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Acceptable username policy

We're having some debate about the username policy over at Wikipedia talk:Username.

Basically, about a month ago, the line which said random usernames aren't allowed was removed because it was causing problems (people were getting blocked erratically. like how User:Asdfghjkl:; was blocked on sight, where as User:Lkjhgfdsa and User:Asdfg12345 were not blocked, and have gone on to be decent contributers).

Now User:pschemp wants to add the line in. Because he things it should be kept. And he insists it should be kept on the policy page because there was never consensus to remove it (although there was never consensus to add it in the very first place.)

Can some people go take a look and give some third opinions? Both regarding whether the line saying "no random usernames" should or shouldn't be kept on the policy page when there is no consensus to keep it; and regarding whether we should keep it in the long term.

--`/aksha 04:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

There was never consensus to remove that part of the policy in the first place, thus its stays until consensus to remove it reached.pschemp | talk 06:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I support removing it. The presumption that random username = vandal/sock is utterly ungrounded. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 06:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Prove that please. While your opinion is nice, until consensus is reached, we don't remove things. That's the whole point. Your addition of an opinion does not consensus make. pschemp | talk 06:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

No offense intended, but people are given a better impression when it doesn't look like a user picked their name by randomly pounding the keyboard or dragging a finger across the center line. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:24, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hence why I put an explanation on my user page. Anyway, judge by the contributor, not the name. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 06:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

i agree. Usernames that look well thought-out do give a better impression. But it doesn't mean usernames which don't look well thought-out should become a bannable offense. --`/aksha 06:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I still think it should be discouraged. It could be done in a nicer fashion, of course. Slap together a quick substable template saying "pick a coherent username" or something like that and stick it on the talk page when banning them. User gets a name we can understand and it's all good. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 07:01, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with discouraging it. I don't think many people would. I do, however, have a problem with the "ban on sight" approach some people seem to be taking. Whether they look good or not, there are people with very random names who seem to be contributing fine. --`/aksha 07:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

There is human error to consider. It's highly unlikely that they'd catch every randomly named account in existence. Those that slip through the cracks with good edits will inevitably survive, but only by a stroke of luck. Plus, a change in username can be forced on those editors if it was really deemed necessary. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 07:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

the human error in this case is exceptionally high when compared to the other username guildlines. Throughout all the discussions, no one's even bothered to try and provide some definitions/boundaries for what is meant by "random". Simply because it's almost impossible. For policies like "usernames should personally attack other groups of people", it's (in most cases) glaringly obvious whether a username falls into the category or not. The blurry grey area in between is small. For randomness, i'm afraid the blurry grey area is huge. The most obvious example i can think of is admins who don't read leet doing "block on sights" for usernames written in leet codes. As a matter of fact, leet often looks very "random" to people not familiar with it. Maybe we should disallow usernames written entirely in leet too then? See my point? --`/aksha 13:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"the human error in this case is exceptionally high when compared to the other username guildlines" another statement you cannot prove Yaksha. Again, where is your proof? Where are the legions of wronged users who have complained?pschemp | talk 13:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

fine, let me rephrase it into "the human errer in this case would be exceptionally high".

or actually, i don't even need to. I think the example i pointed out on the username talk page of how when one username was blocked, and another almost identical one was not proves the point. I don't suppose you could dish up any example of such inconsistency when it comes to enforcing the other accpetable username rules?

the legions of wronged users...well, i hardly except newbie who gets banned within two mins of registering to make any public complaints.

you demand proof for a lot of things pschemp, but i don't see you ever supplying any proofs for your claims. (explaining how each of the other examples of random usernames that i found (on the username talk page) were in fact 'not random' or 'leet' would be a very good place to start. Since you dismissed all the examples on the basis of them all actually being not random.) --`/aksha 14:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Who's to say what is and isn't random? What seems random to you may be a deeply meaningful screename that a person has used on all sorts of websites throughout their internet life. Lets say, for example that someone comes along with the username "SACGWDGSRG18" That seems a little random, doesn't it? I've never used that screen name, and probably never will as I always use ONUnicorn, but I could see myself having picked it at one time. To me that would be a meaningful name as it consists of the first, middle, maiden, and married initials of my mother's name, followed by the first, middle, and last initials of my father's name, followed by the first, middle, and last initials of my (maiden) name, and ending with my age when I first went on the internet (all caps because they are all proper nouns). On the other hand, if we block "random usernames" that seems to me like a very blockable name. Why bite new contributors before they've done anything wrong (or right for that matter)? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 15:56, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Who's to say what is and isn't offensive? Yet, we make that decision all the time and its the same thing. Nothing here is 100% as it is run by human beings and the two cases are the same. At some point, a line needs to be drawn. An example, from last night User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq blocked on sight, had already vandalised the moment he created his account. Check the contribs. This happens all the time. The other point here is that this is a long standing policy and until there is consensus to change it, we don't. That's how wikipedia works. And blocks are not biting newbies, especially when done early so as to save them the aggravations of having to change later. A perfectly polite message is left for them. pschemp | talk 16:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think there is anyone anywhere who would argue that a username like "F_U_U_(insert group of people here)_FREAKS" is not offensive. For the most part it is patently obvious when things are offensive. On the other hand, "aslgore fjoenroe", while it seems like randomness (in this case it was), may not be to the person who contributed it. As for it being a long-standing policy changed without consensus, we are encourgaed to be bold in making changes, and that includes policy. If someone disputes it after the change, then a discussion is entered into (as now). Maybe it was rude for whoever changed it not to discuss it first, but they were just being bold. As for the length of time that it was there representing consensus, I'd be willing to bet that WP:Username is not one of our highest-traffic policy pages; I know I've only looked at it once (before today) and never referenced it in discussion. Most Wikipedians have probably never paid it any attention at all. (After edit conflict) As for User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq, they had already vandalised, thereby demonstrating their bad intentions. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I went to block before it was known they had vandalised 'cause they did it so fast after creation but decided to check because people around here are claiming innocents are getting bitten and they aren't. The other point, is that most ramdom names *are* vandals, as with this one too User:1524gf86d3sf546 which is the exact same story. (Whereas I would normally just block, I check first and lo and behold, it was vandalising). pschemp | talk 19:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

How many times do i have to say this. Just because most random names *are* vandals is NOT an excuse to block on sight. Most anon edits are ALSO vandals, should we start reverting on sight too? Actually, most vandals are anons, maybe we should just block off all the anons? --`/aksha 04:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, you are taking this the the absurd, and no one has suggested doing that. You seem to be suggesting we should ignore obvious vandal usernames until they vandalise which is silly. I'm still waiting for the proof of the legions of innocent users who were harmed. pschemp | talk 04:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The best "policy" on acceptable usernames is that any username is acceptable unless somebody reasonably finds it unacceptable. Lets avoid instruction creep and very harmful blocks against new editors whose only mistake is picking an esoteric username. Let common sense prevail. Thanks/wangi 05:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Um wangi, its not instruction creep, the random rule has been in there for over a year. Also, they *are* deemed unacceptable at the time they are blocked, that's why they are blocked. pschemp | talk 05:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Although what might have been consensus at one point might no longer be so :) Anyway, I'm not really that fussed about getting into the this debate, however I do not believe that we need to mention random character names in the policy - it simply makes it easier for good faith editors to be banned before they make a contribution (for example Someguy0830 would be banned). It's a piece-of-piss for the robot script folk to generate usernames combining dictionary words which are immediately non-random. This is a harmful "rule". But getting back to my original point - I really have no problem with individual admins blocking usernames thay find offensive (be they random or not) but see no need to enforce banning of "random" usernames. Thanks/wangi 05:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The existence of a rule is not in itself a valid justification for the said existence. --`/aksha 08:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a policy against unpronounceable usernames? I think most names that would be recognised as random fall into this, so the "random" policy is redundant, and ambiguous. Remove.--SidiLemine 12:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Remove: Two reasons, both already noted by other users: 1) what looks random to one user may not be random to another (pschemp looks pretty random to me) 2)judge the user by the contribution, not the name. --Badger151 14:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Frankly I agree with Badger151, that pschemp looks random to me. Almost any username can be considered random. But I can see how some could be considered more random then others. Here are some usernames from the last few minutes of the User creation log. I have picked them as being the ones that seem the most random to me (but that's subjective): User:KMC1986 at 14:10, User:0101ccty06 at 14:10, User:Nanfengbb at 14:11, User:Tadg04 at 14:13, User:Pal9900 at 14:14, and User:Nkrajenka at 14:15. Let's give them a bit of time (say, an hour) and see what kind of contributions they make. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"Krajenka" is a surname as well as a town in Poland. A big problem with making assumptions about users with seemingly random names is that many first and last names (as well as words, especially foreign ones) would be considered "seemingly random" by some people. It should also be noted that as wikipedia gets bigger, users are going to have an increasingly difficult time finding an unused username that "makes sense". And is there a policy against "unpronouncable usernames"? Where? --Milo H Minderbinder 14:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

That's almost exactly my point; randomness (unlike, say, offensiveness) is entierly subjective... what seems like a random collection of letters to me is a town in Poland and someone's last name. "11100010101010" might be how someone would spell their name in binary. "SACGDWGSRG18" are meaningful initials to me. "Wyq49h" is how I'd spell my first name if my fingers were on the wrong keys (one row up) "Xbzfk" would be how I'd spell it if they were one row down. "Djstpm" is how it'd be spelled if they were one letter right and "AgEIB" if they were one letter left. I could see myself using any of those options for a username if I had to choose a new one I'd never used before. Meanwhile (from Wikipedia:Recently created admins) what does Aski mean (User:Aksi great)? How about User:TKD; that could be anything? It's completely subjective. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 15:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, "Someguy830" doesn't make a "better impression" on me either, it seems equally careless and hard to remember or understand. But probably the prime offender would be someone trying to be cute by misspelling a common term for anonymity and sticking in the name of a small furry animal. That should be bannable on sight. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 14:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. As should anyone whose name makes no apparent sense, and consists of far more consonants than vowels, such that they have been mistaken for a bot before. Postdlf 14:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Username blocks, continued

*Sigh* you guys just aren't getting how this rule has been applied in actual use. The only random ones that are blocked on sight are the really obvious ones like User:1524gf86d3sf546 and User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq. The borderline ones and unobvious ones and short ones aren't and never have been. And no, randomness isn't an entirely subjective quantity. All the examples OnUnicorn has given are either short (and short ones never have been blocked since human can remember short things easily) or have an identifiable pattern. Basically people are arguing that admins can't be trusted to make correct decisions and that's a load of crap. pschemp | talk 15:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Results The most random seeming username; User:0101ccty06 has made one edit(dif). It needs to be cleaned up for grammer and stuff, but seems to be fairly sound, at least it's not vandalism. User:KMC1986, User:Nanfengbb, User:Tadg04, User:Pal9900, and User:Nkrajenka (the rest of them) haven't made any contributions yet. As for them being short and easy to remember, let's say someone's from Kangerlussuaq and wants their username to be their town. Still too short for you? How about Muckanaghederdauhaulia (the longest place name in Ireland)? A wiki-deletionist, a person with severe depression, or someone who thinks that Wikipedia is not as good as traditional encyclopedias might pick the screen name Floccinaucinihilipilification. Some people pick screen names after favorite animals. What if someone's favorite fish was humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua‘a? A fan of Aristophanes might pick Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhyp...gklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, OnUnicorn, those *weren't* blocked because they *aren't* random so you don't have much point. pschemp | talk 16:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, pschemp, you didn't follow the links, did you? Those *aren't* usernames. To my knowledge no one has acutally tried to register with any of those names. Those are all things that, if someone did register with them, would seem like a random combination of letters to someone patrolling for unacceptable usernames. The fact that they all exist in the real world makes them not random despite the fact that they might seem random to someone who didn't know better if someone were to use them. That was my point. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I take it back, someone did actually register as User:Kangerlussuaq, check the log. But they don't seem to have any edits. There's also a User:Floccinaucinihilipilification. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The point is that they aren't random enough that they would be blocked. I wouldn't block those and neither would any admin I know, they aren't blatantly random. Agian, you seem to think admins can't make rational decisions, which isn't the case. pschemp | talk 16:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My username is random? I'm hurt. Well, not really. If you can honestly say you have trouble remembering two combined words and a short number sequence, then I don't see how you expect to remember something like tjstrf. Random in this case would mean something that has no indentifiable pattern, like sdbaivb or other such nonsense. The usernames that get blocked in this policy are rarely here for a good purpose, and those that are probably register good usernames after learning better. Also, I recommend we get off the subject of bashing each other's usernames to make a point, since it's quite clear that our names do fall well within the tolerance for understandable usernames. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 16:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My bad, no such policy (pronouceable). pschemp, I think the controversy comes from the fear that accounts will be deleted without warning. The way I understand hte policy, it is made so as to avoid automatically created accounts (spam, bots, etc.); A manual check (and possibly advice to change username) should be able to handle that. But for clarity's sake, the term "random" needs to be clarified with a few short definitions and examples, as are "offensive" and "wiki-related".--SidiLemine 16:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, a username block doesn't delete an account. In fact regular admins can't delete an account at all. When they are blocked, the {{usernameblocked}} template expands to give an explanation already. pschemp | talk 16:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia talk:Username - "That list is intended as a guide, it is not supposed to be exhaustive (wikipedia is not a bureacracy or experiment in rule making), it is the broader purpose behind the username policy which is important, if the rationale for an item on that list doesn't tally with the broader policy rationale then there is arguably something amiss. It also has to be remebered that the emotive "banning a newbie" etc. is not the case, blocks for most inappropriate usernames are without prejudice and the autoblocks should be removed without question, it is of course important that appropriate edit summaries are used {{usernameblock}} for example expands out in the block message to give the whole text regarding the status. --pgk 12:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)" That is exactly what is done in practice. pschemp | talk 16:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Given the current power of computing, I wonder if it possible to do some sort of analysis to determine what characteristics are shared by those usernames that are the most prolific vandals, but aren't shared by other users. If this can be determined, perhaps new usernames sharing those characteristics could be more closely watched until they develop a pattern. --Badger151 17:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, pschemp seems to be the most vocal supporter of this policy. Let's look at some of pschemp's blocks since so far most examples have been hypothetical. User:Qwerty123456789101112 doesn't seem random to me, it seems easy to remember, and quite clever if someone wants to maintain a high degree of anonimity. Of course, the stated reason for the block was the length of the name (Is 21 characters really that long?) rather than its randomness but still... User:Qwerty123456789101112's contribution log shows one contribution (diff) that might be considered linkspam, but has not been removed from the article despite the subsequent removal of other seeming linkspam. User:1524gf86d3sf546 is much more random then Qwerty...., and the block reason was vandalism rather then randomness or length. User:NotForVandalism was blocked before making any edits with "are you sure?" as the reason... now tell me, aren't we to assume good faith? If an editor says their account is not for vandalism, shouldn't we believe them until they prove otherwise (yes, that is slightly tounge-in-cheek)? User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq seems random, and was vandalising, and the block reason was, again, vandalism, NOT the randomness of the name. User:Mamamamamamamamama doesn't seem random, and was blocked because the name was too long (18 characters, even shorter than Qwerty, and exactly twice as long as my username). They had made one edit, diff, which was reverted (and probably rightly) using vandalproof by someone who, in my experience, has a history of misusing vandalproof. User:Random or unreadable text or characters looks like someone trying to make a point, and has no contributions. Same goes for User:I read your username policy and it's gay. Perhaps these are people who were blocked for seemingly random usernames and are now complaining by re-registering with pointy usernames? User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB was blocked as random with no contributions... but I can see it making sense to someone. Anyway... ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 18:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It might be better to discuss this in just one place... use VP only to build awareness that there is a discussion. But that said, every one of your examples is a good block based on the username alone, under current policy as it has existed for months and months. You have not shown any of them to actually be bad blocks, or that there was harm caused to anyone by them (with 0 or 1 edit, getting a new username is just Not A Big Deal). And the onus is on those that want to change policy to show reasons for it, not on those that want the status quo to show reasons for not changing, because the status quo ought to be presumed to be good, in the absense of any compelling reason to change. Again, policy is descriptive not prescriptive. Admins block scads of IDS under the current policy all the time and I am not seeing a huge volume of reports at the admin incident noticeboard suggesting that this behaviour is causing massive problems. What I am seeing here by proponents of change is a lot of hypothetical supposition. ++Lar: t/c 18:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

oh good God OnUnicorn, I already told you above that [User:1524gf86d3sf546]] and User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq were ones I wast just going to block for username but that I checked first because I wanted to make *SURE* that innocent people weren't getting wronged and lo and behold, they weren't innocent. They weren't blocked because of vandalism, they were blocked because of their username!, and I just added vandalism so people would know. How many times do I have to spell this out to you? And User:Qwerty123456789101112 and User:Mamamamamamamamama aren't random, and that's not *why* they were blocked as said in the edit summary. Your assumption that they are random is illogical, I don't lie in my edit summaries. Let me repeat this again since you seem to have missed it "you just aren't getting how this rule has been applied in actual use. The only random ones that are blocked on sight are the really obvious ones like User:1524gf86d3sf546 and User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq. The borderline ones and unobvious ones and short ones aren't and never have been." pschemp | talk 18:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I never said Qwerty123456789101112 was blocked for randomness, but I did question the approprietness of the block for the length of that name. It's only 21 characters. User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me for example is 31. Are you going to block him? You never addressed User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB, the only one on my list above where you did give randomness as the sole reason for the block. User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB hadn't vandalized. User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB hadn't done anything yet. You also didn't address User:Random or unreadable text or characters and User:I read your username policy and it's gay. On their face, doesn't it seem like those are people who were most likely previously bitten by our username policy (specifically the part under discussion here)? Lar says we're "not seeing a huge volume of reports at the admin incident noticeboard suggesting that this behaviour is causing massive problems". How many newbies even know that the admin noticeboard even exists? I started contributing here in March and I didn't know the villiage pump existed until sometime in July. That's 5 months. I found out that the admin noticeboard existed shortly afterwords. What kind of newbie whose username of User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB is blocked under this policy is going to go complain there? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 19:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Guess what? we aren't discussing length of names here, we are discussing randomness. User:4g1rLn4M3dBoB is a name that I feel is not conducive to collaboration, regardless of vandalism. As for User:I read your username policy and it's gay that was from a whole string of names that quoted bits of policies. And his original name that he was blocked for was so offensive I won't repeat it (It was *not* a random name but a vulgar attack). However, since you weren't watching the username creation bots at the time, you don't know the whole story and have therefore picked out bits and pieces to use to criticize. Unless you are on the bot at the time, you don't have the whole picture and criticizing people's actions without knowing the whole story is a mighty big assumption of bad faith on your part. Last, any blocked person can complain on their talk page and request and unblock, and *that's* where I don't see complaints. That's where the proof of abuse would be should it exist. pschemp | talk 19:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

ONUnicorn asks "What kind of newbie would complain?" I'll tell you what kind... The kind that reads anything at all in their block message. That kind would ask the admin that blocked them, or would seek some help. But the kinds that are getting blocked for randomness aren't reading, because (news flash) they almost certainly are here for vandalism!!!! Is this a perfect system? Might we block someone inadvertantly who then chose not to create a new username despite the instructions on how to do so? Yes, we MIGHT. But the alternative is far worse. Please stop wikilawyering about this. You don't have a case for change. Get over it, internalise it, and move on. ++Lar: t/c 19:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was "wikilawyering" and certianly didn't intend to do so. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Since when is it instruction creep to restore an inappropriately, non-consensus delete of a portion of policy? Discuss, get consensus, then delete. Don't delete then demand consensus to put it back. Random names are blocked. Period. Get over it. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

"Random in this case would mean something that has no indentifiable pattern, like sdbaivb or other such nonsense." You see, this is the entire problem. YOUR defintion of random is that it has no "identifiable pattern". In which case, User:Asdfghjkl:; is not random (it's just the middle row of the keyboard). But clearly, pschemp by his definition of "random" believed User:Asdfghjkl:; IS random (User:Asdfghjkl:; was blocked by pschemp for randomness.)

Pschemp - if you think randomness is not a subjective quality. Then how about gracing us with your definition of randomness? How long is two long? how obvious is an "obviously identifiable pattern". Clearly, the pattern behind User:Asdfghjkl:; was not obviously identifiable enough for you.

"ONUnicorn asks "What kind of newbie would complain?" I'll tell you what kind... The kind that reads anything at all in their block message. That kind would ask the admin that blocked them, or would seek some help." - no, they won't. The sheer size of wikipedia is intimidating to many new people. You probably don't realize it, or maybe you just don't remember when you were once a newbie. But someone who has never edited wikipedia before, comes to sign up an account, and gets blocked within a matter of minutes, is not going to go chasing after people who blocked them. Maybe if the person was a regular in internet communities, maybe if they've edited for a long time as an anon and became familiar with the environment here, they might complain. But a complete newbie isn't going to. That's what WP:BITE exists for - it protects such new users.

If new users do go and seek help from admins when they are blocked, then i suppose you could provide a few examples? Considering how many usernames get blocked, surely by now, there must be quite some records of newbies who do go seek help after sudden blocks.

"Since when is it instruction creep to restore an inappropriately, non-consensus delete of a portion of policy?" when the portion of the policy was never added in consensus in the first place. It slipped in as something that is "discouraged", then slipped in further as something which is not allowed. Then it became something which was bannable on sight. And got removed when someone noticed how users like User:Asdfghjkl:; get blocked on sight but users like User:Lkjhgfdsa and User:Asdfg12345 survived. In other works, inconsistent happy-trigger blocking. --`/aksha 03:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

So, why should I not block usernames with non-Latin characters? —Centrx→talk • 03:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

uhh...did i say anything about usernames with non-Latin characters? --`/aksha 03:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe not. I didn't read your rants. The length of the comments is usually inversely proportional to the soundness of the proposal. —Centrx→talk • 04:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You know, I found one, User:pschemp. Looks like the "user" (he may not have vandalised, but he almost surely will!), has just randomly hammered the keyboard, coming up with a giant mass of consonants which can't possibly be a word. Quickly, to the banhammer! Lankiveil 01:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC).

Further discussion of username blocks

Huh. So, the less recognizable a username is as meaningful to an English-speaking admin, the more likely it is to get blocked as a random string of characters. In some cases, it's a vandal. In some cases, it's a legitimate contributor who picks a different name and that's fine. In some cases, it's a legitimate contributor who is so intimidated or confused by the {{usernameblocked}} message that we lose them. It seems to me that, if too many username blocks are the second or third type, then the admins making those blocks would need to exercise more restraint. There's no reasonable way to define what makes a random username, and since so many of them are vandals, it wouldn't make sense to refrain from blocking every account until it proves itself to be vandalistic. We have to depend on administrative discretion, and the fact that {{usernameblocked}} is pretty helpful and polite. Since this isn't a job robots can do, we just have to trust the humans who are doing it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

well, lengthy/insulting/wierd-non-latin-characters/POINT aside, there aren't that many. Or at least, all the examples that have been provided as "obviously random" have fallen into the category of being very lengthy, insulting or making a point, or having wierd symbols in it. As i said, there's really no evidence that blocking usernames which are only random (and doesn't break any other username guildlines) based purely on randomness has done any good.

and rules against things shouldn't exist by default. As in, we should not take a "everything is not allowed until they are proven to be okay" approach. Assume good faith means we assume things are okay until there's evidence that they're not okay.

I'm suspicious of there even being any evidence of a Correlation between randomness of usernames and vandalism, let along any Causality between the two. --`/aksha 03:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think of it in terms of "not allowed". You make a new account, the username you choose may work out, and it may not. You find out pretty quickly. No big whoop. That happens to me every time I set up an account at any website - the name I first choose may or may not stick. You're thinking way too much in terms of rules, but Wikipedia works in terms of humans. We don't need to talk about correlation and causation and evidence and "proof" and what the word "random" really means. We just need to accept that admins exercise their judgement, and if there's a problem in a particular case, we address it.

It's really not about assuming good faith, either. Blocking an account within a few minutes of creation isn't a statement about the account holder's motivations at all. It's just a judgement, by a human, that a particular username isn't going to work. If a roughly equivalent one gets through, whatever. No big whoop. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The reason is that usernames must be identifiable. Random strings of characters defeat most of the purpose of a username. —Centrx→talk • 04:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

and that justifies the appropriateness of ban-on-sights? Considering all the opposses inthis (which was for 'extreme cases'), i can't imagine how consensus for shoot-on-sight blocking would have been reached for something like randomness 7 months later when that rule was first added. --`/aksha 05:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

What justifies quick username blocks is that they're no big deal, and it's very easy for someone to either try again with a more wieldy username, or defend the one they first chose. It's likely that none of our policies would have achieved consensus, had they been submitted for it to a group anything like the current population of Wikipedia. That's not really an argument against good practices. In specific cases where problems are caused by quick username blocks, you should bring up those specific problems. If there are so many of these problems, that will become apparent, and we'll do something about it. Until then, try not to worry so much about it. There really are hundreds of things at this website more worth your energy. Most people who want to contribute to Wikipedia use nicely accessible usernames, on their first try. It's really ok. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Username policy, continued

When a user's username is blocked under this policy, what type of message does that user receive? --Badger151 06:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Badger151, it's {{UsernameBlocked}}. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

After being accused of wikilawyering I was going to stop participating in this discussion; but I conducted an experiment and feel obliged to state that it's not {{UsernameBlocked}}. {{UsernameBlocked}} is part of it, but the actual message is a lot longer then that and, imo, slightly confusing for a new user. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 14:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

What else is there? -GTBacchus^(talk) 17:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

In looking only at the {{UsernameBlocked}} template, I note that all username blocks seem to be given the same lengthy message, which starts with a huge red X and, "Your username has been blocked indefinitely because it may be rude or inflammatory..." For the moment leaving aside the issue of the wisdom of blocking random usernames, perhaps we should subdivide the username blocks based on the reasons for the block. Equally important, perhaps the message associated with the block can be made a little more friendly and/or use a block similar to those found on other sites: registration of an improper username fails to go to completion, but perhaps suggests similar alternate names. Does anyone know how many usernames are blocked on a typical day? --Badger151 17:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have that number handy. I asked some admins and someone said "around 50 100-150". As for making the message more friendly and helpful, I support that. What would you change about it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I took a moment to review the registration process by creating User:Test (see talk page), and I noticed a few things. 1) On the registration page there are some notes on what constitutes a valid username, but I don't know how many people notice or read them. 2) On entering a username and creating a password, the next screen said "Login Successful... Your account has been created...) with no mention that usernames to be found unsuitable would be blocked - I expect that most new users interpret this to mean that their account name was found to be acceptable, making subsequent blocks very unexpected. Perhaps adding something along the lines of "Wikipedia reviews all new usernames to see if they might match or resemble current users, or for some other reason create difficulties. This process typically take a few minutes (or hours, or days - whatever is correct). If, for some reason, your username proves to create difficulties, we will contact you and help you move this account over to another username. For the moment, click here to change your preferences, or here to go to the main page" would make subsequent blocks less shocking. For the blocks, removing the big red X might make them more friendly. The bold "blocked indefinitely" also seems a bit rough... I'll tinker some and see if I can put together a written-out proposal. --Badger151 18:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the trouble to do this Badger151, that's very helpful. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm actually enjoying it. It's also a nice work break. A proposed revision, along with the original template, is now at user:Badger151/templates. Please comment! --Badger151 20:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops - looks like I connected the link wrong - thanks to RHaworth for picking that up and correcting it. --Badger151 01:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be three reasons to block random usernames:

• They reduce the sewious appeawance of Wikipedia. I disagree. For one thing, they are not part of the encyclopedia itself. And for another, we allow all kinds of other silly usernames, such as User:Can't Sleep, Clown Might Kill Me (or whatever it is), User:Cute Hobbit, or User:Fetish Grrrl. How does User:Yuyuyuy777 look worse?
• They are often used by vandals. Sorry, this is bogus. Sure, they are often used by vandals, but don't you think they'll catch on and use acceptable names to get around those blocks?
• They're hard to remember and keep track of. For the most part, the software takes care of this for us, but other times, such as on WP talk pages, it's nice to be able to just type someone's handle. It's also good to be able to recognize names (e.g., I see User:So-and-so is active again, better check his changes, or Oh good, User:Fetish Grrrrl is on the case, I don't need to worry about it. If we think this is important, the rule needs to be written with that in mind, and to disallow usernames which appear random or are otherwise difficult to remember or recognize, even if the user has a good explanation. And we should think about user names formed with long sentences or arbitrary misspellings in this category as well (did you notice the spelling variation on the two fetish girls).

Matchups 04:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

God, it's just a bloody username. Apply innocent until proven guilty and get on with something more important. -- Earle Martin [^t/_c] 21:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I may be the closest-to-a-newbie poster here, so perhaps by opinion should count the least (or most according to your POV). That said:

• I noticed that the {{UsernameBlocked}} doesn't even offer the user an outlet to explain why the chosen username may be meaningful to him/her ?
• More fundamentally, I don't see the logic of blocking user for uncommitted-vandalism based on tasseography of their user names. Punish acts not thoughts, especially when reading the latter are prone to errors.
• I still fail to understand how an admin decides that a username is random. For instance, would Cadaeibfaei or Bgahbhahbhd be considered random ? In fact they are a formed by a simple alphabet substitution for digits of π and e; and while it has been conjectured that these digits are truly random, it is undoubted that they are meaningful and dear to any mathematician. Abecedare 08:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
• According to this , then, since I can't see how pschemp's name spells out anything, he should be banned. I wish I had a FARK Asinine tag for this idea. Banning people who haven't done anything wrong yet simply because *you* think their name is random is the stupidest policy I have ever heard of, period. If pschemp thinks it should stay because of consensus, then consensus HERE seems to indicate he's wrong. If my cousin used his usual handle, it would be cp4lb, which was his ham radio callsign (or whatever you call it). Banning him for that wouldn't be right, now would it? Most of the vandals I've seen on CVG are IP-addy only, or else annoying children with NONrandom names like Wanker4949 or l33t-luser or whatever. In any case, first strike is a horrible , horrible idea when it comes to banning people. --Shrieking Harpy ^Talk|Count 04:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Many things which appear "random" to one person may be perfectly meaningful to another. I used the example on the policy discussion page-what if I spelled out my first name in ASCII hex code? That would be meaningless gibberish to anyone who doesn't know what it is, but would make perfect sense to anyone who knows how to read it. What about foreign names? Do all admins know all foreign languages? Foreign words? The list of problems this policy could cause go on and on. Username policy should be applied as narrowly as possible, and only when the username in question is itself a form of vandalism (includes slurs/obscenities/advertising/etc.), or obviously confusing or bad faith ("Sylvester Stallone (unless it can be verified that's really who it is!), an obvious attempt to impersonate another user, that type of thing), it should be allowed. If the user turns out to be a vandal, well, ban 'em for vandalism. As for "hard to type"-that's a silly argument, these newfangled computer thingies have included copy and paste functionality for years and years now, and I don't imagine that going away anytime soon. Seraphimblade 09:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

My $ 1/50th. The issue, as many have noted above, is that ALL users should be judged solely on their contributions. Preemptive strikes are NEVER justified. If a username is not blatantly offensive (bigoted terms or "fighting words" or patently offensive swear words) than it should not be banned on sight. The issue is that, even though the policy sets out "guidelines", and are not to be put into use blindly; the existance of the policy instantly opens itself up to misuse, even unintentionally. If the policy does not exist in the first place, it cannot be misapplied. If a user makes consistantly vandal-like contributions, they should be banned regardless of username. If a user has made no questionable edits, they should be alowed to stay. Foreign words, leetspeak, vowel omission, initialisms, etc. etc. may ALL lead to usernames that appear random, but are infact meaningful. A well meaning admin may see the username and ban on sight a user that could potentially become a good editor. If we don't have the policy, than this problem will never happen. My vote is to remove the policy on random usernames altogether. --Jayron32 04:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm with User:Earle Martin on this one. Its a damn user name. innocent (until proven guilty). Get on with living and quit beating the new user into his own, pre-defined room. Terryeo 13:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Earle Martin makes the most sense. If everyone lived by "presumed innocent until proven guilty," then this wouldn't even be an issue. Unfortunately some people don't value that principle. As for pschemp's demands for "proof," it seems he or she is more interested in having a stimulating debate than resolving this issue in the most right and just way. Finally I'd like to point out that as Wikipedia gets larger, it's going to be harder for new users to come up with names that have not been taken. If vandals use real words which they immediately discard after vandalizing (due to a ban), then more and more potential usernames will be wasted. Most important though is innocent-until-proven-guilty, and it's surprising there are people on a site like this who don't believe in that. 68.244.242.171 06:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm a brand newbie to Wikipedia, and if my username had been banned, I would probably have been too intimidated (and concerned with my real life commitments) to come back in and do copyediting for free just because I had insomnia. I came close to choosing a username that in retrospect I am positive would have been, too. I am very glad I didn't. It would have frightened me. And yes, I have written html before, and used this "intercom" to talk on the "world web". (My Dad's words for how he sends me "letters" now.) Resonanteye 17:45, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

South Asia versus Indian sub-continent

There's been a low-level edit war ongoing in various articles and templates relating to South Asia/the Indian sub-continent. A certain cadre of editors have been replacing the term "South Asia" with "Indian sub-continent." I and others have been reversing the edits, but the game of whack-a-mole doesn't seem to stop.

I did a google test on the two terms (in quotes, so as not to get partial matches) and there are 965,000 ghits for Indian sub-continent and 29,800,000 for South Asia. Indian sub-continent was the older term, in use during the British Raj; it seems still be in use primarily in the context of geology. However, since the sub-continent was split into five countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal) the term South Asia has replaced the older one, as not claiming the whole sub-continent for one of its parts. As we see from the ghits, South Asia is 30 times more common than the older term.

The Partition of India was a horrible, bloody disaster that is still sparking controversy, hatred, riots, massacres, and wars half a century later. I believe that the campaign to use the older term is politically motivated. It implies that the non-Indian nations on the sub-continent are somehow illegitimate.

Can we have a policy ruling that in any context OTHER than the geological or historical, that South Asia is the more common and the preferred term? If there's consensus that the use of the common term is preferable, in which policy statement should this be enshrined? Or do we write one from scratch? Zora 07:53, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Surely South Asia is not the same as the Subcontinent. I'm not sure most people would see Nepal and Bhutan as being in the subcontinent. Clearly Sri Lanka is in South Asia but not in the subcontinent. I'm sure there are other differences too. Use whichever term is most accurate for what you are saying, jguk 09:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that South Asia, geologically (and politically), is actually in the subcontinent as well - it's presumably on the same tectonic plate as the rest of India? I understand that in some parts of the world, "Indian Subcontinent" may be politically charged, but at least where I live, it's a pretty neutral term that's not uncommon (among other things, I've heard my friends from that part of the world use it in a present-day context). --Improv 11:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

When I took a graduate level course in the history of modern India and Pakistan, the preferred term for the region was "South Asia." I'm not sure it's possible to get a policy rulng on this, but you could certainly propose renaming the disputed articles. Notify me on my talk page and I'll participate in the discussion. Durova 15:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second Durova. I don't think you can get a ruling, but I'd be very interested in the discussion. Just let me know. --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 19:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

South Asia is not an obviously self-explanatory term. Why does it not include Saudi Arabia or Indochina, which are also the southern part of Asia?--Runcorn 21:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is the problem with the term. When I read Sout Asiain the newspaper I am sure that the writer means at least India, but I am not sure what else the author means. Andries 23:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Indochina is part of South-East Asia not South Asia. I would say it's understood by most SEA including those in Indochina that they're a part of SEA not South Asia. Indeed I'm somewhat doubtful that many in Vietnam would say they're part of South Asia and also why only refer to Indochina? What about Indonesia, Myanmar etc? I agree that the term doesn't make perfect sense but I think it is the understood term. Indian subcontinent arguably isn't as clear as well. Is Sri Lanka part of the Indian subcontinent? What about Nepal and Bhutan? In any case, I would suggest until there is consensus changing existing references is a no-no. If these editors write new article then perhaps it would be acceptable but otherwise I would suggest not Nil Einne 00:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia's mission doesn't include redefining established academic terms. Durova 04:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I have always seen "South Asia" as an Americanism. I don't think it's commonly used in Britain even today. And incidentally, Nepal and Bhutan were always independent - they weren't part of the partition, since they were never part of British India. The fact is that the area has been known as India for far, far longer than Pakistan has existed. To claim its use is politically motivated is flying in the face of the facts. -- Necrothesp 21:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course it's used in the UK. Both Cambridge and Oxford have schools of South Asian Studies! Ghits, academic usage -- all point to South Asia as being preferred. Zora 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Southeast Asia vs South Asia is indeed a very confusing term, and I think that both are preferable to the Indian Subcontinent. It seems like South Asia is clearly the modern term. Cephyr 03:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, first I didn't say South Asia wasn't used in the UK. I said it wasn't commonly used in the UK. Big difference there. And second, you can never point to Google as a measure of world usage, since such a high percentage of webpages originate in the United States. -- Necrothesp 23:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

What do the people that live there call it? That would seem to be the best choice. My feeling is that since the area including Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia is called South East Asia, then South Asia is logical. raining_girl 16:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the term South Asia has gained preference due to political correctness in lieu of smaller countries in the region that are much less often the subject of discussion. Here in India, the term has also gained popularity. Substituting South Asia for Indian sub-continent is less of an issue, but there is a tendency to substitute South Asia for India with which many in India would have a grouse: e.g. South Asian Entertainment (read Bollywood), South Asian Economy (read Indian Economy).

Also the term clubs India with its neighbours that are less successful economically and/or politically. (Try substituting "American" with "North American".) Though India has its fair share of internal problems, most of its neighbours can be categorized as troubled states (Fundamentalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Maoists in Nepal, LTTE in Sri Lanka). Compared to contemporary India, that projects an image of modest progress, South Asia comprises of countries that would be seen around the world as unstable and/or riddled with woes. A natural reaction by some in India then would be to view the term with skepticism. 09:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

"South Asia" is a perfectly good term; it's very clear what it means (the region of Asia comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan). Nobody confuses this with Southeast Asia, so there's no problem with the use of this term. Badagnani 22:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Rollback to the bots!

I propose to let antivandalism bots (Tawkerbot2, etc.) be granted the rollback feature. A proposal made some time ago for giving rollback to people was not been approved, but I believe that its main objections do not apply to bots. These objection were:

1. it's additional bureaucracy
2. if you can be trusted for rollback, you can apply for adminship
3. can be abused (encourages people to use rollback when inappropriate)
4. creates an additional "access level"
5. you can still do this using popups et at.

The first objection does not apply to bots, since there are currently only a handful of antivandalism bots, and requests for rollback can be granted via WP:BRFA as normal bot permission requests. As for the second objection, no bot has so far be granted adminship (even if limited to uncontroversial tasks such as blocking open proxies). The third point does not apply to bot for the obvious reasons that the bot behavior depends on their program and not on their ego. Since bots are generally considered out the "hierarchy" of users (assuming that exists), the fourth objection does not apply as well.

As for the final question "why doing it at all?", it's true that bots can perform rollback; however, rollback would help reducing the load on the server; especially for accounts such as the antivandalism bots that make lot of reversions, this could be overall useful. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• You will have to contact the Devs about this since it involves modifying the MediaWiki software. >Radiant< 14:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think the actual software needs any (nontrivial, at least) modification for this, just the config. That said, I guess a dev (specifically, someone with shell access) will probably have to be involved at some point, if we decide that this is a good idea. Personally, I'm in favor. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • That what I also got at least by reading Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Archive_2006-01-06#Rollback_group_added and the following section. Once a "rollback" group is added, a steward (not a bureaucrat) can make a user a member of this group. Programming was required to make this ability availiable to bureaucrats; this was considered necessary at the time of the original proposal because of a large number of expected users requesting rollback. It's not necessary now, given the little number of antivandalism bots around. Tizio 16:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Since this proposal has not been opposed (so far), I have asked a developer if this feature could be re-enabled. Tizio 17:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Interestingly, one of the objections I've heard about non-admin rollback is that rollbacks may be flagged as bot edits in recent changes (presumably if they roll back to a bot edit), which obviously doesn't apply here. Of course, it would require a small change to special:makebot, or a similar page to be written. This seems like a reasonable idea.-Steve Sanbeg 19:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Policy regarding 'games' hosted on wikipedia

With the recent nomination of Wikipedia:Esperanza/Coffee Lounge/Games and Wikipedia:Hangman, I believe it is about time that the issue be discussed properly and through out, not on a whim of an afd, with a clear policy coming out of it. Some discussion topics are:

• Should games be allowed at all? Do they violate WP:NOT?
• If games should be allowed, should they be allowed in the wikipedia namespace? user namespace?
• If games should be allowed, should we restrict the type of games allowed?

Please provide your opinion on the issue. Thank you. - Tutmosis 18:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

No, anyone who wants to play a game can ask someone on Wikipedia to join any of the many chess, checkers, backgammon servers online. Wikipedia is a dictionary. —Centrx→talk • 18:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• cough* encyclopaedia *cough* Trebor 18:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

In fact, WP is an encyclopedia, but I agree: Games have no place here. It is laughably easy to ask someone to play elsewhere if you need to de-stress. Distraction from actually helping the encyclopedia and violates WP:NOT a place for social networking, or a games website provider. Moreschi 18:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

If I might suggest something, we could host most of this games on yahoo for free, and we could use 1 page to organize a time table for tournaments or whatever you guys are currently doing with this pages. This could in a way satisfy both supporters and deletionists of game pages. Or did I miss something? - Tutmosis 18:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Why not create a page called "Wikipedia based games", and a community (or even just me!) to manage it? This would solve this problem. Or host it off wikipedia, on another site for example, but link to it? Most games could easily be transferred. If you want to play games, go on Miniclip and similar sites. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a source for information. I know I'm repeating other points, but it needs addressing now, before wikipedia might as well be 'wikigames' You wouldn't expect games in Encarta (microsoft trademark), so why should wikipedia be different? We could go all out and ban games completely, but that could cause an uproar. Wikipedia is about everyone, so we need a comparise. Any ideas?Micropw 17:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:NOT a gaming server. However, IMO we can keep/allow the few games that actually involve bulding an encyclopedia, like WikiRPG or whatever else people come up with in this mood. Misza13 18:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Ditto Wikipedia:Wikistory and Wikipedia:Wikirace and similar games that use Wikipedia functionality. Carcharoth 02:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like most agree that majority of games should be deleted. Should we add this to WP:NOT page and work it into policy? I hope I'm not the only one who hates the process of "on a random rainy day, all of sudden someone decides to delete a a project with a long history". Which happened to userboxes, which still hasn't seen a clear policy made, just mass-deletions enforced by democracy (see WP:NOT). Also on the afd, I feel I brought up a valid point which I want answered, How do barnstars help wikipedia and not encourage social networking? - Tutmosis 02:11, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Esperanza is pretty much 'social networking' why not delete that too? The point I'm trying to make is we need clear boundaries so we wouldn't need this mass deletion crusades. - Tutmosis 02:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't use barnstars (I felt uncomfortable about them from the beginning, along with userboxes, and I am still uncomfortable about them), and I'm not a member of Esperanza, so I'm probably not the best person to answer your questions! :-) Carcharoth 02:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Um... aren't barnstars generally given for doing good work on the encyclopedia? I would say that barnstars are helpful to morale in a way that is directly related to contributions to the project. They encourage us to work together on the encyclopedia in a spirit of respectful and appreciative camaraderie. They positively reinforce good work on the project. If, on the other hand, barnstars are being given out for actions unrelated to the encyclopedia, I would say that's inappropriate. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Not always. I've seen a barnstar given for having a creative username. ColourBurst 17:20, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Hence my use of the word "generally", and my last sentence. I'm pretty sure 99% of barnstars are given for contributions to the project. If that's not true, it should be. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a problem of when social networking becomes loosely related to editing. Here's how I think of it: It's ok to interact and to get to know people (the networking part), but in doing so it should be apart of the making of an encyclopedia. Discussions can find themselves in grey area, and some stuff does get off topic, and that can be ok, but we shouldn't actively seek such activities. -- Ned Scott 02:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean delete Esperanza and barnstars‽‽‽ Esperanza is to bring together a community. Basically it means strengthening the encyclopedia. The Spanish Wikipedia weren't a community so a whole big chunk of Spanish Wikipedians broke off to form Enciclopedia Libre. Esperanzians also make sure that Wikipedians' work feels appreciated. This is done using barnstars. Ok, so maybe some people give away barnstars for just having a creative user name, but we just want to say "well done" to all Wikipedia contributors (except vandals etc). Barnstars give it a personal touch. I think that games should stay on Wikipedia. Wikipedia isn't just about editing tirelessly; it's also about having fun. Games are quite good for passing the time and they don't hurt anybody. Games may not be encyclopedic but as long as this website doesn't somehow turn into Gamepedia, a bit of gaming should be ok. Games generally don't take up that much room and if you want a game that does, try putting it on Uncyclopedia. --lE☺N2323 21:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think most of these turn-based games should go. However, there are some that seem pretty harmless such as Wikipedia:Wikington Crescent or Wikipedia:Wikirace (just remove the score keeping). Also, these "games" actually uses articles and could get people to think about how readers might navigate between articles. Some of the "write a story" or "finish this sentence" games might be ok as long as they stay in the sandbox subpages as demonstrations of Wiki editing (and again, remove the archives, we don't need to keep this stuff). That's probably where I'd draw the line. -- Ned Scott 02:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay so we are getting there, could we put a border around social activities, such "they must be connected with wikipedia in subject matter"? Or does the community see no point in such activies per Carcharoth? - Tutmosis 02:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

"per Carcharoth"? I do see a point in some of the activities. I've supported the retention of games using Wikipedia as part of the process of the game. Please don't misrepresent my position. I also support other people using barnstars, and I support Esperanza in principle (though I don't intend to join). I do see people awarding barnstars for trivial or irrelevant stuff as ego-inflating or irrelevant, and that can devalue barnstars. I also support off-topic humour when appropriate, as that is invaluable for lightening the atmosphere. ie. Don't be too serious, but don't spend excessive amounts of time playing, joking and socializing. Carcharoth 11:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-related fun is likely ok, but things like turn based games (and/or high edit counts in order to "play"), games that have score keeping or "tournaments", or games that are not Wiki-related at all, are all red flags of going too far. So, yeah, they should definitely be connected with Wikipedia, be simple, and have a value other than being a game that contributes to helping build an encyclopedia (other than social networking or a sense of community). -- Ned Scott 02:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally I agree, of course it's a community decision. Do you think it be best to work something like that into wikipedia policy? So in the future we could just refer to such policy, without having people getting into arguements on afds and possibly leaving wikipedia in anger. - Tutmosis 02:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

We do have policy on this in WP:NOT, so I think it would probably be better to make something a guideline. For one the average editor seems to be agreeing with what we're saying, and this isn't a big issue like the userbox dispute, so I don't think we have to "lay down the law" so to speak. Is there an existing guideline that we could attach a note about keeping wiki-fun wiki-related and such? I think a simple paragraph conveying the basic idea would probably be all we need to do. -- Ned Scott 02:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

and when I say "no record keeping" I mean avoid things like those extensive game archives in the Coffee Lounge Games MFD. It's probably ok to mention such stuff in discussion, especially when the game is wikirelated, etc. Also, keeping track of things and collaborating for "games" like WikiRPG would definitely be ok, since they're games of collaborative editing, and such. -- Ned Scott 03:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Didn't come across any such page. Maybe create one? let's say regarding "Community programs"? - Tutmosis 03:07, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Who cares? — Omegatron 03:07, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

We don't want Wikipedia to become a general game playing forum. Nor do we want editors who only play games. That said, I would apply a similar attitude to what we say about user pages that have a lot of not Wikipedia-german material. As long as the users in question are making productive edits we should give them a fair bit of leeway about minor things like this. I do however, agree that game archives are in any event not good. JoshuaZ 03:11, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

"As long as the users in question are making productive edits..." What are we, the Wiki-Gestapo now? Are we going to start monitoring everyone's usage? Spying on users to see where they're making edits, and if they're being "productive enough"? Clearly, Wikipedia is not becoming a "general game playing forum." As far as I can tell, the Esperanza area is the main place where this is taking place. Just corral it all there, and let's get on with our day. This is a lot of useless cycles when everyone here could be more productive making useful edits to the wiki articles. --Wolf530 (talk) 03:38, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Normally, I'd agree with you. It doesn't seem like a huge issue, and it was mostly contained. One problem is when we make an exception for one place but not another, and so on. Maybe if there was a strong reason to keep those pages, even if they were the only ones allowed, but so far I personally haven't seen any good reason to keep them at all. -- Ned Scott 04:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

How about a clear statement on what is good and what people have a problem with?

Right things

1. Games that promote Wikipedia are good. WikiRPG, Wikirace, etc are fine.
2. Events and things that promote Wikilove and community are fine. Barnstars, smileys, and the like don't *directly* contribute to the project but boost people's morale and make them feel appreciated. This , in turn, helps the community.
3. Event-groups like Esperanza have the right idea, but implementation sometimes confuses those of us who are not , shall we say, wikiextroverts? Some people place more value on structure, organization, deleting crap, editing, and the relentless and psychotically-fixiated destruction of vandals than in wikifairy-esque prettying , making the newbies feel at home, and other things. These are both important concepts, even to grumpy deletionists.

Wrong things

1. Things that don't directly related to the Wiki, and don't indirectly contribute to it either. The games in question, in my view (which can be wrong) can't be said to directly or indirectly aid Wikipedia. Some games, like the Sandbox poetry stuff, show you pieces of Wikipedia you would have never seen otherwise. But chess? Come on. I'm almost sure at least one person who has played this chess game has also decided userboxes are a waste of diskspace. The games are wrong because of anyone BUT Esperanza did it (like, say, if they were on a userpage) they would be a smoking deleted salted ruin in minutes.
2. Things that become an end unto themselves. Hell, who wants to deal with vandals when you can chill out and play chess and not edit? DOES this make people more productive, or less? I can chat with AIM and play with my daughter while editing, watching Lupin's AV tool update. I don't need to play a game. Do others? (And yes, I know I shouldn't project myself onto everyone, but still...)

Alright, that's it. --Shrieking Harpy ^Talk|Count 04:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Very nicely summarized, I would support such guideline. - Tutmosis 13:30, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

• Hangman predates Esperanza by about seven months. IIRC Chess is older than that. Also, Barnstars serve an important function for editor morale. >Radiant< 14:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

How do things like the Reference desk topics fall under this? I can't really say that the non Wikipedia refdesks help the encyclopedia directly (maybe very indirectly by suggesting topics that aren't already covered) ColourBurst 17:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Why not create a page called "Wikipedia based games", and a community to manage it? Or host it off wikipedia, on another site for example, but link to it to show the link? Most games could easily be transferred. If you want to play games, go on Miniclip and similar sites. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. You wouldn't expect games in Encarta (microsoft trademark), so why should wikipedia be different? We could go all out and ban games completely, but that could cause an uproar. Wikipedia is about everyone, so we need a comparise. Any ideas?Micropw 17:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC) (The preceding statement was moved from the section Wikipedia:Game guide by Jcam as it appears to be about "gaming" on Wikipedia and not articles which are/are not game guides.)

I see nothing in the WP:NOT that specifically bans games such as this. It says that Wikipedia is not a social networking site, but are turn-based games hosted on here the same thing as MySpace or Friendster? Unless a user tries to initiate a conversation on Wikipedia with whoever they're playing with, I don't think this violates anything. Spartacusprime 21:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they are the same. They are social in nature, and do not contribute to Wikipedia. To claim that WP:NOT doesn't cover these already is wikilawyering, pure and simple. In fact, I'm not sure if we need new guidelines; existing policy, plus knowledge of our core mission and common sense, already give us clear guidance on games: those that are fun and improve the encyclopedia somehow are good; those that do not contribute serve no purpose and should be moved to another site. -- SCZenz 21:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of making policy is to inform all users of what is wrong and what is right. If you didn't notice, some people are voting 'keep'. Just because the majority can use "common sense", doesn't mean everyone agrees with it. Most people have the common sense to agree with NPOV. Why do we need a policy for that? - Tutmosis 02:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

There's a difference between core policy and new guidelines that follow from it. For peripheral details, we can't always write a new guideline for every situation that comes up. Have you read about m:Instruction creep...? I think that deleting the esperanza games page will set an adequate precedent that most users agree that such games aren't helping with our mission; there's no reason for the extra time and angst to put a guideline tag on it. -- SCZenz 03:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Even though I dont think this is instruction creep, I still see your point. I dont wish to have endless policies and guidelines, it's just some areas are completely not covered by any policy or guideline. Userboxes were a testimony to that. No policy was ever made, people were divided and huge amount of time was wasted. Even adding "game site" to WP:NOT would send the message so we don't have deal with this discussion ever again, since most agree with deletion of such pages. - Tutmosis 03:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

You could add a games section to WP:NOT, sure. But remember that WP:NOT is descriptive, not proscriptive, and that we can never hope to write down all the things that Wikipedia isn't. And there was no userbox policy because nobody could agree on one—sometimes doing the right thing on a case-by-case basis leads to less trauma than hashing out a guideline—and I think the same might end up being true with the games issue. -- SCZenz 06:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed I agree with you, but I feel you might be taking my comment out of context. I don't want another section added to WP:NOT. There is a wonderful sentence there "You may not host your own website, blog, or wiki at Wikipedia." Would it do any harm to add "games" to this sentence? I think it still falls under "descriptive", since in my mind 'proscriptive' would be listing actual games like "Don't play chess" which isn't what I want. If another game page is ever is created, we can just point to that and * puff * afd closed with no arguing. - Tutmosis 19:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

If you want to add that to WP:NOT, I'd certainly be in favor. But if there's a big argument about the added text, I personally wouldn't participate very much. -- SCZenz 21:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that hosting games on wikipedia would take the value out of this website because it would disrtact people who have work to do and are trying to gain more knowledge. Putting games on wikipedia would also attract some people who would mess around editing pages to this site. Thes are the reasons I think wikipedia should not host gamesBennyj600 21:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)bennyj600

"If I play, and don't work, then I am a fool, but if I work and don't play, then I am still a fool." bibliomaniac15 Review? 03:48, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe that games with no relation to editing, e.g. hangman and the chess championship, should be deleted. However, others, such as the India Quiz (which is educational), Word Association (which helps editors hone their linking skills and can direct to interesting pages to work on), and WikiRPG (which encourages editing) should be kept. I'll produce a list later sorting what I think should and shouldn't be deleted. The barnstars and Esperanza, which though not "games" have been mentioned here, should be kept because they encourage civility and a good relationship between fellow editors. --Gray Porpoise^{Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae} 12:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

If you want to play games on a wiki there are sites out there that will give you a free wiki to play games on. This is for writing an encyclopedia. Too often people see Wikipedia and they think What a great tool for all kinds of things. But they are really thinking about the MediaWiki software, which provides the functionality they want and does not have a limited scope like Wikipedia. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I've created a page to summarize what I think: User:Gray Porpoise/Wikipedian Philosophy/Games on Wikipedia --Gray Porpoise^{cetaceans have large brains} 21:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Elaragirl wrote further up: "Right things: ... 2) Events and things that promote Wikilove and community are fine. Barnstars, smileys, and the like don't *directly* contribute to the project but boost people's morale and make them feel appreciated. This , in turn, helps the community." [emphasis added]
Do Wikipedia:Emoticons (and all those listed at Template:Smiley) really help anyone, more than they annoy the rest of us? I've been wondering whether these could all be MfD'd and strongly-discouraged. They're spreading from usertalk pages to articletalk pages, and I consider them distracting, unprofessional, and unappealing. -Quiddity 00:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the belief that Wikipedia is more as a central hub for knowledge and not frivelous games or gaming forums. I also agree with the suggestion of keeping games that encourage strong utilization of Wikipedia's encyclopeadic purposes. As far as the discussion regarding Barnstars/user boxes, I honestly do not see much harm in them on this site. For one, Wikipedia differs from other encyclopedia websites in the sense that it views its contributers as an online community. The Barnstars/user boxes are a way to encourage the community feel and recognize those who diligently contribute to Wikipeida's various types of articles. I cannot really comment this way or that about Smileys, I have to admit I am one to abuse them (text wise not so much image wise) when sending a thank you message or the like.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 00:57, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

---

It seems from the discussion here and the recent discussions on MfDs to delete the games that there is largely the following consensus:

1. Games that do not contribute to or leverage the encyclodia and in some way encourage or support the development of the encyclopedia don't belong here.
2. Games other than those covered by #1 above may have a place here.
3. There are other sites that are more suited to playing games than Wikipedia.
4. Social elements on Wikipedia that are directly related to the construction of the encyclopedia or to acknowleding editors for their work on the encyclopedia are OK.

With somewhat less consensus are the following views:

1. To the extent, if any, that games are here, they should be narrowly limited in scope and confined to a well-defined area.
2. We don't need to create new policies specifically regarding games as WP:NOT is broad enough. However, it may be worthwhile to include some mention of games in WP:NOT.
3. Social groups on Wikipedia such as Esperanza may have legitimate purposes here, but their activities should not distract from the purpose of writing an encyclopedia.

Personally, I find using Wikipedia to play games strange given the availability of free gaming sites—but then I've never understood the fascination with using a cell phone for text messages. These are both examples of using a technology for something that the technology is ill-suited for when there are existing and widely available technologies (email and networked game sites) that are highly suited for the purpose. At least with text messaging on a cell phone you can make the case that the proper tool may not be readily available; with playing games on Wikipedia you can't even say that. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 04:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Doug Bell - there's a lot of games that simply need to go. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a games site. Besides, playing games on here is so annoying. It's much more fun at a site which is designed for it anyway. --Cyde Weys 05:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Related - Smilies and emoticons

copying from above, as it's seperate but relevant, and I think an important issue...

Elaragirl wrote further up: "Right things: ... 2) Events and things that promote Wikilove and community are fine. Barnstars, smileys, and the like don't *directly* contribute to the project but boost people's morale and make them feel appreciated. This , in turn, helps the community." [emphasis added]

Do Wikipedia:Emoticons (and all those listed at Template:Smiley) really help anyone, more than they annoy the rest of us? I've been wondering whether these could all be MfD'd and strongly-discouraged. They're spreading from usertalk pages to articletalk pages, and I consider them distracting, unprofessional, and unappealing. Wikipedia is not AOL/Yahoo/MSN - text smilies are perfectly adequate, and non-intrusive visually, and they don't mess up line-height like embedded images do. --Quiddity 20:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I am admittedly biased on this point. I have always hated smileys and don't see their point at all, text or images. They seem to mean, "I know this wasn't funny, but pretend that it was," or "This was funny but you might not be clever enough to notice," or "I am being insulting here, but you can't take offense because this is a smiley." I oppose including them on the talk pages. Obviously. Phiwum 20:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Not to take a side in the issue of the graphics, but as to the point of smileys, there definitely is one. In face-to-face, or even telephone conversations, body language and voice inflection impart a great deal of information in the exchange that provides context to what is being verbalized. In written communication, this is absent. Smileys help clue the reader to the non-verbal clues that are associated with physically connected communication. That doesn't mean they need to be graphic, but they do serve a valuable purpose in informal written communication. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 21:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Right. Because before the internet, people did not use written communication, so it's a whole new set of problems. Sorry, I don't buy it. If folks write with a modicum of care, they should be able to get their meaning across. But I suppose this rant is more than a bit off-topic. Sorry. I'll just wipe the froth from my mouth and carry on. Phiwum 13:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Key word there is informal. Before the internet, in wasn't common practice for people to have a conversation by writing. Even in the early days of email, the communication was more formal. It was with the advent of interactive written conversations that the use of acronym, abbreviations and finally, emoticons become common place. It is different than the prior written communication. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 13:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Right. If it's informal, then there's no reason to take care to express yourself. Draw pictures instead. Also, it's okay to say "I was all like, 'Duh!' and he goes 'Huh?'," as long as the conversation is informal. Lastly, right, before the internet, letters between siblings were all very formal. Otherwise, they'd have smileys in them.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Folks used to know how to write and know they prefer to draw pictures. Why write, "I was surpised!" when you can just put a little bit of punctuation? (Note: I can understand smileys for IRC and other immediate message systems. But not email and not Wikipedia.) Phiwum 14:10, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I've got some discussion of emoticons, their history, and their pros and cons, in my Mail Format site: [1] *Dan T.* 14:02, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I oppose using them also and would certainly be in favor of MfD'ing these. They make discussions look messy. — mark ✎ 20:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

i think games should be allowed any where relevent! Nyjen

Porn References

If Wikipedia is supposedly an online encyclopedia and not merely a collected catalog of general information, then WHY are there so many references and pages devoted to Pornographic entertainment, as in specific movies, and to Porn Stars? Why would ANY encyclopedia of repute want to include a listing of "Big Bust" pornstars or porn stars famous for "female ejaculation"? I mean, really, a page devoted to "Peter North"? Is that a joke? Are either Danni Ashe or Jenna Jameson worth mentioning in an online learning resource seeking legitimacy? How would that possibly cement the site or the Wikipedia concept's reputation as a valuable scholarly resource? Porn doesn't belong here except as a general heading. Adult Film stars are not notable people to be included in an encyclopedia except in the imaginations of one-handed keyboard surfers.

And the number of comic book entries, whether Marvel or DC, is worrisome, as well. Comic Books in general as a subject is perfect. It is a recognized artform. It is considered popular fiction, but of an extremely juvenile nature and NOT on the same level as the young adult fiction of, say, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter... But do we really need a "Venom" article page? Or a complete list of Batman's villains? Or an article dedicated to "Crisis on Infinte Earths"? Where is the scholarly value in this? Why is THIS included as opposed to the works of, say, horror author Tom Piccirilli who is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author?

I think Wikipedia has a lot of potential and is a fantastic idea, but until there are set, enforcible limits that are applied to ALL entries, across the board, then this subjective "wiggle room" for articles is going to negatively impact the public's acceptance of the concept as a whole.

Respectfully,

Joseph Armstead

• I have to agree here. I do a lot of new page deleting (note: I am not an admin) and I have found many sexual references. My first thought is always "Eww!" I have a feeling that this is also most everybody's first response. Nobody likes to see who the porn stars were in 1994. Nobody wants to know something like "how to have sex." (at least not in an encyclopedia) In any case, pornographic references and sexual references do shed negative light on Wikipedia, and I think that they should be ruled as not notable. Diez2 00:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

What part of Wikipedia is not censored do you not understand? Why should the rest of us have to let you vette which articles get posted or not? Nobody likes to see who the porn stars were in 1994. Nobody wants to know something like "how to have sex." Obviously, since we have those articles, there are people who disagree with you. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:56, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Armstead: While porn may not seem scholarly to you, it's a billion-dollar industry and very much notable. The "levels" in children/teen literature you mention are point of view and Wikipedia strives to pursue the opposite. Please see the policy WP:NPOV for more information on this matter. I might personally agree with you that Harry Potter is of a "higher level" than many comics, but not everyone does. We receive requests similar to yours on a daily basis. You are right in that a large portion of the world's population might see Wikipedia of lesser quality because of certain content it contains, but, as Zoe said above, Wikipedia is not censored. What you might see as appropriate might be seen as inappropriate by someone else in the world of different views. What you might think is of little quality and downright disgusting is how another editor might make his or her living or enjoys, and is something that he or she sees as a high-level art form. As long as it's not illegal in the State of Florida, where the non-profit Wikimedia Organization hosts its servers, Wikipedia will not censor or judge on what is of a "high level" or what will increase the project's "public's acceptance". Wikipedia is not running for office and thus does not have to please anyone! We do have an Articles for Deletion section, where, if articles aren't notable (see WP:Notability), they can be deleted by consensus. Those are often articles that fail basic key points highlighted in What Wikipedia is Not. There is no such thing as "taste" on Wikipedia. It's about documenting what exists, whether it is universally liked and approved of or not. -newkai t-c 04:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I should also address your first question, "WHY are there so many references and pages devoted to Pornographic entertainment?" Something Wikipedia can do nothing about is which articles are edited and to which extent. It's a simple matter of interest. Why is the there over 5000 times as much information on New York City as their is about the town I'm currently living in, Vestal, New York? Because there are over 5000 times as many editors interested in editing articles on New York City! How does this relate to porn? This might be speculation, but devoted Wikipedians spend a lot of time in front of their computers, and many probably view a lot of pornography and then edit articles on it... It's quite simple. Tom Piccirilli's article here on Wikipedia might simply not be as detailed (or in this case non-existant) as a random sex position simply because those interested in Piccirilli spend more time reading his books and less time on Wikipedia. -newkai t-c 04:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I've spent enough time in Vestal to assert (as original research) that there's 5000 times as much interesting stuff going on in NYC than in Vestal. Seriously, though, I agree with your first paragraph, even if I disagree with the speculation in your second 'graph. Barno 15:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Armstead,

Perhaps you are confusing what is with what you think should be. I suspect you think ordinary, respectable people ought not be fascinated by naked people, especially people who are professionally naked. Social animals are always interested in each other's bodies and I imagine that you are one of those people who would like to think that humans are not animals, but angels. I say we are both. And Wikipedia is devoted to what is, not what anybody thinks should be. John Reid ° 06:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I was simply stating that interest plays a big role in what is written about on Wikipedia! -newkai t-c 21:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The existence of any one article doesn't prevent the existence of any other. WP:NOT paper. Someone else can write articles on porn stars or video games or comic books and you can write articles on fine art and ancient history. We don't need to limit ourselves to the most important or cultured things. If you think we need an article on Tom Piccirilli, go ahead and write one or request one. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, how you define an encyclopedia is you own opinion, I am not defending pornography but I am saying that just because you do not want to see it does not mean that others dont. It is an unbiased decision that states how Wikipedia is run. -Charlie34 8:27 09 November 2006

Wikipedia does not limit its content on the basis of "wholesomeness" or "goodness". The only limiting factors are: Is it notable, verifiable, not original research, and appear in reliable sources. Porn can pass all of the above with flying colors. Wikipedia is not in the position of deciding what is good for society. Society as a whole judges Porn to be a worthwhile venture, Wikipedia reflects that position. Is it right that Porn is so important to our society? That is neither here nor there. Lots of things that are detrimental to society, such as drugs, are covered in exhaustive detail at wikipedia. Porn is no different. The existance of porn related articles on Wikipedia also does not really interfere with non-porn related ventures. Remember, Wikipedia is not paper, it has nearly infinite capacity, and so feel free to read and peruse non-porn related articles here content in the knowledge that no matter how much porn content exists on wikipedia, it will not interfere with the non-porn content in any way. --Jayron32 06:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• All knowledge surely includes Carnal Knowledge??? And if key players in an industry worth 57 billion dollars a year are not notable, then we need to delete half of the non-porn entries in Wikipedia. BenBurch 20:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

A delicate question

Regarding the necessity to cite reliable and verifiable sources, I have a potentially controversial question:

• Is the Bible considered an acceptable source for historical events? Is it appropriate to cite Bible verses within articles in regards to historical events?

--Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 01:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It is often considered a reliable source, but it depends on the quotation. For example, citing Herod the Tetrarch as being regent during Jesus' life would not be controversial, or any of its descriptions of Paul's travels. Some others might be a problem; did you have something specific in mind? -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been working on Christmas which includes a rather large number of Bible verses. Specifically "The Nativity" section contains a jumble of verses describing the birth of Jesus. I had the impression that this was a subject open to debate and/or interpretation, hence my question. This is the specific content I'm wondering about. What policy or guideline would this fall under? Does WP:CITE apply? If so, does the content meet those standards?

Seeing as how the Bible is really the primary source of information about Jesus for everyone who came after, I can't see how it'd be a problem. If you were to try to start sourcing the Genesis in a Biology article, I might have a problem. :) But the only source of Nativity "facts" come from the Bible, so I say go for it. The reader is already conscious that this information comes from that source anyway. --Wolf530 (talk) 06:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that it should be written as "the Bible says that such and such happened" rather than just saying that something happened and then listing the Bible as a reference. Of course, you would not say that for every statement. Perhaps you could say something like, "the following includes descriptions of the nativity from the Bible." You could also mention that the Bible is the only source of information about the nativity (assuming it is, I thought that there are other Gospels that were not included, like the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary). I'd suggest the same thing when dealing with other ancient texts, such as the Koran and the writings of the Plinys. When dealing with modern, and especially ancient, texts, I've noticed that sources are often explicitly mentioned (rather than just using footnotes or links) if the facts are not agreed upon, if the person's credibility is questionable or if the person was the only witness. -- Kjkolb 16:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to follow up breifly. There is basically nothing about the Nativity that is independent of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Other early gospels and accounts of Jesus' life include no information on his birth and later ones are dependent on the canonical accounts (and not generally considered reliable by anyone). Eluchil404 08:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I too like: The Bible states that '..statement..' in John 3:1 [1] as compared to '..statement..'[1], where [1] is a reference to the Bible. Such a presentation surely is as easily understood, but in addition, editors can easily see what the reference is. And referenced statements are much more likely to stand than unreferenced statement. If there is discussion about referenced statements, the reference is more obvious, too. Terryeo 16:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think in most respects the Bible should not be considered as a reliable source on historical events as there is every reason to believe that it was not written with the objective of being factual. Of course, it's ok to say "the Bible says so and so". But I wouldn't be content with the sentence "Jesus existed, see the Bible for proof." Pascal.Tesson 16:53, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Referencing the Bible for information on the Biblical account of the nativity doesn't really need qualified aside from mentioning at the beginning that the story of the nativity is from the Bible and the line refs to where we drew that information. --tjstrf talk 21:11, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the good responses! --Doc Tropics ^{Message in a bottle} 21:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Page protection policy

I don't see any good reason for not protecting pages that are on the main page, especially the featured article. Isn't the whole point of having an article on the main page that the article is already good, and that few edits need to be made? When an article is on the main page, most of the edits made to it are vandalism anyway.

I'd basically like to propose a change to the protection policy. Pages that appear on the main page should be protected, as are images, or at least semi-protected so that vandalism can be reduced on the articles that are seen by the majority of people that visit Wikipedia. _JD^talk 18:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Full protection on main page linked articles is a bad idea. Even very-high profile FAs change somewhat whilst they are on the main page, see this diff for Hurricane Katrina; its not just vandalism that occurs. Articles that get linked through a DYK mention will be quite dynamic and likely are still being edited by the primary author(s); full protection would really hurt those articles. It may be reasonable to change things so main page articles can be semi-protected if needed (like any other vandal target).--Nilfanion (talk) 18:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Protection of FAs is against policy, but I haven't seen any policy against Main page protection; the only thing i saw was "main page articles may be protected if vandalized" on the WP:SPP page; this sounds a lot like the policy for all other articles. Please show me somewhere if I'm wrong about this. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:00, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Compact cassette saw some major improvement while on the front page, adding an infobox and fleshing out some additional details. Semiprotection would cut down on vandalism, but full protection would be a terrible idea. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Just because an FA is on the front page doesn't mean it can't be improved, and having it on the front page often allows people to do exactly that. Semi-protection might be useful if the article is a vandal target, but full protection isn't necessary. ColourBurst 22:23, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I was going to suggest that a featured article be semi-protected for as long as it's on the front page. Once it's no longer on the front page, it reverts back to editable. It's no secret that stuff on the front page tends to get a good share of vandalism by people who think they're being 'cute'. HalfShadow 00:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree-Although leaving the main page article open to edit is good for enticing readers to become a wikipedian, it is also enticing for vandalism. The idea of full protection for any page defeats the open policy of wikipedia, but for the sake of those who worked on an article to get it to a featured status, the main page article should have some form of protection.--Gronkmeister 22:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The point of always allowing editing on main page articles is to advertise the key quality of Wikipedia - that anyone can edit it. Wouldn't it be somewhat hypocritical if we advertise as the encyclopedia anyone can edit, yet the first article most people see is uneditable? --Golbez 09:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Please see WP:PEREN. There are good reasons for not protecting a mainpage article, in particular the fact that it advertises Wikipedia, and an important part of Wikipedia is open editing. >Radiant< 11:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought the main page was meant to advertise Wikipedia. Most of the edits made to articles on the main page are vandalism anyway, and semi-protection only prevents some people from editing it. Articles would only be semi-protected for as long as they're a big massive target labelled "vandalise me", and if people were serious about editing such articles, they would either create an account or wait for the article to be unprotected. So much vandalism occurs on articles linked from the main page; is it really worth clogging up the edit histories in hope of a single constructive edit? _JD^talk 10:56, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

J Di has a good point - just use today's featured article as an example. The article has had a tremendous amount of anonymous vandalism, which people and bots can barely keep up with. Articles such as Hurricane Katrina are another example - there were often cases where a bot would revert vandalism and inadvertently re-add previously reverted vandalism. From what I've seen recently, the daily FAs are usually not improved much, if at all. Semi-protecting the articles would both discourage anonymous vandalism (by preventing it) and encourage good faith anonymous editors to register accounts and contribute to the encyclopedia. --Coredesat 20:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

To add to that: San Francisco, California became featured article and was quite literally vandal-bombed. In several cases it was practically being vandalised every few seconds. W. S. Gilbert? As soon as it front-paged, a huge surge of almost nothing but vandalism, then when it got off the front page, nothing. Soccer? If the kids want to shit in the pool, we'll just deny them access. HalfShadow 05:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey all, Just my two cents. I recon it would be good to have a researcher actually GO THROUGH some articles and actually CERTIFY (spelling?) them as good or not. You could have a banner saying it's been researched, then it would give the researcher notification of the edit. That way VANDALS won't be able to get away with it. Their favourite tactic is to mess with it a bit at a time. I.e. Mozarts christened name, (is it realy that long? I don't think so) It was in five parts if I remember correctly. This sort of nonsence can only be corrected if you make it harder to change. This way, you have reliable, hard to change information on some topics. I must say, it's really hard to defend wikipedia's reliability if it can be imperceptibly changed - then accepted!

And this, people, is why I think that a researcher should approve, and make it hard to screw with. btw, I overheard someone bragging about how they screwed up the llama page. I'm no expert, can someone check?

Tyler, (lost my account a while back)

Wikipedia:Verifiability/temp - working draft to merge WP:Reliable sources to WP:V

In the light of discussions on WP:V and WP:RS, I have been bold and started a working draft on Wikipedia:Verifiability/temp with the following aims:

• To import a definition of "reliable sources" into the WP:V policy (to make it clear what we mean by the term now WP:RS has fallen by the wayside).
• To stress, in the discussion on sources on the project page, that common sense needs to be applied to the definition.
• To outline the sort of questions people should ask themselves when considering whether a source is reliable.
• Where possible, to shorten the text without losing any of the concepts behind the current version of the policy.

Constructive comments are welcome on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/temp, jguk 12:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Jguk did the same thing in January/February, and it was firmly rejected. He arrived today at WP:V and removed several important sections of it without discussion, and was reverted by two editors. He therefore opened up a draft page, and now is posting here about it because he's getting no support on the talk page. This is exactly what happened last time. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:15, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary. The current layout of WP:V is the one I proposed. I have also not received any negative comments other than from you about the desirability of merging WP:RS with WP:V. Indeed, most seem supportive of the idea - which is why it makes sense to put forward a proposal for comment. Everyone's welcome to comment on the page - indeed, I'd encourage them too. Are the ideas in my bullet point list good and worth acting on, or are they objectives that we should reject (and if so, for what reason)? jguk 12:22, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Everything that matters in RS is already in V, so there's no need to merge. Where is the evidence that "most" seem supportive of the idea? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Invitation to stay WP:COOL:

• Jguk, please don't play this ad hominem as you did on WT:V;
• SlimVirgin, please don't play this ad hominem as you did above.

For the record, Jguk's version was (after the talk now still available at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Jguk's version) introduced in the WP:V page on 31 January 2006. The current version of WP:V leans closer to Jguk's version than to the version before that. Note, for instance, that the older version had a nutshell template, while Jguk's version had the "three point" summary up front. The current version kept this three-point summary, and not so long ago the nutshell formula was finally discarded, and the three-point summary was placed up front. Just giving an example, other examples include the current "Burden of evidence" section, the content of which is closer to Jguk's "Citing sources" section than to what was found in the older version. The current third paragraph of this section was added in a later stage, and wasn't contained in Jguk's, nor the older version. In short, SlimVirgin's assertion above ("Jguk did the same thing in January/February, and it was firmly rejected") is (1) ad hominem, and (2) incorrect. --Francis Schonken 13:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Jguk introduced it, but it was rejected. He stopped editing WP because of the rejection, so he would certainly agree with me on that point. The removal of the nutshell was done by me, as I recall, and quite recently. Hang onto your hat, Francis, because RS is one of the pages he wants to get rid of, a page you have fiercely defended, even against copy edits. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 13:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

This was Jguk's last attempt to rewrite V: Wikipedia:Verifiability/Jguk's version. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 13:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to draw the attention that the "rejection" of Jguk's version was apparently not all that "final" in the long run, so, with retrospect (that is today), the expression "firmly rejected" was maybe adding more fuel to the flames in your discussion with Jguk than was needed. Indeed you removed the nutshell again, several months after it was re-added as part of the early "rejection" process. Maybe there's a lesson there: if you had been less firm in your initial rejection (which in the long run proved unjustified on several points), maybe Jguk hadn't been chased then. Just recommending to consider using "firm rejections" less often. Or do you consider it a success on your behalf that Jguk was chased at the time? Yes, all this reminds me of what happened at WP:RS in several respects. For instance your adamant discussion that [[Epistemology|actual]] (a deceptive link in my view) had to be kept (see Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/archive5#Actual). Until several months later when you removed the entire paragraph containing that link. --Francis Schonken 13:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

But look what happened because of your guardianship of RS. People want to ditch it because you won't allow a rewrite or even a copy edit. That is Jguk's aim, and that part of it, I must say I agree with; just not the way he goes about it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• Forest fire, guys. Please keep all discussion in the same spot, because that's more constructive. (Radiant) 14:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Jguk always does this. He has started discussions about this in the last few hours on the talk page of V, my talk page, his talk page, talk page of ATT, and here. I think it's meant to wear people down. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• objectUm, the premise seems to be faulty. There does NOT seem to be any consensus to scrap WP:RS. There are very vocal editors who are argueing to scrap the guideline, but the guideline is constantly referenced by countless editors every day. Its ubiquitousness points to consensus regardless of the volume and frequence of a few editors here to change such concensus. I would NOT support such a move. I have seen no where, at any point, that a large majority of experienced editors supports scrapping, moving, or in any other way substancially changing this guideline as described. --Jayron32 05:30, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

My editing on articles on "Jacques Pluss" and "National Socialist Movement (USA)."

I noted that my recent editing on both of the articles above was removed. It was decided that I seemed to be using the articles to publish my own websites or blogs. New information was contained in those sources, but I do respect Wikipedia's decision, do not wish to contest your removal of my editing, and I thank you for your attention. Sincerely, Dr. Jacques PLUSS.

Because it is in English, is Wikipedia supposed to be Euro-centric?

The article History of Typography says in the opening line: "This is the history of Western typography from mid-15th century to late 18th century. For the development in Asia, see History of typography in East Asia.". However, developments in Asia preceded European typography by at least two centuries, possibly six or seven. In an objection to this, I suggested that this article, focusing on Europe, should be called "History of Typography in Europe", and the main history should cover developments across the globe. Currently the articfle has a one line reference to the "parallel developments" in China and Korea.

In response to my objections, user Arbo, who has really done a wonderful job on this article otherwise, writes:

I don't think Wikipedia is supposed to be focused primarily on Europe and not the whole world. But this is the english language Wikipedia, written largely by english-speakers and western Europeans writing in english. I haven't read many of the other language WP versions, but I'll bet the Japanese WP, for example, has a Japan-centric bias.

If the english WP has a Western-centric bias it stems from the language its written in and the english-speaking cultures who write it. Try posting your query at the village pump for a better answer.

In this age where English is largely a global language, I thought I should check up on this.

Mind you, in the context of typography, this is not a simple issue - Typography has a strong European tradition, and a lot of font development took place in Europe. However, there is a very strong tradition of Chinese lettering design especially in the context of blockprints which were surely a forebearer to metal types used in Korea etc.

More generally, I feel any article with a title like "history of X" should not be only "history of X in geog:Y", but cover the global record on X. One may consider this an extension of the NPOV, but perhaps some further clarity is needed on this.

I looked around the pump to see if this topic has come up, hope it's not something that comes up every few weeks. This is my first post here. mukerjee (talk) 16:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you. To have the primary page devoted only to Europe is a case of systemic bias. NPOV suggests that the page should be a general history of typography, with subpages for history in different areas of the world. That would be my opinion, but I know very little about typography itself. Trebor 16:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• The main article ("History of typography") should cover typography worldwide, and should obviously start wherever typography was used first, which appears to be in Asia. If necessary, articles such as "History of typography in <area>" can be created for further details. I'd say some renaming and editing is in order, because this is a definite case of systemic bias. (Radiant) 11:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
• I think there should be a section on typography in Asia in the main History of typography, with a link to the Asia article. It makes sense to have them in two separate articles, as the article on Asia is quite long and would make the main article far too lengthy and dense. For a dissimilar but related discussion on systemic bias, see Talk:Year Without a Summer, if you're interested. riana_dzasta 15:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

One expects to see a bias towards Western subject matter, because this is Wikipedia.en, but that doesn't excuse us from trying to correct it. In other words, the proper answer should be, "of course there's a bias towards printing in Europe, since that's what we're all familiar with. Thanks for pointing it out. Now let's try to fix it." In this case, since all the information about Eastern printing has already been written, it should be an easy matter to integrate it into History of Typography. Might I suggest adding much info from the Asian article, and then splitting some out to a European article? -Freekee 06:15, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I am glad to see that some others also agree that the article "History of Typography" should reflect the worldwide history, including China, and if it became too long, additional matter re: European developments should go into "History of European T". Incidentally, dzasta, the early history in China / Korea is (as of now) pretty short; but even if it was long, it deserves a place in any article that calls itself "History of Typography". mukerjee (talk) 06:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement here with the above editors: we should strive to be universal in scope, not Eurocentric or Anglocentric or whatever-centric. See WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias for more thoughts on this issue and some efforts to counter the inherent bias. — mark ✎ 20:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Those other than Mukerjee who have been editing the pages involved have not yet joined the discussion, presumably because they did not know of it--Mukerjee informed me, but only today. A good deal of thought from many editors has gone into this group of pages, and I do not pretend to speak for other than myself, though I summarize as i see it.

There are many aspects to the development of typography; there are two distinct traditions, and some parts were clearly not independent, others clearly were, and some critical ones remain uncertain. Paper was undoubtedly a Chinese invention, and there is therefore a single article on it, discussing its well-documented development in China, and its well-documented spread to the West. Whether the earlier woodblock printing in Asia influenced later European printing seems logical, but is not clearly documented, and is discussed in the pair of articles block printing and woodblock printing, now in process of being merged. The technology for movable type in Asia was quite different from that in Europe; the details of the Asian development are discussed in its own article, and the possible influence mentioned in the articles on Gutenberg and elsewhere. The printing press itself seems to be independent--almost all Asian printing was not done on a press. The development of a suitable non-water based ink seems also to have been European. And of course the influence of this technology on society was also very different in the two traditions--it had only a minor role in Chinese civilization, perhaps somewhat more on Korean--but an immense one in Europe.

It seemed to me that the purpose of the East Asia article was to bring together the scattered material, and give it a presentation worthy of its importance and there was no dissent at the time. It does seem that perhaps the title of the main article should have been changed--that two articles were needed can be seen from the discussions on the relevant pages.

According to the policy for the VP, this discussion should not be taking place here in the VP. It should be taking place on the talk pages of the relevant articles--as indeed it has been up to now. I am sure the discussion there will continue and will take note of the good suggestions made above--it would be absurd not to use good ideas wherever they are made. Possibly other editors of these topics may comment here, but possibly those commenting here might have done well to have instead joined the earlier discussion.

I draw an analogy--though some articles on Christianity must refer to Judaism, Judaism will not be relevant to all later developments in what became a separate tradition, and perhaps most Jews would prefer their developments kept distinct, even though chronologically the earlier. DGG 05:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

All well, and I think most of us agree with what you're saying here. However, part of Mukerjee's issue seems to center on the choice of title for the articles on different traditions. An article titled History of typography should cover precisely what it says: a general history of typography. It should not be about Western typography only, for that's what we would have History of typography in Western Europe for, just like we have History of typography in East Asia. That's the gist of Mukerjee's point, and that's where I agree with him. Use general titles for general overviews, and specific titles for specific overviews. Incidentally, you seem to concede as much when you say "It does seem that perhaps the title of the main article should have been changed". If we agree on that, why should't we move that article at once? — mark ✎ 09:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Done! I have moved History of typography to History of western typography. I had anticipated doing so in advance—the delayed action is due to me supposedly being on wikileave for November :)

Thankyou everyone for your input.

Arbo talk 12:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

James - thanks! But perhaps moving the present article is too drastic. Clearly, most of what is typography today did happen in Europe, esp if we are talking English typography - so just a subsection or two on the antecedents in the main article would be all that is needed. That would be better than having a separate article on Western typography, and leaving some impoverished content for the global one, etc. But we can discuss this on the topic pages.

DGG, immediately after posting this comment here I had posted a note on James' talk page, who was the lead architect of the History of Typography article. Indeed, it is he who told me that such matters could be discussed on the village pump.

Thanks to the pointers to systemic bias. This bias may pervade many articles related to printing, where the Chinese/ Korean discoveries appear to be downplayed. For example, the lead sentence in the article on Johannes Gutenberg says

Johannes Gutenberg... invented the European technology of printing with movable type in 1447.

which gives the impression that the technology of printing with movable type is European, or that it was completely different from any other, earlier, technology. But these things are better handled in the relevant pages. mukerjee (talk) 01:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

As I said on the Gutenberg talk page a few minutes ago, and now copy here, "I think the first sentence is exact: there is a European technology of printing from movable type, it differs from the Asian technogy for doing this, and Gutenberg did invent it. He obviously did not invent all the components, for example paper, or the use of engraving tools. Bias would be if the sentence read, Gutenberg was the inventor of printing from movable type." For further discussion, I refer to my comments there.

And for those who haven't been there to see it, the Gutenberg article has long had--and still does have--a rather longish section on "Was Gutenberg influenced by East Asian printing?" But, as Mukerjee says, we can continue there--perhaps we've done enough over here.

DGG 05:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Editors participating in this discussion please continue it at Talk:History of western typography. Thanks!

Arbo talk 08:13, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

"WikiAtlas"

A user is about to build Portal:Atlas into a gateway to a large series of image galleries of map images that happen to be on Wikipedia. I find this a useful project perfectly suited for commons:, but not so much for Wikipedia, and I have pointed the user to Wikipedia:Galleries. I have also moved some gallery pages, such as Maps of the World to Gallery of world maps. eBut the user seems to dislike the idea to take his project to commons. Wider input is appreciated. dab (ᛏ) 08:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, i agree that the best place for the Atlas portal would be in commons:. However, i think if the portal title and scope were changed to Cartography it would be more convincing to have a place in Wikipedia. It would have a wider scope for such an important subject. It wouldn't be just a collection of maps and pictures as it is now but a coverage of the science of cartography instead. -- Szvest → ^{Wiki Me Up ®} 11:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Not only that, but Maps of the People's Republic of China, Maps of Canada, etc should be moved to Commons, too. Per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not a collection of images with no text to accompany them. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 12:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

All big encyclopedias I've ever seen always had an "Atlas" tome. And I've been extremely frustrated at times when I couldn't find any decent map on Wiki because I didn't know where to look. --SidiLemine 16:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

most of the time, there isn't a decent map on WP. If there is one, see "Geography of X". Proper maps of China will be on Geography of China. If there is a gallery on commons, there will be a transwiki link there. Articles on cartography itself (i.e. what maps are there, who is making them, since when, and where to get them) can be separate, e.g. Swiss cartography. None of this justifies collecting all maps we have into image galleries on Wikipedia. dab (ᛏ) 18:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This all seems to assume that encyclopedic knowledge can exist only in plain-text form. I agree that Wikipedia is not an image gallery; but maps seem to be a (rare) example of genuinely encyclopedic content that is best presented as self-contained images. I would expect every map to also be used on the relevant country page, and probably also on a 'Geography of' page; but providing a full and accurate atlas of the world also seems to be, in itself, an encyclopedic purpose (in a way that, say, providing a collection of unannotated photos of capital cities isn't). I don't think we need to say that, just because something is not in plain-text form, it is automatically not encyclopedic so must be shipped either to commons or as an illustration to a text article. In most cases, a stand-alone image is not encyclopedic; in the case of a map, I think it can be. We need to apply the same standards as to text articles, though - so the Atlas needs to try to provide a single, consistent, best possible map of the world and each part of it; not an indiscriminate collection of all available maps. TSP 20:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, maps seem to be an example of genuinely encyclopedic content that is best presented as self-contained images. Also nothing stops adding text to these "Maps of ..." pages. feydey 01:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Chinese Taipei and Taiwan

Well, many sports use Chinese Taipei instead of Taiwan. However, because the Chinese Taipei article is existing and show the piece of complete information. So, should i add Taiwan behind Chinese Taipei, E.g. "Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)" for clarification, or just write Chinese Taipei? I have big conflict in this with other, i vote for no. However, i need general answer for this. Thank you for all who comment. --Aleenf1 07:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• The name was adopted by the International Olympic Committee at China's insistence as a precondition of the latter's return to the Olympics. As there is only one "Chinese Taipei", no disambiguation is needed - so the "(Taiwan)" is unnecessary. On the other hand, I can't see any harm that can be caused by a single parenthetical statement (that Chinese Taipei is Taiwan), but in Olympic sports articles, a Wikilink should be sufficient without it. B.Wind 08:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree a brief (ie one word) explanation of "Chinese Taipei" may be useful. I think a better way of presenting it would be to have a footnote - eg Chinese Taipei¹ where it first appears, and then at the bottom - ¹Taiwan. Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) is confusing as it suggests they competed under the name "Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)", which would be wrong. jguk 09:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

However, in sports events where results are listed, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) SHOULD be used so that people know that this is, indeed, Taiwan, and not something else. Ludahai 11:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi folks, I'm a complete outsider on this issue, but talked somewhat with AleenF1 on IRC just a moment ago. If I've understood the problem correctly, most people doesn't know what Chinese Taipei is, and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) doesn't look too good. For example, Chinese Taipei national basketball team would probably not make sense to many people as I'd assume most westerners a accustomed to using the name Taiwan, and not Chinese Taipei. But how about including a short one-sentence explanation in the relevant articles, that link back to Chinese Taipei? That would make a lot more sense than Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) in an ordinary article, while various tables could include the (Taiwan), and could also link to either Taiwan or Chinese Taipei. Hope this can be of some help... Bjelleklang - talk 00:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

let me quote "...most people doesn't know what Chinese Taipei is..." this is unsubstantiated. it should be backed up by a scientific survey from a known organization, a scholarly work, or from any reputable source. Chinese Taipei has been in use for international sporting events since when, 1984 Olympic Games which is how many,14 years! "more than 2 decades and 2 years ago..." (quoted from an ongoing RfC in 2006 Asian Games talk page). i agree with the points raised for the use of hyperlinks and footnotes.as it provides clarificatory information by directing readers, who need information, to the right article that explains it. it is not the job of a sports article like the 2006 Asian Games to explain. there exists articles that do it e.g. Taiwan, Chinese Taipei and List_of_IOC_country_codes RebSkii 19:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, schools, as well as most media outlets in Western-Europe, and possibly also the US use Taiwan, and not Chinese Taipei when describing Taiwan. Personally, I don't feel strongly on any part of the issue, but was asked to comment on it by another user, but the way I see it, articles should give helpful (but short) explanations for uncommon terms or names, such as Chinese Taipei and others. In a list, using Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) is probably the best thing, not only because it is correct in regards of the IOC. Another reason for this would be the fact that using Chinese Taipei would to a certain extent degrade the article, because a user not familiar with the name would have to look up another page, and also because using Taiwan would be incorrect. As I see it, using the term Chinese Taipei in an article, should be followed by a footnote, such as

Chinese Taipei is the designated name used by the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan, to participate in most international organizations.

or if possible, an inline explanation. A sports article, should not as you mention offer a deep explanation (that should be left up to Chinese Taipei), just a brief explanation so the user can actually see what country is being mentioned, without having to look up another article. Bjelleklang - talk 00:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

There are two circumstances in which use "Chinese Taipei"

1) Whenever it is a proper noun or registered team name (For example, the soccer team, or the Taiwanese Olympic team).

2) When you are playing nice with the Mainland government.

perfectblue 19:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

The first sentence of the article Chinese Taipei says Chinese Taipei is the designated name used by the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan, to participate in most international organizations. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out where the country is. And considering how many countries there are that the average person isn't familiar with, I don't see why it's such a big deal. If they're interested, they can click the link. -Freekee 20:00, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

New Wikipedia:External links guidelines.

The rewrite of Wikipedia:External links has now been moved in as the current guideline. If you were originally familiar with the subject of this page, you may want to re-read it. While most of the changes are simply to make the guideline readable, there are some alterations to the guidelines themselves and how they should be applied. Major changes include -

1. "External links are to be kept to a minimum" has been restored as the primary principle of the guideline.
2. Recommendation of using a link to ODP categories instead of listing a large number of links, and a template used to request an ODP category be created.
3. A clear and strict bar on links that are a conflict of interests, copyvio, or on the blacklist.
4. It is no longer recommended to use sub-sections within an external links section, as this would imply a long list of links.

--Barberio 16:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, ODP = Open Directory Project, right? –Little Miss Might Be Wrong 23:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding one fansite link to a filmstar article

My apologies to readers if this has been discussed before. I recently added a single (I hope carefully selected) external fansite link to the Kate Beckinsale page. This was rapidly reverted by an administrator, whom I tried to discuss the subject with here. I did point out in that comment that very many other filmstar and popstar pages do seem to allow at least one prominent fansite to be referenced. This also happens to be the case at a casual browse with the following randomly selected star pages - Sean Connery, Kirsten Dunst, Helena Bonham Carter, Scarlett Johansson (Yahoo Movies), Jenna Elfman - I could go on! In each, just one typical example of a good-quality fansite is shown, and that is what I was trying to show on the Kate Beckinsale page. Since the admin in question left no comment or justification, other than a quick standard comment against doing this on my own talk page, I wonder what people think? Is this a good interpretation of the policy, or should all the many "star" pages with a fansite link be exhaustively combed for this and aggressively removed? MarkThomas 16:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if someone should aggressively go out on a search-and-destroy mission to delete them, but as a greneral rule they should be removed when found, and adding them should be strongly discouraged. A number of problems with fansites. There are so damn many of them; who decides what is a prominent fansite, or how you list one, but not another. If you allow one, then fans of others want to put theirs in, too. Another problem is that many are actually commercial, and we really don't want to send people there. Still another issue is that a lot are amateur jobs that end up dying of neglect in a few months, but nobody ever bothers to remove the dead links. Another problem I've seen (not as often but it happens) is the addition of links to totally inappropriate sites. No, we're better off just leaving the fansites out entirely. Fan-1967 16:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

glossaries, lexical lists

what are we going to do with all the stuff in Category:Glossaries? If you ask me, WP is not for lexical lists. We have categories for browsing, and wiktionary for lexical entries. Is there any chance that we can summarily tag these for transwikification? Same goes for Category:Image galleries and commons:. dab (ᛏ) 18:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

For glossaries, Please see full/long/recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Glossaries, and even more recently re-raised at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#What glossaries are (NOT). --Quiddity 21:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Linked images

On the Prussian Blue (duo) article, Szygny has added a link to a photo of the girls' mother, April Gaede. He stated that he did so because it is unflattering and he wants "to show the hideousness of this bigot". Another user (IronDuke) has said that, regardless of the motive, the photo is appropriate because the mother is an important part of the story.

I have no qualms against adding an image of April Gaede to the article, but to link to an external image seems very odd. As well, because of Szygny's stated bias, I feel the addition is inappropriate. I have reverted it twice, but now that IronDuke has spoken on behalf of the addition, I come for advice.

Is it appropriate to link to an external image rather than to include an image? And, in particular, should we do so for family members of the subjects? And does Szygny's motives play a role in our judgments?

Thanks. Phiwum 20:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Under the new WP:EL policy, external links are to be kept to a minimum. (External links are not to be confused with references.) I would take this to mean that files which we can host locally should not be arbitrarily linked to instead.

I think a photograph of the mother would be appropriate for inclusion as a locally uploaded file, and even that particular photograph would have been if it were inserted by a less openly biased editor. Also, if we can find a less ugly image to use then that better image would be preferable. --tjstrf talk 21:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I haven't found any photo that we can include in the article, although I encourage others to look. Could we include an image from a documentary under fair use? If not and if we can't find a photo suitable for inclusion, should the link stay or not? Thanks for the advice. Phiwum 23:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

NPOV and WikiProjects

I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how or whether WP:NPOV may govern WikiProjects. Note first that this is not a question about POV in actual article content. There's a particular WikiProject (which I don't want to identify yet) that currently has an explicitly POV goal as part of its mission statement, of the form "We want articles to show how great X is," and where X is a subject of which people have widely varying and intense views. This statement does not appear in the talk page article tags for that project, but those tags of course link directly to the WikiProject, which has the POV goal stated at the top of its front page. I've also seen it in userboxes for project members.

I am not a member of this project (nor am I familiar with anyone who is), nor do I regularly work on articles under its scope, so I haven't raised this on the project's talk page or attempted to remove it myself. It's also an issue that is likely to stir emotion for the project members, so I wanted to raise the abstract issue first before singling them out.

Should WikiProjects be treated as more akin to user clubs, in which case they can identify themselves and their goals with as much freedom as they'd have on their talk pages? Or do WikiProjects have too much "color of officiality" to be allowed to expressly espouse a POV goal, due to their Wikipedia namespace use and their pervasive article tagging? Postdlf 21:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Good question - I have another question about wikiprojects. Can they create guidelines that conflict with overall wikipedia guidelines, overriding them? And is there an article somewhere that explains specifically what "power" wikiprojects have (if any)? --Milo H Minderbinder 21:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Postdlf: Violating NPOV is unacceptable for a project. We've deleted political wikiprojects for advocating POV editing before. Of course, if it's just something like a fiction-based project that wants to make people think Spongebob is great it's probably not worth raising a big fuss over. Just point out to them that their mission statement should have to do with improving the articles, not making people think their subject is awesome. (They can probably do whatever they want with the userboxes. Especially if they're in userspace.)

• Minderbinder: That would depend on what the project was, what the official guidelines were, and what the project guidelines were. The official guideline might very well not make any sense when applied to a certain subclass of articles, in which case forcing compliance would be counterproductive. --tjstrf talk 21:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Postdlf: We have tended to see such projects listed at WP:MFD, Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Counter-Jihad Education Taskforce and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject countering anti-Serb bias spring to mind. There's now also a Wikipedia:WikiProject Council where you could air discussion or concerns.
• Minderbinder: WikiProjects can create guidelines, yes, but whether they override other guidelines is a matter for wide discussion. What examples do you have in mind? WP:WEB and WP:MUSIC grew from WikiProject guidance. The WikiProject Council have written up their thoughts on what a WikiProject should be, but that's not binding. Steve block Talk 22:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The specific one I'm looking at is at WP:LOST, specifically Wikipedia:WikiProject Lost/Episode guidelines which says that episode names for that show should always be disambiguated with a suffix to the name, whether another article shares that name or not. This contradicts WP:D and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) (where there is some debate right now about changing the issue), both of which say that articles, including TV episodes, should only have a suffix to disambiguate if it shares a name with another article. In a case like this, can a wikiproject declare their own rules that are inconsistent with the rest of wikipedia? --Milo H Minderbinder 22:35, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not involved there, but I have seen other sets of articles where such a rule would make sense in contrast with the recent Munich Air Disaster debacle where project rules moved the article away from the title that it had been know by for over 30 years (And apparently just been reverted back - can't keep up with the moves there) Agathoclea 22:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, a WikiProject's guidelines get their "power" from the fact that the members of the project—who are generally a large portion of the editors in a particular area—are presumably supporting them, not because of some partiular official status of the project itself. While WikiProjects shouldn't be coming up with things that conflict with major policies, I see nothing wrong with developing exceptions/special cases/etc. to issues of formatting, layout, usage, and so forth for particular areas where the Wikipedia-wide guidance may not make sense; this happens quite often, and is generally entirely uncontroversial. (In this case, for example, there may be good reasons for pre-emptive disambiguation; the best thing to do would be to ask the project why the particular guideline has been adopted.) Kirill Lokshin 02:10, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, seeing from the above comments that I'm likely right to think this is a problem, I'm going to point out Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity, which currently states that "WP Christianity desires that the Lord Jesus Christ is represented honorably and magnificently." "Honorably and magnificently" of course being rather different than Factually and neutrally (plus the whole issue of referring to Jesus as "the Lord"). This might be a recent addition to the page that the regular project members may not have noticed, so I can't say that this represents project consensus. Postdlf 23:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

hey, they can easily change that to "WP Christianity aims at representing in detail Christian views of Jesus Christ as lordly and magnificent", since that's what how it will turn out anyway (viz., statements "Christians believe..."). There is nothing wrong with people being motivated to document in detail what they think is cool. It will be different if projects all but instructed members to edit-war or circumvent consensus. As long as they just state that Jesus is their lord and that motivates them to write brilliant article about Christan theology, I can see nothing wrong with that (same for any other Wikiproject. People on Wikiproject Pokemon likely think Pokemons are cool, and while I think they are obnoxious, I won't rant against their project, or their drive to write articles about all aspects of their infatuation in insane detail) dab (ᛏ) 08:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

But there's a big gap between a group who say that they want to create encyclopedic articles on Pokemon because they think Pokemon is cool, and a group who say that they want to ensure that all Pokemon-related articles reflect Pokemon's coolness. The first is just a matter of motivation, which is not anyone else's business anyway; the second promotes the violation of a core Wikipedia principle. I'm not familiar with WikiProject Pokemon's work, so I can't comment on which of these is actually the case for them. But in general we should not be permitting POV-pushers to organize on Wikipedia. -- Visviva 10:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, supporting POV editing is absolutely unacceptable in a WikiProject; it's not really acceptable anywhere on Wikipedia, but especially not in projects which are supposed to be focused on improving the encyclopedia. At the very least such a group should be moved to a descriptive title like "Association of Christian Wikipedians Who Oppose NPOV." But actually, I don't think any reasonable case can be made for tolerating statements of the sort quoted above. These POV cliques only act to poison our community discourse.

Concerning the matter of WikiProject "policy," this seems kind of ridiculous too. We have Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) for a reason. If there is a case for a specific exception to that policy for Lost episodes, let the WikiProject editors make that case on the naming conventions talk page. If not, well ... anyone is free to ignore the naming conventions, of course, but it seems a little strange for a WikiProject to be *encouraging* people to do so. Such behavior only creates messes that other editors will have to clean up. -- Visviva 10:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for WikiProjects deciding their own standardization guidelines. There is no reason that we must drag every would-be standardization before the high wikjury when it only applies to .01% of our articles, and there's similarly no reason that our naming conventions should be forced to detail every single instance of exception. It's the easiest way to avoid process and bureacracy creep, and any action that's too egregarious can always be corrected by the community at large later. --tjstrf talk 11:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The debate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) seems to me to have sprung from an attempt by the community-at-large to do just that: to correct an exception that was established without sufficient reasoning. We have invited members of WikiProjects whose guidelines contradict the general guideline (and general Wikipedia practices on disambiguation) to join the conversation and express their views, and nearly all of them have accepted the arguments for avoiding preemptive disambiguation. However, Elonka's perspective seems to be that because a given WikiProject had previously established a guideline for articles in their field of interest, that guideline should be retained even though its members have not opposed it being changed. This seems nonsensical to me, and to several other admins participating in the discussion at [{WT:TV-NC]]. Elonka herself provided a very useful summary of the views of participating editors here, which Radiant and I interpreted as indicating a consensus in favor of the existing guideline. I believe that if members of a WikiProject have been invited to particpate in a wider discussion on multiple occasions, and a consensus emerges in that wider discussion that the WikiProject's guidelines should be changed, it is appropriate for that WikiProject to follow the greater consensus. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

A majority does not necessarily mean consensus, if there are multiple editors voicing good faith objections. Also, my concern about over-ruling WikiProjects, is in situations where a WikiProject may have spent months going through an agonizing discussion and debate process about a particular matter, in order to reach a painful but ultimately satisfactory compromise on an issue. Then, after everyone's attention has gone on to other articles, a few non-WikiProject members raise a fuss about it, start a discussion in a different part of Wikipedia, and effectively subvert the entire consensus/mediation process. Especially when an original consensus was obtained by a group of editors who only check Wikipedia a few times per week, and then the consensus is challenged by editors who post multiple times per day, rapidly attacking anyone who disagrees with them, and if the original editors don't respond within a few days, they're written off as "not caring anymore." For myself, I tend to listen less to any editor who uses personal attacks and incivility while trying to get their point across. I would also point out that there are multiple editors in the naming conventions discussion who are pretty obvious sockpuppets (the only reason I haven't filed an RFCU check, is because I'm not certain who they're sockpuppets of). --Elonka 03:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, they're not obvious to me. In fact, I'm not even certain who you suspect of being a sockpuppet. But that's a digression from the core issue — if there was a "painful but ultimately satisfactory compromise" reached after "agonizing discussion and debate", there should be some evidence of this discussion and how it was reached. I've asked before, but I'll ask once again: where was this discussion? What were the reasons why Lost, in particular, made the decision to put suffixes on every episode article? How did you get from the actual mediation (which was on the issue of whether there should be episode articles at all, and makes no mention of how they should be titled) to the guideline you wrote? Where was the discussion of episode titling? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

So if a couple editors vociferously objecting makes a non-consensus, then Elonka, how exactly do you define one? You obviously don't consider a supermajority (~80%) a consensus. You've admitted that unanimity isn't necessary. So what exactly would you consider a consensus? I don't see how wikipedia could ever get anything done if every time 20% or less of the people objecting to something made it "no consensus" and "disputed". You simply can't make everyone happy all the time. I'd also like to agree with Josiah's observation that the naming "guideline" on wikiproject lost was never mentioned in the mediation process by anyone but you, and was not a part of the proposal agreed apon [[2]]. Could you please stop making that incorrect and misleading claim? I'm not even convinced there was any consensus to do that, the rule was added by you to the episode guidelines[[3]], and then you cited your edit as "evidence" of consensus[[4]]. Basically, you made a rule, you insisted there was consensus for it, and people took your word for it, even there was no consensus. And now you're saying that a wikiproject isn't being allowed to make a decision, when that decision wasn't even really made by the wikiproject in the first place. --Milo H Minderbinder 14:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

If there's an 80% consensus in a clean poll, sure, I can go along with supermajority. But when a poll's wording gets changed multiple times throughout its run, to the point where multiple people are complaining that their original opinions got twisted: [5][6][7][8][9] [10][11][12][13][14] [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] [24][25][26][27] [28][29] others are complaining that they can't participate because they can't figure out what's being talked about, and others who came along after the fact are repeating the call for a new poll [30], then no, that 80% doesn't mean much. In such a case, what needs to be done is to agree ahead of time on wording for a new poll, which should be run in a clean and stable manner. But of course those who were in the "majority" on the first poll are claiming consensus, and that the minority side were just "sore losers" and "whiners"[31][32][33]. Which incivility is even further proof to me that it's essential that the poll be run again, in a fair manner, to ensure genuine consensus. --Elonka 23:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

So how specifically do you define consensus, assuming a clean poll? If there were to be another poll, what result would be needed for you to agree that it was consensus? (Also, if you want a "clean" poll, I'd recommend waiting until there is wording all parties agree on instead of trying to do it with wording that people have objected to.) --Milo H Minderbinder 23:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Very interesting. May I have permission to copy some of these comments to an active discussion on the matter, at Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (television)? There is currently an active debate there about the naming of episode articles, such as when is it appropriate to use a suffix such as (<series name> episode), and whether or not WikiProjects should have the right to set guidelines for their particular shows. Any interested editors are invited to comment, at Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (television)#Request for comment. --Elonka 08:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• In fact this debate has been going on for several weeks now, and a consensus has been reached on retaining the existing guideline at WP:D. Elonka is about the sole dissenter to this consensus. (Radiant) 09:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• As a general rule of thumb you can tell when a group of people know there goal is failing when they have to start pointing that xyz is the "only" one - FYI there is zero consensus for what you would like. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 10:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
  • There is an existing guideline (WP:D) which indicates prior consensus, and at the very least there is no consensus to changing that. Note that I didn't say Elonka was alone, I said she was about the sole dissenter. Meaning nearly alone. (Radiant) 10:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• There is no middle man, she either is or she isn't the sole "dissenter" - there is no abouts involved. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 10:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• In general, the point is that consensus among a small group (e.g. a wikiproject) cannot trump consensus among a larger group (e.g. the whole encyclopedia). As such, Wikiprojects are given a lot of leeway but should not in general break wikiwide-accepted standards. (Radiant) 09:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Wikiwide? Someone needs to read up about guidelines ;-) and the fact that it is also not accepted "wikiwide" as you put it. MatthewFenton (talk • contribs • count • email) 10:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• What exactly are you taking issue with? Generally, guidelines are intended to be followed. And while exceptions are allowed, usually "but I don't want to" isn't considered a legitimate reason to ignore them. I'd hate to see the state of wikipedia if everyone considered "common sense exception" to mean all guidelines are optional and can be ignored for any reason. --Milo H Minderbinder 17:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Kirill Lokshin's statement above almost makes it sound like a Wikiproject can do anything it wants because the members of that project would be the only ones privy to its discussions and guidelines. In xyr Munich Air Disaster example, did the name of the article have anything to do with guidelines outside of the project? Or anything in the Wikipedia: space at all? I'm guessing not (but that's a wild guess so my apologies otherwise). In the case of the Lost project, the desire of 2 or 3 of its members is that they be allowed to override longstanding conventions at WP:TV-NC and WP:D - but they haven't yet given a convincing reason why and , worse, the discussions leading to that desire apparently took place entirely off-wiki. To me, it's akin to a few members of a comic book Wikiproject going off-wiki and suddenly deciding that the text of all of the articles the project "covers" will be 100% boldface - because the comic book they're covering is printed in 100% boldface. (If anything, the reasoning given for the Lost convention are actually less convincing than the ludicrous example I just gave.) Hopefully no one is entertaining the idea that such a thing would be acceptable. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not quite sure how my statement could be read that way; all I was commenting on was that a WikiProject's guidelines were meaningful because they (presumably) represented a consensus of editors working on some particular topic. (Which is not to say that WikiProjects can do unreasonable things; but, if the editors who are actually writing articles on X decide that some section of the MoS doesn't make sense for those articles and come up with a reasonable alternative, I see no reason to reject it out of hand because the MoS is "more official" than the WikiProject.) Kirill Lokshin 23:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

a content dispute with no content?

I've run into a situation where a user is posting lots and lots of (IMO) off-topic content to a talk page, using it as more or less a message board, along with another user - the two of them exchange personal musings on their own talk pages but also on any article talk page where the first one happens to post a comment. When I say off-topic - there's always some jumping-off point that has to do with the article, but then it goes off into philosophical digressions with no mention of any current or proposed article content, except for general snarky remarks about how other editors have not written enough about a particular subject.

There are no edit wars or other no-nos going on - this user has only talked on talk pages, never edited an article, despite having been here nearly a year. I'm trying to stay cool but I find this really disruptive, and when I've mentioned this (civilly, I think) and pointed the user to the talk page guidelines, the response was basically "you're wrong, it's on topic, mind your own business". What type of dispute resolution, if any, is appropriate when the sole offense is verbose irrelevance? (I don't want to name names until I bring it up through the proper channels, if that turns out to be a reasonable thing to do; this post is just to help me understand the policy. If I should be posting this somewhere else, please let me know.) ←Hob 18:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a blog, social netowrking site, or anything of the sort. First, tag wherever they're talking with {{Off topic warning}}. If they continue to ignore it, open a request for comment. Just removing their whole chat might also work, but it's best to ask others if they're ok with that. Some people just don't understand what talk pages are for. It's best to pound that fact into them now. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 20:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Hob, I hope you don't mind but I checked your contributions to find the talk pages where this was occuring and after finding out what exactly was happening I have to agree that this is very inappropriate. Checking the two users history, it appears that they like to cause a lot of problems and make ad hominem attacks on people. Since I'm not personally involved, I don't want to go and act on it but perhaps you should talk with an admin about this, even take it to dispute resolutions. I'd draw attention to the contributions of these users... --The Way 09:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've started an RFC on the first user; the other one is much less aggressive (and really hasn't made any personal attacks - maybe you're thinking of a different editor I've been arguing with lately in an unrelated matter). ←Hob 06:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Avoiding Disputes: Mandatory Editing Lag

It seems to me there's a simple solution to avoiding many content disputes: Prohibit editors from "camping" on a page in the first place. After an edit, prohibit the editor from any further changes to that article for several (30+) days.

The delay is acceptable since its unlikely the editor will "discover" new, known, verifiable content relevant to the article in a matter of days. If this does happen, they can post their citation or change to the talk page and let someone else incorporate the content into the article, should someone see fit to do so. Meanwhile, if that page gets vandalized or otherwise made incorrect, one should -- in assuming good faith -- trust the invisible hand of Wikipedia with its many eyes to solve the problem.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. However well-intended, the views of those with the most time on their hands seem to prevail. I've run into enough of these "article guardians" through experience and observation to be generally discouraged from participating in what is otherwise worthwhile project, and urge this remedy be adopted.

CleffedUp 10:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Awful idea. Many people do e.g. proofreading one paragraph at a time (to minimize edit conflicts) or as they encounter typos. Also, what is to stop people from using several (30+) accounts to cycle through on a daily basis to avoid the prohibition? And no, it is not unlikely to "discover" new, known, verifiable content relevant to the article in a matter of days. When I'm interested in a topic, I often start digging and find out more information, typically on a time scale of some hours. --Stephan Schulz 11:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing to stop someone from creating multple account for other reasons today, nor would an IP block be perfect. As for your hours timescale, if your depth of knowledge in an area is measured in hours, should you really be contributing to an article on the subject? CleffedUp 16:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. We have tried the other thing, see Nupedia. I'm scientifically literate, and an expert on some subfields of automated reasoning. But an encyclopedic article gives an overview, not an in-depth treatment of its subject. At that level, I can easily find (and have found) contributions that are useful in a few hours. You have also failed to address the issue of incremental improvements (typos, wikilinks, "see also", ...).--Stephan Schulz 17:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Incremental edits could be implemented as a planned batch, e.g. I typed my many replies to these threads in notepad, and cut and pasted into the text box. For legitimate new content, there is always the talk page where someone can aggregate and make those changes. CleffedUp 17:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If the plan doesn't include stopping a sufficiently motivated sockpuppet/meatpuppet master, I'm afraid it's probably useless. Whoever has the largest posse wins the argument. And that's very bad for NPOV. ColourBurst 23:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that you'll not find much support for an idea of not letting someone edit a page for over 30 days. What about reverting vandalism or clear factual mistakes? What if one does come up with better information? Or what if you come back the next day, and saw you made a typo? I can't tell you how many times it's taken me several days to make major edits to a page. I have to say, I don't really agree with your idea. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 11:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

In all of your examples of fixing vandalism and typos, you seem to forget that you're not the only editor. As for "better information," I'd rephrase what I said to Stephan (above) -- shouldn't one only contribute information in which they're expert, or at least know to be complete and factual? CleffedUp 16:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

There are many high profile articles that are regular vandalism targets. There are not remotely enough editors to revert vandalism if each can only revert one vandalism act every 30 days. Fan-1967 16:46, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

But wouldn't such a restriction cause a closely equal decrease in vandalism as well, particularly if the restriction were IP/machine-based? CleffedUp 16:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

No, because the frequent vandalism targets get a lot of hits from many different IP's (a large percentage of which seem to belong to school districts, as you might guess). It isn't a small number of vandals making a lot of edits. For the mots part, it's many, many vandals who just make one or two each. Fan-1967 17:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Another thought on addressing vandals with such a limitation: Much as there are administrators, and arbitrators, etc. there is surely a subset of the general editor base who are established and motivated members of the community who can be trusted to "play nice" as it were, i.e. those who actively seek consensus in making edits with which some may disagree. I see no reason why this group couldn't be elevated above your average editor to be exempt from the lag. CleffedUp 17:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Replying to CleffedUp's earlier point, if you have a verifiable fact that will improve the article, you're entitled to add it. If you find more info later, add that too. For example, if it's a list of classical composers, and you see a few omissions, add them. Next day, you've thought of a few more.--Runcorn 16:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I would say the remedy in this case is through the talk page. This approach of posting an idea and letting someone else aggregate them will also help keep the article in all the "same voice" and otherwise consistent. CleffedUp 17:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's discovered typos in his work directly after posting it. And are you really expecting other editors to fix my errors? That would greatly increase the workload here. Or reduce the quality of this encyclopedia. -Freekee 17:05, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This seems inconsistent with the notion of a community encyclopedia, though your point is taken. To address this, perhaps the lag begins after the next edit by someone else. CleffedUp 17:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Would this apply to talk pages as well? -Freekee 17:06, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

No, my intent in the proposal is only to avoid conflicts in article content edits. An open talk would be a critical component as a forum for a proposed change while the lag was in effect. CleffedUp 17:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your proposal seems to put up too many barriers to legitimate editing. Seems the "cure" would be worse than the disease. Fan-1967 17:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

In this model, the remedy to any prohibited legitimate content change is an addition to the discussion page. It seems to me that this encyclopedia has reached a critical mass whereby most changes call for consensus, and this model encourages just that. The only barrier to a good change is the next person to edit the page. CleffedUp 17:39, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

You may be missing the whole point of Wikipedia, which is that anyone can make any edit at any time. Now you want all edits to be done by committee? If I've made an edit, then I need to wait 30 days, or propose it and hope someone else will make the edit? No, sorry. You make updates incredibly cumbersome in order to accomplish what? Content disputes aren't that common a problem that we should totally throw a monkey wrench into our whole update process. Fan-1967 17:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is one of the worst ideas I've heard in ages. It may go some way towards hindering disputes, but only by preventing serious editors from working on articles. Just imagine. I've written a beautiful article but I've made a mistake or forgotten to add something. Oops, can't change it for a month! And as for "its unlikely the editor will "discover" new, known, verifiable content relevant to the article in a matter of days", what absolute rubbish - I'm always discovering new tidbits of information after I've finished my main work on an article, sometimes within a matter of minutes or hours, let alone days. I'd rapidly lose interest in ever working on Wikipedia again if this was introduced (even more than I am at the moment with constant battles with the obsessive deletionists out there) and I'm sure I'd not be alone. No, kill this idea now before it spreads. -- Necrothesp 17:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

• Can we stop discussing this? This isn't going to go anywhere (and I agree with Necrothesp that it's one of the worst ideas I've heard). I can't believe it's already generated this much discussion. The answer is simple: No —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 17:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

"Why don't we make it so that you can only edit an article once! After all, there are 1.5 million articles and 1.5 million edits should be more than you'd ever need to make! It would totally get rid of editing disputes because once a person made a change they'd never be able to repeat it ever again!" This is basically a perennial proposal, and it's among the most irrittating in my opinion. It ignores that Wikipedia develops gradually, not by one individual writing an FA-class piece in a single spurt. I propose anyone who supports this idea be indefinitely blocked for their utter lack of understanding of the wiki system. (I also propose that this paragraph be read with a sense of humour.) --tjstrf talk 04:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It made me laugh. Postdlf 05:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not a good idea. Uses often do many good edits within a few days. Also, adding forced rules is usually not a good idea. It is better to use "soft" rules the the 3-revert-rule. Edit wars are not that common anyway. --Apoc2400 01:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Fact V fiction

I've got a problem with a user who's twice redirected a page dealing with a topic covering science-fiction, to a page dealing exclusively with biological fact, based only on the entemology of subject's names.

At present, I've attempted to avoid an argument by adding an in fiction section at the bottom of the factual page, but I suspect that the other user will simply delete it.

Any advice? - perfectblue 12:18, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Note related discussion at Talk:-kinesis. - jc37 13:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Note, discussion hadn't been started when I posted here. A quick note on my talk page would have been helpfull.

perfectblue 17:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS and creating pages

When you go to create a page, have a go here, click on this red link, there is, just before the edit box, a big note linking to WP:RS, which I thought was a proposed guideline that was very much in dispute. Wouldn't it be better for this to link to WP:V, which is a policy and which is not in dispute? How do you go about getting someone to change this (I think it's in MediaWiki somewhere and only admins can edit it)? jguk 18:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It's at MediaWiki:Newarticletext, and yeah it's admin only to edit I think. The old text of "Copyright infringements, advertising, attack pages and nonsense will be deleted without warning." is gone too, I notice. The problem is people who do this stuff usually don't really care what the text says and will do it anyway. Look at the gigantic image warning screen... people still upload untagged stuff constantly. --W.marsh 18:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

No. Notability is "a proposed guideline that (is) very much in dispute." Reliable Sources is "generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow." Big difference. Fan-1967 21:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS is hardly in dispute. A quick check through the Village Pump references to questioning this guideline's validity turns up, um, one editor repeatedly raising objections without giving any concrete reason. One editor, with no cogent arguements to support the opinion, does not a consensus make, no matter how vocal or repetitive such opinions are. --Jayron32 04:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

In addition to not being under any actual dispute, it's been a guideline pretty much since its creation in early 2005. —Centrx→talk • 05:26, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Wasn't the point of WP:ATT to supersede both WP:V and WP:RS and address the issues of this alleged dispute? (Radiant) 10:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • No. WP:ATT replaces WP:NOR and WP:V, not WP:V and WP:RS. ColourBurst 19:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

"difference pages"

Most encyclopedias are bound by page restrictions which do not allow them to address anything other than a certain list of topics and a short description of them. I believe that wikipedia could use the flexibility is has from being only online to break the mold of these other information sources. I think one very important way it could do so is by creating pages where two similar concepts, ideas or things are compared and contrasted.

I could think of several pages that could be compared or contrasted, such as Camus/Sartre, IR/Raman, C/C++, glastnost/perestroika. Most of these things are closely related and that would be the impetus for building such a page to illuminate the differences between them. I believe many people look at encyclopedias in the first place for the reason of figuring out how two things are different.

I hope this is helpful.

Well, we actually do have a few pages like that - for example, Comparison of Windows and Linux or Comparison of Java and C++ --`/aksha 04:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

that sounds like a good start, but I think that it is not prevalent enough that a user would find it useful. i think it needs to be a prominent part of wikipedia such that someone who is interested in a difference between two things would know to search for this on wikipedia's site. one would not think of searching an encyclopedia for Comparison of Windows and Linux, and thus people will not use this article to its fullest. if it were part of a section of comparitive articles, then a person may search that comparitive section first and find it quickly. the ways that wikipedia is different than a regular encyclopedia should be known to a user for wikipedia to be most useful and this is a way that wikipedia could be much better than a regular encyclopedia. Vatassery 07:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the concept here, but I think these pages are magnets for POV-pushers, and thus difficult to maintain an encyclopedic tone. I think another problem is that most of the sources for these articles are going to be biased towards one point of view. Anyone want to start Comparison of liberals and conservatives—I bet we could get half a dozen users blocked for 3RR and other infractions in the first day.  :-) —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 07:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

That made me laugh...it's like you were suggesting it as a game.  : ) Postdlf 18:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Note that the "Comparison of Windows and Linux" page is linked from both the articles on Windows and Linux. Crosslinks are your friend :) (Radiant) 10:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

cross links definitely help wikipedia but it would help much more if the crosslinks to a comparitive article were prevalent enough that a user may expect to find them. as for the POV people, i think that would be content-dependent and those articles would have the same problems that the individual articles they are comparing have. for example, a complex comparitive science article would be difficult to verify if nobody else possesses the knowledge of the subject besides the poster. maybe some articles would be prone to vandalism... i think the bottom line is "is this concept going to be used enough to justify a change in policy, however small a change it may be?" if i didn't think so, then i wouldn't have posted this, but i'm only a casual user of wikipedia. Vatassery 18:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The few comparative articles we do have are constantly prone to POV and OR. Unfortunately, writing a fact-based article about something is much easier than producing a fact-based comparision that doesn't end up being an essay with personal judgements. You could assign ten philosophy students the task of comparing Camus and Sartre (the example given above). All would be different, and all would contain opinions that were not verifiable fact. I don't see this proposal going anywhere. Fan-1967 18:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

the articles that i use from/contribute to wikipedia are generally technical and don't suffer from POV SOBs (surprising huh?), so you might see more "comparison articles" in these areas in the future. anyone who is interested is more than welcome to help me start this. thanks for the ideas and the constructive criticisms, everyone. Vatassery 08:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Even technical can run into POV problems (Mac vs PC, anyone?), but I can see that you can do objective analyses on scientific areas. Fan-1967 08:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Tagging of articles

I am sure this must have been discussed at sometime (many times?) before, but should blind tagging of articles be allowed. Shouldn't there be a policy enforcing explanation on the talk page if you are tagging articles with the broad maintenance templates like {{NPOV}}, {{cleanup}} etc. It is very irritating to visit articles with such tags and then try to figure out what really is wrong. If there is no explanation accompanying the tag, then I feel we should be able to as blindly revert the tag, without it being called edit warring. The onus to explain should lie on the person tagging the article. -- Lost^(talk) 05:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

In some cases, as with {{sources}} or even with a lot of cases with {{npov}} and {{cleanup}} it is quite obvious by looking at the article where the problem lies. Also, edit summaries should be sufficient; if people are editing the article, they should fix the problem and if no one is editing the article the edit summary will remain at the top of the history; though, it doesn't always work that way. —Centrx→talk • 05:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It is not always obvious especially if one puts the tag at the top of an article without an edit summary. The least the taggers could do is put the tag at the appropriate section with an appropriate edit summary. What does this edit explain? If you see the history of the article, there are a series of such edits -- Lost^(talk) 05:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The good faith assumption is that the people putting the tags really have a reason to be concerned. Contact them on their talk page and ask them politely why they keep adding such tags. However, repeated attempts to add such tags to an article, when other editors have made good faith attempts to request a reasonable explanation, and no explanation has been provided, could point to point making or could also be obvious triple revert violations. If the editor in question is being deliberately disruptive, and has been warned repeatedly as such, then report them at Administrator intervention. However, make sure that the editor has been politely ASKED for justifications, and then repeatedly WARNED. We need due process before accusations of bad-faith disruptions should be made. --Jayron32 06:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Jayron. Earlier today I added a WP:WEASEL tag to the article on the Bahamian politician Perry Christie because of some very obvious weaseling and POV pushing, e.g. ...many people understand that the Christie government has acted wisely, even though sometimes being very deliberate in their decision making. I also marked the relevant areas with a {{citation needed}} tag, and edit-summarised that change. The reason I used a tag rather than actually improving the article was because I really don't know enough about Perry Christie to rewrite the relevant statements. I think I acted correctly. Walton monarchist89 10:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Troll, sockpuppet

To follow on from a discussion that took place earlier, I have found (through my work with the AMA), that some users tend to label their opponents indiscriminately as 'trolls' (without bothering to refer to WP:NOFEEDING). Another common tactic is to identify their leading opponent, then brand everyone else on the opposing side of the debate as a sockpuppet of that user - with no evidence. I think that the policies on trolling need to be completely rewritten, if possible with the abolition of the term 'troll' altogether, in favour of something more precise. This would help in dispute resolution; the problem is that 'trolling' is such a vague term. Walton monarchist89 10:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I discourage the use of the term at my disclaimer page. The sort of individual who misuses the t-word is often the same sort who would co-opt any available label in the effort to win some particular microdispute. If we get rid of t it wouldn't be long before groupthink goes too. That political correctness is an endless game and a waste of time for everyone except the ts: better to just ask them to interact with good faith civility and keep the sysop tools handy for the ones who refuse. Durova^Charge! 15:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Calling someone a troll is in general a personal attack and incivil, and therefore inappropriate. (Radiant) 10:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposed disambiguation guidance

I've noticed the following problems seem to crop up repeatedly with newbies and disambiguation pages. Frequent problems include them

• Including information that belongs in the article itself (i.e. not necessary for disambig).
• Hiding article titles (because that's what we do elsewhere; and there are a lot of them on disambig pages)
• Linking non-subject items (when the linked article *doesn't* include a definition of the subject)
• Including "normally" constructed sentences with the subject somewhere in the middle
• Including every item under the sun in the list, even if it's not a likely search/disambiguation term.

Obviously, this is done in good faith; they're "helpfully" applying rules that would be fine (and indeed encouraged) elsewhere in Wikipedia.

It's a minor waste of our time to revert these changes, and a greater waste of the newbie's time. And every time we do so, it leaves no clue to the next uninformed newbie. So it happens again, and again, and...

I propose we include a brief hidden comment on each disambig page. Not the whole MoS, obviously; just something to get their attention and cover the most common problems/mistakes.

If this is a good idea, the other question is what to include. We don't want to bloat pages with more comments than necessary (even though they're hidden from non-editors).

There's a draft at Template:Disambig-guidance. Because the comment is hidden, you have to "edit" to view (also, it *must* be included using subst).

Any thoughts?

Fourohfour 12:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• If you haven't already, you might want to crosspost on the talk page of WP:MOSDAB. I think it's a good idea (but also, a lot of work) to increase uniformity among dab pages. (Radiant) 14:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to make this conversation easier, here's the "hidden text":

<!--***** NEW USERS, PLEASE READ THIS FIRST *****

Disambiguation pages use a slightly different style to normal pages. Please:-

(A) DON'T LINK NON-SUBJECT TERMS, except when they are NEEDED for disambig

 and/or include definition of subject. (B) KEEP SUBJECT AT START OF 

SENTENCE IF POSSIBLE.

Thank you. More info on disambig page style can be found at 

[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)]].

*************************************************-->

Too bad wikilinks couldn't be hidden in there... I wonder if a "Disambiguation" namespace might be handy, since it might be possible to change the css for the edit page (this would solve the "disambigs appearing in search/randompage" problem too). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 14:09, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Radiant; yes, it'd be a lot of work to tidy up all disambig pages from scratch. I'm not going to get wound up about every tiny deviation from the MoS (besides which, there are occasions where it makes sense to deviate). But the comment would (a) Avoid any further waste of time with non-standard changes/reverts/etc, and (b) Encourage future additions to follow same style, reducing maintenance. Fourohfour 16:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

pre text edited for printability ? -- DLL ^{.. T} 21:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

How about a note saying something like, "if you are unfamiliar with the format for disambiguation pages, please see the talk page for guidelines." The talk page will then begin with a slightly less brief outline of common pitfalls, then a (clickable) link to MOSDAB? Just a suggestion. The problems I run into most often are only one live link per line and don't add an item to this list unless it stands a chance of being linked here accidentally. -Freekee 04:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• I think this is good. It might also be nice to add a clause to "keep topics alphabetical if at all possible" or somesuch. Note that a DAB namespace is not going to work, because the pages need to be in the main article namespace to be found most easily. (Radiant) 10:02, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This is useful, thanks. Nothing that would justify doing it to every disambig page yet, but I'll include it if and when I find pages with the problem occurring. One of the main snags is that as it *must* use subst, we can't easily change/update existing notices automatically. Fourohfour 11:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Where to put fancruft

So, you want to write a wikiarticle that consist of summaries of the various interpretations of a specific aspect of Dungeon and Dragon's system for creating roleplaying charcters. Parts would be based on reliable sources, but much would be just condensed summaries of the opinions of large groups of people. It would be verifiable, but it might border on original research. So... where on the web should such stuff go?

You could just make a wikipedia article on it. If "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", then perhaps "Extraordinarily trivial claims require only the barest levels of evidence". I've certainly seen worse Fancruft on Wikipedia, but i've never myself been the responsible party. You could just make a webpage, write your own opinions, and throw the page upon the web. But this would prevent others from collaborating, and would be harder to find. Are there any other options I should consider?

Thoughts? --Alecmconroy 14:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

What I'd like is a means to include well known fannon in articles about fictional characters or franchises (so long as it is identified as such, of course) without some purist coming along and reverting it on the grounds that it wasn't explicitly mentioned in continuum.

perfectblue 14:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Realistically, such material doesn't belong here. There's so much of it (and let's face it, a lot of it is really bad) that there would be no objective way to pick and choose what would or wouldn't be appropriate. You could, I suppose, "verify" that somebody posted something somewhere, but how would you determine that what was posted in one forum by one person was worthy of inclusion compared to what someone else posted somewhere else. No, totally unmanageable. Stick to canon material. Fan-1967 14:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that the vast bulk of fannon doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all, and that OR needs treading on, I've run into several situations where there have been arguments over details that were extrapolated, which were branded fancruft, but were valid. A recent example was where details on how on calculating the path of a wormhole (in the context of a of a fictional ship navigating, and relevant to the page) were deleted from a page because the writers didn't specifically used wormhole physics but not the word wormhole.

perfectblue 16:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. If you want to do OR, it shouldn't be on here, and creating a synthesis of message board postings and fannon is just that. At least D&D has published magazines (Dungeon and Dragon, or at least they used to before the Reformed Church of Satanic Accountants took over). Any article employing "Extraordinarily trivial claims require only the barest levels of evidence" should be sent to dev/null. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 15:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflinct) But well-- does such really belong in /dev/null? It's an article I would have wanted to read. It seems like the ideal solution would be some sort of "fancrufty" wiki like Memory Alpha-- somewhere where the rule are it little more bendable (and as a result, the content a little less encyclopedic). The only harm I can see to putting such stuff on wikipedia is that it might degrade the wikipedia name as a source for reputable, reliable info, but it seems like there should for such stuff somewhere. --Alecmconroy 15:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Somewhere, yes. Here, no. It's not like there's a shortage of fansites to put such stuff on. But there's no way such material can meet Wikipedia standards. Fan-1967 15:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, for D&D specific stuff, you might also try here --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 15:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was looking for, and now that I see it, I should have just done a google search, but it didn't occur to me there would be a whole wiki just for D&D. Thanks you much! :) --Alecmconroy 15:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing about 90% of the fancruft go, keeping only greatly trimmed down articles on the most relevant topics. It would be an interesting statistic to see what percentage of the total content on Wikipedia is fancruft—I suspect that the ratio of fancruft would be disturbingly high. This stuff grows like weeds, and I think the reason is fairly simple. Just about anyone can contribute to fancruft somewhere. People without any other encyclopedic knowledge can add their knowledge of whatever it is that they're interested in. So people do. They want to contribute, and that's all they know about. Actually researching an encyclopedic topic and creating or adding to such a topic is perhaps too much work or simply not interesting enough. So this stuff grows like weeds—we need a Wikipedia:WikiProject WikiGardening project to clean this stuff out, but since so many people have little else to contribute to, we can't because the outcry would be deafening. This is one of those "big" Wiki issues that may be too big to tackle, so it is tolerated. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 18:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to confess, I'm a little skeptical myself about how big of a problem it actually is. I'd be content if we could list articles as "bad articles", tag them with some sort of "Non-notable subject matter with few reliable sources" warning and call it good. Delete the controversial ones of course, maybe separate them all from the "Wikipedia" name of course so that the Wikipedia title applies only to the non-bad articles. But if disk space and bandwidth really aren't a problem, then I don't know that having non-controversial fancruft on some giant non-wikipedia wiki would hurt anything. (obviously, that there's a consensus such stuff is bad is plenty good enough for me-- I wont' add it or anything. I'm just saying, a conclusive case hasn't been made to me that the stuff is all that bad). --Alecmconroy 19:45, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The obvious way to accomplish that is to set up a separate Wiki for it. Wikipedia strives for a reputation for reliable, verifiable material. If you start allowing some exceptions to that, then how much other stuff would be allowed as "bad articles"? Fan-1967 20:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Where to put fancruft"?? AfD is surely the obvious answer. Moreschi 19:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The first step is to stop using terms such as "fancruft." Everything here is "cruft," by a strict deifnition. The article on Neptune is planet- or science-cruft. The article on William Henry Harrison is Presidential-cruft. Etc etc etc. The second is to use your head - is the article useful, and is there a place for it here. We have a number of convoluted guidelines to help you decide that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that better terms are needed. For example, I'm including not so much the articles on say Tom Cruise, where there might be many fans, nor on works of fiction like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but really all of the extensive derivitive articles on the fictional elements—so perhaps fancruft is not very descriptive. I'm talking about stuff like S.P.E.W.—is this really encyclopedic? Heck, there's even Category:Harry Potter fandom. Doing a quick perusal of Category:Fictional, which seems to be the top category in the hierarchy for this stuff, somewhat arbitrarily I drilled down through the following categories: Fictional → Fictional locations → Fictional universes → Pokémon → Pokémon species → Pokémon species by type to find 17 leaf subcategories. In fact, Category:Pokémon has 93 subcategories under it—I'm not sure I want to find out how many Pokémon articles that translates to. I just think it's too much, and efforts to beat it back don't seem to be very effective because a) it grows like weeds; and b) there are a lot of people here that wouldn't have much else to contribute to if they couldn't contribute to these. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 20:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The questions, for me, are these: 1) Does so-called "cruft" hurt the project? I would say no. 93 Pokemon subcategories does not affect our ability to have good articles on science and history. 2) Is "cruft" desirable? As a rule, I'd say "yes." We tend to only use the word "cruft" on things we dislike as a subject, rather than recognizing that having major articles on different parts of the PATRIOT Act are just as "crufty," by the standard definition. We should embrace a wide, comprehensive coverage of a subject, whether it be Picasso or Pikachu. 3) What is a logical limitation of coverage? Truly, there is no answer to this, as we all have different feelings as to what is logically worth keeping around. We've compromised on some fairly horrid "notability" guidelines, which is a good start, but the line ultimately sits where the information ceases being useful to anyone. Poke-"cruft," by that measure, is inherently more useful than many historical figures, but that's why subjectivity is worthless. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

For me, one clear line between "trivial subject" and "cruft" is not so much Notability as much as Reliable Sources. It doesn't matter how trivial something is-- if we have enough reliable sources, then we can do the job. If, however, there aren't any reliable sources, it runs afoul of Verifiability. If there is really only one source (or one like-minded collection of sources), then really the best we can do is quote an summarize that source, which has limited value, as the whole beauty of any encyclopedia is to synthesize and integrate multiple reliable sources. If, however, there are lots of reliable sources, then it may belong, no matter how trivial.

The problem with cruft is, there usually is only one reliable source-- the work or works of fiction themselves. Everything else is, at best, semi-reliable. But such stuff is still interesting to read and useful-- it just sometimes strains the bounds of Reliable Sources and No Original Research. --Alecmconroy 00:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• I would question whether "poke-cruft" is more useful than history. Just because we may choose to ignore history and thus not learn from it, doesn't mean that it's inherently non-useful. History is tremendously useful to those with ears to hear and eyes to see. Knowledge of history can prevent wars - can poke-cruft do that? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• Jeff, I guess an inclusionist (which your comments label you as) and an exclusionist are inevitably going to have differing view on how to decide what should be here and what shouldn't. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 20:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict w/ Jeff) I think that a good idea to promote is that there are lots of Wikis, with different goals, different standards, and different purviews, and that it's perfectly valid to contribute to more than one. This could help combat the idea that all information, no matter how trivial or how poorly documented, has to be in Wikipedia, out of some drive for completeness. We could maintain an awareness of what other wikis are out there, and be ready to send people to other wikis when their content would be more appropriate there. If we think of Wikipedia as one particular member of the community of wikis, namely the one that aims for encyclopedic standards, then I think we could better control the growth of inappropriate material that people want to be able to access, but doesn't happen to fit our inclusion criteria for whatever reason. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be a start. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 20:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

GTBacchus nailed it. Here, we're trying not merely to be a collection of whatever information people think is useful- we're trying to be an encyclopedia, and there's a difference. This is the distinction that IMO badlydrawnjeff does not make. Video game guides and phone books are useful for plenty of people, but the material in them is not encyclopedia material. Friday (talk) 21:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Amen, GTB. For example, when I was told above of the existence of a D&D wiki, it was the perfect answer to my own query. The bind we get into, I think is, when we have to choose between putting something on Wikipedia or not putting it on a wiki at all. The existence of the Lostpedia and Memory Alpha and other such places instantly solves the problem.

You know, maybe the whole solution is for Wikimedia to start a wiki that's geared toward the documentation of fictional worlds or other such trivia. (An idea, of course, which is more or less suggested by others above, and others before me, I'm sure). Then, AFDs on fancruft would be much easier, as there could be a "move to cruftpedia" option that everyone could accept more easily. The Wikipedia name, meanwhile, would not suffer from the association with articles about such stuff which are a little softer on the reliable sources, and the writers wouldn't have to face the agonizing choice between wanting to write an article and wnating to obey wikipedia rules at the same time. Obviously, this wouldn't preclude the existence of some external of the work-specific wikis (Star Trek, Lost, etc), but it could serve as a catch-all for those works not popular enough to have their own servers.

Does anyone know how hard it would be for the folks upstair to set that up? Obviously, expenses of storage and bandwidth, possibly servers as well. But, look at it this way-- the purpose of cruftpedia wouldn't just be to get cruft ON an encyclopedia-- it would also help to get cruft OFF Wikipedia, which is surely a noble goal.

--Alecmconroy 23:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm in favor of this. It's not like the bandwidth/storage requirements are going to be all that different than they are when the stuff is on Wikipedia. It would certainly make it easier to define what is appropriate and what isn't if we could define a place that is appropriate for this large and growing collection of borderline (and I'm being kind here) content. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

As a frequent editor of fiction-based articles who has seen just how bad they sometimes get, I am adamantly opposed to any such move. Simply put, a Wikifiction project would degrade into fanboy hell. Here, if an article is badly written I run it through AfD, I can slap cite needed tags all over it, I can make other editors not post their personal shipping fantasies, and I can generally require that a professional appearance and writing style be maintained, because this is an encyclopedia not a fansite. There, no such cultural restrictions would apply, the deletionist party would have no influence, and probably the only things that would be deleted would be outright hoaxes. Do we need 400 articles on Pokemon species in Wikipedia? No. But at least on Wikipedia we only have 400 articles on the species, rather than Wikifiction where we would have 400 articles on the species... plus 800 articles on their moves, 300 on their items, 150 on locations, 12000 on every strategy some 12 year old thought up in school one day, 46 on Pokemon meta-philosophy... Well-written fancruft in an encyclopedia of effectively infinite space harms no one and is at least indirectly beneficial to Wikipedia by drawing additional editors and visitors. In my opinion a Wikipedia which allows or at least tolerates fancruft but enforces decent quality controls is far more beneficial than a festering sinkhole of fancruft without any quality controls. --tjstrf talk 00:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

But tjstrf, the whole point of such a proejct would be to become a festering sinkhole of colllaboartively edited fancruft. People obviously are enjoying themselves writing it. And it wouldn't mean that Wikipedia would change its own policies one iota-- well-written articles about fictional things would be just as welcome as they are now. It would just make deletions a much less bitter pill to swallow, and would hopefully discourage people from creating the stuff on Wikipedia in the first place. If we really aren't concerned about bandwidth/storage/servers, I can't see any possible downside here for us. At worse case, no one would use it and we'd just be where we are not. At best case, it could majorly stem the tide of cruft put into wikipedia, maybe the relevant AFDs much much smoother, and be a Memory Alpha for works of fiction that have no Memory Alpha. --Alecmconroy 00:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Festering sinkholes are useless, duplication of effort at multiple locations similarly useless, splitting our base of contributors even more so. If we'd delete something for its low quality here, pawning it off on another wiki isn't helpful to that wiki. If it has good enough quality writing, is verifiable and not filled with original research... then why are we deleting it? --tjstrf talk 00:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It remains that some content just can't be on Wikipedia, because, for example, it can't be properly sourced. It would be good to have a place to point people when they wish to share such content with the world. It doesn't have to be Wikipedia, or another Mediawiki project - we can point people to other wikis that already exist, we just have to know about them. Perhaps we could maintain a list, in the Wikipedia namespace, of good places to send people who wish to contribute WP-inappropriate content. Then it could be easier to maintain the quality control tjstrf is talking about over the material that we keep here, because it will be more manageable in scope. I already do this with non-notable web content; people who want to write about their websites that don't meet WP:WEB are more than welcome at AboutUs.org, a domain directory that aspries to a level of completeness that we don't get close to. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It's true that there is some stuff we just can't source. But some of these articles are incredibly popular - Pokemon is frequently in Wikipedia's top 100 (see October's rankings here). This really ought to encourage us to get a grip on these articles rather than try and fob them off elsewhere. A concerted effort to think about how this can be done in the context of popular culture could both increase Wikipedia's popularity - and improve the world's understanding of popular culture. We're where people come for this stuff. We ought to be trying to handle it well. --Siobhan Hansa 00:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The way I'd imagine it wouldn't be to delete Pokemon from Wikipedia just because it's a work of fiction-- we need to cover notable fictional things in a non-crufty way. We souldn't change our deletion critera or anything. But we could have somewhere else to throw all the cruft that just doesn't belong here. --Alecmconroy 00:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Defining properly sourced in the context of fictional articles makes an interesting digression as well. If you were to write a guideline for the sourcing of fiction based on the spirit of WP:V (to ensure accuracy and npov) you'd end up with a guideline closer to WP:CANON than WP:RS. Take a look at Final Fantasy VII: it's arguably among the most notable games of its decade, insanely popular, a featured article, etc. and yet its sources for internal facts are essentially a game transcript. --tjstrf talk 00:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The biggest reason something is labled "cruft" isn't that it's bad, but that it has a level of detail that is far too extreme for an encyclopedia. The way I see it is wikipedia articles are written for a general audience, while a pokewiki article is written for an audience of hardcore pokefans. One example is TV - fansites have detailed episode synopses, character descriptions, lists of things, etc. Wikipedia generally isn't even supposed to have individual articles on each TV episode, but that guideline is often ignored. I don't think it makes sense to send things elsewhere because they're bad (bad stuff should just be deleted), but content that is accurate and well written, but would be considered minute details to the point of trivia, would probably fit in well on a specific wiki. People want the insane detail (somewhere), but wikipedia can't seem to decide if it wants it or not. And I don't see other wikis as duplicating WP's editors or audience (as long as WP actually follows the guidelines instead of declaring a policy but doing something else). --Milo H Minderbinder 01:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

<dedent> To address some of the comments above:
Simply put, a Wikifiction project would degrade into fanboy hell.

A sister wiki project for fictional works could adopt whatever standards it deemed appropriate. To say that the only place that reasonable standards for this material can be maintained in on Wikipedia seems to be defeatist. —Doug Bell ^talk 01:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

If we'd delete something for its low quality here, pawning it off on another wiki isn't helpful to that wiki. If it has good enough quality writing, is verifiable and not filled with original research... then why are we deleting it?

To say that this stuff all belongs here I think goes against the purpose of an encyclopedia. I'm not saying to get rid of the Pokémon article—that should certainly be kept, maybe a few supporting articles as well. What shouldn't be here is an in-depth desciption of every fictional element of Pokémon, just as in-depth descriptions of every Star Trek character, etc. is overkill. These can be condensed into concise articles (for example, one article with the star trek characters for the original, the next generation, etc.) with links to the whole sheebang on every line the characters ever muttered on some other wiki. —Doug Bell ^talk 01:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• A likely answer to many of these problems is WP:MERGE. Even WP:FICT suggests that. (Radiant) 10:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly object to this entire debate. The whole point of Wikipedia is that there is no limit to the number of topics it can handle. Yes, things need to be notable, but anything to do with any published novel, TV series, film or magazine counts a notable, as far as I'm concerned. I am not an obsessive fan; I contribute to Wikipedia mainly in my specialist fields of history and politics. Yet I've also been working on improving the detailed coverage of Discworld and the Vorkosigan Saga. What's wrong with that? What I love about Wikipedia is that whatever you search for, even if it's an obscure fictional character, you'll find a bio with interesting facts. Let's not lose that. Walton monarchist89 10:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• The point of merging is not to limit the number of topics, but to provide essential context to short articles that would otherwise have little. (Radiant) 11:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Just noticed this thread : )
See: User talk:Jc37/Proposals/WikiWorks for something similar you might be interested in : ) - jc37 12:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Modifications to the notability guideline

Just wanted to let people know that the guideline on notability is currently undergoing major modifications with a partial merge from Uncle G's essay on notability. I think the changes are positive but they are also a major modification and should probably be ok'd by the community. Pascal.Tesson 15:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Nofollow tag

As far as I am aware, there has been no discussion on the use of "nofollow" on links from en since the one at Wikipedia:Nofollow and Meta nofollow when the decision to remove nofollow was taken in March 2005. Yet today, nofollow is back on many external links (e.g. all of current events, all of Wikipedia space etc). I don't want to repeat the arguments, but there was a majority in favour of removing nofollow and I cannot find any discussion on putting it back? Can anyone point me to the new debate? Personally I am distressed we now self-label ourselves "cannot be trusted" --BozMo talk 20:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think having nofollow on talk and wikipedia namespaces is good. That allows us to have external links in discussions, like about whether or not said link should be included, without tacitly endorsing that link. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 21:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

There is periodic discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam to find the right way to revive that discussion. Everyone involved in spam fighting believes that this would be a a positive change. The arguments in favor of dropping it are somewhat outdated. If there are a couple of people outside of the project that want to see the nofollow issue then I think some of us will write up a nice little proposal on why we should do this. Pascal.Tesson 21:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Pascal, I believe Bozmo is suggesting removing nofollow from Wikipedia. Unless I'm mistaken, you are suggesting adding it back to all pages (not just those outside article space). In other words, I believe you are opposite ends of the spectrum. Dragons flight 21:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The current compromise was implemented May of this year, see this mailing list thread. Dragons flight 21:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it is right, perhaps not but it should be discussed by the Wikipedia community not the developer or spam community. It isn't a technical decision but a decision about the nature of Wikipedia and Web 2.0 --BozMo talk 22:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

(BozMo, I'm assuming your intended meaning here was not that the tech and anti-spam communities should not be discussing this but rather that any final decision needs to be discussed and made by the broader community. If I'm wrong and you truly don't think these smaller communities should be discussing the topic, please set me straight. --A. B. 05:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC))

Yes, sorry of course I am all for discussion. Especially where wider opinions are solicited. Thank you for assuming good faith :)--BozMo talk 07:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I would just add that last time around Jan 2005 there was a lot of irritation expressed that the tech community added nofollow unilaterally without a wider discussion at WP. Look at the archives and see that this is an issue the wider WP community expressed a desire to discuss. Just deciding "some of these arguments are dated and heck I am sure we know better" isn't really the wiki way, in my personal opinion. --BozMo talk 23:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Is that really how you read my message? First, I think Dragons Flight made it clear that I misinterpreted yours as an invitation to enable nofollow on the mainspace. That being said, I am most certainly not saying that I or any group I'm a part of "know better". But I will say this: many editors who had supported dropping nofollow argued that spam was not such a critical problem and that spamming and vandalism was routinely tackled by editors. On that front at least, people who work on the WikiProject spam can testify that this is not accurate. The discussion in question dates back to February 2005 and Wikipedia is much more recognized now as a golden target for spammers because it has become such a central thing on the web. I believe that this argument is outdated in the sense that it does not take into account the current reality of spamming on Wikipedia. People who have been cleaning up the spam will also happily point out to you cases in which spammers are very much aware of the fact that we have disabled nofollow and candidly admit to using this to their advantage. Of course, this was not the only point made to drop nofollow and the argument that we should reward our quality sources with PageRank is still very relevant today. But my feeling is that the cost for this pursuit is that we allow spammers to steal a significant part of that reward (and they do, no matter how much spamfighting we do) and we lose valuable time spamfighting. The community might not share that opinion and I'd be more than willing to except that but all I'm saying is that people at the WikiProject Spam would like to see whether consensus has changed on that subject. Pascal.Tesson 06:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

How can nofollow be used to their advantage? --Interiot 06:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

He he... The confusion goes on. Spammers are using to their advantage the fact that we disable nofollow. This means that they have incentive to find creative ways to leave their links up as long as possible, so that their PageRank goes up. Wikipedia is recognized as a relatively easy way to boost your PageRank. Pascal.Tesson 07:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I thought you meant that the use of nofollow on talk pages/etc could be used to their advantage. Yeah, we're a spam target, but we're always going to have a little bit of spam no matter what (because we have visitors), and if Google thinks our links are too spammy, then they can decrease the influence we have on other page's pagerank (they may well do this already). I do think we need a concerted effort to remove spam, but shutting all of our links off to Google may be going too far. --Interiot 07:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Somewhere (maybe on the mailing list) there was a statement that Google had privately communicated that they would prefer we use nofollow, which if true, is a real wrinkle on the PageRank issue. I'm unclear whether this was a statement about all pages or just the current set of non-articles. It is interesting to note that every wikipedia except EN uses nofollow on all external links, including in articles. Dragons flight 17:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, is the list of wikis that have nofollow turned on (partially and/or completely) available somewhere? I didn't see it on meta, but that would be really good info to have.

It would be nice if the Google statement were clarified. Since it's not though, I'll speculate a bit... since we're a top-10 website, it's not unreasonable that Google might tweak our specific influence on PageRank (either manually or automatically). If this is the case, then it doesn't matter whether we apply nofollow to all links or not. If nofollow is on for all links, it's not legally binding, so Google could partially ignore it, if they decide we have valuable links. If nofollow isn't used on any of our links, but Google sees our external links are junk, they can decrease our influence on PageRank. So our influence on pagerank should (in a perfect world) be the same either way. The only time nofollow is useful to Google is when we mark a portion of our links as being more likely to be trustworthy (and when our normal links do actually turn out to be on average more valuable than our nofollow links). And that's what we're currently doing. --Interiot 18:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It may be reasonable but I guess we are not an exception. Google seems to have an academic pureism about changing algorithm but not making specific interventions if it can possibly avoid them. Google has said though that it looks at link age so spam doesn't gain much if fixed quickly. "Not much" may be a bowl of rice to a poor man though. Anyway as I have said lots of times there are so many wikipedia mirrors running without nofollow that there will always be value to spammers. --BozMo talk 12:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

My understanding, based on developer comments and checked against a few large wikis, is that nofollow is turned on for all external links on all wikis except en.wikipedia article space. It is also turned on by default in the Mediawiki software. Yes Google could, and probably does, consider Wikipedia as special, though it is largely impossible to know what effects that actually has. Dragons flight 18:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

For what its worth that was discussed early last year too. It was left as a switch default "on" because of a belief that anyone who didn't understand what it was probably needed it. Prior to Jan last year it wasn't on any WP. Other large wikis have gone different routes from Wikimedia. MoinMoin does a centrally updated spam url blacklist and ward's wiki went first to robots.txt then to a password only system. --BozMo talk 12:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, my only point here is that this discussion should move somewhere (not tech mailing lists) and be conducted properly. I am struggling to be disciplined and not explain why the idea is wrong here, just try to establish (again) that a proper discussion should take place before these kinds of changes are made. Incidentally, I watch 125 pages for spam and about 50% of all my main-space edits are removing spam, so lets neither of us take offense;). Quite a few wikipedia mirrors rerun the database without nofollow and there is still jam on the table for spammers and always will be. But nofollow does real damage to wikipedia IMHO --BozMo talk 07:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

can unregistered users vote?

It is pretty clear that they can't vote at RfAdm but how about other votes such as article's deletion or article's title disputes? It seems to me a no-brainer that only registered users can vote but there are so many policy pages, proposes policy pages, rejected policy pages etc, that I failed to navigate myself to an answer. Or should I construe that the lack of the issue's being addressed explicitely implies that unregistered users can and do vote on such matters? Thanks, --Irpen 00:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Generally, polls aren't settled on a strict tally of votes. It's more about what is said, than how many people say it. So if an IP user has a good point, his voice will be heard. -Freekee 04:23, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This does not match my actual experience. What I have seen is that the opinion of anyone who has not made significant contributions to Wikipedia will not be seriously considered. Even if they have significant experience and expertise in the subject matter, and even if they offer evidence, their votes will be considered "suspicious" and their votes heavily discounted. Seasoned Wikipedians need not offered a reasoned argument. They may merely say "not notable" and their vote will carry more weight than the experts -- UNLESS the expert happens to be a seasoned Wikipedian.

Yes, you should. They can and do, and as long as there is no suspicion of sockpuppetry their "votes" are considered as valid as any others. Note, however, that title and deletion debates are better considered as discussions than votes; see Freekee's well-made point above. -- Visviva 05:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not about whether the anons are allowed to opine and comment. This is about voting. For moves and deletions the voting tally is an important factor in the closing decision. As for commenting, anons can even comment on RfAdm. Diversity of opinions is always a good thing. --Irpen 05:46, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The exact weighting of votes is, I believe, up to the closer; anon votes may be discounted, and so may votes lacking a rationale. The closer is, I believe, also free to ignore the resulting tally entirely if the situation warrants it. -- Visviva 05:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone is able to leave a comment and it's not going to be removed, and the reasoning and evidence of comments is the greatest factor in any "vote", so that's what happens. I think you overestimate the importance of a voting tally. —Centrx→talk • 06:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

As was shown by the cosequences of Carnildo's promotion and the nightmarish "Giano" ArbCom case, underestimating voting tally is a bad precedent. Point being I never claimed that everything comes down to the vote tally. I asked a narrow question and instead of a clear answer on whether the issue is addressed by the policy this or other way, I get a lecture about admin's right. I know those. Is there still a chance to get a response on what are the current policies? Or we don't have this addressed directly? --Irpen

There is no ballot box, so there is no question as to whether an IP can use the ballot box. If IPs could not "vote", they could just create an account, or three, and "vote". IPs are free and welcome to make reasonable comments in a discussion, just like everyone else. —Centrx→talk • 10:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• Not exactly. You shouldn't compare the apple RFA (which judges people) with the orange AFD (which judges articles). Since we don't really have policy about people's character and trust, RFA ultimately boils down to opinion, and hence people get upset if the tally is ignored. Since we have a lot of policy and guidelines about articles, AFD boils down to those and to precedent, and tally can safely be ignored if one side has a better argument, and neither is this controversial. RFA is the exception, not the rule. (Radiant) 09:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

When you have the ArbCom vote, where the tally is absolutely critical, not only can anon IPs not vote, even logged-in users must have been around for a certain length of time and have a certain number of edits.--Runcorn 10:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Radiant makes the best point. RfA is about opinion, XfD about policy and precedent, if not fact. Every admin nominee is a special case. Nobody ever makes a good argument at RfA, only a more persuasive one. Thus, it boils down to a straight vote -- or would if we didn't rely on b'crats to figure out who is not a sock or meatpuppet. If it's all personal opinion anyway, all we can go by is a show of hands. This is a special case. One might even argue (I don't, but one might) that Carnildo had been in and out of RfA so many times that he was beginning to lack specificity -- that general arguments based on something more than personal opinion actually carried weight.

In discussions that are not about editors, we pretty much deal with things that are not unique. Articles and their subunits fall into categories, and we have policy governing each one of those eleventy billion cats. So rational argument plays a part that a show of hands does not. John Reid ° 15:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• • I don't think anons should be able to vote. There are a few anons who are anons basically to make a point but they are widely known (some even have user pages). Outside of those, I have to wonder what we gain by such things. If XfD is to be determined by policy and not opinion, what percentage of anon editors are really going to be familiar with those when even many regular editors appearantly aren't? The very need for the SPA template tells me that any value in anon voting is somewhat suspect already. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 15:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Again, XfD is not a vote. Tagging a comment with {{spa}} does not mean that their opinion is automatically invalid or totally ignored. SPA's can and do contribute to deletion discussions, occasionally providing crucial information. --Interiot 16:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Anonymous users are welcome and encouraged to make good XfD discussion contributions based upon our policies and guidelines. A good rationale, backed up by good research and well founded on our policies and guidelines, is welcome whether or not the editor has an account. Uncle G 17:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Former studies have shown that anons contribute a significant proportion of the useful content to Wikipedia, so it would reason that they have a right to participate, collectively. On the other hand, any particular anon is usually involved in the community to only a minor degree, does not have strong familiarity with policies or precedents, and has very little interest in articles outside their own area of interest (or even articles written by themselves). For this reason I think their discussion at XfD should be given careful consideration, but they're not particularly qualified to judge the suitability of an applicant at RfA. Of course, there are anons who are as deeply involved as any registered user and ought to be treated like one - frankly, these people ought to create an account. It just makes things easier. Deco 16:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Now, is it possible to have this somehow stated clearly on the policy pages? That anon's opinions are welcome at XFD/RM discussions but if they intend to cast a vote, not just opine, they are advised to create an account? --Irpen 17:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

But remember to make absolutely clear that no-one, anonymous or account-holder, should only cast a 'vote'. The vote should always be accompanied by some reasoning, and the reasoning should be over and beyond "me too" voting. ie. change to "if they intend to cast a vote as well as opine, rather than just opine, they are advised to create an account." Clear reasoning on any issue should always be noted, regardless of who contributes it. Carcharoth 17:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ad hominem rationale should always be avoided in all discussions. All point must be taken on content only. Anon users, even those brought in from outside wikipedia specifically to refute claims in an AfD (and thus obvious SPAs), often do bring in relevent information that is cogent to a discussion. We must NEVER discount any revelvent information on a strictly binary qualification (if user meets X criteria their opinions are valid/if they don't it is not). Closing admins act as trusted judges, and thus are given the right to accept or discount any comments or votes as they see fit; so long as an admins criteria for inclusion are applied consistently and without prejudice. If an admin acts inappropriately, it is a problem with the ADMIN, not with the SYSTEM. Wikipedia has a membership of ~6.5 billion users (see World population). To be a registered user does grant certain privilages, but being able to contribute in a meaningful way is not a privilage restricted to the registered. Ultimately, though anon users present a special challenge for closing admins in XfD and other discussions, it is not the place of anyone else BESIDES the closing admin to decide a priori whose opinion matters and whose does not. --Jayron32 18:00, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely, however this is not the way Wikipedia currently works. Articles are deleted based on the ad hominem rationale that Wikipedians are more believable than industry experts. If an article is deleted based purely on an ad hominem rationale, is there a way to appeal?Dgray xplane 22:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)

(reposting because of very little feedback)

I've overhauled Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) based on a 2nd round of feedback. This guideline is intended to bring a minimal consistency to the basic formatting style of bibliographies, filmographies, and discographies.

Possibly it's complete, and ready for {{style-guideline}} status? Feedback (at it's talkpage) or improvements welcome :) --Quiddity 03:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Need navigation box guidelines

We need some rules and a designated place for discussion of the "navigation boxes" and the templates and whatever used to create them, which are proliferating like crazy on Wikipedia.

Currently, Wikipedia:Navigation takes you to Wikipedia:Contents.

Many of these "navigation boxes" are merely unnecessary, redundant duplications of the categories, inferior to and best served by using the categories themselves. Some of them are useful; many are not. We need some centralized place to collect information about using them--if such a place already exists, please point it out to me and offer any suggestions you may have about making it more findable.

Many of them have hundreds of links, so many as to render them next to useless as a navigation tool.

Many of them take up an inordinate amount of space on the article page.

Many of them will almost never be actually used for navigation.

All those hundreds of links get thrown into the "What links here" of every one of the articles containing the navigation box, rendering the "What links here" totally useless.

See, for example, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 November 2#Template:Municipalities in Salamanca. Gene Nygaard 04:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

There's a discussion at least peripherally related to this at Template talk:Navigation bar, which is a template addressing the inordinate amount of space issue. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

It would certainly be helpful if the MoS mentioned this somewhere. Seems to me the guideline should be more or less as spelled out above: navboxes should be added if and only if they describe a fairly small closed set, and most of their links might plausibly be included in the "See also" section. -- Visviva 07:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

See also WP:ENAV#Navigational templates, an attempt at molding this into a guideline format. --Francis Schonken 10:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Gah! That's another well-written page that has been slapped with an "inactive" tag. In some ways I can understand Radiant slapping inactive tags on these pages, but if it is only to prod people into tidying up guidelines and integrating them into (for example) the MoS, or other places, then this is being disruptive. At the moment, the tag you are using says "This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is kept primarily for historical interest" - this 'kept primarily for historical purposes' bit prejudices the 'if you want to revive discussion' bit later. A better way to put this for some of the pages you have tagged is "This Wikipedia page is currently inactive. It has previously been discussed [[talk page|here]]. If you want to revive discussion etc.". Radiant, can you consider using this wording for pages that have a fair amount of discussion and history?

To be clearer, I can understand a poorly-written page that didn't generate much interest being given a "historical" tag, but there should be another way to tag pages that are well-written, were active, and may have gone inactive because they had reached a mature state but lacked the final push for someone to "officially" codify them. Radiant, as I say above, can you use another tag, or make a list of the pages and put the list at the Village Pump or at cent as part of a wider debate on tidying up such pages, if you want a wider debate like that? Carcharoth 16:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes for considerations about when to use categories vs. lists vs. series/nav boxes. I know that doesn't directly address the concerns Gene raises, but is somewhat related. I wish that there were some way to make the links in templates not show up when you look at Special:Related Changes. For example, List of United States Representatives from Michigan contains many red-links. I use Related Changes to periodically check for new/changed articles, but the pollution from links in the navbox make it much more difficult to sift through the list. older ≠ wiser 17:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree absolutely that bloated navboxes mess up "what links here". I like to use "what links here" to check whether an article is being linked from the right places, and to consider where else it should be linked from. Having all the articles in a large series linked makes it a bit silly. You look at the "what links here" list and think to yourself "why is that link there?" - then you go to the article and find a bloated navbox in Article A, with a link to Article Z in the navbox. Article A and Z may only be tenuously linked, but the navbox has linked them as much as a wikilink in the article would have done, and often with much less justification. Carcharoth 17:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• For a related proposal, see Wikipedia talk:Mini talk page template. (Radiant) 10:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Use of {{user wikipedia/Administrator}}

I recently came across Storkian's userpage. On it I found {{user wikipedia/Administrator}}, though a quick search turned up no evidence that he actually is an admin. Without a second thought, I removed the template and went on my merry.

So today he hits my talk page, telling me not to vandalize his userpage anymore. Biting my tongue...

Is there an actual policy relevant to this particular situation? I just can't fathom a good reason that anybody should be able to declare themselves an admin; it causes confusion for newbies who may be looking for some assistance, and it could make admins on the whole look bad if a random person says their an admin and starts disrupting the place. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:07, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, only admins should be presented as such. Anyone else is posing as an admin, so kind of the Real World™ version of posing as a cop. We as a community decide who we trust to be admins (and it's frequently referenced in ArbComm). -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 23:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• That is a bit self-indulgent. As EVula said above, I'm not sure what is proper policy in handling misuse of the Admin userbox. However, similar to the username policy, I would think someone posing to have a higher rank than the normal Wikipedia user, when not actually possessing said rank, should recieve some kind of warning.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 00:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Or we could just remove the userbox from their page, and then correct them if they suggest that such removal is vandalism. The user may not have "broken" a specific "rule" by having the box on his page, but its certainly in line with the project's mission to remove anything so misleading. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Remove it. If they readd it, warn them. If they readd it again, block them. Impersonating an administrator through userboxes should be just as illegal as impersonating through account name. --tjstrf talk 09:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• Just for the record, the most accurate way to tell who is and isn't an admin is Special:Listadmins. I don't think we need an official policy to tell us that people who aren't admins shouldn't go around saying they are; I've added a note to the template talk page, and dropped the guy a note. (Radiant) 11:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • With that in mind, I just added a link (on the word 'is') to the template that attempts to load Special:Listusers to the right page. It may be more appropriate to not limit it to the sysop group in case someone is lying, but that's a editorial detail. It doesn't appear on the template page itself because the syntax goes crazy; try visiting the userpage of an admin who has the template, such as User:Bryan Derksen. -- nae'blis 18:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Nifty, though it doesn't work for me. Oh well. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I can get it to work on a) subpages that are transcluded, and b) subpages that are only one level deep. I expect if you moved that page to User:EVula/sidebar policies it would function properly. Sorry, this seems to be a limitation of {{BASEPAGENAMEE}} at present. -- nae'blis 18:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Well, given the organization of my userpage, I'd rather not move the pages around (although its current organization was to accommodate a sidebar that is laid out differently from my current one). *shrug* I don't think its that big of an issue; aside from that userbox, I've also got a modified {{administrator}} link at the top-right of every page, so I'm fairly well set with showing my admin pride. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:25, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Copyright question

yes, this is another userbox-related question. yes, I do other things then mess with userboxes. :P

Quick question; recently, the color of {{User:Menasim/Userboxes/User Google}} was changed so that it was all black, rather than the colored version is was before.[34] The rationale was that it is a copyright violation. The logo is text, not an image (it isn't just an upload of the actual Google logo). Similar, yes, but I think it is sufficiently different (not the same font, not the same styling; just the same colors) that it should stay.

I'd just like some additional opinions. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• The coloring of the text in question adds no value to any articles at all. Plus, the coloring could be construed as a potential violation of fair use, ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that it is used in a userbox, which is NEVER covered by fair use. I see no problem with reverting it to black and white, where there is no question about whether or not it is a copy of the google trademark. --Jayron32 21:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) is near completion

It would appear we have a consensus that this naming onvention has gained wide acceptance of involved participants and should be promoted to an official guideline. Comments, as always, appreciated. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  18:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a very important issue, so I urge everyone interested to share his or her thoughts. --Ghirla ^-трёп- 18:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Policy on blocking an editor who makes substantial contributions

An important arbitration is underway under the title RPJ. Over a 12 month period, I made an effort to update the Kennedy Assassination articles using records from PBS and the 1998 work product of the federal Assassination Records Review Board. This effort has landed me in hot water prompted by a group of editors who like the status quo.

Presently, the group, who believes no new information is needed, has asked this editor be banned for "harassing" them with "Flat Earth" information. Now the dispute is in arbitration to permanently block me.

• For policy purposes, assume the editors are correct, and I have, in fact, incorporated into my discussions on the talk pages are "personal attacks" regarding the editors for repeatedly deleting new and well sourced information I placed in the article.
• Assume also, that I have a substantial history of valid contributions, both in the articles discussed by the complaining editors, and in other articles not at issue.

Under these assumptions:

• Is it appropriate, when consensus proves elusive on content, to use blocking against a logged-in user with a substantial history of valid contributions?
• When do the assumed persistent personal attacks become a pretext for blocking those editors with whom other editors have content disputes over updating 25 years of old information.
• How does one determine whether a group of editors, who through persistence, numbers, and organization, generate what appears to be consensus support for a version of an article that is actually fundamentally flawed by excluding significant viewpoints.

I am placing this issue here for general discussion to obtain additional viewpoints on this subject because it appears to be an important policy question.

I am weighing how to approach these issues in the arbitration, and any ideas would be welcome. RPJ 19:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

__________

If you continue to ignore policy, then it doesn't matter how much you've contributed. They'll still block you for pushing your point of view when you're supposed to be neutral. Consensus seems to be against you in this regard. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 19:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

_________ ___

• Thank you for your input. I am confident the evidence will prove I have not ignored any Wikipedia policy, but for the sake of discussion of policy, I assume my discussions are as one administrator put it "civil" but "imply a lack of judgment on the part of other editors" which causes "tension and discord."

• My question then becomes this: When does including a significant point of view on a subject become "pushing" a point of view? I ask this because often well sourced information is deleted with a simple comment "POV pushing." I have no idea what that means though I have asked about it. The phrase and concept of "pushing" a "point of view is one used in this project and haven't come across it in other areas of research and writing.

• My second question is then directed to the Wikipedia policy (above) about the occasional improper consensus which is discussed above. How does one correct a "fundamentally flawed" consensus (achieved through "persistence, numbers and organization")?

• As we know: "The neutrality policy is used sometimes as an excuse to delete texts that are perceived as biased." [35]

• We also know that “Blocking to gain an advantage in a content dispute is strictly prohibited” [36] RPJ 22:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

_______

I have no experience in the edit war. One thing to keep in mind: When potentially controversial material (that which is NOT part of the commonly accepted explanation of events), not only should it be well referenced, it should be put into context. Positions held by a minority viewpoint CAN be relevent, but should never be put into an article so as to represent that they are held by the majority. Even if referenced, such statements as "Some people have raised concerns..." or "Though not widely accepted, it is still held by many that..." Additions to an article where such additions are NOT in conjunction with the majority opinion should clearly indicate that, though referenced in reliable sources, they represent a controversial or minority viewpoint. --Jayron32 21:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• We also know that “Blocking to gain an advantage in a content dispute is strictly prohibited” [37] RPJ 22:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

___________

That seems an important consideration. From what I gather from the discussions so far both here and in the group discussions, there are generally four types of viewpoints that could relate to a subject: 1- a unanimous viewpoint; 2- a majority viewpoint; 3- a minority viewpoint; 4- a tiny minority viewpoint similar to a "Flat Earth" on the shape of the earth.

• There is no trouble with disputes over the first. It is the next three where problems occur and there is sometimes a controversy when the majority viewpoint believes that a minority viewpoint is really a "Flat Earth" view that requires no mention or, at best, a nominal mention. This last fact pattern is what seems to trigger the controversy on such subjects.

• What is unusual about present dispute is that: The well sourced material that I attempt to place in the article is modern viewpoint, and by far the majority viewpoint, and has been for the last 40 years according to all public opinion polls. The last official inquiry into the matter clearly sides with the vast majority of the public (minimum of 70%). The group that deletes the well sourced material holds the older viewpoint accepted by only 22% of the public ands presently adhered to by only small number of people that write in the field.

• I think what has happened is that the editors that are interested in the subject on a regular basis have confused the concept of majority and minority viewpoints in the outside world with whether a viewpoint is a majority or minority opinion among the handful of editors that work on the matter in Wikipedia.

• Since I don’t have an unlimited amount of time to work on the matter, I was hoping that others have grappled with this problem and can describe how to approach this, or whether it is presently not a situation amendable to resolution in the project’s present framework.

• The formal charges being asserted against adamently allege this is not a “content” dispute. Instead they claim it is about my “personal attacks.” I am very confident in that stage of the proceedings, because all the evidence is on the record so to speak, that merely gathering a number of testimonial opinions from fellow editors and administrators of the group that I am abusive and my arguments pull one into “the gutter” will be simple to deflect. The arbitration process requires evidence, and the words are either there or they are not. So far, the evidence page of complaining editors seems very slim.

• Oddly enough, there is a edit war charge recently alleged against me. But, since I am outnumbered 5 to 1 how could I possibly win an edit war let alone believe I should be getting into one? RPJ 22:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Fallacy of many questions. If you're going to complain, don't couch it in terms of leading questions, or you just come out sounding like a troll. Deco 22:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Anon vandalism

On 11/21/06 an anonymous editor 216.49.181.128 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) made 11 edits in just over a half hour, mostly deletion of material without comment in the edit summary. I left an {{anon vandal}} warning on their talk page. Another editor (Trödel) has repeatedly removed my warning and replaced it with another of his choosing. A 'whois' search shows that the anonymous editor is posting from a Church of Latter-day Saints address; Trödel seems to be very pro-Mormon and I feel that he is bending over backward to treat the anonymous editor with kid gloves. Wikipedia is no place for favoritism of any kind and I am wondering what can be done in this situation. Thank You. Duke53 | ^Talk 20:16, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

When dealing with an organization, it's better to be nicer. A potentially large group will be posting from that address so it's best not to bite the newcomers, no matter how obvious their vandalism might be. Continued and consistent vandalism merits stronger warnings. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 20:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

"When dealing with an organization, it's better to be nicer". Ah, there's the rub ... I did not know that it was 'an organization' until after I ran the 'whois' test, which wasn't available to me until after a warning had been posted. I wasn't going to change it after I posted the warning initially, just as I wouldn't change it for an individual. Duke53 | ^Talk 20:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

In either case, the second part of my comment comes into play. Unless this editor is replacing pages with "I stab puppies with sporks" or some equally obvious vandalism, you should use the test warnings. Blanking, while annoying, isn't necessarily intentional vandalism. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 20:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#Warnings, the template User:Duke53 used is at the intersection of the "Obvious vandalism" and "Final Warning" headings. I think its use in the cited case was therefore against the WP:BITE guideline, since the edits were not obvious vandalism (though they did arguably violate WP:NPOV) and it was only Duke53's first warning or communication with the anon user. I further think the "pro-Mormon" statement Duke53 makes above does not assume good faith of Trödel's actions. alanyst ^/talk/ 20:39, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

When any editor repeatedly (11 times) removes, without comment, items that aren't strict LDS POV then it is fairly clear that it is obvious vandalism. This was someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and did it methodically and quickly. p.s. Did you even go to that talk page and read the text that Trödel used to 'welcome' the anonymous user to Wikipedia? Duke53 | ^Talk 20:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I did see it and thought it was very sensible and well-written. If I were in the anon user's place, I would be concerned if, based on my IP address, edits I made were perceived as official acts of my employer when I intended the edits to reflect only my personal opinions. And I would be grateful to someone who informed me of the situation and gave me advice on how to correct it. That's the way newcomers to WP ought to be treated, regardless of which organization's IP addresses they happen to be using. Besides that, you are confusing inappropriate POV edits with vandalism. Not all of the former qualify as the latter. I could remove eleven times, without comment (though comments are better), material from articles that I honestly thought did not belong in Wikipedia, and not be guilty of vandalism; I might have been absolutely correct that the material didn't belong, and been perfectly justified in removing it. (I hasten to add that proper discussion on the articles' talk pages and commented edits would be much the better way, but we can't expect that of all newcomers.) Wholesale indiscriminate blanking of pages or sections of pages can be construed as obvious vandalism, but selective removal of text in furtherance of a point of view is an NPOV violation, but not vandalism from the outset. Continued POV editing after appropriate warnings and discussion can be construed as vandalism. Finally, even if it was obvious vandalism, which IMO it wasn't, the "Final Warning" template shouldn't have been used right away. alanyst ^/talk/ 20:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting interpretation of vandalism. I suppose that I will just go ahead and E-Mail the 'abuse' link on that whois report and see if the LDS has any problems with their people using their computers for this type thing. Duke53 | ^Talk 21:06, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

You could do that, but that seems like a pretty vindictive thing to do to someone who has already ceased their wrongful behavior, from all appearances. Why would you want to continue to harass this user? alanyst ^/talk/ 21:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

This case does not look like obvious vandalism. The user should be warned with {{test 1}} first and given then opportunity to reform and stop. If they do not stop, then add a {{test2}} or {{test3}} before a final warning is given. Additionally, editors who place the test messages should leave at least a few more words explaining their concerns. This is a clear case of not biting the newbies. The compelling evidence here is the high number of edits in a short time. The user may not be aware of policies and conventions and should be warned gently until it is obvious they are acting in violation of policies with full knowledge of such violations. Always assume good faith, and until this user has shown a pattern over time of disruptive edits, treat them as any other newbie. --Jayron32 21:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)