User talk:DGG

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About: your eloquent summary of what does and does not improves this project

Hi DGG, or if I may be so bold, David,
You wrote at WP:AN/I Archive691: <block quote>There is more than one valid way of working here. Some people prefer to create only high quality articles, even though they may do very few of them. Some prefer to create many verifiable articles of clear notability even though they may not be of initially high quality. As this is a communal project, I think every individual person is fully entitled to do whichever they prefer, and the thing to do about people who prefer otherwise than oneself is to let them work their way, while you work yours. The only choice which is not productive is to argue about how to do it, rather than going ahead in the way that one finds suitable.</block quote> Many editors include a statement about their attitudes to editing on their user pages. I am not one of them, that is until I came across what you wrote. I would really like to include this on my user page. While I can add anything at all I like to my user page subject to WP:USER PAGE, I nevertheless ask for your permission to add the quote. OK with you? I'm fine if you decline this.
--Shirt58 (talk) 12:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Of course. DGG ( talk ) 21:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen you reference this essay

WP:TALKINGSOFASTNOBODYCANHEARYOU. Is my memory that faulty? I can't find it, and it's possible the syntax isn't precise. Did you use this a sort of irony? I seem to remember you used the link to represent bullying behaviors. I'm seeing one such user who seems to be wanting to turn the entire AfD process on its head by using such a technique. BusterD (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I have sometimes used pseudo-links like these as a statement for their own sake, without writing an actual essay. I remember saying something like this, but I can't find it. I think this one was TALKINGSOMUCH... -- but I can't find it either. As for the problem, I've commented pretty extensively at AN/I: [1], and will comment at the RfC also, But please don't confuse the reasonable message, with which I am in agreement -- that Deletion Policy is overbalanced towards deletion, and one step towards rebalancing it would be to require some version of WP:BEFORE -- with the unreasonable way it is being over-expressed. DGG ( talk ) 23:23, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, David. I was a debater in school before "talking so fast" became the current style. I feel anything which games the system deserves appropriate response in order to keep the system sound. I appreciate your valid concern about deletion procedures being over-weighted toward one outcome. Thanks for your valuable comments in those forums. Be well. BusterD (talk) 23:37, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had forgotten that context. And so was I,in college--a very valuable experience, especially in facilitating the sort of intercampus experiences only the athletic teams otherwise gave occasion for. But the stimulus is interesting: if I take a turn at NPP, the amount of junk turns me for a while into a deletionist before I catch myself and stop being so unfriendly to all the newcomers. If I take a look at AfD, the number of unwarranted nominations makes me want to give a similarly snappy and unjust response to all of them, with the less than rational thought that if I argue against all of them, maybe there's a chance the good ones will make it. Several good inclusionists have run into trouble here falling into such temptation. DGG ( talk ) 23:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

uw templates

FYI. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you and I with our combined experience could go a long way to help develop this. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Ping about Wikipedia talk:WikiProject user warnings/Testing

Hi! If you still have suggestions for any of the 9 listed as "in-progress" at WP:UWTEST, please drop a note on the talk page for that template. We're going to start the new test now and would rather not change the templates in the middle, but it's easy to do a new test or simply incorporate changes afterward, since all we need is a week or so of data. I'm interested to see what you'd like to do, because my feeling is "the shorter the better" on these warnings. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Guide to information sources

This seems a bit strange to me. The one reference that I can access does not even mention the term "Guide to information sources". Perhaps it should be moved or redirected to a more suitable article? --Crusio (talk) 06:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

it's an appropriate article; I'm not sure there is a really standard term. The one I used in teaching was guides to the literature. The most common beginning words of the titles of such books is however, A guide to information sources in (subject), In any case, it can be much expanded, and I will do so: I know of over a hundred, many in multiple editions. Perhaps it should be List of guides to information sources, because dozens of them are notable individually--there will be substantial reviews for most of them; or perhaps not, because there are some that should be included but may not be, and, more important, I don't immediately want to write all the articles. DGG ( talk ) 16:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Scholar Indices and Impact

Could you perhaps have a look at this article and the remarks I made at this talk page and tell me what you think? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 22:36, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

commented there. DGG ( talk ) 20:32, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Academy of Achievement

Hi there DGG, you were recently involved, briefly, on the discussion page about an organization called Academy of Achievement. Prior to November, it was much too promotional; at present, I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, as I've explained in a note on the article's discussion page—and as I see you warned in your previous note on the same page. I think I endorse your viewpoint that an EduCap article could be created to address its controversies, but the treatment it is given here represents a clear case of coatracking.

It's worth noting that I've been engaged by the Academy to help resolve the matter; in hopes of doing so efficiently, I've prepared a proposed replacement (in my user space here) that I hope presents an acceptable compromise, or a workable starting point. Hope you can join in discussion on that Talk page. Cheers, WWB Too (talk) 18:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Primary sources

I'm finding more and more that newbies are misunderstanding about when primary sources are acceptable, or even if they are acceptable at all.

I started a look at some policy and guideline pages, but through typical over editing (such pages are typically edited/developed due to some current event or other), the primary sources explanations seem a bit watered down and too vague.

If you wouldn't mind, would you a.) help me find any and all pages relating to primary sources, and b.) would you be willing to help write a stand alone guideline concerning them, to better help editors understand usage and so forth? - jc37 02:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

There is no simple guideline. partly because there is no definition of "primary sources" that applies to all types of subjects, and party because the possible uses of them in Wikipedia are very various. Attempts to write one are what have generated the present state of confusion. Just a few example example: to a historian, a newspaper is a primary source, because it is used as the data about which histories are written. To us it is a secondary source, because it's an professionally written and edited responsible covering of the events. To a biologist, a journal reporting research is a primary journal, as distinct from a journal that published review articles, but the actual primary source is the lab notebook. A historian of science studies both it and the publications as primary sources for the history. The same source can be both primary and secondary: an appellate court decision is both: it's the primary source for the wording of the decision, but it's a secondary source, and a highly reliable one, for the facts of the case and the appropriate precedents. In literature, the primary source is the work being discussed; the secondary source is the discussion, but the discussion is a primary source for the thoughts of the scholar in an biography of the scholar. For a fictional work, the work itself is, though primary, the best source for the facts of the plot, because it is more detailed and accurate than anything that may be based on it; for interpretation of motives, if not obvious, a wecondary source discussing the work must be used--but there is not clear distinction about what is sufficiently obvious. The practical distinction for Wikipedia is that primary sources which cannot be used as such except as illustrations are those that require interpretation, because we do not do interpretation, which is original research. A textbook is often given as an example of a tertiary source, being based mostly on review articles; but advanced textbooks usually discuss the actual research article themselves to a considerable extent. And some textbooks, like Knuth's books on TeX and Metafont, are actually the primary sources, because the material presented there was never discussed previously and is of his own invention--unless one wishes to consider the program coe as the primary source.

In any given situation at Wikipedia , the guideline however written will always require interpretation, and the authoritative place for interpretation is WP:RSN--even though the individual interpretations may be contradict each other; just as the authoritative determination of notability is Deletion Reviews, even though different discussions may contradict each other. An encyclopedia is not a machine-written summary, but a work of creative human judgment about what to include, how to source it, and how to present it. The concept that we just repeat what thesources say in a proportionate way is overly simplistic: it helps teach beginners the principles, but does not actually decide any non-trivial cases. The examples which makes that clearest are the unfortunate widespread use of selective quotation and cherry-icking in controversial articles. I'll get things started by copying this into an essay. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a very good start.

Due to some of the issues you note, I think I'm going to ask a few others to also help. (User:Black Falcon in particular I have found is great when it comes to policy/guideline page creation/editing, as well.) - jc37 02:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I suspect there will not be complete agreement; but since RS is a guideline explaining the details of the fundamental policy WP:V, the practical course will be to indicate the accepted range of variation rather than try to find an actual single wording--attempts at that are usually either vague, or do not actually have the claimed consensus, because different people go on to interpret it their own way regardless of what gets written. (yes, I propose that as a general approach to writing guidelines) DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ever get around to copying this into an essay yet? : ) - jc37 14:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have just seen your extremely helpful reply above and, as I was reading it, I thought it would be well worth making into an essay. I am glad you think so too! Coming from a scientific background I had no difficulty in understanding that WP "original research" was merely a term of wikispeak and that "verifiability" is such an odd word that it could have no obvious connotation. However, it took me a long time to realise that, when people were saying "primary", "secondary" or "tertiary", they were meaning something quite unlike anything I had understood. Thincat (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, I will try this weekend. But "verifiability" is a relatively straightforward concept: it means the material in the article must be able to be shown accurate by published sources. We have no way of judging what is really true , because we have no research capability, and few editors with the recognized professional standing to check submissions by academic standards. We therefore rely on outsiders to do that, in publications that have editorial supervision. Whether we "should have such editors and give them authority is a rather complicated question & I'm going to incorporate some material I wrote for Foundation-L about this problem. (My view, briefly, is that we should not do so, but rather go as far as we can the way we have been working. There is a need for an comprehensive freely available encyclopedia with proper scholarly editing, but I don't think our methods can produce one. If it is tried, it should be as a separate project, but the experience at Citizendium has been very discouraging. The most problematic questions are: who will pick the experts?, and , what if they disagree?. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

On newbies and deletion

Hey David. Just saw your comments on the Village Pump thread about AfD etc. and wanted to say:

1. Thank you for the thoughtful commentary
2. I agree with you about requiring more human communication. If you want to talk about actually making that happen, then let's talk. But in the meantime we're trying to slowly but surely improve those related notifications, and your feedback on the work so far would be welcome here (See "templates tested" for a look at the different messages).

We have some very clear recommendations for next tries at new notifications for both PROD and AFD, which we will be publishing in a more succinct list soon. (Notes are on Meta, if you're interested.)

Thanks again, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

yes, I'll get back there. But as you can see from the item just above,I do not have the luxury of being able to concentrate on any one thing here. sometimes everything appears equally important. And, as you can also see from the line it italics there, everything seems inter-related. We can't improve articles without more people. We can't get more people unless we fix our processes of working with articles. We can't stop to fix our processes when there are so many urgently needed specific actions such as the flood of promotionalism. So I try to work by turns everywhere. DGG ( talk ) 22:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, it's our unique chicken and egg problem. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:29, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

anyway.  Tonkie (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Remarks about an -imho- overactive NewPagePatroller

Hi DGG,
I saw that you were involved in a Speedy Deletion Nomination (SDN) on the article about Csongor István Nagy from User Lovehongkong. The SDN came from User:DreamFieldArts, and he had also nominated my article on the former CEO of ABN AMRO where he was the main driver for the sell-off of the bank to a consortium of banks: Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Fortis and Banco Santander. This sale was one of the additional reasons why both RBS as well as Fortis collapsed at the beginning of the Banking problems - leading to the current economic downturn in the US and Europe. Although DFA did remove the SDN when I started a discussion with him I do have problems with his attitude.

I really don't think he is the right person for NPPer. In my initial mail to him (or her - didn't check) I made the comment that Rijkman Groenink might not be known in the US and he directly reacts as stung by a wasp with: The fact that you believe everyone in America is a 13 year-old girl is depressing. None the less he is on the Netherlands Wikipedia because he has some importance to it, while on the English he has none. Even if he does, (I have been proven wrong) have some significance, it is not needed. Many people have done what he has, but aren't on Wikipedia

Another problem that I do have is that he deletes comments made on his Talk page (I had to search really good to find back the Deletion request Rijman Groenink version where he made above comment, and also came later with an explination why Kevin O'Leary is notable and Rijkman Groenink wouldn't be (Kevin O'Leary is also Shark in TV program Shark Tank (see THIS version of his Talk page) (also note the difference in the entire Talk page taking into account that there are only 2 hours between those two pages)).

According to himself he hardly ever uses the SDN process, but when you look at his contributions many SDN's can be seen. And his Talk page only consists of SDN comments (there aren't that many on his Talk page as he deleted older/completed discussion threads on his Talk page. (and worse: he removes text in current threads). There is also a formal Mediation request from User: Bill shannon in regards to DFA. (ah: you are in on that as well)

But what struck me the most was his 'its my job and it will never change' statement (not sure if it is still at his current talk page - but if not you can find it HERE (comment: That's my job, and it will never change. DreamFieldArts 13:39, 26 February 2012 (UTC))

After that point in time I also can be blamed for coming close to personal attack: although I do think that it must be clear that I'm exaggerating and being sarcastic; but I started to loose my patience and could hardly believe what I was reading.

I do refer to the 5 pillars of Wiki, and especially Assume Good Faith: and also with DFA I do assume that he is just doing his best but if he truly thinks that his role as NPPer is the same as a teacher who rips up a paper made by one of his students because it is crap I really don't think he is fit for the job. If my first article had been controlled by DFA I probably would have stopped contributing anything to Wiki ever again. He even tells that he has experienced the same thing, so he knows the feeling, and in the same sentence he says it his his job to 'rip up a paper' and say that it 'is crap'.

I do appreciate that NPP is not the nicest job in the world; but I do think that a NPPer should be very aware about 'new users' (I'm not in that catagory: but as he doesn't seem to do much research when he nominates a SD - other then on articles about persons to check if they had a TV show on top of their 'main' job....); so I can hardly imagine that he checks if the user who wrote the article he nominates for SD is a new user or not.

Could you as (far more) experienced Wikipedian give him some good guidelines and tips: as said, I do assume that DFA handles in good faith: but the way he is working now is really not healthy. Thanks a lot, Tonkie (talk) 20:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Ah: I see that you already contacted him and that he did extensively answered to your comments. Thanks :-)

While I was writing above letter to you I did see that you already contacted him on his role as NPPer but because above text was nearing completion I decided to post in

New page patrolling; DreamFieldArts

As per your discussion with me at 01:29, on 9 March 2012 (UTC), you said, "I am giving you a two week ban, running through March 23, from new page patrol, from page moves without clear prior consensus, and from tagging articles for deletion except in cases of clear vandalism or copyvio." I took this very seriously, as I knew I was doing something extremely wrong. Knowing the only thing I could do was to just stop new page patrolling, as that seemed to be where the problem was diverting from. As I have read from some of your discussions^{1, 2, 3}, you say that I am doing much "better at my job," and Tonkie agreed with this statement, and I felt very complacent about it. Since I am becoming better at what I am doing on here, on 00:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC) I will reclaim my position as a new page patroller. Even though I am very avid about being able to be a new page patroller again, I know I need to be careful about what I do. Now for the first few days, I will patrol lightly, until I feel that by success rate is 95% or higher. Being a new page patroller on Wikipedia is a very important job, and should be taken seriously. With out new page patrollers, there would be havoc on here. (spam, hoaxs, etc.) If you believe that I have done one thing wrong, please do not hesitate to tell me, and to handle the situation appropriately. DreamFieldArts^Talk 21:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I really appreciate that you let me know, and I'll keep in touch with what you do. Remember that part of the job is to not miss the really major problems. Many promotional articles are in fact copyvios, and that's always a sound reason for deletion. A page marked as patrolled without sufficient checking is worse than not patrolling it. DGG ( talk ) 22:12, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Stella Parton discography

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Strayer University

On Talk:Strayer University, you mentioned that you wanted to make some edits to the draft version created by Hamilton83 found at User:Hamilton83/my sandbox. Were you still planning to make those changes? Would you like some time to do that, or is it okay if I move over draft into mainspace? Qwyrxian (talk) 13:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll get there today. DGG ( talk ) 17:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Not yet ready--see my comments there. DGG ( talk ) 19:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Lists of self-publishing companies

Inan effort to improve sourcing in our articles, me and a couple other editors have created two lists of self-publishing companies:

• List of self-publishing companies in article space for notable self-publishing houses
• WP:List of self-publishing companies in Wikipedia space for notable and non-notable self-publishing houses

It's our hope that by maintaining such lists, it will be easier for editors to identify self-published books. In a discussion at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia reliability talk page, The Blade of the Northern Lights said that you and another editor know vanity publishers very well.[2] If you can provide any assistance with these two lists, it would be greatly appreciated. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

a very useful project--it makes sense to have both lists, & I will add to the WP list as I see them, I shall check them both; because these can be considered potentially derogatory listings, they must have good references. It may be necessary to qualify the statements in some cases. DGG ( talk ) 01:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Quest, that is an excellent idea; DGG, that is an excellent caveat. BTW, Cambridge Scholars Publishing wants to publish the proceedings of your last faculty meeting/conference/Jane Austen Book Club. You'll get a letter on really nice looking letterhead in the next week or two. Quest, this goes for you as well. And for everyone, really. Drmies (talk) 04:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Self-publishing

Hi, we are still hoping you would make some suggestions on Talk:List_of_self-publishing_companies#evidence. Your help will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 02:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 05:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Tropes in Agatha Christie's novels

Hi. Glad the article has been, for now, restored to its former glory. I was thinking about AFDing it as it was worthless as a stub. Unfortunately, while I read almost all her mysteries I don't have most of the actual paperbacks I bought or collected aeons ago. I do have a couple or so paperbacks and I'll do my best. Yours, Quis separabit? 16:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I finally found the old paperbacks; there were more than I thought. Is it ISBN#s and page numbers you're needing? Yours, Quis separabit? 20:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Stevens Institute of Technology page

Hi DGG, I saw that my original note on your talk page was archived, so I'm adding this to make sure it doesn't get lost from your radar as there is clearly a lot of incoming requests on your page! This is the link to the latest correspondence, ready for your review. Talk:Stevens Institute of Technology#Updating_page_along_guidelines_for_college_and_university_articles

Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 14:36, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

haven't forgotten: I will get there tomorrow or this weekend. DGG ( talk ) 05:18, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

"I haven't forgotten. I'll get there soon. DGG ( talk ) 19:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the update - very much appreciated! QueenCity11 (talk) 20:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I still haven't forgotten. Some discussions this last week were rather long to deal with, & I'm a little behind. DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

No problem - I appreciate that you have been keeping me posted. Yesterday I spent some time updating dead reference links since Stevens switched over to a new website. Thank you again. QueenCity11 (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi DGG -- Just wanted to check if you have a sense of when you may be able to review. I am getting pressed for an update and want to report back with the latest. Thank you again! QueenCity11 (talk) 16:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I shall try to get to it this evening. DGG ( talk ) 16:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi - Just wanted to check if you think you'll be able to review soon. I appreciate all the help and guidance you have provided thus far. If you would prefer that I look for help from another editor at this point, that is fine - please just let me know. Thank you! QueenCity11 (talk) 11:55, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject NIH

Greetings DGG. I was looking at WikiProject NIH and it appears to be pretty inactive. Since you and one other are the only apparently active members I wanted to ask. Kumioko (talk) 01:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

the articles there certainly still need work: classic promotional institutional pages, in many cases, (much probably copied, and needs ref to the sources, though it US-PD) and overly brief summaries in others. Perhaps if its just the two of us we could simply divide them up. DGG ( talk ) 02:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I would certainly be glad to help out. I looked through some of them and your right theres definately some work to be done. I also noticed there seemed to be some that weren't tagged yet. I was also wondering if you think it would be ok if I did a couple things.

1. I would like to add the project to the Joint projects list of WPUS. The articles are already covered by both projects so it might help them a little and slightly increase the visibility of the NIH project.
2. I would like to expand the title on the template to spell out Institutes of Health. Of course I would leave the existing one as a redirect. I have had a couple folks ask me what it meant already (along with WikiProject SIA and AAA) so it might help a little.
3. There are several articles that aren't tagged yet that I would like to add to the project if you think that's ok. Kumioko (talk) 02:39, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

seems reasonable--just go ahead. I will look at some of the more extensive articles and do some trimming. (and some splitting--they include the bios of the Directors of the various institutes, but these people are sufficiently notable that they should be covered separately). I suggest you copy this discussion onto the talk p. of the project. I appreciate it very much that you're getting this re-started--I confess I had entirely forgotten that I meant to work on this. DGG ( talk ) 06:05, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I moved the template to {{WikiProject National Institutes of Health}} and updated the template example on the project page. I will add it to the WPUS Joint prokects list shortly. Kumioko (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Ambassadors

Could you show me where it says ambassadors are automatically notable because. Bgwhite (talk) 07:40, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I'll be interested in that ... I PRODded someone recently who was ambassador to several countries but didn't seem to pass WP:DIPLOMAT,which seems to say that being an ambassador per se is not enough for notability. He was unPRODded after more content was added, don't know whether it's the person you're concerned with or not (current Thai ambassador to US I seem to remember). PamD 11:54, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, found him, Chaiyong Satjipanon, and I see Bgwhite has been there recently too. PamD 12:04, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

All that is needed to remove a prod is a disagreement that it should be deleted without a community discussion. Prods are for deletions that nobody is expected to contest. The way I judge it, is that it's the highest level of the profession. If you want to go by GNG, I would not rule it out without looking for sources in the country the person is accredited to as well as that which he comes from. In the past we've made the distinction between ambassadors who are notable, and consuls, who are not usually. As always, the community will either agree with me, or not. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I deProded Chaiyong Satjipanon because being the ambassador to six nations, including the United States, would appear to be notable. I also found some Thai refs.

The one I did prod was an ambassador to Uganda and was a career civil servant. I highly respect DGG's opinions and have many written down as reference. However, deProdding with the edit summary saying "Ambassadors are notable" is misleading. Ambassadors are not automatically notable, especially where the majority of ambassadors for the U.S are political appointments who donated the most to a campaign. I have no problem with stating in the edit summary that you believe this person is notable, but don't say "Ambassadors are notable" as it sounds like Wikipedia policy. Bgwhite (talk) 00:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

What I say in an edit summary when I deprod is the reason i deprodded. it is not intended as a statement of policy. I consider ambassadors notable; I can't say consensus would support this 100% of the time, for consensus at AfD can depend on how carefully the matter is researched & argued—and on who happens to show up. I see no reason why an ambassador to the US should be more notable than an ambassador from the US -- or indeed any pair of countries. Checking, it seems about half the US ambassadors are career civil servants; the others are political or civic or business figures who are often even more notable for their outside careers. DGG ( talk ) 00:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Taxatio Ecclesiastica

Thought you might want to expand Taxatio Ecclesiastica.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

For cleaning up City University of Seattle! Your editing expertise is much appreciated and respected by this lowly Huggle jockey. Cheers! Jim1138 (talk) 00:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I have just begun. DGG ( talk ) 03:43, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the Stevens Institute of Technology

Was this ever completed? Silverseren^C 21:20, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

It will be this weekend. I know I've said it before two or three times, but I'm feeling embarrassed enough to actually do it, instead of trying to learn something I haven't done before (last week, the new version of the New Pages list, this week, AfC.) DGG ( talk ) 21:28, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Hey, i've been procrastinating plenty myself. How long has it been since I helped out at PAIDHELP? I spent yesterday working on Man With A Mission and trying to decipher horribly machine translated Japanese news sources. So, yeah. But i've pledged to work through the PAIDHELP page today and get everything done. Silverseren^C 21:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Your comment at WT:RFA

I've been piled up at work, and just now catching up on an excellent discussion at WT:RFA – far better than the usual "the sky is falling, what are we to do".

I did want to quibble with one observation you made; I'll do it here because no one seems to expand on your thought, so I don't see much need to insert it into the thread. Plus I'll use it as a point of departure to make another point, which I may add to the thread, after I've finished reading it.

You remarked, "I typically decline about 1/3 of the Speedy deletions I see, but some admins close essentially everything, Either I or they must be doing it wrong." I say, "not necessarily". To make an extreme example, suppose there are 1000 xSDs, with 100 of them badly tagged. If some new admins poke around, and delete 700 "easy" ones, that leaves 300 left of which 1/3 ought to be declined. So it is possible both can be right. Now, I'm not saying that 100% closers are always right, but we'd have to check some of the close lists to be sure. Which brings me to my pother point. When I was a new admin, I half expected someone would be assigned to follow me around for some time, just to make sure I was understanding the rules correctly. Either that didn't happen, or they were very, very quiet. (I'm even more surprised it isn't SOP at OTRS, but that’s a different issue.) I think we should have a more formal review system for new admins. I know there's the ability to check with someone else, but I'd like to see something more formal.

Having made my point, I'm not sure it belongs on the thread at this time, because my suggestion isn't going to help the problems that are being discussed at the moment, so maybe I'll think some more on it, and formalize a proposal later. Maybe after getting some thoughts from people like you.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:26, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

You are quite correct--I was oversimplifying. Sensible new admins do only the ones that are totally obvious while they are starting--it must be very discouraging to have people revert your first admin actions, and I've seen that happen. And it is true that I will make a point of checking speedy nominations others have thought it wise to pass by, and AfDs that people don't seem to want to close; I know some others do just the same, which is how we keep long lags from developing. But I had in mind also a few long term admins who actually do decide almost all equivocal cases as delete. To expand on what you have said , in a direction of my own,

I have occasionally checked a new admins deletions if I think from the RfA there is likely to be some problems, and I suppose others do similarly. But I do not know if any people systematically reviews the admin logs the way people do new pages--if anyone does, I've noticed no sign of it. The only thing I've seen checked systematically is the very long-standing page protections. It might be a good thing to do. The AfD closes are very visible, the prods have been checked by several people before they get to the top of the list, but speedies and blocks and unblocka and protections and unprotections don't get looked at, unless someone suspects a problem. I have sometimes thought of doing it, but I have always stopped, because, to be frank about it, I don't want to see the errors. I can't pass over a clear error I do see, and I am fully aware that some admins use the tools beyond the proper limits. Some of these are my friends, & I can mention it to them from time to time quietly. But for obvious reasons most of the ones I would disagree with are by people I often disagree with, with whom relations are often not all that friendly. I don't want to spend all my time quarreling and navigating sticky situations; though I may get the errors corrected, it is not likely to improve mutual relations. (I am also aware that I too make both errors and borderline interpretations, & I suppose I even sometimes interpret things the way I would like them to be, & if I have any enemies here, I do not really want to encourage them to audit me with the utmost possible rigidity. I expect I could be able to very well support my interpretations, but as Samuel Johnson put it, nobody however conscious of their innocence wants to every day have to defend themselves on a capital charge before a jury.

When I started here, I wondered how a system with a thousand equally powerful admins who could all revert each other could possibly exist. I soon learnt the subtleties of wheel warring--there were some major arb com cases on it during my first year here which pretty much defined the limits. But more important, I also learned that even the more quarrelsome spirits here understood the virtues of mutual forbearance--and that even the most self-sufficient people do not really want to look publicly foolish. Our balance is I think over-inclined to protecting the guilty if they are popular enough, but it is not as bad as it could be, or as it often is in human societies. DGG ( talk ) 03:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I smiled at your closing comment. I had the same, thought, although for the project as a whole, rather than just the admin function. I'm more recent to the project because, when I first heard about it, a few years before actually joining, I thought about the model and decided it couldn't possibly work. Oddly, I still feel that way, intellectually. If there were no such thing as Wikipedia, and I heard a proposal to create, my instinct is that it will fail miserably. I actually can't quite put my finger on why it hasn't failed.SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:52, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Materialscientist#Impact factors and infoboxes

David, could you perhaps give your opinion on this issue? Thanks! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• I moved this down, perhaps you didn't see it... :-) --Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
  • I have now commented. DGG ( talk ) 16:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Thanks!! --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

CityU of Seattle

Hi DGG, thank you for your message on my page. Sorry that I have corrected the article about CityU befor I've read your advice. I appreciate that you insist on beeing neutral in the tone of an article. But when the Swiss authorities have accused the headmaster of the CityU of fraud than I am not sure how you could say what happened without using the appropriate expressions, in this case "allegations" and "fraud". The article is (as I have written) not about a subsidiary. So for a reader it is of minor interest to read something about the Swiss branch, but if you want to inform you about the reputation of something or someone, than it's quite intersting to read about allegations of fraud. And I have of course read the Wikipedia policies about neutrality. They say that while neutral terms are generally preferable, this must be balanced against clarity. And ok, I don't think that the expression "allegations of fraud" is per se not neutral, but even if that should be the case and the term is not neutral, in my opinion it's the most clear description of what happened. This is, not just a university program that became unstable.Please tell me what you think about that, kind regards, saintcyr. PS: I think it doesn't matter whether someone has a personal involvement with the issue he's describing as long as his point of view is candid and based on facts. I think some of the best articles here are written by people with a personal involvement with the issue they are describing. But though you seem to think otherwise I can assure you I have no personal involvement in the CityU. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saintcyr1 (talk • contribs) 22:51, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The matter must be included, but it can be done a little more subtly than you did it, as I shall demonstrate there. Among the techniques for doing this is use the word once in the article as a quotation; it need not be repeated. (And we'd need the quote not just in English translation, but in the original language used.) And it certainly must not be used in the section heading.: we do not make moral judgements, and through things are reported as there are, summaries must ber as absolutely neutral as possible. that goes for edit summaries also: loaded words should never be used there. And we consider the very word "allegations" to be non-neutral. And the entire section should be summarized, to avoid disproportionate weight. If negative information is reported disproportionately or loaded words used more than necessary, it gives the impression of holding a grudge, not of NPOV writing. It is my responsibility to prevent anyone from using Wikipedia for such a purpose, just as it is to prevent it being used to cover-up serious matters. DGG ( talk ) 23:09, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying your point of view, but I still disagree with you on that. So I have opened a discussion on the matter on the CityU talk page. Saintcyr1 (talk —Preceding undated comment added 04:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

DGG's a tenured and well-respected administrator with a reputation for even-handedness and an excellent grasp of our policies. You would save everyone's time if you just took his advice on how to present such a controversy without disputing it. Jclemens (talk) 05:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I've commenting further, on the article talk p., Talk:City University of Seattle. I've tried to explain the standard WP policy, and also my general approach to this particular type of problems. DGG ( talk ) 18:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

"What DGG says"

David, that was great. Thanks! Drmies (talk) 20:03, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, 1928-1989.

Hi David, this article could use some help from you. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

It will get it, but not immediately. DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Deletion review response thank you / Tutoring newbies on how to do online research

I left a thank you for your response — and unrelated question(s) — here. Another thing that maybe we agree on is the importance of knowing how to do research. I really like Wikipedia's Search Engine usage guidelines and tutorial, and have tried to link to them from Wikipedia:Article titles — because I think it's important to research usage when deciding the best article title, best category title, or the most appropriate term to use — but my attempts to link to this have been repeatedly reverted by people who think they own anything related to the MoS. Likewise, for the same reason, I have been unable to add links from Wikipedia:Article titles to the regional MoS guides. The article on category naming conventions also does not explain how to search existing categories or link to the above article on how to use search engines to research the best category title, either. Maybe you have some advice or ideas on this? LittleBen (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I discovered in my first year here that there were some parts of Wikipedia where despite my interest in the subject, for one or another reason I was unlikely to be very effective. Prominent among these were the MOS and categorization. I am a little concerned with article titles, and in that field, fundamentally I disagree with you -- I think the best article title should be the clearest and fairest, and counting ghits or the equivalent is usually irrelevant. And to the extent I understand categorization debates the problem there is often finding a sufficiently clear wording to encompass the desired set of article. I think the MOS is a little more rational than it was 4 years ago; if I were doing it, I'd limit to to pure matters of style, which does not include choice between article titles, just such matters as whether to use singular or plurals. But in questions like this , your opinion is as valid as mine, and there is no point in arguing the issue here--neither of us is "right". DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

My main question was aimed at getting your opinion on "Tutoring newbies on how to do online research". You don't seem to have answered this, but maybe this is something that Kudpung is more interested in than you are. My comment on article titles was related to this: there seem to be many people creating new articles without adequately researching if there is an existing article on the subject already. Part of the problem is that Wikipedia Search, by default, only shows if there is an article title that is an exact match to the search term; it does not show if there is a category that matches the search term. If it did, it would be far easier to find related material. It is difficult to work out how to search categories. Terminology (e.g. article titles and category titles) is often inconsistent for this reason. Just one example: There are Web browser engine and List of web browser engines articles, but there are nine Comparison of layout engines (XXX) articles, and the category is Category:Layout engines. I don't understand your reference to counting ghits, and don't understand how my viewpoint disagrees with yours. LittleBen (talk) 02:25, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, I got another response on the Deletion review thread that pointed me to a discussion here that may interest you. LittleBen (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I apologize for not covering everything. The WP search function is not the problem; if it does not find an article, it suggests searching for the term. Perhaps the page could be revised to suggest that first, rather than as an alternative to making an article. I think there has been some previous debate on whether it should initially search for the term rather than the article. I also have seen it said that by the standards of other search engines, it could use some sophistication. About 1/3 of people come here from Google etc., and though those search engines rank article titles at the top, they also include articles with the term anywhere. But the Google search engine is, deliberately, getting dumber and dumber; it is no longer possible to use the "+" character as an intersection, and Google Scholar has removed the limit to subject field possibility in advanced search.

Many apparently duplicate articles are created deliberately as a POV fork, others in the mistaken belief that WP includes essays on very specific term-paper type topics. Many are simply naive, as when someone submits a two sentence article on something where we have extensive coverage.

I think teaching people to search properly is a part of research, but the main result of its failure is not the duplicate articles, but the unreferenced articles. Way back when Google was new and exciting, we librarians used to impress the students by showing we could use it more effectively than they could. (The secret is partially cleverness and experience in selecting search terms, but mainly just persistence--something like 90% of users stop at the first page of results--I will if necessary scan through even a few thousand. I have found that people learn by experience better than didactic instruction, provided they are alert enough to pay attention to what experience shows them. Certainly we should do a better job teaching beginners, but the way I think works best is to show them one at a time how to do better. A person learns best when one individual person shows them how to fix their errors and misconceptions, and this is not done by templates. Besides Kudpung & myself, very few NPPatrollers or even admins take the trouble and patience. It's too much for a few people--we need everyone who is able to do it. We progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. DGG ( talk ) 03:38, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we progress not by discussing how to work, but by working. You seem to be better at that (more productive) than I am ;-) But sometimes it's more scalable if we offer others the opportunity of learning how to do the work (not specifically thinking of Tom Sawyer ;-). Thanks and best regards. LittleBen (talk) 04:23, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

FYI - user warnings

[3] As suggested. :) I think our next step is making sure that the code is correct, and then we can start implementing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:48, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. It was suggested by several people at Wikimania that we quickly make similar changes in level 4 and 4im, and then consider whether to combine levels--that part would need an rfc. The easiest way to go now would probably be to go to three levels, by combining 2/3 , to avoid having to rewrite the level 1 warnings. DGG ( talk ) 21:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

City University of Seattle

This article has come up at OTRS and I'm trying to get a handle on its current state. I see that some sourced negative statements were removed (diff) and then some unsourced positive statements too. (diff). I trust that this article has gotten the attention it needed and is under watchful eyes, but could you help me to understand why it was appropriate to remove all of the negative content as well? I briefly looked at the [German] sources and 3 of them looked initially ok while 3 clearly did not. Just looking for a little guidance if you get a minute. Cheers! Ocaasi ^{t | c} 23:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I've neglected following up this one. I'll email you about it in a few minutes, as some of it is indeed on OTRS, and I need to give an opinion about individual motives. DGG ( talk ) 23:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

tomorrow, actually--it's a little complicated. DGG ( talk ) 09:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Page Curation update

Hey all :). We've just deployed another set of features for Page Curation. They include flyouts from the icons in Special:NewPagesFeed, showing who reviewed an article and when, a listing of this in the "info" flyout, and a general re-jigging of the info flyout - we've also fixed the weird bug with page_titles_having_underscores_instead_of_spaces in messages sent to talkpages, and introduced CSD logging! As always, these features will need some work - but any feedback would be most welcome.==

the early CSD logging was interesting, because of the high proportion of errors, a much higher proportion that I normally spot at NPP. This may be just my impression, because it put all of them in one place. If so, it will be very useful in following up the errors to teach the patrollers. The key need is not necessarily to make patrol easier, but to make finding errors at patrol easier, because new patrollers generally need educating. Do you think it would be possibleto get a list of those who patrol for the first time? DGG ( talk ) 23:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

We did this a couple of years ago (and repeatedly monitored it ever since) and at that time it clearly demonstrated that a vast amount of new page patrolling is being carried out by very young and/or very new, inexperienced users. Although this appears to still be very much the case, the Foundation appears to have ruled this out as a possible cause for low quality patrolling. Special:NewPagesFeed is an excellent piece of software but it's not going to be a silver bullet. That said, this tool may help. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:07, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

remind me, where did the WMF publish the analysis of NPP you refer to? Perhaps they mean that a great deal of bad patrolling is done by more experienced people also--which is certainly true. But i've found it easier to teach the new people, who are usually very glad to learn. DGG ( talk ) 19:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reply. I can't remember where the report was published. The survey was launched as a community project but Foundation adopted it and published the report. If I remember rightly (maybe wrongly), it appeared that the majority of patrollers were in their 40s, had PhDs, and had been on Wiki for at least 6 years - or something vaguely to that effect. Oliver can give you a link to the report because I believe he wrote it himself. Perhaps the responses were inaccurate, because those of us who had done over a year of research found that like all other maintenance areas, NPP was a magnet to new and/or younger users. It seems to have improved lately, but I'm only working from the prototype and not from the old yellow highlighted page. I assume those who are working from the beta are more clued up with page patrolling. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:48, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Library portal

I just accepted the AfC submission for the Library portal article now in mainspace. Since I noticed in the past that you're a librarian, posting this article here for your perusal, if you have the time or interest in checking it out, improving it, making any corrections, etc. Regards, Northamerica1000^(talk) 05:17, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for referring this to me. As you realised, this required subject knowledge. It's a valid topic, but even after your cleanup, still needed extensive further editing for conciseness and removal or original research; there were obvious indications of the origin of this as an essay or term paper. I did one round; I will do another later. DGG ( talk ) 07:25, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for checking it out, and for the improvements. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:32, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Essay about Wikipedia

Hi DGG. I checked out your user page mini-essays - very interesting. Would you be available to talk about Wikipedia some time? I am writing about the philosophy and sociology of Wikipedia. 109.145.120.77 (talk) 07:22, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

certainly. Please make an account, activate yoiur email from preferences, and email me from the email user link in the toolbox on the right. DGG ( talk ) 15:00, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - I created the account and set up email. I will mail shortly. Hestiaea (talk) 15:14, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Iwill get back to you, probably next week. things are a little busy. DGG ( talk ) 19:31, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Bibliography of Encyclopedias

You are invited to join in a discussion at User talk:Dr. Blofeld#Bibliography of encyclopedias over my plans to develop a comprehensive set of bibliographies of encyclopedias and dictionaries by topic. I hope you see the potential of such a project and understand that while highly ambitious it will be drawn up gradually over time.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:58, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

PC

FYI. And FWIW, on a slightly different note regarding NPP, although I am not entirely in favour of creating a right for NPP, I fear that the question may become inevitable when the NewPagesFeed is finally released for general use and has been monitored for a while. The reviewer right (whatever that will be) could be a possible guideline, and might incorporate both if need arises. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

As I expect and hope & will try to get such an interpretation of PC that the reviewer right will be almost unused because almost nothing will be subject to PC, one could argue that it might as well serve some potentially useful purpose. I agree that if it is based on mainspace edits it might serve for both. But I think the priority is to get AfC and moves from user or other space into a single queue along with New pages. At the moment I'm working mainly on the afc part because the majority of advice being given people is inadequate, when not plain wrong. I think that proportionately more errors are made there than at NPP. DGG ( talk ) 13:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

That's possible. I don't work at AfC but the articles I come across through other lonks demonstrate that a lot are not being accurately closed and/or with inadequate advice to the creators. I dn't know what kind of a percentage this represents. AfC seems to me to be a necessary process but unnecessarily complicated; I could well envisage a single queue where unpublished IP creations could pass through the same interface as the New Page Feed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:29, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Google scholar anomality

Hi DGG. In a past deletion debate one year ago which I found mightily suspicious (the submitter and the very last voter turned out to be single purpose-accounts in hindsight) you argued from your professional experience that worldcat holdings of about 100 and 2-3 reviews two years after publication would be normal. I took a look again and Duchesne's 2011 book "The uniqueness of Western civilization" has risen since from 60 to 160 university holdings and, according to his homepage, received 10 reviews by now (leaving out his reply to Elvin and amazon). I noticed Brill has published a paperback version this year, so they seem to consider the book a sales success. However, on Google Scholar the book still is listed as cited by none, even though many of the reviews can be retrieved via its database. Frankly, I cannot make sense of this. Do you have any idea and do you think his WP bio has reached the threshold of notability by now? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:26, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

GS citations are erratic, and their standards change, and nobody knows what they are. In the humanities, citations of a book are slow to develop as compared to journals. First, the book will only be cited by those at libraries who have the book, while a few of his articles are in widely held journals. Second, there is the time factor: a 2011 book will show up in a library about 2 - 12 months after publication, a journal shows up immediately after publication. And in the humanities, if someone reading a work decides to use it in an article, they would typically write the article in the next 2 - 12 months , and it would take in the humanities somewhere from 9 to 24 months before it was published. If the citation was to be in a book, of course it would take at least double that time at each stage and sometimes much longer.

Additionally, his writings are from a definite pov, not widely popular at present in the academic world. A very few people will write using his work to support theirs; more will use it as something to refute. But the key qy. is whether he is well known enough that anyone would want to specifically write to refute him, or whether they will just include him among the other theorists they are refuting the next time they write on the general subject. .

As for actual notability , you will have noticed that at the AfD I made no keep or delete comment. I limited myself to critiquing the bad arguments,particularly those from BG. I consider it borderline by my own standard for notability as an academic: whether a person is a full professor at a research university or of equivalent quality. The usual requirement for getting there in the humanities is at least two books from major scholarly presses. Brill is in most fields a minor press, except for near eastern studies, religion, and related subjects; and UNB is a good but not superlative university. Of his journal articles, some of them are in important journals--but most are in a few journals of a rather specialized nature. The publications list should have included only peer reviewed journal articles, not book chapters. What also influenced me is that the article was written in the typical way to make slightly important subjects look more so: material on the importance of his student work, on the importance of his advisors, of those he has debated with, of those who replied to him, What influences me now much more is that too much of the article is a close paraphrase of his web page, which I carelessly did not think to look at during the discussion. if I had, I would said delete.

If you want to try it again, rewrite it from scratch. But I do not think there is enough new information; even if BG stays away from WP the result might be the same, and another delete decision will make it much harder in the future. What is needed is another book--it would be much safer. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion. Best Gun Powder Ma (talk) 20:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge

Could you have a look at the discussion here and tell me what you think the proper title should be? I was pretty much convinced that I was right, until this editor brought up the Microsoft argument. So now I don't know any more... Although, if it's a stone rule that we should put the company name in front of the product name, would that also mean that Nature would have to become Nature Publishing Group Nature? :-) Seriously, your informed opinion is welcome. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:44, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Academic Journals are sui generis . I think WP naming conventions tend to lack rationality. I rarely engage in these debates because I disagree with some of the fundamental rules, like never disambiguating names until there is a conflict. DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Huon's talk page.
Message added 02:09, 12 October 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

The Wikipedia Library

I assume you already know about The Wikipedia Library effort, but given your interest in getting editors access to these resources, I wanted to make sure you've seen this. Brianwc (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Unrelated

By the way, there's complex issue of COI and COATRACK at Retail loss prevention (see history and talk page.) Maybe you care to take a look at that too. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

yes indeed; a classic conflict of an industry white-washer and a consumer pov pusher. The whole thing needs to be redone; a small amount of the text in the various versions will be helpful. DGG ( talk ) 03:29, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Just so you know...

Regarding this, when the tag was applied the page was pretty much a straight copy from the source, with a few phrases changed out, and had been pretty much for its entire history. User:Rjensen deserves a Barnstar (which I will give him presently) for completely rewriting the article, which is of course an even better solution than deletion. Since your edit comment implied that the tag was improperly placed, I just wanted to assure you that it wasn't at the time I placed it, its just that intervening work made it so. Again, you did the right thing in declining the deletion request at the time you did, and Rjensen did some awesome work here, I just wanted to make sure you didn't think that I was tagging articles for deletion without carefully checking them. I had, it is just that the state of the article changed drastically from when I tagged it. The ideal result, altogether, if you ask me. --Jayron32 13:03, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

thanks for letting me know. My apologies. I've run into this before, and I should be more careful checking the history. But when the article is improved, the tag should really have been removed also. I think some people do not realize that anyone can remove a speedy except the guy who first submitted the article)--some people think it takes an admin. Quite the opposite--since anyone can do it, it makes excellent practice for people who wqnt to become admins to build up a record of good decisions. DGG ( talk ) 17:54, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Hey, this entire sequence got me thinking about some stuff, and I started a thread at WP:VPP that you may find interesting or have some insight on. Penny for your thoughts... --Jayron32 18:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Robert Peernock

Ten months ago you declined a prod on this article. I am not disagreeing with your prod however I, stumbling upon the article, found it to have been since its origins based not on the BLP itself but as an article of undue weight that subscribes the man involved as a whistle blower and victim of conspiracy. These are the claims of Peernock himself from his own website, http://www.freerobertpeernock.com, when the reality is that he is a man who was convicted of murdering his wife and attempting to murder his daughters that has claimed they were framed. No one would, neutrally, rate him as a whistleblower or activist. The only whistle he has blown is that there is a conspiracy involving the prosecution, the judge, the jury, his own attorney, his daughter and a "judge's accomplice" who he claims murdered his wife for the judges benefit.

I am rather rusty with procedure, having been absent from wikipedia for a while due to real life situations, but I was hoping you could give some guidance on what to do in this article. It is tilted from its very beginning and I'm not too sure the notability of the book outweighs the individual himself. Many many convicted murderers claim of a far reaching conspiracy, wikipedia should not be a part of their whitewashing. –– Lid^(Talk) 04:56, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Looking more carefully than I did at first, I agree with you that the article should be deleted. What convinced me is checking the book about him, which was what I based my keep on: it is in only 41 libraries. Checking the author, he's a moderately notable minor crime writer with 5 books, his best known ones are in 600 & 400 libraries, so there will surely be reviews to show his notability. This offers a quick solution without the need for afd; I can easily do it tomorrow: writing a short article about the author, anthony Flacco, and list his books. This article can then be redirected there, which will at least give some identifying information here if anyone looks him up. OK? DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure a redirect would be appropriate, Peernock's life and biography is in no way tied to the life of Anthony Flacco. A redirect would not make much sense as those searching for Peernock, if there are any, are unlikely to be searching for the life of an author who subsequently wrote about the case. Also here's a link I forgot to include previously http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-24/local/me-242_1_man-convicted-of-killing-wife –– Lid^(Talk) 06:16, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

To follow up will you be doing what you have suggested as an option? –– Lid^(Talk) 07:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Journal of Population Economics and Les Halpin

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Mephistophelian's talk page.
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Rumi's Kimia

Hello DGG, I removed your prod from the above article as it has previously been listed at articles for deletion. Thank you. Rotten regard Softnow 19:56,

This is not a newsletter

This is just a tribute.

Anyway. You're getting this note because you've participated in discussion and/or asked for updates to either the Article Feedback Tool or Page Curation. This isn't about either of those things, I'm afraid ;p. We've recently started working on yet another project: Echo, a notifications system to augment the watchlist. There's not much information at the moment, because we're still working out the scope and the concepts, but if you're interested in further updates you can sign up here.

In addition, we'll be holding an office hours session at 21:00 UTC on Wednesday, 14 November in #wikimedia-office - hope to see you all there :). I appreciate it's an annoying time for non-Europeans: if you're interested in chatting about the project but can't make it, give me a shout and I can set up another session if there's enough interest in one particular timezone or a skype call if there isn't. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Jacob School of Biotechnology and Bioengineering and possible merge

I notied that you had placed a redirect on this article which had been reverted. To encourage resolution via Talk, I've added a Merge suggestion and opened it as a topic on the previous redirect target. AllyD (talk) 17:23, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Talk:British Studies Seminar, University of Texas at Austin

Could you provide a subject template (we have the place template) for this article? --DThomsen8 (talk) 21:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Tomorrow's Company→User:Sladen/Tomorrow's Company

Hello DGG, could you undelete Tomorrow's Company to my userspace so that I can have a look over it. I just spent a couple of months working with a photographer to release File:Richard-Brown-Eurostar-and-Mark-Goyder-Tomorrows-Company.jpg under a suitable licence; the left-hand half of which I've used as File:Richard-Brown-Eurostar.jpg for the Richard Brown (transport) article; I had a mental note to also add the right-hand half to the Tomorrow's Company article (now deleted in the interim). —Sladen (talk) 10:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

moved. Check also earlier versions--I undeleted the entire history. I'll mention that a key problem with the article is the unsourced claims of being exceptionally important. The sources in the article, as said at the AfD are either self published or the speeches of their founder or mere mentions. Their web page calls them a "global think tank"; such sources as I can find call them a consultancy. I suspect they might perhaps be best characterized as an advocacy organization. Their claimed connection with the RSA seems to be that they were originally inspired by a talk there by a distinguished person. The section of "membership" is link spam. See also the article on Corporate Responsibility Group which I am thinking of sending to AfD. DGG ( talk ) 16:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

• nod*. Concur; I'll have a dig around at a future point, and if I can't fix it I'll probably come back you to unmove and redelete it. Ta! Sladen (talk) 20:13, 8 December 2012 (UTC)—

UMI Dissertations Abstract

Hi DGG!

Would you help me with a UMI Dissertations Abstract query, please?

Thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Ask, here or by email, but it may be a day or two until I can respond to it. DGG ( talk ) 15:41, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Re: Center for Economic and Policy Research (PRODded, now AFD)

The name happens to denote the most respected think tank in the UK and a research institute at Stanford University. The first hit I saw at Google Scholar or Books noted the reader's being puzzled at a CERP working paper being written by a political economist from the only Marxist department in the UK, before he realized that it was a US CERP. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:58, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

My copyright violation on an article talk page

Hello, DGG. You have new messages at Talk:Rainbow Family.
Message added -- Trevj (talk) 11:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Reply

Hi DGG, thanks and respect for all the good work you do. I replied to your comment on Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Another_loophole_on_the_misuse_of_db-G6_theme. Absolutely not in any way intended as criticism, problem with the system not with good admins. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Rising above the mediocre

What you said here was very interesting. "I do not think a community editing project where anyone can edit will ever rise above mediocre quality. Our goal should be to not come below it--above is unreachable. The greater the degree of summarization, the more skilled the writing must be. Even among the scholarly societies, many more are capable of specialized writing than of general introductions."

I would agree personally with that. Summarising a comprehensive subject is difficult, as it involves both a comprehensive knowledge of the subject itself (rare), and good communication skills (less rare, but not frequent). But it surprised me you say that because you seem to be one of the main defenders of the Wikipedia 'ideology', i.e. the idea of 'epistemic egalitarianism', the idea that a 17 year old has as much to contribute as a professor etc. Do you see any conflict between the view you expressed above, and your belief or faith in Wikipedia? Interesting Hestiaea (talk) 08:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it by such monumental terms as "faith and belief"; my hope and expectation for Wikipedia is that it will be a good and useful general encyclopedia. Some aspects of it are already very good, and can be excellent: comprehensive scope, up-to-date coverage. Some will be very good, and are quite good already: accuracy, referencing and cross-linking. Some will I hope become good, though they have problems at present: freedom from advertising and bias. Some will never rise above mediocre: the quality of the writing, including their detailed style. Some of all this is characteristic of a large scale community project: comprehensiveness, timeliness, lack or bias, linking. Some are special features of the people gathered here and they way they work: objectivity , accuracy, referencing.

The intention was for WP to be at the level of the average college student. Many 17 year olds are at that level, some considerably younger in fields with no special academic pre-requisites. Certainly the high school and junior high school Wpedians I have known in Wp circles have been working at a mature level. I learned this freedom from agist bias from my parents, who treated their children as rational beings who would learn more if given the opportunity. Here, we give them that chance. Children should be treated as adults as soon as they're ready, when it does not risk their safety. This is a very safe place, compared to others on the web. And it does not affect our own safety, because when there are errors, there are thousands of people to fix them.

As I said elsewhere, there still remains the need for an encyclopedia of higher academic quality. Most high school students would not be able to participate significantly, but neither would most adults. And a great many of those with advanced subject degrees I have known in my career would not have the necessary skill at comprehensive comprehensible writing. Scholars too need to be edited, and complicated works do best with skilled organization. It can be more efficient to have questions settled by editorial ukase. But not always: as you know, I joined WP and Citizendium at the same time, resolved to go with the one that made more progress. DGG ( talk ) 16:18, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW I wasn't aware of your involvement with Citizendium.

I don't altogether agree with your comment about academic quality. I don't think articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy would be suitable for WP. What is needed is well-summarised and well-explained articles on difficult or general subjects that would be accessible to anyone of high school age (15-18) and above. The Wikipedia article on Being and the corresponding SEP article [4] are both unreadable but for different reasons. The WP article, as you will appreciate, is a rambling dog's breakfast of uncited original research (plus some glaring factual errors). The SEP article looks pretty accurate to me but just goes off into the clouds ("Anti-Meinongian First-Order View") once it gets going. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is better for a general audience but is incomplete. Hestiaea (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Expert attention requested

At User talk:Dr. Blofeld#archive.org I mentioned that I am in the process of beginning the work to upload some of the old, now public domain, articles from the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics to WikiSource, at least partially because I think, in at least a lot of cases, the content of some of the articles in wikipedia we would have on older subjects about whom the scholarly opinion may not have changed much in the intervening time might well benefit from having such a good, reliable, academic source on their subjects very easily available. In fact, I was thinking of maybe proposing to Blofeld that one way to help get some content together on some of the major topics we don't have articles on yet is for, maybe, me to upload old articles to WikiSource, and then he, with his astonishing productivity, maybe check some of the more recent reference and other works on the subject (I think he has both the free Highbeam Research and Questia accounts given out earlier), and, between the older and newer sources, we could get together at least fairly solid "starter" articles on a lot of those topics. One thing that might be useful there, though, would be to know which if any of these older PD reference sources would be most useful in such an effort. I think you are probably the best person we might have to answer that question, if you see fit probably Dr. Blofeld's talk page. John Carter (talk) 17:18, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

• There is no subject whatsoever, about which there may not have been very significant additional information in 70 years, or about which scholarly opinion will not have substantially changed in 70 years. I would very strongly oppose moving any content on major topics here unless (1). The specific portion moved was indicated in the article so we could tell the old material from later additions. and (2) A competent search had been made to see what revisions were warranted. (Unlike some other encyclopedia, there is no current edition to make for an easy check.) This is not going to be easy if done properly. It would make more work to do this than to write from scratch--it could more appropriately be a list of article that need writing. If Dr. B wants to take this on, I am sure he will do it well, but if I were doing it I would rewrite, not merely supplement.

I regard our earlier use of the old EB and Catholic E. ,to have been reckless. We have spent 10 years cleaning those articles up, and it's not yet finished. Yes it's better to have some information than no information, but that's only the case if "some" means incomplete, not if it means wrong or misleading. On the other hand, I must admit that our use of the old DNB has been fairly successful. It clearly separated facts from opinion, and, especially in the articles about the earlier historical figures, relies very usefully upon direct quotation of the sources. Even for this source, naïve use of it simply copies, and does not remove what nowadays we would consider fluff.

More generally, there are, as you say, a great many such works. There may possibly be some fields where matters are stationary enough, but I cannot immediately think of any. In art and music even basic attributions change. In descriptive biology, even frequently used scientific names change. There are similar works to the DNB for other countries, but I have never analyzed them. Having all these encyclopedias available is and will be a wonderful resource--but in general they require interpretation and knowledge of context. DGG ( talk ) 22:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I actually don't myself disagree with you about searching for updates in general. I guess I should say that the few I thought might not have received a lot of large changes would be things like (because I deal with religion a lot) the thinking of Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo, which have been analyzed to the point of absurdity for centuries, and about which there haven't been much in the way of recent discoveries. And I might not have stressed hard enough that I although think that Blofeld, or myself, would also consult the databanks like Highbeam and Questia which will generally have some of the more recent reference sources, like the Eliade/Jones Encyclopedia of Religion to review the Hastings against. I think both he and I have both of them. Regarding the qualifications you cited, I think that if either he or I did anything like this, we could probably arrange the citations in the article to address your point 1, and the search of databanks for more recent material would probably address point 2. I know, for instance, the Hastings article on Ægean religion (I am truly beginning to hate that "*Sheehy, Eugene P., ed. (1986). Guide to Reference Books (Tenth ed.). Chicago and London: American Library Association. ISBN 0-8389-0390-8. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |trans_title= and |month= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)

" character BTW) says that their main goddess could be thought of as being Rhea, when more recent research would probably indicate that Leto would be the more likely candidate, and probably doesn't even make that jump to any sort of conclusion at all.

I myself am probably going to try to "fill out" the existing missing articles in the Eliade/Jones EoR more or less on the basis of a mining of the Hastings and itself, emphasizing the latter over the former. But, yeah, in general, I think you are probably right. I probably should have thought it through a bit more. John Carter (talk) 23:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Analogously, the material in the old DNB could certainly be used to supplement articles, by someone who could do it with some confidence that the part being used is uncontroversial. Additionally, substantial parts beyond the accepted fair use limits here could be quoted. (I think almost anything short of a full article would be legal fair use, & if I were making the rules, I would permit using anything legal, but the consensus wants to be more restrictive. Using out-of-copyright sources removes that problem.)

I've realized another reason why using the old encyclopedia article by themselves --even by an expert who is sure that the interpretation is still correct--is misleading. Doing this does not make clear to the reader that the earlier interpretations are still considered correct--only a current source can do this. DGG ( talk ) 01:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good points, although I suppose if we were to eventually develop some of the articles on reference sources, and I'm thinking many of them meet our content guidelines, we might have articles on them which say that their content is still very highly regarded and accurate for some specific topics. I am in the process of getting together some sources for content on Aegean religion and some of the "Ages of the world" subjects, because those are the ones which have separate articles in both the Jones EoR and the old Hastings. If I do create them or develop them, it would almost certainly be based on at least both of those sources, and probably any other major current reference sources I can find on the databanks. John Carter (talk) 01:56, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, certainly, but only an expert (not necessarily a professional academic--many amateurs are equally skillful) in the subject will know enough to do it right, and I certainly do not mean to discourage you. In summarizing current sources, a lower degree of subject knowledge is needed, because the sources can be more consistently relied on. I regard old sources very highly, so highly that I own a *print* 1911 EB & 1907 Catholic encyclopedia, But that an encyclopedia is generally reliable doesn't say anything about a specific article. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is very reliable within its limits.

BTW, you mentioned Sheehy (1986). I have it & most of the older editions also, & they show nicely the changes over time. What was reliable in 1986 may not be reliable in 2013, and the online Guide to Reference is the reliable source for current views of quality. DGG ( talk ) 02:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Good points. And thanks for the hint to the online Guide to Reference. I am actually right now only really using the Sheehy book because it is one I have available to me, and it does seem to have come out right around the time of what seems to have been a marked proliferation in the production of specialist encyclopedias and similar reference sources, the mid 1980s. The various databanks I have access to have a frankly huge number of reviews in various academic and professional publications about such works, and the material there is probably sufficient to indicate which sources published since then are out there, and possibly provide a better indicator of where they are most and least reliable. I actually have already downloaded a mess of them to my e-mail, and as my limited time allows, I hope to create articles on the more important of them. But I chose the admittedly outdated book because it can possibly be used to help establish notability of some of those older sources, and allow for us to have some ideas regarding what is still considered good in them. A few of the articles on Buddhism in the old Hastings ERE were said in reviews of the more recent Eliade EoR to have been the best articles ever written on their individual subjects, including those in the Eliade EoR, and my hope is that when and if I get the time to read and write them all the articles on those works include mention of similar highly regarded articles in those earlier works. Personally, I think that at this point maybe one of the more important things we might be able to do is make it easier for editors to know which articles we do and don't have, and where sources for them can be found, and reference books, even the old ones, are probably among the best things available to help do that. John Carter (talk) 16:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

No need to apologize. I'm the one who should apologize, because I've been meaning for several years to add everything from GtoR. I do not have it routinely available from home either, and the main library I work at these days, NYPL, unbelievably does not have it. But i can still go down to NYU or Princeton and use it--they have both the online and the printed multi-vol version, and ideally both should be added. I agree the older vols. are usable, and that was notable then is notable now. But if you use them, you'll also need to check about newer eds of the print, and especially about online availability, which is of course much greater at present than it was earlier . However, I'm not clear about "what articles we do and don't have"--surely finding that is easy enough--I think you mean, what sources we have not yet exploited, and I'd be glad to find a way for this. The best I can devise is to use a template for adding the references to a particular source, which will automatically make a category--which can then be given on the article on that source. I think i'll do a batch. I can figure out how get them usable for the various ref formats, but as I prefer plain footnotes, I'll do that; others can add options if they care to. Project for February. DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Help clean Cal Poly Pomona

Hi, DGG

I noticed that you are involved in cleaning Cal Poly. I think these pages need to be deleted or merged. I need your input.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_Pep_Band (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cal_Poly_Pomona_presidents (merge with List of Cal Poly Pomona people) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Universities_Rose_Float (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronco_Student_Center (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_Marine_Institute (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poly_Post (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_Broncos (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_Broncos_men%27s_basketball (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Pomona_University_Library (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLA_Building (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._K._Kellogg_Arabian_Horse_Center (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Poly_Universities_Rose_Float (delete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Polytechnic_University,_Pomona_academics#Agriculture_.288.29 (delete/merge)

Thanks, --Fredthecleaner (talk) 20:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

the way this sort of situation should be handled is to start at the bottom, with the least notable . I've nominated the one of the Rose Float for deletion; the list of presidents should be merged to the main article--it's appropriate content there, and all the successive presidents are notable & should have articles. At the opposite end, the article for their athletic teams is a perfectly justifiable split, similar to what is done routinely for such universities. Whether articles on individual teams should be merged into depends on their significance. Since the basketball team won a NCAA championship in 2010 there's a case for it--I'd need to see how other such teams are handled. The various centers need looking at, but we'd ordinarily mention these in the main article, and redirect/merge, not delete. The CLA building might be notable. The student center building should be merged to the student association, but I'm not sure the combination is notable: there is little content. I cannot see why on earth you included the agriculture section of their academics article--it's already properly merged. The question is whether that entire article should be merged into the main article as a section. Articles on bands and libraries and newspapers are acceptable when they are indpedently significant; that is probably not the case here, but they should be merged/redirected, not deleted. According to :[WP:Deletion policy]], deletion is the last resort. Wanting to delete rather than merge seems quite inappropriate. (Sometimes there is a problem of not getting consensus to merge, and the practical solution can be an AfD, though that's not formally what it should be for.) DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Not that it affects the note, but that is sockpuppet I blocked. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:53, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

so I noticed after I wrote it when I went to his talk p to warn him that the strange mix of including articles that should surely be deleted, and those that should not, indicated a possible negative conflict of interest. As I've said at I think it was an/i, during many of the discussions involving this college and NYU-Poly, despite the article proliferation and recriminations on both sides, some of the material is usable, and some is not. If I can get a day clear from immediate fire-fighting, I'm going to do all the necessary merges. DGG ( talk ) 01:58, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated note: since getting the bit I've been working hard on my content creation,improving on what was noted as a weaknesses at RfA. I've 20+ new articles, which is more than the last 6 years combined. 1950s' American automobile culture is my latest and best so far. Of course I had a tremendous amount of help, but thought you might like to know I've not forgotten why we are here. I expect to aim for GA and FA with this article in time, my first for both. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 02:09, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Just to let you know

You have been mentioned at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avaya Application Server 5300 Ottawahitech (talk) 14:49, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

And mentioned very rightly. These are examples of the series of deletions trying to remove all coverage of the products of the Ayaya corporation, a $5 billion annual revenue telecom firm split from Lucent. If they were done being brought by experienced editors here, I would have though it hostility towards this company, a type of vandalism that has been rather frequently seen, and is now being engaged in mutually by sockpuppets from two universities on opposite coasts of the US. Rather, I think it an obviously good faith attempt to alter the content policies of Wikipedia, which of course anyone has the right to try. Bringing AfDs is an accepted method for trying to see what the degree of support is likely to be. (Personally, I would have brought fewer at a slower pace, but this is not so blatantly unreasonable as some deletion sprees.)

The apparent goal would seem to remove WP coverage of all major physical products and product lines by major companies, or , that failing, reduce not just products but lines of business to single lines on a list, leaving but one article for the entire company and everything it does. Alternately, the goal might be to remove all information ultimately deriving from a company, which amounts to almost the same thing. conceivably its rigid adherence to the misunderstood letter-of-the law about the GNG, as if it were a fundamental invariable policy like Not Censored, rather than its actual state as a very general guideline with many exceptions; and ignoring the purpose of notability guidelines, which is to rationally sort out what is worth an encyclopedia article.

I do not normally support individual product articles except for very notable products; most should be merged into combination articles on the product line- but merged in a way to preserve, not destroy, the information. The article about every commercial and noncommercial organization, or every creative person, or every political and religious concept, serves in some extent to promote it by providing accurate information about it. We have enough problem with the true advertising and promotionalism for all of these, promotionalism which magnifies importance, while providing a minimum of actual information. All relevant WP policy and guidelines are designed to permit and indeed encourage neutral description.

I look forward to WP not just to reversing all previous deletions and over-merges of these products, but the much harder & longer job of writing them for the hundreds of thousands of products in all fields of commerce and technology for which we need articles . Our model is Diderot and D'alemberts Encyclopedie, famous in the eighteenth century and still in ours for the detailed description and illustrations of technology of the period--and the long continued detailed coverage of technology in succeeding encyclopedias.

I am here hours a day trying to remove promotionalism from the encyclopedia, and instruct writers with possible COI how to do it properly. There's an enormous amount of it. Mistaken interpretations like this do not help--they use time and effort that would is critically needed for removing the real junk, and in writing good articles. I'm no inclusionist about spam--I've deleted about 5,000 spam articles about products and organizations. DGG ( talk ) 20:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC

• @DGG, you are doing a great service to Wikipedia, thank you!

It is not easy to determine what this drive to eliminate what is mostly Nortel articles is motivated by. But, to me at least, it is becoming rather clear that it is not all in good faith. How else do you explain the fact that even though I have brought up, time and again, that Nortel is a defunct company, the same people who magically appear in all these deletion discussions keep voting Delete because of spam, do not seem to understand that a defunct company by definition is not in the promotionalism category? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:10, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

True, it does sound absurd, but promotionalism is a very broad concept--the company has successors, who manufacture similar products. And there is probably even a market for used ones. Hobbyists could still write an article on, say, the Apple I in a promotional manner, because they so much like it. The reason these articles are not spam is because they are informative not promotional--the true question, which is open to good-faith argument, is how much detail belongs in the encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 20:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David A. Schauer

Good arguments. Bearian (talk) 17:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Re: Advice

Not sure if I should post this here or on my talk page (so I added it to both) - Thank you for the offer to help. I compiled the information from several sources which are listed in the references, I think the main info came from here: The faculty profile: http://www.design.upenn.edu/people/malkawi_ali-m The board profile: http://www.gord.qa/index.php?page=board-of-directors I added quotes over sections that would have been exact copy/paste – such as the mission/goals statements/descriptions, etc. (such as www.design.upenn.edu/facilities/resources-school).

Both the center and QSAS articles had previously been published (not by me) and on Wikipedia for a few years before I created the Ali Malkawi article. I updated the other pages with current information such as links to articles that were current since there were postings about lack of sources/link rot (since I found them while I was creating the Malkawi page). Would I be able to add additional links to sources for any of these articles in the future? I would like to understand how to post in a way that does not create a conflict/appears promotional.

Regarding the center page, it had been up for a while, published by another user. The merge had been discussed on the talk page. I think it should have it’s own page. From what I understand, it functions as a separate entity – with different goals, objectives, mission, members, projects, offices, events, than the school of architecture. I did find a lot of independent sources listed under “T.C. Chan Centre” that could be added. Just trying to understand why it would be difficult to defend--in the past I have read Wikipedia articles about other departments or centers within large universities that have their own pages. I think that this center has coverage and has work that is notable for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is new to me—still learning. Thanks. Energy22 (talk) 15:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is the place to ask, because busy people are more likely to see it on their own talk p.

The two questions are separate: should an article be deleted, and will an article be deleted. WP is not known for consistency, is erratic about following precedent, and will sometimes make exceptions to most rules if people really want to. I have to give you realistic and safe advice, based upon my experience about what will probably happen. (I have my own views, but though I can tell you what they are, I would be misleading you if i told you to rely on them. I do not get to make the decisions; no one person does.) So, on the basis of my experience here, I think that in practice almost all articles on research institutes or centers within a single department have been deleted or at best merged; they usually get kept when they are particularly notable free standing centers within a university. (Ones you may see around otherwise are sometimes there because there is some special justification, but sometimes because there was an erratic or biased conclusion to an argument, or even that they've escaped notice)

The technical guideline is WP:N, and more particularly WP:ORG; the key question according to the guidelines is usually whether there is substantial enough coverage and whether it is independent & not based on press releases. The decision for keeping or deleting is usually based primarily of the nature and quality of the sources, with only subsidiary consideration of the actual merits of the subject. (I think it should be the other way around, but I know I am in the minority--and if I am in a situation where I am the one to judge, I judge according to the general consensus.) Apart from the sources, there is a general tendency to not make articles for subordinate structures within a larger administrative unit: It took quite a while to establish that such entities as medical or law schools in a university should have separate articles; we have also been able to justify most well known separate journalism and architecture schools; we have not done nearly so well with most colleges of education or business. (This undoubtedly reflects the biases of the average editor here, but such is the state of things.)

I work a lot on these subjects,and I for years have tried to persuade the community to include as full a coverage of higher education as possible. I personally think it best to confine my efforts to the college level, and only the most famous departments, trying to be sure that at least these ones are covered. For research centers such as TCChan, I will support only the strongest. I consider this one borderline. There's no point arguing it here; when I bring it to AfD, and I will do so if I do not get agreement to merge it. The community will discuss it there, and some one else will decide what is the consensus. On the other hand, I think I will be able to say that the QSAS program is independently notable because of its wide adoption, & has good sources to show it.

To give you some idea of the arguments you will have to meet, for the center I will argue that almost all the coverage is internal to the university, or based on student papers, which cover all university events indiscriminately, or is based upon Press releases; and that the importance is based upon sponsoring one meeting of a symposium, publishing one journal, and having engaged in one important international project which should get its own article--and that everything else is local. I urge you to try to find enough good sources to meet these objections, and if you do, the article will be kept.

I should also have mentioned the page PennPraxis, added by a different editor a long time ago "the clinical arm of the School of Design" is in my opinion the least defensible of all: The descriptive half of it should go in the main article, but it is already mentioned there in one sentence, which is probably the appropriate length--its an integral part of the program. The casino material might go in the articles on SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia, if it is even significant there. Those who have written the current versions of the articles didn't seem to think so. This one I shall certainly redirect to the school unless you can find more material , preferably up to date material, The procedure if you disagree would be to revert my move, and then it can be discussed. DGG ( talk ) 20:37, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

You have mail!

Hello, DGG. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Regarding a t-shirt nomination :) Jalexander--WMF 22:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Coursera

Hi DGG--I hope this finds you well, with none of your toes frozen off. I was wondering if you could have a look at Coursera, just to go over it and see what minor or major improvements you could make or suggest. As the late Whitney Houston put it so succinctly in "How Will I Know", "I'm asking you cause you know about these things." Also--do you think this business model stands a chance? It seems so unlikely to me, yet everywhere I look I see stuff like this, even at my own school. Thanks in advance, Drmies (talk) 15:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest converting the business model section into prose, & I'll look for additional references. As for success: the financial question is whether people will actually pay for this, but the examples of payTV etc show they will, if the quality is high enough. What costs most is the supplementation by group discussion & tutoring if they include that, and students will pay for that also, if they can thereby get credit at their college for less than the college would charge ordinarily, & if widely adopted, it is possible that this may be enough to pay for a free service as well. The educational question is whether this will degenerate into lecture-only, and thus dilute the quality of college instruction. But what is the actual quality of much conventional college instruction? DGG ( talk ) 20:03, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

List of big-firm partners at Tulane Law School

Looking at some page histories, I see that back in 2009 you spearheaded a discussion of whether the Tulane University Law School article should keep its long list of lawyers who were partners at Vault 100 law firms. You argued (correctly, in my opinion) that such a list was not the sort we maintain on Wikipedia. It looks like this discussion went from Talk:Tulane University Law School#Partners at Vault's Top-100-Most-Prestigious Law Firms to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Archive 6#Notable alumni, where it appears to me the consensus was that the list was not appropriate: one editor strongly argued to keep the list but the others more or less all agreed with you. Nevertheless, it seems that since then, each time someone has tried to delete this section they have been reverted with an edit summary stating that consensus had agreed to keep the list.[5][6]. Was such a consensus actually established somewhere? Would such a list be allowed at another law school's article? Thanks very much for your input. (I'll watch for your answer here.) --Best regards, Arxiloxos (talk) 20:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed this obvious spam, though if it is restored I cannot take the actual admin action that may be thought necessary, because I both edited and commented; some other admin will have to do that. DGG ( talk ) 20:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with the deletion, and I added a link to the old Wikiproject discussion for anyone who may be interested. Best, --Arxiloxos (talk) 21:49, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

NYC panel

Hi there, DGG. I sent you an email about details for the upcoming panel discussion last week, and wanted to try you here since I hadn't heard back. I hope you can still make it, and if you have any other questions, just let me know. Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 03:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Campus Ambassador

Just saying hi... I see you are the Brooklyn College campus ambassador, no? Am working on a Wikipedia project for Amy Hughes Theatre History Class.

--Eparness (talk) 19:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hey DGG. I've just noticed that you've joined the Brooklyn College Theater History course as Campus Ambassador. Just wanted to say hello myself (I'm OA-ing the course), and add that I'm glad it's you - we've never crossed paths much that I can recollect, but I've seen you around at ANI and so forth, and you've always struck me as a pretty stand-up and level-headed guy. I look forward to working alongside on this project. Cheers, Yunshui 雲‍水 22:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

help find sources project

Hello DGG, last time I came here was for your comments on the description on the template primarysources. This time I seek for your comments on my drafted IEG grant proposal here m:Grants:IEG/find_sources_2.0. The basic idea is to enhance source-finding and thus citing practices for contributors old and new by providing lists of online and offline resources and some basic general description on the nature of the sources in these resources (per general research/librarian perspective and per WP policies WP:PSTS WP:V WP:RS.

Since you are the expert who are familiar with both perspectives, I hope that you will can provide comments to improve the grant proposal. Thanks. --_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 00:26, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll get to this tonight. Thanks. DGG ( talk ) 15:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Local interest topics

Hi DGG, I noticed on some AfD's that you believe local interest topics are not suitable for inlcusion in Wikipedia, and I'm wondering why. When you find the time, I'd love to hear your reasoning. I think they are, on the same account that - for example - articles on insect subspecies should be included. They may be of interest to just a small group of people, but they are of interest. I quite often fidn your reasonings comelling though, so I look forward to hearing how I am wrong on this one! Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

this will take till tomorrow, for I want to give a full explanation; it's been a while since I last wrote it out, & I want it to represent my current view. But as a starting point, using your example, I think you probably meant insect species, not sub-species. I would not support articles on most insect sub-species--we will have enough work to do with the actual 900,000 known full species. (and the estimated 10 times that number that have yet to be identified). The subspecies should be handled the way anything but the most highly specialist books handle them: as part of the article for the species. There will of course be exceptions, when the particular subspecies has been much studied. DGG ( talk ) 21:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem, take your time - good is more important than fast. The reason why I think we should include it, by the way, is point one of the five pillars: "It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers" (emphasis mine). Now I realise that 'it incorporates elements of' doesn't mean 'it should include everything in', though if it is verifiable I don't yet see any objection to including it, and including it does seem to further our mission. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

from my holiday address (greetings from Koh Pha Ngan. You may be jealous now) a polite ping. 180.183.220.31 (talk) 09:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean to rush you, but have the feeling you may have missed this. So a quick second ping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Medical College of Georgia Wikipedia page

Hello DGG!

Just saw you redirected the Medical College of Georgia page to the Georgia Regents University page, History section. I'd like to request that you undo this action, with the caveat that I know this can be confusing.

GRU used to be MCG - the Medical College of Georgia was a standalone university back in the day. However, the university grew to become Georgia Health Sciences University, and the Medical College of Georgia became ONE of the university's colleges.

On the Georgia Regents University web site (http://gru.edu/colleges/medicine/index.php), the Medical College of Georgia is listed as one of the nine colleges in the university. I believe the page you've redirected is the page for the college, so it's a sub-set page - not a historical university page.

I'd love to talk about it with you - please get in touch with me? Thank you!

Email: crule@gru.edu, or of course on my talk page, or here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GRUcrule (talk • contribs) 14:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You are correct that it is customary from medical schools at a university to have a separate page; therefore, I intend to rewrite the page, and I think I said so on one of the talk pages, probably the one for the university as a whole . The reason I deleted the prior page is because it was almost entirely a copyvio from the university site;it had previously been deleted as a copyvio also, in several versions. I'll give a further explanation on your talk page tonight; there are acceptable ways to go forward, but also unacceptable ways. DGG ( talk ) 15:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good - I'm our Social Media Coordinator, but this is a recent position, so I haven't been involved in editing any Wikipedia pages prior to late January. I look forward to learning from your work. Thanks for the speedy reply! GRUcrule ( talk ) —Preceding undated comment added 16:24, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

IOP_Publishing

Ever since I accidentally got involved in an article being worked on by a WWBTOO employee (I did not realize the editor worked for him) I've been trying to avoid the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is manning it, I'm going through it.

I came across this one that I thought might be up your alley on getting a second opinion on my merge suggestions: Talk:IOP_Publishing#Books_Publishing_section

I don't know enough about academic periodicals to know the best course of action. CorporateM (Talk) 17:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I responded. DGG ( talk ) 20:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Muchos grassius. I would prefer not to handle the Request Edit queue, but since nobody else is, I cleared up a good 15 requests that were mostly fairly obvious.

BTW - if you care to, I haven't gotten any feedback yet on Talk:YouSendIt#Draft_for_consideration. I'm pretty happy that they included content from an analyst report, because this is something volunteers will never have access to otherwise, but I feel we could use feedback on the BLP issues and any anti-promo tips. CorporateM (Talk) 21:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Ryan said he would take a look after his Wikibreak, so I'll wait for him! CorporateM (Talk) 16:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Nova Publishers

Hi, if you have a moment could you please have a look at this edit of mine and the discussion on the article's talk page. I'd like to hear your opinion especially about this SENSE reference. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 09:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Milking the bull

In working upon this topic, I observed that you had a particular interest in list of proverbial phrases. When I get a moment, I plan to make some bold edits there as it seems to have gone quiet. Just letting you know in advance... Warden (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2013 (UTC)~~

we perhaps should talk first. The main thing I think it needs is citations. I could put in a few dozen/hundred quickly. then of course it needs articles on all or most of them--that part I do not want to do. DGG ( talk ) 15:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

#smwwiki panel

		The Real Life Barnstar
		Thanks again for appearing on the discussion panel at Social Media Week NYC; it was a great conversation and I'm glad you were part of it! WWB Too (Talk · COI) 13:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Some falafel for you!

Thanks for your Guide lines for Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch. I will try again. Please check it soon Mehrnazar (talk) 08:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

CRL

It has been suggested you might be interested in the discussion at User_talk:Phoebe#CRL. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for unblanking that article about Paul

It was about Paul the Afc BLP (I forgot his last name), not the other Paul, Fisher of Men. I didn't realize that declining an Afc, for not complying with BLP standards, would result in automatic blanking, not until after the fact. There was nothing libelous or copyvio-ish there, merely insufficient, as in "needs more work". I didn't know what to do, if I could reverse it without causing yet more problems. I appreciate that you caught that and unblanked.

I have a few other items, while I am here. I can help you with certain aspects of your work here, not as sycophant-as-a-service, merely because I have a similar skill set as yours, in one tiny area of your field of expertise. On second thought, I think I'll just leave this on my own talk page, for your perusal, should you have time and inclination, rather than littering here. Again, thank you for your help yesterday. --FeralOink (talk) 05:38, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Douglas W. Owsley bibliography

Hi, could you have a look at this article? I'm not really sure what to think of it. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 11:56, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm working on it. DGG ( talk ) 17:50, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Library theft

Hello DGG: Library theft is a new article that you may find of interest to check out, improve, etc. Cheers, Northamerica1000^(talk) 22:20, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

== Might have found some new refs for [[Inter

AfC source tagging

Hi DGG per our last chat I've stated on implementing some (non game based) ideas for improving communication at AfC. I hope that these will be usefull in more rapidly establishing better reviewer norms at AfC. To wit I've developed two new inline warning tags templates tags and will add a few more tomorrow. The point being that these would supplement the existing rejection tags by providing more focused issue detection and better troubleshooting links.

I think the most common issues are

1. sources that are not independent - which we should tag with Template:!IN
2. sources that are user generated (blogs, wikis) - which we should tag with Template:!Blog
3. sources that come from Wikipedia - which we should tag with Template:!Wiki

So far I've tagged used these here BO | Talk 17:31, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Journal statistics

Hi, this discussion has stalled a bit and could use your input. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

A beer for you!

You made a very appropriate edit on 23:49, 5 November 2011‎ on the Mankind Project article--you removed a lenthy addition that was, as you noted, quite promotional in nature. I've been a member of MKP for 12+ years and credit the organization with helping me transform my life in many positive ways. However, puffery has no place for an organization that emphasizes Integrity and Authenticity. Cheers! Mark P.S. If you don't imbibe in alcoholic beverages, a fine tea or exotic coffee will be offered. :0) Mark D Worthen PsyD 09:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Precious

keep articles
Thank you for your efforts to keep articles, such as this piece of culture, for your love of libraries, for sharing resources, and for your thoughts on elucidating, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (25 April 2009, 25 June 2009)!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Selective Law Databases

Hello, what are some selective databases for law that would be the equivalent of MEDLINE? To avoid article deletion, inclusion in which law databases would signify that a journal is notable? 206.174.67.237 (talk) 10:13, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

I will inquire. But since any legal journal is likely to be used for citation in a judgment, including a judgement of a supreme court, and since WP considers essentially every modern supreme court case notable , a case could be made for inclusion of articles on all of them. Most of the important law journals in the US are published by law schools as projects run by the students--obtaining a place on its editorial board is considered the highest honor the school can give, and all of these will be notable. But many schools now publish a variety of additional journals, University of X Law School Journal of International Law, ... of Constitutional, ,,, etc. , which have, I think a much lesser reputation--we have deleted a number of these at AfD. There are then the journals of the StateBar Associations, which could be merged with an article on each of the Bar Associations. Otherwise, I need to consider and ask advice. DGG ( talk ) 05:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Quick question: Outlines

In my work on public relations I came across this article Outline of public relations, which seems like a massively extended See also section of the PR article. Should I AfD it as a fork? CorporateM (Talk) 15:33, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

It's intended as such, essentially as a table of contents, like Outline of physical science, and many others: see WikiProject Outlines and Portal:Contents/Outlines. They are more systematically arranged than th text format of a general article, which requires reading, not scanning, to find specific topics. They are more article oriented than Portals -- see Portal:Philosophy, but more general than Indexes & Lists such as Index of standards articles or Glossaries, such as Glossary of US mortgage terminology . There's also a combination page type: Portal:Contents/History and events-- click "see in all page types".

It's a good question whether we need all of these systems of organization. We've tried others: a systematic organization based on List of Dewey Decimal classes or Library of Congress Classification or Wikipedia:Outline of Roget's Thesaurus, and yet others have been proposed. I think the overlap more than they ought to, but we'll never et agreement on which to concentrate on. Personally, I very much like the Outline of... structure, and would support it over the others. I believe that's the current tendency, also. Ideally everything would be indexed according to the two library systems also, because they're familiar--not that they're any good--especially LC, which was designed to match the structure of a US university curriculum in the first decade of he 20th century. There is no viable one dimensional way to organize knowledge--the alternative is some sort of Faceted classification, whose construction and use can get really complicated. There's even a totally different approach--to have no classification or indexing of any sort, but rely on free text implemented as we implement the see alsos, and the hyperlinks, as anything anyone thinks related, with no systematic organization. Or the extreme of having everything be a free text search.

Perhaps however you are asking whether every item on that particular outline you mentioned belongs--that's for discussion on it's talk page, or whether other things should be added, in which case boldly add them. Or whether the whole outline is biased in some way, in which case, discuss it. Only if it is irretrievably biased or confusing should it be deleted.

Categories are a necessary complement--they are self-populating, but eliminate the possibility of saying anything about the individual items. I use them very heavily for what I do, which is, upon finding a problem article, finding others that are likely to have a similar problem. They should also do very well for finding term paper topics. They will be more effective as subject guides when we implement category intersection in a simply and obvious manner. (And there's the related Series Boxes, those colored boxes at the bottom. I dislike them--they're visually awful, and are used frequently to express or dispute a POV. But they do serve nicely to indicate missing articles.

Quick question, long answer. See chapter 17 of Wikipedia the missing manual for a longer one, oriented towards categories. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC) .

Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar

		Wikipedia Ambassador Barnstar
		For your extensive efforts both as an Ambassador and in other capacities on Wikipedia, I award you this barnstar. You and I do not always agree on specific matters, but your qualities of humility and devotion are admirable and I am thankful for your contributions. Neelix (talk) 14:39, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Cultural intelligence

Hi DGG--I ran into this, which has great potential (according to JSTOR), but it's hardly my field: I can't write such articles on such topics. Perhaps you can have a go? Thanks, Drmies (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Kansas-Armenia National Guard Partnership

In reference to your issues with the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_-_Armenia_National_Guard_Partnership I am the main contributor to the 22 National Guard State Partnership pages, but I am not the one deciding what goes up on each page. I was tasked by EUCOM with coordinating the efforts of each SPP director (there is one for each State) and each BAO (there is one in each overseas embassy) and taking what they give me. Obviously, they do not want to duplicate there own work and rewrite what they already wrote on their State National Guard website so they are copy/pasting select content and asking me to upload. This is what EUCOM wanted to do in order to avoid requiring each SPP director and each BAO to learn the enormous Wikipedia guidelines and to prevent a drastic variation in style and quality.

Tell you what you suggest. The content is not plagiarized. Would a comment on the State National Guard websites indicating Wikipedia is authorized to use the content be the fix? Incidentally, we are nearing completion of our own SPP page here http://www.eucom.mil/key-activities/partnership-programs/state-partnership-program and if you click on any of the 22 links halfway down, you will see it takes you to a pdf (currently in draft form) that shows the exact same content that is appearing on the Wikipedia pages. These pages are going to be part of a printed posture statement. Again, this is to avoid having to create yet another version of the same material.

As for the pictures not being relevant to the partnership, I'm at a loss for words. These were very carefully selected from a large pool of pictures and they each show something meaningful about the program. The soldiers lined up on the airfield getting off a plane is an example of a monumental form of cooperation among two countries that just a few years ago were bitter enemies. The fact that they appear together at all in a picture like this should speak volumes. If you don't get that then I suppose nothing I say will matter.

I am open to your suggestions. Briansmith451 (talk) 11:24, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

There are a few principles involved.

1. Copyright. WP requires that all material be either in the public domain or licensed under a free license, by which we mean a CC-BY-SA license, which irrevocably gives everyone in the world the right to copy, reuse, and modify the material. Permission for WP to use it is not sufficient--WP is a free encyclopedia, which intends its content to be used freely for any purpose, even commercial, as long as attribution is given and the material remains freely licensed. Any use of material not under such a license is limited to brief quotations. We do not permit any compromise with this.
   1. We additionally do not permit Close paraphrase of unfree material; not just the words must be changed, but the arrangement into sentences and the sequence of ideas.
   2. As I mentioned, material published by the uS Government is in the public domain, and so is material published by a certain few individual US states, such as California. (This does not apply to photographs or other material they reprint from elsewhere, which may already be under copyright). Material from most states requires a license--see WP:COPYRIGHT.I note that almost all material from other country's governments (and the UN) is not in the public domain--the US is almost unique in this generous provision for free use.
2. Plagiarism, which applies to all material, free or unfree, copied or paraphrased. Anything taken from an outside source must be attributed to the source explicitly. This goes beyond copyright--it's a basic convention of responsible writing.
3. conflict of Interest You are apparently editing on behalf of a group of outside organizations, as part of your job. This creates a conflict of interest. For our rules on this, see WP:COI. We do not absolutely prohibit it, but we do examine such edits very closely for objectivity. As a general rule, a suitable page will be best written by someone without COI; it's not impossible to do it properly with a conflict of interest or as a paid press agent, but it's relatively more difficult: you are automatically thinking in terms of what the subject wishes to communicate to the public, but an uninvolved person will think in terms of what the public might wish to know.
4. Ownership. Nobody owns a WP page, and anything you write is subject to editing by anyone--as an official editor you are no more entitled to determine the content than anyone else.
5. Notability A Wikipedia article needs to show notability with references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. All or almost all the sources in the articles are from the relevant government units, and do not show importance. There should however be newspaper articles available for all of these, but they must b independent, not essentially copies of press releases. Additionally, such sources can show undisputed facts, but they can not be used for conclusions, such as the success of the programs, which must be shown by outside sources.
6. Promotionalism Include only material that would be of interest to a general reader coming across the mention of the subject and wanting the sort of information that would be found in an encyclopedia. Do not include material that would be of interest only to those associated with the subject, or to prospective supporters, or intended to produce a favorable public impression of the program --that sort of content is considered promotional. WP is an encyclopedia, not a vehicle for promotion of even the most worthwhile things.
7. Illustrations. Actually, I noticed that photograph to which you might be referring, in the California-Ukraine article . I noticed it as a very good photograph, though there is nothing to indicate the field as being in the Ukraine But there is no need for the duplicative photographs of soldiers practicing treating casualties in the Illinois-Poland article--onei s sufficient; and I do not think purely ceremonial photographs such as [[7]] or [[8]] or [[9]] are appropriate--dignitaries meeting each other are PR, as are group photos of the participants. They may make good PR, and good content for the organizational websites, but they add nothing that cannot be said in words as far as the encyclopedic purpose is concerned. Yes, it's important to show the soldiers from the two countries working together I agree with you on that--it adds a demonstrative element beyond what words can do, but perhaps once per article is sufficient, and also those few that show actual military joint activities, rather than just training. Excessive use of what would be a good thing if used in small quantities is a sign of promotionalism--saying the same point over and over again. But, as I mentioned, since nobody owns an article, neither you nor I need decide this.

There are several courses I could take, as an experienced editor: I could nominate these articles at AfD for deletion as promotional and lacking 3rd party sources ; I could list them for a requested merge into the main article; I could list the problem on a suitable noticeboard and ask for opinions; I could persuade you to fix them; I could fix them myself. I do not want to delete content if there is any alternative; a merge would greatly decrease the usefulness as indicating the foreign relations of each of the countries involved; I will list them on the COI board (WP:COIN) if we cannot reach agreement, but perhaps that will not be necessary.

But there is one thing I must do as an administrator. I must remove copyright violations from the articles, by either rewriting or blanking the sections, or listing at the copyright problems notice board. If you do not immediately remove the ones from state pages which are not public domain, I will do one or the other, or remove what I can quickly find, and then list them all--action there usually takes a few weeks. DGG ( talk ) 18:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you

It is good to know that my efforts have been noticed... particularly by a user who, when I see his user names on edits and efforts, I have come to simply assume that something necessary was being done properly. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Library resources box

DGG, I and I expect others would appreciate your continued attention at the talk around user:JohnMarkOckerbloom's Template:Library resources box. There is a deletion discussion about this at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_30#Template:Library_resources_box. There was an article about this template in The Signpost in March, and some external press in other places.

This seems like a big issue which could set a precedent for how the Wikipedia community interacts with libraries. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:24, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

category intersects

Since you've mentioned wikidata many time, I thought you'd be interested in this: Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today. We could use it as a band-aid while waiting for wikidata to spin up. Also w.r.t your votes - I think that whether we use the proposal i made above, or wikidata, simplifying the categories *beforehand* will actually make things easier. None of the categories i've proposed deleting could not be recreated through an intersect - but for now they serve to ghettoize and are against the guidance for ethnic cats.

Anyway, regardless of what you decide on the CFD votes, I'd really appreciate your input and help on the cat intersect proposal. cheers --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I have almost always supported ethnic subcategories. People look for articles in these fields, often to find subjects for school papers. I in general agree with maintaining the categories in the meanwhile, but I'm not sure its worth arguing about them for the present, considering the degree of opposition. As I said there is that intersection will remove the entire need for the discussions.What we need most to keep are the categories from which the intersections will be constructed. (Defining and organizing the root data is a harder problem--I find some of the current Wikidata proposals a little too casual. Adding data fields as one thinks of them is not as good as a systematic ontology.) DGG ( talk ) 15:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Following up on your Predatory Journals discussion

I wonder if there's a definite list of ones to watch out for, as there seem to be a few creeping up at AfC. Instead of doing a thorough search, it would be practical to have a reliable list so we can notify the submitter, don't you think? Regards, (please TB me) FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I may have already said this, but I do not want to compose a list. Who are we to judge?

In fact, I do not like to use the term "predatory" at all, , just like I want to avoid "controversy" sections in articles. To the extent I can tell, some journals commonly considered as such may be fraudulent or hopeless, but I know that some are sincere efforts at alternative publishing. not all of the sincere efforts will prove to be useful, of course, but that's not a reason to condemn them. Publishing is a profession for optimists. I do not want to rely on Beall's list. I greatly respect him and the work he is doing, but there are objections about a few of the entries on Beall's list from reliable npov people in various listserv discussions, and i rather agree with some of the objections--I think he should possibly be removing from the list the very few that develop into respectability.

As for WP, the basic rule is simple, if they get into any of the ordinary indexes, they might be notable & there is no way to find out without a discussion. I know AfC is supposed to accept only articles which are good enough that not only will they pass AfD, but that no good faith AfD is likely; however, I think this is unrealistic in areas of unsettled notability, & this is one of them. If they're in a index more selective than DOAJ etc, and ifthey've published more than a handful of articles, I'd accept them, but I would first warn the editor that it will be challenged and that if they do not want what may be a very unsatisfactory discussion from their POV, to withdraw the submission until they have a better case. If you let me know what they are, I'll comment (or accept or decline, depending), but I think we have to go one by one. (If an article is about a publisher, I think it is just common sense that we want it to have at least one notable journal.) DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, you've answered my question. My main dilemma was if we should simply go for GNG or should journals be held against stricter rules for those reasons. But you've clarified the issue pretty well. I agree in principle, although a list could be useful for bogus, unscientific claims, not for AfC's purposes. Thanks again! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:22, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

As for bogus claims, the problem is not that these journals are used for publishing important but weird work, but that the work they publish --if they actually publish anything -- is almost always thoroly mediocre, because people knowing enough to do good work know enough to publish in better journals. People wanting to spread crank ideas try to publish them conspicuously, and most of the really fraudulent work that makes headlines as such has been published in journals that should know better. DGG ( talk ) 02:43, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

category intersection

You mentioned this in a few CFDs. Mind swinging by and giving your thoughts here, on a possible band-aid while awaiting wiki-data? Wikipedia_talk:Category_intersection#A_working_category_intersection_today? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

AfC stuff

this response is still under construction. I will finish it in another 24 hours, but I want to check I've got everything & didn't get anything really stupidly wrong. . If there are any obvious errors, please fix them' (moved from earlier)

Hi DGG, in reference to your comment here: Firstly, I'd like to clarify that I feel your position to delete the submissions in question is entirely appropriate -- nothing notable or worth saving about them, why waste time!? Moveover, I feel that the current G11 criteria are fine as they are, perfectly valid in the AfC space, and the judgement about what should or should not be deleted left rightly to admins. Secondly, I picked up on your comment about the reviewing instructions. I have twice re-drafted the instructions (latest version quite recently) and was wondering if you have any advice to make them more decipherable? When the instructions were first created they were designed as a rough technical guide about which templates to use etc. I'm aware they have evolved beyond that now and would like to do what I can to make them more useful to people. Pol430 talk to me 20:12, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I would be very glad to work with you on improving AfC, though you will find my opinions of what is needed somewhat far-reaching. The instructions themselves are actually pretty good, though of course they can be refined further. The main difficulty is that they do not emphasise the importance of first considering whether the article is likely to ever be acceptable, and to concentrate of major problems first. The real problems with AfC are much more fundamental. See my list, above, in my discussion with Dennis Brown--which cover only a small part of what I see as the problems. This is going to be a long list.

One: I disagree with some of the criteria and practices in use, which do not follow any reasonable guideline:

A. At the extreme,some people are still using what amount to GA as the necessary standard. They reject articles for relatively trivial reasons, such as spelling.

B. The usual current standard is essentially at "not being likely to be challenged at AfD," but this is too high. It should be "likely to pass AfD " No one individual should decide on the acceptability of a borderline notable subject. That's what AfD is for, and the frequently disputed AfDs show the need for community opinion. (I agree that a standard that they need only pass speedy is too low--it ought to be better than that, because there is no point in passing an article that is probably going to be quickly rejected.)

C. The reviewers often reject articles for not having inline citations, not being aware that any form of citation is acceptable, as long as specifics are adequately referenced and identified. Specific facts need to be identified for controversial or challenged material, or especially for BLPs, but general references to sources are fine for most of the routine material.

D. they frequently insist on third party sources for articles that do not need them, such as places, or the other things that are intrinsically notable. There are special standards for sports, and academics, and other things, some specified in WP:N, some only in COMMON, and these all need to be taken into account.

E. They do not regard the two purposes: one is to get decent articles, the other is to get and keep decent editors. A potentially good editor should get ever encouragement, and articles from such people need follow up to make sure they are not abandoned. On the other hand, a COI editor who will be incapable of writing something acceptable needs pretty firm guidance to stay away, and not keep resubmitting the same material.

F. They do not distinguish between problems that could be easily fixed & give us passible articles that could be improved even further later, and those that need major work before acceptance. If it's minor, but the ed. never returns, we lose the article.

G. They do not check adequately for copyvio. I know this is being worked on, but it remains a problem. And when they do reject something for copyvio & it gets deleted, the contributor still gets a notice to see the AfC for the reason, --altho it is not longer there-- and thus gets no assistance.)

Two But it's not just people being careless or not following reasonable guidelines. Part of the problem is the procedures themselves, some of which are unduly difficult.

A. The set reasons are poorly chosen. Some of them are very rare, some common.

B. The commonly used ones are unspecific, and give no directed help

C. They do not permit giving multiple reasons from the list, which would at least make them more specific

D. They do not permit editing before posting them, as do the reasons in other commenting systems, like Huggle. They can be modified afterwards in a separate step, but this is much harder,

E. They are placed only on the article, not also in the user talk page. This would be trivial to fix, and would make certain the ed. saw the actual reason. As is, if they see "declined' the extra step to see why is one that many never seem to take. It should be facilitated, not hindered.

F. Multiple declines leave the "declined because of..." category for both the current and earlier reasons, which mean double or triple listing many of them.

G. There seems no easy way for someone other than the original ed. to relist something without the messages now coming to the relister, not the actual ed. who wrote the material.

Three But it is not just the details of procedures; more basic problems are the overall workflow and design:

A. the rationales in the dropdown list do not make a crucial distinction between articles that just need improvement and those that are hopeless,

B. there seems to be no easy way to take an article and turn it into a redirect

C. The check for duplication comes when the article is being reviewed. It should come as soon as it is entered.

D. there seems to be no immediate way of removing AfCs when the article has been created outside of AfC

E. There is no immediately obvious way of reviewing what has been accepted or declined for any given day. This makes it impossible to audit the procedure, trying to find accepted articles that need major improvement or even deletion, rejected articles that ned encouragement or rescue, and most of all, reviewers people whose work needs assistance.

F. There is no sorting at any point by approximate subject, even as roughly as AfD does it. I consider this the worst of all failings, because most of us to some extent do specialize to some extent. To illustrate, I could very easily clear up all the scientific journal articles--if only I could find them! I can't work effectively on most fields of entertainment, and if I can skip over them, I can go much faster.

G. moving all material from user space to AfC is not always the best course of action. Much that is moved, should better be deleted-- or left alone.

H,, I., J., and so on, forthcoming, but I want to get down to the essentials

Four And all of this has three fundamental and over-riding mistakes in conception

A. All submitted article should feed into a single workflow so they can be spotted and reviewed after submission

B. The procedure is at the mercy of whoever does the reviewing, much of which is by raw beginners

C. It is almost impossible to audit--whereas NPP is designed so the more experienced reviewers can see what the others are doing.

D. Doing this in WP Talk space was a poor idea, the sort of temporary measure which should have been changed long ago--it makes finding everything much harder.

Five It's not that there are problems. It's that the system will not be fixed. I've asked for many of the simple fixes months ago. I've received repeatedly one of three responses:

A. The change would be made. But they never were, not even sending people notices to look at AfCs that were no longer visible.,

B. It wasn't a problem Whoever has been deciding that doesn't realize that every handicap in the way of new users is a problem--matters like this need community decision.

C. It couldn't be done. I really doubt that--this just means it will be difficult. But keeping new articles & new eds. is the most important thing we have to do here. It's the critical requirement for sustaining WP, because no editor will remain here permanently--most of us get tired, or bored, or move into different interests or obligations--and the few who don't will eventually die.

Sixth and last My conclusion is that the AfC procedure is not worth the trouble of fixing. The existing articles should be cleared out, and a new and rational system started, modeled after the NPP system, Article Curation, and the Article Wizard

A. The simplest way to do this will be to start a MfD on the pages, This remains the control of the community over bad process.

B. Obviously, in practice this will be a long and disputed RfA, but I think enough people are unhappy.

C. But we can't leave a gap, so I'd rather do it after someone has done at least preliminary design on a replacement system.

D. I'd be glad to help anyone who is prepared to prove me wrong by making sufficiently radical changes. DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)This is worth having in one place. Would you consider copying it to a user sub-page and possibly slapping a "user essay" tag on it? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:37, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

So I will, but I want to figure out how to format replies, etc. Perhaps by copying the question part as sections on the essay's talk page? DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response DGG, I endorse more-or-less everything you have said. I particularly understand your frustrations with trying to suggest changes that never get implemented. AfC has, for a long time, suffered from severe shortsightedness. I would like nothing better than to see the current system replaced with something more integral to MediaWiki (like page curation) accompanied by a centralized landing area for both declined and accepted submissions. I agree that this is unlikely to happen. I have for a long time consigned myself to the position 'one little bit at a time' where AfC is concerned. I think a lot of what you have mentioned is achievable, but at the end of it, will we still have a sprawling and complex project that only a handful of die-hard participants truly understand or can navigate? I think the answer is yes, but I doubt I'll stop trying to improve bits and pieces. I'll have a proper look through your suggestions over the next few days and see if I can get a feasible to-do list up for people to work on. Incidentally, I started some work on further refining the reviewer instructions. Primarily, I would like to split the instructions into 'using the script' and 'doing it manually'. My initial efforts can be found at User:Pol430/Sandbox/AFCR Script for the script specific instructions. Feedback welcomed. Pol430 talk to me 23:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I expect to adda few more things tomorrow, primarily from some qys I asked at WT:AFC. Normally, I'd agree with your strategy--I have always looked for a way to adapt existing WP process, rather than develop new ones. In this case I am not at all sure the process is not under the effective control of those who will not change it. Yes, WP people generally something get over-complicated & try to cover everything. But we have kept the deletion processes from complication, and Page Curation works well. I think the key is to think of everything as a preliminary step feeding into NP. I agree with your suggestion about the instructions: I would use it to even more strongly deprecate doing it manually. The current gadget is the one to build one for now. DGG ( talk ) 01:03, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

We have a persistent related issue at the Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard, of users creating an article on AfD and then cut and pasting to mainspace. See Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Another_class.3F. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:13, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

non-ed program users do it to; I do not think there is a way of preventing it--they could after all have written it offline entirely and pasted it into mainspace. The problem is that it leaves behind a duplicate article at AfC, and that can be easily handled by G6'ing the left-over AfC with an explanation such as "preliminary version" . But the actual problem is that they should not be using AfC in the first place We have enough problems with guiding the ed program users without exposing them the the vagaries of uniformed AfC commentators. The only time I ever tell someone to use an AfC -related process is when it's a promotional editor, and I tell them to use the Article Creation Wizard, in the hope that the strictures there will make it clear why they should not be writing an article. DGG ( talk ) 01:21, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Quick question

I noticed you (and other admins) often tag pages for speedy deletion, even though you can delete them yourselves. Is this out of personal preference for wanting review by another admin or is there some guideline or unspoken rule that calls for review by at least two different people? Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 00:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Most of us think it better that two people see the article. I am capable of mistakes, and I know I occasionally make them, because people are not at all reluctant to tell me--sometimes I will have missed something, or not understood, or just gone too quickly. Even for the utterly obvious, there's the possibility of carelessness or sleepiness, or just frustration at having been seeing so many totally unsatisfactory articles. I doubt anything requiring human judgment can be done at less than 1% error. I've deleted over 12,000 articles over the 7 years I've been doing this. and that would have been 120 wrong deletions, and potentially 120 good editors lost to WP. But with someone else checking, that makes it only 1 or 2 in the whole time.

In fact, I've argued that this should be absolutely required, but there are cases where one must act immediately, and it's been difficult to specify exactly the exceptions. DGG ( talk ) 00:48, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh ok, thanks. I agree with you. I was just curious. Ramaksoud2000 ^{(Talk to me)} 01:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I appreciate that there are times when you must act immediately, such as WP:ATTACK and WP:OUTING and possibly other situations. Do the admins have a tool that makes it easy for admins to "delete (or WP:REVDELETE) now, and list the page for review by another administrator ASAP" and if they do, to most admins who make "unilateral deletions" use this tool? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) There is no rule that admins can't delete anything on sight, but tagging and leaving for a second admin to delete is a good, unwritten practice that most seem to observe. Most of us will of course delete blatant COPYVIO, attack, and vandal pages immediately and some other cases of obvious nonsense. However, admins don't actually make many mistakes with their deletions, so 'delete and review later' by another admin would be redundant. I've deleted around 3,000 pages and only restored 20, and those were userfications. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:15, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I define 1% as "many" if one thinks of the cumulative effect over the years. If everyone who had a reasonable case stayed and complained, yes it would work, but most don't. There's also the definition of "error"-- does it mean an article that would pass AfD, or an article that with enough work might possibly pass AfD, an article to which the speedy criteria did not apply, but would end up deleted anyway The 1% is for the first two classes; for the third, it's more like 5%. In any case the error rate will depend on the type of speedys. I tend to look at the ones that have been passed over for a few hours. I only really know about my own errors, and of course my rate may be unusually high because I may be unusually incompetent. Some years ago I did intend to audit speedies--the reactions I received from admins involved in the ones I challenged persuaded me it was not the route to effectiveness here, and tolerating injustice in this was the way to be more useful overall. (There was 1, & only 1, admin who did change their practice in response to my comments.) I think I will decide the same about the G13 AfCs. DGG ( talk ) 20:57, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

AFC Helper Script fubared the move

this edit in which you used the AFC Helper Script to move Barnard & Westwood to mainspace didn't remove the AFC submissions. Please let the script maintainer know what version of the script you are using. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 03:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I use the gadget. What it does, I don't know. I think almost everyone uses the gadget, except people who started before it was there and never switched. But I've seen a number of similarly messed up moves, & cleaned up after them. What seems to happen often is that if there are comments at the top of the page, it does not remove them. It may have something to do with whether previous steps were done rightI do not yet see a pattern. . I think it's probably necessary to check every time that the p. comes out right.

What I've been trying to figure out a way to audit the recently accepted ones quickly. Using the dated category doesn't work well, because there is no way to tell what the article will be about, unlike when it's still an AfC (or when something is an article) and you can see by hovering. I'm trying to scan now use Special:Log/move. I found a really messy example Databet. I'm not cleaning it immediately, so you can see it. BTW, who is maintaining the script? Confirms my opinion, that there is no point in trying to fix this process. The more I look, the worse I find it. DGG ( talk ) 04:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)I have been told that the error is as follows: If the user types in "{{afc comment|1="coment". ~~~~}} it will not get cleaned up when the AfC is accepted. They must use "{{subst:afc comment|1="coment". ~~~~}} I made this error on an AfC and the reviewer told me this was how to correct it. CorporateM (Talk) 13:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)(different stalker) Hmm, I frequently use 1= if I'm including an "=" in the comment. I'll have to start using subst: as a work-around. In any case, the script needs to fix this. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:27, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Uhm, I'm the script maintainer. Interestingly nobody informed me about this issue, neither at WT:AFC nor at WP:AFC/DEV...

I will check if I can found any problems and fix them...

@CorporateM: No, the other way round: if the template is substituted, the script has no chance to recognize what was part of the original comment/template. mabdul 15:39, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Question: does usingthe gadget for enteringthe comment at least put in the comment correctly? DGG ( talk ) 15:42, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Uhm, yes. It should... I never heard of any problems about comments except that I saw some that were manually added and using subst (and thus were not removed). mabdul 15:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned a few minutes ago at WT:AFC:
"Related to the "stuck and lost in edit" bug: I change a bit and requesting every time a token. Hopefully this fixes that particular problem, although this adds more API calls (means more requests to the server)."

mabdul 21:51, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I chose not to contact you directly as I didn't have key information (namely, gadget or production script) that you would need to get started. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:07, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

"""thanks, it will be very good to have at least this fixed, so we can work on the more pervasive long-standing problems. DGG ( talk ) 22:39, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Of course I try to fix bugs and add new features which help the reviewers to do reviews easier. mabdul 06:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

My participation in AFC

You've asked me questions as if I was a font of deep knowledge about AFC at least once on WT:WPAFC recently. While I do have some deep knowledge it has some gaping holes in it due to a long absence from the project:

I was heavily involved in AFC for a few months in mid-2007 but sometime in 2007 or 2008 I pretty much stepped away from it until very late last year or early this year. During this absence there was a wholesale reorganization of the project, with much-improved tools and procedures and an IMHO (opinions may vary) much-improved submission and archiving procedure. That's not to say it can't be improved again, it's just that my historical knowledge has a multi-year gaping hole in it. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:33, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

If I may boast, I even picked up a couple of now-dusty awards for my work in the July-August 2007 AFC backlog drive. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:36, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

List of principal conductors by orchestra

Hi. Would you like to comment here? Thanks. --Kleinzach 01:37, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

J.O. Patterson, Sr., Nazis, syphilis, etc ...

Thanks for your very interesting message. I have read it all with interest, and replied to the part that is of most immediate relevance. JamesBWatson (talk) 07:50, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Confused. Perhaps I did something wrong.

Hi David. Thanks for all your many years of generous service volunteering here at Wikipedia. As you are somebody whose opinion I greatly respect, I wanted to ask about some comments that have confused me. This comment of yours seems to sort of conflict with this comment. As the author of the RfC in question, I think I may not have provided enough background or maybe not described the situation properly. Perhaps I didn't make a clear enough connection between the template and the service. Could you possibly let me know if I could improve the situation? Thanks very much. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 04:07, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see the conflict. I think it's a wonderful service, and should be implemented very widely. It doesn't quite do everything, and considering I equally use two different public libraries and two university libraries, a link to a single library will not be of as much use to me as most people. Do I misunderstand, or is it that I did not explain myself clearly in the 2nd comment? DGG ( talk ) 04:14, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I was misinterpreting your comments. One seemed enthusiatstic while the other seemed subdued, but I was probably reading that in to it. I was more concerned that I may not have presented the RfC details well enough for the community to fully understand it (i.e. what the service is and its benefits). I guess I was looking more for suggested improvements to the RfC. Thanks for the help. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 04:45, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

You are right, I was not clear enough, so I added some unmistakable emphasis. I think there are lots of possible improvements, but the most important thing is to get the basic interface adopted. I'll have some suggestions. DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you I'll look through the RfC tomorrow and see if I can rewrite it to be a bit more informative. Thanks kindly. 64.40.54.118 (talk) 06:41, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

AFC and sockpuppetry

I'm sure you've noticed a lot of new editors jumping in to start approving articles, or even declining them. Please feel free to ping me any time you find a user who is new enough that it is obviously out of place. Email is also very effective and reduces any drama concerns. We are seeing much of this at WP:SPI and can often connect the dots. You don't have to build the case or file the paperwork, I will gladly do that myself. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 12:24, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

perhaps you could email me (or tell me here, if its already been dealt with) to let me know me some examples you've noticed that aroused your suspicions. Unfortunately, one of the many faults of AfC is that we have no easy way of sorting out accepted submission by date. Almost the onlyway to see them at all is to go through Category:AfC submissions by date and look for the ones that link to article talk pages, but hovering doesn't work== you can't see what they are till you open them. There's another way--even slower, using Special:Log/move, but there is no way to separate them from the great majority of moves that are for other reasons. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

For example, if you see a new face that is reviewing AFCs and they have 100 edits here, I would like to know. I have seen editor A setup sock B, and sock B starts reviewing AFCs, starting with other articles. Realistically, a new editor shouldn't be reviewing AFCs anyway. Most new users wouldn't even know about AFC. Same with a new user that is submitting multiple articles that are borderline G11. I work so many of these cases at SPI, I'm often able to guess a sockmaster based on their contribs or style simply by memory, then I can compare deleted material, build a case, and request a CU. Reducing the spam from AFC by making it harder for socking there has to help. And email is best because if there is no connection, no one's feelings get hurt. You don't need to know or think they are a sock, only that they fit that unusual criteria of being where a normal user with their experience wouldn't be. I've been known to tracks socks for weeks when needed, then G5'ing once a connection can be made. Reducing the incentive. Since you are on the front line there, you might notice them faster than others will. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 02:26, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'm trying more to clear up the back end, than the front line, so much of what I see will be very old. But when I see someone doing poor reviewing, I tend to look at everything they reviewed, back as far as it goes, so I might find someone that way. But what I've also been seeing in new editors is they do know about AfC because they've submitted an article, and on the basis of the acceptance of that one article, they start reviewing others. DGG ( talk ) 02:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Much of that is innocent enough, but not all of it. Often it takes digging through deleted contribs and using tools to find intersects with other known socks to make a connection, something you wouldn't normally do but an SPI clerk does regularly. It is an easy avenue to abuse, just like marking obvious spam from friends/socks as "patrolled" at NPP. I don't want to assume bad faith (or venture into WP:BEANS), but it is an easy and obvious target for abuse, and it is already happening. Searching for "AFC" at WP:SPI gives an indication [10] and I'm sure we are missing more than we are catching. Anecdotally speaking, I'm seeing more cause for concern than a year ago. The recent issues[11] with Jaylen Bledsoe and the three AFC filed, and other article created to bypass salting[12] is only one example of COI socking connected to AFC. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 14:42, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Quickly finding old AFC declines for G13, and old accepts for whatever reason

It's not hard to find old AFC declines, at least not for the time period after the current "way of doing things" took effect. If you go to Category:AfC submissions by date/2012 and drill down to an arbitrary date and look at the names of the pages. If they start off with "Talk:" it is almost certainly an accepted submission. If they start off "Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation" or something similar, you will almost certainly find an old decline. You will want to check the page history before G13'ing it though, just in case the submitter or someone else has modified it making it too new to be G13'd.

For verification, I checked all items through letter "K" in Category:AfC submissions by date/01 January 2012 and if the title was Wikipedia talk: it was a stale decline or draft. If the title was Talk: it was an accepted article, usually with a redirect left behind. Note that SOME of these pages had been edited or in at one case re-submitted and subsequently re-declined a couple of months later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:51, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

You can indeed find them, but it's hard to audit them. To audit articles from NP or any other list, such as CSD or PROD or a log, I rely on the popup gadget, which shows the first few lines of text. About 3/4 of the time, this is informative enough to tell be whether I want to deal with it, or whether it's a subject about which I am ignorant. which are best left for others. It will also be often enough to disclose some standard problems, like the worst forms of promotionalism and autobiography. Here, it shows nothing. I have to open the talk p., and then switch to the article. Since typically I will look at 100 popups and then look further and maybe 10 or 20 articles, this greatly increases the time. I am nonetheless doing it, but the work is so great I cannot promise to do it systematically. The hope is that I will find the most frequent reviewers in need of some assistance. (for the unaccepted articles, it works fine, because then it shows the article on the popup, & I can can tell.) I am currently going systematically thru the oldest end of the declined articles in the new system before G13 gets to them, trying to rescue the most essential 1%, and find the 2 or 3% which are OK as is and should never have been declined. There's maybe 10 or 20 % that could be rescued, but I cannot personally revise that much of the encyclopedia. A few more of us, and we could.

The point is not that it is impossible to use afc; rather, it's needlessly difficult. DGG ( talk ) 22:03, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

RfA

Hi DGG. I've posted a reply to your question - I'm not sure if it answers it as well as you'd like, so if I can help by clarifying something just let me know. Issues around our policies are, I suspect, something most of us could write a thesis on, so I tried to stick to only the two areas. :) - Bilby (talk) 09:49, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

What's in a name ?

An editor is interested in the correct title and information pertaining to the article entitled "CSA (database company)". Of course, I am also interested in accuracy. The introduction use to say that the company name is "CSA Illumina" [13] under the ProQuest banner.

However, someone tagged the article, and removed the "Illumina" from "CSA Illumina" in the intro [14]. The editor did leave a query on the talk page. Today I have responded and assembled some links. Although the other editor has not responded (not a lot of time has passed), it seems to me that "CSA Illumina" is not incorrect [15], but it may also be called CSA Illustra [16].

In any case, now that I have wet your whistle with the above external links, maybe you could review the talk page discussion, and links, and maybe you can come up with something (I hope). Thanks in advance. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 15:51, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll check the sources later today. I have some familiarity with the company DGG ( talk ) 15:52, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I just added some refs to the Science Citation Index article. It looks some interesting reading, if you have the time and interest. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 17:39, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Your ANI comment

"the problem will settle itself": that's the kind of thing my father used to say. I don't know how often he was right about that, but given that today is the third anniversary of his death I find those words extra striking. So often your comments are like oil on turbulent water, DGG: keep it up, in good health. Drmies (talk) 05:42, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Library count

I was wondering how one finds out how many libraries stock a particular author or book. I notice that you reference that in a couple of AfD nominations. Thanks, Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:06, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

the way is with [www.worldcat.org WordCat]. Search for the book, isbn is simplest if you know it . Click on the book entry and look down. Best way to find all books by an author is to go midway down to the "Find more information about" selection box:. " Caution: Coverage is almost entirely US & Canadian public and academic libraries, some major university libraries elsewhere, with most academic and some public libraries in the UK, & some public libraries in Australia and New Zealand. There is no single convenient technique for elsewhere, best gateway is, VZBl, then see Special:Booksources. Caution2: Some types of material, like popular sex manuals, esoterica, and devotional literature are not well represented in library catalogs. DGG ( talk ) 15:45, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	For your great work on Jack Ernest Vincent!. :) – →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 05:34, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

AFC G13's

Any reason you're not deleting them yourself and only tagging them? Just curious since they're all being tagged correctly and you have the ability to do so yourself. Mkdw^talk 08:28, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

• Sometimes even admins like another set of eyes on something before it goes. Having the bit isn't a magic talisman against being wrong. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:54, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, I do not think that administrators should delete articles singlehanded. We haven't actually prohibited it, in part because it is always possible to think of exceptions, and it's hard to put them into exact language. I am in fact making many exceptions to my own practice, because of the great number of these submissions: if you look at my deletion log, when there is an additional obvious reason , such as G11, or the potential for an article is absolutely hopeless, or it is a test page from a young person, then I do delete them single handed. I regret the need to do so--it is not what I usually do, but it does speed things up. Some admins think themselves incapable of error; I know perfectly well I am not among them. DGG ( talk ) 13:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry, I was not asking about the general practice of seeking a second opinion. I do this commonly for A7 and G11 examples myself. I specifically said G13 since they were all procedural in nature not unlike a G8 tag. It was not my intention to imply that adminship was an immunity to making mistakes. Mkdw^talk 00:07, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was not criticizing you, but making a general statement. I do not regard G13 as purely technical. Some declined G13s are in fact acceptable articles as they stand , or with very minor fixes. I examine every one, and the ones that are acceptable, I accept, making whatever fixes are necessary--there are not many, about 1 to 5% , depending on what part of the backlog one is working on, but with the tens of thousands of articles, it's significant. (If I'm uncertain about acceptability, I do not delete it, though I may not move it to mainspace.) Sometimes, the submission will make a needed redirect. But some of the less welcome possibilities are more important: I check to see if the article by any chance does exist in mainspace, and ,if so, whether it is acceptable. I find about 5% do exist, and about half of them are not at all acceptable, some of them being speedy for copyvio or promotionalism. I also see if there are really inappropriate reviews--such as missing obvious copyvio--, and, if so, if the reviewer is still active, & still making similar mistakes, so I can explain to them how to do it--this is perhaps the most important step of all. The more I work on these, the more problems I find, some quite unanticipated. The review of them all, however tedious, is an opportunity to figure out how we can do this better. DGG ( talk ) 01:45, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much for that explanation. I hadn't considered it that way before and generally apply a housekeeping and somewhat liberal outlook when it appears the AFC is abandoned opposed to potentially reviewing a second time. This is probably largely a result that I have never tagged an article as G13, but simply come across G13's as having already been tagged by others. Cheers, Mkdw^talk 03:41, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

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boundary 2 again...

Dear David, boundary 2 is again under attack by POV pushers who claim that this is an "in-house" journal without peer review. There is a sopurce for the latter (Ulrich's), but it's reliability is doubted because it is behind a paywall. Perhaps you can join the discussion on the talk page. I must add that I find it exceedingly difficult to keep assuming good faith here... Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 16:30, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

There are reasons from recent events at WP for being extremely careful about negative approaches to anything related to contemporary American writers. But Ulrich's is not really an independent source for this--see my comment on the talk p. DGG ( talk ) 17:15, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

So how do you suggest we describe the journal? As "peer-reviewed" or "internally reviewed" (as suggested on the talk page by the SPAs) or otherwise? To me, "peer review" can be either external or internal or both. By the way, PLOS ONE is by now using peer review more or less in the same way as other journals do, as far as I can see (I'm an "academic editor" for them). --Randykitty (talk) 10:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

List

FYI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:53, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

For your extensive digging at D. C. Reddy. I did checked for sources and all I could find was this. You deserve this Solomon7968 18:41, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Current projects 7-3

I was reading through your current projects listed on your Userpage, and I was curious about 7-3; how would you first define what an "established editor" is? Autoconfirmed? 50 edits? Consensus? Anyhow, I liked 7-1 and 7-2 (and 7-3, just curious about the details). Please let me know when you put this in front of the community at large or if you'd like any help! Happy editing! --Jackson Peebles (talk) 06:49, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I really should revise these. The problems at WP change over time, and so do my interests. I am a little less concerned about articles directly, and more about how we deal with editors, I no longer object to using A7 for organizations, and I'm less concerned about the misuse of speedy in general. Since I wrote that 5 years ago, there has been a greater degree of consistency in speedy deletions generally, and in fact with deletion process generally. But more important, as WP becomes important, we are under increasing attack from people and companies who wish to use us for promotion, to the extent that very strong measure are indicated. Many of the A7 company & organization deletions also qualify as G11, and often as G12, copyvio. Their authors have no interest in contributing to an encyclopedia, but want publicity for their enterprises, and a greater percentage of them are paid editors. I have come to think at AfD that for borderline notability, we should also consider the promotional nature of the article--the combination of borderline notability and considerable promotion is reason to delete--but since that's a matter of judgement, it's a question for AfD, not speedy.

I am still willing to restore articles if anyone intends to work on them, and I'm always surprised at the few admins who aren't, I'd now say, not "established editor" but "editor in good faith", & when there's actually a chance of improving the article. In practice it's usually clear enough--and a good faith editorcan even include the rare paid editor who wants to learn and conform to our standards. The problem is a more practical one, of people finding out about the deleted articles. But this is related to what I see as the main current problem:

in the advice we give new editors. too many people rely on the templates, either in New Page patrol or AfC. In any case where there's a reasonable effort , it is really necessary to explain specifically either what is needed, or why it's likely to be hopeless--and by specifically I mean showing that one has actually read and taken into account the particular article. I don't always do this myself--there are simply too many articles to deal with them all carefully--but I try to do it if there's a likely prospect of improvement, in either the article or the editor. But most patrollers and reviewers patrol or review using insufficient care or the wrong criteria.

I'm currently not that much specifically trying to save individual articles, or even to teach individual new editors--I'm trying to use my experience to help the people who work with new editors do it properly. At this point it's not a question of changing our rules, but the way we apply them, and changing the practices and expectations of the people who apply them. I tend to do this as Idid 5 years ago with speedies--I can't check every article submission, but when I see inadequate advice, I can follow up with that particular person. ` DGG ( talk ) 23:15, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Review journal

Hi, there is a discussion here about the definition of what constitutes a "review journal", which is hampered by a lack of good sources. Would you know of any? In any case, please participate in the discussion. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 17:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

commented there. DGG ( talk ) 02:54, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Library cat

Hello DGG: I accepted Library cat from AfC, and per your background in library science (et al.), please feel free to check it out, improve it, etc. if you have the time or interest. Best regards, Northamerica1000^(talk) 13:34, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Request for input in drafting potential guidelines

Hi. There are, at present, no particular clear guidelines for religious material here, or, for that matter, guidelines for how to deal with ideas in general, particularly those ideas which might be accepted as true by individuals of a given religious, political, or scientific stance. There have been attempts in the past to draft such guidelines, but they have quickly been derailed. I am dropping this note on the talk pages of a number of editors who I believe have some interest in these topics, or have shown some ability and interest in helping to develop broad topic areas, such as yourself, and asking them to review the material at User:John Carter/Guidelines discussion and perhaps take part in an effort to decide what should be covered in such guidelines, should they be determined useful, and what phrasing should be used. I also raise a few questions about broader possible changes in some things here, which you might have some more clear interest in. I would be honored to have your input. John Carter (talk) 22:09, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative

Could you clean up the promo language and emphasis on activities not really noted by independent sources? I have a feeling your tax dollars were at work in the creation of that article. 86.121.18.17 (talk) 12:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Duckduckgo

DGG, I noticed some article creations by User:Duckduckgo (who probably needs a namechange anyway, as this is the name of a company), and at his talk page, I noticed your comment "I know this has been discussed in the past, and I know that what you are doing has been discouraged, so it disappoints me that you are still doing it." If this is a new user, thne your comment is rather WP:BITEy, as that user is probably not aware of this being discouraged. If he is not a new user (which seems not unlikely), then it seems probable that he is one of those users that used to create DNB articles but are now blocked. The lack of edit summaries or "own" writing in these DNB articles makes it of course harder to detect the possible sockmaster. The teahouse invitations he sends to new users may be a clue though. The "clever" name as well.

Do you have any further evidence or indications that this is a returned (blocked) user? Fram (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I tend to look at the articlem not the contributor. I wrote that in fact before I saw the name of the user, as I had seen the exact same thing yesterday on several other recently submitted pages, which I shall now try to collect. As you say, the idea of doing this could occur to more than one person, but I think I recall seeing it on figures of a similar very slight degree of importance. I have also see the old (and in fact the new dnb cited as a source for people who are only mentioned, not the subjects of articles or receiving substantial coverage themselves. I'll try to find some of these also.

Fram, when you comeback to see this, take a look at the item just above. It's .gov, but not a US-PD source. DGG ( talk ) 14:31, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the swift reply. I'll try to look at this and the thing above tomorrow! Fram (talk) 14:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Eric A. Spiegel

Can I ask you why the copyright violation is being ignored. Never mind I see what you did...sorry spoke to soon. :- ) Moxy (talk) 22:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

DGG -- A BIG thank you for your help in getting me started on fixing this. I see what you did and now understand. Many, many thanks! CRHassettVA4 (talk) 23:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I rewrote it entirely. The copyvio from the source listed was only in the first paragraphs, but I assumed the rest was copyvio also and I rewrote them also, as well as changing the general pattern of the article to our style. I rarely do it for business executives, but he seems important enough.

For anyone watching, there are some internal signs of promotional-style biographies for businessmen that are almost always copyvio as well (besides the obvious giveaway of a statement of how important the company is, and especially a statement of how important their duties were in previous positions in the firm.)

Headings that use <big> instead of our formatting

Placing the education at the end, with a final sentence of about spouse and children.

Not giving the positions in chronological order, and often not including earlier positions except the one just before coming to the firm.

The corresponding signs for academics are slightly different, depending on whether they're done by a central office or by the individual. For senior administrators they characteristically include multiple junior executive positions and in-university awards. For any faculty, if the individual wrote it, it will often includes full details of all publications however minor; if the central office, it will omit most exact titles, especially for journal articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Local interest topics again

Hi DGG, a while back I asked you for your position on local interest topics. I think you may have forgotten about it. Could you see if you can find the time to give it another swing? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

As before, the problem is maintaining them free from promotionalism. The more local the organization, the more likely it is that any available sources will be essentially press releases. for example, I've got this problem in my own neighborhood, Boerum Hill: there are a number of interesting creative projects of various genres, as well as some fascinating stores, all with good coverage in the fairly respectable local paper, but that paper will essentially write an article on anything in the general area, and will say more or less what the proprietors tell it. (The paper's political coverage I do trust, and i could use it to justify articles on every city councilman and community board member in the Brooklyn, not to mention the losing candidates, but I don't want to push it against the consensus they aren't notable ) So Iwait until the NYTimes or at least New York covers something in a substantial way--New York may be a bit of a tabloid sometimes, but it isn't a PR outlet. I love local journalism. I even read it when I don't know the area--it shows the way people live, in all their variety. If we could maintain the articles, I might want to do it.

The best hope for this is a local wiki. The attempts at a local wiki in NYC haven't really taken off--there are insufficient people in any one neighborhood who understand, and the ones that exist tend to be dominated by the real estate agents and local attorneys. Or possibly something built around Open Street Maps--that sort of a geographical interface makes sense. Or a combined wiki, Wikipedia Two, still maintaining NPOV and sourcing, but not requiring notability and not all that strict on promotionalism.

actually, I'd like a three way split, WP, the general encyclopedia; WP 2 for local content, and WP+, for academically reviewed material. Citizendium offered promise for that third part, but it 's manner or working drove off too many of the good people. I in fact joined it as one of the original group of expert editors, but I didn't get along with Larry, and if you didn't support him, there was no place for you there. DGG ( talk ) 06:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses. Reading what you say, and thinking about my own experiences, the problem here is that local newspapers are reliable on some subjects, but aren't necessarily reliable on all subjects. Because of that, we have no objective measure on how useful inclusion in a local newspaper is as a measure for inclusion in Wikipedia, and some organisations and individuals will take advantage off that to inject their self-promotion in to Wikipedia, so you prefer to rely on other sources that make it easier to draw a clear line. Is that roughly it, or am I just filling in my own perspective? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I prefer to rely on other methods than using the GNG to make it possible to draw a clear line. Decisions under the GNG come down to the details of what counts as reliable especially with respect to the key words "substantial" and "independent." Depending on what one wants to include or exclude, questions of what is a RS for notability purposes can often be rationally argued either way. But I've learned to work with the GNG, since it is unfortunately still the rule and likely to remain so.

And our key problem now is dealing with promotionalism. It's hard enough to deal with it in articles on major organizations--our standards for what we've accepted before were incredibly lax, and probably 90% of the articles on commercial and non-commercial organizations need to be rewritten. I'm reluctant to start including any thing that would add to the problem. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Mentioned you...

at User talk:Yngvadottir#Arkiv för nordisk filologi. Just thought it would be fair to let you know. --Hegvald (talk) 13:27, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks, I'll be making a response there. DGG ( talk ) 00:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've now made a response. Let me know if I can help with anything. DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Wayra

Hi there. I noticed that you PROD on Wayra as being a non-notable business incubator, which expired on June 24th 2013. I would like to discuss this with you. Wayra is now the world's biggest technology incubator, and has academies in 14 countries. I am the CEO of a current member company. There are many press articles about Wayra in both Europe and Latin America. In the UK alone 28 companies either have been or are going through the incubator currently.

Wayra has also now partnered with UnLtd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnLtd to create a joint social-business incubator called Wayra UnLtd. Again, there is much press coverage and independent coverage from non-profit organisations about this new incubator that establishes notability to some degree.

Wayra was opened by Boris Johnson, is run by Telefonica, has had guests such as HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and numerous politicians, leading investors, etc visit it or mentor at it.

Are you willing to consider allowing me to contribute a neutral, informational piece on Wayra that establishes notability? In many ways it is more notable than Techstars for its breadth and reach, yet Techstars seems to have little problem securing a page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techstars

Thanks! JonathanMayUK (talk) 16:51, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

It was only deleted by the WP:PROD deletion mechanism, and since anyone could have stopped the deletion while the prod was running, our practice is that it will be restored for any good faith editor who wants to work on it. I will restore it to your user space as User:JonathanMayUK/Wayra.

Please read WP:CORP and WP:COI before you begin editing. Remember that the references must be references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases. They have to discuss the company not just record an investment or acquisition, and be written by independent writers and journalists show make it clear they are not just repeating the press releases.

That its the largest in its field is relevant, but not determinative, but you must have a source for it. That any of the companies have been substantial enough for WP articles would help. That notable people have visited there is usually not even relevant. It's done for the PR value, and we see no reason to repeat it.

It must provide information that a general reader coming across he name of the company would want to know, not directed at those who might want to participate or contribute. It can mention the social purpose of the group, but not talk extensively about its worthy intentions . It needs not discuss the principles of company law in the uK under which it is organised & regulated. It must not use adjectives of praise, the material given should show the notability so obviously that it isn't necessary.

The article UnLtd is not very satisfactory for many of these reasons, It uses words like "outstanding", It does not say what it has actually accomplished in the 13 years it has been operating , and not a single one of its references are really satisfactory, except the first one which can be used as a basis for the plain facts. At present, unless I, you, or someone fixes it, it is very likely to be deleted.

Techstars may have apparently written by a PR firm specializing in writing of WP , for it shows the characteristic hallmarks: about half of it is an anecdotal account of the formation of the company, which is of interest only to the principals and their immediate families. But it does the rest well: it shows the accomplishments, including formation of companies with articles here, many of its references are good. It needs editing, not deletion. I do that sort of editing & I'll clean it up tonight, if you want to look at it tomorrow.

After you've rewritten the article--try to do it within a week--, let me know here, and i will move it to mainspace if it is good enough. Let me know too, if you decide to add some ref showing accomplishments to UnLtd, I can fix it up also. Describe your joint enterprise in your own article, and refer to it in the Unltd one. DGG ( talk ) 01:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:COIN#Fairleigh Dickinson University

Hi DGG, I thought you should be aware that Mfuzia responded to your block proposal a few days ago. Crcorrea hasn't responded, though he/she hasn't made an edit since February 19 so I wouldn't expect a response. --Nstrauss (talk) 18:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

thanks, I followed up,saying I do not plan to do anything unless there are further problems if there are, please let me know,for I do not havetime to recheck everything that I ideally would want to. DGG ( talk ) 01:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Paulie Malignaggi vs. Adrien Broner

I created that article a few months before the fight and not one contribution was made to this day. And you say it needs updating, but who's gonna do it? Cause I'm not. I only create them and start with the basics. --2Nyce 11:43, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

As you say, it is much more fun starting articles than maintaining them. Unfortunately, an encyclopedia needs updating, and a project dependent upon volunteers most of whom are active for only a few years at best, will always have difficulties in this. But the solution is not to delete the articles you are personally no longer interested in. The short term fix is to mark them as needing updating--and possibly call attention of the closest working group to the problem. Ultimately, it's getting more participants with a wide range of interests, and our continuing usefulness depends on this. In another direction, our developing use of structured metadata will make some things easier to maintain including eventually even sports results. To some degree, a reliance upon technology is what has not only gotten us started, but may keep us going. DGG ( talk ) 01:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Stephane Bancel

Hi D. I'm politely requesting you review Stephane Bancel. A large number of delete "votes" from Randolph, Arlington, and Boston IPs. I deleted some promo fluff from the page that clouded the picture. Some of the sources are in French, which are by my read RS with clear editorial oversight and an identifiable author. My question: Do you think the subject is notable? NaturalScholar (talk) 01:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I shall look, but it's better when asking someone to look at an ongoing discussion, not to frame the question for them, but to let them evaluate what factors to look at all on their own. DGG ( talk ) 03:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the IPs, I do think that there may be some socking going on. I'll provide a little background. A couple of days ago, I discovered IP 24 deleting the article part by part. I reverted their edits and the IP started a conversation on my talk page [17]. I told the IP would look at the article and give them my view of its notability. I told them that though marginal, I thought he was notable enough not to get deleted in AfD. The IP then found evidence that the article with the correct spelling of the first name had previously been deleted in AfD. I decided that it would be best to send it through the AfD process again and I also hoped to show a potentially problematic IP how things are properly done here. I think the latter goal did not work.--I am One of Many (talk) 17:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you want to show anyone how things are properly done, AfD is not a good place. If you want to show them how to get things done here, then it does do that. DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

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• 20 Universities by [[Commission on Higher Education (Philippines)|Commission on Higher Education]] (CHED, The Tourism and Hospitality Management Education, Center of Excellence is the only
• * Isagani Yambot, [[Philippine Inquirer]] publisher ]

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• *[

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• .'' The Quest for Wisdom, Thoughts on the Bhagawadgita.'' Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1993. (translation of two Kannada works ''Gītagāmbhīrya'' and ''Gītādarpaṇa''

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Synechron

You PROD'd Synechron in early June, so I think I ought to inform you I've nominated it for deletion. There's a somewhat complicated history both there and at Synechron Technologies, which was AfD'd earlier - after realising it was essentially a recreation of an earlier version of Synechron, I closed that AfD early, made it a redirect, and nominated the original article. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Naming dilemma

Hi DGG. I stumbled on a stub article today: John McCabe (author). He's Professor of Molecular Endocrinology at the University of Birmingham but also a novelist. The thing is, his real name is Christopher John McCabe. As a scientist (his primary career), he is known as Chris McCabe. As a novelist, he has two pseudonyms: John McCabe and John Macken. He deliberately does this to keep the science and novelist careers separate. I somehow feel the current title is not quite right, but am unsure as to what is the optimal one, and what redirects (if any) could be titled. What do you think? To confuse things even further, we have an article about another writer with the same name: John McCabe (writer). Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The best way to go for this one is to use the full name, Christopher John McCabe, with redirects from the others, and say more or less what you have just written in the lede paragraph. LC uses "McCabe, John (C. John)", but LC is concerned with him primarily as an author, whereas from the point of view of an encyclopedia, the notability seems equal. As for qualifiers, instead of author and writer, use (novelist) for his name as a novelist and (biologist) for his name as a biologist; for the other person, use (biographer) DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks DGG. I'll make the move and redirects later today. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me some (as always) good advice. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 05:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Blackboard Inc. history

Hi there, DGG. I just noticed that when you moved over the new version of the Blackboard article, the history prior was deleted. Was that just not replaced after a histmerge? Not being an admin, I'm not well-versed in these things—but would it be easy to add back? Cheers, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 21:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not particularly good at such manipulations; perhaps someone seeing this will help DGG ( talk ) 03:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, no worries. I'll see if I can find a sysop hangout and hopefully someone else can handle it. Best, WWB Too (Talk · COI) 18:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Article protection

I see you protected Paulie Malignaggi vs. Adrien Broner. You think you can do the same for Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya. A sock user continues to revert and vandalize the the proffesional boxing records. I tried to request for protection but I was declined for some reason, even though protection was approved for the same exact thing for other articles requested in the past. --2Nyce 12:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I have semi protected for a few days only, in whatever state they happened to be in. You must get resolution of the question of how to display the records in tables before making additional changes. I suggest you ask for opinions from the workgroup, or from other editors who have worked on articles in the subject who have not yet spoken about this issue. DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC) .

Comment on AN/I Discussion

Hi, I made a comment addressing some points you made on my AN/I discussion at [18].Thanks! Factor-ies (talk) 08:37, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

User council

That was a truly extraordinarily brilliant statement. Let's hope the truly important people in the Foundation are following that discussion. My fear is that they are probably not, and that if a consensus is reached in support, they will then chime in and declare such a council as having no authority. Individually or as a body, they've already demonstrated in no uncertain terms in the past that they will not hesitate to disregard what the volunteers want and will continue to press for developments that they 'think' the community should have. The problem of communication has always been an issue - when the WMF doesn't want to know, it puts its hands over its ears. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not actually opposed to the latest developments: I find some of the features of the notification interface quite useful, and I'm very glad we have the visual editor, though for the sort of thing I mostly do, it's not yet useful. But it's allowing the NYC chapter to plan workshops in WP editing for non computer-literate groups that we could not previously have reached. And when I show it to computer-literate people who think the wikitext too much of a bother, they all say they're more likely to actually edit. The main thing the Foundation did wrong here is not having it years ago, and if they over-reacted by putting this one out before it was really ready, I can understand it. And I myself think I could adapt to any editing environment--any regular editor here should be able to do that.

But this would have been so much easier had they told us properly what they're doing, and asked our opinion, and persisted till they got consensus support, just as you and I must do if we want to make changes. Not all their views about communication are irrational; a good case could be made that it's the present in-project system of communication we have fallen into that is ridiculous, and I can see why they have such difficulty learning it. But if you want to talk to people and convince them, you have to learn their language. Trying to make them learn your superior ways is the arrogance of last century's imperialism. It developed together with modern capitalism, and elaborate NGOs and educational institutions, and those who come here with background in the corporate or formal institutional world tend to regard us as unenlightened primitives whose chaotic structure is incapable of actual function. Thus I have a practical suggestion, that everyone hired by the foundation, spend their first month in an apprenticeship editing a WP project on topics of their own choice, and helping with our housekeeping, and continue to do so for maybe 10% of their time, out on the shop floor with the working people. Even the missionary and anthropologist expected to earn respect from knowing the natives on their own terms. The proposals for having selected persons as intermediates is like an anthropologist using only translators.

Of course, by our own lights, it's our pattern of working that it the true one, and the chaos only apparent. We are here not for technical or vocational reasons in the usual sense, but to build a major work for the benefit of mankind on a principle of equal collaboration. Our idealism is not just a corporate slogan, but our continuing motivation. And the reason we expect our way to be followed and respected is that we've actually succeeded--we've made something more functional and helpful than we would have dreamed possible when we started, and certainly one of greater size and importance than all the critics thought we'd every be able to do--the conventional wisdom was that we'd collapse at 1/4 our present size. Now the theorists must rethink the way humans can work in groups based on the way we and multitudes of other such groups have succeeded in working.

Of course we're imperfect. We have not solved all the problems of human interactions. We need skilled people coming in from outside to keep us vital, and prevent us from self-complacency. That most of the experienced editors edit for 4 years at most is actually is a good thing. Those working here are mostly people at their most experimental and creative periods, and also an increasing number who have wide practical experience. Our role is not necessarily to work in our old ways, but to teach the new people how to develop their own ways, but in a manner that will not destroy what has been already accomplished. We are rationally afraid of outsiders coming in to solve our problems, and leave us a desert. DGG ( talk ) 22:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

"they will not hesitate to disregard what the volunteers want and will continue to press for developments that they 'think' the community should have" That's for sure. PumpkinSky talk 02:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Second opinion

I wanted to ask if you could give a second opinion on this section of the Yelp inc. page. I originally had this under History. It has since then been substantially expanded and move into a "Controversy" section, before the feedback came in that we should avoid such names. I still feel it could be trimmed about 30% and should be moved back to History. For example, some of the individual accusations of Yelp manipulating reviews are only cited to local press or a Forbes blogger and are not as prominent as those that there were high-profile lawsuits for. There is some excessive wordiness, etc. But before I make specific suggestions, I would want to make sure that I am correct generally. I would like to avoid the appearance of micro-managing and lobbying in controversial areas. CorporateM (Talk) 15:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

responded there. DGG ( talk ) 22:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! It's a good thing I did not push for trims. CorporateM (Talk) 00:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you think I can borrow you again here? If I have not over-burdened you with my requests yet. It is valuable to have input from someone that you can be confident will be correct. CorporateM (Talk) 00:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

List of French football transfers winter 2013

WP:CRYSTAL does apply - winter 2013 is transfers in December 2013– January 2014 i.e. very much the future! Off to AFD I go...GiantSnowman 09:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

you may very well be right, in which case it will probably be deleted. It's good the decision isn;t left to one person, who, like me, may be ignorant DGG ( talk ) 13:52, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Comment on AN/I Discussion

Hi, I posted a comment that I thought you might be interested in at the AN/I discussion board.

Thanks, Factor-ies (talk) 09:17, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

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Another PROF for you

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Elly Tanaka. I don't have access to the more serious sources that would be required to this one justice. Hope you're well. Best, --j⚛e decker^talk 00:30, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

done. thanks. DGG ( talk ) 02:01, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Qanci

I'm sorry. I had no idea replacing the tag was not allowed. I came across your comment about merging articles and since all the info was already found on the Drinking horn page, I assumed the problem of merging was already taken care of.--69.143.107.68 (talk) 02:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Qanci

Whoops, apologies, now restored. GiantSnowman 08:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Ruby McGregor-Smith

Hi. Instead of just posting warning boxes at the top of the article, could you please explain on the Talk Page your argument for flagging the article as being written like an advertisement and the content having been copied and pasted? It has been over a month and nothing has been discussed. Thanks, Vivj2012 (talk) 10:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Promotional:use of adjectives of praise

copyvio: first section copied almost word for word from [19] DGG ( talk ) 15:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Deon Swiggs

It has been already voted to keep by Admins, so I will be removing the box you have placed on the article. Please do not go on a deleting spree. Thanks (talk) 10 July 2013 (NZST)

the AfD will decide, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deon Swiggs. I've been wrong before, and that's the purpose of AfD. to see what others think. I suggest that a more compact and less hagiographic article might help persuade people to keep it. DGG ( talk ) 15:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Conoley

Thank you for reviewing the article I am putting together on Jane Close Conoley. I would like to move the article back to Jane Close Conoley, as that is the form of her name that she prefers and uses in her publications, at public speaking events, professionally, as a professor, and as an administrator. Close is her maiden name, and she uses Close Conoley as a compound surname.

The other edits make complete sense to me, and in fact I was going through and deleting significant sections of what had been in her CV. I have also begun tracking down additional secondary sources to use to cite and to build the narrative portions of the article.

yes, I saw your good edits. I moved the page back again--our practices here vary. DGG ( talk ) 01:31, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Merton Professor of English Language at the University of Oxford - notable?

Hi DGG! I wonder if you had time to offer some advice on an AFC submission. Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Suzanne Romaine seems light on significant coverage in secondary sources, and has been declined at AfC for a paragraph about the person's academic work not having inline citations. The creator of the submission has asked about this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk#Review of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Suzanne Romaine. The person seems perhaps to meet WP:PROF (criterion 5?) and seems to be an academic of some significance. What do you think? Arthur goes shopping (talk) 17:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

• Unquestionably notable. One of the provisions of WP:PROF is a named professorship at a major university. Nothing further has to be proven, and official sources do to prove it. DGG ( talk ) 23:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC) .

Concerning Kevin Nicholson (Coach).....

....I have denied the speedy deletion; I know you are much more knowledgeable about deletions then me, and if you deem it speedy-worthy...well, I still see the claim to be the "...the youngest professional youth team manager.." as enough to avoid outright deletion. Cheers and happy editing. Lectonar (talk) 18:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

by all means decline any deletion you're not sure about--that's the point of having two admins work on them. (I sent this one to AfD ) The speedy criteria are supposed to be unambiguous, but in practice everything but the extreme cases has a wider range of interpretation. And, I make mistakes. Some admins claim otherwise, and I pretend to believe them. DGG ( talk ) 01:36, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Toll

Hi DGC. These divisions are huge and in terms of revenue and sales are bigger than some companies. Toll is big in Australia, Europe and Asia. I have only really started the articles. I think others will contribute to them.

Toll is really six very different companies using the toll brand. They have achieved their current size by acquiring many smaller companies around the world some of which have wikipedia pages. I believe that the next part of the process is to move the content from these the old articles into one of the six new articles. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_IPEC , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Aviation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Priority are all part of Toll Global Express and this content needs to be migrated to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Global_Express page. So I think that this means that there will be fewer pages in Wikipedia about Toll not more. I know that some Wikipedia editors get overprotective about their work so I am concerned about the reaction that I will get when I suggest on the talk page of these articles that they be effectively closed down and their content moved to the "History" section of the Toll Global Express page. Do you have any advice for best practices in regards to this process? Thanks for the help with the referencing. Regards --PinkAechFas (talk) 19:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it would in any case be a good idea to start there, merging the smallest, so I will support you. But please declare any conflict of interest; not that there need be any, for I have cleaned up similar article groups in the same way as you are proposing. DGG ( talk ) 23:04, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Michael Johns (policy analyst)

Hi DGG,

It looks like you are watching the Michael Johns page and wanted to inform you that I was going to be moving it to Michael Johns (business executive). Let me know if this causes any problems for you. Josiah2013 (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

If he had been only a business executive as vp of a company, would he been notable? But not worth arguing, a which is my general view about titles. DGG ( talk ) 01:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

George C. Prendergast

Hi, it looks like you accepted new article George C. Prendergast on 20th June, but unfortunately there already exists article George C. Prendergast (American oncologist and molecular biologist) which looks like the same man...GrahamHardy (talk) 15:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

same man, but the sequence is more complicated. George C. Prendergast (American oncologist and molecular biologist) article was started as User:Sciencestar27/sandbox on May 20, moved to AfC by another review of July 5, and accepted on July 6. So that's the duplicate. More important, I probably shouldn't have acceptedthe AfC without editing it further. I will merge the articles and do that a little later today. DGG ( talk ) 18:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

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Dorothy Johnston

I've come across two articles, The White Tower (Johnston novel) and Eden (Johnston novel), which you recently proposed for merger into their author's article — but the title that you proposed to merge them into was not actually Dorothy Johnston, the author of the novels, but Dorothy Johnson, a redirect to a different and unrelated person who had nothing whatsoever to do with them. So I just wanted to let you know that I've revised both of your nominations to point them to the correct target. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:43, 12 July 2013 (UTC) thanks -- DGG ( talk ) 15:19, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Discussion on AfC at the Village Pump: AFC ruining Wikipedi

FYI: A discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#WikiProject Articles for creation Threatens to Ruin Wikipedia. I fully understood and respect your opinions on ACTRIAL - I have only added abot ACTRIAL as useful background - I am under no illusions that it, or anything like it are likely to be introdued. I am equally fully aware of your concerns for the state of AfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

A long discussion, but one sentence is enough for me to explain why with increasing experience there I increasingly consider it a disaster:

The insoluble problem with AfC is that the WP crowd sourcing method requires participation by multiple people to improve an article, but having just one random person give advice can work only when there's a very high probability that single person will be an expert, which is not the case at WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Curriculum of the Waldorf schools

Hi, this is a friendly heads-up that I took off the POV tag from this article awaiting an actual discussion or dispute on the talk page, which (the tag mentions) is supposed to exist first. Please open this, explaining what the issues are, and then re-add the tag. Thanks! hgilbert (talk) 11:43, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Re-reading, I used a more exact tag, on both it and the main article. I've added a mention why on each. I'm not sure how extensively I will have time to get involved in this closed circle of articles, but I call attention to problems when I see them. DGG ( talk ) 05:50, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

OK...if you do have time, it would be helpful if you can point to a few exemplary and specific issues. People have sometimes asked for more criticism integrated into the article, for example, but we need to find reliable sources to draw this from (blogs and personal websites not really qualifying here). hgilbert (talk) 09:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I did comment; but we need to find discussions of their methods in general works dealing with the topic of elementary and secondary educational curriculums. They seem prominent enough that I would expect them to be easily findable, though not perhaps on line. The main article seems to have some relevant material that could be used. If it truly hard to find outside their own publications, then it's similar to the problem we have with many topics: if nobody from the main stream of discussion has covered their methods , are they notable outside their own group ? DGG ( talk ) 15:57, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Emil Le Giang

Hi, Please undelete please article about Slovak footballer Emil Le Giang, who plays for FC Nitra and he made his Corgoň Liga debut for FC Nitra on 13 July 2013 against AS Trenčín.[20] Thanks! IQual (talk) 07:37, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

that article was written -- and deleted -- two years ago at an earlier stage in his career. Normally, iI would suggest just writing a new article, but I see there is enough in the previous article that it would be easier to add the material to what is already there. So, altho I am not an expert in this subject. I am simply undeleting it. Please add the new material promptly, and do not forget to update the infobox. DGG ( talk ) 05:55, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit description

Thanks for your edit description here, it's much nicer and more informative than the usual form message that gets left. --TKK ^{bark !} 00:32, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

deletion of Certified Penetration Testing Consultant

Thank you for deleting the Morning277 articles I tagged fro CSD G5. However, the block on Arifhasan23 was removed after I tagged Certified Penetration Testing Consultant. I wrongly decided not to remove the tag. —rybec 02:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

restored. Thanks for letting me know, because this in the 1/2 of 1% of false positives in this group of several hundred socks. DGG ( talk ) 08:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for restoring the page. I don't believe it's a false positive, but I'll take that up with the admin who unblocked. —rybec 15:02, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, there are problems in how to deal with this and the similar not quite certain cases in the group. There are two possible ways of thinking about them: In the past, we have usually tended to AGF; at present, the extent of the problem is inclining us otherwise. My own feeling is still to use G11 instead of G5 when in doubt, but to use G11 rather more liberally than in the past. I think others feel the same about G11 at least--in practice, the G11 criterion is becoming "too promotional to be worth fixing" DGG ( talk ) 00:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

After you restored the page, I took a closer look at it and identified several more accounts that look like sock-puppets. I belatedly realized that I should have looked more carefully at all those other articles, too. I also read a remark by Dennis Brown explaining that deletion would make investigation more difficult. Is there a way to make them viewable again, in furtherance of the SPI, without causing too much work for the administrators, and is that something you'd be willing to do (I was thinking temporary undeletion, moving to subpages of the SPI, moving to my user space, or use of Special:Export)? Here's a list that includes most of the deleted articles (namely, the ones I had watch-listed and which were recently deleted):

Extended content

4Cabling Aasted American Writers and Artists Inc. Amvona Bizible Brendan Wallace Brosix (Company) Bunndle CHMB (company) Campus Apartments Certified Disaster Recovery Engineer Chris Hobart ClassDojo Cleeng Confio CrowdOptic DDC Advocacy David Kiger David Schwedel (entrepreneur) Digital Prospectors Corporation Dominique Molina Echopass Emmanuel Gregory Lemelson Ethan Bearman Fundology Game Cooks GatherSpace (company) Genius Inside Global Met Coal Corporation Go Try It On GroundWork Heel That Pain (company) Heliospectra ITelagen Inflection (company) Inigral John Uustal Jonathan Cardella Junk It! Legitmix Loyaltyworks (company) MarketLive Max Cartier MediCortex Mike Macadaan Misty Lown Neal Creighton, Sr Network Capital NewYorkStay ONEHOPE Oren Laurent PCN Technology (company) PeopleSmart Pneuron PressPad RepairClinic.com ResumeBear Review Boost (company) SJ (musician) Security Innovation SocialSoft Steven M. Neil Sweetcouch TableTopics Talk:Brendan Wallace Talk:Confio Talk:CrowdOptic Talk:David Kiger Talk:Dominique Molina Talk:Ethan Bearman Talk:Fundology Talk:Genius Inside Talk:Kevin R. Foote Talk:Legitmix Talk:Max Cartier Talk:Mike Macadaan Talk:NewYorkStay Talk:ONEHOPE Talk:Oren Laurent Talk:RepairClinic.com Talk:SJ (musician) Talk:Steven M. Neil Talk:Tee Ashira Talk:Tom Dyson Talk:Tsebo Outsourcing Group Talk:WorldEscape Tee Ashira Telly (website) Tom Dyson Tom Hoban (entrepreneur) Tom Kemp (entrepreneur) Tsebo Outsourcing Group Virool Waterfield Group WorldEscape Zipwhip

I realize that this request is likely to be annoying and I'm sorry, but I hadn't made an SPI report before. I don't mind going to Deletion Review but thought I'd ask you first. —rybec 20:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

deletion of Gordon Kahn (architect)

Hi, I looked at the google cache for this article, he seems notable, and the article didn't seem to be particularly bad. Why was it summarily deleted? it doesn't make sense - even if it was created by a blocked user, others had edited it, so it should have gotten a chance, even an AFD for example. Can you restore it so we can decide as a community whether to delete? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

See the discussion at WP:AN] This particular group of socks, based around User:Morning277 and User:MooshiePorkFace is so much a problem, and their actions in inserting hundreds of promotional articles on non notable or at best borderline subjects, presumably for money, is so repugnant to the spirit of a honest encyclopedia, that it fully justifies the use of G5. As you probably know, I have never been a supporter of the blanket use of this deletion criterion, in cases where the reason for block or ban is unrelated to the article, But this is a case where we need to take drastic action in own defense, to prevent the degeneration of WP into a mere vehicle for advertising. Some few of the subjects about which these socks have written may merit an article, in which case you or some other responsible editor should write it from scratch. I am not deleting these articles without looking at them. This particular article showed the characteristic problems: the notability is as an architect, but half the article was devoted to the careers of the subject's parents and the activities of the subject unrelated to notability. Why? because there happened to be sources. This is a dishonest approach to the construction of bad articles, and we must not tolerate it. DGG ( talk ) 08:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I didn't know about the promotional-stub-creation. Though it's odd someone would have paid money for that. Ok thanks anyway.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:45, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Admin's Barnstar
	thank u 3bdulelah (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll try may best to find English sources. all what I have now are Arabic ones. the problems is that most of the media call most of the armed opposition groups as FSA 3bdulelah (talk) 07:45, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Arabic sources are fine. Just give a translation of a key sentence. DGG ( talk ) 15:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Declined Bonobos

Hey DGG, I declined the speedy on Bonobos. The article had some RS, so it was just enough to where I thought it wouldn't pass cleanly as a speedy. I've found a few sources but notability is still in question. I think this one is better served as an AfD. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:48, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

apparently another admin deleted it. My current view is that any article containing a sentence or two about the motivation for forming the company is suspect. And see the following comment on my page. It feels a little like Dec 7. DGG ( talk ) 15:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

"Identified (company)" - see history

Hi DGG. Do you think this might be linked to the Morning277 sock-farm? I motice it contains a link to a article about a person that was recently G:5 selted by you, and seems to be related. Pete --Shirt58 (talk) 12:01, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

yes. At this point I think we need to at least think about the possibility for every article on a small and medium size company in that and related subjects. DGG ( talk ) 15:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Just to let you know I've declined the G11 tag on the article as I don't think it's solely promotional. That said, I didn't read this little exchange until after that, so sorry if I've trampled on the sock investigation. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 10:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Innovations Exchange

Hi DGG, I see your point. I am going to set up a time to talk with Blue Raspberry to get more guidance. I would like to be able to contribute in a meaningful way. Thanks, Tom — Preceding unsigned comment added by FieldsTom (talk • contribs) 12:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

AFD Round #2

I've filed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deal Angel (company) (2nd nomination), since the first AFD, which you closed, was heavily tainted by sockpuppets. Thanks. Reaper Eternal (talk) 01:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

reasonable thing to do. Are there others that need relisting? DGG ( talk ) 01:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Kuningan City deletion request

Hi DGG, I have replied on my talk page. Best regards --Shorty23sin (talk) 06:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of EDP Energias do Brasil

Hi, DGG. I agree that the reason for deleted (creation by sock) is valid and serious. However, I have understandings that this is usually used for newly created articles, not for articles which have been for years and have been edited by number of other editors. Is there any other reason for deletion in addition to G5? The company itself is notable, so maybe you could restore the last version to my user space and I will clean it up before recreating? The problem with Edson Rosa's socks is that if we delete all articles what they have created, we should delete most of articles about Brazilian companies (and also some others from other countries). And it is impossible to stop his current editing as he uses dynamic IP from the Sao Paolo region. Beagel (talk) 07:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that that is a consideration, but it should also be weighed against rewarding socks. If they know that the articles they create will remain, no matter how they create them, we keep the incentive for others to pay socks to continue to do this and it is getting way out of hand Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Morning277--I am One of Many (talk) 07:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Right. It's not impossible to stop the current editing. If we manage to remove all the articles now present, and continue to remove them as they get submitted, then there will be no incentive for that editor to continue. It's the only defense we have. (I did not previously think this way, but the problems we have now been finding are so severe, that they threaten the objectivity of the encyclopedia, and it's time for emergency measures. I agree there's a problem about removing such a large body of content, and the articles should be rewritten. Perhaps the time to rewrite them will be a little while in the future, once we get this editor to stop--and to rewrite them without any of their work in the edit history. I can certainly make the material available to use the references as a base for such rewriting, but perhaps it would be wise to wait. I see only one alternative solution, which is to require identification from editors, and that is such as drastic change in our principles that it is not yet time to propose it. It would be a serious compromise in our mission, but it's a better alternative than permitting promotional editing. We would lose truly open editing, but we'd still have an encyclopedia. DGG ( talk ) 07:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

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Your work in editing the article on Keith N Schoville

DGG,

Thank you very much for editing the page that I started on Keith N. Schoville. This was my first attempt at creating a page and I was not clear at all as to why it kept getting rejected. One thing that you said in my talk page was " It is necessary to source the books to a reliable source, which is not the books themselves;". I did not realize this -- so thank you for pointing it out.

You also wrote "In some cases, it's not clear the extent of the contribution, whether he wrote the entire work, edited it, or wrote a single chapter--it makes a considerable difference". I have a personal copy of most of the books and it should be easy to determine the answer. How should I indicate that he was the author of the entire work?

Bruce Kissinger (talk)

get worldcat refs for the books and add them--it shows the details and discriminates editor from author, and the entry has a list of who did which chapters. Another thing which will help is about the commentaries--some are clearly aimed at students, and showing they are widely used meets WP:PROF. DGG ( talk ) 22:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Busman's holiday

FYI: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Decline of library usage. Warden (talk) 16:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, there is nothing more amusing that taking a statistical report from an organization and finding the holes in it. I used to take library statistics and do this for my class--nice to have another opportunity. Unlike then, I have other things to do, or I could have kept going for pages. Academic grade for the article, B+ (as of the time it was written--if someone presented it now it would be a B- for outdated sources), grade for the deletion argument, C-. DGG ( talk ) 23:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

StarCraft commentator multi

I left a note on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nick Plott and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dan Stemkoski about combining the two into a multi since any contention would likely be similar. czar · · 06:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

sure. I don't do it because it has to be done manually, & the manual AfD procedure is a nuisance. Until there was a script, I almost never nominated for AfD, nor do I do processes like spi or any other multistage procedure, & I try to find an alternative to the formal copyright problems board. Figuring out what to do is difficult enough. When people build something using computer programs, they should know enow enough to automate the procedures for using it. "Know enough" both technically and in having the sense to make it a priority. DGG ( talk ) 16:08, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

deleted page (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

hi DGG, I am working for Cheil Worldwide, an advertising agency located in South Korea. Yesterday, I found out the company information on Wiki was pretty outdated so made some changes. There are lots of other contents to be added and/or revised. However this morning I found out it was deleted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheil_Worldwide 17:51, 16 July 2013 DGG (talk | contribs) deleted page Cheil Worldwide (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)

I don't understand what I was trying to umambiguously advertise or promote on the Wikipedia, but if you could let me know which sentences were such cases, that would be appreciated. Would you be able to retrieve the Cheil_Worldwide article please? If you'd like to have more conversation, you can reach me at soomee.moon at cheil.com (I am not familiar with Wikipedia system to be honest, so trying to learn about it step by step.) thanks, Soomee — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moonsoomee (talk • contribs)

I shall look at the other article you mentioned.[Moonsoomee has not mentioned any other article. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 15:52, 18 July 2013 (UTC)] The problem about promotionalism with the one you wrote are first, the use of extravagantly promotional language: it's "thousands of global employees create ideas that move brands, products and people from nearly 40 offices in 33 countries. ... delivers innovative communications strategies that drive business results ... creativity is world renown, ..." Second, the attempt to list the executives of all the divisions, and the very long list of services in the infobox, all of which are totally routine for an advertising agency. The article was nominated for deletion by a reliable editor, and any admin here would unquestionably have deleted it. Even were this rewritten, you have no usable references according to the WP:GNG. The AdAge material is not visible, though I will try to find a place to see it. (if it is widely available in subscribing libraries, it's usable, if it's more restrictive, it isn't--but it in any case needs a specific link or reference. and should give a sourced quotation. ) Everything else is a mention or a press release. If you are the largest agency in the country, it should be possible to write an article, but you need to first find good independent news and magazine sources that say it.

Our current best practice for people acting as press agents for a company is to submit the article through WP:Articles for creation, which gives people here a chance to review it. The rules about promotional articles, though, apply there also. Try rewriting it neutrally, with good sources, but do it there. DGG ( talk ) 19:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I am happy to do it through WP:Articles for creation but can I have the deleted article (Cheil_Worldwide) to make changes? I did not save the wording and it's a lot of work to start from scratch. Moonsoomee

Legiotex

Hello. I write because my item has been deleted for being promotional. Yet another article similar to mine or just has not been erased. He advised me to do my article a consultant Legiotex Article modeled Apifresh, because I have no idea of ​​the use of Wikipedia. I do not understand why the two items that are similar European projects. One remains in Wikipedia and the other has been removed. So it would be very grateful, if I say I should delete or phrases are incorrect by having commercial hue. Thank you very much, greetings. Thanks for your help. I'm trying to search for similar items to see and compare. To correct mine. Any help from you will be welcome, especially where promotional tone note in the article.Rubendesign (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC) Rubendesign (talk) 08:41, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll give you some advice in the next few days. DGG ( talk ) 05:48, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing

Dear DGG (or if I may call you David),

An article I recently wrote made you suggest that a spam marker should be placed on my talk page. First, the article I wrote comes from an unbiased (perhaps even anti-finance) point of view. I am trying to create more articles about industries that have been growing since the financial crisis in 2007-2008, but it is discouraging when I am then labeled as spam for doing so. I think Wikipedia could really benefit from the inclusion of my article on Chicago Clearing Corporation and the ones that I have started to write on companies like it. This industry has been featured in the NY Times and other prominent publications, yet it lacks background information on how it really formed and what it is actually doing. I think my article helps to shed light on this and I would like to keeping writing more about companies doing similar things. Please reconsider marking me as spam as all I want to do is help Wikipedia grow by injecting some much-needed modern ideas into the site.

Thanks,

CarletonkidonCUT (Rhys) — Preceding unsigned comment added by CarletonkidonCUT (talk • contribs) 14:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

You probably are correct, My apologies, and that's why we admins normally just tag articles, and let another admin review them & do the deletion them, because any one person can and does make mistakes. I'll try to give you some detailed suggestions. I will continue tonight. DGG ( talk ) 19:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

File:Centerstage Logo.jpg

Hello DGG, seeing that you're actively editing/administrating right now, I'd like to ask you for help with this file. It has been tagged for missing source information, but I was able to verify the permission and attribute the authors. The problem is though that this software has been abandoned and I can't find any direct links to this image. We could of course claim that it comes with the software package that is still available for download. What do you think about this? De728631 (talk) 15:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

A statement to that effect would be fine for me, though I do not know if the regulars at that process will accept it. I have never understood the way the criteria for files are applied, and, in the case of NFCC, I disagree with some of them. I'm not going to try to impose my own opinions, or try to convince determined people in a long and probably unsuccessful fight to change consensus, so I avoid dealing with questions about files. DGG ( talk ) 16:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for your input. De728631 (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

FYI, I was right with my assumption. That image is actually part of an archive that is still available for download. Problem solved. De728631 (talk) 19:20, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Sarah Franscesca Green

Can I get a second opinion on something? I'm having a mild dispute on Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sarah Franscesca Green, who I believe satisfies criteria 5 of WP:PROF by being a Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki and previously serving the same named appointment at the University of Manchester - both posts are verifiable by the respective entries on the universities' websites. Other AfC reviewers have declined the article and the creator is asking questions on the help desk. Can you clarify this person meets the notability criteria? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I accepted it. The publications plus the position make for notability, tho reviews of her books need to be added. I personally think all full professors at a major university meet WP:PROF. Opinion at AfD has not consistently supported me--some of the experienced eds. regularly discussing the topic do not think it necessarily sufficient except for the traditional UK style universities where there is one professor of something. I have almost always been able to show such people notable, except in fields against which there is a prejudice, such as education or other traditionally female-dominated fields. But it's likely enough to accept any AfC that's ok otherwise. (In addition, anyone who has published two books at good publishers which have received significant reviews meets WP:AUTHOR, which is actually an exceedingly loose criterion, tho in this case the book reviews need to be shown.

The request for secondary sources is unnecessary, when other criteria than the GNG is being used. The university site is a reliable source to prove the position; the books prove themselves--though I generally add the WorldCat reference for them & verify that they are actual books rather than just reports, and journal articles are proven by the journal references themselves.

I am systematically examining all the hundreds of declined AfCs for for academics to see which I can rescue, and this AfC was on my list. I could go much faster except that one of the things that always needs to be checked is copyvio from their university site. And, of course, I try to improve any accepted article to our customary format & referencing styles. It is unrealistic to expect new users to learn these perfectly before getting articles accepted. Nobody should be reviewing who does not know how to fix articles or at least know correctly & specifically what is actually needed and clearly explain it to the new editor in detail, rather than just use the temp[late.

AfC is notorious for people using their own private ideas of the WP standards, whether to decline or accept. Thousands of promotional or even copyvio AfCs have been accepted over the years, and we need to locate & get rid of those articles if they can't be quickly fixed. DGG ( talk ) 16:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and for passing the article. My general understanding is that a named appointment means the academic world at large has decided your work is worthy of note and should be published to further the understanding of human knowledge - which, to me, is what "notability" is all about. The problem with professors is their work isn't typically distributed to the general public, so inherent notability acts as a "free pass" where we assume the sources must exist, but are non-trivial to access. Schools and villages are two other classes of article that regularly come under fire for "not enough sources", but can be passed via an alternative guideline. And, as I recently discussed as a meetup, the general opinion is that there are a large amount of people holding public office in African governments who would pass WP:POLITICIAN, but we don't have an article for them.

As you've no doubt seen, AfC has come under fire recently, partially for its technical design, but partly because there's generally insufficient good judgement in reviews. I think the "canned responses" you get in the helper script is one of the most damaging things, and most of my work at AfC is on the help desk, where writing a tailored response to the particular problem is required, and generally gets better results. I don't think enough people work with the article submitters - even if somebody submits a non-notable promotional piece, there's still the opportunity to teach them basic notability and verifiability policies, so if they go away understanding Wikipedia better, that's a plus point. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

(1) The key word there is "named" appointment. Some professorships are endowed or memorial appointments, normally pay somewhat to considerably more, and are considered great honors. The longer-established school have many of them, others a few. A named full professorship of this sort at a major university is recognized by everyone working on the subject as notable.

(2) You are absolutely right about a AfC. And I agree that the ideal solution for someone who writes an article that will never be acceptable is when they realize it , and withdraw the submission themselves.There's a message I use, modified as needed : " If you decide that the article cannot presently meet our standards, you can facilitate matters by placing at the top a line reading : {{db-author}}, and it will be quickly deleted.. When you have the necessary material, then try again. I do not want to discourage you, but to urge you to continue to contribute."

(3)general principles of notability later tonight. . DGG ( talk ) 16:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:BP

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Help search for sources?

Hey DGG, I've come across an article that seems like it was originally intended as a spam article, Joel Goldman. I've removed most of the promotional speak, but there isn't much out there source-wise. Of the stuff still on the article, only four are even remotely usable. Most of them are local and one is sort of dubious as far as usability goes. (Canton Repository) I started to nominate it, thought better of it, then sort of feel like I should've just gone with my first urge. I figured I'd ask you to help look for sources and maybe ask if you think it should be nominated. You can find the original version of the article here. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:54, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

He is however a mildly notable author. judging by worldcat holdings. tho some of his works are self published. I will look for book reviews. DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I commented at the AfD --found a few, notability is borderline DGG ( talk ) 05:41, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Yeah... that's sort of why I hesitated with nominating him. There's some notability, enough to where I'm not entirely comfortable voting delete. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:34, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

List of 2009–10 Portuguese Liga transfers

Hello,

I saw on the revision history that you removed the deletion template from the List of 2009–10 Portuguese Liga transfers article. I gave reasons for the deletion which can be seen in the Revision history section.

If you can't find it they are the following: :cites no references, contained several errors, not in a grouped table, incomplete. Created two separate articles to replace current one.

Can you reply to this notice.

User talk:Alexgreene87, 19 July 2013, 14:37 (UTC)

Baltimore County Councilman

Hi DGG,

A page of mine was recently marked for deletion (David Marks, Baltimore County Councilman). I apologize that I was not following proper Wikipedia procedure. I want to make this a genuine article on Councilman Marks, and am not trying to make it a political advertisement. I was wondering if you could tell me if this page for a Baltimore City Councilman is in correct form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Kraft

I want to get this article right and apologize for not creating it in the proper manner.

Thank you, SKahl7180Skahl7180 (talk) 14:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Carl Stokes (Baltimore) is better. . They all need some edits to remove adjectives of praise. And the legislative history should include only bills that they are actually primarily responsible for, with a 3rd party source to prove it, not one of several sponsors. Concentrate on factual things, such as the elections, not on the positions, which belong in an political advertisement Let me know when you are ready.~

Small Town Mayors

I came across this orphan article about the Mayor of Lynnwood, Washington (Don Gough). I think this might be a good test for deletion. Enos733 (talk) 19:13, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This would seem to be a clear violation of BLP policy, I listed it for A7, because it does not quite qualify for G10. The negative information is sourced, DGG ( talk ) 20:10, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

an article.

Hello,

I created the term ... as a satirical/parody of Apple's new design for its operating system but it is actually becoming a term used by a small group of people. I identified this as parody in the first sentence of the article. I was not trying to deceive anyone or create online vandalism.

At the forum section on MacRumors.com we have a conversation thread using the term ... with over 4,000 readers and 60 something contributors.

I have read the notices that I need to cite the Wiki sources that I quoted in my article. I will happily do this if my post does not get deleted.

This is my first Wiki post and I am excited to be a part of this community.

Take care and thank your time and this invaluable resource. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tampalionel (talk • contribs) 23:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

not a hoax precisely, but vandalism in the sense of utterly non-constructive editing. but I think still appropriate for speedy deletion as A7, non-notable web content: most of the comments either denied the existence of the term or simply ignored it. Alternatively we could see it as your self-advertising, criterion G11, or as an attack on the designer, whose bio is half the article, criterion G10. Pick your own choice of one or more of the 4 reasons.I've modified your comment to avoid giving another source for this this. DGG ( talk ) 23:40, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Pretty much what DGG said. I've left you a warning about re-creating this article, as this can be seen as disruptive behavior. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:35, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Crown Disposal, Inc

Hi, DGG.

I noticed that you had deleted the page for Crown Disposal, Inc a few months ago. I was hoping to convince you that an A7 ("not significant") was unwarranted. Crown Disposal is a fairly sizeable company and a large player in the California waste management industry, operating multiple waste facilities as well as having relationships with other large players, including Recology, a very large and very well-known company.

Further, the events that have occurred at their landfill in Lamont, California are perhaps significant in and of themselves - two young men died there in very unfortunate circumstances, caused in fact by extremely poor safety equipment, practices and training. In fact, the local authorities revoked their permit for operation, and there is an ongoing court battle over whether or not this company can continue to operate, especially in light of their multiple safety and environmental violations.

Given the current situation in the area (Lamont was reported to have the worst air quality in the US) and Crown / CRRR's involvement in local environmental destruction, I believe that Crown Disposal is a significant entity, worthy of a Wikipedia entry, and I believe the article as written explained that. Of course, I'd be happy to work with you and other editors to improve the article, if you'd like to see it improved.

Wikipedia is a place everyone - from kids at school to housewives, homebuyers, residents, workers, even important corporate types - goes to learn about people, places, historical events, and corporations. I believe that an article about a corporation with this kind of track record is an important addition to Wikipedia.

Thanks, DGG. Appreciate any comments or help you might be willing to share! Sandyhart68 (talk) 00:25, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I will take a look today DGG ( talk ) 13:50, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I see the AfC you created on Apr 25, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Crown Disposal Co., within a few minutes of when you created the identicalmainspace article.The AfC was declined on May 1 by another editor. I wonder why you didn't mention the AfC just now. I see you added a related paragraph to Recology to say they used one of the company's facilities for a part of the operations. You also added information about not yet substantiated charges against Recology. You're obviously somewhat involved in this issue. G11 is used not only for articles promoting a company, but articles promoting a cause. Obviously it can be difficult to distinguish between neutrally reporting about a cause or a company and promoting it. I think the best step is to proceed with improving the AfC, rather than restoring the article and, probably, sending it to AfD .

If this was a natural person, I'd say that what you were doing is added poorly supported negative information. Our standards are not quite as strict for companies, though I am not sure all your information is supported at all, or that it is proportionate coverage, or that everything you added as been in a neutral manner-- as one example, in an article on another company you said "Republic Services has also had several high-profile fines..." -- where does the word "high-profile" come from? Had the company used it in praising itself, it would be removed, and this works in both directions.

I have every personal sympathy for your general position, but that's not relevant here.

What I think we need in articles on companies is greater attention to the history of the company, rather than the routine appointments and the occasional court case. Some of the articles on firms in this industry have extensive earlier copyvio sections on this from company publications. This is of course the wrong way to go about it, but they will serve adequately as sources. Historical data for any public company and most large private companies is relatively easy to obtain, and any business library can help--most even medium size public libraries have the basic sources. Finding them on line can be difficult ,as the relevant databases tend to be quite expensive (and focussed on the immediate current situation) Resist the temptation to tie these too closely in with social developments--this sort of connection should only be done when there are third party sources noneed to apologize. Tho afcwas intended to make things discussing it. With the background of a substantial article, specific incidents can be given without being disproportionate to the rest of the article. DGG ( talk ) 00:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, DGG for getting back to me on this. I apologize about not mentioning the the AfC; it's been awhile since I looked at the page, or even thought about Crown, until I was discussing them with a friend. I believe what happened when I submitted the article originally, I didn't understand what had happened to the article; while it was in queue for review, it appeared to me as if it had disappeared, so I just made it again (while I'm on wikipedia a lot, and have made edits and contributions, that was my first stab at creating a page - chalk it up to me being a newbie, and please accept my humble apology for making rookie errors).

Your points are well taken. When I have some time, I'll try to get back to the original submission and spruce it up a bit and try again. Thanks! Sandyhart68 (talk) 15:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

no need to apologize. AfC was intend to make things easier for beginners, but instead it often just adds to the possible sources of confusion. We're having an interesting discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/RfC 2013 of whether we should require it; that seems to be soundly rejected, and the discussion is now more on the question of whether we should even recommend it. I think your opinion might be worthwhile having. DGG ( talk ) 03:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Kino Lorber

Thanks for deleting the Kino Lorber page. I didn't expect a response that quickly. --Sunshineisles2 (talk) 03:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

actually, it was much longer than it should have been. copyvios usually get deleted in a few minutes. This took almost 5 hours, because very few admins are active at 20:00 on Saturday. DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I've never been involved with a copyvio before.--Sunshineisles2 (talk) 18:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Ram Revilla Murder Case

Hi, DGG. I noticed you deleted the article I created Ram Revilla Murder Case. Thank you for just implementing the rules on WP. However, I believe it is worthy to be applied here since that article is popularly known not just the "base" country however in some international countries aswell. As even, a suspect was listed in the Red Notice list of the Interpol. It was my mistake to create it without posting the whole article, in the article various reference are cited. Anyways, I'm new here so, I'm asking for guidance. I will post the whole article on my Page. How would I be able to post the same article again once it is already worthy? Fearjesus (talk) 06:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC) Moreover, the victim is a brother of a senator in the Philippines, and the suspects were their siblings aswell. Everybody was monitoring the case, I was just hoping that people could just go to one site for the important details off the case. Fearjesus (talk) 06:54, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The BLP guideline apply not just in article space but anywhere in WP. The victim is notable enough to have an article, and does, but that does not excuse including names of people merely under suspicion--let alone arrested and then released-- whether in mainspace or on your talk page. If someone is actually convicted, it could go in the article, but it still wouldn't justify a separate article on the crime. The page is devoted to details about the crime and speculation about who did it. As I tried to explain to you, we do not do that. The material on your page violated the BLP guidelines, and I have removed it. If you reinsert it anywhere in WP, without agreement in a discussion, you are very likely to be blocked. If you want to discuss it, I already suggested the BLP noticeboard. DGG ( talk ) 03:27, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the warning. Anyways, pardon my ignorance for not reading the BLP Policies. I just have a question, if certain names of individuals (suspects) are not allowed, could I just hide them under initials? Obviously names of witnesses are allowed. Thanks a lot. ′Fearjesus (talk) 04:26, 22 July 2013 (UTC) Also, names of certain individuals into my research were properly properly sourced. Fearjesus (talk) 04:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

the relevant part of the policy for this are UNDUE and DO NO HARM. Even when it's sourced, the exposure that WP gives is so great, that we don't add to people's problems. The exception is when there is so much reporting that even our additional visibility is not much ,compared to what is out there all ready. What we usually look for in something like this is major international coverage. And even so, it would take something really sensational on an international level for us to make it a separate article. If you're still not convinced, I suggested where you should ask. DGG ( talk ) 03:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research

Another editor created Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Canadian Association of HIV Research, which has been rejected.

This is a national scholarly association, but I can't find reliable sources for it. A google search for Canadian Association of HIV Research conference shows plenty of research presented at its conferences. Could you please take a quick look at the article? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 14:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not an unusual situation for professional societies. Personally, I'd simply include them all, if they cover a wide enough field & are the leading national societies. This is an area where the GNG is useless. Reliable information about them is typically only found in their own newsletters & websites, and in financial reports of their activities. Anything in a third party source is very apt to be nonsubstantial or derived from there,

The afc as submitted should have been deleted immediately before G13 got to it as promotional and mostly copyvio--it's essentially a republication of their objectives and a list of officers. Web sites need to be read carefully: I notice their claim is not to be the largest Canadian organization devoted to AIDS research, which is probably Canadian Federation for AIDS Research, but the largest Canadian association of AIDS researchers. It may in fact be not just the largest but the only Canadian national organization of AIDS researchers

The best way to cover these, as I think you suspect, is to write an article on the series of conferences, or to make the main content of the article the series of conferences. We are so lamentably weak in doing these for many of the most important international conferences that this article is not my highest priority. DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Take a look

Hello. I am having a difficult time deciding if the publication Vestoj is worthy of inclusion, and I am hoping you will give an opinion. It is currently at AFD.

I looked at its web site, and it does seem to be a serious endeavor. The references in the article are not bad, and again I get the sense that this publication is a serious endeavor from the English-language references.

Also, if you take a look you will see this is kind of a hybrid publication. According to its description:

Vestoj is a forum where academia, the museum world and the fashion industry can work together and with active communication. We write about the cultural phenomenon that is fashion in a manner that opens up for dialogue between theory and practice in order to raise awareness for fashion as a cultural phenomena and field of research and cultivate an even greater understanding for the discipline. Vestoj will exist outside of seasonally-based trends and news-focused articles. Instead we aim to encourage and champion the critical and independent voice within fashion as well as absolute creative freedom. In order to ensure that we remain free in thought and action Vestoj will have no advertising. Published annually, Vestoj focuses solely on sartorial matters, bringing together academia and industry in a bid to combine academic theory, critical thinking and a bit of good old fashioned glamour.

Thanks in advance. ------Steve Quinn (talk) 15:04, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I've found whatever I could, and said as much as I think is justified, but it's borderline at best. DGG ( talk ) 03:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:27, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

re: afd closes

Hey DGG, you have a reply at my talk page, for when you have a moment czar · · 03:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Replied czar · · 05:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding a statement and then tagging it as needing a reference to prove you didn't just make it up.

You added a statement and then put a "citation needed" tag on it. That is very strange. "It claims to be the largest minorityt-owned investment firm" could be referenced to their official website or wherever you saw them making that statement at. Dream Focus 01:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes I have to stop and eat, so I put in a marker. But I see you wrote the original article: you put in the links to the founders, so you could have written & referenced it a little fuller in the first place & it wouldn't have been nominated for speedy by someone who didn't think to check the links. DGG ( talk ) 03:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I kept looking for information, I read through so much of their website, I searched about everywhere, and I could not find anything at all past what I did. A company that makes billions of dollars should have more mention of them somewhere. I just thought it rather odd to put something in with a citation needed tag attached to it. I saw this http://www.arielinvestments.com/ariel-in-the-media/ and assumed there would be more to add to the article, but upon closer inspection couldn't think of anything there that could be added anywhere. George Lucas's new wife is the president of that company, so it got ample passing mention in the news media when they got married, so I assumed more people would be rushing to the Wikipedia to find out information about it like I did. Dream Focus 10:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you didn't understand me--I did not even have to search, I found the link in the article on its executive. DGG ( talk ) 20:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Ariel Investments

I'll probably be able to add a bit. You may want to drop a note at WP:CHICAGO and WP:FINANCE, too.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:27, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson

Hello again; I have undeleted the above after a request at WP:REFUND, after talking to the deleting admin. Just to let you know, in case you want this to go via AfD. Cheers. Lectonar (talk) 11:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Re: Speedy Deletion of SOTI Inc.

Hi DGC,

Thanks for your review of the SOTI Inc. page I've created. I see it's been nominated for a speedy deletion, and deleted, before I was able to contest it. I apologize, I did not receive an email notification.

I want to present my case here in an attempt to resurrect the page.

I have tried to keep the content very factual and non-promotional, as my goal is not to create an advertisement on Wikipedia, but instead a basic company page. Could you let me know what you saw as advertorial? I will revise it immediately.

On July 9th, I edited the content to remove what another user pointed out may sound promotional. I hope this assists keeping the page up.

I have followed the same format as similar companies on the site: MobileIron and AirWatch.

Regarding significant articles, I want to provide the below coverage of SOTI from well respected journalists and publications. These articles are not reprinted press releases, and have editors tied to them.

The references in the page itself are not reprints of a press release. The InformationWeek piece is authored by a well respected journalist: Larry Seltzer

In addition, SOTI was the top scorer in a Network World review of Mobile Device Management vendors, available here: Network World - Top tools for BYOD management

I'd like to provide additional editorial features on the company and its solutions:

InformationWeek Education - Smartphones Hit Schools, MDM Vendors Don Thinking Caps

CMSwire - SOTI Releases MobiControl V10 to Manage Personal Devices in the Enterprise

eWeek - Soti Unveils MDM Platform MobiControl V10

Mobile Fanpage - Italian review of SOTI solution

Computing Canada - Last Year, We All Talked About a BYOD Problem, It's Time That We Acknowledge That Our Biggest Mobile Problems Are Now Under Control

InformationWeek BYTE - BYOD Tablets, Smartphones: About To 'Disrupt' The Classroom?

THE Journal - Westbury School District Deploys Mobile Device Management System

As time goes on, I'd like to expand the page to include more products, awards won, and additional information- but I wanted to start with a simple upload first.

I'd appreciate any help you can provide. Thank you!

Msalmassian (talk) 05:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)