idea to take a picture of something came from Zoe. I know I'd be annoyed if I thought of a great idea for a picture, asked someone else to take that picture, and then found that they had run off with the picture and idea, claiming it as "theirs". Carcharoth 20:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think you can argue that by saying "can you take a picture for me", and her replying "yes", you have a verbal contract that you have hired her to take the picture, though from reading Simetrical's comment, that is contract work, not employment work. Don't think you have to actually give her any money. As for creativity, when I give someone my camera to take a picture, I tell them exactly how to take it. Hell, I even line the camera up for them (and then go and stand in the picture). Though I suspect that you gave your sister the camera to take a picture somewhere when you were not present, so ignore this part of my rant about creativity... :-) (the earlier comment about identifying who had the idea to take the photo is still valid). Carcharoth 20:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we haven't done anything yet, I was thinking about mailing my camera to her to ask her to take some pictures in the San Francisco Bay Area, but we haven't even discussed it yet. User:Zoe|^(talk) 20:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

In that case, she would clearly be the creator since you would simply be telling her what you wanted her to take a picture of and she would be adding the creative elements (lighting, angle, framing, etc...). And the fact that you "hired" her by paying her a dollar is not enough - the statute requires that the work made for hire agreement be in writing. However, all it takes is for you to be the copyright owner is a few words (in writing) from your sister acknowledging that all photographs taken by her for you will be deemed a "work made for hire" and that you will be the owner of the copyright. (This all assumes we are talking about U.S. copyrights.) -- DS1953 ^talk 03:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Zoe, defense of copyright is a civil matter. As long as you and your sister reach an understanding regarding what will happen to the picture(s), and you are fairly confident that she isn't going to sue you because of anything you do, it doesn't much matter whether you take steps to legally firm up your position. Sure you could work up a written contract, pay her for the images, and take other steps to cover your ass legally, but I would really hope such actions are unnecessary. Just tell her it is for Wikipedia, that pictures need be made public (under the GFDL or similar), and get her to agree to that. You can offer her a byline on the image description page if she wants, as well. I would hope that with your sister you wouldn't need to worry about things more than that. Legally though, she would ordinarilly own the picture, so you could get into trouble if you try to trick her or release the image without her permission provided that she would be inclined to sue you over it. Dragons flight 04:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not really very complex. Basically, all you need to do is e-mail her and say, "hey, sis, these pictures you took, is it okay if we use them for Wikipedia?" and when she says "yeah, go ahead, no problem", you have received permission from the copyright holder. (A phone call will do just as well, but this way you have something you can refer to if, for whatever reason, the question of whether she actually gave permission comes up. Provided that you save the e-mail, of course.) If she takes the pictures, she owns the copyright (yeah, I suppose that technically it can be argued that if you tell her exactly what to shoot, it's really your picture and not hers, but for all practical intents and purposes, if you mail her a camera and she takes some pictures, she's the creator and copyright owner), but as long as you have permission to use the pictures, it doesn't really matter who the copyright owner is -- could be Santa Claus or Jacques Chirac or me, a permission's a permission. -- Captain Disdain 05:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, images that are by-permission for use on Wikipedia are not acceptable. See, e.g. Template:Copyrighted. Christopher Parham (talk) 09:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah. I stand corrected, my bad. That said, surely obtaining permission that includes third party use would be just as simple. -- Captain Disdain 19:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately it sometimes isn't...many copyright owners would be willing to release their work for educational/encyclopedic use on Wikipedia, but would not want to see their work sold by commercial entities. This is actually a fairly common situation. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no doubt that this is true, but in an instance where someone is taking pictures for the explicit purpose of use for Wikipedia, I kinda doubt that is a problem... -- Captain Disdain 06:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Slight correction: the "permission" needs to include an explicit acceptance of Wikipedia's copyright conditions/GFDL - see Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission for some tips on how to acquire such explicit permission from a third party. Zoe, I take it that you're on excellent terms of understanding with your sister. But such assumption is irrelevant for wikipedia. So, if you're on good terms with her, there wouldn't be a problem to get her permission according to the descriptions of Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission I suppose, while that's the confirmation needed for uploading the picture in wikipedia. And then, in the image description (that is the "image:" namespace page where the picture is uploaded) you'd make correct attribution to the "author" of the picture, with reference to the wikipedia-compatible license conditions you agreed upon. Best to mention the attribution in the "edit summary" when uploading too, that makes the attribution "undeletable"/"stable" in later versions of the image description page. --Francis Schonken 09:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox collectors

This is the 2nd time I run into a case of this. Can't remember the first user. But I would likt to mention User talk:Wootking. It seems this person is adding himself to any type of WikiProject he can find, and collecting userboxes of projects and other UBX. However he has not made ONE single edit to an article. His account was created only 2 weeks ago. Now the fact that he collects userboxes i can care less about, but the fact that he is adding himself to all those WikiProjects is annoying, in that it clutters up the Project. It's not a real problem, but I was wondering if other people have seen similar problems lately. It almost seems like a bot (considering the bad formatting of the page). - The DJ 14:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• • Not to mention that the user also claims to have six batchelor's degrees, five masters', a doctorate and a law degree, and is studying medicine. Completely bogus, all of it. Wikipedia is being invaded by the mentally ill, the stupid, and the sociopathic. \ Fnarf999 \ talk \ contribs \ 20:22, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've not seen this particular problem. From looking at this user's page and writings, it appears that he may actually think he has to sign up as a participant in a WikiProject to make use of the articles. He mentions his research and doesn't generally seem to be going anything in bad faith. This may just be an opportunity for communication and understanding. Aguerriero (talk) 22:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The Userbox Wars- Episode III (aka a new proposal)

Ok, so both the inclusionists and deletionists have been very strong in the userbox wars, but all the proposals so far have been very one sided... so, I have attempted to make a new, moderate proposal for everyone to (hopefully) agree on. See the proposal: Wikipedia:May_Userbox_policy_poll.

What this attempts to do is create a new namespace for Userboxes themselves, to move them out of the NPOV Template namespace; while I know Userboxes shouldn't need their own namespace, it's really the only viable solution I've seen, as deleting them all causes fury, substing them removes the community sense of Wikipedia, and keeping them makes the Template namespace have POVs- which it shouldn't have.

Also, MediaWiki dev Rob Church has stated that it would not be difficult to the developers to implement a new namespace, so don't let that factor into your vote.

Overall, I'm hoping to resolve this issue so that Wikipedians can get back to doing what they should be doing- helping us build a better encyclopedia. Thanks all, // ^The True _Sora 18:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

that which is called offensive

I do not believe in censorship - but at the same time can understand those who do not wish to view offensive images, but might still want to view an article. I believe Cool Hand Luke had a solution for this (ie 2 templates). I may be behind the times here, but offering more choice to the user does not seem a bad compromise in exceptional circumstances - not sure on the technical side of things.. From what I see Wikipedia is fairly liberal and a situation like the Abu Ghraib photos is an exception. Wikipedia is an amazing invention for the internet -- so any idea which propagates it, is all to the good. Is there a Wikipedia for children for example? -- Hopefully censored to some degree.

No there isn't wikipedia for children. --Osbus 22:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

There's child-themed stuff at m:Wikijunior Ziggurat 23:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

You're equivocating two issues: what is offensive and what is age-appropriate. Unless you're trying to say that anything adults take offense at is something that children should be prohibited from viewing, which is a bit of a non sequitor. Postdlf 23:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Signature limitations

Some editing had been occuring at Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages as well as a straw poll that would strengthen the limitations on length and content of signatures. This is currently being driven by a few editors, however as this is an issue which effects a very large number of users, wider input would be desirable. - brenneman^{L} 08:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Factions of Nationalism: proposal to move Polish Biographical Dictionary → Polski Słownik Biograficzny

See Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary#Requested move. Alas, but:

I get the creepy feeling this is a test case for the Polish Cabal how far they can go in bending wikipedia their way. Note that Piotrus' argument regarding the dictionary resumes to: look how successful we've been thus far in replacing "Polish Biographical Dictionary" by "Polski Słownik Biograficzny" in many wikipedia articles (which is an unacceptable self-reference argument). It has been amply demonstrated by me that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary, and not to the other, one-volume, one (see talk in archive).

Sorry, don't want to offend people doing hard work in WikiProjects on specific topics (like the Wikipedia:Polish Wikipedians' notice board).

Anyway, didn't surprise me a bit that Piotrus (the initiator of the vote above) opposes the new Wikipedia:No factions of belief proposal ([13]), as far as I can see entirely for the wrong reasons. --Francis Schonken 08:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Um, I'm Swedish and not part of the Polish Cabal^TM, but I think it is just common sense and sound bibliographical practice to keep books (as well as other publications) at their actual title rather than inventing new titles in English for them.

Despite the claims from Francis Schonken, I would disagree that it has been demonstrated that '"Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in external sources'. There are a couple of examples of loose references to this work in that way, but many more refer to it by its Polish title, and in a bibliography or footnote reference that would be the only correct way. This is really a very flimsy and biased argument. Francis just gives much greater weight to the few examples that correspond to his own view.

This is not one of those literary classics that has been translated numerous times, published in numerous editions and known by an English title for hundreds of years. It is a contemporary Polish reference work, published in Poland, written entirely in Polish, and with only a Polish title. Anyone looking for information on this is more likely to look for it under its Polish title. That is, at least, the only title under which it can be found in the catalogues of the British Library or the Library of Congress. Tupsharru 09:41, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Title translations is clear on the issue, *especially* for those books that haven't been published in English (even if there would be no "standard translation" of the title, which was the case for some years regarding Ensaio sobre a Lucidez), the wikipedia content page is at an English version of the title. I mean: Alles went behalve een vent is a redirect to something understood by an average English speaker, isn't it? --Francis Schonken 09:57, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can see, you have written that convention yourself. It has not been widely discussed, it is not really in accordance with actual practice when it comes to publications with foreign titles (the cases mentioned by you are your own, just as the "guideline"), and to most people this is probably a non-issue, as it is (as I wrote above) just sound and normal bibliographic practice to refer to a publication by its actual title, not an invented one. Tupsharru 10:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what your point is. Yes, I wrote large parts of wikipedia:naming conventions (books), apart from copying bits and pieces I had found elsewhere... that's what I do, I sometimes write guideline proposals. Then, the proposal was widely advertised, mentioned several times here on this Village pump page, at wikipedia talk:naming conventions, wikipedia:current surveys, etc, etc. And then it was discussed in several places: primarily at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (books), there was a WP:RM vote *specifically* drawn in these discusions, etc, etc.

The section of that guideline regarding translation of book titles, was not only discussed on the talk page of the guideline (proposal), but specifically *also* at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (use English)#Article titles for books in foreign languages, in the "proposal" stage of the books NC.

Don't know where you see a problem? If there's consensus for a different formulation of the books NC, I'd happily oblige. But mind you, I'd rather put a halt to what I, and some other wikipedians, consider to be factionalism, first. --Francis Schonken 10:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

J.Smith (talk · contribs)

Hello, i am an anonymous role account of another wikipedian, my password is swordfish. please inspect my account to confirm that i am a benign role account and am not hiding anything malicious--J.Smith 13:52, 23 May 2006 (UTC)